Author: Filigree

Artist and writer living in the Southwest USA.

Web: cranehanabooks.com/blog

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What I like about Spring: perfect weather, spring cleaning (both physical and mental), taking self-publishing workshops, finishing new art, plotting out new books, and finding new authors and art galleries to follow. What I don’t like: knowing that summer temperatures will be hitting early this year, spring cleaning, doing a cost analysis on what I…

Read More Spring Things
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It hit 90F in Phoenix this week. I had a box of artwork in the back of my car that I had to offload, or the contents might suffer in the heat. I drove home from work with that box almost a comfortable presence sitting unseen at my back: until I took it inside the…

Read More Old friends, new roads
Aside

Adrift in the typhoon’s eye,

Stalled on the cliff’s edge,

I craft lists of aides I cannot deploy

Until the wind swells

Strong enough

To lift my wings again.

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Vamp and Tramp Booksellers, my art representatives in Alabama, have just uploaded some more pieces of my book art sculpture onto their website. None are quite new, but they are cool pieces in a variety of materials from paper collage to embroidered and beaded fabric. Link here.

Read More New book art for sale
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Well, this has been a good launch day: Maestro seemed to have hit the ground running, thanks to some very good marketing by NineStar, at least two great reviews, and some fans coming out of the woodwork. I have fans. Wow, folks, thank you so very, very much! Kristin at GayBook Reviews pretty much distilled down…

Read More Maestro news, Day 1
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Shameless promo ahead. I know a small jewelry findings supply company that has impressed me with its quality and service. I wasn’t aware they made this YouTube ad for a sale yesterday, and I hope they’ll continue the sale for a day or two. At any rate, Plazko.com is a good little company, and their…

Read More A Not-A-Super B**l Commercial
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Good news, everyone! My release date for Maestro, my M/M/M contemporary erotic romance, will now be February 8, 2016. That means two things: my teeny little novella will no longer be lost in the stellar glare from the February 2 release of C.A. Pacat’s long awaited third book in the Captive Prince series. (And by…

Read More Countdown to Maestro!
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So in (slow) preparation for loading some art on my dormant Handmade at Amazon site, I’ve been doing some research on what’s already there. Some gorgeous, inspirational stuff, worthy of scrutiny. And some…that is not so much. Apparently, in the rush to sign people up, and with possibly not enough experience in the jewelry/handcraft industry,…

Read More Handmade or Buy/Sell?
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On the eve of several business launches, I am deactivating my Crane Hana FB page. Lest that seem counter-intuitive, let me explain. I barely use it (I might check it once a month). I really do not like a lot of FB’s policies over the ‘Real Name’ issue. Content on FB is not freely available…

Read More Deactivating Facebook page
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Well, now that the 1.5 billion-dollar Powerball frenzy is temporarily over in the US, I can admit I’m one of the players that lottery officials hate. I don’t buy many tickets, and when I do, I buy only one per game. The jackpot has to reach a certain level before I even consider spending money…

Read More Lottery Fatigue
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I’d post it here, but WordPress and I have a media upload issue that is not getting fixed until this weekend. So here is a link to the NineStar Press page for Maestro, where you can see the pretty pretty cover in large size. I’ll wait with the final blurb until they get their copy…

Read More Maestro Cover has a link!
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This will be a stub post until I have all my data and editorial points lined up (and this will be an entry in Filigree’s Rule, too). The summary: If you are a young writer, please don’t engage in elaborate sockpuppet catfishing schemes to get reviews for your novel. At some point it’s going to…

Read More Two Fried Catfish, please
by 2 comments on "Hello 2016"

One month from now, on 02/02/2016, my little M/M contemporary romance novella Maestro will be available from NineStar Press. I’ve seen the cover. It’s gorgeous. In a week or so I’ll start up some cool promotion stuff, including one of my handmade beadwoven necklaces in NineStar’s rainbow color theme. My fantasy novel Singer in Rhunshan…

Read More Hello 2016
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Yes, the blog was down for nearly a month. An update gone awry and a new more-than-fulltime job can do that. Over the next few months I’ll probably be redoing and streamlining this blog. What happened in 2015? I got to help a dear friend come back from a bad bicycling accident, and stand witness…

Read More 2015 in review
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Hey writers, if you are creatively stuck and need some story prompts, here’s one resource: The Cool Bits Story Generator. It’s not as random as it appears, and some of its results can be…boggling. But it’s fun. I’ll have a link off to the left, too.

Read More if you need a story prompt