All I Can Do

I think as a writer that you develop certain characteristics, traits, and a comfort zone—but at the same time, you strive to avoid repeating yourself.  I know I have repeated myself—as the first person who edits my novels, I have a pretty good handle on what the content is.  At the same time, you hope that you’re saying something different and unique, that each book is forging its own path and means something to a reader.

Additionally, the pre-order links for my novel have finally come in! :)
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Trouble-ebook/dp/B00DV0XJ7M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373634941&sr=8-1&keywords=heart+trouble+tommie
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heart-trouble-tommie-conrad/1116059074?ean=9781440571466
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/heart-trouble/id672327811?mt=11

Easy

After a two-month hiatus from writing, where my primary task was editing Heart Trouble, I have ventured forth with another novel.  The idea for this one has been recorded on my computer dating back to last year, but I never had the confidence to tackle it.  Truth it, I’m still not sure I can do the idea justice, but plot and characters are mine alone.  If I don’t give them life, no one else will.  So far it’s going well; let’s hope I continue to feel that way tomorrow.  I’m shooting for the kind of book I put out easily when I first starting writing, something around the 75,000 word mark.

Not Again

Nothing lasts forever, except maybe love, and computers are no exception.  I have a dubious relationship with the most important invention of our time.  I have used up and worn out two desktops and two laptops, which isn’t something I’m proud of.  Flashback to Friday when a virus infiltrates my computer and renders it unusable.  I am in the process of the final edit on my novel, Heart Trouble, and unsure about what to do.  Luckily I finally had the sense to Google the problem on my phone browser.  After finding a solution, I had to draw on my graduate school learning (thanks, Prof. Miller—I should’ve paid more attention in your class) and somehow I was able to rescue this computer, yet again, from the fire.  There’s a lesson to be learned here—next time an invader comes to me via wi-fi, shut down the computer and go home.   By the way, I completed my edit.  T-minus four weeks until its release.

Pretty Place

I don’t consider this blog a travelogue, but I have written on several occasions about various sources I have utilized to inspire my fiction, and locations are chief among them.  Last weekend I was fortunate to attend a wedding at the Pretty Place Chapel near Cleveland, South Carolina.  I had not Google’d it beforehand and therefore was amazed, in the best way possible, when we arrived at the venue.  The wedding was incredibly beautiful as well, really a lovely ceremony, but I still can’t get over the chapel.  It was built literally on the edge of a cliff, high above a valley below.  One of those “On a clear day you can see forever” deals.  There is something undoubtedly spiritual and soul-stirring about an open-air house of worship placed within the clouds.  It is a memory I will carry with me for a long time.  Anyway, even before seeing the chapel I thought it might make a good setting for a novel, and I still feel that way.  I just have to synthesize some of my ideas into something cohesive.  Personal stress plus the inevitable worries that come with publishing have led to a prolonged writer’s block, although I haven’t started a new novel and thus the block only exists in the metaphorical sense.

Dorothy:  “You have to have written to have writer’s block.  Otherwise we all have it!”

 

Running Down a Dream

An ancient proverb tells us that patience is a virtue—and if this is true, then I am pretty darned virtuous.  My whole life is a waiting game, and I never advance any closer to an end goal.  And yes, I know that life is a destination, not a journey, but mine is neither.  I have increasingly realized over the past year that I have no concept of fun, or relaxation, or hobbies, and part of this is because I am just too poor for them.  Hobbies require some kind of income, unless you’re hiking (and even that requires the money to buy proper shoes).  I have also realized that if I ever find a real job, I won’t have time for fun.  I’ll be too busy working.  At this point, though, I don’t guess it matters.  I am single and hardly surrounded by a plethora of friends—nearly everyone I am close to lives miles and miles from here—but it would just be nice to make money.  It would also be nice to be married and have children before I grow old and die—but that requires money, too.  I guess writing is the cheapest hobby I could imagine, but the stress of my life has pushed me into a period of writer’s block.

 

Broken Connections

I live in an area with so-so internet service, and merely decent phone service.  Recently, however, my phone signal dropped out for weeks and would only work maybe every six hours.  It can be a little frustrating trying to promote yourself and your publishing ambitions when social networking is closed off to you.  The good news is that I’ve been promoting myself when I do have a stronger signal, blasting very blogs, tweets, and Facebook posts about myself.  I’m still in the formative stages even though I’ve been putting books and blogs out for over a year now.  I find myself wondering if there’s a right or wrong way to do blogging.  How much do you need to inspire your followers?  How much of it is simply catharsis, hoping that another person out there will read your words and find some meaning in them?  I ask too many questions, don’t I?

Heart Trouble

I wrote, edited, and self-publishing my first six novels without much consideration to submitting them to a publisher.  And I may never know if this was a sound idea, but it did allow me to create in a vacuum—deadlines were my own, additions and deletions were at my whim, and word count generally fell where it wanted. I would set goals and exceed them.  I always vow to take sabbaticals upon a book’s completion, but I rarely follow through.  Upon finishing my longest novel yet, I set out to create something a little more, well, manageable.  I strived to write something standard and commercial.  There was no switching of perspectives, and the supporting characters became just that—support.  In no more than four weeks I had completed Heart Trouble, edited it, and then set about offering it to a publisher.  Crimson Romance liked my query and asked for both a synopsis and manuscript, neither of which was hard to submit.  Thankfully they liked the novel, and I am now on the verge of my first release through a real-life publisher.  It’s been an adjustment, of course, but I am grateful to have had both an editor and a cover designer that wasn’t me. 

So here I am, putting the novel out there for the rest of the world to see.  I’ll be available for the first time in a place that isn’t Amazon, although I will be there as well.  This deal includes much more promotion than I could have ever accomplished alone, and will be distributed through Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and the Crimson Romance webpage as well.  If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll find myself on a library shelf here and there.  I will include the relevant links as they become available.  I am already excited to share the high-resolution cover image.

And now for some background on the novel itself, Heart Trouble.  My hero and heroine are only children, much like myself.  The hero, Brandt, lives at home with his parents; the heroine, Marissa, has never met her father and had to move away from her mother in order to find work.  I stuck with the time-tested and familiar cowboy theme in this novel, although I moved it closer to home—I invented a fictional region of Kentucky in order to play fast and loose with the settings.  The town wound up not being as large a character—we mainly stick to the ranch, a typical-enough rural setting.  Like I’ve said before, I’m far more comfortable with rural backdrops.  The novel is a shade under 62,000 words, shorter than all of my previous novels save for Windswept.  I think of it as an efficient story—I tried to focus on the two main characters and allow the story to take place strictly through their eyes.

I’ll keep you up-to-date as things progress—and thanks, once again, to everyone for their support.