Hello Friends!! I’m so freakin’ excited – John and I are finally out apartment hunting! Yay! We’ll be moving soon, so today I’m sharing more links and posts that might be helpful for you. Some might be helpful only if you’re self-publishing or thinking about doing so. Others will be helpful for any writer. Enjoy!

A great article by agent Rachelle Gardner about using Goodreads: “Goodreads: 8 Things Writers Should Know”

A story that many writers dream will be their own story one day: A Modern Day Fairy Tale by Jennifer Probst

This looks like it’s a Christian epublisher: BelieversPress

Another article from John Locke about how he created his success: “An Army of Authors and Friends”

This is a helpful article on figuring out what you need to spend in your self-publishing venture:”Epubbing on a Budget” on WG2E (The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing)

And here’s a great article on making your book cover: “The Making of a Bestselling eBook Cover” on WG2E by Jen Talty of Who Dares Wins Publishing

Another cool – and free – educational tidbit I like to partake of is the Booklist webinar. They have all different kinds of topics. Next month, they have one called Picture These: What’s New with Graphic Novels. You can register here. Booklist webinars are at a set time and you dial in via a “meeting” site. You listen to the speakers and watch their slideshow presentation. You can take notes, but later you’ll get an email with a link to the archives where you can watch the video of the whole thing again. Here is a listing of all their upcoming webinars. You can sign up to get an email letting you know about new webinars. That’s what I do.

Remember when iBooks Author software  came out and there was a big hubbub about the terms and conditions? It read like you couldn’t put your book on any retail site except for iBooks. I spoke to an Apple Store employee who said that the “upgrade” to iBooks Author is only a change to the terms and conditions to better explain what you are and aren’t allowed to do. If I understood correctly, what the terms and conditions were trying to convey is that the software only creates a file that uploads to iBooks. To upload your books to other sites, you simply have to use other software. Apparently, that’s all it was saying. I’m going to download the software and check out the T&C. I’ll try to remember to let you know what I find out. Let us know here in the comments if you’ve already checked!

Another interesting article on self-publishinig sales from author Gemma Halliday.

Read more about how The Hunger Games did their social media promotion. It might give you some ideas for promoting your own books.

I haven’t watched this yet, but I love the Pixar story team, and this is a TED talk by Andrew Stanton from Pixar on crafting great stories.

Interested in Amazon’s KDP Select program? Here is one self-published author’s explanation on how it worked for her. Or more to the point, how it didn’t work.

And finally, three suggestions from my friend Kathleen, co-author of Dog Daze, book one of The S.A.V.E. Squad. She and I both use Scrivener, and here are some useful templates from Mel Corbett. Kathleen put a QR (Quick Response) code on her business card, which I thought was totally cool! Here is an article by Athena Grayson explaining QR codes and how you can use them. Just in case you don’t visit this site very often, here is a reminder to bookmark it. Daily Cheap Reads is a site with all kinds of books listed to highlight some of the many potentially good ebooks selling for under $5. I’m pretty sure there is always at least one free ebook listed as well.

I wanted to post this for you guys a few weeks ago when Janice’s book first came out, but we were right in the middle of Author Crush Month. So now I can finally tell you what a great book it is!

Let me start by saying that I’m not a professional book reviewer. I’m not sure I could do it. I’ve read reviews over the years that are crushing! If I were writing in my private journal, I guess I could be ruthless. But what’s more likely to happen in a Kitty review is that I’ll be attacked by a mob of exclamation points! 

A few weeks ago, I read my friend (see, that’s where I’d put a disclaimer if I were a pro) Janice Cantore’s new book, Accused. I loved it! It’s about a Long Beach, California, police officer (Janice used to be one) who helps out in a homicide investigation only to be nearly killed a couple times by people trying to shush her. And some of the people involved may or may not be on the police force. Yikes!

Detective Carly Edwards, our heroine, owns a cool dog (points for that) and has a good-looking ex-husband who wants to win her back (points for that, too – come on, I write romances!). She also thinks her mom is very annoying when she talks about church and praying and stuff all the time.

Over the course of the book, Carly has to decide what to believe – about a lot of things. Is there a murder cover-up and could someone she know be involved? Has her ex-husband really changed his stripes? Is there really a God and what, if anything, is He willing to do for her?

I like Janice’s books because they’re fast-paced and full of action, yet the characters are fully developed so that you care what’s happening with each of them. Since she used to be a cop, everything seems real and believable. A couple times I wished she’d gotten us even more involved in the action, but I might be a bit of an adrenalin junkie when it comes to action in books, so you have to take that into consideration.

If you read Christian fiction, I think you’ll find Accused to be just what you’re looking for. If you don’t, but you like police action books, the faith-talk isn’t too distracting, especially since Carly doesn’t even want to talk about it for over half the book. When she does start thinking about it and asking questions of her friends, it’s not too heavy-handed. There are a couple conversations that dig deep into the topic of faith and God, but that’s the kind of book this is and it goes along with all the pages that have come before. The conversations answer questions the reader has been wondering about for the whole book, just like the conversations about who did it and why answer questions the reader has wondered all along.

Overall, I give the book 4 stars out of 5. (Caveat: I don’t give many 5-star ratings, so keep that in mind.) I’m definitely going to read the next two books in the series, Abducted, coming out in August, and a third book next year.

Also, if you haven’t read her Brinna’s Heart series, you should try The Kevlar Heart and A Heart of Justice. I’ve read both of those, too, and rate them both 4 stars. (And they both have a dog, too!)

Still not sure? Go read the first chapter on Amazon for free. And if you buy Accused, the first chapter of Abducted is in the back for free. (D’oh! Didn’t realize that till I started typing this! Need to go read it when I’m done!)

More disclaimers:

Disclaimer 1: Tyndale House Publishers gave me a free early review copy of the book. In return for reviews, of course. They didn’t make me promise to be nice though.

Disclaimer 2: I’d already pre-ordered the book on Amazon as soon as it became available. I’m thinking I might offer a free giveaway of book 1 sometime when book 2 or 3 comes out. I’m cool like that.

Disclaimer 3: I’m good friends with Janice and I love her! And I love her dogs! I would probably find a way to promote her books even without free copies. But you’d know if I didn’t like it because I’d be saying things like, Good use of white space with the paragraph indentations, and Lots of pages for the price, and Cute male model on the cover. Note I didn’t say any of those things. (I can’t talk about the cute male model anyway in case John might be reading!)

Disclaimer 4: I’d totally forgotten that she asked my husband if she could use his name so it was a complete surprise when FBI agent John Bucholtz walked onto a page! I screamed and John came running to find out how I’d hurt myself. Then he gave a manly yell when he saw his name. I’d still love the book even if Janice hadn’t immortalized my awesome husband. (Already own the book? Go to page 362!)

Disclaimer 5: I’ve never used disclaimers in a list before. It’s fun.

I’m having an AWESOME time this week hanging out with two of my best writer friends and writing and brainstorming! Woo-hoo!! So I thought I’d give you guys some of the links I’ve been finding over the last week or two. Hope you find one or more of them useful.

I’ve been sent so many different links over the last few months to posts on The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing, or WG2E as it’s affectionately known, that I needed to make sure you’re aware of this web site. You know I’m on a self-publishing journey, and if you are, this is a site you need to check out. There is so much information here that I actually find myself a bit intimidated when I wander around. If you’re a regular, I’d love it if you left a comment about the best way for a writer new to the site to get the most benefit from it. If you’re easily intimidated by information overload, do what I did and just subscribe to the posts so they come in your email Inbox. Easy and done.

Interested in making your own book cover? Or maybe a banner or other picture for your web site? Check out this step by step post on making book covers in PowerPoint. I took one of those free Apple Store classes on using Keynote (the Apple competitor to PowerPoint) and I was astounded at all the things I could do graphically! I think I’m going to take this article on how to play around in PowerPoint and use what I learned about Keynote to do some playing. Hmm…when do I have time for playing? (Note to self: add “playing” to my To Do list.)

Sue Grimshaw, former romance book buyer for Borders and current acquiring editor at Loveswept, talks about promotion on Writers in the Storm. Loveswept is a digital imprint so Sue is actively seeking ways to connect with digital readers. Join in the conversation in the comments section. And subscribe to Writers in the Storm, if you haven’t. They have massive amounts of craft and other writerly information on their blog every week. Lots of great writers there.

Luke Flanagan, a dear friend of John’s and mine, is blogging about his journey to self-publish his children’s book. NOT epublishing, but a real live book. Luke wrote it, illustrated it (he worked with John on Happy Feet 2), and used Pozible.com to raise the money to get the book printed. I find the whole thing exciting and inspiring! And I’m happy to say that our own personal copy of the book will be flying in from Australia soon. Yay! (It better be autographed, Luke!)

Many of you know I’m writing a superhero romantic comedy. (The first short stories in my universe come out this summer, the first novel early next year.) Shonna sent me this great link to Superhero Nation. I’m happy as a pig in mud! Woo-hoo!! Thanks, Shonna! I totally can’t wait to waste a whole day “researching” on this site!

I’ve only had a chance to skim this article so far, but Dissecting Pages for Mood looks like a great post on how a writer adds mood to her/his stories. And there’s color-coded highlighting! Who doesn’t love that?

Are you writing a story that requires you to plant clues and misdirect the reader? This short post by Kara Lennox might help you. It might also cause you to throw out all your red lipsticks!

I just found this web site on Friday, Indies Unlimited. I have barely gotten past the home page, but it looks like it could be a great site for self-publishers – and probably other writers, too.

If you’re interested in self-publishing, you’ve probably heard about John Locke and how he sold 1 million ebooks in five months. Here is another interesting article about him.

Here’s an article by Bob Mayer on what if/when e-royalty rates go down. And here is a NY Times article on the government’s involvement in ebook pricing.

My friend Dwight sent me this link by Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, talking about description versus action. Donald seems to be a fan, like me, of describe it enough for the reader to see it in their imagination, and get on with the story! (My emphasis. )

I mentioned this a while back – there is a Self-Publishers Online Conference coming up in May. The dates and major speakers are posted here and, thanks to James Byrd of S.P.O.C., I can tell you the prices. There is a standard pass, giving you access to the conference and the recordings, for $97. The premium pass gives you that access plus several TBD bonus items for $147. After May 1, the prices go up to $127 and $199. Sounds like it could be great! (And if anyone knows of any conferences or classes for publishers, I’d love to know more about them. I need to learn more about how to be a good publisher, especially since I only have one client and I want her to be happy and stick around. )

And finally, before I totally overwhelm you with links to click, here is my latest reader-must-have – the Albatros bookmark. Check it out, it’s so cool! If only I had a checking account balance that wouldn’t notice if I bought some for my birthday.

Hope you enjoy some or all of these links. Now that I’ve written them down here and know I won’t lose them, I can close some of the 52 open tabs on my web browswer. Whew!