Interview with Girls With Books

Hey, I did an interview with Lisa and Sarah over at their blog Girls With Books. They review books, host author interviews, and book promotion. I want to thank these lovely ladies for kindly hosting me. Check out the interview. I talk about my work process and what inspired me to write Scary Mary.

What's Coming 2015?

My New Year's resolution is to WRITE MORE. So what does this mean for you? It means I am starting a new serial project called My Demon. I shared a bit of it in a Nanowrimo post. I plan to release an episode every month that is between 10k-20k words. This project is different for many reasons. Here's a list why:

1. It's a serial, which means it is an ongoing story. I am not writing this in chapters but breaking it up by days. I will release a day or more in each project. Generally, each episode will cover two days.

2. Episodes will be released on Amazon only. This was a tough decision, but I wish to try out Kindle Select to see how well the project does. I admit this decision was purely based on financial reasons. I won't bore you with all of the details, but Amazon is my primary income source, and they've shaken things up in such a way that going exclusive with them may be very beneficial with this project. It also means that if you are in Amazon Prime or subscribed to Kindle Unlimited, you can read the episodes without having to buy them. I think I'll upload older episodes on more channels later in the year, but I can't say for sure until I see the results of this experiment. Scary Mary and other longer works will continue to be distributed to multiple platforms. Not just Amazon.

3. Playing with preorder. Preorder has become an option on many platforms. I'd like to try it out on Amazon. Every episode will be available for preorder the month before it is published.

4. No paranormal or fantastic elements. Unlike my other works, I don't plan to have any fantastic elements in this story. (I say I don't plan for this b/c it is an ongoing project and who knows where the story might end up? Never say never and all that.)

5. Open to reader input. While I have several episodes pre-written, this project is a work in-progress and I would love to hear what readers think and how they'd like the story to go. That doesn't mean I'll do what you say, but I'll definitely have it mind while I'm writing.

I really hope you like My Demon. It is a huge undertaking, and I hope it does well. But don't worry, I plan to work on a number of projects this year, not just My Demon. There is definitely another Scary Mary book in the works, along with a couple of other things.

Here is the current blurb for My Demon:

Sarah Smith doesn’t want to go to Noble Academy. She has grown up in its shadows and knows she doesn’t belong. Noble is the school for the children of the richest and the most influential in the Western hemisphere. Her father is a handyman, and her mother a cook. They work at Noble. Because they cannot afford to send her anywhere else, Sarah is admitted to this rarefied institution. She doesn’t expect to fit in or to have an especially good time, but then again, she doesn’t expect Damien West either.

From their very first meeting, Sarah knows Damien will be the bane of her existence. He’s rude, loud, and possibly homicidal. She fears he will make her life a living Hell and be her personal demon.

This first installment is 16k words. Each episode will be between 10k-20k words and priced ninety-nine cents or the regional equivalent. A new episode will be released at the start of every month.

This work is considered young adult, but there are instances of strong language and some mild violence.

And here is the preorder page.

Strange Girl Published

Strange Girl, Book 4 in The Scary Mary Series is finally published! This is amazing to me. I can't believe I'm on book 4. I dreamt of writing this series for so long and now it is a reality. It's a real series.

This book was quite the solo adventure for me. Due to my general lack of planning, I designed the cover myself, did all the proofreading, and the formatting. With past books, I've managed to at least hire someone to help with some of these, but this time, I decided it would add too much time and generally slow the process to a halt. So if you see some typos, don't like the cover, or your ereader has a meltdown trying to load the book--It's all MY FAULT. I'll be here for you to scream at. (Hope you enjoy the book!)

So, Strange Girl, what's it about? Well, here's the blurb:

*You look awesome.*

This is a typical text from Jake, the mysterious guy who saved Mary from the Shadowman. After everything had settled down, he started sending little messages to her. They brighten her day and make her feel special. She likes Jake. He's different like her. A freak. They send texts back and forth frequently, and Mary hasn’t told anyone about him. He's her secret friend.

When the TV producer Regina Smith comes to ask Gran for help, Mary pushes Gran to take her up on the opportunity. Regina wants them to go to Alabama to help a group of paranormal investigators, who are making a reality show. They've stumbled onto a real haunted house, and if no one steps in, they're going to get themselves killed. But Mary doesn't really care about that. She wants to go because Jake lives in Alabama. And she hopes to meet him. But when Gran’s kidnapped, Mary no longer hopes to meet Jake, she has to meet him. He’s her only hope of rescuing Gran. But mysteriously, he has stopped answering her texts.

To save Gran, Mary not only has to contend with two malevolent ghosts but also the paranormal investigators who will stop at nothing to capture evidence of the paranormal. If they have to, they’ll put Gran and Mary at risk. They will get the ghosts one way or another.

You know how ghosts are made, right?

The ebook is now live at the following vendors!

Amazon     Barnes and Noble     Smashwords     iTunes    Kobo
And as usual, here is the first chapter of the book as a sample. I hope you like it.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

It’s 8pm on 11/30/14, and I have just validated my novel on Nanowrimo.org. I’ve watched the “Congratulations!” video and downloaded my winner badge. I feel accomplished, but a little bit guilty. A sense of guilt has vaguely troubled me all of November. I wrote A LOT this month, but not a word of it was for Scary Mary 4 – Strange Girl. I shelved that project for November because I was burnt out. I’d been editing it for over a month, and I was beginning to hate the story. I became discouraged. Then around the last week of October, I began getting messages from the regional ML’s detailing the planned get-togethers for write-ins.

I’ve participated in Nano in years past and always enjoyed the community that popped up around it. And I’ve been itching to just WRITE. I was tired of editing. I didn’t want to read and think. I wanted to just write. That may sound a little paradoxical, the idea of writing and not thinking, but it’s something that happens when committing to Nano. And there had been a project brewing in the back my brain that was singing a siren’s song to me. I considered other projects, ones that I’d started and needed to finish. I even worked on one of them on the first day of November, but this other project kept pulsating in my head, enticing me to dive into the world and characters. It was something I’d started writing on the fly months before. Barely starting before saving and closing, less than 1300 words written, but for some reason, it started pestering me in November to the point that the project I’d thought I’d work on to give myself a break from SM4 became unappealing. This other story needed to be written.

So during the first week of Nano, I switched gears and started working on it. (I didn’t discard the words that I’d written for the other project. I’m not that much of a purist when it comes to Nano. Any words I wrote for any story are counted, which was about 3k before the switch, so technically speaking, I only have 47k for this project written, but it’ll be 50k soon enough. I’m nowhere near done.) The words came swiftly. I for once in my life kept up with the goals. Or roughly at least. I started designing a cover. I picked a title that I really like, and dammit, this is gonna be a thing.

Tomorrow, on Dec. 1st, I’m going to open the files for Strange Girl again, and recommit to it. I feel reenergized. I’m shooting for a pub date still of Dec. 15. I will work tirelessly on it for the next two weeks and click publish finally. But tonight, I’d like to share with you the beginning of this other project. It is another high school based story, but it has no paranormal or fantastical elements, at least not the standard ones. The filthy rich, though, seem like mythical beings to me. It has been lightly edited tonight before posting. This is not unedited, raw writing by moi. I wouldn't inflict that on you.

Nanowrimo!

Once again it's November and you know what that means! No, I'm not going to grow a mustache, though Movember is a worth cause. I'm gonna try writing 50k this month for National Novel Writing Month. Don't know how well this will go since I have the fourth Scary Mary to work on, but I'm gonna participate as much as possible. I went to the kick-off event tonight for my region and wrote 2k on a project, but this will not be the norm as SM4 takes precedence.

If you're participating, I wish you luck. If you don't know what the heck I'm talking about, go check out Nano's website. :-)