Coupon Giveaway

Sorry for the weeklong silence but I've incredibly busy with roofing and writing. Roof advice for those looking to buy one of those old Spanish "castle" roof-lines in FL. Beautiful and romantic to look at, for sure, but hold on to your money! The flat roofs are going to be a money pit, especially if the turret (parapet) walls that you fell in love with had been done wrong and everything underneath your beautiful stucco on top of the roof, where you can't see, is rotten.

As for writing, I've been immersed in:
1) trying to plot out a short, short, short story for the Seal of my Dreams anthology (www.sealofmydreams.com) which has been a challenging process, to say the least, because it's going to be a tight story of thirty or under pages. Not many words to work out a believable romance! There are a bunch of excellent authors in this anthology (over 12!) so I need to get my creative mojo to find something unique. With so many contributors and one theme and length, I'm sure the universal consciousness is going to spit out several "same scenario, different twist" stories, and I'm trying not to do that. So...I put the thinking cap on Muse and she...well, gah, she just thinks calories are needed, if you know what I mean.

2) I've been busy formatting The Protector, The Hunter, and The Sleeper my three SEAL books from the Crossfire trilogy to which the rights have been reverted back to me.  It's taking longer than I thought because it's all a learning process for me as well as an expensive one. More on this in another post this week.

3) MikiSquirrel's book! It's ready but I need to figure things out for Amazon's do-it-yourself arm, Createspace, like how to get illustrations to come out right and fix dpis on photos. It's quite a little project for such a small book (30 pages)! It's very different from formatting a regular manuscript with type words and yes, frustrating too, if you're not a techy person. I'm not a techy person, so I'm going to need help on this first try with children's books.

And now, for having patiently read through the whole post ;-), I'm announcing a coupon giveaway. I have a eHarlequin coupon for 30% off any books on their site. One commenter will get the code.

Please comment whether you'd be interested in a children's book about a squirrel when it comes out in a few weeks :-) and what price range would a 30 page 7X9 book should, in your opinion, cost. See, such an easy contest!

GIVEAWAY CLOSES END OF THIS WEEK.

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Writers: Quick Advice From A Long-Time Self-Employer

At RWA this year, the new religion was "self-publishing." Whether it was one's back list of books, one's book under the bed, or one's plan to release some book not popular with buying editors right now, it's "I'm going to get it out on Kindle and the Nook." There was a palpable air of excitement among the authors, that they now have some kind of new power, the ability to get their books over some magical hurdle.

I'm one of the authors who have already started this journey--have done so the last few years since the 2007 Walmart debacle, actually--and there are many things I've learned that these authors, especially those not savvy with online stuff other than hit the "buy" button, are going to stumble upon before they get their books out into the market. First, it's not just a magic button. Nothing ever is. It's really working for oneself, like owning one's roofing company, for instance, and the latter isn't a walk in the ballpark.

Yes, being a published author is essentially being self-employed, anyway, but being one's own publisher is actually a second job on top of that. Unless, of course, you have a lot of capital and can hire editors, copy-editors, book packagers and formatters, etc. etc.  But would it be called self-publishing then?

And even if you do have the cash to do that, you must still understand how it all works, that you aren't just paying somebody to take care of the work and hope that the end product will come out looking professional; this is a NEW BUSINESS and there are scammers out there, wanting to make a fast buck. There are also people out there who will give you a book that looks like you hired a 5 year-old to do all the editing and cover art. So be careful, authors.

This is the time to research like you did before you were publishing, reading up on everything you needed to know about approaching publishing houses and editors and formatting manuscripts. Your savvy ebook readers expect professional looking ebooks. Your readers paying the extra money for Print-On-Demand expect a professional looking cover--front and back, with a well-edited story between them. Anything less will just defeat the purpose of your goal.

Why am I talking about it? It's none of my business what you do with your writing, right? Not exactly true.

First, it pains me to listen to many author-friends, many of whom have decades of experience over me regarding contracts and the book business, sound so clueless about the self-publishing. E-book publishing and self-publishing are different things, for example. Kindle is NOT a format. Hiring your nephew who is computer-smart for $30 is NOT a good idea, I'm sorry; it doesn't matter how good he is at repairing your computer or how smart he is at his techy computer job. Unless he has read your book, many other ebooks, actually has some experience with romance covers and getting all the formats done correctly for different e-readers, a $30 job is what you're going to get. I could go on and on about the so many more wrong assumptions.

Second, I want this new venture to succeed, for me and my friends. I don't want it to get a bad rap that readers get wary about buying self-publishing books. As more and more writers and "writers" jump on the bandwagon, there's sure to be more and more dissatisfied rumblings and complaints from readers. Remember, more than ever before, if you self-published, your book is YOU and YOU are your book. You can't blame the publisher any more ;-). Unless, of course, you sign, hopefully not in blood, with Amazon, hahaha.

More on this coming--the other self-employment job is calling.

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We're All Getting Shorter

I know it's been quiet around here. I've been trying hard to put all my time into writing, even with the crappy economy taking all my time looking for roofing jobs. One of my friends asked me why don't I just "not look for jobs, but instead sit down and write and write instead? Because self-publishing is exploding and she's just read about an author who sold 50,000 copies of her ebook to Kindle and Nook buyers."

It's a very convincing argument, and tempting indeed, to someone like me, who really loves to sit at home and write. But alas, my own RL situation doesn't make it feasible for me to give up the roofing job yet. To be able to do that, I'll have to pay off a big chunk of loans first, and it's not that easy to ignore monthly bills. The thing is, the more in debt you are, the harder it is to take time off to do the thing one loves, and in my case, it's writing consistently.

Writing consistently doesn't actually mean having a lot of free time available. For myself, I need a slot every day that is about the same time, with no outside things requiring my attention, be it calling roofing inspectors, talking to homeowners, or driving county to county looking at and bidding on jobs. The last part is mind-numbing and all that talking and answering the same roofing questions steals more creative energy than I care to admit. It even sucks the fun out of blogging, as you can see here, so much so that I end up having lots of quick thoughts for Facebook but no real in-depth thoughts for here.

I know my readers would prefer to read stories from me rather than my silly chitchat, anyway ;-). So I'm really trying to get myself in gear again. It's all about taking those first few steps in self-publishing to get the income going; the more that income grows, the more it sustains me, and the less I need to go looking for roofing jobs because, hey, look, loans and expenses are being paid off. But it needs work and time, with lots of emphasis on writing work, to get to that point and I'm hoping that two short stories coming out soon will be a start. One will be, FINALLY, the novella that was in the Mammoth Book of Spec Ops Romance, which I've re-edited and re-formatted from PDF for publication through Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords, and the other is a secret short project that I've been nursing during my dry runs wrestling with the big projects I've been trying to finish, sort of a writing-something-not-of-my-genre-to-get-out-of-my-rut exercise. They'll both be priced $1.99, I think, since they're both short stories.

Okay, off I go to write a bit! :) Do catch me on Facebook if you have an account because I seem to be all one-liners lately.

How about you, in your personal life? Have you noticed that you are only good for one or two one-liners, that you're short on words?

Bear with me while I learn. The first button likes the POST. The second button likes the BLOG site. Please help me by "liking" me. Thanks!
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