Goals, Celebrations, and Galveston

The last Friday of the month brings quite a few hops, which is a good thing for me since I am still running on empty when it comes to ideas for blog posts.

First up is the Cephalopod Coffeehouse hosted by The Armchair Squid. This is a simple and fun hop where we all share the best book we've read in the course of the month. If you'd like to sign up and join in, visit Armchair here.

Source: Amazon purchase page

The best book I read this month was Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto. In a word, this book is fantastic.

I mentioned last week that I have become a huge fan of HBO's True Detective, which is also written by Pizzolatto. I picked up Galveston for this reason and wasn't disappointed. If you like haunting and atmospheric noir stories you will love this book. It's a thriller that is hard to put down and I was actually sorry when I came to the end of the book. I think Pizzolatto is an amazing talent and while I'm sure he is quite busy with HBO now I hope he will write more novels in the future.

Next up, Misha Gericke's Do You Have Goals? hop.

This is my second month participating in this hop and I'm really glad I signed up as it's helped me focus on my goal of making a full-time living as a writer by June, 2015.

February was really a great month for me in terms of working towards that goal. I wrote an article about Martha's Vineyard and The Ghosts of Aquinnah that was accepted for publication in the Spring issue of Cape Women Online. That issue will go live in April and I can't wait to see my article there.

I also set up a book signing on May 24 at Edgartown Books on Martha's Vineyard. I'm going to be on the island that week and I was thrilled to be able to arrange something for Memorial Day weekend. As I mentioned previously, I also got accepted to be a festival author at the Ohioana Book Festival on May 10 in Columbus, Ohio. Finally, I arranged to do a presentation about the Vineyard combined with a book signing at my local public library on June 24.

So I feel like I had a very productive month in terms of arranging activities to help gain more exposure. I'm excited about all of these events I have coming up.

Finally, it's time to Celebrate the Small Things again with Vikki at Scribblings of an Aspiring Author.

This week I'm celebrating getting several of my A to Z in April posts written and scheduled to post. Last year I had all of my posts done in advance and I'm determined to do the same this year as it made the Challenge much more fun and less stressful. Are you participating in the A to Z Challenge this year? If you're on the fence about joining in, I can't recommend it enough. Just click on the badge above to sign up.

I'm also celebrating the fact that our weather was warm enough last weekend to melt all the snow and I could walk with Clancy this week without stumbling around in the snow or worrying about falling on ice. The weather turned cold again during the week but that's fine with me as I actually like walking in the cold as long as there is no snow or ice accompanying it. So Clancy and I had some great walks in the park this week and it felt great to be out and about with no snow in sight.

Hope everyone had a great week and has a good weekend coming up!