Lauralynn Elliott's Blog, page 43

About My WIP

I’ve been working on my current WIP since April. For the first three months, it was hit or miss in the writing department. Some weeks, I would do some writing, some weeks, not so much. It was a bad three months for writing. But since the beginning of this month, I’ve had some awesome word counts. Everything is flowing nicely, and I’m really loving this story. But will others love it as much as I do? This is a story that I’m hoping with take off on Amazon and B & N like Guardian Vampire did in Jan/Feb of 2011. It’s so frustrating to have something like that happen, and then it not ever happen again. I WANT it to happen again.

I had almost resigned myself to the fact that I’m more of a novella writer than a novel writer. Before I wrote The Gnome, I had three novels and six novellas published. And a short story. I was SURE The Gnome would be a novel. But when I finished, I didn’t quite have 40K words. You really can’t call something a novel unless it’s 50K, and I was almost 11K short. At that point, I was sure there would be no more novels for me. I was convinced I didn’t have any more novels in me. But along came my current WIP. I planned it as a novella, but I wasn’t even going to worry about how many words it would turn out to be. I was hoping it would at least be a LONG novella like The Gnome. Now here I am at almost 38K, and there are still more adventures to come. The main characters haven’t yet gone on a journey where there will be challenges and perils. In a little more than 12K, this will become a novel. I’ve been averaging 1K to over 2K in each writing sitting. So even if I only get 1K per day, I could conceivably finish this as a novel in 12-13 days. (Not necessarily consecutive.) This makes me happy. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop at 50K. I’m just saying I COULD and still call it a novel.

Here’s a problem, though. This story has flowed so well lately. But when it comes to the challenges the main characters must face, I’m afraid things will come to a screeching halt. The challenges will have riddles involved (and danger), but what if I can’t think of any good riddles? What if my riddles are lame? Eek, this riddle thing is new to me! (I know this almost makes it sound like I’m writing a fantasy book, but no, it really is a paranormal romance. It’s just a little different.) Have any of you ever faced something like this? Have you had to write something that had to be SOLVED? Any advice?

Sunday Update 7/22/12

Just a quick check in before I go to church.

Word count last week was: Mon-2129, Thurs-1928, Fri-911. I didn’t write as many days as I would have liked last week. Stuff just happened that got in the way, but at least it wasn’t that whiny “I don’t feel like writing” that was happening to me last round. Besides, my word counts are so much higher than they used to be, I’m still writing more per week even when I only write three days.

Exercise was so-so last week. Eating…also iffy, but not bad.

Proofing for print on Vampires’ Curse didn’t happen. There was a lot going on last week, but, hopefully, this week will be calmer. I’m also trying to use my time more wisely.

I hope everyone is having a great day!

A Pet Peeve of Mine

I’m a really, really easy-going person. I rarely let things bother me, but there are some things that just push my buttons. Here’s one of them.

I get really ticked when I get email from somewhere saying I can enter to win something (These are emails I subscribe to. This particular one was a pizza place.), and when I read the email or click on a link, I find that I have to go to their FACEBOOK PAGE to enter the sweepstakes. Grrrr. I don’t like Facebook. There’s too much junk on there. If you’re going to offer to enter me into a sweepstakes, why can’t you let me do it from your website? I like websites. They are shiny and pretty. FB is not. People are depending more and more on social networking sites instead of dressing up their website and making it user friendly. I get the social network thing, I really do. But it’s so time consuming to have to go to all these different places. I’m so busy! Make it easy for me. Link to your site and give me an easy way to enter. Don’t make me go to FB, sign in, then have to go to a place where it makes me “allow access” (that always makes me nervous), and THEN I can enter.

I know many of you probably love FB and don’t understand my problem with it. (My mother loves to use it to keep up with family.) That’s okay, we can disagree. I like Twitter, and many of you probably don’t. I just think companies are depending on social networks too much, and I just want to go to their sites. I want things to be EASY and QUICK so I can get on with my writing.

Irish Scones and Sewing Machines

Boy, I’m getting good at titles with dual topics lately. LOL Once again, these two topics are totally unrelated.

I purchased Hogan’s Irish Scone Mix and a jar of Hogan’s Lemon Curd from igourment.com. I love scones…at least the ones I’m used to. I’ve had scones from an English tea room and from Panera, among other places. They’ve always been kind of dense, almost reminding me of the consistency of shortbread or something similar. So I made my scones last night. They’re biscuits. Not exactly like my homemade biscuits I eat with gravy, but very, very biscuit-like. I was disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, they were very good, they just weren’t what I was expecting. So my question is this (Claire Farrell, you have to chime in)…are Irish scones different from English scones? Or are the English scones I’ve been getting here in the US not really scones at all? Does anyone know?

Okay, I said, when I was talking about getting my kitty playhouse from Amazon, that I would tell what else I got from Amazon. It was a sewing machine. I’ve had this sudden burning desire to SEW SOMETHING. And it’s been years since I’ve done any sewing. My old sewing machine is somewhere in the attic. I don’t know where. This new one is computerized, so you can change stitches without changing a disc. Now I’m panicking because I’m afraid I CAN’T DO IT! My machine has some bells and whistles my old one didn’t have, and until I learn how to use them, it looks like it makes things harder instead of easier. Did I just waste my money on a whim? Or will I really be able to do this? Tune in later for further updates.

Wednesday Update 7/18/12

There’s not a lot to report on Wednesdays. Exercise is going well. I wrote a lot of words on Monday. I didn’t write Tuesday because I had a jewelry party to attend (I spent too much money) and then I came home and finished putting together an awesome play tree for my cats. This was the easiest thing I have ever put together. All the parts fit just right and I put it together by myself in about 40-45 minutes. It arrived from Amazon today, and my cats are having fun playing with it. Pictures follow:

Oz was the first to play with the new fun thing.

Willow finally got brave.

Then they learned to play together.

In another post, I’ll tell you what else I got from Amazon today.

Of Fingernails and Eyelashes

Isn’t that a catchy title? And the two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. LOL

Fingernails. I nearly cry every time I have to cut mine. I used to long for my fingernails to grow fast because they broke so much. I love long fingernails (not REALLY long, but a nice length). But, alas, I can’t type well on my computer with long fingernails. I make too many errors and it’s not comfortable. So I have to keep them fairly short. And now that I’m taking good vitamins, they grow so fast! Grrrrr.

Eyelashes. I could talk about how I’m experimenting with Mary Kay’s eyelash serum, but that’s not what this is about. This is about one of my cats. My tabby, Willow, was lying beside my head on the couch. She kept poking me in the eye with her nose, and I couldn’t figure out what she was doing. Then I started watching her. Every time I would blink, she would stare at me and turn her head slightly to the side. Then she would start poking around in my eye. I finally figured out she was fascinated with my eyelashes and was trying to play with them. It tickled so much and I was laughing so hard. There have been times when my kittens have been a lot of work and trouble. But it’s times like these that make me SO glad I have them.

Sunday Update 7/15/12

Good Sunday morning everyone!

1. Writing has gone well this week. I don’t know why I end up not writing on Fridays. Wednesday and Sunday are supposed to be my days off from writing, but with the word counts going so well on the four days I am writing, I’m not upset about Fridays. If my husband has rented a movie and wants to watch it, them I’m going to watch it with him. Anyway, here’s the breakdown. Mon-939, Tues-1205, Thurs-1936, Sat-2175.

2. Exercise is going pretty well. I walked at lunch three days this week. I want to bump that up a lot, but rain, and before that, hot weather, has been hindering me. I need to get on the treadmill when I can’t walk outside, but I just seem to forget that when I get home. *shrugs*

3. Eating habits are getting a little better every day. This one is going to take time to get right.

4. The proofing of Vampires’ Curse for print didn’t get done last week liked I had planned, but I hope to get that finished this week.

How’s everyone else?

Will I Ever Make a Living as an Author?

***WARNING*** Long post ahead

This post stems from the frustration of tanking book sales. I would like to at least continue to enjoy the little “extras” in life by working full time AND writing, at least for now. Eventually, I would like this to be my job, but things aren’t looking so good right now.

I started thinking I might be able to eventually do this full time when my January & February 2011 sales were so good that I made more money those two months than I did at my full time job. And most of that was from one 99 cent novella…Guardian Vampire. I’ve pondered the mystery of this book’s success for a long time, and I still don’t understand it. It’s actually still my best seller at Amazon UK, although the sales aren’t that great. Think about it though…I made a full time salary on one 99 cent book for two months straight.

I got some emails from readers wishing for a sequel. I know I’ve told this part before. There was no sequel to this novella. So I wrote a the Vampires’ Curse trilogy, thinking that readers wanted series. I’ve never had good sales on those novellas even though they are much better, in my opinion, than Guardian Vampire. After writing GV, I wrote a novel, Haunted Lake. It went months with few sales, but suddenly took off. It never reached the volume of GV, but it wasn’t shabby at all. I currently have 12 works published (one is a compilation of three of the others), and Haunted Lake is still the best seller in the US. Better than anything newer. In fact, the oldest novel is doing better than Vampires’ Curse. I absolutely do not understand.

Here’s the thing. Except for when GV was going crazy, I’ve been used to making a steady $500-$700 a month in sales across a few channels. (We know which channel has the best sales.) This has been less than enough for full time work, but it was really good for part time work. We had been buying essentials and paying bills with our full time money, and had been buying fun stuff and paying for vacation with book money. But in the last couple of months, I haven’t made much over $300. And it looks like July might be even worse. I can’t make a living this way. We’re told the only way to do this is to keep writing so you have a lot of books out there. But the last few things I’ve written are the ones I haven’t sold well. And I’m beginning to suspect that it’s because most of them aren’t 99 cents anymore. My old stuff is all 99 cents, but I refuse to price my later work that low. We, as authors, deserve to get paid for our work. So mine ranges from the 99 cent books, up to the 2.99 ones. I’m afraid, though, that as long as other authors keep pricing at 99 cents, it’s going to be hard to compete. Even if you have a good story, you have to get someone to read it first. Readers will download a bunch of 99 cent books at once. I know this because I’ve done it myself. It’s fun to get lots of stuff for your money. But if I really like an author, I’ll pay more. The key is getting someone to read your work to start with. Some of those 99 cent books don’t even get read, I’ll bet. I have honestly considered dropping all my prices to 99 cents to see what happens. But then I think about the hard work I put into the books and say no.

So we come to the present WIP I’m working on. I think Guardian Vampire did well partly because of the title when people were doing searches. I really feel like my WIP has an even better title. I’m not ready to reveal that title for reasons I’ll explain later. But I feel like this might be the book that brings my sales back up. I have a glimmer of hope. I just need to make sure I’m realistic enough to realize that there’s tons more competition in ebooks than there used to be, and that things may not work out like I hope. I’m a resilient person, though, and also persistent. So there’s always the next book, and the next one, and the next one….

Wednesday Update 7/11/12

Since I report the week’s word count on Sundays, I’m not going to list the last two days here. But I will say that I’m kicking word count butt. My story is coming together.

I’m still working on proofing Vampires’ Curse for print.

Exercise is going well again. Anya and I walked during lunch the last two days, and as I reported on Sunday, I walked 45 minutes on the treadmill. Soon, I hope to be back to riding my bike. We’ve been having evening storms (we really need the rain!) so there’s been no outside activities after work.

I still need to work on my eating habits. I’m getting better, but I still need to tone down my portions a little more.

How is everyone else doing?

What I’ve Been Watching on Netflix

I’ve always been a big Star Trek fan. So it was natural for me to queue up the series on Netflix. Yes, I love the cheesiness and the stilted dialogue by Captain Kirk. But I LOVE Spock. He’s always been my favorite.

I used to write fan fiction about the TV series “Emergency”. I had such a huge crush on Johnny Gage, played by Randolph Mantooth. I wrote fan fiction differently than most people. I wrote MYSELF into the story so Johnny Gage was my love interest. Hey, I was about 13 years old. So I watched an episode yesterday.

I watched Practical Magic yesterday, I can’t believe I had never seen this movie! I actually thought it was going to be kind of a comedy, but it definitely was not. I really, really liked it.

Now I come to a show I used to love and, after watching a couple of episodes, still do…Kolchak: The Night Stalker. If anyone thinks the paranormal is something new, they haven’t watched this show from the 70′s. The first episode was about Jack the Ripper, who was still alive after all these years. The second episode was about a zombie whose grandmother brought him back to take revenge on anyone involved in his murder. Kolchak is a bumbling reporter who gets into all kinds of trouble, and no one believes him when he tells them what’s happening. I can’t wait to watch the rest of the episodes.

I know most of you are younger than me, but has anyone seen these old 70′s shows (60′s AND 70′s in the case of Star Trek)? Have any of you ever even heard of Kolchak: The Night Stalker?