New Series for boys coming

I decided in March that I needed to write a new series geared for boys due to the fact that my YA mysteries are girl characters and the boys aren't reading them.  I've been steady researching for the series since I had the first title, which came about from one of our Sisters in Crimes meeting here in Columbia, SC. 

The series will be an adventure series with boy characters (maybe a girl or two but the main characters will be boys).  I'm calling it a South Carolina Directional Adventure Series because the titles all are compass points (directions) and also contain small town names that all start with the compass direction (N, S, E, W).

The first title West of _________ came about from our March meeting of Sisters in Crime.  Our guest speaker was talking with one of the members and telling her where he was from and trying to give her some sort of landmark or area that she would recognize.  He was from Lugoff, which if you are from the Richland County, Kershaw County or any other county that is relatively close to that area you would know where Lugoff is.  The member wasn't really familiar with the area so he gave her a landmark, well it is West of Wateree, which isn't really a town but more a state park/water area.  After a few minutes of conversation, our past president, Paula Benson, spoke up saying that West of Wateree would make a good title (directing it to all of us, not just the writers of adult mysteries).  So for the whole week I had been thinking of how I could use West of Wateree as a title for a children's book or possibly a mystery for boys.  When I went to Anderson on March 25 to have Anita Fricks sign copies of A Moose in the Shower I told her that I needed to write an adventure series for boys.  She didn't say much to that other than, yes you do.  I visited with her and family and came back to Columbia Saturday evening/night.  Sunday night when I was supposed to be sleeping I was very restless so started brainstorming about titles for the new series.  I decided it would be cool to do a compass directional type series since I already had West as one title. 

The next one that popped into my head immediately was North.  North of North came to mind due to the fact that if you locate North, SC, on the map you will see that it is actually south of some small towns as well as Columbia (Swansea and Gaston are actually a bit west and south of Columbia but they are north of North, SC). 

Now that I had two titles, I had to find South and East.  From days as a medical transcriptionist and having many unusual town names dictated and not knowing the states or areas that well, I had a website that I used quite often to look up town name spellings.  I got on the internet on my phone (if we had wifi in the shelter, I would be on my computer all the time when I wasn't working) and pulled up the website I was in need of and went to South Carolina and then clicked on the E listings.  The first town that caught my eye was Eagle Point, but then I found a better one.  So, East of Effingham was the next title I came up with.  Effingham is the home of McCall Farms where they employ over 800 people in the plant.  They are known for canned foods like the Glory foods and boiled peanuts and tons of other products everyone is familiar with. 

Now for south.  I had to have a cool name that would attract boys' attention.  I wrote down Snow Junction first and then scrolled a little more and found the coolest name of a town yet.  I have since found out that this town really doesn't have much in the way of being a populated town at all.  I've been told there is only a park located at the place that is named as a town.  I've also been told that James Brown (the "I Feel Good" singer) was born near this town.  Less than 20 miles from this town is the Savannah River Site.  The town's name, you ask? Spiderweb.  My south book will be titled South of Spiderweb with the adventure having to do with the Savannah River Site or the "future city" competition that is held each year for middle grade students. 

North is a railroad town and so I'm thinking the adventure will have to occur in Swansea or Gaston which are both north of North and possibly be railroad related.  Effingham being a farm town will probably be something 4H related or some sort of farm type competition with the students working on something to help the environment.  Wateree will be a junior park ranger or something on those lines adventure. 

The characters names will be alliterative to the titles so for South of Spiderweb I have Sean Southers; for North of North the name will be Nolan Norris (Norris means north); East of Effingham will feature Ethan Easton; and West of Wateree a simple name Wade West (sounds like a play on words having to do with water).

I have signed up for Camp NaNo which starts July 1; the goal is 20,000 words for me (5000 words per story, but may have to make them a bit longer.  These will be illustrated stories so I hope to end up between 100 and 150 written pages with illustrations interspersed throughout the stories.  Chasity Nicole is already sort of brainstorming the covers for me so once I actually have a cover or two I can share with you.

More postings as I progress.  See you all in the postings.  Mrs. E :)

A Moose in the Shower

It is almost here, finally.  Waiting on proof copies to get here (should be here tomorrow or Thursday) so I can review the print and make sure everything is okay and then approve it so that it will be ready to put out there.

This story was written in 2014 when Anderson County experienced an algae in the water issue and had to flush the whole system, unbeknownst to me while I was away for a book event; so upon returning to Anderson and turning on my shower the next day, it sounded like a moose in my shower.  Thus the story was written.  In 2015, I asked my friend Anita Fricks to do the illustrations and she agreed to do so.  She did the black and white pictures that year but didn't get the coloring done until 2017.  So now, I have a completed story with illustrations and I'm so excited about it.

I have two events scheduled in April so I will have copies on hand to sell at those events.  The book is twofold - the first part is the story with the color illustrations and the second part is the black and white illustrations for the kids to color and find the hidden moose in the pictures (there is at least one hidden moose in all but 2 or 3 of the 14 illustrations; some have more than one and one is a bit tricky as it isn't actually a "moose" but a play on the word (think dessert and in a refrigerator).  I'm really excited to get back to my writing and publishing again. 

This is the full cover (as I haven't figured out how to do just the front cover yet for ebooks yet).

 

The list price is $15 but for a limited time, I will be selling copies for $13.50. 

 

 

I can't wait to hold actual books in my hands.  See you all in the postings - E :) 

Two Fundraising Campaigns

Hey All,

I started two gofundme fundraising campaigns Sunday morning.  One is more in need of being funded immediately; the second one has roughly a 6 month time period. 

First the immediate one - my youngest son is getting married in February; the soon to be daughter-in-law wants a bridal shower and my daughter, Hailie, and I are planning the bridal shower.  The shower is to be held 5 days before the wedding (wedding date is February 18 with shower date February 13 - I know the Saturday before Valentine's day).  With a little help from my friends and readers out there, we should be able to raise enough to host the bridal shower.  I just found out last week the other Hallie's (my soon to be daughter-in-law) brother is running a gofundme campaign to pay for the wedding.  So please help out.  Click here to help with the bridal shower and click here to help the wedding campaign. 

The other campaign I'm running is to help pay off my prior illustrator as I have gotten in arrears and need to clear her up before moving on to the new illustrator (at a much better cost to me and probably one I'll campaign to fund later as the need arises once this first one is cleared up).  I'm running it through June and hopefully will be able to start around August with the new illustrator so I can get the 50-state mystery series back on track.  If you have a little extra and would like to help fund that, please click here and help.  Any donation will be much appreciated. 

Lots of good things coming up as previously noted.  I formatted the Moose story today in publisher and will probably need to do a little tweaking once I get the illustrations but I'm excited to take on this adventure with Anita Fricks. 

I have one other story I'm in the processing of editing to submit to an anthology.  This story was written in 2014 five days short of our supposed to be 25th anniversary and I had a meltdown and sat and wrote about 4500 words over a 2-hour period.  I felt relief once I wrote the story and hadn't intended to really share it with anyone but a few special people and then I gave it to Anita and she edited it and has given me a second run through now so I have a few changes or tweaks to make to it before considering submitting it for the one anthology.  This story may show up in two anthologies depending on how I feel once I've edited it.  I needed to get this out of my system to move on with my life and I have.  My mental health has improved since writing the story.  Now to just get my physical health and finances back on track I'll be good as gold or right as rain. 

Thank you all for continuing to follow me even though I haven't been a regular poster.  You all are truly angels in my life just for believing in my books.  If you haven't already picked up a copy of The Ties of Time, the second in the Kelly Watson YA Paranormal Mystery series, it is available in all formats except audible, which is the next thing on my list once I have cleared a few other projects out. 

Please pass the word about my fundraising campaigns and thank you all in advance for helping out anyway you can.  See you all in the postings.  Mrs. E :)

Book Club Discussions, Screenplay Writing, and a General Update

Greetings to my One Hundred Plus follows out there.  I know it's been a while since I've posted but I've been going through a very rough patch in my life right now.  I'm trying to stay positive and take it one day at a time, but some days are harder to do just that. 

Last month, I had to go out of town due to my father being in the hospital.  He ended up being in the hospital for about two weeks (had back surgery a week and a half after being admitted) before being transferred to the rehab facility.  He has been there for a little over 3 weeks and I just found out Monday afternoon, via his church email/blog/google+ group that he developed pneumonia over the weekend.  They do have him on antibiotics and hopefully he will recover as quickly as possible to not be set back too much from his therapy.  He may be at the rehab facility through the middle of August or maybe the end of August; it's all dependent on how well he progresses.  He admits his muscle strength is very weak and that is one of the things they are working on - strengthening. 

In March, I started another transcription position with Nuance Transcription Services after having been unemployed for six months.  My primary accounts are rehab facilities across the United States in the Select group of facilities.  Every day I'm typing reports on patients who are in rehab for various illnesses or injuries.  Some back injuries or surgeries, some fractures of the hips/knees/wrists/shoulders, and some from strokes or other neurological/brain problems - subarachnoid hemorrhages or closed head injuries, et cetera.  Every day I type one of these reports I think of my father and how he's doing and I think I need to call him but then forget.  My feeling on that is that I don't want to be a pest checking on him every day and I need to be working rather than making phone calls during work hours.

My friend, Anita Fricks, asked me a few months ago to join her in the Reluctant YA readers book club and then I started going to the Wednesday Brown Bag Lunch book club after that.  The problem with the book club reads are that the choices, of late, are books I wouldn't normal read and probably still don't read them.  I hate going to a discussion having not read a book but if I can't get past a few pages, I really find it difficult to read the whole book.  Today's reading was "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury.  Now, I understand it was written in the 1940s; it's not really sci-fi but is futuristic, and all that and I know this has been touted as a great book but I didn't see it that way.  I guess because now that I'm a writer and knowing our mantra in this day and age is to "show, don't tell" and I felt that these stories were just telling us everything, no leaving us to imagine anything really.  I found the first few pages rather boring.  Last month's selection was "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café" and I didn't even get to attend the book club due to being out of town for my family.  I did try to read as much as I could before turning it in but after seeing the movie before reading the book, I couldn't follow along with the book.  The movie and book are two different things.  In the movie, I got the impression that Mrs. Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy's character) was Idgie telling the story.  In the book, Mrs. Threadgoode is telling the story, but she introduces herself as being the wife of one of Idgie's brothers.  The only brother mentioned in the movie was Buddy who got hit by a train.  I understand that things have to be done differently for the movie to work and there were some elements that were kept from the book in the movie (the lake freezing with the ducks and the ducks flying off with the frozen lake so there was no more water in the lake - just an empty space where the lake used to be; giving the drunk a drink to steady his nerves). 

So that leads up to my next point.  Making a movie out of a novel.  Screenplay writing.  I've not done it but when I wrote Finally Home several years ago, I could picture it as a made-for-TV movie - but have yet to actually write the screenplay for it.  I'm thinking of it. 

For those who have read the book, have you been able to picture the story as a made-for-TV movie?  Do you think it is worth trying to write the screenplay?  Do you think I could get someone to produce a movie from the story?  I look forward to hearing your opinions on this matter.  E :)

Just Catching Up

Since my last posting a month ago, a good bit has transpired in my life and with my writing (okay not so much in the latter). I was terminated from my job of over 7 years, for some unknown reason but they didn't contest my unemployment so I should start receiving unemployment soon (fingers crossed I see a check this weekend). I've been applying for all kinds of jobs including with the state, but with the Federal shutdown, not sure how much that will affect state positions and put a hold on hiring on jobs that have been opened for a while. I have also found some positions available through the South Carolina Work Force site which I have been applying for. Tomorrow I take my skills assessment testing to hopefully get into the program for Medical Billing and Coding (that's not what they are calling it now but same idea) that will hopefully put me on a better road to getting a job. I'll keep filing and searching until I either find another job or my unemployment runs out, which, from all best guesses, is basically 4 months from now. Sadness hit the writing world as the Great Tom Clancy passed away. My baby's b-day was last week and I didn't have any funds to get him a card or anything and to top that off, my printer decided to stop working, so I can't even print anything that I need to print right now. Not sure what's up with that. On the writing front, I have decided to stop editing my friend's manuscript and have decided to get back to writing the second story in Kelly's series. I'm not very far in but I feel I can write it rather quickly once I get back to it. I have now pushed my self-imposed deadline to have it written by the end of this month. I need to knock out about 50,000 words in 27 days (considering that the 3rd is busy full with class time with the 6th graders, testing, Sisters in Crime meeting), but hopefully I can bust out some serious writing Friday. I hope I can write the story that Anita and I brainstormed, although I feel like it's not really my story right now. Guess that is the hazard of outlining or plotting a story from beginning to end when one hasn't ever done that before. I think that catches you all up on what's going on in my life. How about you? What's happening on your end? Anything good you'd like to tell us about? --- See you all in the postings - E :)

The Proposal Free Days/Research Field trip

It's free download days again; this time, my short story "The Proposal" is available.  It will be free through Thursday midnight PST.  I'd forgotten to post this yesterday but I have a reason.

Yesterday, my friend Anita and I took a field trip to Iva (the town setting for my Kelly Watson stories) and explored.  We parked on the square and kind of walked around checking out the store fronts or buildings there and turned the corner to find the Iva Museum.  It was closed as they are only open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.  The person who operates the museum was there checking on the air conditioner as he had been on vacation last week and he wanted to make sure that the folks had returned it to its normal settings.  He was coming out of the museum as we were kind of looking in the windows, stating we needed to make another trip when the museum was opened.  Anita asked him about the museum and we explained what I was doing, so he was kind enough to let us in and showed us around and allowed us to take some pictures of some of  their pictures.  We gained a lot of information from that short visit.  Thank you, Mr. David Newby, for spending some time with us and giving us some background history of the town.  He also told us about the "Antique Body Shop" just around the corner, so we naturally had to stop in there.  No, it's not an antique car shop but a senior citizens gym.  We spoke with two folks there and Anita bought herself a T-shirt. 

From there, we made our way to the town hall which houses the police department, municipal court and the place to pay water bills (I've forgotten what it was called).  We talked to the one lady who was standing behind the police department window, who happened to be the victim's advocate.  We asked for some information and she told us that the guy across from them would be able to help us but he had just stepped out of the office, but would return shortly (I missed when he did return or we would have engaged in a conversation with him).  The Chief of Police had to deal with a situation but when he finished with that business, he was very nice to sit with us and give us all kinds of other information.  He even printed out a map and marked places we wanted to explore for us.  That map may show up in the front of The Tie of Time (A Kelly Watson paranormal mystery).

When we left town hall, it was lunch time so we stopped by the cafe we had originally parked in front of and had lunch - buffet style - fried chicken, sweet potato casserole, green beans, beets (which I didn't get any of but I do love beets if they are fixed right), rice and white gravy, some greens (I think they were collard greens), country fired steak, and desserts and a few other veggies.  The buffet table isn't very large so they can only  put up a few items each day.  The waitress was very friendly.

After leaving the cafe, we drove around looking for the different items marked on the map for us including the supposed ghost house (which we didn't really find  but no worries) and the oldest house in Iva which was old but didn't really give me the impression of being the oldest house around, the old drug store (vital to The Ties of Time as this is where the whole mystery will occur), the nursing home, the old high school which is now the Civic Center and houses an indoor basketball court and is used for all kinds of activities.  There is also a very nice park in front of the Civic Center and the only remaining building of the old school which was the cafeteria. 

We got a tour of the nursing home and were invited back during the activities time to observe what one of the worker's daughter does to help out (bless her little heart, she is only 6 years old and was trying her best to do the craft of the day, which was building little bird houses or bird feeders).  Thank you to Diane, Melissa and Tina for helping us give a reason for Kelly and Emma to be in the nursing home.

From the center of town, it is about 1 mile to the outskirts in any direction, so it is not a very large area, so I'm having to change what I started out with for the girls to get around since State Law says that no one can operate a moped or golf cart without a driver's license.  So now my girls will be riding bicycles around town.  I just need to make sure they have somewhere to put their picnic basket and other stuff.  Do they still make front handlebar baskets for bicycles? 

Overall, I think we had a very productive and interesting day of discovery.  We will probably make several more trips to Iva over the ensuing months.  Everyone we spoke to seemed genuinely excited about the fact that I was an author and had set my story in their small town.  I look forward to visiting the town of Iva again and hopefully meeting more people.  I also am excited to really get to writing The Ties of Times and hopefully can get it done fairly quickly.  I will post pictures later as it is now time to get to work as there is a team conference call this afternoon and one of my co-workers is out this week.  See you all in the postings - E :)

Finally Home ACX Update

I was supposed to have my final copy of the audio book of Finally Home last week but Sienna has been having some technical issues.  She assured me today it would be to me soon - within the next day or two.  Once I get the file, I will go through it to approve or make corrections and send to her.  If there are no corrections to be made, then I will approve it and release the audio version as soon as I can.  Waiting on the updated cover from Heather as well since there are some changes to be made for ACX so right now things are in limbo.

For the release of the audio book of Finally Home, I'll be offering the ebook for free on Kindle next week, April 15-16.  If you haven't already read it or purchased a copy, now is the time to get it for free.  Be sure to tell all your friends so they can get their copies.

Also, Anita and I brainstormed a bit after our Sisters in Crime meeting last week about some situations or stories for Kelly and Emma Louise and there are some things brewing, so I may have a few more stories to make them a series.  I'll add a tagline of "A Kelly Watson Mystery" to the new titles, and I guess I'll have to go back and eventually add that to Finally Home  but right now I'll leave it as is.  see you all in thep ostings - E :)