I'm Trying

I've been trying to work, really I have.  I sat down yesterday and opened Cinder Ugly.  I ended up editing a little bit of it and then staring at the screen, wondering where the hell the story was going now.  Something I've been wondering since the last spurt of ideas ran out over a month ago.

When I didn't make any progress with CU, I opened that new thing I started last week.  I ended up editing a little bit of it and then staring at the screen, trying to rebuild some ideas I'd had while I was falling asleep the night before. Unfortunately, everything I thought of was lost.  (Yes, I know.  I should've gotten up and written it down, but I was so tired all I wanted was a little sleep.)

Since I couldn't make anything work here at the computer, I got up and went to my recliner.  There I took up my notebook and red pen.  Usually, I can get things flowing by asking myself some simple questions on paper.  Nope.  Not a damn thing flowed.  Not even a little spritz of inspiration.  Not a droplet of insight. 

Dry.

I thought about making a pot of coffee last night and forcing myself to write after Hubs went to bed.  Then it occurred to me that oftentimes Owl will use the office for her gaming after we've gone to bed.  (Her room is next to our room, so she moves out of there to lessen the noise drifting through our shared wall.)  Forcing oneself to create worlds is impossible while someone is gleefully (and noisily) killing things with her friends behind you. 

Excuses, excuses.  I will find a way around all this. 

When I think of all the plans I had for this year and how they've all pretty-much been dashed on the rocks of the Kung Flu, it pisses me off.  Maybe getting good and mad will help the words flow.  Can't be any worse than where I am now, eh?

Just Get Up and Write The Damn Thing

Now I lay me down to sleep
When into my head the stories creep
If I don't get up and write them down
I'll wake up with a serious frown.
So, there I was Sunday night, trying to sleep, when this scene popped into my head.  The beginning scene for a new mystery laid itself out beautifully.  So I made myself get up and write some of it down.  That usually makes the scene stop playing so I can get some sleep, and it's also usually enough to get me going on writing the next day.

1)  It didn't stop playing in my head.
2)  I didn't write enough of it down to really get back in the groove with it.

I told myself I should just get up, turn the damn computer back on, and write the whole damn scene.  Did I?  Nope.  And the next day, as I was sitting at my keyboard looking at the few notes I had written, I cursed myself for a fool.  It's been so hard to write these past few months I should've recognized the story was more precious than the sleep.  But I didn't.

Still, I sat my ass down and wrote.  Oh my god, what came out was so lame.  Definitely not the glowing words I'd thought of the night before.  I wanted to chuck it all in the trash and go back to sitting on my ass.  But I couldn't just give up.  The story was shrieking to be written.  I tried again last night.  Whole new file, blank page, sit your ass down and write.

This try was not lame.  And it flowed pretty much the way it had when I thought of it the night before.  1300 words.  Woohoo.

I have only a slight clue where I'm going with this.  I don't know the MC in the slightest.  It doesn't dovetail with any of my current stories.  The MC is a whole new person.  It's kind of noir.  It's gritty.  More like Accidental Death than anything else I've written.  But more so.

We'll see if I can keep it going and not second guess myself (which has already begun by the way) and write the whole damn thing.  It's not the book I need to finish right now, but it's the book I need to finish.  Maybe writing this will jumpstart my lead ass so I can finish Cinder Ugly.  Fingers crossed.

A Snipped Snippet

I sometimes post snippets of my stories to Silver James' blog.  This morning, the prompt she presented led me to the original beginning of Accidental Death (when I still wasn't sure where I was going with it all). 

Since it was way more than I wanted to post in her comment section, I thought I'd share it with you here:

She stood alone by his grave, as he would have wished.  No other mourners bore witness to the box being slowly lowered into the ground.  No flowers proclaimed his passing.

St. Anne’s was holding a memorial service on the other side of town, presumably so the good citizens of Serenity could say their last farewell to the city’s now-deceased manager.  They’d begged her to come, but he wouldn’t have wanted them to gather in remembrance.  Out of respect for his wishes, she’d politely refused their impolite insistence.  When she drove by the church, large signs announced their service for him, the way the corner grocery store announced a sale on toilet paper.  The only difference was: the store was at least sincere in their sentiment, and toilet paper at least served a purpose.  There was no purpose in a memorial service given by the upstanding citizens of a town that had driven her husband to an early grave.

Long after his coffin was covered with freshly turned earth, she remained staring at the place where her heart lay buried, feeling like she could only leave the place if she consented to leave the best parts of her behind.  It wasn’t something she was willing to do.  She wasn’t sure if it was ever something she’d be willing to do.

They’d only been married a year when the call came. 

Scott collapsed during a city council meeting.  The heart that beat so loudly against her ear as she lay drowsing against his chest had betrayed them both.  As he stood fighting for his principles, the traitorous organ had given up the fight. 

All around him stood men who should’ve been able to help—four councilmen alone on the volunteer fire department—but try as they might, they couldn’t bring him back.   They worked on her husband all the way to the tiny hospital, but Scott was already gone. 

She was gone seconds later.  Alive but not.  Driven immediately into a state of such utter despondence, she barely registered when the city’s ambulance director offered to ease her pain with something from his kit.  For an instant, she considered slipping into the unfeeling sleep he offered, but in the end, she refused.  She never believed in better living through pharmaceuticals, especially not when it came to clouding her mind or her emotions.  In the end, she didn’t need their elixirs anyway.  Her whole being did an excellent job of numbing itself.

She wandered through the coming days doing exactly what needed to be done.  Arrangements made, family contacted, her husband laid to rest in the tiny plot she picked out for him.  Everything was finished.

Still she couldn’t move.

The wind whipped up out of the north, splaying her long brown hair across her face.  Despite the heat of mid-summer, chill claws ripped through her light blouse.  In her mind, she could see the first few flitters of snow drift to land on his grave and disappear against the warm earth. 

Still she didn’t move.

When a hand gently touched her shoulder, she shifted only slightly, turning her head to look into a face worn by the wrinkles of time.  One of the few faces in Serenity she could consider a friend, and the only one who came to honor her husband in the manner she chose.  She acknowledged him with a nod and turned her eyes back to where Scott lay.

“He’s gone, Jillian.  It’s time to go home.”

She nodded again, wanting to scream about her inability to leave, but unable to make words form in her raw throat.  The old man took her hand, and gently pulled her away from her heart. 

Lost in her own pain, Jillian didn’t notice the old man gently help her into his car.  She didn’t think to ask about her car, sitting cold and alone along the tiny cemetery road.  She didn’t see the flowering gardens now gracing the homes they drove past, nor her own neglected lawn as the car pulled to a stop.

The best part of her was still standing in the cemetery staring at the rectangle of brown where her heart now lay.

The old man helped her into her house, no longer a home without Scott’s life within its walls.  He turned on the lights, and fixed her a strong drink.  Along the edges of her mind, she could hear him talking to her, and she could hear herself answering, but none of it seemed real.  When he let himself out, she stood staring after him long into the night.

Somehow she must have made herself to turn out the lights and get into bed.  Somehow she must have gotten herself to sleep.  As she lay unblinking in the glow of dawn, she unsuccessfully tried to remember doing either.  The light shown brightly through the pretty drapes she’d picked out to cheer their daily awakening.  She shuddered at the sight of those drapes, and longed to pull the covers over her head to hide them from her sight. 

Instead, she forced herself to look at them, and to remember they were part of the life she had lived before.

Dragging herself from the bed she shared with Scott, she realized she still wore the same outfit—black except for where the cuffs of her pants were lightly dusted with earth.  If she’d had an entire wardrobe of black, it wouldn’t have been enough to reflect the gaping hole she felt inside herself.

In the back of her mind, she could hear her husband’s voice, “Life goes on.”  If it had been anyone else’s voice, she would’ve spit in his face, but Scott could always get her to do things she’d rather not do.  Their entire marriage had been a series of new adventures.  His try-anything spirit gently coaxing her bookish self to stretch for the heights.

For the first time since that horrible night, she smiled.

After all, he had been the only one in the thirty-six years of her life to coax her on one of those damned motorcycles.  She was afraid it would kill her, but she survived the experience.  She’d been afraid it would kill Scott, but he survived riding on that hellish thing, too.  If only he could’ve survived one stupid meeting.

Scott was the strongest man she ever met.  Never took a sick day; shrugged off injuries like they didn’t exist.  Whether he was climbing Longs Peak or brushing a rattlesnake out of her the path with a stick, he did everything like he was going to live forever.  Looking back, she realized he sincerely believed he would never die, and as foolish as it seemed now, she believed right along with him.

He never saw death coming.  Until it came and wrecked them both.

For days after the funeral, she went through the routines of life, without actually living them.  She got up every day, she dressed herself, she ate, and then she went to bed.  Everything else was a useless blur.  When the food ran low, she ventured out into the town.  That was her first mistake.

Walking through an aisle of the town’s only grocery store, she was reaching for a loaf of Scott’s favorite bread when voices drifted to her from the next row over.

“I hear you’re having a devil of a time finding yourself a new city manager,” said a man she recognized only as one of the farmers from outside the city.  “Too bad about Underwood...”

“He was a pain in the ass,” said Jerry Powden, one of the city councilman who was present to witness her husband’s death.  Scott never talked much about the meetings she was never encouraged to attend, but she knew enough about those monthly events to know about Powden and his drive to make her husband’s job harder with every vote. 

She gritted her teeth and tossed the now-crumpled loaf into her cart.  Whatever the bastard said was no longer of any consequence.  He couldn’t hurt Scott any more, and as soon as his affairs were in order, she would never see Serenity again.  If the city council wanted to run the town into the ground, so be it.  As she turned to push her groceries away from the offensive conversation, though, Powden’s next words stopped her cold.

“It was the best thing for everyone when he keeled over like he did…”

“That’s a sick thing to say…”

“Screw it.  It’s not like anyone gives a damn one way or the other what I say about him now.  His dying like that saved us all a lot of trouble.  Not that it matters anymore, but we were getting ready to fire him anyway.  We had the votes.  Live or dead, he wouldn’t have been around bothering us for much longer anyway.  And if you ask me, I’m glad it was dead.”  Powden chuckled and the sound dripped like acid along her nerves.  “At least dead, he can’t whine about ‘wrongful termination’.” 

For the first time since that horrible night, Jillian felt.  Suddenly, she felt far more than she ever wanted to feel again, and what she felt was hatred.

The book went in a different direction than I had intended when I wrote that.  If you've read it, you know.  If not, it's available from Amazon.

Don't Get Fleeced

Because I've been at this writing / publishing thing since 2004, I sometimes forget that there are people out there who are new to it all. 

On FB this morning, a woman was looking for help on one of the book pages I follow.  She's trying to get her daughter's novel published and had recently been contacted by a firm wanting to represent the book.  They were asking like 600-1000 pounds for different publication packages.  She'd tried to look them up online, but she could only find their site and links they'd put out about themselves.

Ding ding ding.  There are three reasons right there to walk away.

1)  Reputable companies do not contact writers out of the blue.  Real agents and publishers have too much going on to send letters out to unknown and untested and unpublished authors. 

2)  Reputable companies to not charge to 'represent' you.  You may see charges if you're self-publishing through a vanity press, but they're not representing you.  They're doing the work to make your book a book - editing, covers, etc.  And even then, you have to watch them like a hawk.  Research the hell out of them to make sure you're not getting taken.  If this is a literary agent, which I suspect it is, you NEVER pay them.  They make money by getting a cut of your royalties after the book is published. 

3)  Reputable companies have a wide web presence with loads of people saying good things about them.  Disreputable companies may have a wide web presence as well, but generally people are saying bad things about them.  This one, not having much of a web presence at all?  Well, they must be a pop-up that hasn't been caught by the scam hunters yet.

Someone in comments posted a link to Writer Beware. There's a good source for finding out about scammers.  And if you don't see the company on their site, I think you can contact them about it. 

I commented with a shortened version of the above.  I hope she walks away.  She was smart enough to do some research and to ask about it online, so there's hope.  So many authors don't do the work and get taken for loads of money.  It always makes me sad to hear about another new author getting scammed. 

I used to get crap like that in my inbox regularly.  I still get it, but it's fewer and farther between now.  Mark it as spam, go to the spam box, and delete it.  Do not engage.  Walk away.

Publishing is a long, hard road, fraught with potholes.  There is no easier path you can take.  No yellow brick road you can skip along to reach the Emerald City of publication.  And anyone who tells you they have a shortcut is a conman trying to fleece you. 

The Post-Publication Checklist

There's a lot of stuff to do to publish a book.  And there's a lot to do after you publish a book.  So, here's my post-publication checklist:

Goodreads listing – add ASIN before the book goes live

Add book to your Amazon author page.

Verify book is on Amazon UK author page.

Update FB header.

Add book to all blog sidebars.

Update internal links inside book to Amazon

Post to the blogs

Post to FB pages

Post to Pinterest

Post to Twitter

Post to MEWE

Add book to appropriate Outside the Box book page

Update links on book page – US, UK, CA, AU

Bookmark Amazon pages – US, UK, CA, AU

Update back matter of all other books

Post to FB groups

Fall apart.
 I'm still working on the back matter part.  I already fell apart.  ;o)

Got anything on your checklist that's not on mine?

Release News!

In the midst of all this crap, I published a book.  Book number 14, to be exact.  Sure, it was delayed about a month because of the crap, but hey, it's out there in the world now.  The long awaited sequel to Sleeping Ugly is finally here...

UGLY AND THE BEAST: A Model Curse, Book Two.

It's currently $2.99 (and available in Kindle Unlimited now)*.  And I put Sleeping Ugly down to 99c (or whatever comparable price that equates to in your country) and will leave it there until 5/31.  At which point, both books will go up to $3.99, so get your copies in the merry month of May.

Hopefully sometime this month, I'll have a better idea of when Cinder Ugly (A Model Curse: Book Three) will be released.

Thanks to everyone who helped, supported, and encouraged me through this process.  I couldn't have done it without you.  Literally.  Because without you guys, I would've continued to wallow in my uncertainty.  Thanks for kicking my butt. 

*Due to a massive brain fart, it was not in KU when it first went live.  That has been rectified.  Read on, my friends.

Yep, Slight Delay

Okay, so the possible delay has turned into a definite delay.  Sorry about that, folks.  My grasp exceeded my reach this time.  Don't despair, though.  It'll be done by Monday at the latest.

It's a good thing I'm doing this.  Man, am I finding a lot of typos that I unintentionally inserted as I was fixing other things.  Blerg.  On the bright side, they're getting gone, bit by bit.  As of last night, I had done through pg 146 of 231 pages.  And I'm fixing the errors in batches along the way, so I won't have to do them all when I finish reading, which will save time. 

I'd be further along if I didn't blow Wednesday all to hell by going grocery shopping.  I was wiped out for the rest of the day there.  One thing I did get done Wednesday was the blurb - pre-shopping, of course. 

Jeni Braxxon’s life as a up-and-coming supermodel hit the skids when she found herself cursed.  The asshole who did this to her is rotting in jail, but the curse remains, leaving her as ugly as the north end of a southbound warthog.  Every damn night.  

As if this case of the gruesomes and her impending unemployment wasn’t enough for a gal with serious esteem issues, someone snatches her nephew.  The fight is on to find the boy before something seriously heinous happens.  With the help of her friends and a bit of beastly assistance, Jeni will face down anything this plane or the next throws at her.  If she’s lucky, she might just make it out alive.

And another thing I did was add a series title to the book covers.  I'm going with... drumroll... A Model Curse.  It was the only one I wrote down during brainstorming that didn't suck mightily and was short enough to fit on the covers without being super small.

Succinct and cute.  At least, I think so.  It's pretty much set in stone now, so if you think it's lame, keep it to yourself, k?  (Set in stone because I'm tired of thinking about it and I don't want to have to redo the covers again.)

Right now, it's sitting at about 65K words.  That'll expand some as I put in front and back matter during formatting, but that's the meat of the story without the sauce. 

Again, sorry about the delay.  I'd blame the chaos, but this last delay is on me.  I'll let y'all know when it goes live.  Until then, have a great day and an awesome weekend.  =o)