“Benjamin” is on his way! Pre-Order now!

A little while ago I told you guys about the awesome news of a companion novel for my Ashwood Falls Series being worked on. And it’s almost here! “Benjamin” is written by my friend and fellow Author Jonathan Snyder, who was inspired by my series to write his own story.

“I know where you’re trying to go, Benjamin Holly. The question is: Will you make it there alive?”

You have met those in Ashwood Falls and the lives they live protected by those things on the outside but what about people who have yet to make it there or do not even know of its existence?

Benjamin Holly is one such man. Alone in the world and trying to find the place he sees in his dreams, he struggles to stay ahead of a darkness that’s following him.

Join Benjamin as he faces his nightmare in a little tourist trap where he must make decisions that could affect him and an entire race forever.

 

You can pre-order “Benjamin” now on Draft-2-Digital and it will be delivered to you on February 23rd! 

I am also working hard on Ashwood Falls: Shadow Warriors, the second installation of the Alana trilogy! Stay tuned and subscribe to get the latest news!

 

Let’s talk about: Tools of writing

 

Writing is a really personal process.

The internet is filled with advice, must haves, must dos, should dos and checklists on what to do to write a novel, short story or even blog posts. Hundreds or even thousands of blog posts and articles about how to plan, how to outline, how to write, even how to edit your writing. The truth is: there is no ONE way. For every author, you ask what they use you might get just as many different answers. Something that works for me, might not work for you and the other way around. As sucky as that is, everyone needs to find what works for them and then stick to it, or adjust it until it feels natural, perfect for YOU.

You do You!

I’ve been listening to several podcasts recently (including The Journeyman Writer and Self Publishing Podcast) and I did find that a few things worked for me while others didn’t but worked just fine for others. In one of the Journeyman Writer episodes, Alastair Stephens and Lani Diane Rich talked about the tools they use for their writing and that made me think about what I use. So I thought I’d share a little of that with you!

 

Research 
Google.com
Yep easy as that. No matter what I am looking for that is where I start. Be it images, articles about certain subjects and more.

Pocket
Pocket is a nifty little add-on that I use way too often. When I find a site that I believe to be helpful I pocket it. That means it lands in the app waiting for me to read later. Kinda like bookmarks but to me, it goes faster, and once I don’t need it anymore I just click the little “read” button next to it and it gets removed from the list. And the search function makes it much easier for me to find the article again. I use it on Firefox, but I saw that Android, iPad/Phone and Kobo apps are available as well.

 

Outlining and Writing
Scrivener
I started writing when I was really young and the only way I could write was on paper. Throughout the years I moved that to Microsoft works, then Word and Libre Office. I’m a huge huge fan of local copies, so I never made the jump to Google Drive for my writing (I use it just not for that ;)).
But last year a dear friend of mine told me about Scrivener and I thought it was awesome. I grabbed the trial and tested it, and fell in love. Then for my birthday, I received it as a gift and I’ve been outlining and writing in it ever since. I know some folks have trouble with it because it gives you a lot of options and frills, but I enjoy to be able to mark scenes by Point of view, keywords, move them around, make these little cards with summaries of the scenes, move them around if I have to and so on.
The whole folder for Character bios, Location sourcing and what not is fantastic and helps me personally to keep an overview. Before starting to use Scrivener I had a whole folder with subfolders for everything on my hard drive, but now I have them all in one program and it is way easier for me to look things up.

Evernote
I have told you about Evernote in another blog post and I still use it on my kindle, since I can’t put Scrivener on it when I want to write while being out of the house (haha as if I left the house) or in bed. The ability to sync the Kindle app with the desktop app to get my writing from one to the other makes it really easy.

 

Background Noise
This is one of those things that seem to be different for everyone else. Some need quiet, some want music that pulls them into the scene or character. Me? I need my TV running.
I can’t deal with quiet, then I start to think, and stop writing and start to look around… and I stop to write.
And music has the effect that I want to sing along, or in the case of instrumentals hum along, then I start to google about the artist, the lyrics, the sheet music… you get the drift.
But TV, I can have that running all day (actually I do) and write without being distracted. I know what I wrote and still know what has happened in the show I ran in the background. I might have to say that both is on the same screen. I have no physical TV, I have Netflix and I only have one monitor. So Netflix is in a small window in the upper left corner, while Scrivener is open across 3/4 of the screen. I also have learned to write blind with the typewriter so I can write and at the same time watch the show. Though I don’t do that often. Mostly I listen and when it sounds like something’s happening I look up to the small window and that’s it.
For many, it would be confusing or pull them out of the mood, but I need it to get really into it.

 

Graphics
I love working on graphics myself. Be it locations, characters or my covers, I try to do as much as possible myself. Not only because I’m broke af, but also because I have loved doing that for many years. I use graphics not only for covers but also for visualisation. Not that helps me to get into the mood and character.

Poser & Photoshop, Illustrator
Poser is a program in which I can put scenes, and characters in a 3D environment and render them. In Photoshop I do the rest.
My last project of making a map for Ashwood Falls was started in a program called RPG Citymap Generator, but after the initial 5 minutes with that program, I spent several days in Photoshop to make it mine.
Illustrator is another graphic program, basically the Photoshop of Vector images. I don’t use that as often as Photoshop but for example, the “Enemy of my Enemy” cover was made in there.

Stock sites
And sometimes I use stock sites. These are sites that provide stock images to use in your own pictures. Some need to be paid, others are free. There are way too many to list here, but when you google for Stock images you will have a lot of results including websites that list 10, 20 or more of the best ones.

 

My friends and partner
At the moment I don’t have beta-readers (hope to get them, though), but I have friends I bounce ideas off. When I get stuck or need another set of eyes to know if a plot works they are the ones to get bugged by me. I feel lucky to have friends who don’t sugarcoat things and tell me if something I wrote sucks, otherwise that wouldn’t be any help. My partner even reads through my whole draft in that little time he has to find plotholes, inconsistencies or anything else that jumps at him.
I’m forever grateful for their support.

 

That is pretty much my writing tool cabinet. Does it look anything like yours? If not what would I find in your cabinet? Let’s chat and let me know in the comments!

Self publishing #3 – Editors

As I have promised you in my most recent blog post about beta readers, we are going to look at Editors in this post. As usual I am going to tell you what I did and then tell you what I should have done. I’ll also explain a bit about different kinds of editors and give you a few sources about how to find them and what to watch out for.

Ready? Yes? Let’s begin.

When I wrote my first Book “Sra’kalor“, it was quite an adventure. It was my very first book that I’ve finished, and also the very first book I wrote in English. Since it’s my second language I’m naturally making mistakes. That just means I’ll have to learn more, but until then I definitely need someone to check what I write for grammar, spelling, possible misuse of words and so on. I went through my book four times until I couldn’t find anything wrong with it any more. Believing it was great, I sent it to my partner and he checked once more. He found a bunch of things that could be improved and a pile of spelling and grammar mistakes. I fixed these as well believed to be done, because we had worked a lot and hard on it. So I published the book and began to send it to reviewers, bloggers and the like.

In the coming weeks I received reviews that mentioned grammar and spelling mistakes, that the language sounded as if English wasn’t my first language, that it sounded too formal and some words were misused. You can possibly imagine the punch I felt in my stomach. For a while I even thought I should stop writing if it is that bad, but thanks to some encouraging friends that feeling didn’t last long and I decided to want to improve instead of giving up – yay me. One of my friends has an editor in their family and connected us. I sent my book to her, she took the time and effort to edit it and did not only mark the parts that were wrong, but also explained to me why. That helped tremendously. So I revised the book and feel much better with it now.

No matter how well you write, how much you work on your book, how many mistakes you find and correct, having an editor go through it for you and bring the best out of it is very important. That is something that I absolutely underestimated in the beginning but have learned until now. And if you work with Beta readers – as mentioned in the previous post – you would first write and edit as much as you possibly can and then send your work to your beta readers and after they took it apart and helped you to make it even better it’s the editor’s turn. Not the other way around.

What would an editor do for you? That depends on the kind of editor.

1. Content editors/developmental editors – They check your book for structure, plot holes, parts that go too slow, others that go too fast, inconsistencies (what we call goofs in movies) and so on. It might happen that they change something in your story to make it flow better, change the way you wrote sentences or whole scenes. They work directly with the content of the story and help authors to find their writing voice.
2. Copy editors – These make sure your book has a high readability, that it’s written smooth and has a consistent style all over.
3. Line Editors – They focus on grammar, spelling, punctuation, verb tenses and so on. You know all these little things that we do not see any more because we know our story and our brain reads them correctly even though they are misspelled.
   1. Copy and Line editors are often one person nowadays but sometimes they are still different people. And you might even find someone who does all of the above but not that often.
4. Proofreaders. After all editors went all through your work and you made sure to fix mistakes and rewrite what needs to be rewritten, proofreaders go through the book again and find all the little things that everyone else missed. Yes that can happen. Editors are humans, you are human, so mistakes happen. Even the most famous works still have mistakes here and there, but imagine them without going through all that editing work.

 

How to find editors?

Since I did not have to find an editor, thanks to my friend, I have done a little research about where to find editors.

• “Where do you find an editor?” A goodreads group discussion. Several editors actually replied in this thread to offer their services, other answers linked to websites or people directly.
• “Need an affordable editor?” Another goodreads group discussion in which several editors offer their services.
• “Are you an Editor / Proofreader?” And another goodreads group discussion
  “Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA)” To quote the website: “EFA members are editors, writers, indexers, proofreaders, researchers, desktop publishers, translators, and others who offer a broad range of skills and specialties.”
• “Publishers Marketplace” Editors and other publishing professionals are advertising their services here, have a look.
• “Best book editors on twitter” This is a long list of editors on twitter
• “Mediabistro” Here you can find and hire freelancers, among others editors.

What to watch out for when choosing an editor

• What kind of editor are they?
• Do they work in your genre? That is especially important for content editors. You wouldn’t want a magazine column content editor to edit your romance novel. These are completely different genres and styles. If it only is about spelling and grammar, the genre that editor worked in might not be that important.
• What is their experience? Who have they worked with?
• Do they offer a trial page or chapter so you can see their style?
• Do you click? You work closely with your editor if you can’t stand each other it’ll make it difficult.
• What is their rate? Editors are not cheap. Even those with affordable prices might be out of your budget. So check how much you have to pay and how much you can pay.
• How many authors do they work with at the same time? Do they have the time for your book it deserves?
• Remember not every editor might be the right one for you. You might have to kiss many frogs… wait wrong subject. You might have to try out several editors before finding ‘the one’.

These lists are by far not complete, but do a google search for editors and you’ll find a ton of results. Not only editor pages but also articles about how to find them, what to watch out for, questions you should ask yourself and so on.

Two of these sites are

• “Help! I need a book editor” You can find some explanations, more links to editor resources and articles to related subjects.
• “5 ways to find the right freelance book editor” This article will give you a few tips on how to find the editor you need including questions you can ask a potential editor to find out if they are a fit

There is so much more but this article has been too long already. If you managed to stay with me until now – Congratulations you are a patient human being! And thank you for sticking with me.

Do you have any more invaluable tips and tricks when it comes to editors? Where did you find yours? What experiences do you have with your editor and did your first find end up to be ‘the one’? What did you do when your choice wasn’t the right one? Please share your stories with us in the comment box below! Until next time and stay creative!

Self publishing #2 – Beta-readers

In my first post about my journey of self publishing, I have written about the first step on the journey: Buildling a base like a blog, website and so on. I am not going to tell you how to write. That has two reasons.

Number one is that everybody writes different. Be it style, voice, length, process and so on. It’s a thing that everyone has to find out for themselves. The other is that I’m still finding my own voice, my own style, so to tell others what they should do -especially since there is no ONE way to do it right- would be just hilarious. So we are skipping that point and assume that you are writing your book, your story, what is in your heart or head. What now?

Well here we go again with the thing that I did and what I possibly should have done. So ready?

I wrote the whole book, went through it two more times for edits, rewrites and polishing. Then I gave it to my boyfriend. First of all I wanted someone to read the story who didn’t know it yet and who could tell me if it is BS or not. I’m one of the lucky ones to have that support and honesty that he’d tell me that. I have gotten a couple of great suggestions from him, have been made aware of plot holes and things that didn’t work out. He also is better with English grammar and spelling than I am, so he could find a lot of mistakes I made. We both went through the book two more times, changing things here and there, correcting mistakes until we couldn’t find any more. And then I published the book.

Now to what I should have done. All of what I have done. But then instead of publishing, I should have found beta readers and an editor. I will split this into two posts so this won’t be too long. The first part of this will be about beta readers! The next will talk about editors.

While having my boyfriend as a sounding board was a great thing, it cannot hurt to get opinions of more than one person, even if that person is brutally honest with you. Tastes and preferences are different from person to person. It also could have happen that despite being really careful, you still miss something.

So what are beta-readers? I haven’t had any but from what I ready they are something like test readers, sounding boards and opinion givers. They receive your work and give you their feedback, about things that might not work, are just bad, are good and so on. Some also might be really good with langauge and give you pointers in that direction. It really depends on the beta-reader or what you expect from them. Of course not everything beta-readers tell you will be something you want or hear or change. It is at you to see what you do with the information you get from them.

Since I have not worked with beta-readers before, I am going to post you a couple of links to articles that I found interesting and helpful for future endeavours and hope they’ll help you too.

The big question now is how to find beta-readers. I found a bunch of articles about that. Some talk about networking, making friends on platforms like twitter, facebook, goodreads and so on, because people are more likely to help you, if they know YOU. You can read about this that on smallbluedog.com or jamiegold.com for example, but google has many more results to check out.

Another way is to join groups on platforms like facebook, goodreads, wattpad and so on to connect with beta-readers and find them. You can find more links on where to find them in the jamiegold.com article. But to be honest, even if you go that route, networking and making friends sounds like a great idea.

NOTE: Many beta-readers do this for free, but there are also ways to get beta-readers if you pay for them. I have not looked much into that so far, but I saw it mentioned.

Another great post that I’ve found was on  thebookdesigner.com which gives out free advice about what to know about working with beta readers.

From what I have read in several articles the steps are as follows:

• Find beta-readers and make sure you clarify what kind of feedback you want from them.
• Don’t send them a draft. This came up over and over. Make sure you finish the book as much as you possibly can. Edit, fix, rewrite, polish until you believe it is the best you can make it. Your beta-readers deserve to read it that way and if they really like it and work with you on it, they might tell their friends about it as well.
• Make sure they get the format they prefer your book in – for example some prefer kindle format, others are okay with pdf, again others would like a version they can print and so on.
• Feedback sometimes stings, especially if it is negative. But if you feel hurt by it, take a step back, breath, think about it. Are they right? Is it something you should change and adjust? Will changing that one thing make the book better? Don’t pick a fight over it, but instead thank them for the input even if you do not make the change.
• Remember that while every feedback is valuable, that not every feedback needs to be put into action. Some things are personal preferences, you decide what works with you.
• Remember to thank your beta-readers for their work. Reading takes time, writing up feedback as well and just like you when you write, they take it out of their free time they could spend otherwise. Beta-readers are valuable and do this by choice not because they have to. So thank them, be nice, treat them well and mention them in your acknowledgements.

It is quite important to know that beta-readers, be they as brilliant as they come, are not the same as editors. Beta-readers will help you to make your book as great as your combined effort can make it. The editor will receive it afterwards.

What is your experience with beta-readers? Do you have any? How is it for you working with them? How did you find them? Do you have any extra tips for us? Feel free to comment below and share your stories!

I hope this was helpful. Next time we’ll take a peek at editors!

 

 

Self publishing #1 – The start is not what you think it is

I have been asked a couple of times how I went about my self publishing journey and I have tried to answer to the best of my ability. Despite having read hours and hours about self publishing, what to do and how it works, I have made many mistakes. So I decided to share my way, and not only tell you what I did, but also what I did wrong. Maybe the one or other will find this helpful. Because self publishing is such a long journey, I thought it might be more useful to split this in several parts and make it a series. So here is where we start.

If you are anything like me, you might think that the start is to write and finish the story. Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong. After reading more and more after I have published my book, I have learned that the actual start of the process is to begin building your base, a community of people, followers, future readers etc.

But why should I do that when I don’t even have the book yet to show them? Well that was my question. But actually it makes a lot of sense. You need to get people interested in you. I have not done that when I started, so I am telling you about the things I should have done.

The start could be anything like this:

• Start a blog (I personally love wordpress, but there are other platforms, depending if you want to host it on your website or not. Even if you have a static website, a blog is a fantastic addition, to allow people to subscribe and follow your new posts more easily.)
• Create a twitter (unless you have one that you want to use for it already.)
• Create a facebook page for your musings and book promotions
• Syndicate your blog with twitter, facebook, google+ and other social media websites for maximum exposure of your blog. It helped me because it saved me the time to manually post every article over the net.
• Check out online communities/forums about writing and get active (If you google for writing communities you will find a lot of sites with lists and such to help you find the right one for you. These are just 3 of the top results here, here and here.)
• Read author’s websites and blogs, comment and connect. (Contrary to the whole rumour (and sometimes fact) about authors being solitary creatures, many of us actually love to interact with other writers and readers.)

You might not have a book to show yet, but you have your mind. Share your way, your ideas, interesting articles about writing, writing prompts, inspirations that make you write, quotes that you feel are worth sharing and so on and so forth. I am the first to admit that it takes getting used to. I keep thinking that I have nothing to say, nothing to share, but that is not true. I just keep telling myself that for some reason. So I’m still trying to get into the groove.

On twitter you can share these blogposts, interact with readers and writers or just anyone really. You might think that your stories are the most interesting part of you, but actually readers want to know you. They want to be part of your life so share something about you, don’t hide behind a wall of books. I know that many writers out there are more comfortable focussing on their writing, I am one of those. I really have a hard time to be active on social media, but I have my moments here and there. But mostly I think that my stories are more interesting than me. But I’m trying to get over that. 😉

But the more connected people feel with you, the more interested they become in you and what you are doing. That also means they might be more interested in hearing about your story, your book, your novel series, whatever you are writing, once you have something to share. It does makes sense. I mean would you be more interested in a book a friend publishes or in that of a stranger? Yes, the stranger can deliver a fantastic book that you want to buy – we do that all the time, right? – but if a friend tells me about their new book I’m all over that like I’d be over a meat only buffet.

So Step 1 is to start building your base, interact (even if it is hard for you it’s worth it), and show yourself.

 

 

Stay tuned for the next part soon. Until then feel free to share your beginnings. Did you start with building a base? Or did you write all the way through and started after? What are your experiences and what would you do different if you’d have to start again? The comment section below is hungry for your input!