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Archive for 2013

ROW80 Sunday Update 7/7/13

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 7, 2013| 18 Comments »

I hope everyone had a nice 4th of July holiday. If you’re not in the US, I hope you still are having a great weekend! I had a lot going on the last few days, especially since my boss decided to close on Friday (unpaid day off) instead of just Thursday. We were able to fill those days with food, family, and fun.

I missed my three days a week writing goal, only writing two days. But my word count was 2831, so that wasn’t too shabby. I would really like to hit over 3000 a week, but I’ll take what I got. It’s been a busy week. 🙂

I haven’t walked on the treadmill for the past two days. I have a problem with my foot sometimes where a sharp pain will shoot through the top of it when I’m walking, and it’s so bad, I almost fall. This is a problem that usually lasts two or three days. The odd thing is that this time, it’s the other foot. I didn’t go to the gym, either. I have no excuse except that the gym is about 20-25 minutes away. I live out in the boonies. The reason I use that gym is it’s conveniently close to where I work, but I haven’t worked the past few days. I’ll get back on track tomorrow. Hopefully, my foot will be well enough to walk on the treadmill today.

How did the rest of you do last week?

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Should I Do Audio?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 4, 2013| 16 Comments »

For a long time now, I’ve really wanted to have at least one of my books in audio. There’s probably not a lot of profit in it, but it’s something I would love to have. When my friend, Sharon Gerlach announced that her book, Office Politics, was available in audio, I asked her about it. She used ACX (an Amazon company).

Okay, here’s how it works. You put your book (or books) on the site, and it lets narrators know if you’ll pay by royalty share or by hourly fee. Right now I have two of mine up for royalty share. I honestly don’t think I’ll get any takers. For one thing, they show your ranking on Amazon. Unfortunately, they show your PAPERBACK ranking instead of ebook ranking. Which, of course, is a lot worse. Also, Soul of a Vampire only has one review, although it’s a 4 star, so that doesn’t appeal to many narrators, because these people want a book that sells well. Haunted Lake has 34 reviews for an average of 4.1, so that would be appealing maybe…except for the paperback ranking, of course. So if no one picks it up, I’ll probably go with the per hour option. I’m not going to post that on there, though, because if I’m going to pay per hour, I want to pick my own narrator and make an offer. If I announce I’ll pay a flat rate, I may get offers I don’t want, and I hate to reject people. Awhile back, I looked into getting a narrator for Haunted Lake, but the one I contacted wanted $1500. I just couldn’t afford that. On ACX, they have different narrators who work for different fees. They have a $0-50 all the way up to $400-$1000. There weren’t many at $0-$50, so I checked out narrators from $50-$100. If I can get one at $50, Haunted Lake would be about $270. At $75, it would be $405. I’m going to leave it up as royalty only for a week or two and see if HL gets any takers. If not, then I’ll decide.

So what do you all think? Would you do this if you lost money or broke even? Would it be worth it to have your books, or at least one of them, on audio?

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Wednesday ROW80 Update 7/3/13 & Quinoa

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 3, 2013| 7 Comments »

I had gotten into the habit of only checking in on Sundays, but I’m going to try to do better. Part of the reason for that, though, is that many times I wanted to blog about something else that struck my fancy. But, you know, I can always write that and schedule it for the next day. 🙂

I managed to write one day so far this week, so that’s a third way through my weekly goal. During that session, I wrote 1717 words. I look at it this way. I used to have a 500 word a day goal, so that’s more than three days worth. 🙂

I’ve been trying to find a quinoa recipe that looks appealing to me. None have really got me excited about eating quinoa, especially after I tried a boxed quinoa dish. Bleh. Our local health food store sells both white and red quinoa in bulk, so I could get however much I needed. I would like to try both since the taste is supposed to be different, the red being more “earthy” or “nuttier” according to what I’ve read. Anyway, I found this recipe on Pinterest. Looks yummy. Garlic and Thyme Quinoa Patties. I just placed an order with Mountain Rose Herbs, and now I wish I had included thyme and paprika. 😦 Also, here is the link to the whole article 32 Ways to Eat Quinoa and Succeed in Life. I haven’t read the other recipes yet, but I will.

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Free Books = Bad Reviews/Racist Statement

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 2, 2013| 16 Comments »

What does a bad review have to do with a racist statement? Bear with me here. Sometimes putting the first in a series for free helps garner interest for the rest of the series. But a very experienced author friend of mine once told me she was done making her books cheap. She said every time she did a .99 book, the bad reviews came in. Honestly, it does seem like the cheaper books get the bad reviews, almost like it’s a different type of reader. I just don’t know. But a review I got for Club Blood (which is free in the month of July) on Smashwords made me rethink ever putting my books for free during these Smashwords sales anymore.

Here’s the thing…Club Blood is definitely not my best work. It was the second thing I ever published and the first vampire novella I did. I imagine there are way too many “thats” in the manuscript. But it’s at least good enough that I like to go back and read it from time to time. And I don’t get upset by one star reviews anymore. I see very, very good books get those. But what really ticked me off, no I guess it hurt me, was that the reviewer said I made a racist statement. I’m about as far from a racist as anyone can get. I’m so tired of everyone having to be “politically correct” instead of just being humans. This thing with Paula Deen really brought that all to a head. Do I think she should have used the “N” word? Absolutely not. My kids were raised to believe that it was a bad word just like any other word I didn’t want them to use. But Paula Deen said this a long time ago. And there are people of ALL races defending her, so that makes me feel a little better about the whole thing. Anyway, I digress. This is what the reviewer said about my “racist” statement. “The author managed to throw in the racist statement that the pizza must be good as the restaurant was owned by Italians.” This made me want to cry. Seriously. Is it an insult to Italians to say they make GOOD PIZZA??? That’s like saying it’s an insult to me because I make a good burger. Wait, are burgers American or did they originate somewhere else? I better be careful! Grrrr. If a restaurant advertises that their pizza is “authentic Italian”, is that racist? It would be okay for me to say a pizza sucked because it was made by Americans, but not okay to say it was good because it was made by Italians, right? I thought it was actually a COMPLIMENT, not a racial slur. I bet if I was in Italy, it would be fine to say their pizza was good because it was authentic Italian. No, it’s here in the US where we have to watch every little thing we say in case someone takes it wrong. I’m SO tired of this. Can’t we just be people who all get along with each other and know that we won’t always be perfect and say the perfect thing? Why can’t people love instead of hate? Can’t we all understand the world would be so much better and easier if we all loved each other? That doesn’t mean we all would agree on everything. It doesn’t mean there would be no contention. But we could disagree and still love each other. I guess as long as there is evil in the world, that will never happen. Fighting and killing have been going on for as long as the world has been here. There was murder in the first family when Cain killed Abel. And we never learn. /end of rant

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ROW80 – Round Three Goals

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 1, 2013| 14 Comments »

I’ve thought and thought about what I want my writing goal to be. I don’t want to set a goal that I’m not likely to achieve, but I also don’t want to make it too easy. There has to be some challenge. Although, last round, writing at all was a challenge. So here is my writing goal. I know I can change it if I have to, but for right now…my goal is to write at MINIMUM three days a week for one hour. Those three days don’t have to be any particular days, just three days sometime in the week. And then we’ll see if I need to change that later.

I want to continue my healthier lifestyle. I don’t set weight goals, because our bodies don’t always cooperate, even when we’re doing the best we can. But I want to continue to work out with weights four days a week and walk on the treadmill 15 minutes in the mornings and 45 minutes or more in the evenings.

There is an announcement I need to make today, but I wasn’t sure it was appropriate on my goals post. However, I don’t particularly like to post twice in one day, so I’ll be brief. Smashwords is having a sale in the month of July, so some of my books there are free and some are half-price. HERE is my profile page and you can find my books from there. The coupon code to use is listed at the top right of each book page.

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Fitness Friday – Back on Track!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 28, 2013| 8 Comments »

Finally! My plateau seems to be over, at least for now. I’ve been struggling with the same 2-3 lbs., going up and down, up and down, until I thought my head was going to explode. It would have been easy to just quit, believing that my workouts weren’t doing any good, my change in habits not helping. But I kept on even when I was feeling a little discouraged. Because you know what? Things would have been a whole lot worse if I went back to my old habits. And the perseverance has paid off. I was happy when I got back down to my lowest weight. So I was even happier when I saw, this morning, that I had lost even more. So this is a lesson to all of us. Don’t give up. Don’t think a plateau means you’ve stopped losing weight. Maybe it’s just your body resting for a bit. If you do hit a plateau, you can sometimes get past it by eating things a little differently. For instance, you can cut down on carbs and eat more protein. Or you can do exactly the opposite, cut down on protein and eat more carbs. Change which veggies and fruits you eat. Drink more water. Just do something DIFFERENT. This has always helped the Weight Watchers members I taught when I worked there. But the most important thing is to not get discouraged. If you continue to expend more calories than you take it (unless you’re eating too LITTLE and your body thinks you’re starving it), you’ll eventually lose the weight.

I also want to invite all of you to comment here about your own weight loss/healthy living struggles. I do want to encourage anyone who needs it. Sometimes just putting it out there and sharing with others helps. So every Friday, when I post Fitness Friday, feel free to share your own stories in the comments. Let’s do this thing together, okay?

I haven’t been sharing stats since my weight has been all over the place and wouldn’t settle down. But I’m back to sharing now. So here it is.

Stats for this week:
Beginning weight: 193
Today’s weight: 169
This week’s loss: 2.5 lbs.
Total loss: 24 lbs.

P.S. Update on my dogs. My old dog, Chipper came back yesterday, and he’s still home. However, Duke did not come back. We looked again at his broken harness, and both hubby and I determined that it HAD been cut. So someone must had tried to steal him that night and just couldn’t get hold of him, and it might be those same people that have him now, although there’s no way to know. We’ve canvassed the neighborhood, and no one will claim to have seen him. 😦

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My Heart is Broken – My Dogs are Missing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on June 27, 2013| 16 Comments »

Let me start from the beginning. We acquired a puppy when someone dumped him off at our house. Most of you have seen the pictures. He’s a lovely mixture, but I think he might mostly be pit bull. He’s a very rambunctious fellow, and he just can’t be still. We had him on a long run with a nice doghouse, lots of shade, toys…he was a happy dog. But he was always pulling on his collar, wanting to get to us when we weren’t right there beside him. Worried that he would damage his windpipe (he was starting to wheeze), we switched him to a harness instead of a collar, and that was working out really well. Keep in mind, he still had his collar ON, it just wasn’t attached to the lead. Yesterday morning, my cats took an interest in what was going on outside on the deck. It turns out that Duke was loose, on the deck. I went to check out the harness, and it was split in two. My husband thinks it broke, but it looked cut to me. I was going to put the leash on Duke’s collar and lead him back to his run and attach it by the collar. No collar. Now, he had been hooked up to the lead on his run by this collar for months and he hadn’t gotten out of it. So why was his collar suddenly gone? And why did his harness look cut? I honestly believe someone tried to steal him. Stealing this dog would be hard because you can’t get HOLD of him…he’s too feisty. Which is also the reason I had to leave him loose all day yesterday. We had nowhere to put him, and no way to get him anywhere. He’s strong and big, and there’s no way he would let us put him anywhere. So on the way home from work, I purchased another collar for him. When I got home, he was not there. My son looked everywhere. In the woods. Up and down the road. Nothing. He wasn’t there this morning either. But I swear I think I heard him barking this morning from the direction of my nephew’s house. That was the first place my son drove by yesterday, but he couldn’t see anything. My nephew expressed interest in him before when he saw pictures on Facebook. I don’t want to accuse my nephew unjustly. But if I had to venture a guess as to who might have my dog, he would be the first in my mind. So now, what to do. Do I upset my brother by suggesting my nephew might have him? I don’t want my son going down there because there might be a fight, and that scares me. I don’t want to get the police involved because I could be wrong, plus it’s family. Oh, I didn’t mention…my other dog is missing, too, so I’m sure they went together. Chipper is old and has been loose for a long time. He doesn’t ever get into any trouble, but with Duke by his side…. I’m praying they come home. Part of me hopes my nephew has them. Part of me hopes he doesn’t, because of the family thing. But if I had to say either way, I’m leaning toward him having my dogs.

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My Cover Artist – Anya Kelleye

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on June 26, 2013| 29 Comments »

I’ve wanted to be an author all my life. I got sidetracked for awhile, but I finally embraced the self-publishing, and then ebooks. But what to do for my covers? So my bestie, Anya, started playing around with Microsoft Word and created covers for three of my first books. She’s a very creative person and always has been. When it looked like I was in this author thing for the long haul, she purchased a program called CorelDraw so she could make more professional covers. The first ones she produced with this program were pretty good, but we both agree we might change them when she has the time. She’s asked me if I want to change the covers of Club Blood and See Me that she made with Word, but I still really love those covers.

So now, her career has really taken off better than mine. She’s been contacted by several authors to do covers, business cards, bookmarks, posters, FB banners, etc. This just shows what happens sometimes when you’re a genuinely NICE person. She started all this to help me. I had to MAKE her start charging me for covers. So now, because of something really nice she did, the good karma is coming around. Am I jealous? Heck, yeah! LOL, no, not really. I wish for my bestie all the blessings in the world. She deserves to have this career. Her day job is driving her crazy (at least I LIKE mine), and she needs out of there so she can let loose her creativity. Right now, she works well into the night sometimes, just to get everything done. And she puts up with me wanting to change this and change that until my cover is the way I want it. I’m probably her pickiest author.

Anya, you are the best. I’m so happy that you’ve put yourself out there and got some awesome authors to put their covers in your hands. And if any of you are looking for a cover artist, Anya’s prices are very reasonable. Check it out! PRICING

Pssst! Anya didn’t know I was going to do this post. Don’t tell her, okay?

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New Release – Flight by J.R. Pearse Nelson

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 25, 2013| 2 Comments »

My good friend, J.R. Pearse Nelson, just released the third in her Children of the Sidhe series, Flight. I’ve followed this series all the way to this novella, and I think this one is my favorite. Now would be a great time to pick up all three novellas since they are all priced at .99 right now. This is a great deal for a great set of books!

Click HERE to learn more about the series and where to buy. 🙂

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Sunday Stuff 6/23/13

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 23, 2013| 9 Comments »

I’ve got my motivation back. I wrote 1410 words on Thursday. Since I skipped Friday and Saturday (Saturday I had stuff going on all day, and I don’t know what the heck happened Friday), I wrote today. Sunday is ALWAYS one of my writing days off. But I had to make up for the other two days. Before I knew it, I had churned out 2276 words! I had expected to write about 1000, so that was great.

I’m going to try to be more conscientious about what I’m eating this week. I’ve been stuck on this plateau for several weeks, so I need to do something to kickstart weight loss again. Sometimes, it just takes changing up the TYPES of food you eat rather than changing the amount of calories you eat. We’ll see what happens. And I need to drink more water!

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