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.

On a Lazy Sunday

I'm sitting at BP. Think it'll be a good day to get a couple paragraphs done on a story.
It's gloomy as hell today. Completely overcast, murky gray snow on the ground and the roads are slick and icy.
I made a new blog specifically for my next BIG project, Stories of the States. You can find it at http://storiesofthestates.blogspot.com and it will be updated whenever I have news about the Stories of States road trip or funding or book. It will also be HEAVILY picspammed every time I stop at a place with wifi.

There is an indiegogo campaign for it at http://indiegogo.com/storiesofthestates where you can donate as little as a dollar and get a free signed paperback copy of Stories of the States once it's released.

Kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1053183733/the-girl-i-used-to-be-book-series
I'm trying to raise money for the next series I plan on writing and releasing: "The Girl I Used To Be."
It's about a girl named Jaida who is the victim of incest, develops anorexia, and later loses her mother to her abusive father. It will span five books and takes place in my hometown of Fridley, MN.
Trying to raise $3,000 so I can get the first book professionally edited and get a proper book cover made.

Rather Exciting News!

So, about half of a year ago, I enrolled every book I had out at that point in the KDP Select program, which allows your books to be borrowed for free by kindle prime members. HOWEVER this had a downside, as I was only allowed to publish those books through amazon kindle at that point. So for 90 day increments, I had books exclusively on amazon.com for Kindle (and other places for the paperbacks). Well I liked it so well that I enrolled many of my books for a second period, but have taken the automatic re-enrollment option off of all of them, so that tomorrow, which is July 26th for those without a calendar, the enrollment expires. For all of them (except one short story that I'm keeping exclusive to Amazon, but that will be in tomorrows blog post).
What does this mean to you? Well, if you've got a nook or another reader that doesn't do .mobi files or have a kindle app, you'll be able to read my books! If you're anti-amazon, you'll be thrilled (i hope) to learn that my books will be available through Barnes & Noble and also Smashwords. The prices that are on amazon right now will remain the proper prices through at least October; I'm in the middle of negotiations to take on another lovely writer for Destruction Productions and have not had time to decide whether or not my prices will go up. So I'm pushing that off until October so I have time to decide.

THE OTHER NEWS I have that's quite exciting is that "Living Will" (Sketchbooks, book 3) is coming out before the end of July. It is also the second-to-last book in the series, another large decision. I was originally planning to have it be a 7 book series, but then I re-wrote the ending in my outlines and there's just really not that much story past the end of "Living Will" anymore, so "Sins of The Mother" will be book 4, the LAST book in the series.
"Living Will" will cost $3.99 and will be available everywhere through the end of August, followed by a 90 day period in which it will be exclusive to Amazon so I can take advantage of the Kindle Select program with it.

30 days, 30 stories

I'm starting a new challenge for myself. Every 6 months I'm going to challenge myself to write 30 short stories/novelettes in 30 days. This time around, they will each be published once they're completed and sold for $1.99 in the Amazon Kindle store, with the first 5 days of each story being free promo days.
So far I've almost completed a short story entitled "The Joint," which, as the title suggests, follows the path of a joint throughout a day. It should be up tomorrow or Sunday.
Each story will get its own blog post, and I'm currently on day 2 of the challenge. 28 days to go and 29 stories? I better step it up!