March 1st 2015 Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Good Morning! Good grief, it’s March 1^st. When the heck did that happen? I know, I know, at midnight, but seriously, is it me or is this year flying by already?

Don’t yell at me please, because I know I have two books I should be working on, but this morning I got woken up at an ungodly hour with a story that demanded to be started. It’s strange really, and totally not my usual style, but Olivia has a real quirky personality. I have a feeling this is going to turn into a very tongue and cheek type of story. Here’s how it starts, tell me what you think.

I’m a tree. Well, I’m not really a tree, I’m Olivia Arianna Kardash, O.A.K. It didn’t help matters much that when I was growing up, I was rather well…solid, but thankfully I had a late growth spurt. My mom says I’m willowy. It’s her way of poking fun at herself for not thinking things through thoroughly before naming me, or my brother, Jeremy Robert, for that matter.

It’s funny really, our inadvertent acronyms ended up fitting us. I’m thin with long arms and legs. Heck, in heels, I’m just shy of six foot. Tree size if you ask me. As for my brother, he’s definitely a JeRK. I have no idea how two people, who shared a womb, could be so fundamentally different. Oh, we look alike; the same dark hair, the same greenish-gold eyes, the same stubborn chin, but that’s where the similarities end.

Jeremy towers over me, even when I’m in heels. I have more a runner’s build, his is more in the lines of a professional wrestler. Okay, that’s not completely accurate. He’s not quite that big, but I’m sure, with a little effort, he could be. In all fairness, he needs to be big. It’s difficult to be a Linebacker if you don’t have some serious muscle behind you.

Physicality aside, we couldn’t be more different than night and day. I’m a freewheeling, quirky, love surprises, suck every ounce of joy out of the moment type of girl, and Jeremy, he’s well…stoic, very goal driven, serious. You know the type, no fun at all. Please don’t get me wrong, he’s a good person. He’s just… well…not me, and he can be a real jerk at times.

He routinely holds the top spot on my short list, and his latest infraction happened last week.

Would you want to keep reading? This is so strange for me. I usually have a title before I even start thinking about a story, and I never, I mean never write in first person. I have no idea if the story will continue that way. I guess I’ll just have to find out.

I know I have to finish Faerie Tale Queen and Simply by Chance, but I’m not sure if Olivia will let me. She’s already turning into a force of nature, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to real her in… and I’m not sure if I want to. The only thing I am pretty sure of is this story will end up being one for Annie Acorn Publishing.

Speaking of Annie Acorn, I just heard this morning we are going full steam ahead on Spirited Tales – the compilation of spooky stories I am a part of with several other authors – Ron Shaw, SusanRicci, K. Edwin Fritz, D.A. Grady, Steve Cartwright, Peggy Teel, Bill Crash Palace, JoeEliseon, Annie Acorn – I think I got everyone, but I’m not sure. Sorry if I missed someone. I’m so excited. I can’t wait to see the covers, and to read the other stories.

Here’s how my story starts:

The night is clear, the moon is bright, a low fog swirls along the moor

She appears, the woman in white, a mere echo of the infamous paramour

She begins to stroll, to sing her song, a siren to an unsuspecting man

For ‘tis her fate, a curse imparted, to forever wander this land

Now in death, as in life, she’s forced to lure them still

They are drawn to her, the wretched souls, bound by their own free will

A kiss of death, she will bestow, upon their unsuspecting lips

When they awake, remembering the dream, they will already be in death’s grip

~ Scottish Lore

Okay, I’ve got to boogie. Today is going to be spent on much neglected domestic endeavors. I hope you have super day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge is:

I had it just a minute ago...

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.

February 5th, 2015 Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Oh JOY, more white stuff falling from the sky. This is getting old, FAST. If I was staying in, this wouldn’t be an issue; but because of RV’s commitments today, I will be crisscrossing Central Jersey for most of the day. I detest driving in bad weather.

So Dani won her request to have the Christmas tree up until her birthday, but tomorrow, it’s coming down. I’m sick of looking at the thing.

Her birthday was good. She’s so excited about the Nikon D3200 camera Paulie and I got her. The gift was a bit extravagant, but a girl only turns 16 once, and it was the only thing she really wanted. We’ll be eating a lot of pasta over the next few weeks. LOL

Although she LOVED her gift from PJ and Alex, she wasn’t a happy camper this morning. The mid-way piercing is rather painful, and the poor kid didn’t get much sleep last night. Unfortunately, there isn’t a dang thing we can do to help her. She’s just going to have to wait it out.

As you know, I have been focusing on Twitter for marketing this past week, and quite frankly, it still is making my head spin. I’ve been doing 3 – 4 posts per book (depending on spacing) a day, manually thanking each new follower, and manually thanking each person who retweets one of my tweets. I have also been retweeting, favoriting, and commenting on other tweets. They come in so fast and furious though, I doubt I’m seeing 10% of the tweets that come in. I sneezed, got up to get a tissue, blew my nose, tossed the tissue, and when I came back, there were 218 new tweets – in what 45 seconds. Good grief!

I got a reply from Kobo yesterday. Their advice was to delete my books. REALLY? Needless to say, I pitched a fit. I don’t mind putting in the hours, but then for those hours to be for naught, fries my cookies. Basically, I told them to “figure it out”. You would think if the IT team was worth a grain of salt, this wouldn’t be such an issue. They’ve been “working on it” for over a week now. WTHeck?

My publisher, Annie Acorn, was so sweet. She told me I could send the books to her, and she would see if she could get them to work on Kobo. She isn’t even the publisher on these books, and she wasn’t asking for anything in return for getting them up on the site for me. Bless her heart! I told her we’ll wait and see what the Kobo Team comes up with, but it’s looking more and more like I may have to take her up on her offer.

With all the money grubbing scoundrels out there in the publishing world, I have been blessed with a real gem. I am so grateful our paths crossed, and I am so looking forward to a long future with Annie. She is truly priceless, always ready to share her vast knowledge, makes an excellent sounding board – not just on books, but on life as well, and is just an all-around good soul. Yes, I have been truly blessed.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you this last week. Annie has asked me to be a guest Quill for the Pen & Ink blog on her site. As soon as I know more, I’ll let you know and provide you with a link. In the meantime, if you’d like, here’s the link to previous Pen & Inks. If you have any desire to write, you should check it out. The advice and tips are wonderful.

Okay, I have to get an early start today, so I best be going. I hope you have a warm & safe day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge is:

Enough already…

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.

January 29th, 2015 Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Good Morning! Yeah, I know, it’s been forever. If it’s any consolation, I have been busy. All of my books are available on Nook again. I am also trying to get them up and running on Kobo, but I keep running into problems. They won’t load correctly. I couldn’t get the chapters to break properly, so it didn’t look right. Then I finally figured out how to fix it – sort of – and then I found a bunch of other issues.

The most annoying one was, for some unexplained reason, when I started a sentence with a quotation mark, the Kobo program put a space between the quotation mark and the first letter. I had to go in and manually change each and every one of them. When I FINALLY finished, I couldn’t get a preview of the book. I gave the Kobo team access to my books, so they could try and figure out what is going wrong.

Even though all three books are uploaded onto their system, I only did this for Corporate Blues. Be darned if I am going through and correcting line by line the other two. Heck, Taking Chances is over 120K words!

I don’t get it. It’s not like I’m a novice with creating e-books. I’ve been doing this for three years, with very few issues. Kobo, which is supposedly the easiest platform, is giving me the most angst. Hopefully I’ll hear back from them today, and the remaining two books will load without a hitch. I have invested just shy of sixty, that’s right 60, hours already, and I don’t even have one book live on Kobo. It took me between three and four hours to get all three books live on Nook.

I also took this opportunity to re-edit all three books. It has been years since I’ve read them, so I was seeing them with fresh eyes. Thankfully there were only a few small errors, but there was one in Taking Chances, which had me doing a head smack. Even though I’m pretty sure none of my readers would take the time to do the math, something jumped out at me. (No, I’m not going to tell you what it was. If you didn’t catch it, then that just proves my point.) I corrected, what to me was a grievous error, and all is right with the Bradford world again.

This brings me to a question for all of you. Even if you do not chose to do today’s writing prompt – even though I think you would have fun with it, I did – I would like you to reply. My question is, how closely do you pay attention to small details while you are reading? Do you stop and say to yourself, “wait a minute, that doesn’t add up” or go back and do the math?

I think I have always done that, and now with writing and editing, I do it even more. I’m down right terrible with it. I have even, while reading a series, gone back to a previous book in the series, to check something – back in book one you said he had three sisters, now in book four he only has two, where did he lose a sister?? You get my drift.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons Simply by Chance is taking so much longer to write than the first two books in the Bradford Series. I have come to a decision. I am going to get one of those large evidence boards like you see in TV cop shows, and I am going to map out my books. Characters, relations, homes, staff, distance between each point of interest, timeline. This way I will be spending less time going through my previous books to figure out if something I’m mentioning in a current book gels.

Speaking of writing, which is something I should be doing WAY more of, I had an idea. I bounced it off Annie Acorn, my publisher for all things non-novel, and she liked it. I want to know what you think. (Yikes, I’m asking y’all to respond to three different things in one post.) Here’s the idea – a project I’m going to call Bradford Shorts. Would you like to hear how Aaron & Suzanne got together, or how about Derrek & Anna, or Patrick & Arianna? I’m not sure each of these couples warrant an entire novel, however, a short story or novella may be just the ticket. I would sell each one separately and in a boxed set. As the Bradford Series progresses, I’m sure more secondary couples will arise, and with them subsequent “shorts”. So what do you think?

Okay, there are some things I need to get done before I have to leave to pick up RV. One of the things is calling the courthouse to see where my jury duty papers are. Last year, I was called for jury duty, and it was supposed to start on the same day I started with RV. They let me postpone it until this year. Even though I know it is supposed to be either the first or second week in February, I don’t know the exact dates, and I have not received notification. I need to be able to plan accordingly, so not knowing won’t cut mustard; hence the phone call.

Alright, let me boogie. I hope you have a great day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge is (stolen from my friend Keith. Since we didn’t have our writing group this week because of the snow, this was one of our “homework” assignments – I’ve also posted my response below, if anyone is interested):

A dog's (or cat's, or horse's, etc) perspective/ interpretation of experiencing snow for the first time

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.

My response:

You said the “O” word. I heard it. Out, out, out. We’re going OUT. Yeah, I like out.

Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Why are you taking so long? Quit looking for your glove, you’re not going to find it. At least I hope you don’t find it, or you’ll start yelling.

Come on, come on, come on. Open the door already, I gotta pee! Hallelujah, it’s about time. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.

Whoa, what? That stuff wasn’t here last night. What is it? It smells…Ahh, cold, cold, cold, on my nose, on my nose. Get it off, get it off, cold, cold, cold, on my nose, get it off.

Wait Mommy, what are you doing? I don’t want to go out there. No Mommy, don’t make me. It’s cold…umf. Why would you do that? It’s… it’s…fluffy.

Is that a ball you have? Throw it. Throw it. Throw it! I’ll get it, I’ll get it, I’ll get it. I got it, I got it, I got it. Where’d it go?

Another ball? Throw it. Throw it. Throw it! I’ll get it this time Mommy, I’ll get it. I got it, I got it, I got it. What the heck?

You’ve got another one? Where are all these balls coming from?

January 3rd, 2015 Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

Two days in a row, I know, but don’t get used to it. I will try to post a little something often, but it won’t be like before. I need to become greedy with my time if I plan on finishing the two books I have started, and one more contemporary, plus at least another short for Annie Acorn Publishing, before the end of the year.

I have to submit my short story for the 2016 edition of Spirited Tales (as soon as the 2015 edition of Spirited Tales is available, I’ll let you know), plus a possible submission for either the 2016 Valentine’s anthology or a 2016 Romance anthology – we’re still tossing around possibilities. I have a story idea, but I don’t know if it will end up being a short story, a novelette, a novella, or an actual novel. Annie said to just write it, and we’ll worry about how to package it later. Love her! She took that stressor and blew it out of the picture. Now I’ll just be able to write the story until it’s finished, hand it over to her, and let her work her brand of magic. I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop as things become more concrete.

Although it’s three months away, I’m fairly certain I will be participating in April’s Camp NaNoWriMo, so that, and possibly July’s Camp, will produce the next contemporary – which I think will be Taming Tate, unless some other characters start yelling louder between now and then. I need to finish and publish FTQ before April or I will not be eligible for the Princeton Author’s Day this year, and since I had originally planned for it to be out before Christmas, but life got in the way; it is now my top priority.

I will need to take at least day away from writing in order to get all my financials together for taxes. I do this all the time. I start the year off well, recording all my income, expenses, mileage, etc., then I get busy and the “office work” gets shoved to the back burner, and come January, I end up having to reconstruct ¾ of a year’s worth of financials. Then I curse myself for not keeping up with it because I can’t find all my receipts or the slip of paper where I wrote down my miles for my trip out to Bumblesquatch; and then I swear next year will be better, but I only seem to get better by a week or two. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be in my nineties before I have a system down. Pathetic? Lazy? Procrastination? Old timers setting in? Disorganization? Take your pick, any explanation would fit.

Okay, as I said, Faerie Tale Queen is my top priority, and since it is still ridiculously early on a Saturday morning, my house should be quiet for a minimum of two more hours, so I should get to work. I hope you have a wonderful day, and happy writing!

Your Next Challenge is:

It’s time to pack away the holiday decorations…

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.