Deborah Jay's Blog, page 104
September 7, 2013
Review – Stuck with a Spell, by D.D.Scott
Stuck with a Spell by D.D. Scott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I loved the witty tongue-in-cheek approach.
I loved the variety of eccentric, brilliant characters.
So why the 4 stars? Simply because I found myself frequently unable to figure out which viewpoint I was seeing things from as I began each new chapter. A addition to chapter headings would sort that out so easily.
September 5, 2013
Zharme Anthology Sale
For the month of September, The Zharmae Publishing Press is putting their two amazing Anthologies The Irony of Survival and Real Lies, on sale for only $4.99
A complete steal of a deal!
Release Date: June 17, 2013
Publisher: The Zharmae Publishing Press
421 Pages
Some Authors Include: Frances Pauli, Nyla Nox, James Wymore, and Jon Del Arroz
Description: Irony of Survival being the second in the Zharmae Anthology series takes a deeper look at survival and how irony’s effect on it can grow into something we may, or may not have anticipated. While we wonder to ourselves, how it managed to happen, it does. That is the law of irony, if the possibility exists, then the instant will occur.
So we must look beyond the instant, to the series of occurances and ask ourselves: Is this really what was meant to happen? The answer to that, in our heads at least, is no. The reality may be far different.
When I was asked to sum up the theme of this year’s top shorts obviously the title comes to mind. It’s simple, quick, and to the point. Does that really answer the question “What do the contest entries actually say about the theme, and what does that say about the reasoning behind the theme?” Probably no, and probably nothing at all. Now, when I say “Yes, we did just survive that; but it’s ironic that we did, because now, What the hell!” Is probably a better demonstration of the theme at hand. This is the look at life, and what it really takes to survive. How irony seems to play a dominant role in our lives with concurring thoughts such as: It worked out differently in my head. Or the ever so ingenious. I didn’t die on the trip to Mars, though I should have, only to be killed 12 hours after arriving by Martian children. Of course!
But why is this important?
Sometimes irony works to your advantage. Sometimes, irony is what helps you to survive in the first place, what allows you to see beyond the near term and envision a future that was not present before. Sometimes, the irony of surviving allows for the greatest of accomplishments.
Featuring the top rated short stories of the 2012 Annual Spring Writing Competition, the Irony of Survival takes a keen look at the future, while strolling along a summer park full of adventure, love, and fright. The stories within these covers are spectacular and compelling even for those who scoff Irony in the face.
Amazon Buy link: Irony of Survival
Release Date: Feb 1, 2013
Publisher: The Zharmae Publishing Press
390 Pages
Some Authors Include: Dan Pike, D.H. Aire, and Oscar Francesco
Book Description: Enter a world where fantasy and reality collide, where seeking answers only raises more questions, and the paths you choose can change everything you have ever known. The pages in this collection will send you on an adventure into the unknown to discover the truth about yourself and the world around you. Create and destroy destinies when facts and reasons fail in Robson’s “Walk on By.” Question reality with Lisabeth in “Onward Into Dark,” where dreams come to life and the past returns to haunt those searching to escape the truth. Don’t believe in escapism? Join the characters of Pike’s “The Wolf of Descarta,” as they face reality head-on and struggle against wild fantasies that eclipse life itself. But be careful, our dear readers. One bite of “reality” and you might wish you could wrap the illusions around your eyes once more because as you will find, the truth lies.
Amazon Buy Link: RealLies: A Zharmae Collection of Short Works (Zharmae Anthology Series)
If you’re looking to discover some great new reads written by some amazing debut authors. These Anthologies can’t be beat!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
September 4, 2013
3 ways riders communicate with horses – Horse Tips for Writers
Rider communication with horses
If your horses are in a fantasy world, try telepathy.
For those of us stuck in mundanity, ways to communicate wishes/instructions to a horse come broadly under 3 categories:
Natural aids (no, not the marital type!). These consist of a rider’s hands, legs/feet, and weight.
Voice
Artificial aids – whips, spurs, gadgets.
Natural aids 
can be as crude as kicking the horse in the ribs with the heels, or yanking at the reins, through to the most sophisticated use of the rider’s body position and weight in the saddle. Horses will respond to crude aids, but depending on the horse’s sensitivities that response may not be what the rider intended!
At the crude end of the scale – pull the right rein to turn right and vice versa; pull on both reins to stop; kick with both legs to go.
At the other end of the scale, the slightest shift of the rider’s weight in the saddle to the right, or a tiny nudge with one part (might be knee, thigh, or calf) of the opposite (left) leg will turn the horse to the right; the tiniest closure of the fingers will stop the horse, or even as subtle as the rider drawing their body up into a taller posture can have the same effect. The lightest squeeze of the calf will ask the horse to move forward.
Two main factors will determine the level of sophistication in horse and rider’s communication: training level and sensitivity of the horse, and the rider’s ability to control their own body.
Voice
Horses can be fully trained to respond to voice commands, to produce almost any variation of movement. The actual words used have some impact, but more important is the tone, modulation, pitch and volume of the voice command. Like all other training in horses, precision and repetition are key factors in what a horse will learn. For example, saying ‘trot’ as a command will only be effective if said in the right manner – the word alone will not do the job.
Artificial aids
![Spur2[1]](http://deborahjay.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/spur21.jpg)
All manner of spurs, whips, riding crops and varieties of artificial gadgets exist to enhance or enforce a rider’s commands. How they are used determines whether they are assistance or abuse. Try imagining them being used on your own person – that might give you some clue.
If you’d like any clarification, or further discussion on related issues, please leave me a comment.
September 2, 2013
The Godling Chronicles – Book Spotlight
The time has come for the world to see the power of the Reborn King.
His vast armies march, bringing death and devastation to all who would dare oppose him.
But hope will endure if the bonds of friendship, both old and new, remain strong.
Gewey, split between the man he wants to be and the god he must become, will test his very soul in order to fulfil his destiny.
And only through his love for Kaylia can he hold onto his humanity.
YA Fantasy
The Godling Chronicles ‘A Trail of Souls’
The Godling Chronicles #4
by
Brian D. Anderson
Mythos Press, August 13
About the author
Brian D Anderson was born in 1971, and grew up in the small town of Spanish Fort, AL.. He attended Fairhope High, then later Springhill College where his love for fantasy grew into a lifelong obsession. His hobbies include chess, history, and spending time with his son. Jonathan Anderson was born in March 2003. His creative spirit became evident by the age of three when he told his first original story. In 2010 he came up with the concept for The Godling Chronicles, that grew into an exciting collaboration between father and son. Jonathan enjoys sports, chess, music, games, and of course, telling stories.
September 1, 2013
Review – Blood Faerie by India Drummond
I’m not keen on giving too much away in a review, hence the brevity – but believe me, it’s worth the read!
Blood Faerie by India Drummond
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Absolutely magic!
Set in the beautiful wooded region of Perth in Scotland, this tale brings an exiled fae, Eilidh, in contact with a human detective as they both strive to prevent the evil blood faerie from killing again.
The characters in this very readable book have depth, histories and secrets that unwind at just the right speed, rushing towards a climactic finale that winds up this tale, but leaves you wanting more – and there’s plenty more material there for subsequent books.
India Drummond’s writing is awesomely elegant and I’m away right now to read the next one!
August 31, 2013
Indie publishing – the lazy way – using Draft2Digital
Do you have time to learn formatting? To figure out how to upload to all the different platforms? No?
Me neither. That’s where I was soooo relieved to find Draft2Digital (and no, I’m not on commission!)
I’m not precisely tech-phobic, but thought of having to learn HTML gives me cold sweats. I started following instructions from some of those wonderful bloggers out there who are so generous with their knowledge – people like David Gaughran and Catherine Ryan Howard - but I would get overwhelmed within two steps.
I’m a writer, not a software engineer, Jim.
I daresay I might take the time sooner or later, because the rewards are greater if you do it yourself, and they say it gets easier after that first time. But right now, I’m struggling to find writing time – I don’t need to be learning something else new!
And I know many other writers in the same boat. How about you?
So that’s where these guys come in. If you want the lazy man’s version of indie publishing, these are your guys. NO formatting needed. NO uploading to individual platforms. Just a quick, dead simple process to follow, and they do the rest for you.
Of course there’s a price tag – they take 10% of your sales (that’s 10% of your selling price, so more like 15% of your profit after Amazon or whoever have taken their cut), but to me for now, it’s a price I’m willing to pay to take out all the hassle. And if you don’t sell – you don’t pay!
Apart from paying for a good cover (and you MUST pay for a GOOD cover, or you won’t sell anything anyway), and editing of your manuscript, there are no other upfront costs.
Uploading to D2D
Once you have created your account with D2D, this could hardly be simpler.
ACQUISITIONS. Upload your Word or RTF file. Fill in: Title, release date, description (as you want it to appear on the sales platform – the blurb designed to sell your book), author and publisher (that’s you, if you’re self-publishing), search terms (the sort of things people might put into a search engine that would bring up your book), ISBN number (if you have one – not necessary in most cases), and keywords (3 words that define the categories you want your book to appear in). Then click on ‘Save and Continue’. Your book will now be transformed into a formatted file.
On the next page, LAYOUT, you upload your cover image – an RGB .jpeg file (that’s Red Green Blue, for all you non-techie types like me) and then tick boxes to add pages for: title page, copyright page, dedication page, Also By page, About Author page, About Publisher page, teaser page. Some of these are auto generated, others, like the dedication or about pages, you design and fill yourself with photos and text – there are easy to follow instructions at each step. At this point, a list of your chapter headings comes up for view. If all looks ok at this stage, you click ‘Save and Continue’. If not, there’s a little box saying ‘Help! These aren’t my chapters’ for you to click and get help.
At this stage, it is worth going to the home page and clicking on ‘My Books’. Click on the book you are uploading. Details of the book will come up, along with a dropdown box where you can download your file to check it for errors – and this is one of the fab benefits to the service – you haven’t yet published, but you can download epub, mobi (for kindle) and PDF files, and send them to your own ereader, or anyone you want to, as ARCs (advanced reader copies) to get pre-publishing reviews. Check your file carefully for errors, either formatting or typos, which you are more likely to see on screen than in your original file. You can go through these stages as many times as you want, re-uploading corrections, adding or removing pages, change the cover, whatever you want, until you are satisfied your book is ready for the world to see!
PUBLISHING. Set your price, tick the boxes of the platforms you want to publish with (at present D2D offers Amazon, Apple, kobo, nook and createspace, although the latter requires a little more effort and a bigger cover image), check the box to confirm you have the rights to all the material, and that you have read the D2D terms of service, and then click ‘Publish my book!’
You are now a published author! Within a short space of time you will have email confirmation that your book has been published to each of the platforms – some within minutes, Apple usually 2 – 3 days.
Errors I found I had to correct included:
My chapter headings – they looked amateurish in my first attempt, so I went through and changed them all, then re-uploaded, checking them again on my kindle with another downloaded mobi file.
My cover was hideously dark, so I asked the D2D helpline – wonderful, helpful people who have answered so many questions so quickly and patiently – and it turned out my cover was in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) – the right format for print, but not for digital. A distressed email to my cover designer produced the RGB version which then looked perfect.
I had one line that came out centred, and in huge type, for no reason that I could discern until I contacted the ever-helpful team at D2D, and they pointed out the error in my Word document – a really easy fix, then uploaded the file – yet again!
Apple refused to publish at first, because in my endmatter I’d stupidly asked people to leave reviews on Amazon, and Apple don’t like the competition! So that took a separate tweak to the wording, and finally, I was done!
I’ve even made another small correction to the wording about 3 weeks after publishing – you can tweak your original manuscript, add, change, do whatever you want, then simply upload it again and bingo – the new version is published.
Reporting
Another fantastic feature of D2D is daily reporting. I’m still so newly published I like to check my sales by the day – and with D2D you can! A daily sales chart tracks how many copies you’ve sold, and with which platform. Love it!
At the end of the first month, I had emails detailing my sales on each platform, with price, deductions, and expected income all laid out in a chart. I found some of the column headings unclear, so I queried D2D and received another email, telling me precisely what each column represented. They collect payment directly from the platforms and, after deductions, pay me – choice of cheque, direct bank transfer or paypal. So simple.
Createspace
I’ve just gone through this process, which required a little more tweaking of the final layout (I have a map in my frontmatter which caused some small positioning issues), but again D2D have been really easy and fast to work with.
Downsides
There are always going to be downsides, aren’t there? I just feel that I’m happy for the moment to live with these small issues until I am more ready to take time out to deal with the publishing process myself.
I’m not earning quite as much as I would if I’d done this myself
I don’t think I can change my book’s categories easily – but I haven’t tried emailing D2D about this yet.
Can’t think of any others off hand
D2D are still in beta testing, and they promise they will add other platforms to those already mentioned.
Oh, and if you want to set your book to FREE, you can, except you can’t on B&N, their minimum price by this route is 99c, so you might have to unpublish from B&N in the short term to set Amazon to free, else they may price match that 99c.
Questions, anybody? If I can, I’ll answer them. Otherwise, just take a look on the D2D website, where their FAQ page is quite comprehensive.
And I re-iterate – I’m not on commission, just a satisfied, lazy (read over-worked) author!
August 27, 2013
Books galore at $0.99 at the weekend!
Labor Day is fast approaching; a day that we take the time to recognize the economic and social contributions of hard working Americans! Many of us take the long weekend to barbeque, rest and relax and maybe even catch up on our sleep. But if you’re a true bibliophile, you are probably bypassing all of that in hopes of getting in some valuable reading time! This week, discovering new authors and taking advantage of their marked down titles can earn you entries toward a Kindle Fire or Nook HD, winner’s choice! With a diverse selection of books including Young Adult, New Adult, Romance, and Erotic Romance, you’re sure to find some awesome reads for the upcoming holiday weekend!
This giveaway sponsored by:
Check out our selection of ebooks marked down to only $0.99 each for the duration of the giveaway. Once you’ve downloaded the ebook(s) of your choice, you will be emailed an invoice from wherever you purchased your ebook. Simply find which book you purchased on the Rafflecopter widget below and enter your invoice’s order number (which does not contain any of your personal information). Each order number entered will earn you TEN entries toward the Kindle Fire or Nook HD. For every author whose page you follow on Facebook, you will receive one entry each. You can also receive an entry for tweeting about the giveaway on Twitter. So, get to browsing, get to know our sponsoring authors, and find your next favorite book! The winner will be drawn and notified September 3rd.
Books by Category:
Paranormal Romance
Contemporary Romance
Amazon
Bottom Drawer Publications
Amazon
Bottom Drawer Publications
Young Adult/New Adult
Erotic Romance
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Bottom Drawer Publications
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Bottom Drawer Publications
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Bottom Drawer Publications
August 25, 2013
Everville – FREE! + sequel offer
First, meet Roy Huff, author of Amazon Best Seller, YA epic fantasy EVERVILLE: THE FIRST PILLAR.
I asked Roy a few questions about his writing:
1. Was there an inspiration behind this series, or did it just come to you out of the blue?
Roy - The story was born from a creative writing paper for an English class I was taking for my fourth degree. I got a lot of comments from students that they wanted to read a whole book based on the idea of Everville. The paper became chapter 1 of my book.
2. Why did you chose to write in the YA genre?
Roy – I’m a scifi fantasy writer. It just happens that my target demo is young adult. That’s more of a marketing decision than anything else.
3. Are you a full time writer?
Roy - Currently I am working as a science teacher. Recently I was working as a research scientist. I write very part time.
4. Did you design those eye-catching covers?
Roy – I wish. I had the concept, but I used Damon for the actual art work. He’s the best!
5. What’s the best thing about living in Hawaii?
Roy – There are so many great things about Hawaii. The people are great. The scenery and the weather are obviously fantastic. The food and variety of cultures are also wonderful. I love the outdoors and hiking. It’s just a very peaceful and serene place to live and work.
Thanks Roy!
EVERVILLE: THE FIRST PILLAR is on FREE offer for 5 days – grab a copy while you have the chance!
Blurb: Owen Sage is the emblematic college freshman at Easton Falls University. With all the worries about his first year in college, he was not prepared for what would happen next. His way of life was flipped upside down when he mysteriously crossed into another dimension, into the beautiful land of Everville. His excitement was abruptly halted when he discovered that there was a darkness forged against both the natural world, which he knew well, and the new land which he discovered, Everville. He must devise a plan to save both worlds while joining forces with the race of Fron and The Keepers, whom both harbor hidden secrets he must learn in order to gain power over the evil that dwells in The Other In Between.
With a race against time to save both worlds, his short time at Easton Falls did not quite prepare him for the evil, dark forces he must fight in order to conquer The Other In Between.
* * * * * * *
And the newly released sequel, EVERVILLE: THE CITY OF WORMS is currently for sale at the introductory price of 99c - grab it while this lasts!
College freshman Owen Sage has just started to understand the darkness trying to overtake Everville and the earthly realm. With the help of The Keeper and the Fron army, Owen has managed to buy some time, but new problems have already emerged, new secrets need to be revealed, and the race against time to stop Them from conquering both dimensions has only just begun. The Keeper, Owen Sage, and his friends at Easton Falls University must now battle threats from within. To do it, they must reunite with familiar creatures and join forces with new ones as they navigate their journey to the truth that awaits them in Everville.
