Celebrate the Small Things-November 27, 2015

It's Friday!  Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain!  Tonja Drecker and I are her co-hosts.

I'll start with the bad news of the week.  My son Lyle fell down the stairs on Wednesday night and sprained his right foot.  It's all swollen and painful and he can't walk on it.  We had a fun trip to the ER, and he's going to be relatively incapacitated for the next few days.  Four-year-old kids don't like being incapacitated either.  Still, it could have been worse, and while it's a rather miserable experience for him, he'll heal.

Now for the good.  Self-Help 101 or: How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family is coming out on Tuesday!  I'll be giving away free copies, so be sure to stop by next week to check it out!

We had Thanksgiving dinner with my dad, and I'll be making another Thanksgiving dinner this weekend.  It is definitely a bad week to be on a diet.

I'm continuing to work on my writing, and things are going well.  I have the next installment in the Self-Help 101 series started, and I've also done some work on a companion short story that goes along with it.

What would you like to celebrate?

Celebrate the Small Things-November 20, 2015

It's Friday!  Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain.  Tonja Drecker and I are her co-hosts.

I'll start with an interesting bit of news regarding my family.  My dad retired last week. He's turning 65 at the end of this year, so he's about the right age, but the way he went about it was interesting.  Instead of giving plenty of notice ahead of time, though, he just went into work one day, walked into the office and told them he wanted to retire. Boom.  That was it.  This  did not surprise me all that much.  I know my dad.  He'd just had enough.

Today is the first snowfall of the year where I live.  As of the time I write this, I've heard snowfall estimates of anywhere from 3 to 10 inches.  That's a wide range, and I have no idea where we're going to end up.  I'm not excited about the snow, but my kids sure are.  They can't stop talking about it.

The release of my Christmas novella Self-Help 101 or: How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family is in less than two weeks.  I'm both excited and nervous about that one.  I still need to finish the posts for my blog tour, but I'm hoping to have them done by Thanksgiving.

I've been doing a lot of reading this week, and a lot of writing too.  Those two things alone make for a pretty good week.  With the snowfall coming, I think I'll be able to keep up that trend.

What would you like to celebrate?

The Undead Road Cover Reveal!

Today I'm happy to be helping David Powers King with the cover reveal for his book The Undead Road.  I have to say this cover is pretty spectacular.  What do you think?

Title: The Undead Road: My Zombie Summer: Part 1

Publisher: CreateSpace / Dashboard Books

Ebook Release: January 1^st, 2016

Paperback: January 26^th, 2016

Cover by Steven Novak

Blurb:

Nothing brings the family together like a zombie apocalypse …

Fifteen-year-old Jeremy Barnes would rather watch a zombie movie than shoot a real one, but he has no choice if his family wants to survive the end of the world. Their plan? Drive across the infected United States to a cabin in the Colorado Rockies without a scratch, but their trip takes a complicated detour in the middle of Nebraska when they find Kaylynn, a girl who can handle a baseball bat better than Jeremy can hold a .45 Berretta. And when they stumble into a sanctuary, Jeremy soon learns that Kaylynn is stronger than she looks—a deadly secret lies inside her.

After the radio picks up a distress call from Kansas City about a possible cure, Jeremy’s parents go with a team to investigate. They never return. The only way to find their parents is for Jeremy and his sister Jewel to rely on a dangerous girl who might just turn on them at any moment.

Contest Details:

A while ago, David invited the blogosphere to let him turn one unfortunate lucky contestant into a zombie for The Undead Road. The winner was Ilima Todd, who is now the awesome author of Remake. The next installment of My Zombie Summer is underway, and David wants to do this contest again. Want to be in a zombie book? Not only is this your chance, but it is your choice!

Between now and next Wednesday, send an email to dpowersking [at] gmail [dot] com, with the subject line: Zombify Me! Contest. In your email, David wants you to tell him three things:

1: The name you will be identified as (example: your first name).

2: A description of yourself—the more detailed you are, the better.

3: How would you like the survivors to put you out of your misery?

Four casualties contestants will be chosen on Wednesday, November 25th. The most inventive or interesting entry will be zombified! The other three who are unlucky fortunate enough to survive will be given special honors. Winners will be announced on December 2^nd on David’s blog.

Prizes? The winner will be zombified in the pages of My Zombie Summer: Part Two, receive a signed proof of the novel (when it’s ready), and a $20 Barnes and Noble gift card. The runner ups will receive a free ebook of The Undead Road for their Kindle (other platforms TBA).

Thank you for participating, and good luck!

About the Author:

David Powers King was born in beautiful downtown Burbank, California where his love for film inspired him to be a writer. He is the co-author of the YA fantasy novel WOVEN, published by Scholastic. An avid fan of science fiction and fantasy, David also has a soft spot for zombies and the paranormal. He currently lives deep in the mountain West with his wife and three children.

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Celebrate the Small Things-November 13, 2015

It's Friday!  Let's Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain!  Tonja Drecker and I are her co-hosts.

Thanks to everyone who helped me out with the cover reveal for Self-Help 101 or: How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family on Monday!  I got a lot of good comments, and that's always encouraging.  I'd also like to thank everyone who has signed on to be part of my blog tour.  As of now, I have every spot filled except for one.  The last day of my blog tour, which is Wednesday, December 16th, is still available, and the topic for that day is mistletoe.  If anyone would like to claim that spot, just let me know!

I got a proof for the CreateSpace version of my novella in the mail this week, and it looks pretty good.  Getting that in the mail got me all excited for release day.  Do I really need to wait until December 1st?

I also started work on the next novella in the Self-Help 101 series, and I'm pleased with my progress so far.  I love the excitement that comes with a project like this!

I'd also like to thank Jax and Dani from Cover Girls for the $20 gift card that I won through Spooktoberfest.  As soon as I got it, I did some book shopping.  Shopping for books always makes my day.

We had a furnace problem this week.  It started with a loud banging sound, and after that, the furnace sounded like a jackhammer.  It turns out the filter got sucked inside, and once that was removed and a new filter put into place, all was well.  I'm glad the problem was cheap and fast to fix.

Also, my broken laptop is fixed!  Yay!  My husband and some of his friends tore it apart and repaired it last Friday night.  I'm so glad to have my computer back.  Seriously.  I missed it.  I'm seriously grateful to my sister in law who lent me her laptop to use until we got mine running again.

What would you like to celebrate?

Self-Help 101 Cover Reveal and Other News

I wanted to do something fun with this cover, and since the main character Dani spends a lot of time jotting down notes in a notebook, I knew I wanted to incorporate that somehow.  My husband helped me with this one, but the artwork is 100% mine.  I wanted to capture the feelings of doodles in a notebook, and I figured I could pull that off.  You can judge for yourself whether I succeeded or not.

Title: Self-Help 101 or: How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family

Author: L.G. Keltner

Genre: Holiday/Humor

Length: 27,000 words

Cover Art: L.G. Keltner

Release Date: December 1, 2015

Blurb:

Dani Finklemeier has decided to write a self-help book about how to take over the world, but she’s not sure where to start.  After all, she’s only seventeen and looking for a better way to make money than babysitting.  She buys a self-help book that promises to teach her how to write a self-help book in the hope of getting the job done.

Not that it’ll be easy to get any work done this holiday season.  Her family is staying at the house for Christmas, and fights break out almost immediately.  Dani also has to deal with the fallout from an unexpected kiss with her best friend Seth and the feelings that go along with it.  On edge around her family and unsure how to interact with the one person she’s trusted with everything in the past, she can only take what inspiration she can from the crazy circumstances surrounding her and see what happens.

One way or another, it should be an interesting holiday.

Bio:

L.G. Keltner spends most of her time trying to write while also cleaning up after her crazy but wonderful kids and hanging out with her husband.  Her favorite genre of all time is science fiction, and she’s been trying to write novels since the age of six.  Needless to say, those earliest attempts weren’t all that good. 

Her non-writing hobbies include astronomy and playing Trivial Pursuit.

You can typically find L.G. lurking around her blog, on Twitter, or on her Facebook page.

Pre-Order Links:

Amazon

Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Add it on Goodreads

Other News:

I also have a bit of news.  Thanks to a conversation with my husband, I've decided to turn this into a series.  You can now expect three more novellas to come over the course of the next year.  Each will correspond with a holiday.  The next one will take place during the 4th of July, so you can expect that to come out around May or June 2016.  I think the others will take place during Halloween and New Year's Eve.  That's the plan so far, anyway.  This story was just so fun to write, and I want to keep going with it.

That doesn't mean I won't keep working on the other writing projects, because I plan to.  It just means I'll be keeping busy, which is fine by me.

Also, I still have three dates open for my blog tour, so if anyone is willing and able to help me out.  The dates and topics for those days are:

Friday, December 4th: large meals

Tuesday, December 8th: Christmas trees

Wednesday, December 16th: mistletoe

Thanks to everyone who volunteered to help me out, and to everyone for simply taking the time to stop by!

Celebrate the Small Things-November 6, 2015

Is it Friday?  My calendar tells me it is.  That means it's time to Celebrate the Small Things with Lexa Cain!  Tonja Drecker and I are her co-hosts.

The cover reveal for my Christmas novella Self-Help 101 or: How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family is on Monday.  If anyone is interested in joining in, you can either sign up HERE or email me at: laura dot gene dot walker at gmail dot com.  I'll be sending out the info to everyone later today, but if anyone wants to join in last minute, I'll still be glad to pass on what they need.

I finished formatting my novella for Amazon, CreateSpace, and Smashwords this week.  It's a relief to have that part of things done.  Formatting is a grueling task, but it's worth it in the end.  It's also good that I seem to be getting better at it each time I do it.

I'm looking forward to moving on to work on another writing project.  This one was a ton of fun, but I have another story burning away at the inside of my brain, desperate to see the light of day.  Though I think I may reward myself for a week of hard work by taking it easy today.  We'll see how that goes.

The weather here continues to be wonderful.  It doesn't feel like November at all. Believe me, I'm fine with that.

What would you like to celebrate?

The Insecure Writer's Support Group: November 2015

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and that means it's time for another meeting of the Insecure Writer's Support Group.  Our fearless leader Alex J. Cavanaugh brought this group to life.  His co-hosts for this month are Tyrean Martinson, Karen Walker, Denise Covey, and Stephen Tremp.

Be sure to check out the IWSG website and Facebook group!

This month I'm insecure about getting everything done in time for the release of Self-Help 101 or: How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family on December 1st.  I have so much to get done this month, and I've drawn up a detailed timeline with all the deadlines that I've set for myself clearly spelled out.  When I look at it all written down, it almost seems overwhelming, but I keep reminding myself that it can all be done.

My cover reveal is on Monday, and I'm about to start formatting the book for Amazon and Smashwords.  This is a tedious phase to be in, but I can happily say this much.  I am pleased with the way this story turned out.  I can only hope other people will enjoy it too.

If anyone would like to help me out with the cover reveal or my blog tour in December, you can do so HERE.  I still need some people, so don't be shy!

I'd like to wrap this post up with an inspirational writing quote.

"If I waited for perfection . . . I would never write a word."

-Margaret Atwood

Go forth and write, dear friends!