I'm Publishing a Book...And Other Updates

It's busy around here!
First, and most importantly, I have jumped into CreateSpace and I am thisclose to hitting publish for my book.  There's a bunch of stuff to do after you write a book in order to get it launched and I am still in the beginning phase of the whole thing but so far I have reformatted the book so that it will look better, set up my CreateSpace account and set up some of the basics for the book, reserved my domain name and hosting for the website for the book, created a website for the book that is nearly finished, and now I am re-reformatting the book to fit into the template for the size of the finished book that I want.  Yikes!  I think it is much easier to do this when you have a publishing house backing you up but I didn't want to a) wait (because I am really impatient), and b) schlep the book around to publisher after publisher getting rejection after rejection.  Plus I think that the do-it-yourself process--even if your book doesn't become as successful as it might have been with a real agent/editor/publisher--really teaches you all of the "behind the scenes" stuff about publishing.  This way I am not only a writer but a book editor (and you know how well I edit my posts here on this blog :I ), a book publisher (yikes), and a PR machines for the book (double yikes because I'm not that outgoing and social...but I will give it a try anyway).  Next up I need to design the cover for the book, figure out how to get my Excel index into the body of the book, set up a Facebook page for the book, then hit publish and wait (impatiently) for a proof of the book to arrive.

And five more things:

1. Four ways we have saved money this week: I stay home each day instead of going with the hubby which saves gas (when I drop him off I usually go to Starbucks or the library or the mall, most of which cost me money and gas), we paid our car and house insurance in a lump sum for the year (there is a discount for this which you don't get if you pay monthly), we have ate out once this week instead the two or three times we usually do, and I found a discount coupon for my old webhost so I am sticking with them for another year (if you follow them on Twitter you get $100 off their hosting plan; this plan gives me free hosting for all of my smaller websites so its quite a bargain). 
2. Yesterday hubby picked up 13 nice, name-brand shirts from the Goodwill for $23.  We figured this was a savings of around $350 over buying them at a department store. 
3. We were super fortunate that our house was high and dry during the recent flooding that happened in Las Vegas.  Here's a picture of the UNLV parking lot.
4. Thank goodness it's fall--temperatures are in the mid-90s now instead of the 110s! 
5. The iPhone 5 came out yesterday which has sparked another round of "cell phone envy" in me.  I really really want a smartphone but after comparing prices between the "free" phones you get when you sign up for a two year plan with a wireless carrier and the prepaid plans which require you shell out the money for the phone up front there is no comparison--you save a ton of money with the prepaid plans even if you have to pay $200-$300 for a nice cell phone.  So I'm saving my money for a nice smartphone as soon as I can afford it.

And one more thing...I've found a new favorite romance author. Since I've read everything by my other ten favorite romance writers I had to find someone else to read (I can read about 200+ pages in an evening and my favorite authors can't write that fast...I have to give them time to catch up!) so I stumbled upon Lorraine Health's books and now I am voraciously reading through everything she has written.  And she is really good!