I Started A Shop!

 To my dearest friends and followers,

I am so excited to announce that I am starting a Ko-fi shop!!

Ko-fi (pretty sure it's pronounced coffee?) is essentially a site where creators of any kind can receive donations (as small as the price of a coffee) from their followers. Only recently have they made it so creators can set up a shop as well.

Earlier this year, May 1st to be exact, I published my book, The Story of Hollyhocks (Tales from Beyond the Veil book 1). In September, I worked on releasing a new revised version (as there were many errors later found in the book). Now, that revised version is available for purchase ONLY from me (I cannot control when it will be available from Amazon or other sellers)! I have a brand new shop on Ko-fi, where I will be selling my book and shipping anywhere in the United States!!

I ordered a large quantity of my books from IngramSpark which will arrive sometime in the next week. I had not been thinking about setting up my own shop until very recent, so it was an extremely last minute decision and I must ask you to please forgive the rush of things. XD
I will be able to get books out in time for Christmas, but orders will need to be made ASAP!! I also have a limited supply between now and Christmas, so once those books are sold, I won't be getting more until the new year.

If you want to order any copies, and I highly suggest you pre-order them now, you can do so by checking out my shop here: Vanessa Paige Israel Ko-fi shop. All books sold by me will be signed, and include a really cute bookmark I designed. 

In the near future, I hope to also sell homemade fairy journals through my Ko-fi shop, so keep a look out for that!!
Until then, check out my novel!! Please note, I will also be adding the link to my shop under the My Books tab at the top of my blog.

Thank you so much for reading!!

Yours truly,

Me

My NaNoWriMo Project.

Click to enlarge

To my dearest friends and followers,

As some of you may know, during the month of November, I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

What is NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo is a nonprofit organization based in the US. Its goal is to bring people together from around the world and write. It has different events throughout the year (such as Camp NaNo), but the biggest event is during the entire month of November, in which the goal is to write a novel with a minimum of 50k words. I love NaNo because it offers encouragement, motivation, and community. 

My Past with NaNoWriMo.

In October 2016, I entered a writing contest with Rowanvale Books (that I won, I might add XD). At the end of the contest, Rowanvale encouraged all of the writers to participate in NaNoWriMo, to continue to work on the projects we had all started. That was my first introduction to NanNo. I joined and while I did not hit my 50k word goal, I did get extremely motivated to write, and finished the month with 26k words!! The project I was working on was The Story of Hollyhocks!! I ended up finishing the novel in January 2017.

NaNoWriMo 2020.

This year, having finally published my first novel, I decided to participate in NaNo once again!! Since The Story of Hollyhocks is book 1 in a 4 book series, I began working on book 2!!

I started writing book 2 earlier this year, and began NaNo with 6k words already written, leaving only 44k more to go. Let me tell you, it was NOT easy!! I wrote an average of 1,695 words a day and I spent nearly all my time writing, feeling guilty when I took the occasional day off (I took off a total of 3 days during the month).

My Project.

If you have read my last several blog posts, then you know of a certain character named Jack from The Story of Hollyhocks (Tales from Beyond the Veil book 1). He is a somewhat minor character, appearing in a total of 6 chapters, though he does have a big role in the final chapters of the book. The book I was working on for NaNoWriMo (and am still writing) is currently titled The Death of Jack (Tales from Beyond the Veil book 2). Keep in mind, the cover you see is simply a temporary cover created to announce the novel on the NaNoWriMo website. The story does not begin where the first book left off, but goes back to a time the first book refers to as The Ancient World. It is going to tell of Jack's life and who he was before Hollyhocks met him, and eventually lead up to his death (something which has already taken place in book 1).

Initially, I was calling this project The Fairy Ring, so the ring of mushrooms we learn about in the first book will be playing a big part in book 2.

There are several characters in book 1 who are mentioned, but never seen, such as Ariel, queen of the pillywiggins, the Council of the Ancient World (which consisted of brothers Linden, Kheelan, and Dain), and "Dain's eldest son", along with Kheelan's wife, and a mysterious woman from the village. All of these characters are brought to life in Jack's story and many play a key role. We are going to find out what the fairy world was like before they were forbidden to leave the forest, before the humans and fairies were separated, where Anlon came from, and how the veil was created.

The story is going to take place in 3 different time lines. The first is the Ancient World, in which we learn Jack's story. The second is after Jack died, and the third is when he meets Hollyhocks. I'm super excited!! I think I am half way through the story more or less, with a total of 50,858 words written during NaNoWriMo.

Please, check out the first book for yourself!! The Story of Hollyhocks (Tales from Beyond the Veil book 1).

Yours truly,

Me