Healthy writer, happy writer

Jun

2025

The Halfway Point. Sort Of.

I’ve hit the halfway point of The Coral Throne... sort of. Why sort of? Because today I made the decision to increase my wordcount. I took it from 90K to 100K words, which means that my percentage complete dropped. However, I’m still hoping to have this book done this month. It’ll be just like that November book writing challenge that we don’t talk about anymore! I do still think that I can keep this to a two-book series.

No, that is not permission to come and giggle in my general direction if a wild book three appears.

There’s a lot happening this month in addition to writing. The Sea Prince drops next week, and on Sunday the 15th, I’ll be a guest at Spellbound Bookstore for a meet and greet celebrating the book release. (Yes, I know it’s Father’s Day. I just… sort of forgot when I set up the date.) More information on that below.

There’s also a free book promo for the entire month of June! The link is below, and all you need to do to get a selection of free books is sign up for newsletters. If you’re not already subscribed to mine, this is a good way to do it — you get a free book out of it!

If you’ve been around me for long enough, you know that I’m pretty passionate about reminding people with breasts to do your breast exams, and to get your mammograms if you’re in the demographic where that’s recommended. I don’t think I’ve done it in a while, so if you didn’t know that before, that now counts as your thing you learned today. Part of the reason for this is genetics — I am at a higher risk for breast cancer (and two other cancers besides.) I get monitored regularly, and my annual breast MRI was two weeks ago… and they found something. Biopsy scheduled for one week later, and I spent the entire week repeating the mantra of “It’s NOTHING!”

And it was nothing — when they did the MRI to map out the needle placement for the biopsy, whatever it was that they saw the previous week was gone. I’ve been telling people that I manifested “IT”S NOTHING!” so hard that whatever it was vanished.

Don’t take that risk, though. If you’re supposed to get your annual testing done, schedule it. It could save your life.

And there’s my soapbox for this week. Back to writing!

Promotions

Free Books!

For the month of June, come find a selection of free steamy books! Click the graphic and take a look!

Stuff with Fantasy Bookish Solstice!

Coming June 14th is the Stuff With Fantasy Bookish Solstice event, where every book is 99 cents. I’m not sure how many books are included in this sale, but it certainly looks like a lot!

Preorder Now!

To end the war with the Empire, all Prince Tarjiaan has to do is deny his heart and marry the Emperor’s granddaughter. Peace is assured…

Or is it?

The Sea Prince sets sail on June 10th!

Preorder Now!

Now Available!

Kidnapped from his home and sold as a slave in Rome, Raven-Prince Lorcan must survive in a world where entertainment is murder, diplomacy is betrayal, and love is a commodity. And where a raven who is only supposed to ever have one mate will somehow find two…

Read it before Raven’s Flight comes out!

Image of a book cover. Cover is red-orange, with an abstract design over which there is a raven in flight. Text reads Book One in the Blood of the Raven series. Raven's Fall. Wings of Blood and Desire. By Blood Betrayed. Elizabeth Schechter

Order Now!

Work in Progress

The Coral Throne
(The Coral Throne, book 2)

47986 / 100000 (47.99%)

Appearances

Meet and Greet for The Sea Prince book release
Spellbound Bookstore
June 15th
12:30PM -2:30PM
Sanford, FL

***

Enchanted Knights: Summer Solstice
June 21st, 2025
Oviedo Mall
Oviedo, FL

***

3rd Annual Summer Artisan Market
June 29th, 2025
Brannon Center
New Smyrna Beach, FL

***

Smut Lovers: The Conference
September 17th – 21st, 2025
Orlando, FL

***

Necronomicon
September 26th – 28th, 2025
Tampa, FL

***

Page and Pen Festival
October 4th, 2025
Oviedo, FL

Apr

2022

It’s Still Monday.

Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home
(Heir to the Firstborn, book 6)

124393 / 170000 (73.17%)

****

The Sea Prince
(The Coral Throne, book 1)

25784 / 120000 (21.49%)

It’s late, but it’s still Monday. So this still counts as being a Monday blog.

Today, I played hooky. After morning yoga, I went on a morning date with my husband. We headed down to Disney Springs, wandered around, went shopping, and went to lunch. If you’re ever in Disney Springs and want a good quick service meal that handles food allergies really well, go to D-Luxe Burgers. They’re Disney-owned and fantastic.

They’re also verging on the ridiculous. At some point in the past year, they added lettuce buns to their menu, because they were having a hard time sourcing their gluten free buns. So today, they asked if we wanted a gluten free bun or a lettuce bun.

Most of the time, when you get a lettuce bun, you get a messy burger wrapped in a few leaves of limp lettuce.

This is what you get at D-Luxe:

If you can’t tell, that’s approximately a small head of lettuce, sliced in half, with a burger in it. Lettuce bun indeed!

(AND IT WAS SO GOOD!!!!)

Got back home in time to pick High School Boy up from school… completely forgetting that he had clubs today and wasn’t going to be out for another half an hour. (He opted out of clubs today when he found out I was early. More time to play Clone Hero.)

Which means that today I did yoga, I’ve backed up my computer, I am writing this blog post, and I will probably not write a single word… and I’m good with that! Today was a recharge day. A “fill your own bucket” day. And I talked about that in my Carline Talk on Tiktok.

My what on which?

I have a series of short videos on Tiktok that I recorded while waiting in carline, and which I call my Carline Talks. (Over the summer, these will change to Coffee Time with Liz). I talk about writing in general, and about various and sundry, and today was about filling your own bucket — giving yourself permission to stop and relax, something most creatives are lousy at doing. The thing is, if you don’t recharge, you eventually burn out. So give yourself a break, and read a book. Watch a movie. Go do something fun. And come back renewed and ready to start again.

I give you permission.

(a quick note — I will be changing hosting companies for this website within the next week. Hopefully, the website won’t go weird in the changeover.)

Jun

2020

Time Travel, The Hard Way.

Since we entered quarantine, my son has grown two inches.

Which means, that since we entered quarantine, my son has grown to be taller than his grandmother, who lives barely twenty minutes away, but hasn’t seen him since March because quarantine.

And this reminds me of a Spider Robinson story from the first Callahan book — Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. The story is The Time Traveller, and is about Tom, a man who is locked in solitary confinement for ten years, and who comes out to a world he doesn’t recognize, and for which he has no context. For example, when he was locked away, Nixon had only recently declared that he was stepping back from politics, and that the media wouldn’t have Nixon to kick around again.

When Tom returns to the world, Nixon is President.

I have a feeling that it’s going to be like that for a lot of us, once we come out of quarantine.

In quarantine, I’m baking a lot. Lemon donuts, this time. With lemon powdered sugar, because why not be extra? I’m exercising a lot more, and you can follow my fitness journey over on my Instagram. I’m cleaning, too. If you’ve been around long enough, you probably know that I usually let the cleaning slide while I’m working on a book, because there just aren’t enough hours in the day. But, since I’m not leaving the house if I can help it? My house looks like I’m expecting company all the time.

Funny, that.

And I’m writing. Part of my coping mechanism is exercise. The rest is retreating to my own worlds, where things might get dark, but it’ll all come out fine in the end because ROMANCE!

Wings of AirHeir to the Firstborn, Book 4

36556 / 120000 (30.46%)

Note that I bumped my wordcount. If Wings of Air follows the same pattern as the other books, it’ll come in at something over 30K words more than I think. Which means that this one is going to be a monster of a book.

Do I even need to say that there’s not much else happening? At least, not on a personal level.

In RWA news, we’re gearing up for our first ever virtual RWA National convention. The first of the workshops we’ll be offering have been listed, and this is looking like this is going to be an amazing event! It’s open to non-members, too, so even if you’re not an RWA member, check it out!

And that’s really about it in my neck of the woods. Stay safe, everyone.

Apr

2019

Works in Progress: Table of Stone and Forged in Fire, week fourteen

It’s amazing what not being in pain will do for your productivity!

Table of Stone
Swords of Charlemagne, Book 4

Forged in Fire
Heir to the Firstborn, Book 2

Well, in one project, anyway. I’m a little behind where I want to be in Forged in Fire. I need to go back and reread and get back on track. But the words in Table of Stone are really flowing, so it’s hard to tear myself away from that to work on Forged in Fire.

Now, as to why I’m not in pain any more? I got a cortisone shot on Wednesday morning of last week. Now, if you’ve never done one, let me tell you. They hurt. A LOT. But after a couple of days, nothing hurts any more! So they’re worth it, in the long run. They’re just not immediately pleasant.

I didn’t realize how much being in pain was messing with me until I wasn’t. Until I wrote consistently and made my wordcounts for five days running on Tables of Stone. Now to get myself caught up — I have just about a month to finish this book. I have a little more wiggle room with Forged in Fire, mostly because I am working about five chapters ahead of what’s up on Patreon. I do need to get it in gear, though, so I do start running behind — I want to have the finished book ready to go at Indie BookFest in August.

And… several hours later, I just realized that I never posted this. Ummm… oops? Here, have an update.

May

2016

Gluten Free Writer

I don’t talk a lot about medical things. If you’ve seen my baking posts, you know I do a lot with gluten free baking. That’s because I am medically gluten free. I don’t have celiac — I have had the genetic tests, and I don’t have the markers. But when I eat anything with gluten (which means anything which contains or has been contaminated by wheat, barley, or rye), I get sick. The official diagnosis was Non-Celiac Gluten Intolerance. It’s an auto-immune condition, and it’s not very well understood.

Now, this is the point where I get to tell people that no, I’m not looking for Doctor Google or any macrobiotic diet tips. I’m not looking for the current research — I keep up on that. And I’m not looking for people to tell me that it’s all in my head. My gastroenterologist and I have this under control

Last night, I had the fun of participating in a dinner hosted by the group putting out the Nima sensor. This is a nifty little device that uses spectrographic analysis to test your food at the table and see if it contains a safe level of gluten. For anyone who is medically GF, eating out is like playing Russian Roulette, so something like this is a tool that can be very useful, especially for people who have to travel a lot. You know, like writers. It was a little daunting — attending this dinner were the best and brightest of Central Florida bloggers on allergens and gluten free dining, and sitting right next to me was the Head of Special Diets for Walt Disney World. And then, you know, there’s me, being a little bit of a fish out of water.

Now, this device — you take the removable capsule (single use only, but they’re working on a recycling program for them). You put a smidgen of the foot you want to test into the capsule, and close it down hard. There’s a pop, which is the internal seal breaking and releasing… something. Then you put the capsule back into the machine, which is about the size of my palm. You turn it on, and it starts gurgling as it grinds up whatever you put in to prepare it for analysis. And within two minutes, you have an answer in the form of a smiley face or a frowny face. Frowny face, clearly, is BAD.

What was surprising was that this dinner was held at a restaurant that is pretty well known for the care it gives to gluten free dining. And the group hosting the dinner went in with full disclosure — we’re going to be testing EVERYTHING. So you’d think that they’d be extra careful, right?

There were positives — two of the choices of soup, and the only vegetarian entree both came back strongly contaminated! And I heard just a little while ago that several people got sick — I apparently dodged a bullet!

Needless to say, I *want* one! Especially with the travelling that I’m going to be doing over the next couple of years!

Healthy writer, happy writer

The Halfway Point. Sort Of.

Promotions

Free Books!

Stuff with Fantasy Bookish Solstice!

Preorder Now!

Now Available!

Work in Progress

Appearances

It’s Still Monday.

Time Travel, The Hard Way.

Works in Progress: Table of Stone and Forged in Fire, week fourteen

Gluten Free Writer

Works in Progress

Appearances

2026 Appearances

Find My Books!

Social Media

Let's Keep in Touch!

Thanks for signing up!