Anna Butler's Blog, page 50

Contact Sport Cover

I’ve just had the cover for Contact Sport sent to me by Dreamspinner Press.  This will be the cover for the 2013 Daily Dose “Make a Play” which publishes in the summer, and will then be used for each individual story when that is released.

Wouldn’t be my choice, but I don’t get to choose.  Shrugs. This was the first thing I ever tried to get published and it was accepted.  I can live with a less-than-stellar cover.  

Anyhow, here’s the cover.  I’ll post details of the launch etc as soon as I have them.

Pretty enough bloke, but not a thing to do with Ice Hockey!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

No, I’m not challenged in the almanac department!  I’ve just sent a short story of that title to DreamSpinner, as a submission to one of their anthologies. I have no idea how it will do, but if they accept it, that will be one more little credit on the writing side.

 

John Hogarth and Kit  Lewis met in art college and hooked up there, both professionally and personally. Fifteen years on they’re running Hogarth Lewis together—a small, but growing, branding and design agency that’s garnering work from some of NYC’s finest institutions and starting to make inroads with larger corporations and significant industry players. They have just landed their biggest contract yet with Bowyer Industries. On the professional front, they’re up and coming.

Kit wants to keep their personal life up and coming too. Feeling that after fifteen years it may be time to make sure John isn’t bored, he comes up with a creative way of injecting a little romance and excitement into their relationship by planning a series of seductions based on celebrating various major holidays from around the world. John doesn’t object to celebrating Physical Activity and Exercise Day in Japan, or the Landing of the Thirty-Three Orientales in Uruguay, but his personal favorite may turn out to be the Day of Union of Eastern Romalia with the Bulga. He particularly liked Kit’s dedication to serial and frequent reunions…

FLASHWIRED HAS JUST GONE LIVE

And we’re off!!  FlashWired is now available at Smashwords  - http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/... and will be at Amazon, Kobo and ARe soon.  

WHHHHEEEEEE!!  I’m so dizzy with this I may have to go and lie down for half an hour, with a cool cloth on my brow and a reviving cup of tea at my elbow.

All love and thanks go to Nan, Shelley and Sally, without whose help and encouragement I just would never have got here.  Love you all, ladies.

I really do think I need that tea…

 

Sigh

I’m ready to self-pub FlashWired and I have the first chapter of Shield rewritten and added into it so I can push that a little – I hope it gets the one or two readers I’ll get for Flashwired eager to read – and hence buy – Shield when it’s all done.

But thinking about swag to take to Houston with me to publicise FlashWired brought me up sharp against a problem.

I made a mistake when I set everything up. I was still in fanfic mode, where everything’s a little more casual.  I should never have used AnnaButlerFic.com as a website URL. It looks juvenile and unprofessional. I did the same with my gmail address that but is VERY easily remedied.

So, before I get pins and pens made to give away at the conference (yay for pens because Sarah Madison has found a great US supplier and *everyone* uses them) I decided I should correct the website mistake. That means that I need to change the contact details in a host of places, but especially on FlashWired.I bought a new domain – AnnaButlerFiction.com –  and I carefully read the instructions on WordPress on how to make that my principal domain. I thought I’d done everything right, but whenever I switch this to the new URL, the whole thing just closes down and I get told there’s a DNS error.  It did say that most changes to DNS stuff took a couple of hours and could take up to 72.  Three days!  I hope they’re wrong, but I suppose I’ll just have to keep trying…

Headache here.  Big one.

Damn

Never try to change the domain name your blog is attached to.  PAIN all round.

Progress…

Today has been a day of boring but necessary admin work.

I have created accounts with Amazon, Smashwords, Draft2Digital, All Romance and Kobo.  I would have added Barnes and Noble too, but they’ll only take US citizens, apparently. Tsk.

I have diligently filled out form W-8BEN regarding article 12 of some tax treaty between the UK and the US.  One’s been sent electronically, one other company just asked me to fill out an online statement and three are being sent by snail mail.  So when I do get a pittance via sales – and believe me, I do expect it to be a pittance –  the US tax authorities will not claim their 30% levy on it.  Even if they did, 30% of very little remains not a lot. The US will not be able to squeeze much blood from this stone.

I am in the middle of registering with the UK tax people as self employed, but with the rider that I expect to be exempt from the requirement to pay national insurance, since I don’t expect to make enough to reach to threshold for that – see former remarks about a pittance.  I need to wait for D to get back from walking the dog. He’s a tax consultant, and why not make use of the expert in the house?

And in the middle of this, I’m trying to find the time for one last read through of FlashWired. I haven’t looked at it for several days, so I hope that’s been enough time to give me a fresher perspective on it.  I’ll reread it all tonight. Tomorrow, D.V., I’ll press that button.

I’m a little bit scared.  And a little bit delighted. And altogether excited!

 

The chosen cover for FlashWired…

… is the outcome of a little more tinkering following your feedback, but here it is in all its glory:

 

Thank you, all.  I really appreciate the time you took to come and look and comment.

Cover Images for FlashWire (was Deus)

A friend of a friend of mine put together two lovely images for the front cover of FlashWire.  As is my wont, I’ve been tinkering with colours and lettering, and now have 10 images, 5 of each original, and I wouldn’t mind some help in deciding which one to use.  I like all of them, which isn’t much help.  The images are:

IMAGE ONE 

test1

 

 

test1A

 

test 1B

 

Test 1C

 

Test 1D

 

 

And IMAGE TWO

Test2

 

Test2A

 

Test2B

 

test2C

 

Test 2D

 

So, which would you choose?

Wheeee! Writing Workshop!

It’s up!!

The writing workshop that Sarah Madison, Jennifer Roberson and I are doing at Galacticon is up on the website!!

Delegates will *know* about it now.  They’ll have the option of signing up for some yet to be specified time (grins) of minimal pontificating from us and lots and lots of fun filled activity where we flatly refuse to do all the work and will be galvanising the participants with cattle prods into learning something about how wonderful it is to write, write, write.  Or, you know, they’ll have the option of deciding that they’d rather go and have a McDonalds instead.  Whatever floats their boat, but while we won’t have fries with a side order of plotting and characterisation, we will have origami with post it notes!! How can they resist?

Go here to read about the SOOPER_DOOPER ASTONISHING WORKSHOP WHERE WE IS ALL WRITERS NOW and if you’re coming to Galacticon, sign up and come and have FUN!

Another good reason to go to Galacticon, 23-26 May, Houston