My rights to HEAD OVER HEELS and BORROWING ALEX have not yet reverted to me. HEAD OVER HEELS reverts on June 15th and BORROWING ALEX on June 26th. Amber Quill Press is, as of this typing, still carrying several ebook formats of both novels. I imagine the ebook links for HEAD OVER HEELS will disappear this week and BORROWING ALEX will disappear from the Amber Quill website shortly thereafter. It might remain for sale until closer to the rights reversion date or it might not. I am not in control of whether it does.
Amber Quill sells MOBI (PRC) formats as well as several other ebook formats. MOBI (PRC) works on Kindle, but I don’t know what works on Nook other than the ePub format, which AQP doesn’t specifically sell.
I will update my book pages to the all-new, improved, updated Author’s Cut versions of HEAD OVER HEELS and BORROWING ALEX as soon as they are available for sale. In the meantime, feel free to buy from Amber Quill or Audible (audio books). The audio books are also on iTunes – currently #3 in Top Ten Romance Best Sellers for Australia – that’s HEAD OVER HEELS. Oooh, and #10 in Canada. Just squeaking in there! #6 in the Netherlands (ABOVE Book 2 in the Fifty Shades of Gray series, I do not lie, it’s above it right at this moment). And WHERE SHE BELONGS is, as of this typing, #9 in Denmark. Thank you, iTunes audio books! Two of my audio books are on the iTunes Top Ten Romance Best Seller lists at once! Okay, this is an aside from the purpose of this post, but that’s exciting.
As for the trade paperbacks of HEAD OVER HEELS and BORROWING ALEX, it looks like sayonara for now. Resist the urge to buy used copies from on-line vendors. They’re usually overpriced and don’t earn myself or my soon-to-be-former publisher (AQP) royalties. I will be re-issuing trade paperbacks of both books in July.
I keep meaning to write another travel blog post about my time in the Galapagos—and I will, eventually (maybe this weekend—oh, maybe I’ll be good and write and schedule two at once!)—but I’ve been super busy ever since we returned, and that busy-ness will not abate for several more weeks. Why, you ask? It’s good to ask, “Why?” For a writer, it goes along with asking, “What if?”
You’ve heard of self-publishing? How about Indie publishing? Essentially, they’re the same thing. Over the last couple of years, as self-publishing has mushroomed due to the ease of uploading to Kindle and Nook and the like, I’ve asked many an author who’s re-issuing her back list or has had it up to her neckballs in rejections and decided to self-publish, why do they call self-publishing “Indie” (as in independent) publishing? The answer is usually along the lines of (1) “self-publishing” has a stigma attached to it in the writing world, because there was a time when any decent published author would warn anyone who wanted to self-publish that it was a scam, that money doesn’t flow AWAY from the author, it flows TO the author. FROM the publisher. In other words, “self-publishing” was, back in the day when hogs painted their toenails daily and I was beginning to write for publication (way, way back in the day), pretty much equal to “vanity publishing.” That is, when you pay what is essentially a printer to “publish” and maybe even “edit” your book (snort). And when I say pay, people were paying thousands of dollars to print their work. Vanity publishing bad, because it bilks writers out of tons of money in exchange for “fulfilling” their dreams. Vanity publishing bad, because a vanity publisher will publish anything. The idea is for the company to make money, not tell the writer how to fix their prose. And then the writer realizes that no one other than their dog, their dentist, and their next-door neighbor wants to buy their vanity-published book—and the neighbor is lying.
That’s basically the first reason for saying Indie publishing instead of self-publishing. Reason 2? Because Indie publishing is easier to write and say. “It’s ‘Indie’ because I’m publishing independent of a publishing house,” the author says. “It’s ‘Indie,’ because I’m in charge of commissioning the cover, deciding if I want to hire a professional editor and proofreader, if I want to learn how to format my ebooks and trade paperbacks for the various vendors or hire a formatter to do so. It’s entirely under my control. Plus, it’s less letters to type and, let’s face it, it’s easier to say.”
Okay, I get it. But let’s throw a new one into the mix. Let’s call it Sindie Publishing. It’s self-publishing and Indie publishing all wrapped into one—plus it rhymes with Cindy.
Yes, that’s right, I’m diving into the world of Sindie Publishing.
Does this mean I am no longer submitting my work to editors and agents? No. I don’t like scrambling all my eggs in one basket. The eggs tend to drip through the basket slatty things. However, some authors who couldn’t sell to New York to save their lives are doing very well self-publishing in this age of exploding ebook sales. Some writers who couldn’t sell to New York are doing crappy self-publishing, too. The thing is, you don’t know unless you try.
There are those of us who thought ebooks would take off at the turn of the century (and by that I don’t mean 1900). The difference was that, twelve years ago, unless you wanted to be taken for a wagon of cash by a vanity publisher, self-publishing in the ebook world wasn’t an option. Electronic publishers popped up by the hundreds, and writers submitted to these publishers just like we submit to major publishing houses. However, epublishers were more likely to take on a book or a genre (like those in the romantic comedy niche) when New York was saying, No one wants to read romantic comedy, give us some more vampires. The problem? Ebooks didn’t take off. Until Amazon introduced the Kindle, the general readership basically stuck to paper books. Today that’s no longer the case. People are going nuts for Kindle, Nooks, Kobos, iPads, and whatever-else-have-you’s.
My two contracts with Amber Quill Press—for HEAD OVER HEELS and BORROWING ALEX—expire this month. I could have chosen to roll over the contracts, or I could have chosen to request my rights back. Now, I adore Amber Quill. They gave me a chance when no one else would, I’ve had a great relationship with my editor, and I enjoyed having input on cover design. But the books are now each several years old, and while I’ve been writing more romcoms essentially behind the public’s back, they don’t sell to New York. This is why I took a major detour to write humorous erotic romance under a pen name, and why it looks like “Cindy” only publishes every few years. Because she does. Penny’s doing the rest. But I (Cindy) love writing romantic comedy and humorous contemporary romance, and I want to do more of it without stressing about the necessity of an erotic hook. So, to me it makes utter sense to give self-publishing a try. Oops, I mean Sindie publishing.
HEAD OVER HEELS was first published in 2002 by a now-defunct epublisher, and then re-issued in 2005 by Amber Quill Press. My rights revert mid-June. I’m in the process of revising and updating the story to reflect a leaner writing style (although one couldn’t tell it by my blog posts) and kinda-sorta-maybe including aspects of recent technology that don’t F with my plots. I’ve also commissioned a new cover for HEAD OVER HEELS. I received the draft the other day, and I love it! I’ll go into the details of commissioning a cover versus filling out an art fact sheet for a publisher another day. Both have their pros and cons. Just like every step of self-publishing versus traditional publishing has its pros and cons. Again, fodder for another day. For now, I’m looking forward to re-issuing HEAD OVER HEELS and BORROWING ALEX under my own imprint (rights to BORROWING ALEX revert to me toward the end of June), plus Sindie publishing the romantic comedy short story series I’m writing (in between Penny’s obligations).
Because I’m heavily editing HEAD OVER HEELS on the heels of four weeks of no writing, I won’t have it ready for re-issue the day after my rights revert. This means that if you have a hankering to read HEAD OVER HEELS as it was originally written, you’d better buy it now (links handily provided here). If you’d rather read the updated Author’s Cut, then wait until I announce that the third edition is available. Or, hey, you can always do both.
Just because my rights to HEAD OVER HEELS revert to me this month does not mean that the book will suddenly disappear from third-party vendors (ie. any website other than Amber Quill). Amber Quill will stop selling the book on my rights reversion date, or shortly before, depending on what makes sense for them. However, they will continue to pay me royalties for third-party distributors as the royalties come in.
If you’d like to join my newsletter to receive the announcement of the re-issue of HEAD OVER HEELS, there’s a handy dandy newsletter sign-up box in the upper right of my blog. Or join my Faceook page, or follow me on Twitter.
By the way, the return of my rights for both of these books is restricted to the English-language ebook and print editions. My audio rights remain with AudioLark, and both audio books will continue to remain for sale on Audible and iTunes—and I am quite happy for them to do so. All foreign rights for both books are available for sale to non-English-language publishers, with the exception of the Japanese rights to HEAD OVER HEELS and the Greek rights to BORROWING ALEX, which have already been sold.
Ever wonder about those people who tweet while they’re watching Toddlers & Tiaras or cutting the grass? Well, I have. I’ve wondered how they can enjoy what they’re watching or doing while under the stress of tweeting every two seconds. So yesterday I decided to put Power Tweeting to the test (here’s a link to my Twitter feed, if you’re interested. I’m not over there all that much. Honest.)
I probably lost a few followers during the cake-making process, but it was actually fun. I tweeted about baking my first “from scratch” cake in over twenty years. You see, today’s my father’s 80th birthday (Happy Birthday, Dad!), and I wanted to do something special for him. When my kids were little, I iced the most amazing cakes for their birthdays. One sweltering summer night, when we had no air-conditioning, I spent 4 hours decorating a Bert-and-Ernie-shaped cake. All those shirt stripes! All those colors! My son loved it, but little did he know…I used cake mix. I have always used cake mix, no matter how fancy the decorating (I’m an awesome decorator). I’m too lazy to bake cake from scratch. Mainly because I don’t usually like cake, so it’s not worth the effort. I’m more a chocolate mousse girl. However, Youngest Son’s girlfriend (G-2 for the purposes of this blog) is an excellent baker, and she makes the most Divine Chocolate Raspberry Torte ever! It is DELISH. I wanted to make my own Divine Chocolate Raspberry Torte for my dad.
Note, G-2 is of those bakers who doesn’t have the recipe written down. She had to type up the instructions special for me. My mother is like this. These “natural” bakers and gourmet cooks will trip you up if you’re not careful.
The resulting Twitter feed:
Googling “How to Separate an Egg.” I had an egg separator but it broke after 20 years of non-use (it fell off its perch!)
What, this is a Canadian recipe! “4 oz bakers’ chocolate.” How big is a freaking ounce? How many SQUARES of chocolate?
Eat 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Guaranteed you will not want to taste brown sugar again for at least six months.
“Find two pots roughly same size so one fits snugly atop the other.” Uh, shouldn’t that be Use a double boiler? (note my superior tone here).
tip – cut up the chocolate. It will melt faster.
Tip – “stir until mixture makes a smooth custard” = let it thicken. (I had to think about that one!)
Frantically phone son’s gf to find out what to do with the custard! Not mentioned in recipe! Hint – it goes into the batter.
Lick the beaters clean of cake batter, because you’re going to need them to beat egg whites.
Eat more brown sugar. Only one Tbsp. this time.
Schedule trip to corner store to replace large Hershey’s bar needed for chocolate shavings, because you ate it two nights ago.
The cake is in the oven! I can not be foiled! Wash dishes to prepare for Round 2.
Play Scrabble on Facebook while cake layers bake.
Increase baking time from 25 min to 30 min because these toothpicks are damn sticky!!
Adjust baking time to 32 minutes, curse stupid oven, and kill spider on stove top.
32 minutes is perfect! Time for Round 2. The filling.
Tip. Do not shove measuring cup just used to measure cocoa powder into icing sugar bag.
Don’t believe husband on your way out the door for replacement chocolate bar when he says you don’t have cake batter on your face.
Son’s gf is right. At least one of the two cake layers will fall apart when cutting it in half. Put on bottom of cake plate.
Next time don’t be so quick to show her up by cutting layer in half too quickly. (See how I resisted the urge to edit out the redundant quickly?)
Don’t buy fresh raspberries for chocolate whip cream/raspberry filling b/c you’ll only eat them the day before.
Congratulate self on buying rotating cake plate in 1985.
Resist urge to eat chocolate whip cream filling while assembling four layers of cake BECAUSE YOU WILL RUN OUT.
Shove frozen raspberries into gaps on sides of cake. Artfully, so as to appear on purpose.
Another pack of fresh raspberries in fridge! I didn’t eat them all. Arrange around cake base. Chocolate shavings on top!
“Chocolate shavings” really means “curlicues.” Finally, a use for the side of grater with three horizontal holes.
Shove broken pieces of leftover chocolate bar between cake layers (thought of this all on my own! Helps balance the layers).
Put in fridge overnight for tomorrow’s party. I have conquered G-2’s Divine Chocolate Raspberry Torte!
Where did I last leave you? Oh, right. On board the plane descending to Guayaquil to pick up more passengers headed for Baltra Island in the Galapagos. (Scroll down a few posts if you want to start at the beginning).
Baltra is one of two islands in the Galapagos with an airport intended for transporting tourists back and forth to the Galapagos National Park. The other is on San Cristobal. All flights into the Galapagos land and/or take-off from one of these two airports. I have no idea what the airport on San Cristobal is like, because we came and went through Baltra Island.
Baltra Island basically doesn’t have much of anything on it (for tourists) other than some remnants from World War II, when Baltra was a U.S. Army Air Force Base. The U.S. Army cruised for enemy submarines and were assigned to protect the Panama Canal. Don’t believe me? Check Wikipedia.
Getting onto our boat for the 2-week cruise was a challenge. Like our guide said, we had to be flexible, and the airport experience was a reflection of that. We landed at the airport, and there we met other travelers intended for the Cormorant, our home for the next 14 nights. There were a ton of other people heading for other boats, so it was a bit of a cluster-F, if you know what I mean. And the guides were separated from the other cluster-F’ed people like us wondering where our luggage was.
So, naturally, the first thing I did was leave the gathering area to try and figure out what was going on (the jury is still out on whether I did this out of stupidity or boredom). An Ecuadorian Galapagos guide, who recognized me by my Cormorant sticker, said, “Hi, I’m Harry.” We shook hands. “Hi, I’m Cindy.” (That’s me replying).
Harry wears Cool Hand Luke mirror sunglasses, so before I got to know him I could never figure out what he was thinking. Probably that I was a class-A airhead. Because the next thing he said was, “Where’s your luggage?” My intelligent answer? “I don’t know.” (That’s what I wanted to find out!) Cool Hand Luke gaze from Harry. “You have to go back and get it.”
Well, that was good to know. See, without wandering around like this, one doesn’t discover the important stuff!
Travel Tip! Don’t leave the luggage area after paying your entrance fee for the park without first retrieving your luggage, I don’t care how many airheads are making the same mistake before you decide to. Get it together. Keep up!
So I returned to the Cormorant Crowd and informed at least one of them, probably My Liege, that we were not allowed to leave until we had our luggage.
Much futzing about ensued. Eventually, everyone got their luggage, and our guide escorted us out of the airport. From there, it’s a mad dash to the buses as each guide tries to get their group of 16 or 20 or what-have-you ALL on the same bus. Once you’re all on the same bus, it takes you from the airport to a little ferry that transports you to Santa Cruz Island. You see, our catamaran, The Cormorant, was docked in the bay of the main town on Santa Cruz, which is called Puerto Ayora.
Not the greatest photo. But it shows the buses you ride down from the airport (see that blue blob behind the blue overhang thing?) and then the docking area for the ferry that will basically transport you "across the road." You know, if an ocean were a road.The ferry, which took all of ten minutes.
You know, I really hate having the date stamped on my pictures. It looks dumb in a photo album. Thank you to BP who eventually got rid of the feature for me. Photo credit: Me!
That’s the only photo credit you’re getting this entry, because it’s kinda longish.
Once the ferry docked, we were lumped onto another bus and then traveled 40 or 45 minutes to Puerto Ayora. There, we were instructed to put on life jackets so we could board the pangas (like Zodiacs or dinghies that held 8 people each, the guy working the motor, and Harry, if you happened to be in his panga).
I hadn’t put on a life jacket in a while:
Just don't say anything. Just. Don't.
Heading down the gangplank to board the pangas:
Now, here’s the thing, I get motion sickness. I could write an entire blog post on how to discover you get motion sickness. Maybe someday… However, this trip, I knew about my sea sickness in advance. I would NOT barf all over someone’s sandals on this trip! I came prepared. And you know what that means.
Travel Tip! If you know you suffer sea sickness, either (1) don’t choose a yacht or catamaran that only carries 16 passengers and the crew. The smaller the boat, the more likely you are to suffer. But I didn’t want to cruise the Galapagos on a boat with 90 other passengers. I didn’t even want to cruise the Galapagos on a boat with 30 or 40 other passengers. What if I hated everyone, or they thought I was weird? I figured the odds were better if we chose a boat with only 16 passengers. So, you can (2) go ahead and choose the smallest boat you want, but arrive with an assortment of: (a) scopolamine patches (b) those wrist bands with the pressure points and/or (c) fresh ginger root, which another passenger was kind enough to supply me (you chew a bit of it and then swallow the juices). (It’s really bitter.) (Drink ginger ale!)
I went with (a) and (b), the patches and the wrist bands and sometimes the ginger root. And did I ever need them all, particularly the patches. I had placed my patch behind my ear that morning in Quito and it hadn’t quite kicked in when we reached our boat. So I wasn’t feeling great those first few hours. But I wasn’t barfing, either.
The Cormorant!
Our room was on the main floor on the other side. Cabin 1.
Getting off the pangas.
See that space under the boat? The panga drivers (First Mates, they’re called) love to drive you underneath them. But that was a treat for another day. For now, we settled into our rooms, introduced ourselves to each other, and then were fed an absolutely massive and delicious “lunch,” complete with dessert. It was well after noon, so we thought this was an early dinner. Nope! We were fed just as grandly again that night, after our first excursion.
Our room on the main deck.
The rooms on the Cormorant are spacious and comfortable. I had requested the main deck because it’s more stable if you’re prone to motion sickness (Travel Tip!). BP and LP were assigned a room on the upper deck, which had more storage space than ours did and had a double bed. All the rooms also had balconies and double-wide showers with fantastic shower heads. I came to really appreciate the location of our room after my first totally unbalanced trip up to the sun deck (two levels up).
The Cormorant also has two suites on the main deck. We poked our way into one, and it had a living room and a much fancier shower than ours, with a door instead of a shower curtain. But, hah, everyone has to use a “marine toilet.” This means putting ALL your toilet paper in a garbage can beside the commode (don’t worry, someone empties it twice a day and ours honestly never smelled).
Travel Tip! How do you choose a boat for your cruise? The way I did it was first to research the type of boat that would best suit me. That was a catamaran, which are supposed to be more stable than the small yachts. Then I found out what boats were available for when we wanted to go (February). Then I discovered that the boat I wanted, the Cormorant, was fully booked until April. So we changed our travel plans.
Travel Trip! If you want a specific boat in February, don’t wait until November to book. Especially if you’re booking the entire two weeks and don’t want to have to change rooms (M.L. and I got to stay in our cabin the entire trip but BP and LP had to move from the upper deck to the main deck for week 2, which we knew about in advance, as their room was already booked for week 2).
I wanted the Cormorant, plain and simple, because of the 15 Day/14 Night itinerary, which you can view on-line. (That link provides links to the Cormorant’s other itineraries, as well). Every boat in the Islands is assigned an itinerary that must be approved by Galapagos National Park. Every boat in the Islands is now, as of February 2012, only allowed to “land” (that is, the people on the boat travel by panga to an island and get off to explore) at any given tourist point once every 14 days. Once I learned that, I figured out that if we only went on the Cormorant’s Itinerary A or Itinerary B, we would only see half of what we wanted to see. So we went for the whole shenoodle. Other travelers with us were only there for A or B, not both. A couple from Australia was there on another, shorter itinerary a few days before us. We changed passengers after the first week (except for our Pack of Four) and then, in the last three days, another four switched on and off. There are a variety of tour possibilities, and you can combine to create the one that’s best for you and your interests. I wanted plenty of snorkeling opportunities and I wanted to hike up a volcano on Isabela Island. The Cormorant offered both options.
See how helpful I’m being? I’m not mockingly suggesting that you just “search the Internet.” Who would be so crass as to do that?
Remember I said we had “lunch”? We thought that was it for the day. We had arrived late and didn’t expect anything to be on the agenda for the “afternoon.” But something was. According to our itinerary, we were supposed to visit a place called Twin Craters on Santa Cruz Island. Instead, for whatever reason, we visited tortoises in the wild. It was super cool because the visit was totally unexpected (the Pack of Four hadn’t yet figured out that we were starting with Tour B and not Tour A).
We had to board the pangas again and return to the island, where we had to board a bus again and head back toward the airport! Because the tortoise ranch wasn’t on our agenda, I don’t know where we exactly were, but we all donned rubber boots and walked through tall grass to these mud holes where the giant tortoises were quite happily mud-tubbing.
Steve heading toward a tortoise.Really big tortoise. He doesn't want to show his head.I nabbed him via zoom lens. Everybody say, "Awwwwww."
This blog post is really long and not that exciting. But I wanted to include information for those who are planning their own trips to the Galapagos and want all the information they can get. That’s how I was, and I still messed up. Ie. when the packing list from your travel agent says, “pack a long-sleeved shirt,” they don’t mean one to keep you warm (even if they say, “one to keep you warm at night.”) It means a shirt that will protect you from the sun. This was a lesson My Liege and I had to learn the hard way….
I have a new interview up on my Articles page, with historical romance author Diana Cosby. Diana is retired Navy and donates 10% of her royalties to several worthy causes, including those that benefit American servicemen and servicewomen.
Visit Articles to read the interview. No, I’m not posting it here, as well. You have to muster the energy to click the link. If you can’t muster that energy, you don’t get to read the interview. Instead, ten push-ups!!!
Argue with me and I’ll make it ten thousand. And two chin-ups.
Thank you very much to my Gmail guinea pig! It turns out that, yes, Gmail users CAN join my newsletter. Something wonky was going on with a specific reader, but that reader has now successfully signed on, too.
Remember, the way Yahoogroups works, you enter your email address in the sign-up box on a website (like mine in the sidebar of this blog) or by clicking a link that opens your email program. Do not put anything in the subject line. Just send off the email.
You will receive a confirmation email that you need to hit reply on, or Yahoo won’t subscribe you to the newsletter. Keep a look-out for this confirmation email, because it might go into your spam box, depending on your ISP’s settings.
