Category: Daily Life

In Which Our Brave Heroine Becomes an Entrepreneur

I have meant to post a million times these last couple weeks, but it kept getting away from me.  Blog posts are always skittering away as soon as I turn on the light.  Or, in a less creepy metaphor, they’re like Lucy and the football.

Anyway, I relaunched my Etsy shop this past week and applied for my business license!  Applying  for a license was actually pretty easy–I just filled out a form and paid a small fee–but it felt pretty cool to declare myself a business.  Here’s a screenshot of my Etsy shop:

If you live in the NW, I got an artist’s table at GeekGirlCon, August 11th and 12th.  Come stop by and say hello!

I also went to Comicon a few weeks ago, and it was amazing!  I hung out with author pal Karen Kincy and got to meet Tara Strong, the voice of Twilight Sparkle (and Batgirl in Batman: the Animated Series, Timmy in Fairly Oddparents, Rikku in FFX, Bubbles in Powerpuff Girls, Harley in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, and she’s been in about a million other things, too).  She was so nice and great to see in person!  I gave her a stuffed Twilight Sparkle I made her and she was amazed and hugged it and let me take pics!

John DiMaggio, the voice of Bender on Futurama, was in the next booth over, leaving voicemails for fans from an angry Bender.  I got to go to the Futurama panel as well as the Batman panel, and everyone was amazing.  I’m definitely hoping to go again next year!

I’m back!

What? You didn’t know I was gone? Well, I was. My lack of posting this past week or so was due to me temporarily joining the 9 – 5 world. Or, technically, the 8 – 4:30 world. Now I’ve returned to the ranks of the gainfully happily self-employed.

This is going to be a brief post because I have a literature review assignment due on Saturday and I, er, haven’t picked a topic yet.  Hence, a bulleted list to create the appearance of being brief:

  • Harper Madigan: Junior High Private Eye is now out in paperback!  The paperback is gorgeous.  Here are some pictures to show you just how gorgeous.



For those of you holding out for a signed copy, you’ll be able to order one from me very soon.  Like, starting next week.

  • I heard from my cover artist for The Trials of Renegade X,  and the cover art is almost done!!!  If you want to see it before the general public, be sure to sign up for my newsletter so when everyone else sees it, you can be like, “Oh, that?  That is so last week.”  Except you’ll probably get to see it more like two weeks early, but saying, “That is so last fortnight,” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
  • I’ve got another post coming up on revisions and editing, this time focusing on the little stuff, as opposed to the big picture, so stay tuned for that.
  • And if you enjoy my posts on writing, you’ll be excited to know I’m working on my first ever non-fiction book (!!!!!), entitled BREAKING THE RULES: AN INTERMEDIATE GUIDE TO WRITING.  If you’re past the beginner stage but don’t yet have a book contract and want to amp up your writing, this book is for you.  And who doesn’t want to amp up their writing?  Especially for less than the price of a tall mocha frappuccino?

So there you have it.  These are all upcoming things for you to ponder while I desperately calmly finish up my literature review.

Post Birthday/Book Birthday Post!

My 30th birthday turned out to be excellent.  I can’t believe I’m starting a new decade of my life!  Anyway, it was a great birthday, despite the two hour inconclusive doctor visit from hell.  (They decided I don’t have asthma, but don’t know what might actually be wrong.  Um… yay?)

On the bright side, I got to go out to dinner afterwards, which is one of my favorite things to do.  There was much nomming of noms and it was good and we had a little lava cake at the end, which is the best kind of cake.  And later I got a surprise visit from some friends who took me out for milkshakes, and a great time was had by all!

And I released my book, like a kraken!  *pictures it swimming furiously through the ocean towards unsuspecting pirate ships*  My first indie venture, and I am quite pleased.  The cover turned out amazing, the ebook is very nicely coded (if I do say so myself), and people are buying it.  And saying good things:

This book has got a lot going for it. Is this a hard boiled detective novel, or a teen adventure story? You decide. For me, the juxtaposition of the two is what makes it shine. If you liked Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, you’ll enjoy Harper Madigan, not because it’s similar, but because it’s so different.

Reminiscent of Buffy or Angel, the story bounces between serious and funny without giving the reader a minute to catch his breath. It’s not “belly-laugh” funny, but more, “cool as a cucumber” funny.

That review really captures what I love about this book!  Sometimes that’s so hard to put into words, even when you’re the author.  And any day when my work gets compared to Buffy or Angel is a good day in my book.

The paperback version is almost ready.  My proof copy is on its way, though it might not get here until the 12th.  I am spoiled from Amazon Prime, and I thought since Createspace is an Amazon company that it would carry over, but no…  But it’s shipped and will be here soon.  Hopefully everything will be sparkly and wonderful and error-free and I’ll be able to approve the book for publication.

You will be able to get signed copies directly from me once it’s out, too.  I’ll post more details about that when it releases.

A Gaggle of Announcements

Loud honking announcements that will chase you around the lake and beak you to death for a crust of bread!

Er… probably not.  These are actually very lovely announcements that don’t resemble geese in any way.  But gaggle is a cool word.  It’s right up there with gusset.

Anyway, onto the announcements!

  • In exactly 28 days I will turn 30!  (That’s March 2nd, for those of you who forgot it was leap year.)
  • I have TWO–count them, TWO–new books coming out in March!
  • One is GROWING UP DEAD, a humorous MG about a vampire trying to survive 8th grade.
  • The other is HARPER MADIGAN: JUNIOR HIGH PRIVATE EYE, a noir detective novel set in junior high.

I know, neither of these is the Renegade X sequel.  But it’s coming!  And in the meantime you can tide yourself over with some more great reading. ;)  Each of these will be available in both ebook and paperback.

Blurbs and covers will be up very soon!  If you want to be notified when these books are available for purchase, you can sign up for my newsletter in the top right corner of my site. And if you’re a book blogger interested in reviewing either–or both–of these books, please email me at CampChelsea@gmail.com or through the contact sheet on my site.

Too many projects + my 24 hours of fame

As I’m trying to manage my time and projects and whatnot, it’s kind of dawning on me that I have a LOT of stuff going on right now. My list, let me show you it–not necessarily in any particular order:

–edit three books for self-publication
–after editing, format them all for printing and ebook formats
–learn to format self-pubbed books for printing and ebook formats
–write the Renegade X sequel
–finish/keep up with all my crochet commissions
–keep up with two grad school classes
–do enough tasks to keep my online job because I like having a safety net
–wait for agent notes on my proposal book, then do edits so it can go on sub

Whew! It’s a lot to do, but I kind of love it. Okay, I definitely love it, but there are times when it’s a bit overwhelming how much stuff I’ve given myself to do.

And yesterday was absolutely crazy. I woke up to over 500 feedback messages on DeviantArt. The day before had been free Premium Membership day, so I thought maybe there’d been some kind of malfunction when it switched my account back to the free version. But I pretty quickly realized that wasn’t the case and that something was driving a bazillion new people to my account, specifically to this picture:

These are the main characters from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (which is an awesome show–go watch it if you haven’t seen it). It turned out it had been picked as a Daily Deviation. I didn’t know what that meant, but I started to piece it together when I saw my picture show up on the bottom of site, along with other artwork that was being featured. So, for those not in the know, basically DeviantArt selects images to feature each day. And they picked mine. O__o I was shocked they picked me, once I realized what it was, and it’s still kind of sinking in.

Ponies!

As some of you probably know, I crochet. A lot. And in the last two months I started doing design work, which before then I thought I kind of hated. Because it was hard and I wasn’t passionate about anything enough to *want* to put in the work to get past that stage. And then along came My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I LOVE this show! I’m a proud brony. Or, well, pegasister. I’d been obsessed with this show for some time, and then a friend showed me some pics of crocheted ponies on eBay. And at first I was like, “It would be cool to make stuff like that, but I don’t like designing things.” But I couldn’t stop thinking about them and got really excited about trying my hand at it.

And I did! And it’s been going really well! Designing was hard at first, but now that I’ve learned the basics it’s become super addicting. I’m at the point now where I can sit down with and idea and start making it and have it actually turn out how I pictured. I even made sea ponies from the old 80s show (which I also LOVED, even if, sadly, it doesn’t hold up for me as an adult).

I also got over my laziness/annoyance about uploading and posting pictures, so here are some of my creations (you can see the rest at DeviantArt).

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic characters Rainbow Dash, Pinky Pie, and Rarity as sea ponies:

Fluttershy in her gala dress:

And my newest creations, baby versions of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy:

And I promise I’m still writing, even if ponies have kind of taken over my brain, or at least my apartment, which is now full of pony-colored yarn.

Happy 2012!

2011 was a pretty crazy year. It feels like it dragged on forever and at the same time was a huge whirlwind of hectic chaos that flew right by. I started grad school (a master’s program in Library and Information Science) and spent a week in Syracuse, NY hanging out with other people in the program, who were all amazingly awesome. I had jury duty the day I got back (again!), but thankfully I didn’t actually have to go in.

Writing wise, it’s felt like a pretty slow year, but maybe that’s just the last couple of months talking. I wrote about 90k over three books (not including notes and throwaway material). One of the books I finished, one of them I put on hold indefinitely, and the other is going out on proposal. And while I sold Russian rights for Renegade X–not sure if I ever announced that–and Disney renewed their movie option, I didn’t sell anything new in 2011, just like I didn’t in 2010. In 2010, that was devastating. In 2011, it was frustrating and sometimes discouraging, but I’ve more or less come to terms with it and learned a lot about myself in the process.

Actually, I learned a lot about myself in 2011 and about what makes me happy. I discovered I like having a variety of odd jobs. And I like jobs you sign up for and test into rather than interviewing for. I suck at interviews, but I’m great with tests. I don’t want writing to be the only focus in my life, but I do want to be able to focus on it when I choose to. So I like having my own schedule.

And I never thought self-publishing would make me happy, but in fact I’m ecstatic about it! (In case you missed it, I recently announced that I’m going to be self-pubbing a sequel to Renegade X.) Everyone’s been super supportive of it, and while I still want to be traditionally published as well, getting to work at my own pace and keeping myself as busy as I want to will be a nice complement to traditional pubbing.

I also finally started crocheting plushies for my Etsy shop. which I’d always sort of wanted to do but never really thought I would. And it turns out it’s wonderfully fulfilling. So between the Etsy shop and the self-publishing epiphany, I’ve been really taken by surprise about what makes me happy. I always thought I’d *know* ahead of time what would make me happy, and it’s kind of pleasantly surprising that I was wrong.

So that was my year in a nutshell. I hate making New Year’s resolutions, plus if this year’s taught me anything, it’s that I don’t always know what my goals are, so I won’t make any. But I can tell you I’m looking forward to the new year. I’ll be turning 30 in March and starting a new decade of my life, and I’m ready to embrace it.

The secret to success, as demonstrated by my cats.

I was watching my two cats fight yesterday. Teisel, the big one that looks like an ocelot, refuses to attack unless he’s *perfectly* calculated exactly how he’s going to do it. When he’s going to pounce, where he’s going to bite, and, most importantly, whether or not he thinks he’ll be successful. He only wants to attack if he’s going to win. But he loses every fight.

Kitten (the black one in the pic–you can see his eyes–who isn’t actually a kitten anymore, but the name totally stuck), on the other hand, has a completely different fighting style. He’s quick and bold. He makes lots of frequent attacks, even if a good percentage of them never make contact. He tackles and lunges and snaps his jaws at Teisel, not bothering to calculate whether he’ll actually hit him or not. Like I said, a lot of them don’t actually find their mark. You could say his attacks fail a lot, though it’s obvious he doesn’t see it that way. And yet, he kicks Teisel’s ass every time.

I think you can see where I’m going with this, because it applies not just to cat fights, but to writing. When writing a book, a lot of writers subscribe to Teisel’s methods. They don’t want to fail or be embarrassed or have anything go wrong so badly that they meticulously plan, and calculate, and make sure their attempt is going to be *perfect,* whether that means taking years to painstakingly craft their first book – because they want their first book to be good enough to get published, so they won’t have any “failures” – or if it means never submitting any books until they think it’s a “sure thing.” But Teisel hardly ever gets any attacks in. And when he does, no matter how perfectly he thinks he’s calculated everything, it’s never a sure thing. Sometimes he makes contact, sure, but never as much as Kitten does, and he always loses. And it’s obvious he always feels embarrassed and angry and like a failure.

Kitten’s method takes more guts. His first attempt might not be successful, and even if it is, it takes more than one attack to win a fight. But he doesn’t waste time worrying about failure–I don’t think Kitten even has a concept of what failure is (though Teisel is very conscious of it). Kitten attacks often, not waiting for the right time or calculating how to win without making any mistakes. In fact, technically he makes lots of mistakes, but never as big of a mistake as Teisel, who’s too cautious to make a move. Kitten wins every fight (seriously, EVERY fight, and they tackle each other pretty often), not just because he’s not afraid to make mistakes or fail, but because he doesn’t even see his mistakes as being mistakes.

They’re just part of the process of kicking ass.

And so, if mistakes are necessary to win, does that really make them mistakes? At the end of a fight, Teisel’s attacks might have made 100% contact, whereas Kitten’s are more like 50%, and yet it’s clear who feels like a loser. I’m not even saying that Kitten feels like a winner, because he doesn’t really care. He just wants to have fun. It’s Teisel, the one who cares so much about failing that he’ll never take a chance, who sets himself up for disappointment

My crazy summer is over at last!

Or at least it’s almost over. I have ONE MORE DAY of my temporary day job, and then I’m finished. I survived all the craziness of starting grad school, going to the week long summer residency at Syracuse (and almost not being able to get my plane ticket because financial aid took so long to come), coming home to jury duty (thankfully I never got called in), working a full time job while finishing up classes, and dealing with a tax issue that almost prevented me from getting financial aid. *PHEW*

And did I mention finding out that the Renegade X paperback got cancelled? There was that, too. And then there was also a brief scare where I thought there weren’t going to be any more Monstrumologist books, but luckily they came through!

So there were good things this summer, too, like Disney renewing the film option. And I got a new critique partner, who’s been giving me wonderful feedback and also giving me the swift kick in the pants I needed to get back on track and start writing every day. I’ve been putting in two hours a day five days a week (though I’ll admit to slacking during the past two weeks of day job exhaustion), and that’s worked wonders on my productivity levels. I have a book out on sub, and I’ve got two more that I’m working on. And the residency at Syracuse was amazing. It was one of the best experiences of my life! I made a ton of new friends, got inspired by teachers passionate about their work, and visited their special collections section of the library. Which was, ZOMG, the best thing ever.

I specifically signed up for a distance program so I wouldn’t have to move, but then they went and showed me their collection of 4,000 year old clay tablets, and an old map book written in Latin where what would eventually be the U.S. is a giant blob, and a piece of papyrus from Cleopatra’s time, and many more amazing artifacts, most of them written in either Latin or French (when they weren’t in English). Um, dude, I totally have a background in that. And the school totally has a certificate option where you combine library classes with museum classes and get qualified to work with these objects. There’s just one catch–most of the classes are only available at the school.

You can guess what I’m thinking about doing next year.

And as for the cancellation of the Renegade X paperback, it’s unfortunate, obviously, but I’d like to say that I have the best fans ever. The responses I’ve gotten to this book have been SO wonderful, whether it’s been through positive reviews or from readers emailing me to tell me how much they loved Damien’s story. And having that kind of support makes this business so much easier to deal with, so if you love a book, tell the author.

And if you love Renegade X and want to help spread the word, you can blog about it, post a review on Amazon, or even just tell your friends. And you know what else? Tell your library, especially if they don’t already have a copy. You don’t have to spend money to support a book. Obviously sales are awesome, but spreading information is just as important, and it’s free.

So if you loved the book, tell your friends. And if you hated it, tell your enemies. ;)

Syracuse

I leave for Syracuse, NY TOMORROW night. I’m flying through the night and getting there in the morning–fun, I know–and then I have the rest of the day to rest and get settled before classes start on Saturday. I’m going to be there for a week long residency, with 8 hours of class a day, plus homework in the evenings. O__o I’ll be staying in the dorms, which I’ve never done before, so that will be a new experience. (You never what experiences will matter later or be helpful…)

I’ve loaded up my Nook with lots of library books, some rereads, and a bunch of samples from B&N. This will be my first time travelling with my Nook, and I’ve got an 8 hour trip on the way there and 12 hours on the way back, so I’m thankful I can carry enough reading material to cover that! I know last year when I was coming back from BEA, where I got a bunch of free books, I brought three or four with me on the plane and still had to scramble during a layover in SF to find another one. Which turned out to be a good thing because I found the 2nd Dexter book and bought it and got hooked. I’d seen the show, but didn’t know what to expect from the books. But they’re AWESOME. And they go in different directions than the show. I won’t spoil anything, but I will say that the show doesn’t parallel the books all that much (though I can’t speak for the first one because I still haven’t read it yet–I get the impression it’s pretty similar to the first season, though there are some big differences) and they have their own story lines and a great voice–well worth reading.

Did you know that Chameleon Circuit released a new album yesterday? If you haven’t heard of them, they write songs about Dr. Who and they’re amazing. Their first album was good, and their new one, Still Got Legs, just blows me away. I can’t stop listening to it. You can listen to the whole thing for free here.