Livia J. Washburn's Blog, page 10

Vacation Novel - Witch Got Your Tongue

My husband, James and I went away for 2 1/2 weeks in June to write. We drove 372 miles to stay in a one room rustic cabin a few blocks from the bay. The whole purpose of the trip was to get away from our home lives to write.

I would get up between 3-5 a.m. to get started because the broadband internet down there would only work early in the morning, so any research that needed done on the internet had to be done then. When 7 a.m. would roll around I'd get in the van and go to the Sonic for 2 Route 44 unsweetened teas with extra ice. The ladies there got to know me very well. It was a strange mix. I'd get our jolts of caffeine while gazing at the sun reflecting on the bay.

By the time I got back to the cabin with our teas, James would be up and at the computer. With our tea and cereal, we'd hit the computers hard until lunch. Lunch was always our main meal, and there were three restaurants we went to the most. One was a Chinese buffet, the second was a Mexican restaurant, and the third was a sea food place with windows looking out at the wharf. All three places had grilled fish, my favorite. After lunch we might go out and walk along the beach or look through some of the bookstores in the area. Then it was back to the cabin, working until a late supper. Supper was usually whatever could be eaten at the computer since we were rarely done by supper time.

We'd work until late evening, pop in a DVD and watch something for an hour or two. After the TV was turned off, we'd see if the internet was working enough to answer emails. Then it was time for bed. That was our vacation. We were only planning to go for 2 weeks, but our daughters told us to stay longer and they could take care of my parents a little longer. It is only because of them that I was able to write my latest novel, Witch Got Your Tongue. This book is now on sale on Kindle and the Nook. The trade paperback is coming soon.

My friend Alyssa White designed and illustrated most of the cover. My daughter Joanna made the book trailer with help from her friends. Bethany McLemore and Cheryl Lemmons created and played the music, and Kim Mckelvey drew the wicked witch. My thanks go to all of them.

Mending Fences By Livia Reasoner Now Available as EBook

Originally published in Jove's heartwarming Our Town series! Mending Fences is now available as a ebook in Kindle and Nook. This story takes readers to the frontier town of Zephyr, Texas, where a young romance writer falls for a character she might have invented - a handsome cowboy who stirs her deepest longings...

Amazon link: Mending Fences
Nook link: Mending Fences

Now Available as EBooks

I finally have my three paranormal romance novels up as eBooks and they are available on Kindle and Nook. Spirit Catcher, Alura's Wish, and Yesterday's Flame were originally published under the pen-name Elizabeth Hallam. And yes, I know that there is a writer by that name. I had written a historical novel for Berkley/Jove called Mending Fences. My editor called and thought since Spirit Catcher was a paranormal romance she wanted a pen-name. I had to come up with something off the top of my head, so I suggested Beth Hallam after one of my characters. She liked it but wanted to change it to Elizabeth Hallam. It was the next day that I discovered there was already an Elizabeth Hallam. I called my editor and told her about this, but it was already too late to change. So for three novels, I was the other Elizabeth Hallam. I'm happy that the three books can now be found under my married name Livia Reasoner.

Hallam Now 99 Cents on Kindle

Hallam is now 99 cents but I've added another story. It still has "Hallam", a 10,000 word story is the first appearance of Lucas Hallam, a cowboy who has outlived the days of the old west to become a gun-toting private eye and stuntman in the early days of motion pictures in California. Originally published in The Eye's Have It, 1984. Now it also has "Hollywood Flesh", a 7000 word story was published in The Book of all Flesh 2001. It's a good thing Lucas Hallam is a hard-headed old cowboy and doesn't believe in such nonsense as Zombies, or this case might give him nightmares.

FREE

Hallam was the first appearance of Lucas Hallam, 1920's Hollywood stuntman/PI. This 10,000 word novelette appeared in the first Private Eye Writers of America anthology THE EYES HAVE IT in 1984 and hasn't been reprinted since. The day I came up with the idea of Lucas Hallam, I called my husband, James. I was so excited that I couldn't wait for him to come home from our bookstore. After I told him about my idea, he said, "It sounds like it would be a lot of fun to write, but you'll never sell it." Ha. I've been selling Hallam stories for almost 30 years, and while I haven't gotten rich off the ol' cowboy, James was right about one thing, I sure have had fun writing about him.

I wanted to put this story up for free on Amazon's Kindle, but that option isn't available. Trying to come up with a way around this, the only thing I can think of is to email the file to anyone interested. Just send an email requesting the story to washburn@flash.net and let me know if you want the Kindle version or Microsoft Word.

Turning Books Into EBooks (Or, Help, I've Been Kindleized and I Can't Get Up)

Since we have several books that we have the rights to, we decided to try and put them up as eBooks. The house fire prevented us from being able to just take the files we had and work from them, so the first thing we had to do was buy copies of our books to scan. Also we had to buy a scanner that would work through the books quickly. After researching, I decided to get the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. It feeds the paper through quickly, reads both sides, and it converts it to Word. Since it has a feeder, pages have to be cut out of the books. I found the easiest way for me to do this is with a ruler and a rotary blade. It'll cut through about 20 pages at a time. You have to make sure and cut it close to the spine without leaving glue. If there's even a little glue pages with go through the scanner together. If you cut too much it'll cut off words. I've learned from experience. Even though the ScanSnap is a nifty scanner, it doesn't work without problems. It will have errors and stop somewhere in the middle of the batch it scanned. I work in batches of around 20. When I have the converted Word document for that batch. I check what page it scanned to, adjust my pages to be scanned, and get the next batch scanning. After the first converted Word document, the following ones have to be cut and pasted into the first one. It's time consuming, but it gets it scanned and converted easier than anything else I've found.

Once you have the scanned pages finished, what now? Now you have to read the whole manuscript and search for OCR errors. I like to show paragraph marks and other hidden formatting symbols. Headers and pages numbers have to be removed. Hyphenated words have to be fixed. I will usually save my manuscript in text only and reopen that to work with. It takes out a lot of spacing errors caused by the OCR program, but it also replaces tabs with spaces. Those multiple spaces can be searched and removed, you will then create the space with your first line indent bar. Three spaces is good for a book indention. Kindle seems to recognize this type of spacing the best. At the end of each chapter insert a page break. Don't start the next chapter too far down the page, or it will look odd on the Kindle. I start my chapter heading on the fifth line.
When you save your document as a text file, rename it so your original file will be preserved. Saving as a text file will also cause the manuscript to lose all its italics, but you search for them in your original file and restore them in your reformatted file. Also, any text that was centered in the original file will need to be centered again in your new file. Once you've done this, save the file as a regular Word document.
At this point, you're ready to see how your file will actually look on the Kindle. If you own a Kindle, it was given a specific email address when you registered it. You can send your file to that email address and have it delivered back to your Kindle for a small fee. There's also a free Kindle email address where you can send the file and have it delivered back to your computer in Kindle format for no charge, and then you can use the USB cable to drag the file over to the Kindle itself. This is not the same as uploading the file to be published. No one will see this version except you.
I go through the book page by page on the Kindle, looking for spacing and formatting errors. When I find them, I can go back to the Word file and correct them. After this pass, I usually repeat the last step and send the file to Amazon to be "Kindle-ized" again, then go through it again. You can do this as many times as it takes to get everything looking just like you want it to. When it does, you're ready to upload the file to be published!

All Three Lucas Hallam Novels Are Now Available on Kindle

WILD NIGHT
Winner of The American Mystery Award and The Private Eye Writers Of America's Best Original Paperback Award. Here's the real Hollywood of the studio days . . . glamour, glitz, and an underside of dark and dangerous secrets. WILD NIGHT has been recently reviewed by Ed Gorman and Cap'n Bob.

DEAD STICK Set in the 1920s, this intriguing mystery marks the return of likable Lucas Hallam. A stuntman and former Texas Ranger, Hallam is hired by Hollywood producer Carl McGinley to find out who is trying to sabotage his current film, set during World War I. Dead-Stick is on target. True-to-life characters with a dash of 1920s seasoning contribute to a satisfying read. -- Publishers Weekly Cap'n Bob also recently reviewed Dead Stick.

DOG HEAVIES
A novel set in the glory days of the Hollywood western. One actor is an ex-gunslinger, a former Texas Ranger, and tough private detective. He is hired by a film studio to take a spoiled New York actor to a ranch in Texas and turn him into a credible cowboy star. Once at the ranch in Texas, the situation is complicated when a ranch hand turns up dead. The local sheriff suspects a Native American actor and so the tough-guy detective takes on the case.

"There is more tension than in a barbed-wire fence." --The Los Angeles Times
"A striking original detective set against a lush, fascinating narrative backdrop." --The Dallas Morning News

Another Nice Review of Killer on a Hot Tin Roof

The entire literary tour consisted of interesting characters, each with their own unique story. When Delilah finally gets her fill of lust, greed, murder and emotional turmoil, the highlights of the literary tour, she makes up her mind to find the murderer and get the remainder of the group back to Atlanta.

Livia J. Washburn has written a mystery full of humor and some interesting bits about New Orleans and Tennessee Williams.

If you want to read more check it out here.

Nice Review @ Bookreporter.Com

Warning, if you go to the site, the rest of the review gives away much of the book. Posted below is what doesn't.

Author Livia J. Washburn's latest foray into literary murder mysteries successfully marries entertainment with literature, highlighting the works of playwright Tennessee Williams in a fast-paced and enjoyable mystery novel. The prolific author has a winner in series heroine Delilah Dickinson, a Southern belle and feisty redhead (just don't call her "Red") with a knack for solving crime. Washburn has just the right touch with the literary theme, providing informative tidbits about Tennessee Williams's life and work, without bogging the novel down with minutiae. A fun read!

The Winners

Using Random.org the winners are:

Mark Justice: Killer on a Hot Tin Roof

Marscha Jacobs: Huckleberry Finished