Jennifer Becton's Blog, page 48

Holiday Sale

In honor of the holiday season and as a thank you to my readers, buy one signed paperback from the Becton Literary Shop and Receive the eBook version FREE! When you order before December 24, you'll get a signed copy of Absolute Liability, Charlotte Collins, or Caroline Bingley in the mail, but you'll also get the corresponding ebook (.epub, .mobi, and .pdf, all three types) in your inbox to enjoy right away.

Thank you all, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Trying Something New

Today is the first day of my month-long sidebar ad at The Frugal eReader. I've only done one month-long ad before, and the results were inconclusive. Now that sales have leveled out on Absolute Liability, I think I should get a pretty fair look at how these types of ads work. Plus, it has the added bonus of announcing the coming of Death Benefits.

Also, my friend Kevin Manus-Pennings is on Kindle Nation Daily today with  his book A Shore Too Far. Check it out! I'm not a fantasy fan, but I truly enjoyed this novel and was amazed at the world Kevin created. I hope Shore takes off today.

Many people say that advertising is a waste of money, but I disagree. People can't buy a book if they don't know it exists. But I will say that all venues aren't created equal, and I haven't gotten my money out of every ad I've tried. I don't regret trying though. You have to take a chance to find out what works.

Where do you advertise?

Post-Thanksgiving Update

I'm racing against the clock to finish Death Benefits.

Lots of things are going on in the background here at Whiteley Press HQ.

First and foremost, I am still hard at work on Death Benefits. I always want to put out the best books I possibly can, and to that end, I've been stalled out a bit as I tried to figure out how to improve some of the structural aspects of the novel. I've been moving scenes, and today, I think I finally figured out the puzzle.

Unfortunately, this extensive rewrite has taken longer than I'd hoped, but my desire not to disappoint my readers trumps my desire to be perfectly on time. I hope you all understand. There's still hope though.

We shall see. I'll keep you updated.

I also have plans to release a paperback version of the entire Personages of Pride and Prejudice collection soon. That will be the only place you can purchase "Maria Lucas" in hard copy.

Starting soon, I'll be offering some paperback deals here on the website, so if you're looking for Christmas gifts, please consider checking out the bookshop and other merchandise. (Pssst…some of this merch may just be part of the Death Benefits launch celebration….)

Thanksgiving's Most Important Question

What is this stuff anyway?

Forget pondering the things for which you are thankful.

Don't bother researching the questions surrounding the first Thanksgiving.

The most important question to ponder on this day is this: stuffing or dressing? Let's discuss the difference. According to the AJC, it comes down mostly to location: where the dish is cooked AND what region of the country the cook lives in.

Stuffing: cooked inside the turkey
Dressing: cooked outside the turkey

That's the way I also understand it. However, much like using the term Coke to refer to all soft drinks, Southerners apparently call it dressing no matter where it's cooked, and Yankees call it stuffing despite location.

The debate also hinges partly on ingredients. In the North, stuffing is made of white bread, and in the South, dressing is made of cornbread. But again, this varies by region. Any bread-based dish cooked to serve alongside poultry is called by both words.

So really, stuffing and dressing are interchangeable, it seems, in most parts of the US. But why? Well, according the aforementioned article, Southerners objected to the harshness of the word "stuffing" and decided to call it by the more polite moniker "dressing."

My parents hail from the Northeast, so I grew up eating stuffing, not dressing, and it is always cooked inside the bird and made of white bread. Mine is in the oven right now, and I cannot wait to chow down on my impolitely named side dish.

So what do you eat: stuffing or dressing?

Happy Thanksgiving!

50k

Gratitude

This weekend, sales of my books hit a milestone I expected to see only after years of writing and publishing. Total sales of all Whiteley Press novels hit 50,000.

Let me say that again: 50,000.

That is totally insane.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I want to say again how grateful to everyone who purchased, read, and/or reviewed my books.

Moreover, I am grateful to live in a time when I have the opportunity to write whatever strikes my fancy and publish it in order to see if it also strikes yours. I couldn't do that without companies like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords, so I am thankful for their existence. I'm also thankful for my publishing buddies, who help and inspire me on a daily basis, and for me editors who keep me honest and ensure that readers see only the best book possible.

And in that spirit, I am off to work on Death Benefits.

Thank you again for all your support and encouragement. It's been a wonderful year, and yes, I'm grateful.

Big Congratulations to Nancy Kelley

Nancy Kelley, my friend and one of the cofounders of Indie Jane (along with Jess Melendez/Jessica Grey), has announced the release of her new Jane Austen inspired novel His Good Opinion. At the moment, it's available on Smashwords but will soon be at Amazon, BN, and wherever ebooks are sold.

Congratulations, Nancy! Take every chance to slow down and enjoy the launch, and best wishes for big success.

Initial Thoughts on Scrivener

I've edited and written in Microsoft Word since the beginning of time, so I felt like a bit of a traitor when I decided to take a look at Scrivener for Windows. The jury is still out, but I thought I'd share some thoughts and initial impressions.

I became interested in the program because of the ease of rearranging large (or small) amounts of text without cutting, pasting, or scrolling. I'm looking forward to being able to move scenes with more ease because this usually ends up being a large part of my editing process.

So far, I've imported Death Benefits into Scrivener from Word, and I have divided the text by chapter. I will likely divide further as needed. Tomorrow, I'll begin the heavy editing, but I've already moved chapter two right out of the way. So easy!

I've also spent time learning where all the bells and whistles are located, playing with color coding, and trying to figure out how helpful the corkboard and outlining features will be. I'm thinking I can divide my parts by date and use the outline as a defacto timeline. This also has promise for me because I tend to have timeline issues in all my drafts.

One aspect of Scrivener that I dislike is that I cannot permanently turn on the hidden text. This will not bother normal people, but I find it important to see everything, including spaces and paragraph marks. I have to turn it on every time I visit a section. If there's a way to turn this on once and for all, please tell me how. Also, I am trying to find a way to create my own keystrokes for certain characters that I use often, like en and em dashes.

I'm not sure if I'll convert to Scrivener, but so far, signs are hopeful.

You Can Move the Door

When my engineer hubby and I decided it was time to build a house, we spent a lot of time working on all the details. We chose everything from paint color to faucets. After a lot of hard work–we painted the whole interior ourselves–we had exactly the house we dreamed of owning. Except for one thing: the door to the master bathroom ended up in a weird place, and the shower was jammed in the corner behind it.

Looking back, we could see that the door was in an awkward place, but neither of us came up with the obvious solution, which was to move the door, early enough in the process. By the time we realized the situation, it was too much work (and cost) to move it.

When I get suggestions from my story editor, who is awesome by the way, I get that "move the door" feeling again. I always agree with her suggestions, and I wonder why I didn't see the awkwardness sooner. I have a feeling it's because I'm too close to the text by this time in the process, and I can't see the big picture because I'm too focused on the minute details. So stepping back and seeing the issues that need to be addressed is always difficult.

I don't get emotional or get hurt by her pointing out the flaws in the book. That's what I want her to do. Better now than after it's published! But I do look at the text and think, "Wow! I have a lot of work ahead of me. Why couldn't I just see this problem sooner? I could have saved a lot of labor if I just did it right the first time."

But the plain fact is that I can move the door. I CAN fill in the gaps and repair the issues in the text. But it is a lot of work. And boy, do I wish my first drafts would be perfect! (pipe dream)

Review of Caro at A Word's Worth

Happy Friday, everyone!

I'm so excited to see another review of Caroline Bingley show up today. This time, by Rebecca at A Word's Worth. Please drop by, read the review, and check out all her other informative book reviews.

At Fault

Darcy during our midnight vigil. She clearly wonders what all the fuss is about.

This weekend, my horse Darcy colicked. To non-horsepeople, that sounds like no big deal. She had a tummyache. But because horses cannot burp or vomit, colic can actually be a life-threatening condition. Darcy was clearly in a lot of pain. My vet had to come on two emergency farm calls, entubate her twice (which Darcy does not like), and palpate her (the long, scary glove procedure).

When the vet left the last time, she said the next six hours would tell the tale. And if Darcy showed signs of pain, we would have to trailer her to a vet hospital for either IV fluid treatments or surgery. Horses don't do well with surgery, and many end up having to be put down.

I was a wreck, but thanks to my vet, my new barn owner, and my husband, after a long, cold night in the barn watching her, Darcy came through just fine. And I spent the next few days wondering what I had done to cause her to get sick. Was it food? Not enough water? The change in weather? The change of barn? A flake of new hay? Bad karma?

Horses are large, delicate creatures, and they colic. I now have a better strategy for keeping her healthy (and a very large vet bill). So I'm going to stop worrying about whether or not I was at fault and concentrate on keeping her well.

Coincidentally, At Fault is the title the third book in the Southern Fraud Series. It will feature–you guessed it–an auto insurance fraud case, and if my husband has anything to say about it, a lot of muscle cars. (I prefer the muscly men though. Ahem. Vincent.)