Photo Failure

So, the weather hates me. For the past week, I've been trying to figure out the best time, location, and pose for the cover photo for Hawthorn. Guess what it's been doing for the past week? Temperature spikes, temperature drops, clouds, sun, rain, and some very vicious wind storms. And on my day off ... a massive temperature drop. Again: the weather hates me.

However, it was nice on my gardening day (should have made it my picture day, but it is what it is) and decided in a random moment to climb the crabapple tree in my front yard to determine possible positioning of the Hawthorn cover. (In case you haven't caught on, I am the only available model in my area that barely matches Lex's description. Therefore, I am the one always stuck on the covers of this series.)

Guess what happened the next day?

Wind storms. Two days in a row. Tore out most of the blossoms from this tree. Fine, whatever, still tried to work with it. Nope. Huge resounding no. So, alas, there goes the closest tree I have to a hawthorn to use. Which means time to change up the setting.

While I'm still working on Hawthorn, I would like to have the cover done in advance, instead of right before the release, like I've been doing. (Flashing 'PROCRASTINATOR' light goes off over my head.) Alas, this is where we stand right now: still rewriting, and cover still a blip on the horizon.

In truth, it's been a more difficult rewrite of Hawthorn than it should have been. Out of the entire series, Hawthorn was the one I reread the most in its original (god-awful) form. Now with the rewrite, it just seems like so much work after my major setback. What it does mean for me, however, is that I will have a book that hopefully needs a lot less editing than its predecessors. It also means a bigger gap between releases, for which I must apologize. Self-publishing is a hard business to get through, but I'm doing what I can with the time available for me. I appreciate everyone who sticks by me through all of this.

Thanks for checking in, lovely people, but that's all I've got for now.