Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 52

Results of ENT bargain listing for “Looking Through Lace”

About the time I was almost ready to publish Beyond the Waters of the World, Book 2 in the Looking Through Lace series, an email drifted into my inbox from the wonderful folks at Ereader News Today, announcing a new promotion opportunity, a listing for 99c Bargain Kindle Books. It was very timely, because I intended to lower the price of the first novella in the series for a limited time, to help stir up interest in the second book. So I signed up.

The bargain list with Looking Through Lace w...

Short story sale and new group promo site

A couple days ago, I sold another short story — in the traditional way. By submitting to an editor and having the story accepted. It’s one of my Alaska stories, “The Shadow Artist,” and it sold to Abyss and Apex, who also originally published “In the Middle of Nowhere with Company.” Short stories don’t make me a lot of money as ebooks; traditional sales are more lucrative. But since I have all these previously published stories anyway, I might as well give them a second life, and me a few dol...

Announcing “Beyond the Waters of the World” (“Looking Through Lace” Book 2)

As I mentioned in my last post, I finally finished and published Beyond the Waters of the World, Book 2 of Looking Through Lace:

Coming up with the description was a bit difficult, because I don’t want to provide any spoilers regarding the events of the first book. I would love some feedback on it, if anyone is so inclined:

The Allied Interstellar Community first contact team on the planet Kailazh is faced with even more challenges than most. But dealing with an alien culture is not only di...

Hitting the Jackpot with Yseult and Shadow of Stone (The Pendragon Chronicles)

This past week, I had two freebies running for my Arthurian novels Yseult and Shadow of Stone. For both, I followed the schedule I set up several months ago in my post “Promoting Ebooks with KDP Select”. Yseult had a respectable run, garnering over 2,000 downloads in one day.

The day after, the two day freebie run for Shadow of Stone started, book two in The Pendragon Chronicles. And then sales started taking off — for Yseult. Not only did Pixel of Ink pick up Shadow of Stone for its freebie...

Two free ebooks today, Yseult and Never Ever After

Just a reminder that two of my ebooks are free today, August 28.

Yseult: A Tale of Love in the Age of King Arthur:

For the price of a truce, Yseult is sent to a world where magic is dying – to marry the father of the man she loves.

Marcus’s son Drystan would have saved her from a loveless marriage, but with her relatives being held hostage, Yseult cannot endanger them and must go through with the wedding. The tragic love story of Yseult and Drystan plays out against the backdrop of a violent w...

A short update & this week’s freebies

I continue to be spending an above-average amount of time cooking (canning and freezing, that is), so the word count is down from normal. In the last week, I managed to get another 4,000 words on Chameleon in a Mirror written. Besides that, I did some more work with my daughter on covers, responding to suggestions on Beyond the Waters of the World and In the Middle of Nowhere with Company. Pickled some jalapenos and made more barbecue sauce, tomato consomme and stewed tomatoes. So despite the...

New Pendragon Chronicles page and another free book!

This evening, I finally got something off my to-do list and created a dedicated page for my Arthurian novels, The Pendragon Chronicles. I would be very grateful to anyone who would be inclined to check it out and let me know what you think!

If it’s at all effective, I guess that means I will have to make a page for the Looking Through Lace series (once I have more books out) and Tales From Far Beyond North (or whatever I end up calling the stories). Well, supposedly it will get easier if I do...

Cover for first Alaska story, etc.

Chameleon in a Mirror is coming along nicely, despite all the cooking and harvesting around here at the moment (see my last post). It’s presently at 71,000 words. I’m consistently getting about 1,000 words a day done on the new version, pretty good for this time of year, with a fairly typical August tomato glut. What isn’t as typical is all the chili peppers we have this year. I already made jalapeno jelly, and it’s a big hit.

Next I will have to try pickled jalapenos. I did that last year; t...

By popular demand: How to create the essence of tomato (tomato consomme)

This is not going to be a precise recipe, since I don’t have one. A friend told me how to do this, and his instructions were vague. I googled, but nothing I found gave me a recipe the way I wanted it, neither in English nor German. So I just gave it a shot.

First off, you need a personal tomato plantation.

Barring that, you need a lot of tomatoes. Very ripe, sweet, juicy tomatoes. I doubt if store-bought would work, but maybe farmers market.

Ok, maybe not that many tomatoes.

These are the lef...

Tomatoes, jalapenos, and writing: progress on diverse fronts

Despite the title of this post, I have made a lot of progress on my writing goals in the last week — but the amounts of tomatoes, zucchinis and various spicy peppers ripening in our garden at the moment (not just jalapenos *g*) have made it necessary for me to take some longer breaks from writing in order to ensure that the harvest does not go to waste.

Some of the things I’ve done besides writing in the last week:

- 8 jars / bottles of BBQ sauce (made with fresh tomatoes and garden chillies)...