Hi everybody! Lou Sylvre back again after missing a month for my author post. As the title of my post suggests, I’ve been really busy! Of course life has thrown its usual quota of curve balls, but mostly the “busy” has been the good kind. Lots of writing projects, a few editing jobs to keep me in coin, and a great author’s workshop put on by the fabulous professionals at Dreamspinner Press.

I’ll tell you about that, but first, let me announce that (1) I didn’t forget I had a small giveaway running from my last post, and (2) I did pick a winner—congratulations H.B.! No new contest here, this month, but if you catch the other me, Lou Hoffmann, at a number of blog tour stops and events in celebration of the release of book 3 in The Sun Child Chronicles, Ciarrah’s Light, you can enter into the rafflecopter. In that raffle I’m giving away a $15 gift certificate, a signed copy of Ciarrah’s Light (US only), and a book from the Lou Hoffmann backlist. Enter via the “I love fantasy because…” poll for a little bit of extra fun in the process. That’s not all, there will be event specific giveaways at the Facebook Launch party and in-person appearances (should you happen to be in my hometown area). Here’s a link to a schedule of events, but I confess it isn’t live yet. Check it on or after October 10th for information and links.

I’ve been working hard on writing projects just to try to keep up with what I already have on my plate. I’ve recently been reminded, however, that one of the banes of author existence is this: the more you write, the more you’re around other writers, the more “must-write” ideas occur to you for new books. I presently have five books due out next year—an amount of writing that would have been considered impossible in the days of the typewriter. And, I’ve got a slow-to-realize co-write, and several short stories in progress. But new ideas keep popping up, and after the Dreamspinner conference, I just can’t get push them to the back of the stove. So I’m working on the early stages of two short, sweet romances as Lou Sylvre, and as Lou Hoffman some short stories from The Sun Child Chronicles universe and a brand new YA fantasy series.

Part of the reason I’m fired up with new stories—that conference was a great brain-refresher. I mean, I was flooded with information about the business and about everything from the future of publishing, to genre trends and what works for a cover these days, to new approaches to plotting and digging into character. And the exchange of energy with fellow authors and others in the business was like putting a tiger in the tank, to paraphrase an old gasoline commercial. It took a five day chunk out of my schedule, included eight hours in the air each way, left me both energized and exhausted, and it was in central Florida in early September—not my fave climate. But all that was worth the trade and then some. Professional wisdom was shared, the time was spent productively and well, but what made it good medicine for my slightly jaded author soul was that the people I shared my time with both in and out of the workshops were not, to put it in the words of actress Jacqueline Bisset, “cantankerous bastards.”

Lou Hoffmann will have a post here on Love Bytes as part of the Ciarrah’s Light tour on October 20th. Stop by, enter the rafflecopter, leave your thoghts!

I’m signing off as Lou Sylvre for October, but I’ll try to do a much better job of getting back more quickly to respond to any comments, which are of course always welcome! Happy reading and I’ll be back!