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

Dad's Best Advice and Cover Reveal for #CallMeDaddy

My new novel, Call Me Daddy, will be released October, 2016, and I wanted a fun way to reveal the cover, so I asked people to give me the best advice their Daddy ever gave them. Here's a list of Dad's best advice and I have to say, there are some pretty awesome dads out there! One of these bits of wisdom will win an e-book version of my new novel. Which do you like the best? Can you add any to the list?

• Never say anything about someone that you couldn't say in front of them. (In other words, don't gossip)
• Be the best you can be.
• Shoot em in the yard, drag the body inside. Lol....
• No license til I could drive a stick. The reasoning: "I don't ever want you in a situation where you're either stuck somewhere unsafe, or forced to ride with someone who has been drinking, because the car you're in is a stick and you can't drive it."
• The graveyard's full of people that had the right-of-way.
• Deny everything.
• If you have to fart while in the company of others do so into the thickest couch cushion available.
• Chew your food 28 times, each mouthful. Then he would say, "chew, and chew, and chew" I can still hear him.
• He also advised in working in a profession that is always needed, so you'll always have a work, like plumber, or funeral director. "You may never need a lawyer or a doctor but you will eventually have a clogged crapper." End quote.
• A leopard can't change his spots. In other words, if a guy's a douche bag then he's not going to change.
• I can't protect you all the time so pay attention. Strike hard, strike fast and always, ALWAYS, hit him in the balls! He also taught me to change a tire and the oil so I would never have to wait for help!
• Always smile at homely girls
• Don't marry a man less educated than you. You will never be impressed enough.
• Never get a pet that's too big for you to bury.
  
• Given enough seasoning, everything can taste like chicken.
• Dazzle them with brilliance and baffle them with bullshit.
• My dad had taught me to drive and he said, " HUG THE ROTARY you'll beat out all the others when you jump on the highway." It usually works. :)
• Never trust a fart.
• My dad's best advice: Give 'em what they got comin. No more. No less.
• Don't ever assume ... it's makes an ass out of u and me.
• Never leave the house without money in your pocket.
• I was born a long time before you and I know lots of guys who do that in this neighborhood. If he can do it to his wife, he will do it to you too. A snake is always a snake.
• Never write down on paper what you don't want anyone else to see.
• Always be content, never satisfied.
• He put the cuffs on me and put me in a cell around age six and said "you like the way that feels?" (I've been good ever since)
• Read your bible every day.
• It will feel better...
  When it quits hurting...
• Always know your way out of a place...
• Don't be a slacked jawed idiot.

And now for the big COVER REVEAL! Coming in October, 2016, from Red Adept Publishing: 

Visit my website at Kstonegamble.com
Like me on Facebook 
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Follow me on Amazon and check out my novels! 

Cover Reveal and Pre-Sale: Grab by Anne Conley

PRE-ORDER ON AMAZON

SYNOPSIS

Jordan Rocco has just received a medical discharge from the Marines and is now working with his brother, Evan, at Pierce Securities. He's struggling to find his place among these men who have a brotherhood that doesn't seem to include him. Jordan's only saving grace is the woman across the hall in his apartment building, with her smart mouth and tight curves.

Mia is wholly focused on making enough money at her crappy job to bring her sister home to live with her, instead of globe-trotting with her mother and the latest in a long line of losers. A boyfriend is not in the cards. But a couple of nights with the hottie across the hallway—to release some pent-up frustrations—wouldn’t be remiss. When she's grabbed from her apartment in the night, Jordan witnesses the crime, helpless to stop things.

He's suddenly got a new —mission: Before the worst can happen, he has to save the woman who has come to mean more to him than he realized.

PRE-ORDER ON AMAZON

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne has written her entire life and has the boxes of angst-filled journals and poetry to prove it. She's been writing for public consumption for the last four years. Currently she is writing three romance series. In Stories of Serendipity, she explores real people living real lives in small town Texas in a contemporary romance setting. In The Four Winds, she chronicles God's four closest archangels, Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael, falling in love and becoming human. In Pierce Securities, she gives us Ryan, Evan, Miriam, Zack, Quinten, and Simon. She lives in rural East Texas with her husband and children in her own private oasis, where she prides herself in her complete lack of social skills, choosing instead to live with the people inside her head.

Stalker Links

anneconleyauthor@gmail.com

www.anneconley.com

www.facebook.com/anneconleyauthor

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Authors and Self Promotion

When I was seven, my older brother and I found an advertisement in a Grit magazine to sell Christmas cards and earn prizes. We had our eyes on two bikes, but not just any bikes. Mine was pink, with a pink banana seat, large spoked wheels with lights and clickers, long handlebars with plastic fringe, a basket with pink flowers and a sissy bar twice the height of the bike itself. Basically, the Cadillac of little girls bikes, dripping in pink. Oh, I wanted it, and I wanted it bad.

Imagine-ALL PINK

We hawked Christmas cards. Our teachers, our neighbors, our relatives, our parents even took us to work with them to sell to their co-workers (back in the day when parents didn't sell FOR the kids). We went door to door. We set up at grocery stores, on the street in front of our house, at a church picnic. We not only sold our cards, we figured out how to sell ourselves. He could sing, and I thought I could dance, so if someone wasn't interested in our cards, we'd offer them a 'performance' if they would consider our offer. And we sold cards.

We may not have outsold Hallmark that year, but we sold enough to buy two deluxe kids bicycles and a few smaller things for our baby brother, who I'm sure we used at one time or another to sell cards. It didn't end there--anytime we could find something to sell, we were on it. Lemonade stands, flower seeds, cookies, I'm sure at one time or another I tried to sell my brother. And we had no shame. None. Zero. What we did have was savings accounts---and bicycles to get us to places to spend our money.

I hear authors use the phrase "shameless self promotion" a lot, and personally, I hate the term, and believe it or not, I don't particular like asking people to buy my book. Of course, I want them to, but I often feel like friends, co-workers, even the unknown faces of the internet must be rolling their eyes every time I say, "Buy my book!" And rarely do I put it out there so bluntly; I give my little performances, I make jokes, I share reviews, I write blog posts, I offer sales. But it always feels "funny" to me. My publisher does a lot of the work, but as many authors will tell you, if you aren't contributing to the effort, you're killing yourself. So we do, and we try to find different ways to say "Buy my book!" without just saying it. It's self promotion. And it's shameless. And as writers, crafters of words, it bothers us to do it, so we feel like we need to admit to our friends, readers, faceless potential customers that we know how shameless it is.

  

It's time we stop thinking like this.

If I opened a restaurant, I'd have no problem advertising it. If I were looking for a job, I'd make my resume shine, send it to however many places I needed to, and show up to interviews in my spiffy business suit ready to tell you how wonderful I am. If I wanted to de-junk my house, I'd put stuff in the driveway and tell you what a great deal you are getting on a broken Atari for $50. And yes, I would ask my friends to help me spread the word. Self promotion is shameless, and it should be. We do it in every aspect of our lives.

So why not get over it, and sell some books?

  

I've written a book. It's a good product, something you can hold in your hand and enjoy, or give as a gift. It's less expensive than a box of Christmas cards. I'd like for people to buy it and try it. If you like it, tell your friends. If not, tell me. Do you want me to tell you a joke? Fine. Do my little dance? Maybe. Throw in my brother? That could possibly be arranged.

And if I sell enough books? Maybe I'll buy another pink bike.