Press for Success and an Excerpt

I try to be clever with my titles. Never seem to get the hang of it. Well, one day.

With less than a month to go before Lucid hits the e-shelves, I've more work than ever to do. Well, OK, maybe writing the actual novel was a lot of work, but this new stuff is haaaaaaaaaard. Who wants to write up a media kit when you can continue writing about a fantasy world of your own design?

What's a media kit? It's a nifty document authors put together for blog interviews and the like. A fellow author and great mentor, Ariella Moon, wrote a post about preparing for one's first book release. I highly recommend having a look here:

http://ariellamoon.blogspot.com/

So, I took the great words of advice from Ms. Moon and created my own little media kit. The hardest part was figuring out a photo. I'd like to remain mysterious for the time being, so I decided to take some artsy-fartsy ambiguous photos. The results are hilarious. If I'm brave enough, I may post them on here one day.

But you don't care about that, do you? Of course not! You're chomping at the bit to read a little more about this Lucid tale I keep raving about! OK, OK. As promised, I'll go ahead and include the prologue of Lucid. 

___________________

LUCID

by

L. E. Fred

I know that most adventure/fantasy/whatever-you-would-like-to–call-these-stories start with something magical, but my story starts with something ordinary, dreams. I’m talking about the “I’m taking a test and don’t realize I’m in my underwear” kind of dreams. We have them every night, whether we remember them or not. Sometimes they leave us waking up with excitement or inspiration. Sometimes they cause us to wake with a shriek and to look around our rooms. Sometimes they leave us waking up confused or ashamed. These experiences are probably commonplace for most people, but I doubt any of you could ever say your dreams caused you to stay asleep for a long period of time.

            What if your dreams made you disappear?

_________________________________

What if, indeed! Stay tuned for more Lucid sneak peaks and character introductions later this week! We'll start with our main man, Devon Alexander, of course! Be nice; he's a pretty shy young fellow.

Also, stay tuned for some great author interviews here on the blog of L. E. Fred! 

Til next time, you keep on readin'!

-Fred

It's Real!

Pardon the short length of this blog post. I'm a bit overly excited about my book coming out in a month! The best thing is that I have cover art to show off to the world! So, without further ado, I give you the cover of Lucid!

It looks amazing, no? Cheers to Amber Shah and Astraea Press for such an amazing first book cover! 

Now the real work begins. I've never marketed anything other than my Deviant art page (which has dismal views,) so I'm definitely going to be learning a lot over the summer. This will all be on top of preparing to move to Japan for my day job. However, I take this work with a happy heart, as I'm fulfilling some of my wildest dreams by pimping out my own novel! 

A street team may be in the works, so if you're interested in helping spread the hype, feel free to shoot me a message on Facebook or email me at l.e.fred.writes@gmail.com

Speaking of links, I made an official author Facebook page. Check it out at http://facebook.com/only.but.a.dream 

I also have a twitter @marsjaws, so go ahead and follow that, too. 

The book isn't coming out for another month (June 24th,) but I'll keep your interest until then by posting little snippets of Lucid every evening.

Let's get ready for an adventure! 

The Silence Breaks!

I know, I know. It's been quite a long time since I've blogged about anything going on in my writing world. I apologize for the silence, but I assure you that I haven't been filling the void with frivolous endeavors.

The main thing that's been sucking up my time has been preparing for my adventure with the JET Program. I'll be flying to Japan in August for an adventure teaching abroad, experiencing a new culture, and a healthy dose of growing up. Don't worry, I still plan on writing more YA fiction and chronicling my writing journey halfway around the world! Just expect this blog to turn into a author-travel journal hybrid in a few months.

So, let's get back to the writing journey. After a grace period of waiting in limbo, I got my first round of edits. Editing is not for the faint of heart. Now, I thought I'd seen the bottom of the ego barrel after 50+ agent rejection letters. Hell, even that humiliating creative writing course seems more uplifting when compared to reading my first edits. Imagine someone taking your only child or pet, criticizing it and its upbringing, and then telling you that you have to cut off an arm or sever a paw to make it better. That's about how editing feels. Thankfully I forced myself to simply take in the critiques once before typing anything in the comments margin. I'm glad I refrained from typing the biting words of an emotionally wounded creature. Without editing, we would have a lot of fat-headed authors in this world, one of them being myself.

I am, in no way, trying to insult my editor. She has been fantastic and a pleasure to work with for both rounds of edits. I just want to show how hard it is for someone to watch her cherished work be so objectively scrutinized. But, like physical therapy or an invasive surgery, it was all for the best. My editor pointed out some very good changes and some really stupid mistakes on my part, and I know the end result is a much more succinct story for my future readers' enjoyment. I also know that I can cross out "editor" on my future career possibilities. It takes a very special person to successfully do such a necessary job. If I couldn't be a hard ass in my creative writing class, there's no chance in hell that I could accurately dissect someone's years of toil and love.

So what's next on the literary agenda? Cover art! I'm mostly excited about this, as I do tend to judge books by their covers. It also means that I can start pimping out my social media with visual proof that I did indeed write a novel that is coming out soon.

Guess it also means I have some work to do this summer!

Until next time~

-Fred