What happens when your festival tent meets 40 mph wind?

So… I had a festival this past weekend in Clarksville, IN and the day looked like it was going to turn out awesome. I'd been checking the weather forecast all week and rain chances had diminished down to nothing. I thought I was home free. Saturday we wake up and head out to be at ClarkFest by 8am (after getting donuts, of course). It was sunny and warming up nicely.

My husband helped with setting up the new 10x10 tent we bought and I must say it was very easy! The book set up went smoothly, once I worked out where I wanted each book, table sign, floor sign, candy container, book mark, business card, Greek helmet (yes, you read that right), and model horse. I had my first sale not ten minutes after the festival opened.

Everything was going great... until the wind started picking up. When I mentioned it, the person in the tent next to mine informed me we had a wind advisory with 40 mile an hour gusts coming. Boy howdy, did the weather people call that!

The wind broke something glass and expensive sounding from another vendor, knocked over shelving units, moved tents. Soon people were holding on to their tents for dear life. But that didn't work. My tent had a back wall and it acted like a sail, sending my tent marching forward. One by one, tents were taken down.

The event was to run until 6pm. At 4pm, I decided to cut my losses. I was the second to last vendor still there, no festival goers were arriving, and I knew no more sales were in my future. I had been reduced to one 6 foot table, stripped completely bare. I had a copy of each book on the table and nothing else, other than the gallon water jugs used to hold down my coloring books.

This wind event definitely made things exciting! I was glad I had a great start to the day and look forward to ClarkFest next year. My next event will be indoors, but it's in November, so who knows what the weather will bring!

Okay, until next time!
Write on!
Penny

The “Proper Awesome” Doctor Who - 2nd episode review

SPOILERS, Sweetie! So if you haven’t seen this yet, please don’t read on and spoil the fun!

 “The Ghost Monument” opens with the Doctor and her new companions floating in space… without a ship (or spacesuits, for that matter). The Tardis is nowhere to be seen. Ryan and Graham get scooped up by one ship and the Doctor and Yaz are scooped up by another. Both ship captains are competing in a race that will earn them money and safety for their families.

 

This episode was action packed and the storyline tight and fast-paced. I appreciated the Doctor's sentiment of "No guns." She was adamant guns never solved anything, and when Ryan decided to disagree and play the hero, it didn't turn out as he expected.

 

I also appreciated that none of the main "supporting" characters were killed. I grew used to the various people around the Doctor not making it, so this was a pleasant surprise.

 

Courtesy of BBC

 

 

We were introduced to the new Tardis, and I'm really liking it. Similar to the theme song, it seems a bit industrial... and right up my alley.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed the 2nd installment of Doctor Who and look forward to where the writers are going to take us.

 

Okay, write on, friends!

Penny

Jodie Whittaker makes one awesome Doctor!

(SPOILERS!! So if you don't want to know, don't read any further!!)

I cannot tell you (well, actually I am) how excited I am over our new Doctor. Jodie Whittaker is off to a wonderful start in "The Woman Who Fell to Earth." Just in time, the Doctor takes aim and saves people from an alien in Sheffield. We are introduced to several individuals that will stay by her side to battle a scary, murderous, tooth-pulling Tzim-Sha. At first, it seemed like there were a lot of extra people, and I knew at least one wouldn't make it (based on early sneak peeks). But as each "companion" went about their business, I started liking them more and more.

 

The first episode barely touched on the fact the  new Doctor is female. No big deal. I love the fact she just rolled with it. All things considered, I loved the first episode and can't wait to watch the second one. Leaving them floating in space was quite an ending. We need the Tardis stat!!

Okay, until next time!
Penny

Coloring book crazy and dealing with Create Space/ KDP merger

So I am working on my 3rd coloring book - two horses and now a puppy & kitten one (per my daughter's request). I find it very fun to do and I try to make my own spin on a coloring book to make it slightly different than what is offered by others. I find my second book, Horses in Art, is geared more toward older kids or adults due to some of its intricate lines. All images were taken from The Met's public domain website and it's incredibly awesome they opened up all these works of art to the masses.

One thing I've encountered is during my second book published on Create Space, the merger with KDP went final. I was able to move over my coloring books relatively easy. EXCEPT for the cover. The problem I ran into was the cover selection for designing your own is far inferior in KDP than it was in Create Space. It's unfortunate that we're losing a platform that had more selections. I tried to be so positive when everyone else around me seemed to be panicking because of the merger.

I am still in the process of figuring out how to recreate my covers so they match what was created in Create Space. I had such good hopes. So for now, I will reserve judgement until later.

Sellersburg Celebrates... a success!

We survived our three-day outdoor festival and all had great sales last weekend! This was more than expected because we'd never done an event that wasn't marketed for books. This was a community festival. The clear winners: coloring books. My fellow writer, Jen, did awesome with all her books, but the coloring books took the top prize.

My Amazing Horses coloring book did really well. Especially since it was so last minute due to the fact that I knew my Greek time travel wouldn't do that well. It's such a niche genre, it is hard to market in the toughest book selling events. Then you add in an outdoor festival with thousands of people... well, I didn't know how it would turn out.

I ended up selling more novels at this event over any other event. I was so pleased with the outcome, I've decided to try my hand at the ClarkFest in Clarksville, Indiana on Saturday, October 20th.

Page 69 Contest winner!

I entered a writing challenge I found on Twitter hosted by Stevie McCoy (heavensfiction.blogspot.com). It was the Page 69 Challenge. I was charged with finding the best paragraph or two from page 69 of a manuscript and submit it to compete with others and their page 69s.








Here was my post:

Penny PearsonJuly 3, 2018 at 9:29 AM

Heat licked at Dale Hicks’s skin, excruciating and throbbing. Pain obscured his thoughts down a never-ending tunnel that twisted and turned, getting narrower and narrower. It burned in the most painful way he’d ever experienced. Opening his eyes, he stared around in terror. What happened? His surroundings sparked no sense of the familiar. He thought back to his last memory, yet it seemed so unattainable. He could almost reach out and touch it, but every time he mentally grabbed at it, the memories floated away, leaving a vast emptiness. The rough ground tore into his back, and he propped himself up against a stone wall behind him.

Red, flickering light illuminated the room. Fear shot down Dale’s spine. Something bad had happened.

A large figure came forward. Shadows rippled across the massive frame. Red eyes, sparking fire, focused on Dale. Large scales and protrusions dripped with liquid ooze. “You have arrived sooner than expected,” the creature rasped.

From page 69 of WIP -untitled (I don't come up with title until first draft is complete - but I am SO close!)
Twitter:
@Author_AngieMcP

I like these paragraphs because they show something spooky that's coming my characters' way.

 

****

I was announced as the winner earlier this week, and I was tickled pink! I've never won any sort of writing contest, big or small. Stevie was nice enough to include a pic of my latest novel in her announcement of the contest winner.

 

You can check out the final page for the Page 69 Contest here!

A Coloring Book of Horses?

Cover design - A. McPherson

Well, apparently, I just don't have enough to do. So I decided last week to try my hand at a coloring book. I began to think about what I have to offer at my book events and realized one paranormal adventure needed a friend! So because of my love of horses, it was an easy decision to do a coloring book of different horses. I actually lucked out because when I was younger I drew horses... a lot. So thanks to my drive to draw nearly every Arabian I saw, I had a lot to work with.

I scanned my drawings and then outlined them to create the basic horse. My daughter didn't like it when I added a few details within the horse, so a few of them were left alone, other than their shapes. Another feature my daughter added was a tiny speck at the top of the barn in one of the backgrounds. This little speck is a chicken looking down over the land (my daughter's exact words).

 My husband handled the computer editing after I scanned more than thirty designs. The book was narrowed down to twenty-five drawings. Downloading to CreateSpace was easy, and it only took us a night to get everything entered. I chose to have the page behind the drawing blank to prevent any bleed throughs while coloring. Also, when I gave my daughter extra sheets to take to daycare to color, she came home with the horse colored, cut out, and glued to a popsicle stick. They all had a mini horse show with their stick horses.

The book is titled Amazing Horses and I decided to submit it under the name Angie McPherson. This book is different than the other coloring books, so I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. My book concentrates more on the horses themselves, leaving the background very basic.

For pricing, I chose to be cheaper than most of the books due to affordability for parents of children (and also because I'm really unsure if it's a decent coloring book). I ordered 50 books to be delivered and they will go to Sellersburg Celebrates and the Kentuckiana Book Blitz toward the end of August, as well as two model horse shows. Hopefully model horse people love to color more than their model horses!

I also have an idea for a 2nd coloring book, but we'll see how this one goes! Stay tuned!

Stay paranormally weird and write on!
Penny