Snippits and book signings

Hello all! Just wanted to announce that I will be doing a book signing on December 20 outside Eborn books in the Provo Towne Center mall. Leading up to it, I'm going to start posting a short story on here about the war between the unicorns and the flarefoxes. I ask you all to remember as I do that this is only very lightly edited; it hasn't been through everything I did with my book before publishing it, so please don't read it and think that all my writing must be unpolished! This is just for fun :) Although, I am always open for any critiquing of it you care to give ;) Anyway, here''s the first part. Hope you enjoy!

     Sharp-hoof shuddered a little as he watched warrior Blunt-horn approach the unicorn chieftain. Even among unicorns, Blunt-horn had a brutal reputation. Not quite brutal enough to exceed the chieftain’s own, perhaps, but still. Sharp-hoof wasn’t sure he wanted to know why the warrior had called this meeting. He wished he didn’t have to be here.

     Blunt-horn approached the chieftain and bowed so low his curved horn almost touched the ground. “Sir,” he said, “I request permission to lead an army to engage the flarefoxes.”

     The chieftain snorted and shook his massive head. “Even for you, this is foolhardy, Blunt-horn. Absolutely not. You know I, as much as anyone, itch to engage them. That their territory is so close to ours and yet so untouchable haunts my dreams. But open desert simply is not conducive to our fighting abilities. We rely too much on stealth. In the open we would be slaughtered.”

     Blunt-hoof’s mouth curved up into a sly grin. “What if I told you I’ve mastered full-body shapeshifting? I could teach it to all your warriors, provided their magic is strong enough. Just think of the possibilities. To have the more delicate of our warriors trade their unfortunately feeble frames for that of a beast far stronger. To have our most cunning take on the forms of the foxes themselves and infiltrate their camp. The flarefoxes need not ever elude you.”

The chieftain’s face changed to match Blunt-hoof’s own. “That would make all the difference,” he said. Sharp-hoof shifted, uncomfortable at the turn this conversation had taken. “You have a concern, Sharp-hoof?” said the chieftain.

     “Well . . . meaning no disrespect, Sir, but yes,” said the younger unicorn. “What have we to gain by fighting the flarefoxes? Even if we conquer them, what then? We aren’t built to last in the desert, so it would purchase us no more land. It would give us nothing that we need. We’ve already conquered so many others—we have miles upon miles of forest and all the riches it has to offer. Even the phoenix pays us tribute. If we attack the foxes, mightn’t we just be inviting unneeded trouble? Besides, flarefox territory is all too near dragon territory. And that is trouble we don’t need to invite.” He shuddered.

     “And who’s to say we couldn’t take on even the dragons?” said the chieftain. “We are warriors!” He stamped his hoof.

     This from the unicorn that moments ago thought we couldn’t even take out the flarefoxes,” Sharp-hoof thought, but didn’t dare say anything else out loud. The chieftain continued to address him.

     “I will brook no arguments on this. Understand, young nephew, that land is not the only thing to be gained from war. The flarefoxes may have many reassures that may be of use to us. Perhaps some rare desert plant that cures ills, or imbues power. Or perhaps nothing we can use directly, but that could be traded for something else of value. We could even force the foxes to labor and fight for us. You must think outside the box. Others will always have something you don’t. Always. If you have an advantage, you attack. That’s the only way to survive in this world. Understood?”

     “Yes, sir.” Sharp-hoof took a step back and bowed.

     “Now,” said the chieftain, “All warriors are to begin training with Blunt-horn immediately. Those who master the art will be rewarded. Anyone else who complains or rebels will be given much more reason to complain. Is that understood?”

     “Yes, sir,” said all the unicorns.

     “Good. Get to work.”     

Edits complete

Well, I've uploaded the edited Kindle copy of the book. Now I just need to get the edits into the hard copy. This should be interesting . . . Thanks for your patience everyone!

Lessons learned the hard way

So I'm in the middle of trying to recruit reviewers for a blog tour, and in one e-mail I sent I included a little defense of myself as a self-published author because I was requesting a review from a group who rarely do self-published books. I feel like I've put enough time, care, and effort into my book for it to have been published the traditional way had I chosen to go that route; if I didn't, I would never have published it at all. I wrote and rewrote and had it edited by multiple people and fixed it again. I had as much of it as I could read through in writing groups and bounced ideas off of other authors and made adjustments based off of their input. I took writing classes and used the skills I learned. I put a lot of work into this book, and I told them that while I understood if they refused on the grounds that it was self-published, but I'd appreciate it if they gave it a chance and, if they refused, refused based off lack of time or interest and not publishing methods. (I hope I didn't come across as snotty.) Well, shortly after I'd sent the e-mail, my mother-in-law came' in and pointed out to me what has to be one of the most glaring errors in publishing history. Three words, "Dismiss the insult," randomly placed at the end of a paragraph with no apparent connection to anything. I must have created that error somehow after my editors had gone through the book, because there's no way they could have missed something like that. So now it's confession time.

I hate to read my own writing. I should have read through the thing one last time to check for things like that (and anything small that the editors could have easily missed), one last time before publishing the book. I had ample opportunity to do so, but I'd read my silly story too many times and really, really didn't want to read it again, so I trusted that anything serious had been caught and that I hadn't created any other problems like that while editing and formatting and published the book without a last read-through. Well, I've learned my lesson. Never, ever, ever, ever again. I do not want to give a bad name to self-publishers, and I hope I haven't already destroyed my own reputation before I've had a chance to really build it.

Okay, so maybe that's a bit dramatic, but that's how I feel right now. You don't usually see mistakes like that in books published through any respectable corporation. The odd wrong or misspelled word here and there, maybe, from time to time. After all, even their employees are only human. But not a random phrase like that . . . sigh. So I've taken my book off the market for now to fix it and give it a good read-through to check for any more errors. Hopefully it will be up again in the next few days. And eventually I will look back on this and laugh. For now though, I think I want to go curl up into a ball with chocolate.

Why "Optional First Chapter"?

Since I'm sitting up with a wakeful baby anyway, I thought I'd address a question that no one has asked me yet but that I'm sure people will. Why title my first chapter "Optional First Chapter?"

Well, Chapter Two was originally my first chapter, minus a bit of explanation that is now given in the new first chapter. I loved the idea of starting it that way; I felt it was exciting and attention-grabbing. But every time someone would read that first portion of my story to critique it, they were left feeling confused and wondering if I hadn't given them the beginning of the story. So, after talking with my sister-in-law, I decided to write a prologue to give the readers a little more information to start off with. I tried to make it engaging and interesting, but wasn't sure I'd done as good of a job as I wanted. Then I read some writing advice that warned against prologues. And I have to admit, I feel a little put-off by books with lengthy prologues; I want to get to the story! But my prologue wasn't one set in the past, or from the point of view of some other random character. It could easily just be chapter one, so I made it that. But it still wasn't as engaging a beginning as I felt the now Chapter 2 was, so I decided to title in "Optional First Chapter," I figured maybe that would amuse readers a little, and if they found it too boring they could just skip ahead. And if they got too lost, they could go back and read it knowing that there was more interesting stuff ahead. So there you have it; my weird logic behind the first chapter :)

Published!!!!!

Well people, I've done it! I submitted it to Amazon to be published on Kindle! I want to publish a softback copy through Amazon't CreateSpace too, but first I'm going to wait and see if I run into any issues publishing the ebook first. Still, if all goes well it should be published within the next 24 to 48 hours. 

So what's next? Well, I have an idea or two for a prequel and maybe a sequel, but that's not what I'm focusing on right now. Another idea grabbed me almost out of nowhere, so that's what I'm focusing on next. After all, if I don't love the idea, how can I make the reader love it? I really do want to write the prequel and possibly other sequels, but I think it will be good for me to take this break and step into another story for a bit.

What's this new story, you ask? Well, it's still set in the same world as Elf Tears, but it takes place on another continent; one populated mostly by humans. Other beings do exist, however, and the main character is one of them. She is a shapeshifter and  was once a being of high power, serving under the Aquinix. But she let that power get to her head and was cast down to wander the world for millenia, serving others and seeking redemption. At the beginning of the story she comes across a battle and is led to save an older officer about to be killed. She'll team up with and have some kind of adventure with him. If all goes well for her, she'll hopefully find some kind of peace by the story's end. I guess we'll see where it leads me!