Happy Release Day for THE SPIDER INSIDE HER

***UPDATE***  It’s finally available on Amazon.  Woohoooooooo! 

So where are things right now?  It looks like Barnes and Noble has Amazon beat when it comes to file conversions.    Hopefully, Amazon will make it happen some time today.  When I loaded it up to Smashwords, I was #7 in the queue.  OMG. Either the new and improved Meat Grinder is really that awesome or I caught Smashwords at a slow time.  I’m better it’s not the latter.  Just to give you some idea, when I first loaded Bittersweet up, it was something like #1043 in the queue. Five minutes later, The Spider Inside Her is available on Smashwords.

Print will take a little more time because I still have to finish off a few touches to the inside of the book.  By the way, that image on the right is the cover flat.  Fingers crossed CreateSpace doesn’t have any issues with it or that’ll mean a delay in the print version.  Last time it took two proofs before I finally got it right and it takes about a week for the proof to arrive at my doorstep.  So I’m shooting for no later than July 10th.

Speaking of steps, I’m off to working on Deadlier by the Dozen, book #2.  My gut is telling me to hold off on sending this to my editor only because I feel like I need to give it one more read in addition to the so-called final edits that I’m doing now.  I think I’m going to go with my gut to be on the safe side.  Hopefully, it won’t set me back on my end of July date, but we’ll see.  I’m still hopeful until something or someone proves otherwise. 

Interviewed by Loreal Ingram…and The Spider Inside Her

To promote my June 28th release of The Spider Inside Her, I’m participating in a blog chain with a bunch of other authors from Heart of Carolina Romance Writers. Our theme was to have one of our characters interview us.  For my interviewer, I’ve chosen my heroine Loreal Ingram from TSIH…which is probably not very smart on my part.  She’s a tad pissed and trying to hold back.  Who can blame her, considering I’m the one who’s really responsible for her arachnid curse?  Of course, it could be worse.  She could have buck tooth fangs.

Ugh.  I just had a flashback of panel at ConCarolinas that pretty much left me red-faced.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s just get on with the roasting.

***********

Loreal: So, what made you do it?

Marcia: Do what?

Loreal: Curse me with a spider spirit?  You know.  Similar to an animal one?  The hellish bane of my existence, only you have me crawling on walls and spitting webs?  And what’s up with the alabaster skin and garden spider markings that look more like tattoos?

Marcia:  Oh.  That.  Yeah, well, I was trying to come up with something that hadn’t been done before and I realized I hadn’t read about anyone shifting into an insect.

Loreal: So, I was your guinea pig.  You plucked me out of my mundane existence to curse me to turn into a spider whenever I get the urge for vengeance.  Or rather, whenever she gets the urge for vengeance.

Marcia:  Good lord, woman, would you lighten up?  It’s just a story.

Loreal (takes a deep breath):  So why the vengeance angle?  Not that I’m arguing that bad people deserve to die.  Some do.  But why that particular one?  You could’ve done anything like her being hungry and needing some food or needing to procreate.  Why vengeance?

Marcia:  Well, first, needing food wasn’t a big enough reason to kill people.  For those writing vampires of the evil kind, it might be.  As for sex, that would imply writing something that was either an erotica or a paranormal romance.  Sorry, but I’m not feeling the romance genre right now.  Haven’t for a while, in fact.  Revenge came into play one night when I was watching Conan the Barbarian on TV and thought about how powerful it must be for a man to spend his life looking for the ones who had killed his people.  He’s like a musclebound Captain Ahab.

Loreal: And the domestic abuse angle?

Marcia:  That’s something near and dear to my heart.  Even though I have never been in an abusive relationship, I know others who have.  Members of my own family, for that matter.  It’s enough to make me hope that karma bites the hell of abusers and sucks them dry.  Of course, that’s putting it mildly.  Also, there’s another reason that has to do with the dedication in my book.  All I’ll say about that is his story still haunts me to this day.

Loreal (pause):  Okay.  So…am I going to die?  Yeah, I know that has spoiler potential, but I need to know.  For heaven’s sake, you have to the cops after me, grim reapers, and everyone in the supernatural world fearing for their lives.  Oh, and a crazy ***big-time spoiler alert*** is after me?  Are you insane?  As if the Oni Warriors weren’t enough.

Marcia: No, I’m not crazy–that I know of.  And no, you’re not going to die.

Loreal: Am I going to have a sequel?

Marcia: Yes and no.

Loreal (eyes bleeding black and a second pair opening up on her cheekbones)

Marcia (squirming in my seat):  Now, hold up, sister.  No need to go all spider on me.  Chillax.  Chillaxxxx.  You’re going to make a pivotal appearance in Deadlier by the Dozen, which is due out late July.  But, you’re not the lead character in this book.  In fact that book was written before The Spider Inside Her was.  I wrote TSIH because I had fallen in love with your badass self.  Girlfriend, if the Terminator was a paranormal, you’d be it.  (pounds chest gangsta style) I’ve got nothin’ but love for you, girl.  Honest.

Loreal (transformation reverts and is human again): An appearance, huh.  What about the third book?

Marcia: I haven’t gotten that far,yet.  Basically, my Dark Encounters series is about humans who have first-time brushes with the supernatural world.  Though I want each story to be standalone, I also want them to be interconnected.  So that means, you might make an appearance in that one, too.

Loreal: But no chance of being cured.

Marcia: I haven’t decided yet.

Loreal:  And what kind of name is Loreal?

Marcia:  I got it from that fancy makeup commercial.  I think it’s kind of cute.  Besides, it could be worse.  I could’ve named you Cover Girl Ingram.

Loreal (snorts and folds her arms):  You sure watch a lot of TV.

Marcia: More like a lot of Nick Jr.  You’ll find out one of these days.

Loreal:  Holy crap!  Does that mean Nathan and I will have a kid?  Please tell me he or she won’t have eight legs.

Marcia:  Would you stop?  You don’t even have eight legs.  Well…not yet, anyway.

Loreal: Uh huh.  Oh, by the way.  Am I going to go all black-widow on Nathan?  Because he’s kinda cute.  At least that was one thing you did right by me.

Marcia (reaching for the camera lens): Okay, enough.  This interview is over.  One more word out of your mouth and I’ll be pirating my own work.  Just be thankful webs only shoot out of one orifice and not the other.

**********

So if you liked that embarrassing display, here are some more.    Just kidding.  About the embarrassing part, that is.  Check out my other fellow HCRW authors who have been–or will be–brought to their knees by their characters.

6/6: Aimee Laine : http://www.aimeelaine.com/blog
6/8: Lyla Dune : http://lyladune.com/blog.html
6/10: Carol Strickland : http://carolastrickland.blogspot.com/
6/12: Amy Corwin : http://amycorwin.blogspot.com/
6/14: Lilly Gayle : http://www.lillygayleromance.blogspot.com/
6/16: Rebekkah Niles : http://juturnafaerthing.blogspot.com/
6/18: Laura Browning : http://www.laurabrowningbooks.blogspot.com/
6/20: Andris Bear : http://andrisbear.wordpress.com/
6/22: Marcia Colette : http://marciacolette.wordpress.com/ *waving hello* 
6/24: Nancy Badger : http://www.nancylennea-inlove.blogspot.com
6/26: Sarah Mäkelä : http://blog.sarahmakela.com
6/28: Jennifer Harrington : http://www.romanceadventures.blogspot.com/
6/30: Scott Berger : http://romanticadventurestories.wordpress.com/

The Spider Inside Her – COVER ART!

Coming June 28, 2011

So what do you guys think?  I fell in love with the original stockart image and knew I had to have it for one of my books.  But which one?  I didn’t share a lot of images with Jax because I wasn’t sure what I wanted myself.  This was the last one in my arsenal and I trusted Jax to make it look creepy though the original image isn’t.

I like the way the water sort of weaves a web around the woman.  Water–to me–represents purity and innocence, which describes my heroine.  She didn’t do anything wrong.  And yet, something–the spider–is about to gauge the innocence right out of her.  Why?  Well, like the spider said to the fly, “Because it’s in my nature.”  That’s the vengeance code my arachnid persona lives by in The Spider Inside Her. 

Sarra Cannon, Silent Scream, and The Spider Inside Her

First, if you’re in the Raleigh-Durham area, my friend, fellow HCRW member, and incredible indie author extraordinaire Sarra Cannon will be speaking at the Durham Regional Library today from 1-3pm about self-publishing.  I so can’t wait to show her my support, since she’s one of the few people who had confirmed my thoughts about going indie.  Oh, and did I mention this chick is a Kindle Best-selling author who has sold more than 20,000 books in her Peachville High Demons series?  Needless to say, I had no problem with giving her a shout-out at ConCarolinas, along with a few more of my indie friends. 

Second, I’ve been hit by the creative bug with a great idea for Silent Scream (book #2 of my Bittersweet series).  One thing I’d like to note is this book will probably be a tad shorter than the first (approx. 60,000 words) because that’s all I have plotted so far and it seems like a complete story.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to give enough information so that you won’t have to read the first book to understand this one.  Thanks to MTV’s Teen Wolf series for exciting my muse.  And before you go there, no werewolves (or vampires) in my YA series.  They’re all homeschooled.

Third, and most important of all, I’ve seen the cover for The Spider Inside Her and all I can say is Jax is truly an artist who knows her stuff.  OMG, I can’t wait to reveal it.  I have to because I’m having her do a few tweaks before it’s finalized.  It was hard trying to make the image I chose dark when it started out more fantasy-like.  But, she did it.  Even better, my mother took one look at the picture and said, “It looks like the spider is trying to control the woman.”  Holy crap!!  My mother, the infamous rag-magazine-only reader, totally got it.  Fan-freaking-tastic!!  Fingers crossed others will, too.  I’ve got nothin’ but love for Jax. 

What’s been exciting you there days?

$0.99 Sale for BITTERSWEET

I’m a few days late, but I wanted to do something special to celebrate the release of The Spider Inside Her later this month.  So, I’ve lowered the price on Bittersweet.    Keep in mind this is only for the month of June.  Once TSIH is out, I don’t know what I’ll do.  Seriously.  Not a clue.  I know I won’t hike up the price to $4.99 because I like selling books.   

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’ve done a complete overhaul on an important scene from Deadlier by the Dozen.  It’s still on schedule to be released in July, so no worries there.  The scene needed to change because there was too much talking and not a lot of action.  Also, I realized during my polishing that I have this horrible–bad bad bad–habit of mentioning things that the reader should already know.  Just to give you an idea of how awful it was, after two-thirds of the way through Dx12, I sliced about 15,000 words.  Yes, it was that bad, but I have a much cleaner manuscript because of it. :)

Muse Gifts

I had gotten my edits back from my editor for The Spider Inside Her (Dark Encounters #1).  These are my final edits, by the way.  But instead of working on them, I decided to work on Deadlier by the Dozen, which is book #2 in my Dark Encounters series.  You see, the timing is really good because I’m having my cover artist put some stuff together for the TSIH cover, so it’s not ready yet.  Why bother working on a book when there isn’t a cover?  And since I want to release Dx12 shortly after, I really need to work on that book.

Yesterday morning, I had reached an important conversation  between my heroine and her aunt that didn’t come over as I had planned.  There were bits and pieces of it that bothered me and dragged out the story.  There were also parts that didn’t add much either.  So, I shortened and focused it more on the problem at hand and not secondary issues.  As a result of careful trimming and focusing more on the pertinent stuff, I LOVE it now!!  It knotted up a bunch of loose ends and had given both my heroine and me a couple of important a-ha moments.  For once, the scene didn’t stop me the way it used it.  In fact, it riveted my writing…and hopefully the reading.

I wasn’t expecting that, which made me feel like the muse had given me a gift.  I thank her big-time for it.

Off to make up some hamburger for grilling.  We’re going to the park later on, which is a first for me.  We don’t usually grill in the park, let alone eat there because of the dog-crap scent that travels on the wind.  But that was back in NY.  Hopefully, NC’s leash laws have made it more bearable. 

THE SPIDER INSIDE HER – Update!

I’ve been avoiding this post because I know nobody likes bad news.  Assuming you like my books, that is.  If you don’t, then you probably don’t care and are think the world is better off. 

Anyway, I got my TSIH edits back from my fabulous editor Patricia over at Hazard Editing–holy smokes, they’re growing by leaps and bounds!–and she hit on things that I had gotten lost in the back of my mind.  Not only that, but bought up some interesting points.  My goal is to finish the edits this week and get them back to her by Sunday.  Fingers crossed because my kid has this way of enrapturing me with a smile.  Not only that, but I’ve finally gotten back on my cardio machine so I can do a better job at keeping up with her. 

So what does all of this have to do with bad news?  It means The Spider Inside Her won’t be out until June.  I’m hopeful for early June, but I can’t be sure because I have a date with several panels at ConCarolinas the weekend of the 4th.  It also means that Deadlier by the Dozen has been pushed to July.  Thankfully, I’m almost halfway through polishing off that book before I send it on its merry way.

The good news, I don’t know if Disappearance Hall will be pushed back.  I sure hope not because I really want that book out no later than the summer.  I can’t give an exact date because I won’t know until I figure out how much work I need to put into it.

So where are you with your writing/reading these days?

The Spider Inside Her is DONE!

Woot!    I should’ve finished The Spider Inside Her last night, but I had to change the villan’s reveal in the last chapter.  Deadlier by the Dozen (the second book in the series) would’ve solidified a theme for my villans, and I want to keep readers guessing while seasoning the mystery.  The hardest part was coming up with a motive and making sure all ends were tied up.  I had one before, but I have this horrible feeling that there’s something I forgot, but  for the life of me I can’t figure it out.   So, I’m calling it quits and leaving it up to another eye to pick my story apart.  Mine are all dried out with TSIH.

The next step is to see what my editor from Hazard Editing finds.  I’m still hoping to release TSIH by May 15th, but we’ll see.  I definitely want it available before I go to ConCarolinas the first weekend in June.  If all goes well, I might have print copies of TSIH, too.  But that might be pushing it, so that’s a wait-and-see thing.  Right now, I just want to get this book edited and out, so I can start working on Deadlier by the Dozen.

The Spider Inside Her and Bittersweet Updates

I’m only halfway through the week and so far it’s been great.  This past weekend, I tore through more than 110+ pages of revisions for The Spider Inside Her.  I hadn’t done that in so long that I forgot what it felt like.  Better than sex, if you ask me.    Yeah, I ain’t gettin’ none.  But that’s beside the point.    I have about 50 pages left, which I plan to finish this weekend and hopefully send off the entire manuscript to my editor next week.  If all goes well, TSIH could be available as early as the first week of May.

That’s not the only TSIH news.  I might have a cover to show you soon.  I was looking at some really cool stock art and started playing around with it on my older version of Dreamweaver to get some ideas of I wanted.  By the time I finished, I came up with a really cool cover on my own.  I still want to play around with it before I decide whether or not to use it.  An artist, I am not.  But, I really like what I’ve done so far. 

But…that’s not the only cover art news.  Don’t you like the way I’m rolling into these topics?    Anyway, Dreamweaver enticed me enough to try my hand at putting together a cover flat for Bittersweet.  Just for the fun of it, of course.  The results were pretty nice for a non-artistic type like me.  But do you get where I’m going with this?  :mrgreen:  I’m talking PRINT for Bittersweet!  Woohooooooooooooo!  Now don’t get your hopes up.  I’ve ordered the proof from CreateSpace, so it should be here in a few days.  Cross your fingers everything looks okay because I’d LOVE to release the Bittersweet in print and The Spider Inside Her in ebook around the same time.  It wasn’t planned, but it looks more like a possibility now. 

If I’m really adventurous, I might try to put out the print version of TSIH along with everything else.  But that might be pushing it.  It’ll depend upon my editor’s findings and if the damage can be controlled. 

Oh, and I sold my first copy of Bittersweet overseas.  :D 

How’s your week been going so far?

Disappearance Hall and Other News

One thing about cannibalizing a novel is you never know what other corpses it’ll turn up.  A few weeks back when I posted my publishing schedule, I thought I could get Disappearance Hall done in April.  Not the case.  I had about a third of the book done when I decided to cut half of the remaining pages.  They just wouldn’t work for the new story.  So , I’m down to a total of 252 pages with more cuts coming and more new pages to write.  My best guess is that I’m halfway through my first draft and I’m not going to make April.    May is still a possibility, but…

Something came up last week that could make the April cut, albeit late April.  Though it was a tough decision and one I didn’t take lightly, I’ll be publishing  The Spider Inside Her through Dusk Till Dawn Books.  It’s book #1 in my Cursed series and Deadlier by the Dozen is book #2.  Both of stories need another round of polishing before I can send them out to crit partners and/or my editor.  Not only that, but there’s a good chance that I can release them back to back.  If I do that, then it means Disappearance Hall won’t be in the hands of readers until possibly June or July. 

In essence, I have two books that both need polishing, but I can go through them faster than I can DH.  But…I’m having fun with DH right now and really want to see how my New Adult Paranormal turns out.  It would probably help if I knew which was selling better in terms of the market right now.  Dark Urban Fantasy or YA/New Adult Urban Fantasy?  *sigh*

So that’s where my writing life stand right now.  How about yours?