YA Giveaway Hop

I've spent much of my day entering YA giveaways hosted by I Am A Reader, Not A Writer and Down The Rabbit Hole. There are 226 blogs participating in this YA Giveaway Hop. It's crazy! I'm still learning about all this and I had no idea there were such big giveaways. I wish I had gotten started with this blog earlier so I could participate, but now I know for the future. I'm finding so many good resources and hopefully I can start talking to some of these bloggers I am now following. I feel like today's been productive and I still have 2 more days to keep entering before the giveaways close!

Provex City should be done with it's final proofread in a week or two and then I'm ready to get it formatted for Kindle and Smashwords. I'm so anxious to be so close to getting Provex City up for anyone to read. I also saw going through all these blogs today how many indie- and self-published authors there are out in the marketplace. It's intimidating. But it's more of an inspiration than a deterrent. I'm doing the right thing. I'm right where I'm supposed to be. I feel it!

Thank you to all the blogs participating in the YA Giveaway Hop! And thank you to anyone who adds me on here, Twitter, or Facebook to reciprocate my adds! Thank you so so so much!

Who Cares About The New Guy?

That's a big fear starting out. Who cares about me and what I have to say? That's probably why I've waited so long to get this blog started. I procrastinated a lot. I procrastinated with my website and with Facebook, too. I am more of a solitary person, which is one of the reasons I like to write. It's an intimate experience.

That was one of the advantages I was focused on with getting an agent, someone to do the talking for me. Someone to talk me up because I don't like talking about myself. But like Howard Stern discussed with his wife in Private Parts, he had to get personal, really let people in. That's what I'll attempt to do here because I don't have someone to talk on my behalf. Who knew writers also had to be salesmen?

So who cares about the new guy? Not many people yet. But it's okay. I won't be the new guy forever. One day someone reading this post with be the new guy and I'll say that wherever you're at is a great place to start. Welcome, new guy!

A Conversation Between Friends

I've read a lot of blogs that have their own special niches and/or gimmicks to get their readers' attention or some other guarantee to provide consistency. Posting in a character's point-of-view. Reviewing other books. Providing author interviews. Creating a fantasy club or class. Providing grammar or writing advice. And all the power to those bloggers. If I had one of those ideas or thought I was in a position to hand out advice, then I might be doing that as well.

But I don't plan on doing any of those things. I don't want to hold myself to a strict or predictable schedule. I'd like to write what I feel in the moment. For me it's important to find the flow when I'm writing, and some days are better than others. Ideas come in the middle of the night and fail to come after staring at a computer screen for an hour. I don't feel qualified dealing out any sort of writing advice. I subscribe to three writing magazines and read numerous agents blogs and find so much conflicting advice it drives me crazy. And besides, a lot of it is subjective. And there's never just one way to get somewhere, not one right way, no single way to succeed.

I plan on just talking about my book, a little about myself and some of the strange ideas floating around in my head, my processes, dreams of grandeur, obstacles, and insecurities that writers who are not yet where they ultimately want to be can hopefully relate to. And that was a run-on sentence that I'm not going to be concerned about editing. Editing is for my stories. This will just be conversational between you and I, a conversation between friends. I don't know if this is a right way or even a good way to go about writing a blog, but it's the way I'm choosing now. Thanks again for reading! 

The Start

Everyone has to start somewhere and I'm starting here.

I will use this blog to generate buzz and excitement around my first novel, Provex City. I originally wrote it about two years ago and spent way too long editing and submitting, re-editing and resubmitting. I even changed the title and resubmitted to the same agents (which I know is a major no-no) hoping my massive edits would make it sound like a completely new story. It was previously titled Shroud Lifted. I liked that title, but I like Provex City more. No one was fooled. I was given the opportunity to submit several partial drafts, but that was where my road to getting an agent came to a screeching halt. It's hard not to take submission rejection as personal rejection. I stressed about it for a long time. But it's time to stop stessing. It's time to take action.

I don't blame any agent for rejecting my submission (or submissions). I admit many of them were not very good. Many were sent out before they were ready. But I'm ready now. As Anthony Robbins would say, use your personal power and take action. This is me taking action--not quitting--taking control. I'm not going to do everything right, but I'm going to do everything I can to follow a dream. And that dream is to have one million people read Provex City. Is that too much to ask? Is that so unreasonable? Maybe I've been too reasonable in my life and it's time to become unreasonable. That dream is now out in the universe to set into motion the events necessary to make it a reality. Thank you in advance for what right now may seem unreasonable, but certainly not impossible. (And when I reach one million, I'm shooting for ten million.)

I am taking the fate and future of Provex City into my own hands by putting it up on Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com myself (in ebook format for now, which seems to be the future). I am excited and terrified by the creative control. The cover art I had created for me can now be used. I don't have to worry about a publisher changing the title. And I can now confidently say that Provex City will be one of four books, the first book in the Lorne Family Vault Series. Like it? It's been in my head for two years now and I can finally tell someone other than my wife.

This has become a long first post. I'll wait until later to dive more into Provex City, the future of the series, and little tid-bits and anecdotes about myself. So I'll sign-off here. Thank you for reading. I hope I've peaked your interest. And I hope you come back and visit me again soon.