Come join a party of talented Indie authors at the Holiday Blog Hop! You can win lots of great books and there will be tons of freebies. Visit the links below to win. (Some links are day-specific and won’t work until their day. Be sure to drop by each day to win something new!)
Here is the rundown of holiday festivities on my blog for the week: Continue reading
Come join a party of talented Indie authors at the Holiday Blog Hop! You can win lots of great books and there will be tons of freebies.
My giveaway for the Hop, starting today and for the week: Continue reading
Choosing how to publish. An Examiner article about questions every author must answer.
Now until December 14th, you can enter to win a paperback of The Lustre and Don’t Judge a Book By Its Magic!
I’m being so generous because of the Indie Writers Unite Holiday Blog Hop from Dec 10th to Dec 14th. Visit this link on Dec 10th to get links to all the great Holiday Blog Hop giveaways from me and over 50 other authors.
https://katepolicani.com/2012/12/10/the-indie-writers-unite-holiday-blog-hop/
(It won’t work until the 10th, but don’t worry if you forget. I’ll be sure to remind you!)
Here are the giveaways: Continue reading
Hooray!
Remember when I said that the Goodreads giveaway was a good idea? Well it was a VERY good idea! I sold 603 copies of The Disenchanted Pet for Kindle in November!!! All I can think that I did to earn my success was to give it some free days with Select and then give it away on Goodreads for free. Did I miss something? Oh yes, promoting it for more than a year 😉 . That puts me at an impressive Amazon bestseller ranking of 99,629. Heheh.
On the flip side, not everyone’s reaction was positive: http://www.nathanshumate.com/?p=7550 If you read this, Nathan, I do plan to re-do this cover. It was my very first book, after all.
Seattle and Amazon.com: An informative breakdown of the important relationship between Seattle and Amazon.
What impression are you leaving?
I have to tell you something you’ve probably already heard before, but if you haven’t it could save your writing career. As an author, you need to put your best foot forward. This sounds simple and even trite, but it isn’t always easy to do.
I get lots of review requests lately, which I love! In one author’s review request, the synopsis was disjointed. There was no flow to the description of the book. Unfortunately it was also filled with grammar errors and even included a mistake by the author in pasting the synopsis in the email. Needless to say, I was not eager to read the book. The subject sounded interesting, but the mistakes scared me away.
Authors rely on those short pieces of our work to open the door to new readers. If the only chance we might have to gain a reader scares them away instead of drawing them in, we aren’t going to enjoy much success.
When you send your book to your editor, include a page or two with your synopsis, acknowledgments, author bio, and any other advertising info that goes along with your book. These are just as important as the body of the writing. Most editors will gladly include these in your editing, because their reputation is invested in your book almost as much as yours is.
When people point out errors in your book, your blurb, your website, or wherever, LISTEN. Of course, you should check on their accuracy. But they may be helping you. Never mistake a technical correction for a personal attack. Unless you are writing about grammar, a criticism of your grammar can only help you.
If you laugh off someone’s criticism and feel like it’s no big deal, then you are also laughing off your own success. Take them seriously, even if they are wrong. If you don’t take their advice, it’s appropriate to tell them why.
I have received criticism for my writing as well, and some helped me to fix major mistakes in my work. Others were a matter of preference rather than correctness, and others still were items that I had discussed with my editor and deferred to her judgment. Still, I explained these to the person kind enough to point them out.
Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes Microsoft Word seems possessed, deleting important bits and allowing strange mistakes to remain after I thought I deleted them. We understand that. Just know that a stranger will view their first glimpse at your writing as your best.
If you treat your writing like an unimportant hobby, that’s how it will stay. Nobody is interested in rocketing you to fame when you don’t really care. To succeed as a writer you have to approach it as a business with all the professionalism required by a job. Even more, it’s a sales job, so your audience’s first look might be your only shot. Make that shot a bulls-eye!
Open publication – Free publishing – More authors
This is another part of the previous post’s contest. I hope I’m doing this right!
These are links (I think) to an authors-only contest for free publicity. Check it out!
There are those times when I just can’t write. I may even have great ideas in my head but they get stuck like the glue bottle with the big glue booger in it that won’t come out.
Reasons why I can’t write:
Ways to get myself started again:
Sometimes these still don’t work. What do you do?
Once again I am participating in Kate Policani’s Author blog-in.
House of Cards
I wrote this originally for a horror zine that I’m fond of but it ended up being too long for her. I showed it to another, pagan, editor I know and she suggested a whole new theme that made the story what it is today. So, yes,I’m glad I showed it to someone else. 
I hope you all will like it.
Available at Amazon and Barnes and Nobleand Smashwords
Can you gamble with Fate?
A young nobleman escapes the Reign of Terror in 18th century France to find himself dragged into an even worse fate–a hellish underworld wherein he is cajoled and put on trial by a demon tribunal for crimes he never committed. Can he thwart his fate, one worse than the guillotine?
Genre: Horror, Supernatural, Mythic. $.99
Find out more about House of Cards:
HoC’s page on Kindleboards, here.
I hope you enjoy it!
This week I am participating in Kate Policani’s Author Blog-In. Over the next week I will publish different posts about other author’s novels. If you are looking for your next read, or perhaps a gift for someone, make sure you visit this site throughout the week to see if something catches your interest. Something like
Home to Stay
With the weather getting colder and the busy season about to descend upon us, don’t forget to put an evening aside just for you. Get yourself a cup of hot chocolate, or a glass of wine and escape with this contemporary romance that will take you to a ranch just outside Calgary, Canada.
Synopsis
Although she has never stopped referring to Aces Corral as her home, it has been two years since Diana Crawford has stepped foot on the ranch. Her decision to return home was made just as abruptly as her decision to leave, but as Diana’s car pulls into the long driveway, she knows it is time once again to build the family ranch into a successful business. Little does she know that waiting for her return is a man determined to change everything.
Coming home is emotional for Diana. She is thrilled to reunite with her elderly next-door neighbours, Len and Dot Mackenzie, who are the closest thing to family she has left. But when she meets their nephew for the first time, his captivating eyes and quiet strength hypnotize her. There is no mistaking the attraction, and it is not long before Barry Daniels lassoes her heart. As Diana works on reconciling her past, she knows she has a lot to learn about running a business and when Diana finds evidence of a betrayal that could destroy everything she has worked for; she is desperate to find a way to expose the scheme.
In this contemporary cowboy romance, a woman on the fringes of finding her own inner strength must expose a web of deceit before she loses everything she has ever loved.
Excerpt
“I better go. Think about what I said. There’s something between us and I don’t think we should deny it. I’m willing to take a chance and I want to know if you are, too, but I don’t want you to answer right now.”
He walked over to the door, opened it, and turned back to face her. “It would be sad if we never took a chance and ended up missing out on one of the best things to happen to either of us. You can let me know tomorrow at the barbeque.”
With that, he shut the door and was gone. Diana stood at the counter for a long time after. The feelings he stirred in her both excited her and scared her. Her mind was swimming as she slid her back down the cupboard, until she was sitting on the kitchen floor.
What am I going to do? Should I back off and play it safe, so I won’t be sorry? Or will I be sorry if I play it safe?
Reader’s Comments
You feel like you are right in the tale with the way she describes the characters and their way of life. S.O.
You need to do a sequel to this. C.M.
A “feel good” book that we could use more of! M.H.
Grab a Copy Now!
Please visit my book on these wonderful sites:
http://blog.seditionbook.com/?p=175
http://julidrevezzo.com/2012/11/20/amputeddy-goes-back-to-school-by-jean-boelter-and-kate-policani/
“Breathe deeply, jawan, it shall be your last.”
So was the memorable opening dialogue of The Scarlet Bastards, the memoirs of a young man named Alexander ”Sikunder” Armstrong. A seventeen year old runaway from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, “Sikunder” fled the tedium of a well planned life to the frigid dystopian wastes of the Serberor Campus on the distant colony of Samsāra some 20 light years from Earth. Here, as a jawan in the United Nations Off-World Legion, “Sikunder” experiences the dumping ground of the refugee camps of the United Nations; where tribes and warlords rule with an iron fist and life is cheap and easily lost.
Come join “Sikunder” as he fights pirates on the decks of a paddlewheeler, teaches the finer points of the j-stroke to his decuria leader, MacShaka the Tartan Zulu, and encounters members of the villainous Chinese gang, The Black Hand, after a bottle of bad pinot noir and a plate of the foulest fish in the Seleucus Lacus!
Be like Lorenzo: patronize an artist like me!
Kate Policani 