Summer Splash Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Summer Splash Giveaway Hop. This giveaway runs July 23-31, 2012. Please fill out the form below. Five winners will be chosen. Those five winners will be able to pick any of the eBooks I wrote (excluding the co-written eBooks). I will send winners a code for Smashwords where they can pick from any format for their eReader. The first random winner picked will also win a $10 eCertificate for Amazon.

There are TWO mandatory entries. You have to be a blog follower for your first entry and a Facebook follower for the second entry. You can get up to 3 more entries by following or friending me on the websites below for a total of 5 entries. When you are done entering my giveaway, click on the hop logo above and go back to the main site and enter the main giveaway as well as other authors. You could win Kindle Fires, books, giftcards, and more. Good luck!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Kindle Fire Giveaway

I'm participating in a giveaway for a Kindle Fire. You can enter for free and get another 25 entries when you buy one of the books of any of the members participating. Read the details and enter here.

Abigail by Heather Marie Adkins

Not too long ago, Heather Marie Adkins guest blogged her and released her book, The Temple.In only a short time, she has released another book, Abigail.

Summary:

When Abigail’s supposedly immortal faery mother is found murdered, her human father sells her in to slavery. Bought by a young and wealthy landowner named William, she is whisked away to a Grecian island to play caretaker for his baby sister.


However, the island has a deadly secret connected to Abigail’s past. Her budding romance with William is shattered by Abigail’s intimate, unwanted connection with the island’s faery prince. Meanwhile the faery king plans revenge upon the family. Abigail must join forces with the very race she’s sought to deny, to save the humans she has learned to love.

Buy it now!

Barnes & Noble

Amazon

If I Die Young

Yesterday afternoon, I uploaded If I Die Young to B&N, Amazon, and Smashwords. They are all still processing, but it's just a matter of time. I will let you all know when it becomes live!

When Caelyn Noel was diagnosed with asthma five years ago, it put a damper on things. Now, she’s sixteen and things are finally going her way. She has loving parents, the best friend ever, and the boy she has had a crush on since elementary school has finally noticed her. Then, she collapses in school one day. To her horror, she finds out her heart is failing and she must have a heart transplant to live. Caelyn struggles with her fear of dying and worries of having someone else’s heart.

This Week in Talia News

It's the beginning of a new month! Hello May, please bring lots of sales. My BBoS (brown bar of shame) is gone on Amazon US. Yay!! I love when that bar disappears the first day of the month.

Lots of cover news this week. I have three covers finished now. I will be revealing a new one for an old book tonight. I am very happy with Streetlight Graphics!

I also went back and edited - AGAIN - the old books. I don't think I'm ever done editing. I walked away for six months, pulled the book back up and found things wrong. Even with people editing for me, I still found mistakes! Hopefully, I fixed all of them... doubt it, but maybe most of them :) Please do not hesitate to let me know if you see mistakes in my books. I will go fix them.

My fingers are itching to write an edgy book that I started in high school - which was a LONG time ago. I actually finished the story way back then, but it's not realistic now. So, I'm taking the character names and some of the story line and completely redoing it.

Guess that's about :) Cover reveal to follow.

If I Die Young Cover

As I've been saying, Streetlight Graphics did the cover for my fourth book, The Ultimate Sacrifice. When I saw the amazing job they did, I asked them to also do the cover for my third book, If I Die Young. Since If I Die Young is coming out soon... hopefully within the next 1-2 weeks, I wanted to release the cover.

If I Die Young is about a 16-year-old who needs a heart transplant. Official blurb to come :)

Without further ado...

Up and Down

The beginning of April started out good. I had a good number of sales. But, the second part of April hasn't been so good. Maybe it's spring break? Maybe people are busy with Easter? It's definitely been slower. I'm okay with that though. I know it's a roller-coaster ride.

It wouldn't be so bad if I could break my habit of checking KDP or Pubit 3-4 times a day. I'm obsessed with clicking on the link to see if any more sales popped up. It's hard to stay away from that, when I'm already on the computer writing, editing, or promoting. It's sooooo easy to just open another tab and click on the bookmark.

Sigh.

I'm trying to focus on editing the rest of my 4th book. I might have another scene or two to add before sending it off for reviews. FOCUS - Talia - FOCUS!

Sneak Peek

Have you ever wondered what goes on at the school hidden in the mountains?

This Week in Talia News

Here is the second edition of my weekly update.

Sales were slow this past week, but the books are still selling, so I can't complain too much.

My two books were listed on Breakthrough Bookstore website.

Damaged: Natalie's Story was featured on Adventures in Writing.

I'm waiting to hear from one more person reviewing my 3rd book. I think I settled on a title. Well, it's in between 2. Problem is one is an old movie and one is a newer song. I also got the blurb written.

I finished my first edit on my 4th book. I also wrote the blurb and found a title! Then I submitted it all to the cover artist!! Very excited about this one. My oldest daughter read it and loved it. So, I'm hoping other people will too. I hope to get it sent out to my reviewers by the end of the weekend.

This Week in Talia News

I'm going to try to keep a weekly update of how things are going. So, here is the first edition of 'This Week in Talia News'.

I was interviewed on two blogs:

Adventures In Writing

David Cleinman's Works and Writings

The article I was interviewed for in a local publication came out - however, there were a lot of spelling and grammar errors in the article. I'm worried that people will think that's how I write.

I received a good review for Damaged: Natalie's Story on Goodreads. I love it when I get good reviews. I love seeing that people are enjoying my books.

I finished the second draft of my third book and sent it to a couple people to read and review.

Next week's goal: I haven't decided for sure. If the reviews come in quickly, I'll get to work on them. If not, I'll do the first edit on my fourth book. Lots of promoting - I slacked a little the past two weeks trying to finish a couple of things.

Sale Ends Thursday

Teagan's Story: Her Battle With Epilepsy is only on sale through the end of March. April starts Friday and it will return to it's normal price. Get it now for only 99 cents at either Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Finally

It's official, I have joined the eReader population. After much debate, lots of research, shopping, and agonizing... I have a Kindle.

It was between a Kindle and Nook for the most part. The nice people dressed in blue at Best Buy said they were really the only two they'd recommend. The guy seemed to be pushing me into a Nook. But, my husband said if I was going to buy a Nook, I might as well buy an iPad. And believe me, I'd like an iPad. However, they are more expensive and what I really wanted it for was JUST to read books. Not get email, not surf the internet, not even read magazines. Just books.

I also considered that the kind of books I might most likely be reading would be from indie authors. There are SO many books out there I want to read from self-publishing authors and many of those are on Amazon. I know this means I can't borrow books from the library, I'm okay with that. I even bought a cover that has a light right inside of it, so I can read in bed.

I have one more library books to read and then it's Kindle time!

Love Writing. Hate Formatting.

I hate formatting. HATE. IT. With a passion. Why - in this day and age - can't someone come up with a program that will take a basic Word document and change it into an eBook? I know, some of it has to do with the fact that Amazon uses Mobi and Barnes and Noble uses ePub. But, come on, people!

I have changed my Word document into everything possible and uploaded it and something is always messed up. I've gone back through my books and fixed anything that looked funny and most of the time it STILL looks funny. My main problem are the indents. They are all messed up!

Now, I've uploaded to B&N, and when looking at the sample, it looks fine. But, I can't see further into the book. So, you download the ePub version of it and their Nook reader for computers, and then what happens, all the chapters are messed up on the top! UGH!

The other thing giving me trouble is formatting a table of contents. I had one that when you clicked on it went to the chapter, but the page numbers are wrong (they are okay on the Word document), but not okay on the eBooks because the pages are different. So, I took the page numbers out, but now I can't get them linked to the chapters.

I've tried some free programs, I've downloaded a free trial of Adobe's ridiculously expensive Indesign. Nothing helps.

Love writing. Hate formatting.

Book Reviews

I've gotten excellent reviews on Natalie's Story so far. But, there are only a few. I could really use anyone who has read the book to write a review on Amazon. Doesn't have to be a lot of words, just be honest.

Book Sales

I think a lot of people got Kindles for Christmas. In the week after Christmas, my book sales went from just a couple to 16. Then someone returned a book. LOL! Guess they didn't like it? Or maybe they thought it was paperback and when they realized it was an eBook, they returned it? Whatever it was, not a big deal. That leaves 15 sales for December, not bad. I realize that it's not 1500, that's okay. Maybe someday I'll get there. And when I checked today, another 2 books sold. So, it may be one here and one there, but each sale is a possible fan and that fan might spread the word!

My New Year's resolution this year is to write more. I'd like to finish the book I'm working on and I'd like to get Teagan's Story uploaded to Amazon.

First Payment

I got an email last night - I almost missed it - my mailbox thought it might be spam. It was from Amazon and basically said my first payment is coming in. Took a few seconds to register, but soon I was elated! This means I've sold enough books to get a payment, even if the payment is small! Who would have thought? Even though this is very different than an agent picking the book and selling it to publishers and stores, it's still a wonderful feeling!!

I've sold 21 books so far. I can't wait to hit 25... and maybe 50... and I really, really hope someday 100!!

Writing on the Brain

I think of writing all the time. Ideas flow through my brain. Some I write down, some I don't. Some I kick myself later for forgetting. I wish I had some sort of program that took the ideas flowing through my brain, turn them into words, and type them out. Or maybe a voice program where I could just talk out ideas and the computer automatically types out everything I say.

So many of my ideas slip away and don't make it onto paper or computer. I need to work on that. Every idea is important. Even blogging - sometimes I think of something really awesome to blog about and then POOF! it's gone.

I think about the first story I ever wrote. It was about a couple of kids living on their own, I think it was shortly after reading The Boxcar Children. I was probably 10? I named one character Calliope, not sure what the other one was. As time went on, I wrote more and more edgy YA. Runaways, addicts, abuse, anything I could think of that would shock people. Why write this stuff? Why shock people? Because I thought there wasn't enough. I was a teenager with issues. If I wasn't going through some of this stuff, then I knew someone who was. And being a teen who liked to read, I wanted to read about it, but there wasn't much of anything about it.

No one dared.

Now it seems like lots of authors have dared. There are more and more stories out there considered edgy YA. Have I waited too long? I'm in my 30s now, can I still write YA? I think so. It might not be as crass as it once was, but some of it will still be edgy.

My first book, Natalie's Story, is about a 17 year old girl who falls in love with the wrong boy. He gets violent with her. She forgives and it happens again and again. Then to cope with things, she starts drinking and doesn't want to stop. It touches on abuse, pregnancy, and addiction.

My next book, Teagan's Story, is about a teenager with Epilepsy. I love Lurlene McDaniel. She's a wonderful author. She writes a lot about teens dealing with medical issues. I often read her books growing up and loved her stories. I wanted to branch out to other disorders or illnesses that aren't written about as often. Teagan, who has been home schooled because of her uncontrolled seizures, finds herself in public school when her parents unexpectedly die. This book is about how she deals with Epilepsy on a daily basis.

And coming up? Caelyn's Story. Another medical YA novel. She needs a heart transplant.

I have so many ideas... if I only knew people were interested.

Now is your chance! Leave a comment here. Join my Facebook fan page. Leave a review on Amazon. Help me get recognized! Be a part of it, I won't forget!

It's Live!

I uploaded my book to Amazon and it didn't look right on their preview. So, I worked on the formatting again and again and again. I finally found a way to make the indents work right. Then there were 2 hypens I couldn't get deleted. Finally found that problem. So, I uploaded the book again - with a new cover picture I had taken at the beach a few years ago - and now it looks pretty good. The only problem I'm having now is the chapter headings are off centered. I guess I'll have to deal with that.

Anyway, I digress... MY BOOK IS LIVE!!!!!!!!!!! On Amazon!!!! It's unreal! I'm hoping that once the description gets put on there, that people will get interested and they'll buy it.

Natalie's Story

What are you waiting for??? GO! BUY! READ! :)

I Did It!

I uploaded my first book to Amazon. I had some trouble with the formatting, so I hope that once the good people over there look at it, they'll fix it. I'd hate to have my book up there with the margins all funny looking.

It's supposed to be up within 48 hours. Not sure if that'll happen on a weekend.

I'm so anxious! It's hard to be excited when there's no guarantees. But, there aren't any guarantees in life. Gotta take a chance sometimes. I hope there are people out there somewhere that will read it and like it!

So, book #2 is being looked at by some friends of mine. And I'm working on book #3.

It's Going To Happen!

I am editing my book one more time. Then I plan to send it to the copyright office and upload it to Amazon. I'm sure there will still be mistakes, but I hope people aren't overly harsh.

So, dear readers - all 4 of you - please feel free to buy my book when it is uploaded, read it on your computer or phone or Kindle, and then if you like it, leave a glowing review so maybe, just maybe, someone else will buy it.