Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Please nominate Game Misconduct

And just like that, Game Misconduct is up on Kindle Scout and it needs some nominations. I'm hoping to do a little better than The Call did as far as time spent in the hot and trending area, so I need help.

I've got 29 days to get as many votes/nominations as I can and hope that the powers that be like the book enough to move forward with it. As you may recall, Game Misconduct is my first contemporary romance with no signs or hints of paranormal. It was a new venture for me, and I think it turned out pretty well.

If you nominate and it does get chosen by Kindle Scout to be published, you'll get a free e-book copy once the editors are happy with it. So, please, please, please, please get to clicking over to https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2928DHO240K4J and hit the nominate button.

THANK YOU!

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Apparently I love sitting on the edge of my seat

So, I finally did it. Query letter, synopsis and first three chapters of The Monster in the Woods were packaged together in an email this morning and sent to an agent. I know I have been threatening it for at least a month, but it took a while to get the courage together to see the task through.

Game Misconduct also was finally submitted to Kindle Scout. Hopefully sometime next week I'll have a link to share - and everyone is ready to hit the nominate button.

With both of those actions complete, I have probably a month of nail biting to wait through before I hear anything. I should've probably submitted Monster to more than one agent, but I'm taking baby steps after going crazy and self-publishing for so long.

I should've probably sought out agents long ago, but the world of the Internet makes everything so easy to just hit a button and have your work out there. You also have to actually read the Internet to figure out that isn't always the right way to get started in your writing career. People don't magically find your books like I thought they would once upon a time. Marketing is a must for a self-publishing writer, and let's face it, it's not my strong suit.

If nothing else, the path I've gone done has taught me a lot. I'm not a perfect writer, editor, proofreader; I am still too shy to put myself out there and shout from the rooftops about my work; and writing takes a lot of work, it isn't just writing a book out, slapping a cover together and hoping everyone buys it.

Well, that's my update and ramble for the day. I'll share a link to the Kindle Scout campaign as soon as I get one.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

It's always fun to see your name on the screen in a movie theater

So, this post isn't really about writing or what's going on with my two current work in progresses - still ironing out query letters there. This post is about how I spent a couple hours today in my 9 to 5 work life and ended up seeing my name on the screen for a documentary I was watching.

Sure it was just a special thanks at the very end for the work I did on the interactive digital portion that went along with the project, but I was sitting in a room full of probably a hundred people and got to see my name. I was also acknowledged at the beginning and had to stand up and wave to the crowd.

I've never had a moment like that and it was pretty cool. It was also nerve-racking for an introvert like me. I'm not a person who likes to have attention pointed at me, so when people clapped and cheered at the beginning for my introduction, I was quick to take a seat.

Anyway, that was how I spent my afternoon and now it's time to get back to those query letters, and maybe my paper mache projects.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Guess what ...

If you guessed I was in a melodramatic mood this weekend, you get a gold star. Don't let anyone ever tell you that writing is an easy hobby. I'm sure there's stats about how much alcohol and caffeine the average author drinks a day to deal with some of the frustrations a writer comes across.

I don't drink anything harder than alcohol-free apple cider and it's been over a decade since I had caffeine, so I just get glum. Then I wander across the https://iwl.me/ site and laugh hysterically when I fill in chapters of my work in progresses.

I pasted in the prologue (yes, as of yesterday there is a prologue) of The Monster in the Woods and it told me it was like Anne Rice, which knowing the tone of the book is a good thing. I pasted in other chapters and it started giving me various authors, but that wasn't really the funny part.

The funny part came when I pasted in the first chapter of Game Misconduct and it came up with Stephen King. Second chapter was Ian Fleming and the third chapter was Stephen King again. Neither of those authors come to mind when I think about my little contemporary romance.

It makes me curious to see what criteria they use. It says they use word choice and writing style to compare. Evidently I should've made Game Misconduct a horror movie with a hunky spy in it.

I know it's not really looking at genre, but it was still funny to me, and it helped give me a break from working on query letters and synopses.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

The troubled life of someone who likes to write

Another week has come and gone and I'm probably wondering now more than ever why I keep writing. I have a handful of fans that I'm aware of who seem to love the stories I tell, but everyone else seems to think my writing sucks. I know not everyone in the world has read one of my stories, but there are just days that I feel like I couldn't tell a story well to save my life based on feedback I see.

I've had more than enough of those days this week. As I'm sure anyone who was curious guessed, Game Misconduct did not move on in the contest I entered it in. The fact that they were supposed to move only 50 books on and ended up moving 55 kind of felt a little like a nail in a coffin. They bent the rules for people they had trouble deciding on, so clearly my pitch and first chapter stunk. There wasn't any kind of feedback shared, which means I'll never know why they didn't like it.

I like to think I've grown since my days of writing Avery's and Nyx's stories three years ago. I can see it in my writing, but I still watch and wait for a person to return one of my newer books after they purchased it because I have pretty much lost any confidence that I can string words together to tell an intriguing tale. Sometimes it makes me want to cry and other times it feels like it would be a relief off my shoulders if I just gave up and went back to reading instead of making my own tales.

Which is sad because I really do love to write. I finished up The Monster in the Woods the other day and was dabbing away tears because I loved the way things ended. It wasn't at all where I thought things would go, but the characters in my head grab me and take me on a journey.

Maybe I wasn't meant to share those journeys with the world. Maybe I was meant to just write them for my own enjoyment and brain exercises. I guess that's something I need to figure out before I start on anything new.

If you're curious how my two recent journeys panned out, both Game Misconduct and The Monster in the Woods are on writeon.amazon.com and wattpad.com. While I think about things, I'll probably be pretty quiet for a while. Thank you to all of you who have become fans and have supported me. You definitely are the reasons I've kept going when people seemed to laugh at me.