Lauralynn Elliott's Blog, page 48

ROW80 Check In – Fate is Against Me

Monday, I sat down at the computer and wrote 710 words. But that was only in about 30 minutes, and I was supposed to sit at the computer for an hour. The thing is, I realized I had to get my Mary Kay order in by 9:00 that night, and it was after 8:30. Yikes! Then, when I got back to the computer, I decided to try to finish formatting a print book. I had allotted 30 minutes for that. It ended up taking me an hour and a half to finish because the page numbers kept changing on me. I won’t go into a long explanation about why, but I had to change a bunch of things, then go back through it and make sure, again, that the page numbers were correct. Grrr. I was going to walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes…wrong. In the middle of my walk, I had to stop and go to the bathroom.

Tuesday, I sat down to write. After 309 words, I had a stomach cramp so bad that I was doubled over in pain. I had to lie down. If you’re a guy, you might want to stop reading now. It felt like someone was twisting one of my ovaries. Needless to say, even after the pain had abated, I didn’t feel like doing anything, so I lay down on the couch and watched TV the rest of the night. I have NO idea where that pain came from! At my age, it shouldn’t be happening.

Yeah, I know. TMI.

BTW, I’ve learned to be careful what tags to use on my posts. If, for instance, I enter a tag about “stomach pain” or “exercise”, I get hits from those search terms. Sometimes, that’s not a good thing. LOL

In Memory of My Best Friend

One year ago today, I lost my best friend, Arlene. Author Jonathan Eli lost his wife. I told him today that I wanted to do a blog post in memory of her, but I was afraid I would cry all the way through it. But here it is. She was a breast cancer survivor, and she beat that, but she never felt good after the radiation and chemo, even after five years. A year ago, she died from blood clots in both lungs. No one could ever figure out exactly how that happened, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that she sat too much and didn’t get up and move around. That was mainly due to a bad knee. That’s why I wrote a PSA blog post on blood clots a while back. We don’t know why things happen the way they do. I just think maybe she was so special, God decided it was time for Him to have her.

Arlene always kept her sarcastic sense of humor through all the bad times with her health. Sometimes, I think about something stupid I do, and I can just hear her up there making fun of me. Every time I play a Big Fish game, I think of how I wish I could tell her about it. We both loved those games. One year, when I went to her house to visit for a week, she and I played those games for hours. I’m always thinking “I need to tell Arlene_____” then I remember she’s gone. But I sometimes tell her anyway, although anyone around me would think I was talking to myself.

Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know what I’m feeling today. Part of me is sad. Part of me just remembers her fondly and has to smile at all the funny stuff we did together. And there’s a LOT of that. I miss her very, very much, but someday I’ll see her again. I hope she’s not giving the angels too hard of a time. LOL. Here’s to you, Arlene. I’ll always love you.

ROW80 Check In 4/29/12

I realized that I completely forgot my Wednesday check in last week. I posted something else on that day instead of my check in. Oh well, a missed check in every once in awhile won’t kill me.

I only managed to write 1538 words last week. That is NOT acceptable to me! There were a number of factors involved in my lack of productivity. One of them was a migraine that lasted off and on for two days. The off and on was because of taking medicine, then it wearing off. I also have a “bladder irritation”, which I’ve had before. So having those both at the same time, I was torn between taking medicine for one or the other, since neither medicine would work for both, and I shouldn’t take them together. So I decided to take care of both problems with a couple of doses of hydrocodone. LOL. It at least allowed me to get through a function at church Saturday afternoon and a birthday part Saturday night without moaning in pain. Okay, enough about that stuff! Maybe I sort of had excuses for lack of productivity with the health issues and having my son, his girlfriend, and her baby come to visit one night. Come on, who can write when there’s a baby to enjoy? Such a darling little one year old.

I’m going to have to buckle down and do what I’m supposed to this week. I need to set aside time for my WIP, time for formatting two books for print, and time for exercise. Wednesday and Thursday are both tied up with church classes until at least 8:00 PM. It’s hard to come in and make myself work on days when stuff is going on that late after I’ve worked all day. Maybe on those two nights, I can have abbreviated schedules where I work on each thing for half the time. That’s better than not doing it at all, right?

Are any of the rest of you struggling with juggling writing with other things? (Hey, did you see how I had rhyming words in that sentence???)

Thoughts on Stephen King’s 11/22/63

Is there any doubt this man is a wonderful storyteller? I’m on disk 10 of a 25 disk set, and I’m going to have to recheck it out because there’s no way I can listen to something this long in three weeks just driving in my car. I find myself itching to hurry and get into my car at the end of the day so I can listen. Same thing in the mornings. This is one time I’m glad it takes me about 25 minutes to get to work!

When I first heard about this book, I thought “Okay, he’s going to try to stop Kennedy from getting shot. Interesting, I guess.” But I should have known this book was about so much more. The main character actually does more than that. I don’t know if the attempt to save Kennedy will be at the very end or if it will be sooner. Of course, I don’t know yet if he’s successful. But this book is not just about that. It’s about PEOPLE, just like Stephen King’s books always are. No matter how much STUFF happens in King’s books, they are always character driven in my opinion. You always get down into the heart and soul of King’s main characters. In this particular book, the MC goes through things that change him, but he does things he has to do. He’s a stronger man than he thought he could be. I LOVE this character, Jake Epping. I want so much for him to succeed because he goes through so much to get there. I don’t want to do any spoilers, so I can’t say too much more. I can say there’s kind of a butterfly effect going on in the book. VERY interesting.

One thing that I find amusing is how King can get by with things that everyone always tells authors NOT to do. I think the biggest thing is this. We are always told not to write anything that doesn’t “further the plot”. And yet, King does it all the time. And he makes it INTERESTING. He can throw things in a story that doesn’t really have to be there, but he puts it in there because he wants to. He can write about what people are eating and how good it tastes, but I get my hands smacked for it. Personally, when I read a book, I like to hear little side things that don’t necessarily matter to the plot but are interesting. So when Stephen King does it, I love it. And he gets by with it and people love him anyway. Because no matter what rules he might break (and I think he’s earned the right to break them by now), he’s still a great storyteller. And that’s what it all boils down to. Can you tell a good story? Do people want to hurry up and finish what they’re doing so they can get back to your book? That’s what it’s all about. That’s what it means to be a writer.

Cover Model Jimmy Thomas – New Website!

I’ve been meaning to post about this for awhile, but I just keep forgetting. A few weeks back, Jimmy Thomas launched a new site for authors, cover artists, publishers, editors, readers, etc. to connect on a site dedicated to the romance novel industry. I was one of those who got to try it out ahead of time before its official launch, and I think it’s a great site. Jimmy is a professional with great business sense, and it shows. In other words, he’s not just a pretty face. (Although his face AND body are swoon worthy.) Jimmy has been on my last four covers (the Libby Fox novellas and the Libby Fox trilogy). My cover artist has been using his site Romance Novel Covers for the cover art. His new site is Romance Novel Center. One exciting thing about this site is that he’s eventually going to let us sell our ebooks directly from the site. I CAN’T WAIT for that to happen. Anyway, thank you, Jimmy for developing this site. I love it!

These are all Jimmy

ROW80 Update 4/22/12

The Gnome has finally been released on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Yay!

One of my older books, Starfane, has had a sudden increase in sales. Not a huge increase, but enough to make me wonder what’s going on. I have never understood why certain books sell at certain times. Marketing would be so much easier, wouldn’t it.

Now it’s time to buckle down and work on my WIP that I stopped working on to publish The Gnome. Also, I’ve been abandoning my exercise routine, but I want to get that back on track this week.

How about the rest of you?

The Gnome-Available on Smashwords

The Gnome is finally available on Smashwords. The Gnome

Writing and editing this book has been a long and trying process. It was out of my normal genre, but I did it anyway. LOL. One of the things I worried about the most was how I would do on the action scenes. And the funny thing is, one of my beta readers said those were the parts she thought I excelled in. Go figure. I’m still really worried about how this book will be received. My two “author” beta readers both said they were always waiting to see what would happen next, so hopefully I can keep at least some people entertained. An “avid reader” beta reader really liked it, too. My other beta reader…I’m not too sure about. She really doesn’t like horror at all, but agreed to read this one since she’s read the rest of my books. She’s still waiting on the Christian romance I’m going to publish under a different name. That’s the kind of thing she likes.

Anyway, I’ve already revealed the cover, so I won’t put a huge picture in this post. Hopefully, Amazon will have it on their site tomorrow (they’re a lot faster than they used to be), and who knows about B & N. Now, it’s on to writing more on my WIP!

ROW80 Check In and iPad!

Yesterday, I spent my lunch hour here at work editing The Gnome. I did this because I knew I wasn’t going to get to do it last night. Because I went to get an iPad! I’m so excited! I have the brand new one with the awesome graphics. I’ve never seen such a crystal clear display. I’ve already downloaded Words with Friends and a Bible app. Oh, and I loaded the iBook app and downloaded samples of my books to check the formatting. They looked great!

Here was one of my biggest concerns. I really wanted to be able to write on the iPad, too, so I could take it instead of my computer when I went out of town. But I didn’t know if I could export from the iPad to a Word document on my PC. I LOVE YouTube! I found a tutorial that showed that I could do just that. So I figure what I’ll do is export to a word document, fix any formatting problems, then copy/paste into my current WIP. What do you guys think? Do any of you work on the iPad sometimes, then on a PC sometimes? This process is probably easier if you have a Mac instead of a PC.

I hope to finish edits on The Gnome tonight or tomorrow night.

Cover Reveal-The Gnome

Okay, here it is. LOL. A few of you wanted to see the cover now instead of waiting for the release. The cover was designed by my lovely cover artist Anya Kelleye

Soon to be released!

Choosing Editing Over Writing

As much as I would love to get more words written on my WIP, I realize that I need to finish my edits on The Gnome. I added another beta reader for this story, and she’s pretty tough. LOL. She makes some very valid points, though, so I’m trying to edit based on comments from two different beta readers. I’m just going chapter by chapter, first working on one beta’s suggestions, then going back and working on the other one. These two betas are authors. The other two were readers. I love getting four different points of view from four very different people. Neither of the two authors are commenting and suggesting about the same passages. So I really am getting totally different perspectives. I love it.

Anyway, my whole point is that I need to finish The Gnome before I can get as serious as I like about the other work. So I’m going to devote my writing time tonight on edits. I want to get this thing published this week if possible. I was really worried about this story since it was my first step into horror, although it’s not hard core horror by any means. But I’ve gotten favorable comments from beta readers, so I know that at least it’s not horrible. LOL I was waffling today about whether to go ahead and do a cover reveal or wait until it’s published. What do you all think? Should I go ahead and reveal the cover? And I also wanted to know if any of you have had to lay your WIP aside to finish edits on something else. Feedback, please!