Upcoming Summer Solstice and the Tea Leaves

Do you form a circle in just your own skin under the Solstice Moon to get your wish?  Are you about to try it?  Me too!  Goals and hard work have produced longer to-do lists and more honest, hard work.  My own son just finished a term at school with regular full school days, night school, and an on-line class.  Now he tells me he has summer school!!  He's a regular kid with exemplary attendance and he's smart - but not too smart - good common sense head on his shoulders.  My sympathy for him - and apathy for his educators' schematics - has me thinking about alternatives in the 'work hard with honest work' sort of ethics.  What was once work hard/play hard seems to have taken that slash literally.  Work hard/work hard? I don't think so;
unless there's a light at the end of the tunnel - not just lamps on all night.

This summer, I've decided to cash in a few tickets.  Tea leaves and prophecies be damned, I can light and skip around fires like anyone else.  Here I've listed a few advantages to grab and snap up this summer for author's whose candles have already burned at both ends.  Here's to starlight and shimmering skin!

Time to look up your state's Book Awards - requirements, and dates to enter. If you're an Oregon writer applying before July 27th, you save yourself enough dough for dinner and wine!
Galunker! The best author- Kickstarter to study and follow.  They had their minimum in just three days time!
Fiverr.com - can't self- and indie published authors sit on the veranda this summer too?  These folks are like the minions we were promised but never got.

GigaAlert - free Google search results with up to 3 keywords - you know the ones you were asked to put in about your book.  This site sends you reports about how those words are working for you - and let you know if you should update those keywords. "Work smarter, not harder" that part I believe.
PRweb - PR packages from $99 to $600 help create followers, readers, book group groupies, press, and all that. 

Now a tip from the self-published starter GODDESS, Amanda Hocking.  What should I be doing this summer?  Her suggestion: "Write more books!  Keep writing books."  It's true, she knows, and she's not the only one. Crush It with Kindle author also advises ebook authors to 'write more books'.

Besides, I must somehow afford a vacation, if not for me, for my son - from high school!