Proud and Disappointed at the same time

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This might get a tad long...... [why is it, when someone says that, you know there's a rant coming?!]

But first, I had a few proud moments this week.
1) my son got reader of the year award for the Pre-K thru 2 category...for the entire school district. Wow! Way to go kiddo. He's a kindergartner who reads at a second grade level. Nice job!
2) at my other son's Boy Scout meeting this week, the Troop leader came over to me, confirmed I was his mother then proceeded to rave about what a great job my son had done on the camp-out the previous weekend. "He was the first to pitch in and get things done...and he knew what he was doing, too. From putting up a tent to cooking." So proud of him for taking camping [and all his dad has taught him] seriously, and having fun, too.
3) A couple of weeks ago, my daughter came home with an assignment I needed to sign for...a volunteer project. She told me she had a friend and they were going to go to a nursing home and volunteer. I admit, I was wary...sounded like a lot of work for me! They're only kids(13yo). Are they really going to find somewhere to go? Make arrangements? Get it done? At the least, I knew I was going to be doing an added amount of running around, not to mention that I'd only be lucky if the other girl's parents were willing to give as much as I would have to... that wasn't a statement about the parents. I didn't know them...yet. As a matter of fact, that was my Cynical Nature coming out. Here comes the proud part... they did it. My daughter spoke to the counselor at school, made arrangements with a nursing home and reported that they needed to go to the facility for orientation the next day. They picked a day and decided they would go in on Saturday.

Awesome! Really proud of her. She's getting so grown up and responsible. And she knows what's right... and I can tell because she called me this evening.

And this is where the disappointment comes in...

Because when I asked her about when they were going over to the Nursing Home in the morning she informed me that her friend hadn't liked going there and thought it was "freaky." But her friend's friend [or was it sister? I was too irritated by then to recall now] had a Special Olympics event going on tomorrow too and they were going to do that instead.

Really. Uh, no. Okay, I flipped a little at first. Did she really think I was going to let her go who knows where with who knows who to do who knows what? Not to mention the fact that she'd already made a commitment to something else. I'd signed my name to the form! Seriously. This other girl's parents were okay with this? She could just back out because..."old people are freaky?" I reminded my daughter that these people were God's people and that it might be a little uncomfortable and that it took some getting used to...to work with the elderly, but that she was going. She'd made the commitment...I'd signed the project slip from school that this is what she was doing.

My daughter did not fight it...she knew it was coming. Maybe she hoped for a different outcome. I suppose I don't blame her.

But I do blame that girl's parents. I sent my daughter to their house because this is what they had planned to do in order to get their project done... on the other hand, I'm getting the idea that I'm the only one who thought she was going there so they could "DO THEIR PROJECT." I conceded to picking her up at NOON...Noon! They had another friend over as well. Not just Virginia and this girl. I think I'll just show up at about 11:30.

I feel like shaking those parents...don't they know they are going to be OLD? And then what? They're going to roll around in their wheelchairs and bitch at the wall in front of them that no one comes to see them and young people just don't respect their elders and young people have no sense of commitment...

Kids today are not help accountable.
Not to sound self-righteous or anything...but mine are and will be held accountable. When they say they are going to do something, they will do it. Even if it's harder than they expected it would be.

Picture Perfect

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I have a few kids... ya know.
This one was picture perfect last week when we visited the National Infantry Museum.
Hope she feels the love tomorrow, because I'm going back!

and I am getting into that outside exhibit if I have to climb a frickin' fence. :P My time-travel needs inspiration! It's been waiting WEEKS for the opportunity to conspire with the MUSE.  :D

And for missing Wordless Wednesday, how can I not give you that face?!


Later this weekend, more on Self-Publishing. Promise.

Hot?

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...um, I don't mean the weather.

I'm wondering, how hot is too hot for close-doored sex in a romance novel?

Sexual tension, brought to you by a sweet[ish] author.

Actually, I visited someone's blog recently who wrote [it was somewhere on there], and I'm paraphrasing... An author who writes [and deletes] the steamy scenes.  I might have to go find her and ask how MUCH she deletes. :D

Any thoughts on what's acceptable?
Not for the Faith/conversion-driven, religious fiction, either.
I do not write those... [sounds awful, doesn't it! LOL :D]


Me and Self Publishing?!

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Despite the naysayers and the wary warners, at the end of last year, I decided that I was going to publish something this year, even if that meant self-publishing. I'd done my research, but the venture still seemed daunting... [thanks to Starving Author for the word choice!] The hardest part...promotion and marketing. How to get a book out to reviewers? to book websites? to READERS?

[understatement of the year alert] Without readers, my book won't sell.

This issue, even now, makes a publisher ideal. Even the smaller presses have connections it would take me twice as long to make only because I'd have to do the research first. It's hard to write and promo/market at the same time. I've watched authors do this and I've seen them get dragged down by the process.

Really, we all just want to write.

For eight years, I've been writing. Now, I have several manuscripts. Yes, I'll keep writing, but I don't mind the thought of slowing down in order to put my work out there.

What did I do first?

I picked a manuscript and hired an editor. Why this manuscript?

Because it was different than most of my other work, a contemporary romance when I'd been writing romantic suspense for years. It had been through my crit group and a few beta readers already. I was happy with this story and had gotten some decent, positive feedback already.

Why hire an editor?

Because the biggest complaint about self published work is crappy writing, typos, misused words, overused words, incorrect grammar/punctuation... Overall, stuff that should be easily found by an editor or critique group. I picked someone I knew of, but wasn't friends with. I checked her reviews and feedback. I sent her a five page sample so I could see her work. All my dealings with her at this point had been professional, business-like. Her price wasn't the cheapest, but I found it to be reasonable and within my budget. That's when I hired Rhonda Helms. I don't mind putting a shout out to Rhonda. She did a great job on line edits... on my next manuscript, I'll put her through her paces for content edits.

What next? [besides revisions]

Where to publish. This might seem inane, but there are several means of self-publishing out there--not to mention digital vs hard copy. There's direct, going straight to the book seller, like Barnes and Noble [Pub it] or Amazon [Kindle]. Or through third party distributors, like Smashwords. Smashwords will take your [formatted]ms and distribute it to a number of book sellers, including BN and Amazon. Tempting as that is, you have to be sure you're willing to hold out on the money end. Word is that there is some delay in seeing your proceeds. I imagine this would be true for most third party distributors.

Me?

I decided a good while ago that digital was the only answer anymore. With all the technology out there, people want digital--unless they don't, and in those cases, I find they are living with their heads in the sand. All that aside, I love to hold a book, too! But I like my ereader for practical reasons... Now, there is my grandmother, and I might concede a POD [print on demand] publishing strategy [like Createspace or Lulu] so I can get a book in her hands. But that, I still have to look into. :) I also think that if formatting is my job anyway, I might as well publish directly through the big two [BN and A]. And upload to Smashwords for the more obscure sellers. Maybe I'm crazy!! If you've done this before, let me know your thoughts. I'm interested.

Apparently, I've done some thinking in the past several months.
Now that I know what direction I'm taking, next blog post I'll touch on the actual book. After that, perhaps my thoughts on promotion??? Am I boring you yet?! Let me know if you have any questions...

And have a great week!
With Love,
Bethanne



The best laid plans....

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Monday, trial week for blog without word verification...
I've had four spam come through in 24 hours. 
With word verification, I'd get maybe 2 a month...maybe.
Unbelievable!

Down with Spammers! I will go back to Word Verification, if it ends up being a hassle. That stinks because I know how annoying it can be.

I didn't do Sunday Summation this week. I figured since I'm doing a little series on self-publishing, it sums up what I'm doing pretty well. Tomorrow I'll finish that up. Today I'm enjoying...something. I'm not not enjoying it, that's for sure.

Bottom line, though. I could use a nap! LOL :D
And air conditioning...which we haven't caved into yet, but I'm getting close. I can't promise that during the next field training exercise the air isn't going to go on. :(  That's just the brakes...

I can do fans, all of them, with windows open, but if it hits 90? With humidity? Forget. I have my limits.
And that's one of them.

More on Self Publishing

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Let's discuss this E business for a minute...call me crazy, but I have such a hard time deciding HOW to write this out. Do I go the way of Apple and the iPhone, iPad, iPod?? Making it eBook, ePublishing, eMarket...

Or do we hyphen the darn words? E-books, E-publisher... etc.

Perhaps it's neither and I should just write it like it's a word, epublishing. 

When it comes right down to it, I get confused! hahaha. What can I say? I like to follow the rules and when the rules aren't clear, my world is out of sorts. :D Before I move on to Self Publishing, I have to say there are a few top epublishers that I am willing to sub to. As a matter of fact, I have two submissions out right now. Keep your fingers crossed for me!! :D

Self Publishing: And how I've been convinced it's a worthwhile effort

Example. It's thrilling to hear the success stories. Even knowing the chances of multi-thousand dollar success [notice how I'm too shy to actually use the word million], I have friends who sell a decent amount and are able to supplement an income. Dreams are of stardom, success, fame... 

Goals, sometimes they're merely making a few extra dollars every month so you can go out to dinner as a family. Ya know? 

So that's about the money... making your hobby pay. 

As the industry has changed, so has our method of finding and discovering books. The internet opened all the doors. I'm serious! You just have to Google a word, put a comma, and add fiction to it...and voila! A list of books and the links to buy them. Amazon, BN, and a number of smaller booksellers are leaving the market open to its customers. Which is why [or one of the reasons why] self publishing is having so much success. It's one of the reasons I've [gone to the dark side] and started preparing one of my manuscripts for publication. I'm lucky because I belong to a crit group. So my work not only has to satisfy ME, but it goes through at least one round of edits with my crit partners. I have the luxury of those crit partners or friends and aquaintances reading through it again.... and then I hire an editor who will hopefully catch even more mistakes. Finally, I'll have one hoorah with another beta reader [or two]. 

The concern with self publishing is about flooding the market with a less than quality product. Any Tom, Dick or Harriet can "write" a book and [try to]sell it. And I've read some pretty, pretty, pretty crappy books... it's a given. I can say, with confidence that the crap coming from the SP shelf is crappier than the crap off the NYP shelf. The bottom line, though...is that they both have crap. Only you're going to pay alot more for the NYP crap. Recently, I bought a self pubbed book for 99cents. My first surprise was the length... 900 pages. 900!! I'm sorry, but if you need 900 pages to finish a romance story, you probably need two books [or even three]. And it was promotioned as romance, but I found as I read that it wasn't really. It was more inspirational/women's literature... with way too many peculiarities. 

....whoa!! I have to stop myself. It's easy to get on that train and go off on a tangent. My point is 99cents is worth the lesson in how NOT to write a story! 99cents does not kill my budget. And I learn how to be more selective in my choices. I learn what to look for...cover art, blurbs, sample chapters, webpages-does the author have one? do they have other books out? is the page professional looking? 

OH!, do they thank their family or do they thank their wonderful, competent editor who helped them get to where they are?  haha. 

Like with epublishing, self publication and the digital era, on the whole, allows us to publish our smaller works. Gone are the days when an author had to write a number of short stories before being published. People love getting short stories! We live in a busy world, saturated with instant gratification. There's nothing more satisfying than reading an entire story in one sitting...on your ereader, while you wait for your oil to be changed.

I'm going to stop there... probably could have stopped sooner, so many words! How unlike me. :D 
Next post on self publishing, I'll go through the steps I've taken to become self published. 
Have a great weekend!!
With Love,
Bethanne

Word Verification

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I have word verification set up on my blog.
Out of curiosity, anyone else have trouble reading it? I know. That's the point, in order to make sure you're real, but I mean unusually hard to read! Let me know what browser and computer you use, too!! :D
I hate when commenters get discouraged...

Thanks for the feedback!
Tomorrow, back to my regularly scheduled programing and more on Self-Publishing.
With Love,
Bethanne

On Self-Publishing

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My thoughts:

Originally, eight years ago, I wasn't interested in self-publishing. I knew only one gal who'd gone that road. At that time, she was a pioneer fiction writer. Most self-published authors were non-fiction, niche writers. She did not sell, not like you want a book to sell, making the bestseller list [ANY bestseller list!]. Also, ebooks had only just begun having growing pains. She published in a paperback world. [cha-ching] Not an inexpensive endeavor.  During those early years, it was pounded into our heads, money ALWAYS flows toward the author! More on that in my next post...

I'd read a few self-published titles. Not enough to be an expert, but enough to get frustrated by the incompetence. It was assumed an author only went that route when all other options had been played. They didn't write well enough to catch someone's eye therefore, they would publish their own work. This approach screams second best! What I'd read so far did not negate this perspective. Beginner mistakes--grammar, head-hopping, formatting.

It was about three to six years of writing and learning and crafting and learning some more before e-publishing really came into young adulthood. Forget erotic, sex focused stories with nudies on the front... the book market had opened up to everyone. Publishers wanted it all, romance--short, medium, and long stories. They wanted stories that didn't fit the traditional market. Kindle hit stores as did BN's Nook. The best thing about all these wonderfully e-published books? Pricing. They were cheap. I did not have to spend at least eight dollars to own a book anymore. Music to my ears.

As an author, I loved how fast the process became and I loved the contact. From submission to response, the longest wait seemed to be about twelve weeks. I'd been waiting that long just to hear from an agent! Forget the NY publisher, they were not accessible to the author, ever. Get an agent was the only way into NY. Suddenly, I could talk to editors, network with them, appeal to them with stories they were looking for. Submission calls within e-publishing allowed me to consider new stories or dig up already written ones. And I continued to submit, getting a few hits, nibbles of interest, over the past few years.

[side note: still writing, still learning, btw. It never stops, especially when you belong to a crit group like Passionate Critters]

I was [am] still a little nervous about e-publishing. A few years ago the reasons were twofold. Good publishers were hard to find. There seemed to be no telling who would stick around, who had good editors and GREAT leadership, but as a few years have passed, the well-managed ones have made a name for themselves and stand out as worthwhile. Good covers were[are] hard to find. I know we should never judge a book by its cover, but there are a couple of companies I hesitate to submit to because their covers are crappy--and I don't mean half naked people! I mean cut and pasted images... distorted figures, no symmetry, no appeal. :P  Don't be fooled...a cover can make or break your book! Nakedness is still often an issue that I set on a scale and weigh, but overall, the good e-publishers don't just throw a naked couple on the front of their books in hopes of appealing to someone's libido.

Wow, I'm chatty today. I haven't even touched on Self-Publishing yet...

Eight years is a long time, and I won't be able to do it in one blog post.
Bottom line for today...in five years, I pretty much gave up on traditional publishing. I do have a book for young people that I will start subbing through traditional routes, but I will definitely be more selective about how long I try for and who I target. Something tells me that within another 5 years, juvenile fiction could very well go the same way as Romance and Mainstream.

Have a great week, Friends!
With Love,
Bethanne

Miracle Monday

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I found a Parking Spot at Martin Army Community Hospital. 
That is a MIRACLE!  :D

I'm just thankful today for military life. Even with its ups and downs, I find it has an odd sense of order that I can understand and appreciate. Might make me one of a few..! But when it comes right down to it, I'd rather deal with the military's EFMP or ACS or whatever acronym I happen to need than head to the city or county or state human services... :P

And with a special need kid, that's what I'd be doing. 

Someone else commented about this, and I agree. The sense of community and helpfulness is greater within the Army family than I've ever found in the gov't system [with a few exceptions, of course].  I think it's because....

We're all in it together, working the system, benefitting from the system, trying to maintain or better our quality of life.

Happy Easter

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It's a good day for Christians.
I love the hope that comes with my Faith.
The message of life eternal was reiterated at Mass today, and for some reason stuck out to me.
Eat the Bread-of-Life, go to heaven...
I like it because it re-enforces my belief that my life has a purpose, the my soul is individual to me.
I'm not a chance happening or a being that will disappear at the end of an era.
I'm so special...I get to exist for eternity, irreplaceable.

Have a great week, friends.
May life be filled with peace.
Love,
Bethanne

Killer CheeseCake

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Killer Cheese Cake -- [ignore the way I sound on video...LOL]

from the internet, allrecipes...with a few minor adjustments of my own. 
So easy to make!!

Couple packages of Philadelphia
about 2/3 cup of Sugar
2 eggs
and vanilla.

I ended up adding heavy whipping cream to that because there was no way to pour it. As a matter of fact, I still couldn't pour it and had to use a spatula to spread it out. 

There's a topping as well. AFter the cake cools completely [about 2 hours]
about 10 oz. sour cream, sugar and vanilla
poured over the top and baked again for about 10 minutes.

Can't wait to eat this tomorrow. :D
I'll post pictures again later. 
Have a beautiful Saturday.

With Love,
Bethanne

Fragrance

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Clouds cover the blue sky--or I assume it's still blue.
Temperatures are ideal.
And I can't believe how fragrant the air is down here.
My home is infused with honeysuckle...all the time.

If you're from Decatur, Illinois, you understand the glory of what this means.
One thing I do NOT miss from my beloved home in Illinois is the smell of corn processing...and soy, too.
Ugh! Never pretty.

Easter is just days away.
I hope you all are anticipating it as much as I am!
With Love,
Bethanne

Spring Break is on Us

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I'm looking forward to this week.
Almost positive I won't get a good bit of writing done, I'm glad I spent yesterday working through a little chunk of it. Now if I get to sit down--on the off chance--I can do a crit or two instead and not feel like I'm doing NOTHING for myself.
Anyway, I'll be a bit absent a wee bit over the next several days.
But have no worries...
I'll be lounging with drinks.
Reading for fun.
Watching television and movies.

...oh wait, it's THE KIDS' Spring Break.
Nevermind.

I'll just be a little busier this week, entertainer extraordinaire!

Friday Five

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I am so thankful for the end of this week...
and it's ending with a bang. Had to make a doctors appointment for my son who is covered in some kind of rash. Looks like poison ivy, but it's bad! Grrr... tired of that office. haha.

If this were fiction friday, I'd write a story about a lady who is completely bored, has no errands to run and...only one perfectly behaved child. But it did occur to me that I've been bitching alot lately about my life--how busy it is, how frantic I am. Blah, blah, blah.

This Friday, I am going to write a list of all the things I am grateful for, in no particular order:
1. I can look back on the last five years and see God working in my life. That's something to think about... usually hindsight is 20/20 a lot later for me. haha. :D I'm thankful for my church and the people who have touched my life.

2. My writing group, who has seen me through so much and still likes me when I'm so annoying that I annoy myself. You really can not replace a good writing group of friends.

3. My family, my husband [i'll leave him out of this one, because if you don't know I love my husband, you obviously haven't been paying attention] and children. I've come to such a realization lately. It is very hard to parent kids who are over 10. Comparatively, it's easy when they are little. How is it that love becomes awkward? Am I just lacking in something? I don't know, but I'm grateful for the moments when I see myself clearly and can be stricken to change. Because, I want to love my kids like I did when it was easy...and full of snuggles and kisses and hugs...even when they are too old for it. More touches because when we lose that, it's very sad.

4. Silly as it sounds, I'm grateful to have a clean car. I know how hard it is to keep a clean car. My kids get annoyed because they have to help clean it. And occasionally I get annoyed because my husband is pretty tight about it. BUT, all that aside, I am so happy to have a car that isn't sticky, littered and/or cluttered.

5. I'm grateful for the busyness that proves I am alive....

even if it drives me insane!! :D