Category Archives: Uncategorized

And the Winner is…

Thank you to everyone who signed up for my newsletter and especially to everyone who entered the paperback giveaway! Please join me in congratulating the winner of my first-ever giveaway.

Congratulations Joni!

Photo by Tara Winstead on Pexels.com

There will be more opportunities to win in the future, so be sure to sign-up for my newsletter and follow me on Facebook to stay in the know!

Signing Preparations

Another great way to get your copy of Hidden Memory signed is to bring it to the Meeker Street Nerd Party. If you happen to be in the Kent, WA area, stop by and visit. I will have copies for sale, just in case yours does not arrive in time.

In the weeks since booking this signing gig, I have been planning like crazy. Books were only the first order on the agenda. I ordered fifty, just to be safe. Taking guesses on how many I will sell from my darkened corner of the store? I said two, while my brother guessed highest at thirteen. If I sell fifty, the fiftieth will only cost that person $5 in celebration!

In addition to paperbacks, I will have bookmarks and cool wax seal stickers as giveaways.

Look how great the seal stamp turned out!

I also designed a poster to display on my signing table. It will have my cover art along with some quotes from early reviews. (If you haven’t left a review on Amazon yet, it’s not too late! *Wink*) My only concern about the event is it goes through dinner time. I will have to remember to bring snacks along. I hope to see some of you locals there!

Coming Soon!

First, I have been told I should be more specific on the newsletter sign-up in relation to my blog. I have decided NOT to copy over the audience list from my blog subscribers to my newsletter. As such, if you are a subscriber here, you will need to actively sign up for my newsletter to receive it. You can do so below or on the homepage of my website.

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New Page

Now for the big news! I have released a new page on my website cleverly titled “My Books.” This has information on what is coming soon and my tentative release schedule for the rest of the series. It will evolve, with the pre-order link added in about a month when it goes live on Amazon and other changes as books are released. I am by no means a graphic or website designer, but I am pretty happy with how things are looking so far.

Check out my new page here: https://tiffanyshearn.com/my-books/

I’m at that nervous-excited stage of publication. Things are becoming more real every day, and there is so much left to do to release on time. Fortunately, the book is effectively complete. I am working on polishing front- and back-matter, but the story itself is wrapped. While it might not be perfect, all the advice I see is that at some point you have to stop polishing and release it.

I went to Fiverr to look for copy editors, and I was pleasantly surprised by how helpful everyone I spoke with about this was. Whether I went with them or not, all provided advice on the entire process of selecting editors, which was very helpful for this first-time author. They were all great communicators and answered all of my, probably repetitious for them, questions. Based on my needs, I ended up working with Maxine Meyers she had some great reviews, and I am happy with the results.

The next few weeks are going to be looking into various author pages on sites like Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub, etc., so hopefully, the existing publication info tides you over for a bit until I have that learning to share. It will probably be random life bits for a week or two.

Three months to go! I should start a countdown!

Introducing Tiffany

My name is Tiffany Shearn, and I am an author.

The published part of being an author is still in-work, but I’m getting so close to jumping the last hurdles and putting my work out there. I started this blog to share my journey.

I have a full-length novel written, so what is next? I will admit I am still learning this part, but my list right now is:

  • Beta readers.
  • Copy editor.
  • Cover art.
  • Publication

This is where it gets scary. You put so much of yourself into work that you love, it is difficult to receive the constructive feedback you need to take your work to the next level. I love my story, and I love how it has evolved as I have grown, but it is at the point where I want to share it, and I want it to be good enough to share.

I have always had an active imagination, drifting off into worlds all my own. In college I started writing these ideas down simply so they would not keep distracting me from the much less interesting lectures. That is all they were at first. Ideas. Vague concepts that floated on the pages without much substance holding them together.

I don’t know the moment I decided to weave in the threads of a story, or when that story became a world with people I wanted to know. Now here we are, ready to move forward one more time.

As this is about introducing me as well as my work, I should share some of my background. I was born and raised in the Puget Sound (Washington State, USA) and have stayed here all my life. I love traveling, but this area has so much variety to offer and limited poisonous creatures, so I always want to return home.

I work in Finance and have now worked at two of the big employers in the area. The numbers and problem solver are my favorite parts of the job, and I have worked with some great people over the years. Big business office politics can drive me bonkers, but no job is perfect. You try to focus on the parts you love.

Some of my hobbies other than writing:

  • Reading. I am a fan of the fantasy genre primarily, but I also dabble in mystery, romance, and science fiction.
  • Attending soccer games – Go Sounders!
  • Playing Dungeons & Dragons with our friends. I play in my husband’s game and he plays in mine.
  • Ziplining. Okay, this one is not exactly a hobby, but we try to go once on every vacation if there is one locally.

Right now, I have two aspirations. One is to publish my book, so I’m working on sharing my personal story and working through the steps to sharing my literary story. A second is to go in to finance counseling. I love numbers and budgeting, and I would love to be able to offer these skills to people who can benefit most from them. Helping someone get out of debt or buy a first house would be as great as seeing my name on the cover of a book.

I will keep you in the loop on all of this as the weeks fly by, and I hope more people join along the way.