Category Archives: Ghosts

Cover reveal for a familiar book

08 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by in Cover design, Ghosts, Self-publishing

≈ 9 Comments

As of today, I have written approximately 762,000 words of fiction. That sounds like a lot unless you know that my goal in October of 2011 — before I even finished writing A Gift of Ghosts — was to write a million words, then decide if I wanted to be a writer. Having written approximately 200,000 words of fanfiction in the preceding twelve months, it didn’t seem unrealistic.

Oh, well.

As I said several months ago, I don’t need to finish those words to know that I’m going to be a writer.

But I’m not just a writer: I’m also a publisher.

And one of the best parts of being a publisher is getting to look at the covers of your books and say, “Hmm, I think I’m ready for something new.” I tried updating the typography on the Tassamara series, thinking that would satisfy me, but it didn’t, so last month, I hired Kelley York of Sleepy Fox Studio and described my dream cover of A Gift of Ghosts to her.

Without further ado, my ‘something new’.

cover to A Gift of Ghosts with couple

What do you think? Does it match your ideas of the characters? Would it be your dream cover? I haven’t updated the book yet, because I’m waiting until I have new covers for all the books in the series, but I couldn’t wait to share it!

Updates

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by in A Lonely Magic, Ghosts, Randomness, Self-publishing

≈ 2 Comments

This’ll be a weird little post but that’s the kind of mood I’m in.

1) Glitter nail polish is extremely difficult to remove. I scrubbed at a single nail for a couple minutes before giving up and scraping it off with a nail file and there are still silver specks on the nail. That stuff is like glue. My finger nails may still be glittery weeks from now. I bet my toes will still have glitter on them at midwinter.

2) I remembered I should mention that the audiobook of A Lonely Magic is not going to happen anytime soon. I went back and forth with the ACX guy. He had nice comments for my delivery but I couldn’t manage to get rid of the background noise he spotted, because Florida + summer + closet recording studio = yes, the air-conditioner has to be running. I might try again in winter, if I’m feeling like reading aloud for hours a day would be fun. That sounds pretty unlikely, doesn’t it? More realistically, I might try again if I can get an audio producer willing to do all the hard parts, while I do the reading.

3) A Gift of Ghosts reached an amazing milestone today–two hundred 5-star reviews. For my quirky little book, with its video-game playing hero and anxious, geeky heroine! I feel proud, humbled, (embarrassed that I might sound like I’m bragging!)… but mostly like the world has more possible friends in it than I ever realized. It’s a good feeling. I’m celebrating by returning to Eureka for a while. I’m going to complete Reckless, a fanfic that I’ve left unfinished for almost three years now. I suppose that’s sort of an odd celebration, but it feels fitting.

ThinkGeek contest

08 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Ghosts, Personal, Randomness

≈ 4 Comments

So, Kathy from Kindle-aholic and Stellar Four, posted links to a ThinkGeek donation contest this morning. (Yes, I know that line was link-insane — sorry about that!) If you’re willing to give ThinkGeek your email address, you can pick a classroom at DonorsChoose.org. to possibly get a donation.

I’m pretty sure that ThinkGeek is donating $1000 no matter what, so it’s not as if giving them your address has any intrinsic advantage to the outcome — someone’s getting that money — but I picked a classroom anyway, Mrs. DeVille’s ESL elementary in Seattle. If you’re willing to let ThinkGeek have an address, her number is 1627207291, if you’d like to vote for her, too.

Why did I pick her? Um, mostly, because I looked for a Seattle ESL teacher thinking I might find a classroom taught by a friend, and then found this one and really liked her name. Well, or had sympathy for her name, anyway. I wonder how many Cruella jokes she’s heard in her life? And yet she’s listed as a “Mrs.” which probably means that she changed her name, so I wonder what it was originally? Was changing it a hard decision or an easy one? Yep, questions like this are the kinds of thing I can ponder for hours. Anyway, it’s a minor thing, but it only takes a minute to vote, and she, poor teacher, posted her request in November and is almost out of time, with the entire amount to go. And a printer is really a pretty nice thing to have.

I can’t decide whether this is mean of me or not. If you’re from the northern US and in the midst of a major blizzard, you probably want to stop reading now. But I rearranged my bedroom and this is now the view from my bed.

It makes me think that possibly I should be working a little harder toward finding a job that would let me stay in Florida. I’ve mostly been thinking that when R graduates from high school, I’d head off to someplace where I’m more employable. But I should stop taking my palm tree for granted.

On February 7th, Ghosts reached a milestone on Amazon — 100 reviews. I don’t know why 100 is any different than 99, really, but it was somehow a thrilling moment in a pretty rocky week. Onward, upward, back to Time!

Ghosts free today

12 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in Ghosts, Self-publishing

≈ 2 Comments

A Gift of Ghosts is mentioned on Free Kindle Books and Tips today. It’ll be free on Amazon through the 15th to celebrate the publication of A Gift of Thought.

Not too many copies have been downloaded so far, so I was really surprised to see it on a Free bestseller list already. Then I looked at the list and the Free titles stopped at about 73 or so. I guess only 73 authors are giving away books in the Contemporary Fantasy section. That sure makes it easy to make it on the list! It’s like getting third place in a race with only three runners. But hey, it’s still third place.

I comforted myself by looking at the Top-Rated list and it’s #24 on the Fantasy, Futuristic, and Ghost Romance list and #33 on the Contemporary Fantasy list.

Dedications

13 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Ghosts

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I wrote this months ago. Not sure why it never posted or why I never posted it. Maybe because it struck me as cowardly? But today I like it — it was a great reminder of things I’ve been forgetting — so I’m posting it.

Today was practicum. For a counselor-in-training, this is the make-it-or-break-it moment. Am I actually going to be able to help people or am I going to screw up? We’ve had the rules of confidentiality drilled into us from day one, but I don’t think it’s breaking confidentiality to say that one of my future clients tried to commit suicide a few months ago. Am I going to be able to help him or is this going to be one of my worst nightmares come true? (I initially wrote worst nightmare and then I realized that homicidal trumps suicidal…but still…)

Oddly enough–or perhaps not so oddly–Felicia Day’s end of 2010 blog post popped back into my head. Specifically the improv will save your life point. Even more specifically, ignoring the voice that says “that won’t work, no one does it like that.” I don’t know if that’s as relevant to counseling as it was to writing, but in the moment, it was so comforting.It reminded me to trust my instincts, to have faith in my intuition.

And that made me really want to tell her so.

But…that felt weird. Too weird to do. And yet, why? She seems like a pretty nice person. She wrote something that mattered to me in a way far beyond sense. The delegation part, not so much, that’s meaningless at the moment. But the improv and the anxiety and the patience and the self-awareness–all of those words, for whatever reason, hit a trigger and stayed with me. So much so that it’s a year later and it still matters.

I wrote the dedication to A Gift of Ghosts on a whim almost. Most people dedicate their first book–if they dedicate it at all–to family members. To the loving spouse, the supportive parents, the delightful children. I do have a delightful child but honestly, he deserves no credit. He thinks I should play more WOW and write less (presumably because I was more fun when I was playing more WOW but also because he doesn’t like it when I read him lines of dialog and say, “would you say it that way?” Yeah, you didn’t think that 15-year-old voice was all me, did you?) And I also have/had supportive parents, although…okay, not going there at the moment.

Not the point, anyway.

The point is, I didn’t spend a ton of time thinking out the dedication of the book. I wrote it on an impulse and I didn’t really think that anyone would ever see it. And hey, I wrote a quarter of a million words of Eureka fan fiction, it’s not as if I picked some random television show to dedicate a book to. I think maybe I earned my right to dedicate a book to Eureka. But why do I feel so defensive about this? I’m honestly not sure…but I think it’s because right now, today, tonight, I want Felicia Day to know that something she said mattered. And the only way to make that happen is to tell her so. And somehow that feels ridiculously scary. Even more so than posting the book to Amazon did.

But this is the dedication of A Gift of Ghosts.

A quirky dedication for a quirky book: this book is dedicated to the creators, cast, and crew of the (wonderful, amazing, incredibly fun, tragically cancelled) television show Eureka, for first inspiring my creativity and then annoying me so much that I was forced into originality. And in particular, to Felicia Day, for this blog post: http://feliciaday.com/blog/five-things-about-2010, and for making geeky girls cool.

One Month

11 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Ghosts, Self-publishing

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Tonight’s email from OhLife reminded me that one month ago today I published A Gift of Ghosts. It surprised me. Wow, a lot has happened since then and yet it also feels as if  no time at all has passed. I guess a lot of living has happened: the Christmas Dr. Who marathon and Korean food, the solo sixteenth birthday, the trip to Boston that both lasted forever and was far too short. In book terms, though, it’s been a month.

And a good month, too. Not for writing. I’d be dismayed if I tried to figure out how few words I managed to generate, so I’m not going to try. But the book sales certainly exceeded my wildest expectations. Of course, then I started to imagine even wilder scenarios, which was fun for a few days, too. Still, even once the daydreaming stopped, I’m pleased with month one

So, onto the numbers. It’s a little confusing because of the giveaway, and because some sales were from other Amazon sites, but I think that as of the end of the day today, I have given away 2073 copies of Ghost, sold 221, and “lent” 44 through the Kindle lending library.

And right now, I have 30 reviews on Amazon. Six are from people I’ve met in RL, although that said, two of those were quite unexpected to me (and really nice). Three other people from my RL have read the book, said they loved it and that they would write reviews, but I’m not holding my breath. (Nor naming names, obviously.) It’s an interesting phenomenon, the review promise, and I’m not sure I understand it, but I’ve definitely decided that all statements about people’s prospective behavior when it comes to books should be taken with a grain of salt. And/or a mental deadline of infinity. Many of the others, understandably, are from people that I know in some context online: either fanfiction, critique circle, or the mom’s board, with one review from my WOW guild. But there are also several from people I don’t know at all, and that’s pretty darn exciting.

A little digression about reviews: the self-publishing community seems to have (IMO) a very strange attitude about reviews. To me it seems really obvious that all of the first readers of your book are going to be connected to you in some way. How else would they find the book? It’s almost impossible to stumble across a book on Amazon in amongst the millions of other books and who would ever decide to read it if there were no reviews? I truly do not understand the people who think that there’s something unethical about letting your friends and family write reviews. I basically assume–and I would expect that most other readers do likewise–that the first five reviews have to be by friends, family, or acquaintances of the author when a book is self-published. A self-published author doesn’t have the network of reviewers, the promotional budget, and the PR experience that a mainstream publishing house has. But getting friends and family to leave reviews is not planting reviews unless they haven’t read the book and are lying in their review. That’s obviously a bad idea because it’s going to mislead the reader and then you’re going to get annoyed readers writing reviews. But it’s ridiculous to not make the most of what you have available to you. Anyway, in my case, I’ve mostly asked people to mention if and how they know me, but I am definitely not going to discourage people from writing reviews.I wouldn’t write a dishonest review and I don’t assume that the people I know would either, so the more reviews the better, as far as I’m concerned. (And yes, I have basically decided that since the whole point of self-publishing is not following other people’s arbitrary rules, I don’t intend to start following the self-publishing community’s arbitrary rules, either!)

Wow, that turned into a rant. Not intentional!

I intend to use two more of my free days on Friday and Saturday of this week. I scheduled it at the beginning of the month: Friday is my first day of practicum and Saturday I’ll be hanging out with the visiting niece and nephew, possibly at Universal Studios, so I figured it’s a good time to do it, I won’t be paying any attention. I’ve already given it away to all the people I know, so I expect it’d reach a smaller number, but we’ll see, I guess.

Anatomy of a year (2011)

26 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Ghosts, Mom, Personal, Writing

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January: A scene that doesn’t fit any fanfiction story grabs me and doesn’t let go. I write down a line of dialog: “Chemists think it’s all about chemistry. Hormones and pheromones. Some peptides, a little oxytocin, and that’s the whole story. But what do they know? Really, it’s all about physics.”

Dad is diagnosed with cancer.

February: Dad has a massive heart attack, followed by quintuple bypass. Unfortunately, that means delaying the cancer treatment until he recovers. Everyone is anxious.

I write two chapters of Ghosts. I realize that books with ghosts in them are books about death. I think maybe this is not a good idea.

March: I decide to quit my job and return to school full-time.

I’m stuck on Ghosts at Chapter 4, because I realize that ghostly fifteen-year olds are really dead teenagers.

April: My birthday, and the one year anniversary of my mom’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. And quite a year it’s been, I think. I thank God that year is over, the next one has to be better. (Jinx!)

I’m not writing anything.

May: I officially quit my job and make plans for August through fall, including finally doing the house repairs that have been waiting forever.

I’m writing a little, maybe finally breaking through the writer’s block, but I decide to toss two of the five chapters that are done. I’m back at Chapter 3. I post chapters to fictionpress and bookcountry.

June: Dad’s having cancer treatments in Jacksonville and Mom gets sick. He brings her home and takes her to urgent care, then heads back to Jacksonville. Tests ensue.

July: A diagnosis. Pancreatic cancer that has metastasized to the liver. 4-6 months.

I meant to start really writing as soon as my job ended in early July, and I try, but I spend a lot of time staring into space. I read the first chapter of Ghosts aloud to Mom while sitting by her bed, and decide that it’s not bad.

August: Yeah, that should have been 4-6 weeks. Mom dies August 6th.

I try to write every day. I succeed some of the time.

September: My (ex) father-in-law dies September 6th. Needless to say I’m not really working on my house repairs. Mostly I’m sleeping a lot, crying a lot, and trying to stay on top of schoolwork.

But I’m writing almost every day.

October: I’m in Seattle for Malcolm’s memorial service when I get the call I’ve dreaded for years. A beloved college friend’s cancer is back, and this time it’s terminal. They’re moving to palliative care.

I’m back to writing when I can. I write Zane’s goodbye with tears running down my face.

November: Thanksgiving would have been my mother’s 68th birthday. My sister’s best friend dies unexpectedly, massive heart attack, the day before. She was 53.

I’m trying to let the book sit before starting revisions, but the self-imposed pressure of NaNoWriMo is making me insane and tweaking Ghosts makes me feel better. I tweak. I tweak some more.

December: Revisions! I add a few scenes, make some big changes to the ending, let a few more people critique it, then self-publish.

There are many ghosts in my book. Reviews describe it as wry, fun, breezy and charming, proving…something. That escapist writing isn’t just for readers, maybe?

I said at the end of 2010 that 2011 had to be a better year. I’m scared to say that again. So my resolution for 2012 is simple: I want to be kind as often as possible. That’s it.

Names, names, names

23 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Ghosts, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

I got reminded the other day (from a review) that I started writing Ghosts almost as an extension (rebellion might be a better word, really) of Eureka fan fiction.With two glaring exceptions, the connections are subtle enough that no one who didn’t know that would ever guess it, but the two exceptions are my hero’s name and the company name.

When I started writing, I figured, eh, if I ever decide to do anything with this, I’ll change those. Turns out, though, it’s much, much, much more emotionally difficult to change a name after spending 60,000 words with a character with that name. I probably spent half an hour today using find-and-replace on my file, changing Zane’s name to something that doesn’t belong to a character from a television show.

Zeke. No. Zack. No. Niall. No. Neil. No. Nathan. No. Aidan. No. Mark. No. Kieran. No.

I finally settled on Shane, because it was as close to Zane as I could get without staying Zane, but it still feels wrong, wrong, wrong. I may have to keep his name Zane, despite the connection with the television show. I’m pretty sure if they tried to sue me, they’d have a tough time, since the differences are far more obvious than the similarities. But still, I wouldn’t like it.

General Directions, I’m not so bothered by. On Eureka, it’s GD, too, but that’s short for Global Dynamics, which is a very different name than General Directions. And I like the whole vagueness of General Directions, so I’m keeping it.

But Zane/Shane, I just don’t know. If you’re reading this and you’ve come to the blog from one of my fiction accounts, what do you think? Can I keep his name Zane or does that make it just too much like Eureka? 

Why Is My Book Not Selling?

20 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by in Ghosts, Writing

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Okay, not my book — it’s not posted for sale anywhere yet, so that’s a fine reason for it not to sell. But I stumbled across this blog, Why Is My Book Not Selling, and spent a fascinating hour reading. I also added it to my RSS feed. It’s such a terrific source of help for self-pubbed authors and I’d like to start commenting there. Partially to build up karma for when Ghosts gets there, but also just because it seems truly useful.

I did realize, though, while reading other people’s blurbs that I’m a truly critical reader. If I do start commenting, I’m going to have to qualify everything I say with ‘just my opinion’ and ‘personal taste.’ Reading for a while made me want to go through my work and delete every adjective and adverb. I wonder what Ghosts would be like if all the adjectives were missing? I might have to try it and find out.