It’s official! For one week only, I’m in competition for the best book cover on Author Shout’s Cover Wars. Please head over and vote for my amazing cover, designed with love by the equally amazing and lovely Belinda Borradaile of https://idiotwriting.wordpress.com/
Here’s the link to vote: http://authorshout.com/cover-wars/ Even better, you can vote once a day for the next week. Do it now! 😀 Thank you!
I’m so glad Stephanie decided to use the word “opening” for the word of the week in the Tuesday Use It In A Sentence prompt, because it gives me an opening to write a post about my novelette, All Good Stories, again. I hope she won’t mind that I’m writing more than a sentence. You should check out the prompt on her blog, here: https://stephaniecolpron.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/tuesdayuseitinasentence-opening/ It’s fun!
You’re wondering why I’m itching to write about my novelette? Let me share my exciting news with you.
I received a 4 star review on Amazon and Goodreads! The reviewer got the name of one of my main characters wrong, (his name is Xavier) but it doesn’t matter: it’s obvious she read it. And hey, she got the “X” right. 😀
Here it is, as it reads on Amazon:
Fun, short read for any fan of romantic comedy
by K.J. Avila
“All Good Stories is a novelette that follows the relationship between Xander and Jupiter, mostly from Xander’s point of view, but occasionally jumping to Bob – Jupiter’s new friend. Jupiter becomes friends with Bob online and this sends Xander head-first into jealousy. We get peeks at the many characters around them, too, all big personalities that stand out in the short tale. As a result of the colorful cast, shenanigans ensue.
“This is a fun, short read for any fan of romantic comedy. Xander and Jupiter have a really fun dynamic, and are by no means perfect – he’s a bit possessive and paranoid, while she’s too trusting and a little air-headed. Their flaws help flesh out the characters in a way that makes them very real despite the story’s brevity. Since it’s so short, the author doesn’t dedicate a ton of time to setting or descriptions, but that doesn’t take away from the overall story. It’s a character-driven tale that leaves you warm and fuzzy at the end.
“Overall, it’s a nice story sprinkled with humor that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy once you’re done. I’d love to see it fleshed out into a longer piece, with possibly a little more plot, but that’s just because I’d like to see these characters more. If you’re a rom-com fan, give it a try!”
I was so excited when I read this – my very first review ever!
If you’d like to give All Good Stories a read for yourself, you can pick it up by clicking the following links:
Amazon U.S. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JQWMQAE
Amazon U.K. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01JQWMQAE
Amazon Canada https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01JQWMQAE and many other countries as well. Just ask and I’ll give you the links.
You can also pick it up on Kobo, here: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-ca/ebook/all-good-stories
If you’ve already bought it, thank you so much. And thanks once again to Stephanie for the prompt!
It’s official. I’m a professional author!
My novelette, All Good Stories is on sale today! It’s a romantic comedy, complete with pirates, a parrot, and a Viking. What could possibly go wrong? Lighthearted and fun, it’s perfect to enjoy over a lunchtime or two. It’s available for the low cost of 99¢, or the equivalent in whichever country you live, on both Amazon for Kindle here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JQWMQAE
and Kobo here: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-ca/ebook/all-good-stories
The Kobo site has a preview of the book. I plan to figure out how to set one up on Amazon soon. In the meantime, here are the first two chapters:
Aarin, The Topless Pirate
Jupiter bounded into my book store with an extraordinary spring in her step.
“I finished it!” she proclaimed, beaming much like the ray of sunshine that fell upon the counter every fair morning at this time of year.
“Finished what?” I asked. As if I didn’t know. She’d spent months bemoaning the grueling process of editing her novel.
“Stop it, Xav.” Jupiter had a peculiar way of shortening my name when she was annoyed at me. Her eyes narrowed and her lip lifted crookedly at the ‘V’ as she elongated it. She was very cute when she did it, which made me want to annoy her all the more.
“Wait, let me guess. Your novel?” I teased.
“YES!”
I wished, not for the first time, as she bounced up and down in her spring jacket that we were more than just friends.
“Does that mean you’re finally going to share it with me?” Leaning forward on the counter, I rested my chin in my hand to affect nonchalance. Deep down, I was as excited as she was.
“Of course I’ll let you read it.” She dug through the suitcase she called a purse. After a moment, she pulled out a bound stack of papers. “Aarin, The Topless Pirate,” she announced as she plopped it down in front of me.
“Sounds promising.” I glanced at the title page, which stated only the title, then back to my best friend. “What’s it about?”
“It’s um… It’s about a pirate who goes to sea.”
“And is the pirate topless?” I sat up straight. Visions volleyed around in my mind of breasts bared to the slightly chilled ocean breeze.
She smiled wickedly. “You’ll have to read it to find out.”
I picked up the manuscript and slid it onto the shelf behind the counter. “I’ll read it later.”
She stared, wide-eyed. “You’re not serious.”
“It doesn’t sound that interesting. It can wait.”
“But…” She didn’t look as though she was going to cry, exactly, but the distress on her face was enough to make me waver.
“Sell it to me,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Make me want to read it. Tell me what it’s about.”
“It’s about a pirate. A topless pirate. Who goes to sea.”
“…and?”
“And what? Isn’t that enough?”
“Is there sex? Is there a sunburn involved?”
“Fine! Don’t read it then.” She turned sharply and stalked out of the store.
Feeling bad about my little April Fool’s Day joke, I watched until she disappeared around the corner before I pulled the manuscript back out. I turned back the title page fully expecting to be properly titillated, only to find a photocopied picture of a crusty old pirate with his back facing the camera. He wore nothing but a three-cornered hat.
That we share the same sense of humor makes it no wonder Jupiter and I have been best friends since elementary school.
Bob The Blogger
Bob was a novelist. He was also a blogger. To round out the combo, to make it a trio (because Bob adored the number three), he referred to himself as a Serial Alliterator, which meant he loved alliterations. His blog profile sported a selfie of a previously pencil-thin Bob in the bathroom mirror, wearing nothing but a wicked grin. Though he stated in his profile that he loved the outdoors, since his foray into blogging he had seldom seen the sun. Secretly, he called himself Blob the Blogger.
Today, Bob is excited because yesterday he met Jupiter online. They met on Bob’s blog after Bob blogged about writing a novel. He and Jupiter spent three hours commenting back and forth. Jupiter was single, and she was writing a novel as well.
Tomorrow, if he wasn’t too tired from using the treadmill, Bob planned to write Jupiter three poems. His poems would employ many uses of alliteration; they would contain the letter ‘J’ as often as Bob could manage. They would not contain the first letter of Jupiter’s best friend’s name. As far as Bob was concerned, he needed no excuse to leave the letter ‘X’ out of Jupiter’s joyous poetry. No justification at all.
***
So there you have it! If you’d like to read more, please go to Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-ca/ebook/all-good-stories
or Kindle (click the image):
and support a brand new professional author! 😀
Thank you for reading!
As a subtitle to this post, I should write, “And What Turns You Off?”
The reason I ask: I’ve been told by the experts that I should be “spamming” my friends on my blog, and on all other social media, in order to entice everyone to buy my new novelette, All Good Stories. I told the experts, but I don’t want to do that to my precious blogland friends! but the experts were insistent. “Choose between your friends and your success!” they said. Chanted, really. It was like a waking nightmare until I thought, why don’t I just ask my friends what they think?
So, friends, let’s start with what convinces you to hit that “Buy It Now” button when you’re considering the purchase of the book.
Initially, for me, the cover has a lot to do with it. We do, in fact, judge a book by its cover. The artwork has to be attractive AND hint at what might be inside. It has to make me ask questions. Like, why the parrot? But it’s not only the front! The back (or the blurb in the case of an ebook) is a crucial part of my decision. It not only has to make me want to read the book, it has to be free of errors and give me a hint, through its voice, of what I can expect on the inside.
Reviews and recommendations come next. Even if they’re not jumping off the page to say “This was the best thing ever!” there has to be some consistency to them. For example, “This made me laugh!” and “I chuckled when I read this!”
But then there are those authors who keep on and on and on. Some of us can ignore it, turning it into white noise. I especially tend to disregard an ad if I’ve already bought the All Good Stories book. Then again, seeing “Buy it today!” or “Pre-order now, only 99 cents!” really seems to get under other people’s skin. There has to be a balance! Am I right?
What do you think? What’s most important to you? And would you spend .99¢ to shut me up? (Please see the link at the top right-hand corner of this page.) 😀
I’ve been writing. Actually, I’ve decided that it’s about time I turned this writing career of mine into an official profession, and to do that I need to be paid for what I do. To this end I’ve begun to look for writing jobs that are paid. On Friday I submitted a story for an anthology based on fairy tales, or specifically the continuation of fairy tales after the point at which the story ended as originally told. I decided to tackle Alice in Wonderland. We’ll see where that goes.
My current project is to write ten 100-word stories under the category of speculative literature. I thought that with my recent foray into writing 50-word stories, twice that length would be a breeze. I’ve written one so far, nine more to go by the end of the month. Whatever doesn’t fit into the genre (or whatever I can’t get to stretch all the way to 100 words) will likely be posted on my fiction blog.
On the novel front, I’ve decided to have it professionally edited, so the first third of it is off having that done to it. (It’s like a week at the spa!) In the meantime I’m hoping the lovely person who I’ve asked to design the cover (one who might be reading this) is well on his/her way through the reading of my novel. On my end I’m working on the eighth edit of said novel; part 3 of 3 left to go, and then I’ll work on finishing the first draft of the sequel.
With all this writing and editing, by the time A-Z April rolls around I think I’ll need to spend a week getting edited. (If this makes no sense, you weren’t reading closely enough. Go back.)
And that’s my recent news. What are you working on?
That would be Missing In Action, and the reason is also what is behind my exciting news. A friend, who is also an avid reader and a respected author and reviewer of fiction has accepted my request to read my manuscript. I’ve asked her to give me a no-holds-barred opinion on whether or not my novel needs a professional editor. Yes, I know how many authors and editors insist that every novel MUST HAVE an editor, but seriously… My novel is 750 pages long. I’m looking at paying more money than I can probably ever hope to get back. So this is my last-ditch attempt to really see what’s up with my grammar.
So why have I not been around? I’m concentrating on getting this baby as good as it’s going to get before I give it up. And then, it’s either going to an editor or not because come hell or high water, it’s getting published this year. Why is it going to be published this year? Because I told my muse in a letter that it would. And that’s what it all comes down to.
That’s right.
Not that I’m delusional enough to believe that even on the off-chance he read my letter he would remember it ten minutes later, let alone remember I’m writing a character with his sense of fashion, his stage presence and his face, he’s damned well going to (potentially if it gets to him) receive a copy of my novel in the mail, complete with his name in the acknowledgements! So there! (Disclaimer: The preceding run-on sentence is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an example of the grammar in my novel.)
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing and what I’ll be doing for the next week or so. But I haven’t forgotten about you! I realize I’m terribly behind in my reading and replying to comments. I’ll be going back a couple of weeks to get to them, so if you get a reply to a comment you’ve forgotten you left, don’t be surprised. In the meantime I’m going to try to post every day on my fiction blog, plus blog about my trip to Japan here, and, (of course) keep up the weekly prompts. In other words, I won’t be as busy as I was last month. 🙄
Wish me luck. 😀
For this week’s Wednesday Tuesday Use It In A Sentence, (check it out!), I decided to post an excerpt of my novel The Great Dagmaru for the very first time! From Chapter 34:
With a bowl of chicken noodle soup and crackers on a tray balanced on his left hand, Stephen rapped on Nina’s bedroom door. When he heard a muffled, “Do I have to?” he announced himself.
“Master!” Nina said with a great amount of shuffling about. “Come in, please.”
Disconcerted, but hardly surprised to see her room all but wallpapered in posters of himself, he tried not to stare at the walls. She sat up in bed dressed in an old-fashioned flannel nightie, and he placed the tray on her lap. He perched himself on the end of the bed and faced her. Nina stared at him with her mouth agape as if unable to believe he was actually there in the flesh.
“We need to talk,” he said. “But first I want you to try to eat something.”
At his command she pulled herself together and picked up a cracker.
“Your mother tells me you were sick this morning.”
“Yes, Master. I’m very sorry Master, I promise I won’t drink any more.” She bent her head and took a mouse-like nibble.
Stephen wholeheartedly wished he could tell Nina to stop with the “master” crap for five minutes and simply talk to her, adult to adult, but to give her that equality even for a moment would upset the balance. Leading her to believe it could happen again whilst she was still bound to servitude would probably end in disaster.
He watched her drink some of her soup and when it looked like she might not run for the washroom he decided he may as well begin.
“I want to thank you, Nina.”
Her eyes snapped open over the spoonful of soup she had just put to her lips. Stephen was glad she didn’t have it in her mouth – he thought he likely would have worn it.
“You…want to thank me?” She returned the spoon to the bowl slowly.
“Yes. You made me realize something. In fact you made both myself and Miss Anderson realize something.”
She stared at him, poised as though she was going to take flight. He wondered if he had been hasty in thinking that she was going to keep her lunch down. He decided to go on anyway.
I can’t believe I’m nervous about hitting the publish button. Oh well, here goes nothing.
As many of you know, my epic work-in-progress (my novel The Great Dagmaru) is a paranormal romance about a magician and his assistant. As many of you also know, I have great fun doing research in the interest of making the book as believable as possible. This research has in the past included staying in the haunted mansion in Kingston that inspired the setting, and traveling to Ottawa to spend an afternoon backstage at the National Arts Centre, where one of the performances in my novel takes place. (Check out the links. There are pictures.)
Now I have a new and exciting opportunity ahead of me. This time it’s a little more nerve-wracking. Last weekend when I was again visiting Kingston, I met a magician. And he’s agreed to let me interview him! A real live magician! *ahem* Once the interview is complete I plan to make an article out of it and sell it to a publication. Depending on the slant I put on it, I may pitch it to an online magazine for kids, a parenting magazine, or even as a general interest piece for the Huffington Post. At the moment I’m still coming up with questions. I have quite a few already, but I don’t want to miss anything important. Some of them will pertain to background information that might not even make it into the novel, but they’re things that are necessary for me to understand. Most of the interview will, I hope, shed some light on what makes a magic show fun to watch and what makes a magician want to perform. Not too much light though… it’s the mystery that makes watching worthwhile.
An awful lot is going into the making of my novel. With this article, not only will I have the benefit of the knowledge of someone in the business (a real live magician! *ahem*), but I’ll have something extra to add to my resumé. One way or another, I’m having a blast. It’s all adding up to an experience that not a lot of people get.
Go me!
It may not sound like a big deal, but it’s a first for me. For this reason I want to record it here – I may even celebrate it as an anniversary some day.
Yesterday evening, for the first time ever, I marked a chapter in one of my novels “Final Draft.”
Only 79 chapters left to go before The Great Dagmaru heads out into the world on its own.
I’m probably more excited about this little achievement than I should be, but after seven edits, it’s about fucking time!
Thank you for reading.
😀 😀 😀
As is my usual MO, I’m trying to make the best of the bad situation that is not being able to do anything but hang about the house, by editing my novel. WordPress though, as you probably know, is the bane of any procrastinator’s existence. So. A quick update on my foot and then I’m outta here.
I went to see my family doctor this morning fully expecting an amputation somewhere around mid-shin. Not one but TWO doctors had a gander and they agreed. No infection. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I was when they dejectedly put away their bone saw.
The diagnosis? The blister has turned into a blood blister, which is basically a glorified bruise deep under the skin. It does have to be treated however, to prevent an ulcer from forming.
The treatment? Soak it daily in salt water and pumice the dead skin off the surface and let it heal on its own. And if I have to wear shoes, a moleskin bandage must be applied.
So that’s it! My foot lives to see another day! Thank you so much to all who gave me such wonderful suggestions yesterday – it’s clear that some of you should be doctors yourselves. Especially the ones who aren’t overzealous with the amputation bit – yes, I’m looking at you, Glazed.
I’ll get caught up on all my comments and read all of today’s one-liners tomorrow. Now, I’m off to perform some magic with The Great Dagmaru.
Poof!
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