Sherry Leclerc's Blog

I have great news!

My book, A Realm of Seers and Shifters: A Trial of Kingdoms Book 1, will be released on April 30th!

The Kindle eBook is now available for pre-order. You can reserve your copy by clicking here: PREORDER

There will also be a pre-order giveaway!
Readers from Canada and the US who preorder their copies up to 11:59 am on April 29th can enter to win a signed paperback! All you need to to is go to the link, fill out an entry form, and upload your proof of purchase (can be a screen shot of your Amazon sales verification page). Just be sure no personal information, such as payment information, is visible.

Here is the link for the giveaway: GIVEAWAY

Also, there is still time to sign up to be a member of my Launch Team!

I will send you a FREE ARC version of the manuscript, and all you need to do is consider leaving an honest review here on Goodreads on or shortly after the launch date, or purchase the book on the launch date to leave a review on Amazon.

Here is the link to sign up for an ARC copy of A Realm of Seers and Shifters: ARC Copy

Book 1.5 of the series, Demons and Damsels: A Trial of Kingdoms Novelette, will be launching either on the same day or very soon afterwards. Book 2 of the series, A Tribe of Dragons and Dreamers, will be launching just 2 to 3 months later. Stay tuned for more details!

Please Note: A Realm of Seers and Shifters was previously published as The Guardians of Eastgate. It has been rewritten to include more than 15,000 extra words in added and expanded scenes. It has also been re-edited and rebranded, with a different cover, book title, series title, and series logo.

I can't wait to get this book out to you!

Sherry Leclerc

A Realm of Seers and Shifters: A Trial of Kingdoms Book 1

I have great news!

My book, A Realm of Seers and Shifters: A Trial of Kingdoms Book 1, will be released on April 30th!

The Kindle eBook is now available for pre-order. You can reserve your copy by clicking here: PREORDER

There will also be a pre-order giveaway!
Readers from Canada and the US who preorder their copies up to 11:59 am on April 29th can enter to win a signed paperback! All you need to to is go to the link, fill out an entry form, and upload your proof of purchase (can be a screen shot of your Amazon sales verification page). Just be sure to make sure no personal information, such as payment information, is visible.

Here is the link for the giveaway: GIVEAWAY

Also, there is still time to sign up to be a member of my Launch Team!

I will send you a FREE ARC version of the manuscript, and all you need to do is consider leaving an honest review here on Goodreads on or shortly after the launch date, or purchase the book on the launch date to leave a review on Amazon.

Here is the link to sign up for an ARC copy of A Realm of Seers and Shifters: ARC Copy

Book 1.5 of the series, Demons and Damsels: A Trial of Kingdoms Novelette, will be launching either on the same day or very soon afterwards. Book 2 of the series, A Tribe of Dragons and Dreamers, will be launching just 2 to 3 months later. Stay tuned for more details!

Please Note: A Realm of Seers and Shifters was previously published as The Guardians of Eastgate. It has been rewritten to include more than 15,000 extra words in added and expanded scenes. It has also been re-edited and rebranded, with a different cover, book title, series title, and series logo.

I can't wait to get this book out to you!

Sherry Leclerc

A Realm of Seers and Shifters: A Trial of Kingdoms Book 1

DATE: 2 April 2020

REVIEW: MAMA’S BOY by Dustin Lance Black

VERSION: Audiobook on Audible

GENRE: Memoir

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars

MAMA’S BOY is a heartfelt, emotional, and inspirational read.

Mama’s Boy by Dustin Lance Black is a memoir that spans three generations of the author’s family: from his grandmother Cokie to his mother Roseanna, then to Black and his brothers. It details some of the great difficulties they lived through and overcame, as well as some heartbreaking losses.

To be honest, I rarely read memoirs, but what I’d heard about this one intrigued me. I started with the audiobook since the paperback and hardcover versions weren’t yet available, and I’m very glad I did. The audiobook was narrated by the author himself which, in my opinion, was perfect for this book. His emotion was apparent as he read his family’s personal story and took the listener with him on their journey through some of the highs and lows of their lives.

Each generation of Black’s family had met with major obstacles and difficulties, from divorce, to childhood illness and disability, to poverty, to recognizing and fearing one’s own differences. Each difficulty they faced was met with strength, determination and indomitable spirit. When there were challenges they were unable to overcome, there was family—always there for each other and keeping each other strong.

In the end there was a little boy too timid to speak—who hid behind couches when there were visitors—who, bolstered by his mother’s strength and life lessons, grew up to find his voice and become a champion for one of this generation’s most important causes: equality.

Admittedly, I am an emotional reader (and movie watcher). I feel everything and laugh and cry my way through those books and films that pull me in. Yet, rarely, if ever, have I been as affected by a story as I was by Mama’s Boy. By the time I had finished listening to the audiobook, something inside me had shifted. I think it would be impossible not to feel changed in some way in the face of such struggles, strength, and acts of true human heroism.

Mama’s Boy is a truly inspirational story that left me with the desire to go out and make a difference in the world in deeper and more meaningful ways than I have thus far, just as the author’s mother, and the author himself, have done.

Even though I’ve already listened to the audiobook version, I purchased the hardcover as soon as it was available. It now has a spot in my small library, which I reserve for those books I know I will read and re-read. I have already started to read this written version.

Dustin Lance Black

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved the conversational tone of On Writing. It was almost like sitting and listening to King talk. The tone was relaxed and engaging, proving the point he makes in the book about the importance of language.

The first part of the book was a memoir outlining King's early life and his beginnings as a writer. As a new author myself, it was enlightening to read that even the great Stephen King was not an overnight sensation. He had many rejections, sold a few stories here and there. But he struggled for years: holding down a day job, raising a family and reading and writing whenever he could before he started making enough to live off his work. But he never gave up.

The second half of the book gives many insights for writing, editing and publishing. He gives a lot of useful information from the point of view of someone who's been there. It was encouraging for me to see that there were a couple of things he said that meshed with what I instinctively felt when I started writing with the intention to publish.

I don't want to give too much away. It's better if you read these things from King himself.

I've never been a big memoir fan in the past, but it was really helpful for me to read the memoir of another writer. Not just any writer, but Stephen King. I appreciated the personal stories he chose to share, as they showed that even the most sucessful writers start somewhere. Even the most successful writers struggle sometimes. But if you're writing from the right place with the right intentions, the struggles won't (or shouldn't) discourage you.




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Along with cover design, professional editing is a service no indie author can afford to skimp on.

Beta reading, proofreading, copy-editing, line editing, content editing, structural editing – what do these terms mean, and do we indie authors really need to worry about all that? The short answer is YES, especially if you want to present your story in the best possible light.

Whew! You’ve finally completed that manuscript you’ve been slaving over, or lovingly bringing to life (whatever your process is). You can now crack your knuckles, sit back and relax, maybe even take a nap, because the hard part is over. Right?

Wrong.

There are still many things to be done before your book is ready to be published. One of the most important of these is editing.

As I mentioned above, there are many different aspects and levels to editing. Unless you are a trained and practiced editor, there may be things you will miss if you try to do all the editing yourself. Even if you are a trained editor, it is difficult for an author to edit their own work, since we know what we mean and where we are coming from. It is difficult to step back and look at our work from an unbiased perspective to see if there are sections that are unclear, repetitive, out of place, and so on. This is where having a third-party, unbiased and professional editor comes in.

Some questions you may be asking now are: What do all those editing terms mean, anyway? How much does editing cost? How long will the editing process take?

The answers to these questions depend on the length of your book, the level of editing you require and how polished, or self-edited, your book is before submitting it to a professional editor. It also depends on the qualifications and experience level of your chosen editor, and that editor’s workload.

Is it important starting out to have a deep understanding of what each of the above editing terms means? No, not really. But you should know enough to understand what you are signing up for when you hire an editor and to make your expectations clear. Also, if your budget is tight, you can decide on what you can do yourself and what you really need an objective, professional eye for.

Though the terminology might differ a little from source to source and between fiction and non-fiction, here are some basic explanations for the types/levels of editing you may require:


1. Beta reading
I consider beta-reading to be a stage in the editing process and prefer to have it done early, soon after my first draft is complete – or second, depending on how I feel about my manuscript.

When hiring a beta reader, it is important to clearly outline your expectations for them. I tell my beta readers to read the novel as they would read any book and take note of places where the pace moves too fast or too slow, sections they were tempted to skip over, and any obvious plot holes. Also, were there any sections that didn’t make sense, or that did not seem to fit with the genre or story? Are there sections or scenes that just didn’t seem to work for them?

You could get friends and family to beta read for you, and I do. But I also pay people who beta read professionally and know what they are looking for. Getting friends and family to beta read your work might be budget friendly, but unless they are fans of your specific genre and know what they are looking for, there is no guarantee of how useful their feedback will be.

The main reason I get beta reading done early, before I get into the heavy editing, is in case there is useful feedback I can incorporate in my revisions. You don’t want to go through the time, effort, and cost of editing scenes that you will end up cutting or changing, for example.



2. Story Level / Structural editing
I start with the bigger picture, the story level or structural editing. This is a good place to start because, like with the beta-reading, you might decide there are sections or scenes that do not work for what you are trying to achieve, or sections that need to be reworked. If you do your sentence or scene level edits first on sections that you end up deciding to cut when you get to your story level edits, then you’ve just wasted time, effort and possibly cash.

This level is a big-picture look at your work. Does it have a beginning, middle, and end? Is there a beginning hook, rising action, climax and resolution? Are there scenes that have no real purpose and do not move the story forward? Did you choose the correct character as your protagonist? Is your character development and world-building detailed without dumping information on readers in a way that will lose their interest? Do you “show” the readers more often than you “tell” them?



3. Scene level / content editing
In this level, editors will go through each scene and ask: Does this scene have a beginning, middle and end? Is there a beginning hook, rising action, a climax and a resolution (this should be the case both at the story level and at the scene level)? Does the scene move the story forward? Is there conflict in each scene? And so on and so on.



4. Sentence level / line editing / copyediting
Regardless of the term used for this level of editing, it involves looking at your story line by line, or sentence by sentence. Here, editors will look at sentence structure, spelling, grammar and punctuation. This is the level that should be done last because, again, you don’t want to spend a lot of time, effort and/or money inspecting and dissecting sentences or lines that you are just going to end up cutting or changing down the line.


5. Proofreading
Proofreading is the inspection that takes place just before a manuscript is about to be published. It is a very close look at your story. Proofreaders look for any mistakes or problems that may have been missed earlier in the editing process. Like copyediting (and some may use the terms interchangeably), the focus is on grammar, spelling, punctuation and capitalization.

Proofreading is important because, in a novel of 90,000 words or more, for example, it is easy for little things to slip through. I personally have self-edited manuscripts numerous times, had them edited by a professional, and have still caught mistakes after all that.


If you are an indie author, hiring a professional editor is undoubtedly the way to go. When you are writing your first (and each subsequent) work that you wish to publish, make sure you budget some funds to cover editing.



You can easily find beta-readers and editors online and through social media. Here are a few sites to get you started:

https://www.fiverr.com/categories/wri...

https://www.booksandthebear.com/servi...

http://selfpublishersshowcase.com/aut...

http://dominioneditorial.com/


To learn more about editing your own work, see the links below, which are sites/programs I have used to help me become a better editor and writer, and which have a lot of useful information on editing:

Manuscript Magic:

https://writingblueprints.com/p/manus...

The Story Grid:
https://storygrid.com/

*See the original post here: http://www.sherryleclerc.com/2018/08/...

Sherry LeclercSherry Leclerc

Cover design is one service new and aspiring indie authors can’t afford to skimp on. We often start out with limited resources, trying to decide which services we need, and which we can do without.

There are many things you can do on your own if you are patient and willing to learn. However, unless you are an accomplished artist or graphic designer as well as a writer, you will want to choose a professionally made cover. A poorly designed cover can cause readers to overlook or turn away from a book that might otherwise have great content inside.

Your cover is the first thing readers will notice about your book. It needs to be attention-grabbing and indicative of what the readers will find inside. It needs to hook people. It is said that the cover is what gets readers to pick up the book and flip it over to read the synopsis on the back cover, and it’s the synopsis on the back that convinces the reader to look inside.

Aside from the art itself, there are other considerations that should not be overlooked. These include, but aren’t limited to, color scheme, font, text size, and how easy it is to see the art and text when the cover is in thumbnail size on Amazon. Get any of these wrong, and it could negatively affect your book sales.

    

There are different alternatives to book cover creation, and prices can vary greatly. You can buy a pre-made book cover from a reputable site by choosing from a large variety of options. You choose a cover that fits with your book, and the artist will add your author name and book title. You can find some relatively inexpensive covers this way, but the end price will depend on the artist and/or cover you choose, and whether you are looking for an eBook cover, paperback cover, hardcover, audiobook cover, or some combination of these.

The Book Cover Designer, https://thebookcoverdesigner.com/,  is a site where you can purchase pre-made covers from a large selection. You can choose from featured covers or browse by genre or artist. Once a cover is sold, it will never be sold again, so you don’t have to worry about another author ending up with the same cover as you.

I purchased my cover for my Seers Series short story collection, The Guardians of Sterrenvar from this site. I happened upon an attention-grabbing cover that fit perfectly with my series. I originally only ordered the eBook cover, since I intend to add to the collection before releasing the paperback version. However, the artist has expressed willingness to add the paperback version when I am ready for it – for a fee, of course.

Some other sites I have found that sell pre-made covers, but with which I do not have personal experience, are:
https://www.selfpubbookcovers.com/

https://www.rockingbookcovers.com/pre...

http://www.thecovercollection.com/

There are plenty more out there still for those of you who wish to check out the options before deciding.

The other alternative is to find an independent book cover artist, which I did for the second edition of The Guardians of Eastgate. I found my cover artist on Twitter. I had seen her Twitter posts and examples of her work many times before I decided to contact her about contracting her services.

One benefit to this is that I will be using the same artist, https://willowraven.weebly.com/,  for the subsequent books in the series, so that they are all uniform. She was also able to help me create my author and series logos, which will be included in all the books in the series. Also, I was able to be in contact with her regularly so that the cover fit with my vision, while still having that professional input.

There are a couple of drawbacks for this method for new indie authors, however. First, you need to make sure you’ve done your research, checked testimonials and reviews, looked at portfolios and so on. You can probably find an inexpensive cover artist on Fivrr.com, for example, but that doesn’t guarantee you’ll end up with a quality cover. Do your homework.

Another drawback is that using a reputable cover designer to create an original cover from scratch can be more expensive and take more time than purchasing pre-made covers. The time and money cost will also depend on whether the cover designer works with photographs or creates original art.

One site I found where you can choose from pre-made covers or find an artist to work with to create your cover is https://damonza.com/ebook-cover-design/. They do formatting as well, which many cover artists will do.

In the end it comes down to what your budget is, what time line you are hoping for, and what you are looking for in a book cover. However, your book cover will be important enough, both for your professional reputation and your sales, for you to take it seriously and find yourself a professionally designed cover that is representative of both your book and yourself as an author.

Sherry Leclerc

Sherry Leclerc
How long should my debut novel be?





When I was writing the first edition of my first novel, a big question for me was how long should a debut novel be?

One of the first places I went to try to figure this out was Wikipedia. What I found out there was that writing over 40,000 words is considered a novel, but beyond that, it can vary greatly.



Classification Word count
Novel 40,000 words or over
Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words
Novelette 7,500 to 17,499 words
Short story under 7,500 words
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count



There are a number of factors that can affect the length of your novel, such as genre and whether you plan to self-publish or are looking for a traditional publisher. If you are looking for a traditional publisher, it is also important to note that different publishers may be looking for different minimum word counts. On the flip side, if your manuscript is what they consider to be too long, the publisher may ask you to cut some of it out.

During the process of writing my first book, I read articles and spoke to people in the industry that suggested that a new, unknown author keep their first novel short, for a couple of reasons.



First of all, many publishers are looking for shorter novels for untested authors due to cost and so on, and longer novel lengths are typically reserved for authors who have already proven themselves.



I also read that a shorter novel might better entice readers to give your book a try, as they won’t have to commit to buying a longer and potentially more expensive book by an author they have never read before.

For the first edition of my novel, then, I kept it short at about 60,000 words. However, I felt it needed more fleshing out, and this thought was echoed in a review or two of the book.



When I decided to hire a graphic artist to do the book covers for the entire series, I also decided to re-do the cover of the first book so that the series would look more uniform. This would mean publishing a second edition, and I took this opportunity to develop my story a little more.

In the end, my second edition ended up at around 72,000 words and is, in my opinion, much improved from the first edition. This is still on the short side for my genre, which is fantasy. However, I followed the advice I was given or had read in the beginning concerning first novels and decided to keep it on the short side.

On the flip side of that, I recently read an article that listed publishers who consider new authors. Each of these had minimum word counts well above the numbers I had originally been given or found. However, I have read numerous other articles and books since that repeat this advice.

And, yet again, there are still many publishers who don’t seem to recommend a particular word count.



What take-away messages did I get from all this?

Length is linked in large part to the genre you are writing in.
There really is no true consensus.


Here is a list of some do’s and don’ts that I learned along the way and would like to pass on to aspiring authors:

DO base the length of your novel on what feels right for your story.

DON’T base the length on factors such as how much the per word cost for editing is.

DO think of the submission guidelines of traditional publishing houses you may wish to submit to or are hoping to catch the eye of with your self-published novel.

DON’T assume all publishing houses are looking for the same thing.

DO think of the purpose and audience of your book when deciding word count. Are you writing fiction or non-fiction? If fiction, which genre, and what age group?

DON’T write a super long book for children, or super short for adults.



And the biggest DO of all:

DO what works best for your particular story.





Below is a list of links to some articles I’ve read relating to word count:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count

http://manuscriptagency.com.au/word-c...

https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/w...

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-b...

https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...

https://thoughtsonfantasy.com/2017/02...

http://greatstorybook.com/publishers-...





Sherry Leclerc is a science fiction and fantasy fanatic who lives in magical realms where swords and sorcery,

action and adventure, seers, shifters and sorcerers abound.

Congratulations to the winners of my Goodreads giveaway, Suzanne W., Steve O., Kara N., Rosie C., and Lindsey A. Your signed paperbacks are in the mail!
The Guardians of Eastgate

The second edition of The Guardians of Eastgate: Book 1 of the Seers Series was released today, after a number of delays and some sweat and tears!
Check out my author page for more information, and click the book links to purchase.

Thanks for support! I hope you enjoy the story as much as I do!

SherryThe Guardians of Eastgate

The Guardians of Eastgate by Sherry Leclerc

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I am very excited to get this Second Edition of The Guardians of Eastgate out to you! This new, expanded version has over 12,000 more words than the first edition, with extended scenes and dialogue. It includes further insights into the protagonist and her rag-tag group of friends, out to save the realm.

Join Maelona, a seer champion, and her companions, Blaez, a wolf shifter, and Gareth, a human prince on their journey to Eastgate. Their goals: protect the keystone, bring the different peoples of the realm together as allies, and save the realm from the dark plot of an evil sorcerer.

If you enjoy magic, shifters, swords and sorcery, action and adventure, and a little bit of romance, then you are sure to enjoy The Guardians of Eastgate.

This is Book 1 of a planned series of 5 novels.



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The Guardians of Eastgate