Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Chronicles of Chora: Secret Whisperer

Ok folks!  It's official...ummm as of last week that is... I self published my a short story.   It's called Chronicles of Chora: Secret Whisperer. I've priced it at just $0.99.
And I've got more coming for the Chronicles of Chora!  I'm currently working on the next story and I've already got a tentative outline for the third story in the series.  I'm going to include the cover and a brief description below for you.  Also I've got a little flash fiction from another character who will appear later in Jael's story. I'll have it up soon!


Jael lives in a land where all magical beasts are deemed dangerous.  By the King’s orders, magical beasts, human or naught, are to be hunted down.  They should be caught and if they resist, killed. 

Jael is one of those with magic.  She is a whisperer, with the ability to talk to animals.

To save her best friend’s mother, Jael will risk it all, her secret, her life and even a unicorn.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

A glimpse of me beyond the ink

There is more to me than writing. There is my family , my friends, and my animals.
I have a sick chicken. I took her to the vet. To some, this is no big deal, but many people including my husband, think I'm crazy. The prognosis was not good. I declined antibiotics and took her home to put her down. I changed my mind... As in I was about to break down sobbing over a chicken! Thanks to a friend, he dosed her with a first round of penicillin. I had to try. If she isn't better by Friday, I'll do the right thing.
As humans we have the burden of other animals lives and deaths and quality of life. Sometimes our love makes us hold on too long and sometimes we get lucky enough death happens without us. But sometimes we make the most painful decisions out of love. And then we live with it. So it's imperative we make the right decision.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Ten Words or Less

She looked me in the eyes. I dropped the needle.

I saw a pin on Pinterest about six word stories. I decided to change things up here by posting "my writing" and by changing the rules to ten words or less. Enjoy.
Don't stop growing!

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

To Do List

Complete final draft of first short story...waiting on review by Beta

Complete first draft of the next short in the series... 5,269 words done with a tentative goal of 8,000

Tagline for first short... Sent to Beta for her opinion

Blurb for first short... Same as above

Cover for first short...Done! (You're surprised, aren't you?)

Title for first short... Done! (I'll tell you after I publish it, wink, wink!)

Facebook page... I admit, I've been putting this off until I actually publish. So it will probably happen right before I publish my first short.

Advertising... Again, I'm waiting until the story is actually published, but then I've got a plan. At the end of the book I'll mention my FB page and this blog so future readers can interact with me, and I've got a sort of list going for places that will list the story for free :)

Keep writing...don't stop...haven't stopped...won't stop!

Friday, March 11, 2016

Cover

The truth is, designing a book cover is hard... sort of. The hard part is money. Because if you spend the money for photos I don't think it's that hard to make a book cover. If you like to read and you look at a lot of covers, you can figure out what works and what doesn't.
What I ran into is the question, how much money am I willing to spend on this? I know the cover is important. I have skipped over a book because the cover just didn't do it for me. My first cover is for a short story. I intend to sell it for 99 cents. I am a cheap skate, to an extent. If I feel something is profitable, I will spend the money to do it right. However, I usually don't overspend. And I've researched self publishing and how slow it works and how hard it is to do "successfully." The truth is I'm doing this to share my stories. I'm not doing this to make big bucks. And I know the likelihood of me getting a return on the money I could spend on my first self published work is probably not going to be much. So I can't justify spending a lot of money on a book cover.
Plus I enjoyed designing my own cover. Don't get me wrong, there was some stress. It is hard to find free(as in money and royalties) photos that are a good fit for your cover. But I don't think I did too bad for my first try. I designed 3 possibilities, asked some trusted peeps for opinions and I made my decision. Now I'm waiting on feedback from my Beta, followed by a last round of edits before I self pub for the first time!
In the mean time, I'm going to work on the next short story in that particular series, plus I've got another short story brewing for a different series, not to mention a novel I need to finish the first draft of and a novel my Beta is reading. I have a lot of irons in the fire :) Speaking of fire, I sent out 10 queries last week and I've gotten two form rejections back :( On the positive side, I will self pub that novel if it doesn't get me an agent. On top of that I've got the sequel on standby. I actually wrote the sequel first, not realizing it was the sequel, so I will have to do some revising before I publish it.
Keep on going!

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Handing it over

Earlier this week I handed a second draft over to my beta :) This is unusual because I wait until the third or even fourth draft. But it felt right and I felt like I couldn't go further. I need to be sure the story is right before I pick apart the grammar, etc. Today I pulled a repeat and sent her the 2D of a short story I just finished(the one I plan on self publishing.) Now I'm  left to sit on my hands waiting...
I don't think so! There is no sitting on these hands because I've got work to do. So as much as I would like to anxiously await her feedback while doing nothing else, I'm gonna write!
Speaking if which, last night I gave myself the freedom to skip ahead to a scene that was begging to be wrote. I simply don't do this. But I've done it twice now in the past week. Oh the contradictions! It worked for my short story but I know I'll pay for it with the book I'm working on. Oh well! I'm trying to maximize the enjoyment part of writing ;)
Never quit! Stop, think, reevaluate, make changes, but don't quit.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

The. Plunge.

I am walking toward the edge of a diving board. Off it's edge is a pool so deep I cannot see the bottom. I still have time to turn around.
This is where I'm at. Not literally though ;) but with regards to self publishing. Even though it hasn't been that long since the idea tickled my brain in a way which I actually considered it a possibility, I can't remember what tempted me. Regardless I have found myself exploring the path to self publishing my own eBooks. There is so much to it! There is the actual product(don't rush it but you must provide more than one before you're likely to gain traction), the cover, the blurb, the cover, the advertising, the actual "publishing" and who to use for it(Amazon, Draft2Digital, Smashword, etc), and social media.
I have read so much advice, it is hard to absorb it all. One thing I've discovered is perhaps why I've been tempted. Impatience. It's true. But based on some other advice, I'm ok with that motivator. I'm okay with not wanting to wait on traditional publishing. Except I haven't given up on traditional, I'm still planning to pursue it for some of my works. But the advice that made me ok with trying to self pub was to ask yourself why. And I did. Why do I write and why do I want to self publish?
Because I love to write and I want to share my stories. I want others to enjoy, to hopefully even love, my stories. Of course I would love to make money, or a living or even a million bucks, but that isn't my goal. That isn't why I've been trying to get published. It would just be a fantastic bonus ;)
So from here, where shall I go? My tentative plan is as follows:
1.Continue to query the novel I've ummm kind of slacked off querying
2. Start an author FB page
3. Start self publishing a series of short stories(the bonus is this was a book I couldn't seem to wrap my head around when I thought of it as a book, but now that I've considered it a series of shirt stories, it is coming to life!)
I'm not stopping, neither should you!