Sandy Nathan's Blog, page 9

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy Wins Four National Awards!

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy

WAA-HOO! The results from the Best Books of 2011 contest (sponsored by USA Book News) are in! The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy is an:

AWARD WINNER the "Fiction: New Age" category of the Best Books of 2011 Awards . 
The Angel is also a FINALIST in the "Fiction: Fantasy/Sci-Fi" category.

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy has now won four national awards:

1.  2011 IPPY (Independent Press) Awards Gold Medal in Visionary Fiction: The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy The oldest and largest contest for independent presses. Almost 4,000 books were entered in the IPPYs this year.

2.  2011 National Indie Excellence Award Winner in Visionary Fiction: The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy The Indie Excellence Award looks for a book's overall excellence. Content, cover design, interior and exterior, and everything that goes into the production of a book are evaluated.

And the new wins noted above:

3.  Best Books of 2011 sponsored by USA Book News: The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy is an AWARD WINNER in the "Fiction: New Age" category.

4.  Best Books of 2011 sponsored by USA Book News: The Angel is also a FINALIST in the "Fiction: Fantasy/Sci-Fi" category.

THE ANGEL & THE BROWN-EYED BOY  HAS BEEN ENTERED IN THREE CONTESTS. IT HAS WON FOUR AWARDS IN NATIONAL COMPETITION. IT'S WOWED THE JUDGES, CRITICS, AND REVIEWERS: 

Red Adept Reviews gave it FIVE STARS OVERALL.

The Midwest Book Review gave it FIVE STARS!

Check out its Amazon Reviews, too.

If you like Fantasy, Sci-fi, Visionary Fiction or just a good, engaging read, check out The Angel. You won't be disappointed.

Not only is The Angel an incredibly inventive book with a message and a heart, two sequels are in the process of being published. Find out what happens after the world blows up.

Coming very soon:

Lady Grace brings The Angel's characters back together and puts them in another struggle for existence. This time, they're fighting against the elements and a degenerate society which the nuclear war has spawned.

Sam & Emily: A Romance from the Underground is The Angel's second sequel. Sam & Emily, is a love story involving two characters from The Angel over a span of more than 30 years. It sizzles.

How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months by John Locke | A Your Shelf Life Review

5 STARS!

This is a really great book. If you're an author or aspiring author who wants to sell a bunch of books, you should buy it and put what it says into practice. It's like having a strategic marketing coach who cares about you tucked away in your Kindle.  You can buy it here.

That's the business portion of this review. Having that out of the way, let's hang out and get acquainted.

I bought this book approximately thirty seconds after the nice people at the Amazon Digital Platform sent me a press release saying that John Locke had passed the one million downloads mark, the eighth person in history to do so and the only self published author.

I had never heard of John Locke.

I've read the book four times now and can say that this is one of the most exciting books I've read in a long time, both for what it contains explicitly and for what isn't talked about. The book is a how-to focused on John's marketing plan and a case study of John Locke, both of which I find fascinating.

I really get off on this sort of thing. Many years ago, I was amazed and terrified to find myself a doctoral student in economics at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. (The GSB or Biz school) It was as scary and difficult as it sounds. A year later, I slunk away, battered.  (I left in good standing, but had discovered that I couldn't do the math. And I never would be able to do it.)

I went back to my previous occupation, being an economic analyst, thinking of the experience as "the year I almost got an ulcer."

But the year wouldn't go away. Out of the blue, I got a call from one of my professors at the GSB. Richard T. Pascale PhD was the best classroom teacher I have experienced. He presented a stunning combination of  intelligence, speaking ability, mastery of his topic (negotiation) and "people skills." As well a genuine warmth and humanity. Plus he'd written a bunch of bestselling business books, starting with The Art of Japanese Management and ending with Surfing the Edge of Chaos.

Turns out that his class, Negotiation & Intervention, had become  the most popular in the Biz school by a long shot. Richard needed help doing videotaped negotiation exercises where teams of MBA (Master's of Business Administration) students attempted to outfox each other using the techniques he taught. He also needed help with other exercises like teaching them to active listen, and, of course, grading papers. Richard wanted me to help him.

Really? I couldn't believe it. But I remembered that while I stank at the mathematics of optimization, I soared in the people-orientated classes, like negotiation.

So I said yes. It turned into a twenty year gig. For a few days each spring quarter, I got to work with a team of other really cool facilitators and whip those MBAs into shape. We videoed and debriefed negotiations and ran listening exercises. And we graded lots of papers.

That job was the most fun of any I've had. I also got to work with David Bradford PhD, who taught "touchy-feely", or Interpersonal Relations as the class was actually named. He was a master.

Statistical studies done by the Biz school indicated that grades in touchy-feely and negotiation, plus a few required courses, were the most powerful predictors of lifetime success. To quote the MBA students, "A C in touchy-feely is a C in Life."

Sometime in this period, I earned an MA in counseling to complement my MA in economics.

Time passed. Richard went off to Harvard and Oxford. The job went away, but left me with a permanently altered psyche and a love of business case studies.

GIVEN THIS BACKGROUND, THIS IS WHAT I THOUGHT READING JOHN'S BOOK:

First off, John attributes his success in selling books to his marketing plan. Hah, thought I.

Did you ever hear the joke about the two farmers standing in front of their neighbor's giant new barn. One farmer says to the other, "It's pretty, but I've never seen a barn have a calf worth a damn."

I've never seen a marketing plan sell a million books, either.

There had to be more to it, and I was determined to find it.

Did I? Oh, yes.

Some obvious, and not so obvious, factors in John's success:

"I've made two major fortunes in my life, excluding book sales," John Locke says in his book. He describes a lifetime of business success. Unbelievable success. He's currently engaged in something like fourteen business ventures, in addition to his writing.

When I read this stuff, my blood became about 90% adrenaline. Of course, John sold all those books! Psychologists say that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Of course. he succeeded. That's what he does.

Do you know any extremely successful people? You need to hang out around one to see what they're like.

My dad rose from being a penniless, first-generation immigrant to the owner and CEO of the tenth largest residential construction company in the U.S. at its peak. He built 14,000 homes, 2,500 apartment units, three shopping centers and bunch of churches (those at cost), all before he was killed at age 45. He was also a AAU  champion wrestler, body builder and  health food nut. He supported the Boy Scouts, taught wrestling at a police youth club for kids at risk (which he built), and was the best water-skier I've ever seen.

What does this have to do with John Locke? I don't know Mr. Locke, but I expect he's like my dad. Totally focused, disciplined, and on top of things. Living  his life as though he was skating on a razor's edge. Able to do not only "the math", but possessing the people skills to make his business plans a reality. A major multi-tasker, but able to delegate. Possessing intelligence, charm, intuition, physical power, mental and physical stamina, and the ability to inspire and persuade. (Are you blushing, John?)

The super-effective people get the whole package––all the human skills. And they have fun. My dad had more fun than anyone I know. Business was a game to him and his buddies––money wasn't prized for itself, it was just the way they kept score. I expect John's like that.

Are these skills transferable? Can they be inherited? Not as far as I can see. I've kicked up some dust in my life, but I've never built 14,000 houses.

This ultra-successful person syndrome is a problem when ordinary mortals try to implement something like John's plan.

OTHER ELEMENTS I don't want to turn this into too much of a John Locke love-fest, but he does a really good job in this book. You can start from word one and go all the way through, finding meaty tid-bits. I'm not going to discuss all of them here, though you may feel like I have by the end of this post. (I have trouble writing less than three hundred pages.)

John shows superb joining skills. What's that? Imagine you've just walked into a room of strangers. You want to become part of the group (or its leader), influence them to do something, and you want them to like you. How do you skillfully do this?

You could sell a million books for starters. If the people are writers, that bit of info would get around pretty fast. Faster than that: The title of the book tells us John's sales record. Having established that, he immediately lets us know that he's been in the same battle we're fighting. He starts his book with a section titled REVENGE OF THE NERDS! In it, he compares the popular, pretty people in high school with the rest of us. I was instantly transported back the the golden days of zits and braces. John had hooked me by the end of the first paragraph of his preface, when he says, "the publishing industry, which is like high school on steroids!" Yes! Yes! Yes!

If you've been in the publishing industry for more than twenty minutes, you know this. But John said it! The publishing industry would reduce a team of family systems psychotherapists to blithering idiots. It turns writers from competent adults to insecure, competing adolescents in less time than it takes to write an elevator speech.

After naming the problem, John immediately reframes the traditional publishing/self publishing debate into a dispute between puffed up egos and good business people.

"One of us" or OOU. This is one of the keys to his marketing plan and I'll let you read about it yourself. John calls it Loyalty Transfer. It hinges on what I said above, "entering the room" and making people feel like you're one of them.  John discusses this thoroughly and he shows it even better.

For instance, when he listed the traditional marketing things that he initially did to make his books successful (at the advice of experts), my heart bled with his. I'd done all the same stuff! All of it! None of it worked.

Know your market segment and give it what it wants. A zillion marketing people have told me this, but when John Locke said it, I heard it. He has a great exercise where he writes a detailed description of his buyer and what he/she wants in a page or so.

Oh, maybe I should do that, thought I. Who buys my books? How do I find them? Entice them? I'm working on it.

A deep market segment vs. a wide one. John's aiming at a tight, like-minded group of buyers who love his work. He doesn't want to create homogenized characters that everyone and their ex-wife will love. He wants to and does write idiosyncratic work that the average person might hate. And he encourages us to do the same!

I love that! I do that. My first novel was about the most bad-ass executive you'll ever meet and a great Native shaman. That's not a mainstream plot.

That's what the indie publishing movement is about. Creating the unusual. Writing stuff you won't find on drug-store shelves.

Effective Use of Twitter  John used Twitter to fuel his sales drive. He explains how to use Twitter in the book. Isn't that nice? I had no clue what to do with my little band of outlaws––my followers. To implement his marketing plan, John posted emotionally affecting blog articles not specifically aimed at selling his books, then used Twitter to spread the word. (My husband thought the blog articles were emotionally manipulative. I disagreed.)

After my first reading of the book, I recalled John as saying something like, "I posted this blog article and then Twittered it. It went viral. The next day I was famous."

All my alarms went off. Right, John. I could really see that happening. I get a few retweets once in a while, but "It went viral," just like that. Hah.

Except that isn't what he said, which is why reading things again is a good idea.

People skills. What John said about how he used Twitter to fuel his campaign illustrates how to REALLY use Twitter. It illustrates every personal skill that the Biz school tries to pound into its students. Believe me, the entire staff teaching touchy feely would CHEER reading what John says about how he wrote his blogs and used Twitter.

He didn't just write a blog article and toss it to the wolves of cyberspace. He carefully cultivated, one at a time, people who would be interested in him and his work. And then he organized and ranked his followers and formed networks of on-line friends that would benefit him and others. I'll let you read what he did. Know that you're reading about brilliant interpersonal interaction.

Look at how he handles people. He answers every email. He commits a huge amount of time to his buyers and shows a genuine interest in them. Read the book. And read the sample blog articles he's included in it. This is touchy feely at it's finest.

Do you know why major graduate schools of business created the field of organizational behavior (how people operate in organizations) and courses like Interpersonal Relations (touchy feely)? Some of the really smart faculty realized that businesses don't fail because people don't know enough Linear Programming. They fail because people don't know how to get along, express feelings, deal with personality conflicts, or negotiate their way through the simplest human problems.

People skills are the key to business success.

Writing skills. Also look at the care with which John's blog articles are crafted. Delightfully subtle selling. Those messages obviously took time to put together.

This is why some people succeed and others don't. Howie shows you every step of the way.

While John Locke didn't start selling books until he implemented his marketing plan, I bet that he was working on his Twitter network long before the launch.

(There's one catch in using these techniques: You have to be absolutely sincere in what you write and in your interactions with your market/on-line friends. People can smell a rat. They'll ditch any rodents.)

When I said that I didn't believe John's marketing plan was what sold the books way up above, I meant it. He sold the books, using his plan.

As I approached the end of Howie the first time, I'd gotten the stuff above, but didn't feel it was sufficient  to have a million people hit that buy button on Amazon.

When I got to the end of the book, to the LOYALTY & THE OOUs and THANK YOU! chapters, I had a true spiritual experience. I was reading John's words, but felt like he, in some insubstantial form, was hovering between my Kindle and my chest. It was as though a  golden light floated there.

I kid you not.

I was in Santa Fe NM, the woo-woo capital of the universe, at the time. That might have had something to do with it. Maybe all my years of meditation and spiritual practice gave me a kick. I didn't have that experience on subsequent readings, but once was enough.

I could feel John's energy, his voice, his soul, if you will, vibrating out of the pages. "That's what sold all those books," I said, triumphant."The essential John Locke."

We're talking about spirituality now. That is my area of expertise. I can feel you rolling your eyes and thinking, OMG. Now she's going to talk about religion. Nope. You're safe with me.

The best demonstration of spirit I have seen occurred in the movie Temple Grandin. The real Temple Grandin is an autistic woman who's used her disability to improve the lives of  animals. In the movie, Temple is a high school student when she visits the school stables. Her favorite horse lies dead on the barn floor.

Temple looks at the animal and says, "Where did he go?" She's asking an existential question, and she's truly perplexed. She says the same thing later at a slaughter house as cattle are transformed into beef. "Where do they go?"

Where did whatever made those animals the living creatures they were go?

That definition of spirit is one I used in my book Stepping Off the Edge. It's the animating principle, the difference between a living person and a dead one. Spirit is what moves the world, sells millions and millions of books, and does everything else.

Read the last few chapters of Howie and see if you don't agree with me. John's spirit sold those books, and its behind everything he writes.

To sell books, you need to use all the marketing skills and tools you can, and grow your spirit.  (Gee. You'd almost think I was plugging my book on spiritual practice. Not really. This is a very personal area. Choose spiritual tools and practices that speak to your soul.)

UP YOUR ASPIRATIONS!

Am I telling you that only extremely skilled and charismatic people like John Locke can successfully crack the publishing market? Am I telling you, as some industry pundits will, that self-published authors will sell less than 100 books on the average and only a tiny fraction will top 10,000?

Absolutely not. The first thing we were taught in the Stanford GSB negotiation course was the charming phrase above. Up your aspriations! The higher your aim your sights, the more likely you will attain your target. If you don't hit the goal, you'll get more than you would have with low aspirations. The Biz School has studies that prove that. So, up your aspirations and go forth and sell!

In a recent blog article, John talks about how the traditional publishing experts try to deflate the hopes of independent publishers. I would urge you to take the tools John offers and use them. The first time I read Howie, I thought it should be subtitled Hope. It is hope for independent writers. John gives you the tools. I hope I have highlighted a few points that may make the difference between success and failure.

WHAT ABOUT YOU, SANDY? ARE YOU USING JOHN'S APPROACH?

Absolutely. I'm currently increasing my Twitter presence and writing more books. (I'm @sandyonathan on Twitter, if you want to follow me.) What John says about having more books ready to sell if one hits is absolutely true. My Numenon was #1 in three categories of mysticism and way up there in the Kindle ratings when it came out. People were emailing me (and still do), demanding the sequel. I've lost sales and customers because I don't have it.

I will have two more books in my Tales from Earth's End Series in print/eBook form by Christmas. The first book in the series, The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy, shows a group of people attempting to escape a nuclear holocaust in a ruined future world. It's part teen romance and part coming of age story, with overtones of 1984. It's won two awards in visionary fiction.

The Angel's first sequel, Lady Grace, brings The Angel's characters back together and puts them in another struggle for existence. This time, they're fighting against the elements and a degenerate society which the nuclear war has spawned. My editor says this is my best book. The second sequel, Sam & Emily, is a love story involving two characters from The Angel. It sizzles.

All three books have a transcendent, looking for a better world quality. They're thrillers as well as visionary.

REALLY UP YOUR ASPIRATIONS

Before signing off, I'd like to challenge you to attain a real goal. I'd love to sell a million books, or more. Tens of millions. I'd like to succeed by every measure possible. I'd like  you to do the same.

There's something I'd like more. I'd like to sign on Facebook and not get triggered by all those people saying, "I just sold my 50,000th book. Finished my world tour. Five of the big six publishers just had an auction for my book. I'm invited to the White House to read my book. My book  . . .  My book . . ." You know what I'm talking about.

I'd like to have my goals and my standards and write books that speak to me and to like-minded souls. I'd like to resonate with my people and be so strong in myself that I don't fret about what other writers do or how they succeed.

I'd like to give up the whole competition thing. The measuring my self-worth in terms of what society says it should be. Selling one million books or 14,000 houses or earning a PhD or two. I'd like my soul to be separate from that deadly grind. I'd like to live securely in my own skin and my own being––and soar.

I'd like the bliss of freedom. Does that strike you as something you'd like, too?

Imagine a world of cooperation and appreciation. And kindness. Even love.

That's what I write about.

All the best,

Sandy Nathan, Award-winning Author

Sandy Nathan

Winner of seventeen national awards

Sandy's  books are: (Click link to the left for more information. All links below go to Kindle sale pages.)

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money

Tecolote: The Little Horse That Could

Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice

I am going to discuss John's concept of market segment as it relates to Jungian type in a later article. The power of knowing one's market segment can be made more powerful by knowing its psychological underpinnings. I'm also going to write about on-line addiction. Are you being responsible to your fans or feeding an addiction when you're on Twitter three hours a day?

 

Promoting your Book – Create Interest in Your Book with Character Interviews and Videos

Your book is out, one of several hundred thousand released this year. Now that it's out, how do you attract attention to it? 

You do pretty near everything you can think of to get it in front of potential readers and buyers. Here's John Kremer's website. He wrote the book on book marketing. He can fix you up with thousands of ideas.

Here are a couple of things I've used that were fun for me and my readers: The Character Interview and Casting Video. I'll give examples of both.

Have you done a Character Interview?  That's you pretending to be one of the characters in your book and interviewing yourself. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check my friend Pat Bertram's blog. She offers a number of questions you can "ask" your character and will post your response to her questions. It's a fun writing exercise. As you get into the character's voice, you may find the answers to the questions surprise you. You can do the interview in Pat's format or your own.

Once you've got the interview, post it everywhere. You can offer it to Pat Bertram. And post it on your own blog or website. (You do have one or both of those, don't you? They're a necessary part of an author's tool kit. Start one right away. Here's a good article on starting a blog. Popular sites include LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress.com, Xanga, Tumblr and Webs. These sites feature templates that don't require much technical know-how.) Create links from the social media to your interview. Post it on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, LinkedIn and all the rest.

The idea is to get people involved with your characters. Let them know how these "people" think and feel, live and breathe. I'll give you an example in a minute.

Increase reader interest with Character Interviews: I was cruising YouTube a while back and I found that fans of one of my favorite authors, Diana Gabaldon, had created videos "casting" famous actors and actresses as various characters in her books. When your fans do this for you, you've got something going! Diana now features a video illustrating how she would cast her characters on her website. Here it is: The Outlander Casting Video. It's really cool, too, especially if you're a fan.

You can do this for your own book! The magic of YouTube and the various services helping us technologically-impaired people create videos can allow you to create vids of your own characters, just like Diana Gabaldon's The Outlander Casting Video. Or better. For free or almost free.

I use Animoto.com to create videos for my books. You load images, add text, select music from their library or your own, push a button and Voila! Animoto's computers create a classy custom video for you. You can remix, change music, text, anything. The service is very reasonable. It's easy. I like it.  You can embed, export or download these vids directly to social media sites like YouTube. (I personally like the video quality available on Animoto.com better than that of YouTube. But YouTube is the place to post for lots of views.) Other such services are also available, the field is growing.

When I was doing videos for my earlier books, such as Stepping Off the Edge and Numenon, I had my own photos and artwork, so I didn't have to worry about royalties or copyrights. Take a look at the videos linked above to see what you can do with the Animoto.com format. I remastered these recently, using Photoshop effects on the images and changing the music. I think you'll be impressed with what's possible. The effects when the computer mixes the photos and music are amazing. (The snakes on the Numenon video were in our back yard. Ew.)

When I did the video for The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy, I had no such luck. I had to buy images from royalty free suppliers to produce the video. Most of the images for the video were purchased from 123rf.com. My book designer recommended 123rf.com as being an economical  source for very good images. They were:  Check the book's video  and the Character Video I'll show you in a minute. Great images for all sorts of characters.

HERE WE GO––TO ILLUSTRATE THESE IDEAS  (AND AS A BIT OF BLATANT SELF-PROMOTION) WE HAVE:

THE PEOPLE AND PLACES OF THE ANGEL & THE BROWN-EYED BOY



Use this link if the video doesn't show up here.

The idea is to make it alive. This is pretty lively, methinks.

A CHARACTER INTERVIEW FROM THE ANGEL & THE BROWN-EYED BOY, an award-winning novel by Sandy Nathan

A two sentence synopsis of the book: Tomorrow morning, a nuclear holocaust will destroy the planet. Two people carry the keys to survival: a teenage boy and an intergalactic traveler.

Here's an "interview" I did with a character from The Angel, Sam Baahuhd. I turned this into a short story. Sam's being interviewed by a TV station of his time. The people doing the interview have their own story. The year is 2199.

What does Sam Baahuhd look like? This is as close as I could get. It's impossible to convey how masculine Sam is, or how hunky.

Sam Baahuhd, headman of the village at Piermont Manor, c. 2197

Here's what the station's advertising says about the following interview:

WNYC'S STAR REPORTER MEREDITH CARLISLE INTERVIEWS VILLAGE HEADMAN SAM BAAHUHD.

Join Meredith at Piermont Manor in the Hamptons! Our favorite investigator visits one of the poorest areas in America and one the USA's greatest and oldest stately homes. Tune in at 3 PM for a view of life in the 22nd century.

WNYC––NEW YORK CITY'S ONLY NETWORK

At the shoot on the estate:

"Meredith, I don't like it here," my stylist says, backcombing my hair furiously. I sit at my dressing table on the estate's lawn. I'm Meredith Carlisle. But everyone knows that.

"Did you see all the trees driving out here? Weird," he whispers.

"It was very weird." I turn to the rest of the crew. "Everyone: This is the country. They have trees in the country. We'll do the show and get back to New York."

"They don't have that in the country," Alfred, the director, points at the stone mansion stretching as far as we can see.  "I've been trying to figure out how to get it all on camera."

I stare at the enormous structure. The mansion is like a wedding cake made of granite. Breathtaking. "We're at Piermont Manor. It was constructed in the 1800s, four hundred years ago. Nobody gets in here. We had to agree to interview this idiot to be allowed in. Who is he? Sam who?"

My crew edges toward the van. They're freaked out by the acres of lawn and all the trees. The lack of skyscrapers. I take control.

"Alfred, where is the man we're supposed to interview?"

"I asked those guys over there," Alfred points to a group of very large men standing on the other side of the lawn. He cowers a bit.

"What did they say?" My crew's undue nervousness is irritating.

The whites of Alfred's eyes glint in the sunlight. "I don't know what they said. They speak a foreign language."

"Great. Why didn't anyone find that out? Alyssa, you're the production manager. Do we have a translator?"

"No, Meredith. I'll try to find one." Alyssa looks around helplessly.

"Oh, wait. Someone's coming." My jaw drops. I can't stop looking at him. He's the same as the mansion. Breathtaking. A huge man. Shoulders like forever. That chest. He strides out forcefully. Something wafts from him. Manliness.

My jaw drops farther as he gets closer. Also, my nostrils twitch. He's dirty. It's real dirt, not something applied by the makeup department. He appears to be sweating copiously. He takes off his hat. His graying hair is matted where the hat's brow band pressed it tight.

"Hello there?" I extend my hand, despite my disgust at his grimy paw. "You must be Mr. . . " I search for Alyssa and she mouths the pronunciation. "Baaaaah-huuhd."

"Mr. Baaaaah-huuuhd." I smile broadly.

"Ma name i' Sam Baahuhd. A'm th' headm'n o' th' vil' an' o'ersee'er o' th' big house." He nods at the mansion.

"Oh," I say. "Who?"

He repeats what he said.

"Do you have anyone who speaks English? I don't speak your language." He's very appealing close up, if filthy.  My heart flutters.

"Ah fergot tha' yer not o' th' Hamptons. Been out here s' long, we got our own way o' talkin'. Ah'll pretend yer th' hooch man out at Jamayuh. Ah always speak proper English when ah'm w' him. Canna make a deal otherwise. Can ye understand me?"

"Yes, Mr. . . ."

"Baahuhd. Ye say i' like this, with th' air comin' from here." He presses my belly, forcing the breath out of me. I feel faint. Something comes off of him, like a force. It's wonderful.

"Baahuhd. I see. Well, we're set up for the interview," I indicate a couple of club chairs set on the mansion's front terrace. "Any chance of us getting a peek inside?"

"Nah. Jeremy's got 'er wired up. Get any closer 'n' ye are an' ye'll nah go nowhere again." He smiles, showing surprisingly white teeth.

"It's electrified?"

"Yeah. An' more. D' ye know Jeremy Egerton?" I shake my head. "He's the lady's son, Mrs. Veronica Egerton. Ye know of her?"

"Oh, yes. Veronica Edgarton is famous. And rich. And beautiful. She's the general's . . ."

"Aye. She owns th' big house an' the village an' all th' rest around here. An' me, too."

"She owns you?"

"Might as well. Ye know why yer here t'day?"

"Yes. To interview you." My cheeks tremble from smiling so much.

"Nah. Yer here because Jeremy Egerton sent word to let ye in." He looks me in the eye. It's terrifying, though thrilling.  "If Jeremy hadn't tol' me to let ye in, ye woulda been chased back to th' city th' minute you set foot on this place. That was three hours ago, out on th' road. Jus' so we get straight on it."

"Certainly, Mr. Baah . . ."

"Baahuhd." He walks to one of the chairs and sits down. "OK. Le's get this goin.' Ah got work to do. What 'er yer questions?"

"I thought that the natives of the Hamptons didn't like to be asked questions."

"We don'. Usually, we shoot before we get t' askin' questions. But ah figured this was a chance t' say some things we don' get t' say."

"And what's that?"

"That we're not animals. We're in th' Hamptons because we was born here, jus' like ye were born in th' city. Weren't our fault. Weren't our fault that we don' have schools an' have to work like we do. Weren't our fault that we got nothin'.

"We risk our lives seein' that the lady keeps that," he tosses his head toward the mansion. "An' we get very little thanks fer our trouble."

"You risk your lives?"

"Yeah, lass. Th' Hamptons is a dangerous place. We get th' people who run away from th' cities. Th' people escape from th' torture camps––there's one o'er at Jamayuh, th' next town down. We got the hooch runners an' them that deal in the weed and mushrooms. An' th feds. All of them is dangerous, an all of them want this place." He smiles. "Coupla times a year, they come t' get it." The smile broadens. "Ain't got it yet."

"You fight to keep the estate for Mrs. Edgarton?" I'm shocked, but I shouldn't be. The Hamptons are like the Wild West once was.

"I got plugged three times so far. Not countin' the nicks." He rubs his chest where he's been shot. "Ah'm scarred up lak an ol' bear. It's war out here. Jus' like in the cities."

"We don't have war. What are you talking about?"

"Whad'ya think th' smoke runnin' along the horizon is? There's a war."

"There's no war. If there were, the government would have told us about it. President Charles says everything is fine."

He nods his head and smirks. "When ye drove in, did ye happen t' see big round bowls cut out o' th' ground," he uses his hands to indicate large depressions, "all lined with cement? An' wi' long pointy things stickin' out of 'em, aimed at the sky?"

"Yes. They're all over the place. President Charles said they're satellite dishes to help our screen reception."

"No, lass. They're atomics. An' they're set to go off t'morrow morning. Early. All over th' world." He's looking at me steadily. He's so magnetic I almost believe . . .

No! I can't believe what he's suggesting. The president would lie? There's going to be an atomic war? That's treasonous. We're in the Great Peace. Everyone knows that. A niggling thought about my daughter's third grade teacher disappearing comes up. No, she took a leave of absence.

"I'm not going to listen to this." I turn to Alfred. "Pack up, we're going back."

"No," Sam says just a little bit louder than normal. Everyone freezes and looks at him. "Yer gonna get ev'ry thing ah say, an' yer gonna play it on the tellie today. Tha's why Jeremy let ye' come out here. You gotta tell the people wha't happenin'."

"A nuclear war starting tomorrow? The government would have told us." I'm shaken. For some crazy reason, I believe him and know that I'll do what he says. "What will we do? Where can we go?"

"Yer gonna go back an' show 'er on th' tellie," he says to the others. Then he turns that million volt gaze on me. "Fer ye, there may be a way out. Yer a pretty thing. Ye could be one 'a' ma wives." His smile is mesmerizing.

"Wives?" The idea seems worth considering.

"Ah got four. Ye'd be ma fifth, but we gotta big house. The stable, yon." He points to a barn.

Fifth wife to  . . . His dirty hands make up my mind. "No. I've already got one ex-husband. I don't need to be married." I regret the words as I say them. There's something about him.

"OK. Ye'll take th' camera back t' the city an' play 'er today. Ye need t' tell the people to . . . to run. Or t' stand. They'll die, either way. But they d'serve a warnin'. Tis only fair.

"Tha's what ah got t' say. Now git. Ah'm done wi' ye."

I watch his back as he heads toward the stable. Broad shoulders. Easy gait. Powerful.

I feel drawn to him. No. I made the right choice. We have to get out of here.

"We've got the van packed, Meredith." I hop in as it pulls away from the mansion.

 

"You know we can't play what we got," Alfred says as we jolt down the rutted road. "It's treasonous. Everyone knows that the Great Peace is baloney. We're in a war. But it's covered up. This will blow the cover. The feds will kill us."

"Yes, we can. Sam said to," I'll do what Sam told me to do no matter what. "We have to give people a warning."

"Why, Meredith? There aren't enough bomb shelters in the world to save everyone. We're going to die."

And then it sinks in. If what Sam said is true, we'll die tomorrow.

I should have taken his offer. He wasn't scared about what's coming. He must have a shelter or something. "Turn around! We need to get back to the Piermont estate."

The van shudders to a stop.

"What's that?" There's something in front of us. A vehicle across the road. Another vehicle pulls up behind us. Black figures are moving toward our van.

"What is it, Alfred?"

"They're feds."

"Open the door," a black-clad commando yells. "Give me the cameras." We give them to him.

"I'm Meredith Carlisle of WNYC. Those cameras are the property . . ."

"I don't care who you are." He uses some very rude language, and tosses something in the van, slamming the door. It clatters on the floor. I see a digital timer counting down.

"No!"

 

After the explosion, the commandos gather near the flaming remains of the van. "We got the treasonous materials. Should we look at them?"

"Nah. The president said everything is all right. That's good enough for me."

 

Sandy Nathan, Award-winning Author

There you go, guys, a couple of things to do to promote your books. Have fun with them, and let me know how they work.

All the best,

Sandy Nathan

Winner of seventeen national awards

Sandy's  books are: (Click link for more information. All links below go to Kindle editions.)

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money

Tecolote: The Little Horse That Could

Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice

Two sequels to The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy are in production with an early 2012. If you liked  The Angel you'll love Lady Grace and Sam & Emily.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What my Mama Done Told Me about Writing: Advice from my Mom that You Might Consider

My mother & her beloved little poodle. Aren't they adorable?

Quite by accident, my mom gave me some excellent writing advice. We were visiting one day, just a regular visit, except that I had something important to tell her. We sat in her pretty living room with its high ceiling and matching everything. Like all women of her age group, my mom had "signature colors." We were the only things in the room that weren't pink or green. Or sorta French.

"Mom, I'm writing a book," I said expectantly.

"Oh, no!" Her anguish was real.

I didn't know if she was upset because I was writing a book and she didn't think I could pull it off. Or because, according to our family by-laws, no one was allowed to even think about doing anything in the arts. Or crafts. Or maybe she was upset about both.

"Uhhh . . ." I said, eloquently, devastated. My mom didn't approve of a project I'd been working on secretly for years.

Further conversation revealed that she had a friend who was an author. She knew how much work and mental stress he went through writing his books. She didn't want me to have to go though it. The endless drafts, rewrites, and editing needed to get a manuscript in publishable shape. The trips to Lourdes and other holy sites that I would need to make trying to get an agent. Or publisher. The ruthless competition if I managed to get published. The pain, humiliation . . .

But I was born and raised in Silicon Valley, that's what we do.

Having fleshed out her initial objections, mom changed her tune. She sat up straight and beamed. "Sandy, I want the first copy!" Delighted, she kept smiling. "What's the book about?"

Ohh. I had a draft of the book written. While it was serious and even profound literature and had no explicit sex, the book had a definite erotic/sensual/dark tone to it. To deny those elements would be like denying them in Lady Chatterley's Lover. I stumbled around, trying to figure out ways to tell her I didn't want her to read it, ever. This was a woman I'd never heard swear. Not even "gosh darn." I'd never heard her say the word "sex." I had never heard her mention anything about the reproductive process, even during the famous mother/daughter talk when she allegedly told me all about it. (She remembered this talk. I don't.)

"Uh . . .  Mom . . . Well, some of it is kinda . . . You know . . ."

My mother was always a beautiful woman, but I think she reached her greatest beauty in her later years. Her face rounded and became softer. She had those adorable, shining eyes. Which were fastened on me.

"Why, Sandy, you have to have sex in it. No one will buy it otherwise."

I learned something about my mom that day. She wasn't the prude I thought she was. I also learned about writing. That was good advice. If she'd been able to read my book, I think she would have felt gratified. In one area of my life at least, I'd taken her advice and utilized it to its fullest extent. I'm still working on her premise.

We had been talking about my first novel, Numenon, which went on to win six national awards. Unfortunately, mom passed on before the book came out, so she never was able to read it in the flesh, so to speak.

But I gotta say, "Thanks for the tip, Mom. You wouldn't believe what I'm writing now."

Sandy Nathan, Award-winning Author

Sandy Nathan is the winner of seventeen national awards, in categories from memoir, to visionary fiction, to children's nonfiction. And more.

Her books are: (Click link for more information)

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money

Tecolote: The Little Horse That Could

Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice

Two sequels to The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy are in production with a late (very late) 2011 publication date, or early 2012. If you liked  The Angel you'll love Lady Grace and Sam & Emily.

Selling Books in the (Continuing) Great Recession by Edward C. Patterson

Lord John Maynard Keynes, the Father of Modern Economics. "What goes down doesn't necessarily go back up."

A while back, I began a series on selling books in the Great Recession. We're in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It affects everything we authors and Indie publishers do. (Not to mention causing the demise of major brick-and-mortar retailers such as Borders.) I ran a few articles in the series, but stopped when it (briefly) looked like the recession was lifting. But, goldurnit, it didn't. As we face a double-dipper economic flop, we need advice on marketing more than ever. 

Today I welcome another guest speaker in my series, Selling Books in the Great Recession. Edward C. Patterson is an incredibly prolific and talented author who captures the emotional truth of everything he writes. He's also one of the most effective––perhaps relentless––marketers I've met.  I know Ed from participating in a very popular Amazon forum, Shameless Self Promotion. He shines at extremely tasteful promotion that makes you want to buy his books. I have several of Edward Patterson's books and love them. It's my great pleasure to introduce Ed Patterson to Your Shelf Life.

Sandy Nathan for Your Shelf Life

* * *

Edward C Patterson, author & founder of Operation eBook Drop

In today's economy, there is a need to focus on books in eBook formats, while relegating the print formats to a backup. Sounds a bit dire, however, as an armchair publisher and Indie author, the cost of toting your books about to bookstores and managing inventory returns will make you tired and frustrated. Meanwhile, using online Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony as distributors and leveraging their easy accessibility, an author can break through the morass of the collapsing Book Industry hurdles. Your works can make it to a reader on such things as a Kindle. With lower overhead (zero is a nice number), an author can afford to price works between $ .99 and $ 3.99 and attract attention. Of course, you must have the goods and you still need to market your work, which means getting the word out over the online networks, getting feedback and spinning that feedback to keep the work in motion. Print copies are still functional for readings, speaking engagements, donations, and your ten favorite friends and, dare I say it, as a foil to show how much readers are saving when they buy your work electronically. Heck, I hawk a Cherokee poetry book at Powwows.

I keep my print version costs down by using a POD. (Print on Demand printer) If an author's aim is to get rich, the current recession has little bearing on it. It's actually easier to sell books directly to the public over the web through Amazon.com now than it was in boom times, when you needed to follow stuffy industry rules — rules that the traditional publishing houses are now realizing are their Achilles' heel. The problem is, most authors are poor marketers and, in good times or bad times, that means that some great reads will not find eager readers. It means that authors must wear another hat to engage potential readers in the online fray. However, it's a heck of lot better than carting a carton about to an Indie bookstore. It's a sight more productive than fishing for an agent and lighting a votive candle at an acquisition editor's altar. These trends were in progress before the recession, but I predict that the downtrend and the inevitable recovery will leave the Book Industry significantly and permanently changed — a far better place for those who author and for those who read.

Edward C. Patterson

* * *

The Works of Edward C. Patterson

Edward C. Patterson has been writing novels, short fiction, poetry and drama his entire life, always seeking the emotional core of any story he tells. With his eighth novel, The Jade Owl, he combines an imaginative touch with his life long devotion to China and its history. He has earned an MA in Chinese History from Brooklyn College with further post graduate work at Columbia University. Born in 1947, a native of Brooklyn, NY, he has spent four decades as a soldier in the corporate world gaining insight into the human condition. He won the 1999 New Jersey Minority Achievement Award for his work in corporate diversity. Blending world travel experiences with a passion for story telling, his adventures continue as he works to permeate his reader's souls from an indelible wellspring.

His novel No Irish Need Apply was named Book of the Month for June 2009 by Booz Allen Hamilton's Diversity Reading Organization. His novel The Jade Owl was a finalist for The 2009 Rainbow Awards.

This link takes  you to Mr. Patterson's Amazon Author Page, which provides links to his books and information about them. Published Novels by Edward C. Patterson include No Irish Need Apply, Bobby's Trace, Cutting the Cheese, Surviving an American Gulag, Turning Idolater, Look Away Silence, The Jade Owl (Jade Owl Legacy Series Book I), The Third Peregrination (Jade Owl Legacy Series Book II), The Dragon's Pool (Jade Owl Legacy Series Book III), and Southern Swallow Series (Book I – The Academician). Southern Swallow Series (Book II – The Nan Tu)

Coming soon: Southern Swallow Series (Book III – Swan Cloud; Book IV – The House of Green Waters), Belmundus, The Road to Grafenwöhr, Oh, Dainty Triolet and Green Folly.

Look also for The People's Treasure (Jade Owl Legacy Series Book IV) and In the Shadow of Her Hem (Jade Owl Legacy Series Book V).

Operation E-Book Drop: Providing Our Troops with Free eBooks

Edward C. Patterson is a proud founder of Operation eBook Drop, a member of Amazon's Shameless, Kindleboards, Publetariat, The Independant Author's Guild, The Gay & lesbian Writers and Readers Group, and has guest blogged extensively. He has also appeared on the Bobby Ozuna – Soul of Humanity Show.

Mr. Patterson's website is Dancaster Creative.

Do You Have Writer's Block––Or Are You Depressed?

Writers' Block

In 1995, I had a huge inner experience in which the plot of a book was injected into my brain in about a second. The experience was accompanied with a full complement of inner lights and special effects visible only to me. Yes, I had just come from a meditation retreat.

I started writing and continued for, oh, maybe, nine or ten years. I wrote flat out every day, quitting only when my shoulders wouldn't move. I wrote  nine or so volumes of a series (final number of books depends upon how I cut them in the rewrites). I was in a couple of writing groups, working with a book consultant, and editor. I have not had so much fun ever.

My first published book turned out not to be in the series that had come to me so dramatically. In my spare time, I knocked out a nonfiction title.  Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice is a modern spiritual companion. It won six national awards, was a Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist, and got great press.

The first book in my fiction series, Numenon A Tale of Mysticism & Money, came out a couple of years later. Numenon also won six national awards. It's been out a few years, so its rankings have dropped, but its Kindle version was #1 in three categories of mysticism and way up there in the sales rankings for about a year. (I wish I'd taken a screen shot of its Amazon sale page then . . .)

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money Will the sequel ever appear?

After all this fun and inspiration and wonderful success . . . I fluffed entirely. People were asking for Numenon's sequel. Getting pretty huffy, in fact.  The sequel is written! It's on my hard drive! All I had to do was rewrite a 1,300 page, 250,000 word behemoth about God and good and evil and existential anxiety (mine) and a bunch of people from Silicon Valley and American Indians into something people would buy.

I couldn't. Being quick on the uptake, after a couple of years I realized, "This is writer's block."

I understand that Terry Pratchett has said, "There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write."

I'm from California and I want Terry to know that we also invented Silicon Valley and the tech industry and there are probably no more creative and hardworking people on the planet than Californians. I'm a Californian and I had writer's block.

I used writing therapy to address this, producing one pretty good blog article about the dismal block, and one based on the yogic concept of surrender and letting things bottom out completely.

Unfortunately, despite the vast quantity of helpful advice and positive self-talk they contained, neither article worked. Numenon's sequel remains unwritten and I remained blocked.

UNTIL I realized I was depressed. As in clinically. Then I read a great article about writer's block and depression. And even more. I'm going to post some links about the subject, because these writers say it better than I can.

Writer's Block and Depression: Why You Shouldn't Bully Your Muse   A great blog post by Anne R. Allen The comments are very valuable.

Is It Writer's Block––or Is It Depression? Marg McAlister
Wikipedia on Writer's Block
Search on Is It Writer's Block or Is It Depression? I found a fantastic article on the topic by a famous writer of literary fiction a while back. Just Googled and searched for it  and couldn't find it. Maybe you will.

I really like Anne Allen's blog post above. Most of the articles I looked at presented a million "things to do" to deal with block. (So do my articles above.) The thing is, if you're depressed these great ideas will do nothing to help you.

You need to treat the depression. That probably requires medical treatment. It did in my case. Depression is a serious, very painful, and possibly fatal medical condition. Treatment is available.

Depression feels like being held under water. You feel rotten. You can't get above the water; you can't fight what's holding you down. All you can do is try to survive. It is associated with a lack of joy in life, lack of interest in pretty much everything, and  writer's block.

I finally figured our what was wrong with me and got treatment. Is the block gone? Yeah. Have I rewritten the sequel to Numenon? Not yet, but it's next on the agenda.

I wrote three other books instead of Numenon's sequel.

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy

I had another one of those brain storms in which a book came to me––Bazammo! That book is written and published The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy. What's it about? It's a sci-fi, fantasy, love story. It's won the 2011 IPPY (Independent Press) Award in Visionary Fiction as well as the 2011 Indie Excellence Award in Visionary Fiction. "Tomorrow morning, a nuclear holocaust will destroy the planet. Two people carry the keys to survival: A teenage boy and angelic intergalactic traveler."

Your basic pre-apocalyptic love story with more twists than an eel's tale. It's also a former economist's reaction to the Great Recession. The social milieu of the book, a police state, is what I think we could have if we don't work together and clean up the economic mess.

When I finished The Angel, two sequels throbbed in my brain. The are written and in the editing process. I expect them out in late 2011 or early 2012.

If you handle the real problem, you'll get the result. Writer's block is not about laziness or lack of discipline.

Sandy Nathan, Award-winning Author

 

Hope this is helpful! Would love to hear from you about the dreaded block.

Sandy Nathan

 

Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, Book 1) by Susan Ee | A Your Shelf Life Review

ANGELFALL by Susan Ee

I was captivated by Susan Ee's Angelfall. There are so many things to like about this book. It takes place weeks after an Armageddon instigated by angels. Angels are the bad guys? Yes. That's only one of Angelfall's quirky elements. The characters are endearing and fascinating: The tough/tender heroine Penryn. Her mentally ill and very dangerous mother. Disabled sister. Absent father. And the hunky angel, Raffe, who may or may not be a good "guy".

None of these are stereotyped or predictable. Which is so refreshing. I am not a fan of popular fiction. The current preoccupation with faeries, vampires, werewolves, witches, and angels leaves me cold. But this book didn't.

Superbly well-written and perfectly paced, Angelfall could be used as a model of good writing in any creative writing seminar. The action never ceases as the plot unfolds to reveal unpredictable scenes and situations. Like the politics of angel society. Humans preparing to revolt against angels. And what those angels are up to in San Francisco.

The author's use of place enthralled me. I was born in San Francisco and spent most of my life on the San Francisco Peninsula. The book is set in my old stomping ground. So when she describes Penryn and company heading for Page Mill Rd and crossing El Camino in Palo Alto, I could visualize the scene exactly. The same was true for her locations on Skyline and in San Francisco. When authors site a story in a physically real place that I know, I get really perturbed if the location isn't portrayed correctly. Ee does this perfectly.

I'm looking forward to the next installment of the Penryn & the End of Days series.

I highly recommend this book for adults who like intense fantasy with horrific elements and violence. I didn't find either disturbing, but some might. I would recommend this for older Young Adults.

Reviewed by Sandy Nathan

Susan Ee, author of Angelfall

About Susan Ee

Susan Ee is the author of Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, Book 1). Her short stories have been in various publications including Realms of Fantasy and The Dragon and the Stars anthology. She is also a filmmaker whose latest film played at major film festivals and on cable TV stations throughout the U.S. She studied creative writing through workshops at Stanford, The Iowa Writers' Workshop and Clarion West.

Susan Ee's website

Buy the book on Amazon

Buy the book on Barnes & Noble

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy Wins 5 Stars with Red Adept Reviews!

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy

Red Adept Reviews gave The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy an Overall 5 STARS!

Red Adept reviewer Jim Chambers read The Angel and said, "I have to say that The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy is probably the most original story that I've read in quite some time. . . . The story was ultimately a fascinating and gripping tale about survival and the desperate measures that some—on earth and elsewhere—would take to ensure their survival." I invite you to read the entire review.

The Angel is available on Amazon as a trade paperback and Kindle. It's also available as a Nook, Sony book and iBook. The ebooks are only 99 cents each! Buy here.

In addition to its terrific Red Adept review, THE ANGEL & THE BROWN-EYED BOY HAS WON TWO NATIONAL AWARDS:

2011 IPPY (Independent Press) AWARDS, Gold Medal Winner in Visionary Fiction. More than 3,900 books were entered in this contest.

2011 Indie Excellence Awards, Winner (1st place) of the Visionary Fiction Category.

And it has an average review of almost 5 stars on Amazon!

WHAT IS THE ANGEL ABOUT?

Tomorrow morning, a nuclear holocaust will destroy the planet. Two people carry the keys to survival: A teenage boy and an an intergalactic traveler. 

A FUTURE WORLD ONLY HEARTBEATS FROM OUR OWN:

By the late 22nd century, the Great Recession of the early 2000s has lead to a worldwide police state. A ruined United States barely functions. Government control masks chaos, dissenters are sent to camps, and technology is outlawed. War rages while the authorities proclaim the Great Peace.

IT'S NEW YORK CITY ON THE EVE OF NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON.

Tomorrow morning at 7:35 AM, a nuclear holocaust will destroy the planet. Two people carry the keys to survival: Jeremy Edgarton, a 16 year old, tech genius and revolutionary; and Eliana, the angelic, off-world traveler sent to Earth on a mission to prevent her planet's death.

Join Eliana and Jeremy as they begin a quest to save two doomed planets … and find each other.

ISN'T IT TIME YOU HAD A DATE WITH AN ANGEL?

The Angel's sequels, Lady Grace and Sam & Emily are in  production. All the books in Tales from Earth's End are free-standing––you don't have to read the whole series to get a complete story. But, if you fall in love with the Angel and her friends, you won't have to wait long for the next book.

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money "Bill Gates Meets Don Juan"

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money

 

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money came out in 2008. (Good heavens, has time passed that quickly?) It won six national awards, including the prestigious Silver Nautilus and a Silver Medal in the IPPY Awards. It's got an almost 5 star review rating on Amazon. Numenon was the number 1 book in all the categories of Mysticism on Amazon and way up there in sales––for about a year. That's pretty cool.

I want to thank my readers and reviewers and the contest judges for honoring my book by reading and valuing it.

So what's it about, Sandy? Uh. "It's about the richest man in the world meeting a great Native American shaman." That was the response I gave for a long time. It's true. That is what the book is about. It's about much more, too. I found this press release that I wrote when Numenon was released:

What can readers expect from Numenon?

Numenon is a book that can be read on many levels. First, it's an action/thriller. A reader can get caught up in the story and the interplay of characters and forces. A reader can be enthralled wondering what on earth will happen next. Reading Numenon on this level is just fine.

Numenon can be more than that. It's a philosophical adventure, starting with its name. The famous philosopher Immanuel Kant defined the noumenon (or numenon) in the 1700s. It means "the thing-in-itself," pure being as opposed to the world perceived through the senses.

In writing Numenon, I hoped to carry readers to that essential world, the world of absolute reality where mystics live. The glowing foundation of existence.

To get to the deepest heart, one must start where he or she is. That's what Numenon does. Many of the characters are definite "befores"––they're powerful, ruthless, unprincipled, and not very nice. We walk with them on a journey toward being the people they really are, and we do it in the company of one of the greatest shamans ever to walk the earth.

Numenon is a spiritual and psychological trip from here to there, from where we are to where want to be. To our dearest and truest selves.  The numenon.

I hope you enjoy the trip. I've had a blast writing it for you. Please be aware that this book has a bite. It's not a pretty story about nice people. It's about flawed people about to have their flaws shaken out.

Is Numenon a gripping page turner, a  thriller pitting the highest levels of American capitalism against ancient shamanic power?

Or is it a philosophic investigation into the reality of the mystics, the reality beyond and beneath our everyday lives?

Will it take you to your core, the real you you've always wanted to be?

Read it and find out.

Sandy Nathan

PS. Numenon's sequel, Mogollon, is written and has been written for a long time. It needs to be shorted from a 1,400 page monster into something that people can lift. That is on my schedule––as I've been saying for years, I know. I know. My rewrite project got stalled when I was bowled over by a little sci-fi/fantasy/visionary fiction series that grabbed my brain and would not let it go. The series is called Tales from Earth's End.

The first book of the series, The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy is available now. The Angel is the story of a sixteen year old tech genius and an angelic extraterrestrial charged with saving two planets. The book has already won a Gold Medal in the 2011 IPPYs in Visionary Fiction and won the 2011 Visionary Fiction Category in the Indie Excellence Awards. It has almost 5 star reviews on Amazon and a 5 star overall rating from Red Adept Reviews. All for 99 cents as a Kindle.

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy will give you something to look forward to while I prepare Numenon's sequel. It's everything you hoped it would be and more. What's the more? Characters from Numenon & Mogollon appear in the second book of Tales from Earth's End., Lady Grace! The series do not merge, but they touch! And create fireworks!

We Interrupt This Date by L. C. Evans | A Your Shelf Life Review

We Interrupt This Date

FIVE STARS! Highly recommended!

I haven't laughed so hard over a book in I don't know how long––though I thought the protagonist Susan should be rushed into an emergency Codependents Anonymous meeting and not let out until she learned to say, "No!" loudly. What a great storyteller L. C. Evans is! Susan is recovering from being dumped by her rat of a husband. She's doing fine––until she gets fired, her flake of a sister comes to stay with her infant and moose of a dog, and her elderly mom moves in because of a sprained ankle. There's more! It seems that everyone in her world is leaning on Susan. How much can she take?

The tale is way more complicated than I've indicated, involving ghost tours, a hunk of an old boyfriend reappearing, and a best friend to may or may not be after said boyfriend. Every character is memorable, nutty, and at the same time, feels similar to people we all know. Even the dogs are memorable.The plot moves along at a perfect pace, revealing secrets and more problems. Even ghosts (maybe). Evan's writing style is breezy, accomplished and funny.

I hope there's a sequel––I'll be the first to buy it.

What do other reviewers say?

Firmly entrenched in the Chick Lit genre, the plot of this book is highly entertaining, especially for the over thirty crowd. The storyline was humorous without stretching the envelope in a blatant attempt to be funny. –Red Adept, "Red Adept Reviews – A Blog"

"We Interrupt This Date" is as good or better than many NYT bestsellers that I've read. –J. Chambers, author of Recollections: A Baby Boomer's Memories of the Fabulous Fifties

L.C. Evans is the author of the Leigh McRae horse mystery series, Jobless Recovery, and Night Camp, in addition to We Interrupt This Date.