Thursday Thirteen - 260 - 13 Highlights From My Amazing Year

1 – Having been born in the Year of the Dragon, 2012 turned out to be pretty freakin' fantastic for me, starting with the arrival of the hard copies of my debut release, SAINT SANGUINUS.

2 – My friend and fellow author Shawna Romkey gave me this first-ever moment: my first book signing during the Valentine's Hearts on Fire event for my writers' group at The Halifax Club. 

3 – In March, I attended the Women in Film and Television conference with my producer and friend Tara MacDonald, and our friend YA author Renee Pace.  

4 – Later in the spring, I attended a women's retreat at the Oak Island Inn with Tara and Shawna. A much-needed rest before a crazybusy summer.

 5 – WAY, way up at the tippy top of my joy this year: directing the book trailers for my Scorpius series. Produced by Tara MacDonald and shot by Caroline Ruyle. Best time I ever had on set.

 6 – This May I participated in Free Comic Book Day. Thanks to three local comic shops, I gave away free downloads of the e-book version of SAINT SANGUINUS, since it's a Dark Ages vampire superhero origin story. Many thanks to Giant Robot Comics, Quantum Frontier and Monster Comic Lounge.

 7 – The thrill of seeing your very own book for the first time never gets old! My second release BOUND BY DRAGONSFYRE arrived in the mail in early summer.

 8 – The book trailer for SAINT SANGUINUS won two awards!

9 – In August I signed copies of my Dark Ages vampire novel and my dark fantasy novel in the Indie Artist Alley at Fan Expo in Toronto. Many, many thanks to my friend Tara for helping me navigate this venue, and to my husband Brad who worked alongside me.

10 - Easily, the most amazing moment of this year came when I finally made contact with a friend whom my sister and I met almost 30 years ago. We met Rashid Kamalov during the 1984 Tall Ships event in Halifax, while the Iron Curtain was still firmly in place. After writing about him here on my blog many times, his email showed up in my spam folder in September, which I only looked at because of the Fan Expo contest I held.

Rashid is now my Facebook friend!

Here's what he wrote after reading the tale of our summer together which I told to readers here at A Piece of My Mind:

"Dear Juliа, thank you for the wonderful story about our meetings and for good memory about me. I carried in my heart warm feelings to Michelle and to you through all life. I am glad to know that you are well, we can email each other. It is so well you are here!" - Oct. 2, 2012 

11 – In October I attended my 10th writers' retreat with my writers' group. Already counting down the days until the next one.

12 – A few weeks later, I shared a table at Hal-Con with paranormal/sci-fi erotica author Lilly Cain. Signed more copies of my books and had a ball.

13 – To cap off the Dream Come True year, I went on my second trip to New York City, sat in the red booth at the Russian Tea Room and walked into the lobby of Radio City Music Hall to watch The Rockettes Christmas Spectacular.

That's my sister with me in the red booth, and my BFF at Radio City.

SO amazing.

I can't believe it sometimes!

Thank you to all my readers who have become friends over the years. You've made the world a much, much smaller place.

Here's to 2013! Hope you're off to a fantastic start.

Thursday Thirteen - 227 - 13 Things on My Self-Published To-Do List

1 - This picture of me sitting with Shawna Romkey, currently writing angel YA, was taken last Friday at a dinner to welcome Executive Harlequin Editor Birgit Davis-Todd to our local writers' group. I'll have more on her visit for next week's Thursday Thirteen.

It was a great weekend, and I had the usual light bulb moments go off in my head during Birgit's workshop, and also during the other workshops held while she took story pitches.

I didn't pitch anything - because I'm self-publishing and have a lengthy list of things to take care of. Birgit helps to steer a publishing corporation that sold $3.8 million dollars' worth of storytelling might in the last quarter. So far, I'm an entity of one juggling a myriad of jobs which publishers like Harlequin assign to departments filled with experienced professionals.

2 - So what have I been up to?

After my mega-revisions marathon over the Labor Day Weekend, I handed my manuscript to a final reader for story content, and to a proofreader/editor for style and technical adherence to publishing conventions.

Once they come back to me, I'll make any last adjustments to my manuscript.

3 - I sent a request for a quote to one of my favorite authors. Considering that she writes historical romance, I was nerve-wracked that she wouldn't want to give a quote for a book outside of her genre.

Now, to backtrack a bit - this writer is one of a handful of historical romance authors that are on my sigh-worthy list. She writes dark, passionate stories with truly tormented heroes.

I met her in blogworld before I read her books, so I felt comfortable sending her the request - I just wasn't sure whether my very dark vampire genre would be something for which she'd want to give a quote.

Imagine my delight when she got back to me with a totally rockin' author quote. I'll be putting it on my book cover and on my website. I'll be able to share once the cover is completed.

4 - I contacted my book cover designer, and he's been tweaking the layout for the wraparound cover, meaning the front cover/spine/back cover for the paperback hard copy.

5 - Still on my to-do list for the book cover: write a back cover blurb so enticing, it will raise sunken ships from the bottom of the sea.

6 - Also for the back cover: apply for an ISBN number. Did that on Wednesday.

7 - Start to formulate my dedication and acknowledgements page.

8 - Think about that all persons fictitious disclaimer page - you know the one: "All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental."

But I have to make sure it's in the final manuscript document, before it goes to the formatter.

9 - Write my author bio page.

10 - Get a physical agenda and start writing down which blog appearances are going to be on which day, once the promo tour begins.

I'll be honest - I'm going to be using the backs of returned instruction sheets and other re-usage paper from work. I've got a ton of it. Might as well use it for something.

11 - Once the formatted file is back, I'll be giving the final page count to the graphic designer so that he can calculate the width of the book spine. At that point we can upload the cover and the formatted document onto the Kindle and Create Space sites.

12 - Create Space will mail a proof copy of the paperback version out to me for final approval, before it gets locked into its Print On Demand format.

13 - Start spreading the 11 - 11 - 11 release date throughout the land.