It’s your choice, take the reins and ride, or let it get away
Here’s the thing.
There are many reasons why people decide to publish their own books. Some people get frustrated with traditional publishing. Some prefer the creative control that self-publishing brings. Others see it as a better long-term business choice to control their intellectual property for the life of the copyright. Some people want to publish their Uncle Alvin’s memoirs and hand it to him at Christmas because it was good old Uncle Alvin’s life-long dream. It could be none of these reasons. It could be all of them or a combination of any.
Whatever the reason you decided to self-publish, there you are. You’ve done it.
Now please own it.
Amid all the handwringing about subscription services and how writers are getting paid (I don’t want to go over it, so if you don’t know what I’m talking about, just read David Gaughran’s post HERE) writers seem to be forgetting…
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Is Big Brother Coming To Call? I guess time will tell.
Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Kenny Louie
We live in a really strange time and technology has altered the publishing landscape into something we could never have imagined in 1999. The changes have been nothing short of science fiction. Well, buckle your seat belts because it is about to happen again. Just about the time we kind of get the knack of things, it seems there is yet another upheaval and we have to adapt.
This is why I wrote my social media branding book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World. My methods keep us from having to tear down and start over every time something in the tech world goes topsy-turvy and we can maintain brand momentum no matter what. But this time it isn’t social media throwing the curve ball.
It is Amazon.
I’ve worked hard to be balanced in all my opinions…
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First self edit meaning revise and edit, and then hire a professional
Someone asked a very fair question in the comments last week, so I’ll explain a little more about my self-publishing “credentials.”
I never submitted a manuscript or queried an agent before I decided to self-publish. I heard about self-publishing before I finished my debut novel, A Hidden Fire, and decided from the start that it was the direction I wanted to go. I published my first book in October 2011, and by June 2012, I was making a full time income. So I have been making my living from my writing for a little over a year and a half, and I have published nine books, two novellas, and a short story. I am a working writer. This pays the bills, and it does so better than any other job I’ve ever had. That’s where I’m coming from.
Now, editing.
I’m starting out with one of the…
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Worth a few chuckles as well as a few ugly truths. Don’t piss off a writer or you’ll end up in one of her books, and not favorably either
A lot of “stuff” has been going on in my life lately. Hard stuff. Heavy stuff. The kind of stuff that just makes me want to write massacre scenes….except I am so brain dead I had to google how to spell “massacre.”
Masicker? Missucker?
WHAT AM I DOING???? *breaks down sobbing*
I am supposed to be an adult an expert okay, maybe functionally literate. Fine, I give up! I have nothing left to saaaaayyyyyy. I am all out of woooords *builds pillow fort*.
I figured it’s time for a bit of levity. Heck, I need a good laugh. How about you guys?
We writers are different *eye twitches* for sure, but the world would be SO boring without us. Am I the only person who watches Discovery ID and critiques the killers?
You are putting the body THERE? Do you just WANT to go to prison? Why did you STAB…
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POV – Big problems if you don’t know what you are doing! (And it doesn’t stand for Personal Observations of Venus
This is my Upside-Down-Face
P.O.V. is a word that throws many new authors into panic. What is THAT? Prisoners of Vietnam? Pets of Vegans? Pals of Viagra? P.O.V. stands for Point of View. Traditionally, I’ve not included this lesson in my teachings on structure, but I am amending that since P.O.V. will affect structure.
The structure of a novel written in first person is very different than a novel using multiple third-person P.O.V. characters. Scenes will need a different kind of balancing, so choosing a P.O.V. should not be taken lightly. Yes, often choice of P.O.V. will come from author voice, but not always. Sometimes genre might influence our decisions as well.
Thus, today, we are going to whiz through Kristen’s P.O.V. Spark Notes.
***Just a quick reminder though. Comment over at my new Dojo Diva blog and there is a separate contest for comments with better odds of winning…
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Action + Reaction = Gotcha
And….ACTION!
As a fiction author, you will often feel like an acrobat spinning plates while standing on your head and juggling fiery chainsaws. There are so many components to keep track of, lest you end up down the Bunny Trail of No Return. Organization is key when it comes to being a successful novelist.
Before we continue, if you want better odds of winning my 20 page critique at the end of the month, I am running a separately drawn contest over on my Dojo Diva blog where I am talking about why everyone (but especially females) needs at least some basic self-defense training. Comments count for one entry. Comments with a hyperlink count for two. And you get to learn about beating up bad people.
Moving on…
We have spent the past few weeks studying the fundamentals of what makes up a novel, and today we are going to discuss…
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…you have to spread your wings.
A kind friend told me this years ago when I was going through a very difficult time. I hated my job, I hated my abusive husband, I hated the way I looked. In other words, I hated myself and my life. But it was safe. I knew what to expect from the job, from the loneliness, and from my husband. There were no challenges to face, nothing to rock my world and bring me back to my senses. I was safe in my cocoon, and I was miserable. My safe place was my prison. 
I wanted to spread my wings, I wanted to get an education, and do something with my life. I wanted to break out of the cocoon I had woven for myself, spread my wings, and fly as high as they could take me. So, after being out of school for nearly 15 years, I enrolled in a junior college and did very well. But, my ex-husband was very threatened by this and made going to school each week very difficult. One time he even took the distributor cap and wires out of my car’s engine so that it wouldn’t start. (Don’t worry folks, cars these days don’t have such archaic devices). And, little by little, that cocoon began to crack and that butterfly began to emerge. 
It didn’t happen overnight, it didn’t happen without work, but it did happen. And, that’s the point of this blog. I know there are lots of motivational blogs out there, and I don’t think I can compete with their cleverness and their quick way with words. But, I wanted to say that “You can do it.” I was a 15 year-old, unwed, pregnant teen back in the days before birth control pills and abortion was still illegal in America, and it was only done in dark back offices where nobody knew your name and nobody cared if you survived the ordeal. It was a time when people thought that “good girls don’t do things like that,” and as one of my ex BFF said, “I never thought one of my friends would do something like that.” Yeah, and then I was sent away to a home for unwed mothers where 99% of the girls gave their babies up for adoption. But, I refused, and then I refused again, and again, and again. And then I was a 16 year old child with a child of my own and a husband whose sole goal in life was to get high and stay that way,
I started building a cocoon where my children – there were 4 more over the years – were my safe place, my whole life, and then they started having lives of their own. My cocoon became very empty and lonely, and I wanted out. I wanted to see what I could do. I wanted to fly. So, I started going to Al-Anon meetings and I went back to school. I began to learn that it is not okay to be abused, and that there was a big world outside my cocoon waiting to explored. That cocoon started to crack, that butterfly started to emerge, and now many years later I have 2 master’s degrees, several published books, and I work as a college professor.
My point is that if I can overcome all of that, so can you. Going to school is easier than ever. You can do it all online with a laptop or even – for some schools – with an app on a smartphone or tablet. You can study before everyone gets up, or after they go to sleep. You can study while they are at school or on your lunch breaks at work. The point is: YOU CAN DO IT!
You don’t have to stay trapped in the safe, but lonely and painful cocoon that you have surrounded yourself with. Break out, live free, and fly as high as you want.
And remember always:
“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
― Mother Teresa
Can a boy without magic and a dragon that can’t fly save their world from destruction?
In a land of magic users, one boy is born without magic. In a realm of angry dragons, one dragon befriends a human boy. Together, they follow their hearts on a journey to save their land. They are joined by a wily old wizard and another young dragon on a quest into the unknown to find the creator dragon – Skyhawk — the only one who can save their world from a devastating war. Adventure and danger awaits the misfit group as they travel across the endless Sea of Lights, escape the mysterious earth dragons in the Valley of Death, and continue to search for the mythical Singing Mountains and Cloud Caverns. Will they succeed in finding the powerful dragon and prevent the coming war, or will they fail in their quest, and lose not only their lives but all of creation as well?
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