Meeting all my goals, that is..
The Wyckham House edits are complete and I’m a day away from having it formatted for e-book distribution.
I finished my edit of Condemned and have shipped it off to beta readers.
Wow. I’ve been amazingly efficient. All this while turning 34 (again) yesterday and all the ensuing chaos that is birthdays in this house. Whew. *sigh*
Hope you’re all doing well!
Here’s the linky thing. 
I admit, I miss more check-ins than I make. I’m not particularly scattered, but I’ve noticed over the years that I’ve let go of a lot of the Type-A tendencies I picked up as a result of being the kid of a military sergeant. Also, I was reading Andrea Höst’s Touchstone Trilogy (Stray, Lab Rat One, and Caszandra) and I admit I was completely caught up in her worldbuilding. EXCELLENT series.
Excuses having been offered, here’s my update:
Finished the revision of The Wyckham House and have it prepped for publication; just waiting for edits and a cover, neither of which have an ETA. Hmmmm.
So I guess I need a new goal now…
Edit Condemned and get it prepped for publication. I DO have a cover for it. Doubt I’ll have edits back from beta readers & editor in time to release it with The Wyckham House, though. Bummer.
How’s YOUR week going? 
Cheer on the other ROW80 participants here!
If you'd like to donate money toward those Kindles for our soldiers, simply use Paypal and ibcprograms@gmail.com as the address to send money to. Please note on your payment that it's a Troops donation.
You should have arrived here from J Monkeys blog and will continue on to Michael Mustizer’s blog. But don’t leave until you grab your freebies!
I was an Air Force brat. I know, explains a lot about me, right? My earliest memories of my dad are of him in his fatigues, getting ready to go or coming home from work. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but there is one thing on which we were always in sync: a fierce patriotism to our country and unflagging support for our military forces.
I’ve made it super-easy for you to get some free shtuff today, namely my novel Office Politics. Yeah, it’s romance (non-mushy, though!), so if you’re not into that kinda thing, grab it anyway and pass it on to the chicklit fan in your life. And there’s a chance to win a Kindle, too, so don’t pass this up. Here are my review sponsors, if you’d like to see what they have to say about my work. Check them out – they’ve all done a lot of reading to get ready for this event, and they rock bigtime. Diary of a Bibliophile & Taylor Lee Books.
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What do you have to do to score this freebie for you and a troop? Easy. Leave a comment below answering this question:
What is your favorite firework/firecracker and how would you use it to keep the undead hordes at bay in a zombie apocalypse?
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Oh, fine – you don’t have to answer the second part of that question if you don’t want. But for everyone who does, you get the follow-up novel The Secret Dreams of Sarah-Jane Quinn.
Be sure to leave your e-mail addy below, too. (Please protect yourself from spam by using this format: yourname (at) ISP (dot) com. I’m doing my part to stop the spread of spam by replying to spammers with a word from a list of adverbs everyone says I’m not allowed to use in my writing anymore but of which I am quite fond. I look at it as killing two birds with one word.)
You rock for stopping by. If you leave a comment answering my question, you rock even more. If you answer both parts of the question, you are a freaking rockstar. Love ya, baby!
Image by lawgeek via Flickr
Getting the October 2011 issue of Forever Nocturne formatted and sleek was an effort in frustration. I had nothing but problems with formatting and links being stripped out, paragraphs being rearranged – and then it happened on my personal blog a week later. So – being me – I decided to contact WordPress Support.
Here’s my support request (demand?):
OK, I’ve held my tongue for a week now, but this is ridiculous. WTH is going on with WP lately? In some of my pages I was formatting last weekend, paragraphs were rearranged – and not by me! I pasted them in correctly. Widgets wouldn’t save correctly (one widget contained links, and when I hit save, all or some of the links would be stripped out). This was on my blog forevernocturne.wordpress.com. Now on my other blog sharongerlach.wordpress.com, I just formatted three footer widgets with images and links, went to view the blog to see how it looked – and the widgets had reverted back to the old widget content despite the fact that I SAVED THE THINGS THREE TIMES!!!!!!! I do not have time for this!!!!!
I received this reply today:
Hi there,
Sorry for the trouble. I would like to get some more information. Can you please walk me through the problem?
1. What’s the issue? Please be as specific as possible.
2. What web browser and version are you using? Please try using a different browser like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
3. Where are you encountering the issue? Please send specific links.
Screenshots are a huge help – can you please send screenshots of the issue so we can better understand the issue? Please see http://en.support.wordpress.com/make-a-screenshot/ for information on making screenshots.
Kind regards,
[technician's name withheld] – Happiness Engineer
Automattic | WordPress.com
SAY WHAT?!?!?! My jaw dropped, bouncing off my marble table and sending excruciating pain through my entire head, which is, no doubt, why I keyed this reply without second thought:
Dear [technician's name withheld],
If you were indeed a Happiness Engineer, you would not have sent me that response, because it did not engineer any happiness in my frustrated little heart. Did I NOT already explain the problems I experienced and where they were happening? The only thing I omitted was my browser. I was using Google Chrome. I tried Firefox – which gagged & puked on your widgets. Internet Explorer does not get fired up on my computer. At. All.
If you were indeed a Happiness Engineer, you would not have asked me for screenshots of these problems, because what could they tell you? That yes, indeed, my paragraphs were rearranged and my links as well as the formatting on another page were stripped out, and that my widgets didn’t save with the information I just put in them.
If you were indeed a Happiness Engineer, your response would have included these words (or something close): “WordPress was experiencing some highly frustrating technical difficulties which made us wonder if stone tablets and chisels weren’t a better way to communicate after all. But everything is back to normal now, and the technicians who had to figure out the problem are now undergoing psychotherapy for extreme frustration and technology rage, as well as seeing eye specialists about correcting vision problems caused by hour after mind-numbing, eye-crossing hour of searching code for the culprit.”
Because, [technician's name withheld], I’d rather hear the truth than be asked canned questions that demand I explain what I’ve already explained, which tells me you didn’t bother reading my complaint to begin with.
Now you can try to be a real Happiness Engineer by taking this message back to your boss: “I understand the need for certain questions and information that aren’t always forthcoming in the original complaint. So instead of having your Happiness Engineers copy & paste a standard response, please have them read the complaint in full first, and have them actually – gasp - engineer an appropriate response from scratch. THAT is true customer service.”
I baked a chocolate cake. Two layers. With cream cheese frosting. I served it, making my kids, my husband, and my granddaughter smile. You see, [technician's name withheld], that makes ME the true Happiness Engineer.
Sincerely,
Sharon Gerlach
Writer on the Edge
Although I felt better after writing it, I didn’t send my response.
Because it’s so hard to get good help these days.
Well, I went away to do some publisher-type things, and now that I’m back to my writer-type things…my attention is pinging from one thing to another. I can’t focus. I have 50 pages left to revise on my first novel, The Wyckham House, before it can go to my betas for their seal of approval. This is the second revision, and although not as intense as the first, I’ve been spinning my wheels on the last 50 pages for – oh, let’s be honest here – a month or more. I haz shame.
So I told Kait tonight that goals and accountability DO work, and that I was all-in for the next round. She told me to jump right into this one. So…here I am! I’m baaaack! And I’ve missed you, those of you who were in the first two rounds with me. And to those who weren’t – hi there, nice to meetcha!
I guess now I have to set some goals. I’m gonna make it simple, because since last August, my life has literally been run by a gorgeous little buttercup (aka my granddaughter), and I never know when I’m going to actually be able to write/edit/etc. So here it is:
I fully subscribe to the KISS philosophy, so I’ve kept it simple. ;-)
Nice to be back. *sigh*
Here’s the Linky tool for all the other participants.
”I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time. ” Orson Welles
Amen, brother.
Image by atibens via Flickr
While I completely understand the necessity of saturating a topic or sub-genre in the traditional publishing world – after all, they have to bank on what is already selling – I’ve always been a march-to-my-own-drum kind of girl. Or I’ve always been odd, as my parents would say.
I read an article recently that I wish I’d bookmarked, because I can’t find it now (maybe the blog owner got too much hate-mail and deleted the post?) about how a writer should never, ever address the reader. Um, wow. Really? Because I wrote two novels and am working on a third in the series where the main character, written in the first person present tense, does just that. I don’t just break down the fourth wall in these stories; I drive through it with a big-ass tank and and crush all the mother-lovin’ splinters beneath my treads.
And they’re selling.
You see, I made the decision long ago that I would write for me and share it with you. If writing becomes just a job, if I cease to derive pleasure from it because I’m not doing it the way I want, there’s no point in doing it anymore. To not write would be akin to not breathing. Or stopping my heart from beating.
Not an option.
So my vampires will be different than “canon” dictates. My fallen angels will be different. My zombies will be different. Even my witches will be different, my magic different. I think outside the box, color outside the lines, live outside the expectations and preconceived ideas of others.
And I invite you to do the same. I wrote a blog post for Kait Nolan, who hosted me on my blog tour for the release of Malakh earlier this year, that I titled “Writing in Someone Else’s Rut.” It’s what’s happened to anything magic, anything vampire, and soon, probably, to anything zombie. Someone is deciding canon, and it’s not you or me. The expected norm is to be a fresh voice (as long as it falls in line with all the other “fresh” voices of current times) with a unique idea (as long as it’s not too different from what else is being produced in your genre), that changes the course of your genre (but not too much – after all, who are you to decide the next new trend?)
Let me ask you, fellow writers: Are you happy being a clone? Does it fulfill you? Do you long to write your story but feel obligated to change elements to fit with what’s currently being sold?
Or are you out there wandering the desert of creativity, madly scribbling your unique plots and world-building outside the lines, cackling insanely from the scorching heat of your brilliance?
You have to decide whether you’re going to write in the trendy rut, or whether you’re driving the tank right the hell over canon. Be bold. Be daring. Be aggressive in your creativity. Embrace your unique ideas and develop them fully, so that when you write them down and offer the pages to the world, the world turns them with feverish curiosity, with burning desire to discover what happens, with immense respect and awe that you dared to be so different.
With that, I invite you to take a few moments to read the premiere installment of my outside-the-lines zombie serial, In the Blink of an Eye, in the current issue of Forever Nocturne Ezine. C’mon, it’s only 3 pages and I haven’t even trampled any canon yet.
But I will. You can bank on it. :-D
I received a copy of this book free to read, review, and promote. Below is my honest opinion, as everyone who knows me knows I am not shy of giving.
How to even begin this book review… As a writer, I’m rarely at a loss for words, and not having words isn’t the problem now. There are just so many that I could use to describe this book: mystery, romance, comedy, tragedy. Awesome, side-splitting, erotic, mesmerizing, addictive. I have literally laughed out loud (waking up Long-Suffering Spouse), fanned my face, and held my hand to my mouth in stunned “Oh no! Oh no!” incredulity.
Violet Parker literally walks into center stage from the first sentence and comes alive. I can tell she jumped fully formed and sassy into her author’s head. She is imperfect, doubt-ridden, frazzled, and utterly charming. The story is engaging – oh hell, that’s not even close. The story drags you onto center stage and forces you to experience everything Violet experiences, and let me tell you, that is some kind of face-fanning awesome when the sexual tension amps up between her characters. I blushed, I cheered, I took cold showers… And Violet’s twins – OMG, her twins… Their antics made me laugh the kind of semi-hysterical laughter only a commiserating mother can produce. The kids absolutely made this story for me.
Ann Charles writes with a dry wit and a precocious voice, and coupled with a clever – and cleverly executed – plot, this book is worth every cent and more.
Below are the companion books to go along with Ann Charles’ Nearly Departed in Deadwood – all are 99 cents for this event! And if you go on to Page 2, you can read a bit about the Bestseller for a Day event, and maybe grab yourself a freebie from Smashwords – my gift to you for stopping by today and supporting Ann, Bestseller for a Day, the Indie Book Collective, and indie authors everywhere.
 Gina Robinson |
 Jacquie Rogers |
 Amber Scott |
Don’t miss the first-ever Indie Book Blowout! Over a hundred titles from dozens of independent authors – each for only 99¢! What a bargain! Plus, enter to win a free Kindle.
What kind of books are being offered? Mystery/thriller, romance, mainstream literary, scifi/fantasy, YA fiction, and yes, even nonfiction.
For all you romance readers, anyone who buys my novel Office Politics during the Indie Book Blowout and e-mails me a screen print of their Amazon order summary, I will give a free copy of the next in the series, The Secret Dreams of Sarah-Jane Quinn (via Smashwords coupon). See the picture below for an example of the order summary (you get this in your e-mailed receipt from Amazon. Why just the order summary? Because I don’t need your address or other personal information, and you have the right to your anonymity. )
Now go grab your 99¢ books! There are some amazing authors participating, and you don’t want to miss it! And don’t forget to enter to win a free Kindle!
There’s something that has always bothered me: “the rulebook” of do’s and don’ts in writing fiction.
Prologues, apparently, are out, as are dream sequences, passive voice, antiheroes, and adverbs. *shameless plug here for my unofficial Save the Adverbs campaign* Have a plausible plot, yes; I failed in the regard in the first draft of Office Politics, which required revising the last twelve chapters of the book to fix it. Continue reading
Lake Crescent from Pyramid Peak
When I finish writing a book, that is. Well, not so much weeping anymore. I cried when I finished the first two novels (The Wyckham House – as yet unreleased – and Office Politics).
I wrote Office Politics right on the heels of finishing The Wyckham House; I’d read that you should put your first manuscript in a drawer and take it out to edit only when you have fresh eyes, like, say, in 10 or 15 years. Continue reading
