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Saying Goodbye to Joyce Ward

March 10, 2020 by Tari Jewett in category Writing

Saturday was a tough day. We said goodbye to a good friend, author Joyce Ward, who also wrote as Linnea Alexis. This was the message I shared on Saturday, and I wanted to share with all of you:

Are you a plotter or a pantser? Many of you know what I’m talking about, but for those who don’t, as writers, plotters are those who plan out their books in detail, and they know where the story is going long before they actually start to write. Pantsers, are those who take it as it comes, writing by the seat of their pants. And then there are I suspect many of us who are somewhere in the middle. We do some planning and some pantsing as we write. There’s no right or wrong way, it’s just the process that works best for us as authors to get the story on the page.

In life it’s much the same. Many are plotters, planning their life in detail. Where do you want to be in 5 years? In 10? What’s the best path to reach those goals. Others are pantsers, living life as it comes, waiting for the surprise plot twist. And most of us fall somewhere in the middle, because in life, a plot twist isn’t always something that we plan. Again, there’s no right or wrong.

Joyce Ward and I met when we were at similar places in our lives. Our kids were grown and we were both reaching for a dream we’d long waited to attain, being authors. We were new members of the Orange County Chapter of Romance Writers of America, and in a little bit of a plot twist, the first time we met we were sharing a hotel room for an author event. There were three of us sharing the hotel room that weekend, Joyce, Erin Pryor and me. All of us unpublished authors.

We were instant friends, talking about story plots, the speakers and what we hoped to learn and achieve in our new endeavors. After that weekend, Joyce and I roomed together at many writers events. It worked out well. We both snored, we coordinated our workshop schedules, and at night we would talk for hours about writing, but also about our families…she loved hers very much, about our pasts about our lives.

There were many times that Joyce called me and told me she was quitting, that she was a terrible writer and she was done. She wasn’t going to write another word, and I would remind her this was her dream, she couldn’t give up, and she had way too many ideas that needed to be put on paper.

The next time we spoke I’d be the one ready to walk away, stay home and bake cookies, and Joyce would be the friend at the other end of the line telling me I couldn’t give up.

In fact, Joyce was the reason that my first book was published. She had submitted to a boxed set publisher, and called me up to tell me I needed to submit as well. Her support, her belief in me pushed me to do what I wanted to do, but sometimes wasn’t sure that I could

Joyce worked tirelessly for our RWA chapter, chairing the Book Buyers Best Contest for many years. The contest is a lot of work, and at the time that Joyce started doing it, she had to collect piles of print books, store them in her home, sort them and mail them out to people, as well as recruiting all of the judges and collecting ballots. She was good at recruiting judges. I could never say ‘no’ to her!

My best memories of Joyce are of the conferences and events that we attended together. We shared a passion, we shared many of the same hopes and dreams. We could talk about our families, especially our children. I know how much Joyce appreciated that her children supported her dreams, and believed in her. We called each other with good news, or to commiserate. We were friends.

And then another plot twist, and here we are today. Saying goodbye for now.

I miss Joyce. I miss calling her when I want to throw in the towel. I miss her voice telling me not that I can’t stop writing. I miss planning our writing trips.

But Joyce will always be in our hearts, her books will keep her alive to everyone who reads them, and memories will keep her story going for all of us who loved her.

I’m sure that Joyce is in heaven right now, plotting and planning stories to share when we meet her again.

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Taking Notes on Your Kindle – and Finding Them Again by Kitty Bucholtz

March 9, 2020 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as Amazon Kindle, editing, It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, organization, Self-editing

Note: Kitty is at a conference so we’re rerunning one of her columns from our archives. We hope Kitty has a great time, and we hope you enjoy her column.

In November 2017, I wrote about how you can send nearly any kind of text-based document to your Kindle. A couple weeks ago, a friend told me she’s taking an overseas trip and she was considering printing out her current work-in-progress so she can at least get some editing done on the plane. I suggested she send her Word doc to her Kindle instead. She wouldn’t have to worry about losing pages, and her luggage would be a little lighter.

When she asked me how she would do edits, I realized I haven’t actually written an article about that yet! Here are my thoughts.

First, I use my Kindle to read. I don’t plan to make it my next editing tool. That being said, if I’m reading a friend’s book and see a typo, I want to tell them about it so they can make the correction and re-upload. In the same manner, reading my final manuscript on my Kindle can help me to see errors I missed because now I am reading the book as a reader. Errors aside, I also like to highlight my favorite bits in a novel sometimes, and helpful passages in nonfiction books so I can come back to them later.

I own a Kindle Paperwhite, so I’ll explain how to do everything on that or on the Kindle app on my iPhone. You’ll have to check how to do things differently if you own a different Kindle or use the Kindle app elsewhere. (I’d think it would all be very similar.)

Highlighting

If I want to highlight a passage on a Paperwhite or using the Kindle app on my phone, I press and hold on the first word I want to highlight until it lights up then drag my finger to the last word I want to highlight. On my phone, it automatically highlights. On my Paperwhite, it highlights but brings up a menu asking me if I want to just highlight, or add a note, or sometimes you can look things up in Wikipedia if your Kindle is connected to the Internet, and other menu items may also be available. (If you highlight a single word, the Kindle assumes you want to look that word up in the onboard dictionary.)

To get rid of that highlighting using the phone app, tap on the highlighted portion again, then tap on the highlight color with the X in it. That will delete your highlighting. If you tap on a different color, it just turns your highlighted color (yellow by default) to the other color.

To get rid of the highlighting using the Paperwhite, tap on the highlighted portion again, then tap on “Delete” in the little menu that pops up.

Notes

Once you’ve highlighted something, you can add notes pertaining to the highlighted bit. On the phone, tap the highlighted portion, then when you see the little menu, tap on the square with the pencil (supposed to look like paper and pencil). A new screen opens that says “Create Note” at the top. Type in whatever you want, then hit Save. Now at the end of the highlighted portion is a tiny little page. That’s your reminder that you have a note there.

On the Paperwhite, it’s similar. You can add the note as soon as you add the highlighting by choosing “Note” from the menu after you press and drag to highlight. A “Note” screen pops up where you can type what you want. Tap Save, and you’ll see a little superscript number at the end of the highlighted portion kind of like what you see for footnotes in textbooks.

To read these notes, tap on the highlighted portion, tap on the Note in the menu, and you can read what you wrote. You can also delete or change the note at this time.

But Why?

If you send your manuscript to your Kindle in a .doc or other text file, highlighting and making notes about things you want to fix or change can be very helpful. As I mentioned, I also like to tell my friends about any typos they’ll want to fix. And when reading nonfiction, I highlight and make notes for the same reasons I would in a paper book – to remind myself of how to do something, or remember to come back to this passage later.

How Do I Get My Notes Back?

Obviously, hitting the page-forward button over and over through a 400-page book would be way too annoying to find all of your marks. But Kindle created a “My Clippings” text file for you and it saves everything you highlight or notate from any book on your Kindle. Yay!

For any ebook that the Kindle recognizes as such (I don’t know if you have to have purchased it from Amazon or not), your notes and highlights show up at https://read.amazon.com/notebook

Unfortunately, the manuscript you sent to your Kindle (possibly using the Send to Kindle app 😉 ) does not show up in your online notebook. (At least, I don’t see mine.) So you have to download your My Clippings file from your Kindle to your computer.

To do this, connect your Kindle power cord with the USB plug on the end to a USB port on your computer. Once it’s connected, your computer will see the Kindle like it would a flash drive. Click on Kindle, then Documents, then scroll down to My Clippings.txt and double-click to open. In that text file, you will find everything you’ve highlighted (probably since you purchased your Kindle). You can now save that file on your computer.

My Clippings.txt from my Kindle

Sending Your Notes to Your Friend

Using my friend Debra Mullins’ book Kerrigan’s Law as an example, this is what I do when I find any typos in a friend’s book. I open My Clippings, then cut and paste the notes that refer to that book into a new document.

Each highlight is listed in My Clippings by location number. If it also has a note, it is listed again at that location number with the note you typed. For instance, I highlighted a typo, then wrote “typo” in the note section. Here is what it looks like in My Clippings:

Kerrigan’s Law: Welcome to Burr: Book 3 (Debra Mullins)
– Your Highlight on Location 434-434 | Added on Sunday, December 3, 2017 10:33:42 PM

How to we make that happen?”
==========
Kerrigan’s Law: Welcome to Burr: Book 3 (Debra Mullins)
– Your Note on Location 434 | Added on Sunday, December 3, 2017 10:34:07 PM

Typo

Now I can cut and paste my highlights and notes into a new document or an email and send it to Deb. I try to highlight enough text so she can search for it and find it fairly easily. The location number will only give her a vague idea of where it is, but it helps. For instance, location 434 is very early on in the book.

Since I’d found a typo and knew I’d send it to Deb, I couldn’t help but highlight a portion that made me laugh out loud to send to her, too. 😉

Kerrigan’s Law: Welcome to Burr: Book 3 (Debra Mullins)
– Your Highlight on Location 1383-1384 | Added on Wednesday, December 6, 2017 1:18:20 PM

our old sheriff, Charlie Norris,
==========
Kerrigan’s Law: Welcome to Burr: Book 3 (Debra Mullins)
– Your Note on Location 1383 | Added on Wednesday, December 6, 2017 1:18:34 PM

LOL

(You get it – Chuck Norris? LOL! 😀 )

Using the Kindle Notebook Website

I only discovered the notes showing up on your own “notebook” page today when researching a question I had for this article. (Here’s the 2015 article I found mentioning it.) I couldn’t find Deb’s book in my “notebook,” so I played around with another book I had on my Kindle, Only a Hero Will Do by Alanna Lucas.

Example from my “Notebook”

You can see that I highlighted part of a sentence, then added a note, “Here is a note on that highlighted passage.”

I went through the books showing up in my My Clippings document and compared them to what showed up in my online “notebook.” I could be wrong, but it looks like Amazon only recognizes books I purchased from them. Anything I “side loaded” or used Send to Kindle to get onto my Kindle seems to not show up in the Notebook. Just a little FYI. So to get your notes for those books, you’ll have to download the file from your Kindle to your computer as I mentioned above.

Editing Your Own Books on Your Kindle

Bringing this around full circle, I told my friend Janice that she can load her current WIP onto her Kindle and take it with her on the plane. She won’t be able to make changes to the document, but she can highlight bits and write notes like, “Need more tension here” or “Potentially better ending could be…”

Loading your final manuscript to your Kindle and reading it through before you upload it to publish can also be one of your last proofreads. You can highlight a section and add the note “is should be it,” etc. One note on this – highlight enough, even a whole sentence, so that you can find it again in your document by doing a search.

I hope you found this information useful. I’ve really loved opening My Clippings occasionally to remind myself of all the cool stuff I wanted to remember from nonfiction ebooks I own. Learn from my mistake, though: when you trade in an old Kindle and get a new one, download the My Clippings file from the old Kindle first! Once you no longer have access to the Kindle, you no longer have access to the file. Darn!

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Meriam Wilhelm Author of the Month

March 7, 2020 by marianne h donley in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as Featured Author of the Month, Meriam Wilhelm, Witches of New Moon Beach

Meriam Wilhelm Author of the Month

The one thing I know, after all my years as an elementary school principal, is that there is magic everywhere and in everyone. While I miss those enchanting moments with kids, I have always wanted to let my imagination run wild as I seek out my own magic and write about it. When I retired, I started to write my first books, a series called The Witches of New Moon Beach and inspiration wasn’t hard to find.

I have lived in Redondo Beach all my life, and New Moon might have more than a passing resemblance to my hometown. Every day I walk on the path that runs along the beach, sometimes with my sisters, but most often with my thoughts as I plot my next book.

I am long married and mom to three great grown kids. When I’m not writing or walking on the beach, you’ll find me sewing, reading or traveling and taking pictures.

Website: www.meriamwilhelm.com

MURDER BY MAGIC

THE WITCH OF BERGEN

THE WITCHES OF NEW MOON BEACH BOXED SET

SEA DREAMS

SUNSET SPELLS

MIDNIGHT MADNESS

NIGHT FLIGHT

MORNING MAGIC

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Whales and More by Linda O. Johnston

March 6, 2020 by marianne h donley in category Pets, Romance & Lots of Suspense by Linda O. Johnston tagged as Linda O Johnston, Rest, whales, writing breaks

Travel has been on my mind a lot lately. Among other trips, last year I took an Alaskan cruise with friends and family, and went on some really great small tours from the ship. I hope for more cruises in the near future.

But this year—at the end of last month—I took a wonderful whale watching bus tour down Baja.

During the days, we mostly got to observe the Baja landscape, which was largely desert and mostly uninhabited. We saw it from the bus, and we also took brief hikes to look more closely at the plant life. We spent nights at different, but similar, hotels.

One day we also drove through an amazing, large bird sanctuary—osprey nesting on tops of poles, cormorants, herons, egrets and more. Loved that.
But the expedition was all about the whales!

Hey—can you guess that I love animals? Dogs especially, but I really enjoy wildlife, too.

No writing on this tour. Most times when I travel I bring a laptop along, but there was no time or location where I could work. But the break was worth it

We had three inlet tours of approximately two hours each, plus time on the water getting into those inlets, on small pangas in the water—open boats that seat about ten people. Of course we all wore life vests. Two tours were out of San Ignacio, and one off Guerrera Negro. We saw whales most near San Ignacio. They were gray whales who’d migrated to that area for the winter; summers they spend off northern areas like Alaska—though I don’t think I saw any during our Alaskan cruise. And in the winter, these whales mate and have babies, which we sometimes saw—although baby whales are huge, too.

And guess what! The whales were also people watching. They came over to the pangas to meet us—and let us pet them. Some people also kissed them. Gray whales have barnacles all over their back—and lice within them, too. But feeling the soft, rubbery skin of these huge and friendly animals? Amazing!

So now I’m back home and working on some Harlequin Romantic Suspense books that were on temporary hold before. Of course I enjoy writing them. But my mind is also working on determining a way to use what I saw on the whale tour in a story or two or more.

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TWO PLANNING MONTHS IN

March 5, 2020 by Tracy Reed in category Pink Pad by Tracy Reed

Happy March. Get ready for it… because yes, I am going to say something very familiar…”I can’t believe this is the beginning of the end of the first quarter of a new decade”. That was a mouthful?

Let’s get started.

How did I do last month? Come si, come sa. The second month of planning hasn’t gone as well as I would have liked. At the same time it wasn’t as bad as I thought either. I got sick and that sort of effected my schedule. I have a simple but strict morning routine. I wake up at 6:30, slap the snooze button two or three times, thank God for another day, have quiet time or devotional, tend to a little personal business, grab a pre-workout snack, and go to the gym for an hour or more depending on how I feel. Then I come home eat some protein and get to work.

Unfortunately, sometimes I get a little distracted after eating and before heading to work. Heading to work, is me going down the hall to my office and putting my butt in the chair for a few hours. I researched successful people and their routines getting ideas for myself. What I came up with was six hours a day to operate both of my businesses. However, I seem to always end up working longer.

The first quarter of the year is always a little busy for me because I’m doing buying for my lingerie store. This is something that happens twice a year. There are other mini buys throughout the year, but twice a year I go on buying trips for a few days. These require me to be removed from writing, If you’re not familiar with buying season, it’s like going to RWA or RAM twice a year with more food, wine, less sleep and lots of walking.

When my mother and I return from a buying trip we need to decompress and enter the next phase, catalog review and placing orders. For clarification, this is like writing and publishing a dozen books in two weeks. Since I’ve been a published writer only once did I release a book during this time. I made a note to never do that again. This is where the planning part comes into play.

I was headed to Paris for a buying trip and thought since I had done everything for the book, it would be a piece of cake to complete the end of the blog tour while I was gone. I figured the time difference would work to my advantage. This was a major case of poor planning. The first couple of days were spent fighting jet lag and show fatigue followed by me trying to finish up posts for the blog tour. Needless to say, the launch didn’t do as well as I expected. My saving grace was a the BookBub ad I had during that period which got me a lot of sales.

I said all of that to say February was a real planning test and I didn’t score an A, but I didn’t fail either. So here a few highlights.

Plan: I didn’t finish my book.

Reality: I was going for a small novella, but it’s more like a small novel. I’m currently at 39,000+ words, plus I have a twist I really like. I’m about 7,000 words from the end. I’m trying not to do a cliffhanger, but it looks like that may not happen. I promised my readers I wouldn’t do a cliffy, but if I did, I wouldn’t let too much time pass between books. Upside, I have a cover.

Plan: I haven’t booked any newsletter ads.

Reality: I thought I’d turned off my Facebook ad for A Southern Gentleman Two, but it was still running. This mistake got me sales. And a chain of strange dialog about the ad. I really need to post about it. In a nutshell, the way the ad was written has made over a hundred people believe it’s a post about a real couple.

I did make an ad schedule for the rest of the year which I which goes into effect tomorro. I also have an ad budget. I’ll update you later on how that’s going.

Plan: I haven’t posted to my reader group as regularly as I want to.

Reality: I’m working this. Upside, I did a mini course on using Instagram and have seen a major boost in engagement and a few new followers. I also noticed a few sales related to some of my posts.

Upside, because of my new Instagram posting schedule, I’m posting to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr almost daily. Next on my list is Pinterest.

Plan: New covers for my Alex Chronicles Series.

Reality: I have created three sets of covers and still haven’t found the ones I like. However, I have until the end of the month to make a decision.

Plan: Update my newsletter

Reality: This was on my list for March, but I did it in February. I visited Lauren Layne’s website and saw her newsletter. I fell in love with it, so I developed my version. I like it and hope my readers do as well. Another change I made which ties in with my newsletter is my logo. I was motivated to make a change after seeing my friend Saharra K Sandhu’s new logo. I now have a logo I like.

Summary: I’ve done 24 things, but I still have thirty five things left for this quarter. I know it sounds like a lot. However, I know some of those won’t be done because they relate to a book I pushed to later in the year. And a few are admin related [i.e., setting up ads, switching my lead magnet, updating my website, reviewing my schedule, etc.]. Those are things I need to sit down and take a couple of hours and clear off my planner.

To summarize February…it’s better than last year. I see a plan for the rest of the year I can implement. I also know, I’ll be way ahead of the game next year.

Next month, I’ll summarize my first quarter and tell you which planning tools have worked so far.

Have a great month and happy spring.

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