It’s Live – The Latest Ruby’s Place Story

I’ve said it before, but 2022’s been rough. Really rough. But I was lucky in that I had a place where I could go to get away from it all. A place that makes my heart feel warm, makes me believe that happy endings are on the way: the fictional Sullivan, Missouri, where my Ruby’s Place stories are set.

And now, Rare Gems, the latest in the ongoing series of Ruby’s Place stories, is officially live!

This time around, the story focuses on Elizabeth, Ruby’s best friend. I hope readers will feel as warm and happy reading this one as I felt writing it.

Check ‘er out:

Amazon

Apple

B&N

Kobo

Beat the Summer Slump with a Free Read

It’s been a rough week at the Schindler house. My dog Gus has a seizure disorder, and he had a terrible seizure earlier this week. We had to rush him to the vet for an emergency visit. He’s on a new medication and seems to be doing better. We’ll be seeing our vet again for a recheck next week.

There’s really nothing like an unexpected health catastrophe to completely take over your every thought. I spent most of the past week watching over my little guy.

I was just getting back to work, Gus at my side on the couch, when it occurred to me that we’ve hit the really slumpy part of the summer. It’s miserably hot, nerves are settling in about the new year, questions are raging about what the pandemic will make the next year look like, etc., etc.

So I wanted to offer a little something fun: A free short story for the kids.

WORDQUAKE is so short, it makes a great read-aloud. If your young reader needs a quick listening exercise, you can be the reader. If they need to work on their own reading skills, you can let them read to you. They can even read out loud to their own dog. (Gus often listens to my first drafts!)

It’s also a great story for young readers to review. Please do get them to write a line or two and post it as a review on your e-retailer account. I would love to hear what your reader thinks of it:

WORDQUAKE is available at all major e-retailers:

Amazon

Apple

B&N

Kobo

A Superhero Back to School Special!

Happy New Year!

Fall always feels like the start of a new year to me. The air smells like freshly-sharpened pencils, and it buzzes with the excitement of new beginnings.

To celebrate, you can snag my superhero ebooks for $0.99!

A guide to get students excited about writing + a fun new superhero whose “power” will set a great tone for the classroom.

The INVENT YOUR OWN SUPERHERO journal offers kids a chance to get their creative juices flowing–to come up with their own superhero and begin to understand what makes a great can’t-put-it-down story. Conflict, rising action, backstory, motivation, supporting characters are all elements addressed in INVENT YOUR OWN SUPERHERO. (Another benefit of learning to be a great writer means you’re an even better reader! You can see what an author’s doing within a text when you understand the basics character and story construction.)

Super Susan is a character I invented when I was about eight or nine–I even incorporated my original artwork into the cover. (Susan was colored in crayon, and has glue-and-glitter letters and yarn braids.) I discovered her in some of my archives, and thought her power (super kindness!) was just really timely. The story is also short, making it a great classroom read-aloud.

THE ADVENTURES OF SUPER SUSAN recently got a nice write-up as a new release in the Petersburg Library. You can read it here.

Purchase links:

INVENT YOUR OWN SUPERHERO:
Amazon
B&N
iBooks
Kobo

THE ADVENTURES OF SUPER SUSAN:
Amazon
B&N
iBooks
Kobo

Using the Superhero journal? Feel free to use this short trailer in your classrooms to get your kids excited about writing their own superhero story. And feel free to get in touch for a Skype: click the black square in the upper right corner of the site for the contact page.

May this be the best year yet!

LIKE MILES LEFT YET? TRY FOREVER FINLEY

First, I have to thank you guys for grabbing copies of MILES LEFT YET. I originally released the book in ’16, and it’s always been one of my faves, but it just never managed to get in the hands of as many readers as I’d hoped. A new cover, a little advertising, and voila! It’s finally starting to get out in the world. In the last month, I moved triple the entire lifetime sales of the book.

But ads alone don’t give a book legs. I know this book is starting to move because of word-of-mouth with my readers. So I have to take a moment to thank anyone who has personally recommended the read.

 

A New Request

If you enjoyed MILES LEFT YET, I do hope you’ll take a moment to leave a review on Amazon. Just a sentence or two helps tremendously. Right now, the book’s reviews on Amazon remain fairly low. Upping the number of reviews will help me expand into a new round of advertising, getting the book into the hands of new readers, who can work their magic again with word-of-mouth.

I can’t emphasize enough how much authors appreciate reviews…

Like Norma? Keep reading!

If you liked Norma (who emerges, I think, as the real star of MILES LEFT YET), please do check out FOREVER FINLEY. This one centers on the mystical small town of Finley, the town the Norma drives into at the end of MILES. FOREVER FINLEY is an “episodic novel,” meaning that it’s constructed of loosely connected, stand-alone stories. Each story works together to culminate to the book’s magical conclusion. A new cast of characters is introduced in FOREVER FINLEY, but Norma makes an appearance fairly early on (you’ll find her in the stories titled “Dearest March…” and “A Hundred Julys”).

 

I’ve also done a little repackaging of FOREVER FINLEY–new cover, etc.–and to celebrate, I’ve reduced the price of the e-book to $1.99 temporarily. It’s available as a wide release at:

Amazon

Kobo

B&N

iBooks

I’ve also got a few signed paperback editions of FOREVER FINLEY at my Etsy store!

I hope you’ll decide to spend some time in the town of Finley. It’s become one of my own favorite places to visit.

FORMAT E-BOOKS WITH SCRIVENER THE EASY WAY

ETA: This post is NOT for Scrivener 3. I find Scrivener 3 to be quite nearly impossible to compile. In fact, I now use Scrivener to draft and Jutoh to format. I’ve written about the process here. But if you have an earlier version of Scrivener, this should still work:

Well, it’s the easiest way I’ve ever found, anyway. I type each chapter to look as I’d like it to as I write the manuscript. Then, when I compile, I basically uncheck everything that’s pre-checked by the program, telling it to simply format according to the way each chapter already appears.

Clear as mud? Here it is step-by-step:

1. Make sure your chapters are all typed up the way you’d like them to look. Simpler’s generally better for e-books. (Here, I’ve simply bolded the chapter number, and made the first line of the chapter flush left.) Also, I arrange all my chapters in the binder as far left as they’ll go.

2. Open the compile dialogue box, and make sure to click all the chapters you want to include under “Contents.”

3.  Under “Separators,” choose “Page Break” for each option.

4. Under “Formatting,” Uncheck all the “Title” options and check “Text.”

5. Unclick “Override text and notes formatting.”

6. Unclick everything under “Options.”

7. Click “Level 1+,” then set “Page Padding” down to 0 lines and under “Section Layout,” delete all the Chapter information.

8. Repeat Step #7 for all Levels.

9. Unclick everything under “Transformations.”

10. In the “Compile” dialogue, add your cover.

11.  Also in the Compile dialogue, fill out the Meta Data.

Make sure you’ve chosen the right type of file to compile into (.mobi, .epub), then click “Compile” at the bottom of the dialogue box.

Done!