Mid-April Update

I hope all of you doing the A-Z challenge have been having a blast with it! I can't believe it's already halfway through April. I haven't been blogging because all of my free time has been going to frantically writing Rising Book 2. I'm almost halfway done--I have about a chapter and three-fourths left to the halfway point. I think this will probably be my longest novel yet, considering I have 69,154 words already. There's just so much more story to tell and tie up in this one than the first one.

I've also been prepping for my daughter's birthday party, which is today. Her birthday was a couple of weeks ago, but today was the first day we had free to do it. She wanted a Yoshi cake from Mario Brothers, and let me tell you, that thing was hard to make. O_o I had made the head out of rice crispy treats, but it fell apart (slooooowly) after I attached the head to the body, so then I had to remake the head smaller. Plus, I was pretty much out of frosting at that point, which meant I had to steal some from around the body. Yeah. Definitely not my best cake ever, but it's together and it's edible, darn it.

Here is the end result:

I also had my next Taekwondo belt test this past week--I don't have the results for that yet. So. Yes. April has been busy.

I hope you all are having a wonderful month and that you have a fantastic day!! I need to go do final prep for a birthday party...

Finding a balance and blog tour #4 link

Yesterday, I withdrew from this year's A-Z blog challenge. I did the challenge last year and had a blast and met some awesome people, but after having some long conversations and doing a lot of thinking yesterday, I realized I need to take a step or ten back in some things. Between family and homeschooling and editing and writing and blogging, I realized I have barely had any time to actually write. I'm on a deadline to finish Rising Book 2--I need a complete first draft by April, which shouldn't be a problem if I can actually sit down and do it. I know what needs to happen and I already have lots of the book written. But as April is the A-Z challenge...yeah. You see my conundrum. Even though I already had decided on my A-Z blog topics and even jotted down some ideas, I knew how the month of April and part of March would end up some bizarre blogging time-vacuum.

Plus, my kids' birthday are March and April, and one or two days for each birthday will be taken up with cake-making. Every year, I design and make the cakes for their birthdays. Last year, I made Appa from Avatar: The Last Airbender for my son:





and Wall-E for my daughter:






(Appa had, I kid you not, 22 cups of powdered sugar. It was a HUGE cake with so. much. frosting.)

This year, my son wants Lightning McQueen. My daughter just told me she wants a Hello Kitty cake.

I think all writers need to find a balance in what to do and what's too much and what they need to do in order to still be able to write. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I'm still thinking over them, so I'll leave it at that.

How do you balance your writing with everything else you do?

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Today's Rising blog tour is a review of the book over at the incredible Donna Weaver's blog.

The paperback giveaway at Laura's blog still has a few more days. (I'd posted it ended Saturday, but it ends Sunday.)