My sister is getting married this year! And I, like any creative, ambitious, idiot, offered up to do the Order of Events that will go on each of the tables at the reception. In the end, I was really pleased with how it turned out and the opportunity to use some different techniques. Since she wanted a specific color, I ordered based on the Pantone number from Southern Inks. The tube came fast and allowed for quick start up and minimal clean up. I definitely now have a ton of that color, but I think it'll be perfect going into fall and winter.

With the importance of having the text readable, I ordered a polymer plate from Boxcar press. While, I had created a plate at Spudnik before, I had concerns about my font sizes and felt better having the professionals create the plate for me. I had to experiment around with inDesign but luckily the text had no issues. My woodcut barn was an E-bay purchase and worked perfectly! Maybe next time around I'll overcome my design abilities and just have that part of the plate. For this print, it meant I did the print twice. Once with the barn woodcut and second with the plate. Looking back, I probably could have done them both at the same time, but the base does take up quite a bit of the chase.

After getting all the pieces and parts, I loaded up the Chandler & Price at Spudnik. I usually print on the Vandercook, so this was another challenge. Luckily, I had limited type and I was able to knock everything out in one Open Studio. 

Every time I approach letterpress project, I get to learn new things and continually grow in my skill-sets. It was so fun to get to try so many new skills and have the finished project match the one I had dreamed of!  Best of all, my sister and her fiance loved them!

Full disclosure, I love checklists. I like writing them, I like organizing them, and then crossing items off. Do I occasionally pad my lists to get some easy ones to cross off first? Absolutely, you need that reward early to get you through the list. (Like once I hit post, I get to cross off another thing) I use lists at work and tend to keep them updated for the week. For the personal, the lists were important during graduate school to keep everything balanced. I tended to use Evernote often with their check-boxes.
For a gift, I got Field Notes Checklist Journal and really love it! While I struggle with journaling, it tends to send me into more negativity then not, having the tangible checklists are a wonderful way for me to look back over the record of what I was doing. Life's busy!

So amazing to realize Dont't Belong to No City​ has been out for a little over two months! While, normally I write and edit two projects concurrently, I wasn't sure where to end up after this book was published. Around December, I had begun working on a historical romance and got about 40000 of the way through before losing interest. I'm not sure if that's due to the way I wrote it in scenes or because I already know the ending and have less interest in the meat. Needless to say, after my last book was published, I wasn't sure where to go next. I gave my creative muse the chance to go anywhere. It decided to go full on soulmates and space mode--I suppose it was always just a matter of time. With that though, my brain finally figured out two major plot holes that had always bothered me in the third ravanna book. I'm super excited to jump back into those books after being gone for a few years. With July right around the corner, I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo and hope to get back into this writing groove!

Don’t Belong to No City is out in the world! I am so excited to share this story with you!
Get it and all my books for discounted prices this week only!!!

2 days out!

Life hadn’t been easy to him either. We were both orphans, and I knew the same pull to belong, to have a place, to have a home that he did. But we were separated by a great divide.
He was a Vintage.
I was Queen of the Zombies.
One of us got to pretend we were like everyone else, and the other was alone.
© 2019 Olivia Orndorff

3 days out!

My body curved around hers. It took me a long time to close my eyes, too enthralled by the sight of our arms intertwined. The room too dark to share the secret that my tattoos swam up my arms, and Ilfy’s stayed static.

I stumbled into my shift at the bar late. Too happy to care. Too excited about feeling happy to care.

Because she was beautiful.

It had been so long since I’d felt worthy of even looking at beauty, let alone to touch.
© 2019 Olivia Orndorff

4 days out!

The ward screamed at my temples wanting to keep me inside, keep me safe, if only I listened. I stepped outside the ward’s boundaries and the ward tried to reach me, reach outside its wall crying out like every mother who’s cautioned their child in high places, and then the ward shattered into a million pieces.
© 2019 Olivia Orndorff

5 days out! Beginning of the teaser countdown ;)

They weren’t dreams. Never dreams. Just voices lingering in my mind, faint echoes of souls I now carried, drifting out to play when my walls lifted. I heard them, the cant of the wards, the Vietnamese of a sailor. Only one’s voice spoke in my childhood Creole. A lullaby that soothed me deeper and deeper into darkness.
© 2019 Olivia Orndorff

Your first sneak-peek of the book! 3 weeks to go!!

The woman hadn’t moved from the door as she assessed the room. She felt wilder to me. Like marionberries growing from the cracks of an abandoned building, stretching out toward the sky for sun. Tasted, tasted slightly bitter, though familiar, aged.

I felt her gaze seep into my bones, as the very cells of my blood threatened to boil over.

Last time Eliza Wong and I had been in the same room, she had tried to kill me and almost succeeded.
© 2019 Olivia Orndorff

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