Tag: Elizabeth Hunter

Full System Reset

Omo River near Omorati
By Bernard Gagnon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, $3

So, a few months ago, I blogged about pulling back from social media and such, trying to take more time for family and writing, and you all were super supportive (because you’re awesome) and encouraging.

Then life happens.

And I have a book release just before Thanksgiving (Waking Hearts). And then a surprise project (On a Clear Winter Night) right before Christmas. And a cover relaunch (Building From Ashes/Blood and Sand) right after that. And a big promo-sale in the Elemental series. And then posting the serial chapters for Imitation and Alchemy weekly. And then publishing and promoting that book (sales have been amazing, by the way, thank you SO much.)

All this leads to Elizabeth needing what she likes to call a

FULL SYSTEM RESET.

I have no other major projects set to release right now, which means that I have deleted everything but Instagram off my phone, I will NOT be blogging much, and I’ll be spending the next month taking care of myself and actually writing. (I’m working on the next Irin Chronicles project with Damien and Sari right now.)

I do have a signing in Sacramento on February 20th, so I’d love to see you there, and THEN I’ll be going to Ethiopia for much of March to do research for the next Elemental book I’m writing this summer.

Yes, Ethiopia. I am more than a little excited.

Church of Saint George.I’ll be traveling to Addis Ababa, the lower Omo Valley, and Lalibela with an international expedition company. I cannot tell you how meaningful this is to me, and how important it is to the Elemental series. Vampires in my world did NOT emerge in Romania, they came from Africa, just like humans.

By Bernard Gagnon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, $

Unlike my travels in China or Europe, I’ll be mostly off the grid in Africa. Which, again, is probably very good for me. I live a lot of my life online, but that can be really draining. I need places without phone signal and ever-present wifi. I need quiet.

So I’m resetting.

Talking Mursi men.JPGBy Jens Klinzing – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, $3

Clear the mind. Clean up the phone. Focus on the important stuff. I’ll still be around, but it will be less. I’ll probably try to start having my assistant do more of the stuff that I don’t absolutely NEED to do. She’s good at that, and I should probably delegate more.

Aaaaand that’s it. I appreciate you all. Hope to emerge in April with a better outlook on things and a lot of stories to share. Until then, many many thanks for all your support and encouragement.

Take care, Elizabeth

 

Official Release Day: THE SINGER, Irin Chronicles Book Two

“Passionate, spellbinding, and heartbreaking — “The Singer” is all this and so much more. Hunter is at the top of her game, drawing you into a story of love, loss, bravery, and redemption. If you loved “The Scribe,” you will absolutely adore this sequel.”
—COLLEEN VANDERLINDEN, author of the Hidden series

NOW AVAILABLE

The second book in the Irin Chronicles

THE SINGER

“Haunting, mysterious and passionate, THE SINGER will seduce you at the first page and knock you breathless by the last one. In THE SINGER, a grief-stricken Ava will discover more about her power and extraordinary heritage, while a man reborn with no memory races to find her before celestial outcasts and angelic assassins do. Fans of THE SCRIBE get ready to lock and load as Elizabeth Hunter takes you on one hell of a ride in THE SINGER.”
—GRACE DRAVEN, author of Master of Crows

 

“Hunter has created a magnificent world of amazing characters, entangled in a web of deceit, danger, loss, power, politics, and love that will have your heart racing time and time again.”

—Sandra Hoover, Cross My Heart Reviews

“THE SINGER is an epic romance that delves deeper into a mystical world filled with magic, traditions, customs, and war. Elizabeth Hunter returns with another heart-stopping, addicting installment in the Irin Chronicles.”

—Kimberly Brower, Book Reader Chronicles

When you’ve lost everything you love, how do you fight the darkness?

Ava left Istanbul with a new identity, new name, and new magic she could barely control. Laid low by Malachi’s sacrifice, she searches for help from the fabled Irina. But will the secretive women of the Irin race welcome or shun her? Ava’s origins are still a mystery, and her powers are darker than any they’ve encountered before.

The Irin world hangs in the balance. And as the children of angels battle their own demons, ancient rivalries among the Fallen threaten to wreak havoc on earth.

Thousand of miles away, a warrior wakes with no memory of his identity or his people. Stumbling through the twisted schemes of fallen angels, ravenous Grigori, and even his own leaders, he must find a way back to the one thing he remembers. A single voice calls him. Malachi has one mission.

“Come back to me.”

BUY NOW AT:

Amazon

Smashwords

iBooks

Barnes & Noble

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A New Teaser from THE SINGER: Irin Chronicles Book Two

Irin Graphic 2For those of you following my self-publishing series, I was totally fail on the last post this week, so I do apologize for that. For the rest of you who are looking forward to THE SINGER (coming out on May 6th!) I have a treat for you. This is a very juicy (somewhat maddening?) teaser from Chapter Five, an excerpt from a longer scene with Rhys and Malachi. Hope you guys enjoy and have a great weekend! I’m cutting out early tomorrow to go to the Coachella Valley Music Festival with some friends, so you can look forward to lots of new writing, because we all know I thrive on the tunes.

And speaking of tunes, here’s one from the writing soundtrack to THE SINGER. “Hold On” by Sarah McLachlan is one of my favorite songs. It’s a song about loss and love. About confusion and holding on when things are uncertain. It’s a perfect song for this book, which begins with both Ava and Malachi in very dark places. Enjoy! And the teaser for the book is after the break.

 

Continue reading “A New Teaser from THE SINGER: Irin Chronicles Book Two”

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”

The Magic Editing Hat: Turn Your Manuscript Into a Book

 Someone asked a very fair question in the comments last week, so I’ll explain a little more about my self-publishing “credentials.”

I never submitted a manuscript or queried an agent before I decided to self-publish. I heard about self-publishing before I finished my debut novel, A Hidden Fire, and decided from the start that it was the direction I wanted to go. I published my first book in October 2011, and by June 2012, I was making a full time income. So I have been making my living from my writing for a little over a year and a half, and I have published nine books, two novellas, and a short story. I am a working writer. This pays the bills, and it does so better than any other job I’ve ever had. That’s where I’m coming from.

Crystal_Project_wizardNow, editing.

I’m starting out with one of the most difficult publishing hats because we’re going in the order I use myself for publication, and after I finish a book, the next step is editing that book. Like I said last week, I’m no expert. I’m simply going to share the process I use to give you some insight as to how this all can be done by someone who has absolutely no background in publishing.

Now, I didn’t say I didn’t have any background in WRITING. I have a bachelor’s degree in English and was a technical writer for years. Because of that, I’m familiar with proper grammar and structure. If you are not, and are coming at writing from a different background, then educate yourself. Part of editing is on you, the writer, and part of editing should be done by a professional.

Yes, you need a professional. If you have lots of arguments for me about why your special snowflake book does NOT need an editor than good luck to you, and I’ll see you around.

Yes, I know they’re expensive. For my first book (when I was completely broke), I begged and pleaded with a friend who was a professional editor to help me. After that, any money I made from the first book went into the editing fund for the second book. Many editors are willing to work on payments. There are editors in many price ranges. But don’t forget, this is a business. And all businesses cost money to start up. Publishing a book is actually pretty cheap compared to most start-ups and your book is an investment that costs you nothing to maintain if it’s finished properly. So take the hit and pay for the editor. You’ll be happy you did.

Editing is kind of a big scary word that writers like to moan about on twitter. I know this because I moan about it on twitter. It’s not the fun part of writing, but it’s the part that makes your manuscript a book.

First off, before we talk about hiring anyone, I want to to talk about your part of the editing process. What needs to happen before a professional takes a look at your manuscript? Continue reading “The Magic Editing Hat: Turn Your Manuscript Into a Book”

What do I “owe” my readers?

h5A196D35I’ve been seeing this phrase more and more as authors and readers interact on Facebook and Twitter and blogs. I’ve seen it in e-mails. I’ve read it in reviews of books I’ve written and books I’ve read from other authors.

“You owe it to your readers to…”

I find myself dismissing everything that comes after that phrase. But since I don’t want to be a dismissive person, I asked myself this morning, “What do I owe my readers?”

After all, you’ve spent money on a book that I wrote and published. So yes, I do think I owe you some things. But what do I owe you? When I really started to think about it, I came up with this short list.

I, as the writer (and publisher) of a book you have paid money for, owe you:

1. A well-written and edited book.

You’ve paid me your cash; I owe you a story that is readable and free from distracting typos. I’m not deluding myself that my books are perfect, and typos happen (YES, even in the holy grail of traditionally published books.) But I should do my best to give you a professional product, from cover to formatting. I hope I do this. I try. I hire people who help me make my writing better. Obviously, I’m not perfect.

2. A story that makes sense.

Now, notice I did NOT say “a story that satisfies your every expectation as a reader.” I’ll tell you a secret: That isn’t ever going to happen. Never. Because every reader has a different set of expectations (as they should) and I am the one writing the story. I’m going to write the story that I want. It’s my book.

BUT, I do think I have a responsibility as a writer to make a storyline or a character plausible. I have a responsibility to guide you along a narrative line where you may be surprised, but you shouldn’t get to the end of the book and make this face.

Wh-what just happened?
Wh-what just happened?

Meaning, characters should act in consistent ways (unless that inconsistency is a plot point or part of their character) and the resolution of the book shouldn’t come completely out of left field as aliens descend on the werewolf-filled forest in steam powered dirigibles and shoot everyone with their AK-47s. (I mean, unless you’ve set that up in some way that makes sense, and if you have, I really want to read it.)

Writing a story that makes sense is just good writing, and yes, readers have a right to expect that if they’re paying for a book. But keep in mind, just because you don’t like a book personally, that doesn’t mean it’s necessary “bad writing.” That’s very subjective. Also remember, that no one is forcing you to buy any book you don’t want. No one is blackmailing you.

Blackmail noteDISCLAIMER: If you are, in fact, being blackmailed by the Writers’ Mafia, please alert your local authorities. Blackmail is not acceptable. Emotional manipulation, yes. Blackmail, no.

3. Marketing that is true to the product.

I’m going to be careful with this one, because for a long time, writers had little choice in publishing. If you wanted your book read by a lot of people, you pretty much had to go with a traditional publisher. Now, sometimes, that was awesome! And sometimes, it wasn’t. Meaning, for some writers, they had little or no say about what cover their book had or how it was marketed.

But if you’re self-published, you have total control over this. So (because I am also the publisher) I have a responsibility to my readers to put a cover on a book that gives them an idea about what genre it is. I don’t want to put a scifi cover on a contemporary romance, for instance. And I have a responsibility to write a summary that gives readers an idea about what kind of book it is and how long it is. Is it a novel? Novella? Short story? Is it YA or adult? Don’t sell readers a bull and hand over a bunny. Not cool.

And those are the three things I could come up with. Other than that? Well… it’s really up to me. As Neil Gaiman famously said, “George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.” Writers write the stories they want because, in the end, that is what will make the reader most happy. You’re reading our books (presumably) because you like the characters and worlds we create.

So we’re going to write what inspires us. What we’re passionate about. And that is what creates the most compelling fiction.

Thanks for reading,

Elizabeth

First peek at THE SINGER: Irin Chronicles Book Two

38aae5a0e7216a0d566c86fff93de507All right, it’s what you’ve all been waiting for. Your first look at the next book in the Irin Chronicles: THE SINGER. Click through to read the full teaser. I’ve also posted the prologue to the book, which was at the end of THE SCRIBE.

Enjoy!

~~~

Ava was still sleeping when the car came to a stop. She clenched her eyes shut, holding onto the safety of silence for as long as she could.

“Ava.”

Damien knew she was awake. The man had preternatural senses that never switched off. Ava had decided he was like a weird combination of the most over-protective dad and big brother in history. Which, being the only child of a mother who saw her more as a peer than a child, was a new and interesting experience.

She snuggled into the down filled jacket under her cheek and ignored him.

“Open your eyes. I know you’re awake. It’s going to rain in about fifteen minutes and I’d like to start up the trail before it pours.”

She lifted her head and turned to him, speaking in a scratchy voice. “I never would have let you talk me into this in Turkey if I hadn’t been such a mess.”

“But you did, and now we’re here. Get your jacket on.” READ MORE…

A new chapter of THE BRONZE BLADE and some news.

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I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It’s officially Christmas season!

Yay!

(I love Christmas.)

I’m officially off my writing break now that November has passed, and I’m very excited to be getting back to work on THE SINGER. I’m still planning on a Spring release for that book, but I’ll let you know if anything changes.

BRONZE BLADE COVERI’m also still working on Tenzin’s backstory, The Bronze Blade, in pieces. Like I’ve mentioned before it’s pretty intense, so I only write bits and pieces at a time, to be honest. I’m posting the chapters in parts, so if you didn’t read the update last week, because you thought you’d already read Chapter One, make sure you check that you got all of it. (Or you’re going to be pretty lost this week.) I only posted the first scene that first week. But Chapter One is complete now, and the first part of Chapter Two is up here.

3614216406_992136c497As for other writing, I’ll be posting the first look at The Singer later this week. I know you’ve all be waiting very patiently for a sneak peek at the second Irin book, so I’ll make sure to put a good one up.

Have a great week!

Elizabeth