Jennifer Malone Wright's Blog, page 9

The Angel Families Foundation

I’m sure that many of you have seen my posts flying around on Facebook and Twitter about the auction being held for a member of our writing community who was a victim of domestic abuse. See the post about it here. Well, the auction and donations are going well but I wanted to make a special announcement about the brand new non profit organization called the Angel Families Foundation.

 

A.F.F. Mission Statement
Our goal is to help one Angel each month. Victims of domestic violence should never feel alone, like they have no way out of their situations. We intend to pull our resources to help as many as possible.

Description

Angel Families Foundation (A.F.F.) was founded by K.B. Miller, Jennifer Malone Wright and Ava Vixian after receiving word that one of their friends was the victim of domestic violence.

They created an event to help raise money for the victim. It was very successful. Their friend, the first Angel was the catalyst of this fight. With the help of Jennifer Garrison Trevino, they created A.F.F. to help more survivors.

 

I am personally invested in this cause, not because I have been abused, but because I have witnessed abuse from so many of the people that I love and care about. I feel that no person, male or female, should ever be abused in any way. Abuse is not only physical, but emotional, social, sexual, and spiritual. These are the five major types of abuse. I want anyone who is abused to know that there is help out there. Already there are a ton of resources all over the country, however, many are too afraid or embarrassed to reach out and ask for help. There many factors as to why people don’t leave, but the biggest one is fear. The abuser uses fear as a way to control the one they are abusing. We, the Angel Family Foundation are simply another resource for people to reach out to. We want to help our angels to escape the violence and live in safety.

Domestic violence happens every 15 seconds.

15 seconds … 

Many of my dear friends and a lot whom I do not know, have shared their stories of why this cause is near and dear to their heart. I have been heartbroken reading all the stories that people have shared since the auction event started. These tears that I have cried for the survivors will be used to fight back against domestic violence. K.B, Ava, Jennifer and so many more feel the same way, which is why we now have The Angel Families Foundation.

Please come like our page and join our event to help spread the awareness.

 

Angels of Domestic Abuse Auction for Christmas

***ATTENTION, YOUR HELP IS NEEDED***
A member of our community (writer, blogger, reviewer, editor, graphic artist) was the victim of Domestic Violence over the weekend. I can’t stand by and do nothing. She needs our help as she has children that may not have a Christmas. My PA, Jennifer Garrison Treviño is creating an auction to start today to help raise funds for her. If you can donate, please contact Jeni. We will NOT reveal the name of the victim UNTIL she does. She’s embarrassed and afraid. Even if the only thing that you can do is to share the event with your friends… THAT HELPS!! The more people, the more money for her kids’ for Christmas.
Thank you,
K.B. LP, Ava, Isabella, Amanda, Jennifer, Jeni

This is an auction! All the money raised goes DIRECTLY to the person in need~

Click Here to Go To The Event

You can also look below for a paypal direct donation link! Donation link

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=3ZYZK6G83TXTU

Holiday Book Sale!

For all of December you can get the first two Arcadia Falls Chronicles novellas for only .99 cents. You can also get Once Upon A Zombie Apocalypse: Episode 2 for only .99 cents. All of these books are normally $1.99. If you Haven’t read the first Once Upon A Zombie Apocalypse you can get it free anywhere ebooks are sold.

 

Amazon has not change Savior back to its normal price of $2.99 either, so you can still get that for .99 cents for a short time.

 

If you are looking for a Print book of The Vampire Hunters Daughter full  collection, Amazon has it on sale for less than $9.00.

Happy Holidays Everyone!!

Amazon / B&N / Apple / Sony / Kobo

PS. It might take a couple days for some of the retailers to change the price to the sale price. Most are correct now though.

Let’s Talk The Walking Dead: Recap and Predictions

A lot of you know that along with my books I also write articles sometimes. Here is one of my latest that might interest you.

Click the pic or click here

Will You Take The Pledge? Join Us In Supporting Authors, Artists, Musicians and Bloggers

Hi everyone! So, the post the other day about supporting indie authors got massive hits and lots of discussion on the topic. This stemmed an idea and lots of people have already jumped on board. If you would like to take the pledge, simply save the form to your computer, then add your name with a text editor and share it on your Facebook, blog, twitter, ect …

If you have problems with adding your name and you need help, hit me up on Facebook and I will help you get it done.

I hope you will join us in creating a huge movement for all indie artists and bloggers.

Here is the form.

What the F**K Happened to the Indie Author Community

**Warning, this is going to be a rant and ranting is not my usual online presence, so it could get ugly**

When the self-publishing boom began, just a few years ago, I entered into a vast sea of authors and books. I published my first book and had all these expectations that I would be the next Amanda Hocking, (this was around the time she became a Kindle millionaire) but in reality, I was kicking my feet in the waters, trying to stay afloat because no one was buying my book. No one was even seeing my book. Shortly after that I realized that I needed to do something differently.

That was when I began social networking more seriously. I found other groups of authors who were trying to do the same thing. Their books were brand new, like mine. We shared a common love of the written word and desire to reach the readers we wanted for our books.

With my husband deployed and my five children in bed, I would stay up into the night, liking pages, commenting, finding friends on twitter. I made friends on all the social networks. I joined groups of other authors where we discussed writing, promoting and marketing.

And we shared each other’s work.

It has only been a few years and some of us have had a lot of success, some have been picked up for major book deals, and some of us are still kicking our feet to stay afloat. We have all grown in our writing and in the book selling business since then, but not everything has changed for the better.

The indie author circuit has gone down the toilet.

A community of people which used to thrive, is now full of drama, gossip and selfishness. Part of what we do as indie authors is support each other. This obviously does not apply to everyone, but you know who you are. Even, I am guilty of not sharing others work as much as I used to or helping people as much as I used to.

Side note here for everyone who wants to attack me. I share peoples work all the time, not as much as I used to, but I also do spotlight on my book blog for anyone who asks, I have a lot of behind the scenes help going out to other authors and aspiring authors too. Also, K.B. Miller and I hosted, self-publishing 101 to help authors along. The last few months I have sort of given up on the sharing and helping others because I don’t feel that it is appreciated or reciprocated anymore.

So anyway… what happened?

I understand giving up on people, like I just said above. But, if we were to go back to the way it was with everyone helping everyone we wouldn’t feel this way.

Not only have the authors in the indie circuit gone all selfish and dramatic on us, but the many of the bloggers who used to help us out for free, because they LOVE books, now charge for reviews or interviews, or any kind of promotion on their blogs. I guess this is their right to do that, but it seriously peeves me off. It used to be something you did because you loved it and now you just want to make a profit. I can understand paying for advertising space on the blog sidebars or banners, that has always been done.

Book reviewers have been amazing to me over my time as an author, but I’m pretty shocked at what I’m seeing from some of them too.

This entire combination of the authors, the reviewers, and the crap that Facebook pulls on us with people not getting to view our pages is killing our businesses. I just don’t know how much more simply I can put it to you.

While I’m ranting, I have to add a side note to the authors. Your book being free on amazon and hitting the top 100 does not make you a bestselling author. That is false advertisement. It’s FREE!!  Now, the book world is riddled with Amazon Best Selling Authors and no one gives a f**K anymore. Unless that best selling has USA, LA TIMES, or New York Times in front of it, no one is paying attention anymore. So, unless it’s a paid book. Stop it!

I have every right to do that with my book, The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter, which sat in the top 100 free store for a freaking long ass time, but I don’t. I don’t feel that my free book is worthy of a best seller ranking … because it’s free.

Do you guys get what I’m saying here? I have heard tons of authors complaining about their sales dropping lately, Well… maybe if we all went back to how it was and went just a tiny bit out of our way to help each other out we could make the sales rise instead of drop.

It makes me sad to see all of this happening. So, if you can take time with that cat video or that funny meme about being an alcoholic, you can take time to help a friend or fellow author.

Here is the challenge, repost something for someone you hardly know. We can take it one step at a time and, trust me, it will make you feel good.

And lastly I just want to say that authors need to be nice to each other. I can’t understand why in the hell there is so much drama. I won’t get too deep into that topic, but this is NOT a competition, we are all in this together.

That’s all I’m going to say about that.

So, it didn’t get too ugly… comments are welcome, let me know what you think.

Once Upon a Zombie Apocalypse: Episode 3 Cover Reveal

Who’s ready for more ZOMBIES???

Once Upon a Zombie Apocalypse: Episode 3

The third episode of Once Upon a Zombie Apocalypse picks up as Kylee and Jade and their new rag-tag band of friends finally arrive in Pennsylvania. They venture further into this new world, searching for Kylee’s lost family.

The zombie plague knows no bounds. Anyone can turn, at any time. Those that haven’t turned are becoming something far worse, cold-blooded murderers. The United States government is in tatters and the lawless now make the rules.

Kylee and Jade can’t turn back, and what lies ahead could be more than either of them can handle. Join your favorite Zombie killers as they come face to face with love, loss and more zombies.

Once Upon a Zombie Apocalypse: 3 by K.B. Miller releases on Thursday, November 28th!

If you haven’t started reading the OUAZA series you can get part 1 of both Jade and Kylee for FREE everywhere! One of the links is in the sidebar.

Indie Books Being Removed From Various Bookstores: Rights and Censorship

Yesterday morning I logged into Facebook to see a few blog posts and articles about indie books being taken down off the shelves of various online bookstores. The story is that they are taking down “Questionable” books for review and removing any books that actually have the type of content they want removed.

Here is where the lines begin to blur… but, from what I have read, they are removing content that has rape, child pornography, incest, bestiality, and abusive sexual content deemed to graphic.

That being said, a lot of books are being removed which do not have any of this and some which don’t have any sex at all. I know that so far WH Smith who partners with Kobo has shut down their website and left a rather nasty message on their holding page. While I have an opinion about all this that I will get to in a moment, I feel that message was a little over the top and could have been handled differently. I am going to copy paste the message for when it is eventually removed, it will still be here.

A statement from WHSmith:

Last week we were made aware that a number of unacceptable titles were appearing on our website through the Kobo website that has an automated feed to ours. This is an industry wide issue impacting retailers that sell self published eBooks due to the explosion of self publishing, which in the main is good as it gives new authors the opportunity to get their content published. However we are disgusted by these particular titles, find this unacceptable and we in no way whatsoever condone them.

It is our policy not to feature titles like those highlighted and we have processes in place to screen them out. We offer over one million titles through our eBooks partner Kobo, many of which are self-published titles. Due to the massive amount of self publishing a number of these titles have got through the screening process.

We are taking immediate steps to have them all removed. While we are doing this we have decided to take our website off-line to best protect our customers and the public. Our website will become live again once all self published eBooks have been removed and we are totally sure that there are no offending titles available. When our website goes back online it will not display any self published material until we are completely confident that inappropriate books can never be shown again.

We sincerely apologise for any offence caused.

In the mean time if you have any questions for our customer support team you can contact then here (customer.relations@whsmith.co.uk).

Smashwords spoke with Kobo and they have a pretty informational post. If you are an author and you have books through smashwords I recommend reading their post about it here. I am going to post a few links to a couple different sites about this and then I’ll get on with why I’m actually posting this.

BBC News / The Digital Reader / Mail Online / On The Media / The Guardian

Read up on all this if you want to, what I want to discuss is the censorship and violations of free speech.

I am concerned about how quickly all authors went into a panic and began storming the internet with claims that their freedom of speech is being violated and that they are being censored.

First off, remember that I am an author too and it could be me having these issues as well. In reality, we don’t know that I’m not publishing erotica under a pen name. (Hmmm, something to think about, eh)

So anyhow, here are my thoughts.

We are indie authors, yes? The very definition of indie author is that we are independent and can write whatever we want, thus not being censored. However, simply because we are able to write something and post it on our blogs or sell it from our websites does not mean that every online bookstore HAS to sell our books. In fact, most of them have content guidelines or terms and conditions which we agree to when we publish that state we agree we are not publishing that type of content.

Also, these online bookstores could have lawsuits filed against them for distributing things like child porn. Their removal of the books is a course of action that I can’t disagree with. Those who have had books removed by mistake or because they were questionable will have them put back up, I’m sure of it. One of my FB friends told me hers was back up within two hours.

The online bookstores need to do this. You have to understand that. It is not simply the erotica they are after, it is the harder stuff. I do, however think that traditionally published books should be subject to the same review process the indie authors seem to be going through. Tons of traditionally published books have questionable sex and even incest. V.C. Andrews books were one of my favorites when I was younger and they are full of incest.

There are going to be blurred lines when it comes to some books, yes. There are going to be issues with innocent books getting removed because of key wording or something of the like and it is also going to be a long process.

I think this was the right course of action for the bookstores to take because they are protecting themselves and the hundreds of thousands of other indie authors out there who are publishing books without “questionable” content.

Believe me, these bookstores know just as we do how well romance and erotica do in the market. They know they are making a freaking bundle off of us and they are going to do everything in their power to keep those markets going. Sex sells, money rules and erotica is a huge factor in that.

But the questionable content is something I can honestly say that I don’t mind them removing. I don’t want to accidentally pick up a book with some guy raping a child or something like that.

I am the wife of a soldier who was active duty for 8 years, National Guard for 6. He is now a police officer. I am a patriot through and through, so if there is one thing that I support it is our constitution and our people. YOU … the people, are who we have sacrificed for and I don’t believe in censorship either. So, please don’t think that is what I support, because it’s not … at all.

I get it … really I do. I get the anger and the panic. But, it is the bookstores decision on if they choose to sell our books. They are protecting themselves, which has to come first in order to protect the authors who are following the rules. They aren’t perfect either, they make mistakes … like taking down innocent books. But these books which are innocent and being removed, I am positive will be restored.

Calm down, slow your roll, and realize what they must be going through as well.

 

 

 

 

 

Who’s doing National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year?

Every year I participate in National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is an exercise to try and write 50,000 words in a month. The goal is not to complete a novel for publication, but to exercise your mind and writing by caging your inner editor and letting go … just writing.

Simply by participating you are able to “win” by reaching 50,000 words. There is no prize except for that you freaking wrote 50,000 words in a month dude!

I am going to participate, but not with the NaNoWriMo. I will be doing it on my own by continuing to write a novel that I’m already working on. To find out more about National Novel Writing Month go to their website!

http://nanowrimo.org/

Writing under stress

I don’t know about all of you, but I have the worst time writing when I’m super stressed out. I mean, yeah, I have five kids and I’m always stressed out, but I’m used to that level of stress. When other stuff is going on to cause stress, I feel like I’m going a million different ways and it is hard to concentrate on one project.

Not to mention that sales are low for most everyone right now, so there is the constant inner debate on if I should write or market. There is a lot of inside stuff that goes on with marketing that doesn’t involve posting on Facebook or being in the public eye.

So, what do I do?

I trudge through it. I get out ONE document, whatever I feel like working on most and trudge through it. Even if every word is total crapola, at least I’m writing.

Fact is, for me, this is a job and people who work outside the home can’t just miss a day because they feel like it. They can’t not do their work just because they don’t feel like it that day or they will get fired. This is the same mindset we have to have as authors who work at home.

Nora Roberts, who has over 200 books now, has a section on her website where it said that she writes eight hours a day — Everyday and also that she says, “Daylight hours are for writing.” Of course this was after her children were grown. But still, I would like to emulate this.

Funny, I used to have issues writing when I was in a good mood, you know, that whole moody broody writer thing. LOL But, just because I’m stressed doesn’t mean I’m unhappy, just stressed.

Do you have certain techniques to get you writing through stress?