As most of you know, Finally Home went up as an audio book the end of June. The first week it went up, 5 copies were downloaded (Yay!!!). This evening I went to do laundry and having not checked my mail all week, I went to the post office first. Upon opening there was a large, oversized but thin envelope from Audible.com and I was thinking it was more paperwork that I might not have filled out, but no my first royalty check from audible for 5 downloads of Finally Home and 1 download of State of Successes. Royalties are paid monthly as long as you have earned at least $10. Since the first of July, I have had 2 more downloads of Finally Home and 2 of State of Successes, one of which I believe occurred today or yesterday as I haven't checked my ACX dashboard in a couple of days and the last time I looked there were only 3 total for State of Successes.
For those of you who have downloaded the audio books, I thank you very much. I hope you all enjoy listening to Sienna narrate the story. Just a reminder too that there will be a second in Kelly Watson mysteries. I'm workig on The Ties of Time and hope it meets your expectations. E :)
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
The Proposal Free Days/Research Field trip
It's free download days again; this time, my short story "The Proposal" is available. It will be free through Thursday midnight PST. I'd forgotten to post this yesterday but I have a reason.
Yesterday, my friend Anita and I took a field trip to Iva (the town setting for my Kelly Watson stories) and explored. We parked on the square and kind of walked around checking out the store fronts or buildings there and turned the corner to find the Iva Museum. It was closed as they are only open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. The person who operates the museum was there checking on the air conditioner as he had been on vacation last week and he wanted to make sure that the folks had returned it to its normal settings. He was coming out of the museum as we were kind of looking in the windows, stating we needed to make another trip when the museum was opened. Anita asked him about the museum and we explained what I was doing, so he was kind enough to let us in and showed us around and allowed us to take some pictures of some of their pictures. We gained a lot of information from that short visit. Thank you, Mr. David Newby, for spending some time with us and giving us some background history of the town. He also told us about the "Antique Body Shop" just around the corner, so we naturally had to stop in there. No, it's not an antique car shop but a senior citizens gym. We spoke with two folks there and Anita bought herself a T-shirt.
From there, we made our way to the town hall which houses the police department, municipal court and the place to pay water bills (I've forgotten what it was called). We talked to the one lady who was standing behind the police department window, who happened to be the victim's advocate. We asked for some information and she told us that the guy across from them would be able to help us but he had just stepped out of the office, but would return shortly (I missed when he did return or we would have engaged in a conversation with him). The Chief of Police had to deal with a situation but when he finished with that business, he was very nice to sit with us and give us all kinds of other information. He even printed out a map and marked places we wanted to explore for us. That map may show up in the front of The Tie of Time (A Kelly Watson paranormal mystery).
When we left town hall, it was lunch time so we stopped by the cafe we had originally parked in front of and had lunch - buffet style - fried chicken, sweet potato casserole, green beans, beets (which I didn't get any of but I do love beets if they are fixed right), rice and white gravy, some greens (I think they were collard greens), country fired steak, and desserts and a few other veggies. The buffet table isn't very large so they can only put up a few items each day. The waitress was very friendly.
After leaving the cafe, we drove around looking for the different items marked on the map for us including the supposed ghost house (which we didn't really find but no worries) and the oldest house in Iva which was old but didn't really give me the impression of being the oldest house around, the old drug store (vital to The Ties of Time as this is where the whole mystery will occur), the nursing home, the old high school which is now the Civic Center and houses an indoor basketball court and is used for all kinds of activities. There is also a very nice park in front of the Civic Center and the only remaining building of the old school which was the cafeteria.
We got a tour of the nursing home and were invited back during the activities time to observe what one of the worker's daughter does to help out (bless her little heart, she is only 6 years old and was trying her best to do the craft of the day, which was building little bird houses or bird feeders). Thank you to Diane, Melissa and Tina for helping us give a reason for Kelly and Emma to be in the nursing home.
From the center of town, it is about 1 mile to the outskirts in any direction, so it is not a very large area, so I'm having to change what I started out with for the girls to get around since State Law says that no one can operate a moped or golf cart without a driver's license. So now my girls will be riding bicycles around town. I just need to make sure they have somewhere to put their picnic basket and other stuff. Do they still make front handlebar baskets for bicycles?
Overall, I think we had a very productive and interesting day of discovery. We will probably make several more trips to Iva over the ensuing months. Everyone we spoke to seemed genuinely excited about the fact that I was an author and had set my story in their small town. I look forward to visiting the town of Iva again and hopefully meeting more people. I also am excited to really get to writing The Ties of Times and hopefully can get it done fairly quickly. I will post pictures later as it is now time to get to work as there is a team conference call this afternoon and one of my co-workers is out this week. See you all in the postings - E :)
Yesterday, my friend Anita and I took a field trip to Iva (the town setting for my Kelly Watson stories) and explored. We parked on the square and kind of walked around checking out the store fronts or buildings there and turned the corner to find the Iva Museum. It was closed as they are only open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. The person who operates the museum was there checking on the air conditioner as he had been on vacation last week and he wanted to make sure that the folks had returned it to its normal settings. He was coming out of the museum as we were kind of looking in the windows, stating we needed to make another trip when the museum was opened. Anita asked him about the museum and we explained what I was doing, so he was kind enough to let us in and showed us around and allowed us to take some pictures of some of their pictures. We gained a lot of information from that short visit. Thank you, Mr. David Newby, for spending some time with us and giving us some background history of the town. He also told us about the "Antique Body Shop" just around the corner, so we naturally had to stop in there. No, it's not an antique car shop but a senior citizens gym. We spoke with two folks there and Anita bought herself a T-shirt.
From there, we made our way to the town hall which houses the police department, municipal court and the place to pay water bills (I've forgotten what it was called). We talked to the one lady who was standing behind the police department window, who happened to be the victim's advocate. We asked for some information and she told us that the guy across from them would be able to help us but he had just stepped out of the office, but would return shortly (I missed when he did return or we would have engaged in a conversation with him). The Chief of Police had to deal with a situation but when he finished with that business, he was very nice to sit with us and give us all kinds of other information. He even printed out a map and marked places we wanted to explore for us. That map may show up in the front of The Tie of Time (A Kelly Watson paranormal mystery).
When we left town hall, it was lunch time so we stopped by the cafe we had originally parked in front of and had lunch - buffet style - fried chicken, sweet potato casserole, green beans, beets (which I didn't get any of but I do love beets if they are fixed right), rice and white gravy, some greens (I think they were collard greens), country fired steak, and desserts and a few other veggies. The buffet table isn't very large so they can only put up a few items each day. The waitress was very friendly.
After leaving the cafe, we drove around looking for the different items marked on the map for us including the supposed ghost house (which we didn't really find but no worries) and the oldest house in Iva which was old but didn't really give me the impression of being the oldest house around, the old drug store (vital to The Ties of Time as this is where the whole mystery will occur), the nursing home, the old high school which is now the Civic Center and houses an indoor basketball court and is used for all kinds of activities. There is also a very nice park in front of the Civic Center and the only remaining building of the old school which was the cafeteria.
We got a tour of the nursing home and were invited back during the activities time to observe what one of the worker's daughter does to help out (bless her little heart, she is only 6 years old and was trying her best to do the craft of the day, which was building little bird houses or bird feeders). Thank you to Diane, Melissa and Tina for helping us give a reason for Kelly and Emma to be in the nursing home.
From the center of town, it is about 1 mile to the outskirts in any direction, so it is not a very large area, so I'm having to change what I started out with for the girls to get around since State Law says that no one can operate a moped or golf cart without a driver's license. So now my girls will be riding bicycles around town. I just need to make sure they have somewhere to put their picnic basket and other stuff. Do they still make front handlebar baskets for bicycles?
Overall, I think we had a very productive and interesting day of discovery. We will probably make several more trips to Iva over the ensuing months. Everyone we spoke to seemed genuinely excited about the fact that I was an author and had set my story in their small town. I look forward to visiting the town of Iva again and hopefully meeting more people. I also am excited to really get to writing The Ties of Times and hopefully can get it done fairly quickly. I will post pictures later as it is now time to get to work as there is a team conference call this afternoon and one of my co-workers is out this week. See you all in the postings - E :)
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Bride-and-Seek Free Days
The Bride-and-Seek free days are here. For the next three days, you can pick up your copy of my romantic ghost story based on a legend in England for free. Hope you all enjoy it. E :)
Friday, July 12, 2013
The Ties of Time
The Ties of Time A Kelly Watson Mystery is the newest title in my Kelly Watson series.
I had a story starter prompt, kind of, had written 6 pages up to basically where the "bookstore" was no longer but got stuck as I didn't really have any direction of where the story was going, what the mystery actually was or even why the bookstore (which after brainstorming with my really good friend, Anita, last night is no longer really a bookstore) was there one minute and not the next.
Lana has been urging me to get to writing on this story, not for the story itself but to get back into writing. Yesterday before leaving for the monthly Sisters in Crime meeting, Lana and I were chatting. She had given me a little insight Wednesday night of what the girls found at the site that was a store but is no longer. A piece of wood. So yesterday during our chat, she asked me "What do the girls find under the wood?" and listed a half dozen or more possibilities, then stating the possibilities were endless. I wrote down the suggestions she made on the printed pages of the story to take to the SinC meeting for Anita's reading. I'm glad I did because after the meeting we did some serious brainstorming and came up with The Ties of Time. I now know exactly what the mystery is, who is involved and where the mystery ends up.
I can tell you this about the story: It is actually a murder mystery (which came about secondarily); it involves ghosts, twisted relationships, skeletons in the closet, and even a bit of time travel for Kelly or really more use of her "witchy powers". Solving the murder actually led to two other murders in the past which turn out to be books 3 and 4 in the series. There are 11 characters involved in this story of which several will show up in the next two books, thus the premise of books 3 and 4 are in motion already with book 3 a better inkling of the "ties" of time and other things. All I can tell you about book 4 is they are going to solve the last related murder to the other two but they need to solve the first two before getting to third one. After book 4 is finished, I think I will consider the series complete as I didn't start out writing murder mysteries and after the third murder is solved, there shouldn't be any more skeletons in the closet that need telling. If there are any more Kelly mysteries after book 4, then it is likely they will be basic mysteries and not involve murders as I really don't have any more characters that have been murdered and in a town as small as Iva, SC, is there aren't enough people around to have them getting killed off. Besides, we don't really want Kelly involved in too many murders before she reaches the age of 16 anyways.
The Ties of Time is actually going to tie three mysteries together over the course of time but there are other reasons for the title, which I can't reveal at this moment, but trust me the ties are there. I look forward to really getting the story written now with publication to follow within a few months. I've set a deadline of having the story written by the end of August (that is basically a 6-week timeframe), with editing and revising probably for the middle of October as I will probably start on book 3, the second murder, in the series before jumping into the edits immediately, and then we will go from there.
More when I can - see you all in the postings - E :)
I had a story starter prompt, kind of, had written 6 pages up to basically where the "bookstore" was no longer but got stuck as I didn't really have any direction of where the story was going, what the mystery actually was or even why the bookstore (which after brainstorming with my really good friend, Anita, last night is no longer really a bookstore) was there one minute and not the next.
Lana has been urging me to get to writing on this story, not for the story itself but to get back into writing. Yesterday before leaving for the monthly Sisters in Crime meeting, Lana and I were chatting. She had given me a little insight Wednesday night of what the girls found at the site that was a store but is no longer. A piece of wood. So yesterday during our chat, she asked me "What do the girls find under the wood?" and listed a half dozen or more possibilities, then stating the possibilities were endless. I wrote down the suggestions she made on the printed pages of the story to take to the SinC meeting for Anita's reading. I'm glad I did because after the meeting we did some serious brainstorming and came up with The Ties of Time. I now know exactly what the mystery is, who is involved and where the mystery ends up.
I can tell you this about the story: It is actually a murder mystery (which came about secondarily); it involves ghosts, twisted relationships, skeletons in the closet, and even a bit of time travel for Kelly or really more use of her "witchy powers". Solving the murder actually led to two other murders in the past which turn out to be books 3 and 4 in the series. There are 11 characters involved in this story of which several will show up in the next two books, thus the premise of books 3 and 4 are in motion already with book 3 a better inkling of the "ties" of time and other things. All I can tell you about book 4 is they are going to solve the last related murder to the other two but they need to solve the first two before getting to third one. After book 4 is finished, I think I will consider the series complete as I didn't start out writing murder mysteries and after the third murder is solved, there shouldn't be any more skeletons in the closet that need telling. If there are any more Kelly mysteries after book 4, then it is likely they will be basic mysteries and not involve murders as I really don't have any more characters that have been murdered and in a town as small as Iva, SC, is there aren't enough people around to have them getting killed off. Besides, we don't really want Kelly involved in too many murders before she reaches the age of 16 anyways.
The Ties of Time is actually going to tie three mysteries together over the course of time but there are other reasons for the title, which I can't reveal at this moment, but trust me the ties are there. I look forward to really getting the story written now with publication to follow within a few months. I've set a deadline of having the story written by the end of August (that is basically a 6-week timeframe), with editing and revising probably for the middle of October as I will probably start on book 3, the second murder, in the series before jumping into the edits immediately, and then we will go from there.
More when I can - see you all in the postings - E :)
Friday, July 05, 2013
Upcoming Free Download Days All Books
Since I've moved all my books off Smashwords and Nook and I haven't done any free days in a while, it's time to do some more free download days. I tried to space everything out so that nothing is really running the same day but there ended up being two back-to-back (see below), which may or may not work to my advantage - lol.
Here is the lineup:
"Bride-and-Seek" - July 18-20 (3 days); September 24-25 (2 days)
"The Proposal" - July 23-25 (3 days), September 27-28 (2 days)
"The Tulip Kiss" - August 13-17 (5 days)
Finally Home - August 29-September 2 (5 days - this will run the Thursday before Labor Day through Labor Day)
Remember the free promotional days run midnight PST through midnight PST (3 AM to 3 AM EST). If you are eastern time and look for the books at midnight the day it starts, you won't see them listed as free.
Also posted on the JGDS blog that "Train of Clues" would go free next week and then again in August. The schedule will be July 11-12 and August 27-29 (which will overlap one day with Finally Home, but it will be okay since they are not related and shouldn't have any bearing on the other). Check out my posting and let me know if you have any thoughts on gaining sponsors for the state series. Thanks all - see you in the postings - Mrs. E :)
Here is the lineup:
"Bride-and-Seek" - July 18-20 (3 days); September 24-25 (2 days)
"The Proposal" - July 23-25 (3 days), September 27-28 (2 days)
"The Tulip Kiss" - August 13-17 (5 days)
Finally Home - August 29-September 2 (5 days - this will run the Thursday before Labor Day through Labor Day)
Remember the free promotional days run midnight PST through midnight PST (3 AM to 3 AM EST). If you are eastern time and look for the books at midnight the day it starts, you won't see them listed as free.
Also posted on the JGDS blog that "Train of Clues" would go free next week and then again in August. The schedule will be July 11-12 and August 27-29 (which will overlap one day with Finally Home, but it will be okay since they are not related and shouldn't have any bearing on the other). Check out my posting and let me know if you have any thoughts on gaining sponsors for the state series. Thanks all - see you in the postings - Mrs. E :)
Thursday, July 04, 2013
One Week ACX Report
Finally Home has been live for 1 week now and there have been 4 downloads not including my own from using my credits. Remember this is available on amazon.com as well as audible.com and itunes. Hope those of you who have downloaded the audio book have enjoyed hearing Sienna reading. Drop me a line if you have gotten an audio copy and let me know what you think.
Just to let you know that when there is a second book, hopefully Sienna will be available to do the reading again. Right now, I'm leaning towards The Mysterious Bookshoppe: A Kelly Watson Mystery and go from there. This, of course, is a work in progress and may end up changing as I progress, but I do know that the bookstore holds many mysteries, not of the book type though, perhaps of the ghostly type or some otherly world type. See you all in the postings - E :)
Just to let you know that when there is a second book, hopefully Sienna will be available to do the reading again. Right now, I'm leaning towards The Mysterious Bookshoppe: A Kelly Watson Mystery and go from there. This, of course, is a work in progress and may end up changing as I progress, but I do know that the bookstore holds many mysteries, not of the book type though, perhaps of the ghostly type or some otherly world type. See you all in the postings - E :)
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