Birthing a Paperback (You Might Want an Epidural)
My first novel Back to Lazarus came into being on Kindle a couple of months ago. It was a relatively painless birth, from formatting to exporting and uploading. (I guess in this analogy the months of writing the novel was sex, much better than the pregnant years between writing and publishing.) I’m thrilled to say Back to Lazarus is now available in paperback on Amazon—woo hoo! Check out the full cover. The paperback birth was not so painless. It wasn’t one of those “I must forget the pain of delivery or I’ll never have sex again (that is, write another Read more…
Dealing with the First Bad Review (Or, Suck it Up, Girly-Woman!)
I hope everyone (the Americans with decent jobs who got the day off, at least) enjoyed their Labor Day holiday. In the morning, when I usually write, my husband and I worked on our house in the hopes of avoiding the heat. (We were unsuccessful: it was much cooler later in the day, and we were dripping with sweat by early afternoon.) Afterward, I finished and uploaded my paperback revisions. (Yay!) When my focus started to unravel, I found myself at Goodreads. I’ve started an author account there, but don’t have a sense of how often I should check in or what I Read more…
That’s Why You Hire the Professionals, People! (Cover Design and Author Swag Edition)
Between my husband and me, there’s not a whole lot we won’t try to do ourselves. We’re (slowly) building our own house, so he’s done electrical and framing (a friend who shall remain nameless once framed himself into our house while working on a flare-topped ladder) and everything in between, with limited tools and limited electricity. I don’t think I’ve broken anything with a hammer or sliced anything unintended with a saw, and I’ve done a fair amount of sheetrock fairly poorly (my corners aren’t too bad but all of our walls have a lump in the middle). I’ve also Read more…
5 Lessons Learned in my First Week as a Newly Self-Published Author
As a completely new author with no fan base, no one on my newsletter but my mom, and a brand spanking new website but no real platform or brand or other fancy marketing words yet, I knew that I wouldn’t exactly be rocketing to the top of the charts. I’m in it for the long haul, which translates to, “I never really thought about the first week except as something I had to pass through on the way to the first year(s).” Here’s some of what I learned, living through the first week without having bothered to think about it Read more…
Book Reviews and Ratings Part II: A Code of Conduct?
When I first downloaded Goodreads on my (long lost and lamented) iPhone years ago, I thought it was the best app ever. The bar code scanner almost made my head explode. It is a great resource for a lot of people, but I’ve never used it consistently, and it turns out it wasn’t right for me at the time. As I said in my last post, I’m not a big reviewer, and I wasn’t looking for a community. I just wanted something to help me track what books I’d already read and which ones I wanted to read. But if Read more…
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