BOTTLE CAP PINS! EASY! FUN! CHEAP!

One of my first bottle cap pins with the title of my mystery novel.

Bottle cap jewelry is a blast to make. I discovered quite by accident, while researching what to do at my craft sessions at the Bouchercon conference this year. What could up to 30 people make in less than an hour? Answer: see above. Then I realized that bottle cap pieces could be wonderful as gifts for all sorts of occasions. Each unique. A baby shower? Give a bottle cap pin with the photo of the new mom as a baby! Maybe pins for all the attendees! How about making a bunch of Christmas bottle cap ornaments? Give out a bottle cap magnet for a Halloween treat! A project for your child's class? The limit is your imagination.

This post is a quick and dirty primer to making these.

First, the materials: I would suggest going to either Beadaholique or Amazon for these supplies:
50 Mixed Color Bottle Caps Craft Scrapbook Jewelry
1" Circle Epoxy Stickers For Bottle Cap Pendants 
EK Success Papers Shapers Nesting Punch 1" (or any other brand, as long as 1")
Glue Dots Super Strength Multi-Use 1/2" dots

Images:
use photos, images from magazines and greeting cards, draw your own, stencil, use stamps, stickers, glue small objects that fit within the one inch circle, there are inexpensive bottle cap images for sale, or a combo of, well, whatever you want!

Yes, it is possible to do bottle caps the old fashioned way, cut out the image with a pair of scissors, recycle used bottle caps if not bent, glue and then use clear varnish on the top, but most of these supplies are inexpensive and if you're like me you'll keep coming up with new ideas for these things. And it makes it much faster and easier.

How to:
Take your 1" paper circle image and press it against a Glue Dot. Press the circle into the bottle cap. Holding by the edges, place a 1" Circle Epoxy Sticker on top. DONE Now you need to attach whatever to the back, whether it be a pin back, or hanger for pendants, or magnet. DONE.

Here's how I made a demi-parure of a pin and earrings using part of the cover image from The Mall Fairies: Exile (artist Kaytalin Platt, great cover art, so pretty!):

The arrows are for knowing how the images face because ...

...it's impossible to tell when they are face down!

Then I glued the pin back and earring pieces on and here I am wearing the finished product:

So simple and easy! Doing these at the craft sessions is going to be a blast!

And dear readers, do you have any craft projects like this? Would love to know!

Why Authors and Readers RULE the publishing world.

A short story in my tween fantasy series The Mall Fairies, released September 14. If you pre-order here, then it's only 79 cents! Cheap!

Yes, I just had to crow a little about this new release! However, it slips into my main subject of this post. Since several of my stories are being released from several different publishers in the next couple of months I've been going promo mad. Then I saw a post on an authors'  facebook group where another author asked, (I'm paraphrasing), "Isn't all this promo to other authors just belly button gazing? Does any of it reach the readers?"

And my answer is threefold.

First, authors are readers. I find all my reading off of social media now. And I read a lot.

Second, readers also follow a lot of this social media by authors. Why? For the simple reason that readers are fascinated by authors. I know I'm fascinated by other author's lives. 

And this brings me to the third point. It used to be that the only author's lives we could know about was the famous ones, and only read/buy a current release--but now authors and readers rule the publishing world! They can find out all about, everything (like a story being on sale if pre-ordered). 

I love this world of TMI. I've found lots of great reads! What about you, dear reader? What do you think? Do you love or hate this new world?

Colors Like Memories, A Review and Being God

Colors Like Memories is by Meradeth Houston, a YA fantasy about a member of the Sari, which are angels made up of babies born who never breathed before death. Julie, the Sari, struggles with her own overwhelming grief as she tries to keep a teen from suicide.

I read Colors Like Memories as a great break while I was prepping my workshop "Being God" for the Fandemonium conference. And reading it helped tremendously with the prep. Meradeth creates an excellent fantasy world with the right balance between the elements of the "real" world and the fantastic. Julie has abilities (and wings, I love wings) but she also has to eat and sleep--and has other human failings that are more important, the primary of which is that she's stuck in grief. Another excellent balance in the novel: the world was created with just enough back story and details for it to come alive, and not so much it bogged down this wonderful tale.

Reading Colors Like Memories reminded me to teach that one of the most important guidelines for being a god and creating your own world was to only provide necessary information at the point where the reader needs to know that information.This is true with whatever style of fiction you're writing.

Plus, it was an excellent read.

So, dear writers, what other ways can we be good gods (and goddesses) of our worlds?

Being Fairy(ly) Unbalanced is Expensive

A Couple  of Glow in the Dark Fairies that I will be giving away at Fandemonium on top of one of my covers for The Mall Fairies: Exile.

I apologize for the stretch of a pun in my title. But it's accurate. What's happened to me since my 'tween novel has been released is ... well expensive. In a couple of different ways. Expensive in time first and foremost, not money. Okay, I'm a girl who loves fairies (obviously) and I believed writing about the fairies was the beginning and end of it. But I was wrong, very wrong. I've never considered myself much of a girly girl shopper--that was until I started thinking of ways to promote my title. Uh-oh. So many fairies and fairy related items, jewelry, clothing and ohmigosh, GLOW IN THE DARK FAIRIES. So cute! And I have the wonderful excuse--ahem--reason for shopping. For example, I'll be attaching one of these fairies to a postcard and giving them away at Fandemonium and Bouchercon and who knows where else.

But time spent shopping is not time spent writing the next in the trilogy. I remind myself often not to spend too much, but sometimes it's hard ...

So dear readers, do you have any thoughts, ideas or tips on how to go cheap? How not to get caught doing one more click on one more fairy-related item? I'd love to know!

A ROLLICKING GREAT READ

Maven Fairy Godmother is a fabulous, fun read. This is the kind of incredibly imaginative fantasy that I adore. A lip-smacker of an afternoon read, sit down with a big cup of tea (or if you're like Maven, coffee) and some fabulous chocolate and enjoy. I love how, with the advent of e-books we're getting so much more variety of reads--authors are taking chances!

Maven is a Mundane with a truly middle-aged mundane life. That is until she gets thrust into the world of fairy. There, the magical problems pile up, but Maven never falters--or rather never falters for long. She reminds me of my favorite teacher in high school, smart, tough, gentle and most of all, able to pierce the masks we all wear to bring forth our truest best selves.

Even though the main character is middle-aged, I don't believe this novel is only for a certain age group. Maven's close friend, Tulip, is much younger, and her struggles to become a fairy godmother echo Maven's own. I can see a wide age range enjoying Maven Fairy Godmother, from tween to ninety.

One last favorite about this title that I adore, parts of the ending is unexpected and surprising in many ways, but completely satisfying. More satisfying than a more standard novel would be. Again, I appreciate authors who step out of the box.

Author Pratfalls and Great Social Media Wars

This upcoming Tuesday, July 17th, I'll be giving the luncheon speech at the Idaho Writers Guild in Boise. My talk's all about the various mistakes all writers make. I know I've made every single one, a number of times. Most of the problem is that I'm an author and therefore neurotic and unbalanced--as in swinging from one extreme to the other.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the new world of social media. Every writer I know (including myself) swings from one extreme to the other. Part of the problem is that no one is certain what works the best with social media--is it SEO? Part of the problem is that social media seems to operate as virtual word of mouth, but which mouths and when? Us authors drive ourselves wild figuring that out.

The unbalance comes from not knowing how much is too much and wasted time and effort, or possibly even annoying), how much is enough (we want to sell ourselves and our titles), and how much is too little (my mom always said, "If you don't tell people that you have a book out to buy, they won't know.).

So what's a writer to do? Here's a tip from my talk:

ALWAYS REMEMBER THE WRITING COMES FIRST! Or as my wise mom said too, "You need something to sell, and the more product you have to sell the better." I'd add that having more than one piece of writing published is very useful too, for cross-marketing.

So everyone, keep writing!

Anybody got a secret to sell millions of books? Please share here! Anybody got a rant about the life of a writer nowadays? Share here!

Happy Fourth of July!

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

AN AMERICAN BEAUTY ROSE TO CELEBRATE

 

 My hope is that everyone today who is an American celebrates and is grateful for our freedoms. I'm grateful for the freedom to create whatever I wish, whenever I wish. I've been in countries where that freedom is not available and seen the culture and soul killing results.

Let's celebrate our freedoms and work to set those others free of tyranny.