Heather Marie Adkins's Blog, page 19
June 19, 2011
Indie Author Spotlight - Ania Ahlborn
From Goodreads:
Seed
by Ania Ahlborn (Goodreads Author)
4.36 · rating details · 14 ratings · 12 reviews Fans of Stephen King, Jack Kilborn, and Blake Crouch… prepare to meet the Devil.
In the vine-twisted swamps of Louisiana, the shadows have teeth.
Jack Winter has spent his entire life running from something no one else can see. His childhood is his darkest secret, but after a near fatal accident along a deserted road, the darkness he was sure he'd escaped rears its ugly head… and smiles.
But this time, he isn't the only one who sees the soulless eyes of his past. This time, his six-year-old daughter Charlie leans into his ear and whispers: Daddy, I saw it too.
And then she begins to change.
Faced with reliving the nightmares of his childhood, Jack watches his daughter spiral into the shadows that had nearly consumed him twenty years before.
But Charlie isn't the only one who's changing.
Jack never outran the darkness. It's been with him all along.
And it's hungrier than ever.
The only word I have for this novel is WOW. Ania is a rock star. She's a fantastic writer, there were few (if any!) errors like typos. She has woven a disturbing, shudder-inducing horror story that will have you looking over your shoulder anytime you pass a cemetary. Or woods. Hell, even when you get in bed and turn off the light. I can not wait to read more of her books. 5 star, all the way.
Find her book (only 99 cents):
Find Ania:
June 18, 2011
Indie Author Spotlight - Michelle Muto
by Michelle Muto
From Goodreads:
When teen witch Ivy MacTavish changes a lizard into her date for a Halloween dance, everything turns to chaos. And when no one is powerful enough to transform him back except Ivy, it sparks the rumor: Like father, like daughter. Ivy has heard it all before - that her father, who left when she was seven – was involved with the darkest of magic.
Making the rumors worse, someone uses an evil spell book to bring back two of history's most nefarious killers. Ivy's got a simple plan to set things right: find the real dark spell caster, steal the book, and reverse the spell. No problem! But she'll have to deal with something more dangerous than murderous spirits that want her and her friends dead: the school's resident bad boy and hotter-than-brimstone demon, Nick Marcelli. Nick's offering Ivy more than his help with recovering the missing book – he's offering her a way to ditch her scaly reputation as a lizard-lover. Demons are about as hard to handle as black magic, and as Ivy soon discovers, it's going to take more than a lot of luck and a little charm if she wants to survive long enough to clear her status as a dark witch, get a warm-blooded boyfriend, and have her former date back to eating meal worms before the week's end.
Ivy is a witch, and a damn good one. Her friends are all instances of supernatural creatures and form a cohesive unit - unlike a lot of paranormal novels out there that draw a distinct line between the species. They all took hold of my heart, particularly Ivy who is as beautiful and flawed as a protagonist should be. The plot is fast-paced and intense; I hung out with white knuckles until the end. The Book of Lost Souls is a 5-star book and I recommend it to anyone and everyone.
Find it here:
And find Michelle here:
June 17, 2011
IWU Blog Tour #1
Hello, technological world! I am back from the black abyss known as Disney World. For the last week, I've had no internet access and no phone service, so I was about as cut off as I could get. My dearest thanks to Disney for being so greedy they can't offer free wifi in the hotel room, and also to Cricket, for having absolutely no coverage in Orlando. I'm seriously considering an Iphone.
The best Facebook group in all the universe is Indie Writers Unite! a collection of indies celebrating their triumphs and sorrows in the hit-or-miss land of self-publishing. I've jumped on the bandwagon for the IWU blog tour, so weekly I will be hosting either a guest post or interview from one of my fellow indies.
This week, we chat with Katrina Parker Williams!
Tell me a little about the book/work you're promoting.
I am currently promoting a short story collection titled Trouble Down South and Other Stories and a short story Missus Buck. Trouble Down South and Other Stories is a collection of historical fiction that chronicles events spanning more than 150 years and addresses a wide range of experiences from African-American perspectives. The stories are set in the South amid a changing landscape in which the characters are forced to wrestle with the social issues surrounding Native Americans, slavery, racism, Prohibition, World War I, the Korean War, Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, health, religion, mental illness, and education.
Missus Buck is a 6850-word short story about an elderly woman, advanced in years, who fosters a spirit of hostility toward her daughter-in-law because she believes her to be a commoner. Their family descending from German aristocracy, Missus Buck believes her son has married beneath him when he weds Missus Julie, who feels the sting of her disapproval even from the first day she met her. Missus Buck shows no mercy towards Missus Julie's slaves and squares off with Missus Julie's favored slave, the feisty Rubeline.
What jump-started the idea for this book?
I had written Missus Buck as the start of a novel but found that it worked well as a short story. I may develop it into a novel somewhere down the line.
How often do you write? Do you set word count goals? Do you reward yourself if you meet them?
I try to write every week at least. I can't find the time to write every day with working a full-time job and taking care of a family, so if I can get in some writing once a week, I do so. I don't set goals for myself unless I am trying to complete a short story or a novel. Then I do reward myself when I accomplish that goal.
I see that you have a traditionally published novel, Liquor House Music. What made you choose self-publishing?
I didn't traditionally publish Liquor House Music. It was self-published. I chose self-publishing because it allowed more freedom for me to write the stories I like to write and to publish them.
(Note from Heather: let that tell you guys how awesome this book looks!)
Are you working on any current projects?
I am working on three more short stories that will become part of a short story collection. Hopefully, they will be published by Fall 2011.
Your artwork is so lovely! What kind of feedback have you gotten on designing your own book covers?
Thank you for those kind words. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback from my artwork. I don't design covers for others, but I may consider doing that in the future if someone wants me to do it.
Stepping outside your persona as an Author, as a college English professor, what advice do you think is most important for young writers?
Read, read, and read some more, and then write, write, and write some more. I tell my students that they must become good readers in order to write well. I also tell them to view writing as a fun endeavor instead of a dreaded chore. I discover so many of my students dislike English because of their lack of interest in reading, particularly good books. If they enjoy reading, writing becomes a pleasure also.
Shamelessly self-promote your links! Any books, webpages, etc.
Katrina Parker Williams is the author of a short story collection Trouble Down South and Other Stories, a fictional novel Liquor House Music, and a short story Missus Buck.
Purchase Books at These Links:
Amazon (Kindle): http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_nos...
Barnes and Noble (Nook): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/troub...
Read more about Katrina's Writings at these links:
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
Blog: http://troubledownsouth.wordpress.com/
June 10, 2011
I'm published!
My short story, Underneath, is up and ready for download at Smashwords!
Initially, I'd wanted to offer it for free at BN and Amazon - obviously. They're the two major retailers of ebooks. Unfortunately, neither one allows for an author to offer their ebook for free. According to some research I did, it's possible that going through the back door will work. The back door being Smashwords.
I'm not big on Smashwords. I don't like their formatting. My novels will NOT be for sale there - I work too hard to make them beautiful through my own conversion to ebook. However, I may continue to publish free short stories there to attempt to draw readers. We will see how that works.
Now, for the good stuff!
Book Cover for Underneath
Underneath
9000 wds
An ancient city, entombed beneath a museum that seeks to understand the brutal race that once inhabited the underground world. A young woman with special empathic powers offered a job to create an exhibit of the city's artifacts. Underneath, they wait for her.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/65758.
June 7, 2011
Dead People
Disclaimer: Once again, for this third installment in Indie Writers, I must remind you I am not a book reviewer. My reviews are amateur. Horrible. Probably so badly written you might never want to read anything on my blog again. (Okay, probably not that bad.)
Dead People
by Edie Ramer
From the author's website:
When Cassie Taylor talks, ghosts listen. She wants to heal their souls so they can leave earth. Brooding songwriter Luke Rivers wants to give his recently found daughter a normal home, but he discovers his new house in small town Wisconsin is haunted by a ghost with an attitude. His ghost whisperer has an attitude too—even before someone tries to kill her.
He wants conventional; she wants acceptance. No wonder she thinks men are hard and dead people are easy.
This was a fantastic piece of Indie fiction! Ramer is a great writer. The ebook was formatted perfectly, I found little to no errors, and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. Cassie and Like are both characters the reader can really connect with, and the ghosts are a hoot.
This book, in it's beautiful state of error-free and great writing, is an inspiration for Indies everywhere. It shows that a self-published author can do it right and do it well. I highly recommend Ramer and will be reading the rest of her bookshelf accordingly 
Find links to her books at her website:
June 6, 2011
Making Necessary Adjustments
It's hard work getting all my shit together to publish.
I've successfully managed to tweak all my social networks for publishing, adding info on Heather-as-author rather than Heather-as-boring-girl-with-nothing-cool-going-on. Though, of course once my book cover is complete and it's available for sale, I'll have to go back through and link to it through everything. I'll have to do that every time I set a release date and then again when I publish…enough work to make me cringe.
I just set up my Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing account, as well as my Barnes and Noble PubIt! account. That's one giant leap forward.
I've still got plenty to do. Once I have my cover, I'll have to set up Author Pages through Facebook, Shelfari, Goodreads, and Amazon. It feels like a neve-ending cycle to make it all come together in a neat little package.
For now, The Temple is complete. I'm still plugging away at Flipping Spouses (around 20,000 words so far) as well as doing extensive edits on Abigail. I was off for four days, and naughty girl, I didn't write. At all. That did a nice job of putting me behind.
To write! Good night, world.
May 31, 2011
Busy, busy bee
I feel like this week has neatly flown by because of all the stuff I've been working on.
The Temple is 95% ready for publication. The ebook has been formatted - it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Last night I sat and skimmed the entire novel (short…it's only 205 pages) and fixed final mistakes. There weren't many. Now, I'm only waiting on the cover. My little sister, Sheridan, is designing it for me and she's had the end of the school year to contend with. I'm not sure how quick she is at drawing, but when school lets out for the summer Thursday, she's going to start working on it.
I'd love to be able to publish it by June 10th - that's the day I leave for Disney with Mom and Dakota. Then, maybe I wouldn't agonize so much over the book's first week. I could do a bunch of promotion the day it comes out, and then not worry about anything else until one week later.
I'm knee deep in Abigail revisions. If I can remain steady in my work, hopefully it will be released within a few weeks of The Temple - at least by a month after it, anyway. My lovely cover artist will be out of school, so she can do the cover for my second novel fairly quickly (I hope!)
I've been tossing around ideas for the cover for Constant State of Disaster. It's going to be an actual photograph, rather than a drawing. I'm just going to take it myself. It'll be a great reflection of the book. I just printed CSoD for revisions, but it's going to sit still for a bit until I'm finished with Abigail.
On top of all this, I'm at 20,000 words for Flipping Spouses. I was really hoping to have it finished by the end of May, but as all good things in life, it just didn't work out the way I planned.
No more procrastinating by blogging…off to work!
May 30, 2011
Caramel Icing
For one of my co-worker's birthdays, she asked for something with caramel. Did you know it's impossible to find caramel icing at Kroger? No caramel chips. No caramel sauce. Nada.
So, I googled. And I found!
1/2 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 c milk
Melt butter over low heat. Add sugar and milk. Boil until sugar dissolves. Cool.
Beat in powdered sugar until desired consistency (about two cups). I did it with a fork, because I still can't remember to grab my beater from mom's house, so I didn't get quite the consistency I wanted - but it was freaking good!
May 28, 2011
Spicy Chicken Soup
I had a recipe…I was feeling rebellious. The more I cook, the more I want to mess with things, shake it all up, see what happens. This is one of those recipes, and let me tell you…it's fucking delicious.
2 large chicken breasts, cooked and diced
2 cans white beans (Used Great Northern)
2 cans diced, no salt added tomatoes
8 oz chix broth (no salt!)
2 small hot peppers diced
some onion diced
5 cloves garlic minced
cilantro to taste
1 tsp ground cumin
Tear or dice cooked chicken and place in a glass baking dish
Over low heat, mash beans and tomatoes (if you like a chunkier soup, only mash a little bit). Add onion, garlic, peppers, cumin, and chicken broth - stir and allow to heat just a bit for flavors to mix.
Pour mixture in with chicken in the baking dish. Stir in cilantro.
Bake (covered) 20 mins in 375 oven
FYI, it's hard for me to give amounts in my recipes, because everybody has different tastes. I love garlic and would put a whole damn bundle in everything I cook, but someone else might prefer just a clove for taste. All recipes are subjective!
May 27, 2011
garden update
On April 21, I planted:
Mesclun, Romaine, Carrots, Radishes, Onion, Garlic
I've lost all my radishes. Last week, I came back from the Tenn Ren Fest and found all the leaves had mysteriously disappeared (aka attack of the hungry rabbit). Where my outside guard cat was during the attack is up to debate. I dug up the stalks, hoping it'd been long enough for the radishes to grow, and there was NOTHING. Not even a hint of a radish on any of them. So, I have one radish plant in that row that still has leaves, though it was smaller than the others. We will see what happens.
The lettuce (Mesclun and Romaine) is doing great! Little stalks are growing for the Romaine, straight up and beginning to get that "bunch" look, while the Mesclun is an array of color and leaf shapes that are slowly but surely growing tall. I've thinned the romaine a bit (waiting for some to get a bit taller before I pick who's gonna make it), but I haven't thinned the mesclun. I'm waiting until it's tall enough to pick some to eat, so that by thinning, I'm actually picking to eat. Waste not, want not and all.
My carrot tops are beginning to feather, so I take that as a good sign. I am concerned as it begins to get hotter and hotter because carrots supposedly don't do well in high temps. Melinda at One Green Generation suggests burlap during the summer…where will I find that I wonder? It's worth a try to continue to have carrots.
Onion stalks have gotten taller and seem to be thickening, and the same goes for the garlic - those have shot up like they were made for growing.
On May 9th, I planted another two rows of carrots and radishes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, garlic, and green beans, as well as transplanting my tomatoes, banana pepper, serrano pepper, and bell pepper sprouts.
Carrots and radishes are rocking right along. I've put in what I'm hoping will be a good rabbit barrier to keep those radish tops safe. With the garlic, again like those first few, they've just exploded into stalks.
I planted just three seeds of squash, zucchini, and cucumber in 6 hills (two hills per type). They grew literally almost overnight. Already, the true leaves are growing in on the squash and zucchini. I'm trying to track down some pantyhose to wrap the stalks to protect from borers. The cucumbers don't look as good - kinda stalky and the leaves are rather small.
The green beans are huge. They popped in almost overnight and grew into monsters - and they're still only two leaf stalks! One of the sprouts has been singled out by bugs and is riddled with holes - I'm leaving it in for now, because they aren't chewing on the bigger, pretty sprouts. I'm hoping that's because they like that little one, lol. Tonight I made notes on making my own homemade dish soap insect repellent so I'm going to give that a try.
Now, for the peppers and tomatoes. The week after transplanting, we had a cold spell. I know, my fault for being impatient - but I started the seeds too early and the sprouts got big and started looking awful in their transplant pods. So, hoping the warmth had arrived for good, I transplanted the peppers and tomatoes.
Bad, bad idea. News flash for Kentucky - don't transplant your peppers and tomatoes in early May. Freak cold flashes can happen. And that freak cold flash killed every one of my tomato plants. As for the peppers, I haven't lost them yet, but before the cold flash, they looked bushy and beautiful, and now, they're turning yellow and scrawny. I'm not sure they're going to make it. That sucks something awful, because we eat a ton of peppers.
May 23, I planted some new tomato seeds. Nothing has sprouted yet…so we will see.
My lemon basil, horrible while in pods, is growing fairly quickly now that it's outside in the herb bed. If they all continue to grow well, I'm going to have a shit ton of lemon basil. We'll be cooking with it forever.
I only had one tiny purple basil plant survive. I'm highly upset about this, because purple basil is just beautiful. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try starting a couple more pods. They'd look beautiful in the flowerbeds out front.
I finally transplanted my chamomile, oregano, and flower sprouts into larger containers. They're all going to (hopefully) go in to the flower beds out front if they survive. They were looking rather awful when I transplanted them. It's in nature's hands.
I planted some new seeds, meant specifically for the front beds. Rosemary, sage, echinacea, and catnip. They're hanging out in the garage under cover. I've learned the hard way that when I propagate seeds inside in my Jiffy kits, I have to thin them. Thinning wasn't in my gardening vocabulary until this year…see how I learn?
Let's see, what other herbs are growing…tarragon (tall and bushy!), some sage (kinda scrawny…just transplanted to spread them out into other containers, hoping that gives them a comeback), basil (finally freaking growing), thyme, oregano, rosemary. I may be forgetting some.
Oh, and I planted a container of mesclun on Monday.
That's the update so far.
Now, approximate harvest times:
April 21st plantings:
Mesclun: June 10th
Romaine: July 1st
Carrots: July 5th
Garlic: July 5th
Onions: September 20th (harvest green onions when stalks are 6 inches tall/ 1/4 in thick)
May 9th planting:
radishes: June 1st (but, no…leaves aren't even big yet)
Zucchini: July 3rd
Cucumbers: July 3rd
Green Beans: July 3rd
Carrots: July 23rd
Garlic: July 23rd
Squash: Aug 2nd
All peppers should be ready for harvest by August.
Tomato seeds were planted May 23. That gives a harvest date of around August 23rd…if they grow.
