For all those waiting for my next book, sorry but you'll have to wait a bit longer.  Life is a bit hectic these days with work, apartment searching and interviews.  I'm finding it hard to set aside time to give book two another once over before publishing.  Hopefully I'll have it where I want it by the end of February. 

KDP Select, round 2

Trying another round of kdp select...maybe I should have done the free book promo the first time.

Check out Spirit of the Plains, Book one of the spirits saga, here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WCM5680

KDP Select...a little disappointed (Beginning Writer)

So, a few months ago I posted about my initial thoughts about KDP Select.  I loved the way it showed how many pages were read, letting me know that people were picking up my book and reading it in about one or two days. 

Now, after the three months of my KDP Select run, I have to say I'm a little disappointed.  The main reason I joined KDP Select was to get honest reviews about my book.  I want more people to read and hopefully like it.  I saw other books of the same genre go on KDP Select and garner many reviews, thus I tried it as well.

In the first week, I got a review and it was good, which was good.  Yet, that was the only review that I got during the whole three months.  On top of that, the earnings I recieved were less than half of what I had been making before KDP Select, and those earnings weren't anything to shout about. 

Summary:  I sold less and didn't get more reviews

On to new ways of advertisement.  Here's to learning as you go!  :) 


P.S.  The paperback is coming soon, along with a book of short scary stories.  Book two is completed, but I'm busy with work now and will have to edit it again before publishing.  Look for it sometime early next year. 

Removing Dotted Lines in Microsoft Word 2007 (Beginning Writer)

WooHoo!!  I finally found out how to remove the dotted lines on my word 2007 document.  It might sound strange that I'm so happy, but if you have a similar issue then you may understand, especially if your microsoft office is in a different language.

So, sometimes dotted lines appear on word documents and, if you don't remove them right away, they're hard to get rid of.  I spent many an hour looking on the internet, watching videos and attempting different things.  This took me extra time because my Microsoft Word is in Korean, a language that I don't understand completely. 

After trying so many things, I gave up and published my ebook with the dotted lines. 

Today I was prepping my book for its paperback edition and I asked my wife about the dotted lines.  She said she didn't know, but I had her look and showed her what the internet sites told me to do.  Like before, it didn't work.

So, then I started clicking on random buttons, all in korean, asking her about them.  Once again, she had no idea how to remove the line. 

Then I clicked on the third tab, 음영 S, in English I think it's the Shading tab.  In the shading tab under 스 타일 Y, (Style in English), I clicked 지우기, (which my wife says means delete or clear).  It was already on delete, but I had to click it again for some reason to make it work.

WaLa, the dotted lines were gone and I was pretty darn happy.

So, if You're having trouble with dotted lines, here's my summary of what to do.

1)  Highlight the paragraph over the dotted line and the paragraph under the dotted line.

2)  Click the Home tab and then the borders and shading tab  (four dotted boxes next to the paint bucket).  Go to the last tab, (O,) options.  It should bring you to a screen with three tabs, Borders, Page Border and Shading.

3)  Click Borders and click None.

4)  Click Page Border and click None.

5)  Click Shading and look at the style tab.  The tab might say clear (or delete), but you still have to click the drop down menu and click on clear again.  If not, then the dotted lines don't go away...at least they didn't for me.

6)  Click apply all and then click ok and the dotted line should be gone. 

7)  Smile and be happy that the dotted line is gone, then go and purchase my book, Spirits of the Plains.


Hope this helps.

Just finished a side project of short scary stories.  Hopefully it will be aviable for public consumption soon.

Just sent book two to be copyrighted.  I think I'll make my self imposed start of December deadline.  We'll see. 

If you still haven't read book one, Spirits of the Plains, here's the site.  Hope you enjoy.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WCM5680

Just finished the first draft of book two.  Boy does it feel good!

KDP Select, Amazon Kindle Unlimited (beginning writer)

Is KDP Select good?  Is KDP Select worth it?  In my opinion, yes it is but know that I have only been using it for two weeks and haven't been paid yet.  So, if you came here wondering about money, this blog isn't for you.

Short summary:  The main reason why I enjoy KDP Select is because you can see the amount of pages read every day and so you know that people are picking up your book and reading it within two or three days.  Money is important, but knowing that someone loved your book is very important as well. 

Longer Summary:  Before I put my book on KDP Select, I had it availiable on kindle for four months, I had planned three before putting it on KDP Select, but waited an extra month.  Sales were good after I recieved a good honest review, but then they dropped when I recieved a bad honest review.  Even so they remained consistently above zero.  I was fine with this because I hadn't done much advertising and thus not many know about my book.

Once my teaching job went on vacation, I tried to get some websites to review my book, so I could get word out.  I guess my book is a little different from your typically fantasy book and the sites have many books to review,  which might be the reasons I didn't get replies. 

So, I tried a site where I offered my book free in exchange for honest reviews.  I got some nice reviews from the site, but I also started recieving intimidating emails trying to get me to pay for a service.  When I chose not to respond, a negative review followed. 

Still, sales remained above zero, but the intimidation was a motivational killer and I was in the middle of writing my second book, so motivation was important.  Thus, I decided to put my book on KDP Select.  I had planned to do this after three months, but had held off an extra one while I tried to advertise. 

When my book went on KDP Select, I was happy to find that I could see the amount of pages people read.  It started off with 0 then 112 then 352 then 905.  905!  That's my whole book and then some.  That means that someone picked up my book and liked it so much that they finished it in a couple of days (or 905 people read one page).  I've read many books in my time but I only read a few in one or two days.  The fact that someone could pick up my book and read it so quickly was highly motivational.  And they wrote a review afterwords!   

The pages read kept going up (trend of dropping on thu., wed. and fri.) but I didn't recieve anymore reviews.  Even so, the fact that someone enjoyed my book and read it so fast was motivation enough.  Yes, every writer wants to earn money so they can make it a full time career, but the fact that people enjoy the book enough to read it in one or two days is something a writer loves to know.  Now I'm almost done with book two, maybe twenty pages left.  So, if you're waiting, expect it to come out in the early days of winter. 

Walking and Writing (Beginning Writer)

During the summer, my main job is on vacation and I am only teaching on Friday.  This has worked out great for me because it has given me a lot of time to write my second book without having to worry about making lessons and what not. 

I understand myself and know that I get distracted easily, games, tv shows...the list goes on.  Therefore I have developed a daily schedule that has worked great.

First: I wake up and check the internet while eating breakfast.  About an hour.

Then, I sit down and start writing.  Sometimes the words flow onto the paper, sometimes they don't, but I keep at it until lunch time.

Around 1:00 or so, I have a quick lunch and then go for my midday walk.  Before I walk, I try to clear my mind of everything other than my story.  Sometimes this is difficult, but most of the time I'm pretty successful at doing so.  Another thing I do is check over my story outline and reaffirm what I plan for the next part of my book to be.

Then, with nothing but my charcaters in my head to keep me company, I walk around a nearby lake called Seokchon Lake.  It's a very peaceful walk and the path is supposed to be one way, which allows me to think without worrying about running into people (though some do break the rules).  During my walk, I think about my book and how the story will go.  The words of my charcaters play through my head over and over, as do the many different things that might happen to them. 

By the time I have finished my walk, I have found my second wind and immediately get out my laptop and jot down ideas when I get home.  Sometimes I do this even before taking a shower, thus getting whatever I'm sitting on a bit sweaty (don't tell my wife). 

Walks are wonderful for me and my writing.  I highly suggest every writer try and do this.  Maybe it's not for you, but maybe you'll find it to be as helpful as I do.  My advice is to find a relaxing place to walk, think of nothing other than your book and then just enjoy yourself.  It also has the benefit of being healthy. 

Here's some pics of Seokchon Lake. 

 

It has a nice array of plants.  I particularly like these purple flowers.

 

The path is large, so it's easy to avoid people.  (usually)

 

Right in the city.

 

Trees line the path, offering shade from the sun.

 

Many Geese, a family of ducks, turtles, cats and more animals live on or nearby the lake.

 

It's pretty big.

 

Lotte World Amusement Park is in the middle of one.

 

The lake is full of these guys and other kinds of fish.  They congregate close to places where people throw bread for them to eat.

 

Algae grows all over the man-made they do a good job of keeping it under control.

 

 

I like this guy.  He's here everyday.  (the black bird to the left of the fountain).

 

He showed off for me today.  I guess he knew he was in a photo shoot.

I want to give a special thanks to everyone that has taken the time to review my book so far, old reviews and new.  The support means a lot to me!

Regrettably, the book is no longer availiable on storycartel but,


 If you want to purchase Spirits of the Plains  from amazon, here is the link.

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WCM5680

Thansk and enjoy!

Editing your book (Beginning Writer)

I'm an ESL (English as a second language) teacher.  I always teach grammar, check over papers that need a lot of work and help students with writing.  Thus, when I sat down to edit my first book, I was surprised to see that I had made so many mistakes.  Though, remembering my time as a student, maybe I shouldn't have been soooo surprised.

I'll start with a brief summary for those of you that don't want to read the whole post.


1)  Read this blog post http://www.karenafox.com/commonmistakes.htm

2)  Don't repeat yourself.  Most of the times this means using the same word, you can right click the word to get some synonyms.  I also found that I would write whole paragraphs that said similar things and thus deleted a paragraph or two.

3)  Add dialogue

4)  Make sure you use the right names, i.e. sometimes I would write Wolf instead of Wing.

5)  Read over everything you wrote and do it OUTLOUD.  Listening to the words helps me catch mistakes.

6)  Put it aside for a month or so then read it OUTLOUD all over again.  I believe Stephen King suggested this in his book On Writing, though it's been a while since I read it. 

7)  Everyone makes mistakes so don't worry.  You can even make revisions after you publish your e-book.  I may have done this after my mother told me a few things about what she read.  :)

8)  Enjoy yourself and love what you write.  This is one of the most important things.



So, I started my editing by reading over what I wrote at various times during my writing.  I would print out my book, put it in a folder and then read silently on the subway, bus, or at home.  This helped me think of my story and catch some mistakes, but it's not the best way to edit.  The best way is reading outloud.

After I had finished writing I went to google and typed in beginning writer mistakes.  I wish I had done this when I had started because the website it took me to was very helpful.  It was a blog posting from an author named Karen Fox. 

http://www.karenafox.com/commonmistakes.htm

After reading this post I went back and editied again, this time reading outloud.  I caught more mistakes and had a better understanding why I didn't like some parts of my story.  I even found myself x-ing out whole paragraphs.  I highly recommend that every new and old writer read her blog post. 

So, after reading through my whole book, OUTLOUD, I waited for a month and then read through it again.  This gave me some time to relax my mind and, when I came back, I was fresh and could catch more mistakes.  Here's a pick of most of my edited pages.  Fun stuff!

 

 

And here's a pick of the editing I did yesterday on book number two.  154 pages (A4 not ebook) done so far.

 

 

How to rotate a photo on blogger

So, I was having an issue with a photo that i was trying to upload to blogger.  Every time I uploaded it, the photo was rotated.  I googled how to correct this, but I'm not the best at computers and many responses were confusing.  Thus I played around with it until I found and easy, simple solution.

Open you pic in MS paint.

Click on the rotate, (under the resize)

Rotate the image 90 degrees to the right.

Save the image. 

Upload again.


If your image is now upside down. 

Do the same thing as above, WITH THE ORIGINAL IMAGE, but rotate it 90 degrees to the left.


I hope this helps all those who aren't so good with computers, and maybe those that are.  :)

Yesterday I had one of those days where I really got into what I was writing.  Those times when you don't feel like getting up to eat and you lose track of what time it was.  The chapter I was working on was about Brog, my baboon character, so I thought I'd share a picture of him that I drew a while back. 

P.S.  Having trouble uploading a pic on blogger and having it automatically rotated?  I just learned how to deal with it.  Go to MS paint, open the pic and rotate it 90 degrees to the right.  Then, upload your rotated pic.  It worked for me.

Starting to Write (beginning writer)

Starting to Write

 

 

         So, the thing that really slowed me down in the beginning was thinking of names.  For me, this was very hard to do and I felt like I couldn't start writing until I had the names of my characters.  Eventually, this bothered me so much, that I just started writing, calling my charcaters A, B, C...

After I started writing, the names quickly came to me and I was happy with the ones I ended up with.  Another thing that I found was that when I started writing, I started thinking of more ideas and writing more. 

 

Thus I found that one of the best ways to write is to write. 

 

 

        Once getting past the name hurtle, I thought my book would just spew forth onto the pages and I would be done within a month.  I mean, I had the book planned in my head and knew how the trilogy was going to end, so it should be easy.  Not really.  I fund that, on a very good day, I could maybe get 20 pages written.  (very very good day).  On average, I would say that I did somewhere between five and ten pages a day.  My ideas were there, but I wanted to make sure my writing did them justice.  Also, the more I wrote, the more ideas came to me. 

 

         While writing I discovered a good way to organize my ideas.  I would write them down on sketch paper, each character getting his own section. 

 

   

               As you can see I used different colors for each character.  It helped me while writing, because an organized, color coded outline makes me feel happy.  

 

           I didn't set out to write a certain number of pages, I merely had a story in my head that I wanted to share.  Thus, I just kept writing until I got to the ending. 

 

           Sometimes when I was writing I would get really excited.  I believe that these are the best parts in my book and I hope the reader feels the same.

 

      Sometimes I hit a wall while writing.  Occassionally I would try to break through this wall by clenching my teeth and continuing to type, though I often edited those parts later on.  I found that a good thing to do when you come to a hiatus in your imagination is to print out what you wrote thus far and read over it, OUTLOUD.  You will catch mistakes, get into the flow of your story once again, and will hopefully jump over the wall of writer's block.      

 

         Another thing that I found to be very helpful was constantly sharing my ideas with my wife.  She was always excited and supportive and this really helped motivate me to continue writing.  If you have a loved one that is close by, they are a captive audience that has to listen and respond.  They can't run away or avoid you.  :)

 

        Other things include:

 

                  Setting aside a good amount of time to write.  I currently teach English, thus only write on weekends or vacation.  I find that writing a little here and a little there is difficult.  When I sit down for a while and go at it, that's when things come to me.

 

                  Finding a good place to write.  While writing my first book I was in a tiny studio apartment with boxes of stuff everywhere (I'm a pack rat).  When my wife moved in things got even more cramped (she's a pack rat too).  Thus, I would go to a coffee shop to write.  It gave me a quiet place away from home where I could think better.  Now I live in a two room place and usually sleep in the living room.  (avoiding noise from the street).  I often use a folding table and sit on my bed to write.  But, just finding a place that you can say is "your writing place" is a good idea.  That way, when you get there, you start writing.  Pavlov's dogs.

 

             Sharing Ideas.  I assume that sharing ideas with friends is a good plan.  I tried to do this, but I've been abroad for so long, that I've lost contact with many people.  Some of the people I got in touch with got back to me, but most did not.  The thing you have to know is that everyone has their own life.  You want them to get back to you the next week with a review about what they thought of your whole book.  The one friend review I got came about 6 months or so after I sent the copy, and I think that was after I pestered him a little.  If your waiting for responses, calm down and take a breath.  Also know that you won't always get them. 

 

             You can try sharing ideas with strangers on the internet, writing forums and what not.  I thought about but was honestly scared that someone would steal my ideas or write something very similar.  The reason I felt this way is not because I think I'm so wonderful, but because you see many books that are very similar to each other...i.e. big super powerful enemy, blacksmith, magic schools (especially after Harry Potter), the list goes on.  You might not be as paranoid as I am, but do watch out and know that the world isn't all gumdrops and lollipops. 

 

Grabbing Hold of the Ideas in Your Head (Beginning writer)

Grabbing Hold of the Ideas in Your Head

The way I really got into writing was by reading.  When I would read various books, they would stimulate my imagination and give me ideas.  Eventually I started writing all of these ideas down, which turned out to be very important because, the more ideas I wrote down, the more ideas came to me.  I would write them on whatever I could find and started saving them all in a folder, which I promised to use one day.  Honestly, I doubted that I would ever write anything, but just jotting down ideas was fun. 

These are most of my jotted ideas.  After finishing book one, I decided to organize them into folders.  I know that I still have other ones floating around in my various notebooks and other hiding places, and, hopefully, someday I will organize those too. 

I think that jotting down ideas is very important because it gets you thinking and imagining.  It also stimulates your own ideas, instead of trying to write something similar to another author.  (hopefully my books will be unique).  I originally thought of ideas for book 15 in my series, but decided to start at the beginning so that the reader could grow up with my world. 

I found that my best ideas came when I was riding in a car or bus (not driving), in the shower (when I wasn't thinking of other things), when I was reading (though I hope I didn't copy anyone) and when I was about to go to sleep.  The last one was the most annoying, because my mind would start racing and then I wouldn't be able to sleep for a while.  I don't think my wife enjoys this either.  I found that the best way to get a good nights sleep is to keep an i-pad close at hand so that you can write down any ideas that come up and not worry about losing them.

Organization of your ideas, so that you don't lose them, is good.   I think a lot of my old ideas were lost during the various times I moved houses.  They were probably in notebooks that i threw away.  I remember one with a dark wizard on an island attacking with green fireballs.  Can't find it now.  Any, put scribbled ideas into notebooks.  Use the note section of any smart device you have, this way they don't get lost.  Occassionally type them out on the computer and save them.  I have various folders of book ideas, all of which I hope to work with some day.

Daniel Matuzas: It's the people we meet along the way that shape t...

Daniel Matuzas: It's the people we meet along the way that shape t...: It's the people we meet along the way that shape the person we are today.            Honestly, when I first published my book, I wasn...

It's the people we meet along the way that shape the person we are today.

           Honestly, when I first published my book, I wasn't sure how well received it would be.  I thought it was good, but I had also written it.  It may seem silly, but I didn't want to include a dedication page when I was unsure about what others would think.  Well, after receiving very positive feedback from people that don't even read fantasy, and feedback from some that do, I feel more confident.  Thus, I have included a dedication page...and changed some misuses of names.  I will include my dedication page here just in case amazon doesn't send out a revised copy.

                                                         Dedication page

           First and foremost this book is dedicated to my wonderful wife.  Without her support and encouragement the pages you will read would still be scribbled notes on scraps of paper.  She has always been just plain awesome and I can’t even express how much the love of such a great woman has helped me.  On top of that she did an awesome job with the cover. 

           I also want to give a big thanks to my parents.  They raised me and supported me throughout my life, even when I faltered they were always there.  Not only that, but they were some of the earliest people to give me confidence and support in what I had published.

           Then there are my two brothers and all the support and advice they’ve given me throughout my life.  Thanks to you both.

                 Finally there is everyone else I have known, even if I didn’t much care for you.  I believe that…

It’s the people we meet along the way that shape the person we are today.

and here's where you can purchase my book if you haven't already :)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WCM5680

Whoop!  Got my first review from none other than Dan Brown!...(the lawyer)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WCM5680

New fantasy book

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WCM5680

made a quick revision to the description.  I hope you enjoy my book and, after you've read it, please write a review telling others what you thought of it.

Thanks and Enjoy.

I'm not sure if I already posted this here, but I guess it doesn't hurt to be sure.

I just published my first ebook.  It's a fantasy book, the first in a series, with an early history setting.  Give it a read and please review once you're done.  Enjoy!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WCM5680

new to blogging...bear with me