Monday Morning Musings

It was a brisk 30 degrees when I went for my walk this morning. Probably a warm spell for you folks north of the Mason Dixon Line, but for us in Texas that is cold, cold, cold. However not as cold as it was this weekend when temps dipped into the teens and we there were ice storms in West Texas that slammed into the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

Courtesy of The Dallas Morning News

We were lucky here, 100 miles east, and only got a bit of ice that did not stay long and did not hamper driving.What it did was hamper our weekend performance of our holiday show, Calliope's Christmas. We had to cancel the Friday performance, but did manage to get Saturday and Sunday performances, and we had terrific audiences for both shows.

I was intrigued by today’s Google Doodle so I clicked on the link to go to the Time Magazine feed to see who that lady was sitting in front of what looked like the computers that did the data processing in the early years of data processing. It took a whole room full of large machines to do what many small processors are able to do now, and I remember going to where my husband worked and visiting the computer room. It was larger than my house and had rows of tall, metal machines that hummed and crackled with activity.

Today the doodle celebrates what would have been the 107th birthday of computer pioneer Grace Hopper (1906-1992) just in time for the “Hour of Code” kicking off Computer Science Education Week. Hopper created COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language,) the program that allows computers to communicate through language as well as numbers. That was the language my husband used as a programmer, and it has given way to far more sophisticated languages.

My book, One Small Victory, will be featured Tuesday at The Fussy Librarian, a new website that offers personalized ebook recommendations. Subscribers choose from 40 genres and indicate preferences about content and then the computers work their magic, sending recommendations for new reads. I joined a few months ago, and I really like getting information about new books. The whole idea is pretty cool, and you might want to check it out -  www.TheFussyLibrarian.com

Has the weather been kind to you this weekend?  Had you heard of Grace Hopper before? I will be honest and say I had not, but what an impressive resume she had. For those of you who have done computer programming you might be interested in how the term "bug" came about. She coined it. Check out the Time article for the details.

If you have a moment and want a bit of a humorous break to your day, join me at The Blood Red Pencil where I wrote about the joys of trying to work with little kids under foot and in your office.

Book Review - Sorrow Wood by Raymond L. Atkins

Sorrow Wood
Raymond L. Atkins
Medallion Press, Inc
ISBN: 9781934755631
Hardcover $25.95
August 2009

Reva Blackmon is the probate judge in the small town of Sand Valley, Alabama. Her husband, Wendell is a policeman in the same town where his duties largely consist of breaking up dog fights, investigating alien abductions, extinguishing truck fires, and spending endless hours riding the roads of Sand Valley. The book opens with Wendell contemplating a dead dog and trying to decide if he really wants to arrest Deadhand Riley and Otter Price again. Since Reva and Wendell live above the jail, which is located in a rock castle with turrets and a moat thanks to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, Wendell is not too fond of the idea of having Deadhand for a houseguest, so to speak.

Something of much more import quickly takes his attention as Wendell is dispatched to a real crime scene. A burned body has been discovered at a local farm named Sorrow Wood, and it is believed to be that of a self-proclaimed witch who has a reputation for promiscuity. As the investigation progresses a long list of suspects includes Wendell’s deputy, the entire family of the richest man in town, and nearly everyone else who belonged to the coven or otherwise knew the departed.

While the mystery does propel some of the story, this is not a straight mystery and mystery fans should not come to this book with that expectation. This is a story primarily about relationships and some of the difficult things that people face in their lives. The relationship between Reva and Wendell, which she believes transcends time, is paramount. While she believes in God, reincarnation, and Christianity, Wendell believes in Reva. He has no idea if they have loved in past lives, but he knows how much they have loved in this life.

Reva and Wendell are wonderfully drawn characters, as are the others who people this book, so real they could walk off the pages and join the reader for a cup of coffee. The narrative is rich with exquisite detail as illustrated in this passage, “Jacob was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease… and slowly but steadily, fragments of his memory were flaking off and drifting away with the breeze. He was fading into oblivion one recollection at a time, losing the good along with the indifferent and the bad. It was a sluggish, merciless way to go, as bad as Eunice’s Parkinson’s in its own way, and no less final. Eventually he would forget how to eat, how to breathe and how to live.”

As a counterpoint to the very serious parts of the story, Atkins offers up plenty of humor. Reva is a master of the “understatement” and her quips make the reader smile as much as Wendell does. And Wendell has a good twist of mind as well.

Sorrow Wood is now available as an e-book.
~~~~~~

Raymond L. Atkins first novel, The Front Porch Prophet, was published by Medallion Press in 2008. His stories have been published in Christmas Stories from Georgia, The Lavender Mountain Anthology, The Blood And Fire Review, and The Old Red Kimono. His columns appear regularly in the Rome News/Tribune and Memphis Downtowner Magazine.

Wednesday's Guest - Slim Randles

I must have been cloned. Otherwise how could I be in three places at once. Here in my office working. Over at the Blood Red Pencil for my usual first Wednesday blog, and as a guest at a neat blog, Coffee With a Canine, where I introduce our dog, Poppy. While I am off gallivanting all over the Internet, my friend Slim Randles shares a post with you. Enjoy....

The phone rang just before Dewey pulled off his clothes for his end-of-workday shower.

“Hi Dewey.”

He smiled. “Hi Emily.”

“Hope I’m not interfering with anything by calling you.”

“Just got home from work and about to dive into a shower, so you called at a good time. How are you?”

He thought that would be a good way to start a conversation with this paragon of single bureaucratic woman.

“I’m fine. Thanks, Dewey. May I ask you some more questions? Got them right here. Tell me first, though, do you always shower after work?”

“Every day.”

“Any special reason? I mean, is it related to the cow manure thing?”

“Directly, actually. Cow manure … well, it permeates my very existence. It fills my waking hours. It … oh, it’s hard to explain.”

The king of fertilizer grinned as Emily Stickles wrote notes on the other end of the phone. If she wanted to think of him as having a fertilizer fetish, he didn’t mind. As long as she called.

“I’ve been reading up, Dewey. I think that … together … we can break this hold cow manure has on your life.”

“Oh, Emily, you really think so? What should I do about it, you think?”

“To get started, you should picture yourself free of cow manure. Just tell your mind that cow manure has no place in your thoughts and your life. Let’s see if that will cancel out some of the … unpleasantness.”

“You think cow manure is unpleasant, Emily?”

“You like it?”

 “Let’s say I like what it can do for others. It’s a little like a smile or sunshine,” said our fertilizer king, “it works wonders when you spread it around a little.”

Emily Stickles, the county employee in charge of fixing things for people who don’t realize they need fixing, was silent.

 “Dewey, we really need to talk.”

 “Dinner at the Chinese place tomorrow, maybe?”

 Then he just sat there, glowing in fertile, pre-shower radiance, and grinned.
                                                         ------------------
Brought to you by Slim’s award-winning book “A Cowboy’s Guide to Growing Up Right.” Learn more at http://www.nmsantos.com/Slim/Slim.html 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
January seems to be a great month for lots of e-book discounts. Many publishers and writer's groups are offering titles for 99cents or for free. If you have a Kindle, this is a good time to stock up on some good reads. My suspense novel, One Small Victory, is free for two more days. The authors at Backlist eBooks have some of their books listed for only 99cents. Their sale ends on January 8th.

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?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.

Introducing Backlist Books authors

Today was spent doing some much needed work around my little farm. Our oldest son came out for the weekend and whenever he is here he likes to help me. So we cleared brush and dead trees in the back pasture and burned two big piles of logs. Sure was nice to get it all cleared. 

Since I was busy with that, I did not do my usual post today of  a book review. But I thought I would just introduce you to some of my writer friends. We all belong to a group called Backlist Books and we have e-books for Kindle, Nook and other e-readers for much less than major publishers are charging for books. As the group name suggests, all the books are from our backlist, which means they were once published by a major house and we managed to get the rights back.

So here is a list of some of those authors in the group with links to their blogs.   There's a wide variety of genres, so take a look at them and see if there's anything to your taste. 


Doranna Durgin, http://doranna.net/wordplay

Marsha Canham, http://marshacanham.wordpress.com

Jacqueline Lichtenberg, http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com

Jeffrey A. Carver, http://starrigger.blogspot.com/

Jill Metcalf, http://jillmetcalf.wordpress.com

Terry Odell, http://terryodell.blogspot.com

Patricia Rice, http://patriciarice.blogspot.com

Pati Nagle, http://patinagle.livejournal.com/

Lorraine Bartlett or Lorna Barrett, http://www.LornaBarrett.blogspot.com

Karen Ranney, http://karenranney.wordpress.com

Friday's Odds and Ends

First I want to mention that today is the last day of the big sale from the BackList Books authors. 25% off already low-priced e-books from over 40 authors in a wide variety of genres. My book, One Small Victory, is one of the books offered. These books were all originally published by traditional publishers and the rights reverted back to the authors. Here is a LINK to the sale page.

Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? The eternal question. I started wondering about that the other day when reading the news, and I just don't know. Consider this:

From Fiction: A line from Father Flip in the play "The Altos, Like the Sopranos only Lower" : "I was lost, but found my way behind bars."

From Real Life: A pastor of a small church in Dallas after being arrested for breaking into a woman's house, defending her checkered past: "I've turned by life around. Since 1988, I have walked the straight and narrow path."

Hmmmmmm? I doubt the pastor ever read The Altos script or saw the show, but it is a scary coincidence that the words are so close.

I read this recently in The Dallas Morning News. "Because Dallas city processes for removing graffiti is so lengthy, the city is contracting with a lawyer who has been painting over the graffiti for several years, even though what he is doing is against the law.

So, instead of streamlining the process so city workers could do the work, the city would rather pay more money to a contractor? But, hey, why not change the law so people in the community could paint over the graffiti for free and not be breaking the law?

Oh, but that would be too simple of a solution for a bureaucracy.

And finally, Happy New Year.   Click on the link for a holiday wish from me to you.

Sale on E-Books

There is a terrific sale on the Backlist E-Books site on a wide variety of books from romance to mystery. The sale starts today, Dec 26th and runs  through Dec 31st.

The  books offered were once out in either hardback or paperback by traditional publishers, including my One Small Victory, and the authors retained the electronic rights to the stories. 

If you received a Kindle, Nook, or i-Pad for Christmas, this is a perfect time to load up on a few books. All 84 titles are offered at 25% off, so there are some good deals to be had over the next few days.

Here is a link to the Backlist E-Books site with all the information and coupon codes to get the 25% discount as you check out.

Happy shopping.

E-Books Have Come a Long Way

It has been exciting to see the surge in e-book sales with the advent of the Kindle and the Nook and the iPad, as well as other reading devices. A lot of authors, including myself, are taking advantage of the interest in e-books by publishing new book straight to electronic formats, as well as putting up our back lists. In fact, there is a site now dedicated to BackList E-Books.  There you can find authors from the well-known like Paul Levine to, well, me.

The criteria for being listed on this site is that your books had to first come out in paper from a traditional publisher, so in a way the work is vetted for the reader.

Another exciting development for e-books is a recent announcement that The New York Times will start reviewing e-books on a regular basis. Wow, talk about validation.

While all of that is great news, what prompted me to write this post was a message I received in my inbox this morning:

We are collecting nominations for 2010 eBook of the Year. Please, nominate your favorite ebook here:

 Winners will be announced in The Huffington Post and will be alerted to over 2000 literary agents as well.

Sponsored byHow to Write a Query Letter.com

  To qualify for the award, the book nominated must have originated as an e-book, and I have two that qualify. Play It Again, Sam and Friends Forever.  A romance and a young adult novel. If you have a book that qualifies, head on over and nominate it for the award. If you don't, well, maybe you would consider nominating one of mine?

Thanks.....

Read an E-Book Week

In celebration of "Read an E-Book Week" there is a lot of buzz around the internet about e-books. Some blogs are offering contests, free books, and lots of other fun stuff.

On Charlotte Phillips blog, she has a list of e-books that have received good reviews and might be worthy of a look-see. Check it out HERE This is a book review site, and many of the books listed are ones that Charlotte has read and recommends.

Enjoy!