—Well, Sword & Illusion was supposed to be released yesterday, but we were having some cover issues. Mainly, we didn’t get the cover art form until just last week, and Steve had some problems with the cover they originally sent. I kinda did, too, but I’m not as visual as he is, so I wasn’t as picky about it. I was happy to have a cover at all.

—I think we have a cover we love and I’ll post a picture of it as soon as we get a final one, without watermarks and all that. I’m hoping the book will be released any minute now.

—I do have to say that the covers Astraea has are pretty fabulous, especially for an epress. Not that there’s any inherent inferiority. Quite the opposite, but epubs generally don’t have the budget of bigger publishers so sometimes the cover quality suffers. Not that I see here.

—Noah and I made an impromptu trip to New Orleans in the middle of the week. Steve had a business meeting in the city Tuesday and it turns out that everyone he was traveling with was spending the night. They’d all said they weren’t going to and didn’t bother to tell him when they changed their minds. Then he found out that because he is a big important guy with CCT, he was expected to be at the meetings Wednesday, too. He hadn’t planned on this, so he called and asked if Noah and I wanted to come and spend the night. What he really needed was clothes for the next day, toiletries and pajamas. Oh, and a ride home!

—We went and actually had a good time. Noah loved the fancy hotel with the “futuristic” elevators. There was a small computer screen at the elevator bank and you pressed the floor you wanted to go to. A voice would tell you which elevator would take you there. Then there were no buttons inside the elevator. It was pretty cool.

—The rest of the week was pretty quiet. Nothing unusual. It was Noah’s first week of summer vacation and we’re still working out how that’s going to work out.

—He took his first “let’s check it out” Karate lesson. I think this is something he’ll want to do, but not at the place we went. It was 30 minutes from our house in the midst of rush hour. A friend of his is going to one closer to us, so we’re going to check that one out. I think this’ll be good for him, if for nothing more than the “Yes, Sir!” stuff. He needs to have it reinforced outside of the house that you obey instantly, not twenty minutes later.

—Today, I’m going to work on Pigsty Princess and I think do some work on Sword & Incantation, the sequel to Sword & Illusion. I’m pretty excited about it!

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!