Let me crow about my successes with Kindle Vella so far this year! First, Amazon just gave me a bonus that was FOUR TIMES more than the previous month. Wow. To say I was delighted is an understatement.  Second, I now have one completed middle grade reader published. Princess Willy Be is still #26 in Top Children's Stories. Read Here I will complete a 28-chapter romance novella this week. It's the prequel to the Morristown Murder Mystery series that will publish next, and I plan to repackage it as a regular eBook to give as a free promotion when the mystery title releases. Read Here I have also started revising and publishing, episode (chapter) by episode, my 2017 NaNoWriMo novel, which is mostly just being tweaked by chapter to make shorter, more readable episodes.  Read Here I am once again a published author. Yay, me! And, apparently, I write in very short paragraphs now. 😁 At this point in my life, it all seems like a miracle. So... money + publication = a Kindle Vella p

A friend on Twitter recently commented about how excited she was about her first sale of a short story, and that reminded me of the thrill I had at my first major sale. I'd been writing for a couple of newspapers already, but when Lady's Circle published "A String of Pearls" and sent me a check for a whopping $125, I felt like I'd finally made it to the big time. One of my newspaper gigs at that time was penning a weekly humor column, and of course, I had to write about the experience. The following is just a bit of that nonsense ..er, week's offering.  When I sold my first short story to a major magazine my family joined me in the excitement, and we were all happily playing Howard Hughes around here for a while. My husband started planning his retirement. The kids started picking out houses in the country. And I had visions of never having to look at another price tag again before buying a pair of jeans.  Meanwhile I had not even cashed the check yet. I was a

Episode 01 - Fools & Sages Transcript and links: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening – wherever you are in the world. Welcome to the brand new Blood-Red Pencil podcast. If you’re not going to launch something new in January, then what better time to start than a month that’s… NOT January. I’m Elle Carter Neal , the (sort-of) techie, behind-the-scenes, admin person here at the Blood-Red Pencil, and now behind the mic as the host of this podcast. I’m in Australia, while the rest of our team currently operate from the US. Please leave us a comment and let us know where in the world YOU are joining us from. We love to connect with you. Our theme for April is Fools and Sages, and, while we do enjoy entertaining you with a little foolishness, we hope that, after 14 years of blogging at the Blood-Red Pencil, what we have to offer is a whole lot of writing and editing wisdom. The wisest piece of advice anyone could give or follow is simply “Be kind”. Be kind, be generous, take care