Stephen Burckhardt's Blog: My Blog Ramblings, page 76

Covers Are Coming Together

We think we have the art and quotes set for the covers for part three and four in the Into the West Saga Serial. The colors are still in question though. We should have the final art set this next week. I started reviewing part two, Into the West: A New Home today. I had hoped to be further along in it than I am at the moment but I was spending time with P.R. P.R. is between projects so we are enjoying some real quality time right now. P.R. loves to cook whenever there is time. Lately, I have been treated to some amazing breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. It's been great having P.R. home after the month long business trips last year. We are making up for some lost time.Tomorrow will be a day of reading to get through part two and setting up part three in Word. It's time for Mrs. Kelly to lay out her plan to settle Elizabeth and Conner in new homes in Sharon Springs. The children are not going to be happy to be split up into two different houses but Tim and Doc are determined to make it work. Keep watching the blogs for a few sneak previews from Into the West: Sharon Springs.

I Got So Much Procrastination Done Today

Here it is, only Friday night, and I already feel like I've wasted the whole weekend. I had to go to the doctor today and they gave me another vaccination booster. One of the side effects was drowsiness. Check! I have been dragging ever since I got home. I have been able to get some work done. I have a few people who are actually considering joining my team as an editor and working with me on the books. I've contacted them and given them a basic overview of my project plans and sent them the first book to look over. I realize I need to start investing in this career if I really want to get it to be a viable source of income. Tomorrow is going to be a full day of work on the books. I plan to review book two, decide on the final cover art for three and four, make a few more video ads, and check into getting a trailer made for book three. Dianne and I also need to sit down and review everything for the audio books. We really need to get them set up finally and work on getting all the audio tracks finished. Things have started to move pretty well lately and I plan to focus my energy on keeping it going. With any luck, I might to see an upturn in online followers soon and that will eventually translate into more sales. Don't forget to sign up for my "Posse" so you will get all the latest updates: book release dates, contests, brides, and freebies. While you are on the website, sign up for the Member's Only page to see my personal home videos, download short stories that give you more information about specific characters, and sign up for the birthday club. Thanks for following and have a great weekend,Stephen

Wanted: Editor/Proofreader

I have been saving up money to buy a bicycle but I think it would serve me better to use that money to pay an editor. I am in search of someone to do proofreading only, no rewrites or story polishing. I need someone to make sure all the periods and commas are in the right place, make sure I spell Conner with and e instead of Connor, and that all the their's are there and not they're. To be honest, I'm not sure the best way to go about finding a good editor I can afford (or if those two things are even compatible). I've thought about searching freelance sites and maybe even Linkedin. I have already sent out messages to some friends to see if they know someone who does this kind of work. I really hope I can find someone soon. I am in a good place right now working on the books and I do not want to lose my momentum or focus. If you happen to be an editor who has an interest in editing a western serial, I'd love to hear from you. If things work out, I would be interested in having the same person work with me for the whole serial and possibly future projects. This serial collection is currently planned to be a five book serial with the possibility of more. Each novella is about 100 pages in Word, about 25,000 words. The first two books have been edited previously but a lot of things slipped through the process. I would like to have them reedited as soon as possible then the others, as I finish writing them. If you have any interest in this project, please contact me at Stephen.Burckhardt@aol.com with your rates and turnaround timetable. If your rates fit within my budget, I can email you the first book for you to review and we can go from there. I hope to be working with one of you very soon!Stephen

New Edits Coming

I don't know what got into me. I decided to reread Into the West:The Orphan Train and Into the West: A New Home before I started the hard push on writing Into the West: Sharon Springs this weekend. My intention was just to do another check for typos while I read but ended up adding a few scenes.I did not plan to flesh out the story anymore but I think it really rounds out the characters even better. If you have the ebook versions, you will be able to download the new edits as soon as I get them uploaded, if you are interested. However, if you only purchased the print version, you would have to purchase the print version again to get the updates. I do have a proposal for those who only bought the book in print form.I don't want you to have to purchase the books again (that is a lie, I'd love to have you buy a case of books and give them to all of your friends but I'm realistic) unless you want to have the new cover art as well. If you only purchased the print version, and would like to read the new edits, just take a photo of yourself holding your copy of my book then post it on my Facebook page. I will contact you when the new edits are live and send you a PDF copy of the new edits for free. Or you can wait until Into the West: Sharon Springs goes on sale and I will have a weekend give away for Into the West: The Orphan Train to help publicize the release of part three. You will be able to download a free Nook and/or Kindle version (if I can figure out how to set up the Nook giveaway. I haven't checked into that yet.) I hope to read Into the West: A New Home by Friday so I can spend the weekend getting a jump start into writing Into the West: Sharon Springs (FINALLY, right?! I know!)Thanks for hanging on with me. It is much appreciated. I hope to always be worthy of my readers loyalty. TTFN!Stephen

Facebook Friend Grab Contest

I've had this contest on my website for a while now but I have never talked about it, so here we go. I want to increase my Facebook following so I'm willing to bribe people to help me do it. Follow the easy steps below and you could win a $20 electronic Amazon gift card.Start posting today for your chance to win. Be sure to tag Stephen and set the privacy to "public" on all your posts to qualify for your entries.Goodluck!StephenCurrent Bribe: Facebook Friend GrabYour Reward:$20 Amazon gift card.Deadline for entries: April 1st, 2018 (Yes, it really is April first. I promise it's not a joke, it just makes me smile to make it April first.)How to claim your bribe:step 1 - Share Stephen's Facebook page on your own Facebook page and tag him on the post. Posts must be set to "public" sharing. If you don't tag him, we will not see it so we can't enter you for the post. You can earn one entry per day. step 2 - Earn extra entries for sharing Stephen's blog posts on your Facebook page. Posts must be set to "public" sharing. Tag him on the shared posts and you will earn one entry for each unique blog share. In other words, you can't share the same blog fifteen times and get fifteen entries. You can share fifteen different blogs on the same day and get fifteen entries. step 3 - Earn even more entries by posting a review of Stephen's books on any bookseller or book review website, such as Barnes and Noble, Amazon, or Goodreads, etc. Just post a review and share a link to it on your Facebook page. Posts must be set to "public" sharing. Be sure to tag Stephen in your post so we can see it. You will earn 3 entries for each review. step 4 - Sit back and wait to see if you win.

It's All in How You Say It

I have had a few people ask me why I write Margret's dialog with an accent but I don't do that with her children. In my mind it's pretty simple but I'm sure it could do with a little explaining for those of you who are not in my head. Margret and her husband were born and raised in Ireland and moved to the U.S. in their late teens. Their speech patterns were learned in Ireland. Elizabeth and Conner, however, were born and raised in the U.S. While I might throw in a stray word here or their that they will say with an accent, like calling their dad, da', for the most part they will be speaking with a neutral accent because of their personal speech influences. At one point, it is mentioned that they spend a lot of time with a woman who is English. They also spend a lot of time around Americans at the home where their mother works and in the shantytown where they live. The children learn their speech patterns in New York City. Elizabeth even went to school until they became homeless and their mother was too afraid to send her anymore for fear someone might learn of their situation and take the children from Margret. Ironic, I know, since she ends up giving them up on her own, but that is different because it was on her own terms when she was ready to do so for their sake. See, all it's quite simple really. I have met people who have parents who immigrated to the U.S. and had rather thick accents but the children did not. They might say a certain word here or there where you can catch a bit of an accent to it but for the most part they sound like everyone else where they grew up. It is from these personal experiences that I drew upon for my decided to write their dialog the way I did. Besides, Dianne Burckhardt, who is doing the voice work for the audio books, says she can only do accents for so long so I need to cut them short. I hope this answers the question of accents for some of you. If you want to ask me a question about the books you would like answered in a future blog, feel free to drop me a line at Stephen.Burckhardt@aol.com or go to the "Keep in Touch" page at StephenBurckhardt.com. Write "blog questions" in the subject line. Thanks for reading me!Stephen

What to Write, What to Write . . .

I was reading advice about blogging for authors yesterday. It stated that an author should use their blog to talk about their books. I know, duh, right? But they suggested that is all you should talk about in your author blog, not your process, not your life, just your books. But does this make sense?My life and process is so wrapped up with my books that, for me at least, it is all part of the same thing. My books are extension of me and my imagination. These characters are alive and running around my head all the time. It is very difficult to separate it all. I think that is part of the reason I love using my friends' and family member's names for my characters. It just blends it all together for me that much more. I visualize my characters better, not actually as the people I named them for, but it does help be imagine them as more real. I came up with the idea of the Into the West Saga Serial story a long time ago when I met a woman who's mother had come to Kansas on the orphan train. The family who took her in treated her more as a hired hand for their farm and not as a member of their family. When the parents died, they left everything to their son and nothing to her. The son thought of her as his sister and did give her a little money but not much. It was such a sad story I wanted to go to The Orphan Train museum in Kansas to learn about these children. I did make it there about seven years ago. I learned many stories like this there and while researching the orphan train. The idea for this serial just never went away. When I got married and changed jobs, I thought the time was right to try my hand at being an author and had to start with this story. Some of the bits from the orphanage scenes in Into the West: The Orphan Train comes from stories my dad and his sisters told me while I was growing up about the years they spent living in children's homes in Oklahoma. Specifically, the scene where Elizabeth gets caned comes from a story my dad told me about the children's' home.Every novella is peppered with stories from my own family history and from things I learned while studying communications and forensic criminology. There will be more such stories to come rest in the rest of the series as well. So, keep reading and see if you can spot actual events that are taken from real life experiences. Thanks for following my work,Stephen

I Fought Gravity and Gravity Won!

I had been on a good work track and was just chugging along at a good pace but last Friday I got derailed yet again. This train analogy will be amusing when you hear what I did. So . . . last Friday, P.R. and I were going to a doctor's appointment for me. We were early and didn't need to rush. Things have been great here lately and we were both in a good mood. As we started to get closer to the train stop in our neighborhood, I saw an early train pulling into the station. I looked at P.R. and said, "Let's run for it."Now, with the neurological condition I have, I'm not supposed to run. Even when I walk, I tend to have trouble picking my toes up sometimes and I tend to trip a lot. I'm sure some of you can guess where this is going. P.R. and I take off jogging toward the train station. We aren't running hard because if we miss this train it's no big deal. It was't even time for the train we really needed, we were just having fun. We needed to cross a street to reach the train platform, and since there were no cars coming, I took off and crossed against the light, something I never do. P.R., who is used to me always waiting for the crosswalk light to change before I will cross, stayed put. After I get safely across the street, I jog toward the platform, then it happens. I drag my toes on my right foot and start to go down. Now, I was holding my coffee tumbler in one hand and a messenger bag with paperwork and a few odds and ends in the other hand. In my mind I start to do a slow motion collapse to the ground. I had time to think, How am I going to catch myself? and, This is gonna hurt! Then I hit, face first, into the cement train platform. I would say it knocked me senseless but when you considered I was already running for "fun," I was obviously already senseless before the fall. Luckily, this was very early on a Friday morning and there was only one other person on the train platform besides us to see me do this. Poor P.R. was still on the other side of the street and was only able to watch it happen. I am dazed, and honestly, can't see very well. I get up sit up and realize someone is talking to me but they are just a dark blurry figure. A few things had flown out of my bag on impact and the very kind young man who was the other person at the station with us had come over and was picking everything up for me while I tried to remember where I was and what I was doing there. I thanked him and assured him that I was fine as I stood up and just started to walk to the bench on the platform. Halfway to the bench I remembered that P.R. was with me. I looked back to a very unhappy P.R. still standing on the other side of traffic from me. I just waved and pointed toward the bench then trudged on over there. When P.R. was able to finally cross the street and get to me, I just had to laugh. I looked at P.R. and said, "At least if I'm ever going to do something this stupid, I picked a day I was already going to see my neurosurgeon. The timing was actually pretty perfect." P.R. was not nearly as amused as I was. So, long story short, I ended up with a mild concussion and now I have to go back to the neurosurgeon for another checkup. I'm black and blue and very sore but I will be okay. I've had a headache and been nauseated and dizzy all weekend but I will be okay. Just another day in the life of a colossal klutz. Now, people might think I'm joking about that but there is actually a medical supply memorial collection I left at my parents house. There is a big bag filled with Ace Bandages, air casts, slings, and braces from OTC neoprene braces to heavy duty doctor prescribed braces, If there is a way to twist, strain, or sprain it, it's a safe bet I've done it at least once and probably more than once. So this is nothing new for me. Luckily, writing is something I can do with very little physical effort. So, I will get back on track today starting with this blog. I'm going to get a few more short video ads ready to post then I will get back to work on the books for the rest of the day. Thanks for sticking with me. I figure if nothing else, my life should be entertaining for you all or, at the very least, will serve as a cautionary tale. Thanks for following my crazy life and work!Stephen

Just a Brief Update

I wanted to let you all know I have made a change on my website. I had a page that was News & Reviews but that has changed. It is now Reviews and Ads. I took the "News" off that page because most of the time now when I have news I either make a quick video ad about it or I post a blog. The little blurbs I had on the "News" page really were redundant. So from now on, I will keep posting "News" in these blogs, like I'm doing right now, and keep things a bit more concise.That is all for now. I return you to your internet surfing.

Just a Quick Note

I wanted to let you all know I have made a change on my website. I had a page that was News & Reviews but that has changed. It is now Reviews and Ads. I took the "News" off that page because most of the time now when I have news I either make a quick video ad about it or I post a blog. The little blurbs I had on the "News" page really were redundant. So from now on, I will keep posting "News" in these blogs, like I'm doing right now, and keep things a bit more concise.That is all for now. I return you to your internet surfing.