Getting There

I have a couple of whiteboards in my study, on which I write various and sundry things meant to inspire me. It's not there any more, but I'd once written the following quote:

Success is a journey, not a destination.

I didn't have the attribution for it, but according to The Quotations Page where I looked today, Arthur Ashe said it.

The quote brings to mind the old saying, "Getting there is half the fun." Lately my journey hasn't been nearly as much fun as I'd hoped.

Motivation

My Wonder Twin posted a brief piece on her blog yesterday that really made me stop and think about things. She and I are cut of the same cloth in a lot of respects. I feel her pain more than she probably realizes.

I've been moving in slow motion for a few months now. Turns out I have minor health issues that need adjusting. (Sometimes you don't realize how bad you feel until you find out why you feel bad.) But adjusting they be, and the gears are gradually starting to shift toward the higher speeds.

Book Review: Baby Shark's Showdown at Chigger Flats

Librarian's note: The WGH bought me a Samsung Galaxy Tab2 to play with while he's gone on vacation. The first thing I did was download the software for both Kindle and Nook - and my old pal Robert Fate gifted me with a copy of his latest Baby Shark book. How's that for a great way to break in my new toy?

It's been nearly three years since we last saw Kristin Van Dijk (aka Baby Shark), but Robert Fate's latest Baby Shark adventure, Showdown at Chigger Flats, definitely rewards those of us who have been waiting so patiently.

My Imaginary Life

At the suggestion of my brilliant little sister, I have embarked on the spiritual journey known as The Artist's Way (Julia Cameron). One of this first week's tasks is to list five imaginary lives - five different things I would do if I were not doing what I'm doing now - and then do it.

Today, I am a painter.

I'm not Monet or Picasso, of course. But the paint program on my computer still allowed me a couple of hours of creative freedom. I've done this kind of thing before, but never really thought about doing it full-time. Not that I ever will. But today I can pretend a little bit.

If you could do anything but what you're doing now, what would it be?

Old Friends

Over the years I've had the great privilege to make acquaintance with some spectacular writers. One of my old favorites is Robert Fate, author of the Baby Shark series. I had an email from Bob the other day with an update on what Baby Shark and the rest of her motley crew are up to, and he asked me to share the news with all of you:

GOING DIGITAL AND GETTING THERE
Robert Fate, author of the Baby Shark series

It was sad news when Capital Crime Press, my honest, hard working publisher, decided to throw in the towel, but more than that, it was scary. How about the agreements with the distributors? Where were readers, bookstores, and libraries going to find my books? And what made it the scariest was how fast change was happening all around me. How could I be surprised, though, with major bookstores going belly up and taking their WiFi and coffee bars with them? Larger publishers than mine were calling it quits; eStuff was replacing dead tree stuff so fast it just felt rude. Okay, maybe books must go, but why not with a little more dignity? Nope, no time for that––the future had arrived.

The truth is, I wanted to go all Pollyanna and believe that things would take care of themselves, after all, folks weren’t going to stop reading books––were they? So I let a little time slip by before reading some altruistic Joe Konrath rants and seeing the light. Joe has a way of throwing that switch. No more dragging my feet, I had to go digital.

For me, going digital meant penning 2nd editions of the first four Baby Sharks and releasing them on Kindle. This was the beginning of the “process” part of leaving one world and entering the next.

Okay––making the books available for Kindle readers was step one. But how about all those folks who like holding a “real” book in their hands? After all the badmouth that has been given Print On Demand (POD) by the traditional publishing guys (to serve their own purposes, I fear), I was happily surprised to learn that POD books look EXACTLY the same as the book traditional publishers print. Hooray! That meant all readers would be served.

So, new covers for the PODs would need to be arranged, as well as some other details, since I was now the publisher, but it was all within reach. I think it is fair to say that Amazon (Kindle) makes it easy to self-publish, but that’s relative. If you want to go this route, be prepared to exert some effort. It ain’t rocket science, but there are many niggling details that must be addressed. Patience and perseverance are required, and also some thick skin, since there is still a lot of resistance to “going it alone,” even if it is the American way.

The final stage of the “process” is the marketing, of course––the Sisyphean task of making folks aware of your books. Amazon offers help, but as in all things, you must help yourself, as well. I am now in that final stage. Here comes some marketing.

FREE BOOKS!!

Baby Shark will be offered free for five days on Kindle –– Click HERE on May 18 thru May 22, 2012 for your free book. The purpose of free books is to introduce the series to those who haven’t yet read it, and to re-kindle (you should excuse the pun) an interest in the series with those readers who’ve been there, done that. The other books in the series will also be offered free in the near future––go to www.robertfate.com for that information.

If the free dates slip by you, borrow the titles from the Kindle library, that’s free, too. Ain’t it great? However, some restrictions may apply, as they say.

When you go to robertfate.com to read all the fabulous reviews, be sure to check out the Book Club section, some new stuff there.

More marketing––watch for the summer 2012 publications of Baby Shark’s Showdown at Chigger Flats, book five in the Baby Shark series. And, Kill the Gigolo, a contemporary standalone with a male protagonist and a femme fatale that is a real piece of work.

TWEETS –– If you also live on Twitter––Beginning May 18th, please Tweet this: Free Baby Shark on Kindle http://tinyurl.com/freebabyshark

Best wishes and happy tweeting.

“Digital” Bob

Robert Fate, author of the Baby Shark series, is a Marine Corps veteran who studied at the Sorbonne in France, roughnecked in the oilfields of Oklahoma, fashion modeled in NYC, sold show scenery in Las Vegas, and has been a chef in Los Angeles. As a Hollywood special effects technician, he won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, a ceramic artist, and his daughter, a cum laude graduate of USC. A regular guy, he has a dog, two cats, and a turtle named Pharrell.

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If you want to find out more about Bob Fate and his fantastic series, in my previous life I did a few interviews with him that you can peruse at your leisure:

• Interview with Robert Fate (March 2007)
• Robert Fate Returns to the Lunch Room (April 2008)
• Lunch Room Surprises

Happy reading!

Overwhelmed!

Great big thanks going out to all who responded to my beta reader request - the list is officially full, and I'm both thrilled and honored, as well as beyond grateful.

Exciting things are afoot here in the study - stay tuned!

A Call to Arms

Up with the chickens. It's 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning and I'm awake. Awake enough to be thinking. Of course, once my brain wakes up it's hard to shut it off, anyway.

This always happens. I work the day job three days a week, and on those mornings I sometimes have to drag myself out of bed just to get to work on time. But on the mornings I get to sleep in, what does my brain do? Wakes up early, of course! Why is that?

I know why it happened this morning. Wednesday night was "group" night - I've said before I have the most amazing critique group. EVER. And the most amazing critique partner a writer could ask for. (I'm so blessed.) - and I got jump-started. Seriously jump-started. JT introduced me to Scrivener, and I am in love. Love, love, love. This is a fabulous tool for writers and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get organized in a hurry. I've already spent several hours working with it; I'm officially addicted.

We also put together a game plan for my writing career. I've been slogging around the study trying to make a go of things for too long; it's time to take some serious action - to stop trying and start doing.

So I'm up early on a Saturday morning, doing just that. It's snowed a bit here in Middle Tennessee - oops, just looked out the window, change that to snowing - and I'm tucked in and ready to get down to business.

Help wanted. To wit, I need beta readers. If you're interested, please click here to send me an email - tell me a little about yourself and why you'd like to read for me. I'll take the first 10 responders and we'll go from there. In advance, I thank you.

And now, Harry and I are settling down to work. Enjoy your Saturday, whatever you're doing. And read a book - it's good for you!

Music of the moment: Soundtrack, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Bookmarks

Over on Twitter I follow the #fridayreads hashtag. The other day I tweeted that I'm reading too many books at once. This is scary but true. To keep track of things myself, as well as to share them with you, here's a list of the books which currently have one of my bazillion bookmarks in them and are sitting in various stages of "being read":

• Bram Stoker's Dracula. I downloaded this to my Nook for PC application and am currently on page 304 (of 406, not including endnotes).
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: Book 4 - Prince Caspian.
• A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield.
• Coach Wooden by Pat Williams with Jim Denney. This is a biography of one of the most notable 20th-century sports figures the U.S. has ever known. The book actually belongs to my husband, as it was a gift from my parents, but I snagged it first. =)
• My friend River Jordan's Praying for Strangers. I really am almost finished reading this one.
• Flipped Out. Fifth in the DIY series by my sweet pal Jennie Bentley. Amongst the "thicker" books on my nightstand, this lighter fare is just right for a quick wind-down before bedtime.

In the words of J.K. Rowling, I think that's probably "quite enough to be getting on with."

I've been working the day job all week but actually have tomorrow off. Think maybe I'll devote some time to changing at least one of these from "currently reading" to "read".

What's on your "currently reading" list?

Getting Something Accomplished

Sometimes I do my best thinking in that short span of time between my brain waking from a deep sleep and the rest of my body figuring out that I'm actually awake. I've spent the better part of the last month trying to figure out what to do with this book (the one I'm writing, that is), and this morning I woke up thinking it shouldn't be this difficult. Hard, yes. As HelenKay Dimon said in the post I referenced on Thursday, writing is hard. Being a writer takes work. But JT is forever saying that writer's block is merely your story's way of telling you something isn't right (yes, that's paraphrased, because she says it much better). So I've realized in my minor epiphany that what's wrong with this book is that I'm trying too hard to fix it when I'm not sure what the problem is.

I've done this before, of course. My previous manuscripts have all had one tiny little thing wrong with them that I couldn't see until well after the book was written but still not working. Once I figured out what that tiny little thing was, I was able to fix it, and now I have two pretty decent manuscripts completed. I discovered this morning that I'm at that point now, the point where the blinders I wear when I write have obscured the bigger picture so that I can't see the problem.

So my goal is to pull the blinders off, to look at the manuscript from an objective standpoint, and to find that missing element that when screwed in place will make this machine work like it's supposed to.

The to-do list is longer than my arm, but my CD player, John Williams, a few cats and one miniature beagle are here to keep me company, and with this fresh perspective I'm pretty sure I can get something accomplished today.

Wish me luck.

Expanding My Horizons

The TBR pile. There are still something like 150 to-be-read books on my bookshelves. I have managed to knock a few off (off the list, I mean, not off the shelves) - after A Kiss Gone Bad, I read The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes, Pride and Prejudice and The Help - but by way of Christmas presents from my mother the numbers haven't changed much (we've added Dragonfly in Amber and Flipped Out to the stack).

Sigh. I do love to read.

The Classics. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love classical music. So the following shouldn't come as a surprise to any of you. Cue segue ...

My lovely and talented sister-from-another-mister and critique partner J.T. Ellison teamed up with equally lovely and talented authors Erica Spindler and Alex Kava to create a unique project - a novella in 3 parts, with each writer's protagonist working to bring down the same serial killer. It's called Slices of Night and is available in ebook format (I recommend the Nook version from Barnes and Noble). At its release on Christmas Eve it was available at a discount, and in order to read it I downloaded the Nook for PC reader. I love this thing. As avid a book (a hold it in your hands, read it over and over until it falls apart, made of actual paper book) lover as I am, having access to thousands of books at the click of a mouse is kinda appealing. With my download, I received 5 free ebooks, one of which was Pride and Prejudice - which, of course, I had just finished reading in the above-mentioned handheld form. Another was Bram Stoker's Dracula.

[Insert maniacal laughter here, accompanied by rubbing together of hands and gleeful skipping about the room.] With one Jane Austen under my belt and Stoker in my grasp, I decided to launch myself onto a classics reading binge. And that's the part that shouldn't surprise you.

Of course, this means the TBR pile has grown exponentially in the time it took me to type out this paragraph.

I have several "collections" heretofore mentioned (if not on this blog, then somewhere) of some of the best-known and best-loved stories of classic literature: John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson. I have the complete works of Shakespeare, as well as the celebrated cases of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I'm thinking when I finish reading Dracula that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a worthy applicant for my attention.

Renovations. In the meantime, the study makeover project I started before Thanksgiving is pretty much complete, and in my new cozy personal space I'm hard at work on the next manuscript. The storyboard is perched on an easel next to my writing desk, and the layout is coming together. I'm spending today (a rare day off alone) doing the kinds of things we writers do ... shaking off the day-job dust and getting back on track. I am inspired by the brilliance of my comrades-in-arms; this past weekend I ran a quick copyedit on JT's latest manuscript (it's amazing), and this morning I read this post about working hard at a job you love.

So here I am again, working hard.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good read.