Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Current Project: The 90-Day Novel by Alan Watt

Hi, Jenna here!

For our current project, we are working with Alan Watt. Al is a sensational writing teacher, a great author, and a very entertaining fellow to boot. He has been teaching writing workshops in Los Angeles for several years now. I took one of his workshops, The 90-Day Novel, in 2008. I followed up with taking The 90-Day Rewrite.

I cannot stress how much these workshops changed my life as a writer.

I was beyond excited when Al told me he was working on a book version for each of his 90-day workshops (he has The 90-Day Screenplay also). When he posted on Facebook a few weeks ago looking for help formatting the Kindle version of The 90-Day Novel, I jumped in to help.

We've just finished the manuscript, and it will be available in a few days to download from Amazon!

Here is the cover:


















When it is live on Amazon, I'll post a review and link here to the book. It will be available in hard copy in a couple of weeks as well. I was so excited that I couldn't wait to post!

Meanwhile, you can find Al on his websites:

L. A. Writer's Lab has a wonderful free monthly newsletter with writing thoughts and tips, which are very useful and thought-provoking.

The 90-Day Novel features an excellent writing blog and information on the process.

Alan Watt has his visual art and 90-word stories submitted from various writers - don't miss these!

See you around!

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Welcome!

Welcome to the Lundeen Literary blog.

We are Gabriel & Jenna Lundeen, and we're going to do some wild, wonderful things in publishing.

Gabriel is a librarian, writer, and podcaster; Jenna is a waitress by trade, but also a writer. Both have experience building websites, marketing for businesses, and using creative thinking to get their business owners out of trouble. Gabriel also self-published a book before it was en vogue, and he did it the hard way!

We have a belief that current New York publishing does not currently have enough funds to put all the amazing authors that exist out there into print. We know that self-publishing has a nasty stigma, too, mainly thanks to some companies out there who are more interested in taking authors' hard-earned money and less interested in putting out good writing.

We have a few projects of our own, a few projects from some authors we know and respect, and a few experiments in mind where we can meet like-minded writers who need us just as much as we need them.

The first project will be an anthology of twisted fairy tales, and we have a wonderful author on board who won her first Nebula award this year! We'll have more on that soon, so expect to see anthology submission information here in the near future. The best part about this anthology is that we will be blogging the entire process, from start to finish.

You'll see how we found authors, what the contract looks like, reasons for selecting certain submissions, number of submissions received, the process of cover design, how to format a book, different ebook formats, submitting to different ebook markets, sales totals, payments as they come in, everything. What we hope to accomplish is to show exactly what it takes to publish on your own, and all the things you'll need to learn as you go. You'll hear our cautionary tales and see our triumphs, and we think you'll find it fun - it will definitely be instructional!

We will be offering our services as well: ebook formatting, marketing, consulting, and general assistance in publishing your work. We're still working on a pricing structure, but feel free to inquire if you would like to be one of our first clients. Email us at lundeenliterary at gmail dot com.

We hope to see you soon!