Stephanie Bibb's Blog, page 52

Thoughts on Writing – Proofreading as a Reader

If you read myprevious post, you know that I recently got in my paperback proof copy of Magic’s Stealingin the mail. Mymain goal was to make sure the formatting was correct, soI debated whether or not to correct typos, and then order a new proof (the answer is now ‘yes’), or to leave it be and not risk messing up the formatting.

But my concern was that trying to save money by not ordering a second proof would cost sales in the long run. (Read this BookBabyblogpost for more about saving now co...

Thoughts on Publishing – Magic’s Stealing – The Paperback Proof Is In!

Today I’m going to interrupt my usual post with an announcement: I have received my paperback proof of Magic’s Stealing!

It came in a small, cardboard wrap (not quite a box, but not a bag, either), and was delivered to my front door. Upon opening the package, I took a few pictures. :-D

(( Please ignore the various HeroMachinepictures and cool artwork in the background… those aren’t our personal works (Though if you want a good way to organize the general look of your characters, HeroMachine i...

Thoughts on Writing – Using Foreign Languages In Your Stories

Recently, I’ve been making edits to The Multiverse Chronicles. It’s a pseudo-steampunk fantasy story, and it’s very much not historically accurate. We’ve got dragons, dinosaurs (all right, all right, I know pterosaurs technically aren’t dinosaurs, but still), dirigibles, magic powers, a dragon queen who rules over Britannia, an Industrial Union of Prussia that makes automatons… The list goes on.

Still, we want to have occasional nods to reality, and it’s nice to know which parts of history we...

Thoughts on Writing – Sweating the Small Stuff

At the latestwriter’s club meeting that my husband and I attended, I read a scene from TheMultiverse Chroniclesto see if I had cleared up a few problem spots we’d found whenI read the scene at the previous meeting.

Overall, the description seemed to be taken care of, which opened up the ability to notice other little details that were out of place.

For example, in this particularscene, the main character, Trish is meetingwith variousmembers of the Britannian army. The story doesn’t revolve to...

Liebster Award

I was recently nominated for the Liebster Award by writer Eve Messenger. Basically, the Liebster Award is a blogging meme that allows bloggers to recognize other blogs they enjoy, similar to the Blogger Recognition Award.

Now, I’m terrible at blog-tagging. Part of this is because I feel really awkward “tagging” people chain-letter style, and the other part is that a lot of the blogs I follow don’t actively participate in blog tagging.

However, when I made my post about the Blogger Recognition...

Thoughts on Writing – Multiple Character Motivations in One Scene

Though I’ve primarily been focusing on getting the paperback edition ready for Magic’s Stealing (I ordered the proof copy today!)and making edits to The Multiverse Chronicles, I’ve still been thinking about the plot for The Shadow War. My goal is toiron out as many inconsistencies as possible before I get into the heavy writing/editing phase.

Today I’m going to look to look at ascene from The Shadow War and focuson how knowing the multiple character motivations in that scene can help improve...

Thoughts on Publishing – Infinitas Publishing Status Report

All right, the time has come for another status report. :-)

When Isaac and I first started Infinitas Publishing, we created an Excel file that listed our goals for releasing our books and games. Some of those are completely in the works (they haven’t yet been started), while others already have afairly polisheddraft and just need editing.

Either way, I figured it would be a good idea to take a look at our current projects every once in a while and see how everything is going.

Here are the cur...

Thoughts on Publishing – The Excerpt at the Front of a Print Book

I’m in the process of creating a paperback edition of Magic’s Stealing. I’ve got most of the formatting complete, save for a couple blank pages, and I’m currently focusing on adding an excerpt at beginning of print book. The idea is that as soon as a potential reader opens the book, the first thing they see is a teaser that makes them want to read more (and encourages them to be patient if that scene takes time to reach).

Keep in mind, when a reader is browsing a book store or examining a boo...

Thoughts on Writing – Subplots and End Scenes

Isaac has finished writing the rough draft of Trials of Blood and Steel, and I’m about half-way through editinghisdraft (with plans to go back at the halfway point and start polishing, that way we can start releasing episodes), soIsaac is now working on the little segments that go at the end of each episode.

We’ve been calling these segments end caps (a cross between recap and end of the scene? I’m not sure how we started calling it this), butI realized that wasn’t the actual name for those s...

Behind the Scenes – Beyond the Eyes – Cover Remake

This is a cover for Rebekkah Ford. For this cover, we redid a cover I created for her three years ago, back when I was trying to find willing authors to take a chance on me so I could build my portfolio (thank you!).

At the time, we came up with this:

The goal was to create something mysterious, with a bit of a taste of horror for her first YA paranormal. At the time, I tookinspiration from the cover of Clockwork Angel, the cover art of which I adore.

However, this was an earlier cover of m...