I feel like I’m abandoning you all here. I certainly don’t mean to. A few things have been keeping me busy.

My son, who is three, is priority number one. The husband and I have been working with him on letters and numbers, and I’ve been TRYING to teach him how to write his name, or at least part of it. He’s all about drawing the number 1, probably because it’s only a straight line. We’re actually testing him to see if he’ll be ready for preschool this year or if we should wait until next year. His birthday puts him on that cusp of age, so we have to figure out when he’ll be ready. Then again, the school will want to have a say as well. I don’t want to start him early because he’s knowledgeable enough only to have the system want to hold him back merely based on his age. It happens a lot around here. They’re more worried about their social development. A friend of mine is actually pulling his 8-year-old daughter out of school after this year to home school her. The kid was doing fractions two years ago, but the school refuses to bump her a grade because they’re afraid the older kids will make fun of her. Now, I have heard of the things that come out of this precious girl’s mouth–her parents are NOT worried about her being picked on.

Home schooling our son is still on the table for us. I have trust issues–not so much with teachers, but with the other parents. Our problem is we’re a bit anti-social, so we don’t know any of the other parents in the area. That is why I’ve been looking into the local summer recreation program organized by the school. It would help him make friends, and I can scout the other parents as well as their kids. And if we do choose to home school, the rec program would still be available to us so my son will still be able to socialize and learn all those life skills he’ll need in the future.

In addition to the boy, I’ve been kind of overloading myself with book cover art projects. I’m working with a few authors to make covers for their entire series, so that’s definitely keeping me busy. And I’ve also been rolling out some new premade ebook covers for Melchelle Designs. If you’d like to take a gander at all my latest additions, it’d be best to view them in my Book Cover Gallery on Deviantart.

I’ve been trying to decide on a favorite, but it’s a tie between these two…

Premade FANTASY
Ebook Cover

Premade SCI-FI
Ebook Cover

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Finally, as some of you know, I’m trying (desperately) to edit my next book, one I’m hoping to pitch to agents and/or publishers. When I first started reading through it, I felt like I was torturing myself. The story was born a few years ago, written for someone special in my life. At the time, she was too young to read it, but I was hoping to be finished by the time she was old enough to enjoy it. My main character (MC) is a brooding teen with a punk-like style from Boston by the same name. Now that she’s about the same age as my MC, it’s almost eerie how much they resemble each other–their looks, their attitude, etc. But, just as I started editing, some crazy things started happening in her real life that caused us all quite a bit of worry. Things are getting better, but it was hard to repeatedly read her name over and over and over.

Then, the bombings happened in Boston.

A line from the first page of my book…

The whole city embodied a certain kind of pride, like nothing could break it.

Who else would shut down their entire city to find one person?

I would like to add that I’m loving all the little side stories that are coming out now, like the officer who brought a mother two gallons of milk for her young children during the lock down.

Feel free to share some with me in a comment below…