Hillary DePiano.com » The Trading Assistant’s Assistant http://www.hillarydepiano.com fiction, non-fiction author and playwright Hillary DePiano Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:00:29 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 At 4,775 words for the year. Also Rachel Ray and I are going to throw down http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2010/01/19/at-4775-words-for-the-year-also-rachel-ray-and-i-are-going-to-throw-down/ http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2010/01/19/at-4775-words-for-the-year-also-rachel-ray-and-i-are-going-to-throw-down/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:51:27 +0000 Hillary DePiano http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2010/01/19/at-4775-words-for-the-year-also-rachel-ray-and-i-are-going-to-throw-down/

2%, eh? That is something of a buzz kill, not gonna lie.

So I worked my butt off yesterday and did all of the taxes which may not seem like a big thing but I worked from 7 AM straight through until about 9:30 PM with only a break to go to the gym (about 45 minutes) and make and eat dinner (about an hour and a half).*

*Side note: Rachel Ray and I are going to throw down. Woman claims her recipes take 30 minutes but that is a bold faced LIE. OK, maybe they take 30 minutes to cook but to cut up all the vegetables and other stuff takes 30 minutes by itself! I know, Rachel, you have sous chefs that do that cutting for you but unless you want to send those damn sous chefs over here to cut my damn veggies for me, don’t claim a recipe takes 30 minutes when only the cooking part takes 30 minutes but the whole thing takes over an hour. Freaking liar!

But I digress.

So since I worked like a fiend today, I decided to spend today on writing. Now, it wasn’t on fun fiction writing, it was stuff for the new edition of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant (coming out very soon, I will post when I know exactly when). We are adding a whole new section to reflect changes to the TAprogram and I totally just housed that puppy today so I’m feeling good about getting that done.

I’ve been working an extra long day Monday, Wednesday, and Friday so I was thinking of making Tuesday and Thursday all writing days so that I can devote a whole day to writing projects without feeling like I’m neglecting real work. Not sure if I will be able to pull this off as there is *a lot* of real work to do but a girl can dream. But I pulled it off today so it shows some potential.

Also, you may have noted from my last post that the number of words I had left in the year made no sense. This is because I could only get Google Docs to calculate this in a very dumb way so I am going to try to enlist the husband to figure out a less stupid way to have it calculate. In the meantime, we are going manual. But while this means ridiculous stats such as how many words left and how on track I am aren’t working, I can guarantee that Mr. Potato is 100% correct if nothing else.

I wrote 2,867 words today. This is 2% of my goal. Facts.

Anyway, the potato is taking a break and watching the old boob tube because I am going to jump in the shower and then take advantage of Free Movie Tuesday with the husband and catch Sherlock Holmes this evening. All in all, a very productive week so far, here’s hoping I can keep it up! :-)

What up, Holmes!

Rachel Ray, I’ve got my eye on you.

]]> http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2010/01/19/at-4775-words-for-the-year-also-rachel-ray-and-i-are-going-to-throw-down/feed/ 2 Nice reviews of The Author and The Trading Assistant’s Assistant from GoodReads http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/10/28/nice-reviews-of-the-author-and-the-trading-assistants-assistant-from-goodreads/ http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/10/28/nice-reviews-of-the-author-and-the-trading-assistants-assistant-from-goodreads/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:53:05 +0000 Hillary DePiano http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/10/28/nice-reviews-of-the-author-and-the-trading-assistants-assistant-from-goodreads/

I logged into my GoodReads account today and noticed a really nice new review of The Author that was posted by one of the giveaway winners:

I’ve never read anything by Hillary DePiano……… I won a copy of this book in a giveaway. It was an awesome novella. I couldn’t put it down! As an added bonus, she signed the copy I received :-) I definitely recommend this book to people who LOVE page-turners. Thumbs up!

Thanks to Chris for that really nice review! You can see the original post here.

I was also pleasantly surprised that another giveaway winner posted reviews of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant on GoodReads, Amazon and her own blog which was incredibly kind of her! You can read her review on her review blog here.

If you have read either of these books and have a spare second to review it on Amazon, GoodReads or your personal site, it would be very much appreciated!

Haven’t read either book? Well, copies of both are available on Amazon right now (The Author is also available for the Amazon Kindle, iPod Touch and iPhone) so why not grab a copy.

Short on cash right now? No problem. You can get started reading The Author for free via audio book right here. The rest of the book will be posted soon so you can go through the entire book without paying a cent.

]]> http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/10/28/nice-reviews-of-the-author-and-the-trading-assistants-assistant-from-goodreads/feed/ 0 Congratulations to the winners of my Birthday Book Giveaway! http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/10/19/congratulations-to-the-winners-of-my-birthday-book-giveaway/ http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/10/19/congratulations-to-the-winners-of-my-birthday-book-giveaway/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:16:42 +0000 Hillary DePiano http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/10/19/congratulations-to-the-winners-of-my-birthday-book-giveaway/

Huge thanks to anyone who took the time to enter the book giveaway I was running in partnership with GoodReads! I was really pleased in how much interest there was in this contest so I definitely plan on hosting another giveaway in the future (maybe for Christmas?) so please let me know below what you’d like to see in a future giveaway so that I can make it better.

There were a total of 983 people who entered the contest which is a good 980 more people than I was expecting so, again, thanks for passing the word to those who did!

Now, I’ll bet you are dying to know who won. Let me go ahead and end the suspense right now and offer a hearty congratulations to the winners!

The links below are to the winner’s GoodReads profile so that you can friend them if you wish. Keep in mind that GoodReads selected the winners, not me, so don’t get mad at me if you didn’t win as I had nothing to do with it!

The following people won copies of The Author (this giveaway was the only one for 5 copies)

The winner of the copy of The Love of Three Oranges was Ariel Richardson.

The winner of the copy of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant was Bev ethington

Huge congratulations to the winners! Your copies will be shipping out today so you should be getting them soon.

If you missed out on this giveaway, don’t worry! Not only will I be sure to do another giveaway in the future, you can always get these books at any time from bookstores like Amazon.

PS: If you aren’t my friend on GoodReads yet, why the heck not? Friend me here.

]]> http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/10/19/congratulations-to-the-winners-of-my-birthday-book-giveaway/feed/ 1 In a month, Happy Birthday to me means a present for you! http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/09/17/in-a-month-happy-birthday-to-me-means-a-present-for-you/ http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/09/17/in-a-month-happy-birthday-to-me-means-a-present-for-you/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:09:10 +0000 Hillary DePiano http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/09/17/in-a-month-happy-birthday-to-me-means-a-present-for-you/

My birthday is just about a month away and I thought I might try something fun.

It’s my birthday but I am going to give you the presents! I have partnered with GoodReads to do a special giveaway of some of my most popular books. These giveaways are free to enter and end on my birthday (October 16th).

GoodReads handles the drawings to make sure there is no funny stuff so if you aren’t a remember yet, you can create a free account now. Once you have logged into your account, you can click the big Enter to win button on any of the giveaways below.

The drawing is random so it doesn’t matter how late or how early you enter so place your name in the hat now so you don’t forget.

You can enter drawings for all or just one of the books, it’s up to you! Increase your chances the more books you put in an offer for.

To enter the drawing for a particular book, click the relevant link below.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that YOU are the one to win! ;-)

]]> http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/09/17/in-a-month-happy-birthday-to-me-means-a-present-for-you/feed/ 1 1 million words in 2009 or Damn, I need to acquire some writing discipline http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/01/28/1-million-words-in-2009-or-damn-i-need-to-aquire-some-writing-discipline/ http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/01/28/1-million-words-in-2009-or-damn-i-need-to-aquire-some-writing-discipline/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:06:39 +0000 Hillary DePiano http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/01/28/1-million-words-in-2009-or-damn-i-need-to-aquire-some-writing-discipline/

There was an article that I read somewhere that I didn’t care enough to take note of where it was that said that the English language would reach 1 million words in 2009. Oh, fine, you guilt-ed me into looking it up. Here is the article.

Because there is something wrong with me, I read that and my first thought was, “I should make that my new writing goal.” Yes, Hillary. You failed to even complete 50,000 words this year during NaNoWriMo (yeah, notice how I’ve been real quiet about that? It’s a sore issue, we’ll get to it later.) For those of you playing along at home, 1 million words in a year means writing about 2,740 words a day, 19,230 words a week or 83,333 words a month. Yeah, that is like 20 NaNoWriMos in less than 20 months. In short, that is insane.

I wrestled with the idea for a few days and then finally decided that, even if I were to count all my blog posts, this was still insane and I should drop this idea. This was a rare moment of sanity from me and I think shows growth.

Of course, however, some of my writing buddies that I follow online had the same idea and are actually doing it. We aren’t even done with January and quite a few of them are finished with 100,000 words or more. I would love to say that they make me sick but, frankly, I am jealous. Every book about writing that I have ever read makes it clear that the most important thing is discipline and making time to write every single day. Dude, I don’t have time to sleep every single day so I am definitely not writing every day. The only reason The Whine Seller is a mostly daily blog is because I write a week’s worth of posts in advance and just schedule them to post one a day. But I really should be writing every day and that is the problem.

It all comes down to discipline though, in my case, a little time management wouldn’t hurt. I am becoming convinced that I should be able to work less than I do if I just order my work better. I’m not saying I am ever going to have gobs of free time but I think I could have less, OMG OMG days.

I was thinking of setting myself a 250,000 words in 2009 which is a far more conservation estimate but then I decided instead to just make a list of projects and go with that instead of word count. Ready for the list?

My writing goals for 2009 are:

  • Finish that damn novel I have been working on forever. You know the one.
  • re-write and start to send out to agents/publishers a children’s story I wrote 3 years ago and only just found in a pile of junk on my desk while cleaning
  • Type up and polish the play I wrote, by hand, in a crazed fit in the middle of the night like a nutcase
  • Re-do The Love of Three Oranges into the long awaiting school age version (that people have been begging me for for years)
  • The podcast of The Author (about 1/3 done and sounding really awesome!)
  • Do the newest edition of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant and podcast of that
  • Complete both Script Frenzy 2009 (for which I have a really awesome idea for a play that I haven’t told anyone about besides Jill who told me it sounded cool though, to be fair, she is one of my best friends so what else was she going to say?) and NaNoWriMo 2009

Yes, this is a tall order. But I also think its a do-able order. I just need to kick my butt into gear.

What do you think? Impossible or possible?

]]> http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2009/01/28/1-million-words-in-2009-or-damn-i-need-to-aquire-some-writing-discipline/feed/ 1 Podcasting Day 1: How I broke all sound on my computer. . . http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/08/26/podcasting-day-1-how-i-broke-all-sound-on-my-computer/ http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/08/26/podcasting-day-1-how-i-broke-all-sound-on-my-computer/#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:52:56 +0000 Hillary DePiano http://www.hillarydepiano.com/pages/2008/08/26/podcasting-day-1-how-i-broke-all-sound-on-my-computer/

So I recorded a few sections of my podiodbook last night.

First the good news:

  • My microphone is better quality than I thought and sounds just fine so I don’t need a new one
  • It was a lot of fun to read my book out loud (yes, I am a dork)
  • I should be able to get this done in less time than I originally thought

Now for the bad news:

  • I breathe waaaaay too loud. My brother taught me how to fix this though so we should be OK on the next take.
  • I have found a lot of typos/awkward sentences/etc that I need to fix. I am going to have to do some heavy text editing before I can actually do a final recording of anything. On the plus side, I needed to do an edit of the book anyway to add in the new TA info that eBay changed so it is for the better in the long run but annoying when you wanted to be done yesterday
  • After I unplugged my headphone/microphone combo, all sound on my computer stopped working. I have monkeyed with all the settings that I can think of and no luck. I am hoping it will just fix itself out of pity in a few hours. In the meantime, all sound is broken on my computer a fact I re-discover every few seconds when I try to listen to something

I am doing the book of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant first as it is pretty straight forward. The Author I suspect will be much harder so I am waiting until I get some solid practice in to do that.

I will keep you all posted on how this disaster goes. :-)

]]> http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/08/26/podcasting-day-1-how-i-broke-all-sound-on-my-computer/feed/ 0 Thank you! The Trading Assistant’s Assistant is in the top 100 eBay bestsellers on Amazon! http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/07/23/thank-you-the-trading-assistants-assistant-is-in-the-top-100-ebay-bestsellers-on-amazon/ http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/07/23/thank-you-the-trading-assistants-assistant-is-in-the-top-100-ebay-bestsellers-on-amazon/#comments Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:57:49 +0000 Hillary DePiano http://www.pricednostalgia.com/hillarydepiano/pages/?p=591

There are a lot of books about eBay on Amazon. But your sales have helped to put the The Trading Assistant’s Assistant into the top 100 best sellers and that is no small feat! While I may be kicked out of this spot in a few hours/minutes/seconds, for the moment, I am riding pretty high.

Thank you so much for the support this book has gotten! I have gotten almost exclusively positive feedback on this book and its a great feeling to have one’s hard work appreciated.

Now, how much better would I feel if we reached #50 before the week is through? If you were to purchase a copy on Amazon right now, whether it be used or new, for yourself or a friend, you would help me out with that. Just sayin’. . ;-)

If you already have a copy and would be willing to write a review of the book on either Amazon, eBay, Barnes and Noble, or your own website, I would also greatly appreciate it!

We are far enough along now that I think I can mention that my publisher and I are working on an eBook version of this book that would be available exclusively through Amazon’s Kindle. No word yet on what the price would be or when that will become available but I will be sure to post about it as soon as I have some more info.

Thank you again to those who purchased the book or wrote a review. Your support means so much!

Happy eBaying!
Hillary

PS: I was so excited when I saw this news that I immediately picked up my copy of this book and started reading through it. Naturally, the first thing my eyes fell on was a typo. *sigh* What’s that they say about no matter how many times you re-read something. . .

]]> http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/07/23/thank-you-the-trading-assistants-assistant-is-in-the-top-100-ebay-bestsellers-on-amazon/feed/ 0 Where to get The Seller Ledger (since Amazon is out of stock) http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/06/07/where-to-get-the-seller-ledger-since-amazon-is-out-of-stock/ http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/06/07/where-to-get-the-seller-ledger-since-amazon-is-out-of-stock/#comments Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:57:14 +0000 Hillary DePiano http://www.pricednostalgia.com/hillarydepiano/pages/?p=517

OK, fess up. Who just bought a large number of copies of my eBay books?

So I was on Amazon today and, much to my surprise, they have the coil bound edition of The Seller Ledger listed as out of stock. Now my publisher stocks Amazon directly to make sure that this very situation doesn’t happen so I had them check up on this. According to Amazon, they have 17 copies of this book in stock. . . but one person just bought all 17!

Now, during this same conversation, they said the same person just ordered 25 copies of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant.

Now, as Amazon just suffered a major outage, I am not going to take this too seriously, but how funny would it be if the reason Amazon crashed was because so many people all had an urgent need for my eBay books? I am personally thinking that the person who purchased these books goes by the name of Site Bug.

Incidentally, if you do need a copy of either of these books, Amazon is still taking orders on both of them (though there is a notice on The Seller Ledger that says that it will not ship right away) or you can always purchase them direct from the publisher at http://ebay.pricednostalgia.com

]]> http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/06/07/where-to-get-the-seller-ledger-since-amazon-is-out-of-stock/feed/ 1 Another great review of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/06/07/another-great-review-of-the-trading-assistants-assistant/ http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/06/07/another-great-review-of-the-trading-assistants-assistant/#comments Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:26:52 +0000 Hillary DePiano http://www.pricednostalgia.com/hillarydepiano/pages/?p=518

I was investigating this mysterious possibly a lot of sales in an hour equally possibly just an Amazon bug thing and I got a nice surprise in the form of another great review of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant. (I cannot figure out how to link to their review directly but it is currently featured on the homepage of their blog.) If you cannot find it on their blog, the entire review can be read on Amazon as they were kind enough to post it both places.

No other book I have written has been so well reviewed and I have never gotten so many reviews from random websites here and there like I have for this book so I really appreciate the interest and support! If you want your own copy, (assuming the 25 books at once bandit is not still at large) you can get one at Amazon.

Update: Here is the direct link: http://tjbook-list.blogspot.com/2008/06/review-trading-assistants-assistant-by.html

]]> http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/06/07/another-great-review-of-the-trading-assistants-assistant/feed/ 0 Curled Up with The Trading Assistant’s Assistant http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/02/08/curled-up-with-the-trading-assistants-assistant/ http://www.hillarydepiano.com/2008/02/08/curled-up-with-the-trading-assistants-assistant/#comments Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:35:52 +0000 Hillary DePiano http://pricednostalgia.com/hillarydepiano/2008/02/08/curled-up-with-the-trading-assistants-assistant/

More good news about The Trading Assistant’s Assistant! Curled Up with a Good Book just featured my latest eBay book in their non-fiction section this week. Here is a small snippet from the review.

The The Trading Assistant’s Assistant provides readers with a lot of good information in a few pages. The tone of the book is upbeat and supportive, and because it is written in plain-speak rather than ‘Net-speak, it will appeal to a wider audience of readers. While not every question on the topic of building income as an eBay consignment shop is answered, the author has laid a good foundation. The Hillary DePiano’s views, both pros and cons, will help potential resellers make a more informed decision.

As for the changes to the Trading Assistant program that eBay announced recently, I am working with my publisher to update the book as well as correct a few typos that readers and reviewers have pointed out to me so expect a new edition to replace the existing one soon.

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