Dreams Never Die

Since you are smarter than the average bear, you have already figured out this will not be my usual Friday Odds and Ends post. I am heading out of town for an Art & Author Faire at the Georgetown, Texas library, and will spend the rest of the weekend with my son and his family who live in Austin. Great way to start Mother's Day weekend, which is especially hard for me this year. So today I have a guest piece from humorist, Slim Randles who writes the popular syndicated column Home Country. His story resonated with me as "continuing a dream" is the theme of one of my stories in my collection, The Wisdom of Ages.  

When old Ben died recently, the town was saddened, but probably not for the usual reasons. Ben had been widowed for nearly 20 years and had lived alone in the house where he and Judith had raised their boy, John.

He’d had a lot of health problems, there at the last, too. Things weren’t easy for him.

Sometimes when a guy is in that shape, people nod and smile slightly at his passing and say, “Well, in a way it’s a blessing, isn’t it.

 But not with old Ben. There’s the sailboat, you see.

After Judith died – and Judith was the most practical woman in town – Ben started buying and reading magazines about sailboats. Then he cut the front off the barn/garage out in back, and began building one. He drew crowds with his work for a while. Everyone stopped by from time to time, and we all know it is to be 32 feet long and a gaff-rigged – not Marconi-rigged – sloop. Said they look more like real sailboats.

Eccentric? Well, maybe. Eccentricities last a year or two, but a 20-year project is a lot closer to being an obsession.

When Ben could afford more of the special wood he was using, he bought it. Sometimes all he’d get were some of those little brass whatchits to put along the side. But each time something came, there was work going on out in that garage. Ben took pride in the project being pay-as-you-go, so he wouldn’t owe anybody when he finally put it in the ocean.

Ben died before that happened, and that saddened us greatly. We might chuckle a bit behind his back, but we also secretly envied him and admired him for building that boat.

After Ben passed, his son John brought his wife and children to live in the little house. After a few weeks, we heard activity out in the garage, and we found John working on his dad’s boat.  It would, he said, eventually sail.

There is no statute of limitations on dreams.                            
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Brought to you by the new CD “Having Fun in New Mexico,” Fifteen stories by Slim Randles. www.slimrandles.com   Slim's books have some of the same thoughtful and humorous commentary and are well worth the read. One of my favorites is Sun Dog Days.

Which Book Promotions Work Best?

Last week I said I would report on the results of the free-book campaign I did for my mystery, Boxes For Beds, offering it free for 5 days via the Amazon KDP program. As Nick Stephenson  mentioned on his blog and I quoted last Monday, the jury is still out on what kind of positive long-term effect this approach has, but during the 5 days my book was free it had 39,312 downloads. Here are some stats for those who like numbers: 

The free days started on a Saturday, and Monday morning, before a BookBub feature went live, I had just under 1,000 downloads of the book. By noon on Monday the downloads had jumped to 4,975, with an uptick in downloads in the UK, DE, IN, and CA.

I purposely did not obsess all day with checking numbers, although it was a thrill now and then to pop in and see huge jumps. At 5:30 on Monday there had been  19,497 downloads with small jumps in the UK and CA. Still no downloads in France or India or Mexico or Spain.

Again I ignored numbers after that and didn't check in until 10 Monday night. Downloads had jumped to 26,904, and I picked up a new 5-star review. That was sweet. The book also reached #4 in over all free books on Kindle, #1 in suspense and #1 in historical mystery.

Tuesday morning the downloads for the US reached 30,256, with big jumps for the UK and CA and IN. There were also downloads in all the other foreign markets except Mexico.

By the end of the free days on Wednesday last week, I had reached that 39,312 mark in the US, but downloads in other markets were not even in two-digits except for the UK and CA.

The main reasons authors do these free promos is to gain new readers and review, and hopefully spur sales of that book, and others, after the sale. I have read on author loops that some writers have seen sales of hundreds of books a week after a free event, and I think that works the best with a series. I have sold copies of this book, and two others steadily since last week, but only a handful of sales a day. There has been a huge jump in reviews, and most of them are 4 and 5 star reviews, so that has been beneficial.

Will I do it again? I don't know. Some writers are having better luck with straight ad campaigns for their books. Stacy Juba had a special running for her books the same week I did my special. Here is what she reported:

I advertised the 99 cent sale for my Young Ladies of Mystery Boxed Set on E-Reader News Today, Kindle Books and Tips, Kindle Fire Department and Book Bub all within about 7 days of each other. I also supplemented the paid ads with a blogging campaign, Twitter campaign, posting on various Facebook pages, and highlighting it in my newsletter. I was very pleased with the results. The boxed set reached #11 in the Nook Store and #60 on the Paid Kindle List. Breaking the Kindle Top 100 Paid List and the Nook Top 100 were two of my goals. I also sold several books in the iBookstore. This was my second most successful ad campaign to date. My most successful campaign was for my book Twenty-Five Years Ago Today in March - that led to the book being ranked #5 on Nook and #30 on Kindle and resulted in over 100 new Amazon reviews since then. But the Young Ladies of Mystery campaign was very close.

I didn't see much effect on sales of my other books, but my other books not included in the bundle are for children and teens. I made a nice profit on the ad and reached a lot of new readers, so it was a successful campaign and all of the advertisers were wonderful to work with.

The Young Ladies of Mystery Boxed Set is still only 99 cents and includes her adult mystery/romantic suspense novels Twenty-Five Years Ago Today and Sink or Swim, and her young adult psychic thriller Dark Before Dawn.  

Last spring, Terry Odell, romantic suspense author, tried even a different approach. She went with Nook First, and you can read her full report on her blog, Terry's Place. Briefly, she was accepted into the Nook First program at Barnes and Nobel with a new book, Saving Scott, and it was exclusive for Nook for 30 days. (In the KDP program, the books have to be exclusive to Kindle for 90 days.) The book was not free and Barnes and Nobel did quite a bit of promoting. Following that, Terry reported that her book sold steadily at Barnes and Nobel and sales of all of her books increased at Amazon and Barnes and Nobel.

Terry writes several mystery series, and I think one key to her success - in addition to writing good books - is that she has series and offering a special on one book does spur sales in other books in that series. Her advice to other authors:

Things go up and down, and we can't know why, and probably can't do anything about it. It's a marathon.  

Terry writes the Pine Hills Police Series, the Blackthorne, Inc. Series. and the Mapleton Mystery Series. She has a brand new book out in the Blackthorne series - my favorite of her series. Dangerous Connections was released October 21, and it is on my wish list.

Now, after all of this has been said, I found out my publisher put my short story collection, The Wisdom of Ages, free for Kindle today for three days. Since that book is with a publisher, I won't have access to download numbers, but I do see it is already #85 on the list for anthologies.

As a reader, do you take advantage of free books? If so, do you buy others from that author if you like the freebie?

Authors, what promotions are working best for you? Do you do the KDP program or the Nook First?

Monday Morning Musings - Old and Young

Some of my writing in recent years has focused on characters who are much older than the ones I usually write about. While I was taking my morning walk today, I started wondering why that might be and I realized that it is probably because I am closer to those ages than I am to younger protagonists. I can relate to the issues of aging and being on the downside of life. Plus, now that I am of a certain age, I realize that I look at those other older people differently than I did when I was young. Those older people are no longer the grandmother and grandfather I loved dearly but had nothing in  common with except my mother or father.

They are my peers, and I now see that we have lives rich with more than rocking chairs and knitting needles. That is what I have tried to capture in my short story collection, The Wisdom of Ages, and also what I addressed in a short story that is featured on The Story Shack, "To Love Again." It has a lovely illustration done by Monique Lafitte.

The story is about finding love after the death of a spouse. I remember when I was young, when older people lost a husband or wife, they stayed single the rest of their lives. That doesn't happen so much any more, and that is a good thing for those who don't want to spend their later years alone. I wrote about this once before in a short story that was published in the anthology, One Touch, One Glance Anthology of sweet romance stories. That story, New Love, was based loosely on the experience my father had with new love when he was 80, and it proves that there is no age limit on love.

On the other end of the age spectrum are all the young people graduating from college and looking ahead to jobs or graduate school or both. One of our grandsons just graduated, and it was fun to listen to the young people who came to his party as they talked about their dreams and goals for the future.

What are your thoughts on love later in life? Are you celebrating graduations in your families?

Happy New Year

It seems like just the other day we were bidding farewell to 2010 and here we are starting 2012. I remember my grandmother telling me how the years fly by as you get older, but she told me that when I was just 12. I had no idea what she was talking about.

Thinking about that, made me realize that the best resolution I could make for this year is to stop and savor moments in each day instead of letting it end with me thinking where did it go. If I make a conscious effort to literally stop and smell my roses, how much better that will be than simply walking by them.

That goes for stopping to appreciate other beautiful things in my life like family and friends.

I hope 2012 is an awesome year for all of you who have touched my life in so many ways.

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As a special way to bring in the new year, my publisher of The Wisdom of Ages is offering the short story collection free for Kindle readers today and tomorrow, Jan 1 and  2.

Three stories; four  men whose lives take unexpected turns. Meet Samson who wonders what is down that country road that draws people so. Should he get in that old truck and go see? Mel and Rube have been having dinner at the Leavenworth Grill every Wednesday for years. One day the menu changes and so does life for Mel. Tom would give anything for his life to change. Can he beat back the effects of a crippling stroke by sheer force of determination? Growing old is not for the faint of heart.

New Stories

 The Wisdom of Ages - A Short Story Collection,  my new short story collection was just released by Books We Love Publishing Partners.

Three stories; four men whose lives take unexpected turns. Meet Samson who wonders what is down that country road that draws people so. Should he get in that old truck and go see? Mel and Rube have been having dinner at the Leavenworth Grill every Wednesday for years. One day the menu changes and so does life for Mel. Tom would give anything for his life to change. Can he beat back the effects of a crippling stroke by sheer force of determination? Growing old is not for the faint of heart.

"These three gems will make you think about time and how you use it. Maryann Miller has a rare gift for taking the pulse of ordinary lives and spinning that into extraordinary tales." -- Craig Lancaster, author of 600 Hours of Edward"and The Summer Son

"Miller shares her skills as a writer and her humanity in this inspiring glimpse into the realities of aging and the heartbreak of letting go." Paula Stallings Yost Editor/Author, What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest

"Sometimes the best stories come at the end of our lives, and so do the strongest lessons. Read Maryann Miller's poignant vignettes about aging and let them tug at your heart-strings. They capture the very essence of our tender humanity." ~ Dani Greer, author, editor and Special Projects Coordinator for Little Pickle Press,

 I like working with a publisher who does all the work of getting a cover, ISBN number, and getting that all up on Amazon and other sites for e-readers. But I have also been experimenting with putting my own content up. That can be very time consuming for someone like me who has a steep learning curve when it comes to new technology, but I am learning.

Last Friday I announced that I have two new short stories up on Amazon for the Kindle. SAHM I Am and The Visitor  They are both priced at 99cents and make a good, quick read.

SAHM I Am is a humorous sci-fi story. Technology may be on the verge of having sophisticated home computers that run an entire household, but have the scientists taken into consideration the human factor? When SAHM, a Sensor Activated Home Manager, is field tested at the O'Neal home, he's up against the biggest challenge a computer has ever faced; one Shanna O'Neal.


The Visitor was first written as an assignment in a writing class to adapt a classic fairy tale, and I chose Goldilocks and the Three Bears. A camping trip in the Rockies becomes most interesting when a stranger shows up and the Cantrell family has to find out who has been sneaking into their cabin.