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Showing posts from 2015

Bilbo It Up

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At 2:32am my 8-year-old son came in with a screaming headache. I put him back to bed with a big glass of water and stroked his hair until he fell back to sleep. It was 4:36am when I woke to the sound of the boy puking. He's a good puker - calm, tried to catch it in his hands, made it to the toilet for the rest of it - a sweet boy. He's sleeping again in the other bed. The dog is curled against him to keep him warm, and he'll be staying home from school today.  Cleaning up puke at 4:30am is generally a guarantee of wakefulness, but I wasn't ready to turn on the computer yet, so I checked e-mail on my phone and then flipped to Facebook. Pat Rothfuss had a new blog post - a long one - so I settled in to read. Here's the blog , so you can follow along with my train of thought. Now, I've already donated to Worldbuilders this year - a couple of times - and between the money and the books and the Tuckerization in the auction, and the fact that property

Worldbuilders and an Auction

Every year, Patrick Rothfuss, the team at Worldbuilders, and a couple of hundred of the coolest authors, artists and gamemakers around do this thing to raise mone y for Heifer International, which plants trees, provides livestock, and helps people do something as basic as EAT with dignity. For every $10 a person donates, their name gets entered into a lottery for a chance to win signed books and games, and I've been donating copies of Marking Time to the lottery since it was the only book in the series. Each year I have more books to give, and last year, Maria, at Worldbuilders, asked if I'd consider donating something bigger that they could auction off on ebay. A tuckerization (yep, it's a thing) of a character in Waging War earned $150 for Worldbuilders. The winner of the auction gave me a name for the character - Tam - and two characteristics: curious and clever. I had a wonderful time weaving Tam into Waging War, and because curious, clever people named Tam seem to

Cover Design - The Birth of a Book Cover

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Aren't they gorgeous?! First - news. The publication date for Waging War has been set, and I'll share it with you when the pre-order link goes live. There's a plan in place and I'm finally on schedule, and on track. Gemma, the lovely narrator for the Tempting Fate audiobook, will be starting production on Changing Nature this month, and we'll be working to get that published as soon as possible. Thank you so much for your patience on both. So, the new covers... Writers and readers are very visual people. Writers have to paint pictures with words for readers to see in their heads as they read, which is why most writers I know have inspiration boards. When I first began plotting Marking Time, I built my inspiration board into a collage with which I covered my writer's notebook. You can see where the color tones for the first book came from. As I got closer to finishing Marking Time, I started to think about its cover. This was the first image I

Series Makeover and COVER REVEAL

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The Immortal Descendants series is getting a makeover (all new covers)! If you'd like to help spread this exciting news, please fill out the attached form. The plan and important dates are as follows: 1.        OCTOBER 30 : I will send you teasers, the new cover files, share graphics/links, and a $50 Amazon gift card + signed book giveaway graphic/rafflecopter link (signed books by April White, Elizabeth Hunter, Penny Reid) 2.        NOVEMBER 1 : Please share the reveal graphic and purchase links (I will provide) on Goodreads, your blog, and/or Facebook page, along with a rafflecopter for the gift card + signed book giveaway. 3.        NOVEMBER 13 : I will send you the 'WAGING WAR' teaser, cover, reveal graphic and preorder link. 4.        NOVEMBER 15 : Please share the reveal graphic, etc. on Goodreads, your blog, and/or Facebook page. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vKbaN1Dz1B3AKK0TDbZb6QC0ALvji6Xv0QEpLR-4jKQ/viewform?c=0&w=1 Thank you SO MUCH

Winning Conditions

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Nerdcon:Stories was an excellent convention. There is much to be written about this weekend, and much will be. (The whole  schedule can be found here,  and should be studied by anyone considering becoming a Nerdconner). But there's always a thing that sticks with me.  A thing that got thought about when I woke up to blow my nose at 1:30 am, and the spin-cycle of thinking kept me awake for another hour (yes, my son very generously handed me his cold to carry home for him). This was that thing : There was a panel called No Pressure : How to Keep Creating Once You've Technically Succeeded, and it was moderated by Patrick Rothfuss, so yeah, I was there. Fortunately, it was on the main stage so I didn't have to use size and determination to get a seat like I did at the Is That a Kissing Book? Writing Sex panel, which is a thing for another blog. The panel was a good one, with surprisingly honest shares from people like Dessa Darling and John Green.  It was also mod

Things I learned from Rothfuss

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Pat Rothfuss is a good guy. He's undoubtedly a generous and socially conscious person, as evidenced by Worldbuilders , the charity he founded which raises money for Heifer International every year, and which most recently matched donations to aid Syrian refugees. But while generosity and social conscience can be assessed by a person's deeds, to be good is a personal judgement of the beholder. So, my assessment of Pat Rothfuss as a good guy is my very personal opinion, born out of two hours spent in his company, with my son and four hundred other people in the spectacular Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles. It is certainly a biased opinion, as I've loved Pat's books, laughed at his podcasts, and discussed in detail his D&D character's penchant for chandeliers with my son. But bias is just a theoretical inclination until personal evidence can be gathered in support of a story. And in two hours with Pat Rothfuss, these are the things I learned: 1. H

Kindle Unlimited

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So I did this today. Putting books two and three of my series into Kindle Unlimited was approximately as terrifying as writing book one had been. Which sounds totally ridiculous, because why would a marketing plan that targets readers be terrifying? Or, for that matter, why would writing a book about a free-running tagger (I fall in slow motion, according to my husband) who time travels to Jack the Ripper's London (haven't been there because - you know, we've moved on) be scary? Well, except for the part that I COULD SUCK AND NO ONE WOULD READ IT. Since then, of course, a couple of people have told me Marking Time doesn't suck. And those people actually went on to buy Tempting Fate and Changing Nature, and apparently those don't suck either. But, writing the books is hard enough. Marketing them is its own monster under the bed, only able to be faced with one part luck, one part research, and three parts kind people who like to read time travel books. The rese

A Yukon Short Story

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As you may or may not have noticed from my Facebook photo posts of a double rainbow and big skies, I've spent the summer in the Yukon - mostly in and around Dawson City. The local arts and culture scene in this tiny Canadian town is pretty extraordinary, and this weekend is the annual arts festival, which kicked off today with the announcement of the winners of the Authors on Eighth writing contest - for one poem and one short story, under 2500 words, in the style of Yukon authors Jack London, Robert Service, and Pierre Berton, which addressed the theme "Women of the North." I wrote this short story two months ago to submit to the contest, and am very excited to say that it won! I am now the slightly stunned owner of a stack of fantastic Yukon books and a gold nugget. But the best thing I will take away from this experience is the pride of having written something outside my comfort zone, in a style that's much more subtle than I usually know how to be, and whi

The Next MacGyver will be a WOMAN!

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This. Is. Awesome! To readers who dig Saira, and to writers who write strong women - do this! They're looking for a show idea for the next MacGyver - A WOMAN - to inspire girls and young women to science and engineering. It doesn't take much to enter - a great idea, a compelling character, a couple of taglines for interesting episodes, but the deadline is this Friday, May 1st. Seriously, people - we need this show, and there's no reason in the world the idea for it can't come from YOU! TheNextMacGyver.com

IngramSpark vs. Createspace

To: Indpendent Authors: Re: Createspace vs. IngramSpark: A couple of weeks ago someone posted a link on Facebook to IngramSpark with free set-ups (I can't find it now - sorry), so I did some research into Createspace vs. IngramSpark. Everything I found said do both. Createspace distributes primarily to Amazon, but their expanded distribution isn't utilized by most bookstores because they don't give them a big enough discount. IngramSpark gives the industry-standard 55% discount to retailers, plus the option to return books, which makes ordering our books attractive (I just did a signing at a Barnes and Noble, and had to bring all my own books because they won't order through Createspace). They also have printers in Europe and Australia, which makes international ordering cost-effective. There is almost no money to be made for us on IngramSpark because of the discount to retailers. But it's the one way I've found to get into traditional brick and morta

Festival Aftermath

There's a thing my friend, Korry, and I do after every successful school event we put on  - the recap. It's a way to get each others' impressions of the event, to check our own assessments and interpretations, and just generally a way to download our experiences. I got to recap the experience at the LA Times Festival of Books last Saturday with my friend, Elizabeth Hunter, on Saturday night as we sank into couches with a glass of wine and take-out Mexican food. We were both utterly exhausted in the way that seven hours of being "on" with people brings. The only other time I've been that peopled out was after a day of High School English class takeovers, during which I essentially taught six classes about all the reading and writing. Ever since then, my admiration and appreciation for the work teachers do is pretty much to the moon and back. So, because I'd never been to the LA Times Festival of Books, even as a visitor, I'll share some of the highl

LA Times Festival of Books

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I don't know about you, but I've never been to the LA Times Festival of Books. I know, right? I live in Los Angeles, and... BOOKS! But there's always the parking and the crowds and whatever (excuses) else I happened to be doing that gorgeous April weekend that the festival was held. But then an opportunity came along. An author friend bought a booth and was selling space at the tables to cover the cost. So I bought half a table for Saturday, April 18th. And then another author had to drop out, so I did some quick switching and bought another half. Now here's the thing. A full table at an event like this one seems like a great thing, but I've been to author events with a full table, and I've been to ones where I've shared the table. Here's a little (TMI) background on me - I almost never feel like I fit in anywhere, and I almost always feel like an impostor at author events. So when I'm by myself at a table, trying not to feel like an idiot (th

Marking Time - Revised Edition

So, there's this thing that happens when you do something a lot. Something like writing. You get better at it. It helps to hire an editor who knows more than you do. And it helps to have written two books with her, because then you create a style guide together. A guide for when to capitalize things that don't have hard and fast rules, when to add commas, and whether semi-colons have a place in the universe or can they just be replaced with em-dashes (seriously, I did NOT know there was a name for that kind of dash). It also helps that she knows when I'm using Saira's voice for someone else's dialogue, or when I'm rolling her eyes too much, and it REALLY helps that she calls me on it. And because Tempting Fate and Changing Nature were so much cleaner (in a grammarly way - get your mind out of the gutter), with tighter storytelling (again, mind/gutter) than Marking Time, it was clear that had to be dealt with. So, I worked with my fabulous, knows-way-more

Road Trip Audio Book Deals

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If anyone is going on a road trip for Spring Break, consider finding your favorite e-books on Amazon, and checking the price of the audiobook. The unabridged Audible versions of Penny Reid's Neanderthal Seeks Human, and Elizabeth Hunter's A Hidden Fire are only $1.99 if you download the free e-book. For my road trip north, I'll be listening to Patrick Rothfuss' A Wise Man's Fear, and book one of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series, both of which were $3.99 because I already had the e-books in my library. And speaking of libraries, I also checked out audiobooks at my local library's online page - the same library card number allows me to download both e-books and audiobooks for two to three weeks at a time (I collect library cards from every city I can because different libraries have different online collections). I was able to find the Magic Treehouse books and Gregor the Overlander, which I dowloaded to Logan's iPad so he can listen to

Boys Will be Boys

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So, this happened. I got a letter from my son's middle-school principal about a "wonderful opportunity" all the students will be having next week. The girls will be viewing the indie movie, Finding Kind, with a filmmaker Q&A afterwards. According to the letter, "The Kind campaign is an internationally recognized movement based on the powerful belief in KINDness that brings awareness and healing to often difficult girl dynamics." The boys, meanwhile, will be "hearing a message of goal-setting, overcoming obstacles, and resiliency from former NHL star, Ethan Moreau. Following this inspirational presentation there will be a brief showing of the film, Miracle, based on the challenges and triumphs of the US Olympic Hockey team. Both messages are meant to be empowering and thought provoking to our male students." Let me be clear about a couple of things. I think both of these opportunities are wonderful. I have not seen Finding Kind , bu

The USC Scripter Awards - Diversity

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It's Awards Season - specifically, USC Scripter Awards time - which I've already established is the coolest awards event on the planet . You know, because I have the credentials and clout to establish such things. The short explanation for my fangirly enthusiasm is this: The USC Scripter Awards honors both the author of the original work (novelist), and the screenwriter who adapted that work into a film. The long version is somewhat more complicated, and it involves a little word with a very, very big meaning: Diversity. Now my white-girl, middle class upbringing establishes about as much in the way of credentials and clout to discuss this as my proclamation of the Scripter Awards' coolness. But stay with me here, because I'm going to veer around in some pretty big arcs before I come back to my point. Patrick Rothfuss, author of the Kingkiller Chronicles , and blogger, speaker, gamer, and philanthropist extraordinaire, spoke to a group of authors a