Sydney Strand

So I wrote this short story that turned into a novelette (a fancier word for short story, but it's 12,000 words, a not-quite-short-story-amount that requires a fancier name). I wanted to put it in a tiny booklet form, a tangible something to give my mom who eschews eReaders, as well as something to put on my own bookshelf to show "Hey, look at this real thing you spent three months writing!" My usual go-to is Createspace, but they don't do smaller books. So I went to LuLu. My Experience with LuLu, The First Time So I downloaded the templates, just as I did with Createspace. I needed them for their 4.25 x 6.88 Pocketbook. (Doesn't that sound perfect for my cute Novelette? I thought so, too.) Let's talk the Interior: It had the same issues as the Createspace interior template, in that I had to be mindful of using section breaks and NOT page breaks. This messed with pagination and headers if a page break or a continuous section break (and not ...

I'm so super proud of myself. Today, I saw a tweet from a publisher looking for the kind of stuff I wrote. This publisher--rather, this imprint--gets its books into Target--a big, huge deal (not that many books get into Target). I heard the siren's call. And for a moment...nay, five minutes' worth of moments...I contemplated speed writing a book of 50,000 words by the January 30 deadline. Nevermind that it would be total first-draft crap. Nevermind that I would pretty much be a very neglectful mother, putting her children in front of the TV for, well, every waking moment. Nevermind the chocolate and stress that such an endeavor would entail. Luckily, at Minute Six, sanity returned. And I put this story into my Goals for 2016. And I created a Pinterest board for that story and the ideas that came to me in those five gloriously insane moments. You see, I have a writing plan for 2015. And this Five-Minutes-of-Crazy Story doesn't fit in tha...

So I started this post a week ago. I have the Blogger app on my phone, and I downloaded the images I wanted into a post and that post was supposed to be written last week. Uh, yeah. Not so much. I've been a bit scattered since I finished La Petite Adult's book on Christmas Morning. Or at least, on the writing front I have been. But then I started to look back and realized that the way I do things IS scattered--but I get sh*t done.  I took a minute I figured out everything I've done for my writing career since Christmas Morning 2014. I only wrote down career-related stuff...all the "other stuff" doesn't count. Since Christmas Morning, I have: 1. Revised a Cover Flat (Bad Mom: Mother's Day) 2. Created from scratch Two Cover Flats (Bad Mom: Glampfest! and His Favorite Distraction) 3. Created from scratch the print edition of a book (His Favorite Distraction)  4. Finished the JPG cover for my Bad Mom Short Story 5. Worked on the branding/lo...

Right now, I'm enjoying an aimlessness, a short phase of "What? I have time to do something tonight? I have no idea what that would be!" After a year of GO GO GO--releasing four ebooks, two print books, and one book-in-progress that only La Petite Adult has read--I'm letting myself have a minute to breathe. Well, my version of breathing. But first, my week in review as a Mom Writer with a Deadline: 1. We made it into Portsmouth, fifteen minutes away, to get haircuts for the boys and a dinner for all of us. La Petite had a bear project at school, and as part of the project, she had to take Penny the Bear out and about to give her an experience. Penny enjoying the board game store Walking the streets of Portsmouth, NH 2. We went to church, where La Petite was Mary in the Christmas Pageant. She was superb, and Le Boy Bebe was superb in his supporting role as Clapper. A mural of our church from the 1800s at the local post office. 3. I even for...

A screenshot from about two months ago, when I was tweaking covers and writing on two stories I have just put my fifth book into the work ( Hallelujah, Hallelujah!! ) and that means I've done and published five book covers in a year's time. Actually, I've created more than five. There were a couple of books that a) didn't get written because the story just wasn't there or b) went onto Wattpad or NaNoWriMo and were just placeholder covers anyway, no biggie. Then, just like writing, each cover gets revision and... I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let's get back on track. One day, I'll talk about all five, but for the sake of my !!! BOOK BIRTHDAY !!! I shall only discuss one, the guest of honor: His Favorite Distraction . (It's a good thing I'm only discussing this one: there are 13 covers!!!) Let's begin. The First One Let's start out with where I first started the process: October 2013--fifteen months ago.  ...