Kate McNeil's Blog, page 13

Rachel Carrera’s Author Interviews

I don’t know about you, but I absolutely love hearing the little details behind one of my favorite author’s books! Our lovely blog-friend Rachel Carrera has launched an Author Interview series of posts, updated every Friday. To say this is MY CUP OF TEA is an understatement!!!

My favorite part is that she asks some questions that may seem straightforward on the surface, but they really force the author to think and explain/justify their answers, which truly do lead to some very interesting det...

A Few Updates…

First things first, though…THANK YOU to everyone for your overwhelming support and well-wishes on our book launch! We couldn’t do it without your support!!! A few updates:

The paperback is now available on Amazon! (And of course the e-book is still there too, if you’re a Kindle-reader!)

Pistils has been submitted to NookPress for our B&N Nook friends for publishing! We’ll let you know the moment it’s available (probably tomorrow)!

We’re now on Goodreads! We don’t bite and we love new friends, so...

Today is the Day!!!!!

Happy April Fool’s Day, fellow book lovers!!! I know, we picked quite a day to release our first novel into the world, but we are so excited!!! Kate and I have pretty much been bouncing off the walls all morning, ready to share our book with you and the rest of the world’s population! Of course there have been some bumps in the road (shocker, right?), but the paperback is now available on Amazon as well!In the meantime, if you are looking for a great e-book to read, have a few bucks lying aro...

Scrivener, Round Two

Before you scroll back through older posts, no there was no Scrivener, Round One…or at least not one that I blogged about. I did Tweet a sad little woe-is-me when my first project for the second Twintype Book (yes, there will be more than one and yes, we’re already working on it) was mysteriously erased after I’d manually imported all my details from A Novel Idea…luckily I wasn’t TOO far along.

I was enamored enough with the organizational aspect (I loooooove organizational tools!) to give it...

Interaction with Readers…Yes, No, and When?

One of the best things, in my humble opinion, about the explosion of indie/self-publishing is that the authors seem to be much more reachable and approachable. Instead of sending off a fan letter to Famous Author c/o Their Big Publishing House, now we can interact (as in, the author replies to you!) via Goodreads, blogs, Twitter, Facebook…the list goes on.

With such immediate contact, both sides can benefit…the reader gets a thrill when the author (even a famous one!) replies to their Tweeted...

A Very Important Announcement from…Britt!!!

All right, so I know what most of you are thinking by now. Either Britt is some sixty-year-old cat lady who doesn’t know how to use the interwebz, or she is a figment of Kate’s imagination, her imaginary alter-ego/bestie/co-author in crime. Well fear not, because……

Here’s my story. Kate and I have been working non-stop for months! Editing, editing, editing, getting everything ready for publication, so on and so forth. And holy crap, it’s a lot of work! I had a trip to Vegas planned, and we us...

I’m WAITING…

I know, Inigo Montoya, we hate waiting too!

So we have a firm release date…April 1st! No April Fool’s Day joke (I hate those even more than waiting), it’s soooooo close I want it to be tomorrow!!! No, I want to move the day up to today! I want to be able to scream and yell and dance and Tweet and fling business cards like confetti!

But then I remember…patience is a virtue. Ugh.

I force myself to remember that we have an actual schedule put in place for a reason, to make sure nothing is rushed, t...

More Fun Stuff for Your Toolkit!

So you’re right in the middle of selling your book (literally and figuratively) to a potential new reader. Your new friend wants to buy an e-book, yay! “So how do I get it?” they ask. You can either: a) Say “Uhhh…” and scramble around for a pen and scrap of paper to write down…what? The title they should hunt for on Amazon? Your blog? Your e-mail address? Or you can b) Whip out a business card and hand it to them!

The first thing an author thinks of for their bag of tricks probably isn’t a bus...

My New Favorite App for Writers!

(Fair warning…it’s iOS. If you know of a similar app for Android, let me know in the comments!)

So some of us tend to be fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants authors. I fall squarely into that category, and I refuse to apologize for it. I’ll normally have a general overview of how I want the story to go, and I do always write out a brief character sketch (age, appearance, significant characteristics, etc) in advance. For the most part, however, even as I write toward the goal I have in mind (aka “The...

So Sweet, You Gave Me a Toothache!

Just a quick post here, being that Britt and I are taking a self-imposed week-long vacation from all things Pistils for clarity (HAHAHAHAHAHA, anyway) as we await our paperbacks…she’s going to Vegas and I’m going to relax. Maybe.

So here is something quick and easy that makes me happy…websites that are so sweet (and I mean AWESOME, not fluffy bunnies) that they give me a toothache!* Check ‘em out!

Forever Young Adult: Does what it says on the tin, but it’s my go-to for their Vampire Diaries rec...