For the Criminally Inane

 Yahoo!  We did it! We funded the books, now we're working on stretch goals! I updated the original post but I thought I'd write one here, too. We are just about $300 away from sprayed edges!!! These books will look gorgeous on your shelf and you'll love getting it out and rereading the story! Also I am adding some metal bookmarks. Find out more here!  What else? Revisions for Sugar Creek is going well. I got a peek at the cover and it is GOR-geous! I can't wait to show you!

 My daughter's open house is over! Wedding prep that has lasted over a year for the three weddings is finally over! My sister got engaged last August. As her maid of honor-type person, we did a lot of talking about how and what to do for her wedding. As she was nearing 48, and her first wedding, we wanted to make sure that we properly celebrated. We decided on a Hallow-wedding! She loves Halloween and has skeletons hanging, not in her closet, but in her garage. So between August and October it was a race as we picked a color scheme. We designed wedding invites. We planned. Mature brides have different priorities than young ones. No attendants. So that was nice. She paid for a large chunk of the party herself. And she had a huge invite list. Her bridal shower as a "mourning the death of her single life," including an obituary and macabre decor. Perfect for October. Her reception was a costume party with prizes and dress up. I was a German barmaid with my daughter. MCed the...

What is crowdfunding ? Crowdfunding is where people all come together to fund a certain project that might be too expensive for a creator to fund on their own--like a board game or a print run of really beautiful edition of their books--within a certain funding period.  Words to know in a crowdfunding campaign: Creator : company or person who comes up with a project they want help funding Campaign : is a project the creator would like to fund with the help of backers. This tells their story, about the project, the awards, the risks, the add-ons.  Funding Goal:  is the amount the creator sets up at the beginning of the project. They hope to get this amount with the help of backers.  You pledge toward which tier interests you the most but you pay nothing unless the creator and backers reach the funding goal by the end of the campaign timeline . And you only pay at the end of the funding period.  Backers : friends, patrons, and interested buyers who support the cr...

I did something today that I've never done before. I bought a label maker and made labels to organize my bookmarks. If you are a label-maker type person I envy you.  It doesn't come naturally to me. I really struggle. I found out recently that I have ADHD. I was surprised, but I found that I was already doing something things to manage it. Lately, my family (my brothers and sisters) talk a lot about ADHD because we've all recently discovered that we all had it. I think it started with one of my siblings actually going to the doctor and getting diagnosed and the rest of us saying, oh, wait. I have that symptom, too. I was talking to one of my brothers about it and he said I was the one who escaped it. I was like, what are you talking about? I can tell you several symptoms off the top of my head. Look at my backlist, it jumps from genre to genre and I haven't finished a complete series yet. ADHD? I think so. Learning I have ADHD has answered a lot of question that have pl...

I have a little bit of a rebellious streak. Not against God or authority or anything important. Mostly against social trends. Like when I was in high school, whatever was popular, I would do the opposite. Don't think that this is going to be a confession of epic proportions of all the shenanigans I pulled in my youth. Far from it. In fact, my rebelliousness tends to be the opposite. I go against the popular grain. This is great if you go to a crazy high school that had one of the highest drug and weapon confiscation rates in the state. It is not, however, great for writing. Because, you see, the same repulsion I have toward the trendy clothes, the trendy cups, the trendy water (in middle school everyone drank Evian,) etc. etc. carries through. I CANNOT write what everyone else is writing. It's in my nature. Authors are writing hockey romance because it's trending. I shrug my shoulders. Vampires in the early 2010s. Meh.  And that's a good thing. Those trend-chasers make ...

 Sorry, I lied... I know I said I wasn't going to use a pen name to write my Young Adult fantasy. But now I'm reconsidering it. I already have quite an AWESOME following for my sweet contemporary romance. And a lot of people will jump with me to another genre. (Some won't, and that's okay. I'm still writing for them as well!) But I'm hoping that I can also gain a new audience with my Young Adult fantasy books. Separating the genres by pen name would keep those two lines from being crossed. It wouldn't be anything dramatic, although I've already got Amy Leduc as one of them, I would likely go for a pen name like A. E. Zeigler or Amey E. Zeigler. I do hate that both my names are hard to spell, which makes it more likely that I'll choose the initials and the last name, but we'll see. What's your preference? What will you be writing and will I be interested in them? Great question. Here are a couple of ideas I've already started writing/plan...

 Why I write clean Young Adult Fantasy First off, I love teenagers. I connect with that age group. I feel like I'm still seventeen sometimes. I want to write books that will benefit them, give them hope, courage, and comfort. I want to write books that my kids can read and enjoy.  When I was younger, I would lose myself for hours reading the most fantastical books of the day. I loved how fantasy books could take me to another world, explore topics in a way that couldn't be done here in a contemporary setting, and could talk about good versus evil in a fantasy context. I loved the creativity of these writers, the worlds and characters they come up with and the conflicts! I want to bring that to you! Fantasy has had a resurgence in the last few years, especially the popular romantasy. If you aren't familiar with the term, it's basically romance genre smashed with fantasy. I love it! What a time to live! I tell you, I was born to write romantasy. But the problem is, what I...