Tag Archives: publishing

1 GREAT REASON TO #PROOFREAD

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We’ve all been there. Settled into a comfy chair, hot cup of tea on the table next to you, #e-reader or novel on your lap just waiting for you to open it. You sigh, kick back and open the book. For the first ten pages, it’s great then there’s a misuse of the word “their” when it should have been “there”. You shine it on. No one is perfect. A few pages later, #commas are lacking where commas should be. You are forced to read the sentence three times to make sense of it.
At this point, you may put the book down and never pick up another book written by that author. The best reason to #proofread and #edit is it will increase your earnings.

I have read books that are as bad or worse than the following “interview.” Just for fun see how many mistakes you find in this short piece then leave a comment below.

THE INTERVIEW

Interviewer: As an author, do you have any pet peeves?

Author: No, but I have several dogs.

Interviewer:  Oookay. You said you were thinking of traveling. Are you going to book signings?

Author(shakes head and smiles): No, no. Its my councilor. He told me I needed to fly the coupe for a while. I asked him if I should go to the dessert for a few days, Sunday and Monday. He said, “No, the dessert is too hot. You would be dyeing of heat strokes.” I told him I wanted to insure that I didn’t get too overly hot, so I won’t go to the dessert. It is certainly a factoid that desserts can be very hot.

Interviewer: So where will you go?

Author: I decided I would go further away, up into the mountains. My councilor asked me what I would do all by myself up there, and I told him I wanted to write a nonfiction book about dragons. I figure I can flout my intensive knowledge on the subject. In my book I will explain about all the folderol assimilated with dragons. One piece of folderol that I will talk about is how a young dragon’s voice is in the fortissimo range, so high it actually hurts you’re ears. But, a dragon’s song can be historical, and sometimes, I laugh so hard I can’t hardly catch my breath!

Interviewer: Would you mind if I ask our readers to give us some feedback on your interview?

Author: Oh, I love feedback. I am always looking to improve my writing.

Author leaves. Interviewer shakes head.

According to Nikolas Baron at Grammarly.com they proofread over four hundred freelancer profiles from eight categories for grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. They only selected freelancers with four stars and above. At the end of that study, they could correlate earnings to how well a piece of writing had been proofread and edited.
grammarly jpg
Simply said: When your work is proofread and edited you make more money.
To read this entire article go to  http://www.grammarly.com/grammar-check

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MOUNTAIN SPRINGS HOUSE BLOG TOUR!

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I am thrilled to announce that Mountain Springs House Publishing is doing a blog tour from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

This is the VERY FIRST blog tour I have ever been involved in and I am honored that my publisher, Allison Bruning, has asked me to participate. I will be getting to host some really fine authors on my blog, and I will be doing guest posts on other blogs. This is going to be so much fun! Even for a technosaur like me!

Check out Mountain Springs House on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/mountainsprings/
And “LIKE” us on http://www.facebook.com/MountainSpringsHouse?fret=ts

I have been asked to post a bio and photo so you can get to know me a bit better.

One dark night, just as the wolves howled…. Oh, wait! I’m supposed to do the true stuff, right? Okay, try again.

I was born. I grew up. I am now a big monster. Oh, okay, that’s not quite what I was supposed to do. Do I ever do what I am supposed to do? Not really. Probably why I like Sergeant Nita Slowater of the Special Crimes Team.

Sooo…here’s the real skinny:

Born in a rougher section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, (and there were several of those areas when I was growing up. I hear they’ve cleaned Pittsburgh up very nicely, now. Haven’t been back in many years.) I soon learned how to make myself invisible. If you tend to be on the smaller side, this is a very good talent. As a result, I got to observe people in their myriad of attitudes and emotions. They fascinated me.

In self-defense against loneliness, I learned to read very early, and to write. My first story was written in pencil on those tablets for little kids with huge spaces between lines. It was a story about a lost dog. Do you ever forget your first?

Ever since that day, I have been creating alternate realities.

Fortunately, my life has been anything except traditional, and therefore, I have never run out of stories to tell. I lived on the road for several years, have worked non-traditional jobs (and a very few traditional jobs), and have walked many dark roads and city streets.

Currently, I live on a 12 acre wildlife/wild bird/indigenous plant habitat that my wife of 25 years and I have created. During a single year, we host over 68 different species of birds, and many different animals.

When I am not either reading or writing, I love to hike, take photographs, work with my dogs, tend the land, horseback ride, travel, learn new things, and recently, I acquired a motorcycle, so I am having a great deal of fun learning to ride. Whenever I have the opportunity, I also search for the perfect chocolate. There are many good chocolates in the world, but I am convinced that there is a “perfect one”. Have to eat a lot of chocolates while I am researching!

Aya Walksfar

Aya Walksfar

Now that you know who I am, let me share what I write.

My novella, Dead Men and Cats, is a murder mystery set on an island in Puget Sound, Washington. Two women, Megan Albright and Janie Sampson, while walking on the beach, discover an old rowboat stuck in a driftwood tree. As they turn to continue their walk, a calico kitten leaps from inside the rowboat and onto the slick tree trunk. Nearly falling into Shallow Point Cove, the frightened animal leaps back into the boat.
Megan wades out to the rowboat to rescue the kitten, and encounters the body of a dead man lying in the bottom of the boat. A few days later, Dan Uley’s bookstore is firebombed. With a black cat.
Not long after his bookstore is firebombed, Dan is gruesomely murdered.
Fearing that Sheriff Johnson’s lack of progress may stem from his well-known anti-gay sentiments, Megan and Janie launch their own investigation. They never expected their search to lead to a young man that they both considered a friend.

In mid-July, my literary, coming-of-age novel, Good Intentions, will be re-released as a second edition, by Mountain Springs House.
In August, the first book in my three-book series about the Special Crimes Team, Sketch of a Murder, will be released by Mountain Springs House.

So, there you have it: who I am and what I’m up to!

Importance of Book Cover Design

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When a reader cruises the bookstores, whether online or physical, they often walk down the aisle containing books that reflect their favorite genres.  One of the very first things that catches the eye is the cover of the book; sometimes even before the title or the author.

In today’s competitive market, catching the eye of the reader is the most important step in marketing your work.

The book cover represents the concept of your book.  Not only does it need to catch the reader’s eye, but it needs to honestly reflect the contents within.  There is nothing as annoying as opening a book, perhaps with a horse on the cover, and discovering there in nothing connected to horses, to the culture of horses, to people who own horses, within the book.  The reader feels cheated, or at the least, led astray.

With the basic image decided upon, the author needs to consider the font, size, and placement of the title of the book.  If the reader sees a knight on a horse as the basic design, then it follows that the title script should reflect that era.  The caution here is to not use such artistic script as to make the title difficult to read.

The third element of cover design is the author’s name.  The author’s name needs to be easily read.  Placement and size, in comparison to the title, needs to be considered as well.

Many authors commission professional cover designers.  If, however, this is not a possibility, or the author simply wants to produce their own covers, Jonathan Gunson has provided a list of wonderful links to FREE professional photographs that can be used in cover designs.  http://www.bestsellerlabs.com