Monday Morning Musings

Does anyone but me hate daylight savings time? I woke up this morning at my usual time according to my internal clock, but it was an hour later according the clock on my nightstand. My watch agreed with the clock on the nightstand.

Getting out of bed at 7 in the morning and starting a day that includes an hour or so of outside chores and exercise, then breakfast, usually gets me into my office to start writing by 9:30. As I type this it is 10:50, and other than a quick check of e-mail, I haven't accomplished one writing-related task, let alone written a word on a new book. All too soon it will be time for noon chores and lunch. That'll put  me back in my office by 1, and I'll be wondering where the heck the day went.

Thinking about this difficulty I have adjusting, made me wonder if anyone has ever let a character deal with this in a story. Might be an interesting bit of characterization. Would one bear it stoically, because that is the right and proper thing to do? Or would one rant and rail against it the way I do?

Leave the #*&@^% time alone, would you!

Whew. Now that I have that off my chest, I want to thank everyone who ordered my book, One Small Victory, during the special celebration of Read An E-Book Week last week. The book made the best-seller list in suspense and thriller at Smashwords, going as high as number 3 and settling at the end in the number 10 spot. It also made the best-seller list on Kindle in the free books category, hitting number 2 for one day, then settling in at # 4.

It may take a while for those folks who ordered the book to get around to reading it. I know I ordered a number of books, some for free and some at deep discounts, and it will take time for me to read them all. But I will read them and leave a quick review and rating on Amazon and Smashwords if I like them. I hope other readers will, too. One of the things we writers are learning is that buzz about a title can make all the difference, and the buzz starts with readers liking a book and rating it on the online markets. So do your part. Support your favorite authors.

That's it for now. Hope everyone has a wonderful day and a productive week, and adjusts quickly to this stupid time change.

More Book Deals

This special celebration for the anniversary of the first e-book has created quite an interest on the Internet with authors and publishers offering great deals on e-books.

I posted yesterday with some links to the official Read An eBook site where some authors are listed. You can also go directly to Smashwords and see which authors there are participating in the special sales. I have my suspense novel, One Small Victory, as a free download at Smashwords - a coupon is prominently displayed in the upper right corner. I also have it on my Web site for download. I've heard from readers today that the Smashwords site is sometimes overloaded, so you can do a quick free download from my Web site.

Books We Love Publishing Partners, my new publisher for Friends Forever and the paperback version of One Small Victory, is also celebrating Read an eBook Week by offering special deals. All BWLPP titles regularly priced $2.99 or higher are on sale for half price at Smashwords! Find the coupon code on each book page, and have fun shopping!

Read an E-Book Week

E-books are celebrating a 40th anniversary. Wow, I  did not know they had been in existence that long, as I first heard about them about 25 years ago. Some pioneering e-publishers predicted that e-books would have a huge surge in popularity within 5 years, but it took another 20 years for the surge to really hit. Now we are facing an exciting time for authors and publishers with the popularity of dedicated reading devices and publishing programs that get more books out for readers to enjoy.

E-books began in 1971 when Michael Hart was given $100,000.00 worth of computer time with a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer. He decided that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries. The first "e-book" was born—a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Those humble beginnings would become Project Gutenberg. Today Project Gutenberg houses 20,000 free texts and over 100,000 books are available through their partners. Today over 3,000,000 books are downloaded each month. For more of the history of printing and the evolution to where we are now visit the Web site of Read an E-Book Week.

There, you will also find a list of authors, myself included, who are participating in a week-long celebration by offering deeply discounted or free books for reading on various electronic devices. To view the list of authors and their book, click on the E-Book Week Specials tab on the left sidebar.

Additionally, I am offering a free read of my suspense novel, One Small Victory, at Smashwords, one of the major venues for authors to publish their work.. The coupon code is prominently displayed near the top of the page.


Even if  you don't have a dedicated e-book reader, most e-books are formatted for Palm, iPhone, iPad, and other electronic devices, and there are Kindle apps for most of them. This is a great opportunity to stock up for some summer reading and try some new authors. I hope you will give it a try.

New Opportunities in Publishing

This is an exciting time for writers with all the new avenues of publication opening up with e-books and digital publishing, and I have enjoyed hearing of the success of writers like Joe Konrath, LJ Sellers, and others who have sold hundreds of books. (They also have great tips and advice on self-publishing.)

I have put some titles up on Kindle and Smashwords myself, but recently decided to go through Books We Love Publishing Partners and let them do all the formatting for the different venues. I am not technically savvy and my learning curve for all things computer is very steep. Just ask my kids who dread the e-mail from me with the subject line "Help."

There are pros and cons to going with a publisher as opposed to uploading books independently, and one of the reasons I decided to do the former is because I've had a long relationship with Books We Love. They have been in the business of connecting authors and readers for several years and that connecting is still going on with the publishing arm of the business. Sure, I will still have to do a lot of my own promoting, as most of us writers have to do now, but BWLPP is doing some, too. That is a real advantage for me, as well, because promoting is my second least favorite thing to do.

BWLPP is taking a small percentage of the book sales, and I am willing to give them that for the ease of publication, as well as the added promotion. Many other writers are doing it all themselves, and I admire them for that. But it is not for me, and I think we all need to take the path of most comfort when it comes to taking advantage of these new opportunities.

What about you? Would you go totally independent, or take advantage of a publisher?

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One Small Victory is now available in paperback. It has been on Kindle and Smashwords for almost a year and BWLPP just released the paper edition via CreateSpace on Amazon.

Friends Forever is enjoying a new life in paperback and as an e-book, also through BWLPP. It has been revised and updated since it's first brief publication years ago.