MASQUERADE (CREEPY HOLLOW, #4) Waltzes Into Kindle Stores

After tripping over a few feet, MASQUERADE has finally found itself dancing amongst the other ebooks on Amazon and Smashwords! If you've been looking forward to reading this one after the cliffhanger TRAITOR left you on, then I do hope you enjoy :-)

Goodreads

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Smashwords

Taking A Break

At the end of GUARDIAN, LABYRINTH and TRAITOR, I included a "look out for the next installment" page, along with the cover of the next story. I haven't done that this time. Why? Because I don't know when the next one will be ready! This year has been really busy so far with teaching and writing and publishing, and now I have to plan a wedding (yes, engaged 3 months ago, getting married in 4,5 months time, and we've done pretty much NO planning yet!). So I'm taking a bit of a writing break. Well, I'll still be writing, but without fixed (self-imposed) deadlines hanging over my head. I've already got parts of the next few installments written, but I don't know exactly when they'll be finished for everyone else to read.
I look forward to being less stressed out and interacting with all you guys online more :-)

Counting Words

If you're interested, here are the word counts for the first four stories already out. MASQUERADE took me a few more words than expected ;-)

GUARDIAN:   13,700 words

LABYRINTH:   18,000 words

TRAITOR:   15,200 words

MASQUERADE:   24,700 words

A Thank You

And thank you to everyone who downloaded and spread the word on Wednesday when GUARDIAN and LABYRINTH were free. It was a great way to end off my time with KDP Select :-)

2240 downloads

Download GUARDIAN and LABYRINTH for free! #CreepyHollow

The first two stories in the Creepy Hollow series, GUARDIAN and LABYRINTH, are reaching the end of their 90 day KDP Select period (today is the very last day, actually), and since I have some unused free promotional days, I've made these two novelettes FREE FOR TODAY, 31 July!

GUARDIAN Amazon US | Amazon UK


LABYRINTH Amazon US | Amazon UK

If you feel like being awesome (and who doesn't want to be awesome?!) and tweeting or Facebooking, these are the links you can copy and paste:

GUARDIAN   https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007FRJGXI

LABYRINTH   https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QLX9G8

(And MASQUERADE is almost ready to make its appearance!)

Carole Anne Carr's FIRST WOLF

Carole Anne Carr is promoting her book FIRST WOLF, a children’s quest adventure story set in 8th century Northumbria, by making the ebook edition *free* today and tomorrow (12th and 13th July). You can get it from:
Amazon US
Amazon UK

Toland, a twelve year old Anglo-Saxon boy must kill his first wolf to be accepted by his kinsmen but he is lame. Hill tribes attack his settlement and his father goes to find the King who is away fighting the border wars. Toland must protect his family and find his father. With his faithful hound Bodo by his side, he guides his family to safety, Rescued from drowning by a slave girl who met her death before he was born, he survives the first Viking attack of Lindisfarne and is given the task of carrying the Lindisfarne Gospels to safety at Durham. While full of adventure, action, and mystery, this is a young boy’s rite of passage that involves the killing of his first wolf and his survival in the destructive adult world in which he lives. In this early history are the boy’s otherworldly helpers who are everywhere around him, and central to this story is Toland’s dedication to fulfilling his promise to the monks of Lindisfarne, despite the threats to his life that this single-minded focus brings.

Carole is a member of The Society of Authors, Nat. Assoc. of Writers in Education, National Children’s University (Shropshire), Society of Storytelling, Women in Rural Business, Shropshire Chamber of Commerce, W.I. Speaker, and the author of First Wolf, Little Boy Good-for-Nothing and the Shongololo, Candle Dark, Thin Time, and River Dark.

In her own words ...
"I'm an author and independent publisher of four children's books: two historical fiction, one fantasy, and one picture book. My early years were spent as a bank teller in Africa, then as teacher, owner of an art and craft business, poet, creative writing tutor, actress and Third Order Franciscan. I held the Office of Reader in the Church of England before beginning my writing career. I'm working on sequels to my children's books. I have taught poetry and other aspects of creative writing, been Deputy head of a Shropshire primary school for nearly twenty years, and I’m a member of the Society of Authors, the National Association of Writers in Schools, and W.I. Speaker."

GUARDIAN Kindle ebook is FREE 05/26 and 05/27!

FREEBIE TIME!!

In celebration of the release of TRAITOR,

for today and tomorrow (05/26 and 05/27) you can download 

GUARDIAN for free from Amazon!

Amazon US

Amazon UK

I would really, REALLY appreciate it if you could tweet or spread the word in any way! You can copy and tweet the following message, or write your own:

GUARDIAN, the first novelette in the #CreepyHollow series is FREE till the end of this weekend! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007FRJGXI #Kindle #ebook

And a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who's already spread the word for me. GUARDIAN has got onto some Amazon best seller lists and is slowly climbing up them :-) (It's also unhealthily addictive watching the download numbers of my KDP Reports page go up!)

Click to enlarge.

LABYRINTH (CREEPY HOLLOW, #2) Is Now Available!

The second installment in the Creepy Hollow series

is now available!  

(after a not-so-small and highly annoying Amazon hitch!)

Both GUARDIAN and LABYRINTH are $0.99

on Amazon and Smashwords!

If you live outside the US, you may see a higher price on the Amazon US site. Smashwords, however (which produces all kinds of ebook formats, including .mobi for Kindle and .epub for iPad) should show you a price of $0.99.

Guardian trainee Violet Fairdale has officially been suspended for bringing a human into the fae realm. No assignments, no training, and goodbye to that position at the top of the class. While this sucks, it at least allows her time to secretly keep visiting Nate, the human boy who caused her suspension in the first place. It’s not the wisest move to continue breaking Guild Law, but no one’s going to find out. And Nate is worth the risk, isn’t he?

To prevent herself from going into assignment withdrawal, Vi throws herself into investigating Nate’s real mother, Angelica, a woman who seems to be mysteriously connected to the world of the fae. Nate’s never given her much thought, but that was before an insane faerie abducted him in order to blackmail Angelica out of hiding. Now Nate wants answers, and Vi’s got the perfect ability to help him.

You can find LABYRINTH here:

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Smashwords

And you can add it on Goodreads

My A to Z post for letter B can be found below this post.

Cover Reveal for GUARDIAN, Creepy Hollow #1

[Note: this post may contain an excess of exclamation marks.]

Alrighty. Here it is!!!!

So... What do you think?! You're allowed to be honest ;-) Though if you want to say that you hate it, it might be nicer to keep that to yourself! I -- obviously -- am super excited about it!!

Yes, she's meant to have purple eyes and purple in her hair, which I think is super cool. I once died my hair "blackcurrent" (according to the box) but if I was really brave I'd go real purple, like Vi up there (though hers in natural. Yup, you heard me. Natural).

(Something I've never noticed until recently is that not all computer screens are made equal in terms of colour. Yeah, okay, so maybe that's obvious to some of you, I just never had a reason to think about it before! Anyway, on my one screen she looks awesomely brightly purple, and on my other she looks kinda meh-purple-blue :-( )

~ ~ ~

Summary for GUARDIAN:

1. Receive assignment.

2. Save a life.

3. Sleep.

4. Repeat.

Protecting humans from dangerous magical creatures is all in a day’s work for a faerie training to be a guardian. Seventeen-year-old Violet Fairdale knows this better than anyone—she’s about to become the best guardian the Guild has seen in years. That is, until one of her assignments—a human boy who shouldn’t even be able to see her—follows her into the fae realm. Now she’s broken Guild Law, a crime that could lead to her expulsion.

The last thing Vi wants to do is spend any more time with the boy who got her into this mess, but the Guild requires that she return Nate to his home and make him forget everything he’s discovered of the fae realm. Easy, right? But Nate and Vi are about to land themselves in even bigger trouble—and it’ll take all Vi’s training to get them out alive.

Watch the book trailer for the series.

The Curse of the Kindle

There are so many things that are awesome about the Kindle, and, to be honest, this "curse" I'm thinking of isn't actually a bad thing...

Here it is: It is so easy to buy ebooks that you will keep accumulating more and more, faster than the rate at which you can read, and you'll never get through your "to be read" list!

Yeah, okay, things could be worse. But it just bugs me that there are all these awesome stories waiting there for me and I haven't yet got to reading them!


Currently, this is the list of ebooks chilling on my Kindle that I've either started and not yet finished, or haven't even started yet:

Blood Faerie ~ India Drummond
Crime Stories ~ J.A. Konrath
Descended by Blood ~ Angeline Kace
Destined ~ Jessie Harrell
Hollowland ~ Amanda Hocking
Little Wild Flower ~ Samantha Jillian Bayarr
Megan's Way ~ Melissa Foster
Origin ~ J.A. Konrath
Ravenmarked ~ Amy Rose Davis
Saving Elizabeth ~ Amy Machelle
Shapeshifters Anonymous ~ J.A. Konrath
The Arrival ~ Nicola MacDonald
The Hating Game ~ Talli Roland

Okay, so the list doesn't look that long now that I write it out, but I do NOT read that fast, and I only get to read at the end of the day just before I fall asleep, and I WANT TO READ THEM ALL NOW!

Do you have this problem? Is your "to be read" list of ebooks on your Kindle/ereader like ten times longer than this and you're laughing at me right now?

~ ~ ~

P.S. Come back on Monday to see the cover reveal for GUARDIAN, the first book in the Creepy Hollow series!

And here's the book trailer if you haven't seen that yet.

Amazon eBook Prices: What Do You See?

Image source

*Skip to the end of the post to see the answer that has since been found.*

It has come to my attention that the prices of self-published ebooks on Amazon are not the same outside the US as they are inside the US.

I used to look at authors' ebooks on Smashwords and Amazon and I'd think to myself, why are they pricing their books higher on Amazon than they are on Smashwords? Is it because more work goes into formatting for Amazon? Surely anyone with half a brain cell will choose to buy from the cheaper site then?

BUT after a conversation with a friend recently, and having looked at a few more author websites and then at their books on Amazon, I suddenly twigged: the authors are NOT pricing their books differently on different platforms, it's Amazon that keeps showing me a price that's $2 higher than the price the author set.

What??

I contacted Amazon to ask them why this happens and they couldn't answer my question. They told me that they're unable to offer a price match with a different online retailer. Okay, I get that, but that isn't what I asked! I asked ONLY about Amazon: if I click on the exact same link that my friend in the US does, why do I (in South Africa) see a price that is $2 higher than the price she sees?

No response.

So, if you're not currently in the US (or even if you are, just so we can make sure about this), I'd like to ask you a question. When you click on the following Amazon links, what price do you see?

Book	The author says	I see
Remy Broussard’s Christmas	$3.99	$5.99
Open Minds	$2.99	$4.99
In The Mirror	$3.99	$5.99
Campaigner Challenges 2011	$2.99	$4.99

And another important question for authors: if you've priced your book at $0.99, but I pay $2.99, do you still only get 35% royalites (and not 70%, as you should on a $2.99 book)? Does Amazon take the rest even though someone has paid more for your book?

~ ~ ~

UPDATE (22 Nov 2011)
The answer can be found on the KDP Sales and Royalites FAQ page:

1-6. Why is the price of my book higher in other countries than in my own?
There are a number of reasons why prices for Kindle titles may vary from region to region, including taxes, delivery costs, and other operating costs. We understand your concern about prices and we share that concern - we will continue our efforts to reduce costs and offer the best possible prices to customers in every region.


I guess I should have searched harder for the answer before posting about this, but I'm still glad I posted, as it seems that many people are unaware of the price difference.

Remy Broussard's Christmas, by Kittie Howard

When a classmate physically and mentally bullies Remy, the third-grader withdraws from friends and imagines the worst about his parents. Staring at the Christmas tree in the classroom enables the sharecropper's son to escape his poverty-stricken life and dream about opening a present on Christmas morning and having turkey for Christmas dinner, neither of which has ever occurred.

Friends blame the changes in Remy's behavior on Leonard's bullying and encourage Remy to talk to his parents, his teacher or his priest. Remy refuses, often with open hostility. As Christmas Day approaches, Remy's struggle to understand why he has so little and others have so much deepens. He concludes that Jesus is punishing him for hating Leonard and his bullying.

A bayou-laced, South Louisiana community comes together in 1952 to stop Leonard's bullying in a compassionate manner and open Remy's heart to the meaning of Christmas through love and forgiveness.

This is a delightful story of hope, perfectly timed for Christmas, from a fellow writer and blogger, Kittie Howard. Though the setting is a little before my time, Kittie's words transported me back to a time when I sat in a little classroom in a small village, at an ancient desk with an inkwell (that students found ingenious uses for) doing worksheets of sums. Ah, the smell of freshly sharpened pencils... (come on, I'm not the only one who loves that smell!).

What I enjoyed as well were the Author's Notes at the end of the +/- 14 000 word story, where Kittie shares a little about her life and the way things were back in 1952 that lead to the writing of Remy Broussard's Christmas.

In the spirit of #authorlove, it would be fantasitc if you would head over to Amazon to take a look at Remy and support a wonderful writer-blogger with a genuine and sincere heart.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Formatting your eBook for Kindle

I've recently been helping a friend out with formatting her manuscript for conversion to Kindle ebook form. I was very excited to do this, as I've been curious for a while as to how the process works, and from everything I'd read it honestly didn't look too difficult.

I have to admit, though, that it was a little more of a mission than I anticipated. NOT because it is difficult in any way, but because I am finicky about tiny details, and every time I'd done the conversion process and put the file onto my Kindle to check, I'd think something like... actually, that heading right there would look better in caps, or that word between the title name and author name might look more attractive in italics.

So I lost count of the number of times I did the whole save as html / import into Mobipocket Creator / add cover / click Build / plug in Kindle / copy file onto Kindle / open and check ebook process. It was all good though, because I could do it in my sleep now :-) (though why I'd ever need to do that, I can't imagine...)

Formatting a document for Kindle is not that difficult.

The instructions provided on KDP's Simplified Formatting Guide page are pretty easy to follow:
(specific for MS Word 2007)

• DON'T manually indent the first line of each paragraph, but rather use the Home > Paragraph > Indentation > First Line function, so that it's automatic.
• DON'T manually insert page breaks but using multiple returns (the Enter key), but rather use the Insert > Page Break function at the end of each chapter, before you begin a new chapter.
• DON'T copy and paste images into your document, but rather use the Insert > Picture function.
• Save your Word document as a .htm file.
• Open Mobipocket Creator (the software is available for download. Follow the link on the Simplified Formatting Guide page) and follow the last few instructions on the Simplified Formatting Guide page.

There was only one thing I found frustrating: Whenever I had blank lines between lines of writing, for example:

CHAPTER ONE

My First Chapter's Name

My first chapter begins with these lovely words: We all went out for a blah, blah, blah. It was delicious. But just as we were leaving, a great, big blah, blah, blah appeared and we were all, like, terrified!

Those blank lines DID show up when I put the file onto my Kindle device to check it, but they DIDN'T show up on the Kindle Previewer software or the Kindle for PC software. Freakin' annoying! But I eventually figured out the following solution:

• Put the cursor in front of My in My First Chapter's Name and go to Page Layout > Breaks > Section Breaks > Continuous. Do the same in front of the My in My first chapter begins with... And, of course, anywhere else you'd like there to be a blank line.

So. Anyone else done any formatting for ebooks lately? Have you formatted for different platforms? Are some of them more complicated than others? (For example, are Smashwords guidelines more complicated than KDP guidelines?)

A to Z Stories of Life and Death

Fellow blogger and writer, Damyanti, has put together an ebook of bite-sized short stories, many of which were written during the epic A to Z Blogging Challenge.



How do you judge a teacher toying with the sexuality of her teenaged student? A boy who decides to murder his mother? What thoughts rage inside a pedophile serial killer before he shoots himself? These are some of the premises of 26 stories of life and death, based on 26 letters of the alphabet. They question the concepts of beauty, truth, and morality, by revealing the face of the other side.


The book is available at Amazon and Smashwords. Well done, Damyanti!

PS. Isn't the cover super-duper awesome?!