Tag Archives: Jasper

Author, Tips, URL, Website

Author’s Website:Take a Bite Part 2

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How many posts per page? After checking out several websites and asking around the consensus is three posts is considered enough at first viewing of a page. If people are interested they will look further. The word count per post should be around 500 words give or take a few. Anything excessive will make people stop reading unless the post is drop dead amazing then well ignore this advice.

What I like is how we can personalize it with our own pictures. My heading is my main character to my first book, ” Jasper, Amazon Parrot”.  It is often one will see  authors promoting their books or characters by the pictures located on the first page.

Do leave a place where people can contact you. This was a big snafu I had done. I had shown them where to find me but not how to contact me directly. Lesson learned, one of many we will all discover as we branch out into doing our webpages.

What format you use will determine how many widgets you can place whether on one side of the page or on both. You can even have the drop down menus that you can see on my page at the top. That is a golden opportunity for people to take a quick peak and see what you got going on. Just make sure you keep it updated. Something I need to do in fact.

You can have so much fun with creating your website. It can be how ever you want it while working for you at the same time. Now when I hear of my writer friends tell me they don’t have a page I tell them what is stopping you? How can I help? A far cry from when I waited two months while my site was set to private. It brings out the confidence in a person as their words are being read by other people. To get a person to click like to a post or even comment still makes me giddy. I love it. And you will do once you get started. So after all this what is stopping you?

I don’t proclaim to know all that is good and bad with setting up a page but as always if you have any questions just holler.

Author, Book, Dream Big, Emotions, Jasper, Publication

Dream Big

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This is a chorus from the song “ Dream Big”

And when you dream, dream big
As big as the ocean blue
‘Cause when you dream it might come true
When you dream, dream big

This is a phrase we hear a lot. When I first heard the song by Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband I immediately fell in love with it. So seeing this plaque while I was shopping with my mom I knew it was coming home with me.

My mom on seeing the plaque said to me, “Sharon, do you dream big?”  Looking at her I nodded and replied I did.

As we continued our way around the store what she had asked me still was in my head. Do I dream big? I have been a dreamer for most of my life. My imagination has always been without borders as I wondered, plotted and tried to figure out how to accomplish what was going on between my two ears.

My first dream big was to go to a four year school of higher learning. I would be the first in my family and I was determined to not fail. Even when I changed my major in my Junior year I still graduated on time at the top of my department, Chemistry and Physics.

But when that day came what was left? Finding work and getting married seemed to be what we did at least in the time frame I was at. When my future mother law had said ,” Sharon don’t make me a grandmother before a mother in law,” I told her my only goal at that moment was to graduate.

Getting married and having a child was another dream, one that came and went pretty quickly.  My life started to have a routine about it. There is nothing wrong with routine. It keeps me stable and focused. Yet when my mom asked me that questioned I wondered when was the last time I dreamt big and the first answer that came to my mind was my writing.

I started writing Jasper:Amazon Parrot in the Fall of 2009. I completed it in a few months and have done so many revisions and edits if one saw the first draft to where it is at now you would recognize the name Jasper and that is about it.  Prior to that time I had never thought of myself as a writer in any form. A good friend Debbie told me that my husband had told her he felt I wrote well. When she told me that the wheels started to turn in my head. That summer is when the thoughts and words came of how to start this book. I am not sure what was the umph that made me get started but I did and have not turned back.

This is my dream big project and it has been with me for a few years now. I don’t think of the business as being hard, which we know it is. I don’t think of the many people who have told me this can’t be done. I don’t think of all the negatives that can come in one’s way when one tries to get a book published.

My sole thought is why the hell not? Seriously what do I have to lose? My back up thought had always been if worse come to worse I can make it into a book and read it to my grandchildren the series that I have in mind of writing. So with that I am pushing forward with this book and others that have been written since the late months of 2009. This is my dream big. It has been a rocky ride but I am up to the task. I don’t have a back up dream big plan at the moment, I am too busy trying to make this one a reality. ‘Cause when you dream it might just come true.

Author, Bike, Book, children's book, Electronic submission, Jasper, Laid back, Manuscript, Publishers, Publishing House

MS has been requested

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Another publisher has tossed his name in the hat. I received an email for a request of the complete MS for “Jasper, Amazon Parrot: A Rainforest Adventure”. He inquired if I had an illustrator on hand.

This is someone from the free writers conference that I attended on February 25thof this year. The giddiness had not really evaporated from the previous publisher. Now the mood is full blow WOW.  They say milk does a body good, well so does this. An email was received last night saying it had been received and placed in the queue. I will know in 4-6 weeks. The waiting game begins.

I am trying to not over think this for that can get a person in trouble. Instead I will focus on my NaNoEdMo and continue to write. But as I do baby woohoos comes out of me and a big smile ends up on my face. It can’t be helped. I just want to stand up and shout, but what I would yell is uncertain, just now that is the sentiment that is radiating from my body.

Telling Jasper the good news, he just cocked his head to the side then lowered it for me to pat him.  That just about sums it up right as far as he was concern. If only his laid back attitude could be passed on through me right now.