Too Many Projects

Been too long since I posted here! The Kindle free promotion went well! Over 800 copies were downloaded for free. Hope some of those people actually read the book!

I hope to get back to work on The Treasure of Castle Crabapple soon. At the moment, I am working frantically on Aji's Quest, so that there will be enough pages to tide Tiger's Mouth over while I do NaNoWriMo

Ordinarily I would not take part in National November Writing Month (where you try to crank out a complete new book in one month) when I have so many important projects already in the works, except that next year's Summer Reading Program has an underground theme which would go perfectly with a book idea I've had for some time. And if I'm motivated to crank it out in a month (mostly) I might be able to have it ready to sell before next Summer.

The Night Library: When Madeline tries to get herself locked in the library overnight, she has no idea what she is in for! She is found by the Night Librarian, who hauls her off to the book mines, to spend the rest of her life digging in the search for a gem of a novel.

Saturday

The five days free promotion at Amazon.com is going well, with 133 copies of the Kindle version downloaded on the first day!

The morning was spent packaging up books to mail: two to friends to whom I owed books, one to my sister, whose friend wanted to buy a signed copy, and one to the Cooperative Children's Book Center at UW Madison. If they like the book, they will add it to their collection. (If I'm really, really super lucky, they might mention it in their annual list of choices! :D )

I had hoped to spend some time drawing Aji's Quest, but just really didn't feel like it. Probably partly because it's been a hot day, and partly because I never heard back from Tiger's Mouth whether they were interested in having the comic on their site, or whether it was okay to have their characters make a cameo appearance. Since they would appear on the page after the next, I think I am dragging my feet a little in hope of an answer. If I don;t hear back, I guess I will use generic characters for that scene.

On the up side, I found a little notebook full of notes I made back when I first started the Castle Crabapple books, all about Druzilla's family background and the world's geography. Cool!

Witches on Kindle!

The Witches of Castle Crabapple is on Kindle, now!

From Aug 25 to Aug 29, it should be free. (Promo name = Witches)

Since I don't have a Kindle myself (yet?) I don't really know how it all works! But the book has also been added to the Kindle Lending Library. Enrolling in KDP Select, in order to allow the free promotional period, means that I am not allowed to put WCC on any other e-book platform for 90 days, so if you have a Nook or other, you will just have to wait, sorry. (Or download the free Kindle version and read it on one of the available Kindle apps!)

Amazon Used and New is weird. I noticed three people were selling copies of WCC, which I thought odd, since it's been out only two weeks and hasn't sold many yet. (Was someone unloading my book as fast as possible???) But the three listed are being offered for more than the cover price. Hmmm. And since more people have told me they bought my book online than have actually sold (cough) I can only assume either that these people in Used and New are hoping some fool will come along eager to pay extra, after which they will order my book and pass it on for a profit, or that it's some odd money-laundering scheme.

Books selling!

Well, 14 books have sold online, and I've sold about 8 in person. Not huge sales, but I will be trying to generate some publicity soon. Or I may wait till January, since this time of year, many libraries have spent most of their budgets for the year.

This weekend, between all my other plans, I will be trying to get Witches of Castle Crabapple on Kindle and other audiobook formats.

The theme for next year's summer reading program at libraries will be underground. (Dig into reading, etc.) For years, I've had an idea for a book about a kid caught in the library after hours and forced to dig in the book mines. I don't want to take too much time off from Castle Crabapple, but maybe I'll try writing that for Nanowrimo and have it in print in time for next year's program. :D

Hi, again!

Well, since I last posted, the box of books has arrived!

Kind of funny, last week a friend was looking through the final proof, and said, "Hey, I found a misspelling." My heart nearly stopped. Fortunately, it was an intentionally misspelled word in a letter from Ruffles.

There are now 7 pages of Aji's Quest on the website. When I have about 10-12, I might approach Tiger's Mouth and ask if they want to host or link to it.

Done!

The website is finally totally fixed! :D Yay!

There's been no time to draw or write this week. I was hoping to crank out a few more pages of Aji's quest. Next week, back to work!

The new website!

I have the site updated, but for some reason the index page won't redirect to where it's supposed to.

But here's the page!
http://home.earthlink.net/~inkwolf/Inkwolf/Castle_Crabapple.html

Woot! The book has gone live! It's available on Amazon and Createspace!

https://www.createspace.com/3840978

http://www.amazon.com/The-Witches-Castle-Crabapple-Volume/dp/1475249217/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344434355&sr=8-1&keywords=witches+of+castle+crabapple



iWeb is giving me major stress in trying to create the new website, though.

Still in proofing!

I'm waiting for the fourth, and what I hope is the final proof. I refuse to even look at the interior, hoping that all the typos and glitches have already been found. The last proof, the cover was fine, except that the spine was skewed off center further than ever. After some advice from customer service, I am hoping that the new version will finally be right.

I spent part of this morning getting the new website worked on. I think it's almost done. Now I have to compact and edit my old website so I can fit some of that stuff in with the new pages. It's hard fitting into 10mb, these days.

Meanwhile, I should be working like a beaver on the sequel, but keep being tempted to start drawing Aji's Quest instead, a comic about Go that I've been mulling over for a while. Why are the non-paid projects always so much more tempting than the ones I might make a little profit on?

Still in proofing

The last time I updated the manuscript, I blew all the formatting, and had to rsetart from an old copy, using the Compare feature to re-do all the changes I had made. When I got the second proof back, it not only had some lines and stuff left over form Word, but I found even more typos and errors than I did in the first proof reading. I almost entirely missed the fact that I called Sir Alfred 'Albert' three times. So, the third proof is on the way to being ready, hope that it's finally in decent shape.

Found out why it was taking so long to hear about the OCLC number application--I hadn't gone through the checkout process yet! Well, this morning I checked out properly, and finally ordered my first book proof, now that I've adjusted the cover enough to fit within Createspace's weird automatic parameters. They are shrinking the cover to fit, instead of properly cutting off all the bleed space. I think it's the rainbow on the front cover messing things up.

Well, it's been two and a half years since I posted to my writing blog, and I'd better start again, because I am about to self-publish The Witches of Castle Crabapple! It's been fun drawing chapter pictures and a cover, two things I wouldn't be allowed to do if I published it with a real publishing company. There is something to be said for keeping it all to yourself. :D Meanwhile, Blogger has rearranged their features, and I have to figure out how to do everything again...