#cpc contributors

[cowpasturechronicles]

Welcome to the Cow Pasture, Guest Contributor, Kimberley Cooper – Kimberley Cooper Blog

Firstly, thanks to Sheila for giving me the chance to chat with the folks that visit her blog. Nice to meet you all. I’m based in the UK, so please excuse any spellings and expressions that you might not be familiar with.

Ok, so this isn’t a ‘how to’ as much as a ‘what happened and can anyone else benefit?’

Probably like most of us who like to write, but even more, would like to get a little money in for our efforts, sales have been so-so. Enough that the tax man wants to know but not enough to make an appreciable dent in the monthly bills.

So now, with two novels in the bag, a novella, and two short story collections, it seemed like a good time to take a month off writing and concentrate on promotion. Because hey, writing is one side of the coin, but letting people know that you’ve written something that they may (or may not) be interested in, is the other.

I’m an avid user of Facebook. I keep my private page and my writing page pretty separate, and that works well. In late October on my private page, up pops details of Instafreebie. And me, being always keen on a bargain noticed one word. FREE. So I had to click, didn’t I? But being hopeful and untrusting in equal measure I also had to see for myself that there didn’t appear to be a catch (I haven’t found one.)

You can set up a package that doesn’t cost you anything. I tried this for a few days, and it means you can give away copies of one of your books (you decide how many copies or when to end the giveaway). Originally that was my intention – give away a few copies and hope people liked what they read and then bought some of my other stuff from Amazon. But after a couple of days when I’d given away close to a hundred copies, it occurred to me I was missing a trick. This option doesn’t allow you to collect the email addresses of the people downloading your book. And if those people didn’t head over to Amazon, I’d lost them forever.

So I went to the next level of Instafreebie. Currently, $20 a month allows me to link Mailchimp to my Instafreebie account, and between them, I get to record who is downloading my book. And then I can email them directly with what else I can offer. And write off the cost against tax.

There was another piece of advice I picked up on growing your mailing list, from Facebook – offer more. Don’t just offer the minimum you can get away with, but more. So I sent a ‘welcome’ email to everyone who joined my mailing list via Instafreebie/Mailchimp and offered a free copy of my quirky dark fantasy novella Adventures of a Girl Death Demon. And readers contacted me in droves. I had some great back and forth conversations via email with some, and YES, more sales started appearing on my KDP dashboard and Createspace account.

So that’s a result for me. As is the hundreds of people on my mailing list that I wouldn’t have had, that I can email when I have new content to offer. And setting up an account with Instafreebie gave me a chance to join their closed Facebook group which coordinates promotion of books so that you benefit from a much wider audience, potentially.

So, am I pleased to have done it? Oh yes. The first promotion that I took part in has finished, but I’m still seeing new subscribers joining my mailing list at almost 50 a day. And I’ve joined another promotion which is more long-term, so I hope that will steadily raise my numbers further.

I haven’t got any connection with Instafreebie or Mailchimp; this is just the experience of how it’s been for me. Yours may well be different. But it might be worth a go … whatever you decide, good luck, and here are links that you might find useful.

www.instafreebie.com

www.mailchimp.com

If you enjoyed Kimberley’s post, let her know, and as always, I’d love to hear from you. Talk to me. Tell me your story and look for me on Facebook at SheilaMGood,  Pinterest,  Bloglovin, Twitter@sheilamgood, Contently, and Instagram. You can follow my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

Filed under: Blogging, CPC Contributors, Guest Post, Tips and Resources, Writing Tagged: #cpccontibutor, #guestpost, #instafreebie, #kimberleycooper, #mailchimp, #mailinglist http://ift.tt/2hUXJHu

[cowpasturechronicles]

Guest Contributor Wendy Unsworth

This week, like many, many people, I will be traveling home for Christmas. There will be several stops along the way. Purchasing tickets, planning the whole thing out, has prompted me to ponder on where home is for me these days and in a wider sense, the meaning of home. I have always been a wanderer! Unlike my siblings and wider family who have all stayed in our hometown, on the Lincolnshire coast of England throughout their lives, I moved away in my twenties and just kept going. I think it must be that way for many who leave the family area; they go seeking something new and then move again and again.

I’m certainly not complaining; travel, I believe, has greatly enriched my life. It has also taught me a great deal. There have been wonderful experiences, excitement and times that simply remind me how precious life and health are.

No one who has seen a Zambian mother, nursing a child, sick with malaria, laid low during a military coup, or been cut off by flood waters, will ever feel that they have a right or need to endlessly moan about the late bus or the long queue at the post office. Or whether the supermarket is going to change the stock around again so that you can’t find a damn thing…

So, home to me has been many places and, in all the most important ways, those places are still home. When I think of them, I miss them all, and if I were there right now, I know I would feel part of it again, and feel as though I was home.

At present, I am spending half of my time in Scotland where my ‘official’ home is (that’s where all the bills land!) but also a lot of time in the Alentejo region of Portugal where my son and his beautiful young family live. This area of Portugal is dotted with cork oak forest, and small hamlets and the pace of Life is slow.

In Scotland, I have the advantage of living in a similarly, small community (with my daughter and son-in-law) but also within easy reach of beautiful, historic Edinburgh or the magnificent and wild Highlands. I am not enamored of concrete jungles and always feel at my best with nature around me. So rather than think of home I like to think of my special places and the special people who inhabit them. Some of them I will probably never go back to, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think of them. Amongst those people, family, friends and sometimes strangers, I know I would always feel welcome and a part of their world.

So wherever you are this Christmas, in the heat of the sun or knee-deep in snow, I wish you the company of those dear to you and the feeling that you are home. A glass of wine, a gift or two and, of course, a good book!

Merry Christmas.

If you enjoyed Wendy’s post, let her know, at Wendy Unsworth, and as always, I’d love to hear from you. Talk to me. Tell me your story and look for me on Facebook at SheilaMGood,  Pinterest,  Bloglovin, Twitter@sheilamgood, Contently, and Instagram. You can follow my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

Filed under: Christmas, CPC Contributors, Guest Post, Holidays Tagged: #guestpost, CPCContributors, Edinburgh, Family, Memories, Scotland, wendyunsworth http://ift.tt/2hPULnF

[cowpasturechronicles]

CPC Guest Contributor, K. Alan.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with television. I dreamed of the day that I could watch my choice of any TV show, at any time I wished. Now, that day has arrived, and I have discovered that it is a classic Chinese Curse: something for which I should never have wished. The temptation to watch the fiction on that electricity-powered device too often distracts me from the fiction I should be writing.

More recently, however, I have managed to use television, film and Internet video to motivate my writing on those days when nothing will flow. Perhaps as an exercise in proving my mother wrong, here are three strategies for using electronic video to shock your Muse back into pumping creativity.

Defibrillate by novelizing: Whether we admit it or not, nearly everyone remembers moments when we were tickled, traumatized or terrified by something we watched in a film. Find that video, by searching online or breaking out your old-school DVDs, and watch some of the scenes that move you two or three times. By providing narrative to describe those scenes, and working the screenplay’sdialogue into it, you may find that you are describing emotions and settings in ways that can be adapted into your own work. Of course, there is no shame in novelization, even professionally: in fact, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers is entirely committed to this work. For us, though, adapting a scene or two into narrative form is meant to more quickly and more simply “grease the wheels” of your own original fiction.

Defibrillate by franchising: A novel franchise is an original story based on characters and situations invented elsewhere. In fact, fanfiction.net features a range of storytelling (some of which is surprisingly good) usually written under a Creative Commons License that prohibits selling the work. Some of your work might even end up there—somewhere in my own files are original Star Trek and Columbo novels—but our purpose today is, again, simply to help with Writers’ Block. Franchising can help inspire you! By writing an original scene or two featuring your favorite film or series, you are removing some of the cognitive load associated with characterization, setting, and even planning in general. All that’s left is the writing, and the momentum of that writing might open doorways into your own work. Write a scene as though it was missing from your show. Who knows? Maybe it was!

How would Frasier interact with your characters?

Defibrillate a ‘throwaway chapter’ using crossover: Recently, I submitted my NaNoWriMo project, Death Imitates Art, to the Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition. This put me under a tight deadline: so tight, in fact, that I knew one day I just didn’t have time to be stuck on a chapter. When my protagonist, Eloise, was conflicted about her mother’s mental illness, I asked myself a simple question: “How would Doctor Frasier Crane explain it to her?”

Within an hour or two, I had completed a chapter featuring Kelsey Grammer’s famed character interacting with mine and explaining how the illness affected Mara. I knew I could never use this chapter—it would be grossly illegal—but the dialogue that it generated in the other characters became some of the most important signposts of my premise. More importantly, once Frasier was gone, I just kept writing.

Of course, your mother was right, as mothers usually are: too much television, or video… or Internet… is damaging not just to our eyes, but to our creativity. If you can tell the difference, though—if you can see that fine line—then the border between inspiration and obsession might be just the place that cures your Writer’s Block.

Unashamed, then, I thank goodness for my TV.

  Filed under: CPC Contributors, Guest Post, K. Alan Leitch, NaNoWriMo, Tips and Resources, Writing Tagged: #writersblock, #writingtips http://ift.tt/2gQXFJ9

[cowpasturechronicles]

A big thanks to Sheila for letting me jump into her Cow Pasture and share in her absence. 

Each morning with a strong cup of coffee, I open my gmail. As I wade through the good, bad and crazy stuff in my inbox, one email never fails to generate a smile.

Word of the day from Dictionary.com.

I read the word aloud, before reading the definition. My husband and I have a bit of fun guessing the meaning. He almost always gets it right.

Why am I telling you about this silly little morning ritual?

Not because I’m becoming a great wordsmith. No, most days I’ve forgotten the new word before my second cup of coffee. However, it reminds me to not limit my writing to the same old tired adjectives.

I’m quite sure I’ll never or at least rarely use any of the obscure words selected by Dictionary.com. Come on, I doubt I’ll ever use soliloquize in a sentence. Although I often go around the house talking to myself. 

But, I hope reading these types of little prompts will act as a reminder to search for more creative ways to express myself. To step away from the mundane and ordinary, reaching for the unusual.

What about you, do you find yourself reaching, searching for a better word?

How do you find just the right word?

I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment or click the “write me” tab or look for me on Twitter @jeancogdell, Facebook at jean.cogdell and Amazon.com, stop by and say hey! The lights are on, and I’m waiting.

Please remember to share this post with your Twitter  peeps and Facebook fans.

Keep reading more great posts on how to be creative!

101 Words to Use Instead of “Amazing”

Synonyms for the 96 most commonly used words in English

317 Power Words That’ll Instantly Make You a Better Writer

    Filed under: CPC Contributors, Guest Post, Writing Tagged: #amwriting, #jeanswriting, @jeancogdell, Creative writing, Prompts, Writing, Writing tips http://ift.tt/2hJ1Er5

[cowpasturechronicles]

Welcome to the Cow Pasture, Guest Contributor, Kimberley Cooper – Kimberley Cooper Blog

Firstly, thanks to Sheila for giving me the chance to chat with the folks that visit her blog. Nice to meet you all. I’m based in the UK, so please excuse any spellings and expressions that you might not be familiar with.

Now, I enjoy writing. Although some days it’s hard. Some days, I wish I’d taken up lion-taming, surely that would have been easier.

In 2014 I decided (at midday on 1 November – madness) to have my first go at NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month for anyone who hasn’t come across it. And it was madness. And glorious. And stressful. And the most fun I’d had writing for ages. 50,000 words in 30 days. In the company of thousands of other writers all over the world. All challenging themselves to do the same thing – write the first draft of a novel in a month, between 1-30 November. And I learned a couple of things from that first go:

Considering I’d never written anything longer than a 2000 word short story, I could write longer fiction. Moral – yes you can, you just have to believe you can.

If I’d actually done some planning rather than just rocking up on 1 November with a vague idea, I could have saved myself months of editing.

So, I had a second go, in 2015. That time, I had at least a rough idea of where I was going. Three non-return doorways and an ending, to shape my story. And that made both the writing during November, and the editing in December, much easier. So, if it was that much easier with some planning, surely 2016 would be a doddle if I planned completely, wouldn’t it?

Er, no.

I tried that. September and October 2016 were almost completely taken up with planning NaNoWriMo to the nth degree. And that didn’t really work for me. Planning so much took away a lot of the pleasure of discovering the story. I knew what was going to happen, so I didn’t want to put the rest of my life on hold for a month while I wrote it. I still wrote 50,000 words, so technically I won, but it felt a bit of a hollow victory. I wasn’t afire with the story the way I’d been the previous two years.

So, what now? Take a breath, regroup and learn for next time. And not beat myself up for making (for me) a mistake. If I hadn’t done it this way, I wouldn’t have learned what I prefer. And that’s the overall moral of this tale – in any form of self-expression do what works for you, not what everyone says you ought to do. Yes, listen to advice, but in the end, it’s your choice.

I’m not even going to look at those 50,000 words until January. Hopefully, by then, I’ll have enough distance from the story that it’ll feel fresh and new again. I’ve recognized what sort of writer I am. I’ll never be a planner, not wholly. And I’m not really a pantser either. I’m in the middle somewhere. A plantser? I’ll stick to just planning three doorways and an ending, and come November 2017 I’ll be enthralled to discover the story that’s shyly peeking out, coax it onto the page and then revise the hell out of it later.

Wish me luck.

Filed under: CPC Contributors, Guest Post, Writing Tagged: #amwriting, #kimberleycooper, NaNoWrMo, Writing, Writing tips http://ift.tt/2gZyakZ

[cowpasturechronicles]

Guest Contributor Wendy Unsworth

Image source -Pixabay

Now that the festive season is upon us again, most of us try to take some time to pause from our busy, everyday lives and turn thoughts to friends and family, both past and present.

We all remember our loved ones in our own special way and, for me, the legacy left to me by my father is, I believe, a strong part of the reason I am here today, amongst this wonderful community of writers and readers. And yet, he lived in a different world to the one I now inhabit; I find that both sad and fascinating in equal measures.

My dad died a long time ago, almost thirty years, actually, of a brain tumor in his early sixties. He never had the chance to own a computer or a mobile phone. He didn’t know about the World Wide Web. He did write letters but, as far as I know, never wrote anything creative. But he did love words. It has taken me a long time to realize that fact.

Image source -Pixabay

Ever since I was a little girl people said I got my ‘green fingers’ from my dad and it’s true, I can remember way back to the time when he would give me little packets of flower seeds and show me how to sow them. When I was still in primary school, I conscientiously watered a sunflower every day until it grew way over my head. I thought it might be a beanstalk. It wasn’t, but it was another love that my dad was nurturing in me, even though at the time I didn’t know it.

But back to the words… As I began to explain, my dad was a simple, hard-working man. He could be, what I interpreted to be at the time, quite impatient and aloof. Now, that I have raised a family of my own (and one-half the size that I grew up in) I realize a house with four kids all spread out in age wasn’t the easiest thing to manage. He was hands on, would often cook Sunday lunch, and he liked to do DIY but was never any good at it.

He served in the army, in the closing stages of the war and when it was over never got any other chance to travel the world, though he would have liked to. He had a lot of curiosity about things he had never seen. When I was a young teenager, we would often sit up late on a Saturday night, long after Mum had gone up to bed and he would like to theorize about how the pyramids were built and what the future of space travel might be. He always had his own strong opinions, and he liked to expound them in his own rich, often quirky language.

And it’s the language thing that I wanted to mention because, although he wasn’t a literary man my dad clearly had a great love of language. He had favorite quotes from books and poems that he would often incorporate into ordinary conversations. I can see him now, getting up from his chair and announcing ‘I will arise and go now…’ quoting from The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats and revelled in the alliteration of the ‘lake water, lapping with low sounds’ and would repeat the line often. Dad also liked to make up words. I was quite far into my grammar school years before I realized that obstroculous wasn’t a real word at all. I wrote it in a school essay and was rewarded with red underlining and a cluster of question marks in the margin. I looked it up, dumbfounded, as it was a word I had known all my life around my dad. And English mattered to me at school. It was the subject I was good at. Imagine my surprise when I found out the word didn’t exist!

I confronted my dad about my less than perfect score on my essay and he, rather sheepishly, told me that the word he routinely mispronounced was obstreperous,  but he disliked it and thought it sounded like a medical condition, so he adjusted it to a word he thought more fitting. And it wasn’t the only word that had undergone this treatment; I requested that he tell me anything else I should know before I fell foul of my English teacher again.

At that time and age I thought this habit of my dads was rather odd and embarrassing, but as I grow older, I realize that it was just a part of Dad being dad and it was one of his pleasures in life.

I never adopted my dad’s habit of actually changing words that I don’t like but, as he became ill, I realized I didn’t want his inventions to disappear completely from our family and began to occasionally use a few of his strange forms of words, mainly in jest, and in his memory.

Only the other day my daughter and I were discussing our gardens. We are both keen growers. I asked her if she had considered trying to grow beans and she instantly quoted, ‘Nine beans rows will I have there and a hive for the honey bee.’ It gives me a warm feeling to think that these small but significant traditions run through families. Thanks, Dad, for a love of words (and plants)

The Lake Isle of Innisfree is a beautiful poem. Do look it up if you don’t know it; I am sure you will love it.

  If you enjoyed Wendy’s post, let her know, at Wendy Unsworth, and as always, I’d love to hear from you. Talk to me. Tell me your story and look for me on Facebook at SheilaMGood,  Pinterest,  Bloglovin, Twitter@sheilamgood, Contently, and Instagram. You can follow my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

Filed under: CPC Contributors, Guest Post, Memoir, Writing Tagged: #amwriting, #CPCContibutors, #guestpost, #loveofwords, Family, Memoir, Nobel Prize in Literature, W. B. Yeats http://ift.tt/2hsLnU5

[cowpasturechronicles]

CPC Guest Contributor, Jean M. Cogdell – jeanswriting.com

An oldie but a goodie from June 6, 2015

Advice abounds like sand on the beach but sometimes we need a reality check.

Kill all distractions! Easier said than done.

Ignore the genre stuff. Yeah, right… 

Keep your sense of humor as you enjoy my post from last year.

You heard right; sometimes the answers smart a bit.

Want some good ole common sense, take no prisoners, tell it like it is advice? Wow, 3 clichés in one sentence. That’s a record for me. Okay …

Click, read!

Source: Don’t Read Unless You Want to Know

  I’d love to hear your comments. Talk to me. Tell me your story and look for me on Facebook at SheilaMGood,  Pinterest,  Bloglovin, Twitter@sheilamgood, Contently, and Instagram. You can follow my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

Filed under: CPC Contributors, Guest Post, Writing Tagged: #cpccontibutor, #jeanswriting http://ift.tt/2geZvDd

[cowpasturechronicles]

Welcome to the Cow Pasture Guest Contributor, Wendy Unsworth –  Wendy Unsworth, Books & more

Image source Pixabay

The accepted advice to writers is very often, write what you know and when I first heard it I thought it made a lot of sense. It still does make sense, sort of… Bookshelves are peppered with court-room dramas penned by ex-lawyers, police procedural by cops and war stories by ex-military personnel. I can see how that works. Budding writers with this kind of background have a flying start, they know things that us ordinary mortals don’t know. They can write a very convincing and authoritative line on criminal profiling or surface-to-air missiles.

But what about the rest of us? I, for example, have been lucky to travel a lot and live in very different parts of the world. I’ve had a few different jobs, raised a family. But I haven’t been into outer space and I’ve never professionally (or otherwise – I hasten to add) dissected a human being. So does that preclude me from Sci-Fi and stories that require an insider’s description of a mortuary?

No, it doesn’t, but it does mean that if I want to write a credible story about a geeky young scientist who seems like a total fruitcake but whose genius is going to save the world from a mega-quake, I’m going to have a harder job than if I had just retired from on a dazzling career in seismology. I would need to do my research extremely thoroughly. No problem. Writers do that all the time. Writers create worlds and whether it is a contemporary concrete jungle or a kingdom, so far away that nobody has heard of it (yet), ravaged by marauding dragons, they have to get it right.

So, if knowing your fictional world, with its landscape and its skill-set is not necessarily a pre-requisite but, we accept, can also be achieved by careful research and understanding, is there anything else that a writer must vitally know? The answer for me is yes. I need to know my characters, inside out, upside down, backward and forwards. I need to know what they would do if…

With time and perseverance, I can gather the knowledge I need to create the landscape of my story. I can read other books, I can google it, I can watch YouTube and I can ask people in the know. But if I really want my story to come alive I must get to know the characters who walk there, as only I can. These are my people, I don’t want to introduce them to the world if they are still strangers to me. And knowing them, I need to be true to them every time, no matter how much their refusal to go down into the deep, dark cellar while the wind howls and the lightning flashes, messes with the plot. I need to be absolutely sure that their actions and reactions are theirs and not mine and I need to respect that. Know who you write. This is my mantra. When an author truly knows his or her characters they leap out of the page and stalk the reader right through to The End. They are memorable. They make us, the reader, think, question, admire, loathe.

And that’s what all writers want. (readers too!)

If you enjoyed Wendy’s  post, let her know, at wendyunsworth.com, and as always, I’d love to hear from you. Talk to me. Tell me your story and look for me on Facebook at SheilaMGood,  Pinterest,  Bloglovin, Twitter@sheilamgood, Contently, and Instagram. You can follow my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

Filed under: CPC Contributors, Tips and Resources, Writing Tagged: #amwriting, #CPCContibutors, #guestpost, #wendyunworth, #writingtips, Writing Tips & Resources http://ift.tt/2hdqmzx