EDITING, RAIN, BOOKS, ETC

Good morning all:  I hope all is well with you all.

Hubs got up early and watered the garden, now it is pouring rain.  Of course, isn’t that the way it works?  And it looks like an all day affair.

You know how there are some days when nothing works out?  Well that was yesterday.  I had plans on editing THE HANGMAN, but it just seemed I could not get to it.  So today is the day.  As soon as I finish this I will get started.  Oh crap!  I forgot.  I have an Eye of Round Roast and a Pork Loin in the fridge that I need to cut up.  BUT THEN!  On to THE HANGMAN.  I promise, Sister.

I told you I bought a new MacBook.  Well, there is a lot of new stuff on it. I ordered a book from Amazon and it came in this morning.  I am anxious to get started on it.  I am so computer illiterate it is sad.  I get so angry with myself sometimes.  I am one of those who just can’t remember instructions.

Well I am through whinin’ and crying’ so I will spare you all more of my misery.  You all take care and we’ll talk again later.

DREAMAH

WARM, TRAVEL, EDITING

Hey everyone: Hope all is well with you.
We came home from Mansfield yesterday afternoon, spent the night at home and now we are in Louisville babysitting our grand dog for the week end. It was very cold in Ohio and now here we are at 78deg in KY.
Sister is bragging about her roses and now she is expecting a snow storm. That’s what she gets for going on and on and on and on about being able to plant. I can’t even dig a hole yet. But, hopefully, our cold is over and tomatoes will be in the ground soon.

I tell you. One little complained about not having anything to edit and Sister up and sends me what she has on THE HANGMAN. Actually, I am anxious to get started on the first round. I did notice one pitiful little bud on my dogwood tree. It’s only about three foot tall, but I have hopes for it. It’s funny but just about 80 miles south, the dogwood are in full bloom.

Well, I hope you all have a good week end. Get some writing and/or editing done and we’ll talk again soon. If you haven’t yet, go to Amazon and buy THE STONE KILLER. I think you will like it and it is the first in the JONAS BLACK series.
1/2 DREAMAH

I DON’T KNOW YET

Well folks I’m back.  And to tell you the truth, I don’t even know where I’ve been.  I just know I have been unable to write a blog for awhile.  Because Sister asked me to, I’m going to give it a go.

How the heck have y’all been?  Not much going on in my world.  Well, my husband had a total knee replacement, and even tho he has a very high pain tolerance, he suffered quite a bit.   He is better now, but still has some pain after therapy.I

Have you ever typed an entire paragraph only to have it disappear?  Well, that Just happened to me.  I don’t know where it went.  I suppose it is out there in cyberspace somewhere.  So I will try to do it again.

The most exciting thing in my life is that I am going to Colorado in June.  I can hardly wait.  If we can talk our sister in Ohio to go too, we can have a family reunion.

I’m editing THE STONE KILLER as fast as I can.  Sister needs to finish writing the darn thing so we can get it up on Amazon soon.

My dinner is nearly ready and the husband is hungry, so I will say bye for now.  You all be good to yourselves and we’ll talk again soon.  Stick with your writing and don’t let yourself get into a slump like I have.

1/2 DHL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UPLOADING. CORRECTIONS, UPLOADING AGAIN, AGAIN AND AGAIN!!!!

Print-on-demand Books Hochroth Verlag HP Printer (Photo credit: innovate360)

CREATING KATHRYN CROWN finally has been corrected for the last time (I hope) and uploaded to CreateSpace for the print on demand version of the book.  Now I have to finish A CIRCLE OF MURDERS for uploading to Smashword.  Then on to the next book, THE STONE KILLER.

If you like ghost stories, murder and mayhem, you’ll love THE STONE KILLER.    Here is the blurb I have written for it:

You don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it, as Morgan Jansen finds out too late.

The bond between identical twins sometimes transcends death. So when Homicide Detective Sergeant John T. Huntington appears on Morgan’s doorstep, with his partner Esperanza Ortiz, she already knows her twin sister, Marilyn Heddrix, is in trouble and seriously injured. But, she is not prepared to hear that her sister has been violently murdered.

But Marilyn wants justice and refuses to stay dead.  She returns, as a ghost, to offer snippets of information about another victim, but nothing about her killer.

How can Morgan pass on the information to the detective without having to explain that it came from her dead sister’s ghost, especially to a man she finds so sexually attractive.

Detective Huntington and Morgan begin a journey into the world of paranormal to hunt for a serial killer bent on executing his own form of justice, while each comes to term with the demons from their past.

 

 

UPLOADED, UPLOADED, UPLOADED, CREATING KATHRYN CROWN, NOVEL TEASER

Amazon vs iCal (Photo credit: Zach “Pie” Inglis)

We uploaded CREATING KATHRYN CROWN to Amazon KDP this morning.   After weeks and weeks of editing and corrections, a total of six edit jobs to be precise, would you believe there was a misspelled word.  We corrected the original copy and uploaded the novel again.  Now we are waiting for the process to complete and proof the book.  Once that is done, CreateSpace formatting is next.  We are also formatting A CIRCLE OF MURDERS to upload to Smashword.  That should be fun.  None of this formatting is difficult, just time-consuming.

So, folks, I am going to give you a teaser of the novel.  Included in this blog is the Prologue of CREATING KATHRYN CROWN.  Enjoy, and let us know what you think.

Have a great day and stay safe.

Prologue

The odor of death, hot and coppery, melded with the humidity and swept through the room, carried on the dense sea breeze.  A last ray of sunlight breached the open French doors and cut a swathe across the beige carpet to illuminate an area in the deep shadows.  In the fading light, the woman could see a body on the floor next to the brown sofa, abundant silver curls haloed in a pool of blood, the battered face half hidden by the shadows.  Bile rose in her throat causing her to almost gag.

Car keys clutched tightly in her hand, she hid outside the room’s entrance and gripped her purse to her chest hugging the door frame praying to remain unseen.  Just when she thought escape was within her grasp, a dark form catapulted out of the gloom and charged across the room toward her.  She screamed, turned and bolted.  Each footstep echoed as she raced down the hall past a wall mirror.  The glass briefly captured the image of a shocked white face with a mane of long dark auburn hair.

She fought the front door’s brass knob, twisting it violently, and succeeded in jerking the door open to tear down the flagstone steps to the car parked in the curved driveway.  Thank God she had forgotten to lock the driver’s door.  Once behind the wheel, she hit the lock button, rammed the key into the ignition and turned it.  The engine roared to life.  Rubber tires screamed as she barreled down the quiet street to the highway and toward the bridge.

Eyes wide with fear, she kept glancing in the rearview mirror to see twin globes of bright light rapidly gaining on her.  She rammed her foot down on the accelerator.  The Mustang shot forward at eighty, then ninety miles per hour.  The speedometer continued to climb.  One last time she took her eyes off the road to check the rear view mirror.  That was the last act she committed before the scream of metal against metal and her world was devoured by the night.

Inspiration

A CIRCLE OF MURDERS is now available as a print on demand paperback at Amazon.com for those of you who prefer an actual book instead of the digital kind.

Inspiration for a book comes from many places.  The birth of A CIRCLE OF MURDERS happened due to an actual abduction of a young girl in Tampa, Florida. Neither she nor her body were ever found. To say that I was haunted by what happened does not fully describe the affect that abduction had on me. I couldn’t forget that lost child. But I knew that if all the resources at hand could not find her, the only way I could bring her home was to write. And so my novel, A CIRCLE OF MURDERS, was born. It is the story of a lost child and how she finds her way back home and faces all the dangers along the way

For all who downloaded the free Kindle edition and to all who have purchased the book, thank you.  I hope you enjoy reading the novel as much as I did writing Sarra’s story.

Createspace

Today I FINALLY reviewed again and uploaded for the fourth time A CIRCLE OF MURDERS manuscript for the POD to Createspace be sold on Amazon.  I have to say this has been an experience.  First of all, the people at Createspace are very helpful and I appreciate their assistance.  I also need to say that when you are uploading any work for an ebook or a POD, you can’t go over the text too many times before and after uploading your file.

As a new self published author, the excitement of uploading the manuscript for a Kindle ebook  was overwhelming.  Even though my sister and I have written as a team for several years, this was our first venture into the publishing realm.  I honestly don’t know how many times we went over the manuscript line by line to make sure each word was spelled correctly, that each comma was precisely placed, all quote marks were valid and paragraphs were in their proper place only to discover after uploading several mistakes sticking out like flashing beacons.  All in all with my sister, myself and friends, the  book was edited close to ten times before it was even formatted for Kindle and another four time for the POD version.  All I can say is that there shouldn’t be one mistake in that book, BUT, I’ll bet you, dear reader, could find one.

I have read books that I have found a mistakes in the text and have wondered how that could happen.  The answer is simple:  as the creator of the work, our minds automatically insert the missing word and ignore that ed or s added on a word where it doesn’t belong.   So all I can say is that if you find an error, please forgive the mistake and just enjoy the story knowing that we worked hard to make the finish product as perfect as possible.   Anyone who thinks being a writer is an easy job, should try it first.  So I wish all fellow authors the best of luck in their endeavors now and for the future.

Again it is after midnight and I need to shut my brain down and get some rest.  Tomorrow I resume my editing of THE STONE KILLER and hope to have that manuscript finished soon.   So, good night for now.