S.J. Pajonas's Blog, page 117

Sunday Update – April 24, 2016

It was another busy week around here! My husband was away all week in London, which meant I was on my own with the kids. Normally, this doesn’t bother me too much. My kids are bigger now and pretty self-sufficient. They have lots of things they like to do to keep themselves busy including school, homework, YouTube, outside play, and games. But handling everything every day was hard. Usually I get a little break in the evening once my husband is home, to sit and many have a glass of wine while he gets the kids in the shower and off to bed. When he’s gone I do all of that and more, so by the time Friday rolled around and he was back home, I was DONE.

I thought I would get a lot of writing done this week but I was wrong. I wanted to work on a novella that will come after Daydreamer 2 (it’ll be Daydreamer 3 but shorter than the rest, as my goal for the series is to do: novel, novel, novella, novel, novel, novella…) but I always struggle with the beginning of a story until I hit my stride so I only got about 5k written. Plus, I struggled a lot with Dragon Dictate. Sigh. Always something with Dragon! I decided to instead concentrate on updating old blog posts on my website which took up a lot of time every day. I plan to use all the old content on my website to help promote myself, so making sure it’s in tip-top shape is a priority. I’ve gone back and updated titles, updated images, and links in old posts all week long. It’s been a lot of work but it’ll be worth it in the long run.

What else happened this week?

New floors went in in the kitchen! Yes, we’re having hardwood floors in the kitchen. I’m so looking forward to that. No more tile!

I enjoyed the outdoor weather by eating lunch outside.

My husband brought back this fancy spiced gin from the UK. Mmmm, tastes great in a G&T!

I have another busy week ahead of me. I have a blog post going up tomorrow about compiling from Scrivener to Createspace PDF, I’m participating in the New Adult Scavenger Hunt this week, I have tons of packages to send out, and I have a post on my Top 5 Favorite Traditional Japanese Foods coming up! Stay Tuned!

How Do You Design Your Covers?

In my last newsletter, I asked for people to hit reply and ask me anything. I would post answers to their questions here on the blog and back in the next newsletter as well. Aren’t subscribed to my newsletter? You can sign-up here!

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Lola asks me, “How do you design your covers? How do you decide on the cover design? And where do you get the idea?”

So, some people may not know this but I have designed most of my covers until recently. In fact, I’ve designed all of my covers on my own, excepting FACE TIME‘s first iteration, which was designed by Carrie Butler at Forward Authority. Previous to becoming a full-time author, I worked at HBO.com and before that I worked at a few other web design companies. I’ve used Photoshop since 1998, back when it was Photoshop 2.0 and you couldn’t even move layers around! Yeah, I’m old.

Anyway, I have pretty good Photoshop skills so I figured I would design my own covers. My first few covers were pretty bad, but I got better with The Nogiku Series and did well with FACE TIME and SUMMER HAIKUS. But it turns out that I would rather have the more intricate covers for my contemporary romances and science fiction series done by a professional, so I have also hired a cover designer, Najla Qamber, to handle both of those. She’s awesome! She designed the current covers for both FACE TIME and SUMMER HAIKUS, and she’s working on new covers for The Nogiku Series.

But the simpler covers for my cozy mystery and short stories, I have no problem with designing!

For the Miso Cozy Mysteries series, I did a lot of research on what works well in cozy mysteries before I started designing. I looked at hundreds of covers and found that the majority of them used illustrations for their designs. So I then brainstormed about what I’d do for a Japanese cozy mystery. I searched for illustrations of Japanese women and came away disappointed. Many were too stereotypical (wrongly drawn kimonos and chopsticks in their hair. NO.) and others were too sexualized. I had to change my searching. I went with Japanese scenery and found the flat illustrations that you now see in the first two covers of the series. I combined the scenery with a grassy field and silhouette of a woman, instead of a full-on illustration of a face and body. This felt more authentic to me.

For my short stories, since each is about a different object and the god contained within them, I choose a singular image for the cover. The fonts were fun to pick as well. The yellow text, stroked with black, is a deliberate choice as yellow text on covers catches the eye and pulls people in. I usually spend a lot of time searching for the perfect image for these covers. If I can’t find one, I take one myself! This rice cooker on RICE COOKER REVENGE‘s cover is my very own (I treat it very well, thank you).

When I’m deciding on a cover design for a book, I spend a lot of time looking at similar books in the same genre. Sometimes, I look at hundreds of covers! My eyes blur and my head swims. It’s a lot of research. I surf through the best sellers on Amazon and look at the top picks on Kobo as well. Once I have an idea of what works in a genre (objects or couples in romance or space, stars, and spaceships in science fiction), I make an inspiration board on Pinterest. I will spend a lot of time searching images on DepositPhotos and Creative Market until I have a jumping off point and then I go from there. Once I have some good examples of my direction, I then take my covers to my private Facebook group and ask for feedback. My good pals are very helpful and usually jump in to tell me what’s working and what’s not.

I will say that it has been nice to hand off some of this work to Najla. I already do a lot to make my books become a reality, and not having to make ALL the covers is a significant load off my shoulders. But the ones I do design are a lot of fun for me!

Thanks for asking this question, Lola!

If you have a question for me, too, leave it in the comments or feel free to send me a note via the Contact page.

Top 5 Japanese Mysteries

This post was originally published as a guest post during THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE blog tour! Haven’t read THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE yet? You can purchase it now!

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Since I’m writing a mystery set in Japan for an English-speaking audience, I thought it might be fun to share my favorite Japanese mysteries, written about Japan or by Japanese authors. If there’s one thing to know about Japan before getting into their mysteries, it’s that they can be pretty graphic and gory. The first few I read were a bit disturbing, but I also couldn’t help but be drawn in by the stories. Maybe there’ll be a few here, you’d be interested in!

OUT by Natsuo Kirino – This is the quintessential Japanese mystery book because it’s based on actual events that occurred in Japan in the 1990s. This actually happened in my favorite park in Tokyo, Inokashira Park in Kichijoji, and I have since written this park into one of my other novels Summer Haikus (but I was careful to never mention the incident in that romance!) Anyway, body parts were found in trash bags in the garbage cans in this park and the murder was never solved. Since this murder happened, garbage cans have been removed from the park, and you have to take your trash with you when you leave. Out is murder mystery that uses this same technique to dispose of the body, but that’s only one little twisted piece of the puzzle. I promise you will never look at bento boxes the same way again.

ALL SHE WAS WORTH by Miyuki Miyabe – If you want a real look into Japanese culture, this is a good place to start. The crimes in this novel are mostly missing persons and credit troubles including theft, but you get the chance to see how the Japanese society is laid out and works so that people can game or move around in the system. I found this book fascinating for all the twists and turns along the way to the big reveal.

A WILD SHEEP CHASE and DANCE, DANCE, DANCE by Haruki Murakami – These two books comes as a pair and the mystery in them is both supernatural and not. As usual, Murakami draws from his background in magical realism to create a fantastical, other-worldly setting without leaving Tokyo. Who is the man in the sheep suit and what does he want? These books drew me in and captured me completely.

THE DRAGON SCROLL (Akitada Mysteries) by I. J. Parker – The Dragon Scroll is only the first book in a 15+ book series that takes place in ancient Japan. I’ve read the first five or six books in this series and really loved them. They’re not only clever mysteries but also give good insight into Japan’s past and the rules, cultures, and castes that shaped that time.

SHINJU (San Ichiro Novels) by Laura Joh Rowland – This is the one book on this list I haven’t read but has been on my Kindle waiting for me for a while. It comes very highly rated and talked about from friends, so I’m excited to start it. It also gives a lot of insight into Japanese culture and societal norms, along with a tragic murder of two people drowned in a river together. This is also a first book in a long series, so there’s plenty of reading material here!

These are only a taste of MANY mysteries set in Japan. Other authors you may want to consider in your search would be: Seicho Matsumoto, Keigo Higashino, Barry Lancet, and Sujata Massey (who writes the Rei Shimura Mysteries).

Waving The White Flag

This is for all the people that ask me how self-publishing is going. This is also for all those who say, “How are your books doing? You MUST be making money to stay at home and do that!” And this is also for all the people who tell me I just haven’t done enough yet to market myself and my books. If you want to know how my self-publishing journey is going in Mile Three, when I’m still running the marathon, here ya go…

It’s a long, long road ahead of me. This is just the beginning.

I don’t give up easily. I’m the kind of person who keeps trying and trying and trying, and even if I fail, I usually consider it a chance to learn something new and formulate a strategy to keep going. But there’s something I have to give up on and that’s trying to gain visibility at Amazon. I have tried and tried and tried and poured plenty of money and resources into cracking this nut, and with everything going on, it’s just not possible (right now) for me to make any headway there and find readers. I have done everything: writing in a new genre, Facebook ads, changing my keywords and categories, giving away books, building up my newsletter, social media pushes, putting all of my books in Kindle Unlimited, etc etc etc. None of it works for me. It’s time to wave the white flag and circle the wagons…

Because in publishing news, the Amazon Kindle Unlimited scamming has gotten worse and prompted more blog posts about it. Remember how I wrote about this last month? Even though all of my books are out of KU now, this, unfortunately, still affects me and my books because scammers are dominating the “free” lists on Amazon. I just made REMOVED permanently free again (permafree) and it was buried by scammers almost immediately. I CANNOT WIN. Each time I try to gain my books a little visibility, I lose.

So I’ve decided to take a different tack. I will not game the system. I will stay the course and work on building my platform. How will I do that?

The Game Plan

I will continue to build my catalog of books, including short stories and novellas, on as many vendors as I can. I will not be using Kindle Unlimited until Amazon can clean it up (which I believe they are doing but it may take years or something drastic and I’m not getting involved in it till it’s clean). When I start new series, I’ll do a blog tour. I’ll have a few times per year when I discount my books and pay for advertising. I’ll give away books to my mailing list when I feel like it.

That’s about it. Facebook parties are not effective so I’ll only do them as favors for others. Giveaways will only happen during blog tours. No illegal sweepstakes. No sketchy pen names trying to game KU (because I just don’t have time for it). None of that.

When I think about what has worked for me in the past, guess what the answer is? Blogging.

In addition to my fiction writing, I’ll be publishing non-fiction about Japan, writing craft and self-publishing, and anything else I can think of here on the blog. I’ll offer some deleted scenes and bonus material from my books, and I’ll concentrate on making this blog my author platform. I’ve been blogging a long time and it’s always worked well for me, unlike other things I’ve tried the past three years. Lol. I should stick with it.

This has been a bumpy road for me with hard lessons to learn, and I’ve been very open here about my few successes and many failures. I want to thank you all for sticking around and showing your support as I’ve struggled through all these big shifts. I really appreciate all the notes, the hugs, and the kind words. Love you, guys!

Sunday Update – April 17, 2016

This was one very busy week! Which was good because it distracted me from all types of other stuff going on in the publishing world. Those are things I’ll touch on in another post.

On Monday, I got all of my full-length books up for sale on Google Play. If you’ve been waited for me to publish there, you’re in luck! All the books’ pages on my website have been updated with links to Google Play. It was a lot of work, but I got it done. I like the fact that it’s so hard for me to check my sales on Google Play, that I’ve completely forgotten about it, and not obsessed over my numbers there. Lol. I also managed to go to the gym on Monday and my house was cleaned, which is always a nice thing.

Tuesday was busy too. I walked on the treadmill, grocery shopped, ate Japanese food, and went to a conference at school for my youngest.

Wednesday, I had an appointment with my chiropractor, dropped off a check to the kitchen contractors, and worked at Panera before running more errands.

Thursday, I went to IKEA and that was pretty much my entire day. I was so beat, I had to take a nap in the afternoon.

Friday, my husband worked from home! I went for a walk, did more grocery shopping and then ran more errands.

Phew! That’s a lot of stuff! Through it all, I also finished off the edits on THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER! This book was much easier for me to edit. I finally have the hang of revising from present tense to past and there were fewer changes to the actual plot I wanted to make in this book. Probably because it took me forever to plot it out in the first place. Anyway, I’m glad that’s done now and I’ve given it to two readers. I hope to hear back from them soon.

In the meantime, I’ve been plotting out a novella for the DAYDREAMER series to come after Book 2. I will number it Book 3 but it’ll be shorter than the others. I hope to start writing it this week! It’s been a while since I’ve written anything new and I’m looking forward to getting back to dictating this week.

What else happened this week?

Took off my latest Jamberry manicure. It’s so easy to remove the jams with oil and an orange stick!

Worked on picking out paint colors for the new kitchen and den. I’m going with shades of teal!

My trip to IKEA was to pick up drawer pulls for the new kitchen.

And man, I am battling my gray hairs! I need to re-dye my hair but I’m almost 80% gray now if I don’t. Sigh.

Coming up this week: More about the Kindle Unlimited Scamming and what I have to do personally to sell my books, a blog post from THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE blog tour, and another excerpt from THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE!

THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER Cover Reveal!

In true Stephanie fashion, I am moving on and ahead in my publishing career and getting the second book of the Miso Cozy Mysteries Series out to you all by July 7, 2016! I’m excited to publish this book and many more to come. I hope you like the cover! As you can see from the colors of the cover and the blurb below, Mei is braving a winter in Chikata like one she hasn’t had in a very long time. But she’s strong and will get through this! Pre-ordering is now available everywhere but Google Play (that’ll come soon, as I’m JUST getting the hang of Google Play).

December has set in and just when the rural town of Chikata is recovering from one murder, Mei and her new boyfriend, Yasahiro, find their friend, Etsuko, dead in her apartment. Etsuko was sweet and talented, and now everyone suspects her longtime boyfriend killed her. Mei doesn’t believe it, though, and she vows to help solve the crime.

But Mei has more to think about than murder. With the barn gone and their vegetable stores destroyed, she and her mother are down to their last canned goods and no money for heat. Mei’s mom is fortunate to find work, but Mei must fend for herself, get a job, and keep their financial situation a secret from Yasahiro. In pursuit of paying work, she stumbles onto a new witness to the crime, and before long, the dead woman’s secret life unravels before everyone’s eyes. Half-starving and out of her element, Mei is on thin ice, and it’s going to take a whole lot of ingenuity and quick thinking to solve the crime before the killer gets to her as well.

Pre-order Now For Only $2.99!

You can also queue up this book on Goodreads at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29898322-the-daydreamer-detective-braves-the-winter

I wanted to thank everyone again for all of your support! I write because I love to write and I’m so happy to be bringing stories into existence, but I publish for all of you!

An Excerpt from THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE!

Today, I’ll share with you an excerpt from THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE, available now on iBooks, Kobo, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google Play!

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This excerpt comes from when Mei finally convinces herself to paint again…

Every time I went into the barn during harvesting, I avoided the loft, but at the end of the week, I was finally ready to climb up there and inspect the remains of my past. The stairs creaked as I ascended into the dusty space above the tractor we used in the spring. On the right, under the window, sat the old couch I used to sit on and read, the spot where Tama and I slept together for the first and many times after. A plastic tarp covered it, and I could imagine the upholstery underneath was pristine. Mom was pretty thorough about taking care of this place. My old canvasses, some half drawn on or painted, others blank, leaned against the adjacent wall, next to my easel and tackle boxes of paints. On the left, Mom’s fire-proof file cabinets sat against the wall, carrying her precious documents and other things she needed to run the farm.

The Mount Fuji painting used to take up the space to the rear of my canvasses, but the wide wall stood empty, begging to be filled. I grabbed the top tackle box and popped it open. Tubes of acrylic paint lined the top tray, like I’d left them in there yesterday. Several were unopened and moved when I squeezed them, but a few had seized up. Wow. I was lucky! I’d heard acrylic paint could last ten years or more, especially if they were kept in the fridge, but the temperature fluctuated up here and I expected worse.

I flipped through the few canvasses left and placed one on the easel. I had scratched a few hasty pencil sketches onto it, but nothing seemed familiar. Hmmm. I turned the canvas around 180 degrees and there! Yes. I had planned to paint a lake with a torii gate and a mountain in the background. I never understood this about myself. I loved modern life. I loved my phone, my computer, and the city. Yet, when it came to painting, I only ever wanted to capture the world in its splendor, natural and real. I didn’t paint people. I didn’t paint animals. I hadn’t tried abstract or modern, though I loved to look at both. I was attracted the most to natural landscapes.

I was a host of perplexing contradictions.

Sneak Peek!

Get a free, four-chapter sneak peek of THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE on Instafreebie!

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How Sweet Potatoes Saved Japan

This post was originally published as a guest post during THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE blog tour! Haven’t read THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE yet? You can purchase it now!

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In THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE, Mei returns home to her mother’s farm, broke and jobless, and just in time to help with the fall harvest. Her mom puts her to work picking sweet potatoes and Mei admits that they are her least hated vegetable. That’s because sweet potatoes have a long-standing place in the hearts of Japanese people and very nearly saved Japan from total starvation in the 18th century.

Back in the days of the samurai, Japan routinely went through famines caused either by poor weather or infestations. Many people died and the governments and lords of the time did their best to come up with alternate crops than rice to feed the people.

In 1732 crop failures and pests led to another famine, Great Kyoho Famine, and a call was put out to anyone who could help come up with a solution to the problem. Aoki Konyo, lovingly-known as Professor Sweet Potato, thought that farming sweet potatoes was the answer to Japan’s famine problems. At the time, they were grown in southern areas of Japan, closer to Okinawa, and bringing them to the north was not possible because they spoiled easily. Konyo worked tirelessly to develop a strain of sweet potato that could be farmed in the cooler climates of central and northern Japan. Resistant to bad weather, the sweet potatoes he developed have a high yield (one vine can grow six or more potatoes), grow in poor soil, and can be planted season after season. His first crop was in 1735, and Konyo attended to them himself. From then on, many farms in central and northern Japan grew an abundance of sweet potatoes that helped save the population from starvation.

After Word War II, Japan rationed rice and sweet potatoes because there wasn’t enough to go around. So many people planted sweet potatoes wherever they could: school and home gardens, public parks, etc. Sweet potatoes were even hot on the black market! This was a time before transportation was used to bring food into the city so people took trains out to the countryside, where sweet potatoes were plentiful, just to buy them.

Pictured above: a merchant in Kyoto (Hiyashi) sells roasted sweet potatoes!

In Japan, the sweet potato is called satsuma-imo. “Imo” (pronounced “EE-mo”) refers to all fleshy tubers that are grown in the ground like white and yellow potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, and taro. The sweet potato is called satsuma-imo because it originally came from Satsuma Prefecture. Kagoshima, a port in Satsuma, often hosted sailing vessels from other nations and this is where the sweet potato is thought to have entered the country.

The Japanese love sweet potatoes! They can be roasted, boiled in a sweet soy sauce stock, made into tempura, or steamed and eaten on a cold winter day. I love teriyaki sweet potatoes over rice with nori. Oishii! Delicious! So next time you eat a sweet potato, remember how special they are to Japan and how even Mei enjoys digging them up in the fall.

Further reading on sweet potatoes: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2011/11/25/food/sweet-dreams-of-a-childhood-winter-warmer

Sunday Update – April 10, 2016

It was Spring Break here so I was away most of the week on vacation! As we have in years past, we flew to South Carolina to spend a few days with my family. My parents live just outside of Charleston, on James Island, and close to the beach so going to visit them is a no-brainer. I get to spend time with my family, my kids get to hang out with their grandparents, my husband gets to play golf with my dad, and we get to relax without having to spend too much money. We stay at my parents’ house, don’t have to rent a car, and hardly have to pay for food. It’s a great deal and I enjoy going down there to relax each year. We went to the beach, read books, ate lots of good food, went into Charleston, and had a great time!

This last week was also the blog tour for THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE! Lots of bloggers shared excerpts, guest posts, and reviews, and I’m super grateful for all the extra coverage this book got last week. If you want to see everything, you can look at the schedule on Lola’s Blog Tours. I will be re-posting the guest posts here on the blog the next few Wednesdays, and I’ll share excerpts the next few Thursdays, so stay tuned! If you had been thinking about reading THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE, get your copy now! I will be raising the price across all vendors today and it should be $3.99 by tomorrow. I’m setting up the last few pre-orders for Daydreamer 2 (Amazon and Kobo) this week and then I’ll announce it’s available.

What else happened this week?

I’ve been working on edits to Daydreamer 2! I’m almost done with it and then it’s off to my critique partner!

I am happiest at the beach, even if it’s cold and windy.

Love the fish tacos from Taco Boy in Folly Beach!

My parents’ dog, Cookie, is super sweet and my kids are finally used to her. We don’t have any pets, and it’s nice to have this dog we can see on vacation.

Back home in NJ, after a flight and long car drive, I needed a shower and a glass of wine really badly! I got both and ended my Saturday night happy.

So, I have a lot of posts coming up on the blog! And a few questions that were asked of me from my latest newsletter that I can answer, so I’ll be back later this week!

Sunday Update – April 3, 2016

April is here!! And boy is it spring already around here. Trees and flowers are blooming. Thunderstorms are rolling in and out. And the world is erupting in pretty colors. I love spring. Not as much as summer, but I still love it.

I had a pretty busy week. Monday I spent preparing for THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE‘s release, after going to the gym in the morning. On Tuesday, I got email from Amazon releasing all of my books from KDP Select!! Yay! I hadn’t expected them to do this, and I was floored to get that email. It had been three weeks since I had asked to be released, so I was doubtful it would happen, but it did! I spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday getting my books back up on iBooks, Kobo, and Nook. I’m still considering Google Play since I have an account there. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll try it out. I hear other authors do well there, so it may be worth a shot. I will not be returning to All Romance eBooks. They’re a great company but my books do poorly there because they just aren’t hot enough for their readers.

Then on Thursday, THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE went live! Yay! Another book published! And it already has 12 flattering reviews on Amazon. Tomorrow starts the blog tour for the book and I hope to pick up some new readers during this week-long celebration of this book. If you’ve been thinking about getting it, pick it up now. I’ve decided to raise the price to $3.99 on April 15th.

On Friday, my kids had a half day at school and my youngest had an assembly I had to attend in the morning. It was really cute. All the kids sang about what they want to be when they grow up and wore costumes to represent it. No one said they want to be an author. Lol. I guess that comes later…

Kitchen renovation continues! The workers were here everyday, framing, setting up plumbing and electrical, fixing a few things, etc. Insulation is happening all this coming. Good times. We actually have to be out of the house for insulation, and we timed a trip to South Carolina at the same time since it’s Spring Break too! Crazy week ahead of me.

What else happened this week?

I made some fun bookmarks and plan to give them away with paperbacks, every time I give away a paperback.