Archive for the ‘General Blog’ Category

Weee!!! *tigger dances* Check it out…Wildfire Newsletter Issue 186

Yeah, I’m up earlier with waaaaaayyyyy too much coffee!!

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1 – synopsis are the devil. Write them as you go alone otherwise they become a creature of nightmare designed purely to torment you.

2 – The closer your deadline the more likely you are to develop a hither-toe unknown fetish for the word ‘obviously’ or some other henious crime against literature.

3 – Computers hate you. They delight in eating ms. Remember this. Back up reguarly.

4 – As soon as you sit down to write, your entire company of family and freinds WILL decide this is the perfect time to visit.

5 – Chapter nine is not a good place to rename your hero.

Can you think of anymore? Leave a comment!

Every so often I see a picture and a whole story starts to work itself around it. I’m a very visual person as well, so I tend to create concept ‘cover’s’ for stories I’m working on. It gives me the ‘feel’ of the book at a glance. A couple of weeks ago I saw a picture that just screamed ‘me, me, ME!’

Today I sat down and worked it up into a mock cover for an angel story.

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Greetings and Saulutai salutata Salutatio…buggarit…HEYA!

Okay, maybe I may have had too much sugar/coffee/vodka (delete as applicable) today but hey, we made it to wednesday again! Actually, we’re ALREADY at wednesday?!? Holy crap, how did that happen?

Someone’s stealing time! Oh wait, that could make a good story…*makes note*

Anyway, thought I’d do a quick check in just to reassure you all that I’m still alive in the writing cave. The gifts of chocolate and coffee have been gratefully recieved and have sustained much work on my current wip, Reaper.

We also have a GREAT new review in for Knight’s woman and…*drum roll please*… a newFB fan page thingie over at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Brit-with-Bite-Romance-Author-Mina-Carter/109965902389738. Many thanks to Nicole who set it all up for me and I’m pleased to report I haven’t managed to break it (yet)

There are some great quotes from Reaper already up on the page and Nic’s started a discussion off over there if you feel like joining in!

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Weeee! Just got the link for a wonderful review for Knight’s Woman so I thought I’d share

http://www.twolipsreviews.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5446&Itemid=36

So after a bit of a go with depression (long story, suffered with it for years) I’ve finally given myself the kick in the arse I need and gotten back into the swing of things. So expect things to change around here!

So, what have we got? First off the website actually WORKS now. I got so sick and tired of buying premium themes that DIDN’T DAMN WELL WORK that I knuckled down and coded what I want myself. Most of it’s in place now but there will be a few tweaks as we go along. If you notice something that doesn’t work properly, drop me a line at mina AT mina-carter.com and I’ll fix it pronto!

On the agenda now is writing. Lots of. I have stories that had backed up a little to be finished and some joint projects that I’m giving serious attention to at the moment. I’ll let you know as things progress.

Other than that I’ve been on a serious Supernatural kick recently, so I leave you with something pretty to look at…

Knight’s Woman
Mina Carter
Kurt Drake
ISBN 978-1-59578-719-4

The United Terran Colonies are under attack. Desperate for pilots to combat the enemy raiders the Fleet puts out an all pilots call, hoping to fill their empty fighter squadrons. A call ignored by ex-con Radha Kaden, who figures she doesn’t owe anyone anything. Since a pilot’s life expectancy is slightly less than that of your average lemming, she steers well clear.

Then a bar brawl violates the terms of her release and she has a choice. Go back to Acheron, the harshest prison facility in the combined systems, or pilot a fighter…

Thanks to high casualty rates Wing Commander Davin McAvoy constantly needs new pilots. Dead men can’t fly Valkyries nor can they protect the base or her crew. When he’s told he’s getting that rarest of creatures—an experienced pilot—he’s ready to throw a party. Until he finds out not only is his new pilot an ex-con but she’s a woman too. Both unforgiveable sins in Davin’s book.

Until he meets her and sparks that have nothing to do with the war fly…

Read An Excerpt Here

Buy at LSB

Storm Riders Cover Art by ~Raven3071 on deviantART

I know this topic has been covered many, many times by people far more eloquent than I am but sometimes you just have to chime in on a subject, you know? The other day one of my google alerts caught a question on Yahoo answers of all places asking where they could find a free downlod of Playing with Fyre, one of my Lyrical releases. Luckily someone was quick off the mark answering and replied with something along the lines of ‘what you’re asking is illegal, Mina writes for a living and, as such, doesn’t give her work away for free’. (whoever this person was, I couldn’t find an email to thank you, so…well, thank you )

Now technically this isn’t piracy, this person was just asking a question but it highlights (to me anyway) a basic lack of understanding about eBooks. Ie – that they’re free just because they’re available on the internet and this leads into a far more disturbing arguement from the diehard pirates that everything on the internet is theirs for nothing, by right.

Huh? Right? I don’t get this part. I and other authors work long and hard to produce a product (yes, stories are a product when you  get down to the nitty gritty of publishing). We spend long hours in front of a screen, hammering away at keys to create something entertaining, beautiful, wonderous and all that…Those are hours we could be spending with family, going to see a movie, hell reading books instead of writing them. Enjoyable things instead of the sometimes painful process of creating a story (although, don’t get me wrong, sometimes writing is the best feeling in the world! And sometimes it sucks). But we do it, we write, we edit, we polish the story and then we proudly announce it’s for sale.

And then find a pirate copy on Astatalk within 24 hours. Which people are downloading for nothing, free, zip, nada.

Sorry, correction. These people are not downloading, they are stealing. Each download steals from the publisher, the editor, the cover artist…basically anyone who had anything to do with prepping the book for release…and last but not least, the author.

It gets worse. These people actually request books from others, who then go and buy them with the intent of pirating them. They’re proud of what they do, they boast about it. They hold little competitions about avoiding detection (which then triggers an author or publisher takedown request).

You know what the end result is? Authors stop writing. Yeah, you heard me. Authors will stop writing the stories these people (and other, legitimate fans) claim to love and wait with baited breath for.

Why?

Simple math really. You spend X hours doing something that brings you in $20 a month, then the pirates start up and that $20 dwindles to 15, or 10 or less. You need to pay bills, or even you could have all those hours as quality family time…well, it’s a no-brainer, ain’t it?

So what do we do about it?

Not much we as authors can do, except send multitudes of take down orders to all these ratty little sites and wait for a) abuse from the pirates b) spam and c) spam. Did I mention spam? I did, good.

The other part is up to you guys, the readers. All we authors ask is you support us by buying our books, not downloading them from torrent sites. We’re not talking a lot, a couple of quid or bucks…it’s not gonna break the bank. Buy from the publisher, hell go and buy from Fictionwise or Amazon if it’s cheaper. I normally don’t say that as they take a HUGE cut and us authors get less but, as long as you’re getting a legal download, it doesn’t matter.

You might not think that you doing that makes a difference but every journey is made up of small steps and, believe me, you’ll be making a huge difference to the authors whose work you love to read!! And, by helping, you’ll probably be keeping some of them writing…