Tag: inspiration

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Time for free ebooks!

Today, tomorrow and Friday (June 7, 8 & 9) Through Shade and Shadow is available for Kindle for zero dollars!  If you don’t already have yours, now is your chance!

I’m nearing the end of my first draft of the sequel, and having paged through this first book again this weekend, I’m reminded of how much the characters grow in the second book.  Alaric and Mason are favorite characters of mine and sometimes while writing the minutiae of the scenes and sifting through the plot I lose sight of where they started, so it’s fun to revisit a little bit while talking about the book with new people.

In the next book we will meet some new characters, and some of those who were briefly introduced in Through Shade and Shadow become more visible.  I’m really enjoying fleshing out characters that we only glimpse through Mason or Alaric’s eyes to start out.

Got a question about anything Shades and Shadows?  Drop a comment and I’ll do what I can to answer.

 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

it was a day

So, this weekend was the Bay Area Book Fair, and I had one of the individual author’s tables.  My agoraphobia was racing, my nerves were dancing.  I gave serious thought to not going.  But in the end, my determination beat my agoraphobia again and I set off with a big bag of books, got on BART and headed to Berkeley.

I got there fairly early, and found my spot, got set up, and then  watched as the various vendors and authors came in and did the same.  Couldn’t have asked for nicer weather, except maybe a little less wind.

I wish the same could be said of sales. I sold a few books, but didn’t even break even to cover the cost of the table and umbrella rental.  I did, however, meet some very interesting people, from fellow authors to publicists, parents of students wanting to write, book lovers, etc.

Part of the issue felt a little like isolation.  The bulk of the festival is held in the park, while we were off on a side street with a good amount of distance between us and the first booth in the park.  None of the authors in my immediate vicinity sold much, though the author to my right with his epic fantasy novel sold at least twice as many books as I did.

I’ll admit, I’m thinking about contacting the publicist I met and see what their services run price wise.  It’s that part of this business that I suck so badly at.

But, now that is over and it’s back to the day job.  I hope all of you have a great week!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

and just like that, it’s June

I’m not really sure where January, February, March, April and May have all gotten themselves off to, but I hope they’re having fun.  It seems like just a day or two ago I was struggling to remember to write 2017 on things instead of 2016 (or the inexplicable occasions where I wrote 1996….what?), and here we are on the first of June.

We sent May out with a bang though.  My niece graduated high school on Tuesday.  She is the youngest of my brother’s kids, and I couldn’t be more proud of the woman she is becoming.  The school she graduated from is one of the top 1% of schools in the country and her classmates are all amazing students, most of whom will be attending four year universities and colleges in the fall.

I got back from all of that frivolity last night, and when I woke up this morning it was June.  Already, my calendar is jam packed for the month.

babf_logoStarting this weekend when I will be at the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, California signing (and selling) books.  I will have copies of my two novels, Forever and Through Shade and Shadow as well as my small collection of poetry.  Sale pricing is $12 each for the novels and $2.50 for the poetry collection.

I can take cash, credit cards and paypal.  It should be a fun day for the whole family.  With all of the vendors and authors, there should be something for everyone!

San Francisco Pride is at the end of the month, for a completely different festival to bookend the month.  Pride likewise has something for just about everyone.  If you come out to one or both days of Pride remember to wear sunscreen, dress in layers, wear comfortable shoes, and please consider dropping a dollar (or more) into one of those pink buckets.  Every penny goes to support the organization that creates the festival and/or the organizations that take care of our community.

Somewhere between those bookends, I will be taking a couple of days to head out to Yosemite with my mother, to enjoy some nature and some truly breathtaking views, like this one, which I took on my last trip to Yosemite in 2010.

4795598576_4edc53f518_o

But for now, I should go pour my second cup of coffee and get to working the day job.  Hope you all have a pleasant day!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

be the future

I love my weekend mornings.  They start with coffee and words.  It’s my time to write, or in some cases, edit.  The first few hours of the day are peaceful and quiet and I get to step out of the world I live in to inhabit some place filled with magic…well, mayhem as well.  What good is a story that doesn’t shake things up a bit?

Anyway, I’m enjoying that part of my Sunday morning, working on the closing chapters of In Shades of Sage, the second book in the Shades and Shadows series.  It feels good to be writing again.  I’ve been stuck on the same chapter for weeks. Yesterday I worked out where it was going wrong and re-worked it, so I get to write fresh material today.

But, my time is short today because in a few hours I need to leave to head out to Stockton, CA to spend time with family.  Not only is it Memorial Day weekend, but my niece is graduating from High School on Tuesday.

On the one hand, it doesn’t seem possible that she’s even old enough (forget that she turned 18 in January), on the other it’s kind of amazing to see the person she turned out to be.  I vaguely remember my own high school graduation. For the most part, I was just glad to be done with it.

I was a very different person then, and I really didn’t see much future for myself, if I’m honest.  I was surviving.  For Vae, I’m hoping she sees a brighter future for herself.  I hope she has dreams and ambitions beyond just surviving high school.  I hope to see her shine as she moves into the life she creates for herself.

No matter what that future is, no matter what roadblocks get in the way.  Don’t let anyone else tell you what your future is meant to be.  Make it your own way.  Be the future you want to see.

I’ll be over here with my pompoms cheering you on.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

the day job

Like many independent authors, I can not give up my day job because it is the only thing keeping a roof over my head and the internet paid for.  Which isn’t to say that sales have been bad.  But if I was relying on book sales to keep me ensconced in comfy pajama pants and cat videos on demand, I’d be sleeping in a cardboard box.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.  Fifteen years ago I wouldn’t even have gotten a book published (believe me, I tried), so every sale is something special.   And I LOVE the shifting dynamics of the publishing world.  There are so many outlets for books that might never have come to be, and so many new ways of reading content.  It’s truly delightful.

However, that does mean a market saturation, which makes each book sale something you have to work for.  And marketing a book is more work than anyone can guess, unless you’ve done it.

So, it’s a good thing I like what I do for a living.  Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rather spend my days writing, but I make do with the knowledge that I get to hone my editing skills every day.  I’m also grateful that I work in tech, where I can wear Star Wars and Supernatural t-shirts every day and dye my hair green and sport a variety of tattoos…and no one even looks at me sideways.

Speaking of the day job, the office is waking up around me so I guess I should go pour that second cup of coffee and get to it.  Happy Monday, Readers!

Posted on by — 1 Comment

one of the girls

One of my favorite things in the world right now is the growing awareness of female writers in genres that have been dominated by men for as far back as books have been getting published.  In fact, it’s one of the reasons that I embraced alternative publishing right from the beginning.

In the “traditional publishing” world, what gets published is decided by a small group of people, traditionally older white men, so it’s no surprise that they gravitate toward male writers who write male characters in worlds populated mostly by men and women who are there mostly to serve as a love interest or sex object.

But today, with all kinds of self-publishing and hybrid publishing options opening up, plus the appearance of more and more small and niche publishing companies, women are finding ways to get their voices heard.  So far this year I’ve read something like 10 books (I’m woefully behind due to writing obligations), and a full 7 of those have been written by women.

Most exciting for me is the growing abundance of women authors writing female characters in worlds of sci-fi and fantasy, bringing characters to life that are all the varied things women can be, and building diversity into the worlds they create.  I’ve long turned to science fiction for normalizing the unusual, and now it is stepping beyond the science fiction that I first learned about things like homosexuality, group marriage, alternative religions and other things I hadn’t been exposed to, and showing some real inclusivity.

Women of color are emerging as authors as well as characters.  Old, tired stories are getting pushed aside for some exciting and new tales that are refreshing, challenging, that press our sense of self to the side to experience a sense of someone else, and it’s these books that I find myself wanting to set aside the daily grind for.  My commute is far more than a train ride from the East Bay into San Francisco when I dig for my bookmark and immerse myself in an alternative time line or a space empire or a fantasy land where magic flows.

I’m currently reading The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin.  It’s challenging, and it took me a bit to connect to her changing narrative, but on page 69, I’m hooked in and find myself wishing the train ride took a little longer.

I found this book on a reading list of women writing women in sci-fi and fantasy, as part of a conference I’m going to in October.  I’m looking forward to finding myself in a group of women who write, who read.

Got a suggestion for a good book from a female author?  Drop a note in the comments so I can add it to my reading list.

 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

not your mama’s fairy tales

One of the projects I’m working on right now is the assembly and edit of an (as yet unnamed) anthology of short stories from fellow Creativia authors that all stem from the same prompt. It amazes me how so many authors can begin in the same place and take such divergent paths to weave together stories that end up very, very different.

Now that I’ve finally finished my own submission (dragons!) for the anthology, I’m getting started on the work of editing and compiling.

Considering the prompt, I’m expecting anything from anti-fairy-tales to twists on fairy-tales and much more.  I’m excited to get started and I can’t wait to share the finished product with you.

I’m still expecting a few more submissions, with the deadline still two weeks away.  I’m hoping that this will be a fun way for our group to introduce our fellow authors to our own fans.  We’re a diverse group, writing in many genres.

But for now, I need to get back to the day job!

 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

out from under

This has not been a good week.  I get migraines, and this week I had one doozy of a migraine. It came on during the day at work Tuesday, and I left work early.  Stayed home on Wednesday, tried to work on Thursday, but only got to about 1pm before I called it quits and came home.

Yesterday was the first day I had some relief.  I worked from home because I was afraid the sunlight would set it off again.  Today I am finally out from under it.

That means that all my grand plans for getting stuff done during the week didn’t happen and that leaves me with a fair amount of things to do this weekend, from Pride prep to writing and housework.

I suppose I should get busy doing some of that.  But before I go, let me remind you that I will be holding down a table at the Bay Area Book Festival on Sunday, June 4!  If you’re in the SF Bay area, you should come down and say hello!

Hope all of you have a fantastic weekend.  I’ll pop in with something for Mother’s day tomorrow.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

donations, community, partners

Sometimes I think that the Mondays that follow productive weekends are harder than the ones that follow lazy weekends. We’re heading into the time of year when I have little time for lazy.  There are obligations and volunteer duties, family time and other crazy stuff.

I have volunteered with San Francisco Pride for better than ten years, working in the Donations Partners department.  Essentially, we are the people who greet festival goers with big pink pickle buckets asking for donations to help support the parade and festival. This year I have stepped up to manage the Donations Partners.  It’s a huge task, and a lot of responsibility, but I confess that I love the challenge.

You may wonder where that donation money goes.  And who are all of those people with the buckets anyway?

We partner with community organizations, non-profit groups that work with the LGBT community in some way.  They come from all sections of the spectrum, from groups that work with the homeless, to social organizations, from youth groups to cheerleaders, from churches to other religious groups, from local community centers to drag queens and their courts. Each of these organizations provides volunteers to do the bucket thing.

It’s a long day of work, but each hour that a volunteer works earns money for their organization.  At the end of the festival, the donations money is tallied up, and some of it goes back to the Pride organization to help pay the bills.  The rest is divided up into an hourly rate, and each of the partner organizations gets a grant based on the number of hours their volunteers put in.

Unfortunately, the work puts a bit of a quash on my writing.  Which was my long winded way of saying that I didn’t get much writing done this weekend.  But I did get to take my 68 year old mother to a tattoo shop for the first time in her life.  We took my niece to get her ears pierced.  It was an experience, I’ll say.

But no writing.  I guess I’ll have to try harder through the week.  I need to finish my short story so I can start editing for the anthology, and then I can get back to the world of Shades and Shadows.

 

 

 

Posted on by — Leave a comment

gregarious green

There’s something about going green…I mean, it’s not like it’s strange these days to see people with wild colors in their hair.  On a daily basis I see blues and pinks and purples in a variety of shades and styles.  But green isn’t as common.

I’ve always loved the color, from a faded mint to a dusty sage to a deep emerald to a dark hunter…it reminds me of the earth, of things that grow, things that are natural.

I tried it out back in February, when I wore a green wig to a convention.  I got so many compliments that I determined that one day I’d just do it. Go green.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as just grabbing some green hair dye.  No, not when I’ve been dying my hair some shade of red for at least 6 years (since the last time I decided to go nuts, bleach it and do fun things with it).  I took me 3 bleachings and a color stripping to get to a blond enough blond that I could dye it green.

I had some moments of apprehension.  What if my work place wasn’t as progressive as I thought it was?  What if I hated it once it was done?  Didn’t stop me though.

Funny thing, this green hair.  I find my self-confidence bolstered,  I find myself happy when I look in the mirror, I find my anxiety levels a little less than they were.  And, people seem to like it.  Sure, I’ve had a few people look at me as if I’m nuts, but most of them smile and nod.  Some even tell me they like it.  People at work love it.

That too makes me smile.  Sure, I’ll be forty-nine in September, but numbers will never prevent me from seeking out what makes me happy.

I hope you can say the same.  Be yourself and put a little color in your life!

In the sequel to Through Shade and Shadow, we meet Zero, a teenage character who expresses herself through wigs that range from the mundane to the outlandish. None of them have been green yet.  I may have to fix that!