Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 60

"Yseult" is off to Amazon – now what???

I didn't make it before the new year, but today I finally got Yseult up to Amazon as an ebook! It's still in the review process, so I don't have a link for it yet, but it's a huge relief to have that done. I've opted for KDP Select, so I can't put it up on Smashwords for another three months, but I've heard a lot of success stories regarding KDP Select, and my Smashwords sales with my novella and story collections have been more than modest. Seems I don't have much to lose making Yseult

Yseult cover update: We're just about there!

I got a new version of the "winning" cover for Yseult back from the artist today, Derek Murphy of Creativindie Covers:

This is probably very close to final, if I can't think of anything that still needs to be done. I like the sword being more central in this version, and the wall keeps her from looking like a mermaid, I think. I had a bit of a weakness for the warrior chick, but those who already read the book and voted were strongly in favor of this cover. I'm pretty happy with it now...

Yseult: Covers and Edits

I'm afraid I'm not going to get Yseult up by Christmas after all, too much Christmas-like stuff going on for me to spend as much time on e-book creation as I'd intended. Besides, even though this book has been through so many hands, has been critiqued and edited and translated, I'm still finding a lot more minor typos and little things to change than I had expected. I'm about halfway through the 750 page manuscript now after a week of work, but I also already have all my Christmas presents...

Thoughts on Rereading a Tale of High Passion

Ah, my heart! my heart! It is weary without her.
I would that I were as the winds which play about her!
For here I waste and I sicken, and nought is fair
To mine eyes: nor night with stars in her clouded hair,
Nor all the whitening ways of the stormy seas,
Nor the leafy twilight trembling under the trees:
But mine hands crave for her touch, mine eyes for her sight,
My mouth for her mouth, mine eyes for her foot-falls light,
And my soul would drink of her soul through every sense,
Thirsting...

Villa Diodati Workshop Report

I meant to write this report some time ago, but life around were was crazy after I got back from the workshop and a short trip to Alsace.

A bit of background first: the Villa Diodati Workshop is our "local" speculative fiction workshop — local here meaning Europe. What draws us together is that we all write science fiction and fantasy in English, whether that is our native language or not. The original idea was that those of us writing in English in the midst of a culture speaking another...

How Much Blog is Enough Blog? Or; how I doubled my fiction output in just one month!

I've been doing some reassessing (as well as a lot of fiction writing!), and both are part of the reason I haven't been posting to my blog much lately. I've met tons of wonderful people through the blogosphere, but at some point I realized I was spending way too much time on this stuff, to the detriment of my fiction production. While I was reassessing, I read couple of posts that really struck a chord with me. In "Blog ennui and platforms built of bodies" Susan Bischoff summed up pretty...

Smashwords and Nanowrimo

I've mentioned any number of times goals of "getting this or that up on Smashwords." I haven't followed through on very many of those goals, but today I got my first Paypal payment from Smashwords! It wasn't much, barely enough for a dinner out, but perhaps it will motivate me to follow through on a few more of those ebook goals.

The other motivator at the moment is Nanowrimo, that collective writing insanity that goes on during November. I wasn't intending to do Nano this year, but then, so ...

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Monkey

That's the name of a story that just sold to Daily Science Fiction — one of the pieces I mentioned submitting in my last blog entry. Which means less than a week between submission and acceptance. Woo hoo!

Apparently it's a good thing that I added "getting my stories out on the market again" to my list of goals. I haven't sold a short story for months now, but neither have I been writing or submitting much short fiction, as evidenced by the backlog accumulated that I mentioned in my last...

Progress Report

I fell a bit behind on my word count goals this week, for a number of reasons. Besides an autumn cold and some extra hours emergency babysitting of my granddaughter, the main thing that slowed down new word count was several collaborative stories that all arrived at about the same time and that required revision and response. Since one of them is a requested rewrite, I'm not complaining — a prospect of publication is always good!

Goal check:

- Write 5000 words a week – Only a little over...