 To ring in the holidays I will be giving away copies of the Spheria Audiobook (a $19.95 value) to five (5) lucky subscribers of the Spheria mailing list. This list is reserved for people interested in notifications when I release new books.
To enter, click here or go to www.codyleet.com/spheria-signup Subscribers will be chosen at random on Dec 24. Good luck and Happy Holidays! Cody Leet 12/11/2017
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 Do you have a computer at home sitting idle 90% of the time? If you're like me, you have several. Did you know you can put wasted computing power to good use to help make scientific discoveries? Well now you do. There is a distributed computing platform called BOINC that runs on your machine(s) as a screen saver. What happen is when the screen saver kicks in, your computer receives a calculation to work on which will help move us toward solving scientific problems. The cool part is there are many to choose from:
As of today, there are 176,769 volunteers with 794,367 computers contributing to this project. The screen savers look pretty cool too! Rosetta looks like this:  I encourage your to download the screen saver, pick a cause you believe in, and donate that free idle processing to the world. http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php Cody Leet 12/1/2017  I am super excited to announce that today my novel Spheria is available as an audio book! It was narrated by the very talented James Highfield who has the amazing ability to do tons of different voices. Right now you can get it on Audible, Amazon and iTunes.
If you have not yet read the print or ebook version, then I highly recommend you check this one out. It's my favorite format of the bunch, and a great way to make those daily commutes go by much faster. Also makes a great Christmas present. Don't forget your friends and family! Click below to jump to the purchase page: As for Spheria 2, this is one of the many reasons it is delayed. The other one is life. Anyway, I am slowly making progress and the new cover design is up on my website. Check that out and let me know what you think. Cody Leet 11/14/2017  Book Club Bookstore & More has moved to South Windsor! I will be at their grand opening celebration on 4/29/2017 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm. If you have a free moment stop by and I will sign your copy of Spheria, or pick up a new one.
Here is a link to the event details: https://www.facebook.com/events/1293031004118165 Cody 2017  I am super excited to announce that I signed a deal to produce an audio book version of Spheria! The narrator, James Highfield, of Mr. Biggs Productions, is highly versatile and will record a great rendition. I think the theatrical style of Spheria will lend itself well to an audio book and will open this novel to a whole new audience.
James is an Voice Over Actor living in Michigan. He has been cast in several professional and fan based projects with high audio standards. He has been doing his own audio recording and production for several years with the exception of a few cases. Along with voice over he has experience from several years of theater productions, worked for a few years as a college radio DJ, and he graduated from Northern Michigan University with a bachelors degree in psychology. You can listen to a sample of James' work here: https://soundcloud.com/mrbiggsproductions Cody 3/17/2017  With the demise of Borders and the struggling story of Barnes & Noble, the future looks like it's going to consist of only two sources of books: online retailers and indie bookstores. If you enjoy the feel and ambiance of being in a room with a selection of books to browse through, please support your locally run independent bookstore.
I added a link on the Spheria page to find your nearest indie bookstore. If you don't find Spheria there, you can easily special order it. Happy reading! Cody Leet 2016  I will be doing a book signing this Saturday at the Book Club Bookstore & More in Broad Book, CT, from 10am to 3pm. I hope you can stop by to say hi. There will be several vendors there with refreshments and giveaways.
Here are more details: https://www.facebook.com/events/1803575753249700 Cody Leet 2016
When I was finalizing the third draft of Spheria, I engaged three fantastic beta readers who gave me invaluable feedback on what worked and what didn’t. I changed a good deal in the book based on their feedback and recommend this step as a best practice for all writers. For detailed information, please see my Novel Creation Process. It seems I had a little problem with Diet Coke. Let me elaborate.  Diet Coke I am a huge Diet Coke fan. I consume way more of this substance than is realistically healthy. I have attempted to wean myself off it many times, but the process is futile. Now I accept it as my vice and compared to other possibilities it’s not so bad. I may not be alone. I worked at a company where we stocked free beverages and Diet Coke was the most popular drink by a wide margin.  When I wrote my first draft, I made the assumption that since I love Diet Coke, everyone does. So in about five scenes, with five different characters, they were drinking a Diet Coke. One, in particular, chugged and savored it after a flight (this scene was eventually deleted.) One of my beta readers, Therese, after completing a read through, made the statement, “I was expecting Diet Coke to have some involvement in the climax since it was mentioned so many times.” I guess what I created here was False Foreshadowing. Red Herring Isn’t this just a red herring? I think it's not and for a subtle reason. A red herring is defined as “something, especially a clue, that is intended to be misleading or distracting from the real issue.” The key word in the definition is “intended.” In my Diet Coke example, I did not put that foreshadowing in there intentionally, but it would have left the reader feeling gypped, as it did Therese. It was not misleading; it was just irrelevant.  Fun Fact: the term Red Herring originates with hunting dogs. The salting process that turns a herring red creates such a pungent fish that they were used to throw hunting dogs off a trail. False Foreshadowing I googled this term and found only a couple mentions in a different context: to describe foreshadowing that ends up being the opposite of what the reader expected. I think that’s more in line with a red herring, actually. Or if I had to make a term for it, I would call it “Deceptive Foreshadowing.” So here is my definition of False Foreshadowing:
I think this is analogous to another more common writing mistake: word repetition. It is never good to use the same word over and over in a short span of space. Never do this. It is never fun for your readers.
Solution Once this was pointed out to me, it was simple to fix. I left two scenes in with Diet Coke, changed another to Dr. Pepper, change the fourth to Iced Tea, and removed the fifth altogether. So there you go – avoid False Foreshadowing! Cody Leet 2016
Added details:
On Saturday, October 8, we will use our popular Booked for Lunch program format to introduce you and your books to our audience, followed by a viewing of the Indie Author Day webinar. The program will begin at 12:30, when everyone is invited to lunch. Members of the audience bring their lunches; we will provide food for our guest authors. The Friends of the Library will provide yummy desserts and beverages. Beginning at least by 1 p.m. (we watch to be sure people have finished eating), we will give each author a chance to introduce his or her book. The audience will probably want to have a glimpse of your background, how you came to write the book, and what the book is about. I would think this might be done in 5 - 10 minutes. After the introductions, you will be seated at tables around the room and will be available for questions, book sales, and signing. At 2 p.m., we'll stop for the webinar. The room is available to us until the Library closes at 4:30. We have no "required" end time, but my guess is that people will probably be leaving by 3:15. If authors wish to stay and visit with one another, that would be fine. |
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Photos used under Creative Commons from tgrauros, Michael Seeley, Fabio Pani
