Farley’s Friday: One Dirty Wheaten

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 1 Comment

Farley here.

I can’t believe my good fortune. I’m running down the street, heading for a romp on the golf course, and what do I find? You won’t believe it.

The maintenance team is preparing the golf course for opening in a few weeks. Kristina says this is bad, because it means the golfers get to use the course, and we don’t. I don’t understand why I can’t chase the balls, but that’s for another story.

Today, look what I happen upon. The maintenance team put a huge pile of dirt, right on the road, demanding I jump in, dig, roll around and make myself muddy.

IMG_2152

Now maybe you already know, but I have some genetic traits specific to my breed. I’m a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier, and I’m bred to dig. I can’t help myself. My brain turns off, literally, I don’t think anything is going on in there, and my paws go wild. True happiness flows in my blood.

The trick now is to avoid a bath when I get home. Wish me luck.

Woof Woof.

Advance Reader Copy (ARC)

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 17 Comments

I’m sure everyone knows all about the ARC, but being a newbie, I learned a few things this week.

I learned the ARC is used to garner endorsements that go on both the outside and inside cover of the novel and are used for marketing.

I learned that the ARC gets sent before the final editing and proofreading of the manuscript is complete. Does that make me nervous? You bet, but I guess it’s standard in the industry, so I’ll go with it.

I learned that networking long before you finish your first novel is critical to the publishing journey.

Imajin Books requested I get endorsements from 5 to 7 authors in my genre. Mystery, in case you’re wondering. So I set out to do just that.

How does one find established authors willing to spend their time reading an about-to-be-published-for-the-first-time author’s novel? That’s where networking comes in.

I’ve attended writing conferences, workshops and  awards dinners. Each of these gave me a way to meet other authors. I started a blog. Got active on twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

When I first joined the Crime Writers of Canada, I sent every CWC author a LinkedIn message asking them to connect with me. Hundreds did. I was amazed. I kept a spreadsheet of the authors I’d sent a message to, which ones accepted my invitation and included a check mark when I sent a thank you. Since then, I’ve kept up communication with authors, sending them a message when I’d read their book and posted a review.

Who to ask? I chose authors that I had some connection with. Either I’d met them in person, or I’d connected with them on the internet. I looked for authors where our writing had something in common.

I wrote a letter to each author as I would a query letter. I included my writing credentials and the reason I was asking a specific author.  I was nervous, but people are saying yes. I won’t tell you who yet. Part of asking is the condition that if they don’t like the book, I wouldn’t expect an endorsement. So now I have to wait… Writing seems to be a lot of waiting.

The following is included at the front of the ARC, and is followed by the novel. A PDF version goes to each author who has agreed to read Descent.

DESCENT

A Stone Mountain Mystery #1

ADVANCED READING COPY

Uncorrected Galley Proof

Kristina Stanley

DESCENT

A Stone Mountain Mystery #1

Copyright © 2015 by Kristina Stanley. All Rights Reserved.

IF YOU RECEIVED THIS BOOK FREE VIA A WEBSITE DOWNLOAD ON A SHARE OR TORRENT SITE, YOU HAVE AN ILLEGAL COPY AND CAN BE PROSECUTED FOR COPYRIGHT THEFT.

Copyright is a matter we take seriously. Our authors and our publishing team work hard to produce quality books for people who will appreciate them. We often have discounts and sales so that ANYONE CAN AFFORD OUR EBOOKS.

 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. And any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead (or in any other form), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

http://www.kristinastanley.com

FIRST EDITION Kindle eBook

Imajin Books – http://www.imajinbooks.com

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve signed on with Imajin Books and intend to blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I received the first version of the book cover. I’ll share as soon as it’s done 🙂

Acknowledgement Tracking: When Writing Your Novel(s)

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 10 Comments

The closer DESCENT becomes to being published, the more work there seems to be.

When the manuscript is being prepared for print or e-book versions, there are sections on the inside that need writing. It’s all fun writing a novel or two, but do you remember who helped you along the way?

The time is close to when I have to commit to my acknowledgment section, and I’m a little stressed. What if I miss someone? Did I thank the right people?

So many people helped me write, and it took me four years to finish four novels. For some reason, I decided to keep a spreadsheet with who helped me on each novel. This includes beta readers, proofreaders, anyone who helped me with research, and of course family. At the time, I laughed at myself, but now I’m glad I did.

So I have my list, I’ve written the acknowledgement section, and I have one more question.

Do I ask people ahead of time if they are ok with being in print, or do I surprise them?

What’s your opinion?

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve signed on with Imajin Books and intend to blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published.

Thanks for reading.

Farley’s Friday: An Easter That Keeps On Giving

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Farley here,

Woof Woof.

I woke up Easter morning, barked at my humans to get up and waited, anxiously wagging my tail. I couldn’t wait to get an Easter bunny.

I wagged, wiggled and waited . . . nothing. I thought everyone got an Easter Bunny. Guess I was wrong.

I lay on the floor, rested my jaw on my legs and watched Kristina. Maybe she was going to surprise me. She picked up my leash, and I knew – no Easter bunny for me.

Off we went. Every day some of the snow goes away. I don’t know where, but I miss it. I head for the golf course, running fast. I hit the fairway. No snow! This was very confusing. I ran in circles, rolled in the grass, but still no snow. Anyone now how to make snow?

Something caught my eye. I am a dog, you know, and get easily distracted. I ran for the trees and skidded to a stop. Siting at the base of a lodge-pole pine tree, I found an Easter bunny.

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I think Kristina hid it there for me. I heard the kids in the neighbourhood saying they had to search for their bunnies, so I had to search for mine too.

My bunny lives on the golf course. Every day I visit her, play for a while, and then leave her until next time. She likes to stay outside overnight.

Woof Woof.

Choose Your Spelling: American? British? Canadian?

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Anyone remember Steve Martin’s joke about language? “The French, they have a different word for everything.”

Let’s apply this to English. American, British and Canadian spelling. Why do we spell the same word with different letters?

If you’re writing a book, you have a decision to make. What version of spelling will you use? The important thing is to be consistent. Pick one and stay with it.

I originally wrote everything in Canadian spelling. After a discussion with Imajin Books, we decided to use American spelling. Why? Because of the broader audience appeal. This is subjective decisions, so you might have other reasons for picking a language base, and that’s okay.

Proofreading for this is difficult. Most of us read books from various countries and are used to seeing the words spelled differently, How do you know if you’re consistent if the words look correct?

The answer: Run the manuscript though more than one spell checker.

Here is my experience with spell checkers.

Scrivener picked up some of the words, but when I ran the Word spell checker it picked up others. If you don’t have more than on spellchecker on your computer, borrow someone else’s.I used three spell checkers. I use a Mac and my husband uses a PC. I sent my manuscript to his computer. Even the Mac versus PC Word versions pick up different words.

I’ve written three novels in the Stone Mountain Mystery series, so my homework… I’ve finished updating DESCENT to American spelling. Now I have to go and update BLAZE and AVALANCHE too.

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve signed on with Imajin Books and intend to blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published.

Thanks for reading…

How to Write a Description For the Back Cover of Your Novel

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 5 Comments

Writing a Book Description?

Here are some ideas that might help. I’ve shared my book description (blurb) for DESCENT, the first novel in The Stone Mountain Mystery series, below and outlined how we arrived at the final description.

Step One: Decide what you want to tell the reader. You want to give away enough to intrigue the reader but not so much that you take away from the suspense. I was tempted to put too much information in the description and pulled back a bit.

The goal of DESCENT’s description is to give the potential reader the idea that:

  • Kalin Thompson is the protagonist
  • The story takes place in a remote mountain resort
  • The crime is a murder
  • The victim is a talented ski racer
  • Ongoing conflict between Kalin’s boyfriend and her boss will be a struggle for Kalin

Once you know what you want to say,  write, rewrite and rewrite again.

Step Two: Decide who your audience is. For me, I want an international audience. How does that affect the description? I’d used RCMP in the description? You’ll see below that RCMP is now cops. RCMP is a very Canadian acronym. My bad for assuming it was a world-wide term 🙂

Step Three: Get feedback from anyone you trust. Then write, rewrite and rewrite again.

Final Product: The idea behind the two paragraph description below is if we need a short version, we can use the first paragraph only. The first paragraph is designed to end with a hook just in case that’s all we use. I hadn’t thought of that in my first try at a description.

The back of the book description for DESCENT is:

When Kalin Thompson is promoted to Director of Security at Stone Mountain Resort, she soon becomes entangled in the high-profile murder investigation of an up-and-coming Olympic skier. There are more suspects with motives than there are gates on a super-G course, and danger mounts with every turn.

Kalin’s boss orders her to investigate the murder. Her boyfriend wants her to stay safe and let the cops do their job. Torn between loyalty to friends and professional duty, Kalin must look within her isolated community to unearth the killer’s identity.

Now as with other changes, I have to wade across the internet and change everywhere I’ve put a blurb out for DESCENT.

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve signed on with Imajin Books and intend to blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published.

Thanks for reading…

 

Book Names and Branding

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 5 Comments

Ready to Publish?

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve just signed on with Imajin Books and intend to blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published. At the end of my last blog, Ready to Publish?, I gave myself two action items:

Step one : Re-launch website and give it a cleaner look.

Done: Or sort of done. I’ll keep working on this as I get feedback. What changes did I make to the site?

  • I changed my home page to a static page instead of my blog. I did this so when I have book covers designed, I’ll have a landing page to post the covers.
  • I chose a new format that I found pleasing to the eye and what I think is a more professional image.
  • I updated the image at the top of the page to mountains to start branding my novels.
  • I used a free template by WordPress. This comes with restrictions, but for now I can live with them. Until I start making some income with my books, I’ll be careful how I allocate funds.

Step two: Decide if working titles for DESCENT and BURNT are the final titles.

This is where branding comes in. That’s a big question when you’re about to publish one of your books. I write a mystery series, and so my branding has to consider the current and future books in the series. I want to engage and excite readers, and branding can help do this.

A Stone Mountain Mystery is the tag line for all the novels because the series takes place in a fictitious resort located in the depths of the Purcell Mountain range.

The first three working titles in the series are DESCENT, BURNT and AVALANCHE.

After collaborating  with Imajin Books, we’ve decided to rename the second novel in the series.

BURNT will become BLAZE.

The thoughts behind the decision to change the name are:

  • BLAZE has a sense of impending doom.
  • All three titles are one-word action oriented nouns.
  • BLAZE now links to the mountain theme of DESCENT and AVALANCHE as blaze is more reminiscent of a forest fire than BURNT.
  • One can think of BLAZE as blazing the ski trail which again links the novels.

I’ve spend four years building my online platform and writing about my books. This one word change means I have to visit all of my sites and update the name accordingly. I’m pretty sure this is the first of many changes. But who said writing was easy?

Now I’m off to find all references to BURNT and change it to BLAZE..

Thanks for reading . . .

Ready to Publish?

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 13 Comments

The life of a mystery writer is full of twists and turns. Some good. Some not. But here’s a twist that lands in the good category. I’ve signed a two-book publishing contract with Imajin Books for DESCENT and BURNT.

When I began writing my novels, I loved reading blogs about the writing process, about how to write, about how to publish, and about anything else to do with writing. And I still do. Now it’s time to return the favour. Over the next few months (or years), I’ll blog about the publishing experience. I’ll do my best to share what I learn. To give you an idea of what’s coming, here are my first baby steps in working with a publisher.

Step one: Re-launch my website and give it a cleaner look. This is a work in progress, and the updates will keep coming as I go through the publishing process.

Step two: Decide if working titles for DESCENT and BURNT are the final titles.

Step three: It’s a mystery.

Stay tuned . . .

And as usual, thanks for reading.

Farley’s Friday: A Slip and Fall

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 7 Comments

Farley here, You all know about my winter hiking boots. Well, now that spring is here, I have a new sleek version. They are so light, my feet feel like they’re running on clouds.

Out on one of our hikes through the forest, I stop to sniff a tree – you know, because trees smell great as the snow starts to melt. From a tree behind me, a squirrel natters at me. I whip my head toward the sound and bolt in the creature’s direction … Farley slip 1 But alas, my shoes let me down. When I’m bare pawed I have grip. I forget myself for a moment and run hard. Out go my paws from under me. How embarrassing. I’m a serious kind of dog, and I like to appear regal. Farley slip 2 Instead of looking regal, I look like a snow head. Farley Slip 3 Woof Woof