OKC Event Debrief, NaNoWriMo Decisions, and Hashtag Adventures.

October 28, 2018October 29, 2018 / Rozkai / 2 Comments

About Last Night…

A big thank you to everyone who came out the Bricktown Freaky Book Bang in OKC! We had a great time. I signed and sold a book, and I was able to meet and introduce some new people to my work. I call that a success. Also it was fun to be a supermodel for a day. lol

NaNoWriMo 2018

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This year, for the first time, I have decided to do the NaNoWriMo challenge. I’m still feeling my way around the site and trying to get the gist of this phenomenon, but I already have a couple of writing buddies. So yay! The challenge for me now is deciding which work in progress (WIP) to focus on for the challenge. Also I think I am supposed to set a word goal. I guess that will depend on which WIP I choose. Here are my choices:

God or Mammon

Originally, I was going to choose the second book in the Life Choices series,God or Mammon (Life Choices Book B). It’s a medical thriller. This one will be fun to write, and I am very excited about it.

Patches

The first draft of Patches is already finished. It is a supernatural thriller with angels and demons, and all kinds of wonderful spiritual warfare. It’s about an interracial couple that moves to a small town called Purblind. Christopher White is an architect and his wife, a black woman, is his lawyer. After doing a remodeling project in Purblind, AL, Christopher falls in love with the quiet little town, and purchases a house and some land there. Purblind only allows certain families to own land, so imagine their surprise when not only has an outsider purchased their land, but he also shows up with a mixed family. I still have a few beta readers who are reading it, and I recently got it back from my editor. So if I choose it, I will be mostly correcting and rewriting. Which can be fun as well, but I want to hear from more of my Beta Readers before I get started on this one. And some of them are still reading.

Wrong Number

I started working on this novel a few years ago, and lately it has been calling me back to it. Here’s the blurb: Billions of digits randomly collated into systematic sequences of ten, doled out according to nation, state, and area have linked our society in an intricately woven tapestry of communication. For Jason Gord, one systematic sequence became a lethal obsession, and for Cardigan DuPree the same phone number started a life altering nightmare. It is a thriller suspense novel. I am seriously itching to work on this one again. So I think I will choose it for NaNoWriMo.

#LiveTweetANovel

So I have started to do this new thing on twitter. You know how people live tweet their favorite shows and such? Well I thought it might be a fun thing to do with novels as well. So I started #LiveTweetANovel. Basically I am giving my reactions to what I am reading as I go along. Not for every page of course, but ever so often when I have a comment or thought about what I am reading. I am hoping this catches on, as I think it could be kind of fun. I am currently reading Miranda Warning by Heather Day Gilbert. Follow me on Twitter @Rozkai to find out what I am thinking about the novel so far.

September to Remember Giveaway Extravaganza!

September 4, 2018 / Rozkai / Leave a comment

Today I noticed that I finally made it to ten reviews! Granted I need about 50 before Amazon starts to pay more attention to my novel, but ten is a really good start. So a big thank you to everyone who has left a review so far. If you have read the book and have not left a review, you could be among the forty others that I need to reach my goal of fifty. 🙂 At any rate, the enthusiasm of number 10 really blessed me. Here it is:

A big thank you to the reader who left this review! I am so glad you enjoyed the book! To celebrate the first ten reviews, I am running a giveaway. Enter for a chance to win a signed copy of The Wages or the Gift.

Talent, Research, and Betas! Oh, My!

August 17, 2018 / Rozkai / Leave a comment

Happy Friday all! As my title might suggest, many exciting things are happening with regard to Author Roz. I would like to share some of them with you today.

Before I get into today’s blog, I want to let everyone know that I finally finished reformatting the e-book. For everyone who had a previous version, you should receive an update. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Talent

First of all, I am looking for the right male voice talent for The Wages or the Gift. Yes, that’s right, my next step for the novel is to make it into an audio book. I am super excited to get started, but first I need to find the right guy for the job. I have invited numerous voice actors to audition, but the auditions are trickling in slowly. At this point, I have no clear trajectory as to when audio book enthusiasts can expect to listen to The Wages or the Gift, but as soon as the voice has been chosen, I will update.

Research

I have started working on the next book in my Life Choices series: God or Mammon. I am super excited because this book is going to be a medical thriller. This is a fun genre that will require a lot of research. I am studying everything from medical terminology to hospital administration. Fun stuff!

Betas

Right now my second novel (completely unrelated to The Wages or the Gift) is with a wonderful group of people called Beta Readers! My Beta readers include my publicist (Jen Thomas), my editor (Martha Lowe) and a group of around 7 or 8 random lovers/readers of Christian Fiction. Most of them are still in the process of reading the book, but I have gotten a few of the results. So far, the general consensus is that I am on the right track (ie. they already really like/love the book), which is good. After I hear back from everyone, I will start working on draft two.

Oh, My!

I am super excited to draw your attention to The Voice of Literature Ezine at www.voxlit.co.uk. It’s a great publication out of the United Kingdom that features book reviews, excerpts from novels, author articles, and a section called Writer’s Notes. I am excited to share that an article I wrote on the technique of zooming is featured in this month’s Writer’s Notes section! It’s the first one you’ll see. Check it out! If you are a writer, or a person who loves literature, this is a great e-zine to follow.

Why the Cover Change? Glad you asked.

July 9, 2018July 12, 2018 / Rozkai / Leave a comment

Or maybe you didn’t, but I am excited to talk about it anyway. First of all a quick announcement: The Wages or the Gift is now available in print with a new cover and a new lower price! Blurb / Barnes and Noble / Amazon.

So why’d I do it? Well, I have a couple of quick stories to tell about that. My first hint that my original cover design (which I really liked, btw) was not the most successful choice I could make came when someone made a comment on Julia Wilson’s wonderful review that said the book looked like a non-fiction book to her. I did not put too much stock in the comment, since it was the first one I had heard. Most people were telling me they liked the cover. Still I would occasionally notice little things like people looking at the cover and saying, “Oh the Wage or the Gif” or something similar. I would then explain that the it’s Wages and Gift, and the dollar sign and the present (which I later discovered some people thought was a cross with a bow on it)…you get the drift.

I guess these little isolated incidents were starting to get my attention because after the conversation I had with Delilah Cordova about the cover, I started to really question it. A friend of mine came into town, and I asked her what she thought of the cover. She was like, well I can tell it’s a religious book. (Not necessarily a bad thing, I mean it is Christian Fiction) She went on to say that it was a little confusing, etc. So I started working on changing it. This time I posted it in a couple of Christian Fiction Readers/Writers groups to find out what kind of book people thought it might be. Most of them said suspense or thriller. A few said horror, but no one said non-fiction. And thus I had my new cover.

After I changed the cover, I got a lot more feedback on the first cover that definitely confirmed the necessity for the change. My publicist, who liked the cover, but agreed that it could seem a bit “non-fiction adjacent” told me this story: “I was reading your book in Missouri, and a girl looked at me and asked if I was trying to build a better financial future.” That pretty much says it all.

One more thing, the new cover is up for cover of the month on Allauthor.com. Please vote.