Patrick J. Heck

I know, I know. It’s June 21st. I never claimed to be a good at this.

May went by in a blur. June is, blessedly, going slower. If you read my last post (Writing THE EVERWINTER KING.) you’ll know I started my querying journey. I thought that’d be the biggest part of the month—nope!

Unfortunately my car’s engine gave up. So despite all the fanfare around starting querying, the most exciting thing that happened in May was getting a new car. My first new-new car. I’m not happy to have a car payment again, but it fits in the budget, and I finally made the switch to a hybrid.

And it’s green!

What else happened in May? Let’s see…

• Finished edits on Everwinter and sent it out to betas. Got back 2/3 of them and did a round of (minimal, yay!) edits after.
• Started querying.
  • I sent 20 in May and another 18 in June (so far), but I’ll talk more about querying in my June update.
• Celebrated Mother’s Day with my mom, my mother-in-law, and my oma-in-law (husband’s grandmother).
• Started the next WIP: THE MANOR AT ABINGDON COVE.
• Spent a lot of time with friends. Looking forward to spending even more this summer! We don’t have a beach trip planned, like we normally do, but we’ll figure something out.
• Wrapped up with my last editing client. It was fun working with clients (mostly on referral basis), but it took up so much time from the first half of 2026. I’m committed just to working within my writing circles for the rest of the year.
• Literally every medical thing you can imagine. I started new medication in April, which led to a series of side effects that no one realized were side effects at first. I had an endoscopy, seven separate doctor visits, a terrible psoriasis attack that left me bed ridden, and I saw the dentist because I love suffering, I guess.
  • I’m totally fine now.

That’s May! I’ll be back in ten days to talk about June. I might even be back sooner to talk about some else, like, maybe home repairs…