~~~ Walk Another World ~~~

Love Under All-New Moons & Stars!

Welcome to ILoveShape-shifters.com!

Paranormal/Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Romance Author

Michele Hart
Seeks
Danger, Thrills, and Adventure.

Bad Good Guys. Scary Bad Guys.
And unforgettable chills.

Shadow, risk, and mystery...

Can I interest you in a sssexy and dangerous shape-shifter escaped from a prison-planet for your winter affair? How about a brawler with a badge who can read your thoughts? Imagine yourself trapped on a space station with your high-school crush and only hours to live.

Find me when you’re ready for a risky mind control adventure battling the CIA. Feel like fighting the Mob today? Does your heart secretly desire to be frightened by demons, rescued by angels? A gangland executioner named Heretic awaits you.

Discover passion, dare, and adventure under all-new moons and stars. Investigate me.


Who are the Nephilim?


Nephilim - The offspring of the marriages (or rapes) of the daughters of Man by the sons of the Maker, the fallen angels.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Book 15 - SYNERGIZED - Done !

Wow, Synergized was my biggest single-title and took the longest, but it's my best writing yet, and I'm really proud of it. I took on big themes on this one. Let's see if someone thinks it's good. I'll probably be editing for the next month or two.

Sadly, I can't be submitting it any time soon. It's the third of a trilogy, (The Shapeshifting Priestesses of Pygras) and I'll have to find just the right publisher. I've seen SOOO many sequels that just waned horribly at the end, and I'm really glad I did these two sequels well. Each is better than the book before, and I'm proud of that.

Here's the Series Summary if you're curious:
http://www.michelehart.com/series-pygras.htm

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Doing Edits is COOL!

Edits have been such a good experience.

Got a lot of experience with Word 2007, and my loathing of the program has diminished. I'll eventually entirely convert down the line, I imagine.

Edits allowed me to fix so many flaws I'd seen. Only had to rewrite ONE scene. I consider that a triumph! And the rewrite was just SO much better. I also got to plant a few more tidbits.

All said, I'm much more confident and proud of the manuscript. Thanks goes to Traci @ StarDust Press for a great eye spotting weaknesses. She was very patient in my learning Word, majorly helpful at all angles. I hope I get to work with her again. If she became disgusted with my bozo questions, she never showed it. First Class.

Looks Are Deceiving 's in the hands of line editors now. I'll get those edits soon.

Two Spaces or One? No Tabs. Where Did Tabs Go?

I've decided to blog more. (NO!)
Yes, really.

I like e-publishing. This is a neat experience, and I'm glad to be on the show.

e-publishing has some interesting formatting differences compared to print pubs.

Two Spaces or One?

The e-publishers want one space between sentences, the print publishers want two. Hm ... How did that happen?

I'm typewriter-trained, which means I use two. I prefer the look of it, but that's just probably due to familiarity to it. I think the extra space brings a bit more clarity, which is never a bad thing.

All my manuscripts are 2-spaced, and instead of converting, I think I'll stay with two. After all, if you have an MS with two spaces, you can always hit Find and Replace, and replace every two spaces with one, job done in seconds. If it's the other way around, you can't replace one space with two. It'll put two spaces between every single word. If you have to look for the end of every sentence in 800 pages to insert an extra space, you might as well spend days in Hell.

I sure am glad I realized that before I quickly converted my stories to one space for submission to the e-pubs, then had to go back and spent a week EACH (14 books) putting them back for the print pubs. Maintaining two different files, one 2-spaced and one 1-spaced, opens the doors for mistakes.

Tabs. Are they no longer cool?

I like tabs. Never had a problem with tabs, always got along with them, once permanently set. Word is a monster with tabs, I've noticed, and I wonder how much that pain in the rump influenced the elimination of tabs. Damn you, Microsoft!

(Of course, if you know me,
you know I blame Microsoft for the following:
global warming, the dryness of my July 4th brownies (even though the box said "moist"), the Mid-East crisis, the high number of calories in peanut butter, the fact that shoes are uncomfortable. There is no Waffle House near my home and therefore, no good hash browns around. The overrating of Tom Cruise. The overwhelming fear that one day we'll have a President Cheney. The purse I most love is not big enough. Alien abductions. AND the inflated price of peach-yogurt shakes.)

I love you, WordPerfect, but the industry is forcing me to Word. I had wanted to be true to you and had hoped the world would come around to your superiority, but the enemy was too strong, too rich, and too dirty. You were good, really good, baby, but I'm going to have to sacrifice my finer tastes for my career. I'll always love you.

So, tabs are out and I'm down with that, not a crisis. Just an observation. Thank the stars for this computer world where changing such things does not take weeks and months.

If I'd ever had to actually hand-write a manuscript, I'd've never written my name!

Monday, July 16, 2007

I'm So Excited! Edits Underway!

Just finished my 2nd round of edits, and my editor at StarDust Press, Traci, is really nice, and has remarkable patience with me over Word 2007.

For those who don't know, I've fought the good fight over Word 2007 for the sake of Word Perfect but, alas, I have lost. I am surrendering the fight. It's too big a war, and I like some of Word's features, so I'm just giving up and giving in.

Edits went much faster than I thought, and I've learned a lot.