Tag Archives: Books

A Sale – and NaNoWriMo day 14

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Amazon has their new Countdown, so I’m trying it this weekend.

“Small Bites: The Complete Collection” will be on sale for .99 cents in December 14th (because you have to scheduled a month in advance.). $1.99 on the 15th. $2.99 on the 16th, and back to normal price on the following Monday. If you haven’t read it yet, here is a great opportunity to get it. (Don’t worry, I’ll remind you about it.)

If you have read it, and haven’t written a review, I would absolutely love one. I am only a couple away from ten.

As for NaNoWriMo, I am finally starting to get into the swing of things with it. I started in a funk, trying to get through things, and forcing myself to sit down at the computer. Sometime over the last couple days I finally found a rhythm and realized.. i like this story. I like where it’s going, and I can write it.

I think last night was the break through when I decided how it was going to end. The pieces started falling together, finally, and I was able to write several chapters.

I have a better feel for the characters now, and can see where they are all coming from. It’s made the writing so much easier, and I wrote nearly 2000 words today without even thinking about it.

I am much more confident about this becoming a full novel. It’s already 20k words in, and I have so much more to write.

Some Updates

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pssm

 

So a few things have happened this week.

I published “Potion Shop”. It’s available for 99 cents at the moment, but will be raised to $2.99 on Monday. You can find it on Amazon or Kobo.

I also published a few more books on Kobo. Two of them are stuck in publishing. Kobo’s tech team is working to figure out why that is, and hopefully all of my currently available titles will be available on Kobo and Amazon very soon.

FO-sm

 

Also, I have three chapters left to edit and finish writing for “Forgotten Ones”.

I am hoping it will be out this weekend as well. I’ve been sick for the last few days so it’s slowed down my writing quite a bit, but now I’m starting to feel better so I have high hopes.

Also…. Tonight is the Self Publish Round Table Podcast. If you haven’t seen it yet, then you need to! We all have a roaring good time, and the comments get pretty awesome. If you hang around after the podcast we usually have an after party and chat with all our wonderful fans.

See you tonight!

Writing Backwards

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I had an unusual solution to an old problem today. I’m probably not the first person to come up with this, but I thought I’d share it anyway.

I was working on a chapter for “Forgotten Ones” in which the two fates, Maylin and Jadina, are walking down a tunnel in search of a particular creature that will hopefully lead them to the big bad guy. I knew how it began, and how I wanted it to end, but the middle… not so much.

So, I started writing it backwards. I read the last paragraph and thought “how do they get to this spot”, and add a paragraph describing that. Then write the paragraph, or mini scene right before that.

For example….

June is walking down a path, and knows that the monster under the bed is at the end of the path. She’s going to walk down the path, see some interesting things on the sidelines, and eventually end up at the monsters den. She goes in the den, there is a little fight, and June ends up sitting on top of the monster with the monsters feet tied up.

So, that is my beat. I write the first section with June walking through the woods, and entering the den, no problem. I am really good at that part. I write the ending with June sitting on the monster, and a little quip about the monster having too many hands and not enough brains. But in the center I just have “battle”.

Battle scenes are the hardest scenes for me to write, which is annoying since a lot of my books have them. But what are you going to do… unless I try and find myself a co-author I’m stuck for it.

So, with this particular story that I am just making up on the spur of the moment, if I try writing it backwards as I just did with “Forgotten Ones” I would think… How did she get on top of the monster? Well clearly she had to have all his hand already captured so the paragraph before would be her locking up the last hand, then swinging her leg over the beast and having a seat.

Then what happened just before that? Well, it has a lot of hands, so she is going to have to dodge them as she is tangling them up in a long ribbon. (This is where I just realize she has a ribbon to tie up the hands.)

Before that, there needs to be some tension. Maybe the monster grabs her ankle and drags her down, and she manages to get herself loose by tickling him.

And just keep going backwards until I have a full story. (On a side note, this sounds like a fun story to write as a children’s book with pictures. Maybe some day.)

In other news…..

I now have nine books available on Kobo. I have two more in queue to be on Kobo, but they are coming.

“Forgotten One” is now 25,000 words long, and I am a little half way through the final edits. Plus the two chapters with battle scenes that I have to finish… sigh.

“Potion Shop” is almost done, also. I really need to just get that out there. Perhaps this weekend.

Forgotten Ones

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forgottenonesminiI am down to the final edit of “Forgotten Ones”, and adding in the last few scenes.

So I finished the cover.

Thank’s to David Wright for pointing me in the direction of Font Squirrel, and the twenty-eight fonts I downloaded last night. The one I used for the title and this cover is “Griffin”. An unusual font, to be sure, but I found it eye catching.

The cover depicts “the all seeing eye”, which is appropriate since “Forgotten Ones” is about the goddesses of Fate who share an eye. (Not literally, but we’ll get to that in the story.)

I will be so happy when this one is finished. It is 22,000 words long at the moment, and I still have a few thousand to go before it’s done. That puts it at short book status, and I will be putting out an ebook and a paperback, on the new Kindle Matchbook program. So if you buy the paperback you’ll get the ebook for free. It will just take a couple weeks longer for the print book to be available as I go through for a third edit, then format, and finally set up the printing. (And the Matchbook won’t be available till October, but if you buy print copies before October you still get them once Matchbook takes affect.)

I know, I know… so much of this must be fascinating.

Know this… This time all three fates are in the fight, and they learn something about themselves they had forgotten in their attempt to survive the rise of humanity. Something that allows them to defeat a god who has regained a lot of his former power.

FAQ- How do I promote my book?

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Okay, you have a book. It’s up on Amazon, Kobo, and everywhere else… Now what?

Well, the best answer is… Go write another book!

No, seriously!

Here’s the deal, if you have one book and go promote it, great, people can buy that book. But, a lot of people won’t buy a book if you only have one up there. They like to sink their metaphorical teeth into their favorite authors and read LOTS of stuff from them, so if you have only one book out, and they love you, then they aren’t going to be as willing to take a chance.

Also, what if you do well with your book? Where do the readers go from their? And what if you put the first book up for free, they read it, but have no second book to buy?

It just makes sense to have more books out. The more you have, the more you can share with your readers. The more you share the more they can share.

The concept of visibility dictates that the more surface area you have, the greater the chance someone will spot you… so give yourself lots of books, and lots of feelers out there for maximum chance to be seen.

Okay… got your second, third, etc, book done? Great!

Now… go play on social networks. Meet people, comment on their threads, share your stories. DON’T PROMOTE!

Seems counter intuitive, doesn’t it? Yes, well, we are living in a counter intuitive world. How many of us skip cable, TiVo, use Netflix or anything else, just to avoid advertisement? Why would you think anyone would want to see and advert about your book if they don’t want to see a commercial in the middle of their TV show?

No, they want you to interact with them. Be funny, be interesting, join the conversation. Or produce something worth talking about. if you can do both then you are GOLDEN! People will go looking for you to see what you say if you are interesting enough. People will search out your commercials on youtube if you’re funny. They will Google your story if you’re exciting. They will post tributes, make fan fic, and generally make a joyful noise as long as you making something they care about, or you are someone they care about.

My best success hasn’t been screaming “BUY MY BOOKS!” It’s been making friends. Sharing stories. Interacting with fans. That has brought more people into my little corner of the web then anything else out there. And I am so grateful to all the friends that have made this possible.

Keeping up the word count

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I tweeted this morning that I’d written 12,000 words this month. That’s 500 a day, on average. Some days I did more, some days I did none, but over the average it’s 500 words.

spreadThe one thing that keeps me writing (almost) every day is my spread sheet.

Each day I add the words I’ve written, and what project I wrote on. Each day I add little pink highlights if that number is zero. I hate those zeros. I also keep blog and writing separate, but I do track both. And both show up on my graph at the end of the month (writing in blue, blog in red.)

The trouble with a “zero” day isn’t that I got a zero, it’s that the next day I don’t write as much. And if I have two “zero’s” in a row I have to struggle all that much more to get some words out.

I actually started this about February. That’s when I realized I was struggling, and I needed more accountability to myself. Something I had in spades during NaNoWriMo, but lacked afterward. I no longer had that nifty little graph showing my progress, or the bar creeping forward saying weather or not I “won”. So, I decided to make my own graph.

It took a few tries to figure out exactly what I should have on my graph. As you can see there is an “edited” column that rarely gets anything put into it. I’ve edited quite a bit this month because I am rewriting sections of “Rage War” in between writing “Forgotten Ones” and finishing up a short story. But I never really think about the edited pages, I just want to track what I’ve written.

I’ve also forgotten to add my word counts for a couple of days. Every time that happens I am extremely disappointed n myself. This has become an incredibly important part of my writing. It’s tracking my growth and accomplishments as I move forward.

Soon after figuring out my own graph I discovered “The Magic Spreadsheet” from Mur Lafferty. I really like her version, and how it gives you points for each day you reach your goal, but I’ll stick with mine for now. However, maybe some of you would like to try it out.

Whatever method you use, the best advice I can offer is just to try new things. Find out what works for you. I know authors who keep a writing journal in paper, and jot down a note every day. I know others who blast it out on twitter, o reddit. Still others keep writing journals on a blog. But I do know that it won’t hurt for you to try to keep track and figure out what you are really doing.

I would love to add time of day to this… but my scheduled doesn’t allow that right now. It’s too chaotic. Chalk that up to a dream for the future.

Around the Web

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The last few week’s I’ve been rather obsessed with trying to finished “Forgotten One”, not just the writing and editing, but the cover (which I hate so far) and everything else that goes with it. The only thing I have “finished” at the moment is the blurb that goes in the description field. Even that needs a slight tweak.

So, to take a break from wracking my brains over this, here is another installment of “Around the Web”.
In no particular order.

Infograph, Self Pub vs. Vanity Pub vs. Traditional Pub

Why one author turned down a publishing deal from Amazon (and from her blog, more)

25 Steps to Being a Traditionally Published Author (which is quite funny, and has the same steps as a self pub from 1-9, then there are a lot fewer steps [editing, formatting, publishing, marketing] but equally as hard.)

10 places to get reviews on your book.

Balancing Work and Writing

25 Editing Tips.

The Camera is OUT!

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camera2“The Camera” is finally out.

Ever have a day when you know what you need to do, you know the process, and how you’re going to get there, but you just can’t seem to do it?
That was this book.

I knew the plot. The characters. What was said, when it was said, and who got hurt because of it. All of it. But when I sat down to put it together my mind froze. I’m not even sure that I know why.

The idea for “The Camera” actually pre-dates “The Ring”, which is the first book in this series. When I first started writing it I didn’t really know where I was going with it though, just that a boy bought a camera that actually stored things within the film, and it was going to cause him some trouble.

I had “Needful Things” in mind when I started it. Or “Friday the 13th”, or “The Room”, or “Warehouse 13″… you take your pick. They all have one thing in common. Cursed items that seem to give you what you want, but come at a price. The camera didn’t give Anthony anything he needed or wanted, it just happened to do something unexpected.

So I had this story idea, and I thought it was a good idea, but it was born during my “stress induced writers block” years, so it never went anywhere.

I wrote “The Ring” years later. It was one of those stories that just flowed out onto the page, and I think that is why it is one of my better stories. It took about five hours to get the entire story written, but I wasn’t publishing when I wrote it. I didn’t even think about it when I first started publishing, and I’m glad I didn’t. If I had, I would have put it up as a stand alone story and “Illicit Gains” would not exist.

After “Flight of the Griffins” and “Twilight Tales” were out I did an audit of all the stories in my files, and found “The Ring”, and several other stories. I started grouping them together to form books, and noticed the five stories revolving around cursed items. It was too perfect. I went back and added some foreshadowing in “The Ring”, edited it, and published it.

I thought “The Camera” would be easy to finish. I had three-quarters of it already written, and already knew what happened in the middle. Easy. Right? WRONG!

Every time I sat down to write it something would just scream “wrong” at me. The plot wasn’t right, lets tweak it. This character isn’t right. Lets tweak him. This could be worded a LOT better, tweak. Tweak. Tweak some more.

The entire plot (beyond boy finds camera, boy discover camera does something weird, boy has a horrible thing happen because of camera) changed at least four times. At first there was a thief, then there was a bully, then there was… Well lets just say that I didn’t have the true plot until I started fleshing out the 5th book in the series, “Marco”.

Those of you keeping score, I’ll actually give you the titles of all five of the stories in this series:
“The Ring”
“The Camera”
“The Scarab Necklace”
“The Pocket Watch”
“Marco”

If you read “The Ring” you’ll know who Marco is. He ties the whole series together.

Pressing publish on “The Camera” was a huge weight off my shoulders. After three weeks of saying “it’s going to be out this weekend” I finally got to say “It’s OUT”. I was starting to wonder if it ever would be.

But, this is a good thing. It means I don’t want to put out just any old crap. I want to tell a good story. Maybe there’s a missing comma, or I screwed up a homonym, but the story itself, the characters, the plot and setting, I’m proud of that. I can go back and fix the typos and polish the grammar a bit. But I can’t retract a bad story. I don’t even want to put out a story I’m not proud to call mine.

Now, ten years down the road I fully expect to hate everything I wrote and want to rewrite it. But I’m going to resist the urge. I’ll definitely be hiring a pro-editor, when I can afford it, to re-edit everything, but I won’t be changing the core story. I will let it stand as a testament to my progress because I fully expect each story to be better than the last.

Charting Progress

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It has been a long time since I shared my progress in writing every day, but I think it’s important, at least to me, because it is an act of accountability. I hope it also serves to inspire others to start on the journey of “writing every day”.

A few things I learned….

  • Completing a project is like coming to the edge of a cliff.
    • Once you reach the edge, where do you go? I am starting to see little ledges and paths below so that I can just continue to write on another project, but this takes practice.
  • Editing, formatting, book covers, and marketing SUCK!
    • I don’t mean they suck, as in they are terrible, I mean they suck time away from writing. Some of these things only take a few minutes a day, but editing… man that’s a time suck. At which point I write a lot less.
  • When I’m stuck, I need to switch projects for a little bit.
    • As long as I continue working on the “PRIME” project a little every day I have given myself permission to go nuts on something else, often adding 1500 words to another project in my list, or coming up with another idea for later.
  • My word count is improving!
    • The best part, that rising blue line marking “average word count” is going up and up and up, and it’s awesome! I am really close to 1000 words a day on average. If I keep this up eventually I can write a book a month instead of short stories.
  • Can’t wait for NaNoWriMo this year!

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SPRT Episode 6

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SPRTJust finished up another episode of Self Publishing Round Table.

We discussed pricing. What should an author price their book at? What influences it? What should they consider?

We also talked about “The Beam”, and Neil Gaiman a bit.

 

On that note, Small Bites the complete collection is out, and priced at $2.99…. But I’m going to be raising it to $3.99, and raising all the individual books to $1.99. You may want to get it before the price increases…. It is also available as a paperback through Createspace. It is $6.99.