The Journey of King's Heart Part 2

 In the post before last, I told you about the first part of the journey my first book has taken.

1. Formatting King's Heart

The next step of the journey was not necessarily my favorite part. I get frustrated with the nitty gritty details like formatting. Thankfully there is such a thing as YouTube. I have found a lot about writing and self-publishing. One of the first I would like to mention is Reedsy. Reedsy has been so helpful, from their posts to their YouTube tutorials. They are not a (Christian) organization, so when they use illustrations from the world's movies and books, I have to be careful. Another Youtuber I came across was Mandi Lynn with Stone Ridge Books. She has a lot of videos about self-publishing, formatting, and book covers. One more place I would like to mention is the blog - Helping Writers Become Authors.

  (Again, it is not a Christian website, so I have to be careful with the examples. I want to be a Christian author that has clean wholesome books for young ladies and even their moms to enjoy. At the same time, I want it to be professional and not cheesy. It is not okay to follow the world's standards, watch the world's movies, and talk like the world. But it is okay take advantage of things like writing tips that do not have anything to do with doctrine. Some of the people I have learned from are not Christian, but I have learned many helpful techniques and writing tips.) 

I may have mentioned it before. I found it around November 2021 during NaNoWriMo - National November Writing Month. It was very helpful when I was planning my plot and story arc for the book I started in November - Redeeming Louise. I was able to use some of what I learned for King's Heart.

It took me a while, for some reason, to decide what I wanted to use to format my book. I really struggled with it at first. Should I use Word? Find a different tool? Or should I use Kindle Create? I finally found a really handy template from Kindle Direct Publishing. After I downloaded it, I chose the English file then I picked the size I wanted. The download includes all the different sizes, including 8.5x5.5, which I chose for King's Heart. I do not know if it was the easiest way, but it worked for me. I could just download the Microsoft Word template and go from there since they already set the margins for me. I took out the contents page since King's Heart did not need it. I also took out the Acknowledgements page from the front and moved it to the back. Then I just started copying and pasting one chapter at a time. I actually started this part after my Dad had already helped me edit a few chapters.

2. Choosing the inside design

During the middle of this, I had to decide how I wanted it to look. What should the chapter page look like? What font did I want? Did I want my name at the top? The book title? These were questions that needed answers. I have heard that one of the best ways to decide is to look at other books and see how other authors/designers/publishers did it. Some things I looked up online, but mostly, I just pulled ideas from the numerous novels on my bookcase and Brenna's bookcase at her house. I even did some of this one afternoon at Brenna's house. A lot of ideas ended up being a lot of Brenna's mysteries, but that's okay. I did try to find some in my genre as well. Then I took them, opened them to their first chapter page, and lined them up side by side. I was able to see what I liked and what I did not like. 

I had read and seen that most chapter pages start on the right side of the book (or the odd-numbered pages). Once that was decided, I chose for the chapter heading to be six spaces down and to the right of the page. I also had to choose which font I wanted. One guy I watched on YouTube used Garamond. It looked good to me, so I went with that. For the Chapter heading, I made it gray, Lucida Calligraphy, and 16pt. font. I also added a Drop cap. I also learned from researching and playing around with Word that I could preset the Styles. I don't know why I never noticed that before. Once I had the Style set, it was so much easier to copy and paste and then click the style I wanted.

3. Designing the cover

I am so thankful for a brother that is good at graphic design. My brother Josh is the assistant to the pastor as well as the youth pastor at my church. He did the church website, and he also designs the thumbnails for our live stream services. I was so glad when he agreed to design my cover for me. I was not able to tell him the size for a while, for I did not know how many pages I would have until I was done formatting the inside. When I could give him a page count, then he was able to start designing. He asked for ideas of what I wanted. I went back to research and studied other book covers. I gave him a couple ideas from my bookcase then I looked up books at the main library in Ocala when I went there with Callie one day this summer. It was fun getting ideas.

Once I had a general idea, he ran with it. He ended up giving me six book cover ideas. I had a hard time deciding between the last two. Josh told me I should take a few days to decide what I wanted. He did them all on Canva, so I was able to log into Canva to look at them again. I made a copy of them so I could play around with them a little. It was a fine balance of not being nit-picky but getting the cover how I wanted it. I added the description to the back and my name to the front. I was almost going to go with a purple cover he designed. At first, he put a plane on the front, which had been Dad's idea. I liked it, but that was such a small part of my story that I did not know if it fit. I also was unsure if it would attract the readers I wanted. He took out the plane, and I liked it much better. Then I changed course and decided on Cover#5. We both played around with it. I liked the design, but I did not know about the color. I was able to keep the picture he had but changed the color of it on Canva.

Deciding on the cover took about three weeks, but I am very happy with the results.

4. Plugging it all in

I had already started setting up my account with KDP - Kindle Direct Publishing. I went to my new favorite Youtube videos by Mandi Lynn. I also watched other videos, though I don't remember which. After I set up my taxes for KDP, I started putting in my book details - title, subtitle, author, description, audience, marketplace, categories/genre, and keywords. That was the fun part. 

The next step was setting up an account on Bowker and purchasing my ISBNs. When that was done, I put it on KDP. When the inside and cover of my book were finished, then I uploaded them to KDP. After that, I previewed the book to check for errors before ordering a proof copy. A proof copy is the finished product but with "Nor For Resale" on the cover. The proof copy is for me, the author, to check for printing errors and other mistakes I may not have noticed. It said that I was able to order up to five proof copies - all I had to do was pay for the shipping and printing. Before I ordered the proof copy, I had to set the book price. I chose for my book to be $13.99. I get 60% of the royalties - which ended up being $2.97. But, hey, since I am publishing through Amazon, I don't have to worry about an upfront cost. Yay!

I hit publish Thursday, so right now, my book is in review while I wait for KDP to approve it.

5. Choosing the name of my book line

I wanted to come up with a name for what I would write under. I asked my family for ideas. I liked Ms. Francie Taylor's Keep the Heart. The first book I started writing when I was 14 was based off my purity ring. I wanted a name that would go with that and involve the heart as well.  I asked my family if it should have books, publications, fiction, literature, or something like that in the name.

Here is what I finally decided on...

Thank you, Callie, for helping me with the design!

I want to write books that are gripping, heart-touching, and encouraging. I want books that will encourage young ladies to keep a heart of purity. 

I've enjoyed the journey King's Heart has taken, but I am so glad it is almost published. I hope you enjoy reading The King's Heart in the LORD's Hands when you get your copy. If you enjoy the story, I would love for you to leave a review on Amazon. Meanwhile, you can now follow Heart of Purity Literature on Facebook and Instagram.

Until next time...

Elisabeth Kristine

The Night of the Shooting Star

 A Greater Pastime...

Reading is one of my favorite pastimes. I love a good story that grips my attention and makes me feel like the characters are my friend. I was going to read the novel I am currently reading, but I wanted to sit on the porch first with a glass of sweet tea. I like sitting on the porch when it is raining, early morning before the heat, or before bed. I also heard that there were supposed to be meteor showers this weekend. Dad, Callie, and Micah had stood outside for a while to watch for shooting stars, so I stood at the edge of the porch in the dark for a moment before turning on the porch lights and sitting on the porch swing.

I had not sat long when Dad came out of the house with a blanket and turned off the porch light. "Are you going to lay in the grass?" I asked curiously.

I followed him out to the front grass right by the porch. Callie and Micah followed soon after. One funny thing is I sat down for a moment when I realized and said, "Wait, isn't this where that ant pile was?"

"Oh, no, is it?" Dad asked, getting up and asking for a light. Sure enough, he had laid it right on top of the little ant pile. We quickly moved it a couple feet away.

When Mom came out, we laid back to watch the show. I don't know why we don't stargaze more often. It was fun. I smiled when Dad said we should pray together that God would allow all of us to see a shooting star together. A couple of us only saw one at first, but it was still awesome to look at all the stars. We started talking about stars in the Bible, and that got me to thinking of a song we had heard from the Sommerdorf family back when their kids traveled with them - the song was "What would they say if only stars would talk." We were out there for almost 15 minutes when one raced across the sky. It was super long, and I only caught the end of it, but it was still awesome. When the rest went inside, I stayed out there on a blanket, in the dark, all by myself. 

I started to quietly sing "How Great Thou Art" - softly enough to not take away from the moment. I just sang the part about the stars when all of a sudden, the biggest shooting star I have ever seen flew slowly across the sky to get even brighter as it went. I could even see the burning orange glow around it. I started crying. A true girl, I know, but I was just so amazed. I was laughing and crying at the same time. Even something as small as a shooting star made me think of how good God is and how He is mindful of me.  I was able to see two more shooting stars though they were much smaller and more fleeting. Just a few moments before, when everyone was out there, I felt so small looking up at God's vast universe.  Yet God cares for me. I thought of all the times I had put off time with God or chosen something else over Him, and I asked for forgiveness. How great He is to forgive! How great He is in His creation and care for his people!

Stars in the Bible...

I felt so humbled yet loved in that moment over something so simple, yet part of His amazing creation. God created the sun and moon on Creation Day 4, and the Bible adds, "He made the stars also," as if it was an afterthought. I am glad He did for stars are pretty to gaze at. Psalms 147:4 says, “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.” And Job 22:12 - “Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!”

  I thought of Abraham when God promised his seed would be as many as the stars of the sky. I thought of how humbled Abraham must have felt for God to choose him. God loves me and wants to use me.

Daniel the prophet wrote of the end of time when God shall judge the earth - “And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.” - Daniel 12:3.

The stars were made for a purpose - Jeremiah 31:35

“Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name:”

Stars should never be worshipped, but they should cause us to worship the One Who made them. How great He is!

The Journey of King's Heart Part 1

I am super excited about my book. It should come out within the next couple of weeks. Today, I thought I would share the journey of my first complete, unpublished novel - The King's Heart in the LORD's Hands. So here goes...

On a Sunday morning in January 2019, I was showering and getting ready for church when a book idea started running through my head. As soon as I was done with my shower, I hurried to write down my thoughts in a small notebook before rushing to finish getting ready for church. That was when King's Heart was born.

    Two different books were already in the works by this point, but this one really came together. Like any typical girl, I have watched Princess movies and even some Hallmarks (the good ones, at least). You know, the ones where a prince will leave to travel to the States and fall in love with a waitress or another young "peasant" girl with no royal blood or rich family. Yeah, I've watched a few of those. And yes, they end up being pretty much the same, but what girl doesn't love a cheesy romance? Not only did I watch all the clean princess movies, but my favorite female character in the Old Testament is Esther. I started wondering what I would do if I were taken from my home today to go to a new country and meet a handsome Prince. Since I am a Christian, it was interesting to imagine how my life would play out if I were in one of the princess movies I had watched. Thus came the story of Elaina. [I had first named her Bethany but decided I wanted to do a different name since I already knew a few girls named Bethany. It is kind of fun yet daunting at the same time to come up with character names. I liked the name Bentley from my favorite book series growing up - The Knights of Arrethtrae. Edward Bentley Monroe sounded cool, so I went with that. (I put the two and two together afterward that my Grandpa's middle name is Edward, so that makes it special.) Elaina becomes good friends with a girl named Josephine. I wrote of her with an old friend in mind - a young lady I was pen-pals with for a time. Not all the names I choose have a special meaning behind them, though.]

    I wanted a story with a girl like me - a girl with flaws and not drop-dead gorgeous in my eyes. Too many books and movies make the heroine so perfectly beautiful that you feel you can never measure up. Also, living with brothers, I have learned that guys can be gross. Even though the hero would be a king, I did not want him to be perfect either. As a side note, though you may meet God's best for you, it does not mean that he will be Mr. Perfect; he will have flaws just like you. Hopefully, the characters will be ones you can relate to. I would also like to note that even though the heroine, Elaina, will share some of the traits as me or like some of the same things as me, the events, names, places, etc., are fictional. 

    I wrote the Prologue at the beginning of writing King's Heart, so I would read it over and over to make sure it was well-written. I finished the first draft in early 2022 and asked my parents to read it. My mom had read it as I wrote it, but I wanted her to read it out loud to Dad. It took them almost a year, life can get busy, but anyways, I had other books to work on, like the next book I am hoping to publish before Christmas. I adjusted the parts they pointed out to make my story better and brought out my antagonist more. To save money, I started editing it through Grammarly. When I first started, I got a three-month discount for being a first-time user. I keep forgetting to cancel it, but I have been using it, so it is not going to waste. In fact, as I am writing this post, it has red underlining the grammar errors pointing out what I need to fix, so it has been very helpful.

    I made a PowerPoint slide in June to show my family what else I needed to do to finish my book, and we also talked about ISBN numbers. In April or May, our church ladies went to a conference. They had a Christian author set up a booth. I was able to meet her and ask her about publishing through Amazon, which I decided to do after talking to Krista Zarn, author of the Frontier Avenger series, and her sister Hannah Danford who also published a book through Amazon. When I asked about ISBN numbers, she advised that I purchase my own. When I showed my family my PowerPoint, I also talked to them about that. My dad offered to do one final read-through and help edit it, promising to do so faster than he and Mom were able to read it the first time. It took him two months. I am so glad he read it, too. He really helped me in bringing out the conflict. One of the sweetest compliments he gave me was, "Beth, you are a good writer." We will see what the rest of y'all think when you read my published book. :)

    Well, I noticed this post is starting to get long, so I will go ahead and end it here. This post will have to be in two pieces as there is too much involved in the process of writing and self-publishing a book. When I come back with another post, I will tell you about the formatting stage, who is doing my cover for me, and finally, I will "announce" (It seems so cool to say that:) ) what the name of my fiction line will be. So, until next time...

May you keep your heart while enjoying the wait

Elisabeth Kristine