Remembering

Memorial Day is for remembering. Apparently that’s something I’m not very good at. I remembered the holiday was coming. I remembered what it was for (I was all geared up and had a flag cake pan unpacked and everything). Unfortunately, I sort of lost track of time. I’ll blame that on the frenzy that accompanies the end of the school year and having two teens in two different schools.

After returning home this evening from The Boy’s last orchestra performance of the school year (whew!), Hubby and I decided to unwind by settling down to watch a rerun of BBC’s Top Gear. That’s when The Girl reminded us it was Memorial Day weekend coming up and she had plans. Which reminded me it was almost the weekend and I hadn’t written a blog post. Cringe. And also it was Memorial Day weekend and I hadn’t set up a promotion to celebrate. Extra cringe. (I wore olive drab for a brief period in my youth, so I feel particularly guilty about that.)

I apologize for the blog being pathetically short and dual-purpose, but Be Careful What You Wish For will be FREE from Friday, May 23 to Tuesday, May 27, 2014. This is the first book in the Genie in Your Pocket Collection, it’s rated at 4.6 stars (Thank You), and I’d love it if you’d give it a try and even leave a review if you like it. Assuming of course that you haven’t already.

If you do like Olive, my first mischievous genie, there’s a short story available as a FREE download on Goodreads, Meet Olive. Here’s the funny part about Goodreads – there’s two different copies of the story there. The version with the ship on the cover is a PDF, the version with a woman on the cover is ePUB. I’d love to say it’s just so you can tell at a glance which one you want. Actually this is a byproduct of me fighting with Goodreads’ interface. Getting anything done is like taking a shower with my cat. Their revenge is resetting my download counter on both versions. Bless them.

Also, sometime in the near future, the next book in the collection, Make A Wish!, will be released and Olive makes a guest appearance in there. That book is caught up in revisions right now. More about that later. Eventually I’ll write a short story about the new girl too. Meet Galila? Hmm.

Spring Writing Rant

Spring is officially here. With that, I did a free eBook promo on Chrysanthemum. Thank you to all of the people who took advantage of that promotion. I hope you enjoy it and I'll post occasional updates on my website on the release of the sequel, A'gust. The title says it all, doesn't it? Talk about someone with secrets.

Also on my website, I mentioned Teri & Dev's birthdays were coming up in April. To celebrate that, I'll have a promo on AKA Lexi Frost and the rest of the series. I also have a promo on the sequel, Flynn's In, to cap off March, just because I could within the Amazon rules, but we’ll see it again as part of the series promotions starting next month. (Including a promotion on A Thousand Words. I haven't done a free book promo on that one before, so: Yay for everyone trying to slowly collect the series on promotions!) Hopefully by then I'll have Transitions finished. I’ll tell you what happened there another time.

I'm busy finishing the sequel for Be Careful What You Wish For. I finally got that timeline issue figured out and I'm almost done with the first draft. I want to finish that while it's on my mind. It's not truly a sequel, although Olive plays a big role. You'll see. For those out there who wish they could find a genie in a bottle – no you don’t. Some things are just more trouble than they’re worth.

Amazon's Been Up To Things

Amazon’s been doing some interesting things lately. I see it differently as an author than as a reader. As a reader, I have a Kindle (not just an app) and I have Amazon Prime. Some of the other authors I chat with didn’t even know everything Amazon’s been doing lately. And not everyone who has a Kindle is even taking advantage of the lending library, so it seemed worthwhile to mention these options were out there.

The Matchbook program launched recently. It’s pretty cool. If you buy a paperback (from Amazon of course, they’re not idiots) you can get the eBook for a discount. For participating books. I enrolled all of mine and listed the eBook as free at least through the holidays, kind of a “Buy one as a gift, get one for yourself” idea. When you look at a book’s page, it’ll show you if it’s part of the Matchbook program. Point of obviousness: the title has to have both an eBook and a print version. Less obvious point: it doesn’t work in reverse. Buying an eBook doesn’t give you a discount on the print version. Maybe someday, but not yet. There’s less of a margin on print books, so I don’t see it.

Countdown Deals is also new. You know how you can look at the top books, paid or free, in each genre? Well, there’s now a time-sensitive discount option. This just started, so we’re still experimenting with it, but the page is active. For example: on Saturday, a book could be $0.99; then on Sunday, it’s $1.99; on Monday, it’s $2.99; and on Tuesday it’s up to its regular retail of $3.99. I’m going to run AKA Lexi Frost on this promo starting November 9 to see how it goes. If it goes well, I’ll toss the other ones up there.When it first launched, there were 12 books in the romance category. When I listed the promo for AKA Lexi Frost, there were 5 pages.

And last, but not least, Kindle First. This is for Prime members but doesn’t require a physical Kindle. Amazon editors pick four books to promote, and Prime members can choose one for free before their official release date. I suspect it’s their way of getting some reviews in place for when the books launch. Next month, you can do it again.

On Kindle First, these aren't going to be your average indie books. These authors have sold enough in the past that Amazon Publishing editors have tried to woo them. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily better, there’s some fantastic indie books out there waiting to be discovered and some books published by the big publishing houses that aren’t good for much more than leveling a table. Sorry, you know it’s true and I’m not naming names. As a rule, these should be worth your time. Keeping in mind taste is subjective.

Shameless promotion of my book's free weekend. (Do I get points for honesty?)

It’s a free weekend for Be Careful What You Wish For (As if that graphic didn’t already tell you that). It’s going better than my free weekend for AKA Lexi Frost, I’m not sure if that means anything, but I’ll take it. Yay. Also of note is that the print version of these and Flynn’s In are all out now. Yay again. Although the print and Kindle version of the latter aren’t linked for some reason, Amazon promises they’re working on that.

So, want a nice little Time Travel romance this weekend? It’s free on Amazon until Tuesday.