Hunting for Ideas

So let's pretend a young bride-to-be is helping her mother-in-law sort through the junk in her attic, when they come across a lovely old wedding dress. The mother-in-law reacts in disgust and tells her that the dress belonged to the psychotic fiancee of her deceased brother, who killed herself and the mother-in-laws brother in a fit of jealous rage. They lay the dress aside, the mother-in-law decides to go shopping, and the young lady takes a nap...

...and awakens to the sound of silk rustling out in the hall.

It's an idea.

Anyways, I'm setting Argiope aside for a while so it can simmer on the back burner. I'm thinking about trying to make a "four-pack" of short stories while waiting for inspiration on the novel.

Today is Rowan's speech therapy, so it isn't one of my better "writing days." We'll just have to see if I get anything done.

Rowan is turning into a little computer junkie...who defends her rights to the computer with ferocity. We're going to have to watch that. She didn't even want to get up and go with me to  pick her brother up from school. As far as she was concerned, he liked it there and he could jolly well stay there so she wouldn't have to share. Sigh. Whatever happened to the sweet, loving kids I saw in all the advertisements?

Technical Difficulties

Blogspot wouldn't let me update my blog last night or this morning. Not a huge deal, but I'm surprised I haven't already got a call from my mother... checking to see if I'm dead in a ditch. It's okay, Mom, I'm still here.

I had another interview on Page Readers at Blogtalk Radio. This time it was with a bunch of other authors, all who are in the Silver Moon, Bloody Bullets anthology. I was the first author interviewed after the editor. I managed to not say "um" over a couple of hundred times, and this time I didn't sound so terrified. All in all, it went well.

Now that I have "The Barrow Wolf" finally published on the Kindle, I need to get back to writing. The question is...do I go back to work on Argiope, or do I do a few short story's? I'm actually sort of in the mood to craft a few good short stories. I'm sort of blocked on Argiope again anyways. That seems to happen periodically with that book, but it's okay. I'm now halfway through it, so I know it will eventually get done. I just need some inspiration on how to go forward.

Now I just need to get motivated to find the house under all this mess. I've been focusing on writing and promoting matters, and letting the housework slide. I also need to check the trap up in the attic and see if it's caught the sasquatch that keeps running laps over my bedroom. Somehow, I doubt it.

Oh well, back to work.

Sunday

It's Sunday morning, and the kids are ensconced at their computers while the wife snores lustily in the bed. All is peaceful in our little kingdom.

Today Sheridan will go to a friends birthday party, and I will spend time with Stinkerbell. Maybe we will do a little schoolwork so she won't fall out of the habit this summer. That's my biggest fear...that she will backslide over the summer and lose all the progress she made this past school year. I will have to keep an eye on that.

We have her signed up for ABA therapy on Mondays, speech therapy on Tuesdays, and speech and occupational therapies on Weds., so I'm hoping that will mitigate any backsliding she does over the summer. Oh well, time to enjoy the peace and quiet...the relative peace and quiet, that is.

Okay, NOW it's Available

The Barrow Wolf is now available at Amazon.com on the Kindle.

Now the fun begins again. I'm working on ads in another window as I type this, and soon will have them up and running.  This is an entirely different type of product than the The Ways of Khrem, even though it takes place in the same world. This is a short story uploaded for digital distribution, and it's priced at ninety-nine cents.

If all goes well, this will be the first of several kindle ventures. I have some other stories that I'm considering polishing and packaging together. Oh well, one thing at a time.

Back to work.

Working

Actually, it's not available quite yet. It will probably take one more day. But I have to be ready, so I'm gearing up for ad campaign number two. I learned a little about strategic ad placement with the last campaign, so I know i can be a lot more efficient with this one.
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Why ads for just a short story on the Kindle?
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Two reasons. First of all, I need to at least run some ads to work on what I'm learning, and to give some validity to the experiment I'm running. And second of all, I want to give the story the best chance I can. Not to mention, you always learn something by doing. So I'm going to run a more targeted and lower budget campaign this time, but hopefully an effective one. This time the ads will just link straight to the story on Amazon.com, since a whole webpage dedicated to a short story would be kind of much. Oh well, we'll see how this works out.

The Barrow Wolf

Finishing the Week

Well, the last day of school is behind me, and the week is careening towards a rousing finish.

Last night, I invited my friend Cherri Galbiati over to watch me attempt to upload my first short story to the Kindle. Let's just say it was a bit of a learning experience. I think I uploaded and downloaded that thing thirty times, trying to get it to look semi reasonable on the page. And this was while my attention hound of a seven year old was hovering in the background and trying new and original ways to interrupt the process. Fortunately, his sights were mainly on Cherri, and she did an admirable job of keeping the little booger busy.

Finally the process was done, and then I was told to wait about forty eight hours until the story would be available for purchase. Then Cherri and I went out to Denny's to talk writing, but I was so tired I was practically falling asleep in my french fries. So we made an early return of it and I went straight to bed.

Now it's Friday, and I have two kids expecting me to entertain them all day today.

Help!

Gathering Data

A man named Robert J. Ringer once postulated that "Reality isn't the way you wish things to be, nor the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are." He then went further to state that "You either work with reality, or it will automatically work against you."

So keeping those principles in mind, I have been gathering data on the advertising campaign I've been running, as well as paying close attention to all of my other experiences in my new career as a writer. I behooves me to gather as much information as I can, so I can make the best judgement possible as to what the realities are. And while all my information is preliminary, I'm starting to realize the writing business of today is a far cry from what I imagined it to be. I will be running another experiment soon, in the form of publishing an ebook short story, to round out my data a little bit. I want to be able to move forward with informed confidence, and the only way to do that is to gather all the data that I can.

On another front, today is Rowan's last day of school. It's a short day, which means I will have three final hours of semi-peace (the boy is home, after all), before I start sharing all my days with a rambunctious four year old. Then she will launch her summertime project of seeing if  she can drive Daddy into pulling out all his hair. I'm sure she has gathered her data and is ready to move forward with confidence as well.

Oh well, that which does not kill me, makes me stronger...or bald.

Moving Onwards

As my first set of internet ads start to expire, I'm getting ready for phase two of Project : Learn Writing Realities of Today. While I'm waiting for the final numbers to come in, I'm preparing my next release.

It is titled, The Barrow Wolf...and it is the story of a young shepherd who embarks on a quest for revenge. It runs a little over eight thousand words, and is currently being polished before I try to figure out how to format it for the Kindle. If all goes well, it should be submitted to the Kindle store in about a week. It will be sold for .99 cents.

It will be interesting to compare the results of the ebook market to the printed market.

On another note, today I intend to put the trap I bought up in the attic and hopefully capture the creature that has moved in up there and converted the space into it's own private gymnasium. Last night I think it was using our rafters as parallel bars...when it wasn't trying to unscrew the light fixture above my bed. Yep, something must be done. It will be kind of like my own private safari, in the savannahs of my attic. A real Hemingway experience.

Then I'll write a story about it.

Direction Change

Well, it's certainly been an interesting past couple of days...at least the parts where I've been conscious. This time I only slept for eight hours, so I'm hoping that whatever was making me sleep so long is finally behind me. If nothing else, I'm well rested.
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I'm still studying advertising numbers and sales, but I've decided to broaden the experiment. I'm going to take a story I'm working on, that was slated for a future anthology, and submit it as a straight to kindle story instead. The purpose of this is twofold. The story, called "The Barrow Wolf," takes place in the same world as "The Ways of Khrem," and having it out on kindle might act as free advertising for the novel. Second of all, I'm curious to see what the performance of a short story on the kindle would be, and what all goes into publishing on that platform. I know I'll have to generate a cover, but that shouldn't be too difficult. So that's what is going on on the writers front at the moment.

I'm also talking to Lenka of Lenkaland.com in order to set up an interview on her show. This show would deal both with writing, the novel, and living with Charcot Marie Tooth. Now that I have survived my first interview, I'm looking forward to this one without the same level of terror. We'll also see if I can do it and keep the number of times I say "uh" under a thousand repititions.  It ain't much, but it's a goal. I'm gonna have to work on things like that.