It's BLO-OG, IT'S BLO-OG

Bonus points to anyone who read the title to the tune of that "It's Log!" song from Ren and Stimpy. XD

I figured I'm probably overdue for a blog about what's going down lately. We'll start with PublishAmerica. Yes, I have read all the warnings and errors and red flags. I decided to check them out anyway. Worst thing that could happen? One of my least favorite of my short stories, Fatima, gets stuck with a crappy publisher until they inevitably cancel my contract. I won't spend any money on them, so I doubt they'll keep me long anyway.
I submitted the final manuscript yesterday along with the author questionnaire, and was kind of shocked to see that it didn't ask me for all sorts of weird red-flag stuff that others have reported. But who knows.

The second thing I need to report, as it's been all over facebook (well, maybe not my author page, which you can find at http://facebook.com/emmalinewestlund, if you haven't checked it out yet), is that I flipped my car on Tuesday. I don't want to put all the details on the blog here, since I'm going to write a short story out of it to really try to show people what went on in my head as the accident happened.

Pretty much, I was going just a touch too fast for the stretch of road (somewhere between 40 and 55, speed limit is 55, but there's FAR too much gravel to go much over 40, whereas I was going faster), hit a patch of loose gravel, and began to lose control of the car. I over-corrected and ended up heading to the ditch. My first thought was ok, I'll just go into the ditch and drive back out. Then I completely lost track of what was going on. Suddenly, I was sideways and I was in water. I recall thinking "oh crap. I'm in a lake. I'm dead. I'll never get out." Everything went black.

I had lost consciousness for just a short amount of time, couldn't have been more than a couple minutes, and I realized I was still breathing. I opened my eyes and found myself hanging from my seatbelt in water that was rising. It was rising slowly, but it was rising. My CD player was spouting random bits of songs from the FOB CD that was in, and that was when I began to panic. I couldn't reach my seatbelt and my fat ass couldn't quite wiggle myself free. I screamed for help- despite the fact that the nearest cabins are more than a mile away from where I went in.

I managed to free myself and found myself wading through knee-deep water back to shore, where two different couples had stopped, one man running down the embankment to help me. He pulled me up and helped me crawl up to the road, where we waited for the wrecker.

I managed to walk away with only a couple nasty bumps on the head, a scraped shoulder, a couple really bad bruises where the seatbelt got me, and a bumped elbow (as well as two scraped toes and an embedded piece of glass in a pinky toe). I walked away. I was very lucky.

P-P-P-PublishAmerica!

Now, despite what you've heard of them, despite what I've heard of them, I'm giving them a go with my story "Fatima." I want to see how it goes. If I like them, I'll offer my other books. If not, I'll go elsewhere. I'm not losing anything on it because I will NOT give them any money. and they can whine all they want. I will not pay for anything, just as everything on their website claims, that I won't have to buy anything.
But because of this, Fatima will be unpublished when I sign and send over the contract. So if you want a copy for nostalgia's sake, you'd better get you over to Amazon and get your copy! Paperback or ebook.

Darkness

Darkness is my very first foray into the world of zombies. Well, okay, it's the first that wasn't written when I was seven and very, very bored in second grade. And I do mean bored. Reading class, in particular, drove me batty, as I had learned how to read in Kindergarten, thanks to having a wonderful mother who helped me learn my ABCs and very basic words like "ball" and "red" and "spleen" before I hit school age.
Darkness marks my contribution to zombie lore. Darkness begins to ask the question: What if some zombies still held the intelligence and brainpower that they had in their lives before becoming zombies? What if the drive for brains (or flesh, or blood, or whatever) wasn't the main personality point of some zombies?

It is currently free in the Amazon Kindle Store and you can find it at the following link:
http://www.amazon.com/Darkness-ebook/dp/B008SH6VH8/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1344614458&sr=8-13&keywords=emmaline+westlund

Wow I'm vocal lately

Because apparently I cannot stop writing right now, like, I literally cannot be stopped, I've released another short story, entitled Darkness. It will be 99 cents in the kindle store for 90 days, then it will be released everywhere else. I'm trying a few different tactics with the KDP Select thing, trying to find a way that works. So far it seems like starting them out in the program works the best, but I could be wrong. Next two stories I release will be released everywhere initially and then moved to Amazon exclusively after three months.
Anyway, more about Darkness. Darkness is my first zombie-themed story. It's got zombies, it's got a very small love story, and it's told from the perspective of someone who gets attacked by zombies. It's zombielicious! And I think I may write more about zombies in the future. Anyway, that's the purpose of this post, to talk about Darkness.
Here's the cover for it:

Living Will is live on Amazon Kindle!

http://www.amazon.com/Living-Will-Sketchbooks-ebook/dp/B008RDXWLG/ref=sr_1_10?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1343842882&sr=1-10
$3.99

Even if you do not intend to buy it right away, could you hit the like button on the page? Every little thing helps!  :)