12.10.15 - Building a Publishing House with Vellum

I have a quick suggestion for those of you planning to indie publish your work. It’s a fantastic little app called Vellum.

My friend Alethea Kontis turned me on to Vellum when she was staying with us a few months ago. I saw her working on one of her books in it, and she showed me the app and raved about it. I downloaded it from the app store, and within 5 minutes I’d imported a short story and started to play.

It took me a grand total of one afternoon to learn the quirks of the system. I imported one novel and three short stories, did their formatting, inserted backmatter, built the links, and tied my accounts into the system.

I immediately saw the possibilities. I could make an ebook and upload it with literally a few clicks.

There are books written on how to do this. People specialize in it. I’ve paid for it before – hundreds of dollars.

Vellum is the professional book formatter’s worst nightmare.

It doesn’t take any special skills to make it work. It is intuitive, simple, and straightforward. It shows you what your ebook will look like on all the devices, too, which is one of the biggest bugaboos formatters have faced before.

When I realized what I could do with this program, I immediately decided to move forward on a project that’s long been on my back burner: re-editing, rebranding, and republishing a bevy of short stories, and finally getting myself positioned to release several new stories that hadn’t been uploaded yet.

I taught my assistant Amy how to use the program and set her free to do what she would with the interiors. While we were in Florida for the NINC conference, Vellum training was front and center, and she learned some of the super-cool internal tricks, like evergreening links and how to import backmatter across all titles so you don’t have to recreate the wheel with every book. The ease of uploading ebooks is the real secret here – anytime you need to make a change, all you do is fix the file and reupload – a service Vellum provides at an additional cost.

While the app itself is free, if you plan on using it for your publishing ventures, I highly recommend you purchase their unlimited program. I’m telling you, you’ll spend less on that than a single formatting job by a professional.

When Vellum asked Amy and I to dish on their product, this is what we said:

“I’ve never seen a program more intuitive, flexible, and easy to use than Vellum. The end results are elegant and stunning, and the program is helping my business run smoothly. What more could you ask for?”
–New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison

“As a former Big 5 publishing professional, I thought only XML-fluent designers were capable of creating an ebook. Vellum empowers any author or content creator to make a beautiful, commercially viable product in just minutes. I’ve never been so glad to be wrong.”
–Amy Kerr, Publisher, Two Tales Press

I could go on and on and on about how great I think Vellum is, but it would be easier to just show you. You can see the results of Vellum’s gorgeous interface at my publishing house, Two Tales Press.

P.S. The good people of Vellum didn't pay me to say this. I just love their product!

_______

If you like what you read today, please consider leaving a tip on the way out. No pressure. But unicorns wearing roses might show up if you do! 

12.8.15 - Because We've All Been There

12.7.15 - PW calls NO ONE KNOWS "...Riveting..."

It's a tricky thing, this writing business. 

I'm so grateful for this life, the chance to stretch my creative muscles and give you heart-pounding stories that keep you up at night. 

But there are parts of this job that make my heart pound and keep me up at night: namely, sending my book out into the world.

Oh sure, we authors know that a by-product of creating something is that people will see it. Heck, that's part of this whole "getting paid to write" gig. But it's one thing to create something in solitude and yoga pants, and quite another to send it out into the world. And no matter how many times my characters shock me as I type, no matter how many times I hit Send on a finished manuscript, no matter how many revisions I go through, I still have this voice in the back of my brain niggling at me: 

What if they don't like it?

Hey, I can't feed the kitties if y'all don't like what you read. Mama's gotta bring home the catnip. 

But not only that, there's artistic integrity at stake. I have so much fun creating characters like Taylor, Sam, and now Aubrey. But I want you guys to have fun, too, to experience new places and characters, to be thrilled and excited by the books, and maybe to think a little bit. Art exists to move us, to challenge us, and I want my work to mean something to someone else, too.

As such, I'm completely overjoyed when I receive positive words on a story from someone who's not my editor (c'mon, these book babies belong to both of us, so they're just as biased as I am...).

Publishers Weekly has just printed some thoughts on NO ONE KNOWS, and I'm so pleased to share them with you:

"This riveting Nashville-set standalone . . . is a skillfully plotted story that's equal parts mystery, psychological thriller, and cautionary tale . . . Ellison's  twists are fresh, and the novel's action-packed conclusion will shock . . .  Artful and evocative prose complements the fully fleshed and realistically flawed characters."

Thank you, PW. I'm grateful for your kind words. 

If this sounds like something you can get on board with, you can pre-order NO ONE KNOWS (coming 3/22/2016) from the fine folks below. 

And thanks for helping me do what I do. The kitties especially appreciate it.

12.6.15 - Sunday Smatterings

Hello darlings. Another week has passed, one fraught with terror and tales of heroism. It breaks my heart, it truly does, especially in this season of Peace. As I mentioned on the socials, I’m so proud and humbled to write stories about heroic cops. The cops, sheriffs, FBI, ATF and first responders of San Bernardino are my kind of heroes.

Before the world went to hell in a hand basket *again* this week (sigh) there were a few cool things on the interwebs. Get your tea, settle in, and enjoy this week's smatterings: 

A former editor comes to the dark side in a hilarious, touching way with an essay that struck a chord in all of us: “DEAR AUTHORS, I’M SORRY.” Can't wait for her book!

Nerdiest showed all the cool ways we scienced the s*** out of the universe this year with their list of 10 big discoveries from 2015.

I know I’ve been a little mouthy lately, but it’s because I have a liberal arts education,  which challenged my thought process, and this piece made me stand up and cheer. I loved this quote:  "A liberal arts academy is about learning. It's not supposed to be a place to *suppress* controversial ideas."  Emphasis my own.

Banal but true: I’ve been using a great new grocery service called Shipt! and you probably don’t care. But if you do — I’m telling you, this service is your new bestie. Use my link and get $10 back when you sign up! 

I absolutely LOVE the idea of filling a notebook with things I don’t yet know, then trying to discover them. If it works for geniuses from MIT, maybe it will work for us. And to give it a writing slant — this is a superb way to begin a story. Hmm… maybe I better blog about this… 

And because laughter is always the best medicine: this. Man's Noisy Spider Battle Sparks Police Calls.

On this second Sunday of Advent, light your candles and read this brief reminder of the reason behind the season from Diana Gabaldon. I love her openness about her faith, and love how generously she shares it.

Now, from the Team Ellison home front — two, count them, two blogs for your pleasure this week, one on writer self-care and the other a slightly less-than-reverential look at my mind process.

The December newsletter released to fanfare and joy. And all the recipes now have lovely PDF versions for you to download!

On The Wine Vixen, we got Gnarly and discovered a delightful Pinot. Have y'all seen the new ad on knowing wine? Cracks me up every time. “Pinor Noir… which means… Peanut of the Night…”

Finally, I am going to have some interesting news for you on Two Tales Press next week, so you should check out our new news page, build specifically for this purpose by the assistant extraordinaire.

Blessed Advent, chickens. 

​12.4.15 - On the Universe and Resistance and the Pony Express

Earlier today, suffering from a supreme lack of focus, I wrote a short journal entry about how current events can derail a writer. Imagine my surprise when I closed out the program and saw this quote on my screen:

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” —Maya Angelou

I am always shocked when the universe gives me exactly what I'm looking for. This is what I was trying to say, exactly.

I know I’m not the only person who’s been pulled away from their normal work schedule in the past few weeks. We’ve had two terrible terror attacks, a mass shooting, plus several other local events, large and small, that have altered all of us. Whether it’s being directly affected, incidentally affected, or simply sitting with your jaw dropped at the online reactions, it’s hard as hell to work.

How do you put aside the fear and horror and sadness and write? Fiction, especially. How can our words possibly be any kind of buffer, have any kind of meaning, in the face of evil?

This is the worst kind of resistance — external events out of our control. It’s so hard to turn off the television, to step away from social media, to stop reading headlines, and put your focus back on your work. 

But the only thing to do is keep writing. You keep writing.

Novelists are the postmen of the literary world — as they pledge: 

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

Which leads me to a fascinating bit of arcane history I wasn’t aware of — this quote is supposedly, according to Wikipedia, based on Herodotus referring to the "courier service" of the ancient Persian Empire:

"It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.

— Herodotus, Histories (8.98) (trans. A.D. Godley, 1924)"

Which reminded me... You know, in Colorado I grew up right down the dirt road from a old Pony Express stop, the Pony Express being the best form of communication across the Wild West prior to the invention of the telegraph. Note those cool stamps from Pikes Peak below. 

Ah... the thought process of a writer, in all its banal glory.

And just like that I am reminded why I write, why I fight against the resistance, why I try so hard in the face of unspeakable horror and loss. There is always something to be learned. In these few minutes of looking outward, my frustrations have turned to fascination of the way the universe works, which in turn leads me to the single, powerful thought: All will be well. 

As long as we are free, all will be well.

And you know what else? In the fiction world, we get to see the evil-doers thwarted by heroic people, and victims receive justice. 

So there.