My blogging nightmare

I decided that it was time to get a domain. I thought it would be a good idea to draw in more readers. I think I should have just stuck with my blog. I bought a domain name, since it was just twelve dollars a year. Anyway, I'm not the greatest with web design. I don't really know much about building a website. I bought the domain name jademcauthor.com and tried to link to this account. That resulted in me without a website for an hour. I am still working on getting things linked correctly. 

Casual Friday: My first job

My first job, as you may imagine, wasn't anything glamorous. In fact, it was the opposite. My first job was preparing food at McDonald's. I used to have to wake every morning at around four in the morning so that I could prepare to be there for five in the morning. I did things like prepare the salads and yogurts. It wasn't the greatest job, but it allowed me to buy a cd or dvd each week while I saved the rest of my money for a car. It was while working there that I started playing a lot of video games. I played video games since I was young, but it's different when you're older and you play them. I started playing games like the sims and Spyro. I started going to a place called Rhino Games that sold used games for older gaming systems. I would get a few games every week and play them with my sister. We would usually go together. Rhino games had a deal that if you bought two games you got one free, I usually let my sister pick one and I picked the other and we would both decide on the free one. That's actually how I ended up playing Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil is one of my favorite games, well the Resident Evil games that I've played. I guess this blog is more about what I spent my money on from my first job.

Do I prefer Kindle or actual books?

If you had asked me this a year ago I would have said actual books. I used my kindle from time to time, but it was never my favorite platform. Kindle was an app on my phone, which meant that it was hard to see, and I've always loved holding a book in my hands. I love having a book mark and putting the book down when I need a break from reading. I realized very recently that there are a lot of benefits to the kindle that I have been overlooking. Price is a major factor to me in the books that I do buy. I might love an author, but when payday comes my rent comes first. Kindle has a lot of low cost and free books. I don't really feel bad about spending money on kindle because it's not much and if I don't like the author at least I've given them a try. Another great thing about kindle is that there are more self published authors there than anywhere else. A lot of people may say that's a bad thing. It does mean that there will be more books which haven't been edited. In most cases, I can look past bad editing for a good book. If someone asked me which I preferred now, I'm sure it would be a tie. I love paperback books, but I also love reading a book on kindle and being able to bring it everywhere.

More old writing!

As I was digging through some of my things I found some more old writing. This is from when I was sending things off to the Long Ridge Writer's group. You can see my progress and see what they wanted me to change. You can also see how immature my writing was at the time. I think I've grown as a writer, and I did learn from the writer's group.

Very Old Writing

I was going through my stuff and found this very old piece of writing. I was thinking about doing something with vampires and angels, but I'm not sure that I ever will.

Business Cards

My business cards just came in and I am excited. I might go with another design next time, but for now these are good to test and see if they help with marketing. I plan to carry them around and leave them anywhere I find a bulletin board. I also plan to give some out to people that I meet.

Casual Friday: My writing origins

Many superheroes have an origin story, a story that explains who they are or how they got to be who they are. I realized today that I hadn't shared much about myself and I also didn't share much about my early years writing. I think that I always had an interest in writing. I'm not sure if I was one of those authors who used tell stories before I was able to write, but I do know that I made everyone read to me. One of my early favorites was the Bernstein bears.

When I started going to school I started writing short stories about dogs and cats and my friends. As I grew older I started writing stories with vampires and werewolves in them. Needless to say, Goosebumps had a big influence on me.

When I turned twelve I started writing songs, but they were more like poems because I didn't have anyway way to make music. I didn't play instruments, and I think that most people would be happy if I didn't try to sing. I kept writing poems until I turned about eighteen and then I took a break from writing. I didn't write again for years. When I did decide to write again I was in my twenties, and I no longer wanted to write songs. I wanted to write stories. I had an idea for one in particular, it was about a woman who could turn into a fox. The idea wouldn't go away so I had to write it down. I got a good way into the story before the computer I was currently using crashed. I was beyond upset. I hadn't done anything to back it up. I may go back and rewrite it someday, but it was my early work and probably wasn't very good. I started on another story, and then I started querying agents. I made a couple of really huge querying mistakes during that time. I think the biggest mistake was that I didn't ever finish anything before I sent out queries. I was just so excited that I decided to research how to query and then I sent out my work. I thought that I could work on a deadline, but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have been able to. Every response that I received was a rejection, so I knew I had to work harder. I decided that I should give up on querying for awhile and work on the actual act of writing. I finished the first rough draft of Hair of The Wolf, which was titled something different at the time. After finishing Hair of The Wolf I decided that I didn't want to go the traditional route. I had heard a lot about Amanda Hocking at that time, and while I know her story isn't typical, I also learned a lot about self publishing. I decided that it was the way that I should go with my work. I could get my writing out there quickly and learn more about the publishing business. I could make mistakes and learn from them. Anyway, long story short, that's how I got to be where I am. Hopefully I will be able to release my book soon.

Why I want negative reviews.

My novel should be out soon, and as much as I'm scared of getting negative reviews, I also want negative reviews. I don't want all negative reviews, and hopefully I'll have more positive than negative. Perhaps I should just say that I want honest reviews. I want to be able to look at a negative review and know what the person writing the review liked and what they didn't like. I don't know if I will be able to read all reviews, I know the more reviews I get the harder it will be to read them all. I would love to have a lot of reviews. If someone feels strongly enough about my work to review it I would like to know what they thought.

Weekend Review: Divergent the movie

If you are interested in reading my review for the book please click here. I wanted to like Divergent. I thought it would be a cross between the Hunger Games and the Giver, both of which I enjoyed. It wasn't. It was an average film with very little to think about. Everything in the plot was basically spelled out for you. The main characters were boring, and their romance came out of nowhere. The action scenes were decent, but they weren't near what they could have been.

How I portray myself vs. how I should portray myself

For the past few weeks I've been looking at my blog and thinking about how it portrays me. Would I want to buy a book from this author if I happened to stumble across this blog? No, I wouldn't. It's not the design of the blog itself that's been bothering me lately. I know that needs improvement. I need a few days to just sit down with the blog and give it a face lift. It's a small bit better than it used to be, but still not where I need it to be. What's been bothering me the most about my blog is the posts that I've been making lately. I've been writing short posts that aren't very well thought out. It doesn't make me attractive as a writer. As I noted before, I wouldn't want to buy a book from someone who doesn't take the time to work on the actual posts in their blog. It would make me wonder if the book was going to have similar content. I've worked really hard on my actual novel, but when you're self published, or planning to be, you are your own marketing team. You have to pay attention to what you put out there. Every blog post, facebook status, and twitter update is a chance to reach more people.

Does a book have to be well written to be enjoyable?

If you asked ten different people what makes a book enjoyable for them you'd probably get ten different answers. I wouldn't be able to think of just one answer if I was asked that question. Something I've never really thought about is if the book has to be well written to be enjoyable. With the recent release of the 50 Shades movie, I've noticed lots of people commenting about how poorly written. I haven't read the book myself (or seen the movie), so I can't really say what if the errors in the book would be enough for me to put it down. I have put down books in the past because they were poorly written. Although I have put books down, that doesn't mean that they have to be perfectly written to be enjoyable. A book can have typos, or use the same words over and over more times than it should and still be a good book. I think a book can have errors, I am going to try my best to write the best book that I can.