I am feeling very blessed at the moment. This evening, there are 794,236 Kindle ebook titles listed on Amazon, and on Grace Awakening‘s second day of sales, it is rated #39,234. I’m trying to figure out the math. Am I right? Is that Top 5%? Can it be possible?
I am beyond thankful for the people who are supporting this great adventure and buying a copy!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
It’s an odd feeling when a dream comes true. After the initial euphoria of seeing what you may have wished for and worked for accomplished, there is a only a brief sense of completion and satisfaction.
While it’s fantastic that the dream has been achieved, one can’t just bask forever in achieving one dream, can one? And so, while it was heart stopping to suddenly see Awakening Dreams listed on Amazon’s Kindle store today, and to know that my work was now available to the world, already plans are at work on the next dream! Several books and miscellaneous other projects call.
Let the dreaming continue!
As you know, Book One of Grace Awakening is on its way. The files have been uploaded to Bookbaby.com for processing and distribution to the various companies where it will be available for sale. There is a contest on the Facebook Fan Page for the first person to post that the listing has shown up on a retail site.
There are now links to all the retail sites available on a Buy It Now page. (Click on the cover, at right). So far, the link for each site just comes up to a fruit-less search, but at some point, Awakening Dreams is going to be there when you click. It is most likely that the earliest successful click will happen Monday, July 24th, but it could be a week or two (or three?) later. We just have to be patient and keep checking.
If you click the links to Kindle, Sony Store, Nook or through your iBook app and find Grace Awakening Book One Awakening Dreams there. Be sure to go to the Facebook Fan Page and declare it! First one to find it and post the site, wins a prize!
Well, today is the day!
After years of writing, editing, compiling, collaborating, waiting and abating, Grace Awakening is finally greeting the world! Today Lintusen Press uploaded Grace Awakening to BookBaby.com for formatting and distribution to the e-book outlets around the world. Whether you have a Sony e-reader, a Nook, an iPad, an iPhone, or a Kindle you will be able to download Book one: Awakening Dreams for the remarkable introductory price of 99c.
I have a niece who is 2 weeks from her due date today, and as it happens, now so am I. Bookbaby says it takes 5-10 days for the file to be prepared and sent off to the various e-stores. Those e-stores take from 2 to 14 days to get the files onto their sites and ready to sell. That means my baby could be ready for the world in 7 days or 21 days- just like my niece’s baby.
We’re in the longest waiting period.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
((sigh))
Keep your eyes open!
(PS. On the Facebook fan page there’s a contest for the first sighting on a sales site. Feel free to join the watch and win a prize!)
The last 48 hours have been filled with working on covers for Grace Awakening Book One: Awakening Dreams. Several people have been contributing their skills to this process and the results are impressive! You can see the final 5 concepts here:
http://apps.facebook.com/fanappz/poll/vote?id=29791
Feel free to vote!
Here’s a picture of my day. Today’s project was translating a sonnet from Petrarch’s original Italian into English. I had received permission from Penguin to use a translation by Anthony Mortimer of Canzoniere 13 for Grace Awakening, but after the publisher went out of business, I let the deadline to pay for the use go past. I still wanted a Petrarchan Canzoniere in that particular section of the novel though, and that meant I had to do my own translation. I also wanted it to rhyme following Petrarch’s strict scheme, and I wanted it to be in iambic pentameter.
I started with the public domain version of the original Italian sonnet 61:
Benedetto sia ‘l giorno, et ‘l mese, et l’anno,
et la stagione, e ‘l tempo, et l’ora, e ‘l punto,
e ‘l bel paese, e ‘l loco ov’io fui giunto
da’duo begli occhi che legato m’ànno;
et benedetto il primo dolce affanno
ch’i’ ebbi ad esser con Amor congiunto,
et l’arco, et le saette ond’i’ fui punto,
et le piaghe che ‘nfin al cor mi vanno.
Benedette le voci tante ch’io
chiamando il nome de mia donna ò sparte,
e i sospiri, et le lagrime, e ‘l desio;
et benedette sian tutte le carte
ov’io fama l’acquisto, e ‘l pensier mio,
ch’è sol di lei, sí ch’altra non v’à parte.
My next step was to plug the poem into the Google translator to get the basics. The result was this:
Blessed be ‘the day, et’ the month, year et,
et the season, and ‘the time, et the time, and’ the point,
and ‘the beautiful country, and’ the spot where I arrived I was
da’duo beautiful eyes that tied m’ànno;
et blessed is the first sweet breath
ch’i ‘I had to be combined with Amor,
et l’arc, et Whence the arrows’ point was,
et the wounds’ Nfiniti go to my heart.
Blessed are the many voices that I
calling the name of my wife or esparto,
and the sighs, the tears et, and ‘the desire;
Blessed are all the cards et
known where I buy, and ‘s my thought,
which is only about her, yes that another party does not v’à.
Writing draft- false start and then the better flow
As you can see, while not perfect, it’s certainly good enough to know where he was going, and to catch the Italian words I wasn’t familiar with. I could fill in the blanks from there. I spent some time on http://www.Rhymezone.com, which is my go-to site when I’m creating a complex rhyming poem, and played with various options. I baked a cake. I instant messaged a friend in France. I went to a farewell party. I watched Star Wars Episode IV (which is really still Episode one, to me). I had a bath. I read the editor’s most recent comments on Awakening Dreams. I wrote lines. I re-wrote lines.
As of this moment, I am satisfied with this result, although it may not be the final version. I finished it at 2 a.m. so it’s allowed to not quite be perfect yet. I have my iambic pentameter. I have Petrarca’s ABBA ABBA CDCDCD rhyme scheme. I have stayed true to Petrarch’s intent in this poem, I think, and that’s the most important thing.
Most blesséd be the day, the month, the year
And blesséd be the hour and the moment
When I arrived to find my own torment.
Her lovely eyes completely tied me here;
So blesséd was her breath as I came near,
That Love entangled me within her scent,
Against the arrows left me impotent,
And bound my heart to hers, so thus endeared.
Dear blesséd voices call my lady’s name
And weave her glorious beauty in my verse.
My sighs, my tears, and my desires contained,
Most blesséd are the papers I disperse,
To share my thoughts that bring me fame,
The thoughts of her that are my joyful curse.
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Translation (c) Shawn Bird 2011
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When I was writing Grace Awakening, I didn’t write linearly, I wrote scenes from all over the book. I moved from exposition to climax and into rising action in the same week. This technique helps to keep the writing from being boring, and makes it interesting toward the end of the process when the author must take all these disparate puzzle pieces of story and manoeuvre them into a proper picture.
It creates some difficulties as well, however. The main one is keeping references to time appropriate. If I say “two weeks later” but the events referenced have 3 Fridays between them, I have to fix it! Or perhaps the logical sequence puts a spring activity in December. My biggest consideration was working around the date April 6th, when Petrarch first met Laura. The scene that references that must occur at that time. The last couple of days I’ve been working with an editor on finding these time anomalies and making sure it all works together.
It’s kind of interesting that in some 40+ reads I’ve had of the book, and a dozen or so beta readers, no one else has caught these concerns before. I realise this means that not everyone is going to keep track of the calendar, but for those who do, it’s important that it matches up. So I’ve drafted a calendar, and made sure all the events sit where they should. Just as I researched the times for the sunset when Grace and Ben dine at the Calgary Tower, the little things need to be correct. It’s a respectful nod to the reader. “I care enough about you to create a world that is consistent.”
At least, I’m doing my best.
Topic #137: What invention, as in something not yet invented (jetpack, teleportation ring, time machine) do you most need right now?
The fall that I started Grace Awakening, I also started a high interest low vocab novel I called #8. When Grace took over my life for six months as she told me her 150,000 word story, #8 languished as an outline and one chapter. When Grace was finished, I set to work on #8. I’m aiming for it to be completed at 15,000 words, so it’s a tenth of Grace’s size. You’d think it would have taken a tenth of the time- say eighteen days instead of 180, but no. For all its brevity, #8 has sat with ‘something’ not quite right for almost two years. Every once and awhile I pull it out and add a paragraph here, a chapter there, fine tune a paragraph, crop out a sentence, but the intangible thing has been elusive.
This last week I’ve been reading and thinking about #8. I’ve added half a chapter and decided that I need to crop out the first chapter I wrote for this book (presently it is chapter 2). I realised that I have a beach scene immediately followed by a snow shovelling scene (this is feasible in Calgary, but not in the Shuswap!). Oops. I figured out the biggest area that needs fixing.
As I was drifting off to sleep, one of the minor characters stepped up. She had been in one brief scene in the seventh chapter, but suddenly she had a back story to share that was relevant to the rest of the story. She had been there all along, with the answer to the question, if only I’d been paying attention. I had to be up in a few hours, and I couldn’t afford to get up and write out the scene. I was sure that it would not be lost over night, but I could not shut off the narrative.
It would be so handy for authors to have a brain writing machine. While you sat in a boring meeting, went jogging through the neighborhood, or were drifting off to sleep, your brain writer could dictate the narrative rolling in your thoughts and put it into a file. What a brilliant devise that would be.
I have just had a shocking epiphany. Once upon a time when I was in elementary school, I had a wild crush on a scrawny, goofy nerd. When I looked back at this memory while I was writing Grace Awakening, I had a sense of moral superiority over my affection for the kid. He had his talents, sure, and a sense of humour to boot, but he wasn’t building his biceps in the gym after school and he wasn’t going to be signed in any model search. In fact, I built the first meeting of Ben and Grace on the foundations of this premise: that her first sight of him has no impact because he’s “just another band dweeb to pass in the halls,” until he starts playing his music and she loses herself in the inexplicable connection as their destinies entwined. It was important that there was no attraction before that moment.
Well, now I have to re-think everything.
I just saw a photo of said nerdy guy, at just the age when I first saw him. He’s cute. Nerdly cute, of course, but most definitely cute. What the heck?! I honestly don’t remember such cuteness! But there it is. Plainly, that year at least, if not in the following ones, there was decided cuteness. It’s kind of a Justin Bieber in Drew Carey’s glasses thing. Strange. Cute.
I am agog. I can see that before such cuteness I would obviously have been helpless to resist. Apparently I am far more shallow than I thought. How humbling. I may have to re-think that entire first chapter of Grace Awakening.
Or maybe not. Grace and Ben have their own history that doesn’t have anything to do with my history. But still. I built that chapter on a ‘germ of truth’ that turns out to be a ‘germ of untruth.’ It’s quite discombobulated me. When the germ of truth that became the story is wrong, all that’s left is story. Grace is once again claiming her own reality and leaving me baffled.
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PS. I wish I could show you the photo, but that would probably get me into trouble. So you’re just going to have to trust me on this one: cute.
Well. I might be able to show you the photo. Email me if you remember the kid in question. I might share.
Shawn L. Bird 
Places where the Graces are… (part one) July 23, 2011
Tags: awakening dreams, Calgary, Chinook, Grace Awakening, postaday2011, weather
Readers who aren’t from Calgary are going to be really confused about the weather described in Awakening Dreams. Weather in Calgary is complicated. Here’s a really good youTube video that explains the phenomenon of the Chinook, which brings warm, dry weather and can melt feet of snow in a few hours as temperatures soar to 21 Celsius (~70 Fahrenheit), as well as the reasons why there’s been snow in Calgary every month of the year!.
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