Kristen

Blog: kristenhallgeisler.com
Profile: kristenhallgeisler.com
Homepage: kristenhallgeisler.com

My Shitty Mantra

Mr. HG and I had both had long, stressful workweeks, and a non-rainy Sunday was in the forecast. A couple hours under the trees with the dog would be the mind-cleansing, soul-restoring excursion we needed. It was true — our minds were cleansed by exhaustion and our souls were restored by surviving. It was a…
Learning? Let Lynda and Your Library Help!

This post brought to you by the letter L. I’ve self-published a book (Take the Wheel: A Woman’s Guide to Buying a Car Her Own Damn Self), and I work in publishing, so I feel pretty confident about publishing Lightning in a Throttle: Three Early Electric Vehicle Victories this summer. I’ve got lots of friends…
Business Launch for International Women’s Day

On International Women’s Day 2017, I participated in A Day Without Women. Organizers meant it to be a general strike, but it supposed a lot of privilege on the part of the strikers. There were millions of women who couldn’t take a day off. Being freelance, I worked extra hours early in the week so…
The Bottom Line Is Not Just a Figure of Speech

I’ve been a freelance writer and editor years longer than I’ve had proper accounting software. (A quick hat tip to Freshbooks for making the switch from home-brewed spreadsheets to software not so painful.) The basics are easy (invoice! expense! bam!), and I have a brilliant freelance-friendly tax accountant. But I’m still learning a lot about…
How to Write a Nonfiction Book
Take the Wheel Is Available!

How did I end up not updating my homepage? Who knows. Take the Wheel came out, there were deadlines to meet, there were holidays, there were marketing moves, there were more deadlines … and my blog sat here alone and unloved. There was lots of activity over on the Take the Wheel page, though. And…
Take the Wheel Takes Another Step Toward Reality

Take the Wheel has been edited, I have made the changes or stuck to my guns as necessary, and the text is now in the hands of the book designer. The designer is asking me to decide between fonts that look nearly identical to me and whether I want the page numbers in the middle…
Leggo My Logo!

After several weeks of tweaking and and honing, Nicole at Spot Color Studio sent me the final versions of the logo for Take the Wheel this weekend! She made one vertical version that will work great for the cover of the book, both print and electronic versions, and one horizontal version that will grace the…
To All the Writers Whose Books I Edit: I Feel You

I write lots. For a living. Editors often return my articles with red lines all over the place and blue notes in the comments and green highlighting for all the words I overuse. Being edited is nothing new to me. However. I was walking the dog the other afternoon, and it hit me mid-stride: Ali,…
Adding to Team Take the Wheel

I met with Vinnie Kinsella at Indigo Editing yesterday to ask him questions about the publication process, since I am — or was — so admittedly clueless. He was very enlightening. He also agreed to design Take the Wheel and help me publish it. Here is my new understanding of the self-publishing process: As you can…