Chloe Holiday's Blog, page 14
June 1, 2021
Finders, Keepers Featured in June’s Indie Romance Deals!
I’m thrilled that Finders, Keepers is featured in Nook’s June Indie Romance Audiobook Deals!
https://www.nookaudiobooks.com/category/romance-indie-deals?currentPage=16&order=-1
It’s still available pretty much everywhere else. Happy listening!
May 31, 2021
Memorial Day
Memorial Day is always a much-needed three-day weekend, the portal into summer, with its barbecues, camping, and outdoor fun, but it’s always bittersweet: a reminder of my older brother and the other military members of all branches who died in service to our country.
Memorial Day has ancient origins: the Greeks and Romans held feasts and parades to celebrate their war dead. The famous general and orator, Pericles, gave a funeral address in 431 B.C. that has many similarities to the Gettysburg Address.
In the US, one of the first memorials was organized by newly-freed slaves in Charleston, who—after the surrender of the Confederacy—gathered to commemorate a new resting site for the Union POWs who’d previously been relegated to a mass grave. Decoration Day was observed in May across the war-torn country, but didn’t become the national holiday we have now until 1971.
Poppies became the symbol for memorializing the dead because of the poem, “In Flanders Field,” in which a Canadian Allied surgeon described the red poppies that covered the battlegrounds.
Blessings upon all those who’ve lost family members, and those who now proudly serve.
May 27, 2021
Want to Name my Babies?
Spring has sprung! I have three new babies who need names! Want to help me out? There are two Starlight Green Eggers (who look like quail) and one Prairie Bluebell Blue Egger (the tawny one). Give me your suggestions, and read on for some chicken trivia!
Who knew? Chickens have been domesticated for at least 8000 years, and are one of the closest living relatives to dinosaurs! Delicious when fried, chickens are also valued for their near-miraculous, prolonged egg-laying, use of eggs for embryology, DNA, and vaccine research, and in some circles, cockfighting. Don’t worry, ours are pets, living the high life, never to be cooked nor fought, and appreciated for their tinted eggs.
It’s funny, all the chicken vernacular that’s crept into the lexicon: to “chicken out,” the term “biddy” to refer to an elderly female, to “crow about” an accomplishment, “yardbird” for a free range bird down South, “pecking order” for social hierarchy, the infamous “cocky,” and the phrases “cock of the walk” and “chickens come home to roost.” A young female is a pullet, a mature one a hen (though an Aussie might use chook), and a castrated male is a capon.
Roosters can be viciously protective, their small brains preoccupied with sex. They spend their days crowing, mating, and looking out for predators, as well as luring the hens with tidbitting, in which they cluck while picking up and dropping a succulent worm or bug, to allow one of their harem to grab it, apparently a fair trade to the girls. Courtship involves wing dancing, in which a rooster circles closer and closer, drops one wing, and “strums” the feathers with one foot to produce a rattling sound.
Mating itself is fast: the hen performs a “submissive squat,” crouching and dropping her wings to steady her, and the rooster climbs onto her back, “treads” to get his balance right, and they press their nether regions together. We’re talking a matter of seconds here. Afterwards, the female shakes herself to realign her mussed feathers and strolls away, safe for at least a while.
It’s common for hens to crouch at the sight of a rooster to get it over with, and sometimes ours do this when we approach. What’s the etiquette for that?! Diss her and hurt her feelings by walking past? I’ve settled for a pat on the back and saying, “what a nice chicken you are.”
Got any names for me?
May 14, 2021
“Only Gold-Diggers Like Billionaire Stories”
I was surprised to hear this recently from an acquaintance, though when I thought about it, I could see her point. After all, people are quick to judge people who marry rich older men in real life as gold-diggers.
This photo of Konstantinos’ yacht, from Helios and Submerged Hopes seemed like a fun accompaniment to this topic!
I think that the appeal of Billionaire Romance is two-fold: to those of us wondering how we’re going to pay for the kids’ braces, fill up the gas tank, and still not bounce any checks, it’s escapism at its finest–who wouldn’t love to be able to simply never have to worry about money again? The worldbuilding also offers a vicarious thrill: yachts and jets, casinos and boardrooms, and perhaps serves up a little bit of schadenfreude, too, seeing that even people with money to burn still have problems, and it can be extra-juicy, the way they react when thing don’t go according to plan.
That leads to the second element: a billionaire makes a great alpha: driven, in control, successful, worldly, sophisticated, and sometimes crossing over into such disregard for convention that it involves criminality. No wonder so many Dark romances have billionaires!
Maybe a third element is that we harbor the hope that, obscene wealth and status notwithstanding, that we still are bound by our common humanity. To me, that’s what makes the happily-ever-after great: rich or poor, one can still find love.
May 9, 2021
Happy Mother’s Day
I love this picture of The Red Dog watching over a batch of baby chickens. She represents motherhood so well: fiercely protective, tolerant and forgiving, and welcoming.
I’m always amazed at how little I “got” my own parents until I had to fill that role for my own children, and I’m so grateful for their good example, love and encouragement.
Yet the ability to do things differently is a blessing, too–the world has changed, and these are challenging times. Are we perfect parents? Nope!. I just hope they’ll remember that we did the best we could. 
Happy Mother’s Day to all!
April 23, 2021
Quick! Grab New Heights while it’s free!
Today and Saturday (4/23 & 24) snag New Heights for free! 
April 16, 2021
Breaking the Sound Barrier: Audiobooks!
I was clueless, before, about the work that goes into these—no wonder they’re so expensive! It’s a multistage process: the author must choose a narrator by listening to samples. That alone can take weeks. Once a narrator is chosen, the author sends the manuscript, there is a period of discussion about the tone and any questions the narrator has, and then he or she performs the story. This also may take months, between waiting for the narrator to be free to start, and the reading itself. After that, the author does a listen, and sends back anything that needs revision. Once the final narration is done, the files go to an audio engineer to be mastered—clicks removed, weird stomach noises, volumes made consistent, and other tweaks to ensure a good listening experience.
All told, it takes, on average, 6.2 HOURS to edit and master an audiobook, for every ONE hour of finished work!
Here is a raw clip of Serafina’s narration on Helios (yay!). This is from the airport scene in the third chapter. I thought it might be fun for you to see it: all the buttons across the top and the track itself. The top one with blue squiggles is the “waveform” view, which shows the deliberate sound of the narrator’s voice, but also a breath and some clicks that will be later edited out (though the section with Torrid in Topeka has been left breathy on purpose!). The bottom track depicts the same sound in “spectrograph view,” which gives more information about frequencies. Having both together helps with the editing process.
When will it be done? I’m hoping it will be a matter of a few weeks, but it takes a while for them to go through the QA process as well. In the meantime, Finder’s Keepers is out there at retailers and libraries, too—it’s been borrowed Down Under, in Canada, the UK, and Mexico! It’s an amazing, interconnected world we have now, and a real kick to hear the story while I garden.
Wishing all of you happy Springtime vibes!
April 10, 2021
Turns Out I’m a Moron
An author hopes to eventually connect with readers, but it wasn’t happening. Nada. I thought, “Maybe it takes longer?”
Aargh! I just found out that all the emails sent to me were routed to a secret webmail account I didn’t know existed, instead of the email at the bottom of the newsletter. Over 500 emails, ignored! Mea culpa!
So, of course, I decided to go through them—what if a reader actually wrote to me? Most of them were spam, including a lot of porn, so I decided to set some filters to weed out the obvious ones while still getting any real messages. POOF!!! All of them, gone. Simply gone. No “undo” option, nothing in the spam or trash folder. Just evaporated. And so far, no response from my site hosting company so I can try to fix it.
So if any actually humans DID try to contact me, instead of porn bots, please accept my sincere, mortified apologies! If you do want to reach me, use the outlook email at the bottom of the page, or the “contact me” box on the website. I’d love to hear from you!
Guess What? Finders, Keepers is available as an audiobook!
I’m excited to announce that Finders, Keepers is now available as an audiobook! I’m thrilled it can be enjoyed by people on the go, or who have visual impairment. I wanted to avoid the LOOOOOONG SLOOOOOOW readings or hammy over-acting that make me want to stab my ears out in some of the books I’ve listened to, and I’m pleased that narrator Serafina Dare nailed it. I’ll post links on the website soon but there are forty-two platforms selected, so it’ll be pretty much everywhere, though some might take time to go “live.”
Did you know it takes, on average, 6.2 hours of work behind the scenes for every finished hour of audio? The process is fascinating so I’ll do some posts on that later.
It is available through libraries, too! If you can’t get it online yourself, tell your librarian it’s available through Overdrive, Hoopla, and Bibliotheca. Tell them you wantssssss it! And, as always, leaving reviews or telling your family and friends about it is greatly appreciated! I have a limited number of codes for free copies, intended for folks who’d like to review it; please let me know if you’re interested.
Helios will be coming to your earbuds soon!
March 27, 2021
Easter Eggs: Cyber and otherwise
The symbolism of eggs as resurrection and rebirth is not unique to Christians: decorated ostrich eggs were placed in the graves of ancient Egyptians and Sumerians 5,000 years ago!
The association of eggs with Easter developed when they were prohibited during Lent. Since chickens did not stop laying, boiling was a way to use up eggs that built up during the Lenten fast. Many nations’ cuisines incorporated boiled eggs, like the slice of egg in the salteñas that Carlos ate in New Heights or the Hungarian potato casseroles served around Easter.
Egg decorating and dyeing became popular, with fancy ones given as gifts, which reached the height of excess in the jeweled Fabergé eggs commissioned by the last two Russian tsars.
Egg games include dances, hunts, rolls, tosses, passing games with spoons and other implements, and a sort of demolition derby called “egg jarping,” in which players crash their eggs into those of other players, and the last intact egg wins.
Some eggs need no decoration. Our new baby chickens will grow up to lay eggs that are naturally blue, green, dark brown, and lighter shades of brown.
Mainly, though, this post is about “Easter eggs” in media, which refers to a hidden message, reference, or joke, often in digital format. I have these interspersed throughout The Helios Series.
The term originated in conjunction with an ATARI video game, in which the developer hid his name in the frame, only visible if one hovered over a certain spot (at that time, they prohibited putting developers’ names on the games to prevent poaching and limit bargaining powers). When it was discovered, it was too expensive to remove. Instead, the enterprising marketers decided to embed future “Easter eggs” for players to discover.
Hidden content far precedes this, and is common in the physical world, such as aviation mechanics leaving messages hidden in engineering spaces of jets. The “Easter eggs” in video games and movies can be cheat codes, subliminal messages, inside jokes, references to pop culture. or sometimes taunts to competitors: the 1084 CVAX microchip contained etchings in the Cyrillic alphabet that said, “VAX: when you care enough to steal the very best.”
Comic books do this, too. The word “sex” is hidden in almost every frame of New X-Men 118, and the spines of books in the background of Universe X: Spidey read: ” “HARRAS HA HA, HE’S GONE, GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH HE WAS A NASTY S.O.B.” This taunt to a recently-fired boss was caught before press, but the preview copies that have this are now valuable collector’s items.
In computers, Easter eggs pose security concerns, since they are often held secret, and could theoretically implant “logic bombs” into work, though they can be also be used as tools to detect illegal copies.
I have no taunts in my Easter eggs. Instead, they are references and callbacks to earlier books, sometimes funny, sometimes ironic, that will be apparent to readers of the whole series, while not bogging down new ones.
If you’ve read multiple of the books, did you like the Easter eggs? I’m planning out my new series, and it’s a question under consideration, since it is a lot of work. Let me hear what you think!
March 22, 2021
Psst! Guess what! Finders, Keepers is available on Audiobook!
Sneak Preview: Introducing The Helios Series Audiobooks!
Finders, Keepers is now available as an audiobook! I’m SO excited! It will be coming to pretty much every platform imaginable over the next few weeks, but it’s already “live” via several places!
I’ll update others (Audible/ACX/Amazon/etc.) as they become live.
I’m thrilled that narrator Serafina Dare’s got a nice speaking pace, not the agonizingly SLOOOOOOOOW dictation that many audiobooks adopt, and a mellow tone that won’t make you want to stab your ears out. Want to hear a sample?
The others will be coming, as well as more links!
Want to help? There are lots of ways:
Get a free download code, redeem, and review the audiobook (email me at chloeholiday@outlook.com)
Purchase and review!
Ask your library to get the ebook and/or audiobook (the latter will be available on Overdrive, which will work for them), and review.
Stay tuned for more!
