All my books are free in digital formats during the Smashwords summer sale, which continues until the end of July. Click the link to get to my profile page on Smashwords; from there you can see all my books. Quite a few of them by now! I don’t write a lot every day but I keep writing and it adds up over time.
The sale started July 1. I knew there was something I forgot to tell you…
I’ve finished the DDsE series! (Ella has completed her diary! For now…) To celebrate, for the next couple days, the digital version of the series will be free on Amazon. (The 3rd and final book goes freebie on Saturday.)
I started DDsE as a break from writing my FRAMES series. I’ve never needed such a break before but FRAMES takes a surprising lot of energy. I speculate it’s the combination of world-building plus characters who are not human.
Anyway, the break turned long when DDsE became a series, too. I didn’t dare to pause DDsE and go back to FRAMES, though, lest Nica take over Ella’s diary. Once Nica gets into my head, she doesn’t settle for being the narrator in FRAMES. She takes over. Other books. Conversations. Everything. For a while she wrote my work emails. (How did that go, you ask? Let’s just say it’s a good thing I was about to retire.)
To further celebrate my return to writing FRAMES, Nica of Los Angeles (FRAMES #1) is also free on Amazon as an ebook for the next couple days.
I’m so glad I decided to do it! Brought back the DDsE daily serial blog.
Over on the DDsE blog, we’re in book 8 of Ella’s diary. As far as I can tell, her current adventures will take us through book 9.
I’m having a great time posting Ella’s diary to the near-instant gratification of readers who come to the blog daily.
The farther I get into the DDsE series, the less I can figure out whether I am writing it or transcribing it. For the first time, I’m writing improvisationally. What happens happens. I discover what comes next as I fill the latest blank screen on my iPad.
If you become a follower of the DDsE daily serial blog, you will get each day’s diary entry emailed to you. Of course you can also click over to it whenever you please. I’ve heard from a number of folks that they’d rather wait and read a bunch of daily entries in one swoop. You can read the compiled, completed books (7 so far) on the blog.
For those who don’t want to read via browser, each book of Ella’s diary is an individual e-book novella on Smashwords. (6 individual novellas on Smashwords so far – 3 to go.) I’ve also compiled Ella’s books, 3 to a volume, and published those volumes on Amazon as e-books and paper books (2 compiled volumes so far – 1 to go).
My story You’re the One I’ll Miss is posted as part of a contest on Short Edition. Click over there to read it. I guess I’d appreciate your vote although I’m not sure what I’m competing for…
Create a Short Edition log-in to read free flash fiction from authors around the world.
Short Edition is an exceedingly cool idea. It provides very short fiction on line and at dispensaries in public places. It’s growing. This time last year most of its content was French-only.
It’s a recurring story of my life. To see the value in something, I have to stop, leave, turn away from it.
It, such as publishing the DDsE daily serial blog.
Once upon a time, I had a blog that published the daily diary entries of Ella, a 16-year-old who had just entered a horrible strange amazing phase of life. Ella filled three books with her secret, hand-written diary entries and I posted the entries on the DDsE blog.
[OK, I admit it, I’m the one who has been writing Ella’s diaries and I’ve loved doing so. Although I’ve never had mind-to-mind contact with a feral cat, nor run away with a boy who wasn’t human, nor been chased by unhuman monsters, I can so relate to Ella. I’ve been a teenager all my life.]
Ella has kept writing her diary but I stopped posting entries on the DDsE blog.
I stopped because I’d been bitten by the publishing bug and my agent said that she couldn’t shop DDsE if I was giving it away. So I compiled Ella’s first three books into a single volume and my agent began to shop DDsE to big-deal publishers who took forever to say that they loved the story but didn’t like Ella. Or vice versa.
I discovered that I’ve changed.
Long ago, publishing my novel Was It A Rat I Saw in hardcover with a big-deal publisher was very important to me. Nonetheless, I stopped writing for a couple decades and when I resumed, it wasn’t because I wanted to build or re-build a writing career. I resumed writing because I missed writing.
When I resumed, I joined the self-publishing revolution (and it really is a revolution) but I maintained lingering fantasies about some sugar-daddy publisher who would make the publishing grind easier for me.
I’ve come to realize that I write to connect: with myself; with my readers. To realize this, I had to shut down the DDsE daily serial blog then miss it.
But re-starting the blog seemed impossible. Embarrassing.
At some point, I withdrew DDsE from the big-deal-publishers shop-around and began to self-publish it. Each book of Ella’s diary became an individual novella on Smashwords. (6 individual novellas so far – 3 to go.) I compiled Ella’s books, 3 to a volume, and published those volumes on Amazon (2 compiled volumes so far – 1 to go).
I continued to miss the blog. So. Tupac the impossible embarrassing. The DDsE daily serial blog is back. From now on, every day that blog will publish a new diary entry by Ella.
However, the new entries will resume with the current diary, book 7, because the DDsE blog features Ella’s newest entries, the ones that haven’t been published elsewhere. While the blog was on hiatus, books 4-6 got published elsewhere. Sure, they are compiled on the DDsE blog, and you can read them there. But the newest entries are in book 7.
Saturday, Feb 16, the DDsE daily serial blog will resume daily posting of Ella’s newest diary entries, starting with entry 260 from book 7 of DDsE.
Now would be a good time to catch up on books 1-6 and to begin following the DDsE blog.
Note that I usually keep my blogs separate so if you follow this blog – awesome! thank you! – you won’t get any DDsE posts. You have to click over to the DDsE daily serial blog to follow Ella’s diary.
I’ve just added another story to the Short Fiction menu of this blog. Boredom Fighter is a FRAMES story. It shares the narrator and worlds of that series of novels. However, Boredom Fighter is stand-alone (and turned out funnier than the novels). You don’t need to read the novels to understand or enjoy it.
Chronologically, Boredom Fighter comes after the first two FRAMES novels. So the order is:
Nica of Los Angeles
Nica of the New Yorks
Boredom Fighter
… several more stories
… two more novels.
At least 3 more stand-alone FRAMES stories are in the works*. I’ll probably finish those before I complete the remaining two novels in the series.
* That is, in my head and on various scribbled notes. With a bit of effort, one can even compose an iphone note as though it were scribbled.
Required Writing 