More e-Books Available

Last month, I announced that my books are slowly becoming available on other sites besides Amazon. More have become available this month. Follows is an updated list of books that are now available at Barnes & Noble, Nook, Apple, and other booksellers (or soon releasing):

Contemporary
Promises (long novel - prequel #1 to the Donovan Legacy series)
Beyond Hope (novella - prequel #2 to the Donovan Legacy series)
The Blind Date (short-short story - prequel to In God's Time)
In God's Time (long novel)
Truth (long novel - Donovan Legacy series book #1)
Defender (long novel - Donovan Legacy series book #2)
Healer (long novel - Donovan Legacy series book #3 - available now for pre-order, releases Nov. 25th)
Peace (long novel - Donovan Legacy series book #4 - available now for pre-order, releases Dec. 9th)

Fantasy
Curse of the Talmara (long novel)
Shadows (short novel - Otherworlder book 1)
Visions (short novel - Otherworlder book 2)
Specters (short novel - Otherworlder book 3 - available now for pre-order, releases Nov. 21st)
Destiny (short novel - Otherworlder book 4 - available now for pre-order, releases Dec. 5th)

Urban Fantasy
Wolf short story series (#1-4 have released, #5-9 will release Nov. 23rd, Nov. 30th, Dec. 7th, Dec. 14th, & Dec. 21st but are currently available for pre-order)

• Turned
• Family
• Dark Moon
• Mate
• Rescue
• Super Moon
• Invader
• Acceptance
• Thanksgiving Moon

Non-Fiction
Patchwork Baby Blanket (crochet pattern)
Authors Unchained

MORE COMING SOON

E-Book Availability

CHANGE IS A'COMIN'!

I'm in the process of releasing my books in other e-formats besides for Kindle. If you obtain books through Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, or Scribd, you should see my stories releasing with those vendors over the next several months.

New releases will be Amazon-only for the first 3-6 months and then put out on other vendors after that period of time.

Currently available on other vendors (click on the title to go to a page with links to various sites):

Contemporary
Promises (long novel - prequel #1 to the Donovan Legacy series)
Beyond Hope (novella - prequel #2 to the Donovan Legacy series)
The Blind Date (short-short story - prequel to In God's Time)
In God's Time (long novel)
Truth (long novel - Donovan Legacy series book #1)

Fantasy
Curse of the Talmara (long novel)
Shadows (short novel - Otherworlder book 1 - available for pre-order now, releases Oct. 24th)

Non-Fiction
Patchwork Baby Blanket (crochet pattern)

MORE COMING SOON

Cover Evolution

In 2013, I made my first venture into cover design. Scary, and I didn't really know much about what I was doing, but I was happier with the results than I had been with the Createspace Cover Creator's results. I posted about that back then. I've learned a great deal since then, and figured out a few things about what I do and don't like about the covers I see online and in bookstores and WHY. I finally decided to redo the covers I'd done 3 years ago. Results?

The original covers:

The new covers:

The new covers are live as of last month. I also compiled those four novels into a Kindle e-book collection. I enjoyed doing the cover for that as well.

If you enjoy Christian romances with a suspense twist, check them out!

Story Length

Ask any writer how they determine whether their story is a short story, novella, or short or long novel, and you'll get as many different answers as there are authors. I found the same thing when I researched publishers and writing competitions, to see if I could get a standard word count for different breaking points. No consistency anywhere in the publishing industry.

So, what's a writer to do when nobody agrees? Create their own! What else? I took the huge variations I found and formulated a standard I use for my own work, so I can be consistent in what I classify a story as. For anyone who is interested in knowing what to expect from my work, here goes:

Under 1,000 words - super short (I only have one of these and it's posted for free on this blog)
1-2K - short short story
2-13K - short story
13-20K - novelette
20-41K - novella
41-65K - short novel
65-85K - novel (I don't have anything this length yet)
85K+ - long novel

I use this standard, regardless of genre. I don't use different standards for different genres, to keep my life as simple as possible. Life's challenging enough without my complicating it unnecessarily.

I publish most of my stories in e-book format, individually as well as in collections where applicable. Everything is also published in paperback, though short stories are always grouped into collections since they are too short to warrant paperbacks of their own.

2016 Update

This year has been crazy. We continued work on the new house in January, moved in February, and have continued work on the old house ever since. That's still ongoing.

On top of that, I dealt with an illness in early April that knocked me out of commission for a few days in addition to a back injury that took a serious toll through late February, March, and into April. My old chiropractor switched to using bleach products in the office - something I'm highly allergic to, both contact and fumes. That meant finding a new one. I thought I'd found one, only for him to make matters worse (and tick off my husband by treating me like I was stupid). Took a couple of weeks to find another new one. Thankfully, she's reversed the damage the other chiropractor did AND taken care of the original issue.

I'm sort of on track to meet my writing and publishing goals for this year. As a reminder, my goals for 2016:

• 400,000 new words written
• publish 5 paperbacks
• complete 3 old projects

To date, I've accomplished:

• 80,253 new words written
• 1 paperback published
• 12 short story e-books published and counting (9 are live; 3 on pre-order status for release in May & June; more coming this summer - will be compiled & published in p-back when series complete)
• 1 old project completed
• 1 new project written start-to-finish

Not where I need to be to meet my writing goal, but I'm not worried at this point. Given a couple of really good writing months, I can easily make up the difference.

I have 3 paperbacks approaching publication, with a fourth due out toward the end of the year. If those publish as expected, I'll have 5 out by the end of the year.

For old projects, I need to finish 2 more. I started working on one before Camp NaNoWriMo started on April 1st, but put it aside to do Camp. I hope to get back to it later this year.

May is shaping up to be a busy month in my personal life, but I hope to get a good chunk of writing done despite that. June should be a little less busy. July is the next Camp NaNo, and there are some big changes coming that month. I don't know what August through December will hold yet, but there are still unresolved things hanging out there, so they could be quiet or nuts. Only time will tell.

I'm still moving forward. Slower than I hoped, but it's still progress, so I'm content.

2015 Review

Image from Dollar Photo Club

Finally have a few minutes to breathe, so I can tally and report on my final numbers for 2015. I didn't even come close to meeting my word writing goal. That said, when I looked at what I DID accomplish, I don’t feel bad about it. Here’s all that got done in 2015:

Word Count Goal for 2015 – 500,000
Words Written for 2015 – 379,320 (375,772 of that in fiction, the rest in a NF book I worked on a bit) – for an average of 31,610 written per month; worst month was 3,583, best month 56,977 – I didn't get to write much in November, usually one of my highest months.

Publishing Goal for 2015 – 7 paperbacks
Published in 2015 – 9 paperbacks (3 long novels, 3 short novels, 2 short story collections, & a novelette), plus 3 short stories published in e-book that aren't yet in p-back – BEST PUBLISHING YEAR YET!

COMPLETION GOAL – FINISH 3 OLD PROJECTS
Completed in 2015 – 3 old projects finished – 2 short novels, 1 long novel

Other Details for 2015

Written start to finish – 1 long novel, 1 short story collection, 4 short stories, and 7 stories of a short story serial that isn't yet complete.

Plus, I created 38 memes, 9 paperback book covers, and 18 e-book covers, as well as making significant additions (over 5K words) to 2 old projects and minor additions (5K or less) to 4 others.

Needless to say, despite failing to meet my word count goal for the year, it was a good year all the way around in so many other ways. Given how the last 3 months of the year went, I don’t feel bad at all about the word count goal flop. I may not have gotten 500K, but I still got 379K more written than if I hadn't tried at all. Add in the number of projects published and all the other stuff, and WOOHOO!

Moving On…

This morning, I received feedback from my first reader for a completed short novel – so I need to find time to get to that, make any needed fixes, and get it published. That's the final book in a 4-book medieval fantasy series (the other 3 were pubbed in 2015). When I have time and adequate brain function, I'll package those 4 in a set as well. The cover for the set is already done and waiting.

Also, I've got a short story serial ready to start releasing once I can find the time to do the e-book formatting. Hoping I can get started on that this week.

I’m still making 3 trips a week an hour away to do work on the house we're trying to move to, while using my off days to keep up with the current home (laundry, dishes, sweeping/mopping floors, and all those other mundane tasks), plus resting so I don't cause another health flare up like I did on Christmas day that makes me utterly useless for anything but holding down furniture.

I've tried to write on many of my off days, but I can’t focus enough to get more than a handful of words down before I lose my train of thought and forget where I was going. Trying to be patient about that, which isn't easy since I've always driven myself pretty hard to meet my own expectations, no matter how unreasonable they were. I'm doing better on that score, but it still rankles from time to time that I have limitations. One of the ways I've found to deflect frustration is to use that down time to watch movies and work on visually creative projects instead of word-related ones. Beading and jewelry-making has come in handy more than I can express for keeping me from really getting aggravated with myself over the lack of word-related creativity. I still try to write a bit each day, but at least I'm not berating myself for not being able to do so when it flops. I just shift my focus from writing to visual creativity. At least I'm accomplishing SOMETHING constructive that way.

Anyway, in figuring out my goals for 2016, I kept all of the nutsiness in my life at present in mind. I’m not sure when we’ll finish the transition to the new house, but once that’s done, it’ll mean making trips to the old one to finish the work it needs so we can get it on the market. That won't be as draining as my current schedule, hopefully.

2016 is shaping up to be a year of upheaval from start to nearly finish, and I was tempted not to set any goals for the year and just do whatever I could whenever I could. If I do that, though, I may not get much of anything done, so…

Goals for 2016

400K new words
5 paperbacks published
3 old projects completed

That 400K may be pie-in-the-sky, all things considered, but I'll aim for it anyway.