Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 31

Does Amazon Take Notice of a Visit From an Outside Website to Your Book Page?

Anthony Wessel of Digital Book Today posed very interesting questions for which there are probably no known answers but these questions are definitely worthy food for thought.

The questions concern what happens when people on a website other than Amazon click on a link to a book page on Amazon, perhaps read the info on the page, but do not add the book to their shopping cart.



Does Amazon track that click? If so, does this somehow help the author’s book rise in Amazon’s secret algorithms? And does a click coming from an outside site other than the author’s site have more value than a click coming from the author’s site?

The following will be only my own thoughts on these questions.

First scenario — when we click on a book link but are not signed into our Amazon account.

I suspect Amazon does track this click and it might help the book’s rank. If so, it probably helps more that the click is from a site other than the author’s site. In other words, diversity of originating sites for connecting with a book’s Amazon page probably means more than clicks from all the same originating site. (After all, it could be the author clicking from his or her site over and over again.)

Second scenario — when we click on a book link from somewhere on the Internet and are already signed into our Amazon account.

One benefit is that, even if we do not buy the book this time, the book may show up in the section “Recently Viewed Items” the next time we visit Amazon when we are signed into our Amazon account. This may encourage us to buy the book. If we do, that surely helps the book’s rank in Amazon’s algorithms.

A second benefit may indeed help the book’s ranking simply because we connected to the book’s page from an outside site.

Now this leads directly to another consideration:

If there is a good probability that Amazon includes in its secret algorithms clicks from outside sites to your book’s page, you want as many clicks as possible even if at first these clicks do not lead to immediate sales.

Why?

Because when your book rises in Amazon’s algorithms, your book has more opportunities to actually be sold.

And how do you get these clicks for your Amazon book page?

You can buy advertising in appropriate places (Digital Book Today has attractive advertising packages and Anthony did NOT ask me to mention this).

You can also invest your time and effort (rather than money) in getting out the word about your books. This means blogging, being active on social media such as Twitter and Facebook, participating on sites such as Goodreads, BookBuzzr, AskDavid, and interacting in a helpful rather than selling mode.

This helpfulness means sharing more than updates that say “buy my book.” Helpfulness includes sharing information you think other authors might like to know and supporting other authors as you would like to be supported.

(I would like to say here that you should post reviews for books that you like on Amazon. But I do have to add there are now issues with this — see my blog post “Big Brother Amazon Strikes Again.”)

Bottom line: Writing and publishing a book are only the beginning steps of getting your book into the hands (or ereaders) of your target book fans. If you want to encourage people to buy your book, you need to help Amazon take notice of it.

Click here to visit Digital Book Today.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

Big Brother Amazon Strikes Again

I have been reading blog posts about Amazon removing positive book reviews. I have even seen the exact Amazon wording connected to people having a financial interest in a book doing well, such as a publisher.

From Amazon’s Customer Review Guidelines of what is NOT allowed (boldface mine):

Sentiments by or on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product (including reviews by publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product).

I have also read posts suggesting that authors are being prevented from writing POSITIVE reviews about books in the same genre as that in which they write. (Catch 22: Most authors write books in the genres they like to read. Does this mean authors can no longer write reviews on Amazon?)

But now I know for certain that the definition of who benefits from a book has been expanded to include non-financial interests.

Here is a true saga:

My brand-new cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE had no reviews and I was really hoping for reviews before the ebook’s KDP Select free day of December 4th. (I purposely chose December 4th because Hanukkah this year starts on December 8th and CAST THE FIRST STONE has a Jewish subplot.)

I thought of a fiction author who would probably enjoy the book, and I provided a review copy.

The author did like the book and wrote a very nice insightful review — several paragraphs long — on the book’s Amazon page. The review went live.

Hours later the review was removed.

Then this author wrote a very nice email to Amazon asking why the review had been removed. Here is the reply and note the change from the previous boldface wording (boldface is again mine):

We removed your review from “Cast the First Stone: A Rebecca Stone Mystery.” Customer reviews are meant to give customers genuine product feedback from fellow shoppers. When we perceive that a reviewer has financial interest in a book or a close personal relationship with the author, we remove the review to protect the authenticity of our customer reviews.

If we removed your review and you’d still like to leave feedback about the book, we encourage you to participate in our Customer Discussion Forums. You can post comments and engage with other readers of “Cast the First Stone: A Rebecca Stone Mystery.”

If you have additional questions, please feel free to review our posted Customer Review Guidelines:

http://www.amazon.com/review-guidelines/

If, after reviewing our guidelines, you believe your review was incorrectly removed, please reply to this email with additional detail and we will take another look.

I hope this helps.

Now here is the kicker: At the very beginning of the author’s review of CAST THE FIRST STONE the author revealed having gotten a review copy. The author certainly wasn’t trying to sail under the radar.

And yet Amazon decided that this author and I have “a close personal relationship” and took down the review.

This huge BIG BROTHER step on Amazon’s part is probably only the beginning of authors being squeezed out of writing reviews on Amazon. But when everyone is an author thanks to ebooks, who will be left to write reviews?

If you have any opinions on this, please add them in the comments below.

P.S. If you do write a review for anyone on Amazon — whether or not you are an author — write the review in a Word doc that you save and then transfer the review to Amazon. This way, if Amazon removes the review, you can post it on some other review site and your effort will not be wasted.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

Former Navy Man Responds to My Post About Inaccurate Reviews of Military Fiction

Former Navy man Gary Chase sent me the following email in response to my blog post “Developing a Tough Skin to Inaccurate Reviews re the Military” and then gave me permission to include his email in a blog post:

My wife Elaine [Raco Chase] forwarded your “Developing a Tough Skin to Inaccurate Reviews Re the Military.” I read your [novel] LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS a while ago and enjoyed it very much.

Back in the 60′s when I was assigned to the USS Shangri-La I was 18 and did not have a driver’s license but as a radar operator sitting directly behind the captain of the Shang I learned a whole lot real quick — including piloting an 889-foot-long aircraft carrier.

So when I went back through the reviews of your book I had to laugh at the one guy’s review saying the protagonist was over the top. I rather doubt he was ever near the water much less in the Navy. Teenagers running multimillion dollar systems and ships are a commonplace thing in the Navy. So I suggested he “Join the Navy and See the World” before criticizing the commonplace.

You write a damned good book much in the style of W.E.B. Griffin.

I would like to see a few more of this type of book — for example the life of a sailor during the Cuban missile crisis stationed on Gtmo (as I was — they haven’t gotten that story right yet!). Be that as it may, [LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS] is a good book. Keep ‘em coming and ignore the “technically challenged” ignoramuses!

I am very grateful for this lovely email from Gary Chase. It certainly made my day!

P.S. Last week LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS was free on Kindle for one day. (The thriller is also available in paperback.) This week today, Dec. 4, my brand-new cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE is free on Kindle. Click here to see cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE on Amazon.

(Don’t have a Kindle? No problem. You can get a FREE Kindle app for your iPhone, iPad, Android, PC or Mac at http://amzn.to/NBoSGU)

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

Developing a Tough Skin to Inaccurate Reviews Re the Military

Most of the time I take the occasional less-than-stellar review for one of my novels without getting upset. But in connection with the Navy thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS that I wrote with my husband I sometimes want to scream.

A comment on a less-than-stellar review on Amazon pointed out that a lieutenant commander in the Navy is addressed as “commander” and not as “lieutenant.” Of course! This comment seems to imply that my husband and I made this error, which I doubt as we very well know the correct form of address.

Another comment said that lieutenant commander is a low rank in the Navy and therefore our protagonist couldn’t do what she did. To set the record straight — a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy is the equivalent of a major in the U.S. Army, and this is NOT a low rank.

Perhaps these comments bother me so much because women in the military — in other words, real life — still face an uphill battle in many arenas.

I just read the article “Co-Ed Crew: Reality vs. Taboo” by Captain Kevin Eyer, U.S. Navy (Retired) in the October 2012 issue of the U.S. Naval Institute’s monthly magazine Proceedings (my husband is a member of the U.S. Naval Institute).

The article upset me because, in my opinion, the retired captain’s article offers a cockeyed view of sexual assault on women. Not once does he even say that an atmosphere of turning a blind eye to sexual harassment needs to be addressed.

I read this article very soon after seeing the November 29th episode “Big Chicken Dinner” of the ABC submarine drama LAST RESORT. This particular episode dealt with sexual assault and rape. It did so, in my opinion, in a much more realistic portrayal than did Captain Eyer’s nonfiction article.

Finally, I cannot understand how some readers of LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS — a fiction book! — do not understand that what Mollie does is NOT that extraordinary:

She majored in electrical engineering at the Naval Academy and has a master’s degree. This is her job in the Navy — not some extracurricular activity. Why shouldn’t she be good at her job?

And as to her being an expert shot? Many women and men in the Navy are expert shots. So why not Mollie Sanders?

The book recently got a five-star review on Amazon from a complete stranger. The reviewer really “got” Mollie:

Strong female lead character with lots of action all the way through

I really loved the premise of a really exceptional female in the military. Maybe she is a little too good to be true, but this is a work of fiction not a biography!

Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders can take what ever comes her way and in the end she wins the respect of all around her. She takes chances and sometimes bucks the system, but her heart is in the right place and she is 100% American. This was a nice change of pace from the male military action hero type books that are available. The authors did a great job and I hope there will be more books with Mollie!

I particularly like that the reviewer noted that “this is a work of fiction not a biography!”

(If you think this review is helpful, I would appreciate your going to the review — click here now — and clicking “yes” next to the question of whether this review was helpful.)

In conclusion, I do believe that some of the less-than-stellar reviews of the thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS are fueled by readers’ perception of women in strong roles. And I just have to learn to accept this!

P.S. Last week LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS was free on Kindle for one day. (The thriller is also available in paperback.) This week on Tuesday, Dec. 4, my brand-new cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE will be free on Kindle. Click here to see CAST THE FIRST STONE on Amazon.



(Don’t have a Kindle? No problem. You can get a FREE Kindle app for your iPhone, iPad, Android, PC or Mac at http://amzn.to/NBoSGU)

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

What Is in a Book Cover?

First, the full disclosure: I am NOT a book cover designer, although I did take several advertising courses many years ago at what was then called Philadelphia College of Art (and this included a type font course).

In addition, my business partner Yael K. Miller, who actually creates the covers for my Kindle ebooks after she and I brainstorm the concept, is not a book cover designer, although she is very interested in design — especially font styles.

That said, I want to talk about the danger of creating book covers that “speak” to the author and not the audience.



CIA FALL GUY book cover:

Yael and I both liked the first cover — a manilla envelope (the kind that holds documents) stamped with TOP SECRET and the title of the book and author name. As this spy thriller is partly based on my experiences many years ago as a GS-3 for the 66th Military Intelligence Group in Munich, the manilla envelope really connected with me.

Only, in retrospective, that cover does not invite people into the story — it does not establish in the prospective audience’s mind the question: What is happening to the person this story is about?

The new cover, displayed in this post, is an image that Yael and I believe will entice fans of spy thrillers. Yael used a drop shadow on the title font in order to add to the mysterious feel of the cover.

The protagonist of CIA FALL GUY is a woman and she sets off on a quest to solve a situation that to her could be life threatening. And I think the new cover gives this sense of an unknown destination.

In conclusion, the lesson of this particular book cover is that a design has to resonate with the audience and not the author. And if you’ve made a mistake, admit it and correct it.

The good news is that Kindle ebook covers are not written in stone. An author only has to upload a new image and wait a few hours for that cover to be approved.

Click here to get spy thriller CIA FALL GUY now on Amazon!

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

Visiting the Scene of the “Crime”

My new cozy LA mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE: A REBECCA STONE MYSTERY begins with a press release announcing a Wharton professor as a visiting professor at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management.

Soon afterwards Rebecca Stone — a business reporter for the (imaginary) Los Angeles World newspaper — has to cover a talk at Anderson.

Yesterday evening my husband and I attended a program held at UCLA entitled “Hollywood’s Digital Gold Rush” put on jointly by the Haas Berkeley Alumni Club of Los Angeles (Wharton alum were invited to attend, which is how I got there) and Anderson. And I felt as if I had fallen down the rabbit hole.

First, I drove around the hilly campus in the dark and the rain trying to find the correct parking lot. Finally I had to go out of the campus and re-enter from a different entrance off Sunset Blvd.

Then, once Mitch and I managed to find the exit from the lot, we spotted a very small sign that said “Anderson School.” Due to the rain, we entered the wrong building and wandered around until we realized our mistake.

Back out in the rain, we finally found the main entrance to a different building, climbed a massive amount of stairs, and made our way to the correct event. (Actually, we had to once again go outside after the reception to get to where the presentation was held.)

In other words, I felt as if I were a character in my own cozy mystery, trying to get out of a maze.

On the other hand, the Hollywood digital presentation was quite interesting, even though I didn’t necessarily agree with some of the predictions. I did ask how the panelists saw Amazon fitting into their predictions, and didn’t receive any enlightening responses.

(I personally think the panelists, with the exception of one who said he wasn’t allowed to answer that question, do not realize how important Amazon is to their predictions.)

In conclusion, I’ve just published this week a second ebook cozy mystery outing for Rebecca Stone — TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE: REBECCA STONE MYSTERY SHORT STORIES. (Thanks to Yael K. Miller for creating both Rebecca Stone book covers.)

Click here now to see on Amazon this ebook of two LA Rebecca Stone cozy mystery short stories.

(Don’t have a Kindle? No problem. You can get a FREE Kindle app for your iPhone, iPad, Android, PC or Mac at http://amzn.to/NBoSGU)

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel (2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist) and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

Women in the Military (Including Serving on Subs)

The novel LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS that I wrote with my husband features the first woman serving on a sub.

When Mitch and I originally wrote the story, women were not yet serving on subs in the U.S. Navy. So we came up with a story reason for LCDR Mollie Sanders to be the first woman.

On May 29, 2012, the White House’s Council on Women and Girls posted Brad Cooper’s article “Women Chart a New Course Onboard U.S. Navy Submarines”:

In 2009, U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced that for the first time in Navy history, women would be assigned to serve aboard Navy submarines.

Yesterday, the first contingent of 24 women who completed the Navy’s nuclear submarine program met with President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House. They were joined by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mark Ferguson.

Now I understand that not everyone knows that women are now serving on U.S. subs. So when LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS was free for one day on Amazon thanks to the KDP Select program, I did not get overly upset when I got this message on Facebook from a man about the novel:

This really stretches reality. Women have made great advances in the military, but submarine duty isn’t among them.

I sent back this Facebook message:

When Mitch and I wrote the story women weren’t yet on U.S. subs and that is part of the point of the novel. BUT … women are now on U.S. subs. See this article http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/05/29/women-chart-new-course-onboard-us-navy-submarines

And the man actually thanked me for “correcting” him.

He did go on to wonder how billeting would be arranged on the sub, which Mitch and I deal with in our fiction story. (Click here to buy LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS on Amazon now if you are interested in this story.)

On the same day I read the Military Times news story “Female military members sue to serve in combat” by Paul Elias of the Associated Press

To summarize the article, women are suing because, without access to certain combat positions, their chances for promotion are hindered.

[M]ore than 144 female troops have been killed and more than 860 have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars began, according to Pentagon statistics. Roughly 20,000 of the 205,000 service members currently serving in Afghanistan are women.

The article goes on to say that the lawsuit “alleges that women are already serving unofficially in combat units. Air National Guard Major Mary Jennings Hegar sustained shrapnel wounds in 2009 when she exchanged fire on the ground in Afghanistan after her Medevac helicopter was shot down.” (She received a Purple Heart medal for her injuries.)

Read the entire Military Times article (for which Associated Press writers Julie Watson and Lolita C. Baldor contributed).

In conclusion, it’s a brave new world for women serving in the U.S. military.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a former military spouse as well as the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE with a subplot of non-combat trauma PTSD.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

Watching My KDP Dashboard Is Like “Reading” Tea Leaves

No, I’m not into reading tea leaves. But I do feel as if trying to fathom what works and what doesn’t on Amazon is like trying to read the future without the benefit of a crystal ball.

Obviously Amazon is not about to tell us authors all Amazon’s secrets. So we do have to try to puzzle out the mysteries for ourselves.

This means for those of us who have our ebooks on Kindle we may spend inordinate amounts of time checking our KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) dashboard to see whether there have been any new purchases of our books. And then we try to figure out from what actions the purchases may have resulted.

At this moment the Navy thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS that I wrote with my husband is number 10 on Amazon’s submarine fiction list. (Click here to see the list although MOLLIE may have changed in the ranking.)



But if you click here and go to the Amazon Kindle page for MOLLIE, there is no indication of this.

It seems to me that readers coming to a book’s page might like to know when the book ranks well in a sub-category. But that info usually does not get displayed.

While I am a big fan of how Amazon helps authors sell their books, I do wish that some of the curtains of mystery could be pulled back. But I’m not holding my breath for this to happen.

If you do like military thriller stories, U.S. Navy thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS is FREE on Kindle on Tuesday, November 27th, at http://amzn.to/NUpy9o

And if you’d like to hear news of when my other Kindle books have a free day, please add your name below. (And if you don’t have a Kindle, you can get a FREE Kindle app for your iPhone, iPad, Android, PC or Mac at http://amzn.to/NBoSGU):

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Phyllis’ Book News”

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© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a former military spouse as well as the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE with a subplot of non-combat trauma PTSD.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

Preserving the History of the Cold War

Walking between my car and LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) along Wilshire Boulevard I had an unexpected experience:

What at first looked like a section of a cement wall decorated by graffiti turned out to be the longest section of the former Berlin Wall outside Berlin, sponsored by the Wende Museum.

Needless to say I determined to find out more about this unexpected sight in Los Angeles.

On a personal level, my husband and I were stationed in Munich, Germany, from September 1970 to May 1972 with the U.S. Army as part of the occupying force to keep the Soviets from overrunning West Germany.

We were part of a military intelligence unit, and as such, we were required to be on the lookout for Soviet spies. One of the other requirements was to keep enough gas in our cars in order to escape out of West Germany if the Soviets invaded.

My romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY is partly based on my experiences living in Germany, and the screenplay THE WIDOW SPRINGER that my husband wrote and I joined in on is a story of the coming down of the Wall.

(As my husband and I had security clearances, we were not allowed to go to Eastern Europe. We stood at Checkpoint Charlie in West Berlin and looked over into the East.)

One of my current writing projects is to write a memoir of being part of the occupying force only 25 years after the end of World War II. I have all my original documents of this Cold War period.

My documents include a copy of the letter I wrote to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam with a donation when lack of funds threatened closure of the site. (The donation had been collected from the few American Jewish military and civilian personnel in Munich at that time.)

The video above is of the Wende Museum’s LA event on the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, a monumental event for democracy. But the date of November 9th in Germany has more sinister connections. The night of November 9-10, 1938, was when the infamous Kristallnacht action against the Jews of Germany was carried out.

(And, no, it was not a spontaneous response. In 1971 I worked for the Army Air Force Motion Picture Service with a German woman who had been a teen and at night school in Munich that evening of November 9, 1938. She and her classmates were sent home before the action began.)

As a typical American Jew whose grandparents had escaped the Czar’s harshness in the early 1900s, I knew very little of the history of the Jews in Europe. One year after marrying an ROTC Army officer I was living in an Army-supplied apartment in Perlacher Forst in Munich.

For the first time I was reading about Kristallnacht — when I suddenly realized that the current date was November 9 (1970) and I was in Munich, Germany.



It is for these reasons, and more, that learning about the Wende Museum so interested me. This is the mission of the Wende Museum:

The Wende Museum preserves the cultural artifacts and personal histories of Cold War-era Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to inform and inspire a broad understanding of the period and its enduring legacy.

Click here for more information on the Wende Museum.

Click here for the Wikipedia entry on Kristallnacht.

I encourage everyone to learn more about the history of the Cold War, especially as some political commentators believe we may be headed to a return of those days.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a former military spouse as well as the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE with a subplot of non-combat trauma PTSD.

The U.S. Navy thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS that she wrote with her husband will be FREE on Kindle on Tuesday, November 27th, at http://amzn.to/NUpy9o

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com

Thanksgiving Paen to Fellow Writers

On Thanksgiving I am particularly grateful for my fellow writers, including my brainstorming partner — children’s book author Susan Chodakiewitz — and my business partner and younger daughter — Yael K. Miller — plus triad military fiction authors Bonnie Bartel Latino and Kathleen M. Rodgers.

These four writers as well as others keep me from feeling badly when my non-writing friends pay little or no attention to my writer endeavors.

And thanks to Susan K. Becker, who sent me Nilofer Merchant’s wonderful blog post “How to Support an Author.” Click here to read this post now — and do follow these suggestions to support your author friends.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a former military spouse as well as the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including the military fiction MRS. LIEUTENANT: A Sharon Gold Novel and the cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE with a subplot of non-combat trauma PTSD.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com