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Adventures in Vegas

Today I’m at the Romance Novel Convention in Las Vegas. It’s been an exciting adventure so far! But not necessarily all good. To start out, our poor little car died four miles from the hotel. FOUR MILES! See the picture on my Facebook Author Page.

By the time I realized that it didn’t just need to cool down, it needed professional help (no comments on that, please!), the local garages had all closed. I’ve been a AAA member since I got my driver’s license, and for the first time in 27 years, they couldn’t help me. I was shocked and starting to get a little panicky because I came to town alone.

But God, my awesome personal superhero, came to my rescue! A couple of friends helped me figure out a game plan and I got to my hotel with a change of clothes and my laptop, leaving the car and all my belongings where they were. The next morning, my brother called me out of the blue (anyone want to rent a Wyndham timeshare in Vegas for Labor Day weekend? He’s got one available that they can’t use) and suddenly my big brother was at my rescue again. I felt like I was 16! It was wonderful!

Rescued!

Several of my friends were praying hard for everything to turn out okay and it did! One sent money to take care of unexpected expenses. My brother told the auto repair facility that he wanted to pay for the car repairs. (I should get the fixed car back any moment! Woo-hoo!!) The AAA guys were super friendly and unloaded all my stuff into their courtesy shuttle and got me and all my boxes of books to my hotel.

And then when the convention started, I immediately met several people that I’m so glad I found! Another Christian woman who is also trying to entertain her readers while keeping her stories in her own world view; a sweet model with the nicest smile who I hope to work with on my next book cover; a really nice, smart woman who started up her own marketing firm for writers; and a woman who makes covers I adore! Plus I’m finally able to take time to get to know another friend a lot better. I’m so excited!

Saturday is the book signing, so if you’ll be in Vegas, stop by the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino on Fremont Street from 11am to 2pm. Then I’ll be at the Author/Reader Meet and Greet from 3 to 5.

Book Signing in Traverse City

I’m excited to announce that I’ve confirmed another book signing! This one will be Saturday, September 7th from 3 to 4pm at Horizon Books in Traverse City, Michigan. This signing will be particularly special because I grew up with my mom taking us to Horizon Books every time we went to town, whether we needed something or not. This is practically a childhood dream come true! (I’d never dared to dream as a child that I could grow up to be an author one day.)

Unexpected Superhero is Free

Remember – and tell all your friends – that Unexpected Superhero will be available for free for five days starting this Saturday, August 10! Woo-hooo!!!

It’s a Kindle exclusive now, so you need a Kindle or a Kindle app. (I found out the new Nook now has a Kindle app on it! And you can download one for your iPad or smart phone as well as your computer.) I hope to have the book loaded up on all the other ebook vendor sites (Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Sony, iTunes, Kobo, etc.) on Labor Day weekend. It may show up a few days (or weeks, for Apple) later, but keep an eye out for it.

Happy Reading!

Hello Friends!

Shonna and Stephanie and I are looking into ways we can continue to be of service to you. We’ll be putting up occasional posts about things that may be helpful, so please continue to check in at Routines for Writers. Soon I’ll be announcing a new class that I’ll be teaching in the fall. It will be a video-based class on how to self-publish your book. Details will be posted on the Classes page on my own web site.

Meanwhile, I’m happy to announce the winners of the Goodreads Giveaway that ran from mid-June to mid-July. All ten winners received an autographed print copy of Unexpected Superhero. (Books should have already arrived at your homes by now, my friends!)

Thank you to the other 662 people who entered the giveaway! I’m so pleased that you were interested in reading the book. Thank you for adding Unexpected Superhero to your To Be Read queue.

Super_ip09_FINALCongratulations to -
Jessica from Brampton, Ontario
Trannae from San Dimas, California
Wendy from Abilene, Kansas
Emily from Yuba City, California
Winnie from Vancouver, British Columbia
Krystel from Sudbury, Ontario
Robyn from Stratford, Ontario
Kai from Los Angeles, California
Marie from Pomona, California
Julie from King George, Virginia

Happy Reading! :-D

Finally!! LOL!!

I’ve been waiting to share this news with you for years! When Stephanie and Shonna and I started 2012, we each picked an area we wanted to discuss for the year, and mine was self-publishing. Now I have officially self-published a book in digital form and print form. Yay!

If you’d like to pick up a copy of Little Miss Lovesick for yourself and/or give it to friends or family for Christmas, I have my own CreateSpace store page up now. You can see the book’s description and order copies and generally cheer that I finally made it! :)

I wrote a post on my web site with fun bits of trivia about how Little Miss Lovesick came to be. You might enjoy reading that, too. :)

From more of a writerly standpoint, I thought I’d share a few publishing details here for my last regular post on Routines for Writers.

  • I’ve thought about self-publishing long enough that I decided, if I was going to do it, I was going to set myself up as my own micropublishing company. I filed a DBA (also known as a fictitious business name), bought a block of 100 ISBN numbers, registered my company name rather than my own name with self-publishing sites like Kindle Direct Publishing, PubIt! (Barnes & Noble), Smashwords, CreateSpace, etc., and I asked John to make a logo for us. I’m also going to join the Independent Book Publishers Association with my 2013 budget.
  •  I bought a lot of ebooks and paper books to help me learn how to self-publish my books. If I had continued to use Word to format my book, Aaron Shepard’s Perfect Pages would have been the most useful. But since I decided to go a more professional route (for one thing, my husband John is a former graphic designer, has all the software, and I’ve used some of it before), Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual Vol 1 and Vol 2 have been the most helpful so far.
  • Aaron Shepard has two other books that I bought, but have only skimmed, that I think will be useful in helping me figure out how to promote my books better, how to help them be more discoverable. They are Aiming at Amazon and POD for Profit.
  • Going to the Self-Publishers Online Conference was also a big help. Lots of good information there, and super nice, helpful people. They also suggested a few more books and web sites, but I haven’t gone through all that material yet.
  • I bought a photo from Dreamstime.com and John (former graphic designer, remember? lucky me!) played with it in Photoshop and Illustrator to create the full cover for both the ebook and the print book.
  • John owns QuarkXPress 7.2, a professional desktop publishing program, and I’ve used it to create newsletters in the past so I was familiar with the basics of how to use it. For both of these reasons – but particularly the “professional” part – we used it to create the interior layout. HOWEVER, we had problems getting the program to create a pdf (needed to upload to CreateSpace or Lightning Source or just about any print company). It crashed every time. So I had to send the file out to Staples and they were awesome! But now, because we need to upgrade John’s Photoshop and Illustrator programs for future book covers, we are going to buy Adobe InDesign as part of the Creative Suite. Interestingly, one of their “top 10 reasons you should switch from Quark” is that it will create pdf files quickly and easily. I hope so.
  • There are two options on CreateSpace (Amazon’s print self-publishing arm) for proofing your book, the digital proof and the print proof. I am a former magazine editor who used to use both to be sure we had the most perfect copy of our magazine we could manage, so I used both this time, too. (It takes about a week or so longer to wait for the print proof before approving the file.) I did find some errors, so I’m glad I took the time.

Those are the highlights of what I did over the last year. I hope you find it useful in your own journey.

As I mentioned, this is my last regular post. We’ll be posting irregularly from now till June. (Our web hosting is paid till then.) I’ll continue to post a couple times a week on my own web site, letting you know what is happening with my books, and writing silly things like my Netflix Picks column. :)

Stephanie will post when she’s not crazy busy with school. And at the end, you’ll hear from all three of us saying goodbye to you. Meanwhile, we hope you have a fabulous holiday season, and happy writing! :)
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