Thursday, June 28, 2012

Finding yourself on the web

Okay this is so weird and cool at the same time.  I am now all over the web, again.  In the old days it was the silly websites I put together for fanfiction and poetry and my drawings.  Now it is my actual published work.  I enjoyed it in the old days but now...now it fills in a part of yourself that you didn't know you had.

I am showing up on places like ITunes, Versent Books, Inktera and of course my publishers site.  Now the more places I show up the more chance that someone will actually decide to buy my work.  While the paperback over on Amazon is pretty pricy, the Ebook copy on Itunes is very affordable at 99 cents.  So I am hoping...really really hoping that soon I will see some movement.

I have even posted Gates up on Craig s list and Kijiji.  Now it felt weird putting my book up on those sites but it needs to be done right?  I am right now just sitting here trying to decide if I should put Knight Protector up on those two sites.  It is a novella and a fun one in my opinion.  Course I wrote it so my opinion isn't necessarily unbiased right?

Okay back to writing and reading and trying to think of other ways to get the nice people out there to actually pick up my words and reading them. 

Monday, June 18, 2012

writing time

Well now that I have gotten some reviews it is time to work.  Hope Everlasting is moving along.  Not as fast as I would like but that is how it is when I work.  I have to do some bridging scenes.  I know what will happen once the hero meets the villain but getting the hero to the villain is the long part.  After all you cant have them just meet face to face without some trouble.  While this villain isnt as bad as some of the others I have written, he is still a villain.  He wants something for nothing, wants something he thinks he can take that he doesn't deserve.

Should be fun.  So should I put someone behind the scenes pulling his strings.  It would be interesting and hopefully not too cliche.  I am trying to avoid those nasty cliches.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

farming the web for reviews.

Okay part of being a writer is finding readers right?  So if they won't come to you, you have to go to them.  Luckily there are people on the groups I have joined in the past two months who are interested in reviewing.  Now I don't expect a glowing, OMG review, just a review to show people are reading my work.  So I am going to try a few out.

Shelfari has been interesting.  It has let me review some of the god awful pile of books I have read over the years.  So lets see what happens.

Found a new place to play called Waatpad.  They have people who design bookcovers for free and book trailers.  Now I can do my own trailers.  Now if I could just feel like I am doing better covers.  Well we will see how this goes.

Time to work.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Sun shiny day

Sun is shining and my mood is sooo much better.  Your writer here is thinking that it might be time to try other forms of expression.  Yeah I write, god do I write.  My sotries are all jumbled up in my head and poems only come out during my dark times.  I should have written poetry yesterday.  My camera gets a work out as nature opens her arms to us.  The sun on a leaf, a bug settling down on a branch or a frog hopping in the water.  Okay now I want to go take more photos.  Maybe I should but I started this cause I have been thinking about painting.

Now I have never been the best at the visual arts.  I have some stuff up over on Elfwood.  Drawn ages ago, when my kids were little and I still had art supplies that were mine and only mine.  I feel the need from time to time to draw and well I no longer have the supplies.  I would love a nice sketch pad that I wouldn't have to share with my youngest.  On a nice warm morning I could go over to the stream and okay work my way down to the ground and just sketch nature.  Maybe make pictures with faeries and unicorns and dragons in the nature around me.  I may not be as good as many of my friends but at one time I had a good eye and the ability to draw.  Do I still have it?  Good question.  While baking and crocheting give me an outlet for more tactile expressions of my soul they aren't the same are they?

And something new I want to try is painting.  The dollar stores here have stretched canvas and paints and brushes really cheap.  I have been tossing this about in my mind for months now.  It wouldn't be too expensive this way.  After all a canvas for a buck or two, paints for the same and a bunch of brushes.  Why not?  Yeah we have water color paints and my hubby's paints but I don't want to use his good stuff for what might just be junk.

Should I do it?  Anyone got an opinion?  Anyone reading these posts? 

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

The Legend lives one

Okay so the opening line of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald should be used for a super hero film.  The song now should be a movie.  I know it has inspired me to write another tale.  Okay start to write.  Somehow I think Harry might like it better if I finish Hope Everlasting first.  I had started a short fic about the 30th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald but now that I am working with Harry more I think I need to change the story.  Harry is a great character but having him over by Detroit would be weird.  He is the Guardian of Nashua.  Hmmm...maybe I could change the story and had the wreck happen here on the big lake.  Georgian bay I am sure has some history with ship wrecks.  Heck the bay is huge, even if it isnt on one of big lakes it is still on a LARGE lake.  Lake Simcoe in fact.  I should get my new friends (and old) here in my new hometown to give me some history so I can come up with tales.  Stories of urban myths and legends set in this small Canadian city that is so like Nashua. 

Inspiration...it strikes hard when it does.  Gotta love it.  Love how music can lead to words and words to music.  The grand circle of life.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Sound tracks of my mind

Now anyone who knows me knows that I tend to listen to a lot of music.  Weird, contemporary, pop, country, just music.  Songs tend to spring ideas into the fertile ground known as my imagination.

But once an idea is started sometimes I have to find the songs that will continue the tale.  Right now there is a Gregorian chant playing in the background.  While good for some things, not sure it will work on Harry.  He is a bit more a good old bluegrassy boy.  Not a gun weilding, I have the right to shoot you for just being in the wrong place knid.  More the life gave me a ton of lemons, drowning in lemonaid type. 

But hey he has a sense of humor for sure.  And a sense of right and wrong.  What else can you ask for in a guardian and hero right?  So I think this next son, Eyes of a Child fits his new job.  Finding the kidnapped child of two eternals.

This should be fun. 

Friday, June 8, 2012

Barnes and Noble

Well looks like I will now be found over on Barnes and Noble, along with Amazon.  Gates just showed up there at a little less than the Amazon price.  I don't mind the reduction, after all it is a little pricey for a paperback.  And as I have been approved by Smashwords for their premium catalog, we should be seeing Knight Protector over there soon.  Can't wait to see what reaction this has.

Here is the opening of the newest story I am working on.  It is called Hope Everlasting and is set in the world of One More All Hallows Eve.  I like Harry.  He is not a rip off of Harry Dresden.  I wrote All Hallows years before I read the Dresden Files.  So here goes.  Hope who ever is reading this has an opinion on this one.

***


It was still dark when I came out of Undercity but it was lighter than it was below.  I could hear them though before I saw them.  Two large, horrible smells were blocking the alley that led back to my car.  I sighed, preparing to step back when I heard a soft cry.  Normally I ignored the occasional mugging by the street trash on each other but something about that cry made me step forward.
As I got closer I saw two of the least savory creatures that dwelled in Undercity.  They had backed a woman into a corner between the crumbling building on the right and a rusted out dumpster on the left.  They were tall, even half stooped over as they terrorized the much smaller human before them.  "HE says bring the shiny one, we bring."  The one on the left said in a voice that went past gravelly to stone on stone grinding.  Definitely a troll with his ugly cousin, a pair I recognized.  A pair of two bit thugs who hired out to the one with the most meat.  Yes meat.  It was hard in these modern times to find a good meal when you weren't near a stockyards.

****

Yeah told as a first person.  I have a few of them and I tend to set them in my old home town of Nashua, NH.  If any of you know Nashua, you will recognize the streets.  I have changed things of course.

Now back to writing fiction!

Wednesday, June 6, 2012