Category: Self-Publishing

I’m enrolling my books in KU!

Hey there, if you’ve been with me for awhile, you’re probably wondering where I went.

I’ll be honest and say I nearly gave up writing during a time when I felt like I should have been celebrating my recovery from chemo and radiation for Triple Negative Breast Cancer. It just didn’t go that way.

Chemo and radiation took a lot more out of me than I realized. THEN my husband and I contracted COVID for the first time.

THEN I got depressed. So much so that my mood affected my sleep to the point where I needed to be hospitalized.

I hope you haven’t suffered from a long depression. I’ve had highs and lows before, but never like what I experienced this winter. I’ve never needed to take depression meds.

Now, I am on a couple of medications but hope to whittle those down as I continue to heal.

Long story short, I haven’t written since BEFORE BRADY came out.

***AND NOW COMES THE BIG CHANGE!!***

After several years of marketing my books Wide (on all retailers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and Apple Books), I’ve made the decision to go exclusive to Amazon, which might delight you or tick you off.

Yes, I’m moving my books into Kindle Unlimited!!

I’m excited about this. It will make it easier to schedule promotions. Plus, it gives access to a readership I didn’t have before.

Keeping my books wide might look simple. On the back end, life will be less stressful only dealing with one retailer.

If I find being in KU isn’t working, then I’ll put my books wide again but with a more streamlined process behind the scenes.

As of this typing, my books are in the process of being removed from Google Play, Apple, Kobo, BN, and Draft2Digital, but places like D2D aggregate to third-party retailers and I need to make sure all the books are gone from those retailers before I enroll them in KU.

I’ll let you know when the process is complete. For now, my books are available for sale on Amazon as per normal.

I hope I don’t lose you as a reader by making this move, but it’s something I need to try.

Now, here’s a picture of my hair 8 months post-chemo. It’s at a weird mullet/shag point of growing out, and I dinna like it very much. I can rock a pixie, but my hair grows fast so short would require Too Many Haircuts. I can’t wait until it’s the length it was before, between my chin and shoulders. But at least I ain’t bald anymore.

Talk soon!


I’m updating my website, and I’m not sure how it’s going….

When I say I need to redesign my website, I mean I have to start over with completely new software. This current site is built with an ancient copy of Dreamweaver and the Fireworks software that no longer loads on the ancient PC that sits in my office ONLY to update the website. I used to have an old copy of Photoshop on there, too, and no idea where it went. This makes creating new graphics a challenge.

Here’s the thing. I’m not allowed (by C’est Moi) to rebuild the website hopefully using the How to Build a Website on WordPress course on a special template/theme/whatever they’re called I bought, oh, 2 years ago before I realized just how long my 2018 car accident was going to affect my ability to write actual books. What I am allowed to do is update this current site because I still believe in websites.

So I’m trying. My software no longer connects to my server, so I need to update and build the books without worrying that they might look horrible in Internet Explorer (which thankfully no longer exists) and then go in through the back end and upload via FTP.

So, seeing as I can’t completely start over on the website until all 5 books in Love & Other Calamities are on preorder, I’m bumbling about doing the best I can with my ancient software, and cross your fingers that when I load those pages, they’ll look reasonably okay.

I’ll post on the blog when I’ve uploaded the pages. There are a lot of pages to upload. First, I need to resize some current graphics on the iMac, zip them to the PC, and finish building the durn pages.

Meanwhile, my imagination is itching to come up with a new series but I still have to revise and edit the last two books in Calamities. But the covers and blurbs are done like a lizard burning in the Galapagos sun!

Yippee-ki-yay, mudderfugger.

My First Time

Formatting a book for print, that is.

Actually, I’ve never formatted an eBook, either. I usually farm out my work. But this time I’ve decided I should learn to format myself. It makes updating files so much easier. For some unfathomable reason, I decided to start with print formatting.

CreateSpace has templates for use with Microsoft Word, and it would probably be a lot easier if I just downloaded one of those templates. Only problem is, my copy of Word is so old (the 2003 edition) that I can’t save as PDF, which I need for uploading to CreateSpace. And…years and years ago, when I built this site and my pen name’s site, I decided to upgrade my Dreamweaver and PhotoShop. They came combined in a program called Adobe Creative Suite 2. Creative Suite has since updated to a cloud-based service, but for someone like me the $20 U.S. a month when I only put out maybe two books a year (that’s being generous, LOL) isn’t worth it. And I don’t design my own covers. So, being the obstinate sort, I decided to try learning how to format my print interior pages with the very old InDesign CS2. The problem? Back when I was buying how-to books for Illustrator and PhotoShop, I didn’t buy one for InDesign, thinking I would never need it. Now, there are a lot of great free templates available for InDesign book interiors, but try finding one for the CS2 version of the program. So, instead of downloading a premade template and creating my book from there, I’m building the template from the ground up. Thanks to YouTube and Google, there are a lot of places I can go for help, but the set-up is never quite the same because, you know, Cindy has old software. This might take me awhile…

Just to prove I’m really at work, here’s a shot of Page 1 of PICTURE IMPERFECT in my Word doc, followed by how far I’ve gotten in InDesign (I finally created page numbers on my Master pages, but they aren’t starting in the right spot. My next challenge is creating running, alternating page headers.)

PI_page1PI_Print

The idea is that once I have the template down pat, I can use it for future releases as well. And, if you can read Page 1 of the Word doc, that’s the world’s first peek into PICTURE IMPERFECT! (Which will go up for pre-order just as soon as I’ve got the cover commissioned).

Yup, I need to create a new website page for the book, too.

Oh, Dear, Summer Happened Again!

I know, I know. I had high hopes for blogging over the summer. What can I say? Once Eldest Son comes home from China for a few precious weeks every year, I lose sight of everything else. And it seems most everyone is on social media these days rather than blogs.

Well, today ES and DILly 2 departed for Shanghai again, and I won’t see them for another ten months. So it’s back to writing–and hopefully back to some semblance of blogging. I have good intentions, I really do. But right now I’m delving into formatting for PICTURE IMPERFECT, which IS coming out this fall! This is my first time trying to format, both eBook and print. I have a professional in the wings, should it come to that. But I really would like to be able to change out my backmatter, etc., as needed without hiring out, so it’s time to get technical.

Gulp.

WHERE SHE BELONGS in Kindle Unlimited for Three Months

That about spells it all out. Until October, the ebook edition of my contemporary romance, WHERE SHE BELONGS, will be available exclusively from Amazon. I’m testing out the changes to the Kindle Unlimited program to see if it’s beneficial for me as an author (particularly one who’s a turtle writer and needs to find ways to keep my name out there while finishing The Beast, as I’ve come to think of my single title mystery romance that is now at 122,000 words). (That’s not the title, just a nickname, although it would make a good title, just not for this book).

Unfortunately, enrolling in KDP Select, which includes Kindle Unlimited, means WHERE SHE BELONGS is temporarily unavailable from other e-retailers. But! If you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited, you can now read WHERE SHE BELONGS for free.

All my other books and stories remain for sale from multiple e-tailers.

Now back to The Beast!