There’s a recipe, if you will, to creating a book and getting it ready for self-publication. The fun part is creating the characters and settings, plotting the story line, putting words and actions into the narrative. Then comes editing. Revisions. Decisions about covers–which can be fun because it means looking through lots of stock photos, which can also be kind of boring and/or frustrating if you don’t know exactly whay you and/or your cover artist is looking for. There’s the dreaded blurb. I hate writing blurbs. I suck at it. Luckily, I have a friend who is pretty darn good at it and she freely gives me advice. Yay. There’s formatting invovled. Front matter. Back matter–which has to be constant updated each time you release a new book (more about that in a sec). Table of contents for digital. Page numbers and header content for print.

Updating book lists hopefully just got easier. I wasn’t sure the link would hold up on the ‘Zon because they want their links but evidently, they don’t have a problem with a universal link, which works as a landing page for a series. This is especially helpful for an on-going series. You just have to update the title in the list and have that universal landing page as the link for the series title. In my case, I’m using reader lists on Books2Read. If you click on the link, it takes you to a caroursel that shows the cover of each book. Click on it and boom–you go to the book page and find links to every story where the book can be baught. Yay! With 50+ books out there, the thought of having to update the back matter in each book? Uhm…nope! I’d never write another book. It’s also easy to update on my website. Want to see how it works? Since RESCUE MOON is now available a few places for preorder, and since I remember to add it to the carousel, give it a shot. CLICK HERE. And while you’re there, grab RESCUE MOON or one of the other Moonstruck Wolf books that are out.

In other publishing news, I’m on track to get the other 3 books ready and uploaded for preorders in quick order. SEAL MOON has a planned release of September 24, ASSASSIN’S MOON on October 3, and UNDER THE ASSASIN’S MOON on October 10. Depending on when I get them uploaded, they’ll have varying lengths of time to preorder.

Now, why do I need to be rescued? Because I hate all the “technical” stuff involved with self-publishing. And the marketing, which I totally suck at. This is why I was a liberal arts major instead of business. Anyway, it also didn’t help that the ‘Zon has “updated” their upload process. I had a ranging headabhe by the time I was finished Sunday. Luckily, a win by my Cardnials and a long nap cured the pain.

So we’ve talked tiltes. Let’s talk treats. To help with the headache, I grabbed a box of Cheez-Its Snack Mix because I’m too lazy to make my own Chex Mix (you know, with Chex cereal, Worchestire sauce, butter, etc.?). That said, when I do, I tend to go overboard. Like the original recipe, I use Rice, Corn,  Wheat Chex. plus  I use pretzel sticks and mini pretzel bows. I throw in peanusts, pecans and cashews rather than mixed nuts, because those are my favorite nuts. Then I add Cheetos–puffs, balls, and crunchy. Can’t ever have too many Cheetos! And bagel chips, because those are in the original recipe. So yeah, I have to up the butter and Worchesthire to cover everything. Here’s a LINK for the original Chex Mix recipe. Who else is a fan of Chex/Snack Mix? Do you make your own? What ingredients to you add? And can you stop eating it before the bowl is empty?