KYRA HALLAND
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Books
    • Daughter of the Wildings >
      • The World of Daughter of the Wildings
      • Map of The Wildings
      • Map of Bitterbush Springs
      • Beneath the Canyons Sample
    • Defenders of the Wildings >
      • Mages' Home Sample
    • Mage of Storm and Sea
    • Tales of Tehovir >
      • Chosen of Azara >
        • Cast of Characters-Chosen of Azara
        • Reviews of Chosen of Azara
        • Chosen of Azara Sample
      • Source-Breaker >
        • Source-Breaker Sample
      • Heir of Tanaris >
        • Heir of Tanaris Sample
      • Map of Tehovir
    • Urdaisunia >
      • Cast of Characters-Urdaisunia
      • Map-Urdaisunia
      • Reviews of Urdaisunia
      • Urdaisunia Sample
    • The Lost Book of Anggird >
      • Reviews of The Lost Book of Anggird
      • Lost Book of Anggird Sample
    • Sarya's Song >
      • Sarya's Song Sample
      • Sarya's Song Glossary
    • Short Fiction
    • Boxed Sets
    • Still to come...
  • Read Right Here!
    • Home on the Range
  • About
    • FAQs
    • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Email Signup

Kyra Halland

Strong Women, Honorable Men, Worlds of Magic

May 2016 wrap-up: ouch, arg, yay

6/13/2016

0 Comments

 
So those three words (ouch, arg, and yay are words, right?) pretty much sum up May, or at least the last half and the first part of June.

For starters, sometime around May 18 I did something to my back. It started with stiffness, then progressed to pain and spasms so bad I would lie awake in bed at night, unable to sleep, crying because it hurt so bad. What was worse, we were supposed to go take care of our 3-year-old granddaughter for a few days (more on that in the "yay" section) and I just didn't see how I could do it, in as much pain as I was having. It also made it very hard to concentrate on getting any work done. I knew it was just muscular strain, most likely a combination of new shoes that weren't right for me and some awkward bending, but wow, it really hurt. Finally, the day before we were going out of town to tend Kylie, I did a search on stretches to help with back spasms, and found a site with some things that looked helpful. There was also a book, a $5 Kindle download, so I bought it and tried the first few stretches, and wow. I hesitate to say "miracle cure," but after I did just those first beginning stretches the pain was sooo much better and as I continued with the program my pain went away. The site is here: lowbackpainprogram.com. Of course, I'm not a medical professional and if you're experiencing unusual, severe, or persistent pain you should see a doctor, but for simple muscle tightness and strain, I wanted to share what really helped me.

So that's the "ouch" part and, fortunately, it's much better now. As for the "arg," I spent the second half of May (and some of it is still ongoing) wrestling with some frustrating problems.

First off, I was horrified to discover that on certain Kindle devices and apps (that use the new Enhanced Typesetting), all the paragraph indents were stripped out in all my books published since Nov. 2014, including the entire Daughter of the Wildings series and the two box sets I've released, Love and Magic and Daughter of the Wildings Books 1-3. I was absolutely mortified to see how terrible this looked. When my readers pay their good money for my books, even if it's only 99 cents, they expect and deserve the highest-quality, most professional product I'm capable of providing. And a book with no paragraph indents does not meet that standard. With some detective work and some help from the good people at the Kboards Writers Cafe, I discovered where in my formatting process the problem was coming from, a program I use that apparently doesn't play nicely with the Enhanced Typesetting. Fortunately, it's a step in the process that, it turns out, is unnecessary; I was afraid it was a problem in my html coding and that I would have to re-do all my coding or change my formatting process completely. But all I had to do was run my html files through my process again, leaving off that last, unnecessary step, and everything turned out fine. Then I had to re-upload everything and get Kindle Direct Publishing to make the new files available to customers who've already bought the books, which kind of turned into its own comedy of errors (somehow, some of my correspondence got handed off to CreateSpace, which does paper books, not Kindle books >.>) and I lost a lot of writing time wrestling with all of it, but it eventually all worked out.

If you bought any of those books from Amazon and had an unsatisfactory reading experience because of the paragraph indent problem, you should be able to delete the book(s) from your device (NOT from your Amazon account!) and re-download it to get the corrected file. But apparently Amazon considers a complete lack of paragraph indents to be a "minor" quality problem <.< and so won't automatically push the corrected file to people who bought it.

Then, while I was dealing with that, I noticed some suspicious activity with the fanworks archive site I own. I couldn't track down what exactly was going on, and the only help I got from my hosting company was "change your password." >.> I ended up moving the site to private hosting owned by my older son and his wife (I trust them with my site security more than the company it used to be hosted with), but I'm still getting the domain name and pointing sorted out.

And, this whole time, I've really been wrestling with the second Daughter of the Wildings series. I was going merrily on my way, well into the third book (of a projected five), then I realized I was bored and unhappy with what I was writing. The magic and fun of the first series just weren't there. Some serious thought on the matter revealed a couple of problems. Mainly, I've been very concerned with some current social and political issues, and that was making a heavy appearance in the stories. I don't try to keep my books entirely free of my basic convictions and world view, but pounding on issues the way I was doing, making the books *about* them, does not make for good books. It was sucking all the life out of the books. I also realized that the fun of the Old West setting, the magic, and the Silas-Lainie relationship were all missing as I was telling this bare-bones story that was, really, just a thinly-disguised rant on the issues I was concerned about.

So I refocused on what the Wildings books are really all about, magic, adventure, and romance in a fantasy world inspired by the Old West, made note of the stuff I needed to change, and set aside what I had of book 3 and started over (I didn't change anything in books 1 or 2, just made notes on what to change, in case I changed my mind again. Which turns out was a good thing <.<).

But I was still unhappy with it; now Silas and Lainie were all whiny and depressed because everything was awful and all these terrible things were happening to them. Which brought out the other major flaw in what I was writing. Silas and Lainie weren't *doing* anything. Things were just happening to them and they were just going with the flow, whining and moping and feeling guilty and depressed about it. Which, you know, maybe you win literary awards for stuff like that, but I can't stand reading or writing it.

So, finally, last Friday and Saturday, I sat down and rewrote the entire series summary, looking for the flaws in the plotting, where I was making things happen just for the sake of having something - anything! - happen and where I needed to focus on the heart and soul, the reason for being, of the Wildings books, and re-outlined the entire series beginning to end. The good news is, I'm not going to have to throw out everything; most of book 2 is still good (though with severe editing for political ranting), but the whole second half of book 1 has to be pretty much rewritten, and while the basic structure of book 3 is okay, the characterizations and reasons why things happen have to be totally redone. The bad news is there's a lot of work to be done to get back up to speed, and it's going to make my daily word-count tracking more complicated, since I'll be doing a combination of copy-and-paste (can't stand rewriting material I've already written if it's at all usable) and writing new material. But I finally feel better about where this series is going, and excited about it again.
Picture
And now for the "yay" part. First off, I've been invited to participate in some projects that I'm really excited about. They're still in the early planning stages, so I don't want to give any details yet, but I promise you'll hear all about it when the time comes :D

Even better, I mentioned earlier that we went out of town to help take care of our 3-year-old granddaughter for a few days. Well, the reason we went and did that was because her mommy was in the hospital with a new baby! Our second granddaughter (first one born to us; her older sister came to us when our older son married her mommy, and hopefully the adoption procedings will go through soon) was born two weeks ago. Her name is Lily Dawn, and she is absolutely adorable, just like her big sister. Between taking care of Kylie and helping out at the hospital (our d-i-l had a c-section and had to stay a few extra days; she had a rough couple of days, and she'd had serious complications after her first baby so my son was really concerned and wanted to make sure she was never left alone at the hospital) I'm still pretty worn out, but it was worth it. It was really fun, and wonderful to welcome this precious new child to the family.

Hopefully (knock on wood), things will settle down now and I can start getting some more work done. I've got a series to re-write, two books to revise, edit, and release, and a short-story collection I'm getting ready to publish (have been for the last month >.>). We've got a big week-long out-of-town family reunion coming up later this summer which is looming menacingly over me (I don't travel well, especially when flying is involved, and I love my family but don't have a lot of energy for too much togetherness) but in the meantime I will try to ignore it and get back on track with my writing routine and schedule.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I am Kyra Halland, author of tales of fantasy, heroism, and romance.
    Welcome to my worlds.

    Follow me on BookBub
    Follow me on Goodreads

    Sign up for my email list

    RSS Feed

    My Books

    Daughter of the Wildings
    Beneath the Canyons
    Bad Hunting
    The Rancher's Daughter
    To the Gap
    City of Mages Cover
    For the Wildings cover
    Daughter of the Wildings Books 1-3
    Daughter of the Wildings: The Complete Series
    Defenders of the Wildings
    Mages' Home
    Mages' Exile
    Mages' Uprising
    Defenders of the Wildings: The Complete Series
    Mage of Storm and Sea
    Tales of Tehovir
    Chosen of Azara
    Source-Breaker
    The Warrior and the Holy Man
    The Brilliant Career of Sajur Golu
    Tales of the Source-Breakers
    More Books
    Urdaisunia
    Love and Magic Box Set
    A Cure for Nel and Other Stories
    Mistress of the Mirror and Other Stories
    Click on the covers for more information

    Categories

    All
    Book Extras
    Creative Inspiration
    Fantasy
    Geekery
    Guest Features
    Musings
    News
    Reading Corner
    Romance
    Saryas Song
    Self Publishing
    Sneak Peeks
    Tales Of Tehovir
    The Lost Book Of Anggird
    Urdaisunia
    Weird Western
    Wildings Saga
    Writing Life

    Archives

    January 2023
    October 2022
    September 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    February 2021
    October 2020
    July 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Kyra Halland: Welcome to My Worlds is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

    Other links on this site may also lead to products for which the owner may receive compensation.

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies
Kyra Halland: Welcome to My Worlds is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Other links on this site may also lead to products for which the owner may receive compensation.

This site uses StatCounter cookies to track page views, link clicks, and other information useful for running this site. To decline StatCounter cookies, click here.

Privacy Policy   FAQs

Proudly powered by Weebly
Photo used under Creative Commons from Brett Jordan
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Books
    • Daughter of the Wildings >
      • The World of Daughter of the Wildings
      • Map of The Wildings
      • Map of Bitterbush Springs
      • Beneath the Canyons Sample
    • Defenders of the Wildings >
      • Mages' Home Sample
    • Mage of Storm and Sea
    • Tales of Tehovir >
      • Chosen of Azara >
        • Cast of Characters-Chosen of Azara
        • Reviews of Chosen of Azara
        • Chosen of Azara Sample
      • Source-Breaker >
        • Source-Breaker Sample
      • Heir of Tanaris >
        • Heir of Tanaris Sample
      • Map of Tehovir
    • Urdaisunia >
      • Cast of Characters-Urdaisunia
      • Map-Urdaisunia
      • Reviews of Urdaisunia
      • Urdaisunia Sample
    • The Lost Book of Anggird >
      • Reviews of The Lost Book of Anggird
      • Lost Book of Anggird Sample
    • Sarya's Song >
      • Sarya's Song Sample
      • Sarya's Song Glossary
    • Short Fiction
    • Boxed Sets
    • Still to come...
  • Read Right Here!
    • Home on the Range
  • About
    • FAQs
    • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Email Signup