The Goodreads giveaway starts Monday and runs through Oct. 7. This is your chance to get a paperback copy of Cursed, signed by the author (me) and mailed to you.

 

This promotion is only available in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia and New Zealand. These are countries where I have sold copies of Cursed.
Don't forget you can buy your own paperback either through Amazon or Createspace.
All you have to do is be a Goodreads member, go to giveaways and sign up.
Thanks for reading.

New Parent Survival Guide available at Amazon

Despite reading all about self publishing, the articles in Writer's Digest don't really do the process justice and explain the ordeal you have to go through.

First off, one article said traditional publishing can take as long as it does to incubate an infant, while epublishing takes as long as boiling an egg.
While that is a clever line, it's completely untrue. I think it took three evenings, probably six hours, to upload my book to Create Space and create the book cover. Boiling an egg is 10 minutes.
The book publishing systems, including Amazon, take 12 to 36 hours to approve the copy and cover of a book. None of this is instantaneous. At it shouldn't be.
But I must say, I am very tempted to just sell my New Parent Survival Guide on Amazon alone.
There are a lot of other publishing outfits but none as simple as Amazon has made it through Createspace.com, which Amazon owns. That process created the ability to buy a paperback and ebook version of my book. It also made making a book cover simple and professional.
So right now my book is only available at Amazon. http://amzn.to/XUI3Ag
I am in the process of uploading my book to Smashwords so that I can send it off to all the other ebook retailers but first I have to design a book cover.
This is the biggest hurdle and frankly, where I have felt the most stress in this ebook book publication business. I know a cover is uber important to the success of a book.
But there are no templates available out there. Createspace has a bunch you can use and makes creating a cover super easy.
So, I am resorting to using Gimp to manipulate the photo I have used on Amazon to make a cover. I have found a You Tube video telling me how to use Gimp to make a book cover and I'll be spending a few hours this weekend doing that.
I have to thank the woman who made the video. Otherwise, I'd have to resort to borrowing one of the photographer's laptops at work to use Photoshop.
My husband pointed out to me that if you want instructions for anything, check YouTube first because it's highly likely someone has made a video.
Just tonight my husband used a YouTube video for instructions on how to repair the clock in my car, which required him taking half of the dashboard off.

I have dived back into writing one of my young adult novels and I hope to have that finished in the next couple of months.

Thanks for listening. Read on.

Book release delayed

Unfortunately, I haven't had the time or enough sleep to finish the edits yet. Soon. I've had a rough two weeks and took time off when I did have some free moments.
I gotta have a life, otherwise I'd be a zombie. I don't know how others do it. It's so time consuming to write the book, take care of my daughter, occasionally exercise, cook meals, periodically talk to my husband and go to work every day.
I have no life outside of those few tasks. Sometimes I think that's just not much of a life.
Except, every day I get book ideas. I get excited about the stories I want to write. It's a compulsion. I can't wait for others to read the stories and be entertained.
How sick is that?
My hope now is for the book to be done by the end of December. A mid-January release is now in the works.

Virus is almost done

Virus, the young adult book I've been working on for five years, is almost done.
I have some editing to do, some reader feedback to input before I send it off to copy editors. I hope to have it published by mid to late November 2012.
I plan to post the cover and a book blurb on Good Reads to start promoting the book. If you would like an advance copy, post a message here with contact info and I'll be in touch. I will send out 20 advanced copies. The only stipulation is that I need readers to write reviews and post them on e-retail web sites like Amazon and on Good Reads.
I'll be publishing the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other e-book web sites. A complete list will be posted once the book is set to go.
Virus is an end of world type story about a virus that is unleashed on the U.S. The survivors are mostly young adults who were either immune to the virus or got sick and survived and developed "special skills" when the virus altered their DNA. I think of the book as a cross between The Stand and the NBC television show Heroes. Book one is the story of survival and travel to Florida where most of the population is gathering to live out the winter.
There is a bigger broader story about a  "big bad" that will stretch out over the three-edition series called Remarkables.  Because I work full time, I won't be able to complete book two until late 2013 and book three until 2014. I have most of book two and three outlined and just need to fill in the blanks.
Here is a sample of the cover:

Before I start book two though, I plan to release the first book in my Fairy Tale series called Cursed. It's about a young woman who is cursed to die at 17 by her grandmother. The book is half written and I have a goal of publishing it in late February 2013.
I'm excited about this series. Unlike Remarkables, it's only been percolating in my brain since May. I have a seven-part story to tell. Each book is an independent story, although characters will bleed over from book to book. I think of it more in the vain of Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld. She had characters make guest appearances in books, which all revolved around supernatural themes.
All of my young adult books have supernatural, science fiction type elements. I don't write about vampires or werewolves, but my characters have powers, much like in Harry Potter without reciting spells.
Chapters one and two of Virus will be posted here soon. Come back to check it out.