Good morning!
In true chronically ill fashion, my body has suffered for my delusions of grandeur following months on end of too much work and too little rest. I debated talking about this online with anyone who visits this website, but it feels disingenuous not to, doesn't it? Let's get into it.
For the last few months especially, I've been working almost non-stop on A Clockwork Melody in between a full-time job, a part-time job, various medical appointments, and trying not to lose the entirety of my social life in the process. When you're chronically ill, you're working with energy you often don't have. All throughout August especially, I was painfully aware that I was working myself into an inevitable flare-up, and sure enough it has arrived. I'm grateful it waited until after the book's release date -- such a rare display of consideration from my body, truly.
In between dealing with endometriosis flare-ups and a particularly irritating migraine that's been hanging on for a couple days now, I have (foolishly) still been working on book-related things. Many of these are not particularly exciting, unfortunately; the harsh reality of being independently published means that the majority of bookish work is boring administrative duties. Some of this has finally borne fruit, and I am immensely pleased to finally be a verified author on Goodreads. I'm still working on getting A Clockwork Melody onto other review spaces, so if you have a favoured one in mind please let me know! I've managed to get the book added to Storygraph (though I'm still working on getting the trigger warnings all listed), and I'm in the process of trying to get the book added on Fable as well.
Some genuinely exciting book news -- physical copies are in the works! After many hours toiling away in Photoshop, I was able to get some covers finished up for both hardcover and paperback versions of A Clockwork Melody. Again, the reality is that a lot of the boring book-related work is registering ISBNs for each distinct version of the book... and then having to submit a copy to Library and Archives Canada. But the exciting part of this is that you guys get to see a preview of the covers!
The books are expected to arrive here for me to inspect hopefully in early October. Once I've determined that they look a-okay and are worthy of the public eye, they'll be available to purchase on Lulu as print-on-demand. I'm hopeful that this means everyone who wants a copy will be able to purchase one, just in time for Samhain! (If you know, you know.)
And yes -- that hardcover page at the back does look frightfully empty, doesn't it? The sad truth of it is that usually authors put little blurbs and comments from other well-known authors to draw in similarly-inclined readers. Since I don't have that, I'm at a loss for what to put there. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to ideas. My current thoughts are;
Find a memorable quote from the book's content to have on the back page (difficult)
Include the lyrics from either Charlotte's Lullaby or Charlotte's Nightmare
Have a throwback to the old, original cover for A Clockwork Melody - "The winds of change are blowing, the Clockwork Wars have begun"
With that out of the way, I'm afraid that's the extent of my updates to share with you all. Thank you to everyone who has read the book, shared it with your friends and to your social media, and left reviews. This has truly been a dream come true, and despite finding myself in the midst of a particularly uncomfortable flare-up, I can honestly say this is the happiest and most fulfilled I have ever felt in my short life. I couldn't have done this without you all, and I'm so grateful.
Cheers,
JP
P.S. At some point I will elaborate on each of the four flowers included on the cover, for those of you who are interested in researching flower symbolism... if you haven't figured it out already.
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