FeedMyReads: Q&A with Glenna Maynard

FeedMyReads: Q&A with Glenna Maynard: Here is a little Q&A with Glenna Maynard - hope you enjoy :D Who is your favourite author and why? I absolutely love Charlai...

My Adventure in Self-Publishing Part 2

Now I am a little over a month into this adventure and man what a ride it has been. I want give a huge thank you and hug to everyone who has supported me thus far! You all rock! So here is where I am at, I am updating my cover and reformatting my paperback. I feel like I hit publish on the paperback too soon. So now I am correcting everything I hated about it. That is a perk of being self-published, you can always correct your mistakes and resubmit your files. Though I will advise you to try to get it right the first time. I am always learning something new everyday.  My book Beautiful Strangers will also be getting a new synopsis, the current one just doesn't feel right. So I am taking the steps necessary to be the best I can be. I want people to get what they pay for. I don't want to just cram shit down their throats. I want them to have a great experience when they put their faith in me to give them a great read.

Cover Woes

So when I designed my first cover I was super excited. I was feeling oh so proud. Then I release my book and a few weeks go by and then I see them, other books with the same cover. How did I feel? Devastated! I poured weeks into getting the first one right, but hey everything has a reason. Or I like to believe at least. After some heavy thinking and debating. I made the decision to give Beautiful Strangers a new cover! I am very excited to say that W. Solomon Mitchell has designed a gorgeous new cover for me. I can not wait to show it to you. I feel like Beautiful Strangers is unique and original so why shouldn't it have a cover to match! So this coming Thursday is the big day for the new cover reveal! I can not wait to share it with you!

My Adventure in Self-publishing

  So yesterday I went live on Amazon with Beautiful Strangers and I am so excited and nervous!
It was a bit of trial and error as I am learning as I go. Let me just say it is a lot more work than I ever imagined. Formatting and designing my cover was a challenge but I had so much fun doing it. It took me three tries to get my cover accepted but hey I did it, and on my own I might add!.
  It was also very surreal to me that my book was approved on the 11 year anniversary of my fathers death. I feel like he is smiling down on me this week and encouraging me to push forward. Formatting a book for paperback and e book is so different, I had no idea! It took a lot of research on my part to figure it all out, but hey if I can do it, you can too!
  I know that there will be some harsh critics along the way but I wanted to write a story that would piss the reader off, because I myself love when a book challenges me and takes me out of my comfort zone. I know a thick skin is needed when putting yourself out there to be critiqued and judged by the world.I may update this post later as I am only in day two of selling my book. A huge thank you to all my supporters, who encourage and inspire me to keep writing!

A Winters Day

 Here I sit on a perfect winters days looking out the back window trying to find inspiration. I watch the leaves dance in the wind and nothing. I watch the tress sway to their sad song and nothing. I watch the tall grass as it waves at me and nothing. I glance into the woods and see a lonely Cardinal pecking for worms and nothing. I sit, I stare and I ponder yet nothing comes. Then finally in all the silence it hits me, music. I have forgotten to turn my music on.  My greatest inspiration comes from music. Ah sweet music comes to my rescue. What inspires you?

Just Do It

  So I finally did it today, I announced the title of my book. Now I just have to be patient and see how it is received  Patience is not one of my better qualities. But I decided to just do it. At least I can't say I didn't try.  Maybe one day I will be a best seller and maybe not. But I have to give it a shot and see where the journey takes me. I am so thankful for my family and friends for all the support they are showing me. And I have to give a huge shout out to my partner in crime Morgan Jane, without her I think I would be completely lost. I am so grateful to have a friend doing this with me.
    It is so hard just putting yourself out there for the world to judge you, but that is part of life. And well here I am take me or leave me, but I am gonna do me.So to get back on track the title of my book (drum roll please) Beautiful Strangers. I will be back on later today and actually post some sneak peaks of my work. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I enjoy writing it.

Confusion

  So I am trying to keep up in the social media world. Is it really necessary to belong to so many sites to get yourself out there. My thoughts yes. But it is so confusing at times I can barely keep up.  Guess I can count Myspace out,I logged in recently and I think I heard crickets chirping. Anyways now you need Twitter,a blog,Facebook,Pinterest, multiple email accounts and a Goodreads list. Oh and lets not forget LinkedIn. It takes so much time just to check into all these sites, a person almost needs an assistant to run them all. So I here I am in a world of confusion, feeling like an idiot trying to link them to each other and so on. I consider myself pretty smart so I am figuring it out as I go.  I try to keep up with all the sites I am a member of,but always seem to neglect one or the other. So I ask how do you keep up among the chaos and confusion of all the different social sites?

A journey into the world of writing

   After  a recent conversation with a dear friend, I decided to take a leap into the world of writing.  After reading quite a few books and wandering how they got published, I decided hey I can do that when I discovered a lot of them were self published. I am learning everything first hand on my own for the most part about self-publishing.. I am currently writing my first romance novel. I am taking it day by day and seeing where this path leads.  I thought why not start a blog to keep track of my progress, so here I am. I have been writing over the past few weeks and have made it to chapter 15. I find it much easier to write when I listen to music, but some may prefer complete silence. After doing research on word counts and chapter lengths I have decided not to put these constrictions or deadlines upon myself. you will only drive yourself crazy trying to maintain a certain amount of words per chapter. 
   But I do however think is important to be consistent in your writing, to keep a general flow in transitioning from one chapter to the next I have learned that I the words come to me more easily when I stick to what I know as far as subject matter goes. I have also started an Author page on Facebook if you would like to see sneak peeks of my work you can see it  here https://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-Glenna-Maynard/458646394183267?ref=hl . I may post some of my work here in the future as well. I am trying to break into the Facebook author world, and some writers are very receiving and others not so much. One thing I have learned is if you don't promote yourself then who will? I am currently researching cover art for my book and trying to write a synopsis. For me personally writing a good synopsis has been very challenging, I am afraid of revealing to much or too little. But how do you really define how much or how little to share. I think it depends on the type of reader you are are trying to reach. And I prefer to be surprised, always leave them wanting more you might say.