Roxanne Crouse's Blog, page 41
April 3, 2012
Right Now I'm Reading The Dark Path
The Dark Path [Kindle Edition]
I got this book Free and am currently on Chapter 7 if I remember correctly. So far I am enjoying it. You can get it FREE right now on Amazon so don't WAIT! Check it out and get a copy if you like horror. I personally love horror. Once I'm done reading I'll be putting up a review so come back to read what I think about, The Dark Path.
Get it for FREE while yo still can. The Dark Path
Writer musings: Torturing your characters
Reblogged from A Writer's Journey:
A good story offers a conflict your character must overcome. Aside from the initial problem they have to deal with, they often need to endure a personal conflict they also juggling through the story arc. Many stories include a number of problems to 'raise the stakes', add tension, and give reason for the character to grow beyond their comfort zone.
Here's a post from a friend of mine and writing group organizer Frootbat31. There is nothing I like doing more than torturing my characters. Enjoy the read.
My First review at Sizzling Hot Book Reviews!
Fortune by Roxanne Crouse is a good story. There were aspects of the story that I enjoyed a lot and others I wasn't so keen on, but all in all it turned out to be a good read. I liked Sarah and I liked how the story played out.
Read more at
Sizzling Hot Book Reviews
April 1, 2012
Roxanne Crouse's Reviews>Deep Waters
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Deep Waters by Sophie Rhodes is a story about a girl who meets a merman. They fall for each other, even though it is forbidden, and go on an environmental adventure to save Lake Huron from oil drilling. Here is the description from Amazon:
Deep within the waters of Earth lives a mysterious species of mermaids, the Lemoso. Recent human environmental disasters have threatened the Lemoso's way of life and forced their prince, Raymos Seabolt, to take a stand. Boundaries are tested and rules are broken as Raymos fosters his forbidden romance with a human, Julia Cork. Can their love transcend their differences in time to save the waters that they both hold so dear—the Great Lakes?
The story mostly takes place on the beaches of Lake Huron where teen, Julia, now lives with her environmental parents helping to build wind turbines in the lake to create environmentally safe energy. Not far away from them is the oil-drilling company that wants to set up oil rigs in the lake. While exploring the beaches, Julia meets the attractive, black-haired Raymos, and they spend time together and quickly fall for each other. What Julia doesn't know at first is that Raymos isn't human, he's Lemoso.
The Lemoso do not follow the traditional mythology of merpeople. Sophie Rhodes has created a completely new creature and mythos that humans have mistaken for traditional mermaids. Like sparkly vampires, this was disappointing for me. I wanted to read a book about traditional mermaids. These Lemoso were more like aliens living in the sea. Once I got used to the idea, the story was fine, just not what I was looking for.
The novel has a strong environmental message, and I do mean strong. You are hit over the head with it in the second chapter. I'm not against novels having a positive message. I can even relate to the environmental concerns of the book. I grew up in Florida on the Gulf Coast, and we were in a group called Secure that was against off-shore drilling. Sadly, the worst fears of the group came true, oil spill. I think the environmental theme could have been handled in a more subtle manor so it didn't feel like you're being force-fed.
The characters are playfully written and at times enjoyable to read about, but then there are times when the character's reactions don't come across as realistic. When Julia first finds out the truth, she seems to handle and except it too easily, and when Raymos decides to let her in on the truth, the decision feels too easily made, too quickly made, especially considering the consequences. There are many areas in the book that I felt this way about the character reactions.
This book is definitely for a younger crowd. I think 12 to 14 year olds will love this book, and the parents will, too, because there is nothing explicit for them to read such teens doing drugs, alcohol, or having sex. The only issue parents might have is that Julia's parents let her drive a car alone with only a learners permit, technically breaking the law.
The writing style wasn't bad. It flowed and was easy to follow. There are a few areas that could have been handled better such as the part where Raymos and his family, and the council are all touching and the feelings are being transmitted. This section was choppy and repetitive, but there are only a few areas like this. I did come across several errors, typos; mostly words with -ed added to them that shouldn't have -ed.
Overall, I'd say young girls are going to like this story, but if you're older, like me, and like reading young adult, you may want to skip this one, it's too young.
March 31, 2012
Adventures in File Formatting For Kindle
I deliberated for a long time, and after much thought, I decided to go into Self-Publishing. Perhaps I'm impatient, maybe even arrogant, but I decided I didn't want my fate to fall in the hands of editors. I wanted to control my writing fate myself. I came to this conclusion after being at a writing panel that had four different editors moderating it. The first thing I learned was each editor saw my story differently, and none of them agreed. It reminded me of my writing group and the comments I get from them on stories I have them critique. I have to decide which comments to listen to and which to disregard. In that moment, I realized editors weren't the gods I envisioned them as being, they were mere mortals just like myself, and just like my writing group. Editors are not all knowing. They don't have a crystal ball that will tell them who the next great writer will be. I will always value the suggestions I get from editors, but in the end, there can only be one God of the universes I create and that's me.
So comes the great challenge of self-publishing, and that is correctly formatting your files for digital and print. I'm no expert on this, but I have learned a couple of tricks that might help others that come to the same conclusion as me, self-publishing is the way to go. Let the readers decide my fate.
First off, before you upload any work to Amazon, read their guide! Don't assume the file looks good in word so it will look good on the kindle. Big fat wrong! Apparently, there are hidden symbols inside your word document that don't play well with the MOBI conversion. You have to remove those symbols from your document or you'll end up with a conversion mess, especially if you used the tab key to indent or space bar to indent. In word you have a toggle button that looks like this ¶ . You may have never paid attention to it. You will now. Push that button and see what happens. I'll wait while you try it. … Yes, it added lots of dots and other weird-looking symbols to the document. Don't worry, when you push the button again, they will go away. That button is called the show/hide button and it's going to be your new best friend.
I'm going to start out with indenting because it gave me the hardest problem. While writing in word, you can't use the tab key or the space bar to indent anymore. I know what you're thinking, how am I going to indent then? I asked the same question and finally found an answer I could understand at Smashwords. Their Style guide was far more helpful to someone who knows nothing about Word, like myself, than Amazon's guide which assumes you know what you're doing in word. Before you start typing, you have to pick a style which you'll find at the top of word somewhere depending on what version of Word you use. I use version 2010 and the styles are right up top to the right a little in big squares you can click. You'll want to click normal style. Now you type and when you hit enter to end your paragraph and start a new one, it will indent automatically. It's like magic! You can right-click on the style if you want to customize the indent and the line and paragraph spacing. No more tab, no more space bar.
I know what you're thinking now. I am a mind reader! But what about all the files I've already made in the past where I used Tab or space bar! Don't panic. Hit your hide/show button on one of those files. At every indent you may see dots or you may see an arrow and in some cases you may see dots and arrows. All those dots and arrows have to go. You can do it the hard way and start highlighting and deleting them, or you can use the find and replace tool. Whatever you got, arrows or dots, highlight it, copy it, then go to find and replace, paste it in, it will be invisible, and leave the replace part blank. When you hit OK, they will all disappear! Hurray! If for some reason all your indents disappear too, don't worry. The Kindle conversion will automatically indent the beginning of each paragraph for you as long as this symbol ¶ is at the end of each paragraph. If it isn't then start putting it there. You don't want this symbol 
at the end of paragraphs. The conversion will ignore it so get rid of it, NOW! Before it's too late.
OK that's all I'm discussing today because I'm worn out, and I have other things to do like eat lunch and take a nap afterward. I may talk more about this, I don't know yet. But if I don't read the guides above that I linked to. It will save you a lot of headaches. Til next time.
March 30, 2012
Roxanne Crouse's Reviews > Prison Nation
Prison Nation
by Jenni Merritt (Goodreads Author)
Roxanne Crouse's review
Mar 30, 12 · edit
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Read from March 29 to 30, 2012
This book is about a girl named Millie who has lived her entire life in a prison called Spokane because of her parents' crimes. She has committed no crimes herself and strongly believes in the laws of The Nation. On her eighteenth birthday she will be released from prison and become a citizen of The Nation. Once out, she learns The Nation isn't what she was taught to believe.
This book is set in a dystopian future where the United State no longer exists. In its place stands The Nation that has built a wall covering the entire border to keep people out, and to keep people in. The Justice system has been completely changed. A citizen is no longer innocent until proven guilty. Everything about the setting is interesting and well written by Jenni Merritt.
The plot of this novel is interesting as well. It starts a few weeks before Millie is released from the prison. The reader gets to experience Millie's everyday prison life and feel her anxiety over leaving her parents and the prison walls behind. At times, I feel it is described too well, to the point where it becomes redundant and I'm ready for the story to move forward again. For example, "During the day, a haze of sunlight would illuminate the thick plastic window, giving us our only sign it was no longer night. Daytime it glowed, nighttime it was dead black." The first sentence is enough to describe the window. The second slows the pace of the story. Dialog is interrupted a lot with the characters feelings and overreactions as well, but it wasn't to the point that I got annoyed and stopped reading. I did find myself on occasion reading only the first sentence or two of a paragraph, then skipping to the dialog to keep the pace moving. Once she is out of the prison, she meets Reed, born and raised outside the prison walls, and from him, Millie starts learning the truth about the world of The Nation. The prison part of Prison Nation was so well developed that when you get out of the prison, it's disappointing. Not so disappointing that I stopped reading, but enough to make me shake my head. From the time she leaves the prison, the plot and other characters become contrived. The way the plot wraps up with everyone somehow connected to each other seemed too unrealistic to me, too coincidental. The world Jenni Merritt creates is fascinating, but the plot in the second half of the book didn't work for me.
The main character, Millie, had a lot of depth, but the rest could have used more. Why did the parents never tell Millie the truth during the eighteen years they spent together in a cell? They had plenty of down time for it to come up. I didn't feel a good enough reason was ever presented to explain why they didn't tell her the truth before she discovers it. Why does Reed suddenly decide to do something? I never felt a good enough reason was given to explain his sudden change. When the characters come across Maria's situation, why didn't they help her? They just decided to leave and left her to her doom.
Overall, I liked the world this story was set in and I liked the main character Millie. I liked where I plot seemed to be going until it didn't. It never got dangerous enough. The ending did leave room for sequels so maybe we'll see more of this world. I liked the story enough that I would give a second book a try.
March 29, 2012
Interview with Fortune / The Monster author Roxanne Crouse
Reblogged from Indie BookSpot:
Roxanne Crouse, author of books such as Fortune and The Monster, talks about her approach to writing and her plans for the future.
Why do you write? Is it something you've always done, or always wanted to do? Or is it something that you started fairly recently?
I've been writing since fourth grade. I started out making a comic called…
I was interviewed by Indie Book Spot and here is that interview. I hope you enjoy the read.
Interview with author Fortune / The Monster author Roxanne Crouse
Reblogged from Indie BookSpot:
Roxanne Crouse, author of books such as Fortune and The Monster, talks about her approach to writing and her plans for the future.
Why do you write? Is it something you've always done, or always wanted to do? Or is it something that you started fairly recently?
I've been writing since fourth grade. I started out making a comic called
I was interviewed by Indie Book Spot and here is that interview. I hope you enjoy the read.
March 28, 2012
Smashwords launches The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success
Reblogged from Indie BookSpot:
Smashwords has launched a new ebook that aims to "distill, organize, package and share the best practices of the most commercially successful Smashwords authors". Written by Mark Coker, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success is free and is organised around 28 different 'secrets'.
Sites like Smashwords and Amazon make it relatively easy for anyone to self-publish their ebook, but ebooks don't sell themselves and many writers struggle when it comes to getting people to buy their books.
I'll have to check this book out!
March 26, 2012
Candi Byrne From My Writing Group Releases Her First Story For Kindle
For The Record is a story about a grandmother trying to save her grandson's life . Here is the description from Amazon:
When Bridgit O'Rourke learns her 2 1/2-year-old grandson, Piper, may be carrying a genetic time bomb, she initiates a search for her birth mother, hoping to find clues to Piper's mysterious illness.
Bridgit's anguish and frustration amplify when she's faced with legal and ethical roadblocks and denied access to the information in her sealed adoption records.
Desperate to save Piper, Bridgit circumvents the system, shocking herself at the lengths she'll go for Piper…for her family…for the record.
I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but when I do, I'll let you know what I think. If you're looking for something to read then give it a try.
Congrats Candi, I hope it does well!
My story Fortune is also available and is free until March 30th. I just saw my sales rank on Amazon and it's #1707. I have no idea what that means but it sure is a small number. I hope that's how close I am to making it to the top 100. I'll do an irish jig if I make it and take my family out to an awesome dinner!
