Speech Recognition Software or ‘Look, Ma! No Hands!’

Noble why a post

by Kimber and

good morning, buddies. I am writing this post using Dragon speech recognition software. It takes a lot of practice. But I think you’ll agree I have them learning.

For example, here’s the first paragraph I wrote –

my dearest love

I collapsed into bed to minutes ago, my head fall of every horrible imagination, wondering where you are and what happened. Was it an earthquake? I thought Ashton the sky there must’ve been a volcano eruption if you are flying did the ash get into your engine? But I felt the earthquake to.

here is a paragraph I wrote three days later –

Needless to say without the Internet I can’t send any e-mails we can’t Facebook message the phone doesn’t even work so I’m writing with up regular pen and paper and wondering how long paper will last. Note to self. Take inventory of the paper in the house. So I decided to write a letter to you every day I have no way to send it to you the mail truck has not come.

This post is being written completely using the software. Can you see the difference? I’m not correcting anything with my hands. I am learning to correct using voice commands, such as… Well I would tell you the commands but every time I make one the software does what I say. It doesn’t write down what I said. So I have to learn different words to say the same things to differentiate between commands and what I want my computer to write down.  In time, I will learn to surf the Internet, email, and post directly.  For this post, I cut-and-pasted.

my Sweet adult contemporary Short Story

I’m writing a short story as a practice. I don’t know how well it’ll turn out. I may seek publication for it like I did for drive-by Valentine. Or I might just post it as a free story on my main site. It’s tentatively titled the grizzly bear Lodge, an Alaskan apocalyptic tale.

Once I feel comfortable, I will resume a writing the last book in the Ophelia Dawson Chronicles, blood dark and sweet. And then I can joyfully get on with the business of writing all my stories. I have so many in my imagination that it drives me crazy to not be able to use my hands to share them with you. However thanks to modern technology I do have the hope of sharing them with you using my voice.

If only JRR Tolkien had the software!

Time and Again by Kimber An

I love history and, believe me, it wasn’t easy cultivating this love in the American school system.  The subject is seriously undervalued and racked with political correctness.  I mean, gosh, I love Marilyn Monroe, but when she gets a two page spread in a textbook and George Washington gets a tiny paragraph something is wrong.  But, it’s not just content.  It’s how it’s taught.  History must be made real in our minds to be fascinating and understood.

One way PBS has tried to work with that concept was to produce historical reality shows.  1940’s House is set during the Battle of Britain.  I had no idea what the British went through until this show.  I was never taught.  I think it’s assumed Americans are only interested in the world from their own point of view.  And they wonder why we’re so bored in class!  My other favorite is Frontier House.

Right now, I’m watching my third favorite, Colonial House. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/colonialhouse/   It’s low on my list because I’ve never really wanted to time-travel to back then.  Forget the Thanksgiving turkey.  People were eating each other!  It was that bad.

So, PBS picked out modern people and plunked them down in specially designed houses and communities which were as historically accurate to their time periods as possible.  And then they let ‘em have at it and see how they managed.  It’s absorbing and one thing stood out to me.

Time Management.

Nowadays, our time is organized for most of us.  Alarm clocks tell us when to get up, bells tell us when to get to class, Uncle Sam tells us when to pay our taxes.

In colonial America, folks were up before dawn and worked their butts off until dark, knowing exactly what needed to be done.  Corn had to planted by a certain date or it would not be ready for harvest by winter.  If it wasn’t harvested by winter, people starved to death or ate their family members.

On Colonial House, most people slept in until nine and then stood around trying to figure out who did what and where.  They got distracted by non-essential work and argued.

And how many employment ads have you seen which read something like “looking for an organized, self-starter, must be a team player?”

This weakness of our modern culture was brought on by the generations before you.  Yes, the labor-saving devices, like dishwashers are a little bit to blame.  But, mostly, it’s the failure of parents and grandparents to bring real history alive for their young.

History, a solid knowledge of it can save you in so many ways.

If History was ruined for you, I suggest starting with one of the shows I mentioned.  You ought to find the DVDs to check out for free at any library.

What has this got to do with Young Adult fiction?  Uh…well…um…hey, I couldn’t put it out in a timely manner if I didn’t stay on schedule!  Also, once I’m done with the Ophelia Dawson stories, I want to get into my Time Travel stories.   www.kimberan.com

Thanksgiving and Forever Young

“I’m not getting married until I’m really old, like thirty.”  I’ve used this line several times in different stories because I remember when thirty seemed old to me.  Now, I’m over forty and I know what ‘old’ really is and it has nothing to do with the few gray hairs I keep under a bottle of Excellance by Loreal.

So far, I’ve seen two ‘switches’ and I’ll tell you about them in the hopes that you can see ‘em coming and not let them flip, because they’re what makes people ‘old’ before their time.  The first ‘switch’ happens around twenty to twenty-four.  The former teenager’s brain has physically stopped growing and it’s easier for him or her to process actions and consequences.  Mortality and the mistakes we make suddenly become very real.  And the former teenager decides he was stupid in adolescence.

This is not true.

All teens make mistakes because they’re new to the job and still learning to anticipate consequences, but the teen who doesn’t realize this believes he was an idiot and the ‘switch’ is flipped.

The second ‘switch’ is flipped around thirty-five to forty years of age.  At this point, many of the former teenagers have young teens of their own.  Believing themselves to be idiots was so traumatic, they’ve suppressed memory of adolescence.  Now, they think all teenagers are idiots.

This is not true either.

Since they have teenage offspring, it makes them bitter and angry and darn-near impossible to understand.

So, how do you keep from flipping the switches and staying forever young?

Thankfulness.

A lot of these bitter parents don’t realize how beautiful their adolescent children are until something terrible happens, like a carwreck.  But, you want to hear something even worse?  I know a family who lost a son to suicide and they still do not ‘get it.’

This is the nail in the coffin of ‘old.’

So, look around.  You might be surrounded by people who constantly complain and critisize and you might be stuck there for now.  If so, look beyond that.

Hope for the future hinges on thankfulness in the present.  If you can’t see the good in the here and now, you won’t see it coming down the road.

Learn from the mistakes of others and create your own Happily Ever After.

Happy Thanksgiving!  (Psst, every day of the year!)

How I Woo Blogging Book Reviewers

Kimber An Being Wooed By Husband

Good morning, Blog Buds!
I’m one of the new girls on the block. I just signed with Noble YA for Sweet
Bytes, a Romantic Paranormal set in my home state of Alaska.  The weird part about it is Sweet Bytes is the third book in the series.  You can learn all about the
first two by popping over to my main site- www.kimberan.com  But, please, hang on until you finish reading this.

This post is for authors, technically, and aspiring authors, just in case they need help in this area. Readers and Reviewers will probably find it amusing though, because, hey, we’re talking about you!

During my time moderating the Enduring Romance book review blog, I found that Readers find Reviewers with similar tastes and hang out with them in cyberspace.  The Readers and
Reviewers are online and they talk to each other.  If they like you and your book, they tell
each other and you’ll get more requests for reviews and more readers.  If you whine about a negative review, they tell each other and your email will probably go into the Spam dump.  If you throw a hissy-fit, well, you can kiss a lot of sales good-bye ‘cause you probably won’t get reviewed at all.

Remember, even a negative review gets your story out there.  A reader can’t buy a book if she
doesn’t know it exists. So, you’d better play nice, no matter what.

First thing I do is go Scouting! If you’re brand new, find a popular book that’s similar to yours.  In my case, that was Twilight by Stephanie Meyers.  Then, Google ‘book blog Young Adult’ or you can just pop over to your author buddies’ blogs and see who has reviewed for them.  I have a list and so do most of the YA authors I know. Just ask us for it.  Since blogging book reviewers hang out together, pop over to one of their blogs and scroll down to the links.  They also post each other’s banners.  That’s your starting point.

Visit all the blogs and start your own list.  If there’s no obvious indication that a blogger likes the Popular Book, like a banner that screams ‘EDWARD CULLEN EATS TOAD EGGS!’ then do a Search of the blog.  Put in the title, Twilight, for example, and you should come up with a list of posts which mentions it, positive or negative.  If the blogger likes, loves, or is okay with the popular book, then she might be interested in yours.

If she thinks Edward Cullen eats toad eggs, well, then it’s time to surf on, dude.

So, let’s say you’ve found a blogging book reviewer who thinks Twilight (or whatever your
sample popular book is) is just the bee’s knees.  Then, you emit a little ‘squee!’ and you scroll to the top of the page (or sometimes it’s on the sidebar) and click on ‘Review Policies.’  There are variations in the title.  ‘Policies,’ ‘Don’t Send Me These Crappy Books,’ and ‘What I’m Dying to Read!’  You’ll figure it out.  Click on that and read all about what that blogger wants to read and review.  The first thing you should check out is if she accepts eBooks at all.  If that’s a ‘go’ then check out her current preferred genres and wish list, if she has one. Don’t bother someone who isn’t interested in your kind of book.  You don’t want to come off as an annoying pest.

And always, always, always follow whatever procedure the blogger wants.  Always send your book in the format she wants.  Obey the Book Review Blogger!  Like an agent or editor, she doesn’t need your book, plus she doesn’t get paid money like they do.  She’s got plenty of authors begging her to read their awesome books.  Show her the respect she is due.

The List!  Each time you find a reviewer you think might be interested, add her name, blog address, and email to a running list.

The Form Letter!  This is like a query letter for an agent or editor. You customize this form letter for each of the reviewers.  Most of them will respond, whether they accept or not.  Here is mine for Sweet Bytes at my main site- http://www.kimberan.com/2011/09/sweet-bytes-promo-letter.html

Please don’t go there until you finish reading this post!

You send out this letter to your potential reviewers as soon as you get a Release Date and cover art! Remember, your book isn’t the only one begging for their attention.  You’ve got to give the blogging book reviewers as much time as you can to move yours up the line and get it reviewed right around the release date or within the first month or two afterwards. Although, if a reviewer can’t get to your book for several months, that works too. You can pick up new readers and build your momentum that way.

With each new book you release, it’s important to go through this process again.  Blogging Book Reviewers are real people who go through life changes.  New blogs pop up all the time while others go into retirement, though they usually remain online as ‘read-only.’  Reviewers’ tastes change too.  When I was pregnant the last time, for example, I only wanted Romance novels with an absolute Happily Ever After.  Once I gave birth, I went straight back to my
multi-genre self.  A blogger who previously rejected eBooks might get an Amazon Kindle for her birthday and suddenly be voracious for them.  You just never know, so do your homework each time.

One last thing, always, always, ALWAYS, thank the book reviewer, even if she said your book was the crappiest she’d ever read.  I knew one Reviewer on a popular site who always gave horrible reviews to all books which involved babies or children.  Yet, she read them all the
time!  Huh?  As a Reader, I quickly learned I would love whatever book she claimed to hate.  So, at the very least, post a comment saying, “Thank you for taking the time to read and review my book!”  And leave it at that.

Okay, so that’s the first thing on my promo to-do list.  Since I just sent my pre-edited Sweet Bytes to my editor, I’d better get on it.