Illumine and Obumbrate Winnings Update!

Hey everyone! Consider this your ever-so-friendly update on all things prizes! 

Recently, very recently, several key events I took part of ended, and you know what that means. Shipping books to happy winners! The followings is a list of all the recent winnings of books, purchases of books, or winners of other items that have or have not gone out. 

Please note: If I missed you, meaning you're not on this list, please feel free to email me, message me on Twitter, Facebook me, whatever you need to do to get a hold of me. There's always one or two who I miss among the masses, and I promise it's not me being mean or ignorant, I'm just a little on the forgetful side. 

OBUMBRATE PRE-ORDER PACKAGE

Huff L. & Jacquie T. - SHIPPED

PAID ORDERS 

Candy S. - SHIPPED
Tracy T. - SHIPPED
Krystal H. - SHIPPED 

REVIEW COPIES REQUESTED 

Kim C. - SHIPPED
Roseann H. - SHIPPED
Kayleigh-Marie G. - SHIPPED

#OBUMBRATEDAY RELEASE WINNER

Kim E. - NOT SHIPPED. 

INDIE AUTHOR GIVEAWAY 

Gabbie - NOT SHIPPED. 

Also, I have currently not shipped any bookmarks. The printer is on my first stop tomorrow morning, so they will be going out tomorrow unless a typhoon hits my town and washes away both the print shop and the post office. 

Again, if I missed you, meaning YOU ARE NOT ON THIS LIST, please don't hesitate to contact me! I do not like holding winnings hostage- if you won it, it's rightfully yours! 

That's it for now, over and out! 

Internet Pirates Need A Good 'Booty Raid'

It's all over on the internet right now. Pirates are about! And no, they don't want your booty, so to speak, but they do want your books available for free because that's the 'patriot' thing to do. 


What a crock of crap. 


Stephen L. Wilson's blog gives a pretty good breakdown of what's going on, but in a nutshell this is what's up. An infamous website by the name 'The UIltimate Ebook Library', which I will not link for traffic reasons, is pirating just about every book your pretty little heart can dream of. 


Yes, this means big authors and small authors alike are being fenangled, and for the most part, sending a regular 'Please take down my book' notice doesn't cut it for them. As their sites states: 

... We would like to say that TUEBL is a Canadian website, which operates under Canadian law... Canada does not have a DMCA type take-down template our websites are required to use...

Okay. So you're thinking, "Big deal, just send them what they want saying you're the owner of said book and they'll take it down. They have to." 


Nope. 


Visible attempts to do just this have appeared on their Facebook pages. Some authors who have sent emails saying, "Yo, take my stuff down!" have been posted publicly, along with the authors personal information, photo, anything to use and wield against them in both internet and face-to-face harassment. How in the heck is that fair? 


A second quote from their 'legal' page: 

Also please note that any email that we receive is public information and will be published in full on our blogs, twitter, facebook, and any other social network that we desire.

Great. So if you're someone like JK Rowling (yes, her books are on there, for shame!) and you send a take-down notice, they'll post about it all over the page in a lovely mocking fashion. 


Taken from Stephen L. Wilson's blog: 

What they fail to point out is that the unauthorized use of copyrighted material is a crime. In Canada, as well as in the United States, intellectual work is copyrighted upon creation, and no filing of rights is necessary. 

And that, ladies and gents, is the icing on the cake. These people running this so-called 'Library' are nothing but crooks. 


And you know what boils my blood more than badly written stories, more than editing, more than running out of coffee or listening to telemarketers or having no AC in my room? 


Nasty, under-handed, grubby internet pirates. 


So do me a favor? Click on this link to Facebook page for The Ultimate Ebook Library, and report them. Tell them just how wrong it is to continue hosting books by authors who have told them to remove the content repeatedly!  

The Great CreateSpace Snafu

I am not a happy unicorn.

(I'm not really a unicorn, either, so how that pertains to this, I'm not sure. Let's go with sleep deprivation!) 

Earlier this week, I shared a photo on Facebook that looked a lot like this: 

BOOKS! TONS AND TONS OF BOOKS! On my couch. 

And inside, I was dancing. Happy, joyful dances of insane qualifications. Steph would have been embarrassed at how all-over-the-place I was (yes, it was THAT bad). And then I looked inside. 

Formatting. All. Wrong. 

Somewhere between my precious computer and the CS printers, weird things happened. Missing pages, miss-aligned pages, grey boxes around all of the font. It was a giant pile of yuck. 

Pretty sure that's not how a book is supposed to be. 

Needless to say, I'm pretty peeved. Hence the 'not a happy unicorn' comment above. A-ha! Even while made I can make lame connecting jokes in a blog post! 

So more or less, I'm waiting for a slipping label to ship these yucky books back and get a shiny new batch, which are scheduled to ship from CS's base on or around the 17th of July. If they ship on the 17th, I can tell you I'll have them by the 21st, so if all goes according to plan, anyone who has ordered a signed copy will get it by the end of the month. I'm really, truly sorry this happened, and it's completely out of my control, but you all deserve to know where the hold up is coming from, otherwise I would have sent them ASAP out to all of you! 

So until those new (and hopefully non-messed up books) come in, Obumbrate is definitely still up digitally for grabs on Amazon and B&N, respectively. I've got links right below this for you to click and grab it, if only to temporarily fend off the itch to read it until the paperbacks come in.  

Happy #ObumbrateDay!

OH SQUEEEEEEEE! It's finally here, guys! Six months in the making and IT'S FINALLY HERE AND I CAN'T THINK PAST THESE WORDS SO I'LL SAY IT AGAIN- IT'S HERE!


There aren't words to describe how excited I am for today. Really, there aren't. But if I could tone down today's awesomeness of Obumbrate's release, it would use words like 'awesome' and 'superfragalisticexpialadocious'. I have no idea if I spelled that right. 


So in case you've been living under a ROCK for the last few weeks, here's the run down! The second book to TIS, Obumbrate, is out and available! That means you can grab a copy, scarf it down like Mera did for Mera's YA Book Blog, snag a digital copy on Amazon or B&N, or you know, pick up a signed copy here on the blog! There's all kinds of good things going on today! 


Like what? I'm so glad you asked that! 


Boosh! There's a Facebook event running all day! Or better yet, a massive Rafflecopter Giveaway!  


If that isn't tickling your fancy, Goodreads is still running the giveaway for Obumbrate, too! 


And if none of those fulfill your insatiable need to chat about #TeamEssallie or #TeamKayden or #TeamAri, hit up Twitter! #ObumbrateDay is the code-word, ladies and gents! 


This entire day is going to be nothing but shenanigans, shenanigans, and maybe some SHENANIGANS WITH CUPCAKES. And music. And posted excerpts all day. And probably soda. But not fish, Essallie hates fish. 


Come on! Let's get this party ROLLING! 



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Multi-Tasking As An Author (Or Crazy Person)

First things first, Happy Independence Day!  

Here's a photo of cake (that I didn't make, boo) that will probably make you very hungry. And have the urge to bake. Or maybe that's just me. 

(source lovefromtheoven)

So earlier this week I had a mini revelation, and I knew I had to share it with all of you. 

Multi-tasking. Is. Ridiculous. 

We're inching closer (and closer, and closer) to Friday, aka #ObumbrateDay (you can sign up to attend the online event on Facebook here or just Twitter hashtag #ObumbrateDay), or as I like to call it, The Day I Spend More Time Staring At Amazon Than Any Other Day of The Year. Between working a 12-hour shift at my day job, I'll be slamming the internet like a giddy author, happily posting quotes and answering questions and doing flash giveaways all day. 

But until that day actually comes, I've been doing a mountain of prep behind the scenes! Designing t-shirts, formatting the digital version of Obumbrate for Kindle/Nook/iBooks, completing paperback and hardback designs, promo items, bookmarks, I could list this stuff all day. I'm also pretty sure that if I wasn't so twitchy about being hands-on with my projects, I could have someone do some of this stuff for me and reduce the work load, but honestly where is the fun in that? 

But back to topic. Multi-tasking is a miserable feat, and one that, if conquered, I tip my hat to you. I've only barely managed to juggle work, family, friends, and all the little things in-between and maybe catch my breath along the way. Example, my Monday kind of went like this: 

9AM- Up. Acknowledge that the dishes did not magically finish themselves last night. Inwardly sob. 

9:30AM- Receive email from CreateSpace, kindly informing me my cover was rejected because one of the E's was toeing the red line. Promptly rage. 

10AM-2PM- Re-do cover. Get distracted along the way with imgur. Curse those cat photos. 

2-4PM- Oh hey, those dishes still haven't finished themselves! And they're... growing. 

4-8PM- Head over to friend's house for a few hours. Insert random stop at Starbucks and B&N.  

8PM-3AM- Can't sleep, so let's do more graphic design! 

Rinse and repeat for two days. Only add more later. 

In hindsight, this doesn't look that bad. But something about trying to make a photo look good and accepting it in the end is impossible. 

Oh, speaking of! If you've been lurking around Goodreads, you've probably seen the new cover for Illumine. Surprise! If not, as a 4th of July and early #ObumbrateDay treat, here's the cover.