Author: Andi Marquette

Andi Marquette once wanted to be a seafaring pirate. But she realized that could be a problem, growing up in the Rocky Mountain West and Southwest. So she became an editor, anthropologist, and historian instead. But that, too, didn't satisfy her weird cravings for stories and strange realms. Now, she's a writer ensconced in Colorado and when she wants to go pirate-ing, she just makes something up.

Cool giveaway opportunity for a Kindle

Hey, all–

Debra over at Book Enthusiast Promotions is doing a sweet giveaway, in conjuction with 23 authors (yers truly included). Winner of the drawing gets a Kindle along with some other goodies, like books donated to the Kindle. There are a LAWT of entries, but what the hey? Unlike the lottery, you don’t have to pay to enter! WOOOO! It’s going on for another few days, friends.

Oh, there’s a caveat. It’s a U.S.-only drawing. 😦 Like the lottery. Sorry, overseas friends.

Info at Debra’s site.

Or go directly to Rafflecopter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Book Enthusiast
by Categories: Announcements, Free BooksTags: , ,

Here’s whazzup!

Hi, kids!

Okay, quick update time. Some of you have been wondering WTF is going on with the follow-up to my romance novella, From the Boots Up. If you haven’t read it, well it’ll only set you back a buck ninety-nine. Hope you check it out.

source

Well, the follow-up is a novel-length piece (long novel), and it will be available in print and ebook, and those are two very different processes. A print version requires professional typesetting and then a bunch of times through those files to make sure everything’s going to work.

I have to make sure that all the changes I requested in the print version are made in the file I’m working off of to create ebook files (different platforms require different files), so this part of the process is also time-consuming and a bunch of detail-oriented busy-work because I don’t like to do sloppy work and I don’t like to offer sloppy products. Not to suggest that other authors do. I’m not suggesting that at all. It’s just that I have a major perfectionist streak, and I can get kind of obsessive about checking and re-checking (astrologically, this is what happens when your Moon is in Virgo LOL).

All that said, I will be doing a cover/title reveal Friday the 16th, and I’ll provide a synopsis. I’m hoping to get this pup released the first week of June. Let’s hope the stars align (with the Virgo moon) for that to happen.

Also, fellow author/editor R.G. Emanuelle and I are working on a project together and we’ll be revealing that around May 22nd. So stay tuned for that. WOOO!

And I’ve been working on short stories to include in a couple of things (I’m waiting to hear about one; if it doesn’t fly, oh, well — I’ll hopefully find another home for it). AND I’ve been working here and there on the fourth in my sci fi series. New writing has kind of taken a back seat while I deal with the follow-up to Boots, which has been quite the process. Hopefully, it won’t suck. WOOO!

All rightie, all. There’s some 411 for you.

Happy weekend!

by Categories: Announcements, Stuff going on, WritingTags: , , 1 Comment

Questions from the peanut gallery

And I love me some peanuts!

So here we go, people. Questions people asked me on Facebook.

Daniela:
“What is the most crazy thing you ever did…and why?”
Gurrrrrrrl, there is no way I can answer this with just one crazy thing. And sometimes, it’s not like I planned to do crazy things. Crazy things just kind of happened. And my definition of crazy might not be somebody else’s definition. So here, I’ll share 3 weird incidents:
1. Walked across the border from San Diego, California into Tijuana, Mexico with friends one night. Went bar-hopping then came back and got caught in the middle of a fight between a group of Mexican guys and American frat dudes at the border crossing. I was the mostly sober one, so I had to maneuver a bunch of drunks through that hot mess. I’m pleased to say we made it pretty much unscathed. Why did I do that? Cuz it seemed like a good idea at the time. LOL

2. Got stuck on the island of Lesvos (Lesbos, people) for a week. No place to stay in town, so I lived on the beach instead in this cheap-ass tent I and a friend managed to score in this weird little store. After a week, I managed to catch a ferry back to Athens, but I left the tent with my friend and she went on to Mykonos with it. Why? Hell, it was Greece! Who WOULDN’T want to live on a beach for a week there?

3. Drove to New Orleans from Denver with a group of friends non-stop for Mardi Gras. It took us about 18 hours one way driving in shifts. We’d all pitched in to rent a place in the French Quarter. I slept on the floor all three nights but hey, it was Mardi Gras. Why? Two words: Mardi. Gras. 😀

Suzanne:
“Why is New Mexico “the land of enchantment”? Or really entrapment?”
Those of us who are New Mexicans really can’t explain this to someone who’s never been. Trust me on this, people who have not been. It’s the Land of Enchantment because it’s like no place you’ve ever been. It’s where the past has melded with the present in this really awesome blend of cultures and customs across high desert landscapes of such preternatural beauty that you can’t believe you’re on Earth.

It’s the Land of Entrapment because really, once you go, it’s extremely difficult to leave and when you do, you miss it constantly.

Kaysi:
“Have you ever worn a flannel shirt with matching argyle socks and birkenstocks?”
I have, indeed, worn a flannel shirt with Birkenstocks. However, I do not wear such an ensemble with argyle socks. Rather, in the winter, I wear my Birks with thick hiking socks. And if all of y’all must know, I have one pair of Birks, the Arizonas. I have worn them for 10 years, just getting them re-soled about every 3 years. Oh, and my middle name is Hermione. (not really, but wouldn’t it be kind of cool?)

Emily:
“What is wrong with people?”
Gurl, if we knew that, we’d solve all the world’s problems. I’m thinking part of it might be more legal pot and craft brewing and distilling for all. Plus neighborhood community centers that had great day care for working parents, national Hawaiian Shirt Days once a month, more telecommuting, health insurance for all, cheap higher education, and casual Fridays every day.

Joan:
Would you pay $200 for a pair of jeans? Or even $50? What do you think of Crocs footwear? (There’s only one correct answer.) Who has more gray hair, you or me? I’ll bet it’s you because I dye mine. Finally, and most importantly, what is your secret? You are so much more productive than any other writer I know, by which I mean me. I want to be as productive as you are. Vitamins? A tonic? Electromagnetic socks? What?!

Let’s see. $200? NO WAY. That’s almost a plane ticket! $50? No. I mostly buy in the $30 range.

Crocs: ugh. I owned one pair once. I’ll just take responsibility for that right now. They were red. And they were good for dog walking in Nashville, because the grass was often wet in the spring mornings. But yes, they started to reek. And that’s when I put them out of my misery.

More gray hair: Probably me. I stopped highlighting my hair in 2008 because it cost too much to do that in the recession. So now I have “recession” highlights (i.e. gray).

My secret: A vitamin tonic that I strain through electromagnetic socks. It contains glitter from sparkle ponies and the hair of a unicorn.

PAGE:
“Marshmallows. Where do they come from?”
DO NOT THINK ABOUT MARSHMALLOWS.

Karelia Stetz-Waters
“Why is the song ‘Wonderwall’ so great …even though the Wonderwall was just an old school LCD projector?”
The song is way better than those projectors because the song only lasts about 4 minutes while it took about 10 times that to actually get a wonderwall to work.

THANKS, Gallery! Happy weekend!

by Categories: Questions Answered, Random WTF stuffTags: , , 4 Comments

10 things that make writers insecure (that we don’t talk about)

Yeah, yeah. I know. It’s Sunday and I’m supposed to be resting.

NOT! Day of rest? WTF? Clearly somebody who wasn’t a writer started that meme.

So here’s my tongue-in-cheek list of things that might make writers insecure. I mean, beyond the usual “OMG I TOTALLY SUCK AT THIS WHY AM I WRITING THIS IS POO” angst. As we all know, many creative-types (whether you write, paint, sculpt, do music or whatever it is) are a bit on the sensitive side. Which is actually contradictory, because we’re putting things out into the public world for people to look at, which invariably will draw critics who will smash our sensitive sides into quivering piles of angst, whether they have valid points or not. So on the one hand, here we are all sensitive about what we’re doing and yet we put it out there for lambasting. I haven’t figured out that contradiction, yet. Maybe it’s a type of sickness. Regardless, there are things that just make people who work in creative fields get their insecurities all up in a twist. These are some of them, but most of us won’t tell you that. So here I am, gossip-mongering. 😀

1. Getting ready to release a book just a few weeks after a fellow writer releases a book and that fellow writer’s book is getting gajillions of accolades and everybody’s talking about how awesome it is. This makes some writers want to just quietly gather their things and go home, put on the TV and lament that they could’ve been a contender, maybe, had that other writer not been so much more awesome.

2. Blurbs on other writers’ sites that say how awesome their books are and your life is a meaningless desert of ennui if you don’t read that author’s work. Meanwhile, the blurb on your site says: “fun read, good to kill some time” or “doesn’t suck.”
yeah-i-read

3. Parties where it comes up that you’re a writer and someone invariably asks what you write and then says “never heard of it” and adds “should I read it?” To which the writer is stuck. If she says “yes, you must read my work. You’re deprived otherwise.” then she looks kind of like a douchecanoe. But if she says, “oh, I don’t know. If you’d like to, I guess so.” which then makes her look like a sad and shipwrecked douchecanoe. Although, to be fair, there are many, many writers who are brilliant shining lights in literary-land who have never been heard of at some party in a state far away. Hold on to that.

4. As a follow-up, people who say something like, “If you’re published, how come I haven’t heard of you?” Um. Maybe because there are almost 1,000,000 books published in this country every year? Nevertheless, this makes some authors start twitching about not doing enough promo work.
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5. As another follow-up, somebody saying something like “how come you can’t make much money if you’ve published that many books?” At this point, you’re better off taking your sad, shipwrecked douchecanoe right into the rapids rather than attempting to explain the vagaries of the publishing world.

6. Reading “how to write” blogs and realizing that you have engaged in every single one of those DON’T DO THIS in terms of craft. At which point the writer feels cold and clammy because the book she’s just about to release has several writing no-nos in it.

7. Bad reviews that somebody forwards to you with the subject line “FYI.” (here is a pep talk blog)

8. A really super-cool cover on another writer’s book. Especially if everybody is talking about how super-cool it is. This causes some writers to immediately scrap all forthcoming covers, go home, turn the TV on, and think how they could’ve been a contender, if only they had awesome covers, too.

9. A really cool promo thing that an author does and it gets everybody talking about that author and that book while you’re still trying to figure out how to get something like “sparkle pony” into your title because you’re sure that’ll sell.

10. Hammering away on a book and you’re about halfway through when you go onto Goodreads and see another book whose plot is pretty similar to yours and you wonder if writing Godzilla into your romance will thus distinguish you from the pack.49075106

Other than that, WRITING IS FUN, people!

Hope your day of rest is filled with happy reading, happy writing, happy happy joy joy!

by Categories: Random WTF stuff, Silliness, The Writing CrazyTags: , , 16 Comments

To your health

Hi, gang —

Well, I’m still a bit of a Writer McCrankypants. My apologies for that. This project, as excited as I am about it, is rather stressful as all these disparate elements have to come together so that I can launch it to the best of my abilities (and then do the whole thing again with yet another project in the pipeline…LOL).

Remind me again why I do this job? Oh, I remember.

Because I luuuuuuuv it!

As I’ve been working on the project I’m about to launch I’m also finishing up a short story for an anthology. That one’s been a bit of a pain in the butt. Sometimes stories almost write themselves. Other times, they’re divas and require certain things just so, taking scenes out and re-doing them, and a whole host of other issues. This was one of those. Who knows why. It just was. I’m just about done and then I’ll leave it for a few days and go back and read it and see how it all feels.

Anyway, the past couple of months have gotten me thinking, because not only have I been totally swamped in the writing world, but also in my non-writing world. Yes, friends, writers have non-writing lives, too. Like anybody else, we have shopping, cleaning, and laundry to do (unless you’re all super-famous and can hire that out), cars to get fixed, animals to take care of, jobs to go to, family and friends to check in with and/or take care of, home repairs, doctors’ appointments, haircuts, bills to pay, taxes to do (ARGH)…

Which means for those of us who write and work full-time day jobs, there isn’t a whole lot of time for either. And that got me thinking about much larger things that maybe writers and other creative pursuit-types don’t think about.

Continue reading →

by Categories: Life Stuff, Random WTF stuff, Things that might make you think, WritingTags: , 2 Comments

Playlist, Land of Entrapment

Hi, all!

OMG I’ve totally been going nutso over in Spotify with playlists. I just did one for the first in my mystery series, Land of Entrapment. It’s 30 songs (OMG WTF SHE WENT CRAY CRAY OVER THERE)/artists that served as a soundtrack for this particular book.

As I noted over on Women and Words, each one of my projects tends to have its own soundtrack, though some songs/artists have crossover with more than one project. Speaking of Women and Words, I posted the playlist for my novella, From the Boots Up, over there. Here’s the linkie dinkie.

Anyhoo, here’s the playlist for Land of Entrapment.

It may take a little bit to load fully on your device, so don’t panic. Here’s a URL for it, too, in case you just can’t stand it and you have to go to Spotify RIGHT NOW, dang it. If you don’t have a Spotify account, you can log in with Facebook.

And now, here’s some MOAR INFO about Land of Entrapment:

K.C. Fontero left New Mexico in the wake of a bitter breakup to take an academic fellowship in Texas. With a doctorate in sociology and expertise in white supremacist groups, she’s well on her way to an academic career. But a plea for help from her ex, Melissa, brings K.C. back to Albuquerque to find Melissa’s troubled younger sister. Megan has disappeared with her white supremacist boyfriend and K.C. knows she has the expertise to track the mysterious group, and she knows she’ll be doing a public service to uncover it. What she doesn’t know is how far into her past she’ll have to go to find both Megan and herself and the deeper she digs into the group, the greater the danger she faces.

Winner, 2009, Golden Crown Literary Society award, best lesfic mystery
Winner, 2009, Lesbian Fiction Readers’ Choice award, lesfic mystery

Here’s an excerpt.

MOAR FUN STUFF!

Interview with K.C. Fontero, the main character
Interview with photographer Sage Crandall, K.C.’s love interest

And there you go. Happy reading, happy writing, happy listening, happy Friday!

by Categories: Cool tunes, Excerpts, Music, Things you might likeTags: , , 1 Comment

Writer McCrankypants on formatting manuscripts

Greetings, my peeps. (I almost said minions, but that might be taking liberties)

I’m in a strange twilight zone of writing. I’m not really between projects, but I’m hung up on one and it’s preventing me from really jumping into anything else. Not to suggest I’m not working on anything else because I am doing some work on the fourth installment of my Far Seek Chronicles (that’s the sci fi). I’m also working on a few short stories, and those require a different kind of focus than the longer stuff.

Anyway, I’m preparing a book-length manuscript for a typesetter, which is detail work and makes me super cranky, but it’s necessary work. While doing that, I sent some of the scenes out to an expert in the field to check and make sure I’m not Writer McLooneytoons with my take on certain things. Fortunately, he works fast and he’s been awesome and I’m pleased that I wasn’t completely McLooney but I still have to do some re-writes to correct some of the things in those scenes.

Which also creates more cranky in Andi Land.

So what exactly does it mean, this preparing a manuscript for a typesetter? Or for uploading onto the ebook virtual reality deck? Well, intrepid reader, clickety click onward to find out!

Continue reading →

by Categories: Indie publishing, Publishing bizness, Technology, The Writing Crazy, WritingTags: , , 2 Comments

These Boots were made for readin’

From the Boots Up

Hiya, peeps!

So you may see some bloggers ’round these parts doing some From the Boots Up pimpage for me today. It’s a bit of a “book blitz,” and I’d like to thank Debra over at Book Enthusiast Promotions for helping me out. Thanks, D!

At any rate, I know. A lot of you have already read Boots. Hope you liked it.

But some of you haven’t. And if you haven’t, well, I’ve got some stuff right here that hopefully will whet your appetite to do so. AND I’m giving away a copy (it’s an ebook) through Rafflecopter. If you want in on that, here. Notice how mysteriously it’s worded:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

That said, HERE’S SOME NEWS.

I’m giving those of you who have read it a Boots reminder because in a couple of months, I’ll be releasing the follow-up. That’s right, friends. More Meg and Gina, this time in a novel-length work. I’ll be unveiling the cover next month along with some other teaser stuff (hee hee) to get you all jazzed (hopefully) for it. So stay tuned for that.

Got that? The follow-up to Boots is JUST AROUND THE CORNER.

So go on and check out some of the goodies I’ve posted with this here blitz to get you in the mood (hopefully). And thanks for reading.

Continue reading →

by Categories: Announcements, Excerpts, Free Books, Things you might likeTags: 4 Comments

Another thing authors shouldn’t do

Hi, kids! Here’s Auntie Andi with yet another “Things Writers Shouldn’t Do.” This one falls in the public relations department, though it’s also a good example of what could happen if you don’t adhere to one of the golden rules: “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.”

That’s a good rule for just about anything in life. But let’s see how it applies in the writing world.

As many of you know, I’ve talked quite a bit in the past about what not to do as a writer. For example, I don’t recommend responding to reviews (see why here). And here are some other things I suggest authors not do.

And here’s another suggestion.

Don’t bash your fellow writers. Especially not in a public article.

Continue reading →

by Categories: Promo n' marketing, Publishing bizness, Things that might make you think, Things you shouldn't do, Writing tipsTags: , , , 6 Comments