Tag: e-book

#TeaserTuesday: Waking Hearts

Waking Hearts is only one week away!

Portable Network Graphics image-BB2C9084A046-1

Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/WakingHeartsAmazon
Paperback: http://tinyurl.com/WakingHeartsPaperback
Goodreads: http://tinyurl.com/WakingHeartsGR
Pinterest: http://tinyurl.com/WakingHeartsPinterest

I can’t wait for you guys to get back to Cambio Springs. All the gang is back, but this story really belongs to two very special characters, Allison Smith and Oliver Campbell.

These two have been the subject of MUCH speculation over the years, and let’s just say, ALL their (nosy) friends have something to say about their relationship. The teaser today comes from one of my favorite scenes between Ollie and Sean. Writing old friends is fun. Writing old friends FIGHTING is even more fun. (Okay, so there’s probably something twisted about that, but it’s true. Old friends fight differently.)

This book is also an opportunity for readers to see more of Sean Quinn, rattlesnake shifter from the (more-than-slightly-shady) Quinn clan. He left the Springs when he was young and only turned up at the end of Desert Bound. But he’s a really fun character, so I hope you guys enjoy reading him as much as I enjoy writing him!

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Enjoy the teaser. The book releases a week from today!

~

Ollie pulled over to grab Sean by the neck, only to find the man had disappeared into the floorboard. Ollie heard the whisper of a rattle somewhere in the truck, but couldn’t see his old friend anywhere. The sudden chill of a brush against his ankle brought him back to sanity.

He took a deep breath. “I hate it when you do that.”

Ollie reached over and shoved open the Bronco door, tossing Sean’s empty clothes out the door.

“Shift and get back in the car. I’m not driving into town with your naked ass next to me.”

Another, stronger rattle and Ollie took the keys out of the ignition. “Fine. I won’t leave you on the side of the road.”

There was a flash at his shoulder, and when Ollie turned his head, he was greeted with the flare of a frilled lizard cape flashing in his face while Sean hissed, inches from his face.

“Dammit!” He brought his elbow up to smack it, but it had already darted away. “I hate that one, Sean.”

A ripple of air outside his truck, and Sean’s pale arm grabbed for his jeans.

“Hey, I could have scared you as a horned lizard.”

“What does that one do?”

“Spits blood out of its eye.”

Ollie grimaced as Sean hopped back in the truck.

“You do the weirdest shit.”

“Because hibernation isn’t odd.”

“I don’t hibernate.”

“But you could.”

Ollie shook his head and started the Bronco back up.

They rode in silence until Sean started talking again. “You think she’s still in love with Joe?”

“I don’t know.”

“She hasn’t loved him for years. You ought to know that by now.”

“The timing still sucks.”

“Yeah, it does. But the timing is never going to be perfect. She’s got four kids, two sisters, one father, two jobs. Her life is crazy. But being with you could help with that. She loves you, Ollie.”

“As a friend.”

“So show her it’s more! She can’t keep her eyes off you. Anytime you’re nearby, she watches you. Attraction is not the problem.”

“I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

“And I don’t even want to think about how wound up that girl is. She’s a fox and she’s been alone for how long? She’s got to be frustrated out of her mind.”

“Don’t make me kill you. You know I can.”

“Hey.” Sean grinned. “This is only good news for you, my friend. Everyone knows vixens are freaks.”

“Shut. Up.”

“Just saying, when this has been settled, you will be the envy of us all.”

“She is a mother of four, you asshole.”

Sean burst into laughter. “Yeah. You ever wonder why?”

No, he didn’t need to. A long clothesline of lace panties spoke for itself.

~

Copyright 2015, Elizabeth Hunter

The Formatting Hat: Why You Should Learn to Format Your Own E-books

(This is the next article in my Many Hats of Self-Publishing series. Read INTRO, EDITING, and COVERS here.)

So, the post about formatting is going to be two part. First, I’m going to tell you why I think—even though formatting is something very easily hired out—it’s important for you or someone close to you (like a spouse or assistant) to be able to format your own e-book files. The second part is going to sound a little bit like an advertisement for Scrivener, even though I promise that no one from that company has hired me or even contacted me for promotion.

NOTE: For this discussion, formatting refers to e-books only. Paperback formatting is a whole other kettle of fish which I may or may not tackle later.

Formatting!

The first thing to be aware of when formatting books for e-readers is what you see on the screen when you’re typing and what will show up on an e-reading device are two totally different things. Because you’re not transporting a visual file, like a paperback book. It’s an electronic file that has all sorts of info built into the background that gets transmitted along with the words you’re writing. Page breaks. Line breaks. Font style. Spacing and indents and footnotes and margins can all look very different depending on how things are formatted. In general, traditional word processing programs are not your friend.

But formatting matters. A lot! It’s important that your book is easy to read on any advice. So what do you do?

When I first started out, I hired my editor at the time to also format my e-book files. She was experienced and I was new. I knew nothing about HTML. (I still don’t know anything about HTML, just to set your mind at ease.) I did NOT want to figure out how to format my books for all the stores. So I hired someone. It wasn’t very expensive and, at the time, it was definitely worth it.

At that point, to get into all the available retailers (Amazon, Nook, and Smashwords) you needed three different files. A mobi file for Amazon, an ePub for Nook, and a Word document formatted a specific way to put through Smashwords’ notorious “meat grinder.” I had no idea how to make ANY of those, so I went ahead and hired someone.

The problem I discovered was this: If I needed to make any changes (like a horrible typo that I and my proofreader had missed somehow, or I had a new book out and I wanted to put an excerpt at the end of an old book) I was stuck! The files were already formatted, and I’d have to hire someone again to reformat and send me the new files with the additional or updated content.

Pain. In. The. Neck.

Continue reading “The Formatting Hat: Why You Should Learn to Format Your Own E-books”

The Designing Hat: To Hire or Not to Hire a Cover Designer

 This is a continuation of my Self-Publishing Hats series. Click back to read the Introduction and post on Editing.

My newest cover by Damonza.com for THE SINGER.
My newest cover by Damonza.com for THE SINGER.

When it comes to book covers, I’ve basically done it all. I’ve designed my own, worked with a friend (or a significant other) for free, hired a couple different designers, even gone as far as picking my own cover model once. (Sadly, not the guy on the front of THE SCRIBE, everyone asks that.) I’m going to give you a mantra, and you’re going to remember it from now until the time you retire from this book business:

Book covers sell books.

They don’t sell them all the way. Reviews and samples are going to clinch that sale. But that first click? The thing that gets readers to your book page to read the reviews and the sample? That’s your cover. So yes, it’s really, really important.

Book covers sell books.

Seems simple, right? It’s not.

What do I recommend? DIY? Professional? The answer is going to depend entirely on your circumstances. When I first started out, I had zero cover budget. The small budget I did have for my first book was going toward proofreading after my friend did the edit. But cover? Nope, I had to figure out something on my own.

Luckily, I had a husband who was a photographer and had a great eye for visual design and a deft hand at photoshop. (You may have a friend or family member who is a good graphic artist or photographer. Ask for help if you can.) My husband created some great artwork for my first cover, which I then proceeded to mess up by “putting words all over the front.” (I did warn him that that was part of the whole “book cover” thing.) I fiddled around with the cover copy for a while and eventually came up with something like this.

AHF Cover

Not bad, right? I was totally happy. I had a book cover! With my name on it! And my title! For the book that I wrote! That’s a thrilling moment for every author, and you have every right to get excited about it. So be excited. But don’t forget our mantra:

Book covers sell books.

See, as the book went on the market, I noticed some things through trial and error. The cover for A Hidden Fire was kind of hard to read in miniature, and it was dark. It was an intriguing image, but didn’t give many genre clues. It wasn’t selling the book as well as it could, even though I liked it so much. So over the months, I tweaked it. I made the title bigger. My name bigger. After a while, I noticed that most of the readers I was getting were in Paranormal Romance and PNR covers (for the most part) had people on the front. So I added stock photography to the existing cover. I took it off. I put it back. I’d say I tweaked it about five or six times in six months, and in the end, it looked something like this:

Fire Relaunch Final copy

My name was bigger and easier to read. There was a hot guy on the cover and paranormal romance readers like that. I still had that image that I loved (even though my now-ex was even less thrilled that I’d covered up that wonderful art with a half-naked dude), but it fit within the genre better than the old cover. A couple simple tweaks and the sales went way up. Why?

Book covers sell books. Continue reading “The Designing Hat: To Hire or Not to Hire a Cover Designer”

For Writers: Ten Things I Learned About Independent Publishing in 2012

800px-Juletræslys Yes, it’s a bit early, but the holidays are only getting more hectic, so I thought I’d post this anyway. This is kind of an epic blog post, but my last one, Ten Things I Learned About Indie Publishing in 2011, still gets a lot of views, so hopefully, some of this will resonate with you guys.

1. It’s still worth it.

Remember those predictions that the e-book market was flooded? Riiiiiight. I do, too! Here’s the thing about the e-book market: Nobody knows anything. Not really. This is all changing so fast, no one can predict what the publishing landscape is going to look like in five months, never mind five years.

Keep doing your thing. Keep writing and know that yes, it’s still worth it. Writers are still publishing with more creative and personal freedom than ever before, and they’re being paid. This year, I went from someone who hoped that writing would be part of my income in five years to writing being my income half way through the year. Am I the norm? NO, I absolutely am not, so all my advice about publishing and slowing build your audience still applies.

Lesson from 2012: Personally, professionally, creatively, independent publishing is still worth it. Continue reading “For Writers: Ten Things I Learned About Independent Publishing in 2012”

Why self publishing (part deux): It’s your story. Write what you want.

Grumpy cat does not want to follow “first-time novelist rules”

Most of you who have read this blog for a while know that I had my reasons to publish independently, free from both the constraints and the support of a large or small press. I’ve outlined them before, so I don’t feel the need to expound too much more on that. But as I approach the publication of the fourth and final Elemental Mysteries book, A Fall of Water, new reasons for doing this my own way have become clear to me.

I’m not usually one to pound the indie-drum. There are lots of people with a much bigger audience who do that very well. For me, it was always a personal decision, and one that I recommend to many, but not all. It’s a huge amount of work at times, and I truly don’t think it’s for everyone. That said, as I come to the completion of my first series, I realize that I could not have written the books that I did for the Elemental Mysteries without self-publishing.

I’ve never submitted anything to an agent or publisher, but I read enough, and know enough traditionally published writers, to know that there are some expectations for first time novelists. A first book shouldn’t be too long. It should fit into a well-defined genre. It should be able to stand on it’s own. These aren’t hard and fast rules, but they are the guidelines you hear repeated over and over.

Now, for established writers with a good audience, these rules can be bent. Even first time writers can tweak them, but you’re going to have a much harder time convincing an agent or a publisher to take a chance on you. And when I think about the book I wrote in A Hidden Fire, I realize that I broke a lot of those “rules.” Continue reading “Why self publishing (part deux): It’s your story. Write what you want.”

I’m all over the place.

I’m posting teasers for A Fall of Water and even one for Carwyn’s book!

I’m extolling the virtues of editing!

I’m running my own mini-blog tour!

I’m giving away stuff on Goodreads!

And giving away an ARC of my new book!

And starting a new series!

—wait, what?

Yup. I just finished the timeline on a new book, which is the first of a series that will be set in the Southwest. I’ve talked before about how much I love the desert, and part of the reason is that for years, I would spend a month in the summer with my cousins in Northeast Arizona on the Navajo reservation. Those are some of my favorite memories, so that setting has always appealed to me. I also love the Colorado River Country between California and Arizona. So, while it’s very different from the Elemental Mysteries world, that setting was a natural place for me to explore in my writing.

And along with that setting comes a rich tradition of stories and myths that make the paranormal writer in me just drool at the possibilities. One of the common threads in a many Native American mythologies are shape-shifter or skin-walker legends. The yee naaldlooshii of Navajo myth. The Cherokee Raven Mocker. The Wendigo of Algonquin legend. Shapeshifting and animal spirits have a very long tradition in my country so I’m very excited to explore them in some fun, new ways. I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

Hope you all have a great week,

Elizabeth

Publishing News and a Fantastic Fundraiser! (with prizes, people)

Oak trees at my grandmother's house in Napa

Ah, Life, you never bore me.

Wanted to post today about a few things on different fronts.

WRITING: Well, people, I’ll be honest. I haven’t been able to write much lately, which makes me sad and irritable, as my family will probably attest. Between finish editing on The Genius and the Muse, more editing for A Fall of Water, the fourth Elementals book, and moving back to Central California unexpectedly (which is a Good Thing, but has been rather complicated), writing on new projects has been almost non-existent. I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things next month. Until then, my focus is on…

PUBLISHING: Yay! Finally, for those who have been waiting, the release date for The Genius and the Muse will be May 2nd, which is just around the corner. In fact, it’s just a week from today! You can read the very first advanced review for the book over at Twimom101 Book Blog here.

As for A Fall of Water, it is still slated for an early June release, and I’ll be sure to keep you updated on that. A new teaser just posted today over on ElementalMysteries.com, so if you’re a fan of the series, you can read that here.

MOST IMPORTANT NEWS: I, along with a BUNCH of other authors, am taking part in a fundraiser for a family who has been hit pretty hard in the last few months. The Evans family has had more than their share of surprises, so I’m joining authors like Jamie McGuire, E.L. James (yes, THAT E.L. James!), Tracey Garvis-Gaves, Kristen Ashley, and so many others in donating signed copies of our books for the mother of all prize packages. For every $10 donated, you are entered to win around FIFTY signed copies from these authors and many others (including me!). Check out author Colleen Hoover’s post about the Evan’s family and the fundraiser here. Spread the news. Tweet it. Facebook it. Spread it on the Kindle boards and other forums. This family can really use the help and this prize pack is beyond amazing.

Hope the rest of your week is great!

Thanks for reading,

Elizabeth

Not just a pretty face

The past few weeks I’ve been brushing up and doing final edits on the contemporary romance that I once published here on the blog. I’m aiming for publication on The Genius and the Muse (formerly Tracing Shadows) around the end of next month. At least, that’s the plan. This is my first dip in the Contemporary Romance pool, so I’ve been doing cover research, looking at the lists, checking out marketing and blogs, and it’s made me question something: Will romance readers “buy” a hero who doesn’t fit conventional standards of male beauty?

See, The Genius and the Muse is a parallel love story. There are two couples and one of the heroes is, to be frank, not all that handsome by romance novel standards. (Notice, I didn’t say he wasn’t attractive. Attraction is far more subjective.) He’s pretty rough. He’s a welder/sculptor, so he has burns and scars. He’s not all that tall. He definitely doesn’t shave regularly. Story short, he’s not going to be in any Abercrombie ads, readers.

We talk a lot about standards of beauty for women, and how books can challenge those in ways that movies or television can’t because it’s a non-visual medium. And as a reader, I can fall for a mental picture I create more easily than an actor on the screen. But still, it’s rare to find heroes in romance who aren’t described as devastatingly good-looking or at least, ruggedly handsome.

In my first books, the Elemental Mysteries, my hero is very good looking. In fact, his male beauty is part of his history and a fairly significant plot point. In this story, it was just as significant to Javi’s character development for him to not be conventionally handsome. But let’s be frank, the vast majority of romance readers are female! And who doesn’t like picturing a handsome hero, right?

So, this leads me to my questions today. As a reader, can you enjoy a story where the hero or heroine doesn’t fit the conventionally attractive mold? As a writer, do you shy away from creating characters who are not beautiful because they might not be as attractive to readers? While reading isn’t a visual medium, those mental pictures can be pretty vivid. And let’s be honest, you don’t see a lot of average looking people on the cover of romance novels. (You also don’t see many faces, there seem to be a lot of muscular torsos out there. Interesting.) But obviously, looks do count!

Let me know what you think in the comments. No judgement. Be honest! After all, it’s understandable to want to delve into an imaginary world of attractive people when daily life is a grind, and you haven’t put on make-up for the day (or week). I do the same thing, people!

Hope you have an amazing weekend, and I should have more news about the book posted on the blog next week.

Thanks for reading!

Elizabeth

Author Tribute: L.C. Evans

I just wanted to post quickly today to highlight a tribute to indie author L.C. Evans, who passed away earlier this month from cancer. Thanks to David Gaughran for posting about the tribute give-away and thanks to Simon Royle at The Indie View for organizing it. Though L.C. has passed, her family still benefits from the sale of her books and today, if you buy any of her titles, you’ll receive another book from a contributing author for free. In short, if you were thinking of purchasing a new book today, try one of L.C.’s!

I did not know L.C. personally, but one of the things I like best about the indie publishing community is that it is, in fact, a community. It’s a diverse group of people from all over the world, and I’m extremely proud to be a part of it. I’d like to take a moment to thank all of you who have joined me in this journey, and I thought it would be an appropriate time to share the dedication to my next book.

For my dear friends:

to those who inspire me

to those who challenge me

for all I have met along the way

Thank you for reading, and be sure to check out this tribute for a lovely member of our indie community.

Elizabeth