A Little Perspective From An Author's Point Of View - Thursdays with the Author

I had someone recently complain (after seeing a post about an upcoming free promotion) that my books weren't free NOW. Which kind of made me want to put things in perspective.


I love free books, who doesn't? Especially when it's a newer author. Why spend money on something that's a gamble?

But you have to look at the other side of the coin as well.

Most authors run free promotion for marketing purposes. NOT because we we've made so much, we'd now like to gift it to the masses. NOT because we can't sell any copies and giving it away is our only option. Authors run free promotions to generate a larger audience. Our books move up on the 'lists', you know, when you type in a genre or key word, the books that show up on the first few pages of results? Those are the lists. If we get a ton of downloads, our book moves up. Now more people will see our book when they type in those keywords/genres.


We also run free promotions for reviews. Reviews seem almost impossible to get unless you're paying for them. Seriously. 

And we tend not to count family and friends because, let's be honest, we have no idea if they're only giving it a good review because they feel obligated.

No, we want the reviews from total strangers, avid readers, fellow writers. Those will tell us if our book is good.

So we hope that when we give it away for free, maybe a few people will review it. You know what the estimated odds are for getting reviews during free promotions?

ONE, that's right, ONE review per ONE THOUSAND downloads. Seriously. 

Reviews MAKE our books. They make sales. They tell people what to expect. They get the reader to click 'buy' when they were skeptical. Reviews, even negative ones, help an author sell more books.

Yes even negative ones. If they were all 5 star reviews, I as a reader, would be suspicious. I'd look like Mr. T in the picture above. Like I've said in MANY of my posts, you can't please everyone. Someone will dislike your book. So if every single one of your reviews was all sunshine and rainbows, I'd doubt the authenticity of them.But that's a blog post for another day.

The lack of reviews can of BREAK a book. They are the lifeblood to making sales. And we only get one, maybe two reviews out of a thousand books that we are GIVING away. Kind of depressing.

As for reviews, yes, some people actually pay a company for 'honest' reviews. Most of us offer a free copy of our book in exchange for an honest review. And I will tell you, some of them will be brutally honest. Some of them will hate it. AND post that they hate it on Amazon. Just because they got your book for free doesn't mean they'll have anything nice to say about it. Which is a real downer. Some of us authors, myself included, do not make much, if anything, selling our books. So giving out free copies, whether print or digital, costs us money. All in the hopes that some total strangers may like it and tell the world so via the world-wide web.

What's more depressing is, that a lot of times, our fellow authors, who know EXACTLY what if feels like to not get reviews, won't even review other books. They would probably jump on the chance for someone else that's offering to review, but never offer such a helpful service themselves. They KNOW how hard it is to make it as an author, yet they won't help other authors. So the cycle just keeps going. No reviews, no sales, no help.

Most of us write to provide for ourselves and our family. It's our career. Some of us, well, we'd LIKE it to be our career. But that's hard to do for any of us when the only people interested in our books are the ones that don't want to pay for it.

Let me clue you in on how much an author might make from a book sale. I'll even give you an example from my own sales. For a self-published using CreateSpace for print copies and Kindle Direct Publishing for eBooks.

My newest book is $10.99 print and $4.99 eBook.

If you order the print directly from CreateSpace (that NEVER happens for me), I get $4.70. If only people would buy books directly from the publisher, I might actually be able to consider quitting my day job. But since I first published over a year ago, not ONE PERSON has ordered any of my books this way. They usually order print copies from Amazon.  I get $2.50 for that. Out of $10.99, that's all I get. Now here's the real punch in the gut. If someone orders my book through Barnes and Noble or a library/school orders my book, I get an astounding .30 cents!!!! Yep. That's me 'making it big' with my books people.

Now for the eBook version, every time my book is ordered from Amazon, I get $3.45. Which is a much higher royalty than the print version. That's because there is no cost for production. Amazon takes their piece out for distribution and services and I get the rest. I won't even mention what I get for books that are borrowed from Kindle Unlimited/Amazon Prime users. Because I hardly ever actually see any profit from them. You see, if my book is borrowed, I'm supposed to get a percentage of the 'global fund' made by the fees those users pay to be able to get books/borrow books for free. I only see a royalty from those books if the reader actually reads 10% of the novel first. And that doesn't happen often. Most people that get books that way have a huge stockpile of books and mine is way down on their list. 

*Update: in 2015 Amazon changed it's Kindle Unlimited policy. Authors get paid out of the same global fund but now they get a percentage based on how many pages are read. If a reader reads three pages, or the entire book, I get something out of the global fund. But the same problem applies. Most people have a huge stockpile of books they can read that they've gotten for free via Kindle Unlimited. My book might sit in their kindles for years before they bother opening it. Meanwhile, I'm making absolutely nothing. *

I sell more eBooks than print. By a huge margin. Which is why I make my eBook price half, or less, of the cost of the print book. If it's affordable, more people will purchase it, and since I get a higher royalty back, I prefer to sell more that way. 

I see NY Times best-selling authors selling hundreds and thousands of copies of their eBooks for $9.99 without people complaining that they aren't giving it away more often. That must be what's so great about being traditionally published.

Now some might say: It doesn't cost anything to write a book, why are you charging so much? 

Well aside from the above mentioned costs that the middle man (IE amazon, publishers, etc) takes from our sales, it DOES cost us. Even if we only use pen and paper, we have to buy the pens and paper. We have to have a decent computer. An up-to-date writing program. The internet/phone for research and interviews. We might have to pay for the art or photo for our covers. We might be paying hundreds or thousands for an editor. Someone to format. A cover designer. A marketer. An agent. The list goes on, and on, and on. For some lucky few, it won't cost much, but for most of us, it can cost thousands to get our book into your hands.

So do you see why it's somewhat depressing when readers get upset that I'm not constantly giving away my books for free? Because that seems to be what I end up doing anyway. 

Perspective people.

Of course, my version of things may not be what everyone else deals with, but it's my bet that it's pretty close.

So whether you're a reader or an author, here's some points to remember:

1) Free books are great, but getting a book for under $5 is ALSO great

2) Every time you purchase a book, you are helping support an author

3) Every time you review a book, you are helping support an author.

4) If you download a book for free, please leave a review

Writing Through Difficult Times - Thursdays with the Author - January 12, 2015

Over a year ago, a fellow author and blogger asked me to do a guest post on her blog. Being a newly published author, and ready to jump at the chance for any publicity, I quickly said yes. But when I asked her what she'd like the post to be about she told me: anything, and my mind went blank. I was by no means a professional, nor had I gone to college and obtained some degree saying that I knew more than someone else. My knowledge had strictly come from trial and error, or as it's known in this country, the school of hard knocks.

Earlier that same year, my family and I had suffered through a very painful loss that threatened to kill the hope and inspiration inside of me that made me who I was. How could I write with such pain and grief lodged in my chest? How could I continue to write romance, which has a requirement of happily ever afters, when my happiness had fallen into a bottomless pit of despair? 

Sound overly-dramatic? It may have seemed that way to everyone else around me, but it was exactly what I was feeling at the time. But even in my pain, I forced myself to write. During my time of grief, I marketed my first published book, Dark Mountains. During the time I felt so lost, I finished the final touches on Irish Strength. I finished writing Irish Heart. It wasn't easy, but I made myself do it. And the result of pushing through it turned into two more finished novels. 

So when I thought back on what I had gone through that year, I decided that my guest post would be about writing through grief. It was almost as painful to write it as it was to live it in the first place, but the result, meant to be an educational and encouraging post for other writers, became another part of healing for me.

Before I share the post with you, I want to share the prologue to it all. You see, I've always been able to write better than I can speak, so it's actually easy to keep track of all the things that happen in my life. Because I write about them. Letters, poems, songs, short stories, etc. They all spring from things I've experienced. So to give you a bit of a back-story, I have this tradition of writing letters while I'm pregnant. I write to my unborn children and put the letter in their baby book. I've even written a letter AS my unborn child, to my husband. (I know it sounds strange but it was actually pretty cute)
So it all started with a letter that I wrote to a child I carried...

Unexpected Miracle

January 19, 2013

My little miracle,

  Two days ago, I found out about your existence.  Your father and I were not planning on you, or even knew there was a chance you were there. I was having issues that I should not have been having, and a friend of mine suggested I take a pregnancy test to be sure. I told myself, ‘There’s no way that I am pregnant.’, but followed her advice, and bought two tests. I was so shocked to find positive results on them both. I immediately called daddy and told him the news.

  But I was still having problems that were even more abnormal to have during a pregnancy. Now I was beyond scared that I was losing you right when I had just learned you were there. Suddenly I thought of God. I was begging in prayer for Him to save you. To keep you safe inside my womb.  Why had I not prayed to Him from the moment I found out? Why had I not been praying to him regularly to begin with?

  It seems with mankind, that praying without ceasing comes easy when things are going wrong. The entire day I was praying for you. The next day, waiting to see the doctor and get back test results, I was praying for you. Today, knowing that you are inside me but still in danger, I am praying constantly.

  God has proven to me that my plans, and the plans I make with your father, are nothing compared to what He has planned for me. We had decided to wait until the summer to start trying for you and God showed us that He wanted you to come now. I look at my faith and am saddened to see how small it is. God has proven yet another thing to me. Belief is not good enough. Salvation is not good enough. I am missing SO much by not being connected daily, constantly, consistently to my God.

  So I have not just learned about the baby growing in my womb. I have learned that my need for Jesus is greater than I ever imagined. The necessity of praying and studying the Word of God is greater than I could ever know. My soul demands constant connection with my God. I must have a stronger faith.

  Because of you, my precious child, I have realized these things. God has once again shown me the miracle of life. Though I remain fearful that I may yet lose you, I will trust in the plan that God has created for us. I will love you, and will pray for you, and give you every part of myself for as long as I have you. Just as it is with your big brother and big sister, I will be your mother and I will love you. And though you have just left His arms, I will re-introduce you to our Father in Heaven. I will show you the way to salvation through our Lord Jesus. And I will help you listen and obey the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

  Dear little one, I may only have you a short time. I may have you until the Lord calls me home many years from now. But as long as I do have you, I will thank God for the gift of your life.

Love,

Your Mommy

Can you see where this is going now? I bet you can. And you're probably right. It's been two years since I carried that precious, little life inside me and on Valentine's Day, it will be two years since I had to say goodbye to that hope.

Miscarriage is something that is never really talked about and completely misunderstood, until you experience it. Words, though I wrote them, simply cannot express the absolute sense of loss I felt when my doctor called me that day. I had known there was a problem. I had known there was a chance. But I was sure it would be okay. I was positive that my baby would make it. I had been wrong.

What is even less talked about, and even more misunderstood, is the recovery after miscarriage. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, even sexually. And I'm not kidding. I went through a year of being afraid of having sex, because I was afraid of getting pregnant, afraid of losing another child, afraid I wouldn't be able to survive it a second time. Even from day one, there was so much support, especially from my husband and my two beautiful children, but no one REALLY understood what I was going through. The guilt, the grief, the depression, the fear, the EVERYTHING. 

And the things people say. If you've ever lost a child, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about and how much worse it makes you feel. 'It was for the best.' 'There was probably something wrong with it.' 'God has a plan and we need to trust that this happened for a reason.' 'Heaven has one more angel looking down on us.' 'You can always have another.'

Seem cruel? Ask yourself if you've ever said anything to someone who has lost a child, from miscarriage, still birth, death. You most likely have, in some form or fashion. All of those words, meant to comfort, were just twisting the knife that was already embedded deep in my heart. 

Really, I just wanted someone to be a shoulder for me to cry on. Someone to only hug me and not say a thing. Someone to pray for me. Someone to let me be a zombie for as long as it took for me to find life again. And I did get that in some ways. Now in case you think I'm talking about the months of grieving and recovery after my miscarriage... I was and wasn't. Everything I just said happened in the minutes and hours after I received that phone call confirming that my baby was gone.

But I had two children that needed me and I knew I needed to dig my way out faster than I wanted to. For me, the best way to try and find myself again was to write. Only hours after that phone call, I was writing. If you can call breaking into sobs every few words, writing. But by that evening, I had written another letter... to the child I had lost. And even though the physical proof of my loss hadn't even begun yet, I had already found my way to cope.

So when I was asked to write the blog post, in the end, I decided to share my painful journey of loss with the world. The post was about writing through tragedy and hard times, but it should have been titled: How I Survived. It was a long-winded post so I'll only share with you the part pertaining to this subject, but you can click on the link below to read the whole post. 

I hope that it helps you heal in whatever you're going through as much as it did for me. And I hope it encourages you to keep writing, no matter what you're going through. Life is full of unexpected moments, that make unexpected memories and lead to unexpected places. They won't all be happy, if fact a majority of them will make you sad, but those unexpected moments make you who you are and make your writing what it is.

Guest Post for Alana Munro - November 22, 2013:

As writers, we are used to writing. All the time. It’s what we do. Everything inspires us. We’re surrounded by journals with ideas hastily scrawled in the middle of the night after waking up from a dream. Our smart phones have dozens of notes with short-hand typing when inspiration strikes while out shopping. Our computers have documents in different stages of development. We write when inspired and the mess of words left to sort out later is the result.

But more and more frequently, I’m seeing posts from authors and writers, struggling to write after tragedy strikes. To focus on a pen and paper (or computer and keyboard) when life really kicks us around. Some even take a break from writing to cope with what their life had thrown at them, only to come back and feel lost in the tumultuous emotions still swirling around in their minds.

Life is hard.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is an established fact. Sometimes it even sucks. It’s not predictable; neither is the way we react to it. Everyone has different coping mechanisms. Different personalities and emotions. Different ways of accepting.

I think for writers, the best way to cope is to KEEP WRITING. Even when it seems impossible. Even when there’s no time. Even with our chaotic moods threatening to swallow our sanity. KEEP WRITING. We are writers after all, are we not?

What you write doesn’t have to be good. Hell, it doesn’t even have to make sense. The only thing that matters is that you didn’t give up, you didn’t let anything stop you, from putting words to paper.

Inspiration strikes us all, even in the worst of times. For me, I’ve always found it to be therapeutic to write when I am struggling. Life likes to throw giant flaming bowling balls of problems my way and writing about it is almost like taking up a giant club and whacking that damn ball clear out of the park. Even if what I write is just a jumbled mess of feelings and words scrambled onto a paper, I come back to it later and find diamonds, rubies, sapphires and all manners of creative gems hiding in the wreckage. Use it. Refine it. Create something with it.

Regardless of what genre you write in, tragedy and heartbreak can strike any of the characters. It can build bridges or tear them down. It can deepen character or shatter it. It can forge relationships or destroy them. It can add depth, emotion, humanity, to what we write.

Why hide from that? Who cares if you are bawling your eyes to oblivion while trying to type? Who cares if you are getting salty tears all over your keyboard? Who cares if your pencil lead keeps snapping from the unnecessary force you are writing with? Who cares if you’re surrounded by crumpled up papers after you start and ultimately hate what you are writing. You should care. If you can’t feel emotions and let them flow into what you’re writing, how is the reader supposed to feel the emotion when reading your words? As writers, we shouldn't be afraid of the raw and unpredictable. We should embrace it.

Life never gives us a break. We wish it would, but there is no stopping the ebb and flow of pain, illness, death. What is hard to remember, during those times, is that life also gives us joy, love and hope. What we write, whether romance, horror, children's, etc. isn't one dimensional. it has the same ebb and flow that we experience in everyday life. Learning how to embrace the changes, the hard times, and use them in our work, is what makes us great writers.

Last January, my husband and I found out we were expecting another baby, our third child. We weren’t prepared for this news but were extremely happy. Only a few weeks after finding out, some tests came back with results no one wants. We had lost our baby. After only weeks of knowing that hidden joy was nestled inside me. That light that kept me smiling with the secret knowledge of the little one I carried inside me was gone. I was devastated. Beyond any emotions I had ever experienced. To any of you that have lost a child, in any stage and point of life, you know the feelings I was experiencing. There were no words.

Except that there were words. Feelings. Emotions. Tears. Anger. Despair. Swirling inside me like a hurricane. I couldn't stop crying. Screaming in agony over what I had lost. Drowning in guilt for the wrongs I imagined up for the sake of something to blame. So I began to write. I had written a letter to my unborn child, as I had done with my first two, the day I found out I was pregnant. It seemed only fitting to write a letter to my baby again.

So that’s what I did. And all of those words and feelings and thoughts storming inside me flew onto the paper like that’s where they were always destined to be. It took me hours just to write one page. But that one page contained every piece of my heart that had been broken that day. In the end, the anger and guilt were gone. The sorrow, the pain, the heartache were still alive and raw inside me but I had found the way out. The path to healing… through writing.

We just passed what would've been our child’s due date on October 14. Ironically, a day later was a national remembrance day for lost children. The same emotions I felt the day we lost our baby came swelling back up and I took out that letter and read it again. I blogged it. I passed it on. Hoping that those words I wrote on what is so far, the single worst day of my life, would help someone else heal and find hope…

Precious One,

Today I learned that I had lost you. As soon as I heard the words, I lost myself as well.

Grief is a powerful thing. A tidal wave that comes with no warning and destroys what you hold dear. It devastates everything you once knew and leaves empty, broken shells of what once was. You are lost in the dark, swirling waters, not knowing where the surface is, where to go to breathe. It swallows you and you drown in the darkness.

Everyone who has ever lost must ask the question: why? Human nature compels us to try to understand and explain. To give reason to why everything happens. There is no reason and yet there are a million reasons.

I don’t know why God took you away so soon. I don’t know why I never got to hear your heart beat, feel you kick inside me, listen to your first cry, hold you in my arms. I barely knew you. Your father will not see my belly grow with you, feel you moving beneath my skin, cut the cord that would’ve separated us, hold me while I held you. Your siblings will never get to see you sucking your thumb on a screen while you sleep inside me, wait impatiently in a room while I bring you into the world or hold your tiny hand as they meet you for the first time. We will never get to know you in this world.

But my dear, sweet child, we will never forget you. We will never forget the joy you brought to us, even though it was for such a short time. We will never forget the hope you gave us. We will never forget ideas you spurred in our minds and the love you created in our hearts. We will never forget the lessons that your brief time here taught us.

You showed me the miracle of life, beloved child. You showed me the flaws in my faith and by merely existing, helped me surrender them to God. You showed me how to trust in what God had in store for me and for our family.

Sometimes the path that God leads us down is hard. Sometimes it is so painful that it becomes nearly unbearable. Losing you made me so angry with God. But after the anger passed, God reminded me of some very important things.

He reminded me that He loves me. He reminded me that not all is lost. He reminded me that I have a Comforter that is holding me now. He reminded me that He feels every tear that I cry. He reminded me how blessed I am.

He reminded me that He has given me your brother and your sister. He reminded of the joys that they are in my life. He reminded me that He has given me your Daddy. He reminded me that your Daddy is an example of what He is to me. A rock that won’t be moved. A strength that cannot be tested. A helpmate and counselor.

He reminded me that I am not alone, that I have family and friends that love me and pray for me. He reminded me that we WILL see you again. That the day we find ourselves in eternity, we will find you. We will see you in the heavenly splendor of a child of God. That we will KNOW you and you will know us.

My precious child, I will never stop grieving your loss. I will never forget that I once carried you inside of me. Even in my grief and sadness, I will not forget that my God is leading me. That He is holding my hand, carrying me when I stumble, holding me together when I break.

I know this despair will lessen, that this grief will ease. I know that this wound will heal. I know, my dearest child, that I will hold you in my arms one day. But until that day comes, I will remember what you taught me and let God lead me through this journey.

Love,

Your Mommy

Writing either of those things was not easy. Writing after pain and loss won’t be easy for you either. But you are a writer. You let your feelings, your emotions, and your thoughts flow through you and into your story. Don’t be afraid to write in the pain and hard times. You just might write the best thing you’ve ever created. But you won’t know until you try.

An Explanation for the Silence - Personal Anecdotes - November 10, 2014

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted on my blog, or any of my author pages for that matter. And I do have a good reason. Well actually, about 50 good reasons. The last two months on the home front have been CRAZY. Yes, that's all capital letters. Because it's been that crazy here!

My next novel is 'supposed' to be released at the beginning of January. The use of quotations here may suggest that the release date is up in the air. And you'd be right. Thanks to my previously mentioned crazy few months, I'm way behind on formatting and final tweaking. So it may be pushed back a few weeks or so. Once I get past the remainder of crazy this weekend, I'll have a lot more time to concentrate on my book!

Stay tuned next week for a sneak peek of said book, as a reward for listening to me ramble on about why my life has been so crazy lately. ;)

So to start off, we added a new pet to our household a few months ago. A 6 month old green iguana which we named Iggy. He's going to get huge (he's grown 4 inches since we brought him home) so we decided to build him a custom habitat. These babies go for thousands online (which we definitely can't afford) so, since I'm a creative thinker and my hubby is a handy-man, we opted to make our own. I got an entertainment center for $15, bought a couple hundred $'s worth of material and we went to work. So what started out as this:

Turned into this: 

Which Iggy absolutely loves. :)

As if that project wasn't enough to do, Halloween was coming up and we LOVE dressing up for that in this house. Last year, all four of us went as the Duck Dynasty family, which was super fun. This year, my 10 year old son, fresh off the Transformers: Age of Extinction kick, decided he wanted to be either Bumblebee or Optimus Prime for Halloween. Sure, why not? Until I looked at said costumes in the Halloween section and was disappointed by both the overall crapiness of said costumes and outrageous prices. This is when the crazy gene seemed to come out of the closet. I told him I would MAKE his costume. Ugh.

Needless to say, we quickly decided on Optimus Prime, as he's the more boxy transformer and would be easier to duplicate with cardboard and colored foam sheets. My son also decided to go with a more 'traditional' and less Michael Bay Optimus, which made my job slightly easier. I started his costume a month before Halloween and managed to finish it the day before. No joke. It was a beast. Unfortunately, my talents stopped at getting it to transform from robot to truck, but I tried to make up for the lack of creative skills with making a really awesome robot costume. I think I succeeded, though I'm pretty damn sure I'm tooting my own horn. ;)

Not so bad, right? Well my 6-year-old daughter, not to be out-done, decides (like every other child this year) to be Elsa from Frozen. Another easy break, since she, as a frozen fanatic, already had the dress. Thank God. But she insisted that she needed a wig since her blonde hair (that's perfectly long enough to braid) isn't white, and it needed to be in order to pull of the costume. Fine. So I made her a wig out of yarn. Then, since the temperatures were supposed to be in the mid-thirties, I went ahead and dressed up some mittens for her. And just for fun, added some snowflakes to her shoes and tiara. 

The result was a Halloween that both my kids thoroughly enjoyed. But that did not end my bout with epic-craziness. Oh no. It only got worse.

My daughter turns 7 on November 15 and as is customary in this house, we start deciding what she wanted to do for her birthday a few weeks before Halloween. Traditionally, our kids get the choice of having a party with all their friends and classmates, or going somewhere cool (like St. Louis, Indianapolis, Chicago, etc) with a friend. This year, my daughter decided on a party, with EVERYBODY she knows. Fine. I can handle planning that while making an epic Optimus Prime Halloween costume. Insert epic eye roll here. 

At first, she wanted a Green Bay Packers party. Which my husband and I were pretty stoked about since we're HUGE Green Bay fans. And I'm thinking in the back of my mind, that a football party won't be that popular with a majority of her friends so maybe not too many people will show up. I really was thinking that until ABC aired Harry Potter week. Of course they would air the entire series leading up to Halloween and of course, my children would watch it and fall in love instantly. My easy party dreams just went up in flames like a certain Phoenix named Fawkes. 

My youngest child now wants a Harry Potter party. Which I know, immediately, is going to involve some of the most detailed and over-the-top planning I've ever done. Why? Because mommy just so happens to adore Harry Potter. The books, the movies. All of it. And mommy is secretly just as excited about having a HP party as her child. 

So while still working on Halloween costumes, I began the planning and creating of what I hope will my my daughter's most awesome birthday. It begins with the invitations. Which the nerd in me went completely over-board with. I think I sent the invites before really starting anything else. Just so I would have no choice but to stick it out in case I got cold feet halfway through. Which I did. Multiple times.

Of course, they had to have owl stickers so they'd look like they were delivered by owl post.

Then they had to have to exact 'address' of her classmates.

Then they had to have wax seals.

Then I had to super-nerd the invites so they sounded like actual Hogwarts acceptance letters.

Of course I did.

My daughter even insisted on wearing an owl shirt to school the day she passed out the invitations. And I couldn't have been prouder.

Next came the details. 

House ties for each child:

 Painting the wall of Platform 9 3/4 that they have to walk through to get into the wizarding world.

Hand-drawing the name tags (in Harry Potter font, of course) for their treat bag cauldrons because even though I'm a giant nerd, I couldn't figure out how to fit labels in my printer.

Then hand-drawing the signs for all the shops they'll visit to get all their goodies. 

From Olivanders, they'll get their own wand, which I will describe in more detail below. From Eeylops, they'll get their own owl. From Potage's they'll get a cauldron that will serve as their goody bag. From Madam Malkin's they'll get a robe with a name tag and Hogwarts crest (which also took me days to make each one). From the 3 Broomsticks they can refresh themselves with Butterbeer, Polyjuice Potion and Hagrid's Hot Grog. Then from Honeydukes they get to choose from a variety of wizarding candies including edible wands, chocolate frogs, ton tongue taffy, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, etc.

Making potions labels and vials for their potions class. My science teacher mom has graciously agreed to be the 'professor' for this class and the kids will actually be making different 'potions'. 

I was also going to make floating candles to hang from the ceiling but since it's going to be enough stuff to set up already the day of the party, I nixed the idea and went with tabletop candles instead. Due to the number of young kids that will most likely be running around with a sugar high, I also nixed the real candle idea. And I didn't want to buy the cheap looking battery operated pillar candles. So I got the cheap tea-light ones and made various sized pillars to put them in out of paper towel and toilet paper rolls and some more hot glue. I still haven't finished painting them but I still have five days. :)

 And then there's the wands. 25 kids and they all get a one, and each one is completely unique. The entire process took DAYS to finish. The plan is to have them try a few out and then 'magically' turn on some twinkling Christmas lights when the wand 'picks them'.

I used dowel rods, a crap-ton of hot glue, and some different paints. Then labeled each one with wood type, core type, and length. For me these were the coolest thing to make. :)

(Notice the Optimus Prime painted cardboard? From one project to the next!)

(My daughter spotted a look-alike elder wand out of all these the minute I showed her.)

Along with all this craziness, I'll be making custom-made wizard trading cards for the chocolate frogs. I've also got a dementor (black cheesecloth and plastic skull) to hang from the ceiling and a Christmas light stag that will turn on when they correctly perform the Patronus Charm to scare away the dementor. 

Yeah baby. 

Plus some fishing line and a feather for their charms class where they'll learn to levitate objects with wingardium leviosa. 

Double yeah. 

I also went more crazy and bought a replica sorting hat that via baby monitor, will sort all the kids into houses. All my volunteer professors have capes and witch hats to wear as well. 

I expect I might have to sleep for a week after this party as I'm posting this on Monday and the party is this Saturday and I'm still not done getting everything ready. But I have faith it'll turn out amazing and will be posting pictures to prove it after the party, and after I recover. ;)

So that's what's been going on the last few months that has kept me away from social media. Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things next week and get to work so I won't have to delay the book release. :)