Technically Still a Spring Release!!!!

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Last year, I promised a Spring 2013 release for the prelude novella of my upoming Blood for Blood Series. Blood in the Past was supposed to be released in March, but I wanted it to be the best it could be and that took a little more time and money. BUT, since Summer doesn’t technically begin until June 21st, I didn’t lie to anybody.

It’s been a long road since I first started writing. I started a story, wrote nine chapters of a first draft, then put it aside. A personal tragedy prompted me to finish that story, but as I continued writing, I found I wanted to tell how the characters came to be in the mental states they were in. Why is Jillian so attached to her past? What makes her so needy and love-starved? Why is Lyla so vengeful toward married men, yet still inwardly longs for a happy, married life? Why is Brighthouse so eager to please his colleagues and prove himself? These backstories needed their own spotlight. And not via a lengthy prologue or numerous, tedious info dumps. So, by golly, I gave my characters the spotlight they deserved.

And today, June 19th, 2013, I have goosebumps as I type the following: Blood in the Past is officially availaible as an ebook on Amazon!

Click to Purchase

Click to Purchase

To answer a few frequently asked questions:

  1. It will only be available via Amazon, as I opted to enroll in their KDP Select Program.
  2. It will only be available in digital form. Have to have a print copy? No worries. When the first full-length novel in the series (Blood in the Paint) drops this winter, there will be a limited edition that includes Blood in the Past as bonus material. ;-)
  3. Yes, my eye is still twitching.

Well, what are you waiting for?

Read and review, people! Read. And. Review. :-)

Technically Still a Spring Release!!!!

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Last year, I promised a Spring 2013 release for the prelude novella of my upoming Blood for Blood Series. Blood in the Past was supposed to be released in March, but I wanted it to be the best it could be and that took a little more time and money. BUT, since Summer doesn’t technically begin until June 21st, I didn’t lie to anybody.

It’s been a long road since I first started writing. I started a story, wrote nine chapters of a first draft, then put it aside. A personal tragedy prompted me to finish that story, but as I continued writing, I found I wanted to tell how the characters came to be in the mental states they were in. Why is Jillian so attached to her past? What makes her so needy and love-starved? Why is Lyla so vengeful toward married men, yet still inwardly longs for a happy, married life? Why is Brighthouse so eager to please his colleagues and prove himself? These backstories needed their own spotlight. And not via a lengthy prologue or numerous, tedious info dumps. So, by golly, I gave my characters the spotlight they deserved.

And today, June 19th, 2013, I have goosebumps as I type the following: Blood in the Past is officially availaible as an ebook on Amazon!

Click to Purchase

Click to Purchase

To answer a few frequently asked questions:

  1. It will only be available via Amazon, as I opted to enroll in their KDP Select Program.
  2. It will only be available in digital form. Have to have a print copy? No worries. When the first full-length novel in the series (Blood in the Paint) drops this winter, there will be a limited edition that includes Blood in the Past as bonus material. ;-)
  3. Yes, my eye is still twitching.

Well, what are you waiting for?

Read and review, people! Read. And. Review. :-)

Jerks & Irks XLII: The Unglamorous Side of Writing

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I’m sure you all know by now that the prelude novella to my Blood for Blood Series, Blood in the Past, will be released Wednesday. What you don’t know is why my eye has been twitching for the last nine days. It’s because of the unglamorous side of writing. It’s nothing short of awesome-rockets to create characters, write a plot around them, and see it through to “The End.” But the end is slow going. When I received my final polished copy from Cassie at Red Adept, I thought it would be smooth sailing until release day. It was not.

  • Following the editing process, Blood in the Past was sent to a proofreader. After I received my manuscript back from the proofreader, I didn’t entirely trust their work (equal parts perfectionism, paranoia, and the proofreader herself had made a few errors), so I had to read my story three more times. The reading and re-reading and re-re-reading of your own work is tiresome. That in itself is eye-twitch-worthy.
  • With the novella fully polished, I thought it was a good time to type up the front- and back-matter. Table of Contents. Dedication. Acknowledgments. About the Author. Contact the Author. Copyright. Agh! I bet your eyes are twitching just reading that list. Then I had to read everything over. Again and again. Typos? Spacing? Thanked everyone? Copyright page scary enough? Tres un-glam.
  • Once satisfied with my edited and proofread copy, I copy-and-pasted all the components of the front- and back-matter, then I hired Karen Perkins at LionheART to format the it for Kindle. When she was done–you guessed it–I had to read it through a couple more times, this time from my Kindle. I only found a couple of errors and they might have been my doing. But Karen was very patient with me and we corresponded via email for hours until I was happy.
  • Whoops, I forgot a step. See how scatter-brained I am? Before I sent Blood in the Past to LionheART, I purchased a gaggle of ISBN numbers from Bowker. I know what you’re gonna say: Amazon provides the ISBN for you. And you’re right…if you want the publisher to be listed as Amazon. I registered my own publishing company, remember? (Blood Read Press) Therefore I needed my own ISBNs. Purchasing them was pretty easy. Assigning one to my novella was a pain in the pin-cushion.There are so many QUESTIONS! Agh! A few of which I didn’t even know the answers to. Thankfully, not all the questions required an answer to continue. But seriously, that took me about two hours.

I still have yet to formally apply for a copyright, but I guess that’s for a different post. Tonight, I’ll attempt to upload Blood in the Past to Amazon. Why so early? To ensure I don’t screw it up and have to delay my release date. Duh. Wish me luck guys. I’m gonna need it.

But in all honesty, it is pretty damn cool to look at your own book on your Kindle. ;-)

 

 

All Authors Blog Blitz!

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The very lovely Y. Correa organized this little blog hop to give authors a wave of exposure on this fine Saturday! Today it is my job to tell you about Megan S. Johnston, author of:

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The Chimera are a race so old, the humans relegated them as a myth. The Gods feared the Chimeras’ powers; they believed they were a deadly race, with physical abilities beyond belief. So, they split their race in half condemning them to wander the earth, searching for their other half to be complete. Without their sodalis, each was destined to live life without dreams, without love, without hope. The future rested on finding their one true mate for life.

SHELBY O’NEIL has led a solitary life with her parents. So when she goes to school at Washington State University, she believes her life has just begun. Now in her second year, the dreams begin. She dreams with the same man, night after night for months. When her dream world becomes her reality, and her life becomes a danger zone, she quickly learns to trust the one man who has thrown her into this new and dangerous world.

DEVELON COLE is Chimera and his race has been on earth as long as humans. His people were desperate to find their one true mate for life, and Develon had just found his, in the small college town of Pullman Washington. His goal was to protect her against the hunter’s and guide her into who she was always destined to be, his sodalis, his mate.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Megan S. Johnston is a freelance writer and entrepreneur living in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to writing fiction, she runs several family-owned and operated businesses, which she started over twenty years ago. She is an avid reader of paranormal romance and a member of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. She has four children and seven grandchildren and lives with her husband and two boxers in Washington State. Transition, The Chimera Hunters Series, is her début novel. Click the cover above to purchase Transition. Click the links below to learn more about Megan and her work!
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Website:
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My Global Malfunction

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I’m about to share something with you guys. Something that few people know about me.

I suck at geography and I suck bad.

When I was little, I came down with the chicken pox right when my class was learning US and World Geography. It was a very mild case of the chicken pox, so my grandmother kept me home a little longer than she needed to so that I didn’t get it twice.

I missed a whole lotta geography.

Fast forward to the present. To my Hubby-pants’ teasing jokes, cock-eyed looks, and exasperated sighs. Well, all of that culminated to head a couple of weeks ago. In the space of 24 hours, I said the following stupid things:

  1. We were talking about Pablo Escobar. Me: “Columbia. That’s in Cuba, right?”
  2. We were watching Defiance on the SyFy channel. Me: “Why do the characters keep saying ‘down to Antarctica?’ Antarctica is the North Pole, isn’t it?” (Side note, this led to a rather amusing argument about how, if there wasn’t an actual land mass at the North Pole, then why did people start the rumor that Santa Claus lived there.)

I don’t remember the order in which these two gaffes occurred, but one of them made Hubby-pants order me to put on my shoes and we went out right then and there to buy a globe. We found an adorable little, 6-inch, desk globe. On sale! Isn’t it cute?

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Speaking of globes…Wherever you are on the globe, you can now add my upcoming novella, Blood in the Past, to your Goodreads ‘To Read’ Shelf! There’s a button right over there >>>>

Only FIVE more days until RELEASE DAY!

Jerks & Irks XLI: Parallel Prick

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Last Friday I met a friend for coffee at one of our local coffee shops. I know, I know. I didn’t “check-in” on Facebook or post filtered pictures of my Vegan Coconut Orange Walnut on Instagram, but I swear I really did leave my house and my friend really does exist.

Anyway, I arrived early to assure myself a parking space directly in front of the cafe, since it was raining hedgehogs and lemurs (I’m a writer. I had to made that clichéd metaphor my own). There were two spots available when I first got there, but I had to double back to my house. When I returned, there were was a pickup truck and one remaining spot. No big deal, right? So I prepare to parallel park. I subsequently hit the curb. Then I did the “inchworm dance” with my car. Out, then in. Out, then in. Shimmying myself into the spot behind the pickup truck. The entire time I’m doing this, my windshield wipers working a furious overtime so I don’t hit anything else, there’s a man standing in front of the coffee shop, under the awning. He’s not smoking a cigarette. He’s not on the phone. Just standing there. And just as I am about to successfully make it into my parking spot, he jumps into the pickup truck in front of me and drives off.

Are you $%&#ing kidding me?

He couldn’t wave me down? Tell me to hold on a sec? Put some giddy in his yup and hop in his truck a moment or two sooner so I could pull in easily?

What a jerk.

But you know what? Blood in the Past comes out very soon, so I’m trying to focus on that. :-D

What I Learned From My Editor

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You knew it was coming. The obligatory “my work has been edited, my editor was invaluable, this is what I learned, you wish you had an editor like mine” post.

Blood in the Past was sent to Red Adept Publishing for a deluxe line edit a couple of weeks ago. Oooh, deluxe! I know, right? That means my lovely editor and I go back and forth like a see-saw until the manuscript is perfect. Then we send it off to a proofreader for good measure.

It didn’t take Cassie (hope she doesn’t mind me using her real name) very long to edit BITP, as it’s a novella, not a full-length novel. I received all of her corrections in Word’s Track Changes in about a week. And with that handy-dandy deluxe package comes a separate document with some general points that the editor noticed about your writing style. So, without further delay, here’s what a learned from the fabulous Cassie:

  • I do things for effect, but I do them too frequently so that the effect is for naught. Such as one-line paragraphs and sentence fragments.
  • I use present tense words like now, these, this, etc even though I write in past tense.
  • I don’t use enough contractions. (I blame my mother for that one. She wasn’t a fan of contractions. She even tried to use Eddie Murphy’s character in Coming to America to prove that the English language is better without them. What can I say? It stuck.)
  • I often segue into sentences like I’m writing a sixth grade paper. Yet, Instead, But, etc.
  • I use began to and started to like it’s my job. Cassie pointed out that it is not, in fact, my job.
  • My timeline was a little jacked up because I underestimated the time it would take to complete an arson investigation. None of my betas caught that, so that was a HUGE gaffe that I’m glad she brought to my attention.
  • And finally (this one cut me deep), I have the tendency to “wax poetic.” ~Le sigh~ Cassie did go on to say that my “technical writing is beautiful,” but I need to remember that my characters aren’t all kooky literary professors whose inner dialogue would be so verbose. Oopsie.

All in all, my time with Cassie will be remembered fondly. We cut things that shouldn’t be there. We added things that should. We compromised on a few points. She let me have my way on a few other points. And we bonded over the movie Bringin’ Down the House.

Wait, what?

Here’s what happened. She made a comment that one of my characters had taken kick-boxing classes and thus would be a worthy adversary for another character. I pointed out that it wasn’t MMA-quality training. It was like in Bringin’ Down the House, when Queen Latifah gets into that fight with the Country Club Chick, who says she takes Tai-bo. Country Club Chick then goes on to get her ass beat. Turns out, Cassie LOVES that movie (capital letters were her own, not mine.) So, for my character, the kick-boxing classes, were just for cardio. Sure, you learn a few general movements, but not enough to ward off a larger woman wielding a chef’s knife. Oh dear, I’ve said too much…

Blood in the Past. Available June 19th on Amazon. Ebook Only for this one. Sorry.