Mara Dabrishus's Blog, page 3

The Road to Audio

This week I made an announcement: Finding Daylight is coming out in audiobook. Exciting! Currently I’m going through the sound files, which means a detailed listening of the story checked against the text. So far it’s been a hilarious adventure in seeing my book through the eyes of someone else–that someone being a voice actor doing all the voices in that delightful way that makes the story vibrant and alive.

But today I’m also going to make a second announcement: Stay the Distance, my first novel, is also coming out in audiobook. It’s just audio everywhere this month!

So how did I make this happen? I am just a little indie author, so it’s not like my budget can handle the production costs of hiring voice actors. Additionally, I could have bought my own equipment or rented out a studio and sunk time into doing all the voice acting myself–but voice actor I seriously am not. Plus, who would write All Heart while I’m reciting my previous novels into a microphone?

No, I was going to leave that to the voice actors. But where to find them?

Amazon has this covered with ACX. I simply put the books on the platform, upload a couple of sample pages, and wait for auditions to come rolling in. If you don’t want to wait, you can contact the voice actors directly in hopes they’ll audition. Then you can either pay the producer for their time and expertise, or share royalties on the resulting audiobook sales.

As with everything, a lot of getting both of my audio projects off the ground had to do with luck and timing. Finding Daylight had just been published and its numbers were beautiful–almost pristine–on Amazon. Consequently it got auditions right away and found a talented producer within a matter of hours. But what of Stay the Distance? My little debut has been out nearly a full year now, and its numbers aren’t exactly enjoying that immediate publication boom that Finding Daylight so happily experienced.

This time, it was luck. Publishing a new book gives a previous book a little kick in the pants, and it happened to Stay the Distance at just the right time. Amazon saw sales figures rise out of the blue, determined that an audiobook of Stay the Distance would be good business, and decided to slap a stipend on the title–which was a complete miracle. That meant that any actor who completed the audiobook within 60 days would get a bonus for each finished hour of audio. For an 8-hour audiobook, that’s quite an incentive. Auditions rolled in. I was swimming in them. But who could voice July? For a book in the first person, voice is so important. All of the auditions were beautiful, but the voice that really grabbed me belonged to Sarah Mollo-Christensen. I heard only a couple of minutes and knew she was the one before the audition was even finished. Sarah is July, through and through, and I am super excited to have her.

So, obviously I’m kind of freaking out about this development, and I can’t wait to get the audio out into the world later this month. Both the Finding Daylight and Stay the Distance audiobooks will be in iTunes, Audible and Amazon soon. So prepare your earbuds!

Originally appeared on Horse Crossings.

Writing to Music

The other day I found myself listening to Compass by Zella Day on Spotify, my streaming music service of choice, and thought to myself this is perfect for my Finding Daylight playlist. 

I excitedly included it, and then realized somewhat belatedly that Finding Daylight has been published for over a month now. It had its one-month of publication birthday on February 15th. I’m done writing it. There’s nothing else that is going to happen there. Literally. Finished. In print. Purged from my brain in all ways.

Although…apparently not so much.

I write to music a lot of the time. Writing in deafening silence is weird to me–just surrounded by the clacking of my fingers on a keyboard is no way to spend all of my creative moments.

The same can be said for my work as an archivist. Put me in a cement basement bunker by myself–which is the case with my job sometimes–and I’m not going to remain in silence for long. Process a collection silently? I think not.

So I write to music. But it can’t be any music. Too much of any one genre will drive me utterly crazy, too much of any one artist will start to wear thin. The music has to be curated to fit the story, otherwise the writing will wind up suffering, my characters will wind up suffering, all because I just can’t listen to alt-J anymore, okay? I just can’t.

For me, curating music for a playlist comes down to characters. I like the interaction of people in songs, the situations they represent, and I like to match that up to my characters as they go through the story I’m fashioning for them. If you listen to the Finding Daylight playlist, you can almost see what the book is about and feel out what’s happening as it goes along from beginning to end. The playlist matches the highs and the lows, how each character feels about the situation and about each other.

That’s what I love about playlists. Even better? It helps keep me on track with a characters’ motivations, their feelings, and their arc–where they’re going from one section to the next. Could an outline be just as helpful? Sure. And it is, definitely. But hearing it play out as I’m neck deep in writing is another plane of reminders, and that can’t be beat.

At least, not for me.

The Finding Daylight playlist keeps growing, even when I’m finished with the story and curating yet another playlist for All Heart. I’m in the middle of writing the story, and the playlist is a little thing yet. It’s growing as the story grows, songs added in when I need them. Eventually it will mirror the novel, beginning to end, but it doesn’t need to be that right now. It just needs to keep me on the path.

Originally posted to Horse Crossings.

The Non-Horse Books

Cleveland sky, Cleveland woods, Cleveland snow.

It’s winter. Suddenly. Maybe finally? Anyway, I just finished up a long weekend of lake effect snow and roaring wood fires. Lake effect is notoriously spotty–blizzard in one place, nothing half a mile down the road. I happen to live on the side of Cleveland that gets its share of lake effect while the other side is practically prancing around in shorts and grilling outside.

Fair it is not, but that’s what I’ve got to work with. Snow. Lots of it.

So what did I do on this glorious three-and-a-half day weekend? Well, mostly I painted woodwork in my horribly outdated house, because someone has to do that and apparently it’s going to be me. But I also decided that it was time to pick up a book that didn’t have a horse in it.

No horses. At all.

Many of you know that I write horse books. Many of you may also know that I sometimes don’t write horse books. Like all of us, it is a varied life that I lead. This year, I’m hoping to restart and (cross your fingers right here) finish a novel set in Arkansas that has no horses to speak of. None! So while horse books are my great love, sometimes the world calls for a non-horse book. That is essentially what happened this weekend.

I got my hands on Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows on my friend Monique’s suggestion. On the outset, this didn’t look promising. I’ve not read anything else by Leigh Bardugo. I usually find fantasy books tiresome or ridiculous or riddled with jerkins–whatever those are–but I trotted off to the library and snagged it anyway.

So, yeah, I opened it and couldn’t stop reading it. Hours fell off of my life. The book came with me everywhere. Upon waking, I would grab the book and start reading it again. It was like that–a totally encompassing, own-your-soul read. And look at that cover. Don’t you just want to pet it?

Needless to say, awesome book. Go get it and read it and fall in love with it. I’ve moved on to Starflight by Melissa Landers, which if you ever watched (or maybe repeatedly marathoned) Firefly, you will find yourself struck with the intense need to go watch that again while you’re reading this. I’m currently in the middle of it, and so far it’s good space opera fun. Firefly kind of fun. Maybe not especially deep and thought-provoking, but certainly colorful and full of entertaining characters. Besides, who doesn’t like a couple of people who can’t get it together while they flee from space pirates on a rusty, falling apart ship? I feel like I’ve been waiting for this novel since Serenity never got that sequel.

So, no horse books this week. I’m reading about fantasy heists and teens in space instead. Every so often you have to do this. Clear the air, get horses off the brain. This is what Cleveland winters do to a person–we turn to space opera and fantasy heists, anything to keep us from going outdoors!

(Ha! Just kidding. We have to go outdoors. How else would I get to the barn?)

First Fence by Kate Lattey

First Fence by Kate Lattey

This is the first book in Kate Lattey’s Pony Jumpers Series, and it’s adorable. If the rest of the series goes along like this, I’m in for a serious treat. But, let’s stop fawning all over it and talk sensibly for a second!

First Fence is the story of AJ, an overhorsed rider trying to get it together with her pony, the rambunctious and naturally talented Squib. AJ comes from a non-horse family, and is one of five children, so her support network when it comes to the equestrian world isn’t the strongest and most of the time she feels like she’s taking on Squib alone. Her parents can’t help and everyone at her barn seems to think Squib is only an annoyance not worth the time or effort to train.

Her fortunes turn when she runs into Katy and her mom, both obsessive equestrians with ponies. They immediately see what’s up with Squib, and through them AJ starts finding workarounds, slowly showing improvement. Katy and AJ become thick as thieves, but soon the question becomes who is Katy really there for? AJ or Squib?

The majority of the book is dedicated to AJ coming to better work with her pony, so the horse element is strong with this one. Younger, horse-loving teens will definitely see themselves in AJ as she struggles with the best way to train, or otherwise figure out Squib. But it also does an excellent job of showing the start of a friendship between two very different people, and the hiccups that can cause. Katy and AJ are nothing alike. In fact, their one thing in common seems to only be the horses. So that crux of the story is exceptionally hard for AJ to muddle her way through.

I especially liked AJ’s family, despite all of the kids having names starting with the same letter. So often you see books about kids desperate for horses who have to go around their parents’ refusal through completely unrealistic subterfuge to get a horse. This is a more realistic portrayal–cash-strapped, too big family did everything they can to get AJ that pony, but AJ is on her own after that. This is certainly no horse story fairy tale. Kate Lattey shows realistic horse ownership, and I think readers will appreciate that. No riding princesses to be found here, and no magic fixes. Everyone works for what they have, and there’s no one who knows that better than a horse girl.

Definitely reading the rest in this series. On to book 2!

(And you can get your copy here.)

Free Signed Bookmarks

Who wants a shiny new bookmark? Even better, one that’s signed? A free, shiny, signed bookmark?

Yes, that’s right. A free, shiny, signed bookmark. I’m giving them away. All you have to do is click on the image or right here and fill out the form. Then I’ll send you a bookmark.

It’s really that easy.

Go get your bookmark! Sign up here!

Goodreads Giveaway!

I love Goodreads Giveaways, so I’m joining the fun with Finding Daylight! Five paperback copies are up for grabs. Just click on the link below to enter for a chance to win!

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Finding Daylight
by Mara Dabrishus

Giveaway ends February 29, 2016.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

 

Hannah & Chris: Before the Circuit

Hannah & Chris: Before the Circuit by Kim Ablon Whitney

I am so into short stories right now. Between publishing Saratoga Summers in December, and working on finishing my super secret novella project for however long that’s going to take, I have come to really want more short stories in my life.

For some reason, Kim and I seem to be on the same page. Hannah & Chris: Before the Circuit is a prequel to the first book in the series, Summer Circuit. It’s the older YA/New Adult horse book I wasn’t aware I wanted, but now really want more of–so happily Kim is providing me my fix. Thanks, Kim!

Before the Circuit is a lovely short story set in two parts that explain how Hannah and Chris come to be at the Vermont show in Summer Circuit. In the first part, we have Hannah. Hannah is over-privileged, unsure of how to do the simple things like tack up her problem horse, Logan. Riding is becoming a chore that serves only to get Hannah out of the house, since she’s not skilled enough to figure out how to get through to Logan, and no one at the barn is interested in seeing her succeed. Hannah is facing down an aimless summer before college, but her dad has other plans. The show circuit. Vermont. Without a groom. Hannah balks, but she’s also standing on the edge of becoming just like her mom–friendless, a shut-in from the world–and if she doesn’t take on her dad’s challenge, how will she escape that fate?

Chris is Hannah’s polar opposite. Instead of not having anything to do, he potentially has too much. There are too many people, too many horses, too many responsibilities that can easily go wrong. His best horse doesn’t feel right, and the owner of that horse is impossible to talk sense into. Then there’s his ex-girlfriend, who wants to get back together. Maybe Chris wants that…but maybe not. Chris is on the verge of change, whether he likes it or not. Something’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen in Vermont.

Kim sets the stage for Summer Circuit so well in Before the Circuit. I especially loved getting into Chris’s head, seeing his side of the story for a change. I hope there will be more snippets and stories in between Summer Circuit and the second book in the series, Winter Circuit. There can never be enough short stories!

The Second Novel

This weekend, I published my second novel. It’s a stand-alone YA horse racing novel, although I feel like I should say that I originally thought Stay the Distance would also be a stand-alone. I just started working on the sequel to Stay the Distance this month–entitled All Heart.

So, what’s the use in saying it’s going to be a stand-alone, right? Clearly it’s going to have a sequel, and of course I’m planning it as I write All Heart, because I can’t do one thing at a time. I must do all the things at a time. It makes it more interesting and less likely that I’ll get anything done quickly that way.

But let’s get down to the topic: second novels. I am lucky to say that people seem to have generally decided to like my first novel. Stay the Distance was a first person perspective on a girl neck deep in horse racing, dealing with her mother’s abandonment, and trying to decide if the course she’s always been on is the course she should keep following. Finding Daylight, the second novel, is a bit different. Here’s the synopsis:

Georgie Quinn and the filly Sweet Bells are an unbeatable team. When they win the Breeders’ Cup Classic against colts, the world can’t seem to get enough. Overnight, Georgie becomes the face of horse racing, and Sweet Bells becomes its queen.

Although they’re the morning line favorites, Georgie feels like she’s barely keeping her head above water. Her parents’ farm is a crumbling has-been, her jockey career consumes her time, and Harris Armstrong, heir to Tupelo Stud and grandson of Sweet Bells’ owner, won’t forgive her for telling a lie that kept her family together as the truth ripped his apart.

Georgie refuses to apologize, so she’s stunned when Harris asks her to ride his new colt. The most tenuous partnership in racing has begun. One that threatens to swallow Georgie whole.

Safe to say, this novel takes things a bit further than I allowed myself to go in Stay the Distance. The stakes are higher, the romance less innocent, and the family drama acted out on a national stage. It was an intense writing experience, and vastly different from my previous book since I decided–out of nowhere, I admit–to write Finding Daylight in third person. The tenses are also different. It’s just a radically different book, wholly unconnected to my first, and because I’m me, I decided this will be my second novel.

And second novels are tricky. A debut builds an audience, and the second novel will either keep them there or lose them. Sure, I might gain more people with a completely different story, but I might disappoint people by not immediately continuing to tell the story they know they want. All Heart is coming, I guarantee it, but I really wanted to write Finding Daylight first. I wanted that new challenge, and I hope that it works.That’s all I can really do as I writer, find the shiny new idea and try to write the heck out of it.

So, I’m not going to fear the second novel. I should actually probably buckle down and get working on the third. I want All Heart to be out by late summer/early fall, which means I need to get moving on writing that first draft.

In the meantime, Finding Daylight is available on Amazon right here. Print will be available soon!

Originally posted on Horse Crossings.

Print Proofing

The print proof for Finding Daylight landed on my doorstep yesterday evening, and it. is. gorgeous.

But there are a few things wrong with it, so it’s back to editing the files this morning. Nothing is ever perfect on the first try, and as an author I know that way too well.

So, what are we changing? On the back cover, I’m moving the summary text just a smidge to the left and moving the author photo and author blurb so there’s less black space by the barcode. I have my reasons, mainly so that the text doesn’t run too close to the spine.

Within the interior, I’m scooting the header margins down–again just so very slightly, and I’m scooting the footer margin down just as slightly so the text doesn’t shift. I love the outside margins, because they’re just wide enough to allow my thumbs to grip the book without covering any text, so those are perfect (unless you have larger thumbs than me, in which case I apologize in advance). There was also a bit of a spacing issue for one chapter’s headers, and a couple of chapter titles.

I decided to do raised caps for the beginning of chapters…all of a sudden and for no reason at all other than I randomly decided I liked it. So I dropped those in and voila!

Fixed. Done. I converted everything to PDF/X and sent the proof back to its people. After counting to make sure all my page numbers are right (a constant lesson in questioning my sanity, as it turns out) I’m just waiting on the review files to come back so I can scoot this sucker out into the world as a finished print book.

So the print version of Finding Daylight is coming soon! To celebrate, I’ll be running a Goodreads giveaway of five of these beautiful copies. I’ll be back with more details on that. In the meantime, it’s available as an e-book for Kindle and KindleUnlimited. Get your copy here!

 

The Horse Books that Came Before

Like probably every other horse book author in existence, I find myself inspired by other horse books. I find myself wanting to try what others have done, and the exact opposite—doing what hasn’t been done. It’s obviously a mixed bag, because the mind of an author is a scary place full of twists and turns. You never know what’s going to get our brains racing, or what’s going to put us straight to sleep. We’re a weird breed that way.

But what I want to talk about today are those horse books that made Stay the Distance happen. And to make this brief, I can narrow this down to three titles.

The Thoroughbred Series

Oh, Thoroughbred. It’s not an uncommon occurrence for me to be digging through a random pile of junk and out pops a Thoroughbred book. Still. Like, they’re floating all over my house and I’m not sure where or when any given one will fly out of nowhere and scream, “Read me!”

As a kid I was obsessed with these, and because I’m a nostalgic person and the series only ended about a decade ago, I was still curious as to where the books were going well past the recommended age range. I didn’t care. The plots were sappy and ridiculous, the books were easily consumed candy, and it was horse racing. Thoroughbred is 100 per cent responsible for laying the foundation for my love of racing. Without these books, Stay the Distance definitely wouldn’t exist.

The Perfect Distance

Somewhere along the line in my hearty pastime of reading horse books, I wanted that perfect YA novel. I stumbled into Kim Ablon Whitney’s The Perfect Distance, and my life changed. Kim’s book was one of the first horse books I got my hands on that didn’t hit the repetitive horse story formula like a broken record. It’s diverse, it has a lovely plot that was not girl plus horse equals victory, and it embroils you in the life of a girl who’s just trying to figure things out—figure herself out—and that was such a game changer for me, as a reader of horse books and a writer of them. I know I benefited as a writer from having read this. (As a side note, Kim’s an author here at Horseback Reads! It’s a crazy world, right?)

Another Kind of Cowboy

Yes, yes, it’s a YA novel about dressage. I kid you not, this happened. Most people who know me also know that I ride dressage—at varying degrees of success—and when I stumbled across this book I found that you can actually write about dressage in a YA book and it can be interesting. Fascinating, even! Susan Juby has a whole chapter dedicated to a dressage test that made so many light bulbs go on in terms of how to write riding scenes. Granted, I write racing scenes the vast majority of the time, but the rules still applied. I’m forever thankful to this book for showing me the way.

Of course, these are only three titles. There are so many more books that went into Stay the Distance that I can’t name them all, but I can definitely point at these three and say that of all the horse books that came before, these were the best lessons.

This post originally appeared on Horseback Reads as part of the January Book Club. Tune in to the Horseback Reads Facebook page on Monday, January 25th to ask me questions about Stay the Distance!