The Writing Business - My Plan

In my last post I spoke about the need for a writer to have a plan. This could be as elaborate as a detailed business plan or as simple as a list of steps you need to take to become published (and then don't forget the steps to market what you publish).

Today I thought I'd share with you my list - this is not complete, there are previous steps I've already completed (write an author bio, get a blog or website, get a good author pic... oh yeah, write a novel...). Maybe you'll find some helpful ideas on there, or maybe you can suggest some things I've forgotten! As I tick off each step I'll share my experience and you can learn by my (hopefully rare) mistakes. I'll be sharing my experiences organising book covers next.

From Manuscript to Book:

Edit book

• Check out professional editing organisations
• Circulate amongst Beta readers

Cover design

• Search contacts for artists, graphic artists and professionals at book cover design.
• Check Shutterstock or other photo sites for good stock photos.
• Check online resources.

Format e-book and Print On Demand book

• Check with State writers groups for contacts for digital publishers.
• Look at CreateSpace
• Kindle
• iBooks
• All others: Smashwords, Dymocks, Fishpond etc.

Advertising material:

• Bookmarks
• Postcards 
• Book Trailer - speak to Luke or Rhonda
• Slogans ('cause I have too much time on my hands):
• Zombie Dog hates your guts... loves your brains.
• Tell Zombie Dog to heel, and it’ll bring you a nice fresh one.
• Zombie Dog’s best trick: ‘play dead’ (Zombie Dog is not playing).
• Zombie Dog thinks you look nom nom.
• Zombie Dog, nom nom nomming her way into your heart (cross out, replace with brain).
• Brrrraaaains means I love you.
• (picture of two mafia guys tossing a body rolled in a rug to the doghouse) Sometimes Zombie Dog comes in handy.

Read Amazon guidelines

Decide on release date - promote book leading up to release

PROMOTE

• Check out books on promoting your novel.
• Read the John Locke guide
• Check out guides to ebook publishing
• Giveaway - Kindle?
• Organise blog hop
• Look up other promotional ideas
• T-shirts (overkill???)
• Talk to contacts in programming about creating a game app to pair with the ebook.

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Book Giveaway for Writers

WooHoo! We have a winner!

Thanks to Random.Org I have generated the lucky number:

and checking my list of entries.... the winner is:

Lisa Gibson!

Lisa will be receiving a new copy of:

 and 

Thanks to everyone who entered, I'll host another draw when the followers reach 300!

Now, I'm off to pack for my upcoming Brisbane Writers Festival.

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Book Giveaway Time!

200 followers! Woo Hoo! To celebrate, I'm hosting a BIG BOOK GIVEAWAY!

It's sooo simple to enter, all you have to do is choose which TWO books (yes, you get two!) you would most like to win, fill in the form and tweet or blog about this contest (include a link to this page so people can find it). These will be brand-spanking new books ordered for you from Amazon. I've made a selection for you to choose from, based on my absolute favourite books for helping me with the craft of writing. You will LOVE these books, the hard part will be choosing just two:

 

 

Good Luck!

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Baby Come Back

Hooray for the super-helpful fellow from Telstra who replaced our line. When he pulled the cable through the wall, it came out frayed and unconnected. Turns out those cute little possums running around my roof aren't so cute... or possums. But good news - I can blog again!

I've been itchin' to get on and tell you about the book I received in a book blog draw - signed and sent by the author!

The Seeker by Ann H. Gabhart

I felt so special receiving this book in the mail with a lovely inscription inside!

This novel is a romance set during the unrest in Kentucky during the 1860s and looks at politics, slavery and the Shaker's way of life. The protagonist is a headstrong young woman determined to get her way, despite the infuriating men in her life.

I've never read a novel featuring Shakers before, so I couldn't wait to get into it! I'm finding the history fascinating, but the droplets of lust and passion from the protagonist are also drawing me in. This is such a change from the books I've been reading lately (YA dystopian), that it's quite refreshing.

Ann Gabhart also has a great writer's blog, worth checking out:

One Writer's Journal

I'm also watching the follower numbers grow! When I reach 200, I'm planning another book give-away competition. So... watch this space. :-)

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Competition WInner!!!!

I'll post my R is for... (hmm don't know yet) later today - It's time to draw the winner of the book giveaway competition! After trying this method:

What hat?

I decided to stick to the original plan of using random.org to generate a number.

And the number I got is.....

(I know some people post up their random.org box to show the results but I couldn't figure out how to get it on here). Still not exciting? Okay... looking on my google list of entrants that is.....

Christine Danek from http://www.christinedanek.blogspot.com/

I will organise with the nice people at Amazon to send out your copy of:

and 

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I is for Imagination

What I wouldn't give for the imagination of an 8yr. old.

Last night my youngest daughter started writing her new novel. Chapter one begins with a young girl walking through a rough town with her brand new puppy. Some tough boys hassle her but the puppy attacks, you see this book is about Vampire Puppies. The girl gets a little older and when she is 13 she joins the spy academy (as you do) and comes up with some ideas for using the vampire puppies. 

I'm looking forward to reading this one, it will also feature zombie snails, which become fast when they're infected as zombies, rather than slow. Oh, and her main setting is a graveyard pet shop!

I'm also going to make a zombie recommendation (I never thought I'd hear myself say that). I downloaded  The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan Kindle edition to my iPhone. This book was mesmerising, I found the wistful style almost poetic, not at all what I would expect from a post-apocolyptic story that would also be able to horrify me most of the way through. I likes :-)

Have you entered my book giveaway contest yet? The draw closes on the 19th of April - so there's still time! You could win TWO of my favourite books for reading, writing and editing! Click HERE to enter! 

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G is for Giveaway and Gravity

G is for Giveaway!
Time for me to push my book giveaway again :-)

You have the chance to win two great books, you get to pick them from a selection of four books that I adore. These are my absolute favourite books for writing, editing and reading. If you haven't already entered then go and do it now! You'll find the contest on my post: 

E is for Enter the Book Giveaway!!!

G is for Gravity.

This is Earth and in our world we have rules. Gravity is a pretty good rule. You can't fight gravity - or can you?

When you do worldbuilding for a narrative taking place anywhere on Earth, you know that you have to adhere to the physical laws of this planet. If you taking the plunge into a fantasy world, then you get to create the world to suit your story (but not to suit your characters, you want the word to cause them much conflict).

Think about the physical laws of that world. What is the same as our world and what is different, this will provide the reader with binaries and parallels for their own experiences.

You may decide that in your world sneezes make you disappear, or sunburn can cook you, so characters can only go out at night. Decide on your rules.... and then break them.

You might not be able to fight gravity (despite the promise of many cosmetic companies), but through the ages man has been determined to defy gravity. If there is a 'rule' for your world, show the way that characters can defy those rules. Or have them attempt to defy the rules and fail, this would provide plenty of conflict.

Once man learned how to fly, our world changed. How will your world change? Conflict and change, those elements keep the narrative moving. In my post: Using Settings Effectively for Fiction I shared a tip I learned from the writing course How To Think Sideways, when you plan your world, you only need to ask two questions about every part of this world:

• Does this create conflict for the story?
• Does this force a primary character to change?

Do you have any challenging laws for your world, or have your read a story with a really interesting physical law that the characters tried to defy? An incredible example of worldbuilding is evident in Frank Herbet's Dune (the most amazing sci-fi book I've ever read).

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F is for Follow, Focus and Fetish.

In a blatant attempt to reach 100 FOLLOWERS, I'm hosting a competition to win books on writing and editing! See my last post for the entry form and details:

E is for Enter the Book Giveaway! (oooh, 99 so far!).

I've got a lot of projects on the go at the moment and I find that the days I stress about which to do first, I end up accomplishing nothing. I need to FOCUS on my tasks (I often say I prefer focus-tasking to multi-tasking) and FINISH what I'm on before being distracted by the other.

My current writing tasks include:

• Editing Dog Show Detective
• Writing Warracknabeal Kids
• Researching for Warracknabeal Kids
• Blogging
• Reading, book on writing and editing and all your blogs!

My project tonight is to do up a better timetable so I can schedule these projects to complete a little on a daily basis.  It does help me to keep my information for each task separate. Each writing/editing project has it's own notebook. This is how I discovered I have a FETISH. I will shop for days to find just the right notebook for each project. Dog Show Detective has pets on the cover, while Warracknabeal Kids has a plain brown cardboard cover. If I spot a notebook I love, then I have to have it. I give notebooks as presents. In short, I LOVE notebooks.

F is also for Funny pranks. My protagonist in Warracknabeal Kids is a 12/13yr. old boy who is a bit of a scallywag. Not having a boy's mind for mischief, I asked my husband for some inspiration. I won't go into too much detail but his idea involved a corpse, a coffin and a chicken.

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C is for Competitions, Courses and Children

C is for Competitions and I've found a few new ones!

Juiciliciousss Reviews is offering a surprise book giveaway - a whole parcel of YA books! It's open internationally, so Aussies can enter too :-)

I Heart Monsters is also hosting a huge book giveaway - also open to international entrants!

Princess Bookie is hosting several contests including one just for international readers (not for the US) to win Before I Fall by Lauren Olivier.

C is for Courses.

I've been working steadily on Dog Show Detective edits using How to Revise Your Novel, an online course by Holly Lisle. Recently I posted about Holly's use of the Sentence for Review (My Take on Premise): each scene should have an index card with the sentence. The sentence should be: protagonist with need versus antagonist with need in interesting setting with a twist, or record a moment when everything changes: protagonist is doing this UNTIL....

Since then, I have gone through and followed with one thing I want to keep in that scene and one thing I want to change. By breaking the novel down to scenes, the editing is much more manageable for me (this is my first time editing a novel).

I had a wow moment with the course. I was asked to sit down and re-write the sentence for review in a notebook, the catch was I had to write the sentences for the story in order, without peaking at my cards. I had to do it from memory. Pfft, I couldn't see the point of this. Then I did it. Wow. I found I came up with a tighter more functional order for my story scenes, a few new scenes to tied everything together and forgot a scene that was a flashback, confirming it really isn't needed at all in the story.

C is also for Children and Compromise and Class.

I mentioned in my last blog that my girls wanted to start their own blog. At first they were adamant they needed separate blogs, even though they would both be doing book reviews. The compromise was that Miss 12 picked the title: 'Paper Dolls' and Miss 8 could choose the background (she actually managed to find one with paper dolls).

http://paperdollsbooks.blogspot.com/

And for no particular reason, C is for Cat:

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B is for Birthmarked AND Book Giveaway!

Keeping with the A-Z Blogging Challenge hosted at Tossing it Out. Today is B and I've found a book giveaway competition for you! Steph Su Reads is giving away a copy of the new book Birthmarked by Caragh O'Brien. This comp is open internationally. 

But wait, there's more! In Which a Girl Reads is also hosting an international book giveaway (means us Aussies can enter too!), this is to celebrate gaining a whopping 600 followers! (can you hear the jealousy in my voice?). Check it out:

I'm choosing my favourite books on writing and once I hit the 100 followers (I know that's a long way off 600 - but I'm still thrilled), I'll have a book giveaway too - looks like that won't be long now :-)

B is also for blogging. I currently maintain this site and one on education and teaching English, The Write Words (I also have one for Dog Show Detective aimed at kids). Now my 9yr. old and my 12yr. old daughters have decided they would like a blog too, they would like to blog on book reviews and of course they have no interest in sharing a single blog. Sigh. This is going to be just like the kitten and the rabbit and the puppy - I know who will end up having to do most of the work. 

I am happy they are showing an interest and they were both amazing during NaNoWriMo, each ending up with their own novelette. I told them I would get the book printed and bound for them like a professional book (perfect Christmas present for Grandma!) and now Miss 9 wants to know when it will be in the stores. A little budding writer-wanting-publication in the making!

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