Writing on TGLJ 2, "Illuminatus"

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I know it's been a long time since I've posted anything on this blog. I've been busy finishing up an older story of mine that's for 18-plussers and I've been posting updates on my Catharina Shields' Romantica Blog.

I've also had to take care of one of my pricey exotic goldfish, Feisty, who was under threat of going belly-up! She is supposed to be able to have protein rich fish food (for that bumpy growth on their head they're famous for called the "wen"), but for some reason, it created a growth on her side instead (see image where I circled the strange growth) I was so afraid I'd lose her. She, and the rest of her tankmates, btw, are all on medicated food (Medi-Gold and Metro-meds) for 14 days. I just started them on it last Saturday, so I can stop feeding it to them on Friday, August 17th.
Despite the above, I have found time to write on the second book of "The Girl in the Leather Jacket" entitled, "Illuminatus", which is Latin for enlightened.
I've also worked hard at redesigning the book cover for it (helps with inspiration!) and you can see what I've come up with above.
This book continues where the first book ends - in Lola Fox's Karmann Ghia as they head for Bel-Air to rescue Andy's mom.
This book is about the power struggles and growing pains within the newly formed Illuminatus Coven that Lola finds herself the reluctant leader of while having to arbitrate between the members as she also struggles with feeling torn between her attraction to Zach Ridley and her growing love for Andy. 

Paperback version of The Girl in the Leather Jacket now available

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          And I have to say...it looks mighty nice! Although I made this picture with my Droid phone and the quality of the image isn't all that perfect, this is how they look.
          I am very satisfied with how the printer produced my books. The crisp white pages make the black lettering inside sharp and clear. I am going to do a giveaway in collaboration with Nikki Lipstick soon, and people can win a paperback copy of the book with a matching bookmarker. When I've created those, I'll post a photo of it here, too.
          For information on how to get your own copy if you prefer a hard copy instead of an e-book, click on the "The Girl in the Leather Jacket" tab above and it will take you to TGLJ's dedicated page. Scroll down and you'll find links where you can get a copy. Remember! This book is for a 14+ audience.
          Of Vinegar and Honey: I just got through writing, editing, and formatting Chapter 10 to the Rory and Madelaine saga (Of Vinegar and Honey), and I've uploaded it. It's now available at Smashwords and Amazon for download. Over 12,000 words for only $0.99 cents ain't bad.
          Sad news about my Ranchu: One of my pretty Ranchu goldfish died yesterday. She was a tough one, though. She fought for over two weeks, but she finally gave up the fight even though I did everything I could to help her. I am pretty sad about it.
          I have this powerful antibiotics for my goldies, the only kind of medicinal goldfish food available called Medi-Gold (for diseases like hole in the head {HITH}) and Metro-Meds (general medicated food) by the GoldfidshConnection. They're the creators of this highly specialized goldfish food that can bring back just about any goldfish from death's door - even those suffering the beginning of "pine-coning".
          Anyway, I believe every goldfish owner should get this food and keep it in stock. It's not really that expensive ($16 for 12 oz that lasts forever) and it has a shelf life of about 6 months! It really is a bargain for what it does and it's saved many of my costly exotics (one was $130) time and time again. It's a "must-have" for all goldfish keepers no matter how much your fish costs! Even my giant Oscar fish, Scarr, loves it!
           

Need to redesign a book cover for an upcoming book

          I'm currently writing the second book to The Girl in the Leather Jacket (TGLJ) series entitled, Illuminatus. The thing is, I'd already designed its book cover, but I've suddenly decided I don't like the way it looks. Too dark and too much "sepia". I want a more crisp cover like the first one so they'll look good shown next to each other. And I need to add in the six members of her new group, too, which wasn't in the first one. I guess that's what I'm going to have to do, then.
          I've also opened another blog that's attached to this one, and it's for my more spicier romantica books. You can see the tab above that will take you to it. I don't know why I did that. It's a lot of work keeping one blog updated, but double work keeping them both going. I guess I wanted to make sure they're separate just to keep things real for me. The good thing about being an Indie Author/Publisher is, I can pretty much do as I like so at the moment I'm thinking about publishing all my books (except TGLJ) for readers both 14+ and 18+. My work, except for TGLJ, lend themselves well for this.
          I'm currently finishing Part 10 to my Of Vinegar and Honey series. Then there will be two more parts to write and I can combine all parts, break it down into chapters, and paperback publish the whole thing. I'm amazed it's been such a hit on free sites where it originated and where I've honed my skill at writing full, plot-driven stories correctly. It's an excellent way to get peer reviews and whether or not a story has "legs". Anyway, it's one of my romantica books since there are explicit scenes written in it, but there aren't a lot of them.
          I have so many stories, so many books already in my private library (they all need editing and rewrites, though, since they're all drafts) that I can be busy writing forevah. Anyway, I intend to post them on free sites to see how they take.
          I've had the "pleasure" of giving my Chow-Chow, Powee, and my Pug, Harley, a bath today. It wasn't something I'd planned (since it takes me away from writing and giving a Chow a bath is a tedious chore), but it was necessary. I'm glad I have done it, though. Both Powee and Harley look really good now. At least that's something.
           

Paperback version of The Girl in the Leather Jacket

has been processed and it's on its way!

          I've just received an e-mail, tonight, that the orders I've placed for the paperback version of The Girl in the Leather Jacket and Equilibrium II: Rebirth, have been printed and shipped. Wow. That's really fast! Not that I'm complainin'. I really do like Createspace! Excellent P.O.D. and distributor, I have to say. The quality of the books are always incredibly good. Three cheers for Amazon that they offer this to us struggling authors so we can offer them to our readers, too. It's always nice to have options.

          

          As I'm writing this, my obese Pug, Harley, is snoring behind my desk chair. He follows me everywhere and he just sits in the tiniest nooks and crannies just to be close to me.

         Here's a picture of him together with our cream Chow-Chow, Powee Puff. I just call her Puffers, and I call Harley everything but Harley.

        And despite this rather peaceful picture, those two can not get along and they never have! I've had to pull them apart more times than I'd care to remember. Anyway, when I write about Lycans, I picture Powee. You might be able to understand why when you see her. And she's just as vicious toward poor Harlequins (Harley) as any real Lycan! It's because we got Veeg-Veeg (Harley) when he was already three years old. His former family couldn't deal with his constant shedding so they offered him to us for free! Veeg-Veegersens (Harley) was an alpha male all his three years, but Powee had become the Alpha in our home so there were two years worth of dog fighting that - luckily - never translated into anything serious. Whew!

          I also have a cat named Cali-Bastet. I found her one evening when Dionne and I went to Ralphs Grocery store to pick up some items. She was a tiny thing, full of fleas, worms, and starving. This is a photo of her when we just got her.

          She was meowing so sadly among some bushes and I just couldn't leave her. This was back in July last year. Today, she's a spoiled BRAT. I put those Soft Paw acrylics for cats (pink glitter) on her front paw nails so she won't scratch up our furniture (or my hands), and she's been spayed about a month ago when she was going into constant heat! I never knew a queen (female cat) could go in heat consistently until she's mated. Well, NO KITTENS so it was off to the vet the moment her first cycle was over and now she's always hungry and gaining weight! But she's no less active and sometimes I have to put her in her kennel just to catch my breath. When I download the latest photos of her, I'll resize them and post them here so you can see how much she's grown!

          And then there's Elvis, or as I call him, Elvie. He's Dionne's black pug who is about 2 1/2 years young now. He's a real handful! But he's also so adorable and so un-pug-like since he listens and he comes to you when you call him. How many pugs do you know do that? This is a picture of him on Dionne's bed.

          And last but never least, there's Bamberellas. Another rescue animal that's found its way into our hearts and into our home. She's Dionne's Chihuahua that Nick, her boyfriend, rescued from a dumpster when some kids tossed her into it.
           The poor thing had a broken (but mended) rib, and her tail had been broken as well as her front left paw. But she's the darling of the family now and the sweetest dog you'll ever have the pleasure of meeting. She loves wearing clothes, too! I don't have many photos of her, but I'll ask Dionne to send me some. But at least you can see her here in the kitchen having dinner in her pink polka-dot bowls wearing her red T. That pink thing to your left is her bed where she sleeps in when Dionne's at work and I'm Bambi-sitting her.

Yep. Finally updated my Blog's look

          I just needed to know how I wanted to my blog to look. In between writing, editing, formatting, and publishing my latest books (The Girl in the Leather Jacket & Equilibrium II: Rebirth - in paperback) I needed to know how to set up my blog since it's connected to my official website. I've finally settled on the above. I hope you like it.

         I've discovered formatting to e-publish my books is far easier than formatting them for paperback publishing. Everything, and I mean everything is different. Different rules make for a much more complicated process, but once I got the hang of it, it went pretty smoothly.

          I'm currently waiting for Createspace to finish processing Equilibrium II: Rebirth so I can order copies of it at the same time as The Girl in the Leather Jacket. It saves on shipping! Oh, and since I design all my book covers from scratch and prefer not use the templates offered at Createspace, I know I only make it more difficult on myself, but I hope my readers will agree the result is worth it. I need paperback copies of The Girl in the Leather Jacket because they'll be used as a giveaway (together with matching bookmarkers) in collaboration with Nikki Lipstick's new spring fashion line.

          I'm still working on the finishing touches to For Life for Fine Stories, and although some of you have written me and believe you know where this story is going, I hope I can surprise you. I realize I promised to have it up last weekend, but writers are notoriously unpredictable, aren't we. :-) Making no promises, I hope to have it up this weekend.

Deadlines are useful, but they're also frustrating!

They're useful because they present a goalpost to work toward. They're frustrating when you can't meet those goalposts.


But the rewards are nice. It's always a good feeling being able to look at the end product after you've worked so hard to bring it to life, and after many, many hours doing rewrites, edits, and rereads, it gives me a wonderful sense of accomplishment when I'm finally finished.


After many postponements to my latest Young Adult Urban Fantasy series, The Girl in the Leather Jacket, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. As the ticker to your left shows, it will be released this coming Friday, March 9th, on at least three sites: Amazon, Smashwords, and my latest one, Bibliocracy.com. When the finished manuscript is submitted to all three sites (Smashwords distributes to other sites such as Barns&Noble, iBooks, etc) I will make the links above live.


For my For Life fans: Once I'm finished with this first book of the new four-book series, I'll finish the touch ups on Ch.8 to "For Life" and submit it. The goal is to have it on Fine Stories this weekend. Hopefully, I can meet that goal, but you can be assured I'll work hard to meet that goalpost.


For those interested, I've made a book trailer for The Girl in the Leather Jacket, and I'm posting it here. I hope this works because this is the first time I'm doing this.

Anyway, you can go to my YouTube Channel and see all the videos of my book trailers, if you're interested.
This dang thing took me two days to make - which is a record, as in, record slow. I usually make a book trailer in about four hours so you can imagine my frustration when this one took so long! But I wanted to get it right, and considering the type of music (not really my type of music - my daughter chose it) I had to create images that coincided with the beat.


Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy it.

Chapter 7 to For Life, New YA series, Equilibrium

Chapter 7 to "For Life" has been submitted for publishing at Fine Stories. Please allow some time before it appears although Fine Stories is pretty quick with publishing stories, unlike other sites I know.

I know this took longer than I promised (approximately one day overdue, but still), but I hope it's worth the wait.

In this chapter, more and more is being revealed that intrigues both main characters, Wolfgang and Danielle, while slowly locking them to one another in curiosity and attraction, silently guided by his patient hand. A series of missing persons events are escalating around Queens, finally catching Danielle's attention, and she begins to wonder just how much she can trust this new employee of her father's business.

I've also been busy working on my new YA urban fantasy and paranormal romance due out by the end of this month. You can see the countdown ticker to your left.

It's about a girl named Lola Fox who lives in San Marino, Southern California, and who just turned sixteen. On her sweet sixteenth, she learns she's not what she had always thought she was, and as a young girl, she finds she's slowly coming into her own with all the pitfalls and mistakes that entails.

To date, I've planned a four book series, but it might be more, depending how I feel.

Also, I'm working on my upcoming Featured Author guest spot for Equilibrium at Lauries Thoughts & Reviews for January 28, 2012. I plan to offer a digital copy in any format. So if you're interested, please click on the name hyperlinked of the site here above and join her blog to win! I wish you good luck!

I guess it's TTFN, because I really need to get back to work! I hope you'll enjoy the latest chapter of For Life, and I hope you'll send me feedback or leave a comment and tell me what you think.