Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 54
July 17, 2012
Interview, free book, and hand-painted shoes
A bit of a potpourri today. First: Marshall Payne has started up his interview series with speculative fiction writers again, and today he posted an interview with me. You can read it here.
Also, Looking Through Lace is available FREE today and tomorrow, for perhaps the last time. I’ve opted to take it out of KDP Select so that I can try uploading it (and a few other things) to the Kobo store, which just came out of beta for indie authors. That means I will also republish with Smashwords, alt...
July 15, 2012
The business of being your own publisher
I got very little writing work done this week, other than some rewriting of the next Looking Through Lace novella, Beyond the Waters of the World. I originally wrote the novella back when Looking Through Lace was published by Asimov’s, but it took me too long to finish, and by that time, Asimov’s was no longer interested in a further episode. Yet another of the many mistakes I’ve made during my writing career!
But now, after a number of reviewers have said they would like to read more about T...
July 10, 2012
Reminder: Looking Through Lace and The Future, Imperfect FREE today!
Two of my ebooks are free today, my dystopian short story collection The Future, Imperfect and my science fiction novella Looking Through Lace.
If you don’t already have them, please, help yourselves!
July 8, 2012
Writing progress and upcoming freebies
Just a short update today. This past week, I’ve been caught up in the business end of going indie, and the writing progress, while perhaps looking good in numbers, is less than I would have wanted. I am now at 51,000 words for Chameleon in a Mirror, but the 11,000 words added in the last week were edited rather than typed in from scratch, as I have been doing until now with this new version of the novel. But after rereading this section in the old version, it seemed to me that it needed less...
July 4, 2012
First attempt at a new cover for The Future, Imperfect
My last post inspired me to get to work and make some of those goals reality. Easiest first, right? And that has to be a new cover for The Future, Imperfect, even though I’m not a graphic designer. So I went searching various stock photo sites and googled tutorials for Photoshop and found this lovely, mostly-understandable tutorial on How to Give your Photos a Distressed/Grunge Effect. I have an ancient copy of Photoshop, bought used, so the instructions in tutorials are not always easy to us...
July 2, 2012
A New Round of Goals
For a year now, I’ve been participating in A Round of Words in 80 Days, and it’s been amazing. I’ve published half-a-dozen ebooks, sold several stories to traditional markets, and made enough money off my writing (after a big dip in writing fortunes last year), to once again dream that I might yet be able to make it as a full-time writer. One of the sticky note on my monitor is a wonderfully practical quote from James Lee Burke to keep me grounded: “One of the things an author can always rely...
June 30, 2012
Could group promos be the wave of the future for indies?
As folks who occasionally stop by this blog may have noticed, I participated in a group promo for fantasy ebooks last week, Summer Solstice Free Fantasy. 23 authors who hang out on the Kindle Boards got together and offered a total of 29 books for free on June 20-21.
Chris Tarwater, husband and promotions manager for his wife Tristan Tarwater, had the idea for the promo and did most of the organization, including putting together the site and having a banner made. For those of us interested i...
June 21, 2012
Interview with Indie Author J. R. Tomlin
In honor of Summer Solstice Free Fantasy, I have an interview today with author J.R. Tomlin, writer of fantasy and historical fiction.
What is it about historical fiction and fantasy that makes you write in those genres?
I suppose the main reason is that I read them. I love both genres. I started reading historical fiction very early, by the time I was ten years old I was plowing through The Three Muskateers and then writers like Nigel Tranter. Later, like a lot of people, I fell in love with...
June 20, 2012
Going indie and writing morale
I’ve been at this writing business for a long time now — and if you count all the years I was writing without any success getting published even longer. I sold my first short story to Asimov’s in 2000, and it came out 2001. And that, of course, was far from the first work of fiction I wrote. I think I definitely put in my proverbial 1,000,000 word apprenticeship.
Despite the fact that a big part of my self-definition is that I’m a writer, some developments in the last couple of years were mak...
June 14, 2012
Great review of Shadow of Stone!
Just a short note: Shadow of Stone (The Pendragon Chronicles) got its first review today, and a very enthusiastic one it is. 
You can read it here.
Given that wonderful endorsement, I would like to remind you that Shadow of Stone is free today for the Kindle!
Those of you who subscribe to Daily Science Fiction, the story in your mailbox today is my flash piece, “The Magician of Words.” I hope you enjoy it!
