Barbara G. Tarn's Blog, page 149
July 14, 2013
Sunday Surprise
Gentle reminder: today ends the SFF Kindle event and the BIG competition! 
Even David Farland mentioned it at the endo of his Daily Kick, so check it out!
All my snippets are live on Check also the other excerpts, in case you’re looking for new titles to discover…
Or if you’d like some non-fiction, go for Rohan Healy’s newest book – SEX, Not As A Separate Subject: A Guide to Great Sex with Great People!
Have a wonderful Sunday!
July 12, 2013
Random Friday
On Saturday, after admiring Shafali’s latest work – a magazine cover no less! – I decided to rewatch one of the movies I suggested to her and since I didn’t have time for the Back To The Future Trilogy (gotta work on weekends, LOL!), I opted for Pleasantville – which I hadn’t watched in years. In case you missed it, it’s a cool end-of-the-century movie about two teens going back to the 1950s where everything is black&white – until they start messing up with the reality of the TV show they’ve entered. Some Truman Show and some Back to the Future and the cool mix of colors and black&white.
Apparently Rai 1 has bought every So, it’s another comedy, less silly than the previous one, and I like Vidya Balan and Juhi Chawla – although IMBD shows a “narrator” in the credits (SRK) but there was no voice over in the Italian version. I guess I’ll have to check the original sometime… That neverending list is never going down, sigh! 
I considered drawing for the rest of the Sunday afternoon (or even in the morning when I read the news on Facebook) since Hritik was undergoing brain surgery (sort of wishing-well drawing), but then the Writer got the better of the Artist and I stuck to writing. I had also bought National Geographic because I was interested in the space stuff, but then I found also other quite interesting articles that helped to make more realistic even the fantasy stories – like the article on Transylvania hay culture (so they’re not all vampires over there, LOL!).
Also for research purposes I rewatched Stage Beauty – which actually gave me more ideas about things regarding the Amazons Country, but I’ll use them in some other story, LOL! Now I wasn’t able to figure out the original title (or even the interpreters) of next Sunday Bollywood movie on Rai 1, so we’ll see. It will be a Sunday Surprise, LOL! But you better not forget the SFF Kindle event… I know I’ll have to check some of those titles!
Last but not least – a list of “favorite” books (not mine, LOL! I have a few favorite authors, but I’m not mentioning them). I’ve read 3 out of 28 and they don’t rank very high in my favorite list. The Catcher in the Rye, Fight Club (both book and movie), Pride and Prejudice – and I’ve watched the Narnia movies but read none of the books, and have read a manwha version of Twilight, that’s it. But again – not impressed by any (well, Fight Club – the movie, yes, but you can guess it’s not for the prose!)! Have a wonderful weekend!
July 10, 2013
Writer Wednesday
I usually have these posts ready and scheduled well in advance, but I’m writing Tuesday night for Wednesday morning. Got busy with writing and research and went “Whoops! The blog post!” sort of last minute. So, I spent the weekend writing Amazon Sisters, and I decided to add a chapter from an old summary (I like to recycle old notes – althought there isn’t much left of the original, LOL), so I spent Monday and Tuesday afternoon on that. Now I need to go through the whole thing again and see if it works, then I’ll ask the usual suspects if they’re available to beta-read.
Today I’m meeting my offline writers group (in the middle of July! It’s darn hot outside! But it was so cool when we decided we could have one more meeting, sigh!) so I can rewrite and edit the story I want to send to the Smashwords anthology (a Star Minds Snippet) and hopefully next weekend I’ll manage to work on Choices so I can send that to betas as well.
Still struggling with CreateSpace – finally got the new proof, minor adjustments needed, including the price of the POD book, sigh! – but hopefully next week I’ll upload Star Minds Omnibus and have the POD version ready as well. In the meantime, don’t forget this weekend Technological Angel is at 99c/75p on Kindle along with 2 more books of yours truly and 35 other authors of SFF – and there’s the BIG competition as well, so mark your calendars and don’t miss it!
Some links: a guide to critiquing a story from David Farland. Good advice from Moira Allen – it’s not all about you! No “speshul snowflakes”, remember? 
And here you have also 5 book marketing myths you need to forget (mmm, another book to add to the wishlist?):
Let’s face it, authors are often introverts and one of the worst possible things for us is cold-calling anyone. I don’t take phone calls in general and I have to psych myself up for any that I HAVE to make. I really prefer writing …
Yep, me too! I so hate the phone that I was ready to go to the closest DHL point since I couldn’t find what I wanted to find online! Luckily the parcel got delivered without me wandering in the heat, LOL!
Now more tips to help your readers finding your work. I should really start submitting short stories to traditional publications before publishing them myself, LOL! Now before I publish all the Star Minds Snippets or when I write another Silvery Earth short story, I’ll have to look for the guidelines of Asimov and Analog and Indian SF and Writers of the Future… yikes!
And if you’d like to play with conlangs, check this guest on Joe Konrath’s blog. I had considered doing my language as a translitteration of English as it’s read in Italian, but ended up using Esperanto instead (both in Silvery Earth and Star Minds). Esperantists don’t mind and a bilingual person would have thought I had cheated anyway! So ai didnt invent e lenguege bat ai iused Esperanto! (nice translitteration, huh?).
Last but not least stuff you might want to put on your blog. 1, check (under Find My Stuff) 2, check (same) 3, check (Silvery Earth Chronology and Star Minds) 4, nope – no questions asked… 5, check (About) 6, check. Now for the other things…I’ve added #3, just in case. I doubt many readers come to my blog anyway – but if they do, these Writer Wednesday are also for my writing progress, so… no wordcount widgets! And I have already too many books out to put them on the sidebar, LOL! Have a great week!
July 7, 2013
Happiness is…
oh, yeah, especially in the summer…. but really, anytime, all year round, LOL! (mmm, changed a couple of those pics on the wall in the meantime, LOL!)
Sci Fi Event - The BIG Competition
Reblogged from Tim Flanagan - Author:
In conjunction with the Sci-Fi Fantasy Kindle Book Event next weekend, there will be an incredible competition with 44 amazing prizes!
Take a look at the infograph on this page to see what you could win.
The competition will be in the form of a Rafflecopter. If you are unfamiliar with these types of competitions - don't worry, they are very simple and give you numerous entries to win one or more of the prizes.
and there's also a competition with the sale, so don't miss it!
July 5, 2013
Random Friday
Someone posted this article on Facebook – so my Indian friends are the ones who read the most in the world, huh? Actually, what surprised me was seeing US and Italy next to each other. Italians don’t read. Only a 5-10% of the population reads. But probably, since it’s so much smaller than the US, that’s approximately the same quantity of reading people. Dunno, I’m bad at maths!
Although lately I’ve seen a couple of Kindles on buses in Rome. And my sales of the Italian titles are all from Kobo Italia. So maybe the e-readers are catching up – two years ago, everybody I heard who had an e-reader (Sony or i-Pad at the time) used them for everything but read (a publisher used his Sony e-reader to listen to the music, a colleague bought the i-Pad to watch movies…). I felt lonely with my Kindle Keyboard that I used only to read, LOL!
Anyway, since those Kobo sales are so steady (like 3 per month, what do you think? I’m not a bestseller! ) and I found a nice review of one of my Italian novels on the Italian i-bookstore (and it’s not my colleague… either it’s someone who bought it somewhere else and pasted her review on the i-bookstore, or I don’t know how she got it, since I sold one copy of that title and I know who bought it), I decided to issue another Italian title.
I will revise and format it this weekend, but in the meantime I asked my friends on Facebook to help me choose the cover. I’m putting the same image here, not because I need your help to choose the cover (it’s done), but because I wanted to show you these neat silhouettes I found at Allsilhouettes.com.
Now the problem with those was that I couldn’t figure out how to use the downloaded files – that’s how bad I am with vectors! They said I could open the files with Photoshop, but when I opened them, no file showed up – until I realized they’d been actually added to my “shapes”. So the CSH file is something that get added to Photoshop and then you can use the “shapes” (load shapes and add them to your “customary shapes” folder) to do the silhouettes.
Okay, it’s slightly more complicated than that, but at least you know that if you open the CSH, it won’t show you a white sheet or a JPG or anything (like I thought it would), it will simply add the silhouettes to your “shapes” folder. I also printed the JPG of all the silhouettes, since it’s not easy to discern them in the small (or even large) shape icon, so I can choose beforehand!
Then you need to struggle with levels and proportions, but that’s another story. Not really an Art Friday either, but I don’t think anyone is actually interested in using Photoshop and vector silhouettes (if you are, drop me an e-mail and we can talk about it privately). Have a wonderful weekend – I’ll be writing… and probably drawing… and don’t forget to check the Smashwords sale!
July 3, 2013
Writer Wednesday
Did you notice the new widget in the sidebar? I’m participating in this wonderful event! So don’t miss the sale and check the other wonderful authors participating! Lots of lovely covers – my TBR list will grow again, sigh! And apparently there will be some kind of contest as well, yay! A great applause to author Tim Flanagan for starting this! He’s doing more in other genres, so if you write paranormal romance, you might want to check him out!
Just for your information, the participating books for yours truly are Books of the Immortals – Air, Chronicles of the Varian Empire – The Left-handed Warrior and Technological Angel. I can fix the 99c/75p prices, but the other markets will vary (still be discounted for two days, though)… Feel free to spread the word – I have created a Goodreads event and a Facebook event… share, share, share, the more the merrier, thank you!
Besides, July is the sales month! This year Smashwords does the Summer/Winter sale again, so everything at Unicorn Productions is 50% off until the end of the month (the above 3 will still be more than 99c, so you might want to wait for that). Which means some books will be free. Which means I thank very much the kind person who bought 3 books mere hours before the start of the sale – hopefully that wonderful person will check them before the end of the month and get more with the discounted price!
Finishing Amazon Sisters, so I can re-read and send it off to betas and get back to Star Minds Snippets. By the way, I’ve found this interesting site, I’ll eventually add them to the “Excerpts and Free Reads” page…
Some interesting links! Thank God someone finally expressed my opinion of the Her0′s Journey! This so reminds me of those screenwriting gurus telling you how a screenplay should be structured having never written one in their entire life. Same thing here – someone studied the classics and decided that’s how a story should be told. And probably never actually wrote anything – like the “how to write” books written by editors. I doubt any writer would be very articulate in saying how he/she came up with the story.
Unless he’s David Farland (or a few others who can actually teach how to write). See Dave’s post on Grey Heroes. Another two are Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. I might take the lecture on pen names at some point, since I can’t make it to the Oregon Coast this year. But I enjoy the live workshops more, so here’s to next year’s travels (which will include Loncon, but hopefully also a workshop with Dean&Kris).
Then check David Gaughran’s talk with Alliance of Independent Authors’ Orna Ross. This looks like an interesting organization, since it includes the likes of Writers Beware Victoria Strauss and Passive Guy. Worth thinking about joining.
Kris Rusch on life changing events. I have donated for Dave’s son, will have to check about Peter David. Honestly I’m not thinking about the future yet – not that I want to live for ever, far from that, but I still have to figure out a couple of things in this very complicated country or find a way out of it and try to earn some other citizenship. Yes, we might have free healthcare, so I won’t apply for a Greencard, but I do want to emigrate to a less complicated country!
And if you’d like to make a living with short fiction, don’t forget to check the maths on Dean’s blog. I think that even the most busy person in the world can find 15 minutes to write every day, or even one hour, but then, I’ve heard plenty of “writers” who seem unable to find the time to write. They’re probably wannabe authors. Writers write. They don’t talk about writing, they just write. So if you’re a writer, just go back to writing.
Finally, to blog or not to blog. Up to you. I enjoy this, so I’ll keep doing it. Even if with less frequency than when I started, you’ll still get regular posts here. B.G Hope has a static web page because I can’t handle two blogs, LOL! Unless I start one for readers, with free fiction or whatnot. Mmm, no, I’d rather be off writing the next story, sorry! Have a wonderful week and don’t forget to check the Smashwords sale – a reminder for the Kindle event next week!
June 30, 2013
Happiness is…
This time I would like to dedicate this to Fulvio, who is apparently going through this somehow! Ain’t it cool, Fulvio? Hugs
Sunday Surprise
Okay, I’m giving up. I’m tired to ask around if anyone wants to be my guest. Or send my interview questions out and never hearing from that person again. So, for the summer, Surprise Sunday is suspended. In September I’ll resume posting writers’ wisdom as monthly feature and maybe post a short story or two (again, as monthly feature), in case anyone is interested. Any aspiring guest can apply for a September (or later) date, though.
Now I’m going back to my writing cave (at least it’s cool) and “delight” you with only a couple of posts per week. I don’t feel I can contribute much else at this time but short weekly updates on writing (Wednesdays) and random facts (if any) on Fridays. And of course will keep wishing you a happy week with the weekly vignette!
Since I mentioned my hairdresser in my previous post, and I made her so happy when I told her she could do what she wanted, here’s the latest happiness – letting your hairdresser do what she please! (mm, maybe I should recolor the hair in my Avatar… what do you think?)
Have a great summer (or winter if you’re down under) break and enjoy your vacations/holidays if you have them!
