Anna Dobritt — Author

Last week, I posted the last installment of my stream of consciousness serial, Road Kill. It ended up being substantial enough that it will be edited and published in book form at some point.

I really enjoyed writing it and it forced me to sit down and write at least 1,500 words of original material each week on a schedule.

I’m now introducing a new serial in a totally different genre. It’s a genre I really haven’t published much, sci-fi/supernatural, except in the form of short stories.  This story was inspired by a book that I read. I don’t want to reveal the inspiration yet, because I don’t want to give away too much of the story beyond this introductory chapter.

For now, I’ll just reveal Chapter 1 and look for your feedback.

Extra Innings – Inning 1, Out 1

 Triple A baseball is just one step below the…

This story will definitely become a book once it’s complete. I’m just not sure if it will stay in this first person narrative, or if I will rework it to be a 2nd novel in the Brad Rafferty series (the first being Blood Orange). If you have thoughts on this, please let me know.

In the meantime, here is the conclusion of this story, I hope you’ve enjoyed it. There will be another one coming that I have been cooking up for a while. It will be a totally different kind of story, but I think my blog is a good place to test out different types of writing.

Please enjoy this last installment of Road Kill. If you want to catch up on previous parts of the story, there are links at the end of this post.

Road Kill Part 32 – The Big Match

We now knew…

Your Best Marketing Tool – Write Your Next Book

This chapter is about the activity that most of us probably enjoy the least, marketing our work. This is more than just posts on Facebook and Twitter. This is the part of independent publishing that I dread and that is the most cumbersome. To say you are an independently published author really means that you are taking on two full-time jobs, that of a writer and of a publisher.

I’m sure most of us would just like to write and ignore the marketing. Unfortunately, if you want to gain exposure, this is an unavoidable aspect of what we do. For the mundane marketing tasks, such as posting to Facebook and other social media outlets, I try to be efficient without spamming social media. Social media does have the word social as part of it. Things like automation and cut and paste marketing…

The story is reaching it’s end. It’s apparent that I have enough to turn this into a book, possibly a continuation of the series started with Blood Orange. I’ve enjoyed posting this as a weekly serial and will be doing it again with another story that will be quite different from this one just to test the waters with a different genre.

Now, without further delay, please enjoy Road Kill Part 31. If you want to catch up on the previous parts, there are links to them at the end of this post.

Road Kill part 31 – The Stadium

About two minutes after Donovan left the room to head to Miami, Rafferty nodded at one of his men that had been lurking in the background and he left the room as well. It went without saying that he had put a tail on Donovan and that he didn’t…

Photo Credit: quoteaddicts.com

Your Fellow Authors are not Your Enemies

If you are like me, you are aware of the thousands of other authors that are in the self-publishing universe on social media platforms. We all belong to groups on Facebook and we promote our books, blogs, giveaways, and events. We start to see the same names over and over relentlessly touting our work.

As I first entered the independent publishing world, I viewed all of these authors as people that were competing for my readers. I wanted to out-promote and out-sell all of them.

Photo Credit: www.pinterest.com

Over the three years, however, my view has changed. Instead of viewing my fellow authors as competitors, I have come to think of them as fellow pioneers. I selected the word pioneer purposely. Early American pioneers didn’t compete against each other. The amount of land and natural resources available were abundant. Pioneers worked…

I’ve been reading a lot of Sherlock Holmes lately and it occurs to me that the style of narration in this story is similar. Most Sherlock Holmes stories were told from the perspective of his companion, Dr. John Watson. Watson, although peripherally involved in most stories, was not usually the main character and was simply the conveyor of the story in first person.

I’ve written this story this way and I’ve stuck with it. It’s not easy. I’ve tried not to have my narrator engage in active dialog and act as more of a storyteller. It’s been a great writing exercise.

As I look back on the the last 29 parts of this story, some parts have flowed easily, some not so much as i tried to get myself out of the corners I’ve painted myself into. As I approach the conclusion, however, I’ve found it difficult to wait a…