Hello all and sundry.

I have been thinking for months how I really need to send out a newsletter but to be honest the real reason I haven't is because I don't have a lot of book news to share. Since Believe in Me released in February (the month I last sent out a newsletter), I've finished #RussianBluesWIP and have been querying it in the hope I can get an agent and have it traditionally published. And that's a long and gruelling process and so far I've had seven agents decline and more that haven't responded. Nobody wants a play-by-play of that. XD

Because of all that I've felt very much in limbo. I haven't been writing much, probably because I feel stalled out. When I self-publish, I'm much more motivated and driven, and if I was successfully selling, I'd probably consider continuing to self-publish. But the fact is I'm not. I've had a few downloads when free ebook promotions go on, but very few actual purchases.

So consider this a plea from a desperate author that if you'd like to purchase my books as a holiday gift, I will giftwrap them and mail them directly to your giftee if you order from my ko-fi shop!

So what have I been doing? Autistic special interest/hyperfocus has set in and I've been down an American Girl doll rabbit hole. Some of this is tangentially related to my writing since I've been creating dolls for several of my characters - George and Louise, Hazel, Jamie Graham's mother Lucy, and most of all Mira Zafirov. If you're interested in following this dolly tangent of a journey, I have an instagram account and a YouTube channel: https://www.instagram.com/mira_sophia_z/ I won't be making it a feature of my author newsletter, but if you'd be interested in a doll newsletter where I talk about what I'm creating and collecting, let me know and I'll add you to a separate list!

I've also been reading, of course. My current read is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, read by Simon Vance, and it's simultaneously a slogfest and a Victor-Hugo-Is-A-Drama-Queen-fest. I've been in and out of it for months. But mostly I've been reading American Girl books, revisiting the ones from my childhood and also reading ones that came out after my childhood. I have so much I could say about these! I don't know if I should keep this for the doll newsletter. Would my author newsletter crowd be interested in hearing thoughts about the American Girl books?

The last bit of this is about a pet death so if that's triggering for you you can stop reading here.

One of the other big things that happened this year that threw me was watching my 16 year old beloved kitty-son Spot fade away. For the last six months or so of his life he was on a thyroid medication which bought him time but in July he stopped purring - something that he has done very loudly enthusiastically since the minute I first picked him up at ten weeks old - and we decided to let him go. It was the first time I've been in the room as a pet died, and even though we chose it and our vet is a wonderful person and made it as easy as possible for all of us, almost seventeen years with this beloved boy was not something that we can just brush off, you know? A couple of days ago my facebook memories brought up the photos we took the day we got him - the tenth of November 2008 - and that was really hard. I miss him so much. The only good thing to come out of his death (aside from him no longer being sick) is that Morven took a mere two days to decide she is, after all, a lap cat. I don't see us getting another cat as long as she is with us, because it's so obvious she's finally really happy being Only Cat.

Okay, that's all for now.

Until next time,

Eva