May 2025 Newsletter
10 days, late. Apologies folks. There’s a few things going on that I thought would be ready by now… but they’re not. I’ll make social posts later in the month or at the next newsletter. Ah, well. Apologies for the tardiness.
There are a couple things that I could really use your help with.
1) Reviews. I am sitting at four reviews on Amazon and zero reviews on Goodreads. If you’ve read the book so far, I’d really appreciate a review. If you didn’t really like it, I still want you review with what you did and did not like about it. Other readers are going to choose for themselves if they agree with negative feedback. You can write a review on:
Amazon, here, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DHZZQPFG, or
Goodreads, here, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218197964-the-witches-of-serna?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=0YeZ2dROD2&rank=1.
As an aside, I learned the Goodreads is a subsidiary of Amazon and that, because of that, it seems that when you publish a book through Kindle Direct Publishing (of course, also a subsidiary of Amazon), it automatically generates a page for your book and an author profile on Goodreads. It was kind of funny last night finding my own page on Goodreads and clicking the “is this you?” button. It was also encouraging to see one person on Goodreads is reading it and three people have it on their reading list. But, no reviews and no ratings to date.
2) I need your opinion and feedback on this illustration
Option A
Option B
Option A is the ‘rudimentary’ finished illustration for a scene in the Battle of Versingit, which is early in Book 2. I got some advice from my Mother, Sandy Spring (https://www.instagram.com/sandyspringfineart/) and produced option B by graying the lines on the paving stones, adding gray-tone colors to some of the clothing to help is stand out from the pavement. I am going to add some more gray-tones to clothing, gray out some of the buildings more in the distance to help some of the figures in the background standout more, and a couple other things. But, what I could use your opinion on is
1) the ground. Should I make the lines on the paving gentle like this or even lighter? Or should I ditch the paved street altogether and go for a simpler dirt/mud street to remove the distraction of the ground?
2) Any other thoughts? Can you roughly tell what is happening?
For anything on the illustrations, please reply directly to this email, or if you’re looking at the newsletter on the side, you can email me at morgan.springglace@gmail.com or use the contact form on the website.
Made a few posts on Instagram and X. Posted three more episodes of the gaming podcast:
Episode 9: The Little Lantern That Couldn’t, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql7JGBDcT10
Episode 10: Dreams of Flight and Fire, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFlUmbWQUSk
Episode 11: Murder Hobo Catches a Ride, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAu5vC1SRW4
Wrote a couple blog posts on my website (https://www.morganspringglace.com/blog) about the clash of cultures between the ‘bad guys’ and the tyranny of time and distance in fantasy fiction.
We are sitting at
21 followers on Instagram, (https://www.instagram.com/morgan_springglace/)
32 followers on X (forever Twitter in my memory), (https://x.com/spring23143)
and 35 subscribers on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/@MorganTheGamerAndWriter)
The team and I are editing somewhere between chapters 5 and 7 of Book 2 (22 chapters include prologue and epilogue). The cover art is coming close to being done. Have the illustration above and, maybe, one more (much simpler) illustration. All of the maps are done for Book 2.
Other projects.. At the beginning of April, I had two ongoing carpentry projects of renovating two rooms. By now, I have also started building a table, agreed to refinish another table, and a couple other projects. I’ll tell you about this now as motivation for finishing at least one of them before the next newsletter (which will be on time!). As I finish them, I’ll post on Instagram and FB for those. No pictures of that now. Too embarrassing.
Oh, and I tried something new last month.
Didn’t keep it, though. Too much maintenance. I naively thought it would be less maintenance and keep the hair out of my eyes. Not so much.
Take care, folks. Happy Mother’s Day (tomorrow). Talk to you in ~21-23 days.
