Ball Gowns & Bad Decisions
298 DAYS UNTIL STAR FORGED
Official release: August 10, 2027
Hey, Reckless Readers! 💗
October has arrived, and we're going to a BALL.
Tomorrow, October 17, I'll be heading to Tulsa for the Galaxy Ball Expo, and I am ridiculously excited. A whole day dedicated to books and reading and local authors, and then, once the sun goes down, we get to dress up, be dramatic, and pretend we belong somewhere considerably more magical than the real world.
Yes, please.
It's my first event out in the world as a lady with a book to brag about, so I'll have stories to tell you in the next newsletter. Possibly pictures. Hopefully no one notices me handing out my QR code while I'm there because I'm technically not a vendor this weekend. And my t-shirt definitely doesn't say ASK ME ABOUT MY BOOK.
Anyway, if you see a woman aggressively networking while pretending she's just there for the vibes, no you didn't.
Meanwhile, the manuscript has chosen violence.
October 31.
That's the deadline I've given myself to finish editing Star Forged, which means I have approximately two weeks to convince a manuscript full of morally questionable idiots to behave long enough for me to put them in a book.
They are not cooperating.
To be fair, I created these people. I gave them trauma, questionable coping mechanisms, and the emotional intelligence of wet socks, and now I have to sit here and make sure their terrible decisions are grammatically correct.
This is my punishment. I accept that.
November is supposed to be formatting month, which sounds very professional until you realize it mostly involves me wrestling an enormous document into something that resembles a real book instead of a hostage situation conducted in Microsoft Word.
And listen. I am EXCITED. But there's something deeply unsettling about realizing that this thing I've been obsessively building inside my skull for the last year is eventually going to be printed on paper and handed to other human beings.
Human beings with OPINIONS. Human beings who will meet my characters and potentially decide that their favorite is someone I've already emotionally marked for the farm.
Do I warn them?
Absolutely not.
Before I disappear back into the trenches...
Tell me what you're reading. I want to know which fictional character has you behaving in a way that would concern your friends and family.
You know the one. The walking red flag. The morally bankrupt menace. The man who could ruin your entire life and somehow you'd still be standing there with a little clipboard asking if he needed anything else.
Hit reply. I promise this is a judgment-free zone.
Mostly because I have absolutely no room to judge anybody.
Stay reckless,
AC 💗
Star Forged: Climb the Wall
August 10, 2027
ACEchols.com
298 DAYS UNTIL STAR FORGED. 💗
August 10, 2027.