Meg Perry's Blog, page 35

A preview of coming events

I’m a planner. At least I like to have a plan. My plan doesn’t always work out – does anyone’s? But I’ve found that if I have at least the outline of a plan in place, then it’s easier to shift gears when the plan needs to be changed.

I’m not sure yet how many Jamie Brodie mysteries there will be. I know which one will be the last, but it’s not clear yet how many will come in between. But I wanted to give you all an idea of what I have planned – so here’s the plan for the series. Subject to change as needed.

Cited to Death – Jamie solves the mystery of his friend Dan Christensen’s death. Already published.
Hoarded to Death – Jamie and Pete find a dead body in Jamie’s ex-sister-in-law’s hoarded apartment. Already published.
Remembered to Death – A friend of Pete’s commits suicide, and Pete asks Jamie to find out why.
Researched to Death – Jamie’s ex Ethan asks Jamie to solve the mystery of a missing medieval medical text.
Encountered to Death – The body of a TV personality is found in the locked lobby of the federal govt. building where Pete’s brother Steve works. Jamie and Pete help figure out how it got there.
Stacked to Death – Work-study students start turning up dead in the library stacks.
Classified to Death – Jamie and Pete go to Washington DC for Jamie’s grandfather’s funeral, and get tangled in a mystery involving the Library of Congress.
Pictured to Death – A mystery involving the identity of someone in an old picture of coal miners.
Hidden to Death – One of Jamie’s childhood friends has been arrested for murder. Did he do it?
Psyched to Death – This will involve Pete’s work, somehow – and we’ll finally meet Pete’s evil mother.
Played to Death – a musical mystery with a wedding theme (hint hint) in which we’ll finally meet Jamie’s oft-mentioned ex-boyfriend Scott. This will be the last of the series, regardless of how many others might get added in there…

In terms of timing, the plan is to publish every six months. If I can do it more quickly, I will. I’m working on Remembered to Death now (more on that later), and Hidden to Death is close to done. I wrote Researched to Death last November during NaNoWriMo, so it just needs revision.

I have to go – I have some writing to do!

The Wattpad experience

I’ve been working on the third Jamie Brodie mystery for a while now. It was to be titled Hidden to Death, and I’ve been posting segments on Wattpad. I’ve had to revise once, and then add an explanation instead of a second revision – and now everything has changed again.

I find that I’m not good at posting a work in progress in serial format. I do too much revising as I go, which often requires changes to what’s already been posted. It confuses the poor readers!

I am going to continue to post Hidden to Death. A lot of the mystery is written, and I want to finish it. I am going to publish it later. But – it won’t be the next book out.

I’ll tell you more about the third book in a few days. But for now, I’ll keep posting Hidden to Death on Wattpad. It won’t be published, though, for quite a while…

 

Formatting for Kindle

After Hoarded to Death went live yesterday, I downloaded it to my own Kindle to see how it looked. (I have Amazon Prime, so I “borrowed” it.) Overall, I’m very pleased. I did catch two mistakes that I didn’t see before. I swear…six different people read the book, my copyeditor didn’t catch it, I didn’t catch it…there is a double quotation mark in one spot where it shouldn’t be, and there is a place where something happened “today” that should have been “yesterday.”

I hope you all will forgive me.

For Cited to Death, the first book, I followed the instructions that I had from a book on self-publishing and uploaded the manuscript saved as an html file. This time, I forgot to do that, and submitted the .docx file - and it turned out better. There are paragraph indentations, and the line spacing looks good.

There are a couple of spots where the indentations didn’t come through. And – the weirdest thing – there is one sentence that has a box around it. I have no idea how that happened. I certainly didn’t do that myself!

So, overall I’m very pleased. Except for that box…:/

Hoarded to Death

When Jamie Brodie agrees to help his ex-sister-in-law Jennifer clean her hoarded apartment, the last thing he expects to find in the hoard is a dead body – and what the dead man was clutching in his hand might be the answer to a thousand-year-old mystery. As Jamie and the police investigate, they uncover a hoard of secrets – but the biggest secret of all belongs to Jamie’s boyfriend, Pete. Suddenly Jamie is searching for the answers to three questions: who killed the man in Jennifer’s apartment? Is the paper in his hand real? And can Jamie’s relationship with Pete survive?

Hoarded to Death is published!

And…here it is: http://www.amazon.com/Hoarded-Death-Brodie-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00DQCU7RU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1372757174&sr=8-3&keywords=hoarded+to+death

My original self-imposed schedule was to have this published by June 30, so I’m only two days late, which makes me happy.

Here’s the cover:

This one is a little slower to get to the dead body, but I like the mystery in this one, and I hope you will too.

I’m about 30,000 words into Hidden to Death, the third Jamie Brodie mystery. I will have it published by December at the latest, barring unforeseen circumstances…

 

Discovering Wattpad

I heard about a site called Wattpad from another writer I follow on Goodreads. It’s a site where you can read other people’s writing, or post your own. It’s a little like blogging, too, in that others can also comment on your postings. It seemed like something fun to try.

I’m posting sections of the third Jamie Brodie mystery, which I’m writing now and which will be published (at least, that’s the plan) next December. I’ll post a new section each week. I’d love for people to comment and let me know what they think. The search function doesn’t work very well, but if you search for the title “Hidden to Death” in quotes, under the Mystery subject heading, you should find it.

Better late than never!

I got a little off track over the spring due to some health issues, and got behind on writing and editing the sequel to Cited to Death, which is called Hoarded to Death. But I’m back on my feet, and last week I finished what I’m calling the “final first draft.” I had trouble finding an ending, but I think I have now. I sent it out to the beta-readers yesterday, and they have until June 18 to get back to me with their critiques. My goal originally was to publish in June, but now the goal is the end of July.

I’ve contacted the cover artist and she’s working on my idea. It’s coming together, finally…

The one-day freebie

When I published Cited to Death, I signed up with Kindle Select Publishing. There were advantages and disadvantages to doing that, but the advantages outweighed the disadvantages. So far, I’ve been pleased.

One of the things you can do is schedule a certain number of promotions during a month where you offer your book for free for a short period of time. I decided to do that in February, and on Valentine’s day made the book free for 24 hours. I didn’t publicize it much, just on my Twitter feeds – and I got over 300 downloads! I don’t get paid for any of that, but it’s a great way to get publicity.

Now if some of those folks would leave a good review…:-)

Writing goals

Boy, 2012 ended in a rush. First the craziness of NaNoWriMo, then getting Cited to Death published. I was extremely pleased with the results of both of those things! Cited to Death has done better than I expected. I don’t really know what I expected – but more people have bought the book than I can account for, so that’s great!

I’m so glad I took part in NaNo. I haven’t looked at the novel since I finished it up, but I’ll get back to it before long. When I do, it’ll be with fresh eyes.

I’ve just finished the first draft of the sequel to Cited to Death, which is called Hoarded to Death. I hope to have that published by June. I’m not crazy about the ending yet – it still needs work. But the rest of it is pretty much done, and I’ll be sending it out to my readers soon.

Now, with my daily writing, I’m working on the third book in the series, which will be called Hidden to Death. It’s scheduled for publication next December.

My goal for the rest of January is to write the ending to Hoarded to Death, and to write a blurb for it. I didn’t do that beforehand when I published Cited to Death, and had to come up with one on the fly. This time I’m going to be prepared.

Cited to Death

Academic librarian Jamie Brodie hasn’t seen old boyfriend Dan Christensen in years. When Jamie reads Dan’s obituary in the paper, he’s surprised. When he receives a letter from Dan, written just before his death, Jamie is shocked. Dan’s letter suggests that Dan was in danger, lists two article citations from medical journals, and asks Jamie to look into the citations. When Jamie requests the articles, strange things begin to happen. His computer is hacked, his tires are slashed, he thinks someone might be following him – and he uncovers two more deaths. The coroner’s report says that Dan died of natural causes – but did he? Is there something suspicious about the articles, or was Dan just paranoid? The closer Jamie gets to answering those questions, the more it seems that someone is trying to stop him…

 

Cited to Death is published!

It’s so exciting! To actually go to amazon.com and see something that I wrote! *happydance*

For right now, it’s only going to be available on Kindle. Publishing to Kindle was fairly painless, even though it took a few hours. Friends who have published through other services tell me that others are much more difficult. If there’s a huge demand, I’ll consider it eventually, but not just now.

If you’d like to read it, and you don’t have a Kindle, you can download free Kindle software to whatever device you do have – iPhone, iPad, Android, PC, Blackberry, Mac.

Here’s the link: Cited to Death

NaNoWriMo – so far, so good!

I finished my words for today – 2010 words! I’d love to get 2000 every day…at least that’s what I’m shooting for, and it will give me a little cushion if I need it. So – first day, success!