Good news it is!

Another beautiful cover by Abigail Larson.

Tinna's Might is completed. At last! I'm very excited.  Editor Ien Nivens of http://www.literacracy.com/ did a wonderful job of hacking, slashing, cutting, molding and shaping this book, and put a tremendous amount of effort into convincing me what changes were necessary in order to make this book better.

The next step is a final read-through, which should be quick. After all those changes and croppings and moving of things, punctuation occasionally gets lost or cut, sentences are left hanging; those things need to be fixed along the way so the product comes out looking marginally professional.

I have and always will insist that editing one's work, even if it's for submission to a brick and mortar publisher, is imperative.  It's just the professional thing to do. And yes, hiring an editor can be costly, but there are people out there like Ien, who offer creative and fair alternatives in order to knock your book into shape, and help promote it to boot. So I'm just saying to all my fellow writer friends, look up Ien, do what you must to make your book professional; out of respect to your readers.

So we've hammered out a suitable copy, which I will post below. This time this book will be available as hard cover, soft cover and ebook.  The hard-copies will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online booksellers in a little over a month.  The ebook will be published for sale soon.

I will add that I decided to forego the illustrations. As one of my most enthusiastic readers and friends pointed out to me recently, "I don't like illustrations. It deprives me of the opportunity to imagine the appearance characters on my own--and that's one of the best parts of the reading experience."  I can't argue with that.  I will instead post the completed illustrations on this blog periodically for those who might wish to see them.

A screen capture of the book copy.

One down... and other ramblings.

So I finished book 3 of the Trilogy of Tinna the weekend before last. Believe it or not I finished writing it while driving through the stunning Columbia River Gorge to Eastern Oregon for a visit with a family member who lives in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by colossal wind-turbines. They remind me of the alien ships in War of the Worlds. My little netpad made the trip with me, and while my husband drove, I balanced my computer on my knees and tippety-tapped away while I sipped tea from my thermos, and finished the book.

Mind you, it's not completely done. I think of it like house that's been framed, roofed, sided, but still needs the wiring, plumbing, drywall and details finished up.  It's a good feeling, I dare say.  Tinna's Might is still hanging on the edge of being finished completely and being published to iU and Smashwords.  I'm hoping my editor can sit down and get the last few chapters cracked out very soon. I'm  hoping my next post will be the one saying: It's Here!. ::crosses fingers::

I did the Christmas giving tree again this year. The local one was put up and taken down so quickly, I actually missed it, so I went to the one that my work sponsors. The tag I picked belonged to a young girl who was 8 and she wanted Monster High dolls. Now let me tell you, I had NO idea what those were until I set foot in Toys-R-Us (a mind-boggling experience on its own).  I imagine many of you have set foot in this store, I haven't. I don't have children, and I usually shop for kids if at all at Barnes & Noble where I can get those cool projecty kits and that sort of thing.

Anyway, I walked in, and it seemed like I had to make my way through every aisle because they were set up like a huge labyrinth forcing me to walk past every toy known to man to reach the cash registers. I could not help stopping to ogle some of the cuter toys. For instance, there was this whole section dedicated to these eye-wateringly, sickeningly sweet and adorable flocked forest critters (I'm not kidding, they're so effing cute I misted up and almost bought a family of chipmunks and a little baby bedroom and accessory kit. But when I spotted the cottage and the furniture and accessories and I found myself tempted, and I had to slap myself back to reality). I also did a slow drive-by in the Lego section where they had a display of the Millennium Falcon kit, it was only <---sarcasm about $140... and they even had a little Lego wookie.

Admit it, skanky .. perhaps. Cute? Undeniably.

At length, after passing through the barbie aisle, which was so saturated in pink, I nearly vomited, I came across the Monster-High merch.  The first thing I will admit is that they are cute. The dolls are really kind of adorable in a weird way. But the second thing I have to admit is that they are dressed like small, monstery whores. They have these little Lady-Gaga stripper-platform heels, and teeny skirts that barely cover the no-no square.  But admittedly, the idea is freakin' adorable. There's a frankensteiny one (the cutest one in my opinion), and a vampire one, and a werewolf one, and they have little mini coffin-shaped trunks for their skanky outfits, and little accessories and teeny pets; WAY more accessories in the package that Barbies came with when I was a kid.  I was half-tempted to  get one for myself.  Instead, I bought the Frankensteiny one and the one with fins who looked like a mad scientist, and I bought a little packet of outfitty things. I'm hoping Miss Selena is happy with them.  Now I want one. Not sure why. Shopping for kids is so much fun.

Aaaanyway, let's hope the next post is good news about Tinna's Might. :D

I am writing, writing, writing.

I am quickly discovering that with ebooks, the more titles, the better. At least that’s what I’m being told by a variety of authors who publish ebooks, and this has been somewhat proven to me by the rather brisk sale of the Blackroot novel I put on Smashwords sometime back. At 99¢, it is the best-selling ebook I have, outselling both Tinna’s Promise and even the free short-story collection, The Belletrist. It’s sort of shocking because Blackroot is such a departure from what I usually write, it’s gory and graphic, and a little weird. But the readers seem to like it. iBooks users especially, and lots of Sony Reader users. The desire to offer more titles has given me a creative kick in the pants, but on the flip side, it has also presented me with way too much distraction.

I am currently about 60% on Tinna’s Reign, editing for Tinna’s Might has slowed to a crawl, but it is still moving. I’d say we’ve moved up to about 84% completed, and I have two other books I’ve been pecking at, one called the Wizard King and another The Blue Journal. The Blue Journal is sort of out of my comfort zone, being written in journal form in first-person, which is challenging to someone who almost always writes as a narrator. The Wizard King is a strange hybrid of a Regency romance novel and a fantasy. I started it about four years ago, but it fell into my ‘false start’ pile, and then I was browsing my old starts and rediscovered it, and found some fresh ideas popping into my head as I started reading it.

So this means I’m working on four books concurrently. Probably not a good plan—most people will tell you to pick a project and stick to it until you’re finished, but it’s a bit hard to do when you are having a hard time finding inspiration on one, and have come to a complete halt while another has found a little pocket of inspiration to feed it. I guess, as I always do, I will go where my instincts point me, and let the organic, creative process work itself out.

The point of it all is to offer a broad range of titles for readers. I have the bones for a few good, meaty novels, and I’m working on finishing up the Tinna Trilogy. I may revisit Oromoii later on, but for now, I’m going to concentrate on these other titles and keep out of my false start folder for a few months—just in case something else catches my creative eye.

Argh.

Tinna's Might; about 80% edited

Yes, this is a slow process. I am sorry to keep those of you who are looking forward to book 2 waiting... but we're getting closer, I promise. The illustrations are also being developed. Very exciting. :D Just a quick note. :)