Doings at Rooglewood: Come What May

Oh dear. I'm sorry. That's not a very propitious beginning is it? I don't normally indulge in a pun, but . . . this month tends to be ripe with them.

Anyway, I know I've been a wee bit quiet on the blogging front lately, and I do apologize. I have had many doings, many of which I can't really talk about in a big way just yet, so this may be a bit of an abbreviated "Doings" post. But I'll try to touch on all the most important points!

First of all . . . my mother's launch tour for Until That Distant Day was a great success thanks to all of you hardworking bloggers and enthusiastic readers out there! We both appreciated the love, and we hope that you'll keep on telling your friends about this wonderful book (and encouraging them to actually buy it, of course. I would love to see my mother get a little return for all her hard work!). The .99 Kindle special is over, but the book can still be downloaded for just 3.99, which is a great deal for the amount of story contained therein.

Oh, and the lovely Joy C. of the Fullness of Joy blog won the giveaway. Huzzah for Joy! She will be receiving thepaperback book and a tin of tea from my mother.

Now my current BIG project is getting Five Glass Slippers ready for publication. We are just about ready to send out PDF review files to a select number of readers.

If you are a blogger and prepared to post your review of Five Glass Slippers on Amazon between June 14 and June 31, feel free to write and request a PDF file. We are only sending out 15 copies, so preference will be given to reviewers who also have Goodreads accounts and are willing to post their reviews there as well. Bloggers are requested to review the book on their blogs.

We'll be putting together a blog tour later on, but for now we're focusing on getting those advance readers in. Email me (aestengl@gmail.com) if you are interested! I anticipate having the review file ready by next weekend.

And while we're on the subject of Five Glass Slippers . . .

I am preparing to launch the cover and contest details for the next Rooglewood Press fairy tale collection. And this year, I want to do an honest-to-goodness cover reveal tour! Are you a blogger and would you like to take part in that cover reveal? This would mean getting an advance glimpse of the gorgeous cover and insider's knowledge as to which fairy tale it will be. Email me if you'd like to take part. The reveal is scheduled for June 1 . . . coming up soon.

And of course we're all looking forward to THIS contest, coming up next month!

Details can be found here. I've received a lot of interest but no actual files yet . . . Hoping for a great turnout nevertheless! (But we'll see. This is such an unusual contest, so I hardly know what to expect.) Be sure you get your files to me by the deadline. Music will be posted on June 16.

I have a couple of fun features coming up on this blog over the month of May. These next two Mondays I will be featuring two exciting fantasy novelists, each of whom is offering a giveaway. Their stories look exciting, dramatic, suspenseful . . . all that a reader could ask for in a fantasy tale. You'll have to stop by to meet these authors and learn about their works!

I realized that I haven't yet shown off the birthday cake my Rohan made for me this year . . . so the time has come! Behold:

 

 

That, my dears, is a dense chocolate torte with two different chocolate ganache layers and a butter-cream chocolate frosting. And he learned how to make beautiful chocolate curls for garnish:

 

I promise that I don't love my husband merely for his baking skills; but my word, they certainly don't hurt anything!

For those of you interested to know how the feline denizens of Rooglewood are fairing these days . . . . Monster is still delightfully fluffy:

And Marmaduke is, apparently, headless:

But he's beautiful, so we won't judge him.

Everyone else is doing well too, and Mutti-cat (my feral rescue kitty, for those of you who don't know) is making great strides as she adjusts to housecat life. She has decided that people as a whole are nice, and she will allow anyone to pet her who wants to . . . just so long as they are willing to crouch down beside her Piano of Solitude, behind which she spends most of her days. She's still pretty terrified of Milly the Black Dog (except at meal times, when she loses all fear in her need to join the other beasts in telling me what time it is). But still! I couldn't ask for better progress. So many feral rescues never adjust as much as she has.

I'm writing a book, but it's still in early stages, so I'm not talking about it much (so don't ask!).

I will be contacting my cover artist quite soon now about finishing the cover for Draven's Light, my 2015 novella. Most of the basic design is settled, but the illustration itself still needs to be rendered. I'll be shipping that off to Julia Popova's capable hands. Looking forward to that cover reveal, hopefully in October . . . which may seem far away to some of you, but the way this year is speeding by seems just around the corner to me!

I'm hard at work on Golden Daughter these days.

Just got through the first round of galley edits and am getting ready to dive into typeset galleys soon as well. Pleased with this story, but tremendously intimidated by how much work is yet to be done on it! But I'm starting to see how the interior design work is going to look, and it's soooo pretty. Definitely looking forward to sharing it with all of you.

And . . . I think that's enough doings for one post!

Let me know if you'd like to be an influencer reader for Five Glass Slippers or a cover reveal host for the next fairy tale collection. I would love to have you on board. And let us know in the comments what doings you are up to during the merry month of May. Are you writing anything new these days? Anything old? Are other creative projects taking up your time? Or school? Or work? Do tell!