Sunday Sips-July 4th, 2021

Long time, no see!

First off, Happy 4th to anyone that celebrates.

I took the month of June off from blogging due to a busy, busy schedule. I’ll be keeping this one short and sweet as I dip my toes back in. (Short and sweet…ha! If you’ve read any of my books, you know i don’t do anything short)

The only new tea I’ve tried lately was at my local Starbucks when they were out of my usual order of the very berry refresher. Is everyone else’s Starbucks having shortages? I think it’s everywhere unfortunately. Anyway, I tried the strawberry acai refresher and it was actually pretty good.

So I mentioned last month was busy. That’s an understatement honestly. It was crazy busy! Where I live, the schools seem to save everything for the last few weeks then pack it all in at once. It’s wild. I had two graduations–my son graduated 8th grade and one of my daughters graduated 5th grade. We also flew my mother in law in for them, which we hadn’t seen her for two years so we were heavily occupied with catching up with her. While we had her here, we also took advantage of having a babysitter and my hubby and I got away for our first vacation in 5 years. We went down to Florida for a few days and it was soo needed, it’s not even funny.

We had quite the getaway full of relaxing, eating, swimming, and…an ocean rescue. Seriously. If you don’t follow me on instagram, i wrote about it *HERE*. Basically, my hubby and I ended up saving two women and a little girl from drowning in the rip current, or whatever it’s called. And that was on the first day! After that the vacay was pretty chill thankfully and we really enjoyed ourselves. I know I appreciated having a few days off from cooking 3 meals a day.

Surprisingly, I’m still on my documentary kick. I’ve only watched a couple in between a new fave show on Netflix called The Beauty and The Baker. I’d like to get back into Outlander. I was doing so good with my rewatch from the beginning then, ya know, life. Oh and I started the hottest new show that everyone is talking about, SexLife. I’m only one episode in but I know I’ll be binging the rest as soon as I get a break from my kids…so probably in the fall LOL. SUmmer momlife is much more calm as far as activities go but THERE. ARE. NO. BREAKS. Like ever. My kids stay up much later which cuts way into my writing considering I write mostly at night, after they’re in bed. Yeah. This should be fun. Wish me luck!

Music-wise I’ve kinda been listening to everything lately. I have never ever liked techno but wouldn’t you know it, I watched a couple documentaries on DJs and boom, I think I kinda like it. A little. I like techno a little. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I still don’t like country though. haha. One song i highly recommend is flowers & sex by EMELINE. I saw an instagram reels with the artist singing it and fell in love. Then a few weeks later Spotify recommended it to me out of the blue. Love that it happened too because I’d almost forgotten about the song. A super fun song right now too is 90s Kids by Jax. Everything seems to be 90s-ish these days and this one gives such a blast from the past with its nostalgia-inducing lyrics. Ugh I can’t not mention Black Mirror by Sophie Simmons. It just…chills. I love it. It’s been on repeat for a while now. Give it a listen and tell me you don’t immediately hit play on it again.

Reading. Oh reading. i did what i usually do and chose some books based off their covers alone and it bit me in the butt. I chose an older fantasy series and i just can’t with those anymore. The herione’s are just not strong enough for my reading tastes now. 2009 I would’ve been obsessed with this series. Like diehard. Now though, no. just no. I read the first two of the four book series because that’s all i took to read on my trip and I think that’s where I’ll be stopping. I can’t continue. I’m in need of some strong AF women leads so Let me know if you’ve got any recs. Fantasy, paranormal, romance. I’m ready!

I’m gearing up for Blind Spot’s release in just 4 days which is insane. 4 days!! Ah! I’m so incredibly proud of this book and I cannot wait for everyone to read it. As usual, i’m nervous as well. I don’t see that feeling ever going away. Marc and his love interest have a very close, special place to my heart. Them and their story mean so much to me and I really hope that translates to others. I hope this book means something to readers. I know it’s the popular thing to disregard pretty much all romance books as smut or porn but idgaf. My steamy books are so much more than what some uneducated people will try to label them as and I truly hope the messages written on their pages find exactly who they’re supposed to. That’s what i want for all my books. Always. You can find the preorder for the ebook on Amazon or you can purchase the paperback already as it’s live early.

This weekend and the days leading up to Blind Spot’s release, the first book, Detour, is on sale for $0.99 so if you haven’t started the series now’s the perfect time, that way you’re ready for Blind Spot as soon as it’s available on Amazon. The entire series is in Kindle Unlimited also in case you’re a subscriber. Both the playlist and inspiration board for Blind Spot are now linked here on my website so be sure to check out the Extras page for the Creekwood Series. I will warn to proceed with caution peeking at the inspo board before reading Blind Spot as there are major spoilers.

I do plan on having some sort of celebration for release day just like i did with my other two books so I’ll share some pictures from that next post.

Until then, stay safe!

Ashley