Blog Posts

Hello, friends!

I’m excited to announce that ‘The Gods Who Harvested Men: Book Two in The Panagea Tales” is available for pre-order on Amazon!

Secure your pre-order here!

Thank you all for your patience while I powered my way through another 400 pages of content for our dear companions, Nicholai, Kazuaki, Umbriel, and the crew. I hope the second installment brings you as much joy as the first.

I’ve learned a lot about marketing, proper blurbs, and good series covers in the last several months. I know book one has undergone several large face lifts in the days since its debut, but I’m hoping everything that poor book has endured since June will only serve to streamline the process for other books in the series.

I’m grateful for you all, and I hope to keep your attention as the series continues on into the third installment!

 

Wow! I don’t know what else to say to encapsulate the experience that was my first book signing. (But I’m a writer, so I’ll try.)

I am eternally grateful to have amazing friends and contacts within the wonderful world of Facebook. A lovely woman I met long ago, Jenny, saw my shameless self-promotion posts flowing through my newsfeed about The Tree That Grew Through Iron, and she happened to know the owner of a book store in Appleton, WI, aptly named ‘The Book Store’. Several messages later, I had the event booked!

There were some concerns as to how many people would show, as Appleton was a good half an hour outside the safety and comfort of my home town. Coffee and general nervousness made for a jittery introduction to the first few people who showed, but I was blown away by the soothing ambiance of The Book Shop. And a major, major shout out to my mom, brother, and sister Kelsey (who lives in flippin’ Iowa but drove all that way to surprise me at the event!). Family is feckin’ amazing, you guys. With their love and support, you can overcome any mental obstacle.

Meeting the faces of those who read the words I wrote was humbling. I genuinely love each and every person who walked up to the homey booth provided by The Book Store’s owner, Kalan. I’m eternally grateful, Kalan, that you let me dip my toe in the book signing waters at your store– I can’t think of any better place to have started. The atmosphere was unprecedented. A thousand and one thank you’s to you, my dear!

Thirteen books found their new homes that day. I know, I know… everybody’s favorite number, right? If you consider the copy that Kalan took to sell in The Book Store, that makes fourteen, but I’m not superstitious. Thirteen is my new lucky number.

From the bottom of my weird little heart, thank you to everyone who made it out. Thank you to Kalan and The Book Store for having me. And thank you to the writing gods and goddesses who gave me the ambition to craft this story. It’s been a wild ride so far. I can’t wait to find out how it ends.

Love, light and peace,

-McK.

“Picking up your first copy of a book you wrote, if there’s one typo, it will be on the page that your new book falls open to the first time you pick it up.” – Neil Gaiman

 

Someone warned me about it. I thought the countless times that I scoured through the text were enough.

It’s never enough, people. It’s. Never. Enough.

Quite literally, I flipped open to page 166 of The Tree That Grew Through Iron‘s paperback version. My eyes scanned the page. Then I saw it.

“…edged closer death.”

Gods. Damn.

After an initial panic and contemplative thoughts of throwing myself on the edge of a crippling anxiety attack, I drew a deep breath. I paused. I accepted. The book’s only been out for less than a week. I had time to fix it. There’s only about one hundred copies of my blatant mistake floating around in readers’ hands. (And probably more that I haven’t caught.) But it is what it is. Ironically, it captures a theme that runs through all the installments of the Panagea Tales:

Human beings are not perfect. And they never will be.

The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can move on to worrying mindlessly over other things in life, since we all know there’s bound to be more.

Love, light, and peace, my friends. And sorry if you’re one of the few who purchased my imperfect version.

-McK.

Oh, gods, I’m about to throw up.

Hilarious story: I thought The Tree That Grew Through Iron would go live on June 4th, but it turns out, it went live today! (Don’t worry… I’m confident my writing abilities are better than my organizational skills.)

Here I sit, sweaty-palmed, hyperventilating, hoping to every real and imagined god and goddess that ever existed (minus the evil ones, feck those guys) that you all enjoy this book. Thank you all for staying with me through the journey. I have my fingers crossed that you stick with it for book two!

You can secure your copy of The Tree That Grew Through Iron here!

Love, hugs, and lightning bugs!

-McK.