As you all know I am self-published. Meaning I didn’t go through a big time publishing company and just uploaded my book onto Amazon Kindle for people to purchase or read free if you have Kindle Unlimited. This means I am my own agent and publicist. Figuring the ins and outs of both are kinda tricky when you’re a first timer.
So far I’ve learned that Twitter is an excellent way of networking with fellow writers, agents and publishers. Not only have I met some really awesome people, but I’ve learned a lot about how things work in the film and publishing industry as well. Someone posted a thread about how important it was to PRE-ORDER books from Aurhors you wish to support. That it raises more awareness to others to look into their books. Which I had never thought of before. What came to mind is REVIEWS, too. I know my book might do better in sales, or editing later down the road if it sucks, LOL, if more people left reviews. This was my first published book, I didn’t get it professionally edited and I didn’t know what I was doing, being so new, and I’d LOVE for people to be honest with me. What didn’t you like about the book? Were there too many plot holes? That sort of thing. I’m trying to find ways to encourage my readers to leave reviews or just stars. Even if it’s just three stars, I would love the reviewer. 😊 I might buy myself a book or take a short course or something to help me figure that part out. If any of you are interested in reading the book, here’s a link for ya!
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I want to talk a little more about self care. This comes around full circle to a few posts ago about how I nearly cancelled a couple doctor appointments because they followed quite a few appointments for my kids. So here I am, my Counceling appointment is in 30 minutes (I’m waiting for child care to arrive, AKA my mom) and I’m thinking about the things we might talk about.
I know for one, I want to discuss how I’ve decided that writing will be a job for me, which means I now Official have two jobs. I don’t know how I got so much writing done when my husband was deployed but it seems like I get less done now while he’s working a regular job....well, 7-6pm anyways. I feel like I am just too tired to do any writing in the evenings, when it’s prime writing time and sometimes nap too. I hope it’s because while he was deployed I worked out a lot, giving me more energy. With the new cardio machine my husband and I got that will be assembled very soon, I expect, hopefully, that I gain more energy on top of losing my muffin top and getting stronger. I hope that the part-time nanny we have in line for the summer will help me get some writing done then, too. Right now, I can’t wait for my doctor’s appointments to be done or fewer of and my cardio machine to be set up. I seriously miss that burn pain after a good workout. And now it’s time to sign off. I will probably make an updated post later today to let you all know how it goes. Update! I am so glad I went. I didn’t talk myself out of going, even though I tried. Thank goodness my mom helped me with that, too. It’s so hard for me to ask my parents to watch my kids for appointments for myself and not for any of the kids. I basically told him my life in a nutshell. He agrees, the cardio machine will help. I talked to him a little bit about his workout routine, there was a pre-workout drink on his desk, is how to subject came about. Once I have the workouts available to me routinely, I will have another thing in my back pocket to help me deal with stress. Moral of the story, take care of you. I told him that “When Mom fails (her health), the whole house fails.” It’s true! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ You all know that I finished the first draft of the second book in the Descending series. 😃 What’s next is Editing. I have hired, yes paid for already, a professional editor who is going to critique it for me, looking for plot holes, characters and stuff like that for me. I will be doing the proofreading and such on my end while she does her thing. I get the editing notes back from her on March 21st, from there I make any necessary changes, and I’m sure there are quite a few. LOL
So, for those curious when this will be done? Well, I’m aiming for a release date in the middle of April. In fact, I’m going to try and set up a Pre-Order for the new book for that time frame in mind. I’ve decided I don’t really like the covers I got a couple years back. They are good for the price I paid for the set, but I need/want something more. If anyone out there knows of a good cover artist, please let me know, share their website maybe. On another note, I’m in the market for script cover arts, very similar to a movie poster. If you know anyone for that, too, I would really appreciate it. I checked the status of the other book I’m working on, not related to the series, and I would estimate its about half done. I still plan a release for that one for the FALL. But I will tell you all a little about it. It’s a Young Adult, YA, story, called The Hunt. It focuses on a teen girl named Maeleigh, who just moved to the new town and is starting public school for the first time since she was small. She homeschooled before then, because she is deaf and mainstream school was difficult for her when she was younger. She’s stronger now and the interpreters the school has help her in class. Meeting a boy name Grayson on her first day, things start to get a little weird for her. Headaches followed by dizzy spells. Until one day, she starts hearing his voice inside her head. Maeleigh learns that she isn’t who she thought she was, a normal kid with two parents who like to embarrass her like any other parent. Instead she might have abilities, one being hearing Grayson’s voice in her head. As she immerses herself in this new world, she discovers there are enemies that come with the powers she and her new friends have. Old enemies from a war waged long before she was born but one she may be able to stop. I’m excited to finish and let you all read it. It will probably be a series but it more than likely wont be episodic like Descending. Well, I’m off to get two kids on the bus and another down for nap. Smile, it’s Tuesday, the worst part is over! Lets talk sex scenes. I write romance novels and shorts and scripts. I’ve been writing for years. Am I still a prude when it comes to sex scenes? Hell yes! Why? Because I’m a PRUDE, that’s why! LOL
I know the story calls for it, and I WANT to write the scene the way the story deserves, I don’t want to imply sex when the rest of the story has been detailed, it wouldn’t make sense. If I write a Young Adult book, any romance in it is light and implied, of course, that’s a given, but an adult romance novel, or book series, whatever, it almost requires it or you’re not doing the story or the main characters justice. You’re also cheating the readers. That said, I wrote a really good sex scene just now for the second Descending book. At least I think so. Am I nervous and embarrassed for my mother, sister, sister-in-law, mother-in-laws and everyone else I know personally to read it? Hell yes! They don’t know I have sex with my husband. I’ve worked really hard to keep that under wraps. I’ll take that to my grave. I tell them each of our three kids came from the stork, DUH! Joking aside, I am still really proud of it. I was once asked by a guy I was dating how I could write about something I’d never experience when I hadn’t had sex yet. It’s ok, I’ll share. 😊 I actually believed that for a while, did I mention I was naive back then, too? Anyways, it took me a while to realize that I had never fought in a battle, prayed to an ancient goddess or used magic before either, but I felt I wrote those pretty good. And so I went ahead and started writing those sex scenes when necessary. And today I didn’t squirm in my seat as I did it thinking “Oh my god, my mom is going to read this.” Well, yes I did think that, but I didn’t delete it knowing that. She’s can skip it and turn the page if she wants to. Love you, Mom! Muah! Moral to this story, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t write something well because you’ve never experienced it before. If you ABSOLUTELY need experience in something, ask someone, do research. No one joins the army in order to know how a battle is fought of a gun is fired. So we writers certainly don’t need to have sex in order to write about two main characters getting it on. Yeah, I just wrote that. Whatevs. Love you all! Happy Monday! Yesterday something interesting happened, but it needs a little backstory. Backstory: In May 2017 I self-publish my first book, Descending Into Darkness, via Kindle Publishing on Amazon. I published it without professional editing and with a few naysayers and a lot of supporters. The naysayers, didn’t believe the content, genre, was something readers were looking to read still, that the “story” had been told and beaten to death, yadda yadda yadda. THIS is the exact reason why I had stopped writing it 4 years prior. I felt it wasn’t worth finishing because it wasn’t ever going to be read because why would I publish it if these people were right, no one wanted to read that anymore. Flashback to a few years later, May 2017, and I decided, to hell with it, I’m doing it. If no one wants to read it, fine, but I it would mean I could still say I finished and published something. It was because of this thinking that I didn’t get it professionally edited. I published it after my own editing and a couple of friends reading it and just let it go. I think I only checked on the status of sales after the first month or two. It didn’t sell very many copies, which was okay with me. I was just happy it was done and I KNEW it probably wouldn’t be for a while before it picked up speed, even if it took a couple years. I even already had the second book nearly completed, in a notebook that is, so I was ready to follow up with the next in the series for those who did in fact enjoy it. Cue the discovery of script writing. I fell in love with it and I stopped writing the second book, thinking I would come back to it when I took a break from scripts. Then I got pregnant and most of you know the rest of that story. Now back to tomorrow: My husband happened to ask me if I knew if the book was still selling or not. I had no idea, I checked, still nothing since it came out. Not surprising, actually. Then I decided to do a Google search for it, see if anyone had been talking about. And I found this! You read that right! ePub rated it with 4 ⭐️ s!!! Who knew?! It’s not a complete novel sized book, as it’s a new sort of concept in series writing. There aren’t really any page/word count expectations. Don’t worry, I know the cover art isn’t great. I will get better art soon, maybe when all three books are published and it can look more uniform and awesomer. Lol
Amazon only had one rating/review on it, even know I knew two other people had reviewed it, so I don’t know what’s up with that, but I reached out to my friends on Facebook and asked those who had read it to leave a review. Not only did I get a review, three friends downloaded it to read, and hopefully leave a review. I am COMPLETELY aware that it’s not the greatest thing out there. Like I said, it wasn’t professionally edited and can use a little rewrite here and there, but I am still proud of it. I got it done and at least a few people enjoyed it and want to read the next books in the series as they come out.. Now, on to the next book. I am here at Starbucks (It’s becoming a Sunday thing) and I aim to finish the first draft this morning. There’s just the ending scene left to do and I want this thing published in spring, which, I understand, isn’t far off. Across the Veil was resubmitted to The Finish Line Screenplay competition for another set of notes, so I hope to have the second book sent out for editing while I edit the script. It’s all a delicate process of scheduling and time management. When both are done, I can work on the other full novel I am writing, a YA called The Hunt. I hope to have that one published by this Fall. I’ve got goals and I aim to stick to them. What are some of your goals, writers? Personal or professionally. And, as always, have a great day today! I guess this week’s theme is Health, because now I’m going to talk about exercise. We’ve done the whole doctor appointments and relaxation, now let me get real about exercise. At the moment, I’m doing none. Outside of chasing my kids around the house, lifting the baby from the floor and squats when I change a diaper, I haven’t been working out. I LOVE working out, but I have been really tired lately. Adjusting to three kids was really hard, then we had so many different doctor appointments for all the kids, then we moved, then we had more doctor appointments, including mine. The gym here is a joke, unfortunately. If you have only one kid, or NONE, it probably works for you, but having a schedule like mine doesn’t make it possible. The daycare is one hour for the baby, and I have to schedule 3 days in advance and, so far, never at the same time, so there’s no schedule for the baby. I have to work around nap and bus schedule and that just got to be stupid. So my husband and I made the leap and bought an expensive cardio machine from Bowflex. It will probably replace two years worth of gym membership for the both of us, but the convenience will be awesome. This way, I can work out while the baby plays (I have a baby barrier that will go around it) and the husband can workout at bedtime or in the mornings.
I used to be a gym rat before I got pregnant with my baby. My husband was deployed, my daughter went to school and my toddler went to the daycare and had fun. The gym at the time had a better, workable schedule for me regarding daycare. I would get in 1.5 hours of work out and took 30 minutes to shower and change. Most of you might think, ew, shower at the gym. When you have kids and you hardly get a change to shower child free, the opportunity to shower this way, is priceless. I had friends at the gym too. We would work out together or separate and then meet up at the end to finish with a HIIT or a cool down before we all went home. When I got home, my daughter got off the bus (preschool), and it was nap time for both of them. Then I got a solid two hours, usually, to write. And I would write hardcore. I got tons done. That’s when I discovered screenwriting, which is my niche I feel. After bedtime, I would take two hours before my own bedtime to write some more. I felt so much more energized when I wrote if I worked out. I miss that. I am READY to work out again. I finally got the go ahead from my physical therapist to do light cardio on low impact machines, which the one we got, is. My pelvis is turned out too far and it creates problems walking sometimes, as well as knee issues, and a back torsion, and oh yeah, I have a hernia with diastasis abs. This last baby tore up my core. I will need surgery later but right now, with the lifting of my children, surgery needs to wait when I can recover without picking anyone up. Maybe late next year for that. I can’t tell you all how excited I am to work out again. Yes, there will still be days that I am sore or tired and I will whine about it and try to talk myself out of it, but I am done being overweight and not doing anything about it. Nursing and having a baby that can’t have berries (through breastmilk) or cows milk or Beef, it’s tough to adjust my diet when it’s already so restricted. Yes, I might be crazy, but I think I can manage 20 minutes while the baby plays or munches on her baby crackers in her high chair while we watch cartoons and listen to Podcasts. I wrote so much better when I worked out. Ideas would come to me while I was on the cardio machines. Or I just had more energy to write. Stories flowed so much easier after workouts. I wasn’t completly exhausted afterwards either. Once I got into the groove of it, it was energizing rather that’s exhausting. I know not everyone is able to do this. But if you are able to find some weights to use or bands, you can do yoga and then weights and sit up, squats, whatever, before you wrote. I literally walked into the gym knowing that day was going to be a good writing day because I was getting a work out and the kids were having fun and they would nap well later. I miss the gym, but life happens and I have some good optimism on this machine being what we need once it gets here. Thanks for reading my rant. I’m just happy I could write this morning. LOL You all have a lovely Saturday and enjoy that cup of joe! Self care. It’s real and it’s important. I’ve already told you all that your health is important and not to put it on the back burner. This is different. Don’t push through relaxation time. Yesterday I REALLY wanted to write. I knew I had writing to get done on my MS, that if I just pushed through my exhaustion I could maybe get this MS done by Sunday, if not sooner. But I have kids. I have to be at my peek for them. So instead of writing during their nap time, I took a nap myself. I slept a good hour, maybe a little longer, then woke up refreshed and got in some writing, a little over 30 min worth, before they woke up. It was so good. I wasn’t too tired to shower in the evening before bed too. Which, if you’re a parent, you get it Sometimes sleep or just sitting down at the end of the day, trumps taking a shower when you’re tired enough.
I will make this short, as I need to squeeze in some more writing this morning, but please, please, please, don’t skip on the naps. The show you’ve been wanting to watch but haven’t because of writing/work/kids. If your deadline can allow it, take a break. A bath, a shower, a moment for just you. Love you all! Have a fantastic Friday! |
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