Mountain Girl

Miscellaneous Monday Wherein I Babble About Random Things THE BOOKS HAVE GONE WIDE! Well, at least two of them have.  The third is still waiting out its term in KU, but as soon as that's done...Woo!  So, Snowed In  and Smoked Out  are both available on multiple platforms now!  Including Kobo SUPER PRETTY LINKS: Snowed In Smoked Out So yeah.  Check them out, if you want.  They're both still available on Amazon, of course, as paperbacks as well. Cherry Update I've washed, pitted, bagged and frozen...40 cups of cherries so far.  Which is approximately 10 L of them.  I'll use about 4cups/batch of whatever it is I'm making (jam or pie filling or whathaveyou), so I'll have a lot of canning to do.  Especially since I've still got another ~10L left to pit. And apples to pick. Speaking of jam, I used the raspberries from the garden and some blueberries from the store to make jam today.  I friggin love the col...

Weekly Disclaimer Thing :  Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. So, last week was a little bit about Fiddling, and the bare bones of my editing process.  This week will be...Outlining.  (Dun dun duuuuun!) I know people hate outlining.  It can be frustrating.  But you really should outline your stories.  Really.  Even if you're a born Pantser, you should still outline just a little bit.  It makes things so much faster . Which reminds me, I really need to re-outline my current WIP, since I'm getting lost in the middle. And that's the thing - the outline can change.  If you're in the middle of writ...

Trudie Rowland (c) Aug 8, 2017 Cherries, Cherries and...More Cherries! So, Hubs has a boss who lives near by, and he has a cherry tree in his yard.  He also doesn't have time/energy to pick the cherries, or know what to do with them, so for the low, low price of All The Cherry Pie He Can Eat, he lets me do it (I also get to keep whatever I make out of them, which this year is going to be mostly jam). This year, we got ~ 20L of cherries - again.  That was about the yield we got last year.  It's a lot of cherries.  I also used last year's pic, since the lighting was better (this year, everything's smoky and gross owing to forest fires out west). Now I have to pit them all, so that's going to be fun.   Last year it took me about a week solid, by myself, one at a time.  This year... Will probably be about the same, actually.  Which is going to be such fun, because by the time I'm done pitting and canning all of these, it's time for apple...

So, I got it into my head to do something for Fridays too...so...Photo Fridays.  I'm normally all about the alliteration, but...well, I'm also all about spelling and I can't bring myself to spell 'photo' without the 'ph', so...it's...yeah. Anyway, please enjoy these pictures of my "backyard". Note, it's not actually  my backyard, but it's still within a five minute drive of my house, so that counts. Pics by me, unless noted otherwise. A beautiful mountain lake.  Also the background for the top graphic thing with the words on. It's a good, quiet spot to sit and contemplate life.  Also where I got married, so...yeah.  Very tranquil.  Late evening is the best time for lack of other people, worst time for bugs.  It's a trade off.   Axe in Firewood So, this one has a humorous backstory in which I was trying to get a "noble woodsman" shot of my brother chopping wood.  Which wasn't working...

For this Wednesday, I thought I might go over my editing process. The Weekly Disclaimer:   Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. So, last week it was Finish - then Fiddle.  This week it's the Fiddling Bit. I do three passes: 1) Read It Through - I will sometimes fix little typos I find along the way, or at least make note of them so I can get them on the second pass.  But mostly I just want to get a sense of whether or not the scene/chapter is complete. 2) Add What Needs To Be Added And Fix What Needs To Be Fixed - Sometimes it's just a sentence or two, sometimes its whole paragraphs of exposition or dialogue or whathaveyou....

Because why not...? Inane Stuff First: I have discovered that I can indeed make good sandwich bread, using this recipe .  Before, I'd been struggling to get the damn thing to rise a second time, so while it was tasty it was also squished.  But, not any more!  I made four loaves yesterday, and another batch today to (hopefully) become buns.  We're already down to  three loaves.  It's that good. So, I couldn't be more pleased with myself.  It's fluffy, and light, and doesn't fall apart when you look at it sideways, and smells AMAZING. Someday, I'll be brave enough to make sourdough. Writing Stuff... WIP is...well, I'm working on it.  Now I've got family visiting on top of having 3 kids to watch, so my writing time has...diminished.  Still plugging away at it, though.  I'll get there!  Eventually.   I feel bad, thinking that it's not going to be done when I'd wanted it to be (I really should be ...

My first one!  Yay!  I did up a little graphic thing and everything.   The Weekly Disclaimer:   Writing, like all art, is a subjective experience.  Stuff that works for me won't necessarily work for you...though I hope it does, since I'd love for everyone to succeed.  Can never have enough books to read!  Either way, take these tips with the giant grain of salt needed to season it to your liking, since I could very well be talking out my ass. My Tip For This Week:   Write.  Just write it out.  Get the bare bones down, and when you come to the end, go back to the start and add in the flesh.  The details and the adjectives and the rewording of awkward sentences.  You get to do as many passes as you want. The other side of this is, of course, that you need to know when to stop obsessing over every phrase.  Otherwise, you'll never move on to the next bit and you'll get stuck fiddling with details tha...

Whelp... I'm behind in my word count goals for my current WIP by...pretty much the whole book.  This one's taking a little longer than I had planned.  The authorial end of the summer slump I guess. Also, apparently, there's a summer slump, which I am feeling most keenly. So...any book buying you guys want to do would be most appreciated.  You know...if you want to. ;P Look!  I've got THREE whole books to choose from!  Three! And they're all good.  So I've been told ;P  Snowed In (Book One) is $0.99 to get you started. Anyway, I still don't have a release date for the current WIP.  I was hoping for the end of Aug, but now...not so sure.  I'll keep everyone updated on that, though. Random Thoughts: I need to figure out how get the bread I've been making to rise a second time (trying to do sandwich bread; rises the first time, second time...not so much).  Going to try a different recipe next time... I'm considering doi...

Musings Firstly... I just want to say a huge, hearty THANK YOU to everyone who left a review on Release Day.  I don't know if I've adequately expressed my thanks, so all of you have it.  I sent out 20 copies on Booksprout and got 9 reviews over all - and they were all good!  I must be doing something right ;) So THANK YOU, again, those reviews made my day.  Hugs all around!  And as always: HERE is Tracked Down , $0.99 ebook and $10.99 Paperback.   And if you have an interest in Snowed In  and Smoked Out , they're available as well. And the Rest... Good reviews aside, I had a brief moment of self-pity wallowing the other day because someone bought and then returned one each of the first two books.  I know my stuff's not for everyone, but it's the first time this has happened since I released Snowed In  in Nov 2017.  So it smarts a little, even if I get it.   Bah.  No sense doing the spilled milk...

First Things First: Book Three is...almost done!  About 75% done.  Well, at least the writing part.  I'll still need to edit, but I've got some time set aside for that (obviously).  But it feels good to be coming up to the finale of the story and mostly  on schedule too.  I'm excited to publish it.  Hopefully you guys will like it as much as I do :P ARC List! I've set up a sign up form for ARC Readers on my website ; there's also an external link.  As soon as the book is ready, I'll let everyone know so they can go to the hosting site (in this case, BookSprout) and download from there. Ooooo, things are moving along! Misc. Stuff The usual reminders...got stuff if you want stuff, at CafePress and Society6 .  I ordered some stickers from Society6 for the giveaway that's coming up - I'm quite happy with them.  Kinda want to keep them myself...but I won't ;P Also...<spooky ghost voice> BUY MY BOOOOOKS </spooky...

Camp NaNo 2018 Is...well, I'm about 13k behind, so that's how that's going.  Yay?  I'm not especially worried because the beautiful thing about self-publishing is that if my deadlines don't work, I can just change them to something that does...but I would like to get the rest of the book written in the next...holy fuck, nine days.  Okay, so it miiight take a little bit longer than that.  Blast.  But I'm still writing, and as long as I pull a few 3k word days out of my ass (read: every day between now and the 30th), I should be able to catch up.  Book Three is cooking along, no problems there...the delays are mostly life-based.  Kids refusing to nap, and other kids needing to be picked up from school...Almost getting hit by a car.  The usual.   Impending Giveaway/ARCs Stuff/Cover Reveal I'm still figuring out the ARC thing...I've got a BookSprout account (Yay!), so I'll put it up there...I'm also going to put together a si...

So.  Updates.  Yay. The elder two kids are outside, in splash-pants and rain coats.  It's not raining (it's actually supposed to snow later, got a storm warning and everything.  Yay for March in the mountains.), but everything is wet as hell on account of the snow finally melting.  It also smells of camping because there's a fire going near by. ...I want to go camping so bad, you have no idea... Anyway - I started a Cafe Press shop .  It's named after my fantastically non-witty blog because I couldn't think of anything else, It also hasn't got much in there right now (and what there is is kinda cheesy), but I figured...what the hell.  Someday, someone might want a shirt that relates to my books/website/brand thing I'm trying to build for myself.  Or a stainless steel water bottle.  Or an interesting sicker.  Someone like...well, me. And maybe my mum. Or maybe, someday, one of you guys.  One can hope. Plus, I'm thinking o...

Spring is finally in the air... One of the theoretical downsides about living in the Rockies is that spring is usually late - the snow doesn't go completely until it's pretty much May, and even then it doesn't really get warm until the middle of June.  So no garden for me until May 24th weekend at the earliest, and even then I still have to watch out for sudden and random frosts. Even so, it's been above freezing for the past few days.  The snow is melting.  The prescribed burns are...burning, so everything smells of camping and wood smoke, and it's nice.  The goddamn elk will be moving out of the neighbourhood soon (well, not the pregnant ones...those we get the honor of running from until the end of June, when the calving is over). As for myself, I've finally  gotten the better part of an outline for Book Three.  I know I say 'finally' as though everyone's been waiting for years* and years, when it's really only been a month since the las...

So, I got some physical copies of Smoked Out  (and one of Snowed In, because I had updated the cover and reformatted a few things to make it prettier) in the mail yesterday...they look good!  Smoked Out's cover turned out a little dark, but it's legible and - more importantly - it's here . Squee! Anyway, having the physical copies seems to have lit some sort of fire under my backside - Book Three has been sort of languishing, half formed, in the back of my head.  I started outlining it a couple weeks ago, and every time I try to sit down and write it, the excuses start popping up.  I just need to do more research... It's not fully formed, I'll work on it later... Oooo!  Twitter!  Shiny! I'm not in the MC's head yet... Which are all just poppycock, of course, since the secret to getting the book done is, of course, just writing the goddamn book and editing it afterwards.  I don't have a date in mind (strictly) for publishing...maybe I shou...

Ebook Paperback Also available are the ebook  ($0.99 USD) and paperback  ($10.00 USD) versions of Snowed In: The Shifters of Olsson's Pass Book One.

Well, I'm down to the last 20k +/- of Book Two.  Sweeet!  I took the last couple days off the writing push - I didn't want to burn myself out.  Burn out doesn't get books finished. So, for this week: Chapters 15, 16, 17 and hopefully 18...if I keep up the 3-4k/day pace then I might get 19 and 20 in there, and then it's just a matter of editing and formatting in Scriviner, cover tweaking and... Book Two will be done. Now, that's barring things like the kiddies getting sick (again), or me.  Or whatever.  But it's possible, and rather exciting, and I can't wait to share it with all of you. Incidentally, if you want to subscribe to my newsletter so I can update everyone at once, click HERE . In the mean time, if you haven't read Snowed In , now's the time!  It's on Amazon, as both ebook and paperback . Book Two's Current Word Count: 66 500/85 000 

Sick kid home from school means word counts are likely to...not be good this week.  They were already kind of sucky last week on account of a sick author not feeling like doing anything, so now I'm worried about my deadlines. Granted, my deadlines are self-imposed, and if I really wanted to I could just move them...but that's not how you teach yourself to follow deadlines.  On the upside, once I get into the editing/formatting stage, I'll show everyone the cover in the hopes that whets everyone's appetite. In other news, my experiments in caffeine reduction have...not worked.  Seems my dependency on it is integral to me not being a complete cranky pants whacko in the mornings.  I did  replace most (some) of my soda intake with tea, though.  Still caffeine, but healthier all around in other ways.  Also took up a martial art again in an effort to get exercise, which means my Saturday's are shot, but also means that - even after two weeks - I'm starti...

So, Book Two is halfway done.  Yay! This means I'm 42k words in.  Plus or minus, since I'm not sure of the exact total it'll end up at, but I'm looking at 85k words so...yeah. Little longer than Book One, but not actually by that much, if you think about it.  I just hope people actually like it :) I don't have a set-in-stone release date, though.  This is largely because I'm sort of flying by the seat of my pants when it comes to this whole 'self-publishing' thing.  I'm learning an awful lot, but really - only one book to my name right now.  Hopefully four by the end of the year.  We'll see. Just have to keep on writing... In any event, I've been fiddling with my newsletter and making it pretty.  Sign up is HERE , for those that want in.  Sorry, I don't have an incentive novella for you (yet), but that's in the works too and I'll let everyone know when it's up and ready to go.