After much difficulty, we're LIVE, people!

The Northern Bard Publications version of "The Tiger's Cub" went live today, with the gorgeous cover featuring Derek Yates and Belle Louve. If one buys the paperback, the Kindle is free. There's also a "borrow" option for the Kindle version, so if someone has it, you can borrow it for two weeks from them.

Here's the link:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Tigers-Cub-Tiger-Series/dp/069240001X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1427767636&sr=1-1

I won't even go into what it took to get it there, properly set up, as this process began a week ago....

*sigh*

In other news, it looks like the belly bump that has been confirmed as a hernia is going to give me a minimum of two weeks out of work while the surgery site heals.

Hmmmm......

 How much writing can I get done, since I can't lift or pull on anything (preventing housework) for two weeks minimum?

*cue dramatic music*

Only the Shadow knows.....

Announcing the NEW cover for The Tiger's Cub

While I've been busy with the "alien baby" doctor visits - and taking silly "selfies" to show the doctor for the next visit, since the bump seems to disappear whenever I go into a doctors office to have it looked at (see the circled area in the pic, which one friend notes looks like a baby's foot pressing against the skin even though it's not even close to where a baby's foot would be if I could still get preggers) - the team at Northern Bard Publications has been getting the re-release ready to go.

After being told by the printer that the writing on the back was too close to the edge, the art director started over on the back cover, bringing the background to the same light intensity of the front cover before restoring the writing with the same font as she used for the titles and author name. I like this new look, as it looks very "pulled together". I'm still VERY impressed that Derek Yates was able to come up with the exact look I needed to make it look like Chase Benton is in an alley in New Orleans, thinking about the young woman he's just met.....

So, the official "release date" for the 2nd printing of The Tiger's Cub is April 7th (my mom's birthday, as it seemed the right thing to do) and I'm thinking of offering free Kindle downloads for any who have been wanting the book and have a Kindle, but are short on funds. In the meantime, there's been a CT scan done that will hopefully show what that "hide and seek" bump is and whether I'm going to need surgery to deal with it.

In the meantime, the art director at Northern Bard Publications is all excited about having found some local farms that still have silos that she can go out and take photographs of once the snow melts. There are a lot of thoughts about whether or not we'll actually need to have a model for the re-release of Night of the Tiger, but I'm being strongly encouraged to begin the editing process for the interior - which needs some sincere re-writing before the newest release for the original book in the series - and there are some photos being passed back and forth.

Here's hoping that I miraculously "find" the funding should the decision be to hire yet another model - or models - to represent Kyle and Teresanna on the new cover.....

The Joys of Getting Old

I'm trying hard to keep panic at bay as I prepare myself for the third doctor visit of five since February 12th....

The first visit to my new doctor, as I wanted one who wasn't going to just say "Take a PILL" (cue Mark Blankfield skit from Fridays: http://youtu.be/0ghh5yXlEaw), I was told that I was of that age that I needed some tests to happen. Because I've also been having some minor stomach pain - seemingly tied to the times that I opt to eat something like McDonalds instead of my normal Mediterranean-styled diet - she thought it a good idea, since my dad, an aunt, my grandmother and a cousin (all on the same side of the family) all died of a singular form of cancer that first appeared as a minor stomach issue, to arrange for an ultrasound just to be safe...

Before I left the office, I had blood drawn. Apart from a lack of red blood cells - possibly an infection I wasn't aware of - there was nothing to report.

The second visit was the ultrasound. Much to everyone's surprise, something strange was found just above my navel, where the pain I've been feeling (and ruling out as a gas bubble) after eating "junk" has been located. A colonoscopy and a visit to a surgeon were scheduled.

The colonoscopy happened last week, and my mother was expecting that I'd be told that I take after her, just as my two older sisters do. She has diverticulitis, as does the second eldest of my two sisters. The other sister has one step down from that, colitis. Same digestive issue, just not as severe as mom's. I'm the first one to break that trend, as all that was found was a single polyp and the hemorrhoids that I've had since I gave birth to my son. No answer about that foolish bump that appears now and then in my stomach. It isn't the painful bubble that my mom and sister tend to get.

With my dad, gram, aunt and cousin on my mind, I've been trying to remain optimistic that the little bump in my own belly is nothing to worry about, but the surgeon's appointment to discuss how to gather tissue to test is this afternoon.....

And the fear that I'm next to fight the battle four members of my family fought and lost has been hiding just below the surface, even as I try to think more about the mammogram that has yet to be scheduled.

I'm writing this post this morning as a little public "thank you" to my daughter, who has been going through her own painful gauntlet in the form of a failed marriage that only lasted three months while she lived with her husband, but has been dragging on for six months now as she waits for the final papers stating that she can start using her maiden name again. Without her helping me through a panic attack last night, I'd be a shaking mess as I wait for the time to leave for my meeting with the surgeon, to hear whether we can do a fine needle aspirate to remove a small tissue sample or whether I'm to go under the knife to discover what this little belly bump truly is....

With a little grace from The Universe, this too shall pass, and I'll still be here, blogging away, when I need a special magnifying glass to allow me to read the screen.

Besides, I'd hate to miss the mammogram. I've been practicing for it by going out to the big freezer in the garage and pressing "the girls" in the door, getting myself used to the cold and the squeezing....

Ode to an old friend

I know a lot of people who change out their cell phones the minute they get that "eligible for upgrade" message from their cell phone provider. Being raised while dinosaurs still walked the earth with the basic theme of our lives being "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", I'm not that type of person. In fact, it almost took an act of Congress to get me to start using a cell phone in the first place.

My husband was the first one to carry a cell phone in our house. It was a work requirement, as he needed to be able to call into the office when they paged him from wherever he might be. In those early days, the reception might not be great, as there weren't that many towers up, but as soon as he got a signal, he would call through.

Then, as technology expanded and he got more comfortable with having that phone attached to his hip, he started checking in with me on his way home, as I was a stay-at-home mom and might not have made it out to the grocery store with the two kids for such things as milk that we might need to make supper....

And I was sometimes taking the kids to the playground or to the library, so sometimes when he called, he got the answering machine that we'd purchased second hand - the one that would sometimes let you know there was a message, but sometimes it didn't, so I would occasionally not call him back at the right time.

When the kids got old enough for us to afford to put the youngest in day care while the oldest was at school, I went back to work. Having been out of the job field for a while, I went to work for a temp agency, and I wasn't always given the phone number of the place I was temping before leaving that first morning at a new location. Calls were made to the home phone, but we still had that "iffy" answering machine, and it didn't always respond when I was calling in to check messages before heading home. There were days when I would arrive at the day care to find out that my husband had already picked up the kiddo, and would get home to find him angry because he had been trying to reach me to let me know that he and the kids had made chocolate milk as a snack when they got home and we needed milk. There were times when the car broke down and I was unable to reach him to let him know that I was running late.

After a point, my having a cell phone began to be an important part of our discussions.

Being the type of person who will research things before I spend my hard-earned money, I was soon finding that there was no way, on our budget, for me to afford the "monthly fee" type cell phone, so I started picking up the "buy your minutes on a card" version. This worked rather well for a long time, as I very rarely actually use my phone, so therefore, I could spend $100 for a 500 minute prepaid card that gave me a full year to use up my time....and I was rolling over minutes when the expiration date neared.

Then our son, who had started a monthly plan instead of getting a land line while he was married, went through a divorce. Since he didn't want to turn off his only phone, he offered me the phone he'd gotten for free for his wife when he bought the plan. Giving up the flip phone "buy as you go" phone for my very first IPhone, I felt like I had stepped into the real world. My husband and daughter were soon added to the "family plan", followed by my son's new girlfriend.

I purchased a Tigger cover to protect my phone, and, since I still rarely used it, it didn't get much in the way of wear and tear. Not so some of the other phones in our family plan. Each time my opportunity to upgrade my phone came about, someone else in the plan had damaged their phone and needed the new phone more than I did. I gave up my upgrades more than once, with that "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" adage I had grown up with still ringing in my ears.

Then, yesterday, I dropped my ancient IPhone, which my co-workers had been teasing me was a total dinosaur and needed to be replaced. The screen, despite having survived many such drops in the past, shattered. Heart-broken, I made the appointment to meet my son at the AT&T store to trade up.

I've just finished the transfer of information from my old IPhone to my new HTC Desire. Tongue firmly in cheek, I changed the name of the phone from "HTC Desire 610" to "Debi's Desire". It seemed very apropos for a romance writer to have that as a phone.

But I'm going to miss my little Tigger....

We had so many years together, watching the other dinosaurs die out....

A rose, by any other name, wouldn't be my company

I've been The Northern Bard online since 1997, when I damaged a disc in my lower back and had to spend two months under restrictions. So what does one do when commanded to do "NO bending, NO lifting, NO twisting" when one works as a janitor?

In my case, I was introduced to chat rooms, where I met a lot of really cool people who made some interesting suggestions for ways to avoid breaking the doctors rules. One actually sent me to a page that taught me to build my own web pages using HTML. Taking my own poems, which had been published in The North Country Bard column of The Pequawket Valley News, and using a slightly different title for my pages, I practiced HTML by putting my own poetry onto the internet.

Then I finished the novel I started on an old Tandy HX1000, which took three "fresh beginnings" because I kept crashing the second hand computers I was using. I bought a copy of the Writer's Market to find out who was publishing romance novels. I started sending out introductory letters and the first three chapters to all the "big" companies. And when I got rejection slip after rejection slip, a friend suggested a new tactic: ebooks. It seems that a friend of hers right here in our home state of Maine, who was starting a company called ebooksonthe.net, was publishing novels in HTML, selling permission for one print copy for those who didn't want to sit on their computer reading the books.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history, with the sale of ebooksonthe.net to a company in Maryland in 2002, the introduction of Kindle in 2007, and Nook in 2009. Between the introduction of the Kindle reader and the introduction of the Nook reader, my first novel went to paperback, and although I've never made enough to be worth shouting about, the sales have been steady....

So when I wrote a second novel, I offered it first to the company who had been sending me my royalty checks since 2002....and the headaches between my vision for the second book and the vision of the publisher sent me back to my friends with "the grumblies".

When deciding with a couple of these friends that I could have better creative control if I turned to self-publishing, the next discussion was about the name of our "company" - and at the suggestion that I already WAS The Northern Bard, we opted to name the company Northern Bard Publications, whose first offering was the third book in my series, as chronicled here on this blog.....

I'm very proud of our little company, despite the fact that we don't appear to even be recouping the costs of our first offering, much less the second one that will be launching - or is that "relaunching"? - soon. My choice to use professional models for the covers would probably not be considered a good business strategy, but I truly adore the cover for "A Wild Tiger's Heart".  I also truly love the cover for the relaunch of my second novel, "The Tiger's Cub".....

  

The finance director is praying for a miracle - that she'll be able to see enough of an increase in sales to pay off the credit card I used for both the Daniel Sobieray/Patrice Garza cover for "A Wild Tiger's Heart" and for the Derek Yates/Belle Louve cover for "The Tiger's Cub".

The art director has already put the covers for these two behind her and is obsessing over the third project I've put in her lap: a new cover for the book that started it all, "Night of the Tiger". Her only hope is that The Universe continues to respond to my requests for models. She's joking that, since I've finally hit my goal weight and actually could get away with wearing a bikini for the first time since 1997, I should start modeling to pay for the next cover and stop making the finance director have sleepless nights....

And me? 

I'm feeling the pressure to be the editor in chief, rewriting a small part of "The Tiger's Cub" (mostly things that I trusted the first publisher to put in) and the parts of "Night of the Tiger" that were changed so that the pivotal scene makes no sense.

I'm writing short stories that will be getting put together to become a future Northern Bard offering that I've been calling "The Mostly True Adventures of Superburnerman".

I'm working my "day job" as a salesperson at Staples.

And I'm trying to pretend, especially for the two friends who are on this ride with me, that I'm not worried about a little belly bump just above my navel that has caused me to spend at least one day off each week for the past three weeks either visiting or talking to doctors...

Though I am starting to wonder....

The Universe has this way of getting my attention with extreme drama. 

For the first book, it was the back injury. 

For the second book, it was an argument between myself and the doctor I'd been working with for 8 years, so that I was working part time in retail and had lots of "free time" to write instead of busting my hump for 40 hours a week.

For the third book, it was another job switch to a company that has a print shop on site, so I can check the art directors work before we send it to the printers.

Perhaps this little belly bump that looks like it's going to put me back to a "no lifting" situation if it goes to the planned biopsy is meant to get the current work in progress finished before 2016?

Fifty Shades of Trouble

Or maybe that title should read Fifty Shades of IN Trouble?

Let me go back several years to a simpler time, when I was young and naive and thought no one would ever intentionally hurt me...

*cue the wavy lines they use in the old movies to indicate a flashback*

I was a freshman in college, thinking of majoring in Theater Arts, and a friend introduced me to another actor. We dated, we had sex that didn't do anything for me, I moved on....

Or so I thought.

But he was very obsessive, determined we would marry and I would be his submissive little wifey. (Cue Bugs Bunny link: http://www.talkingwav.com/cartoon/bugs_22.wav)  When I still refused, he played hard ball, insisting that "a woman needs calcium at every meal", he brought me milk and antagonized me until I drank it. I would wake up the next day tied to his bed, naked, with nothing but bruises and body aches to clue me in as to what had happened once I finished the milk....

Suffice to say that, with the help of some very good friends, I walked away from that situation and try to never look back into that darkness.....

Now, back to current day and the women who are flooding Facebook with this whole "Fifty Shades of Grey" craze. Encouraged by several friends, I started to read the book once....and it raised so many red flags and brought on so many nightmares that I returned it to the library. Christian Grey is SO much like that man I met in college that I can't force myself to read the rest, much less see the movie.

So, to make friends stop asking me what I thought of the movie, I posted this:

I even have backup in the form of multitudes of articles, like this one, that also saw what I saw in that book...http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/consent-isnt-enough-in-fifty-shades-of-grey/385267/

But, as my dad used to say when he was warning us against being too opinionated, "Open mouth, insert foot."

I have been absolutely barraged by fans of the book who didn't see that, when she gives a safe word and he refuses to stop, that's rape, and when a man does such a thing to his own wife, that's domestic violence. Courtesy of one sour apple, I've never delved further into the barrel of BDSM culture, but I know people who have, and they say this is NOT a good representation of their world....

Please don't try to insist that you're right and I'm wrong, as even briefly skimming the top of that long ago relationship for the sake of the few lines I wrote above without having to dive back into my nightmares to defend why I feel the way I do....but I HAVE to ask....

What do you think of all this hoopla? Is this book trilogy really worth all the media coverage, or did the author just manage to hit the right people at the right time?

Of course, while I would try to make it sound like my interest is merely clinical, there is a darker shade to my question. I'm trying to market my own books in every way I can and suggest ploys to Northern Bard Publication to get those ever popular "New York Times Best Sellers" in our stable of authors...

I want to know who I need to do the BDSM treatment to in order to get the kind of media attention this first timer got......

When dealing with Mother Nature, does one cry uncle.......or aunt?

I live in the northeast of the United States. For any who haven't heard, we've had LOTS of snow this year, and we have another blizzard warning up for tomorrow and Sunday.

All the neighbors are doing the run for milk, eggs and bread....which is sort of Northeastern slag for "fill up the pantry, because you may not be able to get out for a while". My pantry is always full. I have two young adult "kids" and three grandkids who come by looking for food. It never ends well if Yamma doesn't have something for the kiddies...

But I digress....mostly because I don't want to talk about that white crap that Mother Nature is ready to dump on us......AGAIN. We're already running out of places to put it, and it looks like there's no end in sight. Most people I know would love to kill that furry little rodent who, according to legend, told us on February 2nd that we have to put up with at least six more weeks of this nonsense before spring.

And don't try to point out that March the 22nd is six weeks from February 2nd. The natives turn toward thoughts slow roasting a writer over an open fire if you try to use the calendar and a little logic on them, but I can't blame them. Too many more weeks of looking out at more of this white stuff dropping from the clouds and I might start getting as antsy as they are.

But I have some projects  to finish.

LOTS of projects...

I'm also drawing my curtains shut as the newest blizzard (due to the predicted 33 mph winds rather than deep snow) makes an appearance. At the beginning of the winter, it's covering the dead leaves and lending beauty to the bare trees..

Now, it's just one more round of shoveling, snow blowing, freezing in the stiff breeze and harsh temperatures that are accompanying the snow. Muscles that are already sore from pushing too much snow in too little time have to be forced to do it one more time.

I'm going to ignore that part for as long as possible...