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Showing posts from April, 2015

The Next MacGyver will be a WOMAN!

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This. Is. Awesome! To readers who dig Saira, and to writers who write strong women - do this! They're looking for a show idea for the next MacGyver - A WOMAN - to inspire girls and young women to science and engineering. It doesn't take much to enter - a great idea, a compelling character, a couple of taglines for interesting episodes, but the deadline is this Friday, May 1st. Seriously, people - we need this show, and there's no reason in the world the idea for it can't come from YOU! TheNextMacGyver.com

IngramSpark vs. Createspace

To: Indpendent Authors: Re: Createspace vs. IngramSpark: A couple of weeks ago someone posted a link on Facebook to IngramSpark with free set-ups (I can't find it now - sorry), so I did some research into Createspace vs. IngramSpark. Everything I found said do both. Createspace distributes primarily to Amazon, but their expanded distribution isn't utilized by most bookstores because they don't give them a big enough discount. IngramSpark gives the industry-standard 55% discount to retailers, plus the option to return books, which makes ordering our books attractive (I just did a signing at a Barnes and Noble, and had to bring all my own books because they won't order through Createspace). They also have printers in Europe and Australia, which makes international ordering cost-effective. There is almost no money to be made for us on IngramSpark because of the discount to retailers. But it's the one way I've found to get into traditional brick and morta

Festival Aftermath

There's a thing my friend, Korry, and I do after every successful school event we put on  - the recap. It's a way to get each others' impressions of the event, to check our own assessments and interpretations, and just generally a way to download our experiences. I got to recap the experience at the LA Times Festival of Books last Saturday with my friend, Elizabeth Hunter, on Saturday night as we sank into couches with a glass of wine and take-out Mexican food. We were both utterly exhausted in the way that seven hours of being "on" with people brings. The only other time I've been that peopled out was after a day of High School English class takeovers, during which I essentially taught six classes about all the reading and writing. Ever since then, my admiration and appreciation for the work teachers do is pretty much to the moon and back. So, because I'd never been to the LA Times Festival of Books, even as a visitor, I'll share some of the highl

LA Times Festival of Books

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I don't know about you, but I've never been to the LA Times Festival of Books. I know, right? I live in Los Angeles, and... BOOKS! But there's always the parking and the crowds and whatever (excuses) else I happened to be doing that gorgeous April weekend that the festival was held. But then an opportunity came along. An author friend bought a booth and was selling space at the tables to cover the cost. So I bought half a table for Saturday, April 18th. And then another author had to drop out, so I did some quick switching and bought another half. Now here's the thing. A full table at an event like this one seems like a great thing, but I've been to author events with a full table, and I've been to ones where I've shared the table. Here's a little (TMI) background on me - I almost never feel like I fit in anywhere, and I almost always feel like an impostor at author events. So when I'm by myself at a table, trying not to feel like an idiot (th

Marking Time - Revised Edition

So, there's this thing that happens when you do something a lot. Something like writing. You get better at it. It helps to hire an editor who knows more than you do. And it helps to have written two books with her, because then you create a style guide together. A guide for when to capitalize things that don't have hard and fast rules, when to add commas, and whether semi-colons have a place in the universe or can they just be replaced with em-dashes (seriously, I did NOT know there was a name for that kind of dash). It also helps that she knows when I'm using Saira's voice for someone else's dialogue, or when I'm rolling her eyes too much, and it REALLY helps that she calls me on it. And because Tempting Fate and Changing Nature were so much cleaner (in a grammarly way - get your mind out of the gutter), with tighter storytelling (again, mind/gutter) than Marking Time, it was clear that had to be dealt with. So, I worked with my fabulous, knows-way-more