Today, my heart is broken. I've been watching, as most of you probably have, the news coverage on the attack on the U.S. Capitol, the insurrection in D.C. for several hours. I've been sad, scared, worried, astounded, angry, mortified, and nauseous as I watched domestic terrorists (no, they are not protestors) storm the Capitol building.​ I'm still watching the coverage as I'm writing this.

On the last day of 2020, I shared a post on Instagram. And because I loved it so much, I thought I’d share it here. Seemed fitting for my first post of 2021!

Enjoy!

UNPOPULAR OPINION: I’m grateful for 2020.

That’s right —The Prophecy of the Codex, the second book in the Codex series, is live TODAY!

You can order the ebook here or grab the paperback!

So to celebrate, I thought I’d show you some beautiful inspiration pics and give you the synopsis in images and captions. I even included some snippets from the book! Always feel free to refer back here while you’re reading the book to really immerse yourself in the story.

Enjoy!

Happy Thursday!

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? (If you’re not familiar with it, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, where thousands of writers around the world attempt to write a novel in the month of November!) If you are, you may be in the midst of Preptober! (Get it? Prep + October?) Well, to get you in the writing mood before November 1st, I’ve got something really fun (and helpful) for you!

This weekend, starting tomorrow, I’m doing a Writing Webinar Blitz: three live webinars in three days. 😱 It’s gonna be so crazy, but with me moving next week (check out that announcement here), I wanted to get them out to you!

Check them out!

So you've written a book.

You’ve worked hard on your book. You’ve plotted, planned, and written for days, months, even years to get your story onto the page. And you have an entire book to show for it! That’s amazing!

So what’s next?

Before you do anything else, celebrate! Most people haven’t written a book, but you have. Congratulations! Take a moment to celebrate your achievement.

But after that, you need a plan.

How do you know what’s next? What steps will get you from first draft to finished?

I’ve got you covered.

Let me just say it: There are some scary things going on in the world right now. The Coronavirus is threatening our health, our economy is crashing, and our jobs are, at best, uncertain.

The responsible thing is to stay home. The safe thing. Because this keeps everyone safe, not just you.

If you’re home, you’re not out catching the disease. If you don’t catch the disease, you can’t spread it to others. And if you’ve minimized your exposure to COVID-19, you’re less likely to contribute to it spreading when you do have to go out.

Because there are vulnerable people in this world, some more vulnerable than you. Even if you’re relatively young and reasonably healthy, what could present as a cold to you could send a compromised individual to the hospital, or worse, to their death.

So please, STAY HOME.

Okay, I’m glad we covered that. Now let’s talk about what’s next.

Ever struggle with staying consistent on Instagram?

Maybe you don’t know what to post.

Maybe you have some ideas, but you’re not sure how to put it into a plan.

Or maybe you’re stuck in the planning phase and you struggle with actually creating the content and getting it posted.

I was the same way. Until January of this year (yes, just two months ago), I didn’t plan ANYTHING. Everything you saw on my IG was basically last-minute. Which meant that it was sporadic at best.

I knew if I wanted to level up and really start taking my social media author presence seriously, I needed to start planning.

And, at first, it was PAINFUL.

But I’ve learned so much, tried so much more, and I’m starting to find out what works for me.

And what works is having a simple plan to GET THINGS DONE.

Enter the Instagram Planning Calendar.