Category Archives: Publication

FREE!

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Rapunzel: Stay at Home Mom is FREE for a couple of days on Kindle!

Here’s an excerpt from when she arrives at Sleeping Beauty’s Day Spa:

The forest opened up to a cottage, not a peasant cottage but a multi-story royal cottage with at least ten rooms on each floor, and a servant at the front door. Above the door was a large sign that depicted a sleeping princess followed by scissors and then a candle dripping wax. Rapunzel shivered at the wax. This had to be it.

A pair of birds landed on her shoulders and chirped a melody as she pulled the scroll from her pocket. The servant gave her a once-over and wrinkled his nose, but he opened the door, and she walked in.

Several ladies-in-waiting sat in chairs reading outdated copies of Palace. The birds flew from her shoulders to trellises covered with roses. The servant scooped up the hair Rapunzel had undone to capture the gingerbread man and dumped it at her feet with a bow, closing the door behind her.

A girl not much older than fifteen ran up. “OMG! It’s Rapunzel! Look ladies! I told you her prince was here. He’s soooo handsome. I’ll take that voucher and lead you to the baths. I’m Imogene. Of course Sleeping Beauty will be attending you personally. Ew, is that wolf slobber? I thought the huntsman came through recently. But didn’t you come in a carriage? Did the prince slobber on you? I knew he was a wolf at heart. Oh don’t worry. We’re all girls here. No one will tell.”

Rapunzel glanced warily at the other customers, sure the prince’s fictional exploits in the carriage would be in next month’s Palace.

Imogene led her to a private room with a large tub surrounded by candles and flower petals. Two servants undressed Rapunzel as Imogene commented, “Oh yes, I see what Magnus was talking about—”

Rapunzel turned rose red. “Magnus? Exactly how close did you get to my prince when he purchased my treatment?”

The girl bowed and backed up. “I’m so sorry, he was very formal. That’s just what we call him when we chat amongst ourselves: Magnus, Albert—it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Leave!”

The book includes four illustrations by Kevin Yancey plus the cover.

All for FREE!

Please give it a go!

http://www.amazon.com/Rapunzel-Stay-at-Home-Mom-ebook/dp/B00SY3D5O8

Heads Up!

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I’m experimenting more and more with marketing. I’m putting Rapunzel exclusively at Amazon for awhile, which means this is the last day to buy it for $0.99!

At some point tonight or early tomorrow morning, it will join Kindle Unlimited. If you’re part of Kindle Unlimited, you’ll be able to download it for Free! If you’re not, the price will be $2.99.

If you haven’t read it yet, please peruse the description and reviews: it has 7 reviews, all good!

Thanks to everyone who’s supported the book so far by buying it, reviewing it, or just dropping by to say “good going!”

 

Spark Tally and Early Release!

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It seems strange to be posting Spark Tally in the morning, but I had to let you know that Rapunzel: Stay at Home Mom was released early!!!

You can buy it at Amazon, or if you own an ereader like the Nook or something that needs epub, you can purchase it at OmniLit. OmniLit also has a pdf version available to read right on your computer. I’ll be uploading it a few other places over the weekend.

To refresh your memory in case you missed me going on and on about this fairy tale all month 😉 the blurb:

Shut away from the world as a child, Rapunzel is now obsessed with the safety of her own children. When she locks her kids in a castle tower, her husband decides it’s time Rapunzel had a day off at Sleeping Beauty’s Spa. But the path to the spa is perilous, culminating in a confrontation with her fairy witch mother. Should Rapunzel have stayed safe in the tower after all?

And the Cover:

And my Pinterest board that my publicist has filled with stuff I never even imagined existed:

Okay, I’m done :) I haven’t even had coffee or Bailey’s or both together yet today! I’m just really excited!

Word count for me is about 750. I know partly the small number is due to spending time promoting and editing, but I had time available that I didn’t use wisely, I think. I really need to get a better work ethic going in February.

How did you guys do? Are we ready to move into a new month and make it great?

 

Rapunzel Blurb

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Happy Monday!

It was a busy weekend for me. My husband and I formatted Rapunzel: Stay at Home Mom for Kindle, Nook and PDF. I’ve been pretty worried about getting the graphics to show up, but that ended up being no problem at all. If you decide to go into the self-publishing business, I highly recommend the formatting program Jutoh. It’s a fair price, and for the grief I think it saves, actually a bargain.

When we published the novel under my pen name back in October, everything was frantic because of my insane deadline. We were formatting it a day before it was due to be published. This time we have the luxury of catching more mistakes and getting it just right before publication. There is still a little bit of insanity because Julie and I are also currently editing the next romance under my pen name. Skiing is a part of the romance and I told her soon she would be seeing Rapunzel swooping down the slopes with her hair streaming behind her.

Rapunzel, however, is not a romance. As is tradition with fairy tales, I’ve changed it to suit the times and am using it to exaggerate parenting issues today. Here’s the blurb:

Shut away from the world as a child, Rapunzel is now obsessed with the safety of her own children. When she locks her kids in a castle tower, her husband decides it’s time Rapunzel had a day off at Sleeping Beauty’s Spa. But the path to the spa is perilous, culminating in a confrontation with her fairy witch mother. Should Rapunzel have stayed safe in the tower after all?

The countdown is on! Only twelve days until publication on January 31. I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am!

 

Spark Tally Friday!

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Congratulations to Shari Klase! Her story Princess in Peril is in the anthology Twice Upon a Time! It looks like it’s made it to #6 in Folklore on Amazon! Shari is giving away a copy on her blog so go to sklase.wordpress.com and comment on your favorite fairy tale!

This week has been up and down for me as far as writing. I’ve been doing editing. Rapunzel: Stay at Home Mom is ready for formatting. That’s always a great feeling.

My publicist has found some great articles and pics for my Pinterest Board about Rapunzel. Please check it out!

Unfortunately, I’m late for my next round of edits for my upcoming novel under my pen name. I have to get those done this weekend, but weekend writing time doesn’t always work out.

How did everyone else do?

Spark Tally Friday!

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I hope everyone has had a good week. Not so much writing done here: I think I got in 1000 words. The big project was submitting to an agent. I did it in a slightly unconventional way. We’ll see if it helps or not. I read so much about how you need to do your queries exactly so, and I think two things: 1. The queries must get awfully boring if they all follow the same formula and 2. If you are supposed to be so conventional, why do I hear stories like the author of Bridges over Madison County getting his agent by calling her. You are NEVER supposed to approach over the phone. But he did.

I didn’t call or use purple ink or anything like that. But I can’t say I followed the query code. I’ll keep you posted.

In other news, A Sunset Finish is on sale for 30% off at All Romance right now. If you haven’t tried it and are a regular reader of this blog, I think you’ll really like it. This blog is almost at 10,000 views which doesn’t include views of the Photo Flare Stories or any clicks on the original blog. I’m sure if I added those in, it would be well over 10,000. Thank you so much for all the clicks! It has been my hope to support the prizes on the blog with money I earn writing stories, but that has not happened so far. If you have bought my book, thank you! If you haven’t, please give it a try :) It will help me to continue to offer the contests.

Shameless advertisement over. I hope all of you have had a productive week and are looking forward to a rewarding weekend!

Remember the deadline for the contests has been extended to June 30th!

Inspiration for “Eat Your Heart Out”

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Sorry about the late post. I’m still readjusting to my new schedule.

First a bit of business. Deb pointed out that I put June 30th for the deadline on the Flash Photo pic story. That was a mistake, but I’m extending the deadline for both the Photo Flash and Photo Flare stories: June 30th for both. I hope to see some in my inbox soon.

While I was on vacation, I had a publication! My story “Eat Your Heart Out” was published in the first Darkness Internal edition of Voluted Tales. This is a grimmer story than I usually write, and one that went through several rewrites as editors kept giving me the “close but not quite” comments.

The inspiration for it was from two thoughts colliding. Julie asked me one day, “Who ever thought of the term ‘eat your heart out’? It’s actually pretty disgusting.” I totally agreed with her, but, for whatever reason, it made me think of a friend of mine who has a knick-knack frame that her husband made for her out of wood. Every anniversary, he carves a heart out of wood and puts it in the frame for her. It’s beautiful. I had thought to take a picture of it for this blog, but Julie thought my friend might not want that after reading the story :)

When Julie’s comment about the phrase “eat your heart out” collided with my memory of the heart frame, the spark for the story appeared. What if a girl’s mother made her a heart box to keep her boyfriends’ hearts in so her own never got broken? I know, very dark for me, but I was at a frustrated point where I was seeing only bleak stories getting published.

Surprisingly, I’m quite fond of this story. I think it’s because I particularly like the moments in it. It’s written in a style I was experimenting with and kind of enjoyed, though I think the style held it back from publication. But I’ll let you be the judge. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Inspiration for A Menagerie of Tarot

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I’m back! I’ve been gone on a delightful family vacation for three weeks thanks to my in-laws Bill and Pat. They drove us out to Florida where we spent many days enjoying Walt Disney World. Because I wanted to finish writing a novel before the vacation, I was unable to get posts pre-written before I left. Sorry about that! But I should be back and on schedule for the rest of the summer now.

Before I left, my story “A Menagerie of Tarot” was released in Tales of the Talisman Volume IX Issue 4. This story harkens back to my days of studying Wicca and tarot card reading. Reading cards for someone is fascinating to me. I spent a Saturday practicing at my sister’s sorority house and was amazed how often people told me I got things right. I remember one girl sitting without saying a word through the whole reading, so I figured I was way off base. When I finished with the last card, she stood up and said, “Oh my god, that is exactly right” and left.

I adored my tarot card teacher. She was funny and organized and I learned quite a bit from her. My wicca teacher was kind of a walking disaster like the teacher in my story, though she was very young. Her car always broke down and she did talk about the skin walkers way too much. Because of her paranoia, I was pointed in the direction of books about psychic protection which I’m sure will be of good use in one of my long stories that I want to write.

“A Menagerie of Tarot” is very New Mexican. It takes place at the Albuquerque Zoo, the main character is Navajo, and it pulls from the Navajo folk lore about skin walkers. It’s actually one of my favorites, though it’s pretty gritty. I created the ambiance for the story from an Indigo Girls concert I went to at the zoo many years ago. If you’ve never been to an Indigo Girls concert, you really should. Not only is their music an emotional blanket to warm your soul in, but also the concert goers are the most diverse you will ever see.

I hope you read “A Menagerie of Tarot” and let me know what you think. I would love to know.

Spark Tally Friday

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Happy Friday! My story “Dream Pastures” is live at Kazka Press. Please check it out. Sadly, this is their second to last issue before shutting down :( I’m so pleased I made it in one more time.

I also wrote 10,000 words this week! Finally. It’s been so long since I made my word count goal that I was worried I could no longer do it.

Robin McKinley always says she has no control over when the stories will come to her. She resigns herself to this cosmic storyboard. Obviously it works for her because she’s built her career on it, but it doesn’t work for me. Many of my Gwen stories fall in my head with the plot fully formed, but outside of those stories it can be a struggle. I’ll keep a story idea in the back of my mind for a long time. Last week, I ripped one of those ideas forward and decided now was the time to write it. I had 5000 words down in first person present. As I rewrote all those words, the characters formulated better in my mind. This week the words just rolled off my fingers. It was so nice to write that way again for a change. I feel the past two months have been a struggle.

How did you guys do?