Tag Archives: fuzzynerdcorner

Insomnia, Publishing, School, Writing, Live Writing, Method

Midterm Madness (or Damn You Daylight Saving Time!!!)

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

This is a big week in school for me with two midterms, both in literature, on the same day. Coming on the end of an exhausting weekend has made this a tough Monday. Thanks to Daylight Savings my roommate’s bus to the airport came an hour early. Despite the fact that Daylight Saving didn’t officially start until 2AM on Sunday. No notice on their website of any kind that they decided to use midnight as the change over point. Thus did a frantic drive ensue where we powered down to O’Hare and back in the wee, and not so wee, hours of the morning on Sunday. To this I can say that naps do not adequately replace a full-night’s sleep and so today has been a very tired one.

On the writing front I’ll be submitting a few of my select pieces, poetry and fiction, to a couple of undergraduate contests. I’m pretty nervous about this and I have no idea what my chances are, but I’m going to go for it. The prizes are very small so it would definitely be more about the recognition and getting my work out there than anything else. It would also be nice to know that people like what I do. The hard part now is sitting down and deciding which items to submit. How do you know what your best work is?

As far as the whole audio book process goes, I’ve selected the reader/producer I want to work with but I am still waiting for ACX to finalize my account info. Until that happens I’m not allowed to make offers on their site. I know I submitted my books, and account info, late Wednesday night so effectively they’ve had 2.5 work days to get my stuff done. It still feels like it’s taking forever. I’m super eager to get this audio book show on the road already.

 

BTW, why for the love of my holey socks do we still observe Daylight Saving Time?! Enough is enough I say!

 

If you like these and other posts, feel free to check out my other work:

My Fiction on Tumblr: http://fuzzynerdcorner.tumblr.com/

My Fiction on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fuzzynerd?ty=a (Some activity requires Patron Status.)

My Live Writing, Editing, and other videos: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFZHBRlGb3-RFEr2BXQPi-Q

If you’d like to help a budding author you can also support me on Patreon:

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Dreams, Inspiration, Method, General, Life, Publishing, Writing

With Apologies to School Girls

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

There are now three total auditions for my two books that I posted on ACX last night. Late. Three auditions. I’m still listening to the first one at the moment and I have to keep pausing to squee. I find myself giddy as a school girl. (See apology in title.) I don’t know why this is hitting me so hard. Perhaps part is I never expected to get a response so quickly. I think also it is strange and awesome, in the fullest sense, to hear someone else reading my work out loud. It’s like seeing my own work from someone else’s perspective and is both exciting and nerve wracking at the same time. Like probably every other author out there I want people, some people, any people, to like what I do. And just this little bit is enough for me to dance around the room. So yeah, um, I’m going to go back now and hopefully finish listening. Without pausing to squee again… ::deep breath::

 

My previous post on trying out this whole audio book process: http://fuzzynerdcorner.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/the-audio-book-process/

 

If you like these and other posts, feel free to check out my other work:

Fiction on Tumblr: http://fuzzynerdcorner.tumblr.com/

Fiction on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fuzzynerd?ty=a (Some activity requires Patron Status.)

Live Writing, Editing, and other videos: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFZHBRlGb3-RFEr2BXQPi-Q

If you’d like to help a budding author you can also support me on Patreon:

kaGh5_patreon_name_and_message

Publishing, Writing, Method

The Audio Book Process

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Last night I posted both of my published books, Induction and Transformation, on ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) to get the ball rolling for an audio book format. Late last night in fact. It was suggested by the forms I filled out that I include marketing information as well as info about the books. In the end I just included a brief summary of where the books are available for sale. I’m such a new writer, and not J.K. Rowling, that there’s little point in trying to brag about sales, followers, or popularity. Apparently that was good enough because there are already auditions for both books. This is a very promising start to a process that is completely new to me. Here’s hoping things continue going this smoothly.

The breakdown of the process is this (just for ACX of course):

  • Decide to put a book/story/etc up to be produced in audio format
  • Fill out the title info including info about the work, reader voice preferences, etc
  • Decide on royalty format
  • Submit the info and open your work to auditions
  • Review auditions
  • Accept preferred audition.
  • Producer will create a 15 minute initial sample of your work
  • Approve or Disapprove the sample (Disapproval requires submitting change requests)
  • Producer finishes audio version of your work by agreed upon date
  • Final approval of work (with any necessary changes)
  • Audio version goes on sale (with ACX it sells on Audible, iTunes, and Amazon)

 

It’s a pretty straightforward process, and unlike most software licenses I sat down and ready every bit of fine print before agreeing to the terms. My favorite parts of the terms were that the Author or owner of rights to the work retain those rights and that the standard contract term is just 7 years. Both of those are very important to me after reading about all of the horror stories of authors who signed away their rights to traditional publishing companies for life. All in all I am incredibly excited to be doing this and exploring yet another avenue for getting my work out into the world. It just goes to show that with these new tools and sites anyone can make their dream of publishing come true.

 

If you like these and other posts, feel free to check out my other work:

Fiction on Tumblr: http://fuzzynerdcorner.tumblr.com/

Fiction on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fuzzynerd?ty=a (Some activity requires Patron Status.)

Live Writing, Editing, and other videos: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFZHBRlGb3-RFEr2BXQPi-Q

If you’d like to help a budding author you can also support me on Patreon:

kaGh5_patreon_name_and_message

Life, Patreon, Publishing, Writing, Imagination, Inspiration, Method, Career, General

New Book Published!

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Super excited to finally have my second book, Transformation, published and on sale!  It was a long time coming but it finally came together. This time was definitely easier as far as the actual publishing process goes. Just a few minor issues with things I’d managed to forget between my first book and this one. As usual the Smashwords edition is giving me the most problems but I’ll have time today to sit down and fix them.

Once that is done I can focus exclusively on Avatars & Identity and getting it done. I have a couple of people reading it as I go along and so far it’s my most exciting story yet. I find that funny since it’s the book I’ve struggled with the most. Not to mention the majority of it was written very quickly in the first half of November 2014. It’s been nice taking a break from Stephen’s story to try something different. Lately though I’ve been missing the old gang so I’m also looking forward to getting back to them and finishing off my first trilogy.

On the school front I’m looking into the various writing opportunities available here. I’ve discovered we have an excellent fellowship program for graduates, though I don’t hold out much hope of getting a slot. There are apparently well over 600 applicants for the 6 spots each year. Still won’t hurt to try. I’m also talking with the English department about putting together some kind of information packet or workshop on self-publishing since that is a very new and valid option for budding authors (or even long time authors for that matter).

All in all it’s been very busy but very productive and I’m feeling much better about my situation in general. No idea yet if this whole writing full-time thing will pan out but I’m making progress building up my body of work. I’m also discovering that I enjoy writing poetry a whole lot more these days than I did waaaaay back in high school so that is yet another avenue I will be exploring.

Onward and upward!

 

 

If you like these and other posts, feel free to check out my other work:

Fiction on Tumblr: http://fuzzynerdcorner.tumblr.com/

Fiction on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fuzzynerd?ty=a (Some activity requires Patron Status.)

If you’d like to help a budding author you can also support me on Patreon:

kaGh5_patreon_name_and_message

General, Life, Publishing, Writing, Live Writing, Method, Uncategorized

The Novel Continues

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Another week of class just about done with another two live writing sessions complete. Finished up chapter 15 of my NaNoWriMo 2014 novel Avatars & Identity today. The past three days have seen more writing on my part on the book than I’ve managed to do in the last month. I’ve muddled past another difficult story section and I only have a few major plot points left to hit. I’m not holding myself to the 50k word target for NaNoWriMo for this story though. It will be how ever long it ends up being.

The physical proofs for Transformation came in today. I’ll finish reviewing tomorrow, a last check to make sure everything is good before approving the book to go live. Very excited to finally have the second book done!

Writing, Live Writing, Method

The Quest for the Perfect Streaming Site

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This entry is part [part not set] of 5 in the series Live Writing

Now that I’m all settled into my weekly routine with college I feel like it’s time to get back to writing. To that end I’m planning on restarting my live writing sessions and doing them at least twice a week. The only problem is figuring out which streaming site to use. My basic requirements are thus:

– Must support at least 720p streaming. Anything less and you can’t read the text as I’m writing

– Must support live chat. There’s no point doing live writing if people can’t chat to you about it as you’re doing it. Also would prefer chat to be enabled whether or not a user has an account with the site.

– Prefer support for streaming my audio output along with my microphone. This enables people watching to listen to my writing playlist live and negates the need to add a soundtrack to the video later.

– Prefer free or inexpensive services. I’m a poor student now so I can’t really afford to pay for some fancy streaming service.

– Prefer the site to not be primarily a game streaming site.

 

That’s it really. So with those requirements I’ve been checking every streaming site I could get my hands on. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

 

Google+ Hangouts On Air:

Very easy to use and you can stream individual application windows rather than all or parts of your computer screen. You can schedule events and invite people from your circles to join. This would be my ideal streaming service/tool if it weren’t for two HUGE flaws. It doesn’t let you stream you audio output (i.e. the music you might be listening to) and it’s chat function doesn’t function. I’ve tested this numerous times and no matter what I do people who join the Hangout can’t see the chat window. Just the video. This pretty much defeats the purpose of doing a live writing stream in the first place.

 

YouTube Live:

I have the XSplit streaming software that I picked up some time ago to stream my World of Warcraft multiboxing sessions and these both work quite well together. The only problem is there’s no chat interface at all. None.

 

Twitch.tv:

This actually hits all of my requirements and is the service I used during the 2014 NaNoWriMo event to live stream my writing. My only concern here is that it’s nominally for live streaming gaming. This is definitely not gaming and thus wouldn’t be of interest to people browsing the site. Right now it’s my only real option though I’m hoping to find a better one. Twitch also lets people chat without an account, so bonus there.

 

Livestream:

I had quality issues with my stream coming from XSplit. They also want you to upgrade to a paid account if you want to use chat or any other basic feature beyond streaming.

 

FC2Live.us

Looks like it might work but appears to be used mostly by folks outside of the US. I definitely want a US-based site at this point.

 

UStream:

Another paid streaming site, this one geared towards enterprise or business users. Not for me.

 

hitbox:

Gaming site again. Le sigh.

 

UVlog.com:

This might be an alternative to using Twitch.tv but so far there isn’t much there. I’ll be keeping an eye on it to see how the site evolves.

 

 

So there it is, the list so far. I’m going to keep searching for the best site for my purposes but for the moment it looks like I’m stuck with Twitch. I’ve had some thoughts for fixing at least one of the Google Hangouts issues but the chat one is a total deal-breaker. If they got that fixed I could find a work-around for the whole audio streaming issue. I might send a message or two out to some folks I follow who stream regularly. They might have some ideas. Either way my goal is to start live writing again this Thursday!