Tag Archives: author

January 27, 2016 · 2:00 pm

Cogling Blog Tour for Fellow Author – Jordan Elizabeth

Today I’m participating in a blog tour for a fellow author, Jordan Elizabeth!

I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, since I had the privileged of beta reading one of her earlier drafts of this book. I’ll soon be reading the new version, so I’m super excited to see how the book turned out. 😀

In the meantime…

COGLING

Young Adult Steampunk-Fantasy

Jordan Elizabeth - Cogling Cover

The beautiful cover is thanks to Mandie Manzano.

When fifteen-year-old Edna Mather tears an expensive and unfamiliar pocket watch off her little brother’s neck, he crumbles into a pile of cogs right before her eyes. Horrified, Edna flees for help, but encounters Ike, a thief who attempts to steal the watch before he realizes what it is: a device to power Coglings—clockwork changelings left in place of stolen children who have been forced to work in factories.

Desperate to rescue her brother, Edna sets off across the kingdom to the hags’ swamp, with Ike in tow. There, they learn Coglings are also replacing nobility so the hags can stage a rebellion and rule over humanity. Edna and Ike must stop the revolt, but the populace believes hags are helpful godmothers and healers. No one wants to believe a lowly servant and a thief, especially when Ike has secrets that label them both as traitors. 

Together, Edna and Ike must make the kingdom trust them or stop the hags themselves, even if Ike is forced to embrace his dark heritage and Edna must surrender her family.

 

Jordan Elizabeth - Cogling Cover Wrap

 

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Excerpt:

Green smoke snaked up the side of the tenement and drifted over the sill of an open window. A breeze blew the vapor into a column before it solidified into the shape of a stout, young hag. She shook her crimson curls away from her face and straightened the hood of her cloak to keep her kohl-lined, silver eyes shadowed.

The scent of lavender clung to her robes, washing over the small room. Two brass-framed beds crowded the floor. Blankets covered sleeping children. A little boy wheezed against the head of his stuffed bear, drool dripping onto the wool.

The hag squinted to see the goldenrod dream cloud above his head—a dream about seeing his father again. She frowned at the other bed, where a sleeping teenager lay with a threadbare blanket tugged around her chin. Even squinting, the hag couldn’t make out a dream cloud. The girl was too old to be of any use.

The hag slithered to the boy’s bed and, from the folds of her cloak, drew out a rectangular box four inches long, with a circular indentation on one side. She set it on the floor to remove a vial and rag from her skirt pocket, the rough wool of the rag irritating her fingertips.

“Do it, Simone,” the hag muttered to herself as she willed her hands not to tremble. “Make the Dark Mother happy.” She couldn’t fail at her first mission.

Holding her breath, Simone dribbled three drops onto the rag, yanked the teddy bear away, and shoved the drugged cloth against the boy’s mouth. His eyes opened, his gasp muffled, and his body jerked. Simone stiffened.

The girl moaned. Her mattress rustled as she rolled over to face the wall, brown curls shifting over her pillow.

Simone’s heart thudded. By the seven Saints, she should’ve cast a sleeping spell over the girl. The Dark Mother preferred humans to think hags were harmless healers, not thieves who kidnapped children.

The boy writhed, squeaks emerging from behind the rag. Simone pressed harder. She needed his breath in the wool to disguise and fuel the machine.

The potion took hold and the boy collapsed. Simone’s thick lips curved over her broken teeth. She lifted a pocket watch from around her neck and positioned it into the crevice in the metal box. As the two pieces connected, a chime rang out. She set the box beside the limp little boy and draped the rag over it. Even though she should wait to make sure his breath stuck in the machine, she couldn’t risk waking the girl.

The metal stretched to become his replica as if it were made of putty. With a second chime, the metal shimmered and dulled into the pale peach of his flesh, becoming an exact duplicate of the child.

“Mine.” Simone hefted the little boy into her arms, leaving the duplication on the bed, and transformed to smoke before the chimes awoke the girl.

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Check out COGLING on GoodReads and Amazon.

About the Author

Author - Jordan Elizabeth

Jordan Elizabeth, formally Jordan Elizabeth Mierek, writes down her nightmares in order to live her dreams. She is the author of ESCAPE FROM WITCHWOOD HOLLOW, TREASURE DARKLY, and BORN OF TREASURE. Check out her website, JordanElizabethMierek.com, for more information on her books, contests, and bonus short stories.

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Click here to enter her Rafflecopter giveaway for a chance to win a steampunk necklace!

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November 9, 2015 · 6:38 pm

Thoughts on Writing – Swearing in Audio Formats

In my last post, I read from Magic’s Stealing. It was the first time I edited one of my Youtube blog videos using Premiere Pro, and I used it to remove some of the more obvious stumbles where I tripped over my words. However, I ran into a bit of a conundrum that I hadn’t considered before. For public readings, should I bleep out swear words, or should I leave the text as-is?

If you recall, I wrote a post a while back on To Swear or Not To Swear, in which I debated whether or not to include actual swear words in the dialogue of the book. Ultimately, I decided to keep that particular instance, because it fit the character’s intentions and offered readers a bit of insight into the characters.

Keeping the swear as-is continued to bug me, though, largely because I wondered whether or not a middle grade audience (not just young adults) might be inclined to enjoy the book–but might have a less-inclined parent if those parents read the first chapter.

And that in itself is a whole new debate. Is it a good idea to tailor a story to a specific audience, with certain marketing expectations in mind? Middle grade novels are typically expected to be free of swearing. YA ranges the gamut, and adult depends on the genre.

The conundrum I’ve run into is that I intended Magic’s Stealing to be YA. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if a middle grade audience enjoyed it. As such, it’s led me to a new thought… if I ever do a public reading, should I censor the word? Then again, if I didn’t keep the swear, the passage wouldn’t have quite the same meaning. It’s unfortunate from a marketing standpoint that the only real-word swear is in the first few pages. Should I simply find a different chapter to read, perhaps in the middle of the action?

I suspect this will depend on the venue in question. Some venues, especially ones that are geared towards being family friendly, may ask to not have the swear read. Others may not care at all. It’s probably up to the type of fiction you write as to whether or not you choose to use venues that have specific preferences.

But what about audiobooks?

My first thought was, why change what we wrote? We choose our words for a reason.

On the other hand, people reading a book can very easily skim over words they don’t like. It’s not so easy when those words are being spoken aloud.

(I’ll admit that I don’t tend to listen to audiobooks, so I’m not sure what the general protocol is here.)

Granted, censoring spoken swears will depend on the audience. Obviously, censoring an erotic novel would be ridiculous. The target audience has expectations as to the contents of the novel.

But what about a YA novel with the occasional swear? Should this be censored in audio format? My first thought was “no.” That’s not how the author wrote it. But when read aloud, does that change the impact of those words?

Does reading the book aloud change the impact of the intent, and thus, change what should be read? Does reading aloud change how the text is perceived?

Or does trying to censor a word–whether by dropping the volume or inserting a bleep– actually draw more attention to it?

What about switching the word? The meaning changes, but what if, by switching words during a spoken performance, you actually get the intended reaction?

Is there a difference between the impact of something spoken, versus something silently read?

That, to me, is the real question.

If what we write on the page takes a different meaning when said aloud, then perhaps we should consider that impact, and decide what to change from there.

After all, screenwriting is different from novel writing. Adaptations are made because a book is a different format than what you might see in a live or recorded performance, and has different advantages and limitations.

But if the spoken word has the same impact as the written, then perhaps no changes should be made.

Honestly, I’m probably over-thinking this. For the previous reading, I left the swear in. I figured that pretty much anything I did would draw more attention to it (other than writing a whole blog post pondering the question), while letting it flow in context should keep the story running smoothly.

And in general, I’m thinking I’ll read the text as-is. If the one swear is likely to pose a problem, I could always chose a later segment to read.

But now I’m curious as to what you think. How would you handle a reading that has the occasional swear, whether an audiobook or in public?

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September 4, 2013 · 6:00 am

Twitter Me This

For today’s post, I’m going to briefly tangent my usual cover work posts to a post about twitter. I’ve had a twitter account for a while now, but I really couldn’t really say I tweeted. Mostly, I used it to keep up to date with industry news. Since it’s used for small amounts of texts, Twitter works great for people and businesses to posts links to news or other blog posts, usually with a little tag noting what it’s about. When I first set up my account, I followed publishers, agents, and authors whose blogs I admired. It was a great way to keep up with news, find out new information I was interested in, and generally keep up to date without having to read every blog post out there.

I pretty much watched Twitter invisibly for several months. Then, here recently, I realized there were some links I wanted to be able to return to easily to refresh my memory (writing advice, mostly), and my favorites folder is invariably overwhelmed by random links. So, I started using the retweet function. The posts now show up on my Twitter feed so I can see them again easily, but also, so I can share blogs I found useful easily. I recently updated my photo and header to make it a bit more unique.

Just thought I’d share. It’s been a useful way to sort through information. 🙂

And, in case you’re curious, you can follow me at https://twitter.com/SBibbPhoto

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April 24, 2012 · 12:41 pm

“1000 Words” Anthology Available on Kindle and Developing a Novella

I’m almost done with the “1000 Words” posts, really.  🙂  But I thought it’d be worth mentioning that the anthology is now available on Kindle : http://www.amazon.com/1000-Words-Collection-Stories-ebook/dp/B007WMXV6O/ref=sr_1_24?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1335312063&sr=1-24

The paperback version will be available starting this Friday the 27th, assuming that all goes well. It should be available on Amazon and Createspace. At this point in time I’m not doing expanded distribution, since I don’t think it will have the drive needed to pay itself off. The book will be under $10.00, and will include all ten short stories, have special print formatting, and be in full color (hence the price) that includes each of the ten book covers. 🙂

On a side note, I’ve found that I enjoyed putting all this together. So while short stories themselves may not be my thing (I can now focus on my YA novel, yay!), I’m considering writing a collection of short stories that develop into a novella. Reason being, a few reviews I’ve gotten on Smashwords suggested interest in seeing The Hunter or Socks developed into a longer story. While I don’t see The Hunt becoming much longer (unless I get a few short story ideas I decide to develop), I am considering writing Socks into a two or three part novella. That is– write three sections that are approximately 10,000 words (but not strictly linked to that– I learned from this project that’d be a bad idea). Each one would be a complete story, but the whole project would be linked. Each of the three parts would probably cost a dollar or so.

For a quick reminder, Socks is the YA sci-fi romance short story I wrote for “1000 Words.” It has hints of dystopia, and can be found free on Smashwords if you’re curious to see which one I’m talking about: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/154150

So if you guys are interested in seeingSocksdeveloped into a novella, please bring up your thoughts and comment. That way I know if it’s worth dividing my time between it and the YA novel I’m working on. 🙂

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April 7, 2012 · 1:33 pm

Self-Publishing “1000 Words” – The Carrier

An update on my “1000 Words” project.

For Snow Witch, once the free trial wore off, there were no more downloads of this story (except the one I bought as a gift for my fiance). As such, I’m currently looking at two possibilities: see if sales increase once other short stories are available for free, or make it free as well, and only make the actual, final anthology cost money. (I’m thinking $2.99 sounds like a decent price). Right now I’m waiting to hear back from Amazon/Kindle as to whether there is a way to make it free on Kindle, or if I should simply remove the story so I can make it free on Smashwords.

Either way, I plan to hold off on publishing any of the other short stories on Kindle until the full anthology is complete.

This is largely due to time. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that our final project is due on April 27th, the last day of regular classes before finals. Figure in two weeks for printing shipping a book, and that means I need to have completed the book by April 14th… a week from now. On the bright side, I guess I could do expedited shipping.

While I originally planned to do a large photobook version of “1000 Words” to showcase the completed book covers and stories, I’m starting to think that working with just the trade paperback version might be the best option.

Today I self-published the short story, The Carrier on Smashwords. Formatting was much smoother after having already done the formatting for Snow Witch. The one downside to running out of time to complete these stories, however, is not having as much time to find a proofreader. As such, I did extra proof reading of the story myself, and did it over a span of several weeks.

Once all the stories are completed, I do hope to find another proofreader for the whole anthology, or to look over it again myself, to try to catch anything I missed during this initial phase.

The benefit to going ahead and publishing it, though, is that it gives me the feeling that I must move on to the next story, regardless of if there might be more tweaks to be made. But if I were doing this for future projects, especially if it were a novel, I’d definitely want to find beta readers before it went live.

At the time of typing, The Carrier has had nine downloads, and no reviews (neither has Snow Witch). I just hope it is enjoyable. 🙂

Anyways, the statistics of the project is as follows:

2 Stories completed.

5 Stories written but not edited.

3 Stories still need to be written.

4 Book Covers completed.

2 Book Covers near completion.

4 Book Covers still need to be designed.

Snow Witch: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/139780

The Carrier: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/149719

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March 7, 2012 · 12:07 pm

Self-Publishing 1000 Words – Snow Witch is on Smashwords

SBibb - Snow Witch Cover

I have completed the cover for Snow Witch and finished formatting the short story for Smashwords. (Next up will be a Kindle edition). It is now up on Smashwords. The process felt surprisingly easy, and I only had one issue (had to change it from .docx to .doc), but the solution was easily remedied. I’m currently reading through and getting the hang of sales versus downloads, but hopefully it will work out well. I’m not sure if downloads also includes downloads of the sample.

Since Smashwords currently has a sitewide promotion going on this month for downloading an ebook, I choose to give “Snow Witch” the option to be downloaded for free. I’m hoping to entice people to download and review it, but we’ll see if anything comes of it. I missed the first half of the promotion, though, so it will only be free for three days, until March 10th. I would be curious to know how many people are interested in it because of the cover, and how many people are interested in the story due to the short description.

I also posted a note about it on my photo illustration Facebook page, made an announcement via Absolute Write’s announcements forum, and posted it here to my WordPress blog. I currently have two sales, one with the Smashwords coupon, and one an actual purchase. I’m not sure if the actual purchase was intentional or not. I’ll be curious to see how it tracks for the next few days (and will probably have to tell myself not to keep checking Smashwords’ dashboard for updates).

Next up is to create the Kindle edition, and then I need to edit and write the next short stories to be published. One down, nine to go.

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March 5, 2012 · 11:36 am

Self-Publishing “1000 Words” Project – A Collection of Short Stories

For my capstone honors college project, I elected to merge both my major and minor together. I’m a photography major with a creative writing minor, and for my photography I have a special interest in book cover design and photomanipulation.

Therefore, I decided to create a project consisting of ten short stories, each approximately 1000 words long, which would each be illustrated with a book cover. The title of the project, 1000 Words, comes from the phrase, “a picture’s worth a thousand words.”

While I will be creating a print, photobook version of all ten stories as the completion point, I realized I needed some sort of motivation to write, edit, and illustrate each individual short story.

Enter self-publishing.

I’ve long had an interest in self-publishing, but I also want to try the traditional route, and intend to start off trying traditional for my novels. Now, with the advent of ebooks, I want to try selling the short stories as a side project. Part of this is because I will be using my own first printing rights for the project, and the other part is to help me get a feel for the process and book cover design in order to aid future clients.

So I decided that I will create an e-version of each short story, and self-publish them as I complete them through Smashwords and Kindle. I’ll start off using Smashwords so that I can learn the formatting, then create a Kindle version afterwards.

I am currently planning to price each one at .99 cents, then once all of them are written, compile them into the final anthology called 1000 Words. I have not yet decided on its price, though I’m considering $2.99 and $3.99 at this point in time.

I honestly don’t expect to make any money off of this, especially since I have little in the way of marketing planned. I do intend to announce on my facebook page when I release a story, but seeing as how I have few followers on the business page, I’m not sure how effective that will be.

Also, I am hoping to offer a promotion of a couple day free downloading period (or give coupons to those who ask) for friends or people who might be interested in reviewing the short stories. I have considered leaving one story free once I get multiple stories uploaded.

In the meantime, my first short story slated to be published (hopefully by the end of this week), is “Snow Witch.” A young witch ventures outside of her town for the first time in hopes of transferring her brother’s illness to a willing creature.

I’m in the process of reviewing the short story (which I posted in AW’s Share Your Work forums) and I’m also currently editing the book cover to make it the best I can. 🙂

Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts. I’m hoping that sharing the process will be helpful to multiple people. 🙂

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