It still runs until the 15th, and as you can see some of my books are also part of the giveaway

you can go to the giveaway page here: http://bit.ly/1499km3

And here are all the covers of the books that are part of the giveaway!

Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Sheep-Letting-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00ALYZJMY/

Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=1230000037610

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/263832

I’m still trying to get it go free in the other Amazon stores and waiting on Smashwords for it to go free on B&N, but for now, you can always get a copy from Smashwords for all different readers.

Read on!

Kia

Now we have that out of the way these are my plans for April 2013:

- Camp NaNo in reverse NaNo style

- finish up my dissertation

- release Black Sheep: Fighting for a Future.

So, from top to bottom:

Camp NaNo.

Reverse NaNo is a technique in which you write a lot of words at the start of NaNo and the count goes down as the month goes on. This is rough for the first while but you’ll be way ahead of the wordcount in only a few days and it makes it a lot easier when the book gets harder to write. I talked about this technique in my NaNo2012 post here: Reverse NaNoWriMo

It worked wonders for me last time, slightly too well as I finished in only 11 days… don’t think I’ll be able to pull that off this time, but I can always hope

Just a little maths on how many hours I’ll have to write to do reverse NaNo the way it is set out:

- I write 600 words in each 20 minute sprint.
- I do 2 20 minute sprints an hour (10 minute breaks inbetween).
- day 1 is 3346 words, rounded up to the closest 600 words is 3600.

That is 6 sprints to complete the first day. Counting back that is 3 hours of work. 3 hours and I’ll have finished a day’s work of reverse NaNo.
By day 4 that has already gone down to 2,5 hours, day 10 I’ll only need 2 hours worth of writing.

That does sound very doable, right?

So, do I have a plan yet? Well, it is going to be a lighter story then Otherkin Spirits 1 & 2. It will play during the summer, it will be paranormal + another genre and it will probably have a combinations of two from werewolves, blood vampires, energy vampires and magicians. I’m leaning towards either werewolf + magician or blood vampire + magician.

That is what I’ve got, though I remember that is also what I had last NaNo around this same time, only difference is that I’m in the middle of edits for Otherkin Spirits 1: Disturbed Fate so I don’t have a lot of free time.

Dissertation:

it’s a 10500 word dissertation, I’ve finished 4250 of it already, deadline is on the 26th of April. I don’t actually worry too much just yet, I only have about 1000 words left of theory and the rest of it will be my own short story and a critical commentary of that. I’m feeling pretty good about it ^^

Black Sheep: Fighting for a Future release

Yep, last book in the Black Sheep Trilogy will be released on the 10th of April, you can check out the page for it here: http://www.5timeschaos.com/blacksheep3

Once again there will be a blog tour, I’m looking forward to it, loads of interesting questions and things ^^

Also I reduced the price for the first book to $0.99 since the trilogy is now finished.

Read on!

Kia

Hi everybody,

It’s only 4 weeks until the release of the last book in the Black Sheep Trilogy, if you haven’t heard about it yet or haven’t read it yet, check out the page here: Black Sheep Trilogy

There is also a page for the 3rd book itself now: Black Sheep: Fighting for a Future

For the tour I’m looking for places to do guest posts or interviews or other fun things.

I can do a guest post (on a chosen subject), an interview (about me, my books, subjects in the books, anything within reason) or a base post (Cover, blurb, excerpt, etc.).

I can also provide review copies of any of the books in the trilogy if you would like to do a review (this can be in or outside of the tour).

If you’re interested in hosting a post for the tour, please email me at kia(at)5timeschaos(dot)com

The dates I’m still looking hosts for are April 19 & 20, 21.

Cheers!

Kia

And we’re here again, another year has gone past and another Read an ebook week has come.
And of course, once again, I’ll be listing some amazing authors that you should really check out!
You can find the whole list of the books on the Smashwords Read an ebook week sale page.

I’ll start from the top.

For the second time I’ll be participating in a Smashwords sale. Here is my list:
Magical Roads, FREE, code: RW100
Black Sheep: Letting go of the Past, FREE, code: RW100
Black Sheep: Loving in the Present, 50% off, code: REW50

Nephylim is also here again. Here are her lovely books:
The Runaway, 50% off, code: REW50
Enigma I, 50% off, code: REW50
Enigma II, 50% off, code: REW50

Red Haircrow, has a couple of great books in the sale too:
The Agony of Joy, 50% off, code: REW50
Silence is Multi-Coloured In My World, 50% off, code: REW50

Andrea Brokaw has two of her books in the sale:
I’d rather not be dead, 50% off, code: REW50
Pride, Prejudice, and curling rocks, 50% off, code: REW50

And her husband James Brokaw is also in:
Waiting for War, 50% off, code: REW50

I’ll be adding more books to the list as I come to them. Check back a couple of times this week to see what books have been added!

Read on!

Kia

This second book runs on from where the first ended.

Vic has taken a turn for the worse and is back in the psychiatric hospital. Jack gets kicked out of his house when his parents find out that he is gay. The reason Adam is not getting better is revealed. And that is just the beginning.

Everybody is lost and trying to not let it spiral out of control. Jack moves in with Vic’s family, making it his temporary home until he can move in with his brother and sister. Vic’s health doesn’t improve until he hears about Adam, at which point he put his mind to getting better. Adam on the other hand is fighting his own feelings about Vic’s illness and questions their friendship.

When Vic and Jack visit Adam and Tom for Tom’s birthday, it seems like a great way to let loose, but Vic is hiding more secrets than anyone knew and when they are exposed the situation explodes. Vic storms off in anger and seeks solace in dangerous places and, unknowingly, putting not just himself, but Jack too at risk.

You can look at the page and add it to Goodreads here: http://www.5timeschaos.com/blacksheep2

My goals come in four types: health, university, writing and other.

Health:

My health goals for 2013 look a lot like 2012 and are in line with my lifestyle of the past couple of months.- Keep to a livingschedule and sleep well. This means no 4 o clock nights and waking up early.
- Eat healthy. Meaning, make bulk foods and other things that are easy to freeze and easy to eat. I do need to make a bit more variation in this though, but that might not be too hard, I’ve got a few ideas.
- no smoking (after I finish this pack, which might take me about 3 weeks).
- no caffeine, apart from 2 cups of tea a day.

University:

University gets it’s own goals this year, especially since I need to switch universities as the schoolyear ends.
- Get into university of choice for my master.
- Finish Dissertation on time.
- Find good placement for masters degree.
- Don’t leave work to the last minute.

Writing:

This one is interesting since I’ll be combining some goals from different years again for this year. With my new writing technique I should be able to finish these goals without too much trouble (hopefully).
- write 100.000 words in the whole year, this is an old goal but I’m bringing it back. It’s not a set goal just something I would like to try again to see if I can do it with my new writing style.
- edit Disturbed Fate and Disturbed Connections and publish them.- write 2 more books to publish this year (not a set goal, just something I hope will work).
- publish at least 4 and hopefully 6 books in 2013, all novels or novellas. 4 of these are already finished and only need rewriting and edits (and in some cases covers).
- try my hand at a couple more short stories.
- try another new genre to write. (in 2012 I tried my hand at traditional romance)

Other:

List of random stuff I would like to try and master this year.
- Learn Japanese, I don’t have a set goal for this yet since I don’t know how quick I’ll pick it up.
- Learn to write left handed, weird goal but it’s something that interests me to try to get a hang off.
- Read 50 books and list them on Goodreads, and hopefully write reviews for at least half of them. I’m participating in a group where we try reading challenges and read 6 books together this year, I’m looking forward to trying this.

All these goals can potentially die on me and stuff like that but I’m trying not to be too hard on myself and actually choose goals that I can do.

Don’t forget that these books are only cheap or free for one more day: Holidailies 26: Moooooore presents

And that was it, the end of the Holidailies, very interesting to do, I did really like it.

Read on!

Kia

Black Sheep, excerpt 3.

The first time I saw Vic I was standing in the schoolyard. Marie was hanging around my neck and we were listening to music, like every morning since we started high school. Suddenly she squealed into my ear and out of reflex I started playfully choking her. That was… until someone cleared his throat near us. We stopped and turned around. I froze. There, right in front of me, was the most beautiful guy I had ever seen.

He had long black hair, piercing blue eyes, perfect round and pink lips. The black long-sleeved top he was wearing had chains which were attached to his black skater pants with even more chains on them. He was just damn sexy… He looked very confident even as the whole school was staring at him. He didn’t seem to care or notice at all.

“You squealed, madam?” He grunted but grinned and asked, “You know where room 304 is? I’m new here and need to be there for my first class. I’m Vic, by the way.”

“Uah! Addams Family reference!” Marie jumped up and down. “We’re going there too. I’m Marie and this is Jack.”

Vic looked me up and down and smiled.

“Nice. So I assume you’ll be helping me today?” He seemed to be talking to Marie but his eyes were on me.

“Sure!” Marie grabbed his arm and dragged him with her as she bounced into the school. Vic looked back at me with large eyes as if unsure what was going on, but I shrugged and smirked at him as I walked after them.

It was never boring after that. Marie kept going on and on about him, about how she liked him and how sweet he was. It was annoying, but heck, even I couldn’t get him out of my thoughts. He was just so… intriguing…

Don’t forget that you can now get 25% off of Black Sheep if you add this code at the checkout: VE97Y
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/263832

Also, if you use this code you can get Magical Roads for free: LZ78M
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/177381

Read on!

Kia

Check this post out with more free and cheap ebooks for your ereader until the 1st of January!
Holidailies 26: Mooooore presents for you all

Last year my number was 50 and this year my theme for the year is Good Things.

Picture from a couple of days ago when there was waaaay too much snow and I had to walk the dog:

This year is full of good things, some things I never thought I would be able to do/get but I got through the year without too much problems.

I didn’t keep to all my 2012 resolutions, but I don’t mind much, I’ve done other things that went really well and are more important than those resolutions. My resolutions for 2012 were like everybody else’s: go to the gym, eat healthy, sleep more. I only failed 1 of those (the gym one, because the Pound/Euro conversion was getting worse, so I didn’t have the spare money for it), the rest went fine and even some things went better.

This summer I finally found why I had such moodswings and bouts of depression, I can’t handle caffeine. Cola and energydrinks have always been my comfort food, which is why when I was feeling like I needed some comfort I got even more down. Since this summer I haven’t had any coffee, cola  or energydrinks, or other caffeine stuff. The only caffeine I (at most) drink in a day might be 2 cups of tea, but I’ve even cut down on that. I might look into caffeine free or low caffeine tea, but for now this works. And it makes me so much more productive. Of course, it hasn’t been easy but that is what you get for having caffeinated drinks as comfort foods. I always thought that because I don’t have any effects from the caffeine that there couldn’t be any negative side effects, but I was wrong in that. I’m (mostly) caffeine free now and a much happier person for it.

I also (mostly) quit smoking this summer, though that was more because I didn’t have anyone to smoke with and I only smoked 3 or 4 cigarettes a week. Until a few days ago I hadn’t smoked at all, but with New Years eve coming up I just like to have a pack. My luck with cigarettes (unlike caffeine) is that I’m not really addicted to it apart from some moments out of habit (like smoking between classes at uni and things like that).

Those are the health things, which isn’t that bad. I sleep more and usually keep to quite a decent sleeping schedule these days. Which makes me a much more happy person (usually) and productive (often).

My real changes this year were in my writing. I had a couple of writing goals set up at the start of the year and made most of them and changed some of them. I had a couple of projects running and will talk per project:

Black Sheep Trilogy: I wrote BS3 in about 3 months (quickest of all the BS novellas) and for most of the year I thought that would be the end of it. At the end of the summer I decided otherwise and not only created covers for all the books of the trilogy but also self-edited and then got a professional editor to look at book 1. I self-published Black Sheep: Letting go of the Past (Black Sheep Part 1) on Dec 12 this year. In the past 2 weeks I also self-edited the other 2 parts of Black Sheep and I’ll hopefully finish the short stories that go at the end of those ebooks before the new year starts. I had no plans of publishing Black Sheep when the year started because I focused more on Disturbed Fate, but now I’m glad I did.

Disturbed Fate: I started to do some work on this story at the start of the year but soon found out that I needed to change so much on it that it needed some separate time and I couldn’t do that while I wasn’t done with Black Sheep. I’m now almost fully finished with Black Sheep (apart from doing some release related things) so I can soon focus on this.

Writing things I hadn’t planned to happen at the start of the year:

Otherkin Spirits: Disturbed Fate was my NaNo 2011 novel and is now book 1 in the Otherkin Spirits series. This year for NaNo I wrote Disturbed Connections which will be the second book. They are not a series in the traditional sense of the word, they are same-world books and although I refer to some characters between the books they aren’t really follow up books. You can read either of them without needing the other to understand the story, they are self-contained stories. Where Disturbed Fate is a paranormal novel, Disturbed Connections is a romance novel. Both stories do take place in the same world and with the same “world rules”.

Magical Roads: A short story collection I put together from things I’ve written while at university. It was really interesting and fun to do this and I had a lot of fun trying to get my head around all the different parts of publishing and marketing.

Sean: Working title for my new story. Sean is one of the side characters from Disturbed Connections but the story won’t be part of the Otherkin Spirits series because I’m playing with more traditional vampire mechanics and things like that. It is still in a very early stage (9000 words) but I’m having fun with it between doing other things for my other stories.

Other things I’ve found out this year:

- I can write 1.000 words an hour if I set myself to it. (Tip, check out this guide how I do it: My trick to writing insane amounts a day… )

- I can edit up to 20.000 words a day if needed and possibly more.

- editing is easier if you don’t need to also pay attention to making sure the writing style is consistent.

- NaNo is very doable if you find the trick to writing 1.000 words an hour.

That is it for today

What were your plans for this year and how well did you do on them?

Read on!

Kia

Also, don’t forget to fill your ereader with free and cheap books, here is the list I’ve put together with my friends:

Holidailies 26: Mooooore presents for you all

And I also wrote a post about one of the best ways to get ebooks that aren’t from your main store onto your ereader:
Holidailies 21: Calibre, my fav ebook tool