Hiatus and a New Book

Hello my dear barefoot Readers!

As you may have noticed, there has been a hiatus from my regular weekly posts. This falling-off is of course for good reason: I am currently in the throes of writing my next book, as well as working 7 days/65 hours a week. It's all good fun, but it does cut down on my ability to make more than the occasional babble in other directions.

You can expect a resurgence of shoe-less posts coming mid- to late-summer, as my workload evens out and my book comes to a close. Until then, you can pick up a copy (physical print or e-Reader) of my first book, Shifted, in these locations!

Shifted, Amazon.com

Shifted, Kindle edition

Shifted, Barnes & Noble

Shifted, Nook book

I look forward to writing to you again soon and will be providing regular updates as I can about the onset of the next novel! Until then, click on the image below to enjoy a preview of my next novel!

Ms. DeWees Has Done It Again

Recently, gothic-romance author Amanda DeWees came out with a new novel. After her success in converting me to the possibilities of the gothic-romance with her previous piece, Sea of Secrets, I had to get a copy and see what new tales could be told in the genre that before only summoned overly-dramatized heroes and busty heroines to my mind.

It was just about all I could do to keep the pages closed until I tucked in with my reading lamp. The book wandered with me, stored in my purse, for about a day before I could really give it my full attention. It was not the most focused 24 hours for me.

***

With This Curse begins, as one might imagine, with a curse. A cursed house to be exact, one that threatens to destroy the thing you treasure most. How and when it will strike can never be said, but it lingers there like a malignant humor and turns events that would normally be thought of as nothing more than petty fate into something sinister.

Young Clara Crofton appears at Gravesend Hall with her mother, who is to become the housekeeper of the daunting manor. She is headstrong and tends towards impudence when she forgets to remain silent, but it is not until years later that the curse strikes and banishes her from the house, removing her from her love and her home in one fell swoop.

And then her love dies...the curse, even from a distance, wasn't through with her yet.

Years later, Clara is a seamstress with a very distinct, very real problem: her employer, the exotic actress for whom she has been working for several years, is moving to America to marry richly, leaving the toil of the London stage behind her. Which also means leaving Clara behind, unemployed and with little resources to depend upon. There seems to be little choice for the spirited young woman until...

...the twin brother of her deceased love, Atticus Blackwood, appears on her doorstep with a singularly absurd proposal: marry him in name alone, to ease the passing of his ailing father, and he will make sure she never wants for anything for the rest of her days. But this means returning to Gravesend Hall, the cursed house that stole everything from her all those years ago...

***

Ms. DeWees has woven yet another tale that draws you in, pulling you further and further until you can no longer put the book down no matter the hour. I was seething with frustration during the last chapters that I simply could not read any faster, so anxious was I to discover the resolution to the tale. And yet I did not want it to be over just yet. The rich descriptions and brilliant characterization made every page an intrigue, and the slow blossom of detail formed a perfect build to the climax of the story that literally had me pacing across the room as I read. The plot is well-formed and richly thought out, so much so that it only seems you could make a stab at the ending until a twist surprises you and shows you at the same time that it could never be anything else. Clara has a sharp wit and a humble wisdom that makes her charming in her triumphs and her foibles, and Atticus is such the gentleman-- in both perfection and flaw-- that he makes you wish he'd jump off the page into the room next to you and ask you to play cards with a gleam to his eye. With This Curse brings a true gem to the gothic-romance genre that should not be missed, and I look with great excitement for Ms. DeWees's next volume.

In Need of News

When you write a blog or keep up with current events, you're constantly in need of some platform that provides you with those current events. But if you have a specific bent-- say, writing or publishing-- it gets harder to find a news platform that really caters to your needs.

In the past I've used Twitter to fine new stories or funny tales about the industry, but when the account got hacked (twice) I decided the hassle was a bit too much for my tastes, and deleted the account.

Publishers Weekly is also a good source of information, but tends to the dry and more corporate world of publishing.

A new platform I've been introduced to is Galley Cat, "The First Word on the Book Publishing Industry." I've only received one weekly email from them as of yet, but it's already been chock-full of amusing anecdotes and news including an April Fool's Day prank between Lemony Snickett and Malcolm Gladwell and the report on the rise of audio book sales to $1.6 billion.

Not too shabby.

There's also an argument about the Oxford Comma in video form. The results may be inconclusive, as I stand staunchly for the Oxford Comma due to its resourcefulness, ability to specify, and just plain rightness.

So there.

Galley Cat has tabs for all sorts of news including Publishing, Deals, Bookselling, Writer Resources, Reviews, and even Jobs.

Ok, I'm impressed.

I think I'm going to go mash some tabs and buttons, see what I can find. I'll resurface, er...eventually.

Maudlin Out.

A Journey Through Self-Publishing

I've just finished (really this time) Self-Publishing my first official book. Let much rejoicing commence!

Available on Amazon.com

Available for Kindle

Available for Nook

Along the way, I've learned a lot about self-publishing. I've read commentaries, articles, How-Tos. I've even had a rather successful self-published author as a mentor, who has given me tips and guidance that you can't find in any Manual.

There are some tips you see all the time in the How-To world of self-publishing, tips that I either scoffed at or shrugged at. Tips that usually involved spending rather large quantities of money on your materials.

But what about those who don't have much excess cash on hand for their project? Or any at all?

It's hard to justify, at times, putting a lot of money into a project when there is no guarantee of getting money out of it. This is what makes the publishing world so hard to break in to, because you have to convince a publishing house that your book will not be a sink hole. And of all the books in the world, all the hopeful authors who send millions of queries in every year, yours being the one they choose is a rare occurrence. Which is also why self-publishing has taken such a rise.

But you see a lot of the time tips like -- Have a professional design your cover. Have a professional layout your book for press and print. Don't do it yourself.

There are merits to these tips-- merits that I have discovered. But you can also merge the two.

If you have an artistic eye and a mind for the publishing industry, go ahead and design the cover yourself—but unless you have the programming capabilities to make it a high-res print-quality file, get a professional to do it for you. Pseudo programs will not work. And if you want your paying customers and friends to pay for a blurred, shoddy quality book, you will not be pleased with the ultimate results.

I designed the cover of Shifted myself. The first printing came out beautifully, but at the same time it was really blurry, because the programs I have do not give me the option of saving high-res. For most print materials, you need to have an image quality of at least 300 dpi or your text-- title, author name, description-- will be blurry. And if you can't save high-res, it won't be high-res, even if you use high-res stock images. Which you can't determine are high-res or not, without the proper measuring tools.

For the reprint, I then got a good friend who is a professional, studying artist, to redo the design. She had the requisite tools needed to make my cover over 300 dpi in quality, and the second printing came out spectacularly. So on that front, I did a combination of professional and self. I will be getting her to help me from now on, and I will also be setting aside some money to pay her. It won't be much, but I respect her work, and as a professional, she should not be expected to work for free.

The other major element that will affect the quality of your book, beyond the writing, is layout. You have to know how to typecode your book, and if you don't know how to do that-- or what that is-- you need to have a professional help you. Luckily, I am in that industry, and so I was able to do that on my own at the very basest of levels. Now I may pay another good friend to do fancy layout details with other, more advanced programming down the road. I hope to get to that level soon. But if you know how to use style sheets and coding in as little as Microsoft Word, you can format a viable document for printing.

After that, the main question is: where? Where do you upload your book? I personally used Create Space, through Amazon.com, and then Kindle (the Amazon eBook) and Nook (which is Barnes & Noble, and the other major player in the eReader industry). You will need both Kindle and Nook in your repertoire if you want to publish an eBook, and the way people read these days almost demands that you put out an eBook version of your work. All of them were incredibly easy to use and upload-- it took me about a week to get both eBooks uploaded, just by downloading the Microsoft Word document of my book. It used to be you had to do a special layout and format called an 'ePub' for eBook editions, but the programming has advanced so far that it seems you no longer have to do this. You still can, if you want to use the fancy layout as I mentioned before, but it is not necessary.

Another tip I learned is that the more reviews your book gets on Amazon.com, the more visibility it has, on a purely marketing level. So when you distribute your book, either for free or for sales, ask for those reviews, bump those reviews. You will have so much more visibility just through mathematical formulas in search terms than you will if you just have a book floating out there bereft.

There is so much more out there, now that I've got the book published just on the marketing side, that I haven't even touched yet. My journey will continue. And as I plough through my next book, which is in the works, I will learn even more that can be applied to novels to come, making each and every new publication stronger and better.

Besides, when it comes to books, there is nothing at all like holding your book in your hands for the first time.

Writer Companionship

You never realize just how important it is to be a writer who engages frequently with other writers until you're isolated for a while...In the collegiate world I was surrounded by many scholars and writers, but not a whole lot of writers, if you understand the difference. I did not know of a single other person in my circle or world who was writing a novel or who was working on their sequel or their short story anthology. I was, in a sense, without someone to talk to or collaborate with.

When I started my new job, I was delighted to find that one of my coworkers was also a prolific writer. It is she who has encouraged me and guided me into the self-publishing world, though she far more prolifically than I, and her mere presence helped me to churn out the rest of the book I was working on at the time. I am but the grasshopper, and she yet the sensei. Every morning we could chat and gush about our favorite books, authors, writing tropes, or growl about grammar mistakes and cop outs and the publishing industry's foibles as it tries to discover how to cope with technological advancements.

Then she moved for another job that would give her more time to write, which is wonderful for her! But I, alas, was deprived of her daily presence and good conversation, and realized then just how much that conversation was a catalyst and motivator for my own work.

Don't realize how good it is until it's gone, indeed.

Luckily, she's still around the corner, and we and another coworker who is now also moving on to other projects (and is also a writer) have set up Writerly-Teas.

If you're a writer and have friends who are writers, I highly recommend this. Every writer should have a Writerly-Tea.

A Writerly-Tea is a time-- be it a lunch hour, a sunrise coffee, or, in our case, a post-work teatime-- when you get together with your fellow writers and "talk shop" (or talk plot, as the case may be).

Writers need lots of material. We need inspiration constantly, every moment of the day, by reading, by watching movies, by looking at art and listening to music, by exercising, by being out in nature. Whatever your inspiration is, you need it in great quantities and in great repetition. But what often gets overlooked and is just as important-- if not even more important, at times-- is writerly companionship.

Writers keep each other accountable. Writers set each others' schedules. Writers bounce ideas off of you and help you with your plot struggles and character development. Writers have movie nights when they're thinking about a Shakespearean interpretation and writers have write-ins on the weekends so that they actually sit and work rather than play solitaire or mess around on Facebook. They are the voices in your head personified.

We were having tea last night-- we do this once weekly, at least, at a set time that never changes, so there are no scheduling hassles barring illness or travel-- and got to talking plot after we had updated each other and shared what we were currently working on. Both of us are looking ahead to our future projects, as well as concentrating on what we're doing now, and just by churning through some rough ideas and explaining what we kind of sort of thought we might maybe possible be interested in doing, we both solidified great ideas that had been floating around but not really come down to earth yet. I have the vague idea of my two next books now in my head, whereas before I just knew I wanted to do more books of a certain spin. And I'm energized about writing like I haven't been in years and years before I started this friendship.

I'm already excited about our next Writerly-Tea. I'm excited about the write-in that we've got planned for the weekend, and the upcoming movie nights we've got in the talking-about. I'm excited that I'm excited about writing, and about the work of writing. It's not only a time to hang out with a good friend. It's time to hang out with a colleague and brother in arms.

Slide me that chai latte and give me my pencil!

A Note on Social Media

So this is the second time something has gone wrong with my Twitter account...

The first time it was because someone hacked it, posting tweets I couldn't read because they were in some kind of Arabic or other sort of calligraphic language. I quickly deleted all the posts, removed whatever pages I could that they had posted, and changed my password.

Now my account is locked because of suspicious behavior.

I think I will simply delete the whole thing in a moment. I use Twitter for ideas, links, news, posts for my Facebook page, etc. I don't use it for anything else. And at this point, it is becoming more hassle than worth.

Social media is difficult. As a writer, you can't get away from it-- it has become the means by which you promote, review, show, research, and learn. That I don't mind. Facebook comes in great handy for me, as well as Google and other news websites and forums. But once the commodity is outweighed by the number of incoherent screeching noises I am making at the screen...

I think not.

So I will have to think of other ways to get news on which to write.

On the other hand...

"Robot Adept" by Piers Anthony is a sequel to a book I read many years ago called "Double Exposure" about the parallel worlds of Proton (science fiction) and Phaze (fantasy). I was delighted to discover the continuation of the tale, as well as a following book called "Unicorn Point". I highly recommend all of these books for any Anthony fans, and also to those who have not converted yet.

A Review of the Sequel

Ok doods, there may be some potential spoilers in here, so put on your Spoiler Alert glasses to pick up the signs...

During our Snowpocalypse I was snowed in for several days, so I spent much of that time vegging out, reading, playing Minecraft, etc. The book I was reading was Divergent by Veronica Roth. I was pleasantly surprised by the story, despite a rough beginning of cliche similarities to The Hunger Games and middle-schooler-ish behavior on the part of the main characters. I devoured the majority of the book in a single night, unable to put it down.

So you can imagine how I very enthusiastically started the sequel, Insurgent. This book too took me little time to finish, but I have to say I was not as enthusiastic about the tale as a whole.

This book picks up on the crux of attacks, conspiracies, secrets, and massacres. Tragedies have occurred, hard decisions have been made. And the characters revert to their beginning-30-pages-of-the-first-book idiocy.

Tris, the main protagonist, has suffered much in the battles that ended "Divergent". She has associating physical and emotional trauma because of it. Her boyfriend, Tobias, the main male protagonist, is also struggling with the sudden proximity of his father, whom he has run away from in the past.

When things get tough, the characters get tougher, right?

Wrong. Tris spends almost the entire book lying to and 'betraying' Tobias because 'she has to'. Erm. Sorry, hun, I don't care what kind of post- or pre-apocalyptic world you're living in, but you never ever ever have to lie to the one you love. Ever. Communication is key, after all, so what are you doing?

In the end Tobias discovers her in her 'act of betrayal' (which is also highly overblown and ridiculous) and naturally feels childishly 'betrayed' (yet again, how did this girl's attempt to find information ahead of its destruction lead to the conclusion that she betrayed you?) and says he 'doesn't know her' blah blah blah. Five paragraphs later he's had a change of heart and it's all sappy and mushy and then BAM cliffhanger.

If it sounds like I'm being pretty hard on the book, it's because I am. I really enjoyed the first book, but now I have little to no motivation to go and buy the third book and read it. This is a repeat of the "Eragon" books by Christopher Paolini all over again. He was an idol of mine for the space of about a year when his first book, at age 15, came out. Then the sequel followed and my admiration evaporated. It was such an overly-dramatic rendition of angst, plus dragons. Ack.

To sum it up, I give "Insurgent" 2 stars out of 5...a steep drop from the 4 stars out of 5 that I would have given "Divergent".