Jamie Ferguson's Blog, page 5

It’s time to Bundle Up!

My very first non-fiction book has been published!!!

Bundle Up! is about creating and promoting story and book collections. This includes anthologies, ebook bundles, boxed sets, and so on.

The section for authors goes over what to expect when you participate in this kind of project. I also added a chapter on things to consider when evaluating a project and the curator so authors can decide whether or not to participate in a collection. It can be difficult to turn down the opportunity to be a...

A tiny dent made in the plethora of tomatillos

My first non-fiction book will be available this Thursday! More about it then, but I’m super excited! This book is about creating and promoting story and book collections, so it’s obviously targeted toward authors and publishers, not the casual reader.

Huzzah!!!

I finished my first ever non-fiction book!!!!!

And not only did I finish writing the book, I submitted it the day before my deadline.

Bears are super cute, from a distance

I’ve been working super hard on my non-fiction book for the past week. I expected it to be done by now, but I keep thinking about even more things to add to the manuscript, so it’s starting to feel like the never-ending book. My friend DeAnna Knippling made a comment that ended up with me adding an entirely new section over the weekend. That section wasn’t part of the plan at all—but I’m really glad I’ve added it!

This book is about creating and participating in story bundles and multi-author...

Picking pears

I’ve been working hard on my non-fiction book about creating story bundles/collections, and it’s finally starting to feel like a book!

Up until yesterday I felt like I had a mental block or something. The book felt like a bunch of random bits of information all jammed together, but by the end of the day it had started to feel like an actual book. Hooray!

It may have felt odd initially because this is my first non-fiction book, and for a while it really was just a bunch of bits of information...

Rosie and Jasper won a prize!

Okay, Rosie and Jasper didn’t win a real prize, but the other day when we were hiking a guy ran past us and said they get the prize for being the best behaved dogs on the trail.

Reading to the dogs

I was invited to join the Uncollected Anthology in the spring, and participated in their most recent anthology, Fairy Tales. The group currently puts out three anthologies each year, and there’s a quarterly conference call to talk about plans, marketing, etc. I volunteered to take over running these calls, and for our most recent meeting I put together the agenda and made sure we went through everything. I realize not everyone would enjoy doing that, but I actually like this kind of thing. An...

Plowing forward!

I’ve been mostly heads-down on the non-fiction book I’m working on. I say ‘mostly’ because I’ve found it to be way harder to write non-fiction than I expected – or at least this particular book has been challenging. I know the subject really well, but keep finding myself questioning the ordering of sections, or holding back on my opinion when I’m writing about some topics.

This book will end up just fine – I’ve run into similar issues with fiction, and have learned that the hardest part for...

Entering a new world…

I am delving into the world of non-fiction! Hooray!

Two years ago Dayle A. Dermatis, an awesome author who I’ve had the pleasure of working with in a number of short story collections, suggested I consider writing a book about organizing bundles. At the time I’d curated one collection and was getting ready to send out invitations for the second, so while I liked the idea, I didn’t feel that I had enough experience yet. But I do now!

The focus of this book has changed a little over time, prima...

Keeping the bees happy!

I’ve spent the past week and a half editing stories for two anthologies. Today at work I found myself unable to keep from correcting someone’s document. That in itself is not unusual, but this was a temporary document for software engineers, where typos were irrelevant. Fortunately I had to go to a meeting, so I was able to stop myself.