S.K. Nicholls's Blog, page 70
November 15, 2013
Happy Day
Reblogged from The D/A Dialogues:
A: Are you ready for it, D?
D: Ready? I was born ready!
A: Okay, on three. One. . . Two. . .
D: Wait!
A: What? What is it, D?
D: Maybe you should sit this one out.
A: What?
D: No, no I mean you can sit there and look pretty and add heart to the whole thing, but maybe, could you not sing?
I am so impressed. Even the Druid got in on this!
Happy Birthday, Susan!
Reblogged from Legends of Windemere:
Give a Happy Birthday shout to S.K. Nicholls!
Another one right up my alley. You did know I had an alley didn't you?
Susan it is your birthday!
Reblogged from readful things blog:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldozHQ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmDyB...
Happy Birthday to me. Feel the love.
PSSSST.....Susan...Happy Birthday
Reblogged from readful things blog:
Happy Birthday
Susan!
I got a pretty birthday card from Ionia. Aren't they lovely?
November 14, 2013
8 Ways to Support Author Buddies on a Budget
Reblogged from Kourtney Heintz's Journal:
Today, I thought I'd touch on all the ways you can support an author buddy without breaking the bank.
As an author, my income is in the 4 digits.So buying paperbacks is a luxury.
But I want to support my friends that are traditionally published and indie published.
What's a girl to do?
1) If you can't afford the Kindle version, go to your local library and request that they carry the book as a paperback or ebook.
Kourtney has some cool ideas on supporting authors. Take a read. It's a quick article.
Reviving the Spiritual Self: Looking at the Positives
After yesterday’s let down I am trying to put on my happy face and get with the program today. There are too many things to be pleased with in this world today to let one little trouble take me down. My plan is to NOT WORRY today. So this is a list of things I have to be pleased about.
My girlfriend, Nancy, from Texas is coming in at around 4:30 today. She, and one other friend, seriously encouraged me to publish “Red Clay and Roses”. She is nearly seventy and looks and acts all of fifty years old. I love her dearly and am looking forward to a fun weeklong visit.
I have had a surge in eBook sells. (I am advertising on some new sites. Something I needed to do a long time ago. And when I drop the price, I can add even more sites.) Not any new reviews yet, but I am hoping.
My birthday is tomorrow, and while I deplore aging, having another birthday beats the alternative…which would be dead, so I am happy to be alive and happy to have friends and family to celebrate with.
Speaking of birthdays, my husband says he already has a surprise gift for me. I am a little scared, because one year he gave me a shirt with fish on it. While it was a nice shirt, it was not exactly what I was expecting considering all of the hype around it. It was a little difficult to feign excitement when I opened it, but I know he still loves me, and he has done much better on other days.
My house is cleaner than it has been in months, Yay!
Saturday, I am going on a photo tour of Orlando with Nancy to get some pictures of our beautiful city to post on my blog in the future. We will probably have lunch at Spice, one of my favorite outdoor restaurants on Lake Eola downtown.
I have so much going on in my head about my newest book/series idea that needs to get put down on paper, so I won’t possibly run out of things to do anytime soon.
I have online friends who are more like family, who deeply understand, support, and encourage me. I am so very grateful for the many blessing that have been bestowed on me. I have a husband, children, grandchildren, and friends who love me. I have a beautiful home with plenty of space for making my guests feel comfortable. I have two of the best doggies in the world for company/companionship throughout what might otherwise be lonely days of writing and pounding away at the keyboard. The lovely Mexican heather plants that I planted last week are doing very well. The garden is green and filled with tropical flowers the colors of the rainbow. The wind has died down, and the weather is lovely at a nice and sunshiny 68 degrees, and promises to improve over the day. We might even get a beach day before Nancy goes back to Texas.
Why worry? See, life really is good. What do you have to be grateful for? I am sure if you examined it closely, you would find a multitude of things, as I have.
Filed under: Spirituality Tagged: growth, happiness, worry
November 13, 2013
Continued Frustrations in Publishing are an Integral Part of My Life Now
I would very much like to learn how to format and publish my own manuscripts. I would take a class on how to do this effectively if I thought I could learn it, because depending on someone else to get things right is a terrible frustration for a writer.
As many of you know, I enlisted the services of CreateSpace to accomplish the design of my paperback. When I sent my manuscript off to my independent publisher for the eversion, he had it published in three days. The only problem that we encountered was that the TOC did not function. This, we determined, was due to a translation error. He works on a Mac and I work on a PC. We removed the apostrophes from the chapter headings and, voila! The problem was solved.
I have been working with CreateSpace since June 6th on this paperback. Again, I sent in the manuscript from my PC and it was no different from the MS I had sent to my independent publisher. I had some final edits and a revision that needed to be accomplished, so I made those and sent them the changes on the service file that they required.
I paid extra to have them help design the paperback. There have been ongoing problems with font, front matter, images, handwritten letter size, paragraph spacing, page headers, chapter headers, page numbering, semi colons added to the TOC and other things I DID NOT ask for….I could continue the list, but I fail to see a point. Suffice it to say, things have not gone well.
Finally, after four or five rounds of proofs, all of which have taken seven to fourteen days to accomplish, I thought we finally had everything good to go and was looking forward to seeing the (hopefully) final proof.
Yesterday, I received this. For some reason unknown to mankind (or womankind), CreateSpace personnel decided to use lowercase letters in my TOC. Why would they do that?
Also, there were four places where there was a gaping space between paragraphs. Again, why?
I know that these things may sound trivial to you, but they are not understandable to me. I have had to pay them an additional $135.00 to correct errors which should not have been errors in the first place. I could have ignored them and said, “Whatever, just publish the damned thing!”, and pressed the approve button. But why should I? Why should I expect less than perfect satisfaction on a product purchased. And when these are corrected , are new problems going to appear again?
You would think that they would want to have the best reputation possible with as much competition as is building in the market. I truly appreciate that they provide a service for something that I don’t feel I could have accomplished alone. I would just like for it to be the premium service that I paid for.
I hope my readers know that I am genuinely thinking of them as I go about insisting on a quality product. I am proud to be an Indie author. I am proud to be able to be in control of producing a quality product. CreateSpace, of all people, should understand that. Don’t they want to make Amazon proud?
Am I just being overly sensitive and expecting too much?
Filed under: Publishing Tagged: createspace, publishing
November 12, 2013
#ReliefPH - Call For Help For The Yolanda/Haiyan Victims
Reblogged from Luokeshan's Blog:
If you've been following my blog, you would know that I am a Filipino living in Cebu. The Visayas group of islands (where Cebu is part of) has been struck by severe disasters just within a month. A 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit Bohol on October 15, also affecting Cebu and other Visayas islands. Last Friday, November 8 Super Typhoon Haiyan, a category 5 typhoon made landfall 6 times on different Visayas islands.
Help the Philippines. Meet Luokeshan, a lovely lady and one of the associate editors of Green Embers Recommends.
November 11, 2013
An Unlikely Soldier
Today is Veteran’s Day, when we honor all of those who served. This is Roseendhar Dasilma, an unlikely war hero, but a woman who put her life on the line many times just to insure the freedoms we have and to assure those civil liberties, those legal and natural inalienable rights, to others.
Rose comes from the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, Haiti. She lives near Orlando, Florida now and appreciates more than most the freedoms, liberty, and prosperity of this great country. She cherishes her American citizenship like a jewel, when so many born here take it all for granted, not having a clue how much it means to so many who don’t know the freedom or the prosperity. Roseendhar Dasilma served in the U.S. Army in Iraq.
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I could have written about my great forefathers who served in wars over the years of our family’s history in this country. How they served in The Revolutionary War, the two Great World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. I could have, and I appreciate them, but I often feel that those who have recently served or who continue to serve today don’t get the recognition they deserve.
Rose worked with me as Nurse. Sometimes she told us stories of having to stir shit in a bucket for hours at night that burned over a fire, because you couldn’t leave anything behind when you left camp, not even your turds. She told us of having to move in convoys of tanks that she could see in front of her being picked off by carefully placed roadside bombs and knowing her tank was the next one in the row if her C.O. pressed forward as ordered.
Knowing that you just might not make it home. Knowing that comrades had fallen before you.
Her family and friends in Haiti will never be forgotten by her, and her family and friends here in America treasure her, and know her to truly be one of a kind. This is her sister proudly wearing her Operation Iraqi Freedom jacket.
A B.S.N. prepared Nurse, Rose is working on her Master’s Degree in nursing now. She is divorced with a lovely young daughter who is the apple of her eye. She has worked hard to earn her place in our society and I, for one, am happy to have her. Honored to have known her. Her name is on the back of my paperback so I will never forget it.
Roseendhar Dasilma loves her country, and we love and respect her!
I am honored to call you, friend.
Filed under: Articles, History Tagged: cherish, country. US Army, friendship, honor, love, Veteran's day
My Brand of Green
This is the most favorite flower in my garden. It is nothing special, but it means something important to me. My brother in law gave it to my husband and I on our wedding day and it blooms every year on our anniversary. The blooms stay fresh for months. Orchids are funny. If you give them attention they die. If you totally ignore them they will flourish. (PS. I am not a photographer.)
My yard is surrounded by a green wall of foliage. Mainly because it creates a retreat in the city, a jungle, an oasis that I can call home.
Also because I have nosy neighbors (one in particular who likes to keep every floodlight on around her house at night, because at 90 years old, she’s afraid someone is going to break in and rape her…please). I don’t like the light pollution at night and the green wall helps me to pretend that I live in some exotic place in the wilderness instead of a city 10 minutes from the airport..
Sometimes the maintenance on it can get to be a headache, but it is worth it. I call it The Jungle. Most of the plants here are horribly invasive and will take over if you don’t spend hours keeping them cut back.
For all of you folk who live where it is snowing right now. I am sending you rays of sunshine and greetings from Florida.
I took this photograph this morning. Aren’t the sun rays pretty?
A bit hazy for a photograph, can’t pretend to be an expert. HA!
Do you keep house plants or some way to keep the green in your life year round? I couldn’t live without green in my life.
Green is life.
Filed under: Gardening Tagged: anniversary orchid, flowers, green, green wall, greetings, sun rays, The Jungle
