Bre Faucheux's Blog, page 59

January 2014 Wrap Up

Lana Del Rey does it again!!

I am extremely excited for the new film “Maleficient” with Angelina Jolie. I have an undying love for her, and for the tale of Sleeping Beauty, which will always remain my favorite Disney movie of all time and one of my favorite stories. Just goes to show that my love for fantasy and historical medieval stories started from a young age. I remember the first time I ever saw Sleeping Beauty and I was completely entranced.

When I first saw the trailer for the movie, I was excited. And now with the second one with the song from Lana Del Rey “Once Upon A Dream,” I think its safe to say that I have a new song that I will be obsessing over and to listen to while I write. The tone of it is so perfect for writing something dark and sinister.

I have often wanted to write an alternative version of “Sleeping Beauty”. Maybe now is the time. With this film coming out there will perhaps be a new enlightened interest in the tale that I have always adored.

My girl crush for Lana Del Rey continues. I wouldn’t try to stop her if she tried to canoodle me. Just sayin…… as long as she sang to me while she did it.

Trailer:

Lana Del Rey Song:

Focus! Focus! Focus!

Where is my focus? G.O.N.E. So gone!

Don’t even know where to start.

I guess I can treat this as a reflection and a bit of an update. This past year I did something completely unimaginable and something that I didn’t know I could do. Something that I had wanted to do for ages and told myself I would one day accomplish. I wrote a book to completion and published it. Self-published, but published none the less. Then, I did it again. And twice as fast. I wrote a second. No small feat in my book (no pun intended), and I was proud.

Then, the brain cells felt damaged. I have written over 100,000 words since then, and all of it has ended up trashed or I felt like it was garbage. I have two story ideas going, and I haven’t worked on either of them for longer than a couple days before turning in the towel and deciding to wait for a while. I can’t write when there is anxiety on every corner. And the feels are driving me crazy.

Personal life right now seems like it is falling to pieces, and the worst thing about that is I can’t do anything to fix it. I had a great disappointment recently when I thought I had answer to solve some of it and to get away, but I really don’t think that it will work out now. And that was devastating. What is a writer to do when surrounded by so much negativity? It’s overwhelming! And I am NOT a negative person. Others are telling me that I must persevere and do the writing despite everything happening around me. How? How? How?

I guess all writers have these times when they are completely stuck. Although I refuse to call it writer’s block. I hate that term and I never want to go back to that place again. Mainly because I had it for three years after my horrible experience with a very bad writing teacher in college. But let’s not go there.

For a while I had a cafe I would go to, but now I can’t even bring myself to do that.

So what to do?

I saw a clip on YouTube about how to pull yourself out of these ruts. And I think now is the time to use it. They said to create a notebook/binder full of pictures or images of people on the Internet Machine that look like your characters. You can reference it when needed for a little inspiration. I’m not sure this won’t turn into a celebrity crush book, but its worth a shot.

Second, I am going to create more playlists for the stories as I work on them. Because the ones I have now are clearly too short and I am already sick of listening to the music I have.

Any other ideas out there? Fellow writers, please tell me what your tips and tricks are when it becomes a challenge to even touch a keyboard or a pen? When your mind feels like mush and you can’t write a single word without SOME kind of interruption?

Even through all this negativity, I have been reading more. Which feels like an accomplishment even though anyone can sit there and read. And really its all an excuse because my work situation is so sad and sorry.

2014 – I am not yet impressed with you.

On a lighter note, I am truly, madly, deeply, in love with Birdy’s music. I have been for over a year now. This song somehow went unnoticed by me until recently and I can’t even say how much I love it. It’s been on repeat for three days. I get that way with songs. Thank god for headphones, or I would be driving my family insane. BIRDY!! GIVE ME INSPIRATION! Or better yet, some motivation…

 

Strangest Christmas EVER!!

No better way to spend Christmas and New Years than injured. My dad is recovering from knee surgery from two weeks ago. Then two days after his surgery, my mom falls and nearly breaks her foot. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, my brother flew in from Denver. And navigating our nearby airport is like driving through a maze where every turn is a deadly trap. Nightmares ensued about delivering him back to departures a week later.

New Years is not much better. Sitting here watching ’300′ with my dad, who is frustrated by his slow recovery.

But in good news, the time did allow me the opportunity to get “The Elder Origins” split into three parts, three novellas to be exact.

They are as follows: The Elder Origins, Exile, Encounters.

Woohoo! They are now available on Amazon.com, the first only $0.99

I have also decided that Smashwords doesn’t really work unless people actually know that you exist. So I am back on Amazon Kindle as of right now. And I might be enrolling back into KDP Select. I miss the promo days and I understand the way it works a bit better now. And hopefully I can get a Bookbub promo going as well. This is the plan for the future weeks ahead.

I also made some progress on how to rewrite my current WIP. So we’ll see how that comes along over the following week. I am not going to be able to get to the cafe I generally write at. And working at home, taking care of two injured parents, and then taking them to physical therapy three times a week (separately because the damn doctors can’t get them on schedule together) makes that impossible. So here’s hoping I can actually get some work done at the house.

Not likely.

All so stimulating. I know. But I am excited about my new covers for the novella series of ‘The Elder Origins”. I was fortunate to find three covers that had the same kind of theme and I really love all three of them. Made by Joy Sillesen at indieauthorservices.com.

The Self-Publishing Venture continues!!!!!!

Meanwhile…should have posted this sooner. But I truly love this video. So touching and shows the true human spirit getting into Christmas. Just love it!

To Novella or Not to Novella?

So I had a random thought last night after doing an extreme amount of Google-ing. It might be a terrible idea, but I am getting more and more into it as the hours go by.

Big idea: Turn “The Elder Origins” into a novella series. About 80-100 pages per book. Turn all the “part 1, part 2, and part 3″ into separate books.

Why: Several reasons.

I notice that novellas are doing well on Amazon right now.

Second, the books are not selling well. At all. I need some new ideas.

Third, I think they would do better that way. I know that they are a bit obscure and most people will read them and go WTF is this? I just always had that feeling about them. It’s not that I don’t have confidence in them. I’m just aware that a vampire story set in the 14th century in England makes people’s eyes roll.

Also, the ending is very open ended. The ended to each part of it is, actually. So wouldn’t it be better if I had a cliff hanger on each “part/book/novella” rather than an open ended ending to a large novel that leaves people totally confused.

I have no reviews, and not so many ratings. So it might just be better to start fresh with the series as a novella. I also thought that this way, I wouldn’t feel so pressured to write out a whole book. I can write out about 100 pages and that is the story. I can always leave the ending open so I can have people wanting more for the next short book.

Thoughts? Ideas?

I dunno. I look at my book sales and I know that something needs to change, or be done differently. I did different tags on my book through Amazon, and that essentially did nothing. So what do I do to get my books seen? Or noticed even a little. The truth is, vampire fiction is completely over done. Just FINDING my book is a barrel unless you know its out there. And I have followed every bit of advice I could according to the internet machine. Only thing I have yet to do is to make paperbacks. And I don’t want to do that until I decide about the novella situation.

I saw a lot about another author on Amazon who did this and has had some success with it. So it made me wonder if it is a good idea. Not to mention that it would help me to have 4 books out there right now instead of two. Which means more exposure.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I am doing this for the money. I’m not. But I would like to think that at least someone out there in the cyber sphere is reading what I write. Those writers who say that if no one ever wrote their material for the rest of their lives, would still write books, are lying. We all want our stories to be read or appreciated to SOME degree. And this might be the step I need to get that done.

*shrugs*

Decisions decisions…

PS – I will still write full length novels in addition to them. I just thought having shorter stories in the mix would greatly help me out. I need more material out there and I don’t have what it takes to write full length novels in one month. I just don’t have the patience or the mind set. Or the time. One every two months however, is conceivable.

Divergent Book Review + Random Rambling

Here is a review of the book ‘Divergent’ by Veronica Roth.

I hope you enjoy.

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Writing Ninjas!!

So I was on the KBoards yesterday and I stumbled upon a very interesting post, entitled “Why Isn’t My Book Selling?” by ‘BlakeBooks.’ I read it thinking I was going to get some great tips on how to market and that kind of thing, only to find that it was one of the most depressing things I have read since the start of my writing journey. It was basically an outline of why your books aren’t selling, why they probably will never sell, and don’t ever expect them to sell because you suck at life. *cringe*

Yes, I know my covers aren’t GREAT by any means, and I know I might have some grammatical errors in my books, and I know that maybe the stories aren’t the best thing since sliced bread, but I don’t need someone trying to bring me down for all those reasons.

The truth is, most authors know they will never hit it big and don’t go into writing with those kinds of expectations. You would have to be an insane person to put that much time and effort into something and expect a reward in an industry as cruel and slice and dice as publishing/the book business.

This week, so far, I have sold two books. Woop woop! And I’m happy about that. Sure I’d like to knock that up to twenty some day down the pipe, but I need to dedicate some serious time and effort before that happens.

Then I read in there that this guy apparently writes dozens of books a year (9-10 in 7 months he claims). Full length novels at that. Amanda Hocking apparently wrote up to 18 books in a year. And I wonder, where the hell do these people get the ‘Writing Ninja’ gene? I can’t sit at a computer for twelve hours and hack away at something. For one thing, I don’t have the time. Two, I don’t have the attention span. And three, after the four hour mark of writing, I find that most of what I write is complete garbage. I can’t force creativity after hacking away at it for hours at a time. It just starts to dwindle.

How do these writing ninjas do it? And why did this BlakeBooks guy have to put such a damper on my day? I feel like he posted that on the KBoards just to be negative and put everyone on the boards/all writers in the ‘right’ perspective of ‘don’t ever write for any kind of reward.’

I get the message, but I don’t need my presumed failure displayed in front of me like I shouldn’t expect ANY kind of success…EVER. For. As. Long. As. I. Live.

*humph*

Book Review – Thieftaker by D.B. Jackson

Here is my review of ‘Thieftaker’ by D.B. Jackson

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The Long Awaited Quiet

I have the wonderful fortune to have family friends with dogs that need babysitting over the Thanksgiving holiday. Given that I needed a break from home (quite desperately), I was glad to volunteer. I have babysat their home and dogs before, so they know me and we are all cool with each other. I was greeted with two big sloppy kisses from the pooches. Quite a change from the tiny kisses I get from my two small dogs as these two are quite big and one weighs more than I do (not difficult to though as I am a tiny thing).

It has made a few things clear to me.

-I work better uninterrupted, even though I am growing used to having to work in small spurts as I am always being bothered when at home.

-I don’t know if I could handle constant silence and doing nothing but writing full time. I need a little human interaction even with my introverted ways. But for now, dogs are great company and not too demanding on my attention. My little ones are much more high maintenance.

-I often don’t need to write more than 1,500 words a day. I find that is enough to keep the story fresh in my mind. Although today, with no interruptions, I managed 4,000. Woohoo! But sometimes I have to be satisfied with much less. Life just gets in the way and there is nothing wrong with that.

- I want to have moderate success with my stories at least within the next six months. I want to be self-sufficient and I need to get out on my own eventually, you know. And I really want this to work for me.

Otherwise, this time away from home has allowed me to finish the ‘Sherlock’ series and has had me trolling the internet for last hour searching for all possible scenarios as to how Sherlock got himself the hell out of that last one. Those of you who have seen the final episode know exactly what I mean.

And I am almost done with ‘Divergent’ by Veronica Roth. This is the first novel in a very long time that has left me breathless and eager for the next chapter like a piece of candy. I am not easily wooed into stories anymore. This one has been knocking my socks off. How was this Veronica Roth’s debut novel??? How? So far, I’m completely and utterly impressed. Review to come soon.

Back to enjoying a bit of solitude.

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