02/01/2013 Fantastic Friday!

Hello everyone and welcome back! I hope your week has treated you well. So far my computer doesn't seem to want to screw me over, so I'm going to call this a win. Let's see if I can remember how to now mess things up for myself later and do well at the release day tournament too. For now though, let's get to the long-anticipated review, shall we?

I was going to do this last week, but technically difficulties/panic because of technical difficulties caused a delay. Today I bring you 'The Sound of Wind' by Raegan Millhollin. It follows the life and times of Hugo Meyers, a young man who couldn't care less about where the rest of the world was going, he was more concerned with where his band was going to be playing next. That was until he had a vision in the middle of a set in which he saw the world end.

Of course Hugo knows he can't do it along, whatever it may end up being, and at first his decision is to freak out an ignore it. That option is rather difficult as the air around him seems to start betraying him at the same time. The world is real, super powers don't exist, so why does he have them? Turns out he isn't alone and he needs to gather his own strength and join with them in order to stop the evil that could be directly in front of them. The only problem is that Hugo must decide what's more important, the world, or his own morality, as he's forced to make decisions that he never though he'd be the one to make.

'The Sound of Wind' is available on Smashwords for $1, which is a reasonable price to ask for something that's a full-length novel if you ask me. If the name sounds familiar, it should, because that is my dear friend and cover-artist Raegan Millhollin. She also did her own cover for this as well, but instead of using stock images she decided to go all out and draw her own. Isn't it pretty? So please help out my friend by checking out her book and telling everyone about it!

Thanks everyone for stopping by today. I still feel bad about last week, but luckily things on my computer side of things seemed to have calmed themselves down. For now I hope you all enjoy your weekend and I will see you next week!

01/30/2013 Writing Wednesday

Welcome back everyone! I am glad you all came back today. I was expecting my morning to be a little more...frustrating I believe is the right word, but now I am sitting here not quite sure what to do with my sudden available time. Receiving a bill for something I never had and being told by pretty much everyone else I talked to that the hold time would possibly take into the hours had caused me to fill my morning and get up early on a day I had off. Apparently that wasn't necessary, but now I'm awake and shouldn't go back to bed.

Today I wanted to talk about what it feels like to get a rejection letter. This seems like it would be a fairly simply concept, but it's important to prepare and be ready to accept it, because getting rejection letters is a part of writing and if you aren't properly ready for it they can be absolutely crushing. I got a rejection letter today, and while I was a little sad, I was also about 99% certain I was going to be getting it. They are a way of life and you can't let them get you down.

Now let's say you have your beautiful, polished, magnificent and wonderful manuscript. You send it to a potential publisher/agent and now you are in the (terrible) waiting stage. This stage, as I've mentioned before, can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. That amount of time is generally based on how large of a company you're submitting to. After waiting restlessly to hear that you've been accepted and will be starting the process of contract negotiations, you get an e-mail. Nervously you click it open and at first your heart is filled with anticipation and excitement as you start to read. Until you see the word 'regret', and then all other parts of the letter go unread and you immediately close out of your e-mail. This has happened to countless authors, myself included, and what generally goes through your mind after that is a flood of emotions that go between sadness, rage, and acceptance. It's basically a boiled down version of the stages of loss.

The added thing that rejection letters add though is self-pity. I don't like that word, but I can't think of a better one to describe it. It's like asking someone to the dance (or whatever) and being told that they don't want to go with you, because while they think you're cool, they only see you as a friend and have no romantic interest what so ever. The rejection letter, at least most of the ones I've seen, are not scathing by any means; they are polite, appreciative of your time, but the agency basically friend-zone's you and says that nothing will ever happen between the two of you. You start wondering what you did wrong, how to change the manuscript, query letter, or you, and also whether or not it's worth it to continue to other agencies. A rejection letter is still a rejection and being down about it is normal and fine, especially if you were really confident in what you were doing.

Yes feeling down is normal, however, you can't let it last. Authors will get more rejection letter than pages in their books, and depending on the genre you pick this can be constant. I mentioned previously how agents get a ridiculous amount of submissions, and they need to be very picky when choosing the right new author for them; if they send you a rejection letter it's not because it's a personal attack against you, but because they needed to make a business decision that didn't necessary include you. Let's say you wrote about space-traveling-vampire-cowboys (someone please make that a thing) and the agent you submitted that to is having a rather poor quarter in terms of revenue. They see that as experimental and a huge risk to the firm. Now someone else submitted a coming-of-age young adult adventure novel. That is a much safer investment for them because those things get eaten up by pretty much everyone. They needed to pay bills and the YA author just happens to be the one to help them do that; it doesn't mean they didn't enjoy your story, but that the other one was safer for them. If that happens to you, it's fine, it's not the end of the world and you just need to pick yourself up and move onto the next one.

Now if you have gotten rejections and you are tired of them, either because the economy is forcing agencies/publishers to not take on new authors, risky genres, or you're just done, there is always the option of going into self publishing. You can do this through places like Smashwords or Amazon and while there is a little more work involved on your end (due to you having to do your own advertising and telling people) you won't necessarily need to go after agencies/publishers unless you want to. It also has the added bonus of being able to work at your own pace without having to worry about deadlines and other such things. I'm not saying that this is a good response to one rejection letter, I'm just saying that it's an option if you're tired of getting truck loads of them. If you have a goal to get published by a big-time or any professional publisher you can't let the letters get you down. They happen and are a way of life when it comes to being an author, and aren't something you should revolve your life around. You are doing something important to you, and the agents/publishers understand that, but you can't take the rejection letters personally because if you do the only thing that will cause is for you to become bitter and no longer enjoy your writing.

I appreciate everyone stopping by today, and I hope this post wasn't too long for you. I will be back on Friday, barring any further laptop catastrophes, with my normal review. I hope to see you all there and I hope you all have a great rest of your week. Until then!

01/28/2012 Magnificent Monday

Hello everyone. I'm really sorry about Friday's lack of post. I was having some technical difficulties with my computer. The track pad on my laptop decided it needed to go out in such a fashion that a) made it nigh impossible to do anything on it, and b) make it seem like I had the most irritating/terrible virus I've ever gotten. Most of my Friday was spent angry and/or panicking over the idea of having to possibly reformat but not being able to save any of my data. The fact it was only the track bad came as a bit of relief, but still irritating since the laptop is less than a year old.

I hope to make up for the lack of review this week, since I have a little portable mouse for the laptop now and have disabled the track pad so it doesn't freak me out. The entire situation upset me, but it also made me scared that all my hard work would end up being lost for stupid reasons. My luck with things technology related is mixed, at best, and I am someone who's always a little nervous to update pretty much anything because of the amount of times I've gotten terrible file-corrupting viruses right after doing so. I have been told those patches are supposed to stop that, which is why there is a decent amount of table-flipping when that happens.

For now though things seem to be working fine with the work-around I have done. I have been told, multiple times, to have it fixed under the factory warranty, and realistically I know I should, however there are so many horror stories I've heard of people who have sent their computers away for repair that I am hesitant. Also not knowing how long it would take also makes me fidget since at that point I wouldn't know how long I'd have to go without being able to work on anything. Having to use a mouse isn't so bad, the situation itself was rather inconvenient though.

In other, more awesome news, I can officially say that my temporary position has being permanent at my place of work. It's such a relief I can't even being to describe what that (hopefully) means to me. To be in a work environment that is so stable after everything that happened in the last year is simply magnificent and I'm hoping that it just means good things from here on out. It's great to be able to once again thing of the future and be able to start work on saving for it without having to wonder what I should do after a certain month. I'm really excited about all these and I'm happy that I can finally share it with everyone.

For now though, I will leave you to enjoy the start of your week. I'll be back on Wednesday as always and I hope you will be too. If there are any topics anyone would like to me to consider, or if you have any questions, please feel free to let me know and I'll work it into everything. I always like hearing from my readers and I the whole purpose of this blog is to help people. In the meantime though, have a good week!

01/23/2013 Writing Wednesday!

Good day everyone! I hope this week has seen all of you well so far. Having Monday off was a nice day to relax, well it could have been if I hadn't decided that was the day I was going to put together our new entertainment center. I'm sure the people who already know about it are bored to tears with my story, but I'm proud of it, ok!

Today I wanted to talk a little about patience. This is something that people will gloss over and say that as a writer you need to have it, but it's never really explained why. Patience is something that factors into really every aspect of the writing life and if you aren't prepared for it you won't be able to appropriately adjust to the situation. Some people are impatient by nature and being hit in the face with results that aren't immediate is a huge stepping stone for them. Which is why I thought I'd bring it up today.

Simply deciding you're going to write a novel is one thing, sitting down and actually starting that process is another. Sometimes people have this idea for a story and want everything down on paper (physical or digital) instantly, and when that doesn't happen either because of their typing speed, or their hands/brains simply giving up for the day, they are hit with an incredible amount of disappointment and frustration. I'll admit that wanting my ideas to magically appear on the screen would be awesome and save a lot of time, but since technology won't catch up to the parts of my brain that are super cool we are forced to keep writing things down ourselves. This is where patience comes in, because frankly if you don't grasp onto it here nothing is going to get done. Take things one day at a time, learn your strengths, your weaknesses, and your limits and work from there.

Now let's say you've mastered the necessary amount of patience to get things started. You've been working on your would-be novel forever (or a couple months, time has vanished from your memory at this point) and you look down at the page count and suddenly panic strikes. No matter what number that is up to, whether it's short or long, there is going to be a moment when the fact it's to whatever point that maybe and it's not finish yet will strike you as simply impossible. First you may believe that something's wrong horrible wrong and you frantically make sure all of your progress is there. Then comes the points where blaming happens because no matter where you are the novel isn't done. You are convinced that it should be, but it's not, therefore you are convinced there's something wrong with you. I touched on this a bit when I came back too, in the sense that when it comes to figuring out your actual progress your brain won't always factor in this little thing called 'time' accurately. Here is where you take a step back and actually figure out the amount of time you've dedicated to your project. Maybe it's been a couple months since you've started, but maybe you've also only wrote on the weekends, or for about an hour every other day, or maybe you were writing like the wind at one point but needed to take a break for health reasons, or it's always possible that this thing called 'life' happened and made everything explode. There are so many possible factors as to what is causing the amount of time to pass in regards to your progress that blaming yourself is just ridiculous. Also, if it's only been two months and you're upset your novel isn't done, this is another point where you need to take a deep breath and remember that it can take years to finish one novel, and a couple months is not that much in the long stretch of things.

Next it's time for editing. This is a process where patience shines like a glorious star in the morning. You will have to now read your story again, make changes and notes, read it again and lather, rinse, repeat until you can't stand it anymore. Once that happens you throw it at someone else and let them do it, then they hand it back to you and the cycle begins again. This is the point where even I start to crack, mostly because by the end of it I am convinced that the story won't actually be interesting to anyone ever. This is because of the fact that I have now written it, and also read the story more times than I can remember how to count. I know everything about it, and also what happened before and what is to come. There aren't any surprises for me and everything seems predictable. This is the point where you throw the story at someone new and wait for their reaction, or you deem the story completely finished and your path will take one of two directions. The first being that of self-publishing, which (after you've bribed someone with food or money to make your cover image) is the quickest way to get that feeling of satisfaction. The other path is more waiting, and also more heartache, which is professional publishing.

Let's say your have your polished manuscript and it is a beautiful unique snowflake ready to be set delicately upon the world. You thought about self-publishing and don't like the idea of doing all of the work yourself (understandable) so you decide to go the route of getting an agent or just submitting to a publishing company. You write our your query letter and (in your opinion) it highlights all your manuscript's finest points, and get a list of agents/agencies and send out your submissions. Remember that waiting game you played earlier? Time to play it again and to couple it with some rejection letters. Sometimes the turn-around time for agencies can be weeks or in some cases, months, before you hear anything, and even then if you hear anything at all. Most places have a policy of 'if you don't hear back from us by X date, then sorry' and it's onto the next. A lot of people try the shotgun approach when it comes submissions, which is probably for the best so that you aren't hurting yourself by sending in one, waiting months, then sending in another. The problem that people have here is the fact that they, very likely, won't get an immediate response, and also the response they get has a higher percentage chance of being negative. This frustrates people and also adds to a depressed state. One way that I look at it that makes things a little better is to think about things from the agency's point of view: you've sent them a sample of your work, you and hundreds of other people too, and they have to make time to go through each and every one of them, go over the risk vs reward that is taking on a new author, and then decide whether or not that's something they want to do. They have to do that with each and every submission and sometimes that means only getting through maybe 10 a day (I honestly don't know, I'm just going on an estimate of about 50 new submissions a day and how long each sample generally is coupled with the logistical work that goes along with it). With more piling on each day it's no wonder agencies close their doors to new submissions for a while. Don't feel bad if you get a rejection, and in most cases, be thankful they sent you one in the first place because there are likely a lot of people who got nothing.

Finally, just remember that you wrote a book, that it was a long process that you should be proud of. Not everyone can do what you've done, and even though it was hard and draining, you can hold your head up high and be happy about it. I think everyone who has managed to write a book is fantastic and that you should always keep it up. I'm sorry this post was so long, but apparently I have a lot of say on the subject. I'll be back on Friday with another special review for everyone, so be sure to stop by and tell everyone you know and love. Until then I hope you all have a great rest of your week!

01/18/2013 Fantastic Friday!

Hello everyone and welcome back. I hope this week has seen you all well. For me it has been spent desperately trying to keep warm while at the same time trying to keep clean air around me. We have been stuck in a frozen fog for the last several days and air quality has gone right the way of the dump-truck. I'd love for some clouds to roll in and for some rain to fix that right up. For now though, let's get to work, shall we?

Today I bring you 'The Cave' by Jenny Gaines. A quick little short story about a pair of travelers that find shelter in a cave they'd never noticed before after an earthquake. This story feels like it's setting up for something bigger, and I can always appreciate that, so I'm hoping that I'm right.

Iteska and Azuek are working on getting back to the local village when their travels are interrupted by an earthquake. Thankful they weren't injured in the tremor they are forced to take shelter for the night in a cave that was hidden until the earthquake shook away anything that had been blocking it from sight before. Not seeing a better option they set up camp, but what they don't know is there was a very good reason that cave was hidden before. Like a pitcher plant, something in the cave has been waiting, and now Iteska and Azuek must do what they can to ensure they get to return home safely.

I picked this story because frankly sometimes not knowing is fun, especially when it's an intro to something much bigger. The story is short and tells you that something has been waiting, and now it is starting to wake up and these are the first people to encounter it in a very long time. I know that prequels are supposed to answer some things, but they're also supposed to set up the questions for later. If you are going to start your series, then by all means give us questions because they will be far more satisfying to answer later.

'The Cave' is available on Smashwords for absolutely free. It's a very short little story that I hope you all pick up. I also hope that my guess is right, and that this is the start of something much bigger. If it is this is a good intro for it and I hope the author is able to get the rest of the story out. If not, it is a good stand-alone mysterious short story for anyone to enjoy.

Thanks everyone for stopping by. I won't be in on Monday for the holiday, so I hope everyone has a great weekend. For me, I will be back on Wednesday with more things to talk about. I will spend my time working on my stories in an attempt to get something closer to being finished. Until then I hope you all have a great weekend!

01/16/2013 Writing Wednesday!

Welcome back everyone! I hope the week has treated you all well so far. We're halfway through, but that doesn't mean anything bad. I'm glad you were able to make it back here today and I'm hoping that you're telling all the people that you know and love that I'm back up and running too!

We've talked before on how there are different ways to get yourself motivated to write and how each of those methods do actually work, it just depends on the individuals that use them. Sometimes the idea o a self-imposed deadline is absolutely terrifying and that, not the task of writing out a novel is what actually causes someone to not complete their work. Since I've needed to kick myself back into gear, we're going to take another look at different forms of motivation today.

I'm sure I've stated it before, but making writing a habit is one way that, in my opinion, works incredibly well. Humans like habits and repetition as a nature, so finding somewhere to slip some writing into the mix does help some people when it comes to actually getting something done. I know that a lot of people have ridiculously busy schedules though, so finding time to do that is a possible problem. Also, the amount of time it takes to get a good solid habit to form is roughly 45 days (I believe that is the right number, if it's not, it's close to it), which means that it will take nearly a month and a half of putting effort into it before it'll feel like a normal part of your routine. That means until that happens you must constantly remind yourself of what you're doing, when you need to do it, and how you're going to do it.

I mentioned above that sometimes giving yourself a deadline is a huge double-edged sword. There are some people out there that love mini-deadlines, and they give themselves one for pretty much everything they do. That's great for them if they can actually pull it off. There are others that find deadlines terrifying, looming monsters that suck away all their motivation. The best way to handle this, if this happens to you, is to simply not give yourself a deadline at all. Say you'll finish whenever you want to and be free to decide when you start, when you take breaks, and when you'll finish. Some authors take years upon years to finish a book, which while that may drive some avid fans/readers up a wall, the ending result is a higher quality than if they had rushed through everything just to meet a deadline. It also causes less stress for the author as well, since they don't have to worry about the feeling of self-imposed failure if they don't manage to reach that deadline. (NOTE: Estimates on how long something will take to do is NOT a self-imposed deadline. Saying 'by the looks of things I should be done by X day,' is much different from saying 'I need to be done by X day, then I will move onto the first draft editing on day X, at which point I'll re-read everything three times by X day, and finally do two more rounds of editing, to be finished by X,' so please do not misunderstand.)

As I said before, the most important thing to do is make sure that your writing is something that you love and enjoy. I've heard a lot of people say that they want to write a book simply for the idea of saying that they did so, and then they sit down and get ready to actually do the task and nothing happens because frankly they hadn't been prepared for the amount of work and dedication necessary to actually write a book. This is a labor of love, patience, and also confidence, and if you aren't prepared for what's necessary to do that then, if you really do want to write a novel, the first step is always the most difficult to take: start doing it. Writing is hard, I don't know who or if anyone ever said it was easy, but if they did they are a robot or lying. It's something that you have decided to do with your life, and that's just it; it's your life. Writing a book isn't something that happens say, over the summer and then everything is perfect and awesome. Writing a book (or books) is something that takes years of commitment and the most important thing is to be ready to face that commitment head out and jump into it. You'll be incredibly happy that you did.

Thanks everyone for stopping by again today. As a reminder, you can get 'The Light Rises' for 50% by using the coupon WC65W, so please tell everyone about it! I'll be back here again on Friday so please stop by then too and have a great rest of your week!

01/14/2013 Magnificent Monday!

Welcome back everyone from what, I hope, was a super fun weekend! I know it's always tough to come back to the start of a workweek, especially when the idea of simply staying in a warm bed is far too tempting, but I appreciate everyone coming to stop by here.

I was finally able to start working on writing again this weekend and man did it feel great! At first I thought I was being kind of slow about it, but then I realized the new word count on 'Through the Broken Mirror' and I was rather satisfied with myself. It felt good to come back to it, and I think working on sketches at work is helping too. I've been practicing with inking and I am having a lot of fun with that too.

As I look back at the work I did before my break and what I need to do to fully come back into it now, it feels like a ridiculously daunting task. As I said before, the habits that were developed during my break are rather nice, tempting habits that I don't necessarily want to give up. However it is for the best that I push them aside, and I'm sure that as the new year progresses it'll be easier to do so. I'm especially looking forward to when it's not absolutely freezing cold in the morning, since that it s a major problem and frankly my bed is kept warm by lots of blankets and cats and I don't want to move.

Right now the hope is the get the writing process finished with 'Through the Broken Mirror' and I'm hoping that isn't going to take a billion years to do. Once that's completed the task of editing 'Rending the Seal' will begin and I already know that will take at least one lifetime to do so. My hope with that editing process is that I will be able to trim it down some. I know that stories will be as long as they need to be, but in my opinion that thing is too long and needs to be taken back a couple pages. Especially since once it is formatted to have real chapters (when I was writing I was lazy and just kept putting spaces in order to speed things up) it's going to be even longer just because of the spaces between the end of one chapter and the 'Chapter X' words. Either way I'm sure that is going to be a process I'll be tearing my hair out through, but it will be worth it! Hopefully...Yeah it'll be worth it.

For now though I need to work on what I have in front of me. I feel like I have a bunch of projects in the 'half-way-done' phase and I'd like for them to get to the 'mostly-done' phase. It'll happen soon and when I do I know I'll be extremely excited as I look around and fidget to find something to do.

Thanks everyone for stopping by again today. Remember, the coupon WC65W to get 'The Light Rises' for 50% off is still active, so please tell everyone you know and love! I would be honored to see more people getting into the start of the series. I'll see everyone back here on Wednesday, so for now I hope you all have a great start to your week!