Sheila Reads and writes

Happy Full Moon!

I hope this email finds you sane.

Last week was rough. I wish I had something eloquent to say but I really don't.

I had coffee with my author friend Victoria Mier last week (a great fortune that we live a town apart) and we talked about how you sustain and endure when you feel daunted by the responsibility of the work before you.

It's fitting that I drew the 8 of Cups for this full moon in Taurus. This card is about acknowledging heartbreak and hurt feelings. It's a card about allowing yourself to sit with disappointment before continuing to move toward better things.

We talked about grief and mourning in the last newsletter, but this card is a perfect reflection of how that grief informs how we move forward. The 8 of Cups asks us to be gentle with ourselves as we pick up the pieces and to take these first steps with as much self-compassion as we can manage.

It's okay if you're feeling a little tender. Now more than ever we need to embrace empathy. Take a deep look at the needs that are the hardest for you to admit to the world and make a plan for how to meet them in the coming months.

Wishing you a smoother ride through this lunar cycle.

What you'll find in the rest of this email:

A Pick a Card reading
A DIY Tarot Reading
Song of the Dark Wood updates
A Writing Update
A Reading update
The Lost God Audiobook pre-release

New Moon in Pisces - This new moon in watery Pisces is an opportunity to notice what emotional patterns were locked into. While new moons are often about setting an intention for creation and new habits, this new moon is more about observing what already exists. We are learning how this awareness can nurture us.⠀
Take a few deep breaths and choose the card you feel most drawn to. The card you select represents how you can best observe the emotional patterns that you're locked into without judgment.

Scroll down for your reveal.

REVEAL TIME - The card you select represents how you can best observe the emotional patterns that you're locked into without judgment.

Ace of Swords - The key to understanding your emotional crutches will be most obvious whenever you are thinking about trying something new. The resistance that arises from change is your first indication of which emotions feel safe to you, and which do not. Let that observation be a guide to exploring how you've managed past changes and what helped you navigate apprehension.

Knight of Pentacles- A lot of what you're feeling is getting lost in the sheer busy-ness of your hectic life. Finding a way to sit in stillness and breathe through big emotions will be most helpful to you right now. This is a great time to build short meditation breaks or a movement practice into your day to hold that time for yourself.

The Empress - Your work is in feeling worthy of the time it takes to process your feelings. Perhaps you grew up in a family system that required you to repress your feelings in order to avoid inconveniencing someone with the burden of your needs. But you owe it to yourself to take the time now, in the privacy of your own heart to feel both the emotions that feel comfortable and the ones that feel too raw and vulnerable.

I hope your reading was resonant.

SONG OF THE DARK WOOD Update:

SONG is on a tear and eventually, I'll be able to share some of the exciting stuff I've been holding back. Until then, I've solidified a release timeline and titles for the other two interconnected standalones in the series. I also have a series name so keep your eyes peeled for that very soon.

I've received a lot of questions about which characters the other books are about and if we will see some familiar faces. If you've read the bonus chapter, then you should have a pretty good hint for book 2. If you read the early order bonus chapter, you should have a good hint for book 3.

You will also see some familiar faces in future books.

If you have not purchased a copy yet, you can find it at your favorite online retailer.

If you have already read the book I would be so grateful if you would leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Thank you so much.

What I'm Writing:

In our last email, I was mid-surgery on this revision. Things were messy and unruly. The story still felt too wild to wrangle. Now I am relieved to say that it's nearly wrangled.

As of writing this, I am about 93% into this edit. I still have a couple spots to smooth out and the final chapter to write, but I'm feeling way better about it than I was two weeks ago.

A lot of people think that when you revise, you revise everything at once: the plot, the characters, the voice of the different POVs. In reality, I can only usually edit on one level at a time. Developmental edits usually center around the plot and checking the cause and effect of the story. Writers call this scene and sequence because you're checking for the transformation of the characters on a scene level and the over-arching action and reactions of a story.

Once I finish this pass, I will go back and work on some of the emotional highs and lows and scrutinize the romance arc as a whole. Writing romance means taking a good hard look at the way intimacy develops between the characters. I'm usually looking for three things:

Does the progression of the relationship feel natural/believable?
Are the character's emotional arcs in alignment with the romance?
Am I showing the progression of that intimacy more than I'm telling the reader about it?

That last one in particular can be tricky. There's an idea sometimes among readers that you should always be showing everything through action, and you should be showing a lot of it. But if you "showed" everything in a genre-blended book it would likely end up being 200k+ words. Not to mention that would be boring. For that reason, I go through the manuscript at this stage and pick the spots where I really want to play up the showing and sit with each of those scenes for a while to figure out exactly how to do that.

This is one of my favorite parts of the process, though it's admittedly not a place where I can make quick progress, and that can be frustrating.

Once I finish this round of edits next week, I'll send it off to my beta team for their feedback. Then, I will switch over to the poison book drafting (this is a working title I promise it is not actually called the poison book) while I wait. I am still delusionally trying to finish that draft by the end of the year. I'm not sure that's possible but crazier things happened. Time will tell, and I'm sure I'll have some idea of how that's going in our next email.

What I'm Reading:

The Courting of Bristol Keats by Mary E. Pearson - I have been so excited about this book ever since it was announced. Mary's Remnant Chronicles series was an influence for The Lost God Series. Although that series is YA, I loved how she handled the multi-POV narrative. I'm a big fan of all of her YA books so I was really excited for this contemporary adult fantasy. I'm too early in the story to say how I'm feeling about it yet but I'm intrigued and curious to see how it plays out.

Preorder The Lost God Audiobooks:

I got to share advance listener copies with my street team last week and it has been such a joy. I've received such amazing feedback on the performances and everyone is super impressed with how perfectly Caitlin has captured Cecilia.

A quick reminder that the entire LOST GOD series is available for preorder on libro.fm, audible, and wherever you get audiobooks. THE LOST GOD comes out THIS COMING TUESDAY, November 19, 2024 and the rest of the books come out once a month after that through February.

Cecilia's POV will be performed by Caitlin Kelly, Rainer's POV by Will Damron, Xander's POV by Tim Campbell, and Evan's POV by Rusty Mewha.

I'm thrilled with the cast and blown away with what they have done wiht book one alone. I can't wait to see the full series come together.

Release dates are as follows:

The Lost God - November 19, 2024

The Memory Curse - December 17, 2024

The Storm King - January 14, 2024

The Godless Kingdom - February 11, 2024

Book Bonus Chapters:

A Legacy of Stars bonus epilogue is now available here and should be read after finishing the book, as it contains some major spoilers.

Song of the Dark Wood bonus chapter from Cade's POV is now available here. It does contain spoilers and should not be read until after you've finished the book.

The Lost God bonus chapter of Rainer's POV is now available here. (This is a spoiler so don't read it until you're finished reading the book.)

The Memory Curse bonus chapter of Evan and Sylvie's meet cute is now available here.

The Storm King bonus chapter of a villain POV is now available here.(This is a spoiler so don't read it until you're finished reading the book.)

The Godless Kingdom bonus extended epilogue is available here. (This has MAJOR series spoilers. Don't read it until you finish The Godless Kingdom)

TLG, ALOS, & SOTDW Merch:

I am delighted that there are currently three shops offering some amazing and creative bookish merch.

Book Club Clothing Company has Lost God and Song of the Dark Wood shirts.

Creations by Polich Co. has some stickers for The Lost God Series, Song of the Dark Wood, and A Legacy of Stickers and Pins.(Including out Little Dove logo in sticker and pin format)

Cocos Common Room has some Lost God stickers.

© 2024 Sheila Masterson • PO Box 792, Conshohocken, Pennsylvania 19428
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Full Moon in Taurus - Endurance for the storm