The Weekday Weimariner

I guess it's a trend: dogs that decide they aren't happy where they are and go find a new place to live. At least that's what a young Weimariner named Flynn has done. He lives about a mile or so down the road from us. His family is busy, they have kids, and a new baby. So he doesn't get much love at home. They have another dog, but she's much older and not a playmate.

One cold morning during March, my husband saw something in the bushes next to the house. He went out to investigate and found a sorry, bony looking Weimariner. Of course, both of us are animal lovers. We couldn't just let him suffer. So we fed him, bathed him, and the next day took him to the vet. His collar had writing on it, but it was too faded to read. The vet said that despite being very underweight, the dog was in good shape. He said to hold onto him for a week and see if anyone came by to claim him. If not, he would probably be ours.

The next day, "Bones" we'd started calling him, was out in the yard around the farm house playing with Wellie and Lola. A car pulled up and a lady got out and said he was her dog. His real name is Flynn and he's about 3 years old now. She explained that he was usually good and stayed home, but since she was due to deliver a baby soon, that she'd been in and out of hospital for quite some time. We explained that we didn't know and tried to find out who the owner was. He went home with her, and we didn't see him for a couple of weeks.

Thinking we'd seen the last of Flynn, we thought about getting another younger dog to play with Wellie. He's part American bulldog and has tons of energy. He needs someone to play with. Well, one morning I went out to go feed the horses and there's Flynn on the front porch to greet me. Of course this made Wellie happy. Flynn stayed around for probably 4 days before disappearing back home. We'd see him laying in the sun outside his house as we drove by. 

Flynn seems to have a schedule. Usually Monday or Tuesday he shows up on our doorstep. He must sleep in one of our nearby barns because he's always up early to greet me. On the days he "lives" with us, he gets fed twice a day and can play with Wellie anytime he's out. On Friday nights (like clockwork) he goes home. He must know that his family and the kids are home from work and school so they will play with him. Once Monday rolls around again, he's usually heading back to us. I guess you can't say animals are stupid (for the most part) because he knows where he can get the most love, food, and playtime. 

I'm not sure how long this will continue on. I do worry when he's out on the road that a car or truck will hit him. When he's with us, I do my best to keep him safe and out of trouble, but in the end, he's not really our dog. Part of me hopes the owner will realize he's happier elsewhere. But until that happens, we're just happy to have the weekday Weimariner.

Until next time my creatively obsessed friends.

Kathy

 Flynn when we first saw him.

 Getting a nap in a warm house.

 Flynn and Wellie, best buds.

 Flynn checking out our waterfall.

 Lola, Flynn, and Wellie.

 Flynn watching me muck out stalls.

Wellie and Flynn in the Gator ready to go.

That Spring Time Thing

Oh, yes, spring is in the air! Everything is in the mood for love. The birds, bees, horses, dogs, cats, fish, EVERYTHING! And with this flurry of love going on, I've yet to get another erotica story published. It's not for lack of effort; I have 3 parts of a story written, it's just finding the time between editing, formatting for clients, and running a 100 acre farm that seems to get in the way. And worst of all, on a daily basis I get ideas for fantastic stories in which I have no time to write. As you can see, this is my latest blog post in about a month. There just aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done. I'm sure you're all sitting here reading this and nodding.

Plus, I'm working on getting another installment of the "Space" series out by July. I have a beta reader going over it giving me great pointers, and will hopefully be on track with everything to have it out. I also need to make a trip to Memphis to meet with Prince Mongo and get the final details for The Hall- which I wrote last year and have yet to get it in print. Nope, not enough hours in the day, or days in the year. Time flies! I thought retiring from the Air Force would leave me more time--nope! It just got taken up by other things. Once in a while hubby is nice and mucks out the barn for me so I can write or do other work.

Folks joke about time management; yes, it's preached from the highest mountains, but can we really make it work? I laugh and joke too, but when you're running your own farm and publishing company, you need every second of time on your side. Because of everything on my plate, I have very little down time. It's probably a good thing, I'd go crazy with nothing to do. Even trying to relax and watch a movie has my mind going a mile a minute. I am a writer, and I think about it all the time. Insomnia sucks by the way! You lay in bed, wide awake, thinking and thinking. You don't want to get up, it's far too early for that. So you lie there and think and watch the hours tick by.

The best advice I can offer is set goals and keep a list. By setting goals I mean to pick something within reach and work on it until you have completed it. Right now I'm in the process of getting my first book ready to be republished. It's over 200K words and was total insanity to make that my first published work. But after 2 years, I have my rights back from the vanity press, and plan on releasing it the way it should've been done. At 38 chapters long, the task has been daunting. I made a goal of editing 1 chapter a day. So far, I've managed to keep up, and in a couple of days I will be printing it out to send to my editor. I'd like to have it published by the end of the year (on top of everything else I'm doing) and if all goes well, I should.

So as I sit here in my office, looking out the window at the grass that needs to me mowed--again, I'm making a mental list of everything I need to get done that day. Some days the list is long, others, I get to have a little "grown-up play time"- which usually equates to something fun that still requires work. 

If at times you feel discouraged because you have a lot on your plate, take a deep breath and try to relax. Sit down and organize your priorities-bills must get paid, the house must get cleaned, and the lawn begs to be mowed. And make sure you have time to feed your passion. Set aside time to write- even if you don't get much done, you will feel better knowing you put some words down. Even if it's just a sentence or two, it was something.

Spring is a lovely season for love. But it can be a busy season all the same. We writers must keep our chins up and soldier on in our offices while we watch the grass grow and the birds chirp. There will be time for all of that. Thank heavens the days are getting longer; now we need 36 hours in a day to get everything done! And not to mention time to handle life's emergencies.

Until next time, my creatively obsessed friends,

Kathy

Oh, yes, and spring brings the nesting birds. This one was #3 removed from my stove pipe! I wish they would decide to nest somewhere else. I need to add putting mesh around the chimney to the honey-do list.

One way to get some of the lawns mowed.

My newest "toy" is Bitsy- a 1953 Ferguson tractor. Sure, she's cute, but she's here for work.

Finally, some grown-up play time!

Meet Prince Mongo...The Hall will be an interesting book.

Ashlar Hall- where the story is set.

Marketing by the (e)book

This was also posted on another blog.

Another follow-up article to the one I did a while back. As authors, most of us detest the "M" word. I'm no exception. But, if you play your cards right, marketing opportunities can literally fall in your lap- FREE ones at that!

So, now you're wondering what stupendous things I'm going to tell you. This works very well if you're a prolific author. The reason being, the tactic is to draw folks to you, and your hopefully healthy backcatalog. This is pretty much a no-cost option to getting ebooks in people's hands. And you know what? I didn't think this up. I owe all the credit to one of my Indie author peers. He suggested this to me, simply because it worked for him—so well, he finally got to quit his day job and become a writer full time. How did he do it? He wrote a "free" ebook.

By free, he explained to me that I was to write either a novella or a full length novel. Even better, make it the first book in a series to get readers hooked and wanting more. Once completed, I got beta readers to go over it, and made any corrections. Since I have the know-how, I formatted and did the cover—all for little to no cost. The less money I put into it, the better. It didn't mean I was to cut corners, no, that book had probably 12 editing passes by me. Was it perfect? No! In fact I've had to make corrections and upload new versions. But I did the best I could for the lack of money.

Once you have this free ebook done, now you need to get it up on the internet for the entire world to see. This is where it can get a little tricky. We all know Amazon is the best place to get exposure. BUT, they won't let you put a book up there for free (unless you do the KDP Select with it). So, how do you get Az to price your book for free if you don't want to do Select? It requires a little patience, but in the end, it's worth it.

First: publish the book on Smashwords.com. You can list it there for free. Cool, tell folks about it. SW isn't as well known and the mighty Az, but, they also have a deal with Az that involves price matching. So, once your book is showing up free on SW, go to Az and publish there (just slap a .99 price on it for now) then get your friends, fellow authors, whomever, to log onto Az and use the price matching feature. They will need the link to your book for both sites. It took me just over a month and Az dropped the price to free.

Second: the media blitz. Facebook is a wealth of information, if you know where to look—or like me, just have dumb luck and stumble upon it. I started noticing my "friends" showing links to eReader News Daily and Pixel of Ink. Both are sites that post free Kindle books on a daily basis. I went to the eReader News website, found a contact email, and sent them a very polite email letting them know I had a free ebook on Amazon (and it was totally free, not KDP Select) and gave them the link. They sent me a nice email back and informed me of the day they would post my book (it was a Friday, I think). Up until now, my book had seen good movement in the free sci-fi-adventure category on Az but nothing fantastic. After eReader News posted that link, I could sit and watch my downloads going up by the very minute! I had over 1,000 downloads in ONE DAY!!! I was absolutely amazed! At the peak of the downloading frenzy, my book was #4 on the list. 

Third: don't sit back on your laurels. Yes, I had a "bestseller" on my hands, but that didn't mean I stopped. I did my best to politely post on as many Facebook pages as I could— being mindful not to be spammy about it. I used Twitter and finally figured out how those hashtags worked. By using #free #ebook #Kindle #sci-fi in my tweets, folks searching those words might stumble over my link for the book. It must've worked; I've picked up quite a few new followers on Twitter. Which leads me to:

Fourth: steering them to you! We're all just minnows in this giant sea of publishing. So how do you get someone to find you? Well, simple, tell them! When posting on Facebook or Twitter, don't be afraid to insert your Amazon author's page link. Yes, you're tooting your own horn, but in case you haven't noticed, no one else is there to do it for you. And make sure that page is as compelling as you can get it. Have the best picture you can of yourself, a bio that's interesting, perhaps a bit funny, and engages your audience to want to know more about you and your books. Basically, you're pimping yourself.

Okay, so now you've done all this, what to expect? I have the book posted on SW, Az, and Barnes and Noble—all for free. What I've seen is a gradual increase in my backcatalog sales- especially on Az. I went from making $4/mo in royalties on Az to making $20-30/mo. No, it's not a huge jump, but the good thing is I'm selling a book or two every day from my backcatalog. The free ebook is still getting downloads (it has fallen in the ranking but is still in the top 100) and now folks have hopefully read their free sample and are looking at what else I have to offer; or looking forward to part two. 

Now, what next?  More marketing! What? What? You say? More??!! Yes, this is the easiest of all. When you are formatting your books, don't forget to either put in the front or back matter any links you have: website, Facebook page, Twitter handle, anyway you would want your adoring fans to have access to you. ---A word of caution: DO NOT put your Az author page, or your SW author page—you will run into problems with conflicts of interest between the sellers and they may dump your book. Just use non-company related sites. If the book is part one of a series, don't forget to put: "Watch for Part 2 of ________" so they know there is more to come. And list any of your backcatalog along with your bio at the end, so they know you offer something else to read. 

This strategy worked well for me. Will it work for you? You never know until you try. There are so many ways to get your book out there, but for many of us, we can't afford to fork out loads of dough for advertising. So use what's freely available and make it work. Don't be afraid to be creative—we're writers for Pete's sake—we're supposed to be creative!

Until next time, my creatively obsessed friends,

Kathy

Helpful links:

http://ereadernewstoday.com/

http://www.pixelofink.com/

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/ 

 My Az author page: (yes, that photo is just about a year old now)

http://www.amazon.com/K.-Rowe/e/B003H2UCNI/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

And the link to my free ebook:

http://www.amazon.com/Space-Crazy-Dars-Adventures-ebook/dp/B006Q9M6CE/ref=ntt_at_ep_edition_2_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2 

Here's a few inspirational pictures of the world I live in: these are literally in my backyard.

Do we have you covered?

I like doing the occasional guest blog post. Having done one for Aleksander Romance on the Insanity of Being a Multi-Genre author, I was asked to do one on covers. First of all, I'll say I'm not the total cover wizard. I don't pay thousands of dollars to have my covers done professionally (I'm an Indie author- who has the $!). So, much of my book production process involves doing my own. Is it easy? No way! Once in a while you get lucky and the pieces fall into place, and the cover looks great. Most of the time, however, I'm battling for weeks to get it right. And for me, there's a feeling of personal pride when I get a cover that looks good.

OK, so you ask, what makes a cover great? I've read many blogs on just the subject. Some say covers have to be bold, primary colors; others say match your cover to what you find in the chosen genre. Still, more say that lettering and your name is the most important part. Personally, I think a blend is good.

Let's look at just one of my covers: the one I did for the free ebook Space Crazy. It's a sci-fi adventure, not a terribly long book- just 44,000 words. It was suggested by another author to put out a free book to hopefully draw more readers to my other books. Has it worked? Actually, for the most part, yes. My goal was to produce a book with little to no cost out of my pocket. Mind you, the book is not perfect, but it has been fairly well received.

 

As you can see, it's a simple cover. Just a gloved hand reaching for the stars. Why is this important? It's actually a visualization from a scene in the book. How many of you have picked up a book because the cover looked great and the back copy (or ebook synopsis) sounded good; but when you read the book, the cover had NOTHING to do with it?! Is that annoying or what? Does it kind of make you feel cheated? Maybe the book was awesome, and the cover didn't do it justice. There are those out there too. I always like to have my covers resonate some relevance to the story. Some have argued with me on that, but I'm the author and it's my book, and if I make a cover that isn't right for the book, well, it's my own fault!

How did I go about making this cover? It was fairly easy. Step 1: find a background. I went online and found several sites that have free computer wall paper images. This image was part of a wall paper. Since it was free, I took the image, cropped what I wanted, and had my base to start with. Step 2: the hand. Yes, that is my hand in one of my old fencing gloves. I got my middle stepson to photograph it over a dark blue towel. Then I used Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 (PSE)  and masked the image and fixed a few things on it. Once I had just the image of the glove and no background, I pasted that over the background image. It required a little fiddling to get it right, but finally I had a workable second layer. Step 3: Text. PSE has a wealth of script options. The program can be a bit stubborn to work with, but if you stick with it, you can make some great covers very easily. Once the text was done, I saved the full image. I recommend saving it twice- once as a JPG and once as a PSE file (just in case you need to go back and fix something) The PSE file will maintain all the layers you have worked with.

If you plan on doing a print run of your book and need a full cover, I recommend a program called BookCoverPro. It's not cheap, but once you get good at using it, you can offer services to make covers for other authors. I've done a few, and have just about paid for my initial expense. The program works on a very basic Photoshop type level. Every part of the book is seen as a layer. As with PSE, in the beginning, it's a little confusing, but when you get it figured out, you can have a full cover done in less than an hour!

Here are the links for the products I use. There are many others out there on the market, these just happened to be what I found usable. There are also newer versions of what I use. The key is to find something you can feel comfortable working with.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html

http://www.bookcoverpro.com/features/

In the end, the cover is really what makes the book. If the cover isn't catchy, then a reader may well look for something else. Unless you're H.G. Wells and have the notoriety to have a bland cover like this, you better get busy and make some magic!

Good luck, and happy designing.

Until next time, my creatively obsessed friends,

Kathy

PS: if you'd like to check out some of my other covers, you can find them on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/K.-Rowe/e/B003H2UCNI/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0