the ovenlight saga
Happy 2025 everyone! So, the big news is that part 2 of my book, The Ovenlight Saga, is in the works and I expect to have it finished by the end of 2025 and release it in 2026!
BOOK REVIEWERS WANTED!
Now in order to understand Part 2, you of course need to have read Part 1 ( obviously) BUT a lot of what an indie author is *supposed* to do to promote their book (such as sending out ARC's, doing promotional things, etc.) ALL of that got messed up because of my cancer diagnosis & very long and difficult recovery time.
SO if you:
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love the Twilight movies
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have a sense of humor (like Princess Bride, Monty Python, Parks & Rec, The Office)
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have the time to read a 150 page book & are willing to write/post a review
Then fill out this form and I will send you a free copy (ebook) of "The Ovenlight Saga: Baking Dough - Part 1". If you leave a written review or post a review video somewhere, just send me the links, and I will send you a FREE copy of Part 2 when it comes out! So either way, it's a WIN-WIN for all of you Twihards!!!
AND if I really like your review, you may just get a surprise, signed paperback from me in your mailbox. ( if you're in the U.S.)
So we’re going back to February of 2021 in this series of going back to year that I wrote Part 1 of my retelling of Twilight.
I have been working on it for about a month at that point, and it was still going really well! And I was still thinking that I would be able to be finished with the entire thing by June (not having any reason yet to break it into 2 separate novels because I hadn't been diagnosed with cancer yet) .
I figured out where all the ants were getting in my front door from in January, and got that sealed up, so everything seemed to be going fine for a few days.
But then, in the middle February, we had "The Big Freeze" happen - not just in Houston - but all over the state of Texas. I heard it was the first time the entire state had been under a freeze warning.
I’m not from this part of Texas though, and I had only lived here for a few years at that time. People from other parts of Texas - and other parts of the country that regularly experience cold weather - didn’t really see this as a big deal.
(Where I’m from in the Midland/Odessa area is kind of a mix of desert & plains climates. Winters can get very cold and sometimes we get snow 4-5 times per year.)
Additionally, Ella, (the main female character in my retelling of Twilight -who is partly based on myself), is from Odessa, Texas - instead of Phoenix. That way I got/get to describe a lot of what happened in my childhood/teenage years and make it part of Ella’s backstory!
Plus, moving from west Texas to Houston felt really similar to moving from Arizona to the pacific northwest: hot and dry to coastal, piney woods with lots of rainy ‘hoa-hoa’ days. It’s crazy just how many completely different climates we have in the state of Texas!
Anywhoo, Back to the freeze: Well, it turned out to be a VERY BIG DEAL - not just for the people in Texas, but for the electricity and gas companies, as well as for most of the pipes in our homes.
I learned that because it doesn’t freeze often in Houston, water pipes (like the water pipes in the ceiling above my kitchen and bathroom) were not insulated when they were installed in earlier decades. And made of metal (which unlike PVC pipes), will burst when the water in them freezes.
So the pipes in my house froze. I also didn’t have electricity for 3-4 days because the system demand was higher than what the electric and gas companies could produce, so they had to cut off power to save the grid. People actually died. It was very sad.
I stayed at my sister’s house because they had a generator. When I got back to my house, we turned on the water to see what would happen. Water started gushing out of my ceiling EVERYWHERE - from the busted metal pipes - and then the drywall ceiling in my kitchen came crashing down. So great.
I continued to stay at my sisters house for another 3 weeks, even after the temps got above freezing, because I didn’t have running water until my pipes could be replaced.
So for those 3-4 weeks, I would go back over to my house for about 2 hours each afternoon and work on writing my book (and of course bringing a big bottle of water with me).
Sometimes I still remember what it was like, for the month or so that I was coming back over to my house and being able to look up at the rafters in both my kitchen and my bathroom….wondering how long it would be before the pipes and ceiling could be able to be fixed. Plumbers and drywall people were in very high demand, as you can imagine!
Here is a current picture of my desk where I wrote for a few hours per day - and still write. Nothing fancy, it’s just a card table from Target.
So, I have 2 mousepads on my desk, one on each side of my keyboard. Because of my fibromyalgia, sometimes my hands feel achy or painful from just typing or using the mouse, so having 2 mousepads means I can switch hands back and forth for using my mouse.
This little guy sitting in my chair is SUPER special, so let me tell you more about him!
This little hippo has been my backrest for I think about 20 years now. He was given to me at work when I lived in Austin, I worked for a company that owned the toy machines and claw machines in convenience stores and grocery stores.
Some of the machines had little plastic toys inside, but most of them had the stuffed animals that you would try to get out with a claw mechanism.
So sometimes one of the guys in charge of purchasing would go to the really fancy toy store FAO Schwartz in NYC, and there was this one time that he brought back a big plastic sack of stuffed toy samples.
So they dumped out the big sack of toys onto the floor in one of the rooms and it was called a “plush party” because they called the stuffed toys “plushes”!! And when I saw that little hippo my heart just MELTED!
One of my coworkers said “You really like that one, huh? Well you can have it!” I was so overjoyed! And I don't remember what I named him… if I ever officially named him… sometimes I refer to him as Pedro - but mostly I just call him “my little hippo”.
He’s been my faithful little lower back support in my office chair in every job I've worked at since I acquired him, including working on this novel, of course. I mean I just love little hippos tiny ears and the way they flick them, it's just so adorable! And don’t get me started on Moo Deng!
Well, someone eventually came and fixed my pipes and my ceilings which I am very thankful for.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little foray into my brain, thanks for reading!
