Guess who’s back in the US?!?!

In case you haven’t seen the haiku I’ve been posting this week (with some very obvious riddles), the wife and I were in England for a wedding and some good ole R+R in London.

I managed to get some sweet pics of what I assume is Greenland on our flight from Reykjavik to Baltimore. I’ve seen plenty of documentary footage of the arctic, but flying directly over it with such a clear view of the terrain felt like I’d been transported to another world.

Our trip to England was really nice overall. We had a couple of beautiful days in London, and we got a chance to wander through Hyde Park.

On our final full day in the city, however, we had massive thunder and rainstorms all day. That day was sort of a wash for us, and we ended up lingering in a cafe for a while and then braving the storm to  visit a local book shop. Beyond that, though, we just lounged in our hotel.

We also had a not-great experience on our trip home. Here are some things we took away from this trip:

1. Two full days in London is probably enough. We love London every time we visit, and we really feel like we’ve explored the city. That also means we’re running out of sights to see, and London is frankly just too expensive to spend too much time in.
2. Don’t travel through Luton Airport. We found cheap flights to/from this little airport north of London, because the wedding we attended was in this region. Upon arrival to Luton, however, we learned that the easiest and cheapest way to get to Enfield was to… take the train into London, transfer, and take another train back up to Enfield. Next time, we’ll just fly into Heathrow like usual.
3. If we’re going to have long layovers, let’s just extend them and make a trip out of them. Our trip home was 21 hours in total, with a 6-hour layover in Reykjavik. We like flying through Reykjavik, because it breaks up the transatlantic flight a bit, and the airport is really nice. However, with the difficulty and inconvenience of traveling to Luton, we realized too late that we might have been better off flying to Reykjavik one day, staying overnight, and flying out the next afternoon. Krista has never really seen the city, so I think we’ll plan for this next time… if we don’t just take a trip to Iceland anyway!

WoEM Progress!

Despite our travels, I managed to make some progress on my writing. I now have the final version of The Warden of Everfeld: Memento from my book designer, as well as the final files for my cover. My illustrator came through, and, as I expected, it was a technical issue.

That means I have everything I need to move forward with publishing!

…

*trying not to have a panic attack*

…

Holy crap. There are obviously some logistical things I need to work out, but I guess it’s time to nail down my release date. Details to come.

I also used our long flight from Reykjavik to flesh out my plot for The Warden of Everfeld: Legacy  a bit more. I like where it’s at! I have the main beats of the story across my five primary POV characters from beginning to end.

It would be really easy for me to get lost in the details and just over-outline forever, so I’m going to cut myself off. I know where I want to go with each character and I have the basic ideas of how they’re getting there.

Now, it’s time to write!

Goals for 6/8

1. Nail down a release date for WoEM
2. Submit my manuscript for Copyright review
3. Write 5,000 words on WoEL – I’m starting small while ironing out my publishing plan 🙂

Steve D