SCBWI Summer Conference & A Muddy Good Time!

I hope everyone's had a great weekend. I've had family in town for the past week, so it's been a little hectic...but definitely a blast. Last Thursday we made the short drive to Disneyland, which was my daughter's first time. She loved Astro Blasters and the churros (just like her mommy!). Then on Saturday we did a 5K mud run in Temecula (little Gwendolyn had to sit this one out). That showed me how out of shape I'm in. I survived, but I'm still sore. I'm not really a big fan of running, but a mud run makes it fun. You can see my after picture. I need to start training for a next one!

One the literary side of things, registration for the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators) summer conference began last Thursday.

Click on the picture to visit the webpage

This will be my third year going and I'm very much looking forward to it. They always have great speakers and break-out sessions. And the Hyatt Regency isn't too shabby, either. This year I've signed up to get a professional consultation. For a small extra fee (I hope it's worth it), I'll be submitting 10 pages ahead of time, which will be reviewed by a literary agent or editor. Then during the conference, I'll get one-on-one feedback from that agent or editor. I'm excited, but a little intimidated. Now all I have to do is start my new writing project so I have something to submit...but more about that later.

To those of you participating in the April A to Z challenge, good luck on the final leg! You're almost there! I haven't gotten around to many blogs over the past few weeks, but I'll try to do a better job of that this week. Happy Monday!

New SUSY Asylum Cover

I mentioned in my IWSG post last week that I was just about to order the proof copy for my second book, SUSY Asylum. Well, I did, and I got it yesterday. Can you say, "Happy dance?"The first time holding a new book that I've written is such a surreal experience. It's time for one more read through to catch a few more of those pesky typos and then it will be ready to release on Amazon.

I have been struggling with one thing since the Indie ReCon online conference. Is the cover that I directed appropriate for my book...and books (since I will be re-releasing Provex City shortly after SUSY Asylum goes on sale). I always envisioned my covers with full artwork like the Harry Potter books. So that's what I had created. But the Harry Potter books are technically middle grade. Looking at countless covers on Amazon, over ninety percent of the young adult books out there have graphic art covers. Am I sending the wrong message with my covers? I wrestled with the question for weeks and finally decided, yes, I am sending the wrong message to readers at a first glance. There is a good chance the first impressions of my covers are that they're for a younger audience than intended.

I believe that when you're ready, the right people will appear. And that was my experience here. I was intrigued by M. Pax's new covers, Stopover at the Backworlds' Edge and Boomtown Craze (maybe you've heard of them...wink wink), and saw that they were done by the same cover designer: Erin Dameron-Hill. You can visit her blog and see a bunch of her covers HERE. I emailed her...and I had a new cover less than a week later. I'm excited to finally show it to you...SUSY Asylum like you've never seen it before!

Now Erin is working on the new Provex City cover to match the look and feel of this one, and I can't wait to see it! She does great work, is really responsive, and has affordable prices. If you're looking for a cover designer, she's definitely someone to check out.

www.edhgraphics.blogspot.com

IWSG: Interior Formatting

Happy Insecure Writer's Support Group Wednesday! Thank you again to Alex J. Cavanaugh, the creator of the group. The first Wednesday of every month is dedicated to this group of supportive writers. If it's something you're not familiar with, then please click on Alex's link above for more information and to sign up!

I know many of you are already three days deep into the A-Z April Challenge. I survived it last year and wanted to do it again, but I feel like I've fallen so behind in my writing that I shouldn't be taking on more challenges at this time. Hopefully, I can find a better balance next year.

When I submitted Provex City to Createspace last year, I paid them to do everything. This time around, for my second book, SUSY Asylum, I am doing all the formatting myself, submitting to Createspace as a finished product. For a self publisher on a budget, this is a way I can save some money.

For last month's IWSG post, I talked about Indie ReCon and how much great information was in the posts for that online conference. One thing I found through the conference was The Book Designer, which has a wealth of information, resources, and advice for self published authors. One of the products offered on the site is a Microsoft Word template for formatting the interiors of POD books.

I was skeptical of buying a template for $100, but if it worked and I could do it myself, then it would save me $100 each time I published a new book through Createspace. So I looked at it as an investment. After playing with the template for a few days I got the interior of SUSY Asylum to a point that I thought looked professional, submitted it to Createspace, and received an email the next day that it had been approved.

On The Book Designer, there are currently six interior templates for POD books and ebooks, and since they're in Word, they are easy to customize (I haven't tried the ebook template yet). It's a great product and perfect for those of us publishing through Createspace, Lightning Source, Lulu, or other POD companies.

I will be ordering my proof copy of SUSY Asylum tomorrow and will hopefully receive it sometime next week. I can't wait to finally hold it in my hands! 

I hope your April projects are off to a great start, and as always, thank you for reading!

Kick-Butt Character Giveaway Hop

March 23rd to 28th
Hosted by I Am A Reader, Not A Writer & Good Choice Reading

Thank you for stopping by and checking out my giveaway! I'm so excited for the opportunity to participate in this blog hop and offer a lucky winner one of the kick-butt books listed below.

On to the books...

Magic is dangerous—but love is more dangerous still.

When sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London's Downworld, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gaslit streets. Only the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos...
~Go to the entire Goodreads description of Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

It's been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back...

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel...
~Go to the entire Goodreads description of Angelfall by Susan Ee

 
My name is Gwen Frost, and I go to Mythos Academy; a school of myths, magic and warrior whiz kids, where even the lowliest geek knows how to chop off somebody's head with a sword and Logan Quinn, the hottest Spartan guy in school, also happens to be the deadliest. But lately, things have been weird, even for Mythos...
~Go to the entire Goodreads description of Touch of Frost by Jennifer Estep

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives...

~Go to the entire Goodreads description of Divergent by Veronica Roth







Here are the official rules/guidelines for the giveaway:

1. You must be a follower of this blog. Just click the Join this Site box below "Followers" on the sidebar.
2. You can gain extra entries by following me on Goodreads, Twitter,"liking" my Facebook fan page, tweeting about this giveaway, or leaving a comment below.
3. This is open to international followers. (Only if The Book Depository ships to your country; please check this link to see if your country's included.)
4. This contest runs from March 23 - 28.
5. The winner will be selected on March 29th via Rafflecopter random selection and announced in this post. You will have 48 hours to respond or I will draw another winner. 

***As the winner, if you are just dying to get another YA book, then you may substitute one of the books listed above for another of similar value from The Book Depository***

Thanks Again & Good Luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Also, make sure to check out the other blogs participating in this Giveaway Hop, too!

Top 10 Movie Countdown Blogfest!

Thank you to Captain Alex Cavanaugh for hosting this blogfest! And be sure to go to his blog for the full list of participants.

There are just too many movies to chose from, but I narrowed them down to the ten movie covers below (in no particular order). These are not movies that I necessary think are the best movies of all time, but movies that I can and have watched over and over, having become staples in my movie collection. Hopefully, you've enjoyed a few of these as well. I also want to mention two honorable mentions, Good Will Hunting (I couldn't bring myself to knock off one of the movies below, but it's right up there nonetheless) and Silver Lining's Playbook (which I've only seen once, so it can't officially be on the list, but I loved it so much that I know it'll make its way onto the list in the coming years).

Also, I love Harry Potter, and most of the movies deserve a place on my favorites list, but I didn't want to use up six or seven spots on Harry Potter. So Goblet of Fire represents the series as a whole.

IWSG Wednesday: Indie ReCon

Happy first Insecure Writer's Support Group Wednesday for 2013. Thank you again to Alex J. Cavanaugh, the creator of the group. The first Wednesday of every month is dedicated to this group of supportive writers. If it's something you're not familiar with, then please click on Alex's link above for more information and to sign up!

Fellow indie author, M. Pax, introduced me (and a number of other authors) to an online indie conference called Indie ReCon. It was a three day conference of blog posts and chats with over 40 successful indie authors sharing their experiences, journeys, advice, best practices, strategies, and motivation. And the best part is that even though it took place two weeks ago, the posts and chats are still up for you to read...actually, 52 posts in those three days. It's probably obvious that there is a ton of material (it took me over a week to work my way through them all!). So if you're an indie author like me and interested in additional indie resources, then click on the icon below.

I have some new things to try in the way of marketing and setting up my business, building a brand and a fan-base, but my biggest takeaway from people who have the exciting opportunity to do what they love full-time is to keep writing. Most businesses do not become successful from one product alone, but from multiple. The same goes for authors. Of course, there are always the exceptions, authors that blow up from their first novel. But most successful authors build their following over multiple books. So with that, a core strategy of success is building your backlog.

There is so much great information for indie authors at Indie ReCon, so I so encourage you to check it out. I've bookmarked numerous links and taken a lot of notes to help develop new strategies for me as I continue on this bumpy self-publishing journey. And I'm starting to write again, beginning my third book, because writing and telling unique and personal stories is what it's all about.

Believe anything is possible.

And as always, thank you for reading!

Back From the Future Blogfest

Thank you to Mary @ Wistful Nebula, Nicki @ Not-So-Deep Thoughts, and Suze @ Subliminal Coffee for setting up this blogfest. Here's the blurb so you know what it's all about:

You're up before dawn on a Saturday when the doorbell rings. You haven't brewed your coffee so you wonder if you imagined the sound. Plonking the half-filled carafe in the sink, you go to the front door and cautiously swing it open. No one there. As you cast your eyes to the ground, you see a parcel addressed to you ... from you.

You scoop it up and haul it inside, sensing something legitimate despite the extreme oddness of the situation. Carefully, you pry it open. Inside is a shoebox -- sent from ten years in the future -- and it's filled with items you have sent yourself.

What's in it?

I remove two trade paperbacks from the shoebox, and they are mine! Provex City and SUSY Asylum, but with new covers and a line across the top of each that reads: "New York Times Bestseller." On the back covers is a picture of myself that I've never seen before, but I don't look much older than I do now. I flip through the pages and scan familiar scenes. The words are definitely mine.

I turn to the first few pages to find the publisher and stop on a list of over fifteen books I've supposedly written. It would have been nice to get one of the books I haven't written yet to make my life a little easier, but I'm sure my future self already thought of that. Leave it to future Mike to be teaching present Mike a lesson in earning my own way. Damn you, future Mike! At least I don't have to fret about running out of ideas.  

My gaze drops to one more book in the shoebox. I set the other two books down and reach for my original Createspace proof of Provex City. I still have this book buried in my bookcase somewhere--a copy I never want to lose. It was the first book I had ever held in my hands with my name on it. With all of its imperfections, it symbolizes my transformation into an author. I open up the front cover and find a short inscription:

"Remember to always believe anything is possible."

I close the cover and know it to be true.

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Thank you for reading and be sure to check out the other awesome bloggers signed up for this blogfest!