First review of Full Circle...from Smashwords

Review by: N.B. on Aug. 21, 2012 :      

After having read both _Broken Road_ and more recently, _Full 

Circle_ (both by Cindy Rush), I am now experiencing feelings 

similar to those after I drop off a loved one at the airport: I'm happy 

for the time we've had together, but I'm sad because I'm saying 

good-bye. I will miss Roxie, Caleb, Cole, and the other characters 

that Rush so brilliantly created. The characters, with their realistic 

quirks and flaws, were the type that are easy to relate to. The story

line was interesting, and I found myself thinking about it when I 

was not reading. I am happy to have read these books. Both will

 stay with me for a long time.

Full Circle has been made available in hardback print form on Lulu.com.  It is a little pricey at over $24.00, but this is as much as Lulu will let us discount a hardback. 

Watch for Lulu's additional sales.  They usually run one at least once a month

This is the sequel to Broken Road--the sequel that was never supposed to be written.  But the characters had other ideas and became so persistent, it was either right a sequel or never get a good night's sleep again.

Latest review of Broken Road on Goodreads....sigh

"I immediately felt close to the wonderful characters and could barely put the book down. Each character is strong with great personalities and lots of integrity. The ending came way to soon and quite a surprise to me. I cannot wait to read the sequel and reconnect to Cole's life and Caleb's recovery. Because " Love always trusts and always hopes and always endures "

The Sequel I Swore I Wouldn't Write....

I can't quite believe it, but my second novel is finished.  It seems like the process for this one went so much more quickly than the first, and that scares me a little.  Like maybe I shouldn't have let it go so soon.  My husband has a Master's in Writing and he said the writing on the second novel was much cleaner than the first.  But it still feels very daring to have sent this one on its eBook way less than 18 months after starting it.


The title is Full Circle; it's the sequel to Broken Road.  Broken Road can be found on Lulu.com for the print version and Smashwords.com for the eBook.  Full Circle is only on Smashwords.com in eBook at the moment, but will soon be on Lulu.com for print.


I love the characters in these stories so much.  I believe they will speak to readers for a variety of reasons.  I hope you will give them a chance.

limbo, purgatory, soul prison....

   I am giving away three copies of Broken Road on GoodReads. At last count, 527 people have requested to be considered for the giveaway.  There are three days left before GoodReads chooses the lucky winners.

   My dilemma: GR does not offer me the ability to link the giveaway information with the Smashwords site for the eBook.  Since the eBook price has been lowered to $0.99, I feel certain that a few of those 527 folks who don’t win a book on the giveaway would download a copy for that price.

   The revising/editing on the sequel, Full Circle, continues, but it’s slow-going.  The June 17 release date has been pushed back to July 4, which is about to be pushed back to….

   Meanwhile, the poor characters remain in limbo.

Wow...what a bummer

Apologies for yesterday's post. What a downer. Proof that I should not write when I'm depressed!

: - P

It’s been a frustrating six months.  We “officially” released Broken Road back in the middle of November.  We distributed over 300 business cards showing a brief blurb from the book, and our website address, beginning in Chicago at the site of the Nat’l Writing Project Annual Convention and the annual convention for English teachers.

We felt sure the website would get some hits from curiosity if nothing else, but the number of visitors to the site was disappointing.  We gave away books on GoodReads to two members who were selected by GoodReads out of 393 people who requested to be part of the giveaway.  So far, only one of the winners has read the book and left a comment on GoodReads.

We re-thought the first two chapters and did a major slash-and-trash on the book in early April; turned it from a 20 chapter book into a 75 chapter book, based on advice from a successful eBook author. (This move, I believe, was a HUGE mistake. I think it immediately puts someone off when they download a sample and see that it has so many chapters.  Also, Smashwords considers a book with more than 300 pages to be an “epic” novel, a description I think the average reader would find dismaying.

On our recent trip to south Alabama and the Gulf, we had magnets made for our car with our QR code that connects to our website, which in turn shows that the eBook of Broken Road is now available for $0.99 on Smashwords.  We’ve had a few more downloads of the sample, but no more purchases.

No two ways about it, I’m bummed. Mike really thinks the sequel, Full Circle, should be ready by Father’s Day.  That ain’t happening.  I can’t read with any positive spin anymore, so I have serious doubts about the editing process right now.

I guess the fact that most of my family has not read the book should have been a clue.  Maybe the average reader needs erotic themes, or blood, guts and gore–I don’t know. 

But I do know that I’ve personally read a great number of books that were really enjoyable reads that didn’t rely on shock or sensationalism.  So I’m holding out hope for the folks from Broken Road.

Time Away...

I think this is the longest I've gone without spending time with my friends in Derry since I started writing about them in April 2010.


I honestly thought some of my vacation time would be spent "polishing" the next installment of their story to prepare it for publishing, but that never happened, and I think it was for the best.  


Sometimes, your brain just needs to be free of anything that creates stress, even if it's a stress you have enjoyed, such as writing about fictional folks that you love.


It was a good week of sitting on the beach, playing in the surf, and not doing much of anything else.

On Vacation

Mike and I are in Gulf Shores.  It's wonderful here, although the area has changed drastically from the Gulf Shores of my childhood family vacations.
I brought Mike here for the first time 36 years ago this month. We were both 19 and had been engaged about 8 months.  It's kinda funny to think about--the changes both this area, and we as a couple have been through. And yet, there are a few things that are constant. The waves and the sand are still there; at times, they've been whipped into a frenzy from hurricane winds, and mankind's pollution has wreaked havoc as well, although I'm amazed how clear the water is and pale the color of the sand on this trip.
Mike and I have had a few hurricanes in our married life, and heaven knows we've wreaked a little havoc on each other.  But there's a core of our relationship that has stayed constant, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.


I don't know if I'll work on Full Circle this week or not.  I had every intention of doing so, but there's a feeling of just being completely lazy and enjoying time away.

I’m in one of my funks.  After the initial high of having three purchases of Broken Road on Smashwords, and numerous downloads of the sample, we’ve had none of either for several days.  The Barnes and Noble upload is taking forever, and my submission my story was rejected by yet another contest.

Mike has told some folks that Full Circle, BR’s sequel, will be ready by Father’s Day…I never knew he smoked crack.  I spent time with Lana Lawrence yesterday as she worked her magic on the cover for Full Circle only to discover when I opened the saved photo on my computer that the colors are NOT what I saw on hers.  She emailed and said we might need to adjust our screens’ resolution, but my confidence in using that pic is shot.

On top of everything else, it was an awful two weeks at work.  I’m fifty-five and in a “what-the-heck-is-the-point-of-life” mood.

On the up-side, Mike will be out of school on Monday, and we have a lovely vacation planned for this summer.

And, of course, tomorrow is another day.


http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/157986

A Chance to Win....

We are giving away three copies of Broken Road through Goodreads.  If you are interested, please visit the following website and register.  
http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/25664-broken-road

Remembering...

34 years ago this weekend, no one is sure exactly what day, a precious soul took his own life. His death and, more importantly, his life, have had a strong impact on me through those years.

So much of an impact that around ten years ago, a wish turned into an idea, which became the beginning of a story.  The story would take years to grow from that single idea, but in November 2011, it became a published, hold-in-your-hands book. Not much later, the second book was begun. Today, the second is nearly finished.

My hope and fervent prayer is that no one ever believes I “used” my friend’s death for my novel. The reality is that the story was born of my love for him and how desperately I missed a dear friend.

Wahoo!

Broken Road's first review from a complete and total stranger via Smashwords.com:
Review by: fongies on May 09, 2012 :          
LOVED it you can't leave it there when is the next one coming!
I haven't cried so much reading a book in ages you grabbed my heart strings and pulled them tight.
The bond that you built between all the characters is so strong and it leapt off the page and they now all have a place in my own heart - thank you for bringing them to us
(reviewed within a week of purchase)

Everything old is new again...

     A couple of weeks ago, Mike and I went to the Arkansas Literary Festival and attended a session about publishing an eBook.  I heard a few things about “today’s reader” that frustrated me, but, as Mike often reminds me, we have to keep up with a certain amount of technology.

     A “hold in your hands” book is still my favorite, although I must admit having a Nook that is self-lit comes in very handy when I wake up for no good reason in the middle of the night. 

     E-publishing is no-frills, which I really don’t like.  There is no way to know what electronic reader someone may be using, so the careful formatting of acknowledgement and dedication pages is not worth the time.  I opened Broken Road on one particular reader and my dedication page is split between two pages, with the second page showing the very last line of the dedication.  It looked really stupid.  But that’s hard cheese because “today’s reader” wants to get to the story as quickly as possible.

     So, long story short (I know; too late), we have completely revamped Broken Road. We cut four pages out of what used to be the first two chapters.  Those first two chapters are now the first six chapters. Evidently, “today’s reader” prefers shorter chapters as well.  I decided I might as well just go whole hog and printed the cover on a lighter paper.  I loved the red background, but it seemed to muddle the drawing.

     And now, the big hurrah.  We will be offering the new, upgraded Broken Road on Mother’s day for $0.99.  Yep, that was the biggie we took away from that session on epublishing.  Drop the dang price…and honestly, at this point, I really want folks to read this thing. 

     We’ll see how it goes from here.

Read yourself a story...

I “published” Broken Road in November 2011.  Mike and I had been through it together and separately more than ten times.  We had whipped that puppy into shape…or so we thought.  I currently have four versions of the book sitting on my desk.  The first three have major typos and continuity errors; the fourth has no continuity errors, but still has typos.

Two weeks ago, I decided that Broken Road needed a massive slash-and-trash edit.  I cut three and a half pages out of the first two chapters.  Then I decided to read it aloud to myself.

You would not believe how many more typos I have found.  Reading aloud has to be the best ever tool for editing a written work.  Not only do you catch all those pesky mistakes that your brain doesn’t even register when you read silently, but you’ll have a better idea of how good your book is when you hear it out loud.

So, I reckon I’ll have one more version of Broken Road.  By the way, it’s a really good story.

Happy Birthday, Broken Road

     I'm awake, not by choice, at 3:26 a.m., having been awake since 12:40.  This type of occurrence usually irritates the heck out of me, but I've just realized that yesterday was the second birthday of Broken Road. So it is entirely appropriate that I would have had one of my fall-sound-asleep-only-to-be-wide-awake-two-hours-later events tonight.
     See, when I was in the thick of writing Broken Road, this happened all the time.  The characters couldn't shut up long enough for me to get a decent night's sleep.  They routinely woke me up between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m., yakking incessantly about what they wanted to happen next in their fictional lives.
     I sound crazy, don't I?  That's how I felt! Honestly, the made-up people from my story would wake me up.  
     They let me sleep now...well, nearly all the time.  But I guess they were a little insulted that I let yesterday slip by without recognizing their birthday.
     With apologies, happy birthday, Roxie, Cole and Caleb.  I love you guys...but promise me you won't go back to the middle-of-the-night gab fests.

With Deepest Apologies....But it Had to Be Done!

I offer my most sincere apology to those who have read Broken Road.  I am working on a slash and trash revision of the first two chapters; there's just too much verbiage there.
I have learned that, because I'm new to this writing gig, my style is to barf way too much info onto a page.  That's one of the ways I get to know my characters.  Even after (or maybe because of) reading the blasted manuscript a dozen times, it seemed impossible to pare down.
But it had to be done, and I don't think anyone will miss the additional info.
Jiminy Crickhead, will everything I write take two years to ripen?  In three days, it will have been two years exactly since we started Broken Road. 
Yet another pointer to the fact that I am not a patient person.

Back Where...I Belong?

     Okay…so I got really down about the struggles of being a self-published author a few weeks ago and stopped editing the sequel to Broken Road—just figured, what’s the point?  Since we had already told one of our first readers that she could have a draft over Spring Break, Mike printed off a copy and gave it to her. But I was done. Yeah, the characters were still talking to me from time to time, but so what?  It’s a hellavalotta work and just results in an uphill struggle that can break your freaking heart.

     But I have found myself unable to stay away.  I know the characters are not real people, but it seems unfair to leave their lives in limbo.  Little by little, the editing has resumed.  I don’t mean to sound flip, but I completely understand why writing leads to mass consumption of spirituous liquids.  If I imbibed, these two novels would have done me in by now.

For sale...

I have several copies of Broken Road in hardback and paperback that are pre our last revision.  The cost of these are several dollars less than if you order from Lulu or Amazon.  If you are interested in purchasing a copy, please email me at:
Cindy@Shadetreewritings.com

I'm trying, I'm trying....

I spent 5.5 hours today working on revisions for Full Circle.  Mike has let me know that a couple of advance-copy readers (and believe me, we LOVE our brave readers who will slog through the first draft of a novel) would like to have a copy of Full Circle to read during Spring Break; that's less than two weeks from now.
My eyes are not as young as they used to be and staring at a computer screen for so long is not vision-friendly.
But, I'll do my durndest!

I Think the Phrase Rhymes With...

I really want to hurt myself. Mike read through Broken Road last week. And even though he's read it numerous times before, and I've read it and revised it at least thirteen times, he still found errors this time around. Big errors...stupid errors...banging-my-head-against-the-wall errors.
I'm so frustrated; I'm so embarrassed; I'm so ready to destroy something.
Last week, Mike told someone that Full Circle would be ready to read in two months. NOT BLOODY LIKELY!

And Now It Begins...Again

I have turned over the finished first draft of Full Circle, sequel to Broken Road, to my husband, Mike.  He will read it through and we will discuss and discuss and discuss what needs work and what should be done away with. 
We will end up laughing hysterically at some of the typos (and believe me, there are loads) and crying over the pain the characters go through.
I will get frustrated at how meticulous he insists we be, and he will be exasperated at my 180 degree mood swings.
It should be a lot of fun.  The last one was.

Snow Day...

   Today is a great writing day.  It snowed earlier in the day; now it's drizzling and very overcast.  I would love for Mike to have had a snow day as well, but being here alone has been good.
   The characters of Broken Road have been in limbo for quite a while and today has been the perfect day to get their lives going again.  A few folks have expressed a desire to know what will next happen to my friends in Derry. All I can tell you is that life is never as storybook or simple as we'd like it to be. 

This is crazy

I have to admit that, since we published Broken Road, I have Googled myself (sounds slightly dirty; it's certainly egotistical).  This morning, I did it again and found a delightful if absurd surprise.  Broken Road is now available in eBook or paperback...on Amazon UK!!  What a hoot!  They're asking 18.41 sterling for it, which is the equivalent of about $32.00, so I can't imagine we will sell a single copy, but seeing it listed gave me a thrill.
We lived in the UK from 1988-1990.  I read a great number of books by British authors and Mike and I both enjoy many BBC productions.  So maybe this is happy serendipity.
Whatever it is, it's given Mike and me a wonderful little shot of excitement!

Broken Road giveaway

It’s February, so I’m going to be European and give away a gift on my birthday.  If you would like to be entered in a drawing for a copy of Broken Road,  go to: www.shadetreewritings.com, then to Cindy’s page and find the contact information. 

Send me an email and you will be entered for the drawing.  My four-year-old granddaughter will do the honors of choosing a name out of a hat or a bowl or a bag–I haven’t decided yet.

Does this seem shamelessly self-promoting?  Okay, it is, but it’s my birthday!
The drawing will be February 23.

Another Caveat Lector

If you have purchased The Face, thinking it was a book, please accept our apologies. Lulu sponsored a short story contest which we entered with The Face.  If we had won, we would have used the $100 prize to purchase more copies of Broken Road to we could offer them to readers at a reduced rate.  We had to give The Face a price and also distribute it to all eBook channels.  We're sorry for the confusion this may have caused.  We hope you enjoy that little story, and don't feel ripped off for having purchased it!

Humility is a Good Thing...right?

     Nothing to keep a soul humble like the library of their own hometown choosing not to place that soul's literary accomplishment in circulation.
     That's right; my hometown library in Fayetteville, AR, the city where I was born, raised, baptized, graduated from high school, terrorized (strike that), got married and lived for eight years after marriage has declined to place Broken Road on its shelves.
     Don't know if anyone there read it, which I suppose is a good thing.  It's easier to swallow that they simply don't accept unsolicited editions, particularly ones that are not commercially published. I really don't want to know if someone there read it and was so appalled by it that they refused on those grounds.   
     So maybe it hasn't completely humbled me.

The details drive me crazy

This is not a blog post, per se. It's more in the vein of a caveat lector. 
Today is January 22, 2012 and we are quite frustrated with the ePub conversion for Nook and IBook. 
We are working to fix the glitches with Lulu. It's not that those eBooks can't be purchased and read; it's that some of the formatting is screwy. 
Okay, maybe I'm a little hyper about the details, but I can't help it.

Taking It Slow

     We went away for the weekend.  I had to get out of town.  The frustrations of the day-to-day grind have really been weighing on me in the last few weeks and I desperately needed a change of scenery.

     We went to a fishing resort about three hours away.  We didn’t go to fish; we went to go be in a cabin by the river.  It’s the off-season, so there weren’t a lot of folks there and the rates were affordable.

     I haven’t been able to concentrate very well on writing here at home.  But yesterday, listening to great tunes in the calm of the cabin, I was able to get back into my story.  Oddly enough, I didn’t do much new writing, just a lot of editing.  Got a little crazy and slashed entire sentences and even two whole paragraphs.  

    When I start a new story, I basically just barf words all over the page.  Any thought, any description gets in.  It’s only after I’ve re-read the darn thing seven or eight times that I read a line and think, “what in the world does that add to the storyline?” 

     Mike’s always told me you can’t edit at the same time you write; that’s so true.  I’ve discovered that I can’t edit until I’ve read and re-read and re-read.   The final edition of Broken Road has 33,000 fewer words than the first draft, but that took thirteen reads to happen.   
     A few people are anxious to read this second story.  I am, too.  But the author is going to take her own sweet time.  She’s learned how her editing brain works and it’s not going to be rushed.

We Are Not Mr. Tanner...

I listened to a lot of Harry Chapin when I was in high school and later too. This guy can really sing a story. 


I was too young, then, to understand the story he was trying to tell in the song, Mr. Tanner.


Mr. Tanner owns a cleaning shop in a small town, but his love is singing. He's a big fish in a small pond, but doesn't find his identity there, he just loves to sing. His friends and neighbors finally convince him to sing in New York and seek the big time, where he is panned by critics. He comes home and never sings again, except when he's all by himself in the darkness of the cleaning store.


Chapin's Mr. Tanner is a story about losing your love after taking it to the larger stage where for money and fame it is judged, compared with others, and evaluated for it's worth to the larger audience.


All this to say that we have entered Broken Road in a contest for self-published works through Writer's Digest. It cost us a whole hundred dollars, totally depleting our very humble Broken Road account.


But we did it just to see if we can get the attention of more readers. News of our incredibly amazing, big-screen bound story has moved disappointingly slowly. There is no doubt Broken Road is worthy of submission, but like Mr. Tanner, it may not be seen as something the larger audience would be willing to pay for. But it seems worth it to us for a chance to capture more readers.


Even if Broken Road receives no recognition at all, we're not folding this tent. We've heard way too many interesting and wonderful comments and reactions to the characters in our story. We're moving forward with this. When Roxie hears Sophie say Caleb's a slow mover she says, "Molasses in winter is a slow mover."


And right now, so is Broken Road.


Special thanks to www.rollingstone.com for the pic of Harry.

Woah...

I've been a little surprised at the reactions to Broken Road.  A couple of readers are upset with me about it; they object to the ending.  

That's not what surprises me.  I knew that would be the case for a lot of folks.  I've been caught off-guard because some folks have no trouble telling me that they feel that way.

I'm being polite, but I'd really like to say, "Well, then write your own damn book."  However, my mother raised me better than that, so I'll keep my mouth shut and just be glad folks are reading it.

The Pain of Self-Publishing

I don't think I felt anywhere near the grief writing Broken Road as Mike and I have experienced trying to get the dad-gum thing listed for eBooks.  

The rules for an eBook are a little different.  The front cover has to have the title and the author's name, and you must use one of a few fonts that the ePubs have deemed compatible for e-publishing.

Once you list the eBook, any revisions take forever to go through.  Consequently, I have no idea if the corrected version we posted Christmas day is being sold right now or if the edition with the horrendous error is still being downloaded by readers who will think I'm a moron when they notice the mistake.

I wish I could just shrug my shoulders and say "so be it", but mistakes, no matter how small, drive me nuts.

So, we'll see who wins...my sanity or the diabolical e-publishing that is trying to steal my soul.

Who You Were Supposed To Be All Along

Did you ever see the first Back to the Future movie?  Like any good story, it's rich with themes, but there is a scene at the end where a box arrives at the house; it's science fiction novels written by Marty's dad, George.


When we were in Chicago last November, for Cindy's "coming out" as an author, someone caught her off-guard with the simplest of questions.  "What's your book about?" Like any good book, Broken Road is rich with themes, and Cindy didn't know exactly how much to say.  When we talked about it later, I suggested that Cindy be ready to tell people that Broken Road is a story about "going home and discovering the person you were meant to be all along."  Yeah, I know, deep, huh!


A lot of us don't discover the people we were supposed to have been all along until much later in life.  Roxie sure didn't discover that until she went back to Derry.  And I think Cindy and I, in our own ways, struggled to know who we were supposed to have been all along, too.  


Then, a few weeks ago, this box came in the mail.  We got to have our "George Mcfly" moment.  And we know a little better, just who we are.

Broken Road News Report

Greetings!  Please allow me to offer you my own personal welcome to 2012.  May it be the best year yet.

It's already started as a great year for Broken Road.  Like many writers, we belong to a nice, but small community of writers who support each other and share in each other's work. A few of these folks read early drafts of BR, some so that we could get comments, some because they were going to have an integral role in its production. They all told us what a good book it was. "Couldn't put it down" was a common phrase.

And although they were wonderful comments that so encouraged us, I longed for a person who didn't know me, who had nothing at stake, who had never met my feelings and was totally unconcerned with hurting them, to say that BR was a good read. We new authors, we need a little affirmation, you know?  It's a little like motherhood.  WE know our kids are geniuses, but when they win the talent show, we feel like their value is seen by more than us, the biased eye.

Well, last night it happened. Someone who graduated high school with Mike had read the book and posted to Facebook, well, let me get the exact quote, because...uhem...it's worth it.  

"If you have not yet read Broken Road by Cindy Rush, you should.  This is a very good book. I found it hard to put down."

It was Mike who pointed out that it had happened.  What a blessing to get those words of encouragement.

Have a happy 2012!