Beth Paulson has joined our list of extended authors and also offers author services.
 
Beth’s poems have appeared in many small magazines and national anthologies, and her second book, The Company of Trees, was published in 2004. A former English professor at California State University Los Angeles, she directs poetry events, leads writing and creativity workshops, and lives in Ouray, Colorado, where she writes a column for the Ouray County Plaindealer.
 
In her writing Beth tries to connect her close observations of the natural world to the questions of the human condition and spirit. In her words, “I try to keep my mind/ on this calling,/ the only way I know/ to save the earth.”
 
Beth has received several prizes for her poems, including most recently two 2008 Mark Fischer prizes. Her poem, “Hollyhocks,” was nominated for the 2007 Pushcart Prize and her poem, “The Color of Snow,” was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize.
 
See Beth’s website at www.wordcatcher.org. You may order her book of essays, Uniquely Ouray: Reflections on Life in a Mountain County, from our Extended Catalog.

Author Services, Our Extended Authors

My last post has my general recommendations for the students at the workshop based on my review of their work. Well, Saturday I got to meet the students firsthand. My workshop was about creating characters. I showed the kids pictures out of my old high school yearbook (yes, a few were actually in color) and we invented characters together. What fun! The kids participated fully and eagerly and we constructed a delightful little love triangle with two boys and one girl. I showed them how they could create the main conflict scene just from the character personalities. (More to come.)

Writing: Characterization

Loretta and I are ensconced in a hotel room at the Powderhorn Ski Resort near Mesa Colorado, preparatory to participating in a Middle School / High School writing workshop tomorrow morning. Collbran, Colorado, the school’s location, is best described as not near anything. Truly, it’s a town atop Grand Mesa at the end of a rather long and twisting road. If you have 4WD, you can go further—I’ve done it on a motorcycle.

Why the workshop? I credit a dynamic teacher, Leslie Nichols, with organizing this event. It draws students from nearby schools (nearby being a relative term) both to the workshop and the associated competition. I was told that in addition to teaching a workshop on “The Essentials of Fiction,” I (along with other workshop presenters) would judge “some” student writing. You can therefore imagine my surprise when I opened the mail and out poured dozens of submissions. A stack over an inch thick! Several evenings were devoted to crawling through each piece.

A few observations: First, writing talent knows no grade. My favorite piece was by a 7th grader who wrote about the hunting trip on which he bagged his first elk. Now I’m no hunter (and, being bipolar, should stay away from firearms), but his enthusiasm burned through. His piece had “voice” and was well-written to boot. Another favorite piece was from a similarly-aged girl, who wrote about tagging along with her father on a trip to revisit Viet Nam—this time without the war.

Now, based on what I saw, I thought I’d jot down a few things I’d love to pass onto all the kids: Read more…

Mt. Sneffels Press, Writing: Style

Noalani Terry is a professional indexer who provides back-of-the-book and journal indexes. She develops appropriate, consistent, precise, and accurate main entries and subentries, arranged in easily recognizable and searchable order with cross-references, reflecting the author’s presentation of the contents.
 
Over twenty years in information services and library reference work have given Noalani Terry a broad knowledge base in many subject areas. She has indexed materials and designed information retrieval systems and thesauri for special libraries in fields as diverse as public broadcasting and international agricultural development.
 
Noalani Terry is committed to her clients, providing them with quality indexes created to meet their specific requirements, completed on time. Please contact Noalani now via her website in preparation for your next book or journal index. She looks forward to working with you.
 
Her website: www.wholelifeindexing.com.
 

Author Services

Well, I did it. It seems too easy to be true, but it’s true. You see, I was asked to include a discussion of the Kindle at a presentation I gave recently at the Montrose Small Press Month workshop. I figured I’d better try it before talking about it.

So I did.

I’m already an Amazon Advantage member because Broom 1 (The Story of the Great American Flying Broomstick Book 1: Genesis) is for sale on Amazon as a hardcopy book. So I logged into my Amazon Advantage account. I didn’t have to do much seeking. The link to posting my book as a Kindle Book was right in front of me!

It was easy. I typed in the metadata, such as the ISBN and the price, and uploaded the contents of the book. On my first try, I uploaded the .pdf file. The system asks me to browse through what it would look like on the Kindle. I wasn’t happy. So, I uploaded the original .doc file. Kindle was quite happy with that. It has offered me the opportunity to download the native Kindle format to make tweaks, which I will do at some point here because a couple pages up front appear to be blank on the Kindle. The rest looks great!

Click on the image to see the book for sale in the Kindle Store. I set the price as $6.95, but it’s actually available for only $5.56. Here’s your chance! Assuming you have the Kindle, this is downright cheap and you’ll have a whale of a good time reading it!

Ah, the Kindle, you say. Well, I was skeptical at first too. But on my recent trip to New York, I had a seat next to a guy who brandished a Kindle II. I asked to look at it. Read more…

American Flying Broomstick, Writing: Business

At the recent Montrose Small Press Month workshop, I announced that I will do web fulfillment for local authors. By local I mean Delta, Gunnison, Montrose, and Ouray Counties. I’ll do it simply, too.

1. You leave a couple copies of your book with me
2. I will place information about your book into our “Extended Catalog” at list price, along with a PayPal “Buy Now” button.
3. I’ll put up an Author Profile in the “Our Extended Authors” category
4. Customers pay via PayPal; I’ll take care of shipping
5. I’ll be just like a bookstore: I keep 40% of list price, you keep 60%
6. You can pull out at any time—just drop by and pick up your books
7. If I sell out, please get additional copies to me promptly—PayPal will refuse to sell if the inventory drops to zero.

I reserve the usual rights to refuse anything for any reason. If you are interested, please use the “Contact Us” page or the comment form below.

Author Services, Mt. Sneffels Press, Our Extended Authors

New number for Mt. Sneffels Press: +1-970-901-4092 (a cell phone). We are dropping our landline—these days it’s redundant.

American Flying Broomstick, Mt. Sneffels Press