Archive for the ‘Self Publish Progress’ Category

Publishing Two More Books Adventures…and the future

Posted by - Saturday, May 30th, 2009

Hurray! I’m back on for Round 2 for my Books Irid and Ruby, Flesh and Heart.

The book covers are coming along FABULOUSLY, and I’ll put up the beginning and end process/pictures on my next post.

Also, I posted for a new Editor on Guru, and my old Editor saw it and said she was available. So yeah, I want to re-work with her! I had mentioned it to her before, but I wasn’t ready yet since I had to build up on the funds again. So, I just approved the projects to her and off we go!

I forgot about editing my bookcovers and the summary for those, so I re-posted for this other editor to take a look at it. I had liked his profile before my previous editor saw my posting, and he had a nice price, so I wanted to see how he looks at things. Next, I’ll have to contact my Illustrator and let her know that I forgot to get the back edited…duh! She had already done the color for Irid and it looks great! I had a few suggestions on what I wanted to add, so I’m excited about seeing how it will come out. I’ve seen the first draft for Ruby, Flesh and Heart and it looks great! I told my Illustrator that her work was BAD ASS!

My next two more books that are complete that I will need to do are: The 9th Symbol and Jetta. I’ll have to save up again after the current two projects are done, and the next thing would be to get back to writing on all the projects I’ve started but haven’t finished yet: Creations (3rd book Series in The Calling), Death First Rose, Feral Dance, and Elements. I also have the final and last book of The Calling Series that’s in my head that I haven’t even began on.

So, lots to do! Lots to do!

I’m hoping I can do all of this still, because back in December 2008, I found out that miraculously I’m pregnant! Being 37, I had given up on that dream 10+ years ago. I re-married in July 2008, and 4 months later, WHAM! I’m knocked up! :) Funny how life has its way of letting you know when the “right time” is. When I was 12, and even when I was in college, I had stuff all planned out, but life is strange that way. What I had planned and what was actually SUPPOSED to happen was all on a different timeline. But I’m not complaining, not in one least bit. This IS the right time.

I have money, a house, a good husband, and a flexible job where all of my dreams can now come true.

Now to figure out how to change diapers…. Hmmmm….

Posted in Novels, Self Publish Progress | No Comments »

Goldilocks Issues: Word Press Blog Header Update & Business Cards

Posted by - Sunday, April 12th, 2009

BUSINESS CARDS
I went to VistaPrint and made some business cards and some postcards with the image of my book cover on it. It came out very, very well. I like them. I put an image of me on the back of the business card with the words “Thank You.” I saw that on one of my husband’s old business cards, and I thought that was a pretty nice idea.

I got the postcards so I can sign them and send them out to relatives who want me to sign their books, but they live in different states. It just costs a lot to ship books back and forth; so my mom suggested this idea where I can write a nice thingy on a postcard, mail that out, and then whenever I actually see my relative, I’ll sign the book. They can place the postcard in the book in the mean time.

WORD PRESS HEADER

Man! That took forever to just change the header for my blogsite!

STEP 1:
First I tried to make some kind of background image to lay (or is it lie) my book cover on. I took parts of the book’s cover and kept copy/pasting it over and over using the program PAINT (standard in MicroSoft).

I look at several ways of doing this backdrop.

1) I tried recreating the sky, but it just look like plaid.
madebackground

2) Then I tried to just do simply stars that looked random. It was o…k….

madebackgroundstar2

3) Then I just went for plain, but it was just not the right background…
madebackgroundplain2

So none of them would do (I sound like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. LOL!!) None of them looked right with the book cover. So I decided just have plain ole Black.

STEP 2:
So then I went to WordPress on how to update the default theme and its header. Not easy for me at all. I tried replacing the image “kubrickheader.jpg” with my image, but first you had to upload your image. And where might that be? I had no idea. So, I decided to upload it to my Folder: wordpress\wp-content\themes\default. And I used my Dreamweaver to upload just that file. Well that got it working, but it still had the stupid blue background because my image, I guess, wasn’t big enough. At least I got the “display:none;” to work to get the Title and Subtitle out of the image.

Here’s where I put it in Word Press APPEARANCE > EDITOR > STYLESHEETS CSS.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ h1 {display:none;
@@ font-size: 4em;
@@ text-align: center;
@@ }
@@
@@
@@
@@ Headerimg .description {display:none;
@@ font-size: 1.2em;
@@ text-align: center;
@@ }
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

STEP 3:
But I still couldn’t get that darn blue area out of the way. So I went back to my metamorph_tropicforest theme, took a look at it and decided to change the “header.jpg” name to an image I just created with PAINT.
I renamed the orginal “header.jpg” to

STEP 4:
So THEN I had to resize my “header.jpg” to be exactly 791 X 182. I used PAINT using IMAGE >ATTRIBUTES and resized a blank canvas, and then pasted my book cover, which expanded the length, but not the width. I just grabbed a side of my book cover image and on the PAINT bottom corner, it tells you, while you resizing, what size it’s making it. So I made sure it was 182 and then squeezed it to coordinate the image so that it wouldn’t look so stretchy.

FINALLY DONE:
So I uploaded the images and it looks okay. My book cover looks pretty small, but it’s up there. Resizing the images to match existing images that was use in the theme, was much easier than trying to figure out the default theme for me. I had to re-edit the metamorph_tropicforest Stylesheet to take out the title and subtitle that was going over my header like this..
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@@ }
@@ #logo a {display:none;
@@ text-decoration: none;
@@ text-transform: lowercase;
@@ font-style: italic;
@@ font-size: 18px;
@@ color: #ffffff;
@@ }
@@ #logo H2
@@ {display:none;
@@ font-size: 12px;
@@ color: #ffffff;
@@ }
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

So there you have it! I’m done. So, yeah, the book cover is too small, and I couldn’t get it “Just Right” like Goldilocks, but it will do.

Till Next time!!

Posted in Self Publish Progress, WordPress | No Comments »

Book Cover Quotes In! and More Guru for new Editor

Posted by - Sunday, March 29th, 2009

I got my quotes back on my book covers, and I’m so glad it’s within the budget.

HURRAY!

So now I need to get an editor (or two) for the next two books: 1) Iridand 2) Ruby, Flesh & Heart. I’m going back to Guru to find another editor since the editor for my first book didn’t respond to my inquiries of continuing a relationship with my other four (4) books that I need edited. So, I’m back to the drawing board and finding another one.

It was a bit overwhelming using Guru the first time and some people can just be all out rude on that site. I understand that people have been mislead and projects not paid, but try to use some common sense or inquiries on the customer before you make judgements. My goodness! So, I’m not looking forward to trying to find another editor on the site. Prices and ranges are out there for my budget, but I’m hoping my word count for these next two books might be a little bit less expensive. Irid and Ruby, Flesh & Heart both have 75,000 words, which makes a total of 150,000 words. That is more words, put together, than my first book which had 130,000 words. But since it’s two books, I’ll be getting more done. We’ll see how much they will amount to.

I decided to put both projects in separately, which might bring the cost down…not sure. It will probably be up. Or may just be the same. I’m not sure if I want to work with two different editors on two different projects. The styles might be different. But then again, I might just find one and ask if they can do the other as well. We’ll see how it goes.

I looked into eLance as well and Googled about the two sites. I just basically got the idea that they were pretty much the same, but for those look to make money, eLance was more expensive, yet better quality of customers, than Guru. I didn’t see much on what customers have to say about the two sites, besides the freelancers saying that customers have posted the same projected on both sites sometimes. So I guess I’ll stick with Guru since that’s where I found two very good freelancers: my editor and my book cover illustrator.

Wish me luck!

Posted in Self Publish Progress | No Comments »

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