Monday Miscellany

After my SitRep Saturday post, I ended up writing another thousand words or so on the vampire WIP and then inspiration really struck and I set the novel aside to action draft one short story and outline a novelette.

The short story is the first I had planned to write for another three-story erotica/romance anthology. I've had the basic outline and plot for it written for a while, I just hadn't gotten around to writing it.

And then, once I was finished with that, inspiration really took over. Between Saturday evening and yesterday, I ended up writing 6100 words of an action draft of a romance novelette. Hence the photo you see to the left (available here): I'm looking for another book cover. I mean, I still have work to do; I need to finish the action draft, then draft it, then go through the revision and editing process, but since book cover design is such a tricky thing, I thought it couldn't hurt to get started.

But wait, there's more to this post!

This week is All About Editing week here at From the Writer's Desk. I'll have a guest post from an editor going up tomorrow, then we'll discuss self-editing on Wednesday, then beta-reading on Thursday. Right now, the Friday schedule is still a little open and I may very well decide to discuss editing next week, too, but I'm very excited about this. Editing is such a huge part of the writing process. It's just as important as the idea and the actual writing itself. I want to share tools and resources. I want to direct you, my lovely readers, toward some wonderful editors.

And I want to do this now, before NaNoWriMo, because while writing a novel in a month is a really great thing, chances are that novel is going to need some editing. Sharing the information I have, giving a couple of editors the chance to shine a little, is going to get you thinking (I hope) about how you're going to edit (should you choose to participate in NaNo).

Having this specific series of posts to think about is also serving to kick my lazy butt back in gear. The husband will be home from training this week and that means my vacation is over. I've slacked so much that my blog hits have really taken a nose dive. How am I ever going to meet my goal of 600 hits now? Le sigh. This just means I'm going to have to work harder.

Self-Publishing: Cover Image Resources

If you're selling a book, it needs a cover. People like pictures. (Or paintings. Or crudely-drawn, suggestive sketches. Whatever.) If you're a talented visual artist--like my dad, who is a fantastic photographer; or my friend Kelsey, who is an amazing painter--then good for you! You don't need to hire an artist or buy stock photos. But if you're like me, stock photography websites are going to be your new best friends.

Freestockimages.net has a resource page with a list of free stock photo websites. The list is pretty good, complete with comments on content and quality.

I like Dreamstime.com the best. Specifically, I like their free photo section. These images are royalty-free and free for use online. They're also free for commercial use for up to 10,000 copies. The free images section is enormous. It's where I got my cover photo for The Cowboy Next Door and where I got the photos for the original mock-ups of Cass Gets Her Kicks. I love the place.

A genre-specific option is RomanceNovelCovers.com, where you can even get premade covers. I'm not sure I would ever use a premade cover, but it's nice to know that option is available. (I wanted to link you to the premade covers, but as of this writing, the site seems to be having some problems.)

RazzDazzStock.com is a stock photo website geared specifically toward the publishing industry. Like RNC, they also have premade covers.

Whichever site you use, even if you do a search on Google or Flickr or something, be sure that you read the terms of use. Give credit. Pay for the photo of necessary. (Industry standard seems to be about $10 for royalty-free use up to a certain number of copies sold.) Don't steal. Seriously. Not only is that bad manners, but you don't need a lawsuit on your hands.

SitRep Saturday: Cass Gets Her Kicks

I spent most of the week working on Cass Gets Her Kicks. All four stories are drafted, I am pretty sure I have a book cover, and I've written up the summary and the acknowledgments.

Here's the book cover I think I'm going with:

And here's the "back cover" summary I worked up:

"Cass Reed had always dreamed of crossing America on Historic Route 66. Recently divorced and determined to make a new life for herself far away from her ex-husband and his pregnant mistress, she set out for Los Angeles in a lovingly-restored vintage car.

After a long, boring drive from Chicago, she stops in Galena, Kansas at a roadside motel and promptly finds the nearest bar. There Cass meets the young mechanic, Gavin, who shows her that some men are very good at following orders and that the Magic Fingers still have their uses.

Still relishing the memory of Gavin, Cass stops next in Vega, Texas. She visits another local bar on impulse, where she meets cowboys Joe and Miguel who are only too happy to give Cass a night to remember.

The drive out of Vega does little to arouse her interests, so Cass makes a stop in Santa Rosa, New Mexico to do laundry and break up the monotony. In a laundromat, she meets Felicia, who invites her out to her grandfather's ranch for a swim in a private lake and an afternoon that expands her horizons.

Finally, in Flagstaff, Arizona, Cass stops early. After a full afternoon at the local spa, she books a room at a famous motel and heads to the cocktail lounge for drinks. There she meets Angela and her husband Kevin who invite Cass to celebrate Kevin's birthday with them. In a red room on the third floor, she learns that exhibitionism and teamwork are keys to a happy birthday.

Each erotic short was written to be read and fully enjoyed in half an hour or less. The stories contained in this short anthology are sexually explicit and intended only for mature audiences."

I'm sure it'll undergo a couple of edits before I settle on the final wording, but I still feel pretty accomplished.

Today, I hope to have the first revision of "Galena" done and sent off to a beta reader.

I also worked a little bit on Strawberry Moon this week. I've settled on a POV and a more specific genre for the novel. As soon as I'm done with Cass Gets Her Kicks, I'll be going back to Strawberry Moon to start hacking it apart and sewing it back together.

SitRep Saturday: Strawberry Moon and Cass Gets Her Kicks

First, an update on Strawberry Moon: I'm still working typing up the revised manuscript and re-writing entire sections as I go. I haven't yet finished with chapter one, but that's because it needed serious help, and I only just figured out how to close it up. Awkward and useless dialogue was awkward and useless. On the plus side, all of my characters have more defined voices and motivation, I've slashed roughly ten pages of useless crap, and so far, it's much leaner and easier to read. I have also been reconsidering the title. I like it, it fits, but I'm not sure it's the best title I can come up with. I'll keep you posted.

In other news, Cass Gets Her Kicks. I've mentioned it before, but there has been some serious progress in just the last couple of days. Let me tell you about it, though.

So as you're probably aware, I'm kind of busy all day, every day, and not just with the writing. I usually manage to get half an hour at a time all to my very own self, and sometimes, I want to blow those thirty minutes on something to read. The problem is that I don't want to start a story, get into it, have to set it aside, and then waste the first precious few minutes of my next break trying to remember what happened. I want to just start reading and get a complete story in thirty minutes.

Short stories! They're perfect! Except most of them are longer than the 4,000 - 6,000 words I can comfortably read in half an hour. So fanfic, maybe? But do you know how hard it is to find good, self-contained fanfiction in the specified word count? And fanfic doesn't come on my Kindle. What I really want is short stories in that word count range that I can read on my Kindle in the bath (or in the car, or in the doctor's office). I've been looking! The closest I've come so far is a couple of Delilah Devlin singles that, frankly, are still too long.

There's a quote floating around from Toni Morrison about how if there's a book you really want to read and you can't find it, you should write it yourself. Well, I really want these stories. I don't mind if they're the same character over and over, but I don't want to have to try to keep up with the plot of a novel. I'm also much, much more comfortable with writing short stories; I've been writing as an amateur for ten years now, and if I do say so myself, I'm pretty good at it. So I'm writing them.

This is where Cass Gets Her Kicks comes in. I enjoy smut. I enjoy reading it, and I enjoy writing it--and I'm really good at writing it. That's what it is. I'll save the summaries and stuff for when it's closer to done, but the plan now is that it will be four stories, each in the 4,000 - 6,000 word range, featuring the same female character in similar situations. So far, I've drafted the first story and action-drafted the second. The third is in the plotting stage; the nicest thing about shorts is that they're super easy to plot, action-draft, and then draft and edit. I also know what's going to happen in the fourth. I know what the overall goals are, I know what needs to be done to reach these goals. I'm really, really excited about this project.

And not to put the cart before the horse or whatever, but if this works out as well as I hope it will, I plan to do something similar with another character--Father Jack--who really wants to be written but so far hasn't offered himself to any real novel ideas.

I'm still working on Strawberry Moon and making slow, steady progress, but progress with Cass Gets Her Kicks is much more tangible results already.

Speaking of tangible results and progress! I have here three different cover ideas for Cass and I would love to get some feedback on them. I had a friend help me narrow it down to just one set of options (there was an option that was the closeup of the yellow lines on a blacktop, one that was a US Highway sign, and one that featured the taillights of a classic car) and now I'd like to know what others think/what they like/what they dislike. So if you could take just a moment to look at them and leave me a comment here, on Twitter, or on Facebook, I would really appreciate it!

Version 1

Version 2

Version 3

Oh, yeah! And in order to keep my YA stuff separate from my more adult stuff, I'm planning to use the penname "Ellie Davis." Ellie because it's a phonetically-spelled contraction of "L. Le(e)" so it's close enough to L. Leona for my liking. 

That's what I've been up to this week!