WWFD

A few weeks ago, a collective gasp was heard throughout social media when Amazon acquired Goodreads. This strange, yet brilliant acquisition got me thinking.  WWFD. What would Fusco do?  What would I do if I owned Amazon, acquired Goodreads, and planned to take over the book buying universe?  Yeah, my brain can be used for evil. I have a day job. I’m well versed in sinister.

So, I did what I do when the axis of evil takes over my brain: I listed all the ways I’d put the collective fuck to authors, publishers, and the book buying public by ram-rodding them into buying what I, Great Ruler of Amazon, wanted.

Here’s how:

1. Consume data like it’s covered in chocolate: So far, Goodreads users have treated the site like it was their own personal safe haven. They added, uploaded and reviewed books, and they thought, quite foolishly, no one was watching.  Oh. Hell. No. Not only were the good folks at Goodreads recording everything you clicked, liked, and TBR’d. Now, they’re turning that data over to Amazon, to make the company smarter, faster and more efficient at selling you shit you don’t need.
2. Biatchslap the Author:  I love authors.  Some of them are my friends, clients and BFF’s. However, nowadays, thanks to Amazon and CreateSpace, everybody’s a fucking author. Whether they should be is another blog for another day. But, if I owned Amazon/Goodreads, anybody who could form a complete sentence would get the screws handed to them if they wanted to advertise on my site. You see, now, I’ve got the data to the readers you want.  Look out bitches, it’s gonna cost ya. Sure, I’d sell it–if it were legal. Thank God it’s not. So, instead, I’ll tell you to bend over and reach for your ankles while I decrease your royalties and up your cost to target your readers.  Just leave your money on the nightstand, dear author. Oh. Wait. You don’t want to pay me to advertise your book? That’s alright.  “NEXT!!!”
3. Beat the Big 6 into Submission: See that, that’s me, Amazon/Goodreads, the fat kid in the sandbox. It’s time to play by my rules. While over the years I’ve appreciated your love of the written word, chase of trends, and airplane reads, I’d plan to send to you running for cover and only publish shit no one reads, like poetry and recipe books. In fact, I’d beat you back so far that it would force you to become smaller, niche, and more nimble by keeping your overhead low, print runs smaller and expectations realistic.  My plan wouldn’t be to shut you down altogether. While I could easily be the only book selling game in town, I do need a dog to kick once in a while.
4. Line my pockets with gold: Amazon is in the publishing game for one reason, and one reason only, to grow revenue.  And once my pockets are filled to the brim, I’m going to look to other ways to exploit the arts for my own financial gain.  I’d fool the public into recording their own music, creating their own video games and to share with friends, or starring in their own feature film.  Who needs Hollywood when you’ve got me Amazon/Goodreads/Chocolate Data Covered Fat Kid?

It’s probably a good thing I don’t run Amazon. I’m old school. I like things the way they were. I like to read books and not feel forced to write a review, like the author on Facebook, or download the next series to my Kindle HD, superfast e-reader spy gadget.

So, no more Goodreads for me, if you need me, I’ll be reading a good book, in hard cover, at the library.

Winnah, Winnah, Chocolate Dinnah!

Hi, all. Suze here. We have a winner in last week’s Valentine’s Day Giveaway: Gail Ingis! Gail, I’ll contact you to make arrangements to get you your prize.

I have lots going on this week so I thought it would be fun to let you know what I’m reading right now. Yes, I tend to flit from book to book and usually have several going at once. How do I choose which one to read? It largely depends on (1) where I set the book down last, and if I can find it again (sometimes not for days/weeks/months later!); (2) whether my Nook is charged; and (3) whether I can get the iPad away from the teenaged Crown Prince so I can use the Kindle App. Here’s what I finished this week:

Buried in a Bog by Sheila Connolly. (Ebook, Nook) This is a wonderful little cozy mystery that just hit the NYT Bestseller list and is the first in a new series. It’s about an American woman who travels to Ireland to learn about her heritage, and ends up finding a home. It’s a little bit darker, a little bit slower paced (and slower paced is not always a bad thing!), and a lot more introspective than most cozies. Loved it!

Nameless Cowboy/Cowgirl Romance by unnamed author. (Mass Market Paperback) Honestly, I did not love this book. In fact, I didn’t love it enough that I’m not going to tell you what it was about or who wrote it (nobody I know personally, BTW!). I will say that this is by a prolific author, and lots of other people apparently don’t agree with me because it has sold lots and lots of copies. So, to each his own! But I’ll be giving this one back to the person who lent it to me, with no regrets.

Manuscript Written by a Friend. (Word doc, on computer) One of the things we writers do for each other is read and critique each other’s manuscripts. I finished one this week–with just a little bit of polish, this is ready to go out into the world. It’s a romantic suspense, fresh with a fun premise, and with a great heroine and a sexy Portuguese hero. I predict a sale this year!

Now that I’ve told you what I finished this week, here’s what I have in progress:

Penelope (A Madcap Regency Romance), by Anya Wylde. (iPad, Kindle app) I’ve fallen a bit in love with this indie-pubbed Irish author (just a coincidence, btw, all the Irish stuff in this post!) since I read her previous book, The Wicked Wager (A Regency Murder Mystery & Romance). These books are great fun, a bit offbeat, and only 99 cents each–so I recommend picking them both up if you like historicals/regencies. In fact, everybody go buy them, read them, and report back here with questions/comments in a few weeks, when I’ll be interviewing Anya!

Wedding Day Murder, by Leslie Meier. (Mass Market Paperback) This is another cozy mystery by a veteran author. I can’t get enough of Lucy Stone and the inhabitants of Tinker’s Cove, Maine. I’m reading this series out of order–but the author does such a good job of making each a standalone, I can easily keep the stories straight.

Portrait of a Dead Guy, by Larissa Reinhart. (Ebook, Nook) Just getting started on this mystery, but how can you not love this first line? “In a small town, there is a thin gray line between personal freedom and public ruin.” Can’t wait to dig into this one.

How about you? What are you reading these days? Are you a one-at-a-time reader, or do you have several books going at once?

Is it really all about the numbers?

PJ Sharon here, coming to you from the hills, and enjoying country life. As many of you spent Superbowl Sunday watching football, laughing at commercials, and being entertained by Beyonce, I was out ringing in the spring. For me, the beginning of February marks a turn toward warmer weather and longer days. I know there will likely be plenty more cold and wintery weeks ahead, but I figure there are less ahead then there are behind. It’s also my birthday month—time to reflect on where I’ve been and where I’m going.

Whether we’re talking about football scores, rising temperatures, or adding another year to my age, life seems to be all about the numbers these days. It certainly is when it comes to the book promoting business. Sales figures, rankings, budget—all very important to pay attention to when seeing what’s working and designing any future marketing plans. One of the benefits (or curses) about Indie publishing is that you have immediate access to your numbers. You can follow your rankings and sales to determine if your current promotion is working or if you need to change tactics the next time around.

I’ve done a few FREE promotions through Amazon’s KDP Select Program so I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good at them. Whether they are as effective as they once were, or if all of these FREE books are killing the publishing industry are topics for another day. For today, I’m happy to share the all-important numbers of an Indie-published author trying to make a dent in this tough book economy. Last week, I had my second Contemporary YA novel, ON THIN ICE, available for FREE for three days. I thought you’d be interested in seeing how one of these FREE runs is done, and decide for yourself if it’s worth the work and expense.

Pre-FREE
January 1-25th 20 copies sold (2 borrows) (I won’t include all the foreign sales, but this title does tend to sell well in the UK)
Amazon Ranking: #75,623 in Kindle Store

FREE Run January 26-28th
Saturday, Jan 26th
7,984 downloads
Amazon Ranking: #64 in Kindle Free Store
#2 in Kindle store>Kindle e-books>Teens>Romance

Sunday, Jan. 27th
4,171 additional downloads
#19 in Kindle Free Store (highest ranking achieved in Free Store)
#2 Kindle store>Kindle e-books>teen>romance

Monday, Jan. 28th
3,791 additional downloads
#1 in the Teen Romance category…woohoo! Not bad for a book that has been on the “shelf” for a year.

Also notable were the foreign downloads. It’s always so cool to imagine people overseas reading my books!
UK=143; de (Germany)=24; France=5; Spain=2; Italy=1 (crazy Italians!); Japan=3; and Canada=15

Now, realize that when the book went back on sale in the paid store, no one had actually purchased it in three days so the ranking dropped to about 245,250th in the Amazon Paid store (yikes!), but once post-promotion sales started, the rankings jumped back up and hovered between 11,000th to 15,000th all week. I got a slight bump from pre-promo sales of 1-3 books a day to about 10 a day. That’s already beginning to fall back down to about 5 a day with total sales since coming off the FREE promo adding up to 50 copies of that one title sold in the past week. That’s more than double what I sold in the first three weeks of January. I’ve seen a slight boost in sales of my other titles as well. There have also been 24 borrows (as good as sales at $1.81 per borrow), and I’ve gotten a few positive reviews for ON THIN ICE.
Not the results I’d hoped for, but worth the effort? Sure. So here’s how I advertised the sale.

I gave myself a $100 budget figuring I would make up the cost with a post-promo sales bump of about 50 books. I’ve broken even on the promo after one week. Running the promotion on a Sat.-Mon. made it easier for me to be there to monitor results and landed at the end of the US Figure Skating Championships, which I wanted to honor by giving the book for FREE that week and getting it into skater’s hands.

I contacted the following sites several weeks (a month ahead of time in most cases):

Book Bub-It cost me $30 to advertise my FREE run but they are the current “premier” advertising site. It costs more for other genres, but most people are saying it’s worth the ad cost, especially if you’re offering a discounted book.( .99-2.99)
Story Finds-$20
Authors on the Cheap-$25
Book Goodies-$15 for 3 day ad.
Bargain e-book Hunter-$5
Orangeberry Book Tours-$10

The following sites were free to advertise with:
(ENT)E-reader News Today (they book up months in advance and sometimes aren’t open for scheduling), Indie Book of the Day, Pixel of Ink, Awesome Gang, E-reader Café, Free Book Dude, Ask David, Books on the Knob, Free Booksy, The Kindle Book Review, E-books Habit, YA Promo Central, Book Blast (Kindle Fire Department), and I did a post on the Readers Guide to E-Publishing (RG2E) on Saturday.
You’ll find many of these sites and their links listed on Kindle Book Promos at Kindle Book Promos and Media Bistro/Galley Cat.

The day of the sale, I also posted to Snicklist, Addicted to e-books, Free Kindle Fiction, Good Reads (Free Romance Books group), Google+, World Literary Café (WLC), and as many FaceBook pages as possible that had to do with Figure Skating and the US Championships—(Stop back next week when I’ll be talking about niche markets).

Some of the sites have restrictions (many won’t publicize erotica-not that I’m writing that, but some of you are), and some have some gate-keeping systems in place. Digital Book Today requires 18 reviews with an average 4.0 star rating before you can advertise with them. It took some time to weed through all of these sites, but now that I have my list and links, it only takes me a few hours to set up a really comprehensive and relatively inexpensive promotional blitz. Of course I also schedule my tweets to go out three to four times a day, ask my network peeps to spread the word, and spend some time promoting on Face Book throughout the three days.

I know it sounds like a lot of work. That’s because it is. I haven’t found an easy way to reach this many new readers so quickly, or give my sales a boost in any other way that doesn’t require an equal amount of effort or money. I try to do one big promotional event per month. February’s event will be a three day FREE run with HEAVEN IS FOR HEROES right after Valentine’s Day, hoping to hit those new Kindle owners whose thoughtful men bought them an e-reader. After that, these two titles come off of the Select program and will be available once again on BN and Smashwords. I also plan to upload them to I-Tunes and Kobo this go around so that they are available on as many distribution channels as possible. Then I’ll leave the kids alone to see how they fend for themselves while I focus my efforts on gearing up for the release of book two in The Chronicles of Lily Carmichael, WESTERN DESERT, due out in June. It’s going to be a busy spring!

As far as other promotions, there are always the .99 cent sales, blog hops, blog tours, Good Reads giveaways, and contests. Each requires effort and planning and will yield different results depending upon the genre you write in, whether it’s your first or fifth book, and how the wind is blowing on any given day. All we can do is keep writing, add quality material to our cyber shelves, and hope our sails (and our sales) catch the wind when it blows our way.

Today’s Unlocked Secret: Don’t get too hung up on the numbers. Like age, the number doesn’t define us. How we navigate the rough seas tells us who we are. Happy sales!

Any questions?

Blessings,

PJ

Eyes Wide Open

Happy Friday everyone! Casey here.

Last week on my website, I announced the start of my very first Goodreads Giveaway to celebrate Mystic Ink, now in paperback. I was inspired, in part, by Katy Lee’s giveaway back in December. And because, I realized that while the book has been in paperback since late November, no one knew about it!!

It’s still not too late to enter, the giveaway runs until January 31 (open to US residents only, see Goodreads for all contest rules & details).

It’s interesting to me that Goodreads only allows paper books in their giveaways. I’m not sure if that is because of the inherent concern about DRM issues (digital rights management). All I know is that the reader’s world today is vastly different from the one I grew up in.

As a kid, I got my books from two places: the library and the bookstore. That’s it. The format was paperback or occasionally hardcover depending on the type of book. If someone had told me that, in my lifetime, music, movies, and books would be condensed into a digital format accessible on a single device, I would have said, “Awesome. Sign me up!”

Maybe I would have shown a smidgen of disbelief, but not too much. Hey, my reading (and movie/TV watching) of choice has always been science fiction and fantasy. I was one of the kids who watched Star Trek re-runs every day after school and geeked out over Star Wars.

But, because I’m a sci-fi fan, I also know to ask this question: “What is the evil dark side to having everything digital?”

C’mon. We all know there has to be some tarnish on the silver lined cloud of convenience and easy access. As Rumpelstiltskin always says on Once Upon a Time, “Remember,dearie. There’s always a price!”

Here is what concerns me the most. Eventually, maybe not in my lifetime, if all physical copies of books, music and movies become obsolete, who really controls ownership of that content?

Already, courts are working to decide if customers who buy e-books are only leasing them or do they own them? With a physical book, you can give it away, sell it or keep it forever and pass it to your heirs.

Right now, if you buy a book from Amazon or B&N (or whoever), you are only licensing that content. It doesn’t really belong to you, the reader. And someday, if you don’t even have a physical copy of your digital content, that means you have to go through a gatekeeper to buy it, store it, and use it.

A gatekeeper could be a benevolent corporation or maybe a controlling, not so nice, company (or gack – the government!). Today, cloud storage is free, but will it be tomorrow?

Whoa! This all sounds so Orwellian, doesn’t it?

Now with all that said, I do own e-readers (Nook, Kindle), Kindle Fire,and an iPod Touch, in addition to hundreds of physical copies of books, CDs, DVDs/Blue Ray, etc. And, since I’m a writer, I like knowing that my books ultimately belong to me (and I have the control).

I am not advocating that digital content is bad. I love it. If it weren’t for the computer age, I wouldn’t have spent the last 23 years working from home and watching my sons grow to (almost) young men. And my books would probably still be languishing in some slush pile if it weren’t for small presses.

All I ask, dear Scribesters, is keep your eyes wide open and consider the future possibilities.

Hopefully, I haven’t scared you all away. Anyone else see the evil dark side? Or, conversely, the positives of digital content?

Results of FREE Promo

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas, Scribe fans. It’s been an amazing year. Four YA novels and a short story published, and I’ve learned tons about the business. A huge thanks to all those who have read and helped spread the word about my books this past year. There is no way I could have done all of this without you. I’m truly grateful and humbled by the generosity of my writing community. You guys rock!

I just came off a two day Free promo for Heaven is for Heroes and On Thin Ice. Sales for both books had trickled to a slow drip over the last six months and I thought a run in the KDP Select program might breathe new life into my visibility through the holidays. As with all of my promotional efforts, it’s pretty much of an experiment each and every time since what works one day in publishing may not work the next.

In hind site, my biggest mistake was that I didn’t plan far enough ahead to garner a spot in any of the paid advertising sites like Pixel of Ink, E-reader News Today, Kindle Nation Daily, or one of the newer sites Book Bub, a site that I’ve heard is getting some impressive attention. Some of these sites take one to six months to get an ad, and some cost as much as $200 for a one day advertisement. Pricey, but usually worth it to reach the 10,000+ mark for downloads in a two day period. The consensus seems to be that two days is the charm, as downloads usually drop by day three and if you haven’t hit the top 100 list on Amazon, you’re not likely to beyond day three. The idea is that if you can get enough volume of downloads, it will affect your rankings and set you up for a nice bump in sales once the book goes back into the paid store. At least that’s how it used to work.

Amazon appears to be fond of changing the rules on us Indies as soon as we figure out how to make the system work for us. I’m sure you’ve heard or read about incidents of things like reviews disappearing arbitrarily, algorithms changing to favor traditionally published and higher priced books, and the shifty way they manipulate the rankings after a free promo. In other words, it’s beginning to feel like the cards are stacked against us.

For example, in March I did a two day FREE promo for Savage Cinderella. Granted, I was part of a group of 19 authors giving our books away and cross-promoting the event, clearly able to reach many more readers than going solo, but I had 28,000 downloads, made it into the Amazon top 100, and had an uptick in sales for about three weeks after the promotion, selling about 800 books that month. This week’s promotion didn’t do nearly as well, but I didn’t expect it to given I hadn’t advertised ahead of time and didn’t have the cross-promotion benefits. I did get several new twitter followers and a few new FB “likes” out of the deal and my books are in the hands of a few thousand new readers—always a good thing! Hopefully, it will translate to some postiive reviews.

Here are my results:

Heaven is for Heroes:

2,868 US downloads, 96 (UK), 25 (de), 3(Fr.), 1 (es.), 4 (It.), 1 (Jap), and 7 (Ca.)

Amazon Bestseller Rankings:

#130 Free Kindle store

#8 Kindle store>e-books>teens

#32 kindle store>e-books>fiction>genre fiction>romance contemporary

On Thin Ice:

825 US Downloads, 114 (UK), 22 (de), 2 (Ca.)

#453 in Kindle store

#14 Kindle store>Kindle books>teen>romance

OBSERVATIONS:

Not bad numbers overall, considering there were no paid ads and I basically depended on Twitter and Facebook for advertising. I listed the books on half a dozen Facebook pages that allowed for promotion of free books, focusing on YA sites. I belong to several writers loops and had lots of help spreading the word (THANK YOU Wana Minions, CTRWA buddies, Authors Network and the WG2E Street team folks.)

I had low expectations of this promotion since it was a last minute decision and I scrambled to pull it together. I’ll see over the next week whether sales are given a boost, but I’m not anticipating that since the rankings dropped back to the pre-promo numbers as soon as I came off of FREE. It used to take a few days for this to happen, but Amazon’s new practices seem to expedite this process, making it that much harder for authors to take advantage of short term boosts in rankings. I was hoping I’d stay in the visible top 100 to catch those new Kindle owners after Christmas, but I’m thinking that’s not going to happen either. They’ll likely be loading up on the FREE books going up next week, the zillion .99 cent books that will be available over the next month, and the lucky ducks sitting on the Top 100 list that most people find as soon as they fire up their Kindles.

One interesting note is the number of downloads of Heaven is for Heroes verses On Thin Ice. On Thin Ice has been my best seller for several months, selling twice as many in the UK as here in the US, and outselling my other titles three to one. Since the only thing I did to change the game was to change my cover for Heaven is for Heroes, I’m wondering if that might be what gave the book a boost.

My favorite takeaway from this promotion is seeing downloads in Italy, Japan, and Canada, new markets previously untapped for me. Very exciting!

I hope Santa was good to you all and that whatever you’re doing today, you’ll find some downtime to escape into a good book. Merry Christmas everyone!

Any questions? Thoughts? Ideas?

Stories that Stick

Happy Friday everyone! Casey Wyatt here.

With the holiday season in full swing, I wanted to share some of my favorite books in case you’re looking for gifts or something different to read in all your “free” time.

Either because of the characters or the adventure, these are the stories that have stuck with me over the years. Sometimes, I re-read them (except for #6, explanation to follow), other times, the memory is enough to make me smile.

By no means, is this a list of all my favorite books. Absent, but no less loved, are The Lord Of the Rings trilogy, A Christmas Carol and all of Harry Potter. Instead, I wanted to offer more obscure titles that maybe you’ve never encountered. And I do admit that some of these have a sci-fi/fantasy bent (but I can’t help that!).

1.In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker – a 24th century cyborg named Mendoza time travels to Elizabethan England to the garden of Sir Walter Iden. While there, she falls in love with a monk name Nicholas Harpole. While there’s a romance, this is really speculative fiction and is the first of an epic series about the mysterious Company – Dr. Zeus, Inc.

2. Spring Moon: A Novel of China by Bette Boa Lord – I first read this book as a teen. I distinctively remember that you could choose among an assortment of different colored covers. I choose a pink one with red lettering (which I still own). At the time, I knew next to nothing about China, let alone about the turmoil at the turn of the twentieth century. But I never forgot this tale about Spring Moon and how she survived her country’s massive social upheaval. I re-read this book several years ago and it was still as poignant as I remembered.  If you are a fan of Lisa See, check this book out.

3. A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes – this book was out of print for many years but returned in the early 2000s, when I first learned about it. This story is a dark comedy about a group of siblings on their way home to England after their Jamaican plantation home is leveled by a hurricane. Along the way, their ship is hi-jacked by pirates who have no idea what they are in for. And it begs the question, who is more wicked? The children or the pirates?

4. The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett – A wacky variation of the story about the guy in the in the red suit. In the land of Discworld, Hogswatchnight is in danger when the beloved Hogfather goes missing.Death’s granddaughter has the task of finding him before disaster ensues. With appearances by a down on her luck tooth fairy, a nasty assassin, and Death himself, this is a satirical holiday tale like nothing you’ve read before.

5. A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote – A short story that I read in high school English class. Young Truman recalls holiday visits with his aunt and their annual mission to find ingredients to make fruitcake. I believe this tale sneakily contributed to my fascination and enjoyment of fruitcake. Yes! I admit it. I like fruitcake!

6. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks – This book scares the crap out of me. Written in fast-paced, first person, documentary style, this story is so plausible, it’s freaky! And, since Brad Pitt will be starring in the movie version (which I am sure will bear no resemblance to the book), you might want to check this out. If you read Stephen King, you can handle this. Don’t be put off by my nightmares! I’m just a big scaredy cat when it comes to zombies

7. Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley –  Everyone has a book that they read a zillion times as a kid. This was mine. I took it out of the library so often that I knew its exact shelf. My love of Beauty and the Beast traces back to this book. And I suspect my love of romance too.

Who wants to share their favorite (not as popular) stories? And what books are you looking forward to reading in 2013?

DEATHSCAPE by Dana Marton–a must read!

Hi All,

Happy Wednesday.  Jennifer the Scribe, here.  I’m not sure if you guys heard my raving on Facebook about a book I’ve recently fallen in love with.  The title?  DeathScape.  The author?  Dana Marton.

I loved it so much that I asked her to spend some time with us today sharing her experience with her first indie pubbed book.  Being a multi-published and award winning author, I knew Dana could write.  So, there was no hesitation when I downloaded this baby for my Kindle.  Well, enough about me…join me in welcoming Dana Marton to the Scribes today (insert round of applause here!)

Dana, can you tell us what the birthing process for DEATHSCAPE was like?

D.M. You know how in the romantic comedy Hitch, Will Smith’s character accidentally kicks his date in the head and nearly drowns her and says, “Oops. That’s not how I pictured that happening?” The release of DEATHSCAPE, my romantic suspense novel, was like that.

This summer I set the publishing date of the book for November 1^st, and started advertising it, building buzz. I had plenty of room in the schedule to have the book ready to rock by that date. Heck, I had time to spare. I even signed up to go the NY City for a four-day writers’ conference just before the release.

Then my editor had to take a personal trip and the edits were late. So late, that I didn’t have them yet when I left for the conference, just a few days before release date! I did get them while I was in New York, but I had no time to work on the book, because I had workshops from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.

In case that wasn’t enough to give me a heart attack, I got an email to let me know that marketing didn’t like my cover.

Three days before release, I had no book, no cover, and just found out that the hurricane would not be heading out to sea as previously hoped, but heading straight for us, so we’d be likely losing power, for who knows how long. This was definitely not how I’d pictured my much-anticipated release!

Then I found out that the person sitting next to me in a workshop was a cover design magician. She kindly agreed to take pity on me. So, holding my breath, I went home to Southeastern PA a day early and got to work. I updated the book with lights flickering, wind howling, during the hurricane. Then, praying we’ll have power a little longer, my hubby converted it to Kindle. Oh, and the cover artist designed me a cover on her way home on the airplane and emailed it to me! So, praying for some more time, I rushed to upload everything to Kindle. http://www.amazon.com/Deathscape-ebook/dp/B009YMJ2AO I ended up with the book up actually early!

The winds didn’t blow any of our trees down, we had no damage to the house, and the book was published. I wish everyone was so lucky. The pictures of devastation in NY City just break my heart, as well as the Jersey Shore that has given us so many summer memories. I’ve already donated to the American Red Cross, and I’m going to use proceeds from this book to donate again. If you’d like to join me, you can do it right here: https://forgood.yahoo.com/donate/53/news

 Jennifer says, “Wow!  So let’s hear a little more about DEATHSCAPE!!”

Recovery can be a long and painful process. Ashley Price, the heroine of DEATHSCAPE is recovering. Since her near-death experience, an accident where a child had been killed, she’s been compelled to paint visions of the dead, and fears she’s gone crazy. Then she paints a man buried alive and, recognizing the surroundings, she rushes to save him.

But instead of being grateful to her for rescuing him, Detective Jack Sullivan accuses her of being in league with a serial killer. He swears he will put her behind bars. Except, the more time he spends with her, the more he falls under her spell. Can he trust her, or is he walking into another deadly trap?

The story deals with two deeply-scarred characters, each at the point where their worlds are falling apart. They both have amazing fortitude, despite their circumstances, and I’m truly humbled that readers responded to these characters as emotionally as they had. The reviews have been absolutely amazing so far.

I even received a review from NY Times bestselling author, Susan Mallery, which made my day big time! “Deathscape… sucked me in from the beginning and kept me guessing until the end. I like stories where the characters are real people–with histories and motivations and interesting quirks. Ashley and Jack were that for me. Add a scary killer, some romance and you have a perfect read!” I’m printing that and framing it for my wall!

If you read the book, I’d love to hear what you think of it.

Wishing you a great week. May everything turn out just as you planned!

Anthologies Abound

PJ Sharon, here. Another Tuesday has come upon us—much too quickly in my opinion. If you haven’t noticed how time is flying by, you have either been in prison, or have been living in a cave. Not to poke fun, but it really does seem like our days are short a few hours. The energy is all but frantic around me, and everyone is hustling to keep pace. With recreational time at a premium, there has been a resurgence in the popularity of short stories, and writers are jumping on board to meet the needs of readers to have a quick story fix.

This is good news for writers. It not only offers us a chance to perhaps try something new, short stories are a great way to keep readers interested and entertained in the long months between full-length releases. Although I’ve never been one to write short stories, when the opportunity arose to collaborate with other authors, I happily accepted the challenge.

Since D.D. Scott began her “All for Indies” Anthologies last year, I’ve noticed lots of Indie-published authors following suit…and readers are loving it. What better way to get a taste of a new author’s style or to have several quick reads available in one, very affordable book. Here are a few treats you might like for Halloween.

I’m excited to be a part of this project with some very excellent storytellers. My short story prequel to WANING MOON is among these spooky shorts just in time for All Hallows Eve. SOUL REDEMPTION gives readers a peek inside the mind of Lily Carmichael’s thirteen-year-old brother Zephron, who has to deal not only with teenage hormones, but a dark power that threatens to take him over–a very creepy prospect indeed. This 15,000 word short story leaves you asking, “What would I do?” Read the first chapter on WATTPAD.

In honoring D.D. Scott’s “Great books at great prices” motto, this anthology is available for .99 cents at Amazon, and Smashwords.

If that isn’t enough to set off your fright meter, here are some more fabulously written short stories for your speed-reading pleasure.

Many of my friends from the WG2E Street team contributed to this one and I have to say, they did an amazing job scaring the heck out of me as I read by Kindle light all alone in my big old farmhouse in the woods while my husband was traveling. I know…crazy, right? But don’t we all love a bit of suspense and ghoulishness this time of year?

Tales from the Mist is available on Amazon for $4.99, a bargain for these ten creepy stories by ten fabulous authors! Check out the book’s Amazon page for details on contributing authors and their stories.

How about you? Have you read any good anthologies recently? Do you like short stories?

Let’s Have That Sex Talk

Thea Devine today, talking sex.  Or writing sex, actually, based on a talk I gave at the NJRWA meeting this month.

I’ve been writing erotic romance for nearly all my writing career.  I don’t plot and plan all the sexual compass points.  I have an idea of something I want to do, like, oh say, nipple rings, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t ever started a book knowing just when and where I’d use something like that.  It all comes organically out of the plot and conflicts, and that’s overlaid by other things, like my watching an HBO show one night with a belly dancer and those rings, and thinking, after a week of walking around with my arms crossed over my breasts, what if the rings weren’t pierced, what if they hung there. Just so.  Just so you feel them.  Where could I use that?

As it happened, I was writing Beyond Desire at the time and the heroine was in a harem, and there were all these bare breasts and …  Beyond Desire was the first historical romance that RT reviewed as erotic romance.  That was 1993.

It didn’t cause even a ripple in the industry.  But in 1999 Kensington books shook up mainstream publishing when it released Captivated, a trade paperback anthology of steamy novellas. And they put the words “tales of erotic romance” on the cover.

Nobody fainted.  And the book blasted onto USAToday in about thirty seconds.  Fascinated, the follow-up, blew out of the stores and onto USAToday as well, proving — obviously — that women will pay for sex.

Erotic was suddenly the next new thing.

Then recently, for the last two years or so, there’s been a pull-back on the assumption that readers were going to the internet for erotic content because — why? more privacy, more variety, more tailored-to-the-taste choices, easier access, e-readers.

And then came 50 Shades of Grey , and erotic was suddenly the next new thing.

So what about erotic romance as a platform for you?  Can you write erotic romance?  There are editors who believe that authors who write it can’t NOT write it, that it’s absolutely integral to the way some authors write.

If you’re wondering what your husband will say, your mom, your sister, your minister, if you think people will wonder what goes on in your bedroom — then maybe erotic romance is not for you.

I never had those qualms.  I’ve written explicitly from the get-go, right from that scene in my first book where, as I’ve recounted elsewhere, I had the cornered heroine put her hand between the hero’s legs.  In that scene, I found my erotic philosophical footing — that adversarial relationship which gives a just-can’t-help-themselves edge to the sex and the story.

But when I first started out, in 1987, I couldn’t use four letter words, or proper terms for body parts.  We used none of those one syllable hard hitting hard-core words you would expect when writing a sexually explicit book.  .

Try to describe something which is essentially indescribable:  I mean, how do you describe a kiss?  And orgasm?  A man’s touch?  How do you do that without relying on those time-tested sex words?  There’s no language for it.  Yet we could — by using plain old every day household words to write about sex from a woman’s point of view.

I think that was extraordinary and a revolution all on its own.

Now, when nothing is off the table,  you can be as over the top as you want or care to get.

Is anything goes right for you?  How far are you willing to go?

I essentially write erotic male/female relationships, with the heroine and the hero constantly wresting for control, tons of sex, and a happy, or cusp of happy, ending.

My own guidelines from day one were:  no negative visual images (she isn’t on fire;  he doesn’t impale her with his molten rod). He doesn’t hurt her (he can, emotionally).  She has some control.  Sex is consensual (no matter what’s going on).

But you could push even further — orgies, male/male, triads, foursomes, bestiality, hard core bondage/domination/punishment, corset discipline …  There’s a place for all of it now, and readers for every taste, from graphic and raw to sweet and super romantic..  Only you can decide where to draw the line on how far you’ll go.

A guest at a conference once asked me how much of what I write is really me. That’s a question to strike full-blown terror in a writer’s heart. I really had to think about it.  And truthfully, in the end, some of it.  Not everything.  But that scary thought is huge barrier to some authors to actually put themselves “out there” that nakedly in fiction.  I mean, what if someone thought all of that sex toy play was all about you?  Was it?

If you have constraints but you want to write erotic, why not try?  It’s you and your computer screen.  No one ever has to see it if you don’t want them to.  You can let yourself go — or you can say NO — and delete before things go too far.

But if you really love to write explicit romance, write those scenes as if your characters are Adam and Eve and they just discovered sex — and you did too.

I have to confess I have been asked to tone things down a couple of times.  Once I was told there was too much semen in a particular novella.  Really, people, can there ever be too much semen — in fiction or in life?

You could view erotic romance as a love letter to men — or as a sex act in and of itself (lots of foreplay, climaxes and reader satisfaction).  It’s safe sex, and the best fun in the world.  And if you choose to play, I promise I’ll respect you in the morning.

Can we talk?  Do you write, or want to write, erotic romance?  What are your boundaries? What won’t you do?  What won’t you read?  How far can an author go with you?

Thea Devine is nearly done with Beyond The Night, the sequel to The Darkest Heart.  She is the author whose books defined erotic historical romance and the USAToday best-selling author of 25 historical and contemporary erotic romance novels and a dozen novella. She is looking forward to the reissue of His Little Black Book next month.

What Is It About Books?

      Hi everyone.  I’m in rural southwestern Maine this week, where access is intermittant, so forgive me if I don’t respond.  But I’ve been thinking about books.  No surprise there.   Who doesn’t?  But this time it’s because I’ve been cleaning out my office and I have a pile of books five deep and thigh high sitting on my hearth and those were just the ones stacked on my floor.  I’m nowhere near ready to empty the four bookshelves in the room.  And that doesn’t count the side table full of books in the living room that I intend to read — sometime. Or the back bedroom — the alleged guest room — that is jammed floor to ceiling with — you guessed it — books.

          Who needs a bed?  We never have guests anyway.

          So what it is about books?   I know I absolutely need all those research books, and the essential mountainous to-be-read pile, and there are the books I know I’ll get to — soon;  nor can I give up my beloved keepers because I’m going to read them again — when I have time; and there are my childhood favorites I love to reread (Nancy Drew anyone?); and the books my English teacher husband read in college and can’t bear to give up.

          All the freebies at conferences that cost more to send home than they would to buy them?  I don’t care.  I have to have them.  A friend of mine said we’re all lemmings – we’d dive off a cliff for a box of books.

          What is it about books?

          And you remember my penchant for buying obscure books? We found a used bookstore in that lovely seacoast town in Maine — you didn’t think I walked out with nothing, did you? (It was Kathleen Norris, perfectly understandable).

          And at the flea market at the fairgrounds — what did I buy? 

          Books.

          Who could resist “The Rajah’s Fortress?” Wouldn’t you snap that right up?  Honestly, who wouldn’t?

          I’m even the Recording Secretary my town’s Friends of the Library because we get first dibs at the book sales.

          It’s not that I don’t get rid of books either.  I’ve sold books, donated books to the Friends’ Library sale (three boxes full just the other day), given books to friends, left books outside and invited people to take them — yet somehow the piles in the house never grow smaller.

          I’m the one who used to tote a suitcase full of books on vacation in case I ran out of things to read and the supermarket/bookstore/pharmacy was closed and I couldn’t  buy a new book because I’d finished all the others. 

          So you’d think e-readers would be my salvation and my heaven.  Hundreds — no, thousands — of books in the palm of my hand at the instant!  Whenever I might want.  Anytime anywhere,  No more suitcase.  No more I’ll-die-if-I-don’t-have-something-to-read frenzy.  

Maybe it’s generational.

However, full disclosure, I did get my husband an e-reader for Christmas and I’m really enjoying watching HIM use it.  (He downloaded War & Peace, which I think takes care of his leisure reading for the next ten years — and the need to download more.) 

          And I AM making an effort too.  In order to cut down the paper chaos and declutter my life,  I decided that if I can check the book I need out of the library, I don’t have to have it in the house. 

          Sane, right?  Sensible.  Grown-up.   

          And if I need that piece of research at ten at night — or two in the morning? … or if I MUST read that book NOW … well, that’s why search engines were invented.  That’s the magic of being able to download any book I want any time I want.  That’s why I should fully love and embrace my husband’s e-reader as fully as I love and embrace him.

          My own last four books are in eBook for heaven’s sake.  You’d think I’d want to buy out the store.

          I  actually think the tipping point might have come today.  As I was standing in line at the post office (did you ever notice how much happens in my local post office?), I watched as a woman ahead of me slipped her e-reader from her purse and began unobtrusively reading, and I felt a sudden pang of jealousy.  I wanted a book to read.  Right then, right there.  And I wanted the unlimited choice, right then, right there.  All of it, magically, in the palm of my hand. 

          And there it was, right before my eyes. 

          But would you believe?  I’m still not quite yet sold …

How about you?  Are you and your Kindle inseparable, or do you love your books like I do?  Are your books spilling on the floor and piled in the closet, or are they neatly contained on a device … I’m still ambivalent …

Thea Devine is the best-selling author of twenty-five steamy historical and contemporary romances.  She is working on the sequel to the Darkest Heart, Beyond the Night, to be released April 2013 from Pocket Star.