Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 56

Shooting for May 25th publication date for Shadow of Stone!

I’m happy to say I can now announce a publication date for Shadow of Stone. I’ve gone through the edits I got back from the copy editor, and I have a nearly final version of the cover:

While going through the edits, I noticed a couple of typos the copy editor didn’t catch, so I’m also going to try and do one more read-through. Then I will need to do the formatting and send it out to the readers who volunteered to write reviews.

I also need to work on the blurb and product description. This is...

Another successful giveaway: “Dragon Time” now #2 in historical fantasy!

Not only is Dragon Time and Other Stories #2 in historical fantasy, it is also #9 in fantasy overall in the Free Kindle Store, which I’m even happier about:

The success of Dragon Time, however, is food for thought in the marketing department. When If Tears Were Wishes went free, I referred to my post “Promoting Ebooks with KDP Select” and did pretty much everything I recommend there. When Dragon Time went free yesterday, I announced it in a couple of places, but then we took advantage of the...

A visit, a castle, a review, an Italian greeting, and more freebies

After a relatively spontaneous visit to Stuttgart (a long weekend added to a business trip), my brother left early this morning for Frankfurt, then Heathrow (good luck), then Seattle. We had a wonderful time, and he is now the first of my immediate family to meet my granddaughter Mira — one of the disadvantages of relocating to another continent. But the girls really liked him: Lisa was quite disappointed that he was already gone when they came by today for my birthday dinner, and Mira hopped...

“Yseult” Book of the Day on Flurries of Words!

My novel Yseult has been chosen as “Book of the Day” today on the ebook readers web site “Flurries of Words.” Thanks, Paula!

My brother is brother is presently visiting from the States, and today I “have to” run off and visit Hohenzollern Castle with him (poor me). But that means that I won’t have much time to do any promotion of this wonderful opportunity. So if anyone who reads this feels inclined to send a brief tweet out into the world, I would be very grateful!

I’ll upload pics of Hohenz...

Edits and cover images for Shadow of Stone: Almost there!

I’m making progress again on Chameleon in a Mirror, my Aphra Behn time travel, but not as much as I would like. Since I last posted, I’ve gotten over 2200 words written and am now working on a couple of completely new scenes that I realized I needed. Recently, however, I’ve also been spending a lot of my “writing time” attending to various non-creative aspects of my writing life: jotting down notes for a guest lecture I’ll be giving at the University of Stuttgart later this month; checking th...

Villa Diodati 10: On the joy of hanging out with other writers

Very late Wednesday, I got back from the most recent Villa Diodati workshop, a peer workshop for speculative fiction writers living all over Europe and writing in English.

This time we met in Southern England at a “cottage” organized by Steve Gaskell, and I think it’s safe to say that it was one of the most productive workshops we have ever had. The first “exercise” we did after critiques and lunch on the first day was a two hour long writing challenge. In preparation, we sat around the gener...

Interview, plunging ahead with Aphra, and using up my free days on Never Ever After

Great Minds Think Aloud posted an interview with me today:

http://www.greatmindsthinkaloud.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=interviews&thread=1329

They are also hosting a contest to win a copy of Yseult, which you can access here:

http://www.greatmindsthinkaloud.proboards.com/index.cgi

The new version of Chameleon in a Mirror from scratch is going very well. It’s great fun to get back to Aphra Behn, who has been my idol since I first read about her decades ago. I’ve upped my target...

Aphra Behn: Dec. 1640 (?) – April 16, 1689

I want to thank my blog visitor e a m harris for reminding me that today is the anniversary of Aphra Behn’s death.

The inscription: “Here lies proof that wit can never be, defense enough against mortality.”

I think the words of Virginia Woolf are also in order here:

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she–shady a...

Back to Aphra Behn and Chameleon in a Mirror

The new version of Chameleon in a Mirror, my literary time travel featuring Aphra Behn, is going quite well. I’m 7,000 words in now, and if this keeps up, I can increase the target word count. Of course, I have a huge advantage in that I have the print-out of a completed novel by my side while I work. It may seem ridiculous to some that I have elected to type the novel in from scratch when it would be that much faster to just revise it, but that’s the point. I originally wrote this novel over...

Marie de France, Aphra Behn, and changing horses midstream

So here we are, at the beginning of a new round of words, with new targets and new projects, and I'm finding myself having to admit I need to change my goals. After months of concentrating on ebooks and editing, I returned to Fragments of Legend with the best of intentions, especially once I looked at the numbers and realized that with only 500 words a day, I could get a complete rough draft finished in a couple of months. Then after several days when the writing was like pulling teeth, I...