March 11, 2015 by Lori L MacLaughlin

Blog Tour! With Elizabeth Hein at Scribbling in the Storage Room!

Celebrating the release of my new fantasy adventure novel, Lady, Thy Name Is Trouble, my blog tour continues this week with a guest post on author Elizabeth Hein’s blog, Scribbling in the Storage Room. Be sure to stop by and share my “Lessons Learned.”

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March 10, 2015 by Lori L MacLaughlin

Blog Tour! With Marie Andreas at Faeries, Dragons, and Spaceships!

My blog tour to celebrate the release of my new fantasy adventure novel, Lady, Thy Name Is Trouble, continues this week with a guest post on novelist Marie Andreas’ blog, Faeries, Dragons, and Spaceships. Come visit and read my Reason #57 for choosing self-publishing!

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March 9, 2015 by Lori L MacLaughlin

Blog Tour! With Caffe Maggieato at Just Get It Written!

My blog tour to celebrate the release of my new fantasy adventure novel, Lady, Thy Name Is Trouble, continues this week as I talk today with Caffe Maggieato on her blog, Just Get It Written. Check out her Behind the Scenes Author Interview to find out which character from my novel is my favorite. Can you guess? (Hint: It’s not who you might think!)

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March 6, 2015 by Lori L MacLaughlin

Celebrate the Small Things! And Blog Tour! At Doreen McGettigan’s and on Unicorn Bell!

Celebrate the Small Things is a weekly celebration created by VikLit and now hosted by Lexa Cain to celebrate the happenings of the week, however small or large. You can learn all about it and sign up for it here.

I’m celebrating the release of my new fantasy adventure novel, Lady, Thy Name Is Trouble, with a two-week-long blog tour! Today, I’m having interview conversations with author Doreen McGettigan and with Kristin Smith on Unicorn Bell! Hope to see you there!

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March 5, 2015 by Lori L MacLaughlin

Blog Tour! At Electic Alli’s

I’m celebrating the release of my new fantasy adventure novel, Lady, Thy Name Is Trouble, with a two-week-long blog tour! I hope you’ll come visit me today over at Eclectic Alli’s, where she’s sharing her review! Thanks, Alli!

EDIT: And check out this review just posted by Jo at My Inner Geek! Thanks, Jo!

March 4, 2015 by Lori L MacLaughlin

IWSG — I Did It!

Today’s the day for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) where, on the first Wednesday of every month, writers get together to share their insecurities and offer encouragement. The IWSG was created by Alex J. Cavanaugh, and you can learn all about it and sign up for it here.

After so many years of working on my book, it’s finally published! There’ve been snags and setbacks along the way, including a major formatting snafu with the e-book on release day, but I’m not focusing on that today. Nor am I thinking about all the insecurities that have increased a hundredfold now that my book is actually out there for all to see.

Right now, I just want to say Whoo, hoo! and Yes!! and dance around the house with glee.

On Friday, the print proof should arrive in my mailbox. I’ll get to hold the actual book in my hand, and it will finally start to sink in. I am a published author!!! Whoo, hoo! (More dancing around the house…)

And all aspiring authors take note — if I can do it, so can you. Just take that dream and make it happen. 🙂

February 27, 2015 by Lori L MacLaughlin

Back On Track

Okay, I think we’re back in business. The file appears to be working now. My copy of the book that I downloaded from Amazon for my Kindle no longer has glitches.

The customer service representative I spoke with at Amazon a little bit ago said that for anyone who purchased the e-book earlier, if their devices are connected to wi-fi, their book file should be automatically updated with the new, non-glitched file. I’m not sure exactly how this is supposed to work. I think she said the cloud file would be updated and could be re-downloaded to whatever device the original file had been on.

I’m hoping this works for everyone with no problems, but if for some reason it doesn’t, you should be able to contact Amazon and get the updated file. Their customer service number is 1-888-280-3321.

Again, I apologize to everyone for the inconvenience. It has been one rollercoaster day.

February 27, 2015 by Lori L MacLaughlin

Celebrate the Small Things — My First Novel Has Arrived!!

EDIT: Thank you to everyone! I’ve discovered some formatting issues with the e-book, and I’m working to resolve them. I’ll visit and reply to everyone as soon as I get this ironed out.

It’s here!!!!

This week I’m celebrating a very BIG thing — my first novel is being released today!

Whoo, hoo!! I’m so excited! To think that after all these years, my book is finally in print. Well, sort of. It’s currently available in e-book form, but will be out in print form very soon, if all goes well. The color issues have been fixed, and the print cover file is being processed. All my fingers and toes are crossed that it goes through this time.

Either way, I’m going to celebrate!!!

Trouble is Tara Triannon’s middle name. As swords for hire, Tara and her sister Laraina thrive on the danger. But a surprise invasion throws them into chaos… and trouble on a whole new level. Pursued by the Butcher, a terrifying assassin more wolf than man, Tara and Laraina must get a prince marked for death and a young, inept sorceress to safety. There’s only one problem – eluding the Butcher has never been done. Aided by a secretive soldier of fortune, they flee the relentless hunter.

Gifted with magic and cursed by nightmares that are all too real, Tara must stop an army led by a madman and fend off an evil Being caught in a centuries-old trap who seeks to control her magic and escape through her dreams – all while keeping one step ahead of the Butcher.

Available at:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Name-Trouble-Lori-MacLaughlin-ebook/dp/B00TT8NERU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425178824&sr=1-1&keywords=lady+thy+name+is+trouble

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lady-thy-name-is-trouble-lori-l-maclaughlin/1121255932?ean=9781942015017

Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/lady-thy-name-is-trouble

What other celebrations are going on out there?

February 25, 2015 by Lori L MacLaughlin

The Long-Awaited Cover!

Early last week, I received the long-awaited cover for my fantasy novel, Lady, Thy Name Is Trouble.

I love the colors and the way the elements blend together.

I had hoped that once I got the file, it would be smooth sailing into publication, but was it easy? Of course not. What was I thinking?

Making the e-book cover from the cover file using Adobe Photoshop was simple enough. But then I had to figure out how to convert my MS Word file, including the cover, to the epub version 3 required by Ingram/Spark for the e-book. Calibre only converts to epub version 2. I searched the Web for a free program that would do the conversion without a huge learning curve. I know some HTML, but I’m not a programmer. Ingram/Spark would have done the conversion for me, but I really didn’t want to pay them the $250 or so to do it.

I ended up using a program from the Daisy Consortium: a “Save as Daisy” add-in for Word, which, along with the Consortium’s Tobi and Pipeline 2 programs (all free downloads), allowed me to convert my file. Interestingly, the programs’ original intent is to create books with sound for people with vision problems. Below, are the links to the programs and the instructions.

http://www.daisy.org/project/save-as-daisy-microsoft/

http://www.daisy.org/daisypedia/how-convert-microsoft-word-document-accessible-epub3

http://www.daisy.org/daisypedia/tobi-convert-daisy-books-epub3

The instructions weren’t hard to follow, but I did have to do some uninstalling and reinstalling of the programs to get them to work together the way they were supposed to. I persevered, though, and in the end, I had the necessary version 3 epub file.

I’m sure there must be other ways to do a free conversion of Word to epub 3. If anyone has experience with other programs, I’d love to hear about it.

At the end of last week, I uploaded all the files to Ingram/Spark, set a release date of February 27^th, and crossed my fingers that everything would go through. The customer service person told me that file processing generally takes 3 to 5 business days.

The e-book files went through with no problem, but they found an issue with the print cover file — something about the CMYK color percentages being too high. The file needs to be adjusted and resubmitted. Unfortunately, it’s not something I know how to do. So, until I can coordinate with the cover designer, who I think is away on vacation since we have school vacation this week, the print version of my book is on hold.

However, the e-book version has already been picked up by Amazon and Barnes & Noble and is available for preorder. I discovered this when I did a search on the book title out of curiosity over the weekend. (My jaw hit the floor.) I hadn’t expected it to be listed so quickly. I’d read that it could take two or three weeks to show up on retail sites.

Now, I’m having a hard time getting my head around the fact that Friday is the big day. THE DAY! After almost 30 years of chasing this dream, it’s down to 2 days. It seems too surreal to be true. In 2 days I will be a published author!!!!!!!

January 21, 2015 by Lori L MacLaughlin

The Official Map!

In two previous posts, Western Kingdoms of Alltyyr, Part 1 and Western Kingdoms of Alltyyr, Part 2, I described some of the various kingdoms that comprised the fictional world I had created for my fantasy novel, Lady, Thy Name Is Trouble. I always draw maps to go with my stories, partly because I love drawing maps, and partly because I need that visual reference to plot characters’ movements.

A couple of people commented that they would like to see the map, so — here it is! It took me a while to ink it in, which made me wish I hadn’t drawn it in quite so much detail. 🙂 I’m worried that it won’t look professional enough, compared to the maps I see in traditionally published books, but it’s the best I can do, so hopefully, it will work.

Right now, it’s just black and white. Someday, I want to color it in and hang it on my wall. I think it would be really neat to have a section of wall covered with maps of my fictional worlds.