I joined another short story contest. This one seems really interesting. We have to judge other stories. They will send us two stories at a time, from a genre where we aren’t signed up to compete. We have to read the two stories and choose one that’s better than the other. These battles continue until there is a winner. It’s a cool concept and I’m psyched to write my entry and then read the other entries. It’s still a competition where I will find out the topic which must be heavily included in the story, at the last moment. Then I think it’s 3 days to write the first story in February. Then there’s another round with different criteria in a couple months after that one. It goes on all year until the final battle in November, I think. 

I wrote a story for my best friend. We were talking about Christmas gifts and she loves to make gifts. She is a very talented crafter, knitter, and crocheter (Is that a word?). She was saying how much she likes to make gifts and receive homemade gifts. I realized I could write a story for her. She’s a trooper and read my book even though romance is not her thing at all. She thought it had too much sex, lol. She absolutely loved a fantasy short story I wrote for a competition. So, I decided to write a fantasy story for her. 

I wanted to incorporate things from her life. I messed around with her first and last name until I was able to make it into a fantasy heroine worthy name. Then I added her husband and kids, changing their names slightly. I added her other best friend, one of her dogs, and me! Her other dog will make an appearance in the next installment. The character in this story that represents her one dog is a mouse. Her other dog will be a horse in the next story. I decided, if she likes it, I will add to the story for her birthday and Christmas each year. Lucky for me her birthday is in June. So that means an installment every six months or so.

I also painted a cover for her story. I haven’t been able to paint for a long time due to my hands. I struggled a little but not too bad. I printed out an outline of a dragon and I used watercolors to basically fill in the blank spots. Very similar to paint by number paintings from decades ago. It does look nice from a distance. Up close the mistakes are obvious. My father-in-law always says, “It looks good from afar, but it’s far from good.” That about sums it up.

I don’t think I’ve talked about my disability with you yet. I have fibromyalgia, I was diagnosed in 2000. I also have a rheumatoid type of arthritis called psoriatic arthritis, or PsA. It’s not like the osteoarthritis your grandmother got from her years baking or cleaning with a repetitive motion. This arthritis is a degenerative autoimmune disease. I’m really lucky that I don’t suffer with the psoriasis part of this illness. My mother has it too without psoriasis. PsA can affect, damage, and destroy, bones, tendons, organs, eyes, and hearing. 

The most heartbreaking discovery for me was when I learned that children get PsA and RA. It’s known as an invisible disability because you can’t always see everything that’s going on with a person who has an autoimmune disease. Please don’t ever attack a person who appears healthy but has a disabled parking permit. I don’t always need my wheelchair, but that doesn’t mean I can walk across a big parking lot.

I was in the best shape of my life, healthwise. I was walking or jogging about five miles a day, I was vegan, I worked out at the gym four times a week, and I did Zumba every day. One night I was changing into my pajamas when my thumb bone snapped. It didn’t hurt. The top part of my thumb just hung there in my skin. I thought I had dislocated it somehow. Not wanting to deal with the ER I taped it up and went to urgent care the next morning. They x-rayed it and the doctor informed me my bone had snapped from deterioiration. I had arthritis. I didn’t understand what it meant and I thought it was osteoarthritis. I also thought my mother had osteoarthritis, she never explained. (They want to rename it to lessen the confusion.)

I had no idea I was starting a lifelong trip through hell, or at least purgatory. I had to get my thumb fused. There are screws holding it together now. It no longer bends at the joint. I had to get carpal tunnel surgery. Trigger finger release surgery. My neck is fused, there’s a metal plate holding it together and I can’t move it like I used to. I am on my 11thPsA medication, yes, 10 have not worked or stopped working. I have to see the rheumetologist every three months. I have a weekly injection of a “chemo lite” drug meant to keep my immune system in check so it doesn’t attack my body. I have a monthly injection of a PsA specific biologic also. I take about eight pills every morning and eight more at night. Oops! I forgot I had knee surgery too. I have to deal with medication side effects. The chemo lite causes full chemo side effects, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, exhaustion (can’t stay awake the next day), etc. 

As a result of the medication and conditions, I have gained weight, lost hair, can't drive anymore, require a wheelchair for anything longer than a five-minute walk. My pointer finger points the wrong way and is twisted, it’s creepy. Both of my pinky fingers are bent and I can’t straighten them. I have a lump on my wrist and terrible wrist pain. My neck hurts all the time too. Before the surgery I tried three failed attempts at an epidural pain block. I’ve had excruciating tests. I’m always in pain unless I’m asleep, sometimes even then. I have terrible insomnia. I can’t totally call that a negative. I do a lot of reading and writing in the wee hours. 

My ring finger nails are misshaped. My thumb nails aren’t right either. I’m currently wearing a silver splint on my other thumb because it has become destabilized and very painful. That silver splint is connected to a chain, that is connected to my wrist. Why do I make this spectacular fashion statement, you ask? Because my splint doesn’t always stay on. In the shower, it gets soapy and would go flying if it wasn’t attached. The chain also likes to get hooked on things. Not only can I not always hold things without dropping them, but I get hooked on things and knock them over, onto the floor…

There are many other daily difficulties I struggle through, but I’m used to them, I’m used to the pain. I have to say, no matter how much I struggle, I never give up. I never stop smiling. I have a had a moment here or there where I felt sorry for myself, and I needed a good cry and a hug. But those moments are rare. Usually, I always have hope. Hope this medication will work. Hope this surgery will work. Hope this will be the day I won't need an assistive device. In general, lots of hope. 

I didn’t tell you all of this for any reason other than to educate and advocate. Sorry, it’s not exactly about writing, per se. But it is for me. My writing journey has been with, despite, and because of my health. For more information check out these links:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/psoriatic-arthritis/symptoms-causes/syc-20354076

https://www.arthritis.org 

As always, thanks so much for reading!

There’s something about strangers reading my book and liking it that is magical. It’s a dream as an author to write something and have people like it. The entire time I was writing and editing Force of Corruption, I kept saying, “If just one person likes it, I will be happy. I will consider myself successful.” My husband argued that finishing my book made me successful. To me the goal was for a stranger to read my book and like it. Now that more than one stranger has liked my book, I’m so humbled and surprised. Of course, I had lots of hope someone would like it. My self-doubt didn’t let me believe it would happen. Imposter syndrome doesn’t let me believe it’s real, now that it’s happened either. I seem like much less of a mess in person, than I sound like here.

Have you ever had contact with a reader, a stranger, and been surprised by their insights and understanding of your story? I’m starting to have readers express interest in alpha/beta/ARC reading my next book, Force Majeure. I’m so excited about this. My readers are so smart! They have offered the best suggestions and information about the story. Their thoughts are priceless to me. I absolutely love hearing from them. Even the negative stuff. I know that’s weird, but I think some of the negative comments are spot on. Some reviewers have offered suggestions on how to fix the issue they found. I completely disagree with other comments, but I still enjoy hearing them. Sometimes their dislike of it tells me I did it right. 

I’ve gotten about eight reviews, only three reported any mistakes in the book. Unbeknownst to my ARC readers, I’m having a secret contest for them. There’s a typo that I found. No one has reported it yet. If someone reports it, they’re getting a prize. I will announce it with the 12/31 reviewer give away I’m having for my reviewers. If you haven’t heard yet, I’m having a drawing for the people who posted a review for Force of Corruption. I will draw one name from everyone who posted a review. They will receive a Book Box. It will contain a signed copy of Force of Corruption, a signed copy of Haunted Hunting Camp, some book merch, and a book store gift card.

One of the good things that have happened on this journey are the friends I’ve made. The people I’ve met and shared information or humor with, have been amazing. One of my new friends, author Louise Glass, has a wonderful paranormal romance book, Dream Lover. Here’s my review of it:

Dream Lover by Louise Glass, is a funny, romantic, story about three friends. Think Sex and The City meets Friends meets Stranger Things. (There is a paranormal edge as well.) It has everything you could want in a romance. Plenty of spice, plenty of humor, plenty of romance, plenty mysterious other-worldly events…

Ali finds herself having psychic premonitions. Looking for knowledge, she meets the love of her life, you might say her dream lover. When Lizzie gives up on men, she meets another loser. Or maybe he is not what he seems? Suzanne gave up on love a while ago. Focusing on her career helps her ignore her lack of a love life. Even though she has given up on love, she hasn’t given up men. Thankfully, the worst night of her life puts her back on the path towards love.Ali finds herself having psychic premonitions. Looking for knowledge, she meets the love of her life, you might say her dream lover. When Lizzie gives up on men, she meets another loser. Or maybe he is not what he seems? Suzanne gave up on love a while ago. Focusing on her career helps her ignore her lack of a love life. Even though she has given up on love, she hasn’t given up men. Thankfully, the worst night of her life puts her back on the path towards love.

These women have a wonderful friendship and as their lives twist and turn, they don’t let anything come between them. Even dreaming about a lover, every, single, night, won’t change their minds. When premonitions and ghosts become as much a part of their lives as nutty pets, these women just keep on going.

I laughed out loud more than once. I cried, twice. I smiled with joy multiple times. The paranormal portions of the story are nothing short of fascinating. The author is obviously well versed in paranormal topics, she must have done years of research. Louise Glass describes everything so vividly I felt like I was right there with the characters. The scenery is beautifully portrayed, her knowledge of décor, fashion, and New York City, lends an authenticity to the story. I could picture everything so well; I think it would make a great movie!

I heard the author is hard at work on the next book. I can’t wait to read it!

I’m starting work on my podcast/YouTube recording of me reading stories. I played around with my new headset and it’s really nice. It does a great job of cancelling out background noise. My son recommended them, they are gamer headphones. (Razer is the brand) They are supposed to be great for podcasts. I’m also using Spotify as my podcast platform. It’s very user friendly and in my practice round, I discovered I can add music to the background of my recording. I really need that. Have you heard that old saying, “She has a face for radio?” I definitely have a face for radio, but the voice not so much. I hope it doesn’t torture listeners. My family is not known for having pleasant vocal ability. When we were kids, my brother and I would sing the hymns in church. I remember the people in front of us turning around with looks of shock on their faces when we would belt out the lyrics. My kids used to beg me not to sing in the car. There’ve been many signs that my voice sucks. Hopefully that won’t keep people from listening to me read. I promise not to sing! I will keep you posted on my progress with this project. 

I mentioned above that I’m having a contest for reviewers who find a specific typo. I have about four reported errors in my book. I’ve never read a book that didn’t have at least one error. Even professional authors like Stephen King always have at least one. I wonder if they do it on purpose, to see if anyone finds it. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the errors yet. If I have a chance to fix them, I absolutely will do that. But I’m pretty sure that’s going to involve a new round of formatting. I want to be smart about it if I decide to go ahead with fixing errors and reformatting. If I do that, I think I may also add some reviews to my cover. I’m also considering adding a character to get those extra 5k words to meet the criteria of my accidentally found local publisher. You may remember hearing about Four Horsemen Publishing in a previous blog. 

That is a lot of decisions and a lot of money to redo so many things. I’m enjoying having no real deadlines hanging over my head right now. I am slowly finishing Force Majeure. I am trying to finish before the end of the year, but I’m not holding myself to a hard and fast deadline. I’m not sure if my editor is still available to edit my future books. Her life has gotten very busy. I'll find someone else if not, but it will be difficult. She’s awesome and will be impossible to replace. 

I haven’t had any sales on my website yet. If I do have sales on there, I’m not sure how I will know about it. I think I’ll be notified by email, but I haven’t tested that out. *Note to self! 

I’ve joined a few new websites, I’m always experimenting. I joined StickerMule, it’s a site to design and make stickers to gift and sell. I’ve been using Sticky Brand so far, and I’m pretty happy with the results. They have a special offer almost every week. I think I got 50 stickers for $19 the first round. I just ordered the same design with a hologram effect. I think it’s 100 stickers for $39. I also joined Draft2Digital. I haven’t checked it out fully yet, but it seems to be a site that helps you format and publish your eBook.

I found out about another misstep I made. I’m ordering a paperback copy of Force of Corruption from every store where it’s available. I want to compare the product and the timliness, etc. I will be making a video about that. There is a difference between the distributors. Anyway, I tried to order through Kobo. Turns out they only have ebooks as far as I can tell. I uploaded my book twice, in two different formats I thought. Epub and pdf, I priced them separately and uploaded the descriptions. I truly believed I had uploaded a paperback copy. Apparently not. I had to go back and delete what I thought was the paperback. I don’t know how I did that. I’m going to call it a medication or lack of sleep glitch. 

I got my first review on Bookbub. I didn’t even know it was there. I finally got an email from Bookbub telling me about the review. It’s a really nice 5-star review. My favorite thing about a good review is when I can tell the reader got it. They read my story and understood what I was trying to portray. It’s the best!

As always, thanks for reading!

I did a thing. Not sure if it counts if it was completely on accident. When I sent out my initial ARC notices a bunch of people wanted physical ARCs. I decided to offer ten. I finally got the paperbacks in and had them packed and ready to mail. I realized I had packed up an ARC for the reporter who wants to interview authors for her magazine and podcast. Oops, I quickly gathered my press release, one sheet, and some book club questions, I packed them up with a copy of my book and a personal note. This left me with one more ARC copy all packed up and ready to go and no ARC reader for it.

I made a Facebook post. I said, “I have an extra ARC physical copy, first person to fill out my ARC form and give me their mailing address will get it.” I added a picture of the mailers ready to go and went to bed. My months of posting for ARC readers had netted thirty-seven ARC readers. That’s how many responses I had when I went to bed. When I woke up, I had eighty-freaking-four!

Please, if you fill out an ARC form, follow the directions. When I checked for the first person, I had to go down to the fourth person on the list because the first three didn’t put their address. When I looked at all of the comments and chatter everyone was very excited about the mailers. They are black with shiny red lips like kisses on them. I got them because I wanted something dramatic and romantic to match my romantic suspense novel. I didn’t realize they would be so exciting. Let’s call this marketing lesson number one: an attractive image and a sense of urgency, only one available, equates a frenzy.

Since I only had one physical ARC to give, I felt bad so many people were interested and left hanging. I wanted to figure out a way to keep them interested and not feel left out. I came up with three ideas. 

1. Make my website into an e-commerce site. Then offer a huge discount on my book for everyone who missed the ARC. I had to quickly figure out how to do all of that. My website is hosted by GoDaddy and it’s fairly simple to navigate. They have video and written instructions that are very helpful. I sent an email with a discount coupon code especially for those who didn’t get the one copy. More than 50% off.

2. Have a giveaway for all reviewers. I had to quickly work out how I wanted to do this. I sent an email to everyone who filled out my ARC form overnight to tell them about this. I'm having a drawing for all reviewers on December 31, 2023. They just need to post a review and tag me or send me a screenshot so I know they posted a review; I will enter them automatically. The prize is a Book Box. (Google it they’re pretty cool.)

3. Finally, I wanted to still offer them a free ARC. I sent them the BookFunnel code for my ARC.

When I woke up today, the number of people who signed-up was at ninety-four. That seems like a crazy high number for an ARC. However, I’ve only gotten five reviews out of my original thirty-seven reviewers. It’s more than the average ten percent, but it’s nowhere near enough. Because they all post in different places, there’s only one on Amazon. 

I've sold nine books on IngramSpark so far. That’s two in Germany, one in England, and six in the US. I am officially an international author! Another marketing thing that sounds more important than it is, but I’ll take any help I can get. I think my total royalties for my launch is about fifteen dollars. It’s going to take forever to pay back everything I invested in this adventure. It won’t slow me down. I’m still going to write more books and publish them. It seems most successful (able to support themselves) authors start seeing some steady income around the fourth book they publish.

December 31st is going to be a busy day. In addition to my drawing for a reviewer, I signed up for a Party Room event. I have to make three posts. Two interactive and one with a giveaway. The most difficult part is going to be making sure I get the time right. It’s in a different time zone than mine. I’ve triple checked and it’s only one hour behind me, I think I have it marked on my calendar correctly. Oh, and I can’t forget about it and be a no show.

Fasten your seatbelt, complete switch of topic. I’ve been thinking about some comments I’ve gotten regarding the sex scenes in my book. Some said it’s not spicy enough. Some said there isn’t enough of it. I disagree with the quantity; I think it has quite a bit. This is a young couple, in a new relationship, so they do it a lot. I didn’t write about every intimate moment they had, but it was implied there were off page encounters. Plus, it’s not about that. It’s a Romantic Suspense, emphasis on the suspense. 

With regards to the not spicy enough comment. Here’s where I am with spice level. There is a trend of violence and abuse during sex in romance books. I don’t like that. Not because I’m prude or judging anyone else’s joy, but for very personal reasons. To me, that behavior is not love, it’s not even fun. The ‘hand around her throat' during sex being, for lack of a better word, glorified scares me. Are we possibly raising girls to think abuse is, okay? It’s not just books, it’s music and film too. I am by no means saying don’t write it or don’t read it, just that it’s not for me. 

I also worry, when it’s everywhere being touted as the normal behavior of every person in a loving relationship, that we may be subliminally teaching young women to be victims, and like it. If that’s the case, it scares me. I mean, has anyone checked if the accidental suffocation death rate has increased with this trend? 

With all that said, I will NEVER think my feelings on this need to be forced on anyone else. Any consenting adult is free to love who and how they want IMO. They are most certainly free to enjoy every kink trope they like as much as they want. I don’t DNF if I accidentally come across choking in a book, a good book is a good book. However, I do carefully check trigger warnings for that and r@pe/sexual ass@ult. I will generally put a book with those triggers back on the shelf. I’m sorry if my feelings offended anyone, it wasn’t intentional. I'm just taking my first amendment rights out for a spin. 

What are your thoughts on the rise of this type of tale? Do you think it could be a dark path for some girls? Do you love it and think my opinion sucks? You can contact me through my website or comment your thoughts below.

As always, thank you for reading!

I was thinking about when I started writing, just a few months ago. It only took me about three weeks to write the first draft of Force of Corruption. I simultaneously wrote my short story Haunted Hunting Camp. I used the short story as my experiment to figure out how everything works. After I finished both of those books, I started book two, Force Majeure. I've been working on it for months. I tend to be hard on myself and I keep getting frustrated that I can’t seem to finish it. I know how it ends. I’m slooowly getting there. What’s taking so long?

I think I’m more worried about this story not being as good as the first. It’s an added pressure. It’s definitely much longer. Better? As good as? Who knows? FOC was just under 75k words. FM is sitting at just under 120k today. But it will probably gain another 5k tonight. It may end up twice as long as FOC. When I go back to do my first read, I have a feeling I’m going to find rambling nonsensical paragraphs of crap that nobody could ever understand. See, I’m hard on myself. What I meant to say is I’m certain it’s wonderful and after a good edit, readers will love it. Maybe if I say it enough, I will believe it.

Back when I started writing FM, I created a character that speaks with an accent. I asked in one of my writing help FB groups if anyone thought it would be offensive if I wrote her accent. I started a sh!t storm of differing opinions. The Hispanic responders all thought it would be wonderful if I did that. One woman who was very vocal that it would be horribly offensive to write a Hispanic accent, we now call them “Karens”, said I needed to hire a sensitivity reader. I had never heard of such a thing. Some of the long-time authors laughed at her and said what a crazy concept she was suggesting. Here we are a few months later, and I can’t tell you how many times a day I see Sensitivity Reader mentioned as a usual step in the editing process.

It amazes me how quickly readers and authors assimilate to the next new thing. Even more so, how quickly we as a society accept new terms and concepts. The world-wide connection and all of the internet famous people jumping on the next trending fad must have all the influence over us. Side note, don’t you feel sorry for people named Karen? Unfortunately, the Karen’s I’ve known fit the stereotype perfectly. Except for my friend Karen Peterson, in elementary school. She was great and too young at age eight, to manifest any Karenesque traits.

The character in FM ended up having the accent described and the character mixes a few Spanish words with English. I think it would have been fun for readers to see how I hear the voice in my head, but in the end, I decided it was easier to do it this way. I’ve tried inventing words and spelling out sounds, neither turns out well. Let’s face it, me writing a Spanish accent would’ve involved plenty of new word creation.

 How do you write the noise you make when calling your cat? Trying to invent how the character pronounced the words was too daunting. (I came up with, spspsp, to call the cat.) I tried asking the question how do you write those sounds? on one of my FB groups. I asked if anyone had an onomatopoeia cheat sheet. The usual answers came back: Did you try Google? Onomatpoeia is a sound written, like ‘bang, zap, pow', you can’t just make one up! My eyes rolled so hard! I’m now keeping my own list of the ones I create in hopes to make it easier in the future. Besides, I feel like Stan Lee amassed a fortune making up sound words!!

Another difference since June, I know way more about paper thickness than I ever wanted to know. It’s shocking how much I have learned lurking on author groups and watching YouTube. I now know the basic functions of MSword. This is a necessity if you plan to use it to write, which I recommend. In some of my research, I found out most editors and publishers require a Word Document in New Times Roman font and 12pt. size. A friend told me a pro tip, never try to open an ePub file with Msword. Yes. It’s me, I’m the friend. In my defense I didn’t read the very helpful note at the bottom of the email from my formatting person. It said, “ePub files must be opened on computers that can open ePub files.” I would’ve still tried to open it, further in my defense, who would think a fairly new computer with a bunch of apps wouldn’t be able to open an ePub file? Trust me, they can’t. I had to download Calibre, which I mentioned before. It works like Kindle but it also works as a program to share ePub files. I was able to park my files in the app and upload from there to my distributos. It worked great, thankfully.

ePub files are the files that work best for eReaders. They are versitle and can be read on many styles of eReaders without compromising formatting quality in my experience. When you upload your book most distributors want ePub for your ebooks. PDF or docx. for your printed books, either paperback or hardcover. 

Speaking of hardcover, I’m debating doing a hardcover edition of FOC. I like the idea of a special edition with painted edges. Another trend. People do it themselves or have someone do it. I've seen simple ones that just use one color and a stencil. Then I’ve seen some that would interest Leonardo DaVinci. They can be quite beautiful. Then comes the question of how to display a signed, edged, special edition. Not sure I’ve seen much succes with displays, food for thought.

I discovered IngramSpark has a “Personalize It” option. You can add a page to the front or back of the book, or both and then add a special message and an image. A special edition with a note to thank readers or maybe a thank you to a book club that orders a few copies. It’s a cool idea so I ordered a copy with a message and image to try it out. I was also able to order a copy from Barnes and Noble. I will be comparing quality, color, timeliness, condition, and anything else I can think of between the distributers. I still need to make a successful order on Kobo to have a copy from each seller. I'll update this topic in a future blog.

Found out today that someone in England bought my book. Never thought of myself as an international author. How cool is it to have the opportunity to sell my book worldwide? The first time I tried to write a book, more than twenty years ago, this wouldn’t have been an option. I was faced with going the traditional publishing route. As a devout Panster, I would’ve hated that.

A Pantser is a writer who flies by the seat of their pants. No outlines, no plot, they sit down and start writing. A Planner is exactly what the name says. They are organized, know their whole story beginning to end. Usually, they have piles of notes and outlines. Characters have a whole bio written before they ever hit the page. The truly dedicated have maps of their world, towns, and building floorplans! 

As a Pantser, I literally sit down and write. I have described it as the characters talk through me and I don’t know what they’re going to say until they say it. Strange but true. I didn’t know what would happen when I sat down to write the first time. I sound like I have a mental illness, but I find things I don’t remember writing in my stories all the time, how else do you explain it?

When I worked at the library, we had a large number of patrons who were mentally ill and many of them were homeless. There was one woman who was very ill, though thankfully not homeless. She would have a hospital stay and get better for a while then she would begin to deteriorate, it was a vicious cycle. It was sad when she wasn’t doing well. One of the times she was well groomed and dressed up after a hospital stay, she very casually told me she was a medium. She was somewhat overweight and my first thought was, No way, you’re at least a large. Ugh! Great job brain.

Of course, she meant she was a Medium, as in a spiritual guide. She would randomly tell me things about my life. She was right on the sex of my second child, (she had a fifty-fifty shot). She explained that a spirit will enter her body and tell her things which she would then relay to the person she was reading. I always think of that supposedly psychic woman, when I try to explain how I write. In my case the voices come out through my fingers on a keyboard, often bypassing my thoughts all together. I’m not alone, there’s a whole bunch of us out there. Are you a Pantser, a Planner, or something in between?

As always, thank you for reading!

My debut novel went live Tuesday! I spent most of my day posting online. I posted Reels, Stories, videos, photos, links, basically anything I could think of posting. I got hundreds of likes and messages of congratulations. I got thousands of views on all my visual posts. I spoke to many other seasoned and newbie authors. It was a good day. But, if you have been reading my blogs for a while, you knew there would be a BUT. On my release day, Amazon was “temporarily out of stock” on my paperback. WHAT!?!

I don’t know how it’s possible either. I mean, they print on demand. It’s not like there is a warehouse filled with copies of Force of Corruption waiting to be mailed off. After spending hours posting the link, I switched to Barnes and Noble instead. Until I got fed up and decided to contact Amazon to ask what the deal was with my book. Of course, it’s not so easy to contact Amazon. Have you ever tried it? When I finally connected with a person who claimed to be human, they said I had to contact Kindle Direct Publishing despite the problem being on the Amazon order page. No humans real or otherwise on the KDP page. I had to submit a call request. It was after 8pm and my phone was silent for the night, before I could get the sound turned on, they had called and left a voicemail. No way to call them back, instructions said to just resubmit my request. I couldn’t resubmit because my original request was still active. *Eye Roll here! I gave up, which is what they count on I suppose. 

When I checked the availability of my book again, it was miraculously available. Coincidence? Who knows. Did my call fix it? Who knows. I was happy it was once again available, and I went to bed.

Now for the good parts of my Book Birthday (that’s really what people call it). I received a wonderful review from one of my ARC readers. She also posted it all over her social media which was awesome. It’s surreal to see a stranger touting my book and singing its praises. Another of my reviewers posted on her social media about my release. I haven’t seen her review yet, sometimes it’s difficult to track them down. Amazon has a tendency to squash or delete them, I’ve no clue why that is.

My author friend, Louise Glass, author of Dream Lover, was on top of all of my posts all day and she was the one who first alerted me to the Amazon issue. Louise also scouts my reviews, she’s like Sherlock Holmes getting to the bottom of where they are and what they say. She’s a gem. I met her online, in an author group I think, and we hit it off right away. I try to be in her corner too, but I’m not as steadfast as Louise.

The other rough part of my week was an email from an ARC reviewer. She was very kind and in the nicest way possible said she would give my book a 2.5 stars rating. She said it wasn’t for her and didn’t have enough spice, so she didn’t post a review. When I told my best friend who doesn’t read romance, but read mine because she loves me, she almost passed out. My best friend thinks my book has too much sex, is too graphic, and should be rated X. Again, it’s not her thing. But she was worried about the sanity of my almost reviewer. She questioned how anyone could think my book wasn’t spicy enough. At least I got a chuckle out of her confusion. I will also take my almost reviewer’s comments as the constructive criticism she offered.

In the matter of a day, I have experienced the full gamut of emotions and situations a book release can deliver. I hope most people don’t experience them all in 24 hours. I wouldn’t be me if something strange didn’t happen. Most of the time I can attribute my outcome to some error of mine, I’m unclear if any of this was my fault, beyond being the author.

I had five sales. It doesn’t sound like much to most authors I’m sure, but I don’t think any of them were my friends or family. That means five sales to strangers. Just like my positive review was from a stranger. I’m truly humbled that someone likes my writing. That has been my goal all along, “I’ll be happy if just one person likes my story.” My husband has said repeatedly that it is a huge accomplishment to write a book and publish it for the world to read. It’s true, I spent decades saying I wanted to write a book. Well, I did it. Now what?

First, I have to finish book two in the series. I have the cover; I will probably do a cover reveal very soon. I’m going to put fewer deadlines on myself for this next one. Since I have another book to work on when I finish this one, I am going to take my time. 

I was asked to do a podcast; I don’t think it will be until January. I will let you know when I find out more details. I’ve also been asked to do an interview for a newspaper/newsletter/online publication. That will probably be in the next few weeks. I’m excited about both, they will be new experiences for me.

I tried out BookSirens. It’s a very interesting platform. I uploaded my book and paid $10. For every person they find to download it I pay $2. I capped it at 50 downloads, so a maximum of $100. Those readers are ARC readers, and they will post reviews. BookSirens has measures in place to guarantee they post reviews, and they vet their reviewers well. I will let you know how that goes and if I pay the full $100 and get 50 reviews as a result.

I’m sending out actual paperback copies to some of my ARC reviewers. Again, I capped it at 10. The books aren’t particularly expensive to print, around $4. But shipping can be costly. I should have the elusive copies in a couple days. There is a big debate on the ARC sites, long time authors are confused by this new trend of ARC readers asking for physical copies. New authors are wondering how they can afford to send any physical copies to ARC readers. I chose to do it because I like the idea of unboxing and my book being on videos all over social media. ARC groups are trying to educate reviewers about the cost and that it’s unreasonable to ask for the author to shoulder that expense. Some people are spitting mad about it. I am reserving judgement until I see how much this costs me and if it results in the hoped-for social media posts.

I am keeping careful tabs of all my book expenses, and I will see how much this adventure really costs at the end of the year. I will probably need to sell an awful lot of books to pay for it. Whether it covers the expenses or not, writing a book has been one of the best things I’ve ever done. I encourage anyone debating it to jump in, you won’t know until you try. I think it was Michael Jordan who said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take..”

Lastly, I’m going to be trying another new creative thing online. I’m going to be reading books on video. Not sure who will want to watch that, but several people have assured me it’s a thing. I loved working as a children’s librarian and reading to the kids for story time. This will be a grown-up version of that. I plan to start with my horror short story, Haunted Hunting Camp. Some of it has fairly graphic violence, hopefully I won’t get banned. If I do, that will make three platforms I’ve earned sanctions on. I don’t think you can be a social media creator without getting banned or frozen somewhere. The first amendment does not apply to social media.

Here's a few links for you to find me online and buy my book. A shameless self-promo!

https://linktr.ee/enchantingauthor?utm_source=linktree_admin_share

https://a.co/d/fZKAVr8

As always, thank you for reading☺

Things are getting very exciting. The release is just two days away. I have sent out ARC copies to 35 readers. Last I checked, 21 of them have downloaded the ARC. I've uploaded Force of Corruption to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IngramSpark, and Kobo. I also entered it in an indie-author award competition. 

Before I go on, I need a fan-girl moment. One of my favorite authors is C.M. Stunich. She is the author of F*ckboy Psychos and Havoc Boys Series, along with many others. I love her writing and I recommend her books every chance I get. Here’s the best part—SHE FOLLOWED ME ON TIKTOK! I freaked out and accidentally hit the ‘nudge’ option, which sent her a wave or something. SHE WROTE TO ME! She said, “Hey there.” Then I gushed about how much I love her work and she thanked me. It’s so cool, I’ve been floating on happy clouds for three days. 

Back to our regularly scheduled program blog. I've gotten several comments from my ARC readers about how excited they are to read my book. It’s very encouraging to hear such kind interest in something I wrote. A few of them have shared my cover or reels on their social media. I recommended my book on a reading group to someone who expressed an interest in finding more romantic suspense titles to read. Another group member then commented they bought my book. It’s my first sale to a complete stranger. I didn’t even post a blurb, link, or anything, just the cover. She had to go search on Amazon to buy it. That was a profound moment for me, someone saw my book and decided to take a chance on it.

This brings me to the anxiety I'm having that all of these people are now counting on my writing to entertain them. What if I don’t deliver? My husband keeps reminding me that I wrote it for me. I accomplished my goal. If nobody likes it, who cares. Unfortunately, I care. I don’t want to let anyone down. If they invest their money and time to read what I wrote, I want them to love it. Nobody tells you how hard it is to wait for feedback on your work. It's a cross between waiting for a bar to appear in the window of a pregnancy test and waiting to see where Santa left all of your Christmas presents under the tree at age 5.

Getting everything uploaded to all of my chosen platforms was also more challenging than I imagined. Did you know you can’t open an ePub file on a computer that doesn’t have a special program to do so? When I got the ePub file from my formatting person I tried to load it on my computer for safe keeping and distribution. What I got was a jumbled bunch of nonsense and maybe hieroglyphics. If I couldn’t open and save it, I couldn’t upload it either. I had to scramble and figure out how to make it happen. I ended up purchasing Scrivner. It’s a highly recommended writing program that does formatting and organizes your writing. It was less than $100, but I didn’t actually need it. I will probably use it to try formatting in the future, but mostly it was an unnecessary purchase. I found an app called Calibre. For less than $5, it reads ePub files and most importantly, lets me upload them. I was finally successful in getting both the ePub and PDF files and cover files uploaded to all of my distribution providers. 

Amazon works through Kindle Direct Publishing. It was the first platform I ever tried. My short story, Haunted Hunting Camp, was my experimental publication. I figured out how to get it uploaded. My first several attempts were abysmal. I had to figure out some rudimentary formatting so the chapters started where they were supposed to. It’s in pretty good shape now, for someone as clueless as me. 

There are three Barnes and Noble book sites. It’s pretty confusing. The first challenge to sell there is to figure out how to find the right website. It’s Barnes and Noble Press. The program is very picky and if your book isn’t up to snuff it rejects your upload. Initially my cover was the wrong size because I told my designer the wrong page count (I explained this in my last blog). She was able to quickly fix it and I got everything uploaded. B&N takes a couple weeks to approve it once you get it uploaded.

Next, I worked on IngramSpark. It kept saying ‘incomplete’. I tried over and over again to complete my upload and registration of my book in their system. Something just wasn't right. Turns out I had uploaded it to the wrong place. I had to delete everything and start fresh. I had to choose a different path to get it correct. Finally got that one done and they are reviewing it for errors, etc. It should be live in time for my release. IngramSpark is a print on demand distributor for authors and the place where book stores and many libraries purchase books. My local independent book shops will not sell my book unless it is listed there.

Last of all, I uploaded it to Kobo. It’s the book shop for Rakuten. They are a worldwide distribution shop. My book is more likely to be purchased in places like India and Japan through Kobo. I will be thrilled if anyone in another country buys my book! 

I’m going to look into Target and Wal-Mart as well. I imagine it’s a similar process to all the others. Just lots of Googling to figure it out. By putting my book in multiple distribution channels I’m hoping to reach more readers. 

I'll be needing to update my website this week with all of the links to purchase. I also have it showing my upcoming release, need to change it to show it’s here now. I’m trying to work on the second book in the series, Force Majeure. It’s been difficult to focus on writing while waiting for reviews. I've compared it to sending my baby off to preschool for the first time. But I only had to wait four hours to see how that worked out.

Many of my ARC readers planned to read it over this Thanksgiving weekend while they were stuck in a plane, train, or automobile. I’m hopeful reviews will start coming in after the weekend is over. I haven’t read it again since the formatting was completed. I have an opportunity to be interviewed on a podcast and I was looking for a few quotes from the book to answer questions the interviewer has for me. While reading a few paragraphs, I FOUND A MISTAKE! It’s just a pesky little quotation mark facing the wrong way. I want to jump in and fix it because it will drive me crazy, I hate typos. Remember all the issues I had with the ePub file? I can’t just open the formatted file and fix stuff. I might have to get the formatting person to do it. I don’t want to fix that one thing then find more. So, another thing I need to be patient about. I need to get all of the ARC feedback. I need to do my own proofread. I need ALL of the errors to be fixed at once. I am interested to see how many ARC readers point out the mistake. I’m looking at it as a test for how well they find mistakes and tell me about them. I just hope there aren’t a bunch more. 

I think someone needs to tell writers about the trials and tribulations of becoming an independent author. You have to have thick skin to deal with constructive criticism, and NONconstructive criticism. You must have the patience of Paige Patterson, my female main character, she’s a sniper with nerves of steel. You have to be willing to figure out how to do everything by yourself. You must have at least a few bucks to hire a professional for some parts, like editing and cover design. Yes, you can design your own cover, but it’s not recommended. Authors also have to be marketing and social media experts, which we aren’t. Many are extreme introverts, thus the writing instead of talking.

I am definitely learning some social media savvy. I have crossed into four-digit followers on Instagram, yep, 1,004 followers! Whoohoo! I have thousands of views and likes on TikTok. It takes posting every few days. I’m not great at making videos but I have improved, hopefully I will continue to learn.

Next time you hear from me will be after my book launch. Wish me luck!

Thank you so much for reading.

I’m feeling so excited and nervous. My ARC is going out tomorrow. I've got it loaded up on BookFunnel.com 

BookFunnel, Booksprout, and others, are online book delivery systems for eBooks. On BookSprout you pay a fee for having an ARC campaign, I think $10. Then every time someone downloads your book, from a link BookSprout advertised they charge you $2. Your own links for downloads, like for ARCs are free. On BookFunnel you choose a plan that will work for your needs. They have free or almost free up to “call us for an estimate” for big publishers. You can pay monthly or annually. I chose a plan on the lower side cost wise. It allows me 500 codes. You can upload your book and get a link to share to distribute your book. Or you can get a bunch or “batch” of individual codes that are each good for one download. With a batch of codes, you can print them onto mailing labels and then stick those onto your business cards. This is a great way to hand out free copies of your book if the need should arise. Or if you want to do some kind of promo. You can limit the amount of time allowed for each code before it expires and the number of codes available.

I’m using a single code I will give to everyone who signed up for an ARC copy of Force of Corruption. They will click on the link; it will take them right to my book on Bookfunnel. They will need to enter their email address and that will help them get the free copy of the book. The email address collection BookFunnel does is for the author. BookFunnel doesn’t keep or sell them. It was all pretty user friendly. I’m tech challenged and I got the hang of it pretty quickly. They have “landing pages” so when a person types in a code that goes to your book, they will arrive on your landing page. You have to fill out some information to make the landing page nice. I put my blurb and brief trigger warnings on there. Along with information I would want an ARC reader to know and my contact information on social media and my website.

A quick word on websites. They are important. They help with legitimacy and earn your reader’s trust. It gives them a snapshot of you and your work, it helps readers find your books. I’ve used GoDaddy for years. It’s super easy for me, (tech challenged remember), and I think they have great services. I clicked on a few things on the template to set up different pages on the site. I also have buttons that go right to my book listing on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Another button is for subscribers, I get to collect their email address and they will get access to updates, news, future releases, discounts and giveaways. Win-win is always the way to go, give them something for collecting their email. It makes it worth it for your subscribers.

Tomorrow I will send out an email with information about how they retrieve their book. I will send one email to each of the thirty people who signed up so far to read my ARC. I will have written instructions on this same email. It explains that I want constructive criticism and how important reviews are for the online health of my book. I also give specific instructions like “No Spoilers Please, in your review.” I ask for each reader to contact me with a page number if they find any mistakes.

I will be sending a follow-up email in a couple weeks. There will be a link to a Google Form containing an Exit Interview. I will ask questions about what they thought of my story. Additionally, which character was their favorite and who did they hate. I will also be asking them to join my future ARC teams, or if they are interested in beta reading future stories. I think I’m going to send them a cover reveal for my next story in this series as a reward for answering the exit questions. 

I had some inquiries for paperback copies for them to ARC read. I decided to agree to send out a maximum of ten paperback copies to readers. I get why they want them, it’s a much more exciting social media video to unbox an actual physical book. They can film and judge the cover and many people enjoy highlighting and tabbing their favorite parts of the story. I have about five spoken for so far. It’s not cheap to mail out physical copies so I’m not able to do more than ten. One person lives in a country in Africa and really wants a physical copy. I told her I would see how much it will cost and if it’s not unreasonable, I will send her one.

Another thing that has been happening is that I get a lot of DMs from strangers wanting to sell me their services. Apparently, paid reviews are a thing. They guarantee they will review your book and put it on all of their social media. Some of these book bloggers have huge followings. Several of the groups I belong to on FB do not allow any paid reviews, saying it’s unethical. I understand paying for a ‘positive' review would be unethical, but I don’t think paying for an honest review that will put your book in front of potentially tens of thousands of readers is a bad thing. I am trying one paid book blogger to see how it goes. I’m looking at it just like if I paid for advertising on Facebook or Amazon. She has like seventy-thousand followers, charges very little, and won’t agree to anything but giving her honest opinion. I only want honesty, from all reviewers. Again, she wants a paperback copy, it will be a while until those are ready to go out. I have also become quite popular with Nigerian marketing experts who LOVE my most beautiful writing, in the book that they haven’t read, because it’s not out yet…

You won’t believe this, yep, I made another mistake! Shocking, I know. I told my cover designer that when the proofreader finished, they did some preliminary formatting. It was still going to be a few days before the actual formatting was done. I couldn’t imagine the page count would be different from there so I gave her the final page count. I did mention it hadn’t been formatted yet, but I totally gave her that count with confidence. If you remember, I adjusted my price because it was only 157 pages. My amazing and fast cover designer sent me the the final print cover for the paperback with a spine for 157 pages. After formatting with the expert, Force of Corruption is 238 pages. When I tried to upload the cover for KDP and Barnes and Noble, they spit it back at me as the wrong size. The image doesn’t line up correctly because there are too many pages for the current design. I am rolling my eyes at myself. My designer is fixing it tomorrow. She’s the best!

I continue to crunch away at my second book in the series. I’m working on the final scene now. It’s starting on Halloween; the characters are getting ready for a party. I have been trying to keep up with posting online to all of the social media platforms I use. It’s so much more work than I expected, I need an assistant. Unfortunately, my current budget won’t allow for one but hopefully that will happen in the future. I think social media is the hardest part of being an author. I have to make lots of posts and videos. Hello, tech challenged here. I can’t imagine any of my posts are very interesting, but someone must enjoy them. I’m almost at 1,000 Instagram followers. 400+ on Facebook and still flirting with 100 on TikTok. I’m sloooowly building a following. Thankfully some of those followers enthusiastically signed up for my ARC copies. If I can find a few to buy my book, it would be astounding.

I think you are caught up with my latest stumbles. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been locked in a dark room filled with small boulders and I have to navigate with my hands tied behind my back. I trip and fall a lot. But I don’t know how to give up, so me and my bruised shins, toes, and ego will keep moving forward on this journey. I will be sure to update you on how my ARC distribution goes, keep your fingers crossed!

Have a joyful week and a Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you so much for reading!

My debut novel has finished with the proofreader, and has been delivered to the formatting person. Many people format their books themselves, my experience with formatting has been a lot of frustration, I decided to save myself the headache and hire someone to take care of it.

I've had another mistep, or maybe a few. I was checking on the Barnes and Noble website to see what price I had there. I have changed the pricing multiple times. I have a bit of imposter syndrome and doubt my book is worthy of a very high price. I also found out after proofreading; my book is about 157 pages. That isn’t particularly long. My book is 74,700+ words. I thought it would be more than 157 pages. The proofreader did some formatting, shrinking it from the double-spaced over 500 pages it was before. Anyway, once I found out how many pages there are, I figured it wasn’t worth as much as when I thought it was more pages. So, I went and lowered the price in Amazon and Barnes and Noble. 

When I was on the Barnes and Noble site, I realized something else I didn’t know before. They need the book file uploaded by November 13th for the book to go live on the 28th. Amazon only needs five days to check it over so it can go live. I had planned to have it ready to be uploaded by the 20th on every site. Because of the length of time needed by B & N, I had to push back my release date to the following week. That puts me into December on B & N. My date will remain the 28th on Amazon, so my release date won’t change even though B & N will lag behind. I don’t know how I missed that when I entered the book there in the first place. I’m just rolling with it, what else can I do?

Another thing that occurred was the proofreader thought my manuscript needs more editing. The proofreader wanted to provide that service for an extra fee. I wasn’t inclined to hire further editing and had to say no. This made for an awkward situation. My editor is very laid back and we get along great. She even told me how surprised she has been at how well I take her constructive criticism. She delivers it with kindness and patience. We have been able to discuss any rough spots and reasons why I wrote something a certain way vs why it should be changed. Sometimes I wholeheartedly agreed with her, other times, I argued my case and we compromised. It’s been a great experience. I think my manuscript has been greatly improved from her edits and suggestions. The proofreader gave me a small sample of suggested edits. I’m not saying it couldn’t use more edits, honestly, it probably could. Unfortunately, the delivery of those suggestions was forceful and I don’t know this person I found on the internet. It was difficult to trust they had my best interest at heart. They probably do, and maybe this will be another mistake on my part. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

One of the big reasons was that my husband predicted that this person was going to complain about my manuscript needing more edits and offer to do it for a fee. A fee that is outside my budget for this project. My husband is very skeptical of everyone and has an innate ability to read people. I am naïve and always want to believe the best of everyone. As a result, I have a long track record of being taken advantage of, he tries to watch out for me. He wanted me to believe in myself and my editor, and go ahead as is. I really couldn’t argue his point, I didn’t disagree with him. 

As a result of my not agreeing to the extra edits this person took their name off of my credits. They don’t want their name associated with my book as it stands. Which is fine of course, I have no issue with that. They didn’t edit it and they don’t want their name on it and people assuming they did, even though I specifically credited them as the proofreader. It just made it awkward, for me. They were somewhat abrupt with their messages. But you can’t assume emotion in a message without knowing their actual intent behind those words, I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. They did their job, and did it extremely well. I’m very happy with the proofreading they did and I think it was money well spent. They did say with additional editing my story has potential. I will take that at face value and move on. 

I’m now waiting for the formatting to be completed. I hoped the formatting person would be able to complete it early (because of the B & N situation), unfortunately their schedule did not allow for that. Completely my fault, not theirs at all. I’m sitting on pins and needles as the release gets closer and closer. Time is flying by and it’s getting real, really quick. Only a very few people have read it so far and I’m very nervous about how people will like it. I have twenty some ARC readers signed up and I’m hoping for double that. I've read that only twenty percent of ARC readers actually submit their review. I hope that’s not the case. It seems like the sites and groups for ARC readers are doing their best to educate the reviewers about how necessary their reviews are, some going as far as removing readers who don’t post a review, from their group.

If they like it, that will be a huge boost to the book and more people will be likely to find it and read it. I have no intent or expectation of making a living from my writing, it would be amazing to contribute to my family, but I will be thrilled if someone reads it and enjoys it. That is my goal, I want someone to be entertained and feel transported into the world I created. I think deep down, that’s what most writers really want. 

To that point, I mentioned in the PS of my last blog that my short story, Fire and Brimstone, got an honorable mention from the contest I wrote it for. I am so happy they liked it. This was a contest of a maximum of five-hundred entries and only one hundred got any award. So, I think that means I got an 80% on my work. I'll take it. Any acknowledgment is great. I plan to copyright and publish it now that it’s free. When you enter a contest, they want to have the freedom to publish the story if you win. You are required to not copyright or publish it elsewhere when you enter, until the contest is complete.

One last topic, one sheets. I didn’t know what that was either. It’s a one-page information sheet about you and your work. If you Google it, you’ll find great examples and instructions on what to include. Basically, it should contain a photo of the author and a short bio. This bio should include your contact information, email, website, cell number. A photo of the book cover and a summary. The summary should have a “hook” statement as the first line. Something to make someone want to read book. Then it should have technical information about your book. Where can they buy it? Most book stores require Ingram Spark with your own ISBN be on this list for them to purchase it. Include the ISBN for each format (Ebook, paperback, etc.), price, number of pages/words. They also would like the BISAC code. This is a unique code that describes the genre of the book. Book stores and more likely libraries, may search for books using this identifier. They may have budget restrictions based on these genre codes. Lastly, a couple of reviews or any awards the book has received. Don’t forget to update the information if you get new reviews or any awards. When you visit a bookstore to talk about placing your book on their shelves, bring this sheet and a copy of your book to leave with them!

As always, thanks so much for reading about my journey. When I started this blog, my intent was to share valuable information as I learn it. I had no idea how many mistakes I would be making and that I would become a cautionary tale. This is your warning not to make my mistakes!

After the hard lesson learned with the Blog #6 fiasco, I’m writing all of my blogs in Word, with auto save fully engaged. A hard lesson to learn, I’m totally past it now. Mostly. Okay, I may be a little bitter and frustrated with myself. I have a lot of user errors as I explore this new adventure. I am learning from my mistakes, so take that as you will.

The blog I lost talked about ISBNs. I won’t go into the depth I did before, but I will tell you the important bits. Buy your own ISBNs. Bowker is the site to purchase them from. You can buy one or a set of ten or more. It’s extremely cost effective to buy bulk, I did the math. You need an ISBN for each format of your book. Paperback, ebook, and hardcover. Amazon will give you a free ISBN when you publish through KDP. Great, right? Nope, nobody else will accept their ISBN. If you want your book on bookstore shelves or in a library, you must have your own ISBN. I didn’t know this; the learning curve has been all uphill. I put my debit novel on KDP pre-order. I got the free ISBN. Now my debut novel is on Amazon with a different ISBN than it will have every place else. Another lesson learned.

Now, since purchasing my own ISBN, I have been able to put my novel on Barnes and Noble for pre-order. I have to say it’s pretty cool seeing my book on a real bookstore site. Eventually I will have it on their shelves. I have touched base with two indie bookstores in my area and have a plan to meet a few more. I will offer free materials (bookmarks, coffee cups, stickers, etc.) to accompany my book if they will sell it. I will also be available for a book signing or any other event they request. I’m also willing to sell the paperback on consignment with indie bookstores.

One of my local bookstores is a huge advocate for indie authors. She has a monthly indie author book club, a mainstream author monthly book club, and a bring your own book club. One of her meetings happens to be on my book release day. I plan to ask her if I may bring refreshments for that evening, to celebrate. I'll let you know how it goes. I love that she supports indie and local authors. I want to support them too. I have learned in my life that similar businesses to yours aren’t really your competition. If you reach out and help each other, your industry can improve and everyone can be successful. You don’t have to cut other people’s throats to get ahead. 

I also believe in supporting my community and local charities. I worked for a few years with kids in foster care and I will support organizations that support them until I die. Maybe even after that! This particular indie bookstore supports local literacy charities. I plan to ask her if she would be willing to support foster kids with donations or books. She has an annual sidewalk sale to benefit that year's chosen charity.

The update on my writing progress is a little messy, and maybe great. We'll find out soon. I have submitted my debut novel, Force of Corruption, to a proofreader after completing the edits. I had a bit of a rough transition, a bunch of completed edits disappeared. Are you seeing a theme? Yes! It was again my fault. Auto save was on, but I didn’t understand how to use “track changes” and I apparently deleted some of my updates. I searched and found the word “but” appeared 378 times in my novel. That includes its appearance in words like “button”. I spent about three hours removing it and re-wording to improve the prose. Then I hit the wrong thing and those edits vanished along with all of my chapter 14 edits. Thankfully, it wasn’t worse. I’m learning how to use Word correctly. YouTube videos are free training!

My second book in the series, Force Majeure, is at 108,000+ words. I’m focused on the end, I can see it on the horizon, finally. It has a beautiful cover designed already. When it’s finished, I’m going to take my time editing and work hard before I give myself deadlines to be ready to publish and release it.

My third book, VioleNt, will be after that. It’s at about 20k words. I put it aside to focus on the series. It’s a standalone horror, whereas my series is romantic suspense. I already have an outline forming for book three in the series. There will be more in the series, each one will focus on an individual couple. Therefore, they can be read as standalone books as well. No cliffhangers.

I'm gaining a little traction on social media. I have 370+ followers on FB, 830+ on Instagram, around 85 on TikTok. I’m also on LinkedIn and Pinterest. It’s more than I’ve ever had before. I always tried to be a private recluse on social media in the past. It’s strange actually posting every day and engaging with strangers. I like it more than I expected. I’ve made some friends. One particular author has been a total sweetheart. I can’t wait to read her books. The first one is Dream Lover; her name is Louise Glass. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet or read anything, because I’m focused on getting my book out there on time. As soon as it’s live I’m going to binge her book!

Hopefully I won't trip and fall on my face trying to launch 11/28. I've been begging for ARC readers every chance I get. I have almost twenty signed up so far. I want fifty. Everyone says less than half will actually post a review. Maybe my efforts will pay off and I'll get enough to make a dent in the review game. Apparently, the algorithm needs a lot of reviews and they have to be over 3 stars in the first couple weeks to avoid tanking the book on Amazon. I will let you know how that all works out.

That’s about it for now. Thanks for reading! Support an indie author, buy a book and post a review. Or borrow a book and post a review. Read on KU and post a review. You see where this is going right?

I wrote a long blog post and when I uploaded an image, I accidentally touched something and it disappeared.

Another lesson learned. Write blog posts in Word with autosave!

There's my Friday the 13th luck. Maybe I'll rewrite it and maybe I won't. Shoot! It had some good tips in it too. My bad luck had to hit somehow.

Thanks for visiting even though there's not really anything to read.

This past week or two has been a huge learning curve for me. I learned about Critique Circle; it's a group of authors and you have to read stories and critique them to earn tokens. When you have enough tokens, you can use them to post your story for critique. I read and critiqued a few stories. They were a mix of good, bad, and OMG! It was interesting doing this. The author rates your critique with stars and comments. I put up Haunted Hunting Camp first. But there's a 3500-word cut off. So, it was just a third of the story. It’s a worldwide site. I got a few reviews that didn't really grasp the fact that the story has more parts. But overall, I got pretty good feedback.

I posted approximately 3200 words of Force of Corruption and the reviews have been weird. One guy said he wouldn't review it because of all the punctuation errors and because I said I'm a published author. It's already been edited by my editor, Word, and Writing Pro. So, I inquired further with him and explained it's in editing and I'm only published because I published my short story as mostly an experiment to try out how the publishing works and marketing and all the stuff in between. Then he wrote back and said he didn't want to counter what my editor had to say so he declined again to comment. He said he is an editor. My husband thinks he was trying to get me to hire him and when I said I had an editor he dumped me. It was weird. He has never posted a story, but has 17 critiques under his name. My husband is likely correct.

I've been playing around with Canva some more, making reels and videos for Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok. It's been a lot to learn and I'm mostly still fumbling around clueless. But I have posted a few videos and reels so- go me! My FB has over 350 followers, Insta has about 450, and Tiktok is around 70. I joined Tiktok most recently, so that's why it's less. My husband says this is a fast growth of followers. It feels slow. I don't really know what my goal for followers is, which is something I should know. There's so much social media stuff to know and learn. Every time I feel like I'm gaining ground, something happens and I find out I need to add something else. I added LinkedIn and Pinterest. Apparently, I need both to help spread the word. The SEO likes when you have lots of socials. SEO is Search Engine Optimization. You need this to drive traffic to your stuff. People keep messaging me saying they will handle that for me, for a fee. *Eye roll*

Speaking of people messaging me, I had a totally random coincidence laden odd experience. I was contacted by an artist to see if I want them to make me a cover or something else for my books. I looked at their work, it was fantastic. There was a folder of covers in the portfolio. I noticed several of the covers had a designer name on the them. This was not who contacted me. I'm always up for a good mystery so I dug a little deeper. I found the book, with the cover, it had a publisher and cover designer listed inside the cover. There was a website so I emailed the cover design company and asked about this person and their art.

Turns out, this is the second name this person has used to steal the real artist's work and try to sell it to unsuspecting authors. The actual artist was extremely appreciative and he said there was art in the portfolio from another company too. He previously filed a report against this thief and he was going to alert the other victim. Thankfully I didn't give anyone any money. But you can't trust strangers on the internet, especially if they approach you. He wanted $300.

The interesting part of this story is that the book I looked into, that listed the publisher? It is a publisher that's in my tiny little town nobody has ever heard about. Literally, its a mile and quarter from my house. How crazy is that? At first I thought they only published fantasy. Turns out they do publish my genre. Force of Corruption doesn't meet their 80k word count minimum, it's 72k. But they are wonderful. They have a newsletter and blog filled with excellent tips for indie authors, well, any author really. If I wanted to use a traditional publisher, it would only be them. If I wanted to add 8k words to my book, that is. Maybe I will do that at some point. But it's not going to happen today.

I also found some interesting sites that you can pay to advertise. They have hundreds of thousands of readers who get free books from them and they just need to post a review. Authors can pay to place their books in front of one of those groups of readers, or more, for a fee. Some of them seem pretty legit, others seem like they're just trying to cash in on anything they can get, who knows if they follow through. The one I've heard about in reading groups on Facebook is called Netgalley.com they are legit. They definitely deliver books to readers and advertise them to the readers. I'm debating trying one round at the time of my release. Their cheapest product is like $50. They have some that go up to $900+ for publishers with multiple titles to post.

I'm on Chapter 8 in my edit of Force of Corruption. I'm on Chapter 18 in my WIP, the second book in the series. I'm over 70k words and still have quite a ways to go. I think there's going to be a blood bath when my editor takes a chainsaw to it. I've no clue where it will end up. I'm looking forward to working on VioleNt when I'm done with Force Majeure, book two in the Forces of Nature Series. VioleNt is a standalone as far as I know. But I thought it was a short story originally. I had to concede when I passed 200 pages. I have some new ideas too, so I see a lot of typing in my future. Hopefully when I'm that far down this road I'll have figured out the street signs and how to read the map!

The cover is here for FOC and it's available for pre-order on Amazon. It’s so close with the release party on October 29th. Please keep your fingers crossed that I can get everything done in time. ARC applications are also posted. You can sign up on my website.

I hope I'm helping someone who is jumping into this raging river of swirling requirements. I need that room from HP (the room of requirement), and an assistant, and a social media specialist, and a nap!

Thanks so much for reading! NAMASTE

I’m driving myself crazy over the blurb for my novel, Force of Corruption. My editor and I have written and trashed about three each. I might have trashed a few more. It’s very difficult to summarize a book you wrote. When that summary needs to be under 200 words, it’s exponentially more complicated. My editor just combined two that we had and now I think it might be the one. I have to step away from it for a little bit.

This week has been a merry-go-round as opposed to a rollercoaster. Spinning in circles while gently cresting waves. I may have figured out how to get my book to Barnes and Noble. However, it hasn’t gone through yet so as I shrug and I cross my fingers. I did some interesting things on some of my Facebook groups. Lastly, I have approved the cover for Force of Corruption, my debut novel.

I’m on a few different writer groups on Facebook. One of them is an ARC group. Advanced Reader Copy. I’ve been lurking there for several weeks, but I haven’t been brave enough to ask for ARC readers. A lovely woman posted that if any authors were willing to send her a hard copy of their book, she will read and post reviews. She will also post on her socials. I made the leap and offered her my shorty story Haunted Hunting Camp. She sent me her address and I will mail it out tomorrow. When I posted not only did, she reply, but a few other readers jumped in and offered to read and review it. I will mail them out tomorrow as well.

I did another thing on a Facebook group. This one is for writers to help other writers. The hosts believe in supporting other indie authors. They offer a week of focused free publicity on all their sites for a week if you have a new or debut book coming out. Then they give you a day where you are the monitor/host of the group. They call it an author takeover. I will able to post as much as I want and talk to everyone who wants to chat. I will have quite a bit of publicity with little effort on my part and no cost. A deal even I couldn’t pass up.

The other thing that happened is…My Cover is DONE! The third mockup was the charm. It’s better than my initial vision. I’m really excited about the cover. It makes it more real somehow. Which is crazy. Because I’m online with a lot of authors I see their tales about how they wrote their book or how long it took. I’ve seen 20 years or more a few times. I’ve wanted to write a book since I was a kid. The summer before 6th grade, the movie Grease came out. When school started, I asked our music teacher if we could perform it. She said no, the language and situations are too grown up. I made my mom buy me a “Grease” book. It was pictures from the movie and all of the lines. I sat at a TYPEWRITER for an entire weekend and rewrote all the words and scenes that wouldn’t be acceptable. On Monday I brought my “Grease Lite” script to my music teacher. She still said no, but I got extra credit for writing a script.

My point is that was more than 20 years ago. But I don’t think of my writing this book as starting back then. I started writing this book in the second half of June, 2023. I was done with the first draft in a couple weeks. For me, my novel writing began this year. I never finished a novel before. I truly thought I wasn’t capable. But I have to say, typing “the end”, that was pretty great. This journey is real. I’ve written a book. If I can do it, anyone can. It doesn’t matter if it takes decades or if you’ve never typed “the end” before, you can. Take one step and think about a plot.

I continue to interact with other writers in my Facebook g pups and I try to post a video or photo or a meme at least once a day. I post on Facebook but they keep putting me in jail so I have no clue if my posts are working or posting. My friends and followers are growing in leaps and bounds. I’m getting a few followers on Instagram and TikTok too. None of my connections have led to sales, but hopefully the reviews from the ARCs will help with that.

As someone who came into this against any marketing at all, I think I’m finding a tolerable balance. Mostly I just be me and talk to strangers. That’s something I can do.

One last piece of news: My daughter passed the state bar exam!!

She’s officially a lawyer.

Thanks so much for reading! Have a wonderful week!