Ragtown on Kindle Vella

 If you've followed my blog or followed me on social media, you know how long I have worked on Ragtown. It is truly a labor of love and finally, I can share it with everyone. 

RAGTOWN is now available on Kindle Vella! 

And it has definitely received a lot of love! Vella became a reality in mid-July, and Ragtown has remained in the top 20 Favorite Reads the entire time, peaking at NUMBER 1. 

If you aren't familiar with Kindle Vella, it's a new platform offered by Amazon. Please read my post "What Is Kindle Vella?" for more information. 

Ragtown

The Hoover Dam is a model of American engineering and ingenuity.  But, it is also a testament to the fortitude of the common man: overcoming the burdens of the Great Depression, learning to survive and thrive in an unforgiving climate.  It was that story that I was compelled to write. 

RAGTOWN explores the different roles placed on men and women during the Great Depression, not only by society, but themselves, and what each must do to survive in the harsh climate of the Nevada desert. As both Helen and Ezra are vested in the diversion of the Colorado River from the course it has run for thousands of years, their lives parallel this monumental change. 

My inspiration to write comes from the personal histories of actual dam workers who endured this remarkable era in American history.  It is through Helen and Ezra that I tell their story.

I hope you will all check it out on Kindle Vella, where the first THREE episodes are FREE to read. 

And please, don't forget to "thumbs up" at the end of the episodes, and consider RAGTOWN for your weekly FAV. 

CHECK IT OUT NOW ON KINDLE VELLA !

Tangled Lights and Silent Nights

Too soon? I know, it isn't even Halloween yet, and I'm talking jingle bells and eggnog. But I wanted to tell you about an exciting project that I and nineteen other authors have been working on all summer: Tangled Lights and Silent Nights. 

Tangled Lights and Silent Nights is a multi-genre holiday anthology featuring characters from each individual author's books. So my contribution, "A Crazy Christmas", features Cass and Roland Adams from They Call Me Crazy on Christmas Eve, the Christmas before she kills him. It was a fun story to write and one I think my readers will enjoy. It's also mixed in with an amazing collection of other great stories from some of my and your favorite authors, including USA Today bestsellers Claude Bouchard and Gail Cleare. 

This collection truly has something for everyone.

Journey from the 1800's with Nicole Evelina's "A Vanderbilt Christmas", to the crime desks of Kate Birdsall, Claude Bouchard, and Debbie S. TenBrink's characters, to the futuristic fantasy worlds of Michael Meyerhofer and Ciara Ballyntine. 

In a contemporary setting, experience the holiday with Gail Cleare in Vermont, Diane Byington in Florida, and Kelly Stone Gamble in Kansas. 

Stacey Roberts, Victor Catano, Kelley Kaye, and C. Streetlights will make you laugh, while Darren R. Leo, Justin Bog, and Timothy Woodward might make you cry. 

Or you can fall in love with Erica Lucke Dean, Brenda Vicars, LeTeisha Newton, and Reece Taylor. 

Additionally, we have decided to donate all proceeds from the book to LifeAfter-Visions of Hope Project, whose passion is to shatter the stigma and spread awareness to three taboo topics that underscore society today: Suicide, Substance Abuse, and Domestic Violence.  

I hope you'll join us in celebrating the holiday with some of your favorite characters and help LifeAfter continue their mission. 

Tangled Lights and Silent Nights in available for pre-order now for only 99 cents and you can purchase it at all major e-book outlets by clicking on this link: 


Pre-order Tangled Lights and Silent Nights

Thank You, Nancy #CallMeDaddy

I couldn't have been more than five years old when I first watched Nancy Sinatra don her mini skirt and go-go boots, then pony on stage with her entourage of female dancers. At the time, I may not have fully understood the content of the song "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," but what I did understand, in some five-year-old acumen, was that it was possible for a woman to be strong and confident and in control of her own life. And it was all about the boots.

This was in the 1960s, when women were again living on a historical cusp of progress. College admissions for women were on the rise, although women still weren't able to attend Ivy League schools like Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, or Columbia. "The pill" was available as a means of contraception, but in some states, it would only be prescribed if the woman was married and intended to use birth control solely for family planning. Women couldn't serve on juries or open credit card accounts without their husbands as cosigners, and although more women entered the workforce, they received only fifty-nine cents on the dollar to their male counterparts. Women were again fighting for social equality, and the boots that Nancy vowed to “walk all over you” with became an iconic symbol of empowerment and independence. Women could do anything—and still be feminine and beautiful.

Those women in their boots, those beginning to nick the glass ceiling, gave one chubby five-year-old the confidence to take dance classes, the courage to try out for the boys’ basketball team, and the confidence to dream about a future of unlimited choices.

Over the years, I've worn many boots: work boots, hiking boots, SCUBA boots, even one brief encounter with a pair of thigh-high leather heeled boots. I still can't dance, my pony looks more like a mule, and I can’t shoot a hoop with an Uzi, but I've never stopped dreaming and I've never stopped trying. Although I’ve found many, many women in my fifty years to look up to and admire, who further reinforced the idea of women's empowerment and independence, it was Nancy Sinatra who taught me at a very young age to put on my boots. And start walkin'.

In my novel Call Me Daddy, Vera Shatner takes her idolization of Nancy Sinatra to a different level. When she slips on her boots, she becomes Nancy, and in her mind, being Nancy makes her “normal”—powerful. Independent. Add to that a man who feeds her fantasy, and Vera feels complete, at least until the illusion is shattered. But for Vera, the boots are key to her liberty, even if the freedom she seeks is from her own prison of mental illness.

RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 6

ORDER NOW ON AMAZON.COM

KDP and PubIt and Smashwords, Oh My! by Lorca Damon

In case you haven't notice, I love Lorca Damon. Not only is she a wonderful writer, but she is also full of valuable information, which I manage to squeeze out of her quite regularly. Here's another great bit of advice/info for writers from the ever wonderful Lorca Damon:

I am a proud self-published author. I have three titles that have been listed across a variety of platforms, sometimes with mixed results. While I cannot honestly say that one ebook distribution platform is better than another, they certainly are different.

For example, Amazon is the big dog. Unless you have a moral compass that points you away from the largest ebook distributor on the planet (and some people actually have a vehement refusal to have anything to do with Amazon as a protest of its oversized corporate status), your book needs to be listed on Amazon because it’s currently where the most sales are happening.

As for the retailer’s often-criticized KDP Select platform, that’s again going to have to be your call. KDP Select makes your book eligible for Kindle Lending. I was shocked at how well this actually worked. I remember thinking, “Seriously? People are going to pay an annual membership to BORROW books?” The answer is yes, they do. As the program currently stands, the author forfeits the right to list his ebook anywhere else INCLUDING posting it for free on his own blog. The trade-off is that every time the book is borrowed, the royalty rate is sometimes six times that of a purchase (my 99cent ebook earns 35 cents each time it is bought, and it’s paid me well over $2 each time it’s borrowed). Some people take issue with the exclusivity of the KDP Select program, others see it as a means to get their book into as many hands as possible.

PubIt!, Barnes and Noble’s self-publishing ebook platform, is very simple to use and requires the slightly  more standard ePub file format. If you’re considering PubIt! or if you’re considering enrolling your book in KDP Select and keeping it out of all other platforms, think about the genre you write. NOOK devices are marketed primarily to middle-aged women. If you’re writing high fantasy or extreme sci fi with elaborate world building aimed at a mixed gender audience, missing out on the chance to list your book on PubIt! might not hurt you too much. But if you write romance, women’s fiction, chick lit, literary fiction, and the like, you may be one of the very successful self-published authors who finds more fans on Barnes and Noble’s platform than on Amazon’s.

Smashwords. The little distributor that could. People in the business like to criticize Smashwords for the insane amount of erotica and romance in the catalog, but the numbers show that romance and erotica digital authors are laughing all the way to the bank. Smashwords has a lot going for it. They will list your book in their Premium Catalog for free as long as it meets the standards of their Style Guide (and the Style Guide walks you through formatting your book, plus it’s free as a download on their website) and listing it in their catalog means they will distribute it to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Apple, and more. Once you upload the file in the correct format, they convert it MOBI, ePUB, RTF, PDF, etc. Plus, each time you attempt the upload, if it still doesn’t meet the standards, their AutoVetter program emails you with a list of what is still wrong with it. After you successfully post the manuscript, a human being is still going to quick-read through it to make sure it looks right on a screen, that it isn’t pirated, etc. More importantly, Smashwords is a tireless supporter of self-publishing and has this week announced there are more than 5 BILLION words uploaded to their catalog. They’re just great people, so unless you have a compelling reason (like KDP Select) to not list your book there, you are only hurting yourself. 

All of the platforms out there have something to bring to the table. One of my books is enrolled in KDP Select because it is a highly-specific niche genre, not intended for general public consumption; plus, I wanted it listed in the lending catalog. Another title was enrolled in KDP Select and I took it out because there’s really no great reason to keep that one exclusive. It was an experiment, but once the terms of agreement are up on that title (you are required to list your book exclusively for ninety days if you enroll it), I plan to list it on PubIt! and Smashwords. My third title, which happens to be my only novel, is on Amazon and Smashwords. The first day I posted it to Smashwords, there were 80 page views of its sales page.

Figure out which marketing strategy makes the most sense for your book. Notice I didn’t say for you as a writer, but for each and every book you write. Decide on your audience and which platform will help you reach them the most.

 Lorca Damon is a teacher in a juvenile correctional facility and staff writer for GoodEReader.com. Her first non-fiction title, Autism By Hand, is an Amazon bestseller and her first fiction title, The Earth is for Dancing, was recently published as well. She is also one of the funniest people I know.  You should stalk her at

Her website:  lorcadamon.com

Twitter: @LorcaDamon

Good E-Reader goodereader.com

Ten Years Gone-Guest by Jason Korolenko

 I am thrilled to have Jason Korolenko, author of THE DAY I LEFT on my blog today. I finished the book a week ago, and it is still on my mind. That is exactly what I want from a novel. Jason is not only an extremely talented writer, he is also one of the nicest people on the planet. So if you don't know him, here's your chance to get acquainted.---and you really should check out THE DAY I LEFT. I promise you won't be disappointed. 

  

Awesome book cover

For a long time I resisted writing about why I chose to go indie. These days, I think, most people don't really care which company publishes a novel. They care about cover art. They care about clean editing. Mostly, they care whether or not an author can pull them into another world and give them a story full of conflict and emotion and interesting characters that demand sympathy. I can't remember the last time I picked up a book published by (insert Big 6 name here) and thought, "Wow, if they published it, it must be good."

I can't remember because it has never happened.

Let me be clear: this is not a post intended to glorify the indie process and demonize the traditional publishing industry, nor is it a quaint, bullet-point list of pros and cons of either approach. It's not a sermon as to why you should choose one path or the other. It is simply a post about my reasons, about why I chose to go indie.

I hear you asking, "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

I’m a fiction writer—mostly the dark stuff that keeps you awake at night—who has been gaming the traditional publishing system for over ten years, with a handful of published stories, three unpublished novels, and a co-writing credit on an indie film. I also have an MFA in Creative Writing, and now, a self-published novel titled THE DAY I LEFT, which I wrote while in the aforementioned program.

Now that that's out of the way, you may be wondering, "What kind of person pursues an MFA only to self-publish?"

Jason Korolenko

Let’s break this down into two questions.

Q1: What kind of person pursues an MFA?

A1: The kind who wants to learn directly from professional writers and editors. In other words, I wanted to learn from people who knew their shit.

Q2: What kind of person self-publishes?

A2: The kind who doesn't want to wait two to four years before seeing his book—a book he already worked two years on—go to print. Think about that for a second. Two to four years before it goes to print.

I graduated with my completed manuscript (yes, that includes edits and spit-shines) in June of 2012. I contacted my cover artist, and learned all about formatting for ebooks and print (thanks to the godly wonders of Scrivener) in July. At the end of August, I released THE DAY I LEFT for Kindle, Nook, and all other digital formats, and in September, I'll release the paperback edition. Two months to digital, three months to print. Not bad.

For me, it all comes down to the marriage of quality and quantity. If I wanted to be a chef, I'd go to culinary school. If I wanted to be a doctor, I'd go to medical school. I wanted to be a writer, so I went to writer school. I also write a lot, and I write fast. I don't want people to have to wait two years—or even a year—for my next book.

The more stories I can give you during the course of my life, without sacrificing quality, the better off we'll both be.

 Click here to buy THE DAY I LEFT at Amazon

Click here to buy THE DAY I LEFT at Barnes & Noble

Click here to buy THE DAY I LEFT Kobo edition

And here for all other ebook formats through Smashwords 

Stalk Jason on Twitter @jasonkorolenko

Check out his amazing website at www.jasonkorolenko.com   


And check out this amazing YouTube video of Jason!