Hello Book Friends,

First a little maintenance: I’ve picked up a lot of new followers via the My Book Cave giveaway. If you’re one of them, hello! This is my weekly Substack newsletter, in which I update you on the progress of my current WIP and sometimes include a short podcast about my writing life. If you’d rather not receive these updates in your inbox, feel free to unsubscribe. You’ll still stay signed up to my Special Announcements & New Releases list on Mailchimp, unless and until you unsubscribe from that too.

Now, onto the update.

There’s no mini-cast this week, partly because it’s been a busy week, and partly because I just don’t have that much to say. I debated whether to even send out a newsletter this week. It’s been a week full of freelance work and running errands and headaches and other distractions, none of which has been conducive to novel writing.

But then a little while ago I made myself sit down and open my laptop and I hammered out about 900 new words, bringing the total word count on Revolution to just over 50,000, and that seems like a milestone worth celebrating. So here we are.

Other than article writing and running errands and battling headaches, my non-writing time this week has been mostly split between Bible study and reading theology books and falling down conspiracy theory rabbit holes (I actually have a LOT to say on those subjects, but this isn’t really the right venue for any of that). I’ve been strictly limiting my time on social media, so I don’t really have any cool or fun links to share this week. The Brave New Worlds ebook giveaway is still going on at My Book Cave, which includes a drawing for a $20 online bookstore gift card, and all my indie novellas and shorts are still free on Smashwords, but otherwise I don’t really have anything to share with you this week.

And so I present an open thread to share your own weekend distractions. What’s been getting you through the week? Got any entertainment recommendations? Any tweets or Instagram posts that made you laugh or smile? Want to dish about conspiracy theories or theorize about what the heck you think is really going on with the world? Click that Leave a Comment button below and share your stuff. Because if nothing else, we can all use a little more community in our lives right now.

Wishing everyone a chill weekend and a healthy, safe and sane week ahead, and a happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there (and to everyone struggling with loss this Mother’s Day, I see you, and I’m right there with you).

Until next time,
Jean ♥