Dawn Judd - Author

 I'm sure some of you are wondering where I went. I was so excited about working on Eternal and getting it finished and then crickets. Well, I have a really good excuse. My daughter just got married, and the last few months have really taken up my time as I was helping her prepare for the wedding.  I worked extra hours so as to have enough money to cover expenses and whatever free time I had, I use to help her with whatever needed to be done.  While I'm sure those of you who are waiting for this book to come out or not excited about that, I am excited to say that the wedding was beautiful and it was worth all the hard work we put into it. Now that that's over with, I'm hoping to get back to work on the book. However, I will warn you all, I also have a new grandbaby on the way. But I promise I will continue to keep working on my manuscript.

 I hit 46,000 words today.  I'm so close to being done with the second draft.  I CAN'T wait!!!!  I have my beta readers lined up.  I still need to contact my editor.  I'm really hoping this will be ready to send to the publisher by the end of June.  

 Before I start, I just want to say that this is not set in stone yet. A lot of things have to happen first.  I've been talking to the founder of KAP and some of the other authors that are members.  I am thinking about going back for the fall faire.  It's been six years since I last attended.  They invite me every year, but there's a lot that needs to happen for me to go.  First off, it's an eight hour drive.  I don't do so well in the car these days.  My nerve damage is at an all time high, and some of my medications make driving a nightmare.  But I'm willing to try to do it if I can work everything else out.  I work every other weekend at my job, and with my current schedule the weekend of the faire just so happens to be the weekend I'm supposed to work.  I will have used up all of my PTO by then, so the only way to get that weekend off is to be able to trade days with my coworkers.  One of my coworkers did say she would trad...

 A few weeks back I realized that the manuscript to My Zombie Body was not in any of my drives, nor was it saved on my computer anywhere.  I began to panic, thinking I accidentally deleted it somehow.  It's been a while since I worked on it, so I couldn't remember which drive it would've even been in.  The next day it occurred to me that I never actually typed it out on the computer.  The whole thing was handwritten in a notebook.  Even more panic, because I had no idea where that notebook was.  I even remembered that at the time I was writing it, I had taken it into my office to start typing it, but had to go do something else.  When I finally had time to go work on it, I couldn't find it.  My office is also my craft room, so things get moved around in there all the time.  Now, it's been well over a year since it disappeared and it's never turned up, so I was beginning to think maybe the notebook got thrown out, or packed away in a box ...

If You Love a Book Author and Want to Help Them ...18 Ways to Help a Book Author You Love Eileen Flanagan, author of The Wisdom to Know the Difference , wrote a blog post about a year ago telling friends of book authors how they could help the author sell more books.  Here are some of the highlights of her help list, along with comments from some other authors, providing a few more ways that friends can help book authors to sell more books. If you have a friend who is a book author, please use these suggestions to help them out. If you are a book author, please share this page with your friends (so they can help you out). 1. Buy your friend's book. Encourage other friends to buy the book. Go to your local library or bookstore and encourage them to buy the book. Buy books as gifts. 2. Don't put off buying the book. Don't wait for the holidays to buy the book as a gift. First, the sooner you buy, the more confidence you'll inspire in your friend. Second, media and other...

 I have started the process of adding the new covers to my kindle titles.  KDP has approved them, but currently when you go to Amazon, they are still showing the old covers.  I will not be updating the covers to the paperback book until the store is redone in third person. Naturally, I won't be working on that until I've finished the final edit of Eternal and have sent that over for publication. (Soon, I hope!)  I will also be working on making a hardcover edition as well, but again, not until the rewrite is done.  I will post again when all the changes have been processed and are available on Amazon.  I will also be ordering copies when the new versions are ready, so autographed copies will also be available.  

 After some long consideration, I decided that with the new covers for the network series that I will not be using the ones that I posted recently. Several people that I talked to said that I need to stick with the black and white and red covers because it's branding for that series. So what I've decided to do instead is use new images for the covers and stick with the black and white and red theme. So these are the new covers that my daughter and I have come up with. I do like these better. I know they don't have the book Numbers on the front but they will be on the binding.

 There were a few more covers that have had makeovers.  I wanted to update the formatting on these two and realized that I didn't save the original files.  I no longer remember where I purchased the photos, so I can't just go back and repurchase them.  So I have found new photos that have the same vibe.  I'm sad to lose my old covers, but I do like the new ones.  They have me all excited to finish the manuscripts on all of them.

I announced this one on my FB page a while back, but I don't think I ever made an official announcement.  One of the other manuscripts I've been working on is My Zombie Body.  It's obviously a zombie book, but this one is a little bit more fun.  I hope to finish that one right after the Network series is completed.  If you've popped over to my book page, you've already seen the cover art for it, but I'll post it here as well.  It's a little corny, but so is the story itself, and I love it.  I hope you guys do too!

Since the writing bug has bit me and I have been working hard on my manuscripts, I've been getting things ready for when it's time to publish each one.  Unfortunately some things have come up that put a wrench into everything.  This particular one has to do with the Tonga series.  When I originally purchased the cover image for the first book, I intended to buy another image from the same artist for book two.  They went together so well and it fit the story for the second book.  So here's where the problem arises.  I've been working on that book for so long that it's been six years since I bought the cover art for book one.  I went back to order the artwork for book two and found out that the price on it has skyrocketed.  I was crushed.  I loved it so much, but it's too much.  If it was for an entire cover, I could see putting the money into it.  But it was just the image.  I know, artists have to eat too, but this girl is brok...

 As I mentioned previously, I will be working on adding things to the new site each day.  One of the things I plan on doing is bringing content from the other sites over to this one.  They will be dated for when they were originally posted, so you will have to go to older posts to see them as they are added.  Hopefully it won't take long to get everything moved over.  I know this site isn't as nice as the old one, but I have a lot more control over this one, and will be able to update it a lot more often.  So stay tuned!!

 I have thought about this for a while now and finally made a decision.  I've never liked that Reining In and Phantom Rising are written in first person format.  Eternal is being written in third person format and I like it so much better.  Sooooo, I will be rewriting Reining In and Phantom Rising in a third person format.  Don't worry, the story isn't changing, except a few small details to help with continuity.  The story itself will not change; just the format. It has also been suggested to me to update the covers.  Since I have never found a cover I liked for Eternal (except on that I couldn't get in contact with the artist for permission) I decided to look into updating all four covers.  Here is a mock up of all four.  A few changes will be made before I use them, but please let me know what you think.  I've also decided to change the name of the last book.  Instead of Bloodlines, it is now Broken.  I think it fits the sto...

 I will be posting several announcements over the next few days and weeks.  The first being that, as you can see, I have a new website.  I went to update my current site, and found out the site host has raised their prices once again.  Not only would I be charged more, but I would have to upgrade my subscription just to keep what I already have, and I cannot update it.  I can't keep up with it. So I made the decision to move everything over here.  I will continue to work on it over the next several weeks, time permitting.  And I say that, because almost all of my free time has been spent working on book 3 in the Network series.  I know, it's been a long time coming.  But it will be worth the wait.  I finished the rough draft last week, and I'm currently half way through the 2nd draft.  I'm hoping to have it ready for my beta readers and editor very soon.  So stay tuned.  There are lots more updates coming.  (and here ...