Tag Archives: Chaos

Way to post, like, once a month dude.

August 13, 2012 9:24 am ⋅ 4 Comments ⋅

It’s still summer here for another month. My kids don’t start school until mid-late September and it’s actually hot here, so we’re wringing all we can out of the season while we have the chance.

Of course, other things have been going on – the hubs and I had our 10 year wedding anniversary and we took a little trip to the San Juan islands. While we were there, we met authors Keary Taylor and Nikki Jefford. So much fun! And I’ll be meeting Amanda Hocking in person for the first time next week. I’ve been friends with all of these lovely ladies online for a long time – it’s great to finally meet face-to-face!

The kids have been in swimming lessons and track camp and they start sports camp this week, followed by karate and dance at the end of the month. My mom taxi is in full effect!

I also started a camp of my own, sort of, Crossfit! It’s really hard, but rewarding in that way where you’re using muscles you didn’t know you had. Right now I’m working out four days a week and will be moving to five next week. Wish me luck!!

There are birthday celebrations coming up, more weekend trips, the Pac NW YA bbq, a Gotye concert and back-to-school shopping! My August calendar has so much stuff on it, I can barely make out what I’m supposed to do from one day to the next!

So, what have I been working on? Found is coming along nicely, if not at a snail’s pace. The covers for the entire Penny Black trilogy should be ready soon – I’ll post them everywhere ASAP! The Awesome Robin Ludwig has done it again!! I finished listening to the audiobook of Glimpse last night – look for that to be available by the end of the month.

And, honestly, I’ve been reading a lot. Seaweed, Tangled Tides, Crave, and Envy in the past two weeks. I get to a point a couple of times a year where I just want to do nothing besides read. I always give into it. :)

I hope everything is going well with you all and that your summer has been a blast! I’m sure I’ll be around more often when it starts to rain. :)

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#ROW80 update (composed during shaved ice sugar high)

July 11, 2012 5:32 pm ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

Update!

I’ve written every day since Sunday, except for today as I have barely been home. There’s still time! I’ve worked on a different project each day and have put in between 200-500 words. Not a lot, but it’s better than the zero I get when I stress about not having enough time to hit 1K a day.

I was good about not checking my stats until yesterday, when I was ordering a cookbook and saw in my history on Amazon that the Day of Sacrifice Omnibus had received its first review.

Which was 1 star…because the reader ”was disturbed” that it was targeted at young adults.

Ahem.

The second line of the book description is as follows: The Day of Sacrifice Omnibus is intended for adult readers due to language and sexual situations.

The Day of Sacrifice stories are by S.W. Benefiel. See over there on the right sidebar of this blog? Under the Books for Adults – that’s where all the Day of Sacrifice titles appear.

I’m not sure what else I can do to let people know that, yes I write YA, but I also write NA, stuff for adults and stuff for ADULTS.

Anyway, that set me off on a stats binge. I not only checked my sales on every platform, but I checked the reviews on all of my books. 

I’ll do better. Now that I’ve publicly vented (note that I did not engage the reviewer even though I really, really wanted to) I can let it go.

So, last round I started this tumblr called Be Awesome, Beautiful Dreamer and I was going to add essays to it for a new Toilet Business-esque book of essays. But, then I never had any time to actually write all the new essays because I was worrying about getting DoS done and I have all of these starts that I haven’t finished yet. Forcing essays doesn’t work the same way you can force yourself to sit down and write a scene. It takes me longer to think out my opinion and what I remember about certain events and what to cut…

I digress.

Instead, I changed the name of the blog to FAT WRITER. I’m putting my whole family on the Paleo Diet starting next Monday and I thought it would be useful/funny/entertaining/informational to blog about it. There are two posts up now and I’m about to add another after I make dinner. Check it out. There’s a huge picture of me riding a giant brass tortoise at the Oregon Coast Aquarium on it.

I know, how can you resist?

Happy writing, friends! I’m off to make brats.

 

Posted in: E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Midsummer Retelling Stand Alone #ROW80 Dream

July 8, 2012 2:16 pm ⋅ 8 Comments ⋅

Last night I had a dream that I was at an indie author convention and all of my writer friends were there. (I would die if this were ever really a thing. I have so many writer friends that I would love to meet in person!) After some hilarious antics involving a bee in my iced coffee cup and not being able to find the correct elevator that led me to my personal slot machine room, we all settled into a ballroom for the awards ceremony.

Lots of friends won awards and I was a little bummed. I knew I hadn’t won anything because I hadn’t put out a new novel since 2011 and no one was reading my short stories.

Then Vicki Keire suggested that I write a stand alone retelling of a Shakespearean play.

That’s when I woke up.

And realized that I have notes for a stand alone novel that’s a modern retelling of a classic.

Was the dream a sign? Is THIS what I should be working on?

Or, am I just freaking out?

I’m just freaking out, even in my sleep, apparently. I’ve got an overwhelming number of projects that I need to finish. Not that any of them have a deadline – apart from the one that I’ve made for myself that consists of GET MORE WORK OUT FASTER.

I’ve tried prioritizing works by projected release dates. I’ve tried daily and weekly word count, timing myself, writing for two hours a day, one hour a day, four thirty-minute intervals.

Blah, none of it works for me.

I need for writing to be fun again. That’s what works.

Therefore, my goals for this ROWnd are:

1. Write something every day. On any of the WIP’s, however much I get done, I get done. Eventually, one of them will be finished.

2. Stop reading reviews (I’m really close to doing this already.)

3. Check sales numbers once a week on Sunday morning. (The withdrawal is going to be a bitch. Ha!)

4. Always check-in on Sunday and try to check in on Wednesday.

That’s it!

Now I’m off to see what I can do with my new time travel short story, since I worked on Found several times this past week.

Happy writing!

 

Posted in: Blogs, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

#ROW80 update from the trenches (a.k.a. my office before a garage sale)

June 13, 2012 9:18 am ⋅ 3 Comments ⋅

We’re having a garage sale, therefore my office/seasonal clothes storage room/playroom annex/place where my husband keeps old desks that I hate and family china/ room where everyone dumps everything they can’t find a place for in the rest of the house, looks like several other peoples’ garage sales barfed all over it.

The kids climbed on one of my bookshelves and broke the bottom shelf, causing books to spill all over the floor. I stacked up the books and left the shelf. The kids stood on top of the books to get to the art supplies I keep on another shelf and ripped some of the covers off of the books. RIGHT NOW as I’m writing this, my daughter has just upset a box containing old baby toys and a license plate I stole off of a car when I lived in England the summer of 1990.

When I say this place is a disastrous mess, I’m not bullshitting you.

And I write books in the middle of this hoarders refuge, which can’t be good for my productivity because I spend a lot of time wishing I could just back a Dumpster up to this room, toss the lot and start from scratch.

So, I’m cleaning. I going to clean until it’s organized and the playroom is organized and the garage is organized. I’ll be working my ass off until the linen closet isn’t full of old printers and fax machines and scanners, but the bed linens that are stacked up in a laundry basket in the laundry room.

I’ve worked a little bit more on Found and it’s easy. I love writing it. I just can’t do it in the middle of all this mess anymore!!

Writing resumes on Monday.

…if you’re anywhere near Beaverton, OR in two weeks time, I’ll be selling my possessions out on the lawn.  Awesome deals on broken bookshelves and vintage foreign license plates.

Posted in: indie authors, indie readers, ROW80, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Some thangs and #ROW80

June 6, 2012 10:54 am ⋅ 5 Comments ⋅

I have a list of things I keep meaning to tell you all!

If you have a blog: Sign up for the Indelibles INDIEpendence Day celebration!

If you like to read interesting posts and win stuff: Visit the Mid Summer Dream Fair! My post is called The Stage and it’s coming up at the end of the month.

If you want to win a paperback copy of the Day of Sacrifice Omnibus: Sign up on Goodreads or…sign up on that big sign up widget thingy over in the sidebar there.

If you want to get two monthly newsletters about new releases from the Indelibles and the Pacific Northwest YA Authors: Click the link for the Indelibles and for the PacNWYAAuthors to sign up.

Row80 update: I’m making decent progress on the pen name stories and I purchased an e-book cover, so that’s a done deal. I thought of yet another funny story for the BABD blog…and someday I might actually write it and the other 17 stories I have to put on there. I haven’t worked anymore on Found. 

With the kids out of school and my husband only working away from home three days a week, I just can’t get anyone to leave me alone. If I didn’t have to pay for a new roof in July, I’d seriously consider renting office space and putting the kids in day care for a few hours every day!

Whenever people interview me they always ask how I manage to write books and stay at home with the kids. It’s a friggin’ MIRACLE that’s how. I have no idea. It just gets done and never in as timely a manner as I want. ;)

Posted in: E-books, Fiction, Giveaway, Guest Post, Indelibles, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, YAY YA, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Giveaway winner, #ROW80, Free stories

May 9, 2012 4:51 pm ⋅ 4 Comments ⋅

Isn’t that the super snazziest blog title ever! :)  

1. Artemis Rising Blog Tour Giveaway Winner (Phew!) – Congrats to Naomi H. ! Artemis Rising by Cheri Lasota is on its way. I know you’ll enjoy it!

2. Unfavorable is done! Uh, sort of.  The story is finished, but it still needs an epilogue. I’m having my proofreader/BFF read through it tonight and after I get her notes I’ll figure out how the epilogue is going to go. I have a general idea, but if I end up changing the ending…I like the ending, but I need her opinion. I’m not sure I made the right choice and am too close to it.  Anyway, the epilogue hinges on what happens at the end, obviously, so once I know what it’s going to be I can go from there.  I’ve got beta readers set up for the beginning of next week and I hope to have Unfavorable published by the 18th.

And then the Day of Sacrifice series will be complete!!  It’s going to be sweet having two series under my belt, let me tell ya.

3. Speaking of…Day of Sacrifice is free on Amazon, BN, Smashwords, iTunes, etc. right now. Even if you’ve read it, it would be great if you could download a fresh copy so that it gets lower in the bestsellers ranks and gets more exposure.

Alas, this is how self-published authors get their name (or names in my case) out there! I would be most grateful.

I’ve also added a new short story to my Free Reads section on this site. Surprise, Surprise is from the Indelibles In His Eyes anthology that we put out around Valentine’s Day. The whole anthology is free, if you’re looking for some awesome YA short stories told from a male POV.

Happy reading and writing!

Posted in: Blogs, E-books, Fiction, good neighbors, Indelibles, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, YAY YA, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

#ROW80 update

May 6, 2012 3:37 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Hello all! Long time no update.

Well, Unfavorable isn’t done yet. It is the story that will not end. I think I’m having last book (story) syndrome. I just want everything wrapped up and for no one to be disappointed in the ending and all that CHATTER.

I keep thinking I have 1K to go and then I sit down and write 3K and still haven’t ended the bloody thing yet! My self-imposed deadline was May 1st, so that didn’t happen, but I DECLARE that mutha is going to be finished this week or…well, I don’t know what, it’s my birthday and Mother’s Day next Sunday and I kinda want to, y’know, get presents and eat cake and stuff and not be mean to myself and I already cheated and bought and read the latest BDB novel, so…I just better finish the damn story.

In other news, I went ahead and started plotting the Penny Black trilogy (previously known as the Society School books) and am RARIN’ to get started on those.

Lastly, there’s buzz that a group of bloggers are preparing some sort of interwebs raking over the coals of an author friend of mine. I have two things to say about that:

1. Why would anyone want their rep to be that they are a bully?

2. Get outside and enjoy some nature. Hanging out on the computer all the time getting whipped up into a frenzy is a lameass way to spend a day.

Peace!

Hope everyone has a great week writing and life-wise.

Posted in: Bad neighbors, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

#ROW80 update

April 25, 2012 9:45 pm ⋅ 4 Comments ⋅

I’m getting this in at the very last moment!

Plugging along word count-wise on Unfavorable. This puppy needs to be done this weekend so that Sarah can proofread it next week and then I can send it to a couple of betas.

I wrote 1500 words yesterday and then spent the day today rearranging the scenes and writing a new one. My chronology was all off and I had characters explaining why things hadn’t happened yet instead of just having them happen. Also, in some scenes, they have two days until an epic battle and in others, it’s one! Super annoying. So, I stopped what I was doing and made a timeline.

I’ve been writing these stories since October 2010 and when I started them, I didn’t know how many there were going to be, who all the characters were or what was going to happen from one story to the next. (I had a similar experience with the Zellie books.)

Let me tell you, I’m never doing it this way again. It is way too difficult to keep track of everything.  The Society School books are getting a fat stack of Post-its and some poster boarding, that’s for damn sure! The timeline is going to help me a lot with Unfavorable, but I’m not sure why I haven’t made it before!  While I was perusing the stories 1-5, I also made notes of other things I’d flubbed up.  More rewrites!!

Then I will have only three more scenes to write. Or two. Ugh, I can’t decide!

Obviously, none of this is really up to me. :)

After I made the timeline, I combed through stock photography for three hours looking for the perfect woman/man/couple to put on the Day of Sacrifice Omnibus cover. I finally found them! They are a little more naked than I’d envisioned, but they are the right combo of hair and eye color and hotness level to be Flora and Julian.

The awesome Keary Taylor is making it for me.

That’s it! I’ve been on the computer for 14 hours. I think I can stop now.

Posted in: E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

#ROW80 update and Green Acres

April 15, 2012 10:49 am ⋅ 6 Comments ⋅

Just a quickie update today because I have to clean my house. One of the things I said I’d do when I started making decent money as a writer was hire someone to clean my house a couple of times a month – well, the cleaning lady was supposed to start last week, but she got the flu, so my house is extra disastrous. I’m pretty sure the second I clean, she’ll call to reschedule. It’s the way of my world. :)

I’m not entirely sure of my word count this week – it’s around 2.5K. I tried doing my timer writing and writing without editing and…I sat down yesterday and didn’t time myself and started rewriting/cutting Unfavorable from the beginning…it’s not finished, but the first scene is a lot better and I got some enjoyment out of the process. Ha! My brain just really wants me to let it fix things in the moment. I keep working to retrain it, but she’s a stubborn bitch.

Another thing my brain is, is super obsessive. I had a dream that I bought a farm and then when I woke up I looked up farms for sale in my area and there is a huge one for a good price nearby. (And by good price I mean not a million dollars – it’s not something that I can actually afford.) Anyway, I drove by it. Then I drove up to the house and checked it out. Today I’m going to the open house and then taking the kids over to a friend’s farm down the road a bit so we can see how they manage it.

I have a hard time letting ideas go and I’ve learned to let myself just be a crazy person and dream about them until the last possible moment when my rational side kicks in and says, “hey, it ain’t gonna happen.”

It’s just thinking, right?

So, that took up some of my week too, but the farce ends today and I’ll be back to trying to figure out how to afford to put a new roof on the house I already own – which takes up way less creative brain space than dreaming about being a lavender farmer.

Every time I say quick post, I babble endlessly.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Posted in: indie authors, indie readers, ROW80, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Day of Sacrifice #5 and another new short story!

February 27, 2012 8:33 am ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

DoS #5 – Dissent is out!

Guardians Presley and Liesel volunteer for a special mission to gauge the fallout after Head Guardian Bartholomew’s death.
They discover that things are worse than anyone suspected and their focus changes from intel gathering to search and rescue.
Good thing they work so well together.
Of course, that tends to happen after dating for thirty-eight years.

Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords

If you’re waiting on the newsletter to get the coupon code for Dissent – it will be out later today. Last chance to sign up for the newsletter and get Dissent for free!

 

I also published Back in Time over the weekend. It is included in the Death by Chocolate anthology, but I’ve published it separately because it is the first story in a new short story series. I hope you all will give it a look-see. It’s one of my personal favorites.

 

Nothing in Aurelia Lemon’s life is turning out how she’d planned. She’s unemployed, unattached, and her family bakery is on the verge of closing. To make matters worse, the guy she dumped in high school is doing well and getting rich off of one of her departed mother’s recipes. It would take a miracle to right everything she’s done wrong. Or maybe just a phone call and the chance to go Back in Time.

Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords

If you’ve previously read and reviewed Back in Time in the Death by Chocolate anthology and liked it, I’d be grateful if you could post your review or a portion of your review at any of the above sites.

Now, I’m off to take my son to school and then go to the Home Depot. My dining room that I meant to paint in August 2010 is finally getting spruced up!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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