#ROW80 Rd 4 — wk 7, rpt 1

My NaNo widget appeared to be on the fritz last time I looked at it, displaying ALL days in red. False!  Only one day should be red, yesterday because I edited all day vs. write new material.  Edits are almost done but regardless, today will be new material (and blog post) day.  I’m off all this week, so no excuses.

I got my two weekly blog posts done plus one to grow on scheduled for 11/18 so no worries there.

And to save you the trouble of finding my announcement post of Monday and because I can never announce this too many times, here is my cover and blurb:

No one ever said Gayle Lindley’s first job would be a killer.

Fresh out of college, Gayle’s career path should follow the yellow brick road straight to the top. Thanks to a menial errand gone wrong, a wayward tongue, and a randy supervisor who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, Gayle’s stuck in corporate hell.

Discovering a company secret only turns up the heat.

The one part of her life not going down in flames is her friendship with the gorgeous but intensely private, Jon Cripps. Jon would make the perfect consolation prize for Gayle’s pity party if dating a co-worker wasn’t career suicide. Then again, with all Gayle has been through, maybe falling in love is the lucky break she needs.

Hitting the cool sheets with Jon soothes her mind and body, but it also enrages whoever’s behind the smokescreen she’s uncovered at work. Someone is willing to kill to protect their secrets, and Gayle and Jon are the targets.

With both her heart and livelihood at stake, Gayle’s early career-limiting moves could turn into life-terminating ones.

I feel I should explain a little more about Amazon’s policy after my last post.  Their written policy is to list only the anthology’s editor in the author position, but this policy is not always followed in practice (it wasn’t for either of my anthologies).  My first time being left off, I emailed and they added me but only to the paperback edition and not the Kindle edition.  A fellow writer in the same anthology, who had also been left off, also emailed.  They first told her ‘no, editors only’, but then later added her to the Kindle edition, only.  My second anthology, again seeing myself left off, I emailed and that time they said “ten max, sorry, more is too overwhelming to buyers.” My name is clearly on the pictured cover at least, it’s just less visible to the search engines, which is pretty darned important, IMHO.  So, my advice to any first-timers would be to be a squeaky wheel with Amazon’s author program, and do whatever else you can such as tagging the work with your pen name, getting Amazon to list you in the author section, setting up your author page, etc.

I’ve not had any issues with Goodreads adding me, whatsoever.  With Shelfari, I simply added myself.  No experience with B&N but suffice to say, I’m not listed as an author for my first anthology.  I don’t know if my second one is listed there yet.  Apparently, B&N offers the work a few weeks after it’s been released by Evernight.  Don’t know why.

My goals and current stats for this round are on my ROW80-4 page.

The Linky site lists other participants’ progress reports.  Give them some encouragement too.

#ROW80 Rd 4 — wk 6, rpt 2

I added my long awaited NaNo widget to my ROW80 stats page, but I don’t like seeing 3 yellow blocks in week 2.  My daily average dropped below 1667, mostly because I took yesterday to edit vs. write new material.  Still, I ended up writing new material for my novel so I counted that for NaNo and that’s all that kept me at yellow and not red for yesterday.

I have next week off though and plan some major writing then…after I get a new driver’s license.  Glerg. Wonder if I can still pull off subtracting twenty pounds…hmm.

I got my two weekly blog posts done plus one to grow on.

Only ONE more day until I can reveal the cover and back blurb for my novel!  Woo-hoo!

I received my cover for my other pen name’s Christmas anthology day before yesterday, but, alas, I cannot yet reveal it until we work out the attendant fanfare amongst the contributing authors.

[[Begin Rant]] I’m happy to note that there are only ten contributing authors, which means for the FIRST TIME, I won’t be left off the author list for the work at Amazon.  I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to finally publish something, but because the publisher didn’t include your name in the info sent to Amazon OR because you were the eleventh or higher contributor, you got left out in the cold. Amazon policy.  I’ve challenged it already with tepid at best results.  Searches on my pen name will bring up my author page but NOT my anthology.  If you go to my author page, there is a link to my anthology but who goes there looking for books by an author?  I don’t. I look at what the search results bring back.  Ok, I’ll end my ranting now.  This has just really hurt my already-stomped-into-the-dust-just-getting-to-publication writerly feelings and I gotta vent (yet more than I already have). [[End Rant]]

My goals and current stats for this round are on my ROW80-4 page.

The Linky site lists other participants’ progress reports.  Give them some encouragement too.