writing

Carry on (Fun)

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Another Tuesday rolled around and disappeared. Keeps happening.

Thought I’d share something with you today. (Not the delightful cold/flu business that TBH incubated and decided to share with me, you’re welcome.)

But this: Mo Mhuirnin – it’s a little thing on Amazon. It’s also now on Smashwords (which means it’s available in ePub), yeah, that’s new. Haven’t seen this little thing in ePub before. (9mm Press strikes again!)

Some of you might have come across Ginger Fendalton before via ‘The Scent of Seduction’ – which will be magically appearing in ePub on July 18th, 2019. That’s pretty cool.

Other joys of the day … made soup this morning before I left for the bookshop – that, friends, was a stroke of genius. Came home to hot delicious vege soup. Nothing better on a freezing wintery day.

Writing wise … not much accomplished, but, I did get a few paragraphs down. So, that’s progress in the right direction, just slow progress but sometimes that’s the best kind.

ActorKid and I finished watching Lucifer tonight. I’m pretty sure I saw on Twitter that there is another season? Here’s hoping. Hard not to love it.

Friday we have a book launch for those young readers (reading at a 7+ age) – check out the Writers Plot Bookshop Facebook page for details (under Events).

Actorkid thought making an oreo cake would be awesome – it’s delicious. Truly!

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Last Chance Train

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Blog title is a song from “100,000,000 Bon Jovi fans can’t be wrong”.

You know what makes an author happy? Come on, you do. You got this … say it with me, “REVIEWS.” There ya go. I knew you had it. I would be ridiculously delighted if you’d leave a review of the Byte Books you’ve read – but especially ridiculously delighted if you left the review/s on Smashwords, Kobo, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble … pretty well anywhere that’s NOT Amazon or Goodreads. Why? Because most of my books are no longer available on Amazon and I don’t think “3rd party sellers” should be benefiting from my reviews. Thanks in advance for being cool about this.

In other news: I went home. I came back. That’s all I have to say about that.

I’m working on Crashbyte – and kinda feel like it might get a name change because of Cryptobyte. Do we want to C’s back to back? No we do not. So, I’ll be fossicking through my Byte list shortly looking for something suitable … meanwhile, I know where this story is headed location wise. Ellie is going home. Where is home? Where is she really from? If you’ve read the series so far, you’ll know, or maybe have enough information to guess. It’s going to be a fun book. I can feel it in my bones. There’s a few things my bones are good for 1) detecting weather changes and 2) knowing when a story is going to be fun to write.

EDITED TO ADD: Crashbyte is now known as Vaporbyte.

FYI it’s cold and building up to a storm this afternoon. So here’s a picture of Mahau, (where I was for the weekend).

Mahau Sound, Marlborough Sounds.

My life is a book …

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Seriously! Saw a text from TBH when I woke this morning about strange noises and something/one outside our house – in the front yard. She also said it sounded like something ‘heavier than a bird’ landed in the tree.

The tree in question is a huge camellia tree, right outside my bedroom window. Yeah, I was asleep.

It’s still dark – I have yet to open the curtains to discover what may or may not be in my tree. Of course last night I read a passage in KILLERBYTE about something in a tree (while looking for a few sentences for a graphic). I can assure you that I am in NO hurry to check out the camellia tree this morning. No hurry whatsoever.

As a special treat The Byte Series Boxed Sets are 50% off via smashwords. Until June 1st. Don’t daly. Get in there are enjoy. The Boxed Sets have additional stories – they’re not just three books sandwiched inside a glorious umbrella cover. 🙂 So if you fancy 9 books for well under $10, grab them now.

A lot of you know that Romeo (my faithful greyhound companion) crossed the rainbow bridge on May 5th. He was involved in the writing process of flashbyte, soundbyte, snakebyte, databyte, eraserbyte, psychobyte, metabyte (he was the rock that helped me write that ending), qubyte, cryptobyte … and all the Byte shorts that go along with the series, including the poetry book. Ro was my sounding board. He very much approved of readers reading the Byte Series.

Here he is rocking his killerbyte bandana (original cover)

Walking in sunshine

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Stunning albeit cold day today. The walk to the bookshop was all sunshine and glorious. Don’t mind cold starts when the day is lovely!

So, what’s been happening here?

I have the proofs for snakebyte and the new version of Whispers in the Water. Whispers needs some tweaks. Which I knew and had already mostly done … then I had another idea. So, now it’s twenty pages longer. ha! Guess I’ll be re-doing the cover now. 🙂 Same amazing image – but a slightly wider spine. Kinda a fun project to be honest. Might do it next weekend when I’m home in Mahau. At this stage the books won’t be in the bookshop until July.

There is an important thing I need to remember before we leave on Thursday. THA doesn’t sail well. [She’s the only one of us that doesn’t.] So she’ll need good ol’ phenergan for the trip. Weather forecast is for wind, so it could be a wee bit bumpy out in the Strait. Best to be safe than sorry especially as immediately after the 3.5 hours on the sea we’ll be sitting in a car going over windy roads for 40 minutes! I’m all good on the sea – but man even I hate those twisty freaking roads. 🙂

I did try the whole ‘outlining’ thing for a new novel [non-byte]. Failed. It killed my desire to write and I shelved it. Pretty annoying really, because I was looking forward to this particular story. I might go back to it at some stage. I know it’s good. I know it’ll be fun to write. I just lost the will to do so with the whole outlining process. Maybe I need to find a different way of doing it?

Meanwhile, I’m back working on the 12th Byte novel. And that is fun. No outlining, no messing around at all. Just fun.

Give me something for the pain

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*Title is a Bon Jovi song

Feels like it fits today. Not that it hasn’t been a good week or anything, it’s more a writing thing. If you don’t think writing can be painful then you’re living in fairyland.

Currently, I’m back at the beginning of #Cryptobyte because I know more now than I did before, as often happens. Something else cropped up and I need to make sure I address it. The fun thing is, I’m back at the beginning. 🙂 That implies I got to the end.

In other news the article I wrote last winter is in the: The Spin Off  

For all of you asking why I didn’t mention my books in the article … at the time of writing I didn’t have any in the shop. This was written before the PledgeMe campaign finished and before I could get the Byte Series printed here. Of course, they are in the bookshop now! If you order paperbacks of my books from us you can request signed copies. 🙂

Welcome to February.

Ten years …

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This year marks my tenth year in this industry. Obviously, my journey began long before 2009 because, well, you don’t write a book overnight. Nor do you learn your craft, overnight. My journey began in about 1992. It began because I wanted to read something with real women in it. I wrote a lot and then became serious about this storytelling lark. In 2001 my first short story was published. (Yes, back in the dark ages with gatekeepers and whatnot.)

Around about this time of the year in 2009, I approached Rebel ePublishers in South Africa. (Yay for the internet!)

This year is the tenth anniversary of Killerbyte (April 2009) and the tenth anniversary of Terrorbyte (Nov 2009). They are the original publishing dates. Even though, we tend to say terrorbyte was 2010. It wasn’t. The paperbacks came out in 2010.

The tenth year! That’s supposedly a magic time. Any second now and I’ll be an overnight success. I know, right? Exciting stuff.

Ten books, 1 novella, 3 boxed sets, 1 book of poetry, I don’t know how many related short stories, all in the Byte Series. [Never mind the earlier short stories, or the kiwi novel, or the long shorts, that are unrelated to the series.] The work is there and continues.

I’m as prepared as I can be for instant success. Bring it on. 🙂

Ten years with a main-character like Ellie – could be medal worthy!

Playing with Keynote

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This was the result of my messing around with Keynote this morning. Haven’t used it before and it was kinda fun exploring. There is no sound. Haven’t figured sound out yet or maybe that’s not a thing that Keynote does. I don’t know. 🙂

Good chance I’ll spend more time fiddling around inside Keynote at a later date, but right now, I should get back to work on #Cryptobyte.

Hope you’re all having a lovely weekend.