Amazon, Here We Come!

After that long process which I talked about in my last post, it has finally happened! I've hit the approval button to start the 6-8 week process of getting TSOT onto Amazon and BarnesandNobels.com!!! :D I have also learned that not only will my book go to Amazon and B and N.com (which was enough to sell me. . .), through this distribution package it will also be open for other bookstores to pick up if they request it. This is a very pleasing thought, but one that I realize probably won't be of much use unless I get busy selling my book to the different stores. . . . For me (a very much introvert who completely froze up when trying to get my friendly dentist's office to purchase an advertisement to be put in the program of a play I was in), this is a rather daunting idea. . . daunting may not be the right word; how about catastrophic? But I'm sure, if this is God's will, everything will turn out. :)

In the mean time, some other pretty exciting things have been going on. . . . I got the lead role in a film (:D!!!!!!!!!!!!), and today I'm going with my dad and some people from our church to meet 2 of the people behind an independent Christian film that has been an inspiration of mine since I first saw it almost 2 and a half years ago. (The movie is "Pendragon; Sword of his Father." If you have never seen it, I would encourage you to do so! :) )

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

I'M PUBLISHED!!!!!!! :D

(Click on image to view a larger version)

When an evil act is done, leaving the kingdom in the hands of a betrayer. . .

When the rightful heir to the throne has gone missing. . .

All those who are still faithful have gathered together to form a rebel group known as the King's Men or the Konungr Ly∂r.

All of their hopes rest on a prophecy: on a sword and its wielder, and a girl and her dragon. All of their hopes rest on finding the rightful heir to the throne. But when they find him, will he accept the challenge of fighting to get back the throne? Or will he himself fall prey to the darkness?

After almost two and a half years it's actually happened. . . . My book is published. My name is in print! I don't think that I can quite grasp the reality of it yet. . . . But that's beside the point. The matter of the fact is that it has really, truly happened! I'm not going to wake up in a moment to find out that this has all been some kind of wacky dream. . . it's real. My book–The Sword of Teneraz–is published and available for purchase at lulu.com. I hope to later have it available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNobles.com, but I have to first figure out all of the details of getting that going. :)

Here's the TSOT book trailer as I promised several posts back. . . .

And of course the confetti that goes with it {throws a handful of bright-colored stringy stuff in the air}. . . and don't forget the popcorn!!! :D {licks lips and reaches for a bag of heavenlyness}

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

(an author)

The Sword of Teneraz: The TRAILER!

I'm am very excited to announce that the The Sword of Teneraz book trailer is now complete!!! :D However. . . I am not going to show it to you, yet. You may thank my dad for the wonderful advice of waiting until closer to the books publication date to place it out in public. And I think that I'll keep the reasoning to myself and he: it may ruin it's affects on you otherwise. ;)

So keep your eyes open for the trailer to be released soon, with a great amount of hullabaloo and confetti.

And with that announcement, I think I should let you know how progress on my books are coming.

The Sword of Teneraz– is still in the editorial process. My mom is on her second run through, at the completion of which my dad will go over her notes and see if he has anything to add or such. My cousin has had–as he put it–an evil {crook eyebrows evilly} semester in college these past months, but his plan is to get TSOT edited over his Christmas break.

The Wolves of Langoor– is about 1/3rd written if my estimations are correct–which they seem to be known to not be, so we shall see just how far I truly am. The fantasy of completing NaNoWriMo's required 50,000 words in one month hasn't turned out to be a reality this year. :( All though I HAVE been able to make a great dent in the mass of writing to be done in order for this book to be called complete. So that has been exciting in itself. And I feel, that if I can keep up even just the amount of consistency that I've gotten in writing this month, I MAY (just possibly) be able to get the first draft done in a few months. (Don't hold me to that though, what with Christmas coming up and all. . . . It can be a great time to get lots of writing done, because of getting a break from other things; such as school. But on the other side of things, it's very possible to not get any writing done over the Christmas holiday, because you're so busy spending time with family.)

I hope that you feel U.T.D on all the latest happenings with my books now. Oh! And that reminds me. . . once NaNoWriMo is finished, I WILL be typing all that I have so far of TWOL into the computer so that I can put some numbers into the word count for it on my side bar; which, to my chagrin, still very clearly says "COMING SOON".

Thanks for following! And happy (late) Thanksgiving!!!! :)

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

It's That Time of Year Again. . . .

NaNoWriMo is here. . . . Well, technically it came several days ago (I was a little late in starting). But anyways, my goal is to write 50,000 words in The Wolves of Langoor before midnight November 30th. Wheeew! That is a lot! But I've calculated that if I write approximately 5-8 pages a day, I should have it. . . . Yesterday I got a little over 5 written, and today I'm hoping to beat that, so I'd say I'm off to a decent start. . . .

I'll keep you posted with updates as the month progresses. But first, I want to hear back from the rest of you NaNoWriMo participants out there. How are you faring? What are you working on??

Before I go. . . I have 1 more announcement/question. So I've come up with 2 simi-title names for the series that includes The Sword of Teneraz, and The Wolves of Langoor. What do you think of:

1. The Chronicles of the Sword of the Kings

or
2. The Sword of the Kings Chronicles. . . .

I threw out the idea of calling it a trilogy, as I have a feeling that it might become 4 books instead of the originally planned 3.

Please let me know your thoughts. :)

Assr vísa ykkar or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

Ryann Watters and the Kings Sword the movie!

Just yesterday I found out that a Christian fantasy book by Eric Reinhold called "Ryann Watters and the Kings Sword" is being made into a motion picture right now, and is currently in the filming process! If you know me at all, you know that my passion is film and reaching the film industry for Christ, and that I am an absolute fan of Christian fantasy! So of course I am extremely excited about all this!! :)

For more info on it you can go to their official website: http://www.kingssword.com/. You can also watch the teaser for the movie on youtube by following this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97mxHXeLkA0.

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

Oh What Happiness! Oh What Thrill!

Just maybe 10-20 minutes ago I finished the 4th draft of "The Sword of Teneraz"!!! :D I am very excited. . . . . Now it is time to relax and celebrate as others edit it (and of course do a bunch more writing in "The Wolves of Langoor") until I get it back from them and take the final editorial step of putting them all together into my last draft. *deep sigh* :)

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

Beautiful. . .

This past Tuesday I went to the first meeting of a small group that I'm involved with this summer. And it went wonderfully. :) I think that it will be great! But anyways. . . we were talking about beauty, and what God sees as beautiful. We're working through a book called "Want More? Life" by Natalie Lloyd, and the title of the chapter was "You're not pretty; you're beautiful". . . or something to that extent. It talked about David when God chose him to be king, and that section there that talks about God not looking at outward appearances, but instead seeing the heart. And then it asked, if God looked at you, would He see someone beautiful?? Naturally. . . that was kind of an awkward question. I didn't think I could say yes, because I knew that I was by far not a perfect person, and the definition of beauty with God is someone perfect right??? So, I answered that I could only hope.

A few days later. . . I was busy reading a REALLY good book called "Bones of Makaidos", fourth book in the Oracles of Fire series by Bryan Davis, (if you haven't read these books–as well as the first series Dragons in Our Midst–you should go read them. . . . :) They're GOOD!) when I came across a section of the book where a character was asked almost the exact same question as I had had such trouble answering. "Are you truly beautiful in God's eyes?" But her answer wasn't "I can only hope", or some other indefinite answer. She was confident. . . Jesus had cleaned her, so she was wholly pure, and no one could make her believe that she was still buried in her sins.

It clicked.

And I realized how wrong I had been. We should never doubt the cleansing power of Jesus' blood, nor, how beautiful we are in God's sight when we truly rely on His saving grace. No one's perfect; so before I had been led to think that no one could truly be beautiful in God's sight. But sure. . . no one is perfect by their own power, but when we allow Jesus to wash our hearts with His love, we become pure, scrubbed clean of our past sins. That doesn't mean that we can never sin again. . . and we do make mistakes, we fall at times. But that is no reason not to run back to Jesus when we realize that we are wrong, and allow Him to pull us into His arms, and gently wipe away the dirt from our palms and set us back on the right path. And then. . . when God looks at us, we can have no doubt that He will smile and call us His beautiful daughters or handsome sons. :)

So yes. . . I am beautiful.

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

P.S. BOOK NEWS! I just finished the 3rd draft of TSOT today!!! WOOT! :D One more, then a few others edit, and on to publishing!!! . . . This is actually happening. . . . . .

An Update On Life And The Things In It

I am sorry that it has been so long since I have even gotten on here. I'm finding with the business of the holidays, I haven't had all that much time to "waste" an hour or two of my day sitting in front of the glowing screen of the computer. I've been instead reading, making Christmas presents, and just relaxing around the fire place with my family, and it feels good! I've got to say, I've now gotten to a point that it really does feel like a "waste" to get on here! Unless of course I have a specific reason for it. Like just now, I just wondered away to help my sister with some specifics about our parent's present (and no, I will not tell you what it is, my mom DOES come on here every so often! ;) lol). But anyways, that's why I haven't written very many posts. But probably after Christmas, and all of the business has passed, I'll be able to, not only work harder on getting all of TSOT onto the computer, but also be able to post more. :)

So, to begin, I've been doing a lot of reading lately, even though I'm a pretty slow reader, I LOVE to read! So, ya, the picture above. . . that just happens to be my bedside table, and those books. . . those are the books I am reading right now (sorry about the picture being slightly blurry, my camera doesn't take the best pictures at night). It's not the most current picture, I've finished The Hobbit since I took it, and there are several more bookmarks dangling out of pages. . . but otherwise. . . it's fairly accurate! :)

Yesterday we got out Christmas tree up and decorated. It is the biggest, most beautiful tree we have had in my entire life! It looks just like a tree in a toy store would; packed up with all of the different ornaments we've been given throughout are lives. No fancy, ornamental tree for us! :) And I'm kind of glad. My grandma had this tradition that each year at Christmas she would give each of us cousins an ornament, and after she died, my parents picked it up and have continued the tradition. I loved pulling out all of my ornaments, and remembering the Christmases that I got them. . . . It makes it a whole lot more special I think, when you have memories attached to the decorations and stuff.

Well, I think I shall go pick up one of those books from my bedside table! Maybe Uglies. . . it's in a very exciting part! :)

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~