Carol Davis Luce's Blog, page 13
July 12, 2012
I’m a Guest Blogger at Indie Review Tracker Today. Please visit and comment.
How Amazon Helped Me Sell 100,000 eBooks in Just Four Months!
http://indiereviewtracker.com/?p=2530
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How Amazon Helped Me Sell 100,000 eBooksIn just four months!
July 12, 2012 By Carol Davis Luce 1 Comment
Bestselling author and indie inspiration Carol Davis Luce joins us today to tell us how Amazon “rekindled” her career. At a time when Amazon gets a lot of bad press in traditional publishing circles, pending the outcome of the DoJ case in the US, it seems indies are happier than ever with the freedom, flexibility, and support this behemoth provides. And why not? Never before have authors had the ability to reach millions, even billions, of potential fans so easily. Say what you will about Amazon, but for many indies, Amazon is not just a corporation, it’s a path that leads straight to their writing dreams.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: blogging, books, literature
July 7, 2012
June 8, 2012
June 5, 2012
A Passion for Freedom…Carol Davis Luce
Rex came to us on a mild Saturday afternoon in April in the early 1950s, prancing like one of those spirited horses in a Wild West show. He was half-grown, of mixed shepherd descent, with a reddish-tan coat, gold eyes, and a speckled nose the color of terra cotta. His tail was bushy like a coyote’s, which we soon learned was, indeed, a part of the mix. That day, as he trotted by our house, a house identical to every other on our block in the suburbs of LA, he appeared not to have a care in the world—he was Disney’s roguish, “Tramp.” And like Tramp, he was without a collar. To my brother and me, two dogless kids, that meant only one thing–he was a stray and up for grabs.
He answered to “Here, Boy”. I lured him to us with my half eaten bologna sandwich. After he wolfed it down, he licked away the sticky residue of the Eskimo Pie from my face while I scratched his head and patted his rump. My brother gave up his sandwich and received the same wet reward. We’d been begging for a dog ever since the move to the suburbs, and we weren’t at all fussy.
He happily followed us through the tall gate into our fenced-in backyard where we intended to keep him until my mother came home from her double shift as a waitress. We returned to the front porch to wait for her. Minutes later my brother nudged me and pointed, “Hey, look!”
I spotted the dog halfway down the block. Impossible. The yard was enclosed with a six-foot cinderblock wall. The gate closed and locked. There was no way to get out. Yet there he was. He had leaped over the fence. With that easy, loping gait, his desire to move on, to travel untethered, was crystal clear, even to an eight-year-old.
I wanted him. I needed him. I couldn’t let him go. I ran into the house, grabbed more bologna, and raced back outside, yelling, “Here, Boy!”
When our mother’s car turned into the driveway an hour later, we both rushed to meet her, the dog bounding along happily at our sides. Words gushed from our mouths, promises spewing forth like pledges from a politician’s lips. We begged, reasoned, as we kneeled letting the dog lick our faces, all the while encouraged by her silence. Knowing her as we did, silence meant she was considering it. And that meant it was as good as done. Our mom could be talked into almost anything.
“How will we feed him?” she asked. “We barely have enough for ourselves.”
“Steak bones and scraps from the restaurant,” I said.
“He’ll make a good guard dog. Look at these teeth.” Sonny lifted the dog’s upper lip to show the strong, sharp teeth.
She walked across the lawn to the front door. “He stays in the backyard and if he causes any trouble, he’s gone,” she called out over her shoulder. “And I mean it.”
We named him Rex, which meant King.
We figured out the series of scars on his underbelly, lashes healed over from beatings he had probably suffered as a puppy, made him distrustful of adult men, particularly men in uniform. With women, children and small animals he was friendly and gentle.
The remainder of the summer he grew up, running loose at my side, enjoying the freedom he craved. Rex didn’t like to be confined, and he wasn’t. Common barricades were obstacles deftly mastered with one leap.
He became my constant companion. He shared my food, my bed and lovingly guarded me and the endless stock of chicks, ducklings, and bunnies I raised. He kept me company on the long days and nights while my single-parent mother worked the split shift for extra money. He took me in, accepted me into his life. It was never the other way around.
With the growing up, the problems began. Rex was a ladies hound. The more females the better. In those days, pets weren’t neutered and spayed as a matter of course like they are today. We scarcely had enough money for doctor visits or medication if one of us became ill. He was such a free spirit, it never occurred to anyone in our family to have it done
There was no fence he couldn’t jump. No backyard he couldn’t invade. Like a Viking on a pilgrimage, Rex came, he saw, he conquered. He became a familiar sight in the neighborhood and soon the entire community. More than once a box of red-nosed puppies found its way onto our front porch. The local dogcatcher no longer tried to chase Rex over fence after fence, from yard to yard, he merely wrote out a citation and attached it to our front door. The fines added up. I took babysitting jobs to help pay them.
We chained him to the backyard clothesline. He wriggled out of the collar and took off. We bought a harness (guaranteed escape proof) and repeated the process. At the end of the day, the harness with attached chain, dangled empty on the other side of the cinderblock wall.
More citations. They began to double, then triple. When there was no more money to pay the fines, our mother took the court’s advice to have Rex removed from our home and placed at the city pound. For a male coyote mix and escape artist, it was a death sentence.
The day the dogcatcher came to pick him up, my mother, brother and I stood in the yard hugging him, crying. Our neighbors gathered around to say goodbye. In the end, my mother relented, and the dogcatcher was sent away without his canine cargo. Rex had a reprieve.
While we were away from home, we kept him in the house. We took turns walking him, usually after dark when he could run free within sight. Things calmed down.
When Rex turned four my mother remarried and we moved to a neighboring town, seven miles away. The housing subdivision, with undeveloped landscaping and open backyards, was a paradise for our roaming Rex. Complaints from neighbors began again. The dogcatcher patrolled the streets. The first citation arrived and then another. Then one day Rex didn’t come home.
I was sick with worry. I missed my constant companion. A week later, a phone call from a friend in our old neighborhood informed me that Rex had turned up at our old house. Ecstatic with joy, I begged my flabbergasted parents to drive me there and bring him home.
Our reunion was the happiest day of my life. Although his ribs were visible through dirty, matted fur, his paws ragged and bloody, and he now favored a front leg, he yipped, whined, and knocked me down in his enthusiasm to greet me. Rex was home again.
Happiness was short-lived. Less than a week later, he disappeared for a second time.
The following days in my new home were lonely and sad. Aside from trying to adjust to a new town and school, I had to make new friends in the middle of the year when the groups and cliques were already formed and impossible to infiltrate. My longing for Rex, my best friend and companion, became unbearable. I searched for him, traversing on foot the seven miles from our new home to the old one, taking a different route back home.
In the early days of his disappearance, I dreamed of him nightly. Then, on and off for many, many years to come. I married, had children and still I dreamed of a reunion with Rex. My love for him had no conditions, no time limits. He would occupy a place in my heart forever. It never, in all those years, occurred to me he might be dead. He had disappeared in his prime and nothing could dare cut short his intense lust for life. If he couldn’t be with me, I reasoned, he had somehow made his way to those open spaces. And I would have continued to embrace that flight of fancy if not for that one day twenty years later. Looking through a family album with my mother, I saw a photo of Rex. My mother said quietly, “Honey, I guess it’s okay to tell you now—it’s been so long…”
“Tell me what?”
“Rex died shortly after we moved to the new house.”
No, don’t tell me that, please don’t tell me that, I wanted to say, but couldn’t.
“I know how much you loved him,” she went on. “But I know that deep in your heart you knew he was never going to settle down. The citations, the neighbors in the new subdivision already complaining. He was your pet, but he was too much of a hardship for your stepdad and me.”
Not to me. He could never, ever, be a hardship to me.
My silence encouraged her to continue. “Remember the first time he disappeared? We took him to the dog pound, but he escaped. Jumped that seven-foot fence topped with barbwire and ran away, back to the old house. We couldn’t believe it, and neither could the people at the pound. No dog had ever managed to scale that fence. The second time we took him to the pound we stayed there until…until–. I’m sorry, honey. We hated having to do it. He was a good dog, except for his wildness. He was too spirited to live in the city. And no matter where or how far away we took him, he’d find a way to come back to you.”
I stared off into the distance. In my mind’s eye, I saw Rex sail over that barbwire fence. Saw him run to freedom. That’s what I wanted for him. But I couldn’t hold back the image of him being forced into a cold concrete room by men in uniform, frightened, the door slamming, the sound of gas hissing around him. Rex had run out of reprieves.
I wish I could have held him in his last moments. I wish I could have comforted him and told him it would be all right. I wish he had made it to those open spaces where no one beat him, where no fences, harnesses, or rules restricted his passion for freedom, where other children loved him and let him love and protect them as he had loved and protected me.
My mother clasped my hand and squeezed, asking for understanding and forgiveness. “We had no choice. You realize that, don’t you?”
I squeezed her fingers gently and nodded.
*Rex was the role model for ‘Red Dog’ in my novel Night Passage, and again as ‘King’ in my fictionalized memoir, Secrets of a Brown Eyed Girl. He will always have a place in my heart.
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May 26, 2012
NEWS FLASH! NIGHT WIDOW NOW IN PAPERBACK!
NIGHT WIDOW is now in paperback for those readers that love the feel of a physical book in their hands, and the heady smell of paper pulp. No excuses now, huh?
Paperback Edition
Please check it out at http://www.amazon.com/Night-Widow-Carol-Davis-Luce/dp/0615644724/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1338049544&sr=8-3 or https://www.createspace.com/3879068
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May 16, 2012
New website for the Indie Chicks
New website for the Indie Chicks
[image error]Welcome to the Indie Chicks Cafe – your place to sink back into your chair with your favorite drink and read about subjects of interest to you. Passionate writers & fascinating topics. Always. So settle into your chair. Relax. Enjoy.
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May 3, 2012
NEW COOKBOOK! Dine With Us: A Collection Of Recipes From The Authors of Indie Writer’s Unite…
My Hungarian SEVEN CHIEFTIAN STEW is featured in the soup category. This is a rich and hearty stew.
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April 22, 2012
Welcome the next Indie Chicks Anthology Author Melissa Smith. Read her inspiring story on my blogsite.
Melissa A. Smith
A common question people ask a writer is what made them decide to sit down and start writing in the first place. For me, it was grief.
While in high school, I wrote. I had taken journalism and the teacher loved my writings. Two pieces of my work had been published in two different school publications. I was also asked to join the staff for the school paper, but declined. I just didn’t like writing the things wanted for a paper. I liked creating stories to take you places. Inventing new worlds and people to live in them. I stopped writing after getting out of school and didn’t start again for several long years.
December 2008 had started like any other December before it. I was out shopping for those perfect gifts for each member of my family, and loving every minute of it. By my side was my shopping partner. My mom. My best friend. This year was a little different, as we made our rounds trying to get most of her shopping done earlier than her normal pace of slow (she was known to be out shopping as late as Christmas Eve), because she was set to have her final knee replacement surgery on the 19th. That day was also the last day of work I had before school let out for Christmas Break.
We had almost done everything she’d wanted to have done, done. But there were still a few things to gather, like stocking stuffers and things of that nature. She went in for her surgery and everything went great! The last time she’d been in the hospital, for the first knee 6 months prior, she’d contracted hospital-acquired pneumonia. Her doctor, wanting her to be healthy for the rigorous knee therapy that follows two days after surgery, released her the following day. The 20th.
Wanting to forgo giving you all the details, I received a phone call early on the 21st. A phone call no one wants to get. My father, who’d awoken to find his partner for the past 34 years gone, couldn’t make that call. The responding police officer had to do it for him. Pneumonia had taken her from us.
So started my descent into grief.
We were supposed to do some shopping before I took her to physical therapy that day. We were supposed to do a lot of things during my break, because she too had it off for recovery.
Instead, I had to help my dad organize a funeral.
During the year and a half that followed, I read over 230 books. All while working full time and tending to a family.
It was the start of summer vacation in 2010 when I’d run out of books to read. I dove into spending time with my boys and vegging at the pool daily. I thought it had been long enough, and maybe the grief wouldn’t be so sharp. I was wrong. Without having someplace for my mind to wander, to live in, I was a mess of tears.
It was then I’d woke up in the middle of the night, leaving a dream that made my brain buzz. I tried to shake it off, leave it where I found it. In my dreams. But it wanted to be let out. So I sat down in secret and started writing.
At first when my family noticed my switch from books to the computer and all my constant typing, they asked what I was doing. I lied. I told them I was writing to my sister who lives in Texas. At first they bought it, but as the typing went on, they were puzzled as to why I didn’t just call her and talk to her. Again, I lied. But this time I said she’d asked me to write down some things about our mom.
While they still were puzzled by all the clicking going on at the keyboard, they left me alone.
Three months later, I’d written and finished my first novel. Cloud Nine. During that time I also started on another story which I finished and released four months later.
While writing started out as therapy for a grieving soul, it is now something I must do to keep all the exciting characters quiet. I love it! I only wish it could have developed without such dark beginnings, but nonetheless, my mother would be proud.
******
This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble
for the wonderfully low price of Free! To read all of the stories, grab your copy today!
Also included are sneak peeks into 25 great novels!
My young adult paranormal romance, Cloud Nine is one of the novels featured.
Amazon
Apple iBooks
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords
Want to find out more about Melissa and her books?
My Blog Come by for a visit!
Facebook Authors Page I love new visitors!
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April 13, 2012
Welcome the next Indie Chicks Anthology author, Michelle Muto. Read her inspiring story on my blogsite.
THE MAGIC WITHIN AND THE LITTLE BOOK THAT COULD
That’s what I’ve been calling The Book of Lost Souls, the book that started my path to publication. I’ve always loved to write. I’ve always loved the way imagination and words blend on a page, the way they transport a reader to faraway worlds, or right next door, where witches live. From the time I was very young, books were an amazing world to me. There was no greater joy than going to the library with my mother whose love of books knew no measure. When I was very young, my mother read to me every night. As I grew older, we’d talk about the books we were reading.
Even as a young child, I knew I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. But, writing wasn’t what paid the bills. I got a regular job and life went on, although I still dreamed of writing. My father always told me to believe in myself and to never give up on what I firmly believed in. A few years after his death, I took up writing again. My mother, who was now ill and who had moved in with my husband and me, was happy to read what I wrote, or to set the table in order to give me a few more minutes of writing time.
And so I wrote and edited and revised. Just before the book was ready to send to agents, my mother died. I set the book aside. Writing was too painful, too full of memories.
But, the stories in my head wouldn’t let up, and so after a few years I started writing again. This time, I wrote about a teen witch named Ivy and her life in a small town, and I quickly fell in love with the story and the eclectic group of characters. I think of it as Buffy meets Harry Potter. When I typed the last line, I actually felt a pang of sorrow—I didn’t want to say goodbye. Ivy and her story became The Book of Lost Souls, and after polishing it up, I sent it off to agents. Plenty were interested and requested the full manuscript. Unfortunately, most of them thought the book was too light. Too cute. Too Disney. They offered to read whatever else I had, as long as it was darker. Darker sells! Or so they said.
So, after two revisions for two separate agents that eventually didn’t pan out (they said the book still had a lighthearted feel to it that wouldn’t appeal to publishing houses), I set The Book of Lost Souls aside and started working on an outline for a much darker book.
It was around this time that the economy began to collapse—hard—and I was given the pink slip on Friday the 13th, right after I had completed a project that saved the company $400,000 annually. Say goodbye to eighteen years of loyal service! Suddenly, writing a darker, more dystopian book about the afterlife on top of losing my job seemed too much to take. Still, I recalled my father’s wisdom of believing in myself even when no one else did. I wrote and finished the next book, Don’t Fear the Reaper, in about seven months.
Still unemployed despite literally hundreds of applications, I began to worry we would lose our home or deplete our savings before I found a job. My career in IT was gone—off shored as they call it. I also wondered if I’d ever see any of my books published. I was so close to getting an agent so many times. Agents wrote back: You’re a strong writer. Or, The Book of Lost Souls is a great story and is well-written, but it’s not for me.
Nearly every morning, my inbox was filled with rejection letters from jobs and agents, yet I tried to stay positive. I kept repeating my father’s words to believe, to never give up. For every rejection, I sent out twice as many applications, twice as many query letters. I just tried harder.
I had been querying Reaper for about three months when I got an editorial letter from one of New York’s biggest literary agencies who’d had The Book of Lost Souls for nearly a year. A year! But, the letter was so enthusiastic about the story and my writing that I sat down and made every last revision they suggested. I turned it in and waited. Months went by. In the end, they rejected the story—not because they didn’t love it, but because in the year and change they’d had the manuscript, another client had submitted a proposal for a story about a teen witch. Conflict of interest, they called it.
And that was that. My novel, the book that was finished, was dumped for someone else’s book that hadn’t yet been written. Somewhat angry and depressed, I set The Book of Lost Souls aside. Again. By now, I was at the end of my rope. I was still unemployed and out of unemployment benefits. The only work I could find was the occasional short-term computer job, some tech writing gigs, or dog-sitting. Nothing full-time, and certainly nothing we could count on.
If the near-miss with Super Agency wasn’t enough, I found myself running into similar situations with Don’t Fear the Reaper. Now, agents were saying, Too dark! But, you’re a talented writer and we’d love to see other work. Or, You’re capable of incredibly incisive scenes—the opener is still one of the best things I read all year. And, my personal favorite, In this economy…
It was then that I learned about self-published authors such as Karen McQuestion and Amanda Hocking. I decided to go indie as well, starting with The Book of Lost Souls. What did I have to lose? A lot if I didn’t figure out a way for our household to stop hemorrhaging money. The only problem? I had no idea where to start. I sent an email to Ms. McQuestion, in the hopes she could point me in the right direction. She was so incredibly kind! Not only did she reply, she sent me a wealth of information on self-publishing. Today, she shares all that information on her blog. I’m incredibly grateful to her.
I got a cover I could afford with the help of another indie, Sam Torode. Two editor friends went over my work. Finally, I formatted the book and the rest is history. I uploaded The Book of Lost Souls in early March, and it’s been getting consistently great reviews ever since. As for being too lighthearted? I receive emails all the time from people who love that the book is funny, upbeat, and clean. 
Within my first five weeks of self-publishing, I hit three best seller lists on Amazon. Me. An indie author without a publicist or a big agency or publisher behind them. Just me, my computer, my loving husband, and the devotion of two dogs at my feet.
I’ve been asked if there will be a sequel to The Book of Lost Souls. The answer is yes. Two more books, maybe a third. I just haven’t thought that far out yet.
And the other, darker book? After some revisions, Don’t Fear the Reaper debuted in late September 2011. On its first day, the book reached lucky #13 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases, Children’s Fiction, Spine-Tingling Horror.
I’m only sorry that my parents aren’t here to see this. I took my father’s advice and my mother’s faith and reinvented myself. I still dog-sit and take on small computer jobs and tech writing gigs to help keep us afloat financially. But one day, I hope that my hard work will pay even more of the bills. Until then, I’m at peace with the way things are.
Henry Ford once said, “If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Great advice. And so, The Book of Lost Souls, the book that nearly wasn’t, became the little book that could. I’m a firm believer that hopes and dreams are something to hold onto and fight for. Believe in the magic that is you. Keep your dreams close, and set your imagination free.
I’d like to dedicate my section of this anthology to readers everywhere—words alone cannot express how much I appreciate you believing in me. You’re every bit as much a part of the magic as Ivy herself.
So, thank you, Dear Reader. Sincerely. Because, every author with a story to tell writes with you in mind.
Come connect with me. I’d love to hear from you:
Where to find my books:
Createspace: The Book of Lost Souls Don’t Fear the Reaper
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