OVER THE HILL IN MAUI PART 1

PART 1: THE SWIMSUIT STILL FITS IF I LEAVE ONE BOOB OUT

N Maui Beach (I'll get you the name later)

Funny thing how I've always thought of Maui as a place where only the young people came. I don't know why- perhaps I'd heard descriptions from other people who love the Valley Isle. From those impressions I have always pictured it as the Party Isle.  We've been to all the other major islands, though, so Maui had things that were on our Bucket List. Well, no, you know me, I'm not one to let a little age difference intimidate me. Just makes me wish I could still do some of those things I used to do. So we went to Maui.

Imagine my surprise then, when I saw more people with wrinkles and bags than taut physiques. More gray hair than blonde, and any woman who wanted to, wearing a Maui sundress. 

sunset over the harbor from the condo

Second impression: those aren't just the tourists. Maui-ites have no intention of hiding from the sun once they're over the hill. They're in paradise, and age has nothing to do with it.

clouds at 8,000 ft

We've actually been here several days. By the time I get in, my back aches like fire and my ankles have swelled like logs. And here we are, constantly meeting Young Things who would have put my hiking abilities to shame back when I was their current age. 

tiny flowers at 9,000 ft on Haleakala

Yesterday in our drive to the top of Haleakala- up the steepest highway in the world, we came up to a hiker pick-up area, and there stood a young couple not looking too hopeful. We never pick up hitch-hikers. We did anyway. What a joy they were! Manchesterians transplanted to California, eagerly hiking the very trail I had dreamed of doing fifteen years ago. We took them up to the trailhead just short of the crest, and they began their trek across the crater.

Today we took a helicopter over the crater and down on the rainy side, two other couples, both young, one from California, one from France. We all had a wonderful, exciting adventure. I've never done a helicopter ride before but even I knew the supposed scary sudden altitude drops were actually pretty wimpy. Don't care. It was thrilling.

one of hundreds of waterfalls in windward side

I'm getting brave in this Wild Over-the-Hill world called Maui. Still haven't stuck a toe in the water yet, though. Still wondering what I'm going to do with the other boob. And I finally got the pictures posted! Some of them anyway!

OVER THE HILL IN MAUI PART 1 Coming tonight

We're now in Maui and I'll start with the first post in a short series tonight after we get back to the condo. I'll be taking my camera and binocs as we get our bearings on the island. We've been all over Hawaii but this is the first time to Maui other than stop-overs. On today's agenda- the Maui Farmers and Crafts market, the beaches, etc.

NEW ADDITIONS to Mercy Corps Sale

Just  a $25 donation to Mercy Corps can get you a book cover customized to your book.

See my Mercy Corps Donation Page

VISIT MY MERCY CORPS DONATION PAGE AND READ ABOUT HOW YOU CAN GET A BOOK COVER FOR ONLY $25.

So you probably think I'm not doing anything. Not so. In fact, working on books and covers has kept me pretty darn busy, and then there have been some personal things come up that have been a bit-- well, let's just say, emotionally and physically demanding.

But I did have time for another  whimsical cover design (hey, a person needs to have a little fun now and then). It doesn't belong to any book. But when I re-dressed her in yellow instead of white, I remembered the WISPS OF SUMMER design I did in August. What a great series this would make, based on seasons. It sounds sort of like a Victorian women's fiction, don't you think? Maybe Rumors of Autumn, and Remembrance of Winter. From that, I got a new idea:

Does anyone want these, maybe with your own title and author name? I'll make you a deal: $25 per cover but not to me. Paid as a donation to Mercy Corps, which is ranked as one of the best world-wide charitable organizations operating in the US. Over 90% of the funds donated make it to the people who need the help. And their programs are aimed not only at emergency relief but at helping people become self-sufficient.

Then one more step: a new promotion for Mercy Corps, using my inventory of experimental and speculative cover designs. So If you need a good deal on a cover, check out the ones I'm posting on my MERCY CORPS PAGE.

CELEBRATORY GUNFIRE CONTEST!

Well, one of those "secret projects" I've been working on has reached fruition. It's a promotion for Lady Wicked with a sharply reduced price.
99 CENTS!
This won't last long- but I don't know how long. The publisher, The wild Rose Press is evaluating the promotion and if it's successful in generating lots of sales, might continue using these 99 cent promos to help readers discover TWRP books. Some of my favorite authors are on their list, so I'm hoping for great success. For myself, I just want my Lady to find all the readers I feel she needs and deserves.

So to help encourage buyers, and reward the readers who have already bought the book at the much higher list price ($7! They deserve to be rewarded), I want to throw a big contest. The big celebratory gunfire contest type. What shall it be? Give me your best ideas by noon tomorrow (Pacific Daylight Time) and I'll reward the top five with a $5 Amazon Gift Certificate.  This means it HAS to be something I can launch immediately, before the price goes back up.

News in BRIEF!

So you've noticed I'm not posting much these days. The reasons for my dereliction of duty are below.

(Incidentally, this design for Wisps of Summer is just a mock cover, posted just for fun to show you that I often rebel against deadlines and obligations. And because I thought you might like it. There is no book planned for it, so I guess I might work it up for someone else who likes it.)

I have to get BELOVED STRANGER to an editor by August 14th. It's supposed to be 25,000 words or less. It's 32,000 and I haven'd reached The End.

An editor called, having read LOKI'S DAUGHTERS (which is not for sale as it's doing quite well where it is) and wants to know what else I have. Wow, that always feels good, and I'm very interested in this publisher, whereas traditional publishing is not where I want to go right now. So can I finish FAERIE and get it to her really really soon? No matter that I really had wanted to release it earlier this year, it is just not ready. And the idea of releasing a book before it's ready just appals me. So I'm working hard on that.

I have another project proposal which I can't discuss yet, but it's quite exciting. Right now it's at the "either sit and wait or go do something else" stage. I'd say it's a long shot.

And although  I've completed four consignment book covers, I still have five more due this month. September is full, and I have some scheduled here and there throughout the fall. It's a good thing some people are willing to wait, having books that won't be released until later this year or early next year.

And I didn't mention the new wood flooring going in upstairs to replace our really ancient carpet that is probably a major cause of my constant sinus and runny nose problem. That's where I work. I need a cleaner work environment, so somehow I have to sacrifice my work space plus numerous hours of packing, carrying out, moving and then returning my possessions to their rightful places once the job is done. I've dreamed of this for years. But I sure wish someone else would do it for me!

LOKI'S DAUGHTERS is an Amazon Best Seller!

So, an update on the last post, when LOKI'S DAUGHTERS was free on Amazon. By the time it was finally removed from the Free Reads list, it had downloads just shy of 50,000 copies, in about 13 days. And then it moved to the Amazon and Kindle top Sellers list!

Its first re-listing, or the first I saw since I was out with the guys to see Harry Potter, was at #10,072. Really disappointing. But I should have realized that was just a starting point. It quickly moved to #1472, then #375, then up to #271. The next morning it started at #171 and moved rapidly up to #103, and then onto the Top 100 Sellers, getting as high as #90. Since then it's been lurking in the mid 100s range and gained some this morning to be at #140. But I'm pretty sure a lot of its potential market was sapped by staying on the Free Reads for so long,

All in all, that's fine. It's a book I always loved and so I love it when new readers find it and love it. And even more so when they let me know it caused them to go looking for my other books.

Right now, yes I'm still being a bad blogger (almost wrote blooger, which seems oddly fitting). There  's not enough time in the day. I barely make it to Face Book and forget Twitter regularly. It seem so me when I'm being very productive with writing and cover work, that's an inward thinking process, and it's hard to shift back out to the outer, more social networking process.

Here's what's happening:
1. Amazon kicked back The Mudlark for bad formatting. Duh, didn't we have it fixed exactly right yet again? I saw it and even read through on the Kindle again. It was fine. Then suddenly it has all those crazy double indents again. This time we got some hexa-digital software and went through it line by line, and there are NO hidden codes, no thing that could possibly be triggering those ugly nasty double indents. The book looks just perfect with every other format except Amazon's Kindle.

But this time someone wised me up, and pointed to html format. At first I gagged- you know, the whole eye-rollling head-pounding "No! Don't make me learn it!" thing. But it's easy to just save as an html web page. In Word, it's called "Web Page", and you do it exactly like saving in rtf format. Then you put it into the Kindle Generator in exactly the same way you would a Word doc file. You just choose the file from your computer files with an extension of .htm


I hope this works. It looks great in the preview, and I went through the whole thing. This isn't totally adequate, and now I'm finding that in spite of my desire to avoid learning html, it's what I'm going to have to learn next if I want my books to be really professional. Funny thing, that the tool I really needed was right there all along. But it took the really good explanations of Guido Henkel  for me to understand why and how to do it.  I DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS! My brain says it hurts, just thinking about it! But I'm telling you, if you want a really professional book that looks great in any ebook format, this is what you have to do. Go check him out. I'll blog more about my learning experience as I go along.

2. I'm still not finished getting FAERIE in publishable state. I'm disappointed but I can't put it out until the last problems are resolved. While all books have problems, I've found those are the places where I have real opportunities to make a book great instead of just good. So it's best to keep looking for the things a book needs to be unique instead of taking the first reasonable way to finish it. I hate putting it down again, but other things now must be done first.

3. I have to finish BELOVED STRANGER (was IN THE ARMS OF A STRANGER), which is aimed at an invitation-only series of novellas through a publisher. I may still self-publish it instead if I think it would work better for me, but I'm still aiming to get this book done and sent off by August 14.

4. And cover art is really keeping me hopping. I'm going to have to cut back on that, even though I love doing it. I've been getting a lot of multiple requests from authors, and often they want to bring out several books at once. Sometimes I can't accommodate them. But it is fun to develop a series style for their books.