September 26th Challenge

Hi it’s Christina –

Good Morning! I’ve been in a bit of a funk for the past few days – kinda – sorta – sick, but not quite. Everything was a little off, and that is why I did not do a blog post. I was concentrating on the “absolutely have to”, and letting the rest slide.

I did go to my Tuesday writing group. We had a HUGH crowd. I think it was the biggest yet. Afterwards, a small group of us went for ice cream. Terrance, a regular in the group, Rebecca, a new addition who found our group completely by accident (she was supposed to be studying, then thought we were a volunteer group, so she decided to sit in – boy was she surprised; but then she had so much fun, she decided to stay, and will more than likely be returning), and Annabelle, a radio producer for the BBC, who was visiting from England, via Tanzania.

Can you believe that? She was in Princeton for just one day, had nothing better to do, so she decided to visit our writing group at the library. She claims she has never written before, but Oh MY, what a talent she has. If she ever gets bored with doing her radio shtick, she could have a lucrative career as a writer. Yeah, she was that amazing.

Blessedly, Wednesday evening I had not meetings, so I was able to relax a little. Dani went out with some friends, and I commandeered the television. Monday night I got to watch the season premiere of Sleepy Hollow, but as luck would have it, it aired at the exact same time as a new show I wanted to see, Scorpion. Thanks to the magic of OnDemand, I was able to watch Monday’s show on Wednesday.

Now, even though because of all the hype, and all the previews, you pretty much saw the entire show before it aired, I still think it is going to be a good show. Next week will be the real test for me. If they can keep the momentum going, I’ll continue to watch. (On OnDemand of course – Sleepy Hollow takes presidents.)

Even though I claim I do not watch much TV, this season appears to have sucked me back in. I am, and I have been, a fan of NCIS since its inception, and have watched fairly faithfully. A few years back they did a spin-off NCIS:LA, and I began to watch that one too, but not faithfully. Now this year there is another spin-off NCIS: New Orleans – and considering I have always been a fan of Scott Bakula, there was no way I was going to miss this new series. So there’s three shows.

You already know what a Sleepy Hollow nut I am, plus now I may be adding Scorpion. My husband got me hooked on Person of Interest, but I’m not a faithful watcher. Dani and I watch Teen Wolf together (it’s our thing). Another obsession of mine is Grimm, which like NCIS and Hawaii Five-O, I have been watching from their first episodes; and as luck would have it, Grimm and Hawaii Five-O are on at the same time. All told, that’s nine shows – nine hours of my week spent unproductively, doing nothing but sitting on my bum, relaxing. Not my usual style.

Oh wait, I forgot one. Elementary. I’m a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, so when a modern day version came out, I was all over it. I love pitting my wit against the character to see if I can pick up on the same clues he does.

I will admit, the new show Forever has caught my interest as well, but I think I will let that one slide by for now. For someone who doesn’t not really like to waste time watching TV, my plate is quite full at the moment. This one I will relegate to OnDemand while the others are in reruns.

That’s the same way I get my Castle fix. I watched an episode this summer when there was nothing on, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So between TNT, OnDemand, Netflix, and my computer, I have been getting caught up on the last several seasons.

So what about you? What shows have gained your loyalty and commandeered your precious time? What is it about the show that drew you in, that keeps you coming back week after week?

Just a reminder, the $0.99 Kindle Sale is still going on. You have until 11:59 p.m. on Saturday to get your copies of A Second Chance, Taking Chances, and/or Corporate Blues. At midnight, the prices go back up, and I don’t think they will be on sale again this year. We’ll see.

Okay, I should get going. I need to run to the bank to get change for Saturday – I’m actually selling my books, they are not being filtered through a bookstore this time. I have to run to ShopRite to replenish my candy again – both days last weekend, I got wiped out. Then, when I get home, I need to clean out my car, because not only does all my junk need to get pack in there, Kathi Kurz is driving up to MilfordAlive with me, so I’m going to have all her junk too. Two tables, two chairs, all our decorations, cases of both of our books, our food and drink cooler, and God only knows what else. At least we are sharing the tent, so we’ll only have one of those. 

I hope you have an amazing day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge:

Cinderella gets fed up with being “mister nice guy” and plots her revenge on her step sisters…

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.

September 23rd Challenge

Hi it’s Christina –

Good Morning! I tried, but I just didn’t have it in me yesterday to make a blog post. I was wrecked after the two day book signing. Sunday, I had intended to walk the festival after the signing and get pictures of all the displays so you could see, but I was spent. I was literally fighting to stay awake during the drive home. I will be back at Peddler’s Village next weekend (not this weekend), and I will get the photos for you then.

I did well on Sunday, not as good as on Saturday, but it was a good day nonetheless. It wasn’t quite the same without the two Karens there. Karen Scheuer was not feeling well, so she was unable to return on Sunday, and Karen Hluchan had a prior commitment. I did however get to spend some quality time with Joanne Holliday, and I have decided I thoroughly enjoy the woman. Her and her sister Lucy were a riot! I look forward to seeing both of them at future signings.

I did have a nice surprise on Sunday. Do you remember me telling you about meeting Jessica at a previous signing? She was the aspiring writer and jewelry maker (I told you about an upcoming craft fair she will be attending). Anyway, she stopped by to say “Hi”, and it really made my day. She brought along her husband and her mom, who barely looks old enough to be her big sister, let alone her mother, so I got to meet her family. It’s moments like these that warm my heart.

Yesterday the only writing I did were email correspondences and I did jot down some notes on a story idea which popped into my head. It may or may not turn into anything, we’ll see. If it does, you’ll be the first to know.

I also spent part of the day hammering out details for this weekend’s event – Milford Alive. I’ll be honest, I have no clue where Milford even is, but I am happy to report, it is only about half an hour away. I really should do a little more research before I agree to do these things. My friend, Kathi Kurz, an author of children’s books, will be joining me this weekend. I am picking her up early, we are packing up my car, and heading up there. We will be sharing a tent, so if you happen to be in the Milford, New Jersey area on the 27^th, please come by and say “Hi”.

So my big sale started on Sunday, and things are going a little slow which is surprising. I’ve only sold about twenty books so far, and they have all been on Amazon.com. Not a single one has sold on Amazon.co.uk, and I’m not sure why. All three books are either at $0.99 or £1 – that’s a 67% discount. I created an event on Facebook and invited over 800 people. If they’d each share it with two friends, I’d be able to get the word out.

The last time I ran a sale, I did almost no advertising for it, and the amount of sales surprised me. So this time I figured, if I put forth a little more effort, they would be even better. Logical, right? This is just one of the many mysteries of book marketing for me – truly not my forte, but a necessary evil all us authors must endure.

I have received several direct messages requesting the link to my radio interview. Really? WOW. Thanks! At the risk of no one seeing this post on Facebook, I have decided to chance it, and post the link here. (If you are reading this directly from my blog, this comment won’t make much sense to you. You see, if I include any pictures or any links within my posts, Facebook severely hobbles the number of followers the post reaches. It is very frustrating.)

Okay, I should go. I hope you have a great day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge:

I’ll set the stage: A crowded room, lots of people are chatting, you notice one person standing alone…

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.

June 30th Challenge

Hi it’s Christina –

Not really my kitchen

Good Morning! Today is my last day before insanity starts, so I am going to spend it getting my house organized. A bomb blew up in the kitchen, the waste baskets are overflowing, and I have a boatload of laundry to do… to name just a few. I also need to go grocery shopping, and I need to go back to Costco because when I got there yesterday, the pharmacy was already closed, and I needed to pick up a prescription.

I’m in a bit of a quandary. When I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo, I said I was going to be working on a new story, Taming Tate, but I still haven’t finished Faerie Tale Queen. I’m thinking one last run through NaNo and FTQ will be finished, but I feel guilty working on the same book for three consecutive NaNos.

However, I do have some extra incentive to finish FTQ. Remember the NYC publisher, who wanted Corporate Blues, but I rejected the contracts he offered? Well, he came back again with a contract I would have accepted, but I had already published Corporate Blues. I told him I was working on FTQ, and I would give him first swing at it. If he accepts it, we’ll go forward; but here’s the catch, I have to have it to him before the end of July. If I spend July on Taming Tate, I won’t have time to finish FTQ.

I know this probably sounds like a no-brainer, but here’s the catch. Just like with Corporate Blues, Faerie Tale Queen already has a cover I love, and I assigned it ISBN#s. If I go with the publisher, my cover will change, and I have wasted the two ISBN#s because they will have to be reassigned. Am I being short sighted? Should I just suck up the money I spent already and go the traditional publishing route again? Hah, I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t even know if they will accept FTQ. What do y’all think? I’d really like to know.

On another topic, my $0.99 Sale went well, but I fell shy of my goal of selling a hundred books, by eight books. I really thought the sale didn’t end until midnight tonight, but when I checked Amazon this morning, the price was back up to $2.99 (I lowered the price from $4.95 to $2.99 a little over a month ago). I know there are still several hours left before the end of the month, but I doubt I’ll sell eight books today. I did break the top 10K mark overall on the Amazon ranking list, and the top 500 mark for historical romances, so that’s something.

I can run another sale for Amazon.uk, but I think I will hold off until September so I can run the sale for both UK & US at the same time. Also, if I don’t go the traditional publishing route, I can include FTQ in the promotion.

What I’m really hoping for is that one of the fifty-tree copies of A Second Chance that sold will generate two more reviews so I can qualify for a different type of promotion. A friend of mine told me about it, and he sold over five hundred books during the promotion, and has been selling several books daily since the promotion.

Unfortunately for me, they won’t even consider promoting a book until it has ten reviews, and I have been stuck at eight for quite some time now. I don’t understand it. Why don’t folks review books after they have read them? It takes less than five minutes, and the reviews don’t need to be anything elaborate. A few sentences and you’re done. Yet less than 2% of the people who have read A Second Chance, have written a review for it. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of being a writer, because I have absolutely no control over it. Sometimes this whole marketing thing makes my head spin.

Enough! I babbled so much yesterday, we never got to the challenge, and I don’t want to do that again today. I hope you have a marvelous day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

There was this one time…

There was this one time, many years ago, when I had wanted to pack everything up and move to Florida. I was working for a company which had offices in Jacksonville, and I would have been able to transfer. I would have had to pay my own moving expenses, but I didn’t care.

For months I poured over real estate listings, maps and school reports. I researched and carefully put together my pitch so I could sell my husband on the idea. I narrowed the list down to three possibilities. Each of the houses was in the best rated school district. Each home had five bedrooms, one for us, one for each of our children and a guest room. Every house had a pool, and one even had a dock for my husband’s fishing boat.

I got comps for our house here in New Jersey so we could get a good idea of how much it would sell for. Between the sale of our house here and the new one in Florida, our mortgage would have been less than $50K. The taxes for a year on the Florida home were the same as one month’s taxes on our New Jersey home. I would have been able to afford all the bills on my salary alone, and my husband would have been able to start his own business.

I had all my ducks in a row. The children were all behind me on the move. I was excited. I presented everything, full color photos of the property and all, to my husband, and he wouldn’t even look at it. There was no way he was going to move away from his family. It didn’t matter that I had made sure each of the houses would accommodate for an extended stay from them, or even my offer, that when the time came, they could move in with us. He wouldn’t budge.

This is a true story, and as you can probably tell from my tone, it is one that still bothers me. Instead of having a nice new home in Florida, my husband having his own business, and our kids being able to go to college at greatly reduced rates, we are still here in New Jersey, in our fifty year old little ranch which does not have the same property value as it did ten years ago, paying exorbitant amounts on mortgage, taxes and college. I love the man dearly, but sometimes his shortsightedness makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

Your Next Challenge is:

You visit some place you have not seen since you were a child.

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.

June 26th Challenge

Hi it’s Christina –

Good Morning! Sorry I have been M.I.A. for a few days, but I had to spend every spare second finishing the editing assignment. I am happy to say, as of eleven o’clock last night, I’m DONE!

It was a wonderful story, and I’m thrilled he wrote this sequel to his first book. All the loose ends left in the first one were tied up nicely. Maybe “loose ends” isn’t the best choice of words, because the first story did end well. Perhaps unresolved issues would have been a better way to say it. There was even one point, near the end of the story, which brought a tear to my eye – it was a truly moving scene. I can’t wait to see the book when all the edits are complete.

As soon as I’m allowed, I will tell you all about the book. I do feel really bad the editing took me so long, because now the author has an extremely small window to finish the edits before his deadline. Thankfully, he only has the last few chapters to revise, and from the notes I gave him with the first batch of edits I sent, he very well have already fixed some of the issues, even without my final edits. Regardless, he still has a few grueling days ahead of him to meet deadline.

On the home front, Dani and her dog-sitting assignment are going well, Lys began training for her new job, and PJ finally sold his motorcycle! It has been a hectic few days around here. Lys has been dropping me off, and picking me up, from work so she could have the car to do whatever running around she needed to do, and to get Dani to her dog-sitting gig. She’s also has had to bring my nephew to work because my sister in law is working, my brother in law is away on a business trip, and my in-laws are on a mini vacation in AC.

Then, when I come home from work, I have to drive Lys to her training, and then pick her up when it’s over. She was supposed to be finished the first night at nine, but she didn’t get out until after nine-thirty, and then last night, she was half an hour late getting out again. By now you know, I’m not a night owl. Nine, ten o’clock at night, I want to be home, not waiting in my car for an extra half hour because the director is chatty and can’t tell time. Whatever, I can suck it up for the next few days, then starting Monday, Lys will be riding the bus to and from work, so it will no longer be my issue.

For the next few days, I’m going to take it easy. The only writing I’ll be doing is this blog. I figure it’s best I recharge, because in less than five days, Camp NaNoWriMo starts, and I’m going to need all the energy I can store to get through it.

On Monday, the sale started for my Kindle books. Now through June 30^th, all three of my books are on sale for only $0.99. As luck would have it, Amazon featured A Second Chance as their “Deal of the Day”, so the promotion got some free advertising. Yeah! I’ve sold twenty-six books during the first three days of the sale, and my overall ranking on Amazon has jumped considerably, so I’m happy with that. I’ve also had an increase in my number of books borrowed, which I think is kinda cool.

Here’s a rare sales pitch. The books are less than a buck. If you haven’t read them, and you need something to read while you’re sitting by the pool or at the beach, why don’t you grab a copy now? The price won’t be this low again until right before Christmas. Okay, I’m done.

I hope you have a wonderful day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

You are a tasty treat in a bakery display.

No don’t look over there. Those are cupcakes. Anyone can make cupcakes. They’re nothing special. Come down this way. Look over here. 

Cookies? You’re looking at cookies? You have got to be kidding me. Why would you even pause at the cookies when I’m over here, flaunting my light flaky layers and luscious hazelnut whipped filling? Have you no taste for decadence? Is your palate so uneducated you cannot appreciate epicurean ecstasy? Peasant, why am I even expending my energies on you? The effort is making my chocolate curls unravel.

Oh, what’s this? You’ve decided to grace us with your presence? Should I be honored? 

How dare you look at me with such indifference? Is that disdain I see? An éclair? You chose an éclair over me? Just as I suspected, neophyte. Well, enjoy your mediocre treat, I shall bestow my gastronomic pleasures upon more discerning taste buds.

Your Next Challenge is (from Tuesday’s writing group):

The happiest corpse I’ve ever seen.

You have ten minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count, and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.