I have been writing and editing the cookbook and resting a lot. My toe is still PINKY, which is the new swear word I use for almost everything. I have a PINKY backache today.
Language evolves from people using words that may not be the current 'right' word. An example is floundering. I still cringe to see that used in place of foundering.
A flounder is a fish. Or at least it was. Seems that the new meaning is now in the dictionary, although foundering is still preferred. So when people are overwhelmed and someone says they are floundering, I first translate that there is no fishing involved and that someone is buried in problems.
I looked up overwhelmed the other day ( my curiosity about word origins is insatiable). Turns out it come from a Scandinavian origin. Whelm means buried or covered. Thus, overwhelmed would be over-covered or over buried. Hmm, seems a little redundant but that's the usage we now have.
Happy tales to all
kathi
Monday, October 10, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Ponderings
People ask how I keep busy when I have to stay in bed or at least lying back with my foot up. I am so busy it really doesn't occur to be to think about what I can do to not be bored. I am seldom if ever bored. Living in my brain is a Cirque d'Soleil all by itself.
The hardest thing for me this summer is not being able to get outside to garden. My husband and brother have been my minions to keep things growing well. I actually had them help me out to a chair last Sunday so I could sit and pull weeds! I am hoping it helped a little to get rid of my indoor pallor.
My days are filled to the brim with writing, editing, reading, thinking, and breaks for playing with writer friends on facebook. I also signed up for an online course to learn Photoshop. That keeps me pretty busy.
One thing I have learned is to keep notes right away on the weird quick thoughts I have. Many of my story ideas come from these.
My Toes are getting better. The left one remains painful and I can't wear a shoe on it. But the books are flowing and I am getting much done. If you haven't seen it yet, check out my web site at kathiHwriter.com.
Happy tales to all
kathi h
The hardest thing for me this summer is not being able to get outside to garden. My husband and brother have been my minions to keep things growing well. I actually had them help me out to a chair last Sunday so I could sit and pull weeds! I am hoping it helped a little to get rid of my indoor pallor.
My days are filled to the brim with writing, editing, reading, thinking, and breaks for playing with writer friends on facebook. I also signed up for an online course to learn Photoshop. That keeps me pretty busy.
One thing I have learned is to keep notes right away on the weird quick thoughts I have. Many of my story ideas come from these.
My Toes are getting better. The left one remains painful and I can't wear a shoe on it. But the books are flowing and I am getting much done. If you haven't seen it yet, check out my web site at kathiHwriter.com.
Happy tales to all
kathi h
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Keep Moving Forward
When life throws a curve and I want to crawl under the covers... I remember that life moves forward whether I do or not. I have been laid up (there is an interesting phrase) with broken toes and have seen the bright side and used the time to write. It has been for the most part great. No one expects anything from me and I have found my rhythm. An ebook will be available for purchase very soon, and I designed the cover about which I am very excited.
New stories and titles have flowed...yes flowed... into my brain and I made notes and stayed on track for the one I am line-editing for the ebook distributor. In these times as an author we have many choices to make when
considering how and where to publish.
We can go the traditional route and send either a hard copy or ecopy of the proposal to a print publisher and wait while several people look at it and decide if it fits their needs; if it is well written (luckily I do not have that problem); if it is similar to something they have recently published; how it might fit in their future line up; and many other considerations. Then you either get a yea or nay, and you either make the changes they want or you send it out to someone else. Each of these steps can take weeks if not months.
The next option is to submit to a publisher who does ebooks then after six months to print and go through much the same process except is is done via email and doesn't require trips to the post office and wrappings and postage.
The next option if you truly believe in your book, and why would you have spents months writing it if you didn't? YOu look for a place to publish it yourself. Usually you have to pay these places up front, but you get to keep most of the income from sales.
There are many options within this option and because of ebooks now there are even more. Sometimes print house will actually have a subsidiary epublisher who again evaluates your work and takes it on. Keep in mind that all of these are cutting into any money that is made on the book, print or ebook.
Some facts have come out recently showing that ebooks last year had more sales than all the print books combined. Many "brick and mortar' stores are going out of business as a result. The ereaders have come down in price and the books themselves are coming down to a reasonable level.
Enter a company called Smashwords. They call themselves an ebook distributor. They take your manuscript and run it through what they lovingly call the meatgrinder to turn it from print format to ALL the major e-reader formats. You are the publisher in the sense that you not only have written it, but you do the job of the publisher and editor, provide the cover art, include the copyright page (they do get you your ISBN), and make it completely ready. They grind it out into multiple formats for Barnes and Nobel's Nook, Amazon's Kindle, iReader, Deisel, Moby, and more also turning it to PDF files for reading on the computer and other devices and ePub for older style readers. They are the only company I have discovered that does this. For free! They then distribute to their own site and when your manuscript has been vetted, it is included in their premium catalogue and goes to Amazon, B&N, etc!!!! And you don't do a thing... Except to promote the heck out of it. They do no marketing. They are the distributor. Because it is available ( usually within two weeks of giving it to them) by the big e-stores, you are where people can find you. Think of it as being on their shelves.
Now, you do the work of pointing it out to your readers. For this the internet is your friend. Social networks like facebook and my space, blogs, your own website, anything you can think of to let people know it is there. To further promote it, Smashwords has author's pages and books are shown as they come out on the new books page.
You are encouraged to offer free pages and a lower price at least for awhile until you build a reader base. This is entirely up to the author and you do set your own price.
Famous authors are also using smashwords to re-publish thier books that may have come out only in print, whose rights have reverted to the author, or for work that doesn't fit length or genre requirements. Or for projects that were scrapped by their publishers.
As an example of this difference, many novellas (short novels) are offered, For authors these are usually included in an anthology with other authors or a collection of several of their own stories. You see many collections of mysteries done this way. Now these stories can be offered on their own for a low price or for free and used to get new readers!
I plan to offer a variety of stories that were too short for a novel or just didn't fit a slot. One of the first will be Open Wide; a vampire dentist story about 3000 words. (the average book is 60,000 to 100,000 words).
My first full length novel; Heat Waves will be out soon. You can watch for it at Smashwords.com or go to my website; kathihwriter.com to see where you can download it. It should be on Amazon and the other big stores by September!
Happy Tales
kathi h
New stories and titles have flowed...yes flowed... into my brain and I made notes and stayed on track for the one I am line-editing for the ebook distributor. In these times as an author we have many choices to make when
considering how and where to publish.
We can go the traditional route and send either a hard copy or ecopy of the proposal to a print publisher and wait while several people look at it and decide if it fits their needs; if it is well written (luckily I do not have that problem); if it is similar to something they have recently published; how it might fit in their future line up; and many other considerations. Then you either get a yea or nay, and you either make the changes they want or you send it out to someone else. Each of these steps can take weeks if not months.
The next option is to submit to a publisher who does ebooks then after six months to print and go through much the same process except is is done via email and doesn't require trips to the post office and wrappings and postage.
The next option if you truly believe in your book, and why would you have spents months writing it if you didn't? YOu look for a place to publish it yourself. Usually you have to pay these places up front, but you get to keep most of the income from sales.
There are many options within this option and because of ebooks now there are even more. Sometimes print house will actually have a subsidiary epublisher who again evaluates your work and takes it on. Keep in mind that all of these are cutting into any money that is made on the book, print or ebook.
Some facts have come out recently showing that ebooks last year had more sales than all the print books combined. Many "brick and mortar' stores are going out of business as a result. The ereaders have come down in price and the books themselves are coming down to a reasonable level.
Enter a company called Smashwords. They call themselves an ebook distributor. They take your manuscript and run it through what they lovingly call the meatgrinder to turn it from print format to ALL the major e-reader formats. You are the publisher in the sense that you not only have written it, but you do the job of the publisher and editor, provide the cover art, include the copyright page (they do get you your ISBN), and make it completely ready. They grind it out into multiple formats for Barnes and Nobel's Nook, Amazon's Kindle, iReader, Deisel, Moby, and more also turning it to PDF files for reading on the computer and other devices and ePub for older style readers. They are the only company I have discovered that does this. For free! They then distribute to their own site and when your manuscript has been vetted, it is included in their premium catalogue and goes to Amazon, B&N, etc!!!! And you don't do a thing... Except to promote the heck out of it. They do no marketing. They are the distributor. Because it is available ( usually within two weeks of giving it to them) by the big e-stores, you are where people can find you. Think of it as being on their shelves.
Now, you do the work of pointing it out to your readers. For this the internet is your friend. Social networks like facebook and my space, blogs, your own website, anything you can think of to let people know it is there. To further promote it, Smashwords has author's pages and books are shown as they come out on the new books page.
You are encouraged to offer free pages and a lower price at least for awhile until you build a reader base. This is entirely up to the author and you do set your own price.
Famous authors are also using smashwords to re-publish thier books that may have come out only in print, whose rights have reverted to the author, or for work that doesn't fit length or genre requirements. Or for projects that were scrapped by their publishers.
As an example of this difference, many novellas (short novels) are offered, For authors these are usually included in an anthology with other authors or a collection of several of their own stories. You see many collections of mysteries done this way. Now these stories can be offered on their own for a low price or for free and used to get new readers!
I plan to offer a variety of stories that were too short for a novel or just didn't fit a slot. One of the first will be Open Wide; a vampire dentist story about 3000 words. (the average book is 60,000 to 100,000 words).
My first full length novel; Heat Waves will be out soon. You can watch for it at Smashwords.com or go to my website; kathihwriter.com to see where you can download it. It should be on Amazon and the other big stores by September!
Happy Tales
kathi h
Thursday, July 21, 2011
One Giant Step
Today is the annivesary of the first man walking on the moon. I can never forget how excited I was. I wanted to be there or on olater misssions so very much but had physical considerations that negated that. My heart was there. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." I had a tape recorder going ( the old reel type) and took a picture of my black and white TV screen.
I had ties to future moon missions and our town was the only one during those days that had two moon mission astronauts. As such we were awarded the first Space and science center where you could sit in an Apollo module and later ride in a simulator. There was a moon rock... something I coveted for my own rock collection. And to me the coolest thing, my family knew both of those astronauts. James McDevitt and Al Worden. Al had been my baby sitter back in the days when our parents played pinochle together.
Later 21 astronauts were to come from Michigan, but those first two from the Apollo missions to the moon were the ones that truly inspired me.
Now, we have recently seen the launch of the last (at least for now) Shuttle mission and for see future moon travel leading up to a Mars walk. Wow! Wish I could go. And today July 21st the shuttle returned safely for the last time.
One giant leap indeed!
krh
I had ties to future moon missions and our town was the only one during those days that had two moon mission astronauts. As such we were awarded the first Space and science center where you could sit in an Apollo module and later ride in a simulator. There was a moon rock... something I coveted for my own rock collection. And to me the coolest thing, my family knew both of those astronauts. James McDevitt and Al Worden. Al had been my baby sitter back in the days when our parents played pinochle together.
Later 21 astronauts were to come from Michigan, but those first two from the Apollo missions to the moon were the ones that truly inspired me.
Now, we have recently seen the launch of the last (at least for now) Shuttle mission and for see future moon travel leading up to a Mars walk. Wow! Wish I could go. And today July 21st the shuttle returned safely for the last time.
One giant leap indeed!
krh
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