It has been a great writing week here in Southern California. I was finally able to return to writing on my work-in-progress The Valley of Fear, which is the third in the Shirley Combs/Dr. Mary Watson mystery series. I made it my goal to complete Chapter Three, and it was rough! The book had been […]
Today, I’m participating in the “My Writing Process” Blog Tour. It’s a sort of chain mail amongst scribes; the tour rolled out in January, and will conclude this week. I was invited to play by Anne Lower, aka the Princess Scribe. Anne’s tour was last week; she wrote about how she goes about creating her screenplays, web series, […]
If you’d like a free copy of the first book in the Shirley Combs/Dr. Mary Watson series, I’m giving away FIVE more copies. Leave a comment here with your email address without the actual @ or dot (e.g. sandra at sandradehelen dot com is mine), and if there are more than five comments by the […]
THE HOUNDING by Sandra de Helen, available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats. CHAPTER ONE: The Hounding CILLA CAN’T SEEM to shake the nightmare. She almost gives up her daily run rather than face the possibility of meeting those dogs in real life. Dogs are reality for every marathon runner, and each runner finds a […]
So, the books are now in print. New book, plus revised book with new cover. They now have to be marketed. This is where it would be handy to prepare before the books are in print. I was so busy with all the revisions, trials and errors, outsourcing jobs and riding herd on everything, I […]
I need a sign to hang on my blog: Gone Writing. I’ve been absent from here for two weeks! Time flies when, well you know. I’ve been revising my mystery novel The Hounding, preparing it for audiobook and for re-release. I want it to be the best it can be and these days, it is easy […]
I’m getting excited about this weekend because two things are happening. First, my book’s teaser trailer will be released tomorrow afternoon. Second, I’m going to give away The Hounding on Kindle totally free for 3 days beginning at 12:01am Friday! I haven’t done this before, so am not sure how often to tweet and FB this information. […]
https://www.createspace.com/3840208
Yesterday the final final proof was completed and approved. The paperback is now released and available at Create Space for $11.99. The Kindle edition is still available on amazon.com for $2.99. The Look Inside will be available on Amazon in a few days. The paperback will also be available on Amazon in a few days.
I felt happy to finally push the Approve button at Create Space. This book was first published by Fiction Works as an eBook before ebooks were “the thing.” An eReader cost about $300. My book was a best seller the year it came out (a best-selling ebook, that is). That didn’t mean much back then in terms of money. We were all just WAY ahead of our time.
So, this year I revised The Hounding brought it up to date, made a few revisions that tightened the story, and I cleaned up every error that I and two assistants could find. If you read the book in either format, and find ANY error, please please tell me so I can fix it.
I think my protagonist and her sidekick, i.e. Shirley Combs and Dr. Mary Watson, are the Nancy Drew and friend for grown-ups. Dr. Watson is kind of a combination of Bess and George (she has George’s slim body, but she’s kind of Bess-like emotionally). Shirley, of course, is an homage to Sherlock Holmes and isn’t Nancy-like at all except that she is a woman and a detective. But Nancy Drew was our Sherlock, right? Nancy Drew gave me permission to act like Sherlock Holmes even though I was blonde and blue-eyed and lived in middle America when I was growing up. I had my “glass” (magnifying glass), and collected clues. I solved mysteries around the house and around the neighborhood. My mom collected pipes, so I often chewed on a stem thoughtfully as I paced the floor solving crimes while she was at work.
How did you “Nancy Drew?”
This seems like a good time to write about the process of proofing the galleys of one’s book. I thought I had a perfect version of my manuscript when I sent it to be printed. I had gone over it six times. SIX times. I had read it aloud twice. I was so confident, I […]
My fellow member of WIP500, Aniko Carmean (@anikocarmean) tagged me to participate in #luckyseven. The rules of the #luckyseven are simple: Go to page 7 or 77 in your current manuscript Go to line 7 Post on your blog the next 7 lines or sentences – as they are!! Tag 7 other people to do […]
Red Crested Author Sandra de Helen 