Today, Shelley Stout, author of Radium Halos, was supposed to be my guest. She has been very busy with work and totally forgot about getting her article to me. I had asked her to write a short article on creating her study guides for her book and the fact that she has developed two different level study guides. She has them geared for 8th and 11th grade. Now I know you are thinking that there isn't much difference between 8th and 11th grade but there is a world of difference in what they cover and how they utilize novels for study. Shelley's study guides are available here if you are interested in using her book during your history class or science class or even art. There are many ways Radium Halos can be used throughout different curricula. Hope you at least get to check it out and I highly recommend reading the book even if you don't use the study guides.
See you all in the postings - E :)
Showing posts with label Radium Halos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Radium Halos. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Book Review Friday - Radium Halos by Shelley Stout
This is reposting of my previous review of this book but it is worth mentioning again. Radium Halos is an excellent read. Shelley has added a study guide that is available for free here. Shelley will be my guest on March 28th, so stay tuned for more from Shelley.
Rating: 5 stars
Radium Halos is a very lightly written, full of humor and sadness and other aspects of life novel that has the potential to be a made-for-TV movie. The characters are really brought to life by Ms. Stout's descriptions and often humorous flashbacks of all the people who had passed through her main character's, Helen Waterman, life over the span of fifty years.
Helen worked at the Radium Dial Factory in Illinois one brief summer and only did that through her older sister's urging. The journey takes us from the early 1920s to the mid 1970s (although the latter date is not really known, it is elluded to through a description of Helen's niece's hairdo and that she is out of the times). The flashbacks are woven in quite nicely and don't really take away from the story at all. I felt like I was listening to my grandmother (in a sense) recollecting her time during certain periods of her life. I found myself cheering for Helen, crying with her, crying for her and hoping that just once she would stand up for herself and let it be known.
I really hope this novel does get made into a movie as it would be very eye opening to folks who know nothing of this time period. I had never heard of the radium dial factory info until I met the author at a writer's conference a couple of years ago. I'm sure in its heyday, the factories did get a lot of attention but there are folks who are still around today that possibly have some connection or other to these terrible conditions and should definitely be shown the dangers of radium and how it has affected or impacted the lives of those exposed to the harsh working conditions.
I have already recommended this book to several folks and will continue recommending and will keep my eyes open for the movie to come out - E :)
Product Details
Paperback: 226 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace (October 13, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1448696224
ISBN-13: 978-1448696222
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
Radium Halos is available for kindle for the low price of only 99 cents.
Rating: 5 stars
Radium Halos is a very lightly written, full of humor and sadness and other aspects of life novel that has the potential to be a made-for-TV movie. The characters are really brought to life by Ms. Stout's descriptions and often humorous flashbacks of all the people who had passed through her main character's, Helen Waterman, life over the span of fifty years.
Helen worked at the Radium Dial Factory in Illinois one brief summer and only did that through her older sister's urging. The journey takes us from the early 1920s to the mid 1970s (although the latter date is not really known, it is elluded to through a description of Helen's niece's hairdo and that she is out of the times). The flashbacks are woven in quite nicely and don't really take away from the story at all. I felt like I was listening to my grandmother (in a sense) recollecting her time during certain periods of her life. I found myself cheering for Helen, crying with her, crying for her and hoping that just once she would stand up for herself and let it be known.
I really hope this novel does get made into a movie as it would be very eye opening to folks who know nothing of this time period. I had never heard of the radium dial factory info until I met the author at a writer's conference a couple of years ago. I'm sure in its heyday, the factories did get a lot of attention but there are folks who are still around today that possibly have some connection or other to these terrible conditions and should definitely be shown the dangers of radium and how it has affected or impacted the lives of those exposed to the harsh working conditions.
I have already recommended this book to several folks and will continue recommending and will keep my eyes open for the movie to come out - E :)
Product Details
Paperback: 226 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace (October 13, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1448696224
ISBN-13: 978-1448696222
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
Radium Halos is available for kindle for the low price of only 99 cents.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
This and That - end of week
So, I've a campaign to give away all my titles as PDF files for free in exchange for reviews. To date, I've had one actual request (have sent three files to the one person) and two who said they were interested in reviewing the books but haven't made the request yet. I've been posting on my plurk which goes to my FB page and twitter page and the one person who has requested my books actually retweeted a post last week. He lives in England so the state books wouldn't do him much good, but if he wanted them, I would've been happy to send to him.
Sales this week have been very minimal - Finally Home - ebook = 0, print = 0; "The Proposal" (an April Fools Day story) = 1 on smashwords; "The Tulip Kiss" = 1 on kindle. No sales on Nook this week. I hope those folks who purchased the copies will write reviews for the stories. I'm getting views on smashwords; unfortunately, I can't gage how many people view my books on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Smashwords is the only one that shows how many views and so far "The Proposal" has had 46 views; Finally Home 25 views and "The Tulip Kiss" 15 views. I can only hope I'm getting similar views on the other two places or more but that isn't showing up as sales, so need to do something to help generate sales.
I decided to do something with "Bride-and-Seek" when it is published (hoping within the next couple of days or at least by the end of week next week). I'm going to list it exclusively on kindle for the quarter and put out my five free ads during that time and see if that will boost sales. I've been following the Sisters in Crime yahoo forum and there is one lady there who has been reporting her progress throughout her time with one of her books listed this way (what this exclusive listing does is alows prime members to get the ebook version for free (borrow) and the author has to not put that title up for sale on any other ebook sales place (no Nook, no smashwords, no fictionwise (if they are still in existence), no sales on your website in ebook format) but you can keep the title in print format everywhere, if it is available in print). Anyway, we are pretty close to having a completed cover for "Bride-and-Seek" and once that is approved, I will be putting the story up on Kindle only. The ads hopefully will lead to folks checking out my other titles and hopefully purchasing them.
The other thing I'm considering is FB ads. Another author friend of mine has just started using the FB ads (middle of December) and saw a dramatic increase in her sales - something like 48 books over a 2-week time period - now that's the kind of sales I'd love to have since my goal is only 15 to 25 a month of each title this would be great to see sales like this.
Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and my posting will be a short one about the holiday. Wednesday's posting will be a question from a 3rd grader Lunchtime Writer's Club member in Indiana. Thursday will be about book festivals and other things, and look for a review on Shelley Stout's book Radium Halos on book review Friday.
So signing off on another dismal sales week - until next week, - E :)
UPDATE: 01/16/2012 - I haven't really been checking my sales on createspace, so I've kind of neglected my state stories a bit but I just checked it today and apparently I had an order for State of Wilderness last Friday through the expanded distribution (could have been to a bookstore, a library or school or through createspace directly). - So sorry for neglecting my state stories - lol.
Sales this week have been very minimal - Finally Home - ebook = 0, print = 0; "The Proposal" (an April Fools Day story) = 1 on smashwords; "The Tulip Kiss" = 1 on kindle. No sales on Nook this week. I hope those folks who purchased the copies will write reviews for the stories. I'm getting views on smashwords; unfortunately, I can't gage how many people view my books on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Smashwords is the only one that shows how many views and so far "The Proposal" has had 46 views; Finally Home 25 views and "The Tulip Kiss" 15 views. I can only hope I'm getting similar views on the other two places or more but that isn't showing up as sales, so need to do something to help generate sales.
I decided to do something with "Bride-and-Seek" when it is published (hoping within the next couple of days or at least by the end of week next week). I'm going to list it exclusively on kindle for the quarter and put out my five free ads during that time and see if that will boost sales. I've been following the Sisters in Crime yahoo forum and there is one lady there who has been reporting her progress throughout her time with one of her books listed this way (what this exclusive listing does is alows prime members to get the ebook version for free (borrow) and the author has to not put that title up for sale on any other ebook sales place (no Nook, no smashwords, no fictionwise (if they are still in existence), no sales on your website in ebook format) but you can keep the title in print format everywhere, if it is available in print). Anyway, we are pretty close to having a completed cover for "Bride-and-Seek" and once that is approved, I will be putting the story up on Kindle only. The ads hopefully will lead to folks checking out my other titles and hopefully purchasing them.
The other thing I'm considering is FB ads. Another author friend of mine has just started using the FB ads (middle of December) and saw a dramatic increase in her sales - something like 48 books over a 2-week time period - now that's the kind of sales I'd love to have since my goal is only 15 to 25 a month of each title this would be great to see sales like this.
Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and my posting will be a short one about the holiday. Wednesday's posting will be a question from a 3rd grader Lunchtime Writer's Club member in Indiana. Thursday will be about book festivals and other things, and look for a review on Shelley Stout's book Radium Halos on book review Friday.
So signing off on another dismal sales week - until next week, - E :)
UPDATE: 01/16/2012 - I haven't really been checking my sales on createspace, so I've kind of neglected my state stories a bit but I just checked it today and apparently I had an order for State of Wilderness last Friday through the expanded distribution (could have been to a bookstore, a library or school or through createspace directly). - So sorry for neglecting my state stories - lol.
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