Perfect Gnome Home

 

As I went for my walk today, I realized I had a huge issue with a chapter book that I thought was totally complete.

It was edited. It was read by a an Australian to help  come up with some Aussie slang that my thorny lizard might say. I had it read by a Brit to verify what Rory would say and do.

It looked like it was finished. I even queried it!

And actually from a stand-alone chapter book standard, it is finished.

But when I started writing notes for my story bible, I realized that GNOME WITHOUT A HOME took place around 100 years PRIOR to Rory meeting Kyte Webber of my Goblin's Apprentice series. His planted acorn is actually the oak tree in the stories--Rory's true gnome home.

When I wrote the third location Rory traveled to, I imagined a frou-frou sterile home in So. Cal with auto sprinklers and a lawn manicured to within an inch of its life. But that wouldn't work in my time line.

So, I changed it.

Japanese Tea Garden

And it didn't involve huge amounts of rewriting, but it did involve a few hours of research to find the right location that would work for me and Rory's story.

The Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA is perfect.

What do you think?

Would this be a good gnome home?

Later!
Mags

Merging Characters

I am so not happy.  I wrote this entire blog and then *poof* the silly thing disappears in cyber space!  Arrggghhhh!!  I KNOW this won't be the best blog I can write . . . because I already wrote it!
--sometimes I hate blogger!

I spent the last couple of weeks merging two characters. Why would a writer do this?

Well, there are many reasons.  First, the character isn't pulling his/her weight. Second, they aren't moving the story forward. In other words, they are simply superfluous. 

When I finished my final edit of GNOME, I had to come up with a series name.  I didn't have a name.  I didn't like my first ten ideas, but then I came up with THE GOBLIN'S APPRENTICE.  I had to make the goblin appear in the first book--oops.  He didn't show up until page 50 of FAERIE.  It wasn't hard tweaking GNOME, but cleaning up the mess in FAERIE was a nightmare. Two weeks later, I managed it!  Yay!
I spent the last couple days re-editing the first 60 pages of FAERIE (again!) to get rid of the clunkiness of the writing.

But the worst is over and I can continue editing to have FAERIE up and ready to go by May 1.  I just hope my artist has a cover for me by then . . . she's suffering some issues, too! 

Pushing through . . .
Later, Peeps.

April Fool's--no joke

Last Friday was April Fool's Day.  And I'll be the first to admit that I don't like the traditional tricks and jokes that tend to go on, so my family is awesome in that respect and they don't mess with me. So many good things happened that I wondered if someone was playing a April Fool's joke on me.

The highlight was having my book mentioned on three blogs.  One blog was a planned interview, the other two were a total surprise.
The blog that excited me the most was a book review of GNOME. This review was so very special to me.
1)  It was my first book review that was exclusively on a blog
2)  It was a review given by an eleven-year-old.  The reviewer is smack-dab in the middle of my target age range.
3)  Not only was he my target age range for this story, but he was a BOY! I'd been told by so many agents/editors/bloggers on the internet that they want 'boy' books, as boys and girls will read boy books, but only girls will read girl books.  Uh, my character is a girl and I don't think that fact bothered him at all.
4)  I was more excited by this review than I was to be in the paper a couple weeks ago!
The third blog was a shoutout to Rubix Boy for joining the blog-o-sphere as a young reader/reviewer.

Rubix Boy's review excited me because I had been having a hard time finding reviewers who would read MG --a self-pubbed MG at that.  I knew what I wanted to do for my next step in marketing, but I didn't have the connections that I needed to get the word out.  In steps Misty of Topshelfebooks who helped me out by sending out the word on various FB pages that I wanted MG book reviewers. 

I had one teacher (w/150 6th-8th grade students, many with e-readers) and a few other parents request GNOME.  I happily gave them a coupon code to get a free copy from Smashwords with my only request being: post a review on Amazon Kindle, Smashwords and/or Barnes & Noble Nook. It can be a good review or a bad review, but I want it to reflect the brutal honesty of that age group.

But that's all the marketing/publicity news I have for now since I need to seriously get cracking on editing FAERIE.

After all, Rubix Boy requested the next book in The Goblin's Apprentice series . . .

Later, Peeps!

Release Day for GNOME!!!

In celebration of releasing GNOME, I will give away a free copy of Lost Leprechaun Loot . . . just in time for St. Paddy's day!!!
Here's my smashwords page, Click on Lost Leprechaun Loot, enter the coupon code: XV73M



Feel free to forward this link and code to anyone and everyone.  LLL will be free until March 14th.
Oh, I'm planning to have Book 2, THE FAST AND THE FAERIEOUS out by May1!

Love and hugs for all your support!
Later, Peeps!