Lauralynn Elliott's Blog, page 22

Costume Ball at RNConvention

I’ve never been to a costume ball before. But it’s going to be a lot of fun seeing what everyone comes up with to wear. Jimmy Thomas is getting professionals to decorate for it, so it’s going to look awesome. Only the best for our Jimmy.

Anyway, my friend’s mother and I went to look for material for my dress last night. We looked and looked, and I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to find what I really wanted and would have to settle. Not so! There it was. The perfect material. I’m so excited that we found it. And I’m so happy that I actually know someone who can make a dress like this for me. We never could find the lace we needed to match, but I’m going to look at some different places. I just hope we don’t get down to the wire on this. The ball is only 3 weeks away! But I have confidence that my dressmaker is going to get it done and it will be perfect. I will NOT stress over this.

Nervous and Excited

My books are shipping out today for the book fair at the RNConvention in Las Vegas. I’m a little freaked out because I realized I didn’t have enough copies. So I ordered more from CreateSpace. I hope they get here in time for me to ship those out, too, before the deadline. I also shipped out a raffle basket for the convention. I will be really embarrassed if no one puts their raffle tickets in for my basket. Here is a picture of what I sent. I decided to get a mini trunk rather than an actual basket.

And here it is closed.

My trunk has five of my print books, a $25 Amazon gift card, and a necklace and earring set like the one in my book Soul of a Vampire. So, if you were at a convention and saw this, would you put one of your raffle tickets in for this prize? There are raffle tickets in everyone’s convention bag, so everyone will have several tickets that they don’t have to buy. I hope I picked items people would want.

I’m having my costume made for the costume ball, so I hope that turns out well. I’m going with my late best friend’s mother (who is making the dress) tonight to get material and whatever else we need. I wanted something a little more elaborate, but then I would have had to bring an extra suitcase. LOL.

Now, what to wear for the party on the first night and for the RONE awards. Sigh.

One of the things I’m most nervous about is…what if I don’t sell my books? What if I sit there at the book fair, and no one buys them? 1) I will have to pay to have them shipped home. I’ve already had to pay to ship them there. 2) I will have spent a lot of money that I can’t afford on buying my books. If I don’t sell all of them, I might have to have a big sale on my website when I get back. LOL

What happens this year will determine if I go back next year. If it is profitable (book sales, new readers, learning a lot in the classes), I will. But if not, I’m not paying that much to go next year. I know it’s an investment and you have to spend money to make money. I have to be practical, though. I think I’ll be able to tell if it’s worth it or not. We shall see.

Late ROW80 Check In – I Need Focus!

It’s unusual for me to miss the Sunday check in, but I just didn’t really get on my computer yesterday. I can tell that by all the emails I had waiting in my inbox today. I was just kind of unplugged yesterday. Not my normal day.

I really didn’t get much done last week. Fewer than 1,000 words. I finally figured out what my problem is, I just don’t know what to do about it. I can’t FOCUS. Every time I sit down to write, all these things are going through my head. Stuff I need to be doing. Like Saturday, all I could think of was that I needed to go to the pharmacy and get the needles for my insulin pens. And sometimes I’m thinking about the housework that needs doing. Or something. If any of you have any good ideas on how to stay focused on my WIP instead of my brain flitting around to everything else, PLEASE let me know. I used to be able to churn out a story in no time, my fingers flying over the keyboard almost every day. Of course, my plots are becoming more complicated, too. Anyway…HELP!

Pray for Anya’s Dad

Please pray and/or send good thoughts to Anya Kelleye’s dad. He had a heart attack in the wee hours of the morning. They’ve put three stents in and there was no damage to his heart, so that’s good news. Still, I’m going to be praying all day for his quick recovery. Anya lost her mother a few years ago, and I know this scared her this morning. Her dad is such a nice man, and he actually gave me a little help on something in my last book, Soul of a Vampire. I’m really glad he’s doing better, but I would love to see him 100% well very soon. Your good thoughts will be very appreciated.

I Made Cheese – Part 2

Last night, my plan was to make a nice ricotta and then use my mozzarella and ricotta to make lasagna. For dinner. However, my plan only went partly the way I wanted. Ricotta is supposed to be easier than mozzarella. It does have fewer steps. But…it takes much longer! The reason is that it has to get much hotter than mozzarella for the curds and whey to separate. (Mozzarella must form curds faster because of the rennet tablet.) I thought it would NEVER happen. Honestly, when it hit the target temperature (185 F) the curds still hadn’t appeared, and I was about to give up. My husband came over and said “Are you still stirring that?” I just couldn’t give up, though. Not until I knew for sure it wasn’t going to work. Then, to my amazement, curds started to appear. They weren’t big chunks like with the mozzarella, but little bitty things. When it started doing that, I took it off the heat and let it set for 10 minutes as directed. Then, I poured everything into a colander lined with butter muslin (fine cheesecloth). And I had BEAUTIFUL ricotta. And it tasted wonderful! Now, to make lasagna or not. It was getting pretty late. Then I decided I would go ahead and do it. So at about 10 o’clock or so, I had lasagna. I did’t EAT lasagna because there was no way I was going to eat something that heavy that close to bedtime. But I have tonight’s dinner in the refrigerator.

I Made Cheese!

I received my DIY cheese kit a couple of days ago. Reading through the instructions, it was clear that mozzarella was the hardest to make. Well, it’s just like me to have to try to hardest one first instead of starting with an easy one, like ricotta. I followed the instructions for mozzarella…SUCCESS! And I have proof. Here’s the result!

Mozzarella!

Kit was bought from the Etsy shop UrbanCheesecraft

ROW80 Sunday Update 7/7/13

I hope everyone had a nice 4th of July holiday. If you’re not in the US, I hope you still are having a great weekend! I had a lot going on the last few days, especially since my boss decided to close on Friday (unpaid day off) instead of just Thursday. We were able to fill those days with food, family, and fun.

I missed my three days a week writing goal, only writing two days. But my word count was 2831, so that wasn’t too shabby. I would really like to hit over 3000 a week, but I’ll take what I got. It’s been a busy week.

I haven’t walked on the treadmill for the past two days. I have a problem with my foot sometimes where a sharp pain will shoot through the top of it when I’m walking, and it’s so bad, I almost fall. This is a problem that usually lasts two or three days. The odd thing is that this time, it’s the other foot. I didn’t go to the gym, either. I have no excuse except that the gym is about 20-25 minutes away. I live out in the boonies. The reason I use that gym is it’s conveniently close to where I work, but I haven’t worked the past few days. I’ll get back on track tomorrow. Hopefully, my foot will be well enough to walk on the treadmill today.

How did the rest of you do last week?

Should I Do Audio?

For a long time now, I’ve really wanted to have at least one of my books in audio. There’s probably not a lot of profit in it, but it’s something I would love to have. When my friend, Sharon Gerlach announced that her book, Office Politics, was available in audio, I asked her about it. She used ACX (an Amazon company).

Okay, here’s how it works. You put your book (or books) on the site, and it lets narrators know if you’ll pay by royalty share or by hourly fee. Right now I have two of mine up for royalty share. I honestly don’t think I’ll get any takers. For one thing, they show your ranking on Amazon. Unfortunately, they show your PAPERBACK ranking instead of ebook ranking. Which, of course, is a lot worse. Also, Soul of a Vampire only has one review, although it’s a 4 star, so that doesn’t appeal to many narrators, because these people want a book that sells well. Haunted Lake has 34 reviews for an average of 4.1, so that would be appealing maybe…except for the paperback ranking, of course. So if no one picks it up, I’ll probably go with the per hour option. I’m not going to post that on there, though, because if I’m going to pay per hour, I want to pick my own narrator and make an offer. If I announce I’ll pay a flat rate, I may get offers I don’t want, and I hate to reject people. Awhile back, I looked into getting a narrator for Haunted Lake, but the one I contacted wanted $1500. I just couldn’t afford that. On ACX, they have different narrators who work for different fees. They have a $0-50 all the way up to $400-$1000. There weren’t many at $0-$50, so I checked out narrators from $50-$100. If I can get one at $50, Haunted Lake would be about $270. At $75, it would be $405. I’m going to leave it up as royalty only for a week or two and see if HL gets any takers. If not, then I’ll decide.

So what do you all think? Would you do this if you lost money or broke even? Would it be worth it to have your books, or at least one of them, on audio?

Wednesday ROW80 Update 7/3/13 & Quinoa

I had gotten into the habit of only checking in on Sundays, but I’m going to try to do better. Part of the reason for that, though, is that many times I wanted to blog about something else that struck my fancy. But, you know, I can always write that and schedule it for the next day.

I managed to write one day so far this week, so that’s a third way through my weekly goal. During that session, I wrote 1717 words. I look at it this way. I used to have a 500 word a day goal, so that’s more than three days worth.

I’ve been trying to find a quinoa recipe that looks appealing to me. None have really got me excited about eating quinoa, especially after I tried a boxed quinoa dish. Bleh. Our local health food store sells both white and red quinoa in bulk, so I could get however much I needed. I would like to try both since the taste is supposed to be different, the red being more “earthy” or “nuttier” according to what I’ve read. Anyway, I found this recipe on Pinterest. Looks yummy. Garlic and Thyme Quinoa Patties. I just placed an order with Mountain Rose Herbs, and now I wish I had included thyme and paprika. Also, here is the link to the whole article 32 Ways to Eat Quinoa and Succeed in Life. I haven’t read the other recipes yet, but I will.

Free Books = Bad Reviews/Racist Statement

What does a bad review have to do with a racist statement? Bear with me here. Sometimes putting the first in a series for free helps garner interest for the rest of the series. But a very experienced author friend of mine once told me she was done making her books cheap. She said every time she did a .99 book, the bad reviews came in. Honestly, it does seem like the cheaper books get the bad reviews, almost like it’s a different type of reader. I just don’t know. But a review I got for Club Blood (which is free in the month of July) on Smashwords made me rethink ever putting my books for free during these Smashwords sales anymore.

Here’s the thing…Club Blood is definitely not my best work. It was the second thing I ever published and the first vampire novella I did. I imagine there are way too many “thats” in the manuscript. But it’s at least good enough that I like to go back and read it from time to time. And I don’t get upset by one star reviews anymore. I see very, very good books get those. But what really ticked me off, no I guess it hurt me, was that the reviewer said I made a racist statement. I’m about as far from a racist as anyone can get. I’m so tired of everyone having to be “politically correct” instead of just being humans. This thing with Paula Deen really brought that all to a head. Do I think she should have used the “N” word? Absolutely not. My kids were raised to believe that it was a bad word just like any other word I didn’t want them to use. But Paula Deen said this a long time ago. And there are people of ALL races defending her, so that makes me feel a little better about the whole thing. Anyway, I digress. This is what the reviewer said about my “racist” statement. “The author managed to throw in the racist statement that the pizza must be good as the restaurant was owned by Italians.” This made me want to cry. Seriously. Is it an insult to Italians to say they make GOOD PIZZA??? That’s like saying it’s an insult to me because I make a good burger. Wait, are burgers American or did they originate somewhere else? I better be careful! Grrrr. If a restaurant advertises that their pizza is “authentic Italian”, is that racist? It would be okay for me to say a pizza sucked because it was made by Americans, but not okay to say it was good because it was made by Italians, right? I thought it was actually a COMPLIMENT, not a racial slur. I bet if I was in Italy, it would be fine to say their pizza was good because it was authentic Italian. No, it’s here in the US where we have to watch every little thing we say in case someone takes it wrong. I’m SO tired of this. Can’t we just be people who all get along with each other and know that we won’t always be perfect and say the perfect thing? Why can’t people love instead of hate? Can’t we all understand the world would be so much better and easier if we all loved each other? That doesn’t mean we all would agree on everything. It doesn’t mean there would be no contention. But we could disagree and still love each other. I guess as long as there is evil in the world, that will never happen. Fighting and killing have been going on for as long as the world has been here. There was murder in the first family when Cain killed Abel. And we never learn. /end of rant