Fan Fiction, Zoom, and More

Poor Annabelle has had a hard time getting her fan fiction story to me. She actually used the link over on the Fan Fiction main page over on Blogger, where fans are supposed to send their stories. She followed all the rules but alas, I never got it. Then this morning, lo and behold, I found two of her attempts in my CircleCAdventures email in SPAM. (Grrr.) I marked them “not spam” so hopefully any others who submit will land in my INBOX.

Here you go. This is Annabelle’s first fan fiction story. Head over and give her some luv!

Searching for Forgiveness . . . Annabelle J.C.

I apologize again for the kafuffle over that dumb ol’ Chatbox. I may try it again in another month, after things settle down but I guess we can talk about it in our first-ever Zoom chat. (More about that in a later post.)

Here’s why things have been moving slow through the month of October.

• My publisher finalized the Trouble in Tacoma cover, but I found a “Jenny” I liked a whole lot better so I tweaked and edited their “final” cover and sent it in with a “Please will you consider a cover update?” email to the publisher himself. Well, they absolutely love what I did to Jenny’s smile and face but it took a couple of weeks to finally get the new cover. I’m DYING to show it to you, but they won’t let me, not until the beginning of December.
• They sent me the manuscript for The Narrow Escape to copy edit. Yikes! I’m just saying . . . that was a hard copy edit because they suddenly got really picky with what we call “echo” words–the redundant use of the same word in a few paragraphs or pages. I did what I could but it took longer than I liked, and then when I read over the entire story (answering a bunch of queries), I changed a bunch back. I mean, honestly! The book needs to sound like ME. All in all, that has taken the most amount of time. But it’s finally turned in a week ago.
• They sent the BCC (back cover copy) for the back cover of Trouble in Tacoma. I pretty much had to rewrite it, but she (Hannah) said she is thrilled when authors rewrite their own back cover copy (so I guess it was okay for me to polish it up). I think it’s important to mention “Andi Carter” at least one time, so Circle C fans can instantly grasp–Oh! This is an Andi Carter’s friend Jenny story. Right?
• I had to turn in my marketing questionnaire for book 2, The Narrow Escape (I think they’ll keep the name). This is the file where I give them IDEAS about book covers. Remember the voting? I had written that accidental post showing a few covers I had in mind and had planned to have y’all vote on them, but . . . with my publisher being so strict about not revealing any covers until the proper time, I backed off. So forget what you saw. LOL I sent them five cover concept possibilities, and they will have a hard time choosing one they like. I like them all. (They had no problem agreeing on the cover for Trouble in Tacoma that they ALL absolutely loved.)
• The day before I left, Kregel sent me the proof layout pages (what the book actually looks like) for me to go over. I did that the first day of traveling. I’m happy to report that they are using all of my BW illustrations I created for the chapter titles, and they look great. (I’m doing a little happy dance here.)
• I don’t know if I ever showed you the fun little picture book I was working on, A Horse for Andi. Well, long story short, my people at Kregel found out about it and went a little crazy (as in . . . a little crazy in love about it) and asked for a book proposal ASAP so they can possibly contract me for a picture book series for Andi. So, I had to get that polished and sent in. (Not that I’m crazy about this idea, but a bookstore in Ohio bought 400 of the books from me when I told her about them! So, y’know, maybe they would be popular. But OH so much work!). And now, I have had to take the book down from Amazon since my publisher asked me to.

All of these things happened in October, along with getting ready to go down to Texas (we are on the road right now . . . in Wyoming). Most of these things were due next week or at the end of the month. But there’s no way I can do this once I hit the ground at the ranch, so I had to get it all finished and sent in before I left this week.

So, there you have it. And now . . . it’s time to get caught up in things before we hit the road once again.