2013 - Week 2 and Progress (I think!)

Hello, my dears, and welcome to Newsletter #2.

First, my TBR list. Yeah. Skipped 200 titles, and that’s just on my kindle. I seem to read a couple of books and buy 20 more. Is this some modern day affliction? If so, is there any cure or am I doomed? Just give it to me straight – I can take it.

I can see myself in my old age – instead of books in my bookcase, I’ll have kindles full of books, sat neatly in line. So, this week I will review five books and buy none. Unless I see a tasty morsel.

If you’re interested, here’s Linda Leander’s Author Spotlight, complete with my reviews for her books, which is my only contribution to book reviews last week. Oh, the shame!

Editing – made good progress with a developmental pass and new plan in place. Ready for my next job on the 19th. And after that it will really get busy.

I’ve done a spot of beta-reading and diagnosis on a manuscript and that went very well, with the author telling me I’d given her the best advice she’d ever had. Made me feel good and put a smile on my face.

In the meantime, writing is doing well, and I’ve been working on building my social platforms, too. I’m working on Eternal Immortality, the sequel to Eternal Island. I love those stories. Thank you, Kristie, for showing me that vampires and witches don’t have to be dull.

Once that’s done, I can get back to finishing Blood is Power – mostly because it is so close to being done, and I already missed my own deadline on that one. Oh, the shame again! I have about 20% on Martin Little Takes Epic Action written, too, so that might be next, together with a new venture in collaboration with Patti Roberts – About Three Authors. Here’s the cover.

 

Laura has posted a review for Martin Little, Resurrected. Her post is so sweet, it makes me feel bad for pushing poor Martin to the back burner for so long. Oh, the shame once more! I will make it worth her while waiting for the next one. I didn’t forget Martin, Laura. I just got the impression from the UK Publishing Industry that satire was an unwanted genre, too ‘niche’ – hence the shift into action thrillers and other genres. I have, since, ceased to care about Big Publishers’ opinions and am now going with whatever takes my fancy. Write on!

My lovely – almost daily – conversation with our wonderful on-line funds-transfer organization resulted in nothing more than a few extra grey hairs. Watch this space, as a nice detailed post and lots of tweets with their name heavily hash-tagged are spinning menacingly through my mind. Suffice it to say they haven’t yet asked for my shoe and cup size, certified and in triplicate! When they do, I’ll be ready.

My something new this week is BrandYourself – self-explanatory, I think. I’ll let you know how it works.

I promised to tell you about Evernote, which was last week’s discovery. It works as a note-taking mechanism (when I remember to turn it on), but just like any other notes, they get disregarded. You jot things down so you can get on with the task at hand, and then there’s something else more important, and so on. For now, I have only managed to find a use for it as a store for some of my favourites. I’ve simply shifted the clutter of links I kept for the last few years ‘because they may come in useful’ to Evernote. The drawer full of everything in most kitchens, loose ends that don’t fit anywhere else. That’s Evernote to me. Has any of you managed to find a better use for it?

That’s all for now. I’ll be back next week. So far, I’m loving this year.