I wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!
just like the hashtag “amblogging”
I wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!
I may have mentioned that I’ve been working on new covers for my books. I think today would be a great time to do the new covers reveal. They’ll be in the stores probably next week.
The Inventor’s Son: The Beginning is my prequel book. I felt it needed to appear different than Book 1.
And now, compare the cover I’d had for The Inventor’s Son since last year to the new one…
And now, the transformation of Book 2…
Needless to say, this is a big departure from the original covers! I’m really happy with them. What say you? Should I have kept that “old textbook” feel of the other covers, or do you think that the more contemporary treatment makes them more attractive?
A quick note about a move I made earlier today: I started a new blog on Tumblr! I decided to use Tumblr to do my Steampunk themed blog, however, I may decide to reblog either here and/or at the Goodreads blog if I decide the post is worth doing that full-blown treatment.
This does not mean that I won’t have my own website, it just means that I believe, in my ongoing efforts to seek out an organic audience for my books, Tumblr and Wattpad have the potential for finding those people.
I will still be blogging here about the same topics I’ve really been blogging about in this past year. Many of my readers here are fellow authors, and I think the focus of this blog is really going to be more about the writing life and process than the Tumblr blog is.
I had a dream last night about the Christmas Eve open house party I used to go to every year when I lived “up North.” I dreamed that I got there late and all that was left over was already on ice except for some great Italian bread that was freshly baked and still warm. What does this dream mean? I have no idea. But I thought about things I’ve done during this holiday season as compared to holiday seasons in the past. What do I do now that I used to do then? What have I dropped, and what have I picked up?
I decided to make a list of things that, for me, make this season special. Some of them are things I still do, some are things I just started this year, and others are in the past and I might never get to do them again…
I’m sure there are more things I do and have done that I didn’t post about yet, but maybe I can make a part 2 to this post. What kind of traditions do you have that you miss, or have you started to take place of others?
First off, I have a link here to my very first guest blog post:
http://plungingintothenovel.blogspot.com/
K.J. Bryen will be publishing her new book, Lokte in the fall of 2014.
My guest post talks mostly about my writing journey so far and offers some tips that I’ve found are critical to surviving the first months of the self-publishing journey.
However, there is so much more, more than what can be covered in a single post. The entire exercise was quite thought provoking for me. One thought surfaced above all others: I may just have to start another blog!
If I start another blog, it will be dedicated to The Inventor’s Son. Once I start some heavier promoting and get Book 2 out, I’m sure that some readers might want to delve a bit deeper.
I’ve also joined the Google+ community Steampunk Tendencies. Their actual website is http://www.steampunktendencies.com/
When I see how many people are members of this group, and how elaborate their costumes and artwork is, I’m at once encouraged and daunted. Encouraged because Steampunk really does seem to be taking off and becoming more mainstream. Daunted because, compared to many of these people, my Steampunk resume is pretty thin as of yet. It’s such a fun genre, I’m sorry I didn’t get into this sooner.
There’s a variety of things I do that keep me from going to sleep when I really ought to. Just last night, it was already 12:35 and there was someone I had corresponded with on Twitter (because there’s ALWAYS someone to converse with on Twitter, no matter what time it is) that had sent a reply to a reply I sent her, etc. Before that, I did two very productive word sprints, which has an effect a lot like exercising right before bed.
Other nights, I watch tv, and I am not the type that falls asleep while watching television. And sometimes the show makes me so wound up, like the Game of Thrones finale last week, I can’t fall asleep after that.
Once in a great while, I’ll be out late, but I don’t have a huge social whirl, and all of us need to get up early the next day anyway.
It’s also hurricane season, and once I hear about tropical storms forming off the coast of Africa, I tend to watch for Accuweather updates and the like.
Often, I just have to do things at that hour that I couldn’t do all day.
But I don’t like it. I feel like I could do better if I wasn’t sleep deprived.
(This was posted in response to today’s Post a Day http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/sleepy-time/ )