Thursday, January 26, 2012

My nifty new award, my book tailer and REMEMBER to read your manuscript aloud

Wow! Now that I have this nifty writers blog award, and from a site that is right up my fantasy alley, I better get blogging.
I have been doing a little of it on my personal blog, but as far as writing, I have just successfully edited out about 6,000 words in my Middle Grade book. It is with an editor, who is focusing on grammar and mostly punctuation, but I am still amazed to see the stupid mistakes she is catching in it: Redundancies (ie saying the same thing twice in a sentence),  other odd things such as that.

I was so excited when she offered her services that I did not do the final 'out loud' read through on the revised manuscript. Always a mistake.  You have to read it out loud to really hear it.

My book trailer is up on YouTube. I created it by creating several drawings and then using words in between. The thing that really sets it off though, is the music. I have a credit for the composer at the end. The piece I found just fits so perfectly. It has a low native sounding drum building up, for this book that has a lot of elements of the First People in it.  You can find it at by searching YouTube for Moon Tree Brothers. My videos are at http://www.youtube.com/user/SAVanVleck  and include my grandson's Country music, as well as odds and ends.

In amongst this, I seem to have a heart attack epidemic in my family. Mom ended up in the ER with a heart attack and has taken days to recover. Hospice is now coming out to her apartment and that is a comfort. The other family member is mom's little Chihuahua. I have to make sure she eats before she gets her heart medicine and some days she just does not want to eat. The vet doesn't have a lot of hope for length of her life. 
So, your blog award was a bright spot in my day. Thanks, so much Storybook World. Click on my award for a link to their site. http://astorybookworld.blogspot.com

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