Reblogged from J W Manus:

Reblogged from Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors:

Reblogged from Catherine, Caffeinated:

So what happens when a three-cup-a-day habit stops cold turkey? Some pretty rotten stuff, as it turns out. When I started having weird symptoms, I searched the web for “caffeine withdrawal.” Yes, it does exist. Some want it entered into the DMS as a diagnosable mental condition. But I’m choosing to look beyond that to the benefits I hope to gain from a decaffeinated lifestyle.

I’m trying to stop the crash. For the last six months or so, I’ve started nodding off every afternoon at about three or four o’clock. Literally, if there were not a computer monitor in my path, my head would thump straight over onto the desk. A few days a week, that’s about the time I’m driving home. An inquiry with my doctor earned me a lifted brow and one sentence: “Try cutting out the coffee.”

That’s what I’m doing. I know that the withdrawal is a temporary condition, but I’m not nodding off anymore. To the driving citizens of the mid-Hudson Valley, you’re welcome.

On to other news:

Drawing Breath has had a pretty good week. It began with an e-mail letting me know the book won a finalist medal in the Indie Next Generation Indie Book Awards. With two awards now, I’m quite proud of my little book-child.

If you’d like to pick up a copy, the May fundraiser is still on. All royalties from sales of Drawing Breath this month will go to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. More details here. I’ll probably post a running count mid-month to see how we’re doing, unless it’s terribly embarrassing.

The IndieView posted an interview with me where we talk about Don’t Tell Anyone, writing, publishing, and how I shopped for my husband.

Speaking of Don’t Tell Anyone, I’ve entered it in two small contests. One is the “Spring Pitch” contest by Underground Book Reviews, one of the more high-profile review sites that specialize in indie books. My pitch will be on their Facebook page for the month. The pitch that gets the most likes wins a bit of money and a review. The second is running on Oprah’s Life Class page. Look for the bookmarked post titled “Are you the author of an ‘inspirational’ book?” If you feel inspired to swing me a “like,” I’d be most appreciative.

Well, now I’m inspired to work on my next novel. Yes, there is life after a WIP kicks the bucket. Enjoy your day!

Click on the photo to learn more about cystic fibrosis.

Many of you know that I wrote Drawing Breath as a small way to honor a friend who lived into his thirties with cystic fibrosis. Although each person who is diagnosed with the disease experiences a unique level of severity, there is still no cure, and management of the symptoms can require a great deal of time and expense. Often this hits families hardest; since the disease is genetic, multiple children can be affected, like the ones my character, Daniel, meets in the hospital.

Since May is Cystic Fibrosis Awareness Month as well as the anniversary of the release of the book, I wanted to do something special, and I hope you’ll be willing to help me. All proceeds from sales of Drawing Breath over the month will go to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. This amounts to $4.00 per print book (please purchase print copies through CreateSpace directly, because they take less of a cut) and $1.00 per e-book.

You can buy the book here:

Amazon
CreateSpace (print)
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords
Kobo

The foundation is working to increase awareness, help support families, find better treatments and, one day, hopefully, a cure. Thank you, in advance, for your help and support.

Reblogged from J W Manus:

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I get several emails a week from people who are self-publishing or thinking about self-publishing. They ask me questions about the process.

Sometimes I can answer: "What's a good program for making an ebook?" (look here)  "My ebook has weird characters. What's causing that?" (look here) "What does Smashwords do?" (it's an aggregator that distributes ebooks to various retail sites.

Read more… 1,006 more words

Previous to this bit, Adam, Liza, and Charlie were attempting to get Estelle to agree to a biopsy.

——

Liza pounded the elevator button. “You’re sick. That was sick and cruel. How could you say something like that?”

Adam shrugged. “I panicked.”

“You couldn’t say something like, ‘We love you and we want you to get better?’ You had to tell your mother I was pregnant? In her condition?”

“You mean you’re not?” Charlie said.

They both scowled at him.

“I was looking forward to being an uncle.”

“Your brother is sick,” Liza said.

Charlie smiled. “Yes, but he’s creative.”

“So, what, I’m supposed to fake being pregnant now? Excuse myself every so often and pretend to throw up?”

“For a while,” Adam said weakly.

“And then what?”

“We are trying, Liza. Who knows, we might even be pregnant by then.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “At the rate I’m learning new things about you? I sincerely doubt it.”

This has been one of the most difficult things I’ve had to admit to myself in a very long time. Harder than the realization that I’ll never be a child prodigy, that my bikini years are probably behind me, or that no matter how often my chiropractor attempts to relieve the compression in my spinal disks, I will never grow tall enough to become a Radio City Rockette.

The novel I’m working on has met an unfortunate end.

It coded a few days ago. I attempted to revive it through extraordinary measures, gave it CPR, a few jolts with a defibrillator, every lifesaving modality known to modern literary science. Time of death: 6:21 p.m.

This was not an unexpected loss. We’ve been to this point before, just on the brink of disaster. While the dialogue tried to fake its usual perky insouciance, the prose had not been looking well for a good few months. Privately it complained of fatigue, an unredeemable protagonist, and a plotline too predictable to survive. So I took it to a specialist. My suspicions were confirmed. “It’s a foregone conclusion,” one intoned, shaking her head. Another suggested organ donation, seeing particular merit in a first chapter that could breathe life into a decent short story.

But we have come to praise Caesar, not to bury him. Or, as my Unitarian friends and family are wont to say, “We are here to celebrate the life of Unnamed Manuscript #7.”

It started with the best of intentions. A conflict. A notion of where I thought it would end up and how I might get there. But I now know that the deadly flaw was that instead of going with my instincts and letting the characters lead the story, I tried to force them into a plotline designed to be a mouthpiece for my own opinions. I didn’t want to believe I couldn’t make it work. But I persisted. I’ve been taught persistence. To keep banging my head against the wall, trying to make the pieces fit. I could have continued, shoving these unfortunate characters hither and yon, even finished the damned thing. But I’d always know that it was rotten at its core, and readers would know. They always know. Can’t you tell a passionless read when you stumble into one?

So what have I learned from this Lazarus of a novel that twice rose from the dead? That persistence is an admirable trait, a vital one for an author. We need to be persistent to survive the process of learning our craft. We need to be persistent in creating a finished, quality product for the marketplace. And beyond, we need an extra bit of stubborn to sell the product and have the courage to start a new one.

But maybe part of that persistence, part of that discipline of learning the craft is in knowing when to walk away from something that can’t be saved. Letting this one go was a hard decision. It hurts like hell, but I have to do it.

Have you ever had to abandon a project? What did you learn from it?