THE PAPER MAGICIAN: Cover Reveal!

WHY HELLO THERE.

Excitement is in the air. Why? Because my book has a cover!

My firstest cover, just for me! And it's so pretty!

Wanna see it? Do ya? Of course you do! (Unless Blogger's preview has already spoiled it for you. In that case, you can scroll down anyway and see it BIGGER.)

Here it comes!
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Ceony Twill arrives at the cottage of Magician Emery Thane with a broken heart. Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic…forever.

Yet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined—animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.

An Excisioner—a practitioner of dark, flesh magic—invades the cottage and rips Thane’s heart from his chest. To save her teacher’s life, Ceony must face the evil magician and embark on an unbelievable adventure that will take her into the chambers of Thane’s still-beating heart—and reveal the very soul of the man.

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So excited!

If you want to mark the book to read on Goodreads, go here.
If you want to preorder the ebook, paperback, or audio book, go here.
If you want to tell me to suck a lemon, please do so in the comments. :)

#WIPmadness Check-in: Roundin' Up April

Head's up, guys! Mother's Day is just around the corner, so make sure you break from that manuscript long enough to send her a card!

(I actually transcribed this video and used it in a church talk yesterday...)

Last week was hectic for my writing! I have two deadlines for two different manuscripts (one of which is DONE, thankfully, the other of which will make this week hectic as well). Throw in a baby who suddenly wants to eat every two hours instead of every three and a husband swamped with thesis work and you have hysteria at the Holmberg residence. (Silver lining: the LDS missionaries came over and cleaned my place on Wednesday since I haven't had time to do it in forever. Woo!)

As soon as this second manuscript is turned in, I'll have a large swatch of breathing room until the next round of edits hit my desk. In the meantime, I hope to start my own edits on my Eastern-based romantic fantasy. I'm excited to get back to it!

This makes four weeks of #WIPmadness on the blog. Looking back over the month, what have you accomplished, or wish you had accomplished? What are the writing goals for May?

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ALSO, for a self-plug, I got my cover for The Paper Magician! You can see it here. :)

#WIPmadness Check-In for April, Number Three

Publishing is like waiting for Christmas morning . . . only you don't know what day Christmas is on.

Writing involves a lot of waiting. Waiting to finish the manuscript, waiting on queries, waiting on editors, waiting for publication . . . needless to say, being a writing requires a great deal of patience. BUT, it's always worth the wait!

How are your projects ticking away? What are you waiting for?

April #WIPmadness Check-in, Numero Dos!

Does it ever seem that writing is a balancing act?

We all have our strengths, and, unfortunately, we all have our weaknesses as well. We might be strong with setting, but weak with plot. Strong with side characters, but weak with our protagonist. Strong in prose, but weak in theme.

Once upon a time I was pretty good with magic systems, but lacking in prose. So I worked and practiced and got my prose up, only to get my plotting down. Now I'm trying to get my plots stronger without losing any finesse in characters.

I suppose the point is that, no matter how far along on the publishing road you've driven, there's always room for improvement. When it comes to writing, there's always something to learn or relearn. We can never stop growing. And we can never stop writing!*

What are you working on this week? What elements are you trying to balance on the writing scale?



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*On my writing front, I finished the first draft of THE MATERIALS MAGICIAN!


Also, happy birthday to my lovely sister-in-law Chris today, and to my sexy manmeat husband tomorrow!

April #WIPmadness Check-in!

Heyo friends.

I'm hosting #WIPmadness for April! For those of you who don't know, #WIPmadness is a writing hashtag on Twitter. Anyone can join, but even if you don't have Twitter, feel free to participate and let the rest of us know how your writing is doing!

Spring is in the air, and with spring comes new opportunities.

I'm really excited to be a writer right now. I'm two chapters away from finishing the third book in my The Paper Magician trilogy, I'm starting edits for The Glass Magician by the end of the month, and I'll be getting another book ready for submission in the meantime. After all that, I'm finally returning to Empire of Cranes and Spiders, my Eastern romantic fantasy, for some more revisions (the sucker is just too long/wordy). I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on it again.

On top of all that, I have two new agent sisters and I'm having a blast getting to know them better!

So, what are you working on this month? What projects do you have "blooming" in your metaphorical gardens, writing or otherwise?