Here is the announcement. I will be giving away three paperback copies of Moonlit Valley to the lucky winners. Last day will be on Saturday March 9. On Monday March 11, I will announce the three winners. All you have to do is like my Facebook page, located at the right of the screen, and automatically you will be entered for a chance to win a copy. Feel free to share a review, if you’d like. Each copy will come with a Moonlit Valley bookmarker, and signed 🙂 Good luck! Cheers!
MOONLIT VALLEY
The purpose of this post is to highlight the importance of consulting your earlier outlines or notes when writing a second novel that refers to characters of a previous novel.
When I wrote The Dinorah Chronicles – Ramblings of the Spirit, I did not consult my earlier notes for Moonlit Valley, for most of it. While reviewing Ramblings of the Spirit, I noticed that I had misspelled the name of one of the creatures, and have done it through the entire novel. I wasn’t sure, so I consulted my notes from the first book. This was more than a typo. I was right, I had switched a k for a j, calling the supernatural entity a Murksling instead of a Murkslink, and in a deeper level, altering the character’s essence/meaning (murk-slink). Although it wouldn’t probably affect or alter the story, readers notice these things, and many of them know their critters and supernatural beings by heart, if they are reading your books. Not realizing that mistake on time to make the correction, would have been misinterpreted as carelessness or lack of respect towards the world that a writer has created. In a way, it is a letdown to the reader. This is why it is so important to keep earlier notes and outlines at hand, when out of the ordinary beings are created and named. It is helpful as well, to keep track of important details if you are writing a series.
I keep all my notes and very short outlines in the computer, so it is easy to refer to them, as necessary. However, I was relying on my memory and trusting that I would remember every detail. Not the case. If you don’t like to keep your notes in the PC, a small box of index cards for each novel, divided by chapter, is a good idea. In each chapter card, include meaningful information such as dates, ages, descriptions, places, and names of characters, and any other pertinent details for future series. In addition, you may buy software that can help you organize your novel files. I like to keep it simple because I don’t want to create a project out of an outline of a novel.
So this is my bit of wisdom for today – keep your critters, demons, and supernatural beings at hand, so you don’t end up dissapointing your readers.
I have thought about ways to spread the cheer about Moonlit Valley, my first novel (you may visit the Novels tab on this blog for more information on the book). I thought about Moo mini cards, and found this to be a great idea. Today, I ordered a few. They are very affordable. It is an awesome way to promote your business as well as your books. For me, I ended up doing a combo business and book promo mini card.
Moo mini cards are half the size of a traditional business card, and you can print on both sides or download your images. In my case, I downloaded images of my business logo and images of my book. The best about it is that you can have up to 100 different images in the back of the card (in one order). The front will be your business or book info, and you can choose for the back one or as many images you want, up to 100. If you have many novels, you can use part of the cover to place in the back of the card. Each time you hand out a card, a different image (or message if you choose) will be on the back. You can also do all of them with one image only, if you desire. I love the opportunity to be able to do many things with these mini cards. You can also create text cards, and for example, use lines from your book. There are many possibilities, depending on how creative you want to be. I can’t wait to get mine.
In addition, I discovered that Moo has a new service called an NFC card. This is as awesome as it can get. Techies will love it for sure. These are business cards that have a small chip inside and when you hand it to someone the person can touch it to a smart phone, the card will send a message that has been pre-programmed by you, and the phone will execute it. For example this could be download music, or your portfolio, or pics, or a link to your website … Imagine directing customers to your book link via your business card; isn’t that awesome?
Well, for now, I will be happy to get my glossy moo cards with all the images selections that I created. As soon as I get them in the mail, I will post some pics so you can see how beautiful and smart these mini cards are.
Check it out if you think this is a good idea – http://www.moo.com/share/qg6j89
I decided to offer Moonlit Valley via Smashwords because it offers a wide distribution option for electronic books. In a way, it was like killing many birds with one stone (ouch). It offers the ePub format (nook, apple,kobo…) and others like the Sony reader, Palm, pdf, rtf, and of course plain text, as well as library lending. This seems the perfect all-in-one, one-stop-shopping deal. For someone like me, who gets easily overwhelmed by too many sites to keep track of, and too many profiles, joining Smashwords was a plus. There is only one thing I did not like – the look of the end product of an electronic book. Unlike Amazon Kindle, it is a bit messy and limited on what you can do with font type and font size. Your chapters might end anywhere in the page, and the worst is that when you are trying to fix it, your book is out there available to the public – there is no in-between or prelude to the publishing button. I was so worried that I could not get Moonlit Valley as spiffy as in the Amazon Kindle, that I became frustrated. However, I hadn’t finish fixing my file when I already had three downloads for a sample of the novel – I guess a good thing. How I dealt with this feeling? It was easy. I searched for the books of famous and best-selling authors, then looked at their file – they were having the same issues and troubles with how the novel looked. Then, I guessed that there was no way getting around that – Smashwords electronic books will never look as perfect as Amazon Kindle, but at least will offer readers who use the e-formats mentioned above the opportunity to find my books, and sample them.
I find that offering Moonlit Valley through Amazon in paperback and kindle format, as well as offering it through Smashwords in various e-formats covers pretty much everything (check the Novels tab in this blog). So I am sticking with this way of doing things. I advice that you create profiles in Amazon USA, UK, France, EU, and that you do it in the main language (use goggle translator) as well as follow-up with an English description underneath (just in case). Making use of the forums on Amazon/CS from time to time is a good idea as well. One thing I wish I could do is to manage all the Amazon stuff from one Hub, meaning the CS, Kindle, and Author Central – it would save much back and forth.
As far as social networking goes, I love Facebook because it offers so much, and although I don’t love twitter’s format that much, I am trying to get used to it. To me, FB is more geared to follow-up in conversation, while Twitter feels like a bunch of birds chirping at the same time, with little or no interaction between them. I will give it some time. One word of advice to new authors trying to get into social media, “it is not that easy to transfer all your people from your personal FB account into your Author Page – most of them will not click to join the new page, but they are more than happy to interact with you through your personal FB account. So my advice is that if you are like me, who cannot bother with too many profiles and accounts (hence why I condensed two blogs into this one and this one will serve as my author blog as well), the best thing is to start your FB or Twitter accounts with your author name – it will be much easier in the long run. I made that mistake, so now I share on both. I guess if you are using a pen name, then you have to keep multiples of everything, and to me that translates into nightmare.
For me, keeping it simple works best, despite all the advice out there saying that you have to be in every format/platform available. For me, doing that would be contra productive because I would end up tired, overwhelmed, and dreading the whole thing, and with no desire to write, which is the main purpose – writing novels. For me this is what works: Amazon +Kindle + Author Central + Smashwords + Facebook + Twitter + WordPress = A happy writer.
In the end, we want to be happy writers and enjoy the process. Too much of anything gets in the way, that is how I feel.
MOONLIT VALLEY
I am adding this link as I think it is important news about the battle between Amazon and bookstores – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/drm-lawsuit-independent-bookstores-amazon_n_2727519.html
Ok, I could not resist doing this to these adorable seagulls. I took the picture at the Keyport, NJ waterfront. It looks like the are gossiping about something quite juicy, so of course I had to imagine it. Click on the picture to make it larger 🙂
Photo by Maria Diaz
I am just kidding; however, I am extremely happy to announce that Moonlit Valley is available through Amazon (US, UK, EU) in paperback or e-book (Kindle or PDF). It will also be available via extended distribution through the Ingram, Baker & Taylor catalog, in about 6-8 weeks, meaning that you will be able to order it at your favorite bookstore. I will be celebrating tonight, of course. Here is the link to Moonlit Valley
You can also find it here – Moonlit Valley, and through Smashwords here for all of you who have ereaders in the ePub format (nook, apple, kobo…), Sony, palm, and other electronic formats.
This is a picture of the cover,
MOONLIT VALLEY
And the back cover,
And a spread picture (because I’m so excited),
Here is a bit about it,
Moonlit Valley
Rose Carrigan never imagined what awaited her when she left her New Jersey hometown to live in an old farmhouse located in a small southern town called Moonlit Valley. After a series of mysterious clues and unfortunate events, once more, her world turns upside down. This time, the man who she loves, Jeremy Sandbeck, her irresistible and seductive husband, is the one responsible. When she discovers his identity, she must decide between love and destiny, defying the surreal world that she has discovered. Jeremy struggles with love, and what he
thinks is his true supernatural and divine duty.
I hope you like it. I will keep you updated.
Slow as a turtle; this is how I describe the process. Well, so far I have worked in getting Moonlit Valley ready to publish, and in the meantime, I have been working on small changes and tidying up of Ramblings of the Spirit. I started writing The Book of Sharon, and can’t wait to have all these pieces that may seem apart now, fall together in harmony. Self publishing is tons of work, that I can tell you.
I came across this beautiful song and immediately thought of Moonlit Valley – it fits the story perfectly, so I wanted to share it with you. It is “No Sound But the Wind” by the Editors. It is an awesome song. I love their songs. Here is a video that I found in YouTube from theseboredkids, who did a great job with it.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do. In the meantime, I will go back to work 🙂
I am writing this post for all new writers who are thinking about joining writing sites. When I started writing online, I wasn’t sure of what venue to choose so I selected a few popular sites to write for them, thinking that this would be beneficial for my writing career. Unfortunately, I started to notice that one of those sites – called Triond, started allowing very bad writing – mostly from people who wanted to make a quick buck and didn’t care about writing garbage and ill edited articles. The staff let those articles go through, without editing them. Some of these articles were actually unreadable – just picture a string of keywords with no meaning to them. Fearing that associating with that site would hurt my career, I contacted them and asked that my content be removed and my account canceled/closed. My account was closed, and at that time, it seemed that my articles were blocked and they did not show as published. This happened more than two years ago.
Today, while reviewing some links on this blog, I came across old content that had a link to one of those articles. I clicked on it and to my surprise, the article did show up published. I kept clicking on some of the old links and most of them were showing active. Not only that, but there were all kinds of ads running on them, making Triond money. I am disgusted. Immediately, I clicked the contact link and wrote to them asking that my content be removed or blocked. Lets see what happens. I hope I get a response this time.
In the meantime, my face and work is plastered on that site, along with all the craziness and bad writing going on. There are very good writers on that site too, not all is bad writing, but a huge percentage is bad written content, and that is the only reason I wanted to disassociate my name from it. I never had a problem with the site otherwise; I just did not agree with their practice of bad editing and letting anything go through to publishing.
Let my experience serve you as a measure to choose a writing site very wisely and carefully, to avoid situations like this one. I hope that Triond listens and blocks all of my content, which they are not authorized to publish anymore.
Let me start by saying that the path to a writing career requires a certain amount of study and learning, and tons of practice. I say a certain amount because, writing should be your primary focus. Learning and reading other authors will teach you a great deal; however, it is by writing and rewriting that you will learn. I wish I knew this when I started on this journey, it would have save me some precious time, but no ones knows it all. With this in mind, from time to time, I try to share with you any blogs or sites that I think would have saved me much time, if I had known of them earlier. This is in the hopes of saving you some time so you can embrace your writing. Although everyone learns in different ways and pace, I can tell you that in my case I had to sift between much hay and debris to get to the grain. For me the learning process was exhausting at times. This is the reason I get so excited when I come across a blog or website that gives me the feeling of “Wow, I wish I had found you sooner.” Here are a few that will certainly teach you or inform you in the right direction.
I don’t know how long these sites have been around but I recognize that these are professionals in their craft, and reading them early in your writing journey will help a great deal. I hope that you enjoy these sites, as much as I do.
Let me start by saying that when you decide to embark on the voyage to self-publish, plenty will undermine your confidence. As a self-publisher, you will be acting as the writer, the contractor to find an editor, cover artist, interior designer/cover designer … and much more. If you are doing all this yourself, there is much to learn, little time, and tons of roadblocks, that is, if you want to end up with a product that looks professionally created. Print on demand may be inexpensive, and if you are just doing e-book format, then your initial expense could be $0.00. However, this doesn’t mean that you will end up with an excellent product. If you are a quasi-perfectionist, you may end up becoming your biggest roadblock.
So far, I have embraced the path to self-publishing and I have worked hard towards publishing my first book. Since I decided to start the process, the rule of plenty has made its presence in my life. I have had plenty to learn, plenty to do, plenty to cry about, plenty to ignore, plenty to work against, plenty to resist, plenty to embrace, plenty to doubt, plenty to stumble upon, plenty to create, plenty to hate, plenty to whine about, plenty to change, plenty to redo, plenty to cry about again, plenty to disagree with, plenty to fear, plenty to deal with – computer viruses, computer hackers, computer issues, software malfunction, hacked accounts … And it may have seem that all of this has happened at once. However, I’ve also had plenty to like, plenty to enjoy, and plenty to love. Even that my confidence might have been undermined by the Rule of Plenty, I wouldn’t do it any other way.
I have chosen this path, and it is not an easy one. I have found that the only way to beat the Rule of Plenty is to embrace Randomness when it shows up, and keep going. Yes, embracing the random is the only medicine to cure a bad dose of the Rule of Plenty. So, if you have been getting an incredible dose of the Rule of Plenty lately, don’t despair, embrace the randomness of it all, and push forward. Sooner than later, there will be plenty to celebrate.
Inkspeare 