R.A. Hobbs's Blog, page 2

How Ninja Brush Their Teeth: Now available on Kobo, iTunes, and Smashwords

Just a quick update.

How Ninja Brush Their Teeth is now available in all formats.  Still waiting for Nook to upload it, but it should be any day now!

Kobo

iTunes

Smashwords

Enjoy!

~R

A three star review to be proud of.

A three star review to be proud of.

I recently received a review written in better than the story itself! If you’re like me and enjoy short fiction, check out the rest of Adam’s reviews over on his blog! Click the link above!

-Cheers!

-R

Petman, you scary.

Am I the only one seriously freaked out about where robotics are heading and who’s funding the research?

*shivers*

Confessions: When I hid from Ursula

Sometimes, I’m an idiot and I regret things…

One of my more acute (but only terrible to myself) regrets, is of the time I ran and hid from Ursula K. Leguin. Don’t know her? Go read everything she has written. She is amazing.

I was working as a facilities maintenance worker (read: JANITOR) at the downtown Seattle Public Library on a night shift. Although the job was hard physically, and made me constantly tired it also had some pretty amazing perks – books. Everywhere. And lots of them. One of the areas I kept clean was the science fiction department and YA section. I would devour books on my breaks, sometimes barely remembering to eat just so I could finish a book and pick up another one. It was during this time that I discovered one of my other favorite short fiction writers Ted Chiang along with the exceptional Ursula K. Leguin.

On one particularly special Friday evening at the library, Ursula K. Leguin had been a guest speaker and had just finished her talk with a full audience who had given her a hearty and rousing applause. It was a little after this that I heard people walking towards the back-of-house portion of the auditorium where there was a little dressing room for library guest speakers. She was coming back there, probably to grab her things. I was back there too, rinsing out a nasty mop-bucket after a clean-up from a notoriously disgusting first floor public men’s room. (You don’t even want to know what I cleaned on a regular basis *shudders*)

When I heard she was coming I took off in the opposite direction.

I told myself there was a carpet that needed to be vacuumed in the children’s office right away because they had had cupcakes with the sprinkles on them and you know how those get all over the floor. Not to mention they had black carpeting which made everything show and it couldn’t possibly wait.

Of course I was lying to myself.

I was terrified.

Terrified that I would see Ursula K. Leguin and she would see me: the sweaty, tired-of-working nights, dreaming-of-being-a-writer-but-never-brave-enough to-try-Janitor.

So, I hid and didn’t stop vacuuming until I was sure she was gone. Then I went back to rinsing the mop bucket and cleaning the rest of the bathrooms, trying my best to pretend I wasn’t angry or sad that I just missed my once in a lifetime opportunity to meet her.

In the years since, that regret has never ceased to prick at me. And as I pursue my dream of being a writer it makes me even more sad that I did this.

The regret isn’t so much that I passed up an opportunity to shake her hand or maybe take a photo with my favorite author, the remorse is that I didn’t want to meet her because I was afraid, and ashamed of who I was. How prideful is that? It’s just so…lame.

And as a story teller, I throw books across the room that end this way-yet there it is, a crappy anti-climatic ending.

Just promise me this: if you ever get a chance to meet your Ursula, don’t run away out of fear. Don’t ever be ashamed of who you are. Be sweaty, be tired, pull off your rubber gloves, proudly offer Ursula your hand and live without regrets.

~R.

The story behind the Ninja books

And now a little background on how “How Ninja Brush Their Teeth” came about.

It all started because I was sad.  I had put up a snippet of some other writing on a writers forum and it was pretty much hated across the board.

Even my husband, my love, my best friend, the one who I bounce all my ideas off of hated it too.  So, I was sad and deflated and couldn’t bring myself to write a word for a whole week.  And instead of writing, I browsed the internet, reading writer forums, writing blogs, looking for inspiration when I finally found a blog by Kristin Kathryn Rusch that basically had one central theme.  If you are a writer, then suck it up and write.

It lit a flame in me. I licked my wounds and put myself back on the keyboard and because I was out of ideas and just needed a quick writing exercise , I looked for a writing prompt and came up with two words: Ninja + Toothbrush.

That’s the story.  What started out as a writing exercise of 1000 words has now grown into what I hope to be a three book series.

Inspiration can come from anything – but most often, at least for me, it comes from a recent defeat.

Cheers!

~R

I finally got a REAL cover this time!

Not just some crap whipped together in MS Paint!

Thanks goes to James at humblenations.com who’s brilliant, wonderful to work with and has amazingly fast turn around.

My husband is constantly telling me, with covers you need to sell the sizzle and not the steak, and this cover is all about the sizzle.  We couldn’t be more pleased!

I’m so close to finally uploading the book.  I did a ton of revision on the first chapter. Something about it had been bugging me for a while now and after a recent read through I decided it needed an overhaul.  I’m finally at peace with it and now it just needs a another pair of eyes to look for any grammar issues I may have missed.  (Thanks Valerie, for being willing to help me during such a busy season!)

I’m also working on a side project for an old friend of mine, comic book artist and writer Alan Gandy.  He asked me to submit a story for his Seattle Nights Presents Comic.  I’m excited for the opportunity but was uncertain if I could come up with something original for him based in Seattle.  Not to mention we are completely at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to content! He’s zombie, horror, erotica and I’m just not that… exciting.

So, I decided to look through some old notes I had.  Sometimes ideas rattle around in my brain and get in the way of projects I’m currently working on and the only way to purge them is to write them down in a notebook and move on.

Well, in my notebook I found an odd little idea for  a short story called, Median Earl.  Here was the pitch:

If America had a pantheon of gods, Median Earl would have been the lowest on the rung. Given only the desolate bits of land that divided America’s great highway and byways, and the little islands of dry grass and scrub that intersected deserts of hot, lifeless asphalt, Median Earl was given the mission of sustaining whatever life managed to crawl out of its barren crust.

If Median Earl was the lowest American god, than Griswald Marquis was his one and only follower. Just a homeless man that came across Median Earl under a North Interstate 5 overpass in Seattle, Griswald dedicates the rest of his life following and recording the acts of this lesser known god.

It’s been a long time since I’ve attempted to write a comic book script and I’m a bit rusty.  So far, the story is coming along nicely but it’s growing and new characters are popping up like weeds and now a nasty villain just came out of the shadows.  But for now, I’m just going to get it all down and tighten it up later.  Wish me luck! I really hope to give him something he can work with.

That’s it on the writing updates.

The tragedy in Connecticut has been on my mind, of course, along with you and everyone else.  Prayers continue to go up for that community and for the parents of the terribly young victims who are now bound together  in their loss, like bits of driftwood circling around a gaping black whirlpool.  God have mercy.

I’m reminded of the teacher who hid her class in a small bathroom and told them all how much she loved them because she wanted them to know they were loved before the gunman came in and killed them.  Thank God they were all spared and thank God for that brave teacher.  I think of my daughter’s kindergarten teacher and I know for a fact that she would have done the same thing.  And it’s people like this that give me hope.

Yes, this world is sick.  It’s diseased.  But there is still love here.  And it shines brightest in the darkness.

Peace and Prayers for CT.

Cheers and Blessings!

~R

Hygienic Ninja and my publishing schedule

It’s usually when I start posting specific dates for things to happen that suddenly life decides to prevent whatever I have predicted or scheduled from ever happening.  For kicks, you know, because when things happen just as planned – it’s boring.  Ask any storyteller worth their salt – they’ll tell you.  You want to put your audience asleep?  Have everything be swell.  This ties into my belief that God can be compared to an author and if your life is getting too easy and boring – be prepared for a little ‘conflict’ or ‘plot twist’ hiding in waiting around the next corner.

/tangent

I have a tentative publishing schedule planned for the next three months!

How Ninja Brush Their Teeth will be released sometime in December.  For the reason posted above I wont give an exact date, but the date is in my head and I’m working really hard to get there.  I have a couple more revision passes to go, some plot thingies to add and then re-familiarizing myself with the whole HTML formatting hocus-pocus that I admittedly totally forgot how to do since the last time!  Gosh, it’s only been since August, too.  Oh well, I’m hoping it’ll be like riding a bike…

In January I’ll be going into heavy revision of Why Ninja Dress Like Pirates, my part 2 of the Ninja series.  Depending on how that goes and when my beta readers get back to me, I’m hoping to release that towards the tail end of January.

And for my third installment of the Ninja series that I’ve tentatively named, Ninja Verses  Soccer Mom Super Villian, will hopefully be done, revised and up for sale late February or March.

During all of this, I’ll be working on a historical fantasy based on late 1800′s Seattle which I’m really looking forward to for the change of pace.  No, it’s not Steampunk, but more Wizard of Oz-ish/Odyssey kind of thing.   Not sure when that will be done though, I’m hoping before summer.

Anyway, that’s about it on writing updates!

Cheers!

~R

NaNoWriMo: Lessons learnt.

Lessons I learned from NaNoWriMo:

#1.) They call it a month of literary abandon.  More like literary Abbadon, that leaves your mind a wasteland of creativity after a locust swarm.

#2.) On Dec. 1st, they change the website name back to NahNoHellNo, because that’s how I feel when I look at that website right now.

#3.) There are writers out there that write 10,000 words a day and finish NaNo in the first week.  Other, more capable writers than myself are able to finish NaNo on time, with a clean first draft which only needs to be cleaned up of a few typos before it is submitted to publishers, bought on the first submission and become best-sellers.

I hate all these people.

#4.)I can write a novel in a month.  It’s a crappy novel that ends in the middle of a sentence because when I realized I hit 50,000 words, I said, **** it, I’m done! But oh sure, I can write a novel in a month. Yay me!

#5.) I swear more now than I did in October.  Interesting.

#6.)  Writing 2,000 words a day seems like a perfectly reasonable pace.  It’s Stephen King’s pace and he claims he only writes until lunch, according to his memoir, ‘On Writing’.  But 2,000 words a day for me is too much, I’m sorry to say.  By the end of that particular mileage,  I’m writing really dumb sentences and everything gets bloated and mushy.  It’s gross.  1,000 words a day is a good pace for me and something I’m confident I can maintain on a consistent basis.  Thank you, NaNo, for teaching me this.

#7.)I can only comfortably write in 500 word chunks at a time before my back starts to bark at me and my wrists and elbows start to tingle.  Which reminds me, I need to eat better, drink way more water and start walking again.  I also need a new office chair and desk.  Heck, I need an office.  Right now I’m writing in the corner between the highway intersection of my living room and kitchen.  I guess I shouldn’t complain.  One of these days my kids will be grown and out of the house and I’ll be typing in the converted kids room I made into my office and miss being interpreted every five minutes to look up Minecraft parody songs on YouTube.  But yeah, finally, I will be uninterrupted and alone as I type on my tear-stained keyboard full of regret.  They grow up so fast!

#8.) Everyone who wants to be a writer should do a NaNo, or at least attempt it.  For all the grind and desperation it can bring on, it’s a ‘fun’ experience and it’s rare to get to write something  with the support of a community who has joined you in the endeavor and pledged to cheer you along the way.

#9.) People who make a living as professional writers – every month is their NaNoWriMo, right?  But it’s the jerky ones sniff at our meager accomplishments (I’m talking to you, Scalzi), while the cool ones are on the sidelines cheering us on and handing out Styrofoam cups of encouragement, or even joining in the fun themselves.

#10.)  Sometime, in December, I will be faced with what I have created when I start revising.  I will be utterly shocked at how terrible it is through most of it, wondering if I’ll ever improve or if I’m destined to writing like a caveman.   In other places, where I find I don’t remember ever writing the passage, I’ll be pleasantly surprised, or see something that sparks off another idea, or come across a paragraph that I can work with and can see clearly how to bridge one idea to the other.  It will be as much an emotional roller coaster revising it as it was writing the damn thing, but at least it’s there on the table with a heart beat.

Albeit, a weak one.  :)

Cheers!

R.

Featured Story: "The Girl And The Guitar," a Novelette by R.A. Hobbs

Reblogged from Short Fiction Spotlight:

Genre: Fantasy

Type of Story: Novelette

Summary: A mysterious guitar finds its way into the life of a little girl and her family. As the truth of the guitar begins to reveal itself, it threatens to tear the family apart, and one of them discovers the only way to save the family is by a sacrifice too costly to bear alone.

Read more… 974 more words

My little novelette was featured today at Short Fiction Spotlight! Check it out!

I write therefore I wroted: Update on writing stuff

This is not a picture of my mom. This is Grandma Moses and is my mom’s facebook profile picture. She is just being silly.

Hi mom,

I thought I’d give you an update on what I’m writing about these days.

I’m pleased to announce  ’How Ninjas Brush Their Teeth’ is now done and in the hands of beta readers.  I’m just waiting to hear back from them to find out what needs to be added, switched, corrected and deleted from existence.  The shock of red pen-marks slashed all over my manuscript is never fun, but each time it happens it gets easier and easier, and the story always ends up being 100 percent better because of it.

You’re probably wondering why your daughter is writing about Ninjas brushing their teeth.  Well, mom, you had a weird child.  And you’re pretty weird yourself so it only makes sense that these things are passed down in the genes.

And no, it isn’t a children’s story about oral hygiene. Those are totally played out now anyway, since Spiderman and The Hulk got that material covered years ago.  A generic Ninja would have no voice in that crowd.

Anyway, I’m hoping somewhere in the first half of October, How Ninjas Brush Their Teeth will be out and up on all the major e-distributor sites ready for sale.

Speaking of sales,  The Girl and the Guitar’s have been dismal.  Aint no sugar-coating it.  It is what it is.  I pretty sure most of my sales have been from you and dad and some really supportive friends of mine.  And for each of those I’m extremely grateful!

Interview with an Android is averaging about 10 downloads a day – but it’s free so those numbers aren’t amazing, but I’m hoping it will grow an audience hungry for more of my work.  It’s received some really amazing reviews in the meantime – which is surprising for me since it was one of the first things I’d written, and not very well, I might add.

You just never know what’s going to resonate with readers.

Ninjas. I’m hoping for ninjas.  And if that doesn’t work, I might try exploring rabid Chihuahuas for a change of pace.

As for my lackluster sales, I think I have a couple of things going against me at the moment.  One, my covers suck!  They suck so much that I can’t make print versions of my books at Createspace because the resolution is so bad. With print versions I’d be able to hand them out and try to drum up some local word of mouth – or something!  I really need professional help with the covers or Photoshop – but I can’t afford either.  I’m just stuck between a rock and a hard place at the moment, but don’t worry, because I’m not worried – it will all happen in its own time and I’m in it for the long haul.  In the meantime, I’ll just keep writing and building a nice back-list of content to put up throughout the year.  And maybe beg for book cover money for Christmas, birthday and mother’s day gifts…hint, hint, HINT!

Already, I’m starting to write the sequel to How Ninjas Brush Their Teeth, and have a third planned.  I also have about a dozen other stories waiting to be written and more being thought up everyday.  I’ll never have a shortage of ideas, thanks to your weirdness genes.

Love you!  Call you later!

-R