To write is to be free
Becoming Stardust is free for another two days. You can get it on Amazon here. It’ll then be on Kindle Select until June 9 before then appearing on Smashwords.
So download it and please leave a review. It can be just a star rating or you can leave a few words 🙂
This is the prequel story to ‘Stardust’, a YA sci-fi family drama that will follow. I intend to have this novel ready for publication in late 2022.
If you’re on Kindle unlimited, Becoming Stardust is free on from the 13th to the 17th 🙂 So download it and give me a review 🙂
It is just under 10,000 words so it’s a quick read introducing some of the characters that’ll be appearing in Stardust. Here is the synopsis.
Before Ilona took on the identity of a dead girl, she was a hunted girl. Her mother and she had known nothing but running until the bounty hunters finally caught them. Wounded and orphaned, Ilona sneaks her way onto a smuggling ship. Subsequently becoming part of the crew. This appears to be the break that finally gives her a safe upbringing. However, it is just the beginning.
Last day to read my short story for free on Amazon. After that, The Witch’s Room will remain in on Amazon until mid-year where you can then buy it on Smashwords as well.
If you’ve downloaded the story can you please leave a review. It doesn’t have to be long, just a few words.
I completed the seventh draft of my short story The Witch’s Room and I decided that it was ready to be released into the world wide web with my name attached to it. It is currently under review on Amazon and should be up within 72 hours. At the moment I am only putting it on KDP select as a means of trying to get as many people to read it. If all goes well in a few months I’ll put it up on Smashwords 🙂
This story started with the visuals of a character entering the Witch’s Room. I thought that the scene was awesome and IÂ shouldn’t/couldn’t let it go. So I had to work out what needed to happen for this scene to occur in a story. So I wrote it down on my work notepad and when I got home I began working on it.
Looking back on the dates of my word documents, I had the first draft completed just before 5pm on the 15th of February. That’s less than a month ago! Since then I have drafted every 2-5 days. It only took me a few hours every time to draft because of how short it is (I was also working on other stories).
I think the most challenging thing about this process was picking the book cover image. I wanted to have a stone sculpture of a woman to portray the scene in the Witch’s Room. But I was very nitpicky about it. It had to be aged and not too ornate. But I couldn’t seem to find one that fit everything because a lot of stone sculptures of women from the past were of the Virgin Mary or Angels and had religious themes to it. You can see that I found an image as close as possible to what I wanted. It’s not how the statute looks in the story, but it’s the closest.
Just completed the 2nd draft of my newest short story. Also, I still haven’t decided on a title, but I’ve found some images that I might want to have as a cover. I’m not sure when this will be ready, maybe in a few months 🙂
I’m going to put this in KDP Select to see what happens as I’ve never done this for my books 🙂 
Friday, 17th November ’17
I editing finished the last 10 pages of The Things We Do. Which seemed to go on forever. I then spent the rest of the day looking online to see if it might be a good thing for me to put my upcoming novellas in the KDP Select program.
I haven’t thrown myself into the whole marketing side of writing because I am a quieter person. I’m planning on taking the slow but steady route. Where I’m going to get a bunch of stories out and then begin to put my presence. Because then I would already have a bunch of stories out there for people to read 🙂
I’m thinking of enrolling my next few books into the KDP Select. I hadn’t enrolled any in the program before because I was worried about restricting myself. But for someone that finds marketing somewhat alien, maybe I should just put it exclusively on Amazon for 3 months.
What are your opinions? Is KDP Select worth it?
Saturday, 11th November ’17
I gave up trying to finish writing my sci-fi book. Instead, I’m editing  Save One for the third time. I found that the first chapter to be pretty decent and I can tell that I’m improving. I’ve been fixated on this story for the last few days, almost like an obsession. I made the book cover for it and I’m hoping to have this draft done by Tuesday. I want it out by March next year.
I also made Feet or Fins and The Backup Girl available in print copy. They should be ready in a few days 🙂 I spent so much time on the creating a cover for them. For The Backup Girl I used the entire stock image on the entire front and back cover. I just couldn’t get the image right for a single page, the DPI was too small. For Feet or Fins I went and remade the book cover because of the DPI. The easier part of the setup was creating the interior book. I used the 5×8 template because those two books are novellas and I was worried that they’d turn out too thin.
I bit the bullet and uploaded my novel on Amazon. In the past I’ve kinda had issues with Amazon because of its business tactics, but I’m not selling enough through Smashwords. So here I am.
And I’ve already got a sale 🙂
I found the process of uploading surprisingly easy actually. No repeated rejections from meat grinder here. In terms of formating, I just used my smashwords version with the license section cut out and it was accepted the first go.
So now that I’ve got my book out on multiple sites I believe that I’ll be getting more sales 🙂 At the moment Feet or Fins is not available as a physical book, which is something I’m going to do in the future 🙂
Stephanie Haggarty 