Sunday, September 27, 2015

Tinnitus Years Later

There are 4 installments in this series links are below 


Part 4
Prayer and Great Faith 
I hope that my blog on Tinnitus has helped in some way. Maybe it helped you to have the faith that you will survive. Maybe it taught you to be careful of your ears and to wear ear plugs to protect your precious hearing. Maybe it helped you to help a loved one or a friend that has had this issue or is still dealing with it as we speak. 




Looking Back 

It's been a long road since 2009.  I still remember with ease the doctor looking at me and saying, 'there's nothing we can do just turn the radio up louder.'  Years later there are only days now and then that I even think about my tinnitus. Most days it fades into the background. But I still keep fans running, and fish tanks bubbling to make sure that I don't have a reason to look for that high pitched whistle that so often came into my field of hearing. My dad also has this issue, and his is worse than mine so I still do my best to protect my hearing. I often put in ear plugs when I blow-dry my hair, or when I mow the grass. One could even wear them when sweeping and should. I'm so thankful to God that he's given me the peace and healing so that I can live with this disease. 






Forgetting Tinnitus

If you are a family member or a friend of a person that has Tinnitus please don't ask them how they are doing. Don't say how is your hearing, or do you still hear that high pitched whistle. That is the worst thing you can do. It could have been a good day for them up to that point. They may not have thought about their ringing in days and now you're few words could cause them to focus on their issue. Some people hear a roar, some hear a whistle. I have even known of a few people that hear actual music.   But what ever you do don't ask them how they are!!!  NOW if they are just beginning their trials you can suggest things to them and I'll list a few of them below in the next section. 


Tricks, prayers, and healing

I'm sure it's different for everyone, but for me I've used what some call white noise to help. You can keep fans running, bubbling fish tanks.  Wearing ear plugs in the beginning can only enhance the tinnitus sounds so I suggest wear them only when you need them. For me early on wearing a headset also didn't help so I would just turn on the stereo. For me also sitting on the porch in the spring was helpful the noise of the bugs helped a lot. You can buy cd's with different kinds of sounds, now I guess it would be mp3s for most of us.  Storms, crickets, rain can be a soothing effect.  

Also just in general staying busy. Read or watch a movie if you're having a bad day, the worst thing you can do is to think about your problem or to focus on it. If you have noises in your house that make it worse, or make you think of it, like an old freezer that hums, then get rid of it and get a new one. My Granny used to have a light pole that would hum at night and it would drive me nuts because I would think is that me or that stupid light pole. 

Praying and singing, can be of great help, and call others and ask them to pray for you, or fast, or be anointed with oil. All of these can help your faith grow and help you to understand that God is bigger than anything and that with his help, you will get through this DAY. 

Yes don't think about this as a long term thing because as time goes by you will heal mentally and though the sounds may not leave you will learn to live with them. There will be days too, that the sounds will go away, it will just not be there, and you might not even notice it because in time life gets better. 

But for those bad days, get out of the house, call someone, laugh, or cry, and let life creep into your mind so that you can focus on something other than your own troubles. Blessings to you and know that God is bigger and that you can do this!!!

Thanks and I pray that my words help you in some way. 
Samantha 



Part one is here on this page
Part 2 Tinnitus: Causes and Measuring sounds
Part 3 Tinnitus: Final Installment
Part 4 Years later



Sunday, June 21, 2015

Cover Sale Christian Covers Clean Covers


I'm sharing a post from a good from Jen Gentry I hope you can join us

 


Picture Jen Gentry 
Some of the most talented cover designers I have the privilege to know have come together for a great cause. They have donated several glorious pre-made book covers to help create scholarship money to assist aspiring indie authors to attend the upcoming Christian Indie Authors Conference. This is an excellent opportunity for Indie Authors to score a professional book cover at a very good cost and help a fellow Indie Author at the same time. The sale is going on right now and ends on July 4th. The organizer Samantha Fury says they will be adding new covers daily until the sale is over.
 

I personally have enjoyed just looking through the wonderful selection of interesting, breathtaking, and artistic works on display. Anyone who purchases will be working directly with the designer to personalize each piece.

If you are looking for a cover for your own next masterpiece be sure to check out this book cover extravaganza.  Here is the link for the Facebook site.  

Some of the most talented cover designers I have the privilege to know have come together for a great cause. They have donated several glorious pre-made book covers to help create scholarship money to assist aspiring indie authors to attend the upcoming Christian Indie Authors Conference. This is an excellent opportunity for Indie Authors to score a professional book cover at a very good cost and help a fellow Indie Author at the same time.

The sale is going on right now and ends on July 4th. The organizer Samantha Fury says they will be adding new covers daily until the sale is over.
I personally have enjoyed just looking through the wonderful selection of interesting, breathtaking, and artistic works on display. Anyone who purchases will be working directly with the designer to personalize each piece. 


If you are looking for a cover for your own next masterpiece be sure to check out this book cover extravaganza.  Here is the link for the facebook site.   
To learn more about the #CIAN2015 Conference please visit their website here 

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Free Webinar from Christian Indie Authors

 

FREE WEBINARS FOR AUTHORS

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Every month The Christian Indie Author Network will be offering a completely free webinar for Indie authors on indie publishing, writing, marketing, writing tools use or writing life hacks. They will be taught by Christian indie author experts or indie publishing and marketing company experts. These will be first come first serve and to reserve your spot you will need to register for the webinar. This is the page to learn what this months webinar topic is and to register for the webinar.  By doing so you will become part of our email list and will be informed of future webinars.


This Months Webinar.
"Making Money while
Breaking Through as an Author"

June 3rd at 8 pm Eastern
Here are the things that kathryn will cover during this webinar:

  • Five Simple Ideas that will help you plot your way to a successful freelance writing career.
  • Setting your freelance goals
  • How to go about finding the jobs
  • How to succeed at getting the jobs
  • Ways to keep getting jobs
  • How to make time to work on your novel while freelancing.
  • There will be a question and answer session at the end.
  If this webinar interests you reserve your spot below now. Then, share this page with a Christian writer you think will be interested too.

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Hopesmith/Author/Speaker - Kathryn offers a phrase of hope through her columns, articles, books and workshops to shine the Light on the moment. Her personal hope is that every person who encounters her words will feel as if those words were written (or spoken) just for her. She speaks at women’s conferences, professional organizations and schools on finding purpose, being encouraged and growing relationships. Learn more about Kathryn by visiting www.KathrynLang.com or email her at KathrynLang@KathrynLang.com.
You can also see her teaching at the Christian Indie Authors Conference in Davenport this July30-August
 
 
 
 Please Register here at the bottom of the page

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Author Central Page: Being a good Author 101

Author Central Page 

Being a good Author 101


About me: Lesson 1
Where do you start with teaching people more about who you are, well lets start with the Author Central Page on Amazon.  It's a great place for people to get the basic information about who you are. Amazon allows us to edit several areas of our AC page so let's start with the basics of, how will people find my AC (author central) page.  

The first place people find you is on your book pages. If they scroll past the description and reviews they will see you're page. I will say that many authors don't upload an image or connect their books and this hurts your chances to reach readers. Here is what it should look like with your smiling face and part of your bio.


Another way is for you to just share and advertise your AC page. There is a link for your Author Central page and it will look like this, with your information of course. amazon.com/author/yourname  just like this no .com or anything. Type it into your browser and it should direct you to your page. If for some reason this does not take you to your AC page sign in. HERE. Once on your Author Central page click on the Amazon Author Page. 


Once on your AC editing page you will find the share buttons in the top right hand corner.  You can copy and paste or share right from this spot. Click on the little pencil and it will show you how to add your AC page to your emails. From this point you can also share on Facebook and Twitter but so far I can't get it to share my image. I changed my image today and that could be the reason.
From this page here you can edit many things. You can edit your bio, add blog feeds, add your twitter account, photos, videos, and events. Today I just added two new blog feeds so I know you can at least add three maybe more.


I will say the most important part about an AC page is to have some good images . Be sure your image are not dark and please don't use a selfie. Find a friend or a cousin to take some pictures of you. Outside images are great. I personally think that if you have a pet that getting a good pro looking image with your pet makes you look friendly. People love pets. Again, this is a business, so think of it that way you don't want a dark image of you inside the house by the Christmas tree. You want the best image you can get. My dogs are a part of my branding so I use them as often as possible.

Just to recap. Good images, add your twitter feed, your blog feed, do you have an Event coming up, do you have a book trailer, or an interview that you can up load. Also at the bottom there is a discussion thread where you can talk about your books.  If you want to work on your AC page start here. https://authorcentral.amazon.com/

I hope that you've found this helpful. This is Samantha Fury the founder of the CIA groups and website, so please if you need a good home group or you need editing, or cover design, or you just want to learn from authors that have been doing this for years come join our groups. Also consdier coming to the first Christian Indie Authors Network conference. It's being hosted by some great authors.

Addition 6/23/2015
I'd like to add that I've noticed of late that many authors don't have their AC connected properly I don't know if this is an issue with Amazon or what, but when you click on your name on any of your book pages it should like to your Author Central page. I've not figured this problem out but if your name does not take your readers to your AC page something is not working right, so please contact amazon. And always make sure that when you release a new book that you sign in and add the new books to your list of books.

Thanks for joining me today and feel free to comment if you've found this helpful or if I missed some key point to making our AC pages the best they can be.


Website 
Facebook Group
Conference Group
Contact Us
Samantha Fury is the author of  the Street Justice Series.  
She's written many articles on book covers, for Indie Authors.
She operates several Indie Groups. Editing Services, Cover
Artist, Helpful Indie Facebook Groups.



Wednesday, March 25, 2015

ACX and how to share auditions

Sharing ACX  Auditions




Making Decisions
Do you have some new auditions from ACX for your next audiobook and you just can't figure out how to share those great auditions with your friends.  Maybe you went to your page and just tried to share the link. Well that doesn't work. But there is a way to share those auditions with close friends so they can help you make up your mind.

© Depositphotos.com/Damedeeso


SAVING THE FILE
Saving the file first thing you will need to do is sign into your ACX account and go to your auditions page.  Once there you will see something like this. This is the page for my auditions for Maid for Martin.
Once you are here go to the Download button and right click on it and SAVE LINK AS. Be sure and give the file a name that you will recognize and put it on your desktop so it's easy to find. Don't just click Down Load file that will only open the audio in a window and start the audio playing. You MUST right click and save link as.

© Depositphotos.com/Damedeeso

SHARING 
Once you have your file saved on your desktop and it will be in a mp3 file you can pretty much do with it as you want from there. You can share it with friends on Facebook, or you could host three or four samples on your website in a private area and allow fans or friends help you decide.

THANKS 
I hope this has been helpful. Please check out my other ACX blog posts and share if you found this useful.  Also please feel free to share and like.

Part 1 ACX Audiobook Adventures Part 1
Part 2  ACX  Part 2: Choosing a Narrator
Part 3  ACX and the Stipend part 3
Part 4  ACX Read Review Upload part 4
Part 5  Whispersync 101 Audio Adventures part 5
Part 6  How to leave a review on audible

A few Audio Pages that I belong to you might find useful



Samantha Fury is the author of  the Street Justice Series. She's written many articles on book covers, for Indie Authors.She operates several Indie Groups. Editing Services, Cover Artist, Helpful Indie Facebook Groups.


Check out Samantha's premade covers here

                              © Depositphotos.com/Damedeeso

Monday, March 9, 2015

How do you keep up with your facebook groups?

Group, groups, and more groups
Can one author have too many groups?  Yes.  If you have groups you never visit, or you have no idea what they are for, yes you have too many groups.  

Groups 101
The key to keeping up with your groups is knowing when to use them and how often others use them. You really need to have 3 to 5 groups you're in daily. You'll need some groups you check weekly, monthly, and those that you hit when you want to promote. You'll  need to know what groups allow posting and running and which ones doesn't. Getting a bad name is easy to do and before you know it people won't know you as that friendly helpful author, but as that author that posts and runs.

About us 
Authors,when you join a group please read the about us. Not all groups welcome book ads, and it is a common mistake to think they do. Authors join a group and instead of saying hello how are you my name is . . etc etc. The first post you see is hey look I wrote a great book and you should buy it. Authors please slow down and take the time to read the ABOUT US in any group. Not all groups are about advertising, some are just for learning and discussions. 
  Images from Depositphoto Javier Brosch & Annette Shaff 


 
You're home Groups
In these groups people need to know you by your first name, they need to know if you have kids or pets. They should be like a family, people that you can count on when you need help with a promotion a tweet or help with a thunderclap. I believe that we should also give of our time just like we tithe with our money. Our Author friends are trying to make a living, be a light, and in general share their works to a lost and dying world. If we can help them - then we are helping a hurting world, souls hopefully be saved and helping our friends succeed and that is a good thing in my book. 
 


Group Maintenance 
Once you chose what groups you want to visit daily, weekly monthly just for promo's free days etc. The next step is figuring out a way to keep up with these groups and to remind yourself to visit them. When we are done you will want to host these groups on your website, but I'm getting ahead of myself so here is step one.  




List lists and more lists
I'll warn you if you are not a lists kind of person just save yourself some time and stop now. But if you love organization I think you will find this helpful.

Step one
Make a master list of all your groups in an email or a word doc where you can transfer them to your website where you then break them down into daily weekly monthly groups etc. You say this is overkill. Maybe, but it is really helping me to take control of my online Facebook groups.  To get the 'link' with the 'group name' attached, go to the groups page, highlight the name of the group, right click and copy. (see image)
Step Two
Take said link and copy and paste it into your word document. Now repeat this for every group you have. Yes I know it's a lot of work but in the end if you have a lot of groups it is well worth it. Once you have your list then you will go through them and put them in segments. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Advertise in etc.

I know some people that are in 1000's of groups I'm not in way that many but I did feel the need to organize and here is what mine looked like once I had them paired off in Daily Mon, Tue Wed, etc, Twitter groups, groups to delete later, promotional groups etc etc. You may not want to go this extreme but when we are done we will have an easy to access list of our groups. It took me about three days to do this working a couple of hours at a time.Yes it was worth it.

Step Three
Now once we have our groups in groups :) we will transfer them to our website and yes once you have everything bookmarked you can hide the pages so no one else can see them.  With this part, it just depends on how extreme you like things.

Do you want Monday groups to have it's own page ?



Do you want all of your groups on one page just in sections.  
It's all up to you.

I prefer this way below. I book mark them and they are really handy to keep up with. The issue from this point it to keep adding any groups that you join, and to weed out those groups that are really not useful. This really is a useful tool, for just about anything that has a link and is something you want to keep up with.




If you're one of those people that love lists, I hope that you have found this useful, and for those of you that just think I'm crazy for doing all this work, think again. It's really been a great asset in helping me to keep up with my groups, the only thing I wish is that I would have thought of it sooner. 

Samantha Fury is the author of  the Street Justice Series
She's written many articles on book covers, for Indie Authors.  
She operates several Indie Groups. Editing Services, Cover Artist, 
Helpful Indie Facebook Groups, and a wonderful Forum 

 Images from Depositphoto Javier Brosch & Annette Shaff 


Monday, February 23, 2015

Christian Indie Authors Network (CIAN)

Christian Indie Authors Network




What is CIAN?
CIAN stands for Christian Indie Authors Network. In Oct of 2010 Samantha Fury created a forum for self-published authors, and that group started coining the phrase CIA. That forum lead to Facebook groups, a website, and more.

There are several CIA groups on Facebook now so we’ve gone a step beyond to try and distinguish from the many groups. We were the original CIA and we’re grateful many others have followed in our footsteps. CIAN is growing every day and we have gone from one small forum to a network of groups and we welcome others to join us and come grow with CIAN. You can start learning about CIAN at our Portal Entry Group Here. 



https://www.facebook.com/groups/356689447801642/
Portal Group
What is a Portal Entry Group? It is a group where you can learn more about our other CIAN groups. We have many to pick from. Our main group had to go secret years ago when too many people wanted to join who were not Christian or just interested in posting advertising. Once a group becomes well known Facebook finds a way to promote you. So we made the main group secret to protect the family atmosphere of Christians sharing and learning from each other. We created the Portal Group so people could still find out about all our groups.



Our Mission CIAN has many groups, some Christian only, some clean, ranging from Cover and Blurb help to Marketing to Editing. We have a weekly online paper. We have a growing Readers group. We have one of the largest Christian Indie Authors websites online. We're working on a “members only” side to the site. We hope to have our Christian Writers’ Academy open soon, with free and members only resources. Our mission is to help Christian Indie Authors be a light in a dark place.



Why join CIAN?
You may wonder: Why would I need to join an online group? What good will it do me? Speaking from my own experience, had it not been for my online Christian friends, I would not even know that self-publishing existed. At this point we’ve heard almost every question before. But we are more than happy to repeat the answers new authors need to hear as many times as needed.



At CIAN we share our problems. We are not just people in a group. We are more like an online family. We care about each other, we pray for each other, and we are there when someone needs advice, prayer, or just a friend. CIAN wants to be a blessing to the Christian Indie Author. We want to teach, guide, and help. It doesn’t matter whether you are looking to learn more about self publishing, or are with a small press and need help learning how to market your books. Come check us out. Come grow with Christian Indie Authors!

Look for more articles about CIAN coming soon
Website
Facebook Group 


Some images from pixabay.com
Samantha Fury is the author of  the Street Justice Series
She's written many articles on book covers, for Indie Authors.  
She operates several Indie Groups. Editing Services, Cover Artist, 
Helpful Indie Facebook Groups, and a wonderful Forum 

Check out Samantha's premade covers here







 

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Love is 2015 blog hop Christian Authors

LOVE IS

What does Love mean to you? Come see what our Authors have to say!






Hi! Samantha Fury here, and I'm happy to share with you what LOVE IS to me this year. I think as we move through life the way we look at things changes. We learn, we grow, and mostly as we grow older we become more aware of the most important things in life.

Flowers & Candy?
A lot of people think that Love has to do with romance, and dating, candy and chocolates. Maybe flowers and perfume come to mind. A great romance novel or a night out on the town with a person you love.

I'm not saying these are bad things, they all take in what we think of as love and romance and Valentines day. But this year I'm thinking beyond self and what others can give me.
 
This year I'm thinking about 'Love is' what I can do for others. I think of Jesus and a bible verse Acts 10:38. It says that Jesus went about doing good. Here is the verse.


 ACTS 10:38
How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.



To me this year being like Jesus is what 'Love is' to me. It means that I think of others before myself. I wake up every day with the idea in my mind what can I do to help someone. How can I bless my friend or my neighbor. Love is to me--giving, helping, being a blessing to someone in need. In other words being Christ like.

Sometimes it can mean flowers, candy, a free book to read, a gift of a few dollars. More often it can just be a smile, a prayer, a kind word to help someone know that another person does care about them. Do I succeed every day, no, but I do my best to show love and kindness when I can. A fine teacher once said that we should wake up in the morning with it on our mind what can I do to bless someone today, and as often as I can I follow this teaching. 

Thanks for dropping by and I hope that you are blessed by my words. I hope that you know that we as Authors write so that we can be a blessing and I hope that if you have read one of my books that you received a blessing from one of my novels.



http://www.amazon.com/Charlies-Angel-Street-Justice-Book-ebook/dp/B0041844HM/ref=pd_sim_kstore_8?ie=UTF8&refRID=0VF0JVPN0315KMDSBP9K

This year we are doing our Love is blog hop again. Several of our Christian Authors are going to be talking about what Love is, to them. Please visit our main site HERE or click on the image below to find all of the blog links.
http://www.christianindieauthors.com/blog-hop.html



Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my blog. Mom just got home from getting 5 new stichtes. Here I am going to bed at 6 a.m. Not a good thing. I hope to soon get som...