4k Hits and Moving Forward

I just wanted to pause my writing for one moment to write a quick and sincere thank you to everyone who's visited my blog since its inception. Yesterday evening my blog hit 4000 page views. It's been kind of a lumpy bumpy ride these past two-ish years that I've actually been active here. I've had times where I couldn't get three words typed, and I've had times where I've written an entire novella in less than three weeks. With me, there's not much in-between.
And with me, there's not much room for writing blog posts no matter what kind of time I'm having writing my stories. For that, I apologize. I'm not the best at social networking. I find it really difficult to post comments on others things. I'm actually really kind of afraid of not conveying myself properly and accidentally offending someone with my words when I'm typing.
When I'm speaking, on the other hand, I don't have to cherry pick my words as much. I stutter and stammer and might still have some difficulty expressing myself, but I don't have to sit and second guess what I'm saying because when I'm speaking you can tell my mood. You can plainly hear or see my expression and tone so what's meant as a compliment shouldn't come off as an insult (and vice versa).
I'm trying to push forward and force myself to speak on the internet. In fact, I've made an acquaintance in one of my lovely readers. She followed me on Twitter and it was linked to her tumblr so I followed her back on both and we ended up skyping that entire night away. It was just about the best time I'd ever had with someone on the internet.
So here's the thing: Please, do not be afraid to approach me. I want your readership, but more importantly I want your friendship. Who knows? Maybe you'll make it into one of my stories! I take a lot of my friends and put them in my stories, in one way or another.
Anyway, if you catch me on the internet, go ahead and talk to me. Bother me. Tell me I should be writing and then start enthusing about Star Trek or Doctor Who.

This month, I'm hosting an event over on fridley.patch.com. Every day, I'm posting a 50-150 word excerpt (shooting for 100 words each time, but sometimes it's a bit over and sometimes a bit under, because paragraphs) from something I'm working on. And: All through June, July and August I'll be releasing one short story every Friday or Saturday.
This week it's a zombie action gorefest.

FREE DOLLIE! Also, That Whole 'World Ending in 2012' thing is live in the Amazon Kindle Store

For five days, starting Monday, you can go to the Amazon Kindle store and get a free copy of Dollie for your kindle or kindle reading software. The promotion ends on Saturday morning around 2 or 3 AM Central time, so you've got five days to download and enjoy Dollie for FREE!
It will be the last time Dollie will be available for free through the Amazon Kindle store, as I am pulling it from the Amazon Prime program (It's not called the Amazon Prime thing for us writers, but I don't remember what it's called on our end... OH KDP select.) at the end of its current term, which is in July. So if you were planning to borrow it for free, Prime members, please remember to do so before July.

That Whole 'World Ending in 2012' Thing is now live in Smashwords, Kindle, and Nook stores, soon to be distributed to all ebook retailers, and coming out in print as a special 2fer paperback (RADT and TWWEI2012T) sometime in June? That's my best guess. I'm working really hard to get Mortality finished and polished and I'm still working to pull Nikki's Choice together for the Fatima + Nikki's Choice dual story paperback, which I'm hoping to release in August.

Nikki's Choice, the ebook version, will be put out as soon as it's done. It will ONLY be released in paperback through the dual story paperback with Fatima and a poem by my dear friend Robert Meyer.

For Mortality, I'm doing the whole 9 yards. I'm even gonna shell out money to release an audiobook of it. AND I'm gonna try to shell out money for a real book cover. Key word in that sentence: TRY. Because I don't know if I'll have that kind of money to spend. But that's where you guys come in!

Please show your support for me, you know you love me, and buy a copy of Random and Disturbing Thoughts or That Whole 'World Ending in 2012' Thing. Also if you could review any books by me that you may have purchased or gotten in free promotions, that would mean so much to me you have no idea.

Notice: Thank you for noticing this notice. Your noticing has been noted, and will be reported to the proper authorities

Really, I'm running out of blog titles.
Back, before the demise of GreatestJournal, I blogged constantly and I rarely had titles. This property does not follow through with my books, as I figure out a title FIRST, then do all the "dirty work" of writing it. It pretty much goes Title, Main Character, Supplemental Characters, Setting, Plot, Bad Guys, Genre, Content, Book Cover. Editing occurs all throughout the process, and it does get one final look over in a printed out version so I can find any weird anomalies.
Take right now for instance. I just got the idea for a story titled "Her Deepest Desire." The main character would be a girl of 16, an orphan, her name would be Naoma Liddel, and she would live with a foster family. Et cetera.
I come up with that information first, and the rest of it just flows. By the time I get to Supplemental Characters, I've already started writing the book. Sure, the first few paragraphs will change and evolve through the entire process, but most of the time the first sentence I write is what ends up being the first sentence of the book.

But I digress, as that was not the intended purpose of this blog entry.

First off, I want to show off this lovely link here: http://www.amazon.com/Emmas-Blog/dp/B007H0GCUI/  you can subscribe to this blog on your kindle. It's 99 cents per month with a 14 day trial period. Each entry would automatically be delivered to your kindle.

Also, almost all of my published works will be available for free for the FINAL TIME until after May tomorrow. Only Random and Disturbing Thoughts and Paper Lanterns will be left out, as I don't have any more free days for them.

Murder (A high school Speech team reject)

True to form, I may have been talking about "Murder" the past few days, but I never gave a real release date. Well, now I will. It'll be out within the next 12 hours, whenever Amazon sees fit.
Major props and huge shout out to my friend/former college instructor, Cara Bennett, who is actually on the cover of "Murder."

Swanky cover, innit?  :)

Murder is priced at $1.00, but will eventually go down to $0.99 when Amazon stops being a tool and lets me set the price at $0.99. It fought me tooth and nail to even let me publish it last night.

Also, huge-ish type news. You will soon be able to subscribe to this blog right from your kindle and get all my awesome updates delivered right to your kindle! KINDLEKINDLEKINDLEKINDLEKINDLE! Kindle! Kindle. Kindle?

Sorry, got stuck in a loop there.

I'm still considering changing a few things about the cover for "Murder," mostly the color scheme. But for now, I'm happy with how it looks, and it's my 7th (self)published work! Super happy about that.

Haven't posted in a long time

But that's a good thing, because it means that I've been busy.
I've written close to 40,000 words in the past three weeks, and am working on editing four different things and trying to make a bunch of cover artwork.
Random and Disturbing Thoughts, my memoir that I really only published as a joke to see how many I would sell, has two five star reviews. To put that in perspective, Martyr has 1 two-star review and Paper Dolls has 1 four-star review. Random and Disturbing Thoughts has gained two 5-star reviews in less than a month.
I'm hoping it is a sign that my work is going to start being more popular and that I'm going to earn more money so I can afford to keep on writing. I'm gonna be quick releasing a few things, some short stories, a short nonfiction piece, a novel, and a couple of DP items in the next two months because I want to make at least $1,000 for my vacation in June/July.
I can make this happen, but not without your help.
I want to say thank you to everyone who's downloaded, purchased, reviewed, or recommended any of my books, and ask that you please continue to spread the word about my books.
Also, I just noticed, my blog is up to 7 followers, which is totally awesome! I will have to start another giveaway soon, I suppose. Maybe when I reach 15 followers? I think that's a good goal to shoot for.
Speaking of giveaways, I've been having some problems getting my computer to cooperate with Createspace, so I've been unable to order the paperback copies for the winners yet. I will be sure to get those to you before the end of March.

Anyone know a way I can block facebook at will so I can get some work done?

Seriously? Because I have 10, yes, TEN things that I need to work on, five of which are within two actions of being completed and published, yet facebook. All facebook. All the time facebook.
I joined the Kindle Prime publishing thing recently with all of my books, and convinced both Jane and Chastity to do the same, and our sales have been exploding. If this keeps up the momentum, I'll be "jobless" by mid June.