Michael R. Hicks's Blog, page 14

My Review of The Movie Oblivion

I’ve been looking forward to Oblivion for a while now, and finally got to see it today. In short, I wasn’t disappointed.

Now, I’m not going to go into the plot and all that stuff, as a bazillion people have already done that on various sites. I’m just here to tell you that, even if you think Tom Cruise is a weirdo, it’s definitely worth seeing. The special effects were great but didn’t overwhelm the story, it had some neat plot twists, and it also starred Morgan Freeman (and I’ll go watch a movie just because he’s in it, to heck with Tom Cruise!). Even if you’re not a sci-fi nerd like I am, you’ll likely enjoy it.

It was also nice to see a more original story line make it to the big screen, rather than the remakes and sequels that seem to be typical Hollywood fare these days, although I’ll confess to wanting to see the upcoming Man of Steel. I’m not saying the plot was entirely original, as that’s a bit hard to do considering all the things that have been written and filmed, but it was refreshing all the same.

Was it perfect? Of course not. There were a couple of bits toward the end that jarred my logical sensibilities, such as they are (no spoilers!), and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime in the HBO series Game of Thrones (which is awesome, by the way), was cast in what would seem to be a good role for him, but his character was a bit flat.

So, all in all I’d give this one four stars, which in my rating scheme means it’s something I’d recommend and something I’d also consider buying for our Blu-Ray collection. But best of all, the end of the movie was timed such that we landed in the middle of today’s Starbucks Happy Hour and got our Cookie Crumble Frappuccinos at half price. It’s hard to beat that!

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Prices Slashed On UK Nook Ebook Readers

If you’re in the UK, now may be the time to grab a Nook

When times are tough economically, it’s always good to see changes that lighten the load on the pocketbook, and I’m doubly glad to see changes that encourage folks to read (not just because I make my living from people buying books, but reading is food for the mind). So my hat’s off to Barnes and Noble for slashing the prices of their UK Nook ebook readers.

The current prices for the Nook ebook reader line for UK customers are:

Nook Simple Touch: £29
Nook SImple Touch GlowLight: £69
Nook HD: £129
Nook HD+: £179

It appears that the Nook is finally going to try and give the Amazon Kindle a run for its money in the UK market. With the Kindle line starting at £69 for the basic Kindle, £109 for the Paperwhite, and £159 for the Kindle Fire, the Nook is now more competitively priced, with the Simple Touch seriously undercutting the basic Kindle.

With regard to book selection, it’s hard to go wrong either way. Both retailers have more books available than any of us are going to read in a hundred lifetimes, both types of ereaders allow you to upload and read DRM-free content from other sources like Smashwords, and the high-end models of both lines have a lot of extra functionality beyond reading ebooks.

But if you’ve been wishing you could get an ebook reader and have been put off by the price, it’s hard not to give some serious consideration to the Nook Simple Touch at it’s new price (reduced by a whopping £50), which is equivalent at today’s exchange rate to $45 (note: the US price for the basic Kindle with embedded advertising is $69). That’s about nine Starbucks Java Chip Frappuccinos that I’d have to give up to pay for it. I could probably do that, and maybe lose a couple pounds in the process.

Now, if you’re still on the fence and even that £29 for the Nook Simple touch is a daunting prospect, remember that if you have a smart phone, tablet, or PC, you can get free apps from Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble UK, Kobo, Google, and others to use for reading. Then you just buy the book from your particular retailer and read it on your phone or whatever (for example, I do most of my reading on my iPhone using the Kindle app). Which way – a dedicated ereader like the Nook or an app on your phone – is better? That’s a highly personal preference, although as a general rule I’ll say that reading on something like a Nook or Kindle device is easier on the eyes, and the devices tend to have more functionality than the apps. I just started to read on my phone because I have it with me all the time, and even if you have an ereader, having the app on your phone is great for when you have to kill some time waiting in line for a Java Chip Frappuccino.

So, if you’re in the UK and have been hemming and hawing about getting an ebook reader, take a look at the Nook – it might just be for you…

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Is Promoting Your Book on Bookbub Worth It?

I hereby recommend Bookbub.com!

Let’s face it: the hardest part about being an author isn’t writing the books, it’s promoting them, getting them out there where potentially interested readers will see them and, if they like what they see, buy them (or download them, in the case of freebies). There are tons of ways to do that, some of which work better than others, and most of which yield different degrees of success for a given author. One type of promotion, of course, is paid advertising, which encompasses a lot of territory. I’ve been very blatant in my stance that paid advertising, regardless of venue, is largely a waste of money. However, I’m hereby going to make an exception to that sweeping generalization: Bookbub.

Here’s the story. Every day I go to my Amazon KDP admin interface where the book sales reports are generated and crank those numbers into a spreadsheet that I use to project the month’s estimated sales/royalties and track my income, expenses, taxes, blah-blah. When I got to the price-matched (free) downloads for SEASON OF THE HARVEST, I stopped. The download total for the month that I entered the day before was around 5,500 copies. The total roughly 24 hours later, as I was updating the stats, was over 14,000. Hmmm.

Quickly popping over to Amazon to look at SEASON’s Amazon page, I saw that it had climbed from wherever it had been in the rankings (I no longer even look at those, since I have no control over them) to #178. Okay, that’s cool as heck, but how did it get there? I checked Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today, which had promoted my books in the past, but only the older entries were listed.

In the meantime, SEASON kept climbing, until as of the morning that I write this — less than 24 hours later — it’s at #7 in the Kindle store and has had a total of nearly 20,000 downloads.

It’s sort of hard to argue with results like this (#7)…

As I was chowing down on breakfast, wondering how the heck this happened (and giving thanks to God for it), I received an email from Stephanie Bucklin at Bookbub, explaining that they had a bit of extra space in their daily email, and chose to drop in a blurb for SEASON OF THE HARVEST in hopes of tempting me to consider purchasing listings with them in the future.

Well, Stephanie, your strategy worked! I definitely plan to purchase listings with Bookbub for my free books, and may also consider it for some of my paid ones. Now, keep in mind that the up-front cost isn’t necessarily cheap. The price to list a book depends on its list price vs. the category you want to advertise to, with rates for freebies ranging from $40 to $240, and prices for paid books from $200 to $1200 (check out their current price list here).

Before you jump out of your shorts looking at the $1200 figure, in particular, think for a minute. In that case, you’re paying to reach a targeted audience of over 460,000 readers of mysteries and thrillers, with an average download per ad of 1,750 copies (again, though, you could be higher or lower). If you’re charging $2.99, that works out to roughly $3,500 in royalties on those sales, for a net profit of roughly $2,400. It’s all about return on investment (ROI), my friend, and a 200% return ain’t bad.

Now, are you guaranteed that? Of course not. The low end of the sales figures provided in the chart is 200 copies, which means you’d lose about $750. But again, that’s for the biggest, most competitive category that I just wanted to use for illustration. Most of the other paid categories are more manageable, and the freebies are, based on the experience I’ve had in the last 24 hours, pretty much a no-brainer. Are you always going to shoot into the top 10 of the free listings in the Kindle store? Ummm, nope. Remember, even under the best of circumstances, you’re going to plateau a bit at some point after saturating a large portion of your potential audience (that’s why you need to keep writing new books!), and not every book goes into a promotion like this already having a 4.3 star rating and almost 350 reviews, which is going to really lower a reader’s resistance to clicking the download button. But chances are you’ll get a boost that’ll be worth sacrificing about fifteen cups of Starbucks coffee. I love their Java Chip Frappuccino, but I’m willing to sacrifice the calories (for now!) to sell more books.

The bit about saturating your audience brings up another point. Bookbub ran SEASON OF THE HARVEST against their Action and Adventure readers, whereas I would have tossed it at science fiction or even horror readers (as at one point, when I had it in the horror category on Amazon, it got as high as #2 in the paid listings). In doing so, I suspect that Bookbub exposed SEASON to a lot of people who hadn’t seen it before. I think that may have had a lot to do with it shooting toward the top like it did; previous listings in Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today had a great impact, but I don’t think ever took it that high. Of course, I now have to hope that those Action and Adventure readers who downloaded the book actually enjoy it!

Anyway, the bottom line is that I really do think Bookbub listings are worth a try, especially if you’re promoting free loss leader books. That’s a level of investment nearly anyone should be able to swing. The paid book listings are tougher to wangle, but if you have a good experience with a free listing or just want to go for it, the potential ROI looks pretty darn good.

Have you used Bookbub? Leave a comment and tell me what you thought…

Is Promoting Your Book on Bookbub Worth It?

This post is from 2013, so the prices and so on have, of course, changed. However, I still believe that you’re almost certain to get the best return for your advertising dollars from BookBub, which has expanded the range of options and readership since this was originally written.

Let’s face it: the hardest part about being an author isn’t writing the books, it’s promoting them, getting them out there where potentially interested readers will see them and, if they like what they see, buy them (or download them, in the case of freebies). There are tons of ways to do that, some of which work better than others, and most of which yield different degrees of success for a given author. One type of promotion, of course, is paid advertising, which encompasses a lot of territory. I’ve been very blatant in my stance that paid advertising, regardless of venue, is often a waste of money. However, I’m hereby going to make an exception to that sweeping generalization: Bookbub.

Here’s the story. Every day I go to my Amazon KDP admin interface where the book sales reports are generated and crank those numbers into a spreadsheet that I use to project the month’s estimated sales/royalties and track my income, expenses, taxes, blah-blah. When I got to the price-matched (free) downloads for Season Of The Harvest, I stopped. The download total for the month that I entered the day before was around 5,500 copies. The total roughly 24 hours later, as I was updating the stats, was over 14,000. Hmmm.

Quickly popping over to Amazon to look at Season’s Amazon page, I saw that it had climbed from wherever it had been in the rankings (I no longer even look at those, since I have no control over them) to #178. Okay, that’s cool as heck, but how did it get there? I checked Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today, which had promoted my books in the past, but only the older entries were listed.

In the meantime, Season kept climbing, until as of the morning that I write this [29 April 2013 – MRH] — less than 24 hours later — it’s at #7 in the Kindle store and has had a total of nearly 20,000 downloads.

It’s sort of hard to argue with results like that.

As I was chowing down on breakfast, wondering how the heck this happened (and giving thanks to God for it), I received an email from Stephanie Bucklin at Bookbub, explaining that they had a bit of extra space in their daily email, and chose to drop in a blurb for Season Of The Harvest in hopes of tempting me to consider purchasing listings with them in the future.

Well, Stephanie, your strategy worked! I definitely plan to purchase listings with Bookbub for my free books, and may also consider it for some of my paid ones. Now, keep in mind that the up-front cost isn’t necessarily cheap. The price to list a book depends on its list price vs. the category you want to advertise to, with rates for freebies ranging from $40 to $240, and prices for paid books from $200 to $1200 (check out their current price list here).

As I mentioned earlier, this was originally published in 2013, so the prices and options have all changed. Having said that, BookBub’s reach now is enormously greater than it was back in 2013!

Before you jump out of your shorts looking at the $1200 figure, in particular, think for a minute. In that case, you’re paying to reach a targeted audience of over 460,000 readers of mysteries and thrillers, with an average download per ad of 1,750 copies (again, though, you could be higher or lower). If you’re charging $2.99, that works out to roughly $3,500 in royalties on those sales, for a net profit of roughly $2,400. It’s all about return on investment (ROI), my friend, and a 200% return ain’t bad. And even if you don’t make a huge return, if you get your book into the hands of new readers, who hopefully then will become fans who will read your other books – that counts, too.

Now, are you guaranteed that? Of course not. The low end of the sales figures in the BookBub chart was 200 copies, which means you’d lose about $750. But again, that’s for the biggest, most competitive category that I just wanted to use for illustration. Most of the other paid categories are more manageable, and the freebies are, based on the experience I’ve had in the last 24 hours, pretty much a no-brainer. Are you always going to shoot into the top 10 of the free listings in the Kindle store? Ummm, nope. Remember, even under the best of circumstances, you’re going to plateau a bit at some point after saturating a large portion of your potential audience (that’s why you need to keep writing new books!), and not every book goes into a promotion like this already having a 4.3 star rating and almost 350 reviews, which is going to really lower a reader’s resistance to clicking the download button. But chances are you’ll get a boost that’ll be worth sacrificing about fifteen cups of Starbucks coffee. I love their Java Chip Frappuccino, but I’m willing to sacrifice the calories (for now!) to sell more books.

Another thing to keep in mind that retailer algorithms, Amazon’s in particular, play a huge role in how well your book does.

The bit about saturating your audience brings up another point. Bookbub ran Season Of The Harvest for their Action and Adventure readers, whereas I would have tossed it at science fiction or even horror readers (as at one point, when I had it in the horror category on Amazon, it got as high as #2 in the paid listings). In doing so, I suspect that Bookbub exposed Season to a lot of people who hadn’t seen it before. I think that may have had a lot to do with it shooting toward the top like it did; previous listings in Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today had a great impact, but not like that. Of course, I now have to hope that those Action and Adventure readers who downloaded the book actually enjoy it!

Anyway, the bottom line is that I really do think Bookbub listings are worth a try, especially if you’re promoting free loss leader books. That’s a level of investment nearly anyone should be able to swing. The paid book listings are tougher to wangle, but if you have a good experience with a free listing or just want to go for it, the potential ROI looks pretty darn good.

The post Is Promoting Your Book on Bookbub Worth It? appeared first on Michael R. Hicks.

Some Thoughts on Making Twitter Work For You

I’ve read through a number of recent threads about social media – Twitter, in particular – and how a lot of authors are continuing to struggle in making it work for them. Like everything else these days, things they are a-changing, and on top of that, as more people join the fray it becomes harder to stand out in the crowd.

That’s one theory, at least. But I think if you have a good foundational strategy, you’ll do well over time. You’ll stand out because you have a clue about what you’re doing, rather than just firing off promotional tweets every fifteen minutes, then wondering why you’re not making any traction.

Before we dive in, let me remind you that Twitter is just one of many tools available to you. It may not be the right tool for you, and that’s okay. You should learn about and experiment with all kinds of tools to see which ones fit your hand.

Twitter Is Clamping Down

Because there are so many idiots (and I don’t mean just ignorant authors, but lots of other morons beyond our little publishing community) abusing the system, Twitter has become a lot more restrictive (as of late 2012). A number of my author friends have had their accounts suspended for “overly aggressive” following practices and spam, even though they were following far fewer people per day than I do, and I probably put out more promo tweets than most.

I suspect the reason why I haven’t been hammered (and I hope this continues to be the case, knock on wood!) is that my follower-to-following ratio is very close to 1-to-1, meaning I’m not following tons more people than are following me, which is an immediate red flag. It’s also because I interact so much with people, and don’t just send out promo tweets. If all people see from you is promos, some are going to report you as a spammer. I’m sure some people have done that to me, but I suspect that Twitter has some sort of algorithm to compare the spam reports to the activity on your account, and if you don’t pop above that threshold, you’re okay.

This will be especially important for accounts with fewer followers. If you have 500 people following you, the abuse tolerance threshold is going to be a lot lower than if you have 50,000. So when you’re just starting out, don’t go in with guns blazing. Just like the tortoise, slow and steady wins the Twitter race. Here are a few suggestions to try and stay out of trouble:

Keep your follower-following ratio close to 1-to-1 (read: don’t follow a lot more people than are already following you). When you’re below 2,000 or so followers, it makes sense to spend time weeding out junk followers (spammers, inactive accounts, bots, etc.). Once you get above that, it starts becoming more effort than it’s worth, but you’ll have to determine where that threshold is for yourself.
Don’t follow more than 100 people a day, at least until you have a pretty big following, say 5,000 or so. Then you can try to gradually increase it, but don’t go overboard!
Don’t “churn” too fast. One of the big red flags on Twitter is when you follow someone, they follow back, then you dump them. Spammers do this to keep their follower-following ratio out of the red zone. If someone follows you, follow them back and keep it that way unless they unfollow you or they’re someone you find offensive (in which case, don’t just unfollow them, but block them). And you should unfollow anyone who unfollowed you first.
We’ll hit on this shortly, but carefully manage your promo tweets – you don’t want to be reported as a spammer. Your promos should be well in the minority of your overall Twitter activity. If not, you’re likely headed for trouble.

Twitter Success Takes Work

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: making the most of Twitter takes a lot of work. I can’t emphasize that enough. Most people think they can spew promo tweets all day or check in on Twitter once a month and it’s going to get them sales. It won’t. You have to engage people. Yes, you need to put out some promo tweets. But MOST of your tweets should be non-promotional, informative, entertaining, or in some way thought provoking to generate responses from your followers. Asking questions (“Hey, what did you think of the Jack Reacher movie?”) is a great example, just don’t overdo it.

Then you do your very best to respond to every response you get. If you don’t, you’re wasting your time. I’ve made a number of genuine friends through this process, and have put my books in the hands of a lot of people. I don’t look through my home stream anymore, because with over 58,000 followers (as of the end of 2012) it’s become a torrent, but the level of engagement by existing and new Twitter followers on my @mentions and DM streams tells me that I’m still reaching – and engaging – a lot of people. Not all of them stay engaged every day, but after you’ve formed a relationship they generally hang around and periodically pop back into conversation. Think of Twitter as a huge cocktail party, and you’re circulating among the tables chatting.

It’s A Numbers Game

You may be doing eyerolls at the number of followers I have for any number of reasons. The fact is that while direct engagement on Twitter is essential, it’s also a numbers game. Of the people who follow you, subtracting out the spam and bot accounts, some are going to see your promo tweets (with or without you engaging them first). Some of them will respond to those tweets in a positive manner. Others will get annoyed at some point and unfollow. Some will just follow you and ignore you after that (and yes, I follow everyone back, although right now I’m catching up on a backlog).

But the point is that as long as you consistently build your following, hopefully using search strategies that focus on finding people who might be interested in your genre, you’re getting your books/brand in front of new people every day. I’ll keep building my following until the day I die or something better than Twitter comes along, because every new follower represents an opportunity to gain a new reader and, in some cases, new friends.

How Often Is Too Often?

The frequency of promo tweets has always been hotly debated, and even now I don’t have a definitive answer for you. I’ve experimented a lot, and continue to do so. In the past, I’ve typically put out promo tweets at intervals of 60 to 120 minutes (give or take), although recently I’ve taken advantage of more advanced tools to match focused tweets (e.g., for folks in the UK, vs. here in the US) to the time of day during the week when most users are active. Hootsuite has an automated scheduler that is interesting, although it often tends to post tweets either too close together or too far apart for my tastes.

There is also an interesting infographic on the best times to post on Facebook or send tweets on Twitter that bears some study. Keep in mind, however, that you should be thinking about emerging global markets, so the times are going to be offset for Europe (your main market will, of course, be the UK for English language titles, but don’t forget the Scandanavian countries and South Africa), as well as Australia and New Zealand. So if you’re putting out tailored tweets for those markets, make sure to hit their corresponding prime times.

The bottom line of the entire promo tweet gig is to generate as many clickthroughs on links as possible while creating the least amount of irritation among followers (which leads to a higher rate of unfollows). It’s also important to create as many unique tweets as possible, so followers don’t see the same thing too often, and to promote more heavily the market(s) you want to develop more (for me right now, that’s Nook, Kobo, and iTunes). And before you shout “SPAMMER!”, keep in mind that in between those tweets I’m busy putting out totally non-book related things (cat pics are great!) and responding to followers. The promo tweets are the minority – by far – of what’s in my overall timeline. I talk a lot, but it’s not all about my books.

As an interesting aside on the above point, I’ve also had a number of followers on Twitter say things like, “You know, after seeing your promo tweets for the last six months, I finally took the plunge and got one (or more) of your books”. These folks are obviously exceptions, but their sentiment also speaks to the reality that you have to send out promo tweets frequently enough for them to actually hit your followers’ eyeballs. People who have more than a handful of followers do NOT look at or see every tweet that comes through. Most don’t back up through their home stream when they’ve been on line as they might on Facebook – they just rejoin the cocktail party in progress. And like many other marketing strategies, it often takes some number of impressions for the follower to a) see it, b) lower their resistance to trying it out, and c) finally click on the darn link to go check out the goodies. Yes, they may also unfollow you, but that’s a natural consequence of the game.

Free Sells

Twitter isn’t a very good place to sell your book(s), but it’s a great place to give books away free. The lead novel of each of my trilogies is free in ebook format, and the freebie tweets generate lots of clickthroughs and downloads…and readers. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me on Twitter or via email that they never would have found my books had they not seen one of those “free book tweets.” Some I tailor for specific platforms to click through to a retailer’s book landing page; others I send to my “free novels” page on my site, where they can get whatever format they want (note: I also monetize every link that I can through affiliate programs – if you’re not doing that, particularly with Amazon, you’re losing out on “free” money). Other folks present opportunities during interaction to send them a link (not pushed at them, but when they ask about my books). And the people who click through these links and download also actually tend to read the books, as opposed to the free book gatherers on Amazon, for example, who already have five bazillion freebies on their Kindle that they’ll never read.

If you only have one book and don’t give it away for free, that’s okay: give away the first few chapters, hopefully enough to get the reader hooked. What you’re trying to do here is reduce the risk the buyer feels so they’ll be willing to try it. If all they’re investing is a bit of time, they’re much more likely to try something. And bigger samples – including entire books – are always better, because at a certain point, if they like the book they feel invested in it and want to buy it. That’s when you make the sale.

It Can Take A Lot Of Time

So, those are some of the things that have come to mind while reading a lot of the talk out there about Twitter. Let me reiterate that using it like I do takes a LOT of time. I’m a full-time author now, and I’d say that Twitter takes up three to four hours, spread throughout the day: I work on setting up tweets and evaluating the previous day’s activity for an hour or so in the morning, and then I’m on periodically all day tweeting. Not everyone can or wants to make that level of investment, but you can still see great results without investing as much time. They key is consistency and engagement.

Facebook (On The Side)

Since we’re here, I also wanted to make a comment or two about Facebook. I’ve come to the conclusion that Facebook isn’t a very good environment to find new readers. You can find some, but it’s becoming increasingly restrictive and I think people on there are even less responsive to “buy my book” (or even free) stuff than on Twitter. And the follow rate for Facebook pages tends to be much lower than on Twitter, so you run a higher risk of inundating folks with promotions. If nothing else, heed this: you can’t post on Facebook the same way you do on Twitter. Remember, Twitter is a cocktail party (as Chalene Johnson once said), whereas Facebook is your living room where you’ve invited people into your home. They’re totally different environments.

Instead, Facebook is a great place to develop deeper relationships with fans you’ve picked up on Twitter. Most of what I put on my Facebook author page has nothing to do with my writing, although I’ll periodically post blurbs from upcoming books, announcements of releases or platform updates, etc. What gets the most response are things like kitty pics, comments on movies I’ve seen, etc. – things that let you connect on a personal level. And the majority of those fans will be among the first to buy my next book.

But I don’t get many new readers there. Most of the people following me on Facebook are folks I picked up on Twitter by saying, “Hey, come by and join me on my Facebook page…” Then on Facebook you can build a stronger relationship with them beyond 140 character exchanges.

My Encounter With Stephen King

You can sense my wife’s envy…

Like most of the rest of the human population of Planet Earth, I’ve read books written by Stephen King. Not all, but quite a few. My personal favorite was The Stand, although under the influence of mild mood swings I could probably point to half a dozen others and say they’re my favorites. But did I ever expect to actually meet him, even though we live here in Sarasota, less than three miles as the crow flies from his house on Casey Key? Well, nope. Sure didn’t. But I did.

Of course, things like this usually happen in the most unlikely places. Here I was bumbling around in our local grocery store, gathering up a few things my wife sent me to retrieve, when I spied this gent over at the meat counter. He was wearing glasses and was dressed in rather baggy jeans, a T-shirt that had “Bangor Maine” on it, and a ball cap. I didn’t think much about it, but as I wandered over to the dairy section, I kept thinking, “Gee, that guy looks really familiar.”

As he passed by, heading toward the produce section, I took another gander. I knew I’d seen that face before. My spidey-sense was tingling.

Whipping out my iPhone, I searched for recent images of Stephen King. You have to keep in mind that the last photo I’d seen of him was probably on the back jacket of one of the hardcovers of his that I bought twenty years ago, and I was thrown off a bit because he was tall, a lot taller than I would have expected, and pretty thin, too (hopefully not the work of an angry gypsy).

The pictures didn’t exactly clinch it, but they were close enough that I figured, what the heck. The worst that could happen would be he wouldn’t be who I thought he was. So, as he was loading his stuff onto the belt in the checkout line, I leaned in and said, “Excuse me, sir, but you look a heck of a lot like Stephen King.”

He looked up at me and smiled. “Well, that’s because I am Stephen King.” I put out my paw, he shook it, and I let him get back to his life.

Did I tell him who I was, or ask for a photo with him? Nope. While I’m sure he probably would have made pleasant noises regarding the former and happily agreed to the latter, I didn’t want to intrude on him any more than absolutely necessary. It was enough to see him in the flesh and shake his hand.

So, what’s your favorite celebrity encounter story?

Introducing Edward E. French, Narrator

Edward E. French

I can’t tell you (well, I guess I can, as that’s what I’m trying to do right now) how pleased I am to have Edward E. French, hereafter referred to as Ed, narrating the audiobook version of SEASON OF THE HARVEST, which as you may know is my first foray into the audiobook market.

While Ed’s biggest claim to fame – literally – is his Hollywood special effects makeup wizardry, for which he was nominated for an Oscar for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and was awarded a primetime Emmy for his work on House M.D., he actually began his career as a radio personality at WHAV in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He’s also been an actor, playing roles Off-Broadway and in regional theaters throughout the country, and it was his interest in acting that eventually led him into the special effects makeup business, which he’s been part of now for thirty years.

Ed in his SFX Workshop

Over a year ago, however, he decided to revisit his roots in the voice arena, recording several audiobooks, as well as novels written by H.G. Wells, which he’s recorded for his own enjoyment.

What does this mean for you, dear reader (or audiobook listener)? It means that you’re going to enjoy the heck out of this audiobook. Ed’s narration is captivating, and he doesn’t merely read the words to you. He puts his acting experience to good use, injecting energy and intensity into the nearly fifteen finished hours of the story.

The bottom line? You’re going to love it…

The audiobook is currently undergoing pre-publication review by ACX, the distributor. Once that’s done, it will be released to Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. I’ll keep you posted on the release!

Looking For Beta Listeners For SEASON OF THE HARVEST Audiobook

You Are What You Eat…

At long last, it’s almost ready: the audiobook version of SEASON OF THE HARVEST is finished! Well, almost: it needs one final torture test by a small group of audiobook listeners to make sure we’ve got it right!

I’m looking for a a few hardy souls to grab a preview copy of this thing and give me feedback on any bloopers they find that I might have missed in the review.

My only other requirement is that you have some time over the next several days to do it, keeping in mind that this thing is pretty long (almost 15 hours). I’d like to have your feedback by Wednesday, 17 April, if possible, so we can make any final revisions and kick this sucker out the door for everyone to enjoy!

So, if you’re interested, contact me (post a comment here, email me, or let me know on Facebook), and I’ll select a few guinea pigs – ideally, veteran audiobook listeners – this afternoon.

And, as always, thanks so much for your help and support!

Season Of The Harvest Audiobook Giveaway

The New Cover For The Audiobook Version

Production of the audiobook version of SEASON OF THE HARVEST is coming along, and hopefully will be out on the street either late this month (March) or early April! However, I need your help: we need to pick a section or two of the book that will be included in the audio sample that prospective listeners can check out that will (hopefully) entice them to buy the book.

So here’s the deal: post the lead paragraph from a scene from SEASON OF THE HARVEST that you think would be great for the sample in a comment where it says Leave a Reply below. If more than one person submits the same scene, I’ll only keep the one that was submitted first.

You’ve got until this coming Friday (15 March) to submit your candidate scene. After that, I’ll open up the comments for voting with a little widget you can click on to vote for your fave entry, and the one with the most votes wins (well, I’ll put a caveat on here that it also has to be one that I can live with!).

For the person who submits the winning entry, I’m offering up a 3-month paid gift subscription to Audible.com worth $45, or I’ll get you a gift certificate for that amount at Amazon or Barnes & Noble (and yes, folks outside the US are welcome to play).

And if you haven’t read SEASON OF THE HARVEST, you’re not out of the running! Grab a free ebook copy and hunker down to read it, then submit the scene you think would be great for the audiobook sample!

A Cat And His Box

It looks to me like Sasha’s new favorite box is a tad overwhelmed. We reduce, reuse, and recycle boxes in this house – it really cuts down on the cat toy budget!

A cat. A box. Match made in heaven.