Lauralynn Elliott's Blog, page 56

Round Four 2011 Wrap Up

These were my goals for this round:

1. Write at least 500 words per day as an average. Did it!

2. Publish the third Libby Fox novella during Round 4. Done! Title: Search for the Vampires' Curse

3. Publish Starfane in print sometime during Round 4. Check.

4. Publish a collection of three of my novellas in print during Round 4 (if my cover artist and I can get together on this one that soon). I didn't get this done, so it will carry over to the next round.

5. Exercise at least three times a week, for 30 minutes at a time, so that I'll feel better and get my writing goals accomplished more easily. Massive fail!

The first three goals were the most important to me, so I feel like I did okay this round. Now I need to think about my goals for the next round, which will be stated when that round starts. It's been fun!

Happy Birthday, Anya!

Today is the birthday of my good friend and cover artist, Anya Kelleye. I won't say how old she is, but…well, she's a lot younger than me. LOL

Happy Birthday, Anya!

ROW80 Check In 12/18/11

It's going to be short and sweet today. I published my novella, Search for the Vampires' Curse, and my free (.99 on Amazon because you know why) short story, The Beast in the Mirror last week. For more details, check out my previous two posts. The strange thing is that I've actually sold 3 copies of The Beast in the Mirror on Amazon, even though it's under 5,000 words (which is clearly stated) and it's .99. It's free on Smashwords and I've had 196 downloads. My whole reason for publishing this short story was to give something to my readers for free. I never dreamed anyone would really pay .99 for it on Amazon.

My next print project is going to be making one book out of my three novellas, Club Blood, See Me, and Guardian Vampire. This will be a little more challenging to format than just one novel for several reasons.

So much holiday craziness! I can barely concentrate on writerly things!

New Releases Available at Amazon!

Both of my new releases, Search for the Vampires' Curse and The Beast in the Mirror, are now available at Amazon. SFTVC should be available at B & N soon, but I'm going to let Smashwords distribute TBITM so it will be free. I hesitate to tell Amazon about a lower price on The Beast to get it to be free since you have to sign in to do it. But anyone else please feel free to do that. I really wish Amazon would let us put free works on there so we don't have to jump through hoops to make it free.

Search for the Vampires' Curse

The Beast in the Mirror

Available at Smashwords!

I finally got my novella and my free short story published at Smashwords last night. It was so late when I finished, and I was so sleepy, that I decided to wait until tonight to publish at Amazon and B & N. But I was very surprised and pleased when I got an email from Smashwords this morning saying someone had reviewed The Beast in the Mirror. I clicked over there, not sure what I would find, but what I saw was a very nice 5 star review. I loved this little short story, and I was so glad to find that someone took the time to give it a good review.

You can find The Beast in the Mirror here and Search for the Vampires' Curse here.

ROW80 Check In 12/14

It seems like forever since I've posted an ROW80 update. Here's where I am.

Starfane is now in print on CreateSpace and Amazon. I need to put a link to my paperbacks on my book page. Right now I only have my ebooks linked (and I didn't have all of those until Kait busted me on it), and suddenly I'm like, duh, people MIGHT want the paperbacks. I have sold a few paperbacks of Haunted Lake, so that proves some people still like books in their hands.

The last novella in the Libby Fox series, Search for the Vampires' Curse, is ready to be published. I'm also publishing a free short story, The Beast in the Mirror, on Smashwords. I haven't decided if I'm going to put it on Amazon for .99, then tell them about a lower price so it can be free. I'm afraid someone will buy it at .99 then be mad when it goes free. We'll see. Now that I have U-Verse internet at home, I can actually publish from there instead of trying to rush to get it done during my lunch hour at work!

In anticipation of the release of these two stories, I'm revealing the covers right now. These are designed by Anya Kelleye at Anya Kelleye Designs

Favorite Christmas Memories

How can I pick a favorite Christmas memory? Through the years, there have been so many things that I could add to my favorites list. So here are a couple.

Christmas at my Grandma's

My mom and dad divorced when I was very small, but I always maintained a great relationship with my paternal grandparents. I remember they used to have this silver Christmas tree, and there was a color wheel that shone on the tree and it would make the tree change colors. I always thought that was so cool. My aunt would always make a cheese ball and serve it with Sociable crackers. Then there was the dinner. My grandma could really cook! My grandparents are gone now, but I'll never lose those memories.

Christmas Party with Friends

One of my friends and I always take turns hosting this Christmas party. There are always four couples and their kids that get together, and in the past few years, we've added my mom and and a friend's mom. Sometimes a few other people show up. There was always some kind of gag going on. One year, a friend froze some slugs and when Christmas came around, she took then out of the freezer and put them in Jello to bring to my house and gross everyone out. Little did she know that freezing the slugs wouldn't kill them…and they started crawling out of the Jello! This year will be sad because my best friend died back in May. There's a part of my warped brain that wants to make a huge blow up picture of her and sit it in a chair so she can be there with us.

Full of Randomness

If you got an email with a Christmas Memories post from my blog, and then it wasn't there, it's because…well, it's really a long story. It will be back up on December 10.

Did everyone get the KDP Select email from Amazon? If anyone is thinking about this, make sure you realize that it says your title has to be EXCLUSIVELY on Amazon.

AT&T U-Verse is finally available at my house! I ordered the internet today and it should be installed Monday. I didn't do the TV part yet because I haven't compared it to my Directv line-up to see what channels I might lose. Maybe later. But high speed internet! And I won't have limited data usage anymore! Take THAT, Verizon! (Unfortunately, I'm still locked into Verizon for another year, but I can just use the internet card when I go on trips when I don't have internet service.) My husband won't complain about the lagging when he's playing a card game with other people on Pogo. And Netflix! I can have Netflix!

I haven't gotten even a tenth of my Christmas shopping done. And my tree has no ornaments. How about the rest of you? Ready for the holidays?

Home Stretch!

I've gotten about half of my last Libby Fox book proofed and edited. Novellas are so much easier to edit than novels! Did I really say I was going to concentrate on novels instead of novellas for awhile? Yes, yes I did. But I digress. Anyway, I hope to finish up the editing tonight, then it will be off to a couple of beta readers (one read it kind of as I wrote it). I hope to have this ready to publish in a couple of weeks.

I got my print proof of Starfane back. CreateSpace is so fast! I had the proof about three days after I ordered it. It all looks good to me, so I approved it and it's already for sale on its on page on CreateSpace. It should be available at Amazon within a week.

Next on the printing front is a compilation of three of my earlier novellas, Club Blood, See Me, and Guardian Vampire. I jokingly told everyone I should call it "Loving the Dead and the Undead", since there are two vampire stories and a ghost story. Surprisingly, a BUNCH of people actually liked the title. So I might use that.

How is everyone else? Are the holidays making you crazy while you're trying to write?

Barnes & Noble is Doing It Again!

I check my book sales every day and keep a spreadsheet. I always count "yesterday's sales" because those should always be closed by the next day. On December 1 I checked the sales for Nov. 30 and added them to my spreadsheet. The next day they were gone! Then, on December 2, I checked sales for December 1 and recorded them on my spreadsheet. Today, I'm showing NO sales for December 1! Once again, they disappeared! Are we going to have the same repeat as last year when sales were disappearing? What is UP with B and N?

On a brighter note. We built our house in 1999 and still didn't have any kind of picture on the wall behind our dining room table. I don't know if I mentioned this, but when I got back from Disney, my husband had bought us a new dining set. So we decided we needed to finally decide on a picture for the back wall.This is the picture we bought. There's something about it that speaks to me. It makes me want to write a story about it.