Tag Archives: S.K Munt

Excerpt from unchained Melody S.K Munt

Ryan had showered while Meredith had been kissing Hunter good night and was now wearing black track pants with white stripes down the sides and no shirt as he stood in the centre of the room and sculled a bottle of water until it concaved with a crack. He threw the empty receptacle carelessly to the floor, looked up at Hunter and said: ‘Hey man. That only took forever. I’ve made your bed up though and there’s a fresh towel in the bathroom when you want it…’ He threw himself down on his own four poster bed and picked up a book: Don Quixote. Hunter knew that because he’d seen it on the table in the music room upstairs earlier. ‘I’m probably just gonna read until I pass out.’
Hunter said nothing in response, watching Ryan settle comfortably into the centre of his bed, his nose already buried in the book. Water was shining like blood on his damp hair in the light, giving him the impression of being someone’s master or vampire lord, not a seventeen year old kid with mummy and daddy issues. Hunter resented him for that- for being so flippant, so fucking cool in the face of everything all the time. For reading a book with a title Hunter wouldn’t attempt to pronounce out loud. No one talked shit about Ryan. Callie was a slut, and Hunter was a wannabe rock-star who should have been a boy scout instead; but Ryan Weaver was Ryan Weaver and had never, a day in his life, tried to be anyone else or had been expected to be.
Hunter leaned against the wall, crossed his arms and stared harder, waiting to see how long it would take for Ryan to feel a burning sensation between his eyes.
It took four seconds.
Ryan glanced at him, then turned back to the book. ‘Geez, how wasted are you? I’m not going to carry you to the shower, man.’ Hunter pressed his lips tightly, his scowl intensifying naturally in the face of that remark. Ryan sighed and put his book down on his chest, ‘Okay what? Did you drop acid or something?’
Hunter stared.
Ryan looked at him then, and after a few beats, a wearied look came over his face. ‘Fuck.’
Hunter raised an eyebrow.
Ryan sighed and sat up, tossing the book to the bedspread and resting his elbows on his knees, with his head in his hands. ‘She told you, didn’t she?’ Hunter tapped the side of his nose, afraid that if he opened his mouth now, nothing but the F-word come out. And he owed Ryan the chance to be heard out before he threw him into a few walls. ‘Look, I’m sorry.’ Ryan regarded him with an earnest expression, his drooping gait reminding Ryan of a scolded dog. ‘It wasn’t intentional. She was asleep, right there on the couch next to me, it was dark and raining, I was lonely, she was beautiful and smelled like fucking flowers…’ he exhaled. ‘But nothing happened.’
‘Because lightning struck?’ Hunter asked coldly.
‘Yeah.’ Ryan snorted. ‘I think the Gods were telling me to back off.’
‘Someone had to.’
Ryan’s eyes flashed, looking a bit like muted lightning themselves for a moment. But then he sighed, flopping back on the bed and bringing his hands to his face. ‘Look I know it was stupid okay?’ Gavin Rossdale’s husky voice making lyrical anguish to ‘Glycerine’ filled the room and suited to match both of their moods perfectly. ‘But I told you weeks ago that I was beginning to suffer in her company and what did you do?’ He sat up on his elbows and glared at him. ‘You pissed off. You left us alone almost every day for a month Hunter! It’s a bit late for you to lecture me for breaking the Three Musketeer code when you were off sticking your musket elsewhere!’
‘Okay, for starters, I haven’t stuck anybody with a musket.’ Hunter pushed off the wall, holding up a finger. ‘Secondly, I’m not just pissed off that you risked our friendship with Callie because you had a hard-on, but because you then asked her not to tell me about what happened. To keep a secret from me. How is that keeping us a trio, Ryan? Since when are secrets even a thing with us? What else haven’t you told me?’
‘Nothing!’ Ryan bounced to the balls of his feet, looking squarely at Hunter. ‘That’s it, okay? I almost kissed Cal. Almost. We were interrupted by thunder, and the way she answered that little Truth Or Dare round robin tonight tells me that she might have waved a red flag even if we hadn’t been- because you’re the one she’s imagined kissing anyway, not me!’
But Hunter held up his hand. ‘She was full of shit, Ry. I don’t know what her real answer was, but she basically told me that she made it up for the simple fact that I was the only one of the three options that wasn’t available and therefore, wouldn’t get any ideas.’
‘Oh bullshit. She told you that because she doesn’t want you to know how much she really likes you.’ Ryan turned away and kicked his rubbish can aggressively. ‘Everyone knows it Hunter. Why do you think Sacha asked you what she did? About why you haven’t kissed Cal? Everyone assumes that you two have hooked up because clearly, there’s something between you guys that has been excluding me for a while!’
‘She doesn’t want me.’ Hunter snapped, the words causing him actual anguish. ‘She had her chance but she-’
Ryan’s head whipped around. ‘What?! What chance? When?’ Hunter cringed. Everything inside him cringed just as everything inside Ryan began to straighten. His mate started laughing- actually laughing!
‘Oh no way- you’ve tried kissing her too?’ He loped towards Hunter with a half-amused, half-hateful grin on his face. ‘And I’m the one keeping secrets?!’ He poked Hunter in the centre of the chest. ‘When? Come on, Marks, fess up! I can see in your eyes that I’m fucking right!’
Hunter slapped his finger away. ‘I just told you man, and it happened two hours ago. What was I supposed to do? Run inside with Meredith’s hand in mine, curl up in your lap and sob because I tried to take Callie up on her offer and she actually ran away after literally pushing Meredith into my arms?’
Ryan’s brow smoothed out. ‘She did?’
Hunter nodded. ‘I was drunk. I only meant to go after her, to ask why she’d never mentioned the whole virginity thing to me-’
‘Because it excited you to hear it-’ Ryan pointed out.
‘Yeah well, fuck I’m not made of stone!’ Hunter stepped back, throwing his hands in the air. ‘Anyway I had her up against the wall, and she reacted like I had leprosy, told me that she’d exaggerated the wanting me thing, because she didn’t want you to think that she wanted you, or for Reece to think he had a shot in hell, period.’ He sagged back against the wall, feeling depleted in every cell. He shrugged. ‘And then she bailed.’
Ryan stared at him, his gaze shifting from one of Hunter’s eyes to the other quickly, as though searching for a tell that Hunter was now lying. But Hunter returned the suspicious look with a defeated look of his own, and held up his hands again.
‘She doesn’t want either of us, Ry. She’s our friend. And now, she’s this close to running to the hills, because we’re crossing lines all over the shop since she got boobs!’
Ryan turned away. ‘Fuck! This is bullshit!’ He bounced lightly on the balls of his bare feet. ‘And it’s all my fault, of course! Why did I have her over? I’ve known this was coming. I didn’t plan to do it, but I knew there was a chance I might!’
‘You did?’ Hunter asked, stiffening again. ‘Why? How often have you thought about it?’
‘How often?’ Ryan leaned over and pulled up the spiral, five-subject notebook he used to write lyrics in. Loose leaves of paper were stuffed between the attached pages and Ryan pulled them out, throwing them above his head like he was in a parade. ‘This often!’ Dozens and dozens of pages took flight and floated to the ground. He paused, peered in the dim light at the title of one, shook his head and threw it into the air above his head. ‘Sun-Kissed Snow White!’ He pulled out another fistful. ‘Fisted heart!’ He reached for another and once again, flung it behind him. ‘I want to be inside you Callie!’ He shot Hunter a foolish look. ‘Okay that one was never meant to be seen…and they all suck anyways!’
Hunter snorted. ‘Can I read it?’
‘Could you read, with a fist down your throat?’
Hunter laughed, and then Ryan chuckled.
‘I’m sorry.’ He turned to Hunter, his arms hanging limply at his sides. ‘I don’t want to be Callie’s boyfriend, well, at least I don’t think I do. And even if I did, I wouldn’t risk what we all have together by trying to keep her to myself.’
‘Well that’s a good thing,’ Hunter said. ‘Because I’d kill you before I let you take such a risk. Just like I expect you to snap my neck if I ever try anything like I tried tonight again.’
Ryan rubbed his temples with his hands. ‘Yeah well… how are we both going to make it to grad alive then, Hunter? Because I can’t even look at her without wanting to throw her down on the nearest surface. You’ve been off and so she sang with me and holy crap…’ He sank back down onto his bed. ‘Holy crap- that girl can sing me hard…. That husky thing…’
‘I know.’ Hunter was actually jealous that Callie had sung with Ryan. He sat down on Ryan’s desk. ‘She’s changed, hasn’t she? It’s not just the physical thing. She’s like… more alive or something.’
Ryan scratched behind his ear. ‘Yep. And whether she knows it or not, everything she’s doing is sexy; the clothes, the dancing-’
‘That thing with the tights!’ Hunter added.
Ryan groaned. ‘I almost stopped living.’
‘Okay so we can’t help but look,’ Hunter surmised, ‘but we just need to agree to keep our hands and lips to ourselves.’
‘By not drinking around her- ever again.’ Ryan agreed.
‘And not walking her anywhere or driving her anywhere alone.’
‘Which means you can’t miss any more practices and you need to stop being a shitty best friend in general so I’m not stuck with her by myself so much.’
‘Agreed.’ Hunter conceded. ‘But it also means, that we either need to get her a boyfriend, or get you a girlfriend as a distraction.’
Ryan screwed up his nose. ‘That seems like a dog thing to do.’
‘You wanna be a rock star?’ Hunter reminded him. ‘Well you better start treating girls like groupies and get some of that frustration out of your system before you break down our system completely.’

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JA0ZO5C

*Warning Unchained Melody contains Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘N Roll*

From girl, to woman, to goddess….

January 1991

The new girl in town takes a chance, saves a life, and wins herself two best friends, a Red Sox hat and possibly, a band.

October 1998

Ryan and Hunter don’t know how to handle themselves when their so called ‘Tomboy’ best friend begins to blossom into a goddess. So they handle it badly and suddenly, the Red Sox hat is on the ground and Callie had vanished naked into the eye of Cyclone Addison leaving them short for their first big gig and broken-hearted.

June 2004

Hunter and Ryan have finally recovered from the trauma of Callie’s disappearance and are ready to take their music careers to the big-time when Callie returns. No longer the girl next door, but a banished goddess with a mission; to break the heart of one of the men who still love her, using the other, or die.

Set to an incredible playlist with heart-stopping twists and turns, Unchained Melody is a coming of age story that starts with innocence and ends in wicked desire, with a paranormal twist unlike no other that will have you singing, laughing, crying and hot under the collar!

Excerpt from Unchained Melody…..

‘Anyway, I was going to drive you up to the gorge, grab a blanket and one of the acoustics from the back and lead you up the mountain.’
‘It’s a good thing I wore comfortable shoes then…’ Callie joked.
‘As I knew you would. But I was still imagining the Docs.’ He kicked her Volley’s under the table. ‘So while we were walking up, I was going to you know… inch closer,’ his fingers glided back down on the inside of her wrist and traced her heart line on her palm. ‘And closer… and when you stumbled- which you would of course because it’s pitch black up there and hard to navigate- I was going to catch your hand, and then not let it go. You know, like I didn’t even notice I was holding it…’
Callie blushed as she imagined him doing that, the unspoken tension he was creating there and then by slightly stroking the webbing between her fingers, making her wish he’d lace his fingers between hers. ‘Yep these are definitely the moves planned by a seventeen year old,’ she said, a little breathily.
‘I know right?’ Ryan winked and pulled his chair closer to hers, leaning his head towards her like what he had to say was of vital importance and secrecy. He removed his hand from hers and used it to prop his jaw up while his other stretched across the back of her chair, surrounding her but not quite touching her. It was agony.
‘Okay so we’d get up the mountain and I was going to take you up to the main jumping rock.’ His eyes stroked her neck, then met her eyes. ‘Remember the one I used to play guitar on?’
Callie nodded, remembering the first time she had seen Ryan up there and thought of him as: the cute one. ‘Blue board shorts,’ she whispered, her face growing hot.
‘That’s… that’s right!’ Ryan grinned again and nudged his shoulder against hers. ‘Good memory.’
‘One of my favourites.’ Their low voices formed a sort of mist around them. ‘Go on.’
He grinned at her and suddenly, his lips and teeth were the most fascinating thing in the world. ‘Once I got you up there, I was going to lay the blanket down, pull you into my lap, and ask you to play and sing for me.’ Ryan’s knee brushed against hers now but she was already too hypnotized by his sensual mouth and the way he had started lightly running his fingers down her hair to have enough lung space left to gasp in reaction. ‘And if you were too shy, I’d beg.’ His voice was almost toneless, breathy and warm against her jaw. ‘I was going to reach around you and pluck out a few chords but really it would have just been an excuse to get my arms around you… you know?’
‘Of course.’ Callie closed her eyes briefly, luxuriating in Ryan’s nearness, his barely there touches driving her out of her mind.
‘Right. And then, I was going to use the tip of my nose to part your hair until it parted over your neck…’ Ryan turned his face into the arch of her neck as he pulled her hair away from her pulse. ‘And then I was going to kiss you right there, on your nape,’ his thumb rolled over her topmost vertebrae, ‘and tell you to keep playing no matter what.’ Callie’s eyes fluttered shut as Ryan’s lips glanced off the sensitive flesh just at the curve of her jaw. ‘And while you sang like the angel you are, I was going to keep kissing down your spine…’ One of his fingers made her skin shiver as his free hand ran along the low scooped back of her black halter top. ‘The kisses would have gotten a bit wet, and a bit messy and I hoped, you’d start to find it hard to concentrate on your song…’
‘Oh?’ Callie’s stomach clenched and she felt herself grow damp and more lucid, not even trying to disguise her moan as Ryan’s hand cupped her knee and slid slowly up her thigh.
‘Yeah. If you started to fade, but stayed in my arms, reacting to my touch, I was going to slip my fingers over your thigh, pull back the edge of your panties right…’ his hand slipped under the hem of her black leather mini-skirt and then fingertips were tracing the crease between her lace panties and her inner thigh and Callie felt everything inside her tighten. She bowed her head towards his, aware that there were at least five other couples in the dim restaurant, and that Doris Day’s Perhaps was being filtered too softly through the built in speakers in the ceiling to disguise much of any sound she made, maybe even her breathing, which was becoming erratic- but she did not care. ‘Here…’ Ryan whispered.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JA0ZO5C

It’s not easy being an adopted, astraphobic ballet dancer from Canada, trying to make friends in a new country, but when eight year old Callie Clay saved the boy at the gorge on her first day in Horizon, she scored two best friends, a red baseball cap, and a reputation for being a risk-taking weirdo.
Eight years later, Hunter and Ryan had been given pamphlets on what to do when they started noticing girls, but nothing could have prepared them for the changes that came over their tomboy friend and so they handled it as hormonal teenage boys do; badly. One moment, they were a band on the precipice of their first big gig and the next, Callie is having a nervous breakdown and running naked into the eye of Cyclone Addison.
When Callie returns, she’s no longer the girl next door but a goddess with one purpose; To shatter one of the hearts of the men she’s forbidden to love, by using the other- for the sake of The Harmony, and to save her own ass.
Go back to when the music defined lives, the butterflies of first love consumed every thought and brace yourself for a ride to Oblivion and back! Passion, anguish, sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll… Unchained Melody is an epic Paranormal Romance served with a pair of Doc Martens and a trip down Melody lane! 

Dear 2013 Featured in The Mackay Daily Mercury

Excerpt from ‘The Marked Ones’

Excerpt from ‘The Marked Ones’

The pain in her feet began to ebb and the small waves breaking over her caused Ivyanne to lose her control. She bent at the waist, plunged her head under and shot out a few meters, letting her hair get good and wet, before bursting forward with lightning quick speed, grinning underwater. She felt the moment of change, as she willed her body to do what came naturally. The skin on her thighs began to tingle uncontrollably and she shivered happily until the transition completed. Then, she gave her lower body a flick, and propelled herself through the water at five times the speed she had before. She kept her arms out in front, merely as a guide until her eyes adjusted, feeling for anything that she might collide into.
But there would be nothing, only sand. Ivyanne flicked again, rotating her shoulders so she twirled in several consecutive circles, her hair gliding around her face like cotton candy being spun on a stick, and when she lost momentum, she came to a stop and opened her eyes-and then everything was how it should be.
Ivyanne floated there, suspended halfway between the surface and the ocean floor, watching as the sand bars emerged from the darkness, and the stars from the sky above penetrated the water. She smiled blissfully and arched her back, before looping backwards in a large arc which swung her so low that she could trace her fingers in the sandy floor.
Peace. Comfort. Safety. Solitude-everything Ivyanne craved and hadn’t had for so long was now settled around her like a warm, watery embrace. She flicked her tail again, gently this time, and swum parallel to the ocean floor, digging tracks with her fingers in the sand.
But as the pain from her various aches and injuries subsided, her mind cleared enough for her to think. Like awakening from a delicious dream and slowly focusing on a different reality, Ivyanne remembered the shock on Lincoln Grey’s face when their eyes had locked.
It had happened. She had not hallucinated it. The realization that it had not been a nightmare-and she had compounded her woes with an extra, very large problem, suddenly hit Ivyanne like a gust of icy air. The frustration and despair of everything she was about to face ripped out of her in the form of a high pitched and heartbreaking scream that sent a pulse through the water so strong that she knew the sound would reach the reef around Needle Island, scaring away all marine life, but her.

K Munt

The Fairytail Saga Books 1 & 2

Covers of The Fairytail Saga

Tips For Self-Publishing, helpful for Mac users too

1 Reply

Okay so two weeks ago I decided that I’d publish my novel as an e-book. Not a foreign concept now is it? Well let me assure you, for me, it is.

I am not an e-book person. I don’t have a Kindle-I didn’t even have an app on my iPad. In fact, for the past two years I have bemoaning the collapse of the printed word when my favourite retailer, Angus&Robertson, shut down. The only e-books I do own are on iBooks-and they’re only because they weren’t available elsewhere.

I tried to get the trilogy I’ve been slaving away on for almost 2 years published, but the truth is-if there’s a great way to pitch a mermaid love triangle set in Australia for adults, then I couldn’t think of it. I’m a good writer-it’s who I am. But one thing I have NOT practiced is the query letter thing.
There were so many problems. I got so close to several companies and agents, but there was always a ‘but’ involved. ‘But’ does it have to be set in Australia? BUt do YOU have to live in Australia? BUT does it have to involve sex, as this would make a great YA novel? BUT…couldn’t they have FANGS instead of fins? One even wanted me to eliminate all of the stuff not revolving around the love story, and I might sell out to e-books, but I won’t compromise my vision. At the end of the day, I wanted to tell the story that I want to read, to scratch the itchy spot between 50 Shades and Twilight. I write exactly like someone who loves The Bay Sitters Club and The Poisonwood Bible in equal measures-enertainment, prettiness, perfection…with a little bit of grit, and words that venture beyond 6 characters at times. Yes I’m Australian and yes this book is set here-but I’ve presented my country through romantic lenses, highlighting the beauty of it, the drama-and less of the ‘G’Day mate’ stuff.
I don’t think there’s a single reference to G’Day or Vegemite. Crikey! I did it! (Ha ha ha, had to slip that in there)

Anyway my point is that there is no market for me-not without several short story awards and university degrees under my belt anyways. Paranormal romance, focusing on an under-developed sub genre (mermaids) targeted at Adults who ENJOY a blood-pumping sex scene without wanting to be drowned in them. My story has a little bit of action, a lot of drama, quite a few laughs (I can be Punny at times) and it’ll get you hot under the collar. Anyway-you can’t fit that in a query letter without sounding insane, and no one wants to take a chance on a first time Australian writer who used to be a cheerleader coming in with book one at 118,000 word count-so self publishing it was.

I have to confess-I learnt the hard way. And by the hard way, I mean I’ve gone through THREE sets of the most expensive batteries for mouse in two weeks. I haven’t slept. My kids don’t recognise me, and I’ve been having sex with poor neglected husband between when I shower and when I put on jammies. I tried to get advice for this-I googled EVERYTHING, but there is so much that’s left out that ought to be presented in a much simpler way, so that’s what I’m going to do for you, because believe it or not, I’m actually having a lot of success for a first timer. In one week I’ve gone up 100,000 spots in rank among other things, that I’ll get to. So here we go: Rookie advice from a rookie!

1) Write a good book. Might sound simple but it aint. I don’t read free or 99c e-books. I’m not interested. I like my books to be fantastic and I’m trying to create the same thing for others.
The Marked Ones (Trilogy) took me 6 months to plot (in my head, I don’t do notes if I can avoid it and this story is pretty complex) and 9 months to write. The FIRST time. I have done so many edits that my characters recognise me as much as my kids do. If you think your story sounds like someone else’s, than it probably does. Be original, take risks-but for the love of god READ first. if your book sucks-you WILL hear about it.

2) Still with me? Reckon you’ve got ‘the one’? Okay then carrying on…Get others to read it. I’m not talking about your mum and your husband…real readers you know, but no one that knows you SO well that they will put their feelings above their opinions. I chose three girls I went to high school with who didn’t really know or like me that much, who happened to like the same genres as I did, and had jobs, kids, laundry and ten million other things to do that they might put my book off for. But you know what? They didn’t. And when they were staying up until 3am to read my doc story then I knew I was onto something. My book is actually dedicated to them-those three girls are priceless to me now.

3) Get someone official to read it. This step is for those who are DAMN serious and have a bit of cash so if you’re not sure, you could get away with skipping it. I chose an assessment agency here in Australia-Lynk Assessment Services, paid them $300 bucks for them to read my manuscript, tell me where I went wrong and right, point out the major formatting and grammatical errors and expose the weak links. I got a wonderful report back from Lynk, and that gave me the drive to push on, and something to add to the bottom of the query letters I was still sending out then.
You might not need an agency. If you’re in school or college and have a teacher you could slip $100 bucks to (ENGLISH teacher, not your football coach) then try that.

4) Build up some anticipation. As excited as you are to launch your book…put feelers out first. I started with my Facebook, then added a Facebook page JUST for my book, where I would rant about my writing, upload pics that were relevant, put in sneaky snippets and get some interest going. Start joining online service for networking-Twitter, Tumblr, Goodreads (very important that you don’t just show up tooting your own horn here on launch day-they’ll freeze you out. Establish friendships first with nice like-minded people) and start blogging.I did all of this AFTER the fact and it was far too stressful. The bags under my eyes will attest to that. Google : ’46 websites to promote your writing’ and join them. ALL of them. Use user names that are your pen name and try and keep the same password for everything. Bookmark each site (‘favourites’ for Microsoft users) and have all 46 profiles set up and ready to go. Start adding people from your genre. I googled ‘mermaid readers’ and got at least 10 helpful discussion groups from there. You don’t want to know the lengths I’ve gone to since, but there isn’t a mermaid discussion board I haven’t pillaged yet. Paranormal romance (my genre) is next.

THE DOCUMENT (DIY)
5) format your manuscript for e-pub. They make this sound SO easy for people to do, and perhaps for Microsoft users, it is-but NOT Mac. I use Nisus Writer Pro which is such a FABULOUS word processing program ($69 from App store) that the other kids won’t play with it, lol. Pages is rumoured to be slightly better, but I don’t know. My Kindle version went up well enough, but dear god…I’m still fighting with Smashwords. In fact, I broke up with them this afternoon. We’ll make up, but more later.
To get the very best version of my Kindle document, I downloaded the program ‘Sigil’ (E-Pub software) for Mac-it’s not easy, but it comes with instruction that make sense. I transferred my doc from Nisus to Sigil for the serious stuff-page breaks, Headers, Titles etc.

Some formatting tips-
Run a spell check.
Put a page break between each chapter
DON’T use the spacebar unless it’s between words. If you use it to centre paragraph breaks or chapter headings-e-pub will rape you for it.
DON’T use fancy font. Or anything over size 14.
Run a ‘find’ mission on words that are easily used the wrong way. Google It’s and its so you know what’s what for sure, then find every one in your manuscript and make sure you’re using them in the right context. Same as ‘then’ and ‘than’. I have an I.Q of 151 and you’d be surprised how many of those buggers still slipped by me at 3am. When you read your manuscript yourself, watch out for words that will pass a spell-check but don’t make sense. I believe I had a ‘white weather couch.’
Please do a serious edit. And another after it. Every time you change something-read it back 4 times. This is where mistakes happen. I tried to replace realised with saw and left the realised in. Yup. Dipshit. In the name of improving my manuscript, I trashed it, then uploaded it. BAD move. Still cringing.
PRINT your manuscript, give it to someone else to read with a highlighter. No one is worse at editing a document, then the writer, who has the sentences memorised.
NOW remove your page numbers-you CANNOT use these with a Kindle, for it creates it’s own for each device.
Move your margins-best bet is to check the Kindle site and make sure they’re the same specs. I guessed mine (ugh, the 4th upload attempt around) but you’d be surprised how much one inch of translation will mess with your alignments. I had Chapter headings off to the right and coming down the next line-not pretty. In fact-USE NUMBERS for chapters. Much simpler.
Chapter Headings-This is where you use heading styles 1-3.
*When you do your title page, Highlight The Title with ‘Heading 1’
*Then Highlight your byline,copyright information, illustrator/cover designer with ‘Heading 2’. Insert Page Break. (USE A copyright, with symbol and all or you will get rejected.)
*If you want a dedication, write it up after break, Highlight once more with ‘Heading 2’. THEN page break again.
*When you get to your chapter titles/numbers-use Heading 3 for these only. KINDLE NEEDS THIS. YOU WILL BE TURNED AWAY WITHOUT IT.

Okay so by now you should have your manuscript looking pretty sweet, and someone double-checking a print copy for spelling errors. NOW it gets a bit more fun!

6) Get a Cover.
I won’t be a fountain of enlightenment here-I tried one option and went with it. I joined a site called ‘Designcrowd’ which is basically a collective of designers who may be able to drum up something for you.
They let you upload your synopsis, write a description of what you’re looking for (I said, simple, elegant, dark and metallic tones, preferably gold, with a tail insignia of some sort.) Now, name your price. I went with the cheapest option-$200 seemed fair for a book that might go belly-up. Then, add your info-Title, Author, tagline etc.
Then, you wait. If you select the ‘payment mandatory’ option you will get a hell of a lot more offers than I did. (This means you HAVE to pick, anmd pay a winner. There is an option not to, but I only got 2 volunteers with that) It took 15 minutes for me to get my dream cover. I couldn’t believe how she nailed it. Everyone else was giving me pretty mermaid scenes with well-known clip-art but Natalie Rose Spasic from ‘Officemanager4u’ was brilliant. From the start she was peppering me with questions so I gave her my e-mail-and she ran 4 or 5 versions by me until I had it perfect. DON’T be afraid to perfect it. It’s your book-you can ask to tweak.
A bunch of other people submitted designs-I gave them 48 hours to come up with something and cut mine off after two. From hereon out, I’ll be using Natalie, and I highly recommend her. But if I’d let it go, I might have had anywhere up to 20 options. You can even invite designers who you’d like to try their hand.

7) Now, if all of that formatting stuff seems too much for you-do what I’m going to end up doing-look up ‘Bookbaby’. They will take your manuscript (send it off as perfect as possible, they’re formatters, not editors). For $200 they will format your manuscript for every e-reader known to man AND distribute it and ask for no extra royalty. I am half way through this process. Currently, I can ONLY get a decent upload to Kindle, because the other option, Smashwords, just doesn’t mix with MAC self-publishing virgins. BookBaby does all of the hard work. I am currently one week into the process, but once they have it done (should be a few more days) I will replace even my Kindle version with their perfected product (and Kobo, e-reader, Samsung, iBooks, etc etc) and not look back.

Book baby also has the option to cheaply PRINT your manuscript, and put it on audio C.D. Awesome, yeah?

So if you’re keeping up with the math-the easiest and best way to get a cover and distribution to Amazon and affiliates, is $400. $200 for Design Crowd, $200 for BookBaby. Sounds steep, but I’ve already made this price back in sales (in one week) and it’s not even ON apple or Kobo yet. Just Kindle.

8) Retailers. THIS is where it gets confusing so I’ll make it real simple.

If you want Kindle AND Smashwords (which you can reach in one click with Bookbaby) then you CANNOT use ‘KDP SELECT’

KDP select is an exclusive offer. It is a 90 day contract in which you cannot sell your product ANYWHERE but Kindle and yes, it’s enforced-they google the shit out of you.
What KDP does is make your book available in a lending library so you get royalties from that, AND they give your work a bit of a plug by offering you 5 days to be used within those 90 days, that you give your book away for free.
Now, giving your book away for free will get it downloaded. But I’ve heard mixed reports about this.Some people say that get 17,000 downloads in one day, and then sell a few hundred after that, some say they get 5000 downloads and then never sell a book again-because the people in their market grabbed it for free and have moved onto another Vampire series now.
I am personally nor using it…YET. I have priced my book at $4.99, which isn’t cheap-but I believe that my book is worth the money. Indie writers like to go for the 99c-$2.99 bracket but I’m aiming higher and so far, it’s working out. For starters, a higher fee, means you get a more discerning crowd-people who LOVE quality of writing, over a quick thrill. It also means each sale you make counts a hell of a lot more than the free ones do when it comes to ‘ranking’. The free books in my genre are ranked in the 100,00’s at the moment, at no cost. Mine has probably sold five hundred less than theirs, but I’m in the 30,000 bracket at the moment, for having steady sales at a good price. Make sense? But hey-if you wrote your book in 3 weeks and got it up in 20 minutes on a Microsoft computer and don’t really care what others think-go for it. But other authors to warn against using KDP if you only have the one title, as I do.

Personally, I was terrified at the idea of people who don’t like my biggish words giving me a slue of 1 star reviews for fun that day-and for FREE.

No for now it’s on Kindle only, and it’s selling way better than I thought and I’ve gotten 1 One star review, and 8 four and five ones.

Mind you, when I release book 2, I may release book 1 on KDP then. If they loved book 1 for free, then they’ll probably pay for the next two instalments. i haven’t decided yet. i’ll wait until I get verdicts back from every other retailer, before I make any kind of commitment.

9) Okay so you’ve got your book up-now the hard work begins. promote promote promote! Contact readers, offer them a free copy for a review (just a few). The more reviews you get, the more hits you get-it’s as simple as that. With every positive review, my rating climbs.
Use all of those free sites you set up and put links to your selling platform. Don’t sleep for 5 days-tweet and blog until you run out of words! Beg for reviews! Ask your mum to do it, if no one else will.

Okay I’ve just written down a lot of stuff and I need to get back to formatting book 2, so I’ll leave the nitty gritty at that for now. I hope this helps someone-or I’ve really wasted my time.

A few final tips that worked great for me:

1) Contact your local newspaper. Tell them you wrote a damn good book and it’s doing well. I did this last week, and instead of getting a 5 inch blurb, I got a THREE PASGE FULL COLOUR SPREAD! In a town with 120,000 people, free advertising just doesn’t get better than that! And then I went away on the weekend and someone mentioned to a different reporter that I had a 3 page spread in my local newspaper-so she decided to interview me for hers too! Bam! 400 kilometres, covered.

2) Go to a writer’s festival. I just attended one this week (YES, busy week!) that was a three day stay at a resort. This wasn’t a huge writer’s festival, but it had 4 very prominent Australian authors there who I got to be BFF’s with for three days and their advice was priceless. (L.A Larkin, author of Thirst, and Anita Heiss, author and spokeswoman extroadinairre!)I had to show ’em my stuff and sell the hell out of myself, but they must have liked it because one tweeted about ME this morning! A woman who’s sold over 100,000 books! Extraordinary! And the article in my paper came out while I was there so they actually got to see how seriously I was taking myself-how determined I was. My picture will be in the paper again this week with Anita-can you ask for better publicity than that?

3) Use your Facebook friends. We all have those friends with over 1000 friends-this is where it’ll pay off for you. Ask them to share your Kindle link. especially your friends overseas! I have readers in the UK, Canada, India and Denmark because of this little tactic.
get your truest friends to help you out too-I asked mine to change their profile pics to my cover for 1 day, to generate interest, and it worked. My author page now has 120 followers 🙂

That’s it for now! I’m exhausted! If you have any questions, feel free to message me 🙂 Check out my work (no commitment there’s a sneaky peek on Kindle, free of charge) and get an idea of what it is I’ve offered.

This is hard work. I won’t lie. But if you have the grim determination that I do-it WILL pay off. Peace out fellow authors! And good luck!

themarkedone

they won't take forbidden as an answer