Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 56

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...

“Looking Through Lace” FREE from now until Friday

I’m getting a little burned out on doing free promotions so often, so I’m using all the rest of my free promo days for my award-winning science fiction novella “Looking Through Lace” this week. Available for Amazon Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Yseult-Tale-Love-Arthur-ebook/dp/B006SJLSDA/

I’m planning on taking it out of KDP Select after that, at least for a while, so get it free while you still can!

"Looking Through Lace" FREE from now until Friday

I'm getting a little burned out on doing free promotions so often, so I'm using all the rest of my free promo days for my award-winning science fiction novella "Looking Through Lace" this week. Available for Amazon Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Yseult-Tale-Love-Arthur-ebook/dp/B006SJLSDA/

I'm planning on taking it out of KDP Select after that, at least for a while, so get it free while you still can!

Another round of goals: publication date, draft completion and more

After all the editing and marketing and ebook publishing I've been doing so far this year, I really need to get my writer hat firmly back on and concentrate on writing again. My main goal will be to write at least 2500 new words a week. If I can stick with that, I should have close to a complete first draft of Fragments of Legend by the end of June. Of course, I don't know exactly how many words total it will end up being, but I already have over 70,000 words in draft and notes. This won't...

Short story sale and Yseult rankings

Getting late here in Central Europe, but I've got some news before I head off to bed: I sold another short story to Daily Science Fiction today, "The Magician of Words." It's an odd little piece, to my way of thinking more like a prose poem than a story proper, but then, the other story I sold to them was based on a poem, so maybe it's a pattern.

Yseult is doing quite well on its final free promotion, although it doesn't look like it's going to break into the top 100 Free Kindle Store...

Last freebie for “Yseult” today and tomorrow, March 26-27

Before I take Yseult out of KDP Select, I’m using up my free days for a final 48 free promotion. KDP Select has been very good for me (at least most of the time), but I won’t know how much I might be selling elsewhere if I don’t at least try. So the beginning of April, I will be putting Yseult up on Smashwords, and fairly soon thereafter it should be available on B&N, iTunes, etc. (assuming I get the formatting right that is, and Smashwords Meatgrinder accepts it!)

So please, if you don’t hav...