Tag Archives: Mayor Of Dorktown

Way to post, like, once a month dude.

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. :)

#ROW80 update (composed during shaved ice sugar high)

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.

 

Midsummer Retelling Stand Alone #ROW80 Dream

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!

 

Some thangs and #ROW80

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. ;)

#ROW80 update

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.

I hesitate to use the word epic, but…

…I’m about to give away a boatload of e-books!

Today is my 2-year Indieversary – yup, that’s right, I’ve been an indie/ self-published author for two years. Happy book birthday to Glimpse!!

Normally, this would be the paragraph where I lay a bunch of sweet stats on you and be inspiring to other writers and what-not, but I suck at keeping track of stuff. (I hear the third year [I'm totally lying] is when you get control of your indie career. I’m expecting to wake up tomorrow being able to make spreadsheets and do my taxes without using “guesstimates.”)

I’ll just say this: I’m doing great, my job rocks, I’ve met a lot of cool people who I now consider friends, and I earn enough to buy what I want. (Excluding $700,000 farms. C’mon, I’m not Amanda, for crying out loud!)

So, yay, Happy Indieversary to me! Let’s get to the giveaway!!

There are three prize levels.

Grand Prize – 26 ebooks!

Exiled by RaShelle Workman, Running Wide Open and Getting Sideways by Lisa Nowak, Transfer Student and 13 on Halloween by Laura A.H. Elliott, Watched and Protected by Cindy M. Hogan, Tangled Tides by Karen Amanda Hooper, Sleepers by Megg Jensen, The Green by Karly Kirkpatrick, Beautiful Demons and Inner Demons by Sarra Cannon, Clockwise by Elle Strauss, BECOME by Ali Cross, Destined by Jessie Harrell, Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn, Dream Smashers by Angela Carlie, The Secret of Spruce Knoll by Heather McCorkle, The Veil by Cory Putman Oakes, How to Date an Alien by Magan Vernon, BOUND by C.K. Bryant, A Spy Like Me by Laura Pauling, The Soulkeepers by G.P. Ching, Unenchanted and The Iron Butterfly by Chanda Hahn, Artemis Rising by Cheri Lasota

First Prize – 15 ebooks!

Exiled, Running Wide Open and Getting Sideways, Transfer Student and 13 on Halloween, Watched and Protected, Tangles Tides, Sleepers, The Green, Beautiful Demons and Inner Demons, Clockwise, BECOME, Destined

Second Prize – 11 ebooks!

Open Minds, Dream Smashers, The Secret of Spruce Knoll, The Veil, How to Date an Alien, BOUND, A Spy Like Me, The Soulkeepers, Unenchanted and The Iron Butterfly, Artemis Rising 

Fill out the entry form below.  All that’s mandatory is that you leave a blog comment with your e-mail, but if you “Like” and/or Tweet about the giveaway, you get extra entries.

Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor. (Hey, it’s my indieversary. I can be a total dork, more than usual, if I want to.)

Much love and thanks to all of you!

Continue Reading →

#ROW80 update and Green Acres

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!

The kitchen sink

We never talk anymore!  That’s my fault. :)

I thought skipping a round of ROW80 would help me feel less pressured to blog all the time and take one more thing off my To-Do list, but instead I’ve missed blogging! And I’ve only added more stuff to the To-Do list, so as per usual my “plans” are a bust.

Seriously, I win the medal for suckiest time management skillz.

Before I take off to California for Spring Break for a week, I thought I’d give you all a little update on what I’ve been doing writing and life-wise.

*Day of Sacrifice #6 – which I’m calling Unfavorable for now because I get tired of referring to stories by number - has to be finished by the end of May so I can participate in an Indelibles launch party.  I think six weeks is a totally doable span of time to write a 15K story…I’m just a little freaked out because it’s the last one and I have to wrap up the whole series. I’ve got a beginning and an end and absofrickenlutely no idea what happens in the middle. Guess I’ll figure that out as I go along!

*I’m finally ready to start the next trilogy in the Zellie world. This trilogy also doesn’t have a solid title. I have plenty of ideas flowing, but am having writer’s block when it comes to titles!  Perhaps there will be a contest.  Hmm.  Here’s the working title: Society School for Retroacts (Penny _____ #1, from the author of the Zellie Wells trilogy.)  Doesn’t that have an awesome ring to it? lol

Anyway, I’ve mentioned on Facebook that the main characters name is Penny and that this trilogy would be set in the future. It started out being a decade, then I changed it to twenty years, and now I’m thinking around fifteen.  The initial ideas I had for the books didn’t have enough oomph to last through a whole trilogy. The plot is still in the brainstorming stage, but I’ve definitely got a better hold on where I want it to go. I’m going to try to have this book done by August. (Do not hold me to this as a firm release date!!)

*Back in Time is not the last you are going to hear from Aurelia Lemon! After I finish Unfavorable, this will be what I work on when the Society School book is driving me nuts.

*Also I’m co-writing a contemporary New Adult book with Vicki Keire that is shaping up to be awesome – we’re taking our time with it, but I’ll keep you all updated.

*Also, also, I’m still working on pen name stories!

*Also, also, also, I’m starting a new blog where I’m going to write random essays about weird crap that happens to me. It’s going to be called Be Awesome, Beautiful Dreamer!  Basically, I want to put out another book like The Toilet Business and I need new material.  This idea could and probably will totally bomb, but whatevs, I’ll try some shit, y’know?

*On the personal front, I finally fricking got my dining room painted!! Only took two years y’all. I was on such a painting roll that I did the hallway, the closet doors in the hallway and all the doors.  My mom helped me because she is awesome and because she asked if she could! (DUH.)  All the paint looks great, although I can’t find one of the light fixtures that we took down. I rock at hiding things from myself.

*My old RAV 4 that my husband was driving was thisclose to breaking down on the freeway in a fiery explosion, so we traded that bad boy in and got a used Prius. The hubs is excited to have a new to him car and I’m happy that he won’t be stranded on the 26 during rush hour. We’re taking it to California and are both dorkily stoked to see how much money we save on gas. (Being an adult is super interesting and cool!!) I have had the pleasure of driving it once, on the way home from seeing John Carter.

*I quit smoking.  I know, you didn’t know I smoked. (Unless you’ve read The Toilet Business and then I’m sure you had a good idea that it was still going on.)  Well, I did. First, for a long time and then I had kids and I quit and then I started up again for a short time. I may appear loud and sarcastic and quippy, which I can be, but mostly I’m socially awkward. Smoking gave me something to do, it helped me tick off the time until I could go be alone again.  And when I was alone, it was a reward for getting things accomplished – especially writing.  However, I’ve quit a couple of times before and it’s been easier this time. I’m eating my face off, but eventually I’ll be mellow enough to concentrate on a better diet and exercising. It’s been a week. Go me!

*I got two new tattoos.

My indie publishing philosophy:My kids initials:

It’s been eleven years since I’ve had a new tattoo, so I thought it was high time I got a couple. The pictures are kind of crappy and I’m painfully pale, but you get the gist. :)

I think that’s all I’m going to overshare for today. Ha! I hope you all are enjoying spring and get to have a little break soon.

Trilogy winner and a review that’s not a review

Yes, that blog post title sucks, but I just couldn’t bring myself to title it Winning! like I really wanted to.

Anyhoo…

I’m happy to announce the winner of the e-book of the Zellie Wells trilogy is Brenda Demko!  Yay, Brenda!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by during the blog hop and left a comment.  I love hearing from y’all. Also, big thanks to those of you that followed me on Twitter and Facebook and signed up for my newsletter and blog.

So, I went to see Young Adult yesterday. (Pardon the segway, I was up very late last night with my wheezing daughter…and I had a hard time putting down the book I’m reading .  Bad combo!) I wanted to see this movie the second I discovered it existed because it’s written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman- the Juno team. I totally loved Juno and could care less if it’s not cool to like Juno anymore.

Besides that, I had a few other reasons for wanting to see it.  I really dig Patton Oswalt – he’s so funny and truthful – I just think he needs to be in all movies. He did not disappoint in Young Adult. I also, obviously, wanted to see it because it’s about a YA author.  Lastly, I’ll admit there was a bit of a nostalgia thing going for me – the characters are my age and I wanted to see if they knew what they were doing yet. Like going to a high school reunion at someone else’s school.

In a nutshell, Young Adult is about Mavis Gary, an author who ghost writes a Sweet Valley High-type series. Mavis’ life is in the crapper and she goes  home to Mercury, Minnesota after being gone for a long time to win back her high school sweetheart, Buddy – who happens to be married and has a new daughter.

We’re supposed to hate Mavis, she’s in Charlize Theron’s body after all. She’s also an alcoholic and her emotions are in arrested development. She’s that popular girl who said hi to you once in the girls bathroom and asked for a stick of gum.  You’ll always remember it and she forgot it while it was happening.  Mavis disses her hometown, disses her parents and generally doesn’t care how her actions affect anyone around her.

Like I said, we’re supposed to hate her.  We’re supposed to think, “Ha ha popular chick, welcome to the real world.”

But I didn’t. I actually had a lot of empathy for her. I got that juxtaposition between having high school be your glory days and having those glory days take place in a town you couldn’t wait to get out of. I understood why she would dwell on the past. For me, as a young adult writer, your head is in that space more than most people.  You can’t help but have a hard time adjusting to adulthood because you spend a lot of time “pretending” you’re still seventeen.

You’re also used to rewriting your history a little bit in your books, so I found it believable that Mavis thought she could go back home and rewrite the ending to her teenage love affair.

Anyway, I don’t have much more to say about it.  It’s a good movie and I recommend you all see it, but it’s not sunshine and rainbows.  It depressed me in a weird, self-reflective way that I’m sure is not a normal reaction. :)

The strangest thing, after I went to see Young Adult, I picked my kids up at my parents house and they’d gotten into a box of my stuff in their garage.  My son handed me a scrap of cloth, which turned out to be the front of this guy’s skateboarding t-shirt I’d had up on my bulletin board since the 8th grade.

I don’t know what to do with it.  I can’t throw it away.

 

For a real review of Young Adult go here.

Winner of the Zellie trilogy!

I posted on Facebook and Twitter who won the copy or the Zellie Wells trilogy, but completely forgot to announce it here!  So sorry to all that have been waiting to hear the news.

The winner is Kim Waters, a book blogger from Australia!  Congratulations Kim!

I sent the book out to her today and one to the GRAND PRIZE winner, Sandra Lin.

If you didn’t win this go around, take heart, I do giveaways all the time -like the 12 Days of Christmas Reading promotion that starts on the 10th and another around Valentine’s Day.

Also, don’t forget that the e-book of Glimpse, the first book in the trilogy, is free at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and other retailers right now. AND, the e-book of the trilogy is only $6.15 on Amazon!

Thanks to all who signed up for the giveaway and please forgive me for not letting you all know sooner who the winner was.