What's Happening July 2024 Edition

Hello Champions! There are SO many things happening this month (including book sales, SheaCon, giveaways, and more!) and made this blog post to summarize them all in chronological order so you don't miss out!

Enjoy Fireworks for Wizards! - July 4

Happy Fourth of July, the holiday in which Americans celebrate freedom with colorful, in-air, explosions! And there just happens to be a Magiford short story that is perfectly in keeping with the holiday while also supplying you with your weekly dose of wizard + vampire chaos.

Fireworks for Wizards: https://www.kmshea.com/shorts/fireworks-for-wizards

Audiobook Giveaways - July 3-5, July 10-12, July 17-19

You only have three weeks left to enter my weekly audio giveaways on the Facebook Group or Instagram. The giveaway is for an Audible promo code and you have to be able to use Audible.com or Audible.co.uk to be eligible.

This week the giveaway is for Magic Redeemed, book 2 in the Hall of Blood and Mercy series. The giveaway closes on Friday so to enter just go to the ​Facebook Group​ and/or ​Instagram​ and comment on the Giveaway post for this week!

Two Magiford Books on Sale - July 12

The official dates for Amazon Prime Day are July 16-17 (mark you calendars!) and they are starting sales early this year which happens to include two of my books for a one day sale!

Both of these books will be deeply discounted on July 12th on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca :

The Pack of Dawn and Destiny Trilogy is discounted to $1.99:

https://books2read.com/u/497q6M

Crown of Shadows (Book 1 in Court of Midnight and Deception) is discounted to $0.99: https://books2read.com/u/ml2WZv

SheaCon Goodie Bag - July 19-21

The SheaCon event kicks off Friday, July 19th, which is also when the official "SheaCon goodie bag" will go live, and you don't need to attend the event to get the free stuff!

This year there will be a super special audio short story, a new coloring page, and lots of free books from multiple authors. Watch for a new blog post on July 19th with all the info.

SheaCon Event - July 19-21

SheaCon is a weekend of K.M. Shea themed fun held on a private discord server different from Kitty’s main server. There will be panels with Kitty and other authors as well as games and activities all weekend long. SheaCon 2024 will be on July 19th-21st US Central time. The link to the special Discord server where SheaCon is held will be posted the first day of the event on Kitty’s Discord server and on her Facebook group.

The guest authors this year are: Melanie Cellier, Deborah Grace White, Shari L Tapscott, and Brittany Fichter.

Here's the SheaCon panel schedule (all time in central daylight time):

Friday (July 19th):

• Opening Ceremony at 6 pm

• Melanie Cellier and Deborah Grace White at 9 pm

Saturday (July 20th):

• Kitty General Q&A at 11 am

• Shari L Tapscott and Brittany Fichter at 2 pm

• Kitty’s Inspirations at 6 pm

• Celebrity Retha and Dragons at 8 pm

Sunday (July 21st):

• Kitty Writing Q&A panel at 12 pm

• Dr Kimberly Healthy Relationship Analysis at 3 pm

• Vin Hot Seat at 7 pm

For all the latest SheaCon news visit the ​dedicated SheaCon page on my website​.

FebFest 2024

Every summer we have SeaCon which is a fan organized event hosted on Discord with guest authors and fun activities. Last year we experimented with a mini event in February and this year the SheaCon Planners are bringing back the fun! You can look forward to fun activities like bingo and trivia!

Here's a special message direct from the planners with all the details: Come one, come all to SheaCon FebFest 2024! For a few hours only, Kitty’s discord server will be hosting special Sheacon activities. We hope to see you there on Saturday, February 24th starting at 1 pm US Central time. The channels for the event will magically appear here on Kitty’s server when it is time to party.  If you haven’t joined Kitty’s discord server yet, learn how to here! Sadly, I (Kitty) will not be attending FebFest this year because I will still be frantically working on the final book in the Magic on Main Street series. But it will still be an amazing time and there will be a lot of fun things you can do even if you haven't read all my books. I hope you have a blast!

Sheacon 2023: Wrap Up

I’ve finally had time to upload all the Sheacon 2023 panels, so Sheacon 2023 is over but I have some extra fun for any of you who weren’t able to attend so keep reading!

First I want to give a big thank you so much to all the Champions for attending, and for being such an amazing group! All of the panels activities had great participation and you all were so much fun to hang out with, laugh, and celebrate books, which is what the original goal for Sheacon has always been. Also, a big thank you to Elisa Rae, Celeste Baxendell, Hanna Sandvig, and Charlotte Vane who were our guest authors this year.

Every year I thank the Sheacon Planners–without them none of this would have happened, and they not only started working on Sheacon 2023 months ago, they also have worked hard to make Sheacon smoother/more professional every year. Naturally, there’s a lot to thank them for! But this year I’m extra thankful, because the week before Sheacon my life fell apart with the passing of Perfect Dog, and these wonderful, kind, and caring people held down the fort while I was MIA. That week before Sheacon was probably the worst week I’ve had in these absolutely rotten last two years, and their kindness–and the kindness and cheerfulness of our community in general–was what got me through that weekend. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

This year’s 2023 planners were: Anneli, Jordan, Chelsc, Rachel, Zooknar, Batattack, Bluefires, Cheybri, Cwang, Eleniel, FrogPrincess994, Gwen, Lavalectrix, Louberry, Prolly, RayJay, Wish.i.was.in.a.fairytale, Witchdoctor, and Amanda.

Additionally, we had some planners–and a few additional volunteers–who acted as hosts for panels/events/games during Sheacon! They not only donated their time to be hosts, they bravely kept up the conversation while organizing games, showing us all evening star stretches, and more. So thank you, again/also, to: Anneli, Jordan, Rachel, Zooknar, Akira, Amanda, Ayrin, Batattack, Chelsc, Cheybri, Eleniel, RayJay, RoseTen, Gwen, FrogPrincess994, and Vin.

And finally a special thankyou to our Retha and Dragons dungeon masters: Zooknar, FrogPrincess994, and Jordan! (This special event wouldn’t be possible without them! If you’re wondering what Retha & Dragons is, check out the panels down below.)

This is also the perfect chance to thank and salute our Chief Sheacon Planner, Cindy. Cindy puts in serious hours organizing the conference–the scheduling she has to figure out months in advance is intense, she’s pretty much a professional chaos wrangler–and I’m so grateful for her.

Finally, I want to thank our Director of Discord, Vin, and the Mod Squad–Mythical Cat, Smasher, Batattack, Cimorrene, and Rog–for helping all the new members in our discord server who joined so they could attend Sheacon, and our Facebook Mods–Megen, Sarah, and Jocelyn–who kept our community Facebook Group apprised of everything happening for Sheacon!

Goodie Bag/Freebies

The free books that were available for Sheacon weekend are no longer available but make sure you check out all the fun new goodies I unveiled for the event this year on the Sheacon 2023 Goodie Bag post. (There was a new Magiford Short Story, and a new Rumpelstiltskin coloring page, so make sure you grab those!)

Panel Recordings

Finally–what you’ve all been waiting for! For those of you who missed out on attending in person, I have great news! Our diligent Sheacon Planners recorded all of the main panels, so you can listen to them at your leisure! (If you enjoyed these recordings, please leave a quick comment thanking the Sheacon Planners as I physically would never be able to record all of these myself!)

1. 2023 Opening Ceremony: MP3 File

2. Author Panel: Hanna Sandvig and Charlotte Vane: MP3 File

3. Kitty Q&A #1: MP3 File

4. Author Panel: Elisa Rae and Celeste Baxendell: MP3 File

5. How to Train Your Champion: MP3 File

6. Celebrity Retha and Dragons with Hanna Sanvig, Elisa Rae, Discord team members Vin and SuperRog, and a special appearance from me!: MP3 File (Special note, there is a slight glitch in this recording, about 15 seconds of audio are missing around the 8:15 mark, but it’s a hilarious event, and one of my favorites!)

7. Kitty Writing Panel: MP3 File

8. Kitty Q&A #2: MP3 File

9. Closing Ceremony and Kitty Hot Seat: MP3 File

10. Bonus: Evening Star Stretches: YouTube Video

And that’s everything for now! Because it’s been rough, I opted not to do the transcriptions this year, but thankfully I have been able to write. It looks like I’m going to be on schedule with Jade’s series, but I won’t know for sure until I hit editing time in October. It does NOT look like I’ll get any additional time to work on Retha #4 this year, but that’s okay, I’ll just tackle it first thing next year, and I did get a pretty good chunk of it done early this summer. At least I won’t be starting 2024 months behind schedule like I did with 2023. 😑 (Yes, I’m still upset about that.) Thanks for reading, Champions. I hope you enjoy listening to the panels, and thank you again to our Sheacon team.