THE GREEN TUESDAY Sale is Here! Many Authors, Many .99 ebooks. #GREENTUESDAY

Green Tuesday is upon us! Check out the shelves are ebooks special priced at .99 or less! THEN hop on over to your favorite haunts and tell your friends!

Green Tuesday Sale! Save the trees, buy ebooks! Author/Publisher sign up. #GREENTUESDAY

This is a tiny bit late because man, I have been running on coffee and Top Ramen for months and it has finally caught up with me.

So here is the deal, my friends and I at Green Envy Press have are starting the first annual, GREEN TUESDAY SALE. Save the tress, buy ebooks! And not just any ebooks, but .99 cent ones! As many as we can possibly get. Which between us is already TONS. We thought, sure, we could do this awesome sale with just us. But man, we'd rather have a party! So we're going to open the sale to any author/publisher who can meet the following requirements.

1)Must have .99 ebook(s ) [regular or sale priced] on or before 12/2 available on Amazon
2) Must have a Twitter account and must be willing to post a minimum of three times on various social networks about the sale. (i.e. 3 tweets, or one post each on G+, facebook, and Twitter--however you want.)
3) Must have a blog, and be willing to post the Green Tuesday button provided to you via sign up email from at least 11/18-12/3
4)Must post sale information the day of the sale on your blog. (12/3)
5)Must sign up before 11:59 PM 11/28 (Thanksgiving)

SIGN UP FOR THE GREEN TUESDAY SALE HERE. 

BONUS, nice things:
It would be nice, if you sign up before you could share this post on your own blog. The more people we have participate in the sale, the more people will hear about it. That means higher traffic, and more fun for everyone--authors and readers alike.

We are also going to be having some fabulous giveaways! If you would like to contribute swag, books, ebooks, cash (to buy cards), or gift cards to the cause click here. It's not required.

In addition to all the benefits there are from having a large ring of synchronized support; I will be throwing an all day Twitter party (and bringing 22k+ of my closest friends) all day Green Tuesday. You are invited to party too, use hashtag #greentuesday

Did I leave something out, or need clarification? Leave a comment or send me an email. 

Yesterday I got my first death threat... apparently this means I've made it.

On Tuesday, which is odd because it's always the Mondays--but on Tuesday something crazy happened. No, not the normal level of crazy you know and love me for.

Someone threatened to kill me, on Twitter. It would be on Twitter, because practically all my life is there these days, but! It freaked me out a little bit. I'm over it, but COME ON! Who gets death threats on Twitter?

Besides me, I mean. I thought I'd get them over the the end of Pigments of My Imagination--but the fanboys took the cliffhanger better than expected! Everyone was mostly nice--this wasn't from anything writing related.

I must still be freaked out, because there are a lot more exclamation points in this post than usual. I am not even sure this post is in English.

Why I ♥ Grammarly & You Should Too

Dudes. I use Grammarly's Plagiarism Checker, because copying is for bad pop music.


And the rest of it? Man, I am in love.

So. The secret is out. I hate editing...Wait. You mean that wasn't a secret? You mean I complain about it on Twitter like every week? Er... day? HOUR?!

Ok, so quite often I can be found complaining about how much I hate editing to around nineteen thousand of my best friends. Often whining about how it totally ruins my day, week, existence. So it might come as a complete shock to you, that I don't hate editing so very much anymore. Well anyway, it's a shock to me.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down and tried Grammarly for the first time. To say I was a skeptic was putting it mildly. All I could think of was that stupid Allstate commercial, it must be true if it's on the internet! Grammarly claims they:

• Instantly find and correct over 250 types of grammatical mistakes

• Improve word choice with context-optimized vocabulary suggestions

• Help avoid plagiarism by checking your texts against over 8 billion web pages   

I admit I scoffed! We all know how good a job Microsoft Weird does checking our grammar. Even Scrivener has failed me recently. (Shorn is so a word Scrive-NERD) So despite the fact that the whole internet is talking about them, I did not have high hopes. Still, the timing was good. I was in edits up to my armpits, so I tossed in the next chapter of my manuscript in.

Wow.

That was all I said, and seriously this writer is never at a loss for words. Never.

I went through an entire chapter in just minutes. It takes all the guesswork out of the edit process for me. Often I think something might be not right, but I can't put my finger on it. Grammarly can. It is hard to self-edit. Grammarly kept me from having to re-read the same scene until the words spun off page and I'd start wondering if I wrote the whole damn thing in some obscure dead language.

The very next thing I did was email my editor asking him to go over my edited text--and see if it really is as great as I thought it was. I had to wait until the next day for my answer. Apparently editors need sleep. Whereas I previously thought they were too evil for it.

The answer was amazing. "While it didn't catch everything," he starts.... it was about ninety percent cooler than what I normally turn into him. And I mean, he couldn't say it's perfect right? Editors got to eat too.

For kicks, I am going to throw in this blog post pre-edit to see what Grammarly finds.

So as you can see, I'm an awful writer.

No, that's not right. As you can see, Grammarly gives you a "score" out of 100. As you correct things your score goes up. I don't know about you, but my adult self still likes to get A's. No one wants to write a D- of a book or even a blog post. Grammarly makes it all so easy, I forget that I am editing and not just playing some crazy word game all the Grammar Nazis think is cool.

On Grammarly.com they have an awesome list of TOP TEN REASONS YOU SHOULD USE GRAMMARLY. I'm partial, so I think mine's better.

#10 Sometimes it pays to be the smartest one in the room. Let's be honest, in writing everyone is trying to out do everyone else. To be the best you have to be the best at something. Why wouldn't you jump on the chance to make you and your book more professional with something that doesn't require your firstborn child.

#9 Everyone is a critic. As a writer, you spend a fair amount of time trying to make other people happy. If you claim you don't you're a terrible liar. There is always someone. You might be writing your books for you, but then there is always the agents/editors/publishers/readers/and other critics of the world. Don't give them something easy to complain about.

#8 Self-editing is hard. Being burned at the stake for being a bad self-editor is worse.

#7 Grammarly has 20k Twitter followers (a little more than me!) but editing is not cool--therefore Grammarly must work fabulously! Because no one wants to hang out with editing at a party.

#6 All the cool kids are doing it. While I am big into being original, there is something called a grading curve. You might be shocked to realize this applies to writing and real life. If everyone else raises their standards, you have to raise yours or you won't be able to compete.

#5 Real Editing comes in tiers, like substantial, basic, and copy-editing. Grammarly plans also come in tiers, but theirs are all for a very small fraction of how much you'd pay for a first edit.

#4 Use it and abuse it for one low price! So you get your manuscript back from the editor, and it has red lines all over it! What do you do? You fix it of course. Only sometimes the fixes aren't as cut and dried as we like and most editors don't include a second (or third, or tenth) look in their price. Grammarly does.

#3 It's not cool to wait in line. Say you want someone (anyone!) to look at your book. Did you know that most awesome editors have serious wait lists? In addition to the time you'll spend on that, it also takes weeks for them to get back to you when they do start your book. Do I think you can go editor-free when you use Grammarly? I can't, but I can skip to the copy editing part which saves time and money. Comma people probably could though.


#2 Real editors need sleep (those bastards). Feel free to use Grammarly at three in the morning. I do.

#1 Angela Kulig recommends it! Hey, that's me~!



The Fine Print: Grammarly sponsored this post... but they didn't actually plan on me talking about them. They said I could write about whatever I wanted. I decided to write about Grammarly because I am seriously into writing innovation, and I want my friends to be into it to. I love Grammarly, but that wasn't a requirement.

A Good Update

This is an update to my last post, A Personal Kind of Pain. My husband was packed, and ready to go. He was just waiting for the final details on his last minute plane tickets when he found out his orders had been canceled.

So he's still here.

I feel like a rung out rag of a women. I have cried every time I think about it for two days because I don't know what else to do. After being pulled one way and then another for so long it's hard to feel anything at all but at least I don't have to miss my best friend and cuddle mate, and that makes it much MUCH better than the alternative.

A Personal Kind of Pain

Those of you who have followed me around on the internet for a while, know I rarely talk about my personal life. The first reason is, it gets kind of dull. For example, today I have already run the dishwasher three times!  The second reason is, it's personal.

So you might not know this, but my husband is in the Air Force. That presents some very interesting challenges for our life, being so far away from family (close to 1,000 miles) can be very difficult but it's worse when husband is gone--and as you read this blog he's leaving again.

On some level, you get used to it. Or, at the very least, you get used to going through the motions. However this time because of the shutdown we were jerked around a bit---we were told he wasn't going, then he was going again, then not going, then it might be canceled all together, then he was going again but they ran out of time, and now he's going again for real and hurts. It hurts so much more than it would have if I hadn't had to hope he wouldn't go.

Usually, I'd go through a mini grieving period. I'd read a book a day for week until I could live again, but this time I just don't feel like I have time to blink. In the world of book promotion pulling back for a week could mean you are as good as dead. While that might sound dramatic, it's true. So I will do my best to focus on that, and making sure the dishwasher gets filled.

I just wanted you to know.

HEROES & VALLENEZ is free on Kobo!

Vic Vallenez is awesome, and right now he is absolutely free for Kobo! Heroes & Vallenez is a novella introduction to the world of Barneby Knotts, that we will be exploring very soon. Of course if you wanted to pay for H&V he is just .99 on BN.COM and AMAZON.COM

Blurbish:
Victor Vallenez might not be a villain, but that doesn’t make him a saint. At age 16, Vic could be a career criminal, but instead he spends his time lurking in corners and telling other peoples' secrets—for a price. As a professional snitch, money is the only thing that talks more than he does. Still, as much as Vic hates to admit it, there are some things even blood money won’t buy—mainly Emily. So, when her chivalrous butthead of a boyfriend shows up and asks for his help, there is one very good reason he won’t turn him down—and that’s his angle.