Greetings from a somewhat refreshed Deanna. We’ve just got back from a little mini break and right this moment, as I’m typing this, I’m at team writing sprints. If you follow any of my What Deanna Read series posts, you’ll see I do this a lot—write during sprints. The reality is team writing sprints are the only times I get me time when it comes to my writing. Otherwise, it’s mostly author client work and writing.
The mini break was wonderful and much needed. I do plan a wrap-up at some point for Substack, but I had a little fun with these two small updates here and here.
On a more personal note, April through to the end of August was rather brutal for Hubby and me due to his two knee replacement surgeries and subsequent complications. I was going to share a bit more detail about it, but decided to leave it for now. Maybe another time when I’m feeling up to it.
A Small Intro If You’re New Here
I realise that even though the blog and website has been around for almost a decade and a half, not everyone has followed me from the beginning, so if you’re new here, welcome. Take a look around, there’s plenty to sink your reading teeth into.
This particular series, Notes from Deanna’s Desk, is essentially a collection of highlights from my Substack Notes. When I first started Substack, they had just introduced Notes and I was learning to navigate my way around it. It’s sort of a hybrid social media platform for Substack that’s algorithm-driven (ugh!), but I use it more as a professional journal to jot down thoughts about writing craft, the publishing industry, and provide an insider’s glimpse into the nitty-gritty of a working publishing partner. It’s not glamorous or sexy, and it’s a lot of hard work. I shy away from the “Word of the Day”-style calendar platitudes that are generic and cliché. I understand that gets a lot of clicks and interaction, because they are low friction and easy to scroll, click like, or drop an “oh, I do that too” and move on.
Because that’s not who I am.
Perhaps it's weariness and perhaps it's just a refusal to play the game anymore. At my age and having been in the industry for as long as I’ve been, I’ve just seen it all happen before in some shape or form. I’d rather put my energy into a good book cover or a serious structural and developmental edit.
But I digress (I always do!)… what you get from my Notes from Deanna’s Desk is me pulling back the curtain on the hard yards it takes to be a working career author, the effort, the consistency, showing up, the research, and the continuous improvement of writing and craft. And hopefully, I bring a dash of levity and humor to the whole process so we’re not drowning in creative angst, wearing sackcloth, and going blind while hunched over a desk writing by candlelight in a drafty attic.
Anyway, onwards—
Actually, before I get started-started, I want to add that the reason my Notes are collated here is that my website is the permanent home for all my writing. Any social media platform feed is fleeting and has the lifespan of about two minutes. Probably less, really. But here on my website, they have a place to live forever or until I take the website down, which means that some of my hard-learned lessons in the trenches of the publishing world have a home and won’t get lost.
Let’s Get Into the Meat of the Notes
It’s been forever since I’ve done a proper collation of my Notes, so this might be a long one. I’m going to try to theme this so it might jump around a bit chronologically, but provide a better reading experience in terms of cohesiveness.
But let’s start with a cheeky cat of the day. It’s become a whole personality for me…
19 September 2026
I’ve embraced the fact that I’m not a real cat lady, but a Pretend Cat Lady (TM) and yes, it’s a whole thing. We don’t have a cat or cats (plural) because our lives do not allow for it at the moment. Too much travel and being away, and having been an almost constant traveler with work (I got tired of it), I know it’s not fair to the pets who prefer a stable home environment and consistency of routine. Stable and consistent routine is the antithesis of my lifestyle. Then and now. I often joke that for someone who hates traveling as much as I do, I sure am away a lot.
In this particular restack, I shared a note about cat person vs dog person which I thought was cute.
I love cats—in theory—hence being only a Pretend Cat Lady (TM). It’s a thing. Go with it.
Happy bonus Caturday.
It seems a lot of authors love cats. I hate them and am a dog person instead. But this photo of my sister’s cat in the U.S. came up, so I am sharing it. Before I bought a smaller travel laptop, I used to use my iPad for mind mapping and Scrivener. And while visiting my sister, her cat took an interest in what I was doing.
How about you? Cat person, dog person, both, or neither?
Also on 19 September 2026
I guess I was feeling chatty and rambly that day and I had juice in my tank to write.
In the last several weeks, I’ve taken steps to straighten up my work-life balance and it’s slowly coming together.
One of the biggest things I did was structure each author’s release calendar and work schedule into individual shared calendars. The ones who are more hands-on, we share the calendar and schedule management, put things in, check things off, etc. For others, I create them, send them invites so the activities and deadlines end up in their calendars too, and I keep track of what’s what.
This has worked out great so far and I finally feel (1) slightly more in control and (2) like I can see space in my work life and personal life where I can breathe again.
For those who are constantly running and trying to keep up, I cannot even begin to emphasize how much it has helped not only to find my creative mojo again, but to actually be the publishing partner my authors need me to be for them.
Are there still stress points and crazy hours now and then when a deadline hits? Yes.
Are there still times when I agonize over a deliverable or I need to crank to get things done in a time crunch? Also yes.
But I can also see space in my life to the end of the year, and I can plan time and breaks.
And the other biggest thing I’ve done for myself which makes me so much more effective for my authors is to give myself time off. Real time off. Then protecting that boundary and intentionally switching off. Easier said than done, but I’m getting better at it.
And I am blessed with wonderful clients who understand those boundaries as well because they, too, are trying to achieve some semblance of the same thing.
Now, every Saturday after team weekly sprints and all day Sunday, I’m off work till Monday. It’s no mean feat considering I work for myself and I work from home. That’s a solid one and a half days where I do zero work. I achieve it most of the time. Not all the time since life is not like that and there are no absolutes.
Is everything perfect? No.
Is it getting better? Yes.
And as people, the only thing that’s a constant is we continue to try, to grow, and to get better at achieving our goals.
Plus enjoy the heck out of our lives along the way.
So here I am, on a Saturday evening.
I had a fabulous writing sprint session with my team. Words got written. I had a personal best on the word count front. 802 words in 15 minutes. I was CRANKING!!
Followed by another fabulous session with one of my authors as we debriefed her almost 7,000 (it grew!) word editorial assessment report. And we took pressure off her, so she could relax into polishing the book and making it the best book it can be when it’s published.
I’ve had a wonderful nap. Watched some TV with Hubby. And there will be more chilling tonight.
We even have plans to check out a line dancing place tomorrow which is going to be fun. No dancing for us yet since Hubby’s knees are not recovered enough from surgery for it.
But I’m feeling the most relaxed I’ve been in months. My brain is feeling the most switched on it's been (the trolley incident yesterday notwithstanding) in months too.
I'm certain there will be more curveballs in the future, but at the moment, things are feeling less chaotic inside and out. And that's huge.
I'm counting down to the mini break next week. Plus Hubby has suggested we plan another one for the end of October since we have a free night at one of our fav hotels to use with a suite upgrade that expires soon. I can't wait for that. So excited!!
Right, I'm off to enjoy the rest of my weekend. Maybe I'll even have the energy and mental bandwidth to spend a bit more time on here moving forward. But only a bit. I still want to protect my time and not get sucked into the whole social media merry-go-round thing. Substack is not my job. Substack is just a fun place I like to hang out and be somewhat random.
Y'all enjoy your weekend too. I'm sending you kitten cuddles, chocolate, and great weather.
PS. Remember that pile of shoes that's been living on my bedroom floor? It's still there. I'm also learning not to fuss too much about the perfect state of my bedroom and just go with the flow. The shoes will get sorted... eventually. Meanwhile, there's a hot shower and an audiobook calling my name. And if I play my cards right, I might even wrangle a shoulder massage out of Hubby.
Wow, another one on 19 September 2026
Yep, definitely feeling chatty…
None, zip, zilch.
In the recent life and times of Deanna the Publishing Partner:
- A three-hour planning session to map out the rest of the year, or at least most of it. We ran out of steam at about the end of November.
- Coordinating and negotiating a foreign language translation contract for my authors.
- A read-through, notes, and editorial report for a 60,000-ish word urban fantasy (yay! Vampires!). Oof! That was a lot of hours.
- General author wrangling.
And of course, general life stuff that keeps on lifing. That’s a good thing—if life stopped lifing, it means I’ve carked it, and we don’t want that.
There’s still a heap of stuff waiting for me, including:
- That pesky thing called admin and invoicing clients. Argh!
- A collection of essays that need editing, plus book cover, and internal illustrations.
- A new book cover for said urban fantasy book.
- A set of three new book covers and a box set book cover for a romantic suspense series.
- Edits for a 90,000-ish word crime thriller coming up. It’s the last book in a series, so it’s going to be a banger.
- Oh, and I think there’s one or two more sci-fi book covers somewhere towards the end of the year too.
- Oops, almost forgot that short story collection that’s collecting dust waiting for edits (see what I did there? Snerk!) Thank goodness for patient, understanding authors who aren’t in a hurry to hit publish. We all need a few of those in our lives.
- That’s all excluding the regular lineup of remaining releases for the rest of the year. I think there’s at least another ten-ish books still to go, give or take a few. I’m not sure the exact count.
I’ve probably forgotten something somewhere in there, but that’s all I can remember off the top of my head.
It’s also a lot, and a good reminder that I need to pace myself and make sure I get breaks, time for rest and recharging in.
Next week’s mini break to a local-ish beach resort is going to be a fabulous reset. Hubby and I are off to celebrate a very belated 25th wedding and 29th dating anniversary.
But before we get to the mini break, we have team writing sprints starting in a few hours.
Onwards…
18 September 2026
The reality was, by the end of that day, I’d clocked almost 10,000 words with an editorial report that came in at just under 7,000-ish words and a commercial viability report for something one of my authors had planned at about 2,500-ish words.
For the record, Deanna 0, World 1.
Picture this (said in the dramatic voice of Sophia from the Golden Girls sans the Sicily setting):
Deanna and Hubby are just done with grocery shopping. Something that's been put off for a good three weeks. We've survived on leftovers, frozen freezer food cooked by yours truly's mumsy paired with fresh rice or noodles, and some meals out. We've long since run out of fresh veggies.
Today was finally the day where I had enough emotional bandwidth to tackle peopling. We've had a ton of days out running errands and doing life stuff where I've burned out on crowds and people in a few hours and the thought of braving the crowds at the grocery store was just too much.
Hubby even mentioned that I've been weirdly overwhelmed by crowds, people, and being out more than usual in the last few days.
In my defense, I've just emerged from an intense several days of a read-through and notes for a structural edits assessment of an almost-60,000 word book, plus writing an over-6,000 word editorial report.
So back to the picturing this:
We've just come out of the grocery store. It was a biggish shop, so with four full bags of groceries, we pushed the trolley to the car.
We get to the car and I immediately head to the door to get in.
Hubby: You need to return the trolley. I'll pick you up at the front of the store.
Me: (turns away from the car and goes to grab the trolley to return it, starts pushing it back to the front of the store)
Hubby: I have to empty it first.
Me: (looks at trolley still full of groceries)
Also me: (laughing) My brain is not braining today.
Me again: (still laughing) Hey, hire me as your publishing partner. I can brain. I read good. I write book good.
Hubby: But you can't manage to return an empty trolley...
Also Hubby: Don't forget I'll pick you up in front of the store. DO NOT come back here.
I should have stayed at home today. There's still a small section I just remembered I need to check to confirm the internal timing of the things happening in the book I'm editing. Back to work…
17 September 2026
This one quite literally made me laugh since it was a restack of a meme I found hilariously funny that said, “My apologies to the Goodreads reviewer who found my novel about vampires on a submarine “unrealistic.” (You can also tell the writer is American because he’s punctuating the sentence with a full stop inside the quotes.)
Dude, you just read a book where the guy is hanging off the side of a cliff, holding on with one broken arm and the other one is dislocated, and he’s trying to haul himself up using his dislocated arm. Might I suggest you reconsider your definition of realistic?
15 September 2026
I am often confronted with people who look down on romance as a genre, romance authors, and romance readers. And to them, I say this…
Underneath
the pretty eyes and the humor, this guy has a great point about the
romance genre as a whole. And he’s right, both romance readers and romance
authors are (mostly) smart, intelligent people.
Of my authors, to list a few—a former lab tech, engineer, journalist, etc., and my background is in IT systems and management consulting.
It takes clever, clever people to dream up complicated plots, engaging characters, and then execute those with skill to bring readers engaging, addictive reads.
I’ll step off my soapbox now. Go read a romance.
Also, here’s the video I shared from Steven’s Book Reviews. He’s also hilarious which makes it even more fun.
1 September 2026
The publishing industry is still up in arms and there’s still a lot of noise and kerfuffle over machines vs humans. This made me stop for a moment. You can check out the sticker here.
Something
very interesting crossed my feed today. A book with a digital sticker on
it that says “Human Authored (TM)”—my first such sticker, probably won’t
be the last.
My first reaction was: Oh, interesting…
My second was: Hmm… I wonder when the book was written, then went to check the publication date. Late 2024, if you’re curious.
My third was: Will this make me more likely to buy the book and read it? Or would it not change anything and it would still be the cover and the blurb that drive me to one-click?
And my fourth and final question was: Would anyone care and would it move the needle on book sales for this author?
I don’t have an answer for the third or fourth question… yet. Because I sincerely don’t know. I only know about all the kerfuffle that is raging in the publishing industry right now and I’m intellectually curious as to how it will unfold. Time will tell.
30 August 2026
In case you missed it, here's a shameless plug for a podcast interview I did yonks ago which tells you a little about what it means to be a publishing partner. And here’s the video of the podcast interview.
When
someone asks me what I do and I say I’m a publishing partner,
I’m often met with confusion. Being a publishing partner is very different
from being a niche, vertical service provider in publishing. I was on the
Miles Beyond the Page podcast talking about what it means to be a
publishing partner. I was also awkward AF.
26 August 2026
In this particular episode, Deanna goes on the warpath, aka meet Ragey Deanna sans menopause.
Today
has been a day. Well, yesterday now since it’s after 2AM.
If I had one phrase to describe the day, I’d say I was on the warpath. Why—you ask? Because some dude sent out an email implying I was delinquent about something and that it was unacceptable.
So I raged.
Then I had a massive rant during team writing sprints—shout out to the team who listened to me vent. Oof! And during sprints I sorted through all my documentation dating all the way back to 2017 to prove that I was not delinquent.
Dude came at me with accusations, and instead of killing him with kindness, I killed him with icy cold data, evidence, and facts, and an audit trail like no other. All time and date stamped.
My response email was hard facts, indisputable evidence, and if it sounded a tad formal when I asked for an explanation of why they failed to contact me for over five years, well, that’s something they’re going to have to figure out and come up with a suitable response, yes?
After that spurt of excitement, Hubby got fed—we are still working through leftovers, so it was an easy meal.
Followed by some tweaks to a cover for one author, then chats with another author about her next release, edits, cover design, internal artwork, and planning the release for November-ish in time for Christmas gift-giving season. Woo! And reminded another author she had to post and send out her newsletter, etc., that I’d prepped for an audiobook release.
I called it a day on the work front after that. I was done and needed a nap. Plus I’m working on being sensible and not overdoing it right out the gate. Go me!
Hope you’re having a great Tuesday and it was better than mine. Sending kittens and stardust.
In case you’re wondering, this did get resolved and I did receive an apology.
25 August 2026
I admit that it’s still hard after all these years to take things easy when I need to. I do manage it sometimes though. Cute sign from the cafe here.
CONFESSION:
I took last week pretty easy on the work front. Rest, recovery, and taking
care of myself so I'm not a burnt-out husk.
I'm back to work this week and Monday was Mondaying.
It kicked off with a fabulous catch-up with an ex-client. She had wanted to take us out to lunch after we wrapped up—successfully—an IP theft case. Oof! That was a lot at the time. Lunch got delayed on account of Hubby's many surgeries and extra hospital stays, so today it was. And it was worth the wait. The catch-up was lovely, the food was delicious, and best of all? Seeing both of them looking relaxed, calm, and bright. We discussed the future and a project that's in the making. Nothing to update on that front yet, we're only in discussions at this point.
And now it's back into the swing of all the things.
Just finished a new audiobook release prep. That's always fun. I do love a good audiobook and this is a fabulous series.
And I have started brainstorming concepts for a rebrand that I've been asked to do for one of my authors which includes three books in the series so far, and a related short story collection. That's going to be challenging. We knew this needed to be done, but I think it took Emma Hartlight a while to make the mental shift on the design work since the stories started as sweet contemporary romance, but she really found her stride writing sweet romantic suspense. Plus the original covers are gorgeous and she was very attached to them.
Also, the next major piece which I'm starting tomorrow (after team writing sprints and between another meeting to set up a consignment sales process for another author) is the design work for a box set and a redesign of the three books in the series for Julie Rowe's Biological Rapid Response Team. It's time for an update cos naked men and wet t-shirts are so passé on book covers. At least for the kind of books she writes.
Last but not least, I think there's final typo edits for a novella (it was so good) that's releasing early September. And yes, in response to BadRedhead Media (Rachel), we are indeed very lucky that our job pays us to read some fabulous books.
Saw this sign at the cafe where we had lunch and I think it hit the Monday vibes just right.
It's after midnight here, so y'all have a great week. I'm the one doing the sending this time, all the kittens and coffee to fuel you.
22 August 2026
I think I’ve mentioned before that I have hyperphantasia—it’s a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to reading either with my eyeballs or listening to an audiobook. This was in response to a Note talking about reading the manuscript out loud to improve their writing.
Last
night, I jokingly said to Hubby, “sing to me.” He started singing out the
book he was reading. I talk about cadence and rhythm in writing a lot when
I’m working with my authors. And Hubby being funny when I asked him to
sing to me proved that point. The book he was reading was written so well
that when he sang it (look, his singing isn’t going to win a Grammy, and
I’m probably the only person who appreciates it), it worked. It was a made
up tune, but the writing in the book worked as lyrics. That was
revelatory. So not just reading it out loud, try singing it. You don't
even need to carry a tune or be in tune. Yodel, even...
Wrapping up with 1 September 2026
I’m going to close out this very long recap of my notes with this one, which explains a little of why I've stepped away from social media (again) while I recalibrate and refocus my energies regarding the ever-elusive work-life balance.
I’ve
run out of juice and my tank is empty, so the next little while is going
to be a lot of trying to juggle a full workload and trying to reverse the
trajectory of being a burnt-out crispy critter.
All my social media platforms are the first on the chopping block when I need to scale back, so I’m taking a small break from social media, which includes Substack, for a little while.
I’ll still have daily scheduled posts, but I wanted to let all you lovely lot know that I’m not ignoring you. I just need to put my time and energy where it’s needed most since there’s very little of it available at the moment.
I’ll get back to being chatty and interacting when things settle down.
Be well and be kind to yourselves.
If you read my last set of Notes, you’ll know we tried out line dancing. Actually, we didn’t end up line dancing cos Hubby’s knees weren’t up to it yet. We discovered that after a full day in the city for a belated Father’s Day lunch with the family which involved a lot of walking. Poor Hubby was wrecked. Instead, we went to a local ranch (I didn’t even know there was a legit ranch near us) and watched the line dancing.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
Yours truly lasted about two minutes with the noise, the loud music, the hooting, hollering, clapping, and stomping. My poor nerves. Hubby asked me within 30 seconds of us arriving if I’d be able to handle it. Hubby knows me well, bless the man.
We’ve decided to check out some YouTube videos, see if Hubby’s knees can hack it, and then go from there. Maybe the local weekly classes at a local community hall would be different.
Until next time…
xoxo, Deanna.
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