Bestselling Author Sharon Michaels

It’s October and I have two fun cozy fictions staring Oscar the Doxie Detective available free on Kindle Unlimited. In fact, both stories take place during the month of October.

I’m often asked how I come up with ideas for my books and short stories. Here’s a behind the scenes look at A Collection of Fun Short Reads From Oscar the Doxie Detective and his canine friends.

When I began writing the four books in an Oscar the Doxie Detective cozy mystery series, I wrote little biographies for the main and secondary characters. As I grew to know each character better, little stories about their lives began percolating in my imagination. That’s how the ten fun stories in this collection came to be. Each story is written through the eyes of that character.

You’ll want to download your copy of this fun short reads collection featuring the canine and human characters you’ve gotten to know so well from the Oscar the Doxie Detective series.

Download your Kindle and/or free Kindle Unlimited copy here: Fun Short Reads From Oscar the Doxie Detective:and his canine friends
 
 

If I had to describe in one word what it’s like around our house fourteen days before the release of a new book, stress would definitely be the word.

I am an organized person. I write goals. I make lists. I have calendars. I still get stressed.

Here’s a look at how the two weeks prior to the August 29th release of Mending Broken Dreams: A Short Story played out at our house

Thursday, August 15, 2019: I printed off the entire story and started the first edits with my handy-dandy red pen. There were a lot of red marks, but that’s part of the process. I thought the ending needed a little tweaking. Woke up in the middle of the night working up a new ending and couldn’t fall back to sleep.

Friday, August 16, 2019: We decided to redo the covers of the previously published short stories, Mending Broken Hearts and Mending Broken Promises. My husband began the process of finding new art, deciding on fonts and colors and getting the first mock-ups ready. I figured if we were going to have new covers, I was going to add bonus content to the stories. During the afternoon I continued the first edits on Mending Broken Dreams and started fine-tuning the ending.

Saturday, August 17, 2019: By noon I handed off the revised first edits to my husband (along with the red pen). He’s in charge of checking for proper punctuation, grammar, story flow, etc. I took the rest of the afternoon off to binge watch Downton Abbey. (I’d never seen it and since it kept popping up on Amazon Prime, I finally gave in.)

Sunday, August 18, 2019: Got the revised edits back and started my second round of line-by-line edits. We also began fine-tuning the new covers. Brought food in from Cracker Barrel – no time to cook.

Monday, August 19, 2019: Gave the revised second draft to my husband for proofing. This time to make sure there were no missing words, etc. Finalized the new book covers.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019: Started editing the Bonus Content for all three stories. Began one more round of edits (and hopefully for the final time) on Mending Broken Dreams. Felt like everything was coming together nicely, including the tweaked ending.  It was Pizza Tuesday at our local pizza place. You’re right, we had pizza for supper.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019: We made a final pass through the Bonus Content and finalized edits for Mending Broken Dreams. Not so many red marks this time – only one or two. We were both amazed at how the mind and eyes fill in missing words.

Thursday, August 22, 2019: Stress started kicking in big time. I began the Kindle formatting of the new book and revised the formatting of the previous two books. It took all day. I had to check and double check that the right things were in the right places. My husband made dinner – chicken fingers and mashed potatoes – we had a real home cooked meal.

Friday, August 23, 2019: Uploaded to Amazon the revisions and Bonus Content for Mending Broken Hearts and Mending Broken Promises along with the new covers. Double checked the key words and categories and set the three books to be classified as a trilogy. Uploaded Mending Broken Dreams and wrote a description for the Amazon sales page (sometimes I think writing the book description is harder than writing the entire book). Had to fix some spacing, but all and all everything went well.

Saturday, August 24, 2019: I celebrated the completion of my writing and publishing goal by binge watching more episodes of Downton Abbey. In just two binge watching sessions, I made it all the way to season five.

There’s my life in a nutshell during the two weeks leading up to publishing my newest book on Amazon.

You’ll want to download your copy of Mending Broken Dreams: A Short Story today. Here’s the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WWHRZSD

A review on Amazon is always appreciated. Thank you.

Let me know what you think of the new Mending Broken Hearts and Mending Broken Promises covers too. If you already have these two books on your Kindle, Kindle will automatically update them with the new Bonus Content and revised covers.