Rinelle Grey's Blog, page 15

I wasn’t going to write a blog post today. I spent the day at the park, chatting with some friends while my daughter played, and I came home sunburnt, and with a headache! But then I went across and read Joel Friedlander’s post on Why You Should be Blogging about your Origins, and I thought that sounded like a fun post!

So today I’m going to be talking about the people who have supported me in my journey to become a writer. I have a lot of writer friends, and one of the things people talk about is the number of people who have told them that they could never make money from writing books. Sometimes this comes from complete strangers, but often from people close to them, their families and partners.

I think I’ve been really lucky. I loved creative writing in school, and would happily write all day. My mum would encourage me when I said I wanted to write books, and even tell me that I didn’t need to wait until I was grown up, but I could write a book now. (I might have done it too, if I’d had a computer, but alas, writing by hand, or even worse, editing by hand, never did it for me.) When I started writing more seriously in 2006, she was just as encouraging, and when I decided to self publish, she was right behind me.

My hubby is just as supportive. Even long before I had any plans to actually make money from my writing, he supported it because it was something I enjoyed, and that was important to me. He cheered me on through NaNoWriMo each year, and helped me to find writing time, even when he was working full time. When I decided to self publish, he was my best proofreader, and he’s cheered on every sale I’ve made.

My sister, who’s designed every one of my covers, and my webpage graphics, proofread my books, and given countless hours of discussion to knotty plot problems, helps in a more practical way.

Even my daughter, who’s 9 years old, loves to tell everyone about Mummy’s book, gets excited when a print copy arrives, and wants to write books too.

I’m very lucky to have all these supportive people around me. It certainly makes writing easier, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be where I was today without their help.

Who’s supported you in your writing journey? Give them a shout out in the comments below.

Last week, I hit publish on the print version of Reckless Rescue. Even though the ebook has been out since February, it’s taken me this long to actually get a matching print book. Some of this was due to the fact that each time I ordered a proof copy, it took 2-3 weeks to get to me in Australia, but a lot was due to simply being intimidated by the idea of formatting my own book.

When I actually sat down and did it though, it wasn’t half as scary as I thought it would be! So today I thought I’d share some tips that I found useful when formatting and uploading my book.

1 – Use Garamond – Fonts in print books are different to online, and some work better than others. There are several fonts that work, in fact, Joel Friedlander lists the 5 most popular, but if in doubt, Garamond is a safe bet!

2 – Watch your caps/smallcaps – If you want to start your chapter with smallcaps, you’ll want a pro version of your font, otherwise the upright strokes of the letters will look feint and may not print properly. I used Adobe Garamond Pro.

3 – Proof online first – Createspace’s online previewer is great (if slow to load), and make sure you check it there first before ordering a proof copy. Anything you can fix before you order a physical copy is worth it! If you only have typos etc to change after your first physical proof, you probably don’t have to order a second proof.

4 - Use Word – I didn’t want to, I even tried setting up my novel in Adobe InDesign, which is the professional tool for the job. Took me at least a month of avoiding it before I decided it wasn’t worth it. I downloaded one of the Createspace templates, and copied and pasted, then made a few formatting changes etc.

5 – Use High Resolution Graphics – If you’re using pictures, even just an author picture or cover of your next book at the end, use the biggest sizes you have. Your final uploaded file can be up to 50mb, so unlike an ebook, you don’t have to keep it small! High res graphics will not only look good, but they’ll prevent you having your file rejected for low res ones!

6 – Save as PDF/A-1a:2005 – I tried uploading the word file at first, thinking createspace would change it, then had a lot of trouble with a rejection for not having big enough gutters. Turns out my blank page was being removed, and so all the mirrored gutters were on the wrong side!

Hopefully, now that I have one experience with print formatting under my belt, it won’t take as long for me to format Reckless Rebellion and get it uploaded!

Have you done any formatting for print? Any tips to share?

Well, I’m already bored of giving excerpts from Reckless Rebellion in order, so I’m skipping ahead a bit. (If you want to read in order, you can read the sample chapters here.)

This is one of my favourite scenes, when Tyris’s ship first arrives back on his home planet of Urslat after three weeks in space. They’re expecting a warm welcome…

Marlee took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and nodded.

While he grabbed his belongings from the cabin, she did the same. He pressed the buttons to release the door, and turned to her. “Are you ready?”

She wore her best dress, the one Jaimma had given her for her birthday, with pink frills. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

He took her hand, and she gripped his fingers. Together, they stepped into the doorway.

Despite the bright sun he knew shone above them, the sky glowed purple this far up in the atmosphere. All around them, concrete and glass covered walkways ran, limiting their field of vision. So long as you weren’t in one of the outer walkways, it was easy to miss the fact that you were in the upper atmosphere.

There wasn’t time to take in the view though. Half a dozen soldiers stood right in front of them with sub-machine guns raised. Shocked, Tyris, shielded Marlee behind his back before stepping forwards, hands held up. “Here now, what’s all this?”

The soldiers didn’t lower their weapons. “General’s orders, sir.”

“Then where is the bloody general?”

SFR Brigade Presents is a collection of snippets from a group of Sci-Fi Romance authors. Check them out to discover other cool snippets.

This is one of those topics that seems to divide both readers and writers equally. From the classic “I looked in the mirror and surveyed my straight blonde hair and blue eyes critically”, to the more subtle descriptions of a character’s physical traits, I’m wondering how much character description is really necessary?

In Reckless Rescue, I’ve really described very little about my characters. At some point, it’s mentioned that Marlee’s hair is ‘dark’, and longish (how long is long anyway?), you find out she’s wearing a skirt when it’s swishing around her as she walks, there’s mention that Tyris’s hair is short and spiky. And that’s about it.

From what I can determine, some readers like to have the characters described in detail, so they can picture them exactly as the author intended them, while other’s are happy to fill in the details from a vague idea. Similarly with authors, some have a very specific image, and like to include this, while other’s have a vague image, and are happy for readers to fill in the details.

For me, it varies from novel to novel. I have only vague images of Marlee and Tyris, their physical appearance isn’t really important to the story, while I have a far clearer picture of the twins in Twin Curse.

Do you like to have characters described in detail, or do you prefer to imagine how they look yourself? Or as a writer, how much character description do you include in your novels?

The traditional picture in a low tech society is the farm girl heading out to the barn, bucket swinging, to milk the cow. But in Reckless Rescue, it’s not a cow Marlee’s milking, it’s a goat.

So why did I choose goats instead of cows? One of the reasons is that I have personal experience with keeping and milking goats, but not cows.

But my real reason goes deeper than that, and comes of spending a bit of time thinking. If you knew you were going to an uninhabited planet, with limited resources, which would you choose – a goat or a cow?

I chose goats for the following reasons:

They’re smaller – They fit on your spaceship better, they’re easier to handle, they’re just all round more manageable. Yes, this does mean that they produce less milk, but in reality, one goat bred for milking can easily give you a few litres of milk a day, and that’s enough for most families.

They breed faster – It’s quite normal for goats to have twin pregnancies, meaning two new goats for every birth. If you’re wanting to transport a few animals to build up a bigger herd later, that comes in handy. Keep the girls for milk, and use the boys for meat. They also have a shorter gestation, so less time without milk in between times.

They’ll eat anything – While a goat’s legendary powers to eat anything may be a little overstated, it’s still true that they will eat a wider variety of food than cows. Goats are browsers, not grazers, and they’ll happily eat leaves, bark, food scraps etc, as well as the usual hay and grains. This makes them the ideal animal to keep in tough conditions. Just remember though, they don’t eat tin cans (though they may nibble if they still smell like something interesting), and while they might pull your washing off the line, they have no interest in actually eating it.

A few downsides: Goats milk does taste different. Commercially produced goats milk (where the goats have probably been fed on hay and grain) isn’t too different, but a goat that has been grazing on anything that’s available does have very strongly tasting milk. But in a real survival situation, I think you’d take what you could get. And you do get used to it, and even come to like it, after a while.

Cream: Cream doesn’t separate from the milk as easily as cows milk does, so you get very little of it. And though I’ve read that you can make butter out of it, I suspect it would be quite strong tasting!

They’ll eat anything: Yep, this one belongs in both the pros and cons. Goats are escape artists, and once they get out of their pen, the first place they’ll probably head is your vegie garden or orchard.

The most important thing though, goats are way cuter, and a lot more fun than cows.

Have you ever tried goats milk? If you were in a survival situation, which would you keep, goats or cows?

Wow, it’s been a busy week!

Releasing Reckless Rebellion, and running a free promo on Reckless Rescue in the same three days meant I was REALLY busy. But it also worked really well. I had a lot of downloads of Reckless Rescue over the three days, and the sales are trickling in for Reckless Rebellion.

Confirming what everyone says, the best way to promote your book is to write another book! Not sure if this will increase Reckless Rescue’s sales yet (since it’s been free, so will get some sort of bump from that), but I can say that Reckless Rebellion’s first few days of sales have been WAY above what Reckless Rescue’s were.

The launch wasn’t all fun and games though. On the first day it was out, I downloaded a copy of Reckless Rebellion, and realised, to my horror, that the formatting wasn’t working correctly!

It wasn’t major, and didn’t affect readability, and probably no one but me (who knew how it was supposed to look!) noticed, but it did but me. You can see from the two screencaptures below, that the paragraphs weren’t indenting properly, and there were large gaps between them, more like web paragraphs than book ones!

Funnily enough, this only affected the iPad version, that I could tell, making it rather had to identify and test. But after three days of tearing my hair out, I fixed it.

Turns out I was missing a tiny line or two of code from my stylesheet, and for some reason, this was only affecting the iPad version? No idea why, but it’s fixed now. (And I updated my Dreamweaver post, so no one else experiences the same issues!)

Phew. So glad it’s sorted. I’ve contacted Amazon to see if they will send out an update to anyone who’s already purchased the book, and having the same problem. (I didn’t on my Reckless Rescue until I deleted and re-downloaded it.)

So, with that all sorted, I’m finally back to writing Twin Curse, which is supposed to be off at the (content) editor any day now! I’m so close to the end I can taste it, and I’m loving how it’s shaping up. Can’t wait to send this book out there and see what other’s think of it!

And as well, I’ll be finding a bit more time to update my blog regularly, respond to comments, and visit all my friends. Sorry I’ve been so absent lately!

It’s been an exciting week for me. The second novel in my series, Reckless Rebellion, came out on Wednesday, AND to celebrate, I’m running a free promotion on my first book, Reckless Rescue. Today’s the last day it’s running, so if you haven’t grabbed a copy before, now’s your chance.

Today I’m continuing excerpts from Reckless Rebellion where I left off last week.

When Milandra had walked out on him nine months ago, the only thought in his head had been how to get her back. It had never occurred to him that her departure might be the best thing that ever happened to him. If she hadn’t left him, he wouldn’t have left Urslat, and he never would have found Marlee.

Maybe there was something to Kerit’s belief that the dolphin was lucky.

An involuntary smile lifted the corner of his lips. He should be squeezed into the narrow bunk beside her, not dozing here in this uncomfortable chair. But they must be close to the central planets now, and when the first communication finally came through, he wanted to be awake.

Even after three weeks in space, he still couldn’t believe he was nearly home. A few months ago it had seemed so impossible, yet here he was. As he had predicted, the Hylista had no problems sustaining faster than light travel, even if she flew a little slower than normal. Any day now, they’d be close enough to Urslat to communicate in real time. Then he could relax.

SFR Brigade Presents is a collection of snippets from a group of Sci-Fi Romance authors. Check them out to discover other cool snippets.

It’s here! Reckless Rebellion is available on Amazon today.

With Tyris’s home planet in sight, Marlee is looking forward to  exploring her new home. Only a routine medical exam to go, then they can be together on the thriving planet of Urslat.

Incredibly, the exam reveals something that shouldn’t be possible. Something that is actually illegal because of Tyris’s past. Marlee’s pregnant.

Marlee and Tyris will do everything they can to keep their secret safe. But Urslat has its own problems, forcing Marlee to choose between everyone she has ever known and the ultimate secret she carries within.

AND…

To celebrate, Reckless Rebellion is free for three days, so grab your copy now!

The SFR Romance Brigade Presents is back!

And just in time for my new Sci-Fi Romance release next week! Therefore, this week, and probably for the rest of the month, my snippets will come from Reckless Rebellion, sequel to Reckless Rescue. My plan is to start at the beginning, and post a continuous excerpt each week.

Tyris’s head lolled to one side, further and further, finally slipping off the back of the chair with a suddenness that jerked him awake. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the radio in front of him. The status light still showed red—they weren’t in communications range yet.

The file that was open on the tablet computer in front of him caught his attention, and he changed a word or two. He’d spent large chunks of the spaceflight writing the report covering the crash and subsequent repair of his ship, but it still felt inadequate. How could he possibly describe what had happened on Zerris? And there was so much he’d left out. Like the villager’s reasons for not wanting to leave, and his relationship with Marlee.

He sighed and glanced through the open door into the sleeping cabin. She lay sprawled on the lower bunk, the sheet half covering her nakedness. She wore nothing other than the jade dolphin necklace he’d given her for her birthday. She never took it off.

His brother’s words echoed in his head. Give it time, bro. The dolphin works in mysterious ways.

Reckless Rescue will be out on the 18th of September! If you want a reminder on the actual day (and maybe a little earlier), sign up to my mailing list below.

SFR Brigade Presents is a collection of snippets from a group of Sci-Fi Romance authors. Check them out to discover other cool snippets.

Today I’m participating in Indie Life, a feature run by Indelibles. Basically, everyone posts about something related to indie publishing, and visits everyone else. To see who else is involved, check out the linky list.

With the release of Reckless Rebellion right around the corner, I’ve been working on making sure Reckless Rescue is making all the sales it can, and looking for any ways in which I can improve it’s presentation.

One of the things I’ve been working on is improving my blurb. I admit, I’m not good at blurbs. I love each and every plot point in my novels, and thus I find it next to impossible to determine which are worth mentioning and which aren’t. I’m just too close to my book.

Reckless Rescue’s blurb was written when I first released the book, and I hadn’t really reviewed it at all. So I sat down and tried. But all I was doing was making it longer!

I knew I needed an outside opinion, so I went to Misty Evans at Strong Brew Coaching. Over the course of a week and a bit, Misty and I emailed back and forth, slowly shaping my blurb into something that both represented the book, and hopefully will bring in new readers. Misty did a great job, and was incredibly patient and through. I’d definitely use her blurb writing service again. In fact, I intend to for Reckless Rebellion (which releases next week!)

So, today I thought I’d show off my brand new blurb. I’d love to hear what you think.

Stranded on the dying planet of Zerris, Marlee longs for the one thing she can’t have…a family. Due to the noxious gas covering the planet, she can’t conceive a child, and the Council, determined to repopulate the planet, have ended her third—and most precious—relationship. They insist she pick a new mate and try again, but she’s sworn off love and the possibility of ever having a real family.

When a ship from the thriving planet of Urslat crashes on Zerris, Marlee rescues the ship’s daring captain, Tyris. His ship is grounded, winter is setting in, and he won’t survive without help. She offers him a deal…he can live with her if he pretends to be her mate so the Council will leave her alone.

Tyris agrees and a hungry desire sparks between them as they battle the harsh winter and primitive conditions. Their attraction grows, and soon, keeping their distance becomes impossible, even more challenging than the snow, the Council, and, for Marlee, the risks of a real relationship.

Will she risk her heart one last time for a chance at her dream? Or will Tyris be her undoing?

How do you go with writing blurbs? Do you have any blurb writing tips? Or can you share (link to) a brilliant blurb that really sold you on a book?