Tuesday, August 28, 2018

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.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

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:

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