Cover Reveal for The School That Ate Children!

I started writing The School That Ate Children in November 2014 and I have to say, I absolutely love this book. I love its spontaneity. I love the fact that it's about two sisters. I love that it's an adventure. The School That Ate Children was the book I didn't expect to write. It was the book that made me realize I love magic and can't write a book that doesn't have magic in it (thus changing my tag line to "My work is inspired by themes and events in Haudenosaunee history. Most of it has magic in it"). And it's the book that made me realize that without a doubt, I wanted to be an indie publisher. 

This book had two very different starting points. My first attempt at it was much more serious. I had started to write it for a contest that was looking for "real" stories - which meant historical fiction or stories that were mildly autobiographical and specifically, stories that did not have anthropomorphic animals or were retellings of legends or myths. And so I drew on some very real and unpleasant personal experiences to get at a "real" story. As a result, a very different draft of this book exists in my computer. But that story - I did not love. It felt forced - like I was writing what someone else wanted written. The whole process of writing it made me ask all kinds of questions about what a "real" story was. I managed to get a first draft down and left it alone for a few weeks but when it was time to go back to it - I rewrote the entire thing entirely new. And this story, the one I fell in love with, broke all of the contest rules. And because I loved it so much, I decided not to change it, that I probably shouldn't change it and that's when I realized I wanted to be an indie publisher. So I could write and share the stories I loved the most which in the end felt more honest and real and authentic than any other approach could be. 

For the second version of the story, I simply opened a Word file (this was before I started using Scrivener), wrote The School That Ate Children, at the top of it and off I went. It was not meant to be the actual title of the book. Just a placeholder until I could find something better. But despite having many different titles in mind, none of them seemed to fit and so I wound up sticking with this as well. In a way, the whole book has been one wonderful, happy accident. And I have to say - I really love this cover, which was designed by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design. Amazing work. 

The School That Ate Children is a middle grade urban fantasy. Despite the rewrite, it still touches on some rather serious issues. Issues of grief, of loneliness, of bullying. Of losing more when you've already lost a lot. But at its heart, it's a story about siblings and love and the surprising characters in life that help you keep families together. 

The School That Ate Children comes out on June 21st, 2016. It is available for pre-order on my website. It will also be going up on Amazon, Kobo and iBooks for pre-order in the next few days. Happy writing!

S. 

I Formatted An Ebook With Scrivener

Yesterday was an incredible day. I wrote 1154 words for a new story, I watched a Scrivener webinar (which is an amazing piece of writing software I've just started using more), I researched for a non-fiction book I'm working on, AND—I formatted my very own ebook! 

This is a big deal for me. You see, a few months ago when I was getting ready to publish The Vampire Skeleton and my short story collection I decided I would like to try and format my own ebooks. I did some research and learned there was a free program called Calibre that could help you, which I promptly downloaded and tried to use. I didn't have much luck. Nor did I have much luck formatting ebooks using InDesign. And so, because I was in my first trimester, working full-time and doing my doctorate, I figured it might be best to find an ebook formatter and work with them. And so that's what I did.  

However, I've been writing a lot more the last two years and as a result I have three other books ready for publishing (their covers are being designed in March and May) and a host of smaller stories (around 6,000-10,000 words apiece) finished as well. And since I really liked some of those shorter stories, I decided to polish them up and hired an editor to help. 

Once they were edited, I realized I had to decide what I was going to do for cover art and formatting, which we all know is both important and potentially costly. But over the past few weeks I've been binge listening to The Creative Penn podcasts, as well as reading Joanna Penn's books. She uses Scrivener a lot and after hearing/reading about it on and off throughout her material, I decided to give it another try. (I bought it three years ago but didn't use it much as it was always crashing on me). I reloaded it on my writing laptop (I write on an 11-inch MacBook Air so I have the App Store version) and away I went. My timing was good, because she was just about to do a webinar with The Scrivener Coach, Joseph Michael. I was working last week so I only got the chance to watch the replay yesterday and I have to say, it was so awesome! I learned so much in that webinar, not the least of which was some basics about compiling an ebook. After watching the webinar I kept fiddling around with the settings for my ebook. 

A few hours later (and quite a few tests runs) I had produced both .mobi and .epub files that I can use for Kindle, Kobo and iBooks—the three platforms I'm using to distribute my ebooks. One of the best parts of the whole process was that I could easily fix things for myself when there was something off in the formatting (missing italics, for example). It was amazing—I'm still excited about it. I love that you can take time to fine-tune and make the file look really great. The whole process is incredibly empowering. 

All of this means I will be soon releasing an ebook of a novelette (10,000) words called, The Fall of Ithaca. I'm so looking forward to it! And I'm definitely looking forward to working more with Scrivener. I expect I'll have some hiccups as I learn, but so far, I'm so grateful I gave it another try and also very grateful there are so many resources available at Joseph Michael’s website to help me hone my skills. Exciting times! 

What about you? Do you have any favourite Scrivener tricks? 

Til next time, happy writing everyone! 

S

LOOK! My books are on iBooks!

Okay, so a few blog posts ago, I was trying to sort out where I was going to publish my books. I had settled on Amazon and Kobo because they were both apps I was really comfortable using as a reader. And in the case of Kobo, because I have a device of my own that I love. 

My plan was to use Draft2Digital to distribute to Nook and iTunes, however, two weeks ago I changed my mind. There were a couple of reasons for this. At first, I found the prospect of getting an EIN intimidating. The forms, the calling the IRS, etc. You still have to go through this process with Draft2Digital but I think I tricked myself into believing it would be easier than loading my books onto iTunes directly. But once I launched my books, I realized it made so much sense to have them available on iTunes—especially since virtually everyone in my family has an iPhone and there are millions of iPhones and they come with iBooks preinstalled as an app. So I decided to make having my books available on iTunes a priority.

As with so many things related to independent publishing, there are a lot of great resources out there. The one that helped me the most was this post on Catherine Ryan Howard’s website—in particular, the step-by-step process outlined by David Gaughran. This was the process I followed to get my EIN and it was as quick and painless as it was laid out to be.

I had already started the process of signing up for my iTunes Connect account a few weeks ago and since I’m a Mac user, downloading iTunes Producer (the next step in the process after setting up all your contact, tax and banking information) was also very straightforward. I submitted my books (they had already been formatted as EPUBS by the wonderful Streetlight Graphics) and less than 24 hours later—they were available on the iBooks Store. 

So now I am very happy to share that The Vampire Skeleton and Spirit & Intent are both available as ebooks on iTunes! Very cool, that. Especially because it was something I really struggled with. 

Another factor that helped motivate me was this fantastic interview with Liliana Hart by Joanna Penn.  After I listened to it, it added additional fuel to my fire to have my books available on iTunes. Honestly, a lot of the interviews Joanna does with various guests add fuel to my fire. I’ve been listening to this podcast obsessively because every time I do, I get more and more excited about the possibilities of being an indie published author and creating things that make me happy. If you haven’t listened to her podcast, I highly recommend it!

Anyways, that is my exciting news for the week. Over the next few days I will be learning how to build banners and widgets (like the kind featured above). Very fun! Til next time!

Happy Writing!
S. 

Spirit & Intent

For those of you who don't know, I recently launched a tiny, independent publishing company as well as published three books which can be found on my Books page. (They can also be found on the company website). 

My company is called Spirit & Intent and there are a lot of things we hope to do over next year in addition to publishing books. In the meantime, I'm so happy we can finally share things like our logo and website. We've honestly been working on them for over a year now! 

But even though we've launched and had this really wonderful article shared about us, there is still a lot of work to do. For the first time in my life, I'm essentially running a business and because of that there is a lot of planning I have to do to help the company grow in a positive manner. Right now, the company is only publishing books that I've written because those copyrights are already mine to work with. It will take quite a bit more work and additional resources to branch out and include other writers in the way I would like to and in a way that would create a great situation for them. Hopefully, this is something we can look at in the future. Until then, all of us writers are lucky that the tools to publish are available to us all. More and more, indie publishing seems like the best possible route, at least to me.  

Still, I have to say—though it's been a lot of work and even more work lies ahead, I have never been happier. Writing has always made me happy, but in the past few years it's brought me more joy than I could ever have imagined. I'm so excited about all of the upcoming projects we have planned and the various ways we're going to share them. There's a lot to learn and I'm loving learning it.

One of my big goals with starting a publishing company that I talked about way back in an earlier blog was to help myself learn the Cayuga language. There are a lot of really fantastic resources out there for learning Cayuga but what I know for sure helped me expand my ability to speak & write English—was reading. I hoped that connecting my love of reading with my desire to learn the language would result in some interesting projects & though we haven't shared those projects yet, I really think it will :). 

We've set up a Twitter account, a Facebook page and a newsletter. In one week, we're going to do a giveaway of a set of our books plus an art print to one of our lucky newsletter subscribers. Interested? Click here to subscribe!

This week I have been listening to the Joanna Penn's Creative Penn podcast pretty much non-stop. It's a super inspiring podcast that I'm very grateful exists and as it's a nice long weekend, I've revised my weekend to-do list to follow-up some of the topics that came up during my listening. This includes:

• Working on copywriting and sales descriptions for my books
• Trying Scrivener again and learning how to set Project Goals
• Contacting an editor to help me set a firm deadline for a project I want to publish in April 
• Creating a pre-order button for another book; and
• Revisiting my publishing schedule for the next year to set the word count targets I need to meet deadlines 

Basically, I'm looking forward to a weekend of reading, writing and editing—the best kind there is!  What about you? What are your plans for the weekend? 

Until next time, happy writing!

S.

Ready. Set. Launch!

It’s finally happened! Two of my books are available for purchase today! They both appear on the brand new Books section of my website. There are previews there as well. The first one, Spirit & Intent: A Collection of Short Stories & Other Writings, is a collection of illustrated short stories that I worked on with my sister, Alyssa. Alyssa is an awesomely talented artist and she’s been illustrating my work for years. It means a lot to me to finally be able to share our project. The art from the book will be available as prints on our website in a week or so. I love the paintings she did and how they took shape the more we researched and talked about the stories. At least half of the stories and writings in the collection focus on Jikonsaseh, a woman from the Story of the Peacemaker and also, a Haudenosuanee clanmother title. Working on this book created a lot of interesting discussion amongst my family and friends. It also helped me think about what it meant to be someone who was working towards peace—and how much personal growth was required to create peaceful relationships. It’s an area where I still have a great deal of work to do but I am definitely willing to go on the journey.

The second book available today, is called The Vampire Skeleton. It’s a fast paced Young Adult fantasy with hints of romance and a dose of magic.  I’ve written about it in previous blogs here and here and here. It was the book I never planned to write. I started it right before my daughter was born and the story took on a life of its own. I decided to publish it first because it was another story that carried a lot of meaning for me and my little family—especially since I finished it when my baby was just a few months old and my husband illustrated the back cover. (Definitely a lot of sentimentality in these publishing choices). You can preview The Vampire Skeleton on my Books page and over the next few weeks I’ll be releasing chapters of it over at my Wattpad site, as well.

So there they are. The first two books I am publishing this year. I dearly love them both. And I totally understand that not everyone may love them the same way I do. That’s okay. Even if no one likes them as much as I do, it’s been 100% worth it to come this far. To have written them, edited them, toiled over them and shared them. It’s better than okay. It’s amazing!

When I first realized I wanted to be a writer, there was only one pathway to sharing your work—the traditional path. And while I think that is an absolutely fine path, I am extremely grateful there are other ways. I am grateful to share something that I love, inspired by the people and stories that I love. Truly, it is such a great time to be a writer!

The books are available on Amazon and Kobo. In the next few days, they will also be available on my sister and I's website, along with her art prints. I so look forward to sharing!

Happy Thursday Everyone! And as always—happy writing,

S.