This and That

Updates for the week include no sales of any of the ebooks this past week. A teacher on my friends' list on plurk contacted me after I left a response on her posting regarding some ideas to get a student reading and setting commitments for his IEP (individualized education program). I made several suggestions including my state books; she has requested an order form, so now it is a matter of waiting to see what she does. I also sent her the file of one of the books so she can decide whether or not the class would benfit from the books or not. I hope she does as this might be incentive for me start working on the state stories again. I really need to concentrate on those for a bit, with the hopes of getting three written and whenever Heather is ready to work on them she can just do her thing and they will be ready for her. Of course, once they are written, I also have to get my editor back on track with editing as she has pretty much given up on her writing career and has been busy with other things. But it will happen.

One of my son's friends who is basically homeless but staying here for the most part (he stays at other friends' houses on the weekends and sometimes during the week but they all have school so hard to stay elsewhere) is in debt to me, so I told him he could work off his debt by doing some research for my wip - Imogene: Innocense Lost. Maybe he will have that research done by the end of May or middle of June so I can get back to writing that story as I really would like to get it published sometime the first of next year. I know, I know, we've all been told get the story written fist and then do research but there is a problem with writing this story that way. It is a dated story. By that I mean that there are key dates in the story and I have to make sure I don't write something that didn't exist or wouldn't be realistic for that time period (i.e., the story starts in June of 1980, the real story starts in 1970 and the backstory starts in June of 1945/September 1945). Obviously in 1980, I can't talk about booking flights to China via online methods (we were still typing on Selectric typewriters in 1980 and word processors were the new wave of technology then; cell phones were big and bulky and kept in cars mostly because they were too heavy to carry around, not like today's cell phones that fit in your pocket; computers existed but not in the form of laptops, netbooks, et cetera; Sony Walkmans were the thing of the day back then not iPods or MP3 players or whatever is out there today; we still listened to cassettes and even a few 8-track tapes still existed in 1980 as well as soem reel-to-reel tapes. In other words, a lot has changed from 1980 to 2012 and I want this story to have as realistic feel to it as possible.) I have several scenes or parts of scenes written as well as the first three pages. Once I have the research notes, I think I will have to sit down and do an outline and then start writing the story, which is something I've not done before with my writing simply because I write short stories. Most of time the stories were written for contests and there wasn't time to outline anything. When I wrote Finally Home, it was actually a total rewrite of a story and was written as a NaNo challenge for me (National Novel Writing Month which is from November 1 through November 30 with the object being to write 50,000 words of a novel, or a complete novel, in 30 days. These days, 50,000 words is considered a novella or a good start to a novel. Finally Home topped out at 56,000 words, and really wasn't written during the November 1 to November 30 timeframe; rather, I started about November 14 or 15 and ended December 14 or 15, so I did write it during a 30-day period and hit the goal of 50,000 words in 30 days, it didn't count for NaNo officially. I have a feeling that Immogene's story will end up being much longer than that and thus will need the outlining. I'll probably challenge myself to write it in 30 days again and shoot for about 75,000 to 90,000 words on that story, so we will see what comes of it once the research is done.

For my earth day bookworm giveaways, I sent 2 to Australia, 1 to England, 2 to Kuwait via Germany (these were purchases), and 12 out across the United States with 1 person refusing to accept her bookworm and 1 person winning 3 different times so in lieu of sending her 2 more of the same bookworms and the fact that she was purchasing 5 total, she got her choice of 3 bookworms and purchased 2 for Christmas presents (she had one a previous time for a different bookworm giveaway and had refused saying she was going to buy some anyway, so that is where the 3 of her choice came in). Overall, I think the giveaways worked because I wasn't just giving bookworms to commenters of this blog but on the Writers on the Move blog also. My birthday is coming up in just over a month and there will many giveaways during the 50 days from June 5 (my birthday) and August 2 (no giveaways on Sundays or holidays, although I may do a special one for the 4th of July but haven't decided yet since that date falls on a Wednesday this year) to include bookworms, chances for the red, white, blue afghan drawing to be held December 1, and maybe even books and other prizes. Watch for the announcement May 31 with the first giveaway occurring on June 5.

Coming up tomorrow is a posting on self-imposed deadlines (probably why I talked about writing Imogene on today's posting) and WWYWWQ. I haven't planned out Thursday's posting yet so not sure what the topic will be. See you all in the postings - E :)