Since Lulu.com is now in production mode of my “three-e-books-in-one” The Prodigal Band Trilogy, now is a good time to rehash “the why” I created these books beginning years ago.
Continue reading “About The Prodigal Band Trilogy: the Why Parts 1 Through 5”
I began writing a book that would eventually work its way into three books that make up the Prodigal Band Trilogy–Battle of the Band, The Prophesied Band, and The Prodigal Band–back in the late 1960s in diary form as the characters morphed from just a group of guys in a gang or a clique, with or without girlfriends, living on Long Island-then-New York City, to rock musicians with or without girlfriends, living in England. Why the morph? Because of my own interest in rock music as well as actually having participated in a local band for a few months, and having gone to England in 1970, as well as the notion I had the rock bands from England were more worthy overall than American ones (and Brit bands were my fave bands anyway.) These topics have been discussed in previous posts here and on my blog.
The names and looks of the characters were created in the mid-60s with other characters being created in the mid-80s, which was when I started getting serious about the books, which was still just one book novel. But instead of a diary to write stuff that would later make up the book(s), I just wrote on notepad paper with pen.
Continue reading “About The Prodigal Band Trilogy: The Theme-Good Triumphs over Evil”
I have been on the WordPress Writer/Author scene since mid-February, 2018, and have read dozens of posts by newbies and established writers-authors and bloggers who have advice on writing and self-publishing. Read the advice, but, folks, you have to figure this one out yourselves, even if you lose money in the process. I am what one would call a “tactile learner,” that is, I learn by doing.
For instance, I learned by foolishly trying to transfer a domain from BlueHost, who claimed to be ICANN registered but aren’t (or else why would they send me an e-mail stating I needed to go through whois@BlueHost.com, when Whois is part of ICANN? WHOIS LOOK-UP is indeed part of ICANN), that transferring a domain is a fool’s errand unless you already have done such a thing in the past and succeeded. So, all I could do was withdraw my complaint against BlueHost. BlueHost can throw my domain I paid for in the trash, or hand it over to some whatever for free. When the domain comes up for renewal I will not be renewing it.
Back to the original storyline.
In the mid-1990s I joined a local far west Texas writer’s group called ‘Texas Mountain Trail Writers.’ While working on the first printed novel I would call Battle of the Band, I needed ‘tutoring’ so-to-speak on absolutely what had to go into the novel to make it a legitimate novel, to market and sell the thing–that is, get some literary agent to ‘sell’ it to a big time publisher. No literary agent came a-calling, so I had to do it myself.
Continue reading “Being a ‘Non-Conformist’ Author: You Don’t Always Have to ‘Follow the Script’”
In Part 1, I stated why I became a writer-story-teller. In Part 2, I stated why the characters I made up were a gang and then a rock band. In Part 3, I stated why the rock band morphed into one from England, and in Part 4, why they were from northeast England, where the initial setting would occur. Now is Part 5, discussing the various changes I made over the next twenty or so years from 1970 until the final version of the first novel in the series, Battle of the Band, was published, that set the stage for the next two books, including the FREE PDF of The Prodigal Band.
Continue reading “The Prodigal Band Trilogy: The Why, Part 5”
After about a month of trying to get BlueHost to give me back my domain “omegabooks.com” and (using ICANN and Whois as excuses for not doing so!) failing to get the domain “omegabooks.com” back, WordPress handed me a “reprieve” of sorts by letting me set up a new domain, omegabooksnet.com from where one can download the FREE PDF e-book, The Prodigal Band, as well as (soon) purchase the printed books published in the 1990s, Battle of the Band and The Prophesied Band. For the last three weeks I have been getting the site prepared for this adventure in Independent Publishing and marketing. Today, April 30, 2018, I was able to get the site presentable, and also get The Prodigal Band registered with the Library of Congress ($55 fee).
Since omegabooksnet.com is now the official OmegaBooks site, this WordPress blog site will be the BLOG for omegabooksnet.com where I will discuss how and why I began the book series in the 90s, the creation of the characters and scenarios and such. Since I have deleted the “blog” and “book” pages previously at the top of the page in the “menu,” I am re-posting the original “blog” article, below.
Continue reading “This site is now the OmegaBooks WordPress Blog site”
I know that sounds bloviated, unrealistic, conceited even, to call my little independent publishing company hardly anyone has ever heard of “home of the world’s most unique fiction.” But folks, I do believe it is true. Here is why:
Continue reading “Why Is OmegaBooks “Home Of The World’s Most Unique Fiction”?”
I was away from computer for about a week doing other business and am now back to working to finish two other books, one for sale on Amazon Kindle and the other a free PDF download from this site or by e-mail–this book, Prodigal Band, will be a free download for about a year, then will be for sale on Amazon Kindle. (Note: since it takes a lot of money to publish-print books by a book printer while any book can be put up on Kindle or Nook or Smash Words, there is no point to an indy publisher spending money to print books when I would have no idea how many to print for a profit. I would have to gauge how many books ought to be printed by gauging sales from Kindle books…know what I mean?
Plus, I have to set up my purchased OmegaBooks domain on WordPress. I purchased it from BlueHost but not being a techie it was too difficult to set it up on BlueHost with the WordPress add-ons. So I have to wait until the end of March to set the domain site up, then start setting up the free download site and advertise the Kindle books and the print books (my first two books printed in the latter 90s).
So, if you like the site and are interested in my books, print or Kindle or free, bear with me and OmegaBooks.
Instead of going to literary agent after literary agent groveling before them and getting no positive response whatsoever–letter after letter “rejecting” my first novel, Battle of the Band–by the end of 1995, I decided that even though I had very little money on me (I had to borrow money from my husband who had other plans with money he had gotten from selling a piece of land he won by helping fund a legal battle our side won), I had no other recourse but to self-publish my book that I had been, on and off, working on since I was a teenager! And to self-publish books, you need a “self-publisher,” right? So I needed an independent publishing company with myself as SOLE PROPRIETOR, and, since it was my final recourse, I called this company OmegaBooks–the Greek letter “omega” which looks like an upside-down “u” is the final letter in the Greek alphabet and is also a reference to Jesus Christ at the “Second Coming” as the “alpha” (first Greek letter) and “omega” at His Second Coming.
Welcome to OmegaBooks, which was formed as a SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP in 1996 to publish and paperback print my first novel, Battle of the Band, the first novel in a series originally called the Prodigal Band Trilogy.
In 1998, I published and paperback printed the second novel in the “trilogy,” a sequel to Battle of the Band, called The Prophesied Band.
In 2000, I started working on the final novel of the trilogy. But raising children and having a family to take care of (my husband was away from home as a medic, often) as well as home school my children–I am a Texas certified teacher and guidance counselor–I had to put off completing the series.
Then, when my children were off to college, I took an office manager job in 2010 which lasted almost five years. In June, 2015, I retired, and that was when I began working on my novels again.
I recently completed The Prodigal Band which for a period of time can be downloaded as a PDF file for free. I will set that up shortly once my domain is set up (I own the domain but have to move it as the original host provided me with password and other issues that drove me crazy! I had some tech savvy ten years ago–now so much has changed. So I will, when permitted by the previous host I purchased the domain from, be moving the domain to WordPress, which will allow me to upload the file for free download for about a year. After that, that and the other books will be available on Amazon and other downloadable book store options. Smashwords has books for such stores as “Toshiba Book Place” (I have a Toshiba laptop). And any other venues I can find.
A Kindle book to be formatted, Shine Over Evil, will be ready in a few months to be purchased and download from Amazon for the Kindle format.
Sections of chapters for the various books will be posted shortly for reading pleasure.
I will not be discussing what is in these chapters yet. But get ready for a series of stories that “popped into my head” as a teenager and “morphed” into what they did become.
I was a teenager in the 1960s…maybe that will give one a clue. Plus the use of the word “Band”… Band, eh? Hmmmm….
Omega Books 