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After the Party

/ Wist / Leave a comment
Well, no party.  I’m not a partying type of person, sadly.  If anything I’m the most boring person to bring to any party.  But on turning 30 I did get another grey hair.  Another mark of wisdom I like to call these.  My kids think I’m crazy though, as despite having a usually pretty big get together for their birthdays, I lamed my own out to death.
But I did get a lot done before hitting the old mark, and I’m proud of myself.  I can raid the cake department in the grocer whenever I feel the need to increase my sugar intake and despite the offer from one of my best buds to send me a hunk in the mail, I simply reminded him that there are advantages to being single.  In the very least it has effected the road I chose to take with my writing; free and limitless.  Well with limits, but you get the idea.
Loneliness is something you can overcome.  It’s not easy, but not impossible, either.  Keeping busy helps, but I was raised like an only child so I can usually manage it.  Kiddies help too, even when they drive you nuts.  On a brighter note, I’ve probably written 10xs more by being single than I have either living with my mom (going back to my teenage years here) or with someone else.  Guys are fun accessory until they starve you out into the streets or build up an obsessive disorder that stops you from living altogether.  And no, I’m not saying all guys are like this, just my roll of the dice with em so far has been pretty lousy.
God help me if I ever start writing romances…  @@’  I wonder if there’s a romance-horror section of the sorts.  I clearly need to expand my reading genres.
And no, I haven’t given up entirely.  There is someone on this planet for everyone, and the last time I questioned God’s timing, he responded by putting a gorgeous, charming single guy before my door, ready to take on my broken washing machine.  All this when I had just woken up mid-afternoon…
Note of side effect by being a writer with too much freedom: Making a living in your most comfortable, light blue teddy bear PJs can sometimes be a bad thing.
Second note to self: Get another bra strap magically stuck in the motor to try the summon again.

Bliss in a Box

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Today I learned a valuable lesson. That lesson being that it is indeed possible to receive bliss in the mail.  Although my mailman thinks I’m a complete and total crazy now (which is justifiable considering the circumstances of me practically stalking and nearly mugging him on several occasions) I have it!  Dragon Aster in the print!  And I might just lose my mind in excitement.

If I don’t kill my iPad camera for doing my excitement zero justice with its inability to see a perfect glossy finish!!!  *insert rage here!*

*breathes*

I’m okay now.  I have a proof to proof.  And so far everything looks in order.  Oh cheese…one of my kiddies has already stolen it!

This could take a while…  @@’

Lesson number two of the day: Just because you authored it, doesn’t mean your kids can’t steal it.

No paint to watch dry…

/ Wist / 2 Comments

But by cheese can it take forever to squash a couple dozen layers in a huge image file.  I thought I would pin up what stands as the final cover for the print version of Dragon Aster: Book I.  If I stay on track and don’t get energy-zapped from anymore birthday parties powered by sugar, more sugar, and sugar after-effects in kids, I hope to have it available by the end of August.  I might make some last minute touch-ups, but I really have to lock the perfectionist bunny into an iron box…

I’m still upset about having to clip her ‘spiritual’ wing, and my kids already have a riot complete with a picket line set up behind my desk because of it, but I couldn’t make it fit.  And I really, really tried.  Le sigh…

*drops perfectionist bunny into deep Alaskan waters*

There is no problem you can’t bear

/ Wist / 1 Comment
Slow down you two-headed freak!  You have a spelling error on you!

What can World of Warcraft teach you about writing?

That you can’t correct any and all spelling errors, everywhere.  And I don’t care if it’s this monster’s name, it’s still spelled wrong.

OUCH!!!

Even when he tries to bat me dead to convince me otherwise…

All fun and games until…

/ Wist / 3 Comments

…until they make you bleed.  You have your warning, as this is a head-to-desk moment.

I’ve had a few people ask who did my cover and well, that be my screenshot here.  Brilliant me, I naturally didn’t count on the ‘bleed’ space needed for my forthcoming print version of Dragon Aster: Book I (that would be all those not-so-cool red lines around it all).  It’s gonna need to be rearranged and stretched which isn’t hard in itself, I just hate math.  Period.  If you ever make your own cover via Photoshop or another program, I leave to go back to drawing with some words of wisdom from someone learning it all from trial and error, also known as scratch.

1.  Always make your cover image insanely big.  Unless your machine is older then 3 years, you can’t make it too big.  If you look at mine in the above picture, you can see that I’m still cutting it way too close to visual pixels in the final work.  Cirrus and Sybl there are big enough in actual size to blanket my 13 inch laptop screen a few times.  The checkered canvas they are all roughly pasted on at the moment is 65 inches wide and 45 high.  Forget the screen–I could blanket my kids with this.

2.  Get the brightness bright right off the bat.  This saves kicking yourself in the future.  A good cover is bright.  If you accidently flatten all your layers permanently and it’s dull, a last-minute brightness touch-up might make glow what you don’t want to.

3.  Big fonts win.  With everything digital these days and online, small fonts mean you’re blindsided by potential customers.  Big fonts for the win.

4.  You can never have too many layers.  Seriously.  One for my dragon, one for her dress, one for Sybl, one for each of the lines of font…okay, you get the idea.

5.  A good scanner is your friend.  An old scanner will see you grow old and die before it.

6.  Have enough memory!  By cheese does my machine do the crawl thing when doing this.  On top of that, my hard drive is screaming at me.  I think it’s time to hand the laptop down to the kiddies and upgrade…

7.  And no, that is not my email beside that email icon.  <.< ‘  *jots down note to clean that out one day and maybe find more memory in doing such…*

Dragon Aster: Book I

/ Wist / 3 Comments

Book release day is here and I’m excited!  You can now find Dragon Aster: Book I on Amazon for the Kindle and on iBooks.  If you are a reviewer I would be more than happy to send a free copy your way in the format of your choice.  If you are waiting on the printed copy, I have started looking into that and currently have a battleplan.



It seems like an eternity ago since the first bits of Dragon Aster came to my dreams where it would spend years being scribbled, picked on, boxed, erased, recycled, (don’t ask on that one) soaked, (don’t ask on that one either) lost, torn, and countless painful and neglectful things you can do to a manuscript.  But Time has proven that what doesn’t kill it, makes it stronger.


So I felt like dedicating this post to a few collected memories of the history of Dragon Aster.  Don’t laugh at how far they go back.  Well, don’t laugh too hard.  Better yet, just don’t hunt down my age.  Many years were lost with this manuscript in a box, and they don’t count in my opinion.  😛


Remembered facts:


The first title was “Dragon Wings.”  It had a nice ring to it, until I later found “Aster” which serves as three theme meanings in this book.  One is the name of the realm, the other refers to a scene in Chapter 34 (I’m not spoiling anything) and the last is simply ‘star.’


Sybl was first conjured and written down on paper when I was 11 years old.  Her first name was similar to my real name.  She had a lot of superpowers at the time, that now that I look back at it, weren’t all improbably and unbelievable.  She also got the full wrath of my mother who could never understand why I loved to scribble down fantasy stories when my friends and other kids were outside causing chaos.  I didn’t exactly grow up in a safe neighborhood, and I still don’t understand her reasoning here.  Just let the kid stay safe and sound in her room for crying out!  It’s hard being the only writer/walking dictionary in the family.  If that’s not enough, Sybl also had a tail before she later transformed into a Fay.  I have pictures.  You can start laughing again.  <.<‘


Cirrus was my second character who appeared shortly after.  He was a dragon shifter from day one.  His first and second names were awkward, but the third one sticks now.  He was silver before, but only changed to white after that.  Unshifted he looked as he is now.


Nafury is a long spoiler of a story who came after those two.


Kas came after those three.  His original name was ‘Ciar.’  He was more or less always what he is now, though he also got the advantage of joining the first manuscripts when they were in a somewhat-stable form.  He’s also my kid’s most favorite character.  Cirrus is mine, so you can see a TEAM KAS! being screamed rather loudly in the background here…


Hain came after him, though his name did change from its original, and now a kid who pops up in the second book has it.  He was even more of a jerk back then, and had most of his cool talents since day one.


Lintrance and Loki also entered the story when it was more stable and didn’t change much.


I wrote/completely overhauled the Trilogy arguably 5-6 times.  The second part and third were eazymode, it’s getting the first part to sing to the right bell that’s tricky.  My first plan was to release the book as a giant 150k+ novel, but since it now falls in a YA audience, I learned shortly after that many teenagers don’t have that kind of patience.  Some do, the ones I’ve tested for the majority don’t.  Now that I have the first book out, I am a ton more confident in its sequel and finale as well.  My only regret is having to axe the original adult version that had a lot of the good stuff.  Maybe one day I’ll restore it and make it an adult-only version.


I am a fresher-indie adorer, but despite that I never queried agents or publishers for my manuscript.  I read/learned from all the books on how to, but never sent out a letter or my manuscript by mail.  Fear was a biggy here I guess, that and I always valued complete control over my book.  I like being able to make/finalize the cover. I like keeping things exactly as they were dreamed/worked.  I like having full responsibility over what I write.  I’m not a control freak in real life, but if you compare writing a manuscript to raising a small baby, I just might be.  I sometimes stumble on traditionally published books that feel murdered to please.  It’s very rare to find an indie book that you can’t ‘feel’ the characters in or simply fall into the effect the author wishes to convey.  Being a character-driven person in my book choices, this is a biggie for me.


If I could do anything differently, I would go back and swat myself over the head every time I wanted to delete a scene or something that I would end up wanting to use later on.  My grammar was anything but perfect as a kid, but ideas come to the young so much easier as they aren’t bogged down by this thing normal people call the ‘real world.’  Well, I’m headed back into it for a while.  But I’m bringing my mailbox of books with me!


I leave to eat mass amounts of cake only to sugar crash in such a way that never saw morning, with a special thank you to the readers on Authonomy.com:


Scott Rhine (author Foundation for the Lost) a Fantasy Cookie pick!


Laila Bevan (author of Stolen Childhood)


Walden Carrington (author of Titanic: Rose Dawson’s Story) who also left me one of my most favorite reviews!


Jennifer Beth (author of Toxic Blood)


Sam Dogra (author of Zodiac Hunters)


Dan D. Andreescu (author of To Kill a Dead Man)





And the readers on Wattpad.com:


Thea Atkinson (author of Formed of Clay) look for my review of this book here very soon!


Silent Dreamer who has more great poetry than I can all fit in here.


Adrian Geiger who also has some great work that I can’t all fit in here, either.  Look for a review of The Quest of Dragons: Book One: Euphoric Dreams soon on Fantasy Cookie!


Katie Hodgson whose No Fear I’m currently stalking.




And at the end of this list that I will likely beat myself up over having forgot someone:


Timothy Nies (author of When Tommy Adams Burned the World)


Domenico Italo Composto-Hart (author of Dark Legacy: Book I – Trinity) 


Ron Leighton (author of A Cheerful Smoke for the Dead)


Jay Taylor


All my buddies online and in RL, if you don’t know I love you already, you need to put down the video games and pay attention more when I  /ello u.


My niece who has an awesome photography talent that needs to be seen by the world.


My two sons, who never simultaneously agreed on anything unless it’s cool.  Very handy at times.

 

Next project: writing an acknowledgement page to fit so many people in.


*collapse!*

Summary

/ Wist / Leave a comment

For Dragon Aster: Book I

Sybl has endured the first years of being a teenager both unloved and forgotten. When an Awl takes her from Earth to the realm of Aster, she will discover a place where fantasy is the reality. A world of dragons. But that will not be all that she finds.

Still distraught from having lost his best friend, Cirrus has tried to move on with his life. His world is falling apart, and it is a fight the High Guard cannot win. All that remains is a Prophecy from the ghostly memories of those he loved. A Prophecy that a Fay would return to Aster, restoring the balance of life and death. For without her, his kind will side with the forces of war. An onslaught of destruction would follow, and he is a dragon tired of death.

When he finds Sybl, he takes it on himself to become her protector. Within her memories, she holds one from the friend he lost. She may be the last hope that the Prophecy has yet to come about. But he will have to outfly the shadows from his past first, for the demon who is after them does not fear a death it can weave.

Wake to a world tangled in the Threads of Fate.

Dream back the memories that can save it.

Hug A Book Blogger

/ Wist / 2 Comments
I’ve learned a ton of what the reviewing world has evolved into from my old days as a fantasy writing group moderator. After reviewing for some years and recently starting up Fantasy Cookie, and nearing my own book release, it calls for the start to a list.  I’ve cruised and read professional, paid book bloggers, as well as those who do it as a hobby.  I stalk book bloggers for my own book.  I receive an insane amount of review requests for other people’s books, but despite how busy I am, I’m loving every minute of it. So in my Hug A Book Blogger post I’m going to round up what I’ve seen work, and what does not.

BAD  Completely generalized requests.

This one gives me a grey hair every time.  It’s the email I get that says “review my awesome book now!” but has no links.  No summary.  No cover.  No nothin.

I’m cool with getting Tweeted at (it’s in my guidelines) to get my attention, but my email is not my Twitter screen.  And if you Tweet at my personal Twitter name and not at Fantasy Cookie (@CookieFeeder) you’re doing it wrong and haven’t read my guidelines.  If you are not a first-time stranger, I don’t mind however.  If you refer to me as a male and/or make zero reference to Fantasy Cookie my first thought is SPAM.  Did I mention the grey hairs?  I’m not an agent and I can’t promise you fame, but help me out here by giving me some indication that you in the absolute least visited the site.

I also know then that you likely read one of my reviews and like my style.  That in turn allows me to give you my opinion without the fear of offending/doing it wrong in your eyes.  A lot of indies are super-sensitive to reviews, often because they are just starting out.  I respect that because I am one myself, though I have a thick skin from writing for ages and value the harshest of constructive reviews alongside the cheerier ones.  Let me see that you aren’t scared of me so I can connect better with you and your book.

BAD  Not responding in a timely manner.

I like my book blog to be fresh and although I’m still assembling future interviews and possible books tours, I like to be in contact with real people.  Spam doesn’t cut it.  Emailing me back after 2 months doesn’t work either.  I have a lot of other people who will happily reply to my emails “that’s cool with me” within a minute and that will always get you to the front of my attention.  Not a bot?  Your book just moved higher on my list.

REALLY BAD  A summary that makes my spellchecker crash.

Okay so you’re a little too-human and I can forgive you for that.  But your spelling just scared the cheese out of me and your book officially has me shaking.  I’m a writer as well and heaven knows I blindside a ton too, so sit on it and check it again in a while. I will often do this with my reviews as well and it helps to catch typos.

GOOD  “When you get around to it” requests.

I’m alright with you sending me your book and adding to your email “when you get the time.”  I actually love these requests, because it’s these ones I add to the shuffle of scifi/fantasy/romance/poetry/male/female/artist …okay you get the idea.  It is the perfect way to help me assemble variety.  But I’m also a bit of a webmaster and can identify a virus and then hunt you into a grave for trying to make me into your zombie.  Many book bloggers are not keen on codes.  Again, read their guidelines.  If it’s not mentioned, assume they don’t want your attachment.

GOOD  Prey on their weaknesses.

Every book blogger is a reader and every reader has a certain taste.  Find it.  Use it to your advantage.  I like dragons.  I like fantasy romance.  I like classy, stylish, never done…  Okay so I like most fantasy and science fiction by default.  Many book bloggers aren’t the same, however.  Don’t send them your dragons when they only read vampires.  It doesn’t end pretty.

GOOD  Help me hype you.

Blogging is a small business for many people.  Hype creates traffic.  Traffic creates customers and readers.  Customers and readers then spread like a wildfire through word of mouth and you then have yourself on a ton of shelves and rss feeds.  Bloggers often take an affiliate cut from the sellers.  Authors obviously get paid and you can see the money happening soon after.  There is one word to help you here: confidence.  Be proud of your work.  Understand that there are readers out there who will love your work.  Love yourself so that they can love you.  Help your book blogger by being a strong base of confidence that they can build on.

GOOD  A nudge/tweet/dm/email of a reminder.

Send me another email if you don’t get a timely response (within a week).  Sometimes I will mistake you for generalized spam or a bot and sometimes I just get a flood of emails that drown out everything.  Nudging me tells me you’re a real person and I will respond then.  But be mindful of doing this with other book bloggers.  Some are very picky and just don’t have any interest your book or wish to correspond.  Some have even less time.  Tweak your requests and improve your chances.

fridafantastic.wordpress.com and www.smreine.com have great lists as well, and you can see that every book blogger is different.  It’s a simple trick of learning what they like, what they don’t and working with it.  If you’re hunting down an agent or publishing deal, it’s also great practice.

Happy writing, reading and blogging!  ^ ^