I Have Finally ARRIVED!

I received a google alert for my book title, The Edge of Memory, this morning. The link led to a chatboard discussion comparing various social networking sites.

At first, I thought the alert was related to the series of Social Networking posts I’ve started on the Querytracker Blog. But then I remembered the flag was on my book title, not my name. So I followed the link and snooped around.

Hmmm… nothing about me or my book that I could see… just someone complaining that he didn’t have enough memory to run a particular social networking site.

And then I saw it. My book title, linking to my ABNA entry.

That’s right. Thanks to Amazon.com, I’ve become a stealth ad, triggered by the keyword memory.

Awesome.

Geekiness to Spare

A long time ago, I celebrated my uber-geekiness here when I discovered how to use Palm Markup Language to create my own ebooks with formatting, table of contents, etc.

I love having a copy of my manuscript handy on my palm pilot, and I love reading my crit partners’ manuscripts on the go this way. Ebooks also display nicely on the PC (with ereader) when I’m only looking to read, as opposed to adding comment. I like to read manuscripts I’m critting through once for big-picture feel, then I go back in Word with track changes and all. 😉

Anyway… ebooks=highly cool. Since I posted last May, I’d been planning to post a tutorial so that other folks could make their manuscripts into formatted ebooks. Last night, I finally sat down to write it up.

And I discovered it wasn’t necessary. The geek requirement has been dramatically decreased by a super-easy program called “Publish Ebook“. Seriously, you can do this without a smidge of geekiness whatsoever.

If you have ereader installed on your computer, handheld, phone, or whatever, you’ll be able to read your manuscript. The files are tiny, too, so you can store a lot of them even on devices without much memory.

Here’s my ebook for The Edge of Memory displaying on my PC.

It has a clickable Table of Contents and everything.

In other news, my blog stats show that someone is searching for “Heather Dyer UIUC” and “Heather Dyer poetry”. So if you’re looking for the quirky bio major and Linsey-Woolsey Lit Magazine staffer who wore bell bottoms and was often the only person dancing at O’Malley’s (despite sticking to diet coke all night), you’ve found the right person. 🙂

And either way, thanks for stopping by.

Hmmm… Is Sarah Palin Watching My Book Trailer?

My book trailer is posted on youtube.  Along with a shorter version.

I’ve discovered you can view various stats on your videos when you post them.

For my original book trailer, I have viewers from about 20 states so far, but mostly it’s just one or two random views.  Most of my viewers, naturally, are in Illinois.

But today I peeked at my stats and was quite surprised to see that Alaska is coming in as a strong number two.  I have half as many viewers from Alaska as from Illinois, and that’s including myself in the Illinois group (I haven’t found a way to copy the code for my video without accidentally triggering a “visit”)

I don’t know ANYONE in Alaska.  I don’t even know OF anybody in Alaska, except for the Palin family.

So… what other explanation is there?

Two Minutes of Your Time–

I decided that the original mock-up trailer I made was a bit too long.  So, I’ve edited to just under the 2:30-minute mark. 

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In Deep Smit (7/25)

It’s Friday again!

This week I am in deep smit with HarperCollins. No, they have not expressed any desire to buy The Edge of Memory. I’m sure they’ve never heard of me or my novel.

So why am I smitten with them this week? I’ve recently learned that they re-released a favorite novel of mine that has been out of print since, well, as long as I can remember.

The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread is the story of a nine-year-old boy in Cleveland in 1944, who tries to prove his worth to himself by journeying across the city alone to visit his best friend. He arrives there seconds before the gas tank explosion and is faced with the challenge of saving himself, his little sister, and a number of other characters he happens to encounter.

I’m delighted that this book is finally back in print. Yay, HarperCollins!!

So, I was just minding my own business…

when suddenly, without warning, I became an aspiring novelist.

I have toyed with various ideas for novels all my life… most often when I am driving by myself. So with my newish job came a longer commute and so more time was spent daydreaming about what I would write if I wrote books.

These ideas were of the vague, “Someday” sort.

Until a couple weeks ago.

Since then I have written 17 chapters. So, yay, me!

I am hoping to finish the first draft before the end of the year. So wish me luck!