Tuesday Teaser 7/23/13-Wolf’s Oath
Here is a snip from Des and Connie’s story. Enjoy!
Connie drifted on the edge of waking, feeling utterly relaxed. Something poked at her mind, something that wanted to disturb her, but she was curled too comfortably on her side to want to let it in. For the first time in weeks she felt deliciously warm. She wanted to savor the feeling. When she tried to tug the edge of the blanket higher under her chin it snapped taut and didn’t move. She tugged harder with the same level of success. Frustrated, she rolled onto her back to free it and realized she wasn’t alone. She opened her eyes a slit and found herself nose-to-nose with Des.
That woke her up in a hurry, the feeling of warm relaxation fleeing. Des? What the hell was he doing in bed with her? He had the nerve to smile at her.
“Good morning,” he said, and his voice was rough with that sexy, just-woke-up gravel note in it that made her want to melt.
Connie refused to melt. Des was gorgeous, sexy, and smelled good enough to eat, but why was he in her bed?
Tuesday Truth AND Teaser 7/16/13
Yes, today I have one of each! The Truth is that the Mid Summer Dream Men Blog Hop is this weekend, Friday July 19-Sunday July 21. There are going to be great prizes, so drop in at www.JustRomance.me to come along on the hop!
And I have a teaser from Des and Connie’s story. This snip is from chapter 2. It’s visitation night and Connie would rather be anywhere than here, but she feels obligated to stay. She’s leaning against the wall beside the kitchen door, watching the flirting and maneuvering with distaste. Enjoy!
Katie, the blonde who shared Connie’s apartment with Kathy, was at the nearest stove. She laughed loudly and playfully slapped the shoulder of one of her current boyfriends. Connie mentally shook her head. Katie was one of the women who enjoyed all the male attention. She and JaNae loved flirting with the men who tried to outdo each other in their lavish gifts and compliments. Katie’s voice rose above the low murmur of voices.
“I need the little girl’s room,” she told the six men hovering around her, flashing them a flirtatious smile. “I’ll be right back. Don’t any of y’all fight while I’m gone, hear?”
She detached herself from the cluster and gestured for Sammie to join her. The younger woman jumped up and abandoned her admirers without a backward glance. Katie paused to grin at Connie, who raised one brow. “Why do you flirt with them like that?” she asked. “And why are you using that southern accent? I thought you’re from Minnesota.”
Katie’s cheeks turned pink, then her grin flared bigger. “It’s fun.”
“Are you ever going to actually pick one and marry him?”
Katie shrugged. “Someday, I guess I will. But I’m enjoying myself too much to settle down with one yet.” Her hand smoothed down the curve of her waist to her wide hip and down to her thigh. “After twenty-eight years of being too fat to attract a man it’s a rush to have dozens of men fighting over me.” She winked and grabbed Sammie’s arm to tow her through the kitchen door toward the outhouse in the yard.
That was one thing Connie did like about the men here. They didn’t judge a woman solely by her slender body. They liked big women even better than skinny women, but every woman, no matter her age, looks, or size, found herself the object of blatant admiration.
How To Publish an Audiobook
Some online author friends have asked me how I had my book made into an audiobook. There must be other people wondering the same thing, so I thought I’d share my experience of the process here on my blog. I went through the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX). With ACX there was very little for me to do. I listed my book, posted a short excerpt to be used for auditions, invited some narrators to audition, listened to the auditions and selected a narrator, and approved the final product. After that, my part is done. I found the process very easy, and the people at ACX were professional and friendly when I emailed with questions. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, but I took a deep breath and plunged in.
First be sure you have audio rights to your book. If you’re self-published, then of course you have those rights. If your book is with a publisher, check your contract to see if they took audio rights.
If you have the audio rights to your book, then you are the Rights Holder. The Producer is the person or company who will record and create the audiobook. The Narrator is the person who will read the book. The Producer and Narrator may be one and the same and is usually called The Producer. For Sleeping With the Wolf I was intrigued by Brick Shop Audio and invited them to audition. They are professional, with excellent narrators. The narrator I chose was Clementine Cage. I love the way she changes her voice so the listener knows which character is speaking.
What do you need to do to have your book put into audio?
- A short excerpt of the book to be used for auditions
- A clean full manuscript
- Cover art
1. Go to www.acx.com and set up an account.
2. Click Add Your Title. It will bring up any books associated with your name on Amazon. Select the book you want to work on.
3. A box comes up with three options. You can narrate your book yourself, but unless you have great sound equipment I’d go with “I’m looking for someone to narrate and produce my audiobook.”
4. The ACX Book Posting Agreement comes up. This is a legal contract, just like one from a publisher, so read it. When you’re satisfied, click Agree & Continue.
5. A new page comes up: Create the Title Profile. Various fields need to be filled out. About My Book is auto-populated with the blurb from Amazon. You can edit it, add stuff, or even re-write it all together. You need to select what genre the book is, and then list your requirements for the narrator. Male or female? Southern accent, British accent? The Additional Comments box is important because prospective producers will read it to find out more about your book. You want to tell them things that will make them want to audition.
6. Upload the audition file. Unless the first page has great interaction between the main characters, don’t choose the first page. You want to hear how the narrator will speak various characters. Keep the audition file fairly short, just two pages. In the Note to the Producer field write anything you think will help them to understand the scene and what you want the voices to sound like.
7. Next choose the payment type and terms of distribution. Enter how many words are in the manuscript. That will tell you the estimated time length of your audiobook. Do you want to pay the producer up front? A producer may charge $100 to $400 per finished hour. So if your book will be 10 hours long you can expect to pay up to $4000 up front. The good thing about that is you receive the whole royalty. I chose to go with the Royalty Share option. I paid nothing up front, but I will split the royalty with the producer. You can learn more about how this works HERE.
8. Post the book. Producers/Narrators looking for a book to produce can see it and audition. You can invite narrators to audition, which is more effective than just hoping the perfect narrator will find it. Listen to the auditions. This was actually the hardest part for me. It’s thrilling and weird at the same time to hear words I wrote being read by a professional. You can sort them by Like, Dislike, or Maybe. When you choose one, you will make them an offer, listing the deadlines for production. If they accept, you send them the manuscript.
9. The producer records the first 15 minutes and send it to you. Do you want changes made? If you like it, approve it and wait a month or two for the finished product. HERE is where you can find out more about the production terms.
10. Upload the cover art. I am very fortunate in my cover artist, Lyn Taylor. She is willing and able to tweak my cover art to fit ACX’s cover requirements.
Once you approve the final product, it takes a few weeks for ACX to review it and send it to Audible for sale. For me, it took about 2 1/2 weeks for Sleeping With the Wolf to show up on Audible.com. It showed up about 3 days later on iTunes, and it took almost 2 weeks for it to go up on Amazon.
You can check your sales on ACX under the Completed Projects tab of your dashboard. These sales are a day behind and it is usually updated around 9pm. So tonight I should be able to see how many books have sold as of 7/12/13. These are only preliminary sales figures, and may not be accurate. Since my book has been live for only two weeks, I haven’t received an official Royalty Statement yet. I understand these come out monthly, as do royalty checks, provided I have $50.00 in sales. You can imagine I’m looking forward to that!
Well, this was a fairly lengthy blog post. Sorry about that! I found ACX made the process very easy and I plan to put all my books in audio format in the future. I hope that was clear and helpful for anyone who is thinking about having their books put into audio format. More and more people are using their smart phones, iPods and iPads to listen to audiobooks while they commute, exercise, clean and work. This is a great time to give listeners a chance to enjoy your books. Please feel free to leave a comment, or if you have questions you can email me privately at maddybarone@gmail.com
Writing Update-Ellie’s Wolf News, Audiobooks, & Wolf’s Promise Teaser
Hello, everyone, I thought it was time I let people know what I’m up to these days writing-wise. I have been working with my editor on edits for Ellie’s Wolf. And did you know that the book will be coming out much earlier than I had expected?
The Release Date for Ellie’s Wolf is Monday, August 26, 2013!
That’s less than two months from now! Next weekend is a long weekend for me since my day job is closed Thursday and Friday for the Fourth of July, so I will be taking advantage of time off to send out my newsletter. It will have the first three chapters of Ellie’s Wolf attached. If you’re interested in getting a sneak peek at Quill and Ellie be sure to check your email on Saturday.
Another thing I’ve been busy with is audiobooks. Not that I actually did anything except listen to various auditions, which was fun and nerve-wracking at the same time. It was a difficult choice, but the narrator I chose is Clementine Cage from Brick Shop Audio. I love her voice and the way she made each character sound distinctly different. The quality of sound at Brick Shop Audio is excellent. I’m so pleased that my audiobooks will be well done. The production phase for Sleeping With the Wolf is wrapped up and I expect the book to be available at Audible, Amazon and iTunes by mid-July. Clementine and Brick Shop Audio are currently working on Wolf’s Glory. The five minute sample they did made me squee like a teenager!
Finally, I am working on Wolf’s Promise, the story of the plane’s surviving co-pilot and Des, Taye’s second-in-command. I love Connie. She’s one of those kick-@$$ heroines who is fun to write, although she has a tendency to take over the story to get her way. This will be a short free read, so I’ll be posting chapters here as we go. Later it will be on Amazon, etc.
Want a little teaser? Click Here for Wolf’s Promise Chapter 1. Do remember, please, this has not been to the editor yet. Actually, I haven’t done much self-editing either, so it’s rough. Be kind!
Tuesday Teaser 6/25/13-Jelly’s Story
Poor Jelly. his name is now Spotted Stone Wolf, but his mate mockingly refers to him as Spot.
Poor Stone. Snared by a pair of pansy brown eyes as hot and wild as a prairie fire, and almost as gentle. What does a wolf have to do to get a little petting? Apparently, getting shot twice in the belly is just the ticket.
The bedsprings groaned under him as he stretched one arm above his head to test the torn muscles in his belly. Searing pain told him he wouldn’t be getting up for a while. Footsteps, light and quick, tapped in the hall outside the bedroom and the door opened. His mate came to the bed and scowled down at him. Ah, yes, that was his sweet mate.
“When someone points a gun at you, you’re supposed to move,” she said, brows pulled straight over narrowed eyes.
“I did!” he protested.
“Away from it, Spot, you idiot, not toward it.”
Spot. He hated when she called him that. Time for a little payback. “The gun was pointed at you, little girl. I had to stop the bullet.”
The way she clenched her jaw at his nickname for her made him want to grin. She huffed. “With your stomach?”
He almost forgot his wound but remembered just before he would have shrugged in a show of nonchalance. “It was handy.”
“You idiot,” she murmured, leaning over the bed to stroke his tangled hair. “You idiot.”
Tuesday Teaser 6/18: Wolf’s Promise
Here is a bit from chapter 1. It’s raw and I may re-write it (again). I want enough detail that those who have never read the series can figure out what’s going on, but I don’t want to bore readers who have read the series. In other words, I want to build the world but make it part of the story. Anyway, here you go. Connie is staring at a hand drawn calendar and talking with Kathy, one of the survivors.
Connie stopped dead on her trek across the kitchen to stare at the calendar on the wall. Today was Monday, December 29, 2064.
Kathy stopped too. “It’s been exactly two months, hasn’t it?” she asked quietly. “The plane took off on October 29.”
“Yeah.” While she stared blindly at the calendar, Connie’s mind drifted back to that day. The vertical wind shear they hit was so strong it disabled the plane. Inexplicably, all engines failed simultaneously. Like every pilot, she and Don had trained for every emergency imaginable and they worked calmly and quickly to retake control of the plane. Nothing had worked. The plane had screamed a metallic protest under the stress of air currents, and finally, broken, had come down to earth in a barely controlled crash that left too few alive. If only …
Connie shook her head briskly. It never did her any good to review the sequence of events from that morning, so she shoved the memory away. Besides, it just made her headache worse. She made herself glance around the room, noting rush of women cooking lunch. Good. Maybe some food would tame her headache.
Kathy leaned closer to speak in a low voice. “You should stop blaming yourself. You and the captain did everything you could.”
“Not enough.” Connie heard the bleakness in her voice. “Too many died.”
“You’re not being fair to yourself. Some of us did survive.”
Her laugh came out of her throat like cheese scraped over a grater. “Thirty out of a hundred and two.”
Kathy squeezed her forearm. “That’s thirty who still have lives. Probably more would have died, if we hadn’t gotten help from the Lakota. Heaven was looking out for us. The Lakota nursed us through and they brought us here to Kearney, where the mayor gave us a safe place to live.”
Connie refrained from asking why heaven didn’t look out for the seventy-two who hadn’t made it. “It’s safe because we’re surrounded by a barbed wire fence patrolled by armed guards. Women being so rare that we’re like gold in a bank vault.”
“Or water in a desert.” Kathy brayed with laughter. “When you’re my age, it’s nice to have younger men panting over you, wanting to lick you up and down.”
Connie closed her eyes. “Stop! Do not put that image in my head.”
Plotting Wolf’s Promise-A Pantser Attempts to Plot
Every writer creates their story in their own way. Some have a very detailed outline set up before they ever beginning writing. Those are “plotters”. They have every step of the plot meticulously planned. Others have a hero and heroine at Point A and know they will be in love and happy by Point B. Those are “pantser”. They write by the seat of their pants. How exactly the H/h will get to Point B is vague when they begin writing.
Most writers fall between plotter and pantser but lean more in one direction than the other. I have always been a pantser. Really, REALLY a pantser. On May 26 my fellow Liquid Silver Books author Tina Holland taught a workshop at our local critique group meeting on how to use a plotting board. I’ve been waiting ever since to try it out. But the only place I have to lay out a plotting board is my kitchen table. And wouldn’t you know it, my kitchen light died on May 30. I’ve called the apartment management three times. Finally, last night I went and bought a cheapo floor lamp. Putting it together was not as successful as I would have liked. But though it leans like a drunken sailor, it does the job. I have Wolf’s Promise loosely plotted!
I thought others might like to know how I used it. Everyone uses a plotting board differently, I’m sure. As you can see, the story will take place over a very short time, only a few days. I am using a white board with a blank calendar printed on it. The actual action takes place between Monday December 29 and Thursday January 1. Here is what I did:
1. In the vertical Sunday column I wrote “Connie” in the first two squares, and “Des” in the next two squares, and “Other” in the last square. That is for setting.
2. In the Monday column I wrote the date “29” in the corner of all five squares. In the Tuesday column I wrote “30”, in the Wednesday, “31” and in the Thursday, “1”.
3. Then I began writing choppy sentences on the stickies. The bright pink stickies are for Connie’s actions. “Break up cat fight” etc. The dark blue stickies are for Des’ actions. “”Ask Connie to be mate”. Orange are for back story. “Connie: plane crash”. White stickies are for Goals/Motivation. “C: keep women safe”. Yellow-green are setting. “At PWH”. Purple are love scenes.
4. Place stickies on the appropriate day on either Connie or Des’ squares.
The light blue stickies on the left side of the board are Des’ back story, some of which will play a part in the story and some won’t. For instance, his mother was murdered by townsmen, and he now hates townsmen. In order to marry Connie he has to be able to live with townsmen. His ultimate Goal is to win Connie, which is on a white sticky. Those things obviously will be in the story. He doesn’t like cats, milk or the color purple. Those things probably won’t be in the story. Connie’s back story on the lighter pink.
If while I’m writing I decide to change the sequence I can just move the sticky.
Is that clear? It is to me, kind of. I guess we’ll see how it goes when I start writing this afternoon! 🙂
Tuesday Teaser 6/4/13: Ellie’s Wolf
Tomorrow I’m off to Lori Foster’s Annual Reader & Author Get Together in Ohio! I received Wolf’s Prize back from the publisher with a request to make a few changes before they offer me a contract. My goal was to have it turned back in before I left, but I’ve been so busy getting ready for the trip that I haven’t finished the changes yet. One of the changes is the title. Wolf’s Prize will be Ellie’s Wolf instead. When I have signed the contract I’ll make updates throughout the website.
Meanwhile, here is a conversation between Ellie and Rose:
Rose wiped the heel of her hand over her eyes. Like many fair skinned people her face was blotched red from her tears, but the blue of her blue-gray eyes was more vivid. “You’re here now. Sky got Taye’s letter, but he didn’t come for the funeral.”
Resentment edged Rose’s voice. Ellie tried to find the right words. “Did you want him to come? Do you want to marry him?”
“No! Yes! Oh, lord, I don’t know.” Rose sprang up from the bed to pace. “Six years ago I’d rather have married a tarantula. But I want a baby and unless there’s a miracle, I won’t have one unless Sky comes back.”
Tuesday Teaser 5/21/13
Here is a snip from Wolf’s Prize, featuring some secondary characters who will be featured in a collection of short stories. Ellie and her friends Sara and Melissa are watching some of the men of the Clan just after they’ve changed from wolf to man and haven’t put their clothes on yet. Just a hint: Stone Wolf is Jelly’s adult name.
Sara nudged her horse to join them. She took one foot out of a stirrup and hooked her leg over the saddle horn with an ease that Ellie envied. Sara’s cheeks were flushed and a smile played with her lips. “I wish all men looked that good naked,” she said with loud enthusiasm.
Ellie winced. Several of the men looked at her, and one wolf, who must be Stone, raised his hackles and growled.
“Oh, please.” Sara rolled her eyes. “Like you don’t know you’re just as gorgeous as the rest of them.”
The wolf’s face wrinkled in an almost human frown, before his tail went tick-tock once. Then he turned and trotted away.
Mel took off her cowboy hat and waved it in front of her face. “That is just plain weird.”
Stone, human now and dressed in only jeans, walked back to them. His face still held a frown as he stared up at Sara. “You think I’m handsome?” he demanded of her.
“Are you kidding?”
Stone blinked at the wealth of sarcasm drenching Sara’s voice. “Is that a “Yes, I “think you’re handsome” or a “No, I don’t think you’re handsome” sort of are-you-kidding?”
Sara rolled her eyes again. “You are so male.”
After a moment of consideration, Stone puffed out his chest. “You think I’m handsome,” he announced and strutted away.
A Teaser from Wolf’s Promise
I suppose I should save this for next Tuesday, but I’m in the mood to celebrate and share my joy. I sent Wolf’s Prize to the publisher tonight. So I’m free to work on the collection of short stories I’ll be putting out in early 2014. The first of these will be about Connie Mondale, the crashed plane’s co-pilot, and Des, Taye’s Beta. This takes place at the Plane Women’s House.
Des walked down the dim hallway on silent feet. A sound caught his attention, and something perilously close to panic surged through him. Crying. Almost soundless crying, coming from the apartment Miss Connie shared with two other women. Panic was followed swiftly by rage. Without hesitation he opened the door and flung himself inside, gaze sweeping the room to find whatever had reduced his strong, unclaimed mate to tears. There was nothing to see but Connie, sitting at a table, her pale blond hair untidy as if she had raked her hands through it. She jerked her head up from the cradle of her hands to stare at him.
“What the hell?” she began.
“Who hurt you?” he snarled.
She rose from the chair to face him, chin up and mouth firm. “I’m not hurt.”
“Then what made you cry?”
Red bloomed over her pale face. “I’m not crying.”
Tenderness, a feeling utterly alien to his nature before he’d seen this brave woman, swamped him. “Okay,” he said, attempting to sound calmly reasonable. “I can pretend there’s no tears on your cheeks if you want. Tell me what upset you.”
She folded her arms with a glare that aroused him. Instead of answering his question, she attacked. “What are you doing upstairs? Men aren’t allowed up here.”
Did she have any idea what her strength did to him?
