UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion
Agony Aunt
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Today I mostly wrote ... the word count thread.
Alicia wrote: "Will be doing my first podcast and my first live library event in July. I have yet to get the parameters - don't know what the library expects, but might as well break the ice. For the podcast I'll..."I just ask the venu or the podcaster what kinds of things they'd like me to discuss so I can prepare. Some will even send you the questions they are going to ask so you can prepare your answers. :-) Top job and best of luck.
Thanks, MT. I figured you'd know - wish I had a hat and a cape! And maybe a sword. My characters would think I'd lost my remaining marbles, but it would be fun.
Alicia wrote: "Thanks, MT. I figured you'd know - wish I had a hat and a cape! And maybe a sword. My characters would think I'd lost my remaining marbles, but it would be fun."Delighted I could help. Hat and cloak is hot in the wrong kind of weather though! :-)
Mostly getting myself sorted out for writing: for some reason, writing a blog post seems part of it.Maybe it lets me organize my writing into some coherent sequence, and that bodes well.
I keep getting knocked off my pins - startings that don't keep going - but this time the old Mac laptop I have been depending on for some of my software that can't be upgraded is having serious problems (black screen of death).
I MAY have a solution in that I noticed how hot it was getting, and my husband gave me a cooling platform with some USB rather-quiet fans.
But my brain suddenly threw up the possibility of lithium fires, which led to trying to figure out how I would put one out AVOIDING the ceiling sprinklers (which would ruin our bedding AND our computers), etc. Which paralyzed me for at least a day while my subconscious sorts it out.
And I need to move my email to the new computer (to minimize the use on the old one to absolutely only the two old programs I don't want to lose), and I'm up several trees in what is the right way to handle my email - and not lose what I have carefully saved, though I would be fine to lose everything I put in the trash that Google, instead of following instructions and deleting, ARCHIVED on MY computer. Cheeky!
I can barely handle one emergency at a time, so naturally I decided to start a diet.
Needless to say, the writing is suffering.
You have all my sympathy Alicia, but I’m guessing once it’s done, things will be easier.
Keep at, Alicia! There's nothing a little courage and literary talent can't overcome!As far as my evolving doorstep of a novel - The Truth About Trees - is going, I'm currently a couple of chapters into the final rewrite of the fourth of the four tales - The Tale and True Testament of Apology Roy. The previous word count for the entire thing was around 80,000 words. I'm now about to pass the 120,000 word mark with the best part of a quarter of this crazy opus still to rewrite.
I am already well past the point of expecting anybody but me to read it, and, to be honest, that sits very well with me.
Strange old thing that we do, isn't it, this old writing malarkey? Strange, but in its own way, rather beautiful too, I think.
I write for myself, but the readers - and potential readers - are my real aim, and I intend my books to be a legacy of sorts.So far 167K and 185K, and the third volume should be somewhere around that, too, for a nice long read when it's finished.
There's nothing mystical about me, and magical realism is not my thing, so it has to be realistic fiction, and I'm writing to make an almost impossible premise not only possible but plausible - which takes words. In the same way Jane Eyre is realistic fiction, I want to move readers to my setting and let them wallow.
So far the reviews have been kind - and embarrassingly fulsome. Once I can drag someone into reading.
Marketing needs work, and my energy is limited, but I love writing, even if it's strange.
Hope your rewrite is going well.
Alicia wrote: "I write for myself, but the readers - and potential readers - are my real aim, and I intend my books to be a legacy of sorts.So far 167K and 185K, and the third volume should be somewhere around ..."
It's amazing the progress you've made Alicia. Also, feel free to drop me a line if you need any help or want me to look into getting rid of the ads on your wordpress site for you. I did it because I didn't like the ethics of some of the advertisers and didn't want to give them room on my site.
The eyebombing book has now gone to press. I haven't released it yet as I am now absolutely certain that I'm going to do a kickstarter for that.
Stuart wrote: "Keep at, Alicia! There's nothing a little courage and literary talent can't overcome!
As far as my evolving doorstep of a novel - The Truth About Trees - is going, I'm currently a couple of chapte..."
That's absolutely the right reason to write Stuart! And it's why I do it too.
Thanks, MT. I don't take the offer of help lightly, but reserve you for when I'm REALLY confused.Only I can straighten out the current book - and only I can gather in my wandering attention and turn of the internet and try to FOCUS.
I think there's something in what I wrote in my Journal about it: "So I AM poking at emotionally fraught material - making this MARRIAGE seem real, hard-fought but life-saving for the children I claim to be writing."
It is remarkably hard to hurt your characters when you've gotten them to a good point - but it's not over, and things are going to get a whole lot worse before they can get better.
I think I'm too close, but that's the only way I can write.
And I have to stop waffling about it, and start DOING it.
I didn't know I was such a coward.
Alicia, Netherworld hasn't price dropped on AZ UK yet but I see you were saying you hadn't worked out universal links yet? I use Books2Read which is affiliated with Draft2Digital.
Thanks so much for letting me know!I was in a brain fogged state when I lowered to 0.99 USD - chose 35% royalty (or you can't do that) - and stupidly assumed Amazon would now lower it properly in all the other markets. It did NOT - but in an odd erratic way over the venues - I'm still shaking my head.
I have LEARNED. I will ALWAYS check that detail from now on - I appreciate so much that you took the time to inform me.
It should be okay as soon as they let me know - which has been happening relatively quickly.
I would really appreciate you trying again when it does go down - and I'll leave it at the sale price longer if necessary. Especially because I appreciate the UK sales showing up.
If that's not convenient, for ANY reason, please let me send you an ARC - review optional, I don't nag.
Thanks Alicia, will try it again tomorrow.
Pam wrote: "Alicia, Netherworld hasn't price dropped on AZ UK yet but I see you were saying you hadn't worked out universal links yet? I use Books2Read which is affiliated with Draft2Digital."I just confirmed on Amazon.co.uk that NETHERWORLD is
'Or £0.77 to buy'. And PURGATORY is 'Or £0.78 to buy'.
Again, thanks so much for letting me know so I could go change it!
Alicia wrote: "Pam wrote: "Alicia, Netherworld hasn't price dropped on AZ UK yet but I see you were saying you hadn't worked out universal links yet? I use Books2Read which is affiliated with Draft2Digital."I j..."
sorry I didn't get a chance to check it yesterday - just bought it.
Hope you like it - and anticipate the next one.I am getting myself organized, but it's been 7 years since I organized Netherworld (meaning plotted the heck out of it), and even with good notes and the examples of the first two, it is WORK. Which I'm not objecting to - just having 'fun' with.
I'm adjusting to a huge new monitor for my computers - the previous one, a digital TV also, which I've had since at least 2014, started glitching and giving me black screens, so I've certainly gotten my money's worth out of it.The new one is also a Fire TV, and has quadruple the resolution and at least double the screen space, so I can put lots of my writing pages up when working. In the intervening years, bigger is also cheaper - so it cost less to replace the old one. Amazing.
The side effect is tiny crisp text: how tiny is too tiny for the human eyes? Still playing with all the possibilities.
Compared to, say, an Apple monitor of this size and resolution, a TV is a much better value (though I'd love the biggest Apple monitor - I've seen one, and it was awesome). So until I start selling a lot more, this is it.
But tech is exhausting, and half the features are new, and the other half are subtly different, and the process of adjusting your setup so you can at least write again takes more days than you'd think.
The AC is still iffy - and that takes up a lot of worrying.
Now that the machines and I are on speaking terms again (and another huge problem has a final date of Aug. 7), I have written in my Journal of Book 3 Setup:
"My commitment to MYSELF is to have LIMBO organized and ready to continue writing by the same time.
"Now I have a lot of work to do!"
I can really only do one thing at a time, and things not only keep getting added to the To Do list, but they insist on parking themselves on the top rung.
Alicia wrote: "I can really only do one thing at a time, and things not only keep getting added to the To Do list, but they insist on parking themselves on the top rung.."I know what you mean. Desperately trying to get back to my edit but I've had to do all the crits for my group and now working on new scenes which are needed for the start of the next extract of another book to send round to them. All taking a lot longer than hoped.
Desperately trying to get LIMBO organized - and get into the meat of the story.Something keeps interrupting - and then I'm too tired or too frazzled to focus on what is a long job.
I got some done this morning - and then the AC man knocked on the door. Got a tiny bit more - and the man who is going to replace the toilet knocked on the door.
No phone calls, no warning, no 'is this a good time?' And once they're there, you don't turn them away, because who knows when they'll make it back!
Had an interesting and thoroughly enjoyable chat today with a potential Virtual Assistant (I SO need help with Marketing!)She was coherent, examined my current plans - and said there wasn't anything more she could do for me right now. This is a rarity. No attempt to BS. She will be my first call if I need her kind of services.
She did the one thing I ask potential helpers - went to Amazon to check out some of my reviews. No one else ever has. I like to think that independent outside reviews give other readers confidence in an author - she called them stellar and upvoted a couple. Way more than I expected - or have ever gotten.
Now back to work for me - we agreed finishing LIMBO so the trilogy is complete - which might take several years - is the best use of my time (oh, and trying to get a Bookbub).
She's in Hawaii - we chatted briefly about the terrible fires.
Finally making some progress! My new assistant - a lovely college junior at U. Ca. Davis - is serving to keep me focused, dig through the dates and timelines I have, and create the new documents.I can't waste time when I get frustrated if she's here, so I find myself sticking to the problems and figuring them out.
And talking to her about all the plot messes for the last book in the trilogy is helping me get them straight in my mind. It turns out I have almost everything I need, and it's slowly going into the documents I need. She doesn't have to fully understand it to help me get it more orderly - I had the sense to DATE EVERYTHING when creating the originals.
And the major interrupters have finished their work. Fingers crossed.
Finally finished plotting for Pride's Children: LIMBO - and actually got started on the first scene this morning, so I'm in a MUCH better frame of mind.I may have to turn in my quills at the end of this (another five years?) if I'm going to be this slow!
Hoping the writing part will be faster - I have some experience now.
That’s fantastic Alicia! I have a bizarre scene in my head. I don’t know what it is or where it fits but I think there is potential for something with it. What I have to decide is whether this is a new character in a new setting or a post K’Barthan Series Pan of Hamgee. It might just be a short story centring around him getting mugged. But I’m pretty sure it’s him, and some shennanagins in K’Barth. I do like the idea of K’Barthan merpeople … although we could have that in this version of reality too. Ah so many ideas. I need a quick win first though. I’m thinking a poetry book. :-) Or maybe some more eyebombing.
I know the feeling of 'needing a win.'Keep plugging away - you can't NOT write - it'll come, no worse for waiting.
Alicia wrote: "I know the feeling of 'needing a win.'Keep plugging away - you can't NOT write - it'll come, no worse for waiting."
Thanks and yeh ... the eyebombing book was the first one and I just need something else. I'm sort of feeling that poetry will ease me in and I have an idea for a local comp which is called aftermath ... it just depends if I can do it justice.
M.T. wrote: "it just depends if I can do it justice. ..."the only person who has any doubts is you, the rest of us who've read your work know you can :-)
Jim wrote: "M.T. wrote: "it just depends if I can do it justice. ..."the only person who has any doubts is you, the rest of us who've read your work know you can :-)"
Aw shucks Jim. :-) Here's hoping. I also have this ridiculous scene with The Pan of Hamgee who is now loaded with 'The Power' of the Architraves which is somewhat unpredictable. I love the idea of him not quite being able to control it at first. So at the moment there's this scene in my head where he and Ruth are here, in this version of reality, and he's dressed the usual way, hat and cloak, which doesn't go down so well in the village pub. Some blokes come after him and Ruth as they are walking back to her house and try to beat him up.
He sees them coming, obvs because of the eyes in the back of his head, ducks out of the way and starts trying to talk his way out of it, he gets annoyed, his palms get itchy and he raises his hand in a stop-right-there gesture and flames are coming out of his fingers. And they're all agog and he just says, 'sorry, it does that sometimes, it'll go out on its own, you were saying?'
But this could equally be happening as he negotiates with the Grongles over economic stuff in K'Barth (although I think he blows up a statue in that one and then melds it back together again) or possibly, if the selkies/mer-people pop up it could be something that happens while he is trying to maintain a calm statesmanlike facade meeting their leader for the first time. :-) I dunno. I'll have to write a couple and see what they look like.
absolutely, go for itWrite it first and worry about the details later :-)
You'll have so many ideas when the words start hitting the screen :-)
right. I shall be writing that then. Just need to get this interrment out of the way ... :-) Poor brother's MIL has a cancerous tumour and they are removing it on Tuesday so instead of coming down tomorrow, joining us and spending the weekend there they are now doing a 600 mile round trip in a day so they can be back. Her op is on Tuesday. It's all go.
Praying for all of you - tough week. Again.
Thanks my lovelies. It was a lovely committal and we went and had lunch at Shoreham airport afterwards. Bit of a rainy drive home but the Bruv and co had sensibly decided to stay at Mum and Dad’s house for the night and go on in the morning.We will be back again on Tuesday for the valuation, for probate, once that’s done, hopefully we can start things moving with selling the house and move on with our lives. Although it will be a wrench as it’s a really, really lovely house.
I hope another family can love it. Don't forget to take pictures!
Husband went on Zillow (sp?) and got me pictures of the first house we bought - we've only had two - and I'd forgotten so much since we left it in 1981. The real estate agents put them up for buyers - though it really isn't your house because they usually 'stage' it and it never looked like that when you lived there.
Alicia wrote: "I hope another family can love it. Don't forget to take pictures!
Husband went on Zillow (sp?) and got me pictures of the first house we bought - we've only had two - and I'd forgotten so much s..."
I can imagine, Mum and Dad's looked very different in the photos to how it actually is! :-)
I have now decided to set myself a target. I have three submission calls for March. Two for stories and one for a poem so I'm going to have a go and see if I can write something. The stories are up to 5,500 words and up to 7000 so hopefully there's enough to get my teeth into but short enough for it to be achievable. Meanwhile the poem is called Aftermath and I have something partially written that might work for that. I'm just not sure what format I'll use, rhyming, blank verse etc
Hope that helps. I find I have to block the internet to get any writing done - too distractible otherwise.
And even then, some days like today I can somehow fritter away the entire 4 hour block. To be fair, part of it went to a nap I couldn't put off, but I'm still waiting for my brain to check in and actually be useful for thinking.
Mostly stress, but a lot of it is physical - this stupid disease uses my little bits of energy for such things as digesting food!
Alicia wrote: "Hope that helps. I find I have to block the internet to get any writing done - too distractible otherwise.
And even then, some days like today I can somehow fritter away the entire 4 hour block...."
Ugh. Sympathy.
I did some writing yesterday and realised that I actually can't do any until I've finished the pissy admin or I won't do the pissy admin because it's so unbelievably boring and I get lost in the writing and forget it because there isn't an other person's welfare involved anymore. Mwhahaahrgh ...
It took eighteen months to clear up just the US parts of my mother's estate - I had to force myself to do it, finally got some help.The systems are horribly arcane and ridiculous, and everyone wants an 'original' (do they realize what they are saying?) copy of the death certificate.
My mother wasn't a big help, either. It took pages to explain (and copies of documents all the way along) that the girl baby christened Rosary Ellen Josephine García Colín was the adult who signed herself Pepita C. Butcher from the time she married my dad on. C for Colín and Pepita as the recognized nickname for Josephine were just the beginning of it.
My dad complicated his side by being Ernest NMI (no middle initial) Butcher.
Get your papers in order BEFORE - or the heirs have a mess. I made my husband legally change his name from William Wesley Ehrhardt to William Christopher Ehrhardt (Wesley being an old army buddy of his dad and Christopher his confirmation name). The US Army will forever have him as William Wesley - they can't change their archives. Etc., etc., etc. He had changed it some places, not bothered where it was a problem - over many decades, school, army, and employment records.
I forced him to change AFTER the mess with my parents' papers. At least our kids will be okay.
Yikes! I can imagine. These days the quest for originals isn't quite so insistant, for example I can do links to the power of attorney forms, which is handy, and a lot of the information filters through automatically but there is still a ridiculous amount of stuff I have to know. On the up side. I have finally managed to track down the box file my parents kept with the addresses of everyone who received Christmas cards from them and I have found the addresses of everyone to whom Mum has left a bequest on there. That said, there are so many things I don't know and my brother would have been absolutely at sea if I hadn't been around to sort this out. :-) He's even crapper than I am (there's such a huge difference between being good at something and doing it because someone has to and I'm the jobless one who is the slightly less crap of the two).
Onwards and upwards
May it soon be over.I've wondered more than once whether the annoyance helps divert attention from the very real grief, thus giving the survivors a bit of a break.
But it's a very annoying break.
Alicia wrote: "May it soon be over.I've wondered more than once whether the annoyance helps divert attention from the very real grief, thus giving the survivors a bit of a break.
But it's a very annoying break."
That could be true ... I suspect it's waiting to hit me when all the admin is done.
It will hit you, in pieces, for a very long time. Nothing we can do about the system of birth through maybe moving on to another realm. We weren't asked for our consent when someone decided to have us.You had pretty amazing parents - and I think I did, too.
Alicia wrote: "It will hit you, in pieces, for a very long time. Nothing we can do about the system of birth through maybe moving on to another realm. We weren't asked for our consent when someone decided to have..."Very true.
Peeps! I wrote a thing! And submitted it. I'm very excited. I'm now going to go and write a blog post for my author site because I think if I blog about the kind of stuff I write on there, it might serve me down the line when the new type of search comes in, which is a bit more driven by delivering what people are looking for at the moment rather than the nearest thing to what they want to see from advertised results.
Looking forward to hearing what happened to your thing.
The forst thing I've spotted is a cock up in the first paragraph so I suspect said thing will bomb but it was doing the thing that counted .most I reckon.
I had forgotten how physically demanding a key scene can be - it's like filming a whole screenplay until you get it exactly right. I've had three naps today already, and advanced a minute or two of the plot!Most of them are not this hard, but the ones that are turn out to be critical, and reward the effort - while wiping the writer out!
And at the end of it, you just know it's right where you just knew the others weren't
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