Don't hit me, I'm sorry

2013 might be the year of the snake, but for me it's the year of the GIANT HAMSTER WHEEL. I'm running and running but I just can't get off. I had so many opportunities this year that just fizzled out. So in brief here is my list of Thanks & Regrets.

Margaret from A Love 4 Lit. Put up with my crap during Indie Author Month. I wanted to rock that! But my laptop died, and my posts went missing, and she didn't kill me when I couldn't make time to fish everything out of my dead computers guts. February 2013 was one of the most stressful months of my life. I was trying to replace me vehicle, the military expected my husband to work so many hours he was making roughly minimum wage, and I could not keep my family well. Despite all that; I was really glad I got the shot so thanks for being awesome M!

Larry Kollar, who holds my hand like every day. He does all the things I can't stand to make myself do with out complaining. He is my best book buddy, so I should probably stop reminding him he's old enough to be my dad. Especially since he seems to have more energy than I do recently!

My POOR husband; who has to put up with this craziness everyday. I am so far behind schedule that I ended up spending half of every day FREAKING OUT that I was so far behind--and as you can guess that didn't really help anything.

My daddy, who bought me Ruby. My father in law who bought and drove my Honda Odyssey from Houston to Las Vegas because they cost so much less there. My family is the best!

I'm sure I'm forgetting people, because I have been forgetting things all year. The good news is, things seem to be getting back to normal. It only took three months! Let's hope this is the last apology blog for 2013 at least.

AND GUESS WHAT? Pigments is headed to the editor this weekend, so I will have something new to freak out about.

Free Books, Boy Books, and Books--Delayed

Ang here! Finally, making the announcement that Heroes & Vallenez is LIVE! Amazon took their sweet, sweet time on this one; it was "publishing" for 24 hours!

Just to recap here is the info from goodreads:

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.

 

And some personal notes, this is a middle grade novella. Basically Vallenez is a huge tease, and this is the setup for my new urban fantasy MG series about Barneby Knotts. Feel free to get attached to bad boy VV though, his novella series is slated for three titles.

 

Now, that giveaway I promised for Friday--early even! I am not planning a book tour. The truth is, I don't really like doing them as I don't like talking about myself; so I am trying to bribe you into talking about me! Stop giving me that look mom! This is how it is, you post my book info on your blog--you come back and link it here. You don't have to read it, you don't have to review it, you don't have to write a lengthy post about it--but if you want to that is great. (If you are a book reviewerer and would like a copy let me know)

 

What you absolutely need to have in your post is 1.)something about the book--i.e. the blurb, or that is is MG etc. 2.)the cover 3.)the link to Amazon

 

Do this anytime before March 13th, and add your linky and you could win. a $60 Amazon Giftcard. One winner void where you know it! (And don't forget you still have a few hours to enter to win a Kindle Fire)

 

To go with the H&V launch, The Skeleton Song is currently FREE on Amazon. It's only going to be free a hand full of days so get it now, and tell your friends!

AND LASTLY!

WHERE IS POMI? You said the day was set in stone! I did, but then my laptop died and it took me a while to decide on the details of a new one and have it shipped to me; so we are a bit delayed. Don't yell at me--it's hardly enough of a delay to mention! Look for more on that soon.

Meet Lola, our new pet

This is our new Pet. Her full name is LOLA, 30% OFF. The first thing you need to know about Lola is, she's evil. The second thing you need to know is YES she was 30% off but that wasn't why I bought her exactly. Lola has not been handled a whole lot--so sometimes she hisses and bites (but it's really more like a pinch). You'd hiss and pinch too if you had to live in a glass box that was way too small for you. Lola is a Chameleon and she isn't supposed to live in glass--and she was returned once already so she was really to large for the place she was living. I had planned on buying an Iguana, but I became moderatly obsessed with the fact that the wrong sort of people might take Lola home--and that she'd end up being returned again. Trust me, she's much happier in my office in her large all mesh habitat, with real live plants, dripping water, and humidifier; and even though I HATE bugs. I managed to feed her a couple of crickets this morning before making the man take over.

I'm a good lizzard mom; but I can't help but thinking that LOLA, 30% OFF would make an awesome book title.

BTW, I uploaded Heroes & Vallenez; expecting to make the announcement about it being live tomorrow but for you adventurist types it will be up soon. Expect to have another giveaway for those who help me spread the word it starting Friday. Until then you still have a few more days to enter to win a Kindle Fire HD--HD because we had more than 500 entries! Thanks to you guys who helped me spread the word!

Angela Kulig GOES BIG! Refuses to home! Wants you to have this Kindle Fire...

It's Indie Author Month over on ALove4Lit! Which, considering the month I have planned, was pretty spectacular timing! Go check it out, I'll wait.

February 2013 has just twenty eight short cold days in it, but it shaping up to be one hot month! In January my friend and publishing co-op mate Larry Kollar released two books, The Accidental Sorcerers and The Crossover (I did the covers!) and now it's my turn! That is right, I have 2 books planned for release in indie Author Month; and so far Larry and I have joint custody of March.

Here is my approximate schedule. When it says Heroes and Vallenez is soon--it means soon! And the date of the POMI release? Yeah that is set it stone. I know you guys have been waiting and I'm sorry. (Bad author, go to your room!)

This is the biggest month I have ever had, so to celebrate I am going to have a giveaway of equal stature! So sit down, and get those twitter fingers of yours ready to go!

I am giving away a Kindle Fire...and if I get 500 entries, which since everyone has 24 chances to win should be cake; I am going to make that Kindle Fire a Kindle HD! And yeah there are ebooks too! You want this prize, and you want to tell everyone you know.

Because doing that earns you more chances to win. Now while you are thinking about that GLORIOUS giveaway let me clue you into another big freaking deal happening this month. On 2/15 I am having  G+ chat with friends and fans and if you want to win a Kindle, you should maybe plan on coming to that too. Just sayin' more on this soon ;) But I'd clear my schedule if I was you....




a Rafflecopter giveaway

P.S.
I just lowered the price of SKELETON LAKE on Amazon to .99

The Evolution of a Book: Title and Cover. Guest Post with Author Larry Kollar

When The Crossover launches on Wednesday, you might not realize that the late-January release involved a lot of November and early-December banging of heads on desks, nightly IM sessions across three time zones going past 1 a.m. (at least in the EST), emails and Dropbox drops. It wouldn’t be too far off to say that there was more pain and suffering over the front of the book than doing the rest of it.


Those of you who follow my Writing Wibbles column might remember that The Crossover was originally called Chasing a Rainbow. Angela Kulig suggested that I search that title on Goodreads. There are hundreds of books with that title, or a really close variant, so we embarked on the first head-desking exercise: coming up with a better title, or at least one that wasn’t already used far too often. The word “Rainbow” was out, it just didn’t ring well. Coming up with a cover became a side project, but one that continued to nag at us. Finally, one night, we were IMing. Angela said “crossing something,” and the title came to me in a flash.


But that was only the beginning.


With the title out of the way, we turned to trying to come up with a book cover. Angela got to where she started dreaming about the cover and the difficulty she was having, finding something suitable. One night, she suggested we find a rainbow photo, monochrome-ify it, and go from there. I was on vacation at this particular time, and it’s a good thing the cottages had wifi. I found a shot on Wikimedia Commons, and I cropped out a piece and started working with it.

We went through several iterations, with different comments each time:


“Darker.”


“We need a different title font.”


“Not that font.”

I learned a lot from this exercise. One thing I learned was how to bang my head on the table at 1 a.m. without waking up everyone else. But it was a good exercise. I learned a ton and a half about titling placement, and what works as cover art. Finally, I heard:


“I think we need a different picture.”


So Angela went out and found one. I wasn’t sure at the very first, but the more I looked at it, the more it grew on me. To me, it harkens back to the abstract fantasy covers of the 1970s.

This all goes to show, it’s always valuable to have someone else involved with producing your book, someone who knows what she’s doing and where to find what she wants.

Angela here! You might think I'm on of those broads that is always changing her mind--and you'd be right; but no amount of awesome content will sell your book as fast as a good cover will.

Enter to win yo!

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Failing Spectacularly with Books and Turkeys

I am super glad its December. November is always a weird month for me, and NaNoWriMo is a big part of that. It always seems to me a comedy of a great many errors; chalked full of the best intentions and a seven course Turkey dinner.

SEVEN COURSES.

Or at least it seems like that when you are the only one cooking.

Also, I have five children; therefore I must look at 3,547,369 crayon turkeys made from their hand prints during the month of November alone. So it comes as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about my life that I tend for fail spectacularly at NaNoWriMo every year. Except for ME! It always shocks ME!

As it stands I tend to have no problem finishing novels in any other month of the year (and two in September) heck I will COMPLETE four books in December—complete four because I am wrapping up the three books I started in November.

Yeah, I started three books in November. I always do that to myself. I don’t go into it thinking HEY I am going to totally screw myself over by attempting something that might be mathematically impossible. Yet it happens every time anyway.

I started my book (which is secret btw) three days late, two days after that I decided I had to finish the Hollows Series right now or I am going to DIE. DIE. Which if fairly humorous because the second book in the series hasn’t even been released yet, and since Larry Kollar can’t quit his day job and do nothing but edit my books I am not really in a rush.

But after convincing myself of the need to write that book—which is titled Ice Bridge Forest—it occurred to me that I’d need the second book in the Granted series before the 4^th book in the Hollows series.

So damn it all, that was the train of thought that lead to my ultimate destruction.  

Oddly, that is what it’s like in my head every day.

 

New Book Launch: THE SKELETON SONG

Well it is FINALLY available! Amazon really held that one hostage for a while. I wanted it to be free FREE but the best I could do now was free to borrow for Amazon Prime members and .99 otherwise. Smashwords has been giving me fits and unfortunately they are the easiest way to get a free book out there. Someone suggested I just make the book a google doc and just post it wild on the internets--but I think that is asking for someone to take it and call it their own.

*UPDATE*
IT IS NOW FREE ON AMAZON. CLICK THE COVER.

Here is the blurbish!
Drowning might not be the way most adventures start, but it is the only way at Skeleton Lake. When Death is your only companion, darkness is always on the horizon.

In the prequel to SKELETON LAKE, Cassie chooses the wrong brother. That leads to a series of events that take all of her choices away. For in a world of beautiful bones and false flesh, sometimes life after death is killer.

I also decided to delay my giveaway; I was going to do one for Halloween but I looked up and realized EVERYONE was doing one so I thought I start tomorrow.

Check on the book trailer for The Skeleton Song below!