Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 45

A research dilemma: new archeological discoveries at Caerleon. (And an update).

I do love research. Collecting information and brainstorming plot elements that will fit what I’ve found is one of the most enjoyable parts of writing for me. And now that I’m back to The Pendragon Chronicles with A Wasted Land, I’ve been collecting new research gems and brushing up on old, creating a visual mosaic using Pinterest.

This last week, while I was googling visuals for the various settings of the novel, I stumbled across a fascinating link to new archeological discoveries in Caerle...

Slowly increasing my word count, the natural way

I wrote a couple of days ago about how I intend to experiment with myself, see if I can increase my writing speed a bit. I started this week, and while I only had two days to test some new techniques, the first couple of things I’ve tried seem to be showing results. (Tuesday was taken up with grandmother duties, as well as the Big Project redux, some files that had to be redone.)

I’ve taken several fast writing courses over the years, have participated in several Nanowrimos, and while they mi...

Another way to think about marketing

Joanna Penn has a guest post over on David Gaughran’s blog that went up yesterday about marketing myths. Several of the myths I was already aware of (“If I get a traditional book deal, I won’t have to deal with marketing” — known that one for a long time, having been traditionally published *g*). But myth #2 really got me thinking:

MYTH 2: Marketing is scammy, sucky and awful and I’m not the type of person who can do it anyway

It’s time to reframe marketing.

Think of it this way instead. Market...

Mindsets and our attitudes to success and failure

Lately, I’ve been watching the sales of my books slide into oblivion, and it’s disheartening, to say the least. I have to admit that at times I’ve been tempted to define myself through that lack of success, to start wondering if I’m a failure at this whole self-publishing gig.

Today, I started reading a book that might just help me to find my way out of that attitude: Mindset by Carol Dweck. Basically, she defines types of mindsets, the fixed mindset and the growth mindset, and describes how...

Clarion West Write-a-thon, goals for the next quarter, and a sale on Yseult

I’ve taken a rather extended break from blogging, for a number of reasons, the only one that is relevant being that I had enough distractions and I wanted to get some writing done. And I have made progress on a couple of projects, despite very full days. I mentioned a while back that I wanted to make a stand-alone version of an episode from Shadow of Stone, and I finished a first version of “Gawain and Ragnell” with it’s own chapter breaks and appropriate quotes from Arthurian literature. Whi...

Changes in attitudes, changes in latitudes

I’m sad.

My daughter, the architect and Photoshop expert who helps me with the covers I do myself, flew to the States today, most likely for good. I’ve always been aware that I might lose her to another continent, the way my dad lost me to Europe, but realizing it might happen, then knowing it will happen, and then finally being confronted with the fact that it has happened … well, those are very different things. We’re very close, she lived next door for many years, and we would trade cookin...

Cover for Chameleon in a Mirror, and various other updates

Some time ago, I promised to post a revised version of the cover for Chameleon in a Mirror to my blog, and I’ve finally gotten around to it:

Please let me know what you think!

Since I got Island of Glass off to my niece, I’ve been working on A Wasted Land, the next novel in The Pendragon Chronicles, trying to sort through what I already have and figure out what is usable and what has to go to the trash bin. That means, I don’t have any word count to report, since I’ve been reading, analyzing,...

Using Pinterest for research bookmarks, and an update

First off, I have to thank Emily Witt for a recent post of hers which I read. It was primarily about music for characters, but she also went into using Pinterest for images for book projects. I’ve been hearing for a long time about how Pinterest is yet another great social media site where authors can reach out to their readers. All I could think was, “Oh, no, another social media site where I’ll be expected to spend way too much time reaching out to my readers.” AKA, another time sink.

I’m p...

Publishing to multiple stores through Draft2Digital: Almost All the Way Home From the Stars

A while back, I promised to blog about the process of formatting a book for all sales channels offered by Draft2Digital, including CreateSpace. Before I published this collection of stories I wrote with Jay Lake, Almost All the Way Home From the Stars, I only used D2D for B&N, Kobo, and the Apple bookstore. For that, I could upload the EPUB file that I compiled with Scrivener. For this collection, however, I also wanted hard copy, and in order to generate the PDF for CreateSpace, D2D requires...

The recent Amazon category revolution, and what it means for you

As many writers have noticed by now, this month Amazon has been playing merry with its browse categories, deleting a couple, and adding a whole lot more. In the long run, this might well be good for writers, giving us more chances for exposure, but what a lot of us saw was an immediate and dramatic decline in sales. I think this mostly applies to those who had books in categories that were deleted, or whose books were reassigned to new categories, not necessarily the best or most appropriate....