I’ve been busy writing up a storm. Or riding out the storm? We had a close call with Hurricane Idalia this past week. She missed us but hit just about spot on of some land we have further north. I don’t know yet how bad the damage might’ve been. It’s made me focus on natural disasters and I’m extremely thankful it didn’t hit here. I don’t do well without AC.
I entered a writing competition. It’s for a short story. The deadline is in November, the results won’t be until February 2024. I’m really happy with what I wrote regardless of how it fares in the contest. I entered another contest for this weekend. They send you a writing prompt at noon on Saturday and you have to submit it by noon Sunday. Hopefully I’ll remember I did it and submit something. I’m not sure what’s so attractive about a contest, I guess hoping for recognition? I don’t care about the prizes very much, but a little cash wouldn’t hurt to offset the cover design cost for my novel, Force of Corruption.
I think it’s a worthy investment to hire a professional designer. I’m looking forward to what she designs. I’ve gotten past the halfway mark in the second book in the series. Crossed the 50,000 word mark, woohoo!
I am a member of multiple author, writing, and reading groups on Facebook. There are some groups geared towards ARC readers. Advance Reader Copy. The idea is that you send your book to a reader prior to the launch date in exchange for an honest review. I think it’s a good deal for the reader and the author. Reviews are like gold to an author!
Having no idea how to go about asking for Arc readers, I lurked on the groups. I read other requests. The authors all seemed to have an application for the readers to apply to read the book. Most of the forms were made through Google Forms. Another tool I’m completely unfamiliar with, yes I’m really new and clueless!
I use Word to write. Google docs is another popular format. I’ve read that publishers prefer Word, and .doc or .docx formats. I played around with the forms and I was able to make one that looks halfway decent. So I filled one out myself to see what happens next. Nothing! I thought maybe I would get an email with the response. Nope. As usual when I’m lost I asked my husband if he knew what to do. He showed me how to sign in to Google and find the responses. It’s pretty easy once you know how. He sent me a link with Google instructions to find responses for Google Forms.
Now I have my own response to my Arc form and now I need to make a post on one the ARC groups and put up my form and see what happens. I’m posting about my short story which is already live on the Kindle Store. I’m still using it as my experiment for all of this stuff. Normally you would do this for a book before its launch. Maybe two-four weeks before, then the reviews are there when you release the book. Who knows if anyone wants to read a short story, maybe since it’s free somebody will be interested. I’ll try to remember to keep you posted on what happens, ARC-wise.
Thanks for reading!