It’s been an interesting year of getting writing done. Surprisingly, I decided to do some paid advertising in Amazon for the first time, thanks to fellow author Kenny Wayne, who encouraged me to do it. He walked me through it, holding my hand while I kicked and screamed, and then realized that it wasn’t so bad! LOL!!

That’s about it for me. Just wanted to provide my Woot! Woot! on my blog today.

Until Next Time!

My first blog post was 12 years ago!

Over the years, many writers have abandoned blogging and have gone straight to just, well, writing. They’ve placed their concentration on the novel and marketing it. Blogging takes a lot of time, and doesn’t bring a lot of traffic. Thus, here I am, not posting as often as I had done in the past… but I can’t just let it go. I actually love the content of my blogs and I still want to visit, like an old friend, from time-to-time.

So here I am again, now having to have something to say to “my old friend”. I have finally upgraded my main website! It’s been a long time coming. It wasn’t mobile, tablet friendly, and it just looked very dated. Like 2008 dated old! I got the template from TheTemplateStore.com back in that day that came with a txt license from Sandy Bowen to place with the site. I loved this site! But change is a must. Sigh. So I had a good cry, and I let go.

I mean, I learned HTML and had to change from my very first website:

Then, I went on to this website:

And now for 2020, to go back to Guru, to find a web designer to help me with the newest website project. I was fortunate enough to find that the designer, who moved my website from ICDSoft to HostGater, was still on the site. She took down my ideas and went to work.

Little did I know that so much has changed on WordPress since the last time I logged on. I am currently type in, Block format? And there’s the BeTheme that was out of this world!

Well, back to the classroom I go.

I found a YouTube video on how to work around in BeTheme, and WordPress directed me to their site on how to use this new Block format.

Self-Publishing learning NEVER stops!

Now, I have a WONDERFUL looking website (If I do say so myself!) and I simply enjoy how everything flowed together from my old to my new site.

My web designer introduced me to UnSplash where I can get my visual candy for my site, and chose some awesome pictures. We also just added a few books to the main page, and viewers can scroll down the page, click to email me, and use the Menu to go everywhere else.

It’s sleek. Its precise. It’s easy to navigate. It’s…modern! I so just love the new look. It’s me….

Well, that’s all I had to say this time. I wonder when I’ll post again…. Hmmmm.

Until next time!

Am I still around? Of course! If you’re a writer, you’ll still write. Maybe… not as often as I did years ago, but it still continues. And why is that? Well…after completing a goal, or a dream, knowing that it can be done, things then become, well, quite relaxed.

You get sidetracked keeping up with all the wonderful TV series like: Once Upon A Time, Westworld, Walking Dead, Orphan Black, The Originals, Expanse, Dark Matter, American Horror Story, Game of Thrones, and some least satisfying series like Colony, and The 100. That’s just a few of the sidetracks of indulgence. There’s also work, raising offspring, and day-to-day maintenance of life.

Years seem to go by, and it’s still on your mind to do some updates on your blog, or website, but you just don’t get around to actually doing it. LOL!

Then, one year, you get invited to do a collaboration effort with other authors, that actually completes and goes into fruition! And the following book was born and available on Amazon and several other places, January 2017!

A list of the authors and their poems and stories are at the ISFDB Site. I’m the only novelette on the list: Perfect Connection. I guess I was a bit long. LOL!!

History….

Kinitra Brooks contacted me through my Facebook, and my LinkedIn, and my Twitter, in March 2014. I guess she wanted to make sure she covered all areas and didn’t miss a communication with me. LOL! I’m pretty sure she got my name from author Alicia McCalla, because Alicia did an interview on her website of me back in 2012.

Alicia had changed her website so it lost all the comments that were in response to the interview, but it’s still up there–Guest Fest: Deana Zhollis Discusses Sexual Slavery in Her Cinderella Fairy Tale.

Thus Kinitra Brooks wrote to me…

I am writing a critical monograph, Searching for Sycorax: Black Women in Contemporary Horror, for a university press, examining the unique positionality of Black women horror creators as subversive pioneers in both Horror studies and Black feminist literary theory….

Searching for Sycorax excavates and illuminates a Black women’s aesthetic of horror—applicable to literature, film, and/or comic books—that uncovers and privileges the multiplicity of subversions that are made manifest in the lives of African diasporic women. ….

I am interested in possibly including an analysis or reference of your work in Searching for Sycorax and would appreciate it if you would send me an electronic file of your books….

I was happy to support, especially with an educational direction, and sent copies of my books.

Then in June 2015, Kinitra sent me an invitation letter to invite me to join the Anthology work that she wanted to do. And I had until January 2016 to write up a selection of work that fit what she had in mind for the Anthology.

In October 2016, she did an interview, and dropped a coin to mention the project: Interview with Dr. Kinitra Brooks, Who Teaches a Class on Beyonce.

Funny…. The way that each of these women define what I write isn’t exactly how I looked at it. Sexual Slavery? Horror? Because of them, I had to rethink the category of my work. Naive me was thinking that all my writing was simply some Erotic Science Fiction writing.

Horror? I definitely wasn’t thinking in that category at all!

When I wrote to Kinitra that’s how I thought of it, she spoke on her idea on the Anthology: “..the premise is that Black women redefine horror when they write it.”

I was like, “Huh.”

I kinda liked that idea. Redefining Horror. So, I told her…
Count me in!

Sigh… I really liked that cover!

So, I went back to my cover designer, who, unfortunately, is no longer working full time for authors, but is still available for long term loyal clients. THANK GOODNESS! Even though it might take her a bit more time to produce, since she now works full-time for a major company, I’ll wait forever for her art!

The first suggestion from my cover designer was that she felt that what was saying “young adult” the strongest was the colors and the fantasy creatures. So, she added a black border around the characters.

Original Cover	First Suggestion Update

But I LOVE my fantasy creatures!! Next, idea was to aged the women. I wanted something to show a bit sex appeal and suggested daisy dukes. I know. I was desperate LOL!! My cover designer basically said, “Oh no!” She never sees grown women wearing daisy dukes! LOL!! Honestly, she suggested, let’s just skip that idea. LOL!!

2nd update — She gave the purple and turquoise shirts, Tank-tops; added a bit of cleavage for the red shirt; a bit of belly-showing on the green shirt; took off the backpacks (though in the novel they did use them, but backpacks make them look younger); and darkened the background.

Original Cover	Second Suggestion Update

Still…it just wasn’t meeting the criteria. My cover designer said again, it was the “visual cues” that was missing the target. She finally came up with the answer.

In the Tirna Magique cover, people are taking the visual cues of color, i.e. purple trees, and the fantasy creatures in the background that we psychologically associate with children and stories for a younger audience when they are trying to interpret the intended audience for the book. But since you really don’t want to lose those aspects, my thought is to remove the women from that environment and set them in a more informational neutral background which will help break the association of the characters with the young adult vibe and works with the whole traveling between worlds part of the storyline.

Original Cover	Final Redesigned Cover

This definitely helped in what was needed!! It’s probably not completely away from the “young adult” feel, but it’s close enough. I get to keep my unicorn and mermaid, and the characters also have a background and image of looking older. It also gives that vibe of going from a bleak environment to a radiant one, which is the theme of all my books. It definitely fits!!

Here again is my wonderful new cover! I’ve already uploaded to Amazon and Zhollis.com

And, you know…? I actually like this one just as much as the other one.
Lesson learned: Changing doesn’t hurt as bad as I thought.

Until Next Time!


See the previous post for Tirna Magique’s (FIRST) Book Cover design steps.
See the previous post for Creations’s Book Cover design steps.
See the previous post for Jetta’s Book Cover design steps.
See the previous post for Irid’s Book Cover design steps.
See the previous post for Ruby, Flesh and Heart Cover design steps.
See the previous post for The Made Cover design steps.
See the previous post for The 9th Symbol design steps.

…I kinda likes that feature!

So what’s the other .com website? Well, it’s just some of my (what some people would call) strange beliefs, which I had posted on this blog site. But it really shouldn’t be on here. Two different subjects should be placed separately. I’m a snail, you know, so I do make changes slowly.

I ran into some problems, as usual, with making such a huge change. Even though I went back to Guru.com to find someone to move everything for me, problems arose. I got a 500 Hostgator error on all my .php pages. I found out I had to change the permission on the files. Previously, they were 0644 on ICDSoft. On Hostgator, I had to change them to 0755. Then, some of my images, just didn’t show. But when you click them, I could see the image. I just replaced each and every picture link that had the problem. That required going through the entire blog and finding them. It wasn’t all the images, so that was good. Why that happened, I just couldn’t find an easy answer.

And why am I updating and fixing errors when I paid someone on guru.com to do the move? Well, I wasn’t quite precise on what I wanted and the job required a lot more time and effort than the description I gave. So, to make up for that, I just went ahead and fixed the little problems that did arise, though it took my hours to figure it out through searching in Google. Nonetheless, it got done.

Another Anthology Project
I’ve been asked to be part of another anthology. I’ve got my 2nd draft done, and I’ll get it edited soon after one more look over. The deadline for the completed work is January 2016, so I have time to get everything done…with my slow self. I have been asked to do an anthology before, but it unfortunately got canceled. That’s how I ended up with Tirna Magique. With this new project, and new short story, I figured if things don’t go as planned, I’ll just make a book of short stories. I have plenty of them just sitting around for years and years and years, so why not put them all together and share them with the world! Even if this anthology project doesn’t get tanked, I figured I should put together those short stories anyway. That will be my next, easy, project to complete, since novels take much more time these days.

Another Irid book
I’m currently working on another book within the Irid world. Have I mentioned this before? I don’t remember… Anyway, this one is placed a few hundred years after the first novel. It’s coming along…uh… I’m half way through it…being that I started it around November 2013. Yeah…I’m slow.

I’ve got one more thing I’ve finished working on, and its been a long time coming. But, I’ll post that update later.

Until Next Time!

These days, all the news is about Amazon and its deals, and how all of this will effect the future of the sales and prosperity of the written word. But the world of the distributors and sales, though quite important for today and the future, isn’t as heartfelt, and close to home, as the news and stories of your fellow authors.

Here’s to changing the way of thinking about these days!!

Today, things have just settled down to the normal life of an author, which is being the Lone Self-Publisher. And that’s alright. Just keep remembering to look forward to each completion of the next book, and be happy with, yet again, that one, single, next buy.

And, more importantly, continue to keep the fires burning with socializing with your fellow authors….like NaNoWriMo.

Even with NaNoWriMo, I’m not quite up to par with the word count. I still continue to set my own personal goals, and that would be just to get past that 10,000 word count (which I’ve done. HURRAY!!!). Of course, the main goal is to complete the 50,000 word count by November 31, which is similar to the goal for most authors which is to be famous and/or make a living from writing alone. But sometimes, life makes sidetracks where you can’t quite reach the goal….for now. The main goal is still there, but to get there just might take a bit more struggle and much more hard work…and time.

With time, one does achieve one’s goals.

I did reach the 50,000 word count my first four years; and, at one time I received thousands of downloads of my book; and, at one time, I had a steady buy of three (3) books a month, but that is all now done…for now.

The good days come and go, and they come again. The bottom line is to continue on to reach them all.

Until Next Time!

Until Next Time!

I was horrified when my three (3) and only precious, wonderful, adored, and admirable buys, in my eyes, went to: ZERO, Zip, Zilch, Nada, nothing…………GONE!

I finally placed my prices back to what they were, and then the buys went up to… ONE (1). And it’s been quite hard to accept that the one (1) buy is all that I have these past few months.

I’ve lost the small treasures that I had.

So, I’m back to trying to find another way to regain the months of happiness that I once had. Somehow, someway, I must find it again.

And when I do, you’ll be the first to know.

Until Next time!

One must remember to think of SELF, who is also a customer. What would SELF like to do whenever SELF would want to hear more about something? I should have started thinking this way when my book was really selling–when Irid went free. Hindsight is 20/20 they say. No matter. It came to me now just when I was on Kindle Boards and someone posted something that made me the light bulb go off! Well….it went off several years later, but it went off and that’s what matters.

I mean, I have a website and I have a “Contact Me” page, but I REALLY didn’t mention anything about how people could learn about new Novels as I get them ready or when one is ready to buy.

It’s one of those DUH! moments.

So, off to figuring out on my website how to update and include a form for people to subscribe. I added it on my main page to the left with a option to click and fill out a form. You can take a look at my form by clicking the teeth:

I like the “clicking the teeth” idea. That’s what I put on my main page of my website too.

I also added a check box to the “Contact Me” page if the person wanted the option to be added to my distribution list to learn more about new novels.

Of course, the HTML for the emails became a problem. I had a form that had more fields than it could handle. It would only allow like four (4) fields to place information into the body of my email when I wanted like five (5) fields. And I had no idea how to make a checkbox, or a pull-down option.

Yep. Hours and days went by on Google to learn how to do those things.

I know there’s the MailChimp option, but, as I mention last year, I wanted something for my webpage, and, now looking back at that blog post, I wasn’t going to spend the time to do all this…. But, I did it anyway.

So, this post is for those of you who want some beginning code to start with on making a mailing list on your own website.
You can see what my form looks like from my Special page.
I learned about mail from making my Contact Form. So, that starting point helped me out with the rest of this stuff.

Here you go…. Code!

You’ll need three (3) pages

1) HTML or PHP page for the form
2) The receiving/processing PHP page for the data collected from the form
3) The “Thank you” page after the “Submit” button is pressed

Page One – HTML

This is the form that has the fields and for people to fill out. It sends it’s data to the process.php page. The name of this page can be anything you want (mailform.htm)

Page Two – Process form

This collects the data from the HTML page. It’s name is process.php. If you notice below, there’s a $body line several times. This is the content of the message that you will see in the body of your email. The "n"; is simply like a line break or paragraph return. It puts line spaces in the body of the email to make things look a lot cleaner.

Page Three – PHP Sent

This is just a normal page that says “Thank you!” and you can design that one any how you like. This page is called sent.php name, which is what the process.php page states to send it’s information in that “header” line location above.

Okay then. That’s about it. I hope this code helps some people out. It will at least give you a starting point to make some improvements later.


Until Next Time!!

So… I went online to figure out how to get me back into writing.

A few things suggested were:

• Take a break
• Read a Book
• Attend writing functions
• Join a Critique Group
• Write fun stuff!

I think my break is Loooooong enough.
I did read a book. Sex Zombies was a fun read.
I attend the Houston Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers monthly dinner via Meetup.com
I don’t have a Critique Group anymore

And writing FUN stuff? Uh, duh. I DON’T WANT TO WRITE!

Thus…sigh…I still don’t write.

My next thing was to go to Google for MORE help!

I love the writing contests that give either a topic or provide a small portion of the story that should be used in your story. One of them is WriterWeekly’s 24-Hour Contest. The story has to be completely written within a certain time frame, like 24-hours, and thus the story becomes unique and original. This site you have to pay $$ for though….

I also love NaNoWriMo which happens during the month of November, where you have to type 1667 words a day to meet the 50,000 word count by the end of the month.

I’ve heard of other writers talk of Write or Die where, on a serious level, the program starts deleting what you write if you procrastinate too long. The Web App is free, but for $10.00 you can buy a desktop version.

If you like pictures of kittens, after so many written words, you can have a cute cat pop up every time you meet your writing goal word count. Written? Kitten! is the place for that.


Lots of fun stuff on the internet for online tools to boost those creative juices!


Hopefully something will help you if you’re in the same mess as I am. As for me, I’m still trying…..


I think I’ll wait until November. Hmmmm.


Until Next Time!!