Queensland Baby! Goodreads Giveaway, New Books Available, and My Last Chance Prayer

Hello from beautifully sunny Queensland!
Yes, that's right, I've left the (not so cold now) weather of Melbourne, and flown the two hours up to Brisbane for the annual Caleb Christian writers conference!
Have been working my little backside off trying to get ready for this conference for the last few weeks, as I'm actually getting a table and selling books! My first physical event as a bookseller. Pretty exciting, no?

I have a lot of little things I want to cover just to keep you all updated, so I'm just going to lay it out.

GoodReads Giveaway:

First of all, big thank you to everyone that entered the Goodreads giveaway for the hardcopies of The Five Day Writer's Retreat. Over 1,000 people entered! It was really amazing.
I've sent out the five copies, but apologise to the winners in the UK, as it won't arrive until early December. 

I am sorry that only 5 people could win the hardcopies. However, to make it up to the rest of you, I'm offering 50% off the Smashwords' electronic copy of the book. This can be used by absolutely anyone until the 10th November, 2013. All you need to do is go to Smashwords and use this coupon code:

WD79W

 

You are more than welcome to share that around. I appreciate the support, and want to share the fun.

 

Colostrum - A Handbook of Spiritual Antibodies for New Christians.

 

I've finally published my father's first book! It's available as an ebook at Amazon, and soon will be coming as a hardcopy (I'm testing out Lightning Source rather than Createspace for it, and will give you a full report on the two once I get the proofs and hardcopies of Dad's book). 

Dad's been an Anglican minister for over 30 years, and has put together a handbook of the worst heresies that tend to shipwreck new believers. From experience he passes on the spiritual antibodies needed to fight these diseases. 

It was so much fun editing this book for Dad, largely because it was just so... Dad! Reading it is just like listening to him speak. I could even imagine his gestures and facial expressions. It is colloquial, and excited, theologically sound, and sensible. Highly recommended for all new believers, and would make a perfect baptism present. 

If anyone would like a review copy, sign up for my reviewers' list just on the left hand sidebar of this blog to always be offered free review copies, or send me an email at b.greentr@gmail.com.

Prayers, Please!

Finally, tomorrow night is the Caleb Dinner, where the winners of the Caleb Awards will be announced. My Christian Young Adult Supernatural, Sally Hunt Vs. God is a finalist in the unpublished manuscript section. To be honest, if I don't win I don't mind in that I get control of my manuscript and can publish it myself. However, at some stage I do want to be a Hybrid Author, with a combination of traditionally and self-published works. Largely, I want to see the difference and how well traditional publishing now compares. This would be a great opportunity. 

Also, just knowing my writing is of winning standards would be nice.

In a similar vein, I've entered the first chapter of After The Winter, the 1920's historical romance I did as my first draft for NaNoWriMo last year, into the Harlequin 'So You Think You Can Write' competition a few days ago. Little did I realise that if I get through to the next round, I need to submit a full manuscript by mid October! I have 50,000 words, but I never actually completed the first draft. So, pray that I do get into the next round, and then that I can get the manuscript written to a high enough standard in just a week! 

 

If you want to read the first chapter, check it out at: http://www.soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com/manuscripts-sytycw-2013/after-the-winter/

If you were wondering what my ROW80 goals for the next week... well, you can probably guess now. Intensive romance writing!

 

Anyone that will be free in a week or two to do some quick beta reading, I would love you long time!

 

Stay tuned for updates!

Busy Little Self-Employed Bee

So, have now been self-employed for three whole days!

What have I achieved in that time?

1. Continued with the creation of my awesome business plan and procedure manual. (Much harder than one might think, and involves complicated planning like how am I actually going to go from where I am now to running a multi-million dollar business helping people publish their works. Great in theory, just working out the practical steps to get there slightly harder). 

2. Have signed up for a number of writing conferences, to keep my skills sharp (and the all important networking). 

3. Wrote to one of the writing conferences I was planning to attend anyway, and asked if they needed another presenter to talk about creating an online platform. They came back and said they didn't need another presenter, but could I be on the panel talking about marketing and social media. Yah! Buffy Empire Building begins. 

4. Encouraged by that success I then wrote to different community centres and training organisations with proposals to run a short course in self-publishing. Am still waiting for responses, but the only way to build my experience and reputation is by actually doing it!

5. Using YouTube, I have taught myself to do basic covers in Gimp, and have created two covers for my brother's short stories. Pretty, no? (Hey, for half a day of learning, I think they are pretty good. Think what I will be able to do after an entire week!)

I'm still going to use my graphic designers for proper novels, but for free/cheap short stories, it is easier to do it myself. (Graphic designer has so far been mucking around for a month with Dave's other cover. I did these in an hour each.)

6. Following on from doing the covers, I edited both of Dave's short stories and uploaded Tom Grafton Vs. The Sambar Spiker onto Smashwords yesterday, and Tom Grafton Vs. The Wild Dog Pack on Smashwords and Amazon today.

The first one is completely free and available at Smashwords. If you had a spare 20 minutes and liked hunting/adventure stories, a review would be hugely appreciated. 

The other one is available for just 99c, less than a can of coke and much better for you! Reviews of that would also be great on Smashwords, Amazon or Good Reads. (Am getting Dave's author page up on Good Reads, but might take a day or two...).

Search for "David Alexander Greentree books" in google turns up both Smashwords and Amazon. 

7. Got annoyed with trying to publish on Smashwords from Word, which was being stupid, so downloaded Scrivener (finally!) and taught myself how to use that today. Had to reload Tom Grafton Vs The Sambar Spiker to Smashwords as it was coming up with an error, but after I had played with it in Scrivener for a while, it came good. From now on, all writing to be published is going to be in Scrivener. Long live a word processing program that actually prints like it looks!

8.  Have spent a few hours teaching my father how to set up a Facebook Page (not his personal one), how to do some keyword research, and what article marketing is. It's a slow process, but at least they are paying me. (My parents figured it was that or have me evicted for not paying my rent and sleeping on their floor anyway. It's a fair point). 

So, I think that for just 3 days' work, that's pretty good, if I do say so myself. Though haven't done any blogging this week, as it was meant to be my 'week off'. But still, can't do everything, and can't have it all right now.

Any good tips on cover creation?