February 27, 2011

Five chapters down

Despite getting sidetracked with self-publishing my short story collection earlier this month, I managed to stay on track by completing the fifth chapter of my book this weekend. Two weeks ago, I was still in the middle of writing chapter four, but I didn't want to fall behind so early in the year, so I spent every free minute I could find writing. I feel better having caught up now. Another two-and-a-half chapters to write in March!

February 14, 2011

Numbers Plus Four

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

My self-published collection of short stories is available in the Kindle Store!  The book is titled Numbers Plus Four because it consists of a story called "Numbers" and four other short stories.  Get it?

I have to say that the self-publishing process wasn't as painful as I thought it'd be.  The hardest part, aside from writing the stories, was creating the cover for the book.  I went with a simple cover that I could make myself, but I might need professional help for future covers.

February 12, 2011

I'm Publishing!

On the heels of getting my short story published at Every Day Fiction, I decided to put five other short stories together into a collection and self-publish it on Amazon's Kindle Store. I'm doing this mainly to get practice going through the self-publishing process. I don't know what gotchas are involved with self-publishing, how long it takes, etc. I'd rather experiment with this collection of short stories than the book that I'm currently writing. If my short story collection happens to sell well, that's an added bonus!

So far, I think I've successfully formatted my ebook and uploaded it to Amazon.  According to the Kindle Direct Publishing website, it takes a couple of days before the book shows up in the Kindle store.  I can't wait!

February 10, 2011

I'm Published!

Big news! I've been published for the first time ever! A short story that I wrote was published at Every Day Fiction. It may not be the most prestigious literary magazine ever, but I'm super excited that someone published something I wrote.

And now we resume our regularly scheduled program.

February 3, 2011

New Year's Resolution

This blog came about as a result of a New Year's resolution... actually, two New Year's resolutions.  My 2010 resolution was to start writing again.  I've been writing fiction since grade school until my 20's.  Then kids and family obligations came along and I stopped.  Last year, the urge to write again became so strong that I resolved to make time for it.  Over the course of the year, I wrote several short stories to get back into the flow of writing. 

In December 2010, I stumbled across Joe Konrath's blog.  (If you're not familiar with him, you should read his blog).  He's a successful self-published e-books author, and he inspired me to dip my toes into the world of online self-publishing.  So my 2011 resolution is to take one of the novel ideas I've had in my head for years, finally write it, and self-publish it by the end of the year.  For me, that is an ambitious goal.  Based on my outline for the story, it requires eight months of writing (roughly two and a half chapters a month), then three months of editing, and a month to put everything together for publication.  So far, I've written two and a half chapters, so I haven't fallen behind on my schedule yet.  :-)