Writer Wednesday

First of all, The Look Challenge! Mighty Joleene Naylor challenged me to this quite interesting thingy.

Here are the rules:

• ~ Search your manuscript for the word “look,” and then copy the surrounding paragraphs into a post.
• ~ Give a little background on the scene if you’d like.
• ~ Tag 5 other writers who’re working on, or who’ve completed a manuscript.

From the WiP (actually in beta/editing stage, will come out in December) Technological Angel (Star Minds book 1) – the scene is set in Rome, Italy, November 1982. Sci-fi geek Daniele has just met someone.

“Wait wait wait! You mean you’re extraterrestrial?” Daniele marveled. That would explain the strange clothes, the harmonizer effect and the impossible name. “No, no, wait, let’s start this from scratch! So, you are?”

“I’m Gaurishankar from Ypsilanti and I’m looking for Uwe-yuri from Marc’harid who on this planet wants to be called Ugo Rossi and lives in Roma, somewhere here in EUR, but I’m not sure where exactly.”

Keep cool, Daniele thought. After all, even in Star Wars there were aliens that looked humans. The idea of talking to a real extraterrestrial, even if he looked so common, was exciting. That guy didn’t look like any of the “Martians” seen around the world, but definitely talked strange.

A big car passed by and Gaurishankar’s watch started beeping like crazy. Daniele observed in wonder the metal bracelet with a small quadrant of lights emitting strange sounds, realizing it couldn’t really be an actual watch. Must be some kind of James Bond gadget or something.

“Uwe-yuri,” Gaurishankar whispered, following the black car with his eyes.

This guy is really obsessed, Daniele thought as they jogged after the car who was indeed the neo-millionaire’s. Daniele had recognized him and his chauffeur, but the gate of the villa closed on their faces, making Gaurishankar curse under his breath.

Now, finding five writers who have a manuscript… I’ll try!

Madison Woods

Prue Batten

Laxmi Hariharan

Loralie Hall

and… dunno. If you’re a writer reading this and have a WiP, please take the challenge and link back to me, so I can see your excerpt! 🙂

Now, to other writerly stuff. Don’t miss Kris Rusch last post on disappearing writers, and check the comments on how to take care of our health as well. Personally, I work on a desktop (seated), on a laptop (usually in my lap on the bed, LOL) and longhand (both for writing and drawing), so I change position quite often. And I do try to walk every day, or I wake up with a back ache.

Also, if you’d like to donate books to underfunded school libraries, check David Gaughran’s post about Fill the Shelves – at the moment only for the US, but the UK site is on its way…

I spent the weekend uploading ebooks direct to Kobo, and I must say I love their e-pub converter more than calibre. I figured out how to save my word.doc so they come out as perfect e-pubs, as perfect as the meatgrinder’s, but without the Smashwords matter, LOL! The titles slowly went live on Monday, but I had to adjust all categories, as apparently choosing Fiction/Adult labels as Romance/erotica (even if there is a romance/erotica category…). So I took out one category from all books, as I don’t write erotica.

My titles have only 2 categories, sometimes just 1 (they suggest 3). There are no tags, and it wasn’t easy choose the categories, hence not “enough” for visibility. I uploaded 6 titles for B.G.Hope, 7 for Barbara Sangiorgio and 17 for Barbara G.Tarn – well 18, but then I delisted one as it’s free on Smashwords, so I’ll let it go to Kobo through them. There’s no way to upload for free on Kobo, I guess they price-match like Amazon, but dunno how it works yet. So the free stuff is still only on Smashwords, LOL.

Also, for my main pen-name there are actually 18 books, but 2 are still the Smashwords edition. BoI – Water is stuck in “publishing” status for some reason, sigh. But then, I noticed I had let the DRM on, so I managed to take it out before it went live! 😉 All titles came with DRM, even if I’m sure I didn’t want it on any, and had to modify them after they went live…

When I wasn’t uploading and converting and checking e-pubs, I was inking SKYBAND 12, so it’s finished. Now I need to color and letter it… meh! I also finished the longhand version of Records of the Varian Empire, so this week I’ll alternate typing and coloring SKYBAND (on desktop) with writing the new B.G.Hope title – yes, longhand. Can’t write the first draft on the computer, I tried, I just can’t do it. I tried to do it for 1 scene of Mind Link (Star Minds book2), and rewrote it completely when I printed out what I had done – longhand! 🙂

So that’s all for today… have a great week!

Posted by Barb on 24/10/2012

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/writer-wednesday-34/