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So I “finished�� writing Enchanted last Thursday after a day long marathon writing spree. Enchanted itself is a long way from being published though. It gets a week off so my brain doesn’t implode, and then I start the first round of editing. The ending will need some reworking, but I finally have all the finer parts of formatting down so I won’t be spending buckets of time on that besides getting the cover pages ready. Myrrhlynn has an idea for the cover, but she still needs to find the right reference photos and font, etc.

I’m really happy with Enchanted, and I have to say it was probably the easiest book to write so far in my career as an indie author, even though I did a lot of research to complete it. I’m a little shocked to realize I’m going to miss writing it! It has some great scenes and I really fell in love with the characters.

In other news I’m currently editing My Life at the MBRC. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, but I have caught a few formatting mistakes which I must apologize for. I should finish editing it by the end of this week, which will be perfect because I’ll swap over to editing Enchanted next. After I do the first read through of Enchanted I’ll put it aside again for a few days/a week and then do a spit-shine editing read through to clean up any rough edges. After that it will be ready for publishing!

That’s it for today, Champions. I’ll have an interesting post to give you on Wednesday, but for now please celebrate with me over the end of Enchanted!

Today I wanted to talk about Book Trailers. I can’t seem to make my mind up about them, sometimes I stumble across the rare book trailer that makes me go “GIVE ME THAT BOOK RIGHT NOW OR ELSE!!�� but mostly I find trailers that make me go “…why did you bother?��

To begin with I’m not exactly certain what the point of a book trailer is. I suppose it’s another way to spread the word about a book as they can be posted on Youtube and shared on twitter/facebook/etc. Some people feel that book trailers in a way violate books because the beauty of reading is to use your imagination and picture what’s going on. Personally I think that’s a load of hogwash, because we could say the same thing about a book’s cover.

My personal beef with trailers is that many of them are unimaginative in that they use the cover art and zoom in on certain portions or pan across it and use words that are found on the back cover of the book. If I wanted to know what the cover looked like I would have just looked at the cover. Of course, I say that as a loving critic. I have myself and I’m not certain how I feel about them.

I think part of the problem is that book trailers is an art form that is still being discovered. The more book trailers are produced the higher quality they will be made at. Here are a few cream of the crop book trailers that dazzled me. Enjoy!

Sorry folks, it’s a bad poetry day. I spent most of the morning binge writing Enchanted, so I fried every cell in my brain. It’s for a good cause, yes, but sadly it means I have no brain cells left to share for a post which means you all get to suffer through a bad poetry day. HORRAH!

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The Donut

If life is a donut

then I’m in the middle

I want to go nuts

but you can’t eat and fiddle

This will go straight to my butt

that’s hardly a riddle

But when it sits in my gut

the donut makes me giggle

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Be afraid, Champions. Be very afraid.

It has been a little over a week since I last gave a status report on Enchanted–book two of King Arthur and Her Knights–so I wanted to talk about it today. I’ve written about two thirds of Enchanted, and I’m hoping to finish it in the next two weeks.

I have decided that it’s going to have an October release date, and it’s very likely it will be released the second or third weekend. I’m probably only going to offer it for free for two or three days instead of the usual five, but when I get a timeline pinned down I’ll be sure to post it here and frequently remind you all.

So why am I waiting to release it until mid October if I plan to finish it in the next 14 days? For a few reasons. First of all I want to spend a greater amount of time editing Enchanted before posting it on Amazon. It’s pretty standard for writers to let their books sit for a couple of months or weeks, before taking a stab at editing because it really helps clear the brain, so I’m going to give myself a week off before I launch into editing. It is also because I want to get a head start on my next book.

I’m going to take a break from the King Arthur and her Knights series to write a stand alone novel. It is a YA fantasy story, and it will be about Princess Ahira’s length so the planned price tag is $2.99. I’m still hammering out details over this mysterious book, but I wanted to warn you Britt Fans so you know you probably won’t be seeing another King Arthur and her Knights book until December or January 2014.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, Champions. Have a great weekend!

Over the holiday weekend I tackled a project I have long been wanting to do: sanding, restaining, and finishing a small, ancient bookshelf I own. It has turned out fantastic! Much nicer than I ever dreamed. It has also put me in the book decorating mood so I’ve been trolling pintrest for things like bookshelves and bookends. In my Pintrest tour I found quite a few cute little bookends I wanted to share with you! (The bookshelves will be featured on a later date.)

Sadly I have only one set of bookends. My bookcases and bookshelves tend to be stuffed and overflowing. Thanks for reading Champions, I will see you Friday.

A refreshing pine scene to keep your books upright!

RUUUUUUN! THE BOOKS ARE GOING TO CRUSH YOU!

Isn’t this adorable! I love bookends where one piece ‘interacts�� with the other so to speak.

Classic Fairy Tale opening and ending. The perfect way to the start and end a bookshelf, right?

While this looks absolutely awesome my one thought is that it would probably take up a great deal of space.

These dear deer are simple but elegant. I love it!

Even though I have released seven books on the Kindle to date, and I’ve written countless more stories that will never see the light of day, I’m still learning about writing. Writing is a never ending process because you never stop learning. Even if one has all the technical and grammar rules mastered there’s always more to learn about characterization and plotting the plot.

Recently I learned the lie of -ly adjectives. Bluntly put, when writing a book about 75% of -ly adjectives/words are unnecessary. What the heck is a -ly adjective? Exactly what it sounds like, an adjective that ends with ly. Here are a few examples: Quietly, quickly, softly, gently, angrily, sadly, and jumpily. Those sound like words that are fantastic and need to be included, right? Wrong! These -ly adjectives usually occur when paired with a verb, in example: quietly whispered and quickly ran.

Think about quietly whispered for a moment. Is it really necessary to say you quietly whispered? Wouldn’t it automatically be assumed you’re quiet because otherwise you wouldn’t be whispering? The same goes for quickly ran, if you’re running wouldn’t it be obvious that you’re being quick about it? The -ly adjectives are unnecessary because the verb already gives you an idea about the action and how it should be played out.

As a side note suddenly is a ly word that gets over used a lot. “Suddenly the bear walked out of the woods.�� It describes that the bear arrived all of a sudden, which is OK. However, the sentence would be a lot more remarkable if you used a stronger verb to describe that instead of the word suddenly.

Please note that I said about 75% of the -ly adjectives/words are unnecessary. You’re going to run into -ly words that are necessary. The idea behind this writing trick is that you watch for words that aren’t needed because the verb already describes it accurately. Some words, like accurately for instance, are going to be necessary because they change the idea of the verb. (ie: Accurately shot as opposed to inaccurately shot)

If you’re writing and you find you have a lot of -ly words that are necessary don’t stress out about it. I have often discovered that people make up a lot of writing rules. There are so many rules, in fact, that they often cancel each other out. Personally, I learned that it’s best to take these writing “rules�� as tips, so I watch for them but I also don’t hesitate to break them.

That’s it for today, Champions. I’ll see you Monday!

Today is a celebration because Life Reader earned 4 out 5 stars from Star, blogger of ! Huzzah! Reviews by people who enjoy reading my books always make me purr.

In other good news I’ve gone back to writing Enchanted, book two of King Arthur and Her Knights. Enchanted seems much more determined to be written than Enthroned was, which sounds a little weird. What I mean is that this book is coming together very easily and everything (and everyone) is co-operating. Right now I’m sitting close to 10,000 words, which means I’m almost a third through writing it. That doesn’t sound very impressive, but I had to take a week off to fix Ahira and another week off to edit Enthroned.

That is all for today, it is a super short post but I will make up for it on Friday. I’m planning to post some writing tips for all of you aspiring authors. Thank you for reading, Champions, and enjoy the rest of your week!

Princess Ahira has been re-edited and is ready to be re-released on Amazon at her new price of $2.99. I’m hoping to put her up early tonight. If you haven’t bought Princess Ahira yet and you want a cheaper (less edited) copy I suggest you snag one right now. Otherwise if you’re patient I will probably put Ahira up for free later this year/early next year.

I’m very pleased with all the edits I made. I think the story will be a smoother read, and I fixed a few minor characterization issues.

After this I’m returning my attention to Enchanted, book two of King Arthur and Her Knights. As editing Princess Ahira took longer than expected it’s pretty safe to bet that Enchanted sadly won’t be released until early October.

In other news I’m slowly being driven mad. While a few of the big name authors I like (Gail Carriger’s Etiquette and Espionage, Ally Carter’s Heist Society) have done a jolly good job of continuously producing new books some of my favorite books/series haven’t had any new books in years. (Cough, Tamora Pierce and Robin McKinley cough) I have patiently waited for Pegasus II for over THREE YEARS, and they still don’t have a publishing date! Pierce hasn’t been as bad as McKinley, but it feels like over the last few years she’s taken much longer to release books as well. These books are well worth the wait, but I would do a lot to have McKinley post even one blog about the progress of Pegasus II. (For those of you who haven’t read Pegasus, read it! It’s fantastic!)

That’s all for today, Champions. Hopefully I’ll have some more amusing news to share with you come Wednesday. Ta!

To most people writing a book is quite obviously a creative venture–and I agree. However I do think many cranks in the book world (publishers, book stores, advertising, etc) lose that creativity and keep doing the same thing over and over again until it feels stale, over used, and trite.

Because of that I want to hold up stores/publishers that break that mold. Today my example is Anagram Bookshop. Sadly Anagram closed down in 2011, but before then it was a gorgeous little bookshop located in Prague–yes Prague of the Czech Republic. I never had a chance to visit this store, but it always received high reviews for�� the store location (it was in the cellar of an old house just off a church courtyard) and store layout.

I first heard about Anagram Bookshop, though, through it’s promotional ads.

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Even their tagline, Words Create Worlds, just makes me grin. Most bookstores that I find these days pretty much follow the Barnes and Nobles layout. I adore Barnes and Nobles. I could stay in one for hours, but there’s something to be said about the more individualistic bookstores, like Anagram. Barnes and Nobles is a bookstore–a glorious heaven of a bookstore–but my favorite bookstores are the ones where you step into a different world when you enter their doors.

What about you, Champions? Have you ever found a transporting/creativity brimming bookstore?

It has come to my attention that a few of my older books, Like the Robyn Hood series and Princess Ahira, are in great need of some TLE, or Tender Loving Editing. My editor, Sunshine, recently combed through both of the Robyn Hood books and I’m devoting myself to Princess Ahira. Princess Ahira is getting a formatting facelift, and I’m tightening up the writing as I go. (In example I’m replacing words that don’t necessarily belong in the world/time that I portray Ahira to live in, fixing errors, cutting back descriptive language, etc.)

Robyn Hood will be getting the same treatment from me, but for now Ahira is the book that is really getting a remake. I’m announcing this because when I release the new, cleansed version of Princess Ahira I plan to mark the price up to $2.99. The new version will include some bonus content (two short stories) but if you don’t mind formatting errors and you do mind the upcoming price tag I suggest you snag a copy while it’s available at 99 cents.

Some of you may be wondering why I’m bothering to fix books I’ve already released. Truth be told I wasn’t aware of how to properly format a word file so it could be loaded onto a Kindle when I released Princess Ahira. I’m much better at that process now, so when I look back at Princess Ahira it’s more than a little embarrassing. Plus I am fond of Princess Ahira, and no story deserves the horrid errors I’ve discovered in it.

Thanks for reading, Champions, I will speak to you on Wednesday!