Yay! AIA Seal of Excellence for Worlds Within Worlds
Prunella Smith: Worlds Within Worlds has just received an AIA Seal of Excellence. http://awesomeindies.net/aia-seal-of-excellence-awarded-to-prunella-smith-worlds-within-worlds The question is: should the cover wear the Seal or not? With it: Without it: Which should I use?
‘Rite’s Path’ new release by Kate Policani FREE this weekend
Kate Policani is a good friend these days. I first met her several years ago after reading and being very impressed by her book ‘The Disenchanted Pet’. Since then, her writing has grown and she released a revised version of the book recently. It’s a great story and well worth a read. This is a short story she’s put out on Kindle and it’s free this weekend, so I suggest that you click the link and pick it up. Rite’s Path by Kate Policani Genre: Fantasy, Short Story, Choose-your-path Synopsis: Mesha and her brothers attend the Grand Festival of Duman to see the greatest spectacle in the land of Sas against their Father’s wishes. Mesha’s people don’t worship Duman and consider his believers to be reprobates. Her sneaky brothers brought her along rather than give up their fun, and she didn’t object. In the Queen’s Courtyard, everyone expected that the…
“Riveting stuff.” Prunella Smith: Worlds Within Worlds – one for your list of great new books to read
Yay! Prunella Smith: Worlds Within Worlds is out now on ebook. If you’re planning on buying it on Kindle, please get it today and help make it visible in the Kindle store. ‘The barrier between the worlds shatters like the window. The beast is loose. My nightmare has become real. The guy has totally lost it. If he finds us here, we could die. No, I don’t doubt it; we will die.’ Author and editor Prunella Smith inhabits a multilayered reality. Physically, she lives in the Australian bush with her crazy cat Merlin. In her work world, she edits the love story of Kelee, a Magan Lord’s daughter, and in the cyber-world of social media, she’s subjected to slanderous attacks by a disgruntled author. To complicate matters further she sees things through the eyes of a Tibetan Yogi, has strange dreams and relives old memories. Separate worlds, interconnected and complementary, but…
Bad reviews? Watch out; defensiveness makes you blind.
Anyone in any creative field eventually receives feedback that is hard to hear. Not everyone will like your work, be it visual arts, music, theatre arts or writing. Bad reviews are not such a problem when they’re someone’s personal opinion—no worries, they just don’t like it. It’s not their thing—but when they critique your craftsmanship, you’re likely to feel it as a punch in the gut, especially if you’ve done your best to make sure your work is the best it can be. For most people, the first reaction is to be defensive. Because art is such a subjective field, we can always say that we have done something for which we’ve been criticised for a creative reason. In writing, we would say that it is a matter of style, or voice. This can be the case, but unless we have a full understanding of the point seen to be lacking and…
The story behind the new Awesome Indies website – sale on now!
The new Awesome Indies website should be live now, and the sale will have started. Those of us in Australia get in first because it’s 6.15 pm here while the Americans are still asleep and the British are just waking up. In some ways, the banner says it all, but it doesn’t mention the enormous amount of work that has gone into setting up the new Awesome Indies website, or what a huge improvement it is on the old site. The old site suffered from me growing it from a simple blog that didn’t have the tools to make it the way it should be, and when I shifted it to a self-hosted site, I just didn’t have time (or the skills) to make it into anything other than a slightly fancier version of what it was was before. Any of you who tried to buy a book through…
Wondering what the Awesome Indies is? Post by Chris Longmuir
I thought I’d share this post that Chris Longmuir wrote about the Awesome Indies. She puts it very well. Pop over to her blog here. http://chrislongmuir.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/awesome-new-website-for-awesome-indies_27.html
Ella’s unusual insomnia cure: meditation & contemplation
Ella is the central character in my soon-to-be-released novel Worlds Within Worlds. At one point, she finds it hard to sleep, and if you have ever had difficult sleeping, the following excerpt from the book will resonate with you, and you may find Ella’s unusual insomnia cure helpful. The essence of her unusual insomnia cure is meditation and contemplation. It may wake you up more for a start, but at least you are utilizing your time in a useful way, and knowing that things will eventually change helps you not to worry about the insomnia. Not worrying is vital, because anxiety makes insomnia worse. Next time you can’t sleep, try asking yourself the questions Ella asks herself. I hope you enjoy this excerpt. Sleep? If only. Word-shaped bullets pound against my skull and ricochet again and again. I am not following the thoughts; they just won’t stop coming. I’m not thinking about the…
Travel Torture
Remind me to never fly overnight again. It’s torture. One has to sleep, or at least try to. After all, when you arrive, you have to deal with all sorts of inconveniences like a foreign language, different money, and finding transport, all while dealing with a vast change of temperature and a different time zone. Add sleep deprivation to that and you’re faced with a hell of a first day at your destination. But how to sleep in a chair that is so close to the one in front that you can’t stretch your legs, so close to the one next to it that your elbows must remain tucked at your sides, and reclines so little that you’re still basically upright. Can you sleep sitting up? Some people can, but not me. To make it worse, on this Air Asia flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur, my seat happened to…