Michelle L. Levigne's Blog, page 81

The Adventure: SO WHAZZUP?

Today I'm blessed to be a guest on JPC Allen's blog, talking about fandom as a great foundation for learning to write.

Check it out:
https://jpcallenwrites.com/2020/06/18/the-fandom-method-of-worldbuilding/



WANNA COME TO A PARTY?

I'm having a BOOK LAUNCH PARTY!

July 1, hosted by the intrepid Tamera Lynn Kraft, who hosts those wonderful Booklover parties on Facebook.

We're still nailing down the details, so check back here for the specific address and time.

I'm "officially" launching TWO books that day, so your chances are doubled to get a free print copy of either SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES, Book 2 in the Neighborlee, Ohio series.
OR
FRIENDLY FIRE, the first book in the AFV Defender series (blatantly an homage to Trek, and firmly rooted in the wonderful, crazy time I spent with the USS Defiance crew, Trekkers extraordinaire, in Sacramento).

Heads up, gang: I will give you a link to the page where you can get a FREE Kindle download of CONFESSIONS OF A LOST KID, Book 1 in the Neighborlee, Ohio series.

But you have to come to the party to get it!

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

Published by Ye Olde Dragon Books www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com Available now in print and Kindle/Kindle Unlimited

Then M'kar caught her breath and she knew. She held out her tattooed hand.
"Exactly," Dulit whispered. He tugged down his collar, to reveal his matching tattoo, the flaming wings spread to embrace the dip in his collar bone.
"You found …"
"Not exactly, but it has to be close. Do you remember that incredible smell?" His throat worked.
M'kar nodded. After their battle two years ago, her nostrils had been scorched so she couldn't smell anything for nearly a lun. She had been grateful. The overbearing sweetness in the air from the monstrosity they had fought would never fade from her memory.
"Well, I ran into it again. What we found … makes it run away." He let out a snort. "Fly away, anyway."
"Garion." M'kar took a step closer.
He reached into his belt pouch to extract a data wafer. The other hand he brought from behind his back. It held a ti box, the wrapper faded but still clearly proclaiming it the genuine ti grown on Le'anka for purifying the blood, stimulating the mind, and calming the nervous system. With a delicate flavor and aroma that didn't need enhancing with sweeteners.
M'kar doubted the box held ti, either pressed in blocks or loose leaf. Whatever it held would fill both her cupped hands.
"As soon as you're back on your ship, put the box in stasis. All the others are in stasis. Best thing we could think of. The last thing we need is to double the ship's population."
"Of what?" A gentle brush of her mind didn’t reveal anything alive in the box. However, she had been wrong before. Being one of the strongest animal-oriented psionic Talents ever trained at the Academy didn't preclude mistakes or limits. She simply hadn't found the wall hard enough and thick enough to make her brain bounce around like an old-fashioned rubber ball.
That battle that had scarred their hearts, minds, and bodies had come close, though. She had slammed against something out of legend, terror-become-flesh. Her brain hadn't bounced that time.

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

Published by Ye Olde Dragon Books www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com Available now in print and Kindle/Kindle Unlimited


"Wait a moment. I'm lost." Wexel shook his head, as if he was trying to knock it back into synch with the conversation. "I saw the mechanical hooples. Those are bad enough." He shuddered, indicating he was among Cynes' latest victims. "Are you saying the live versions are on my station too?"
"He shouldn’t be making the robot hooples." Genys wanted to curl up and cry. "We erased all his files and took all the prototypes and locked up the psychotic programmer working with him." The last encounter her ship had with Cynes and his hooples had been bad enough. Robotic and organic hooples, on one station?
Please, Enlo, hasn't my crew been through enough already? It's bad enough we're the Nanny Shipnow. Why Cynes on top of it?
"Still making the robots," Decker said on a growl. "Even more addicting than the farting furballs."
"How exactly do they work?" Wexel glared at Cynes. "The results, I already know. How do they work, and how do we stop them?"

"They generate a frequency and a light show, in the ranges that Human eyes and ears can’t consciously register. It creates an addiction in the brain. You feel great, but you want to spend all your time playing with it."
"The newest version of subliminal programming." One of the civilians held out a ball of neon yellow fur, with four sets of oversized mosquito wings and eight pairs of legs. Genys itched just looking at it. "We were just realizing what was happening to us when we saw your crew chasing him. Captain, do you know how to set us free?"
"Is it turned off?" She didn't care that she was sweating. Her face felt cold enough, she had probably gone white.
"Still looking for the data access code, but we've got one of Dr. Tahl's maskers running," Decker said.
"Bless you." If she didn't think he would live up to his name with a good right hook, Genys might have kissed him.

Update: GOALS

The plan is to check in every Sunday and tally up what I've accomplished, and add any new goals to the list. (Feel free to jeer if I don't get at least half this list done this month!)

JUNE GOALS LIST as of 06/07/20:

YOUNG DEFENDERS BOOK 1:  1st draft
Started draft 1

Tweak 4 published Commonwealth Universe novels
Done -- Gemar, Scouts

1st draft of Making It All Up, Match Girls #2

Format and upload another Neighborlee book to KDP

Put together my online lesson for ACFW in July.

Revise and format and upload 2 short stories to D2D for sale.
Done: Neighborlee Sampler,

Off the Bookshelf: THE FLYING FLAMINGO SISTERS, by Carrie Seim

Audio book
Audible Original

Radio drama

What FUN!

The story of the plucky Flamingo sisters is done as an old-time radio drama, with suspenseful music and sound effects, nefarious villains of the mustache-twirling sort, and over-the-top dialog and wordplay.

Everybody's name in the Flamingo family starts with F -- including the dog.  Everybody in the family flies, or contributes to flight. When the girls' parents disappear in a air race, their evil uncle shows up to take over the family home, throw the girls into an orphanage, and search for a map to the family fortune, which can only be discovered once every hundred years.

Of course our girls take off in their plane to search for their parents, facing obstacles with determination and humor and a little sibling bickering.

Far, far too short a story -- and I really hope that the ending, which invites readers to return to hear what happens next with Fae, Frannie and Flo, their dog Fritz, and their evil uncle Frederick, really DOES mean there will be another installment.

The Adventure: YOU'RE NEVER TOO OLD TO LEARN (but that doesn't mean it won't HURT!)

Right now I'm at the end of Week 2 of the Book Launch Blueprint, taught by Thomas Umstattd Jr., Jim Rubart, and Mary Demuth.

Maybe you've heard me screaming a few times over the last two weeks, late at night, asking the Universe: WHY did I think I could write a new book, handle the day job of freelance editing and take this course all at the same time?

It's a fascinating course, on all the things a writer needs to do to prepare for a book launch. All the options and resources and tools to use to get the word out, to get visible, to get people talking.

Things I should have figured out and should have been doing years ago.

Big confession time: I'm a CAVE TROLL. I long for the "good old days" when writers sat in their garrets or dungeons and did nothing but write, and left the promotion, the advertising, to their publishers. *sigh*

NO MORE!

Did I say fascinating? Yes, but terrifying and frustrating. I'm constantly having to shut up the troll at the back of my head that keeps whining, "But I don't WANNA! It's SCAREY! I don't have TIME!"

On the plus side, I figured out a few "Well DUH!" things, like I need to have my biography and a press kit of sorts posted on my blog and my website, in case readers want to learn about me, and not just my books. I need to make it possible for readers who visit my site and check out my books to BUY IMMEDIATELY -- meaning set up buy links they can click on, right then and there. I'm set up for that now, but it's gonna take time to get the coding for all those links.

Because if you haven't looked lately, honey ... I got a TON of books out there.

And nobody is buying them because I don't make it easy, or they just don't know the books are there.

But that's about to change. As soon as I get a couple rush editing jobs done, and finish this course.

Hold me to it!!

Check out the Novel Marketing Podcast, and Author Media, for more information.

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

Published by Ye Olde Dragon Books www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com Available now in print and Kindle/Kindle Unlimited
Down two more corridors and one more level to reach her destination. Genys held her breath as she stepped into the reception area of Administrator Wexel's office. M'kar was right, they were due for a clash between the Defender’s crew and the local indiferps. She saw no one, not even Wexel's irritatingly efficient and protocol-ruled assistant with a weaselish face. The type of person she expected to find out any day now was actually Gatesh. She was about to approach the closed door of the administrator's office when the door to a conference room on the far side of the reception area slid open.
"Ah, good, thank you for coming so quickly, Captain." Wexel leaned out far enough for his glistening ebony head to be visible. He beckoned and retreated back out of sight.
Genys stepped through the door. Her first glance was enough to estimate thirty people crammed into the conference room. Maybe a dozen were her crew, maybe ten were retrofit and upgrade engineers. The rest looked like civilians, maybe employees of the various restaurants, shops, and services provided by the station. Decker, the Defender's head of security, gestured with a tip of his head as Genys’s second look around the room put names to faces.
"Please --" She stopped short when he stepped aside, revealing a rotund man dressed in a furry tunic and leggings. "Jorono Cynes?"
"No, no, not at all," the little man jabbered in a fruity, mock-aristocratic voice. "Mistaken identity. I swear."
"It's him all right," Wexel said. "Identification verified. We owe your crew for recognizing and apprehending him. They were quite adamant that he had to be stopped and his cargo impounded."
"What is it this time, Cynes? Hooples or cherashires?" Genys wondered if someone had put Gatesh Green in her spicewater, and she was hallucinating all this.
Please, Enlo, let this be a hallucination?

New Release Sample: FRIENDLY FIRE

Published by Ye Olde Dragon Books www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com Available now in print and Kindle/Kindle Unlimited
Every Gleaner in Friggley's took two steps from Genys’ Nisandrian half-blood Chief of Talents. Nothing more frightening than a Nisandrian with her hands out of sight. There was no way to predict what weapons she might draw from seemingly thin air. Legends said they had mastered N-space and could drag enough weapons along behind them, just slightly out of dimensional phase, to destroy a planet. Other legends claimed they could hide weapons inside body cavities. Genys always squirmed a little when she thought of that. M'kar never confirmed or denied those stories. Granted, no one had ever dared ask outright, but shouldn't her commanding officer have the right to know?

Bottom line: Nisandrians were always ready to fight. No need for provocation. Nisandrians liked fights even more than Gleaners liked pilfering anything and everything in sight.
One of these days, Genys vowed to learn how M'kar managed to enter a room without being seen. It was like she slit the fabric of space-time to just appear, when and where she was needed. According to the records of her training on Le'anka, M'kar didn't have teleportation among her psionic gifts. So how did she do it?
"What's it to ya?" the Gleaner captain said, his voice softening and rising another half-octave, while taking another step back.
Genys could almost call him a smart man.
"Just wondering if you're the Gleaner doing the pilfering, out on Dock Seven, or the one being pilfered, that's all. Nice big hole blasted right next to a cargo hatch. Don't your people know how to knock? Or maybe they forgot the security code to get in?" M'kar raised her voice to be heard over the curses and yells. The Gleaner captain and eight filthy, garishly ornamented crewmen scrambled to exit through a door only wide enough for two.

Update: GOALS

(The plan is to check in every Sunday and tally up what I've accomplished, and add any new goals to the list. Feel free to jeer if I don't get at least half this list done this month!)

JUNE GOALS LIST as of 06/07/20:

YOUNG DEFENDERS BOOK 1:  1st draft
Started draft 1

Tweak 4 published Commonwealth Universe novels
Done -- Gemar

1st draft of Making It All Up, Match Girls #2

Format and upload another Neighborlee book to KDP

Put together my online lesson for ACFW in July.

Revise and format and upload 2 short stories to D2D for sale.

Off the Bookshelf: THE TAIL OF EMILY WINDSNAP, by Liz Kessler

Actually, this ebook had SIX stories about young mermaid Emily Windsnap.

The Tail of Emily Windsnap
Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep
Emily Windsnap and the Castle in the Mist
Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret
Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun
Emily Windsnap and the Ship of Lost Souls

Fun! I picked up the book in my quest to get a sampling of middle grade stories so I could start out right, planning and writing my own hopeful middle grade SF series, Young Defenders, to tie into my AFV Defender series (book 1 just released this week -- shameless self-promotion!)

When the series starts out, Emily is anticipating middle school and finally learning how to swim. She and her mother live on a boat, but her mother won't let her go swimming, as she's afraid of the water. This makes no sense to Emily. There is a downside to starting a new school, because her nemesis from the harbor community will also be there, and Mandy is a bully. But then Emily jumps into the water and for a minute or two it's wonderful -- until her legs get heavy and she has other strange sensations. Determined to figure out what's going on, Emily goes swimming at night, when no one can see -- and transforms to a mermaid for the first time!

Our plucky young heroine goes through quite a few adventures and gets herself into and out of trouble again and again. Sometimes I just wanted to shake her, because seriously? Why does she keep doing what she knows she shouldn't? Why does she keep taking chances and hacking off Neptune?

The struggle and multiple moments of, "Oh, no, don't do that!" pay off in the end. Fun for mermaid enthusiasts, young and old.