It's here at last!

This isn't really a post. More like a blatant publicity stunt, but we authors have to do this sometimes!

Firstly - just to let everyone know that TREESPEAKER is ON SALE from now until I decide to stop it being on sale (that's the good thing about being an 'Indie'. I can decide!) So instead of $3.99 it is now just 99c. If you use this link it will take you to whichever Amazon you use - it's magic!... http://authl.it/6v?d
(It's also available at Smashwords, Apple, B&N etc, but check that the price has been changed before you buy.)

Please tell all your friends!

Secondly -

Yes, at last, the book I've been promising for two years (exactly) is coming out. I'm very nervous about it, being a sequel and knowing that people have favourite characters etc, but I'm pretty happy with it, so I hope you are.

See you all on Friday!

How to Procrastinate Effectively – Advice for Writers.

You’ve had breakfast and you have the whole day ahead of you. Nice hot cup of coffee on the desk. Time to make a good start on editing that novel that’s been sitting on your hard drive for months. Step one: sit down at the computer.

Will you look at that screen! What a disgusting mess. Now, where are the wipers? What are they doing down there on the floor? Oh look, there’s that shoe that’s been missing for a few days. It’s there, under the desk. The dog must have hidden it there. Better get it out and go and put it with the other one.

             
Put the shoe under the bed. You haven’t made the bed. Better do that, just in case someone should happen to visit and walk through the bedroom as visitors sometimes do. There’s washing down there in the corner, too. It might be a good idea to put a load in the washing machine now. It could be raining tomorrow. You never can trust the weather forecasters who say it’s going to be fine for the next week.

              
The dog has dragged her bed into the garden. You can see it from the laundry window. If you leave it out, the other dog will chew it. Better go and bring it in. It needs a good shake. Better go and get something to whack it with.

              
Now that you're holding the broom, you may as well sweep the floor of the verandah. All that dirt is just getting tramped into the house. Move out of the way, cat! What’s the problem? Why is she yowling? Aw, poor thing, her bowl’s empty. No food nearby. Go to the pantry to get it. Now, look at that bowl. She can’t be expected to eat out of that. Take it to the laundry and give it a wash. Now you can feed her.

              
Back to the computer. Sit down and take a big sip of coffee. Yuk! It’s stone cold. Go back to the kitchen to make another. Those dishes in the sink really need washing. You can do them while the kettle reboils, can’t you? The stove could do with a wipe down, too.

             
Hot cup of coffee once more on the desk. It’s probably not worth trying to edit while you drink it. You’d have to keep stopping to pick up the cup. You haven’t checked Facebook for a while. Someone might have responded to that quip you left about blowing your nose. Check it out. Find a wonderful photo of a baby squirrel, posted by that ‘friend’ you can’t pronounce her name from Uzbekistan. Check out the link under it. Wow. Gorgeous. Now, while you’re on, it’s probably a good idea to check your emails. Yes, see, three emails from Burkina Faso; you could have missed those.

           
Woah! Wait a minute! How long is it since you checked your book sales? That was before breakfast. You might have had a sudden rush. Take a look. No. No sales. But make sure you check all the outlets. You never know when your book might take off in Brazil.

              
You haven’t quite finished your coffee. Maybe just check out that forum you posted on last night, before you start work. What! Someone disagreed with you! You’re going to have to answer that.

              
Hmm, that answer got a little long-winded, but it’s all writing, isn’t it? Turn off the internet now. No, wait! Better leave it on and just minimise it. Then you’ll know if anyone posts of Facebook.

              
Find the file you need and open it. Start to read.

              
Footsteps at the door. Husband pokes head around the corner. Goodness, is it lunchtime already? Go and eat. That will give you energy for editing.

              
Back again with another cup of coffee and a little chocolate to ease yourself into work. Oh dear. It really is hard to concentrate on editing and drinking at the same time. What else can you do?

              
Er…

Mmmmm…

That’s it! Write a blog post!

Ahem!

Bye!

Dragon Box on Smashwords

In December 2011, I added The Dragon Box to Amazon's 'Select' programme. That meant not only that it could be borrowed by those who use Amazon Prime (for which I'd get a payment), but I could also give it away for five days every three months. For the first six to nine months, this system worked wonderfully. I had a few borrows (not huge numbers, but everything helps) and I gave away thousands of copies. Even better, after each giveaway, sales of the book would shoot up for ten to thirty days, giving me an income that tempted me to give up work.

Now, however, the bubble has burst. Giveaways still rise into the thousands (though not as high as before), but the sales afterwards are minimal. It seems that unless your book is picked up by one of the major advertising sites, thus propelling sales into the region that will take the book into the Top 100, there is little benefit - and Amazon is making it more and more difficult for those sites to exist. Borrowings don't offset that. So I've taken The Dragon Box out.

Where to now? Well, I've put the book onto Smashwords and it's undergoing review for distribution to iBooks, B & N, Sony, Kobo etc. I'm fairly confident it will pass, as it didn't have any autovetting errors (after much gnashing of teeth I got that right). I'm also looking at a couple of other options. I've not had a lot of success through Smashwords with Treespeaker and Orlando's Gift, but Apple does sell some, so I'm hoping I might have some success there, especially with a children's book when so many kids have iPads.

Mark of the Dragon Queen will finish with Select soon, too, and I think that will go to Smashwords as well. What I'd really like to do, is to get them all into print. It's just a matter of getting my head around Createspace. It's probably not hard once you get going...but I'm not very brave when it comes to formatting.

Meanwhile, here's the link for The Dragon Box on Smashwords. If you feel inclined to go there and tweet and/or Facebook it to your friends I'd really appreciate it!

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/297485 

Don't judge a book by its cover - or a man by his clothing.

I’m afraid I couldn’t resist the temptation this morning to go along to the State Library Book Sale being held in town. Until now, it has been held in a stuffy little room with no air conditioning. Getting around the books was a frustrating obstacle course, constantly bumping into people and almost dropping what you've picked up. This year it’s in the new Recreation Centre – air conditioned, spacious and easy to manoeuvre.

I was good. I got books for Sausage and Dynamo before I started looking for me and then I only got two. There wasn’t a lot there that I thought I might want to keep. These days, I tend to look at novels and think, “I can get that on Kindle”, and most non-fiction, I can get from the library anyway. There was one book I thought I’d like to have on my shelf though: “The Dummies Guide to Body Language.” When I’m writing, I need something to tell me how my character might be looking or standing or sitting with a particular emotion.

There it was, sitting on the table. But before I could grab it, a huge hand reached out and picked it up. I looked at the man who had ‘pinched’ it from me. His hand was only a part of his hugeness; six-foot-five at least, I’d say. He had a stubbly beard and wore overalls with reflective patches like mechanics or firemen wear. I waited, thinking to myself, he’s not the sort to want a book like that. (Terrible of me to stereotype, I know.)  Wrong. He flicked through it, gave a nod of satisfaction and added it to the pile under his arm. Long arms like that must come in very useful at book sales.

I spent the rest of my time wandering around the sale thinking about character creation. I went to a course about it over the weekend, so it has been on my mind anyway. Here we had a man who appeared to be a workman.  I probably wouldn’t have given him a second glance in the street. You’d imagine him getting home from work, and wanting nothing more than to put the day behind him with a beer, a bit of TV or a good adventure novel. In picking up that particular book, though, he became a mystery. Maybe he’s trying to understand his wife. Or maybe he’s another writer. Or a mature age student intent on getting another job. Maybe he just enjoys reading psychology. Picking up that book he became three-dimensional – a very big three-dimensional! It just goes to show that what the course presenter over the weekend said is very true. Add irony to a character and they become real and interesting. 

So that was the holiday...

I finished work for Christmas on the 19^th of December. This being Australia, we have our long break now, to avoid going to school in the hot weather – well, some of it, anyway. Of course, the first week involved a mad rush to get ready for Christmas. I hadn’t bought any presents at all, so it really was quite chaotic, but I made it in the end and no one complained about what they got. Friends probably noticed the lack of Christmas cards, but I just didn’t get around to it. My apologies to everyone.

After Christmas, I had an article due for the British magazine, ‘Writing Magazine’ about the creation of ebook covers. It involved a bit of research, so it took a week or so. As soon as I’d sent that off, I started on two pet portraits that I’d promised to do for an old lady in town. She’s a regular customer, so though I don’t like using acrylics for dogs (I prefer pastels), I gave it my best. The major problem was that while I was trying to do them, the temperature was well over 40C, so the paint kept drying quicker than I could get it onto the board. The other problem was that one of the dogs was black; a lovely dog, but black is really difficult to make ‘alive’. 

Portraits done, I decided to start a new page on Facebook. I have an author page (Katie W. Stewart Author) if you haven’t seen it), but I thought it might be a good idea to have a page just for my illustrations, art and book cover designs to get some more work (Katie W, Stewart Illustrator). I got a lot of positive feedback and even better, a commission to do a book cover for a lady in the US. It was a Post-Apocalyptic Zombie story, but fortunately, she didn’t want Zombies on the cover. She wanted a woman on a horse. I’m not great at horses, least of all from the back when they’re rearing, but I did my best and hopefully she’ll be able to publish soon.

Only a couple of days after I’d completed that, I heard of a lady in England who was looking for an illustrator for her children’s book about Trolls. I offered my services and she signed me up, so for the last week, I’ve been drawing Trolls. I have to say, if this is work, then let me work until I’m ninety, because it has been so much fun. Imagine drawing a huge ugly ogre, dressed up as a fairy, knowing that the next day, you’ll be drawing a troll hanging from a tree and wearing a tutu. The mind boggles.

Illustration for 'The Troll Trap' by Rosen Trevithick

Unfortunately, I have only one day of ‘holiday’ left. On Thursday I have to return to work in the Library and I have to admit that the only good point about that is being with the great staff at the school. Otherwise, I could quite happily quit and spend all my time writing and illustrating. I’ve worked just about all holidays, except for the odd trip to Perth to see movies (hint – if you haven’t seen Les Miserables yet, you’re missing a great movie!), but I can honestly say my ‘holiday’ has been wonderful. All this creating has inspired me. I’m so glad that I’ve dropped a day of work this year to give myself more time (with the safety net of reregistration as a teacher so that I can earn some money if I need it doing relief). With a little organisation, I think I can make a go of this author/illustrator business. I might even persuade my accountant that getting a business number isn’t such a silly idea. Well, I can dream.

The Next Big Thing

Potential cover...still working on it.

Guy Salvidge, local author and nice guy, tagged me last week to participate in ‘The Next Big Thing’ Q & A. I have to answer some questions and then hand the baton over to five more authors. So here are the questions and my responses…

1) What is the working title of your next book?

I chose ‘Song of the Jikhoshi’ because I thought ‘jikhoshi’ was a word I’d made up. So anybody looking it up on Google would find it easily because it would be the only one. Silly me. Since then I’ve discovered that ‘Jikhoshi’ is the name of a popular Indonesian rock band. I can’t win on these book names!

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

It’s a sequel to Treespeaker which ended with a definitely open thread (while not leaving the reader in any suspense…I hope, because I hate stories that do that).

3) What genre does your book fall under?
I’d say it’s YA fantasy, which is a bit of a problem because Treespeaker didn’t really fit into YA. There’s been a lot of discussion about this. People thought Treespeaker should be YA because the style suited YA, but Jakan, the main character was in his forties, so it didn’t fit. Either way, I’ve found my books are getting read by all ages, whatever subgenre they get pushed into, so it’s not really worrying me. I have a third book in my head and that goes back to being adult/YA crossover again!

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Ah, now that would be telling. Let me just hint that if you look at my Pinterest boards, one or two of the faces on my ‘favourite entertainers’ and ‘faces for characters?’ lists might just be in my book.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

“A boy must work out whether he is still the man he once was.”
Confused? Tut tut. That means you haven’t read Treespeaker. Go out and read it at once!

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Self-published. I’ve given up sending novels out to agents or publishers. I’m quite happy with how my self-published books are doing.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Years! I started writing it as soon as I finished Treespeaker, but then I hit a wall and I just couldn’t get back into it. At first Treespeaker wasn’t doing all that well anyway, so I figured it didn’t matter, but now it’s doing better, so I’m determined to get it out there early in 2013. A few plot holes to fix first.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I don’t like comparing my books to others. I don’t want them to be like anyone else’s!

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

As I said, the ending of Treespeaker lent itself to the opening of this story. It allowed me to go into an area I’m interested in – adoption and the concept of nature vs nurture – and anyway, I really liked the characters in Treespeaker (am I allowed to say that?), so writing another story let me continue my friendship with them for a little longer.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

People who have read Treespeaker and given me feedback, seem to have loved the characters too, so I’m hoping they’ll enjoy this further episode. It’s maybe not as spiritual as Treespeaker, but it does look at the issue of nature vs nurture and the importance of choices in life.

The baton is now handed on to Lynda Wilcox, Kat Jordan, Ardyth deBruyn, Stuart Ayris and JA Beard
 

New Book Cover for a Lynda Wilcox Novel.

Since finishing NaNoWriMo, I've been working on a cover for Lynda Wilcox's upcoming novel, 'Organized Murder'. Yes, my British and Australian readers, I know that's not how we spell organised, but Lynda is trying to sell to a world-wide audience, so 'organized' it is.

Some of you may remember Lynda. I interviewed her here when her first adult novel was published. She also writes for children and has two children's fantasy novels on Amazon. I'm really looking forward to reading this one as the first one was a great read - funny and well-written, with a very likeable main character.

I actually did a cover before NaNo, but I was in a hurry to finish it and really wasn't satisfied. So I've redone it and I like this one much better - and so does Lynda, thankfully.

I hope she rewards me by getting her new book out very soon!

NaNoWriMo update #4

I did it! I finished with one day to spare. Still pinching myself because I really didn't think I'd do it...but I did!

So what did I learn from this little exercise?

1. I can write intensively when I put my mind to it.
2. Never trust Microsoft Word.
3. Scrivener is a wonderful programme for writers like me who plan and re-plan as they go.
4. Writing fast creates complete rubbish, but it gets a rough idea of the story out there for working on.
5. Never trust Microsoft Word.
6. Writing the death scene of a character you're fond of is difficult. Writing it at breakneck speed is even harder. But it gets done, which it wouldn't have otherwise...I would have procrastinated forever about doing that scene. :(
7. There are some days when writing is simply not going to happen. It doesn't matter.
8. It is possible to write without going back every three minutes to make sure it makes sense.
9. Never trust Microsoft Word.
10. It's a great feeling to get a story out of your head onto paper in such a short time. I'm glad I did it.

Now, back to editing. Is there a NaNoEdMo?

NaNoWriMo Update #3

My pace has really slowed over the past week, mainly due to work and visits to the city which took away all my oomph. One of the trips to Perth was to bring Eldest home from university for the holidays (finished first year already - where did that time go?). The other was to do a course for work, after which I had to write a 500 word reflection. I don't know whether it was because I'm doing NaNoWriMo or not, but those 500 words seemed like 50000 until I'd done them.

Anyway, 6500 words (or so) to go and 5 days to do it. It's looking do-able. I'm still feeling like the story is rubbish, but there's something there that's polishable and I've been taking lots of notes as I go along, so... off I go again!

NaNoWriMo Update #2

Yesterday, 13th November, I officially passed the half -way mark. Actually, I found getting to 10000 words more exciting. Maybe that's because it meant I'd actually got back into the flow of writing and now it's just happening...some days better than others, of course, but flowing along nicely. I can safely say that at least fifty percent of what I've written is absolute rubbish, but I expected that. I mean, for the last three chapters, my characters have been sailing to a mysterious island. All well and good if I knew anything about sailing, but somehow the boat at the beginning of the trip became a ship and I really don't know if it was sailing backwards, but with my knowledge of boating terms, it probably was. They got there though!

After the fiasco of losing all those words last week, I've been using Scrivener a lot more and I have to say, I've been finding it very useful. Here's a screen shot of one page - 

As you can see, the central section is similar to any other word processor, but it's the features down the sides that I'm finding really useful for NaNoWriMo. On the left I had planned my chapters on little cards on the 'pinboard' (that appears up in the right hand top corner), but I've ended up adding extras as the story goes along because I'm useless at planning. Easy to do - just add an extra card in the right place and it slots in down the left hand side. 

Then there's the other great feature down there on the bottom right - a place to remind myself of plot holes that I think of,  but don't have time to go back and fix (there's a lot of those). I'm copying it all into Word, too, just for extra insurance, but I'm liking Scrivener more and more.

Now, on with the writing!