Thea Atkinson's Blog, page 7

The Livescribe Pulse Pen -- is it really worth it?

Reblogged from John Voliva's Weblog:

First off -- two posts in seven days! Huzzah!

Secondly, to answer the question above - YES, YES & YES! And let me tell you why...

You can find a lot of information about the pen on their wesbite. A ton of great examples are given there. I was turned onto the pen by pharmacy technology guru Bill Felkey…

Read more… 631 more words

OK. I've been thinking for a looong time that it would be so much better if I could find a pen that would transcribe automatically to my computer. Right now, I handwrite my fiction then transcribe it by dictating through Dragon, and then edit. But tada!!! it seems there is a pen that will do this for me. Alas, only available in the US. Anyone interested in shipping it for me? grin.
Anywho. You all might find this as interesting as I do.

Pirates and torrents and Thea Reads.

Harry Potter (Photo credit: Pixelsior)

Recently, I found the following in my blog’s dashboard for search terms. You know, how folks find me on this here internet.

“Thea Atkinson books on torrentz.”

LOL.

I always told friends, “I’m not worried about folks pirating my books; I’m just not famous enough for anyone to go looking for me.”

Well.

I guess I’ve made it!

Am I ticked off that someone tried to find my books on the torrentz? You know: Pirate them? Hella no. Spread the word, baby, is what I say. The more folks read and like, the more my name spreads. Heck, I’ve got no troubles being the next 50 shades of Grey, the next True Blood, the next Harry Potter.

‘Cept I won’t get there. I know that. And I’m equally ok with that. If you really can’t afford to buy a 2.99 or 3.99 Thea read, there’s tons of ways to get me free. One of them is to join my mailing list. As news of new releases come out, old releases often go out as goodies. Or I have contests, Or I have coupons, Or I let you know when I’m offering something free.

So for now, I think I’ll pretend I’ve made it. It certainly makes the long winter nights much warmer.

Subscribe to my newsletter Thea Reads for goodies, freebies, and news, but never spam. Never.

Buy me from other retailers:

Itunes
BN
Kobo
Sony
Smashwords

Related Posts


Smashwords affiliates get 25% of Thea Reads. See how. (theaatkinson.wordpress.com)


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Why Do People Pirate E-Books? (teleread.com)



Filed under: Thea bits

Cover Reveal: Bone Witch

I know. I know. I did decide long ago what the cover would look like. It’s showing on my website and it’s down in the little graphic at the end of the post, but since I’m nearing the completion and getting ready to set the official launch date, I thought I’d offer a quick post letting you peek at the cover.

Also, if you want to know about more new releases before anyone else, get in on goodies associated with new releases, or find out more about Bone Witch as it launches, please join my newsletter. It’s free. No spam. No abuse of your email list. Just good things about what releases are coming up. Bone Witch isn’t the only Thea Read launching this year.

Click the link (Thea Reads) below to sign up.

Subscribe to my newsletter Thea Reads for goodies, freebies, and news, but never spam. Never.

Buy me from other retailers:

Itunes
BN
Kobo
Sony
Smashwords

 Related Posts

Smashwords affiliates get 25% of Thea Reads. See how. (theaatkinson.wordpress.com)
Witch Hunt: Of the Blood… (annecmichaud.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Thea bits

V is for vampires and Valentines

The Vampire Diaries (season 2) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s coming up to Valentine’s Day, and I thought I’d yak about a special kind of love: my enduring obsession with vampire fiction.

To begin, I should explain that I’m not sure if I’m oblivious or just plain dumb, but I rarely jump on trends when they’re trending. Maybe I’m just so self-centered, I don’t pay attention to the mass pop culture trends. I only started watching The Sopranos when it was done and over. I picked up The DaVinci Code long after everyone was going on about it. Oz is just starting to get played at my house via Netflix.

But I do know one thing: I have always, ALWAYS, loved vampire fiction. ALWAYS. I watched and loved the Frank Langella version of Dracula, and equally loved Fright Night and Bram Stoker’s Dracula with Gary Oldman. I didn’t watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the time it aired until long after it was done (see above about trends) but I did watch and love the entire series. Same with Angel, and some really horrible horrible vampire movies over the years. The movie Let Me In is my current favorite. Don’t even get me started on how much I loved Dark Shadows (the series, not the movie).

Didn’t matter how bad/cheesy they were; I was enthralled. I still am. I’m a sucker, if you’ll pardon the pun.

So now you’re wondering what Valentine’s Day, trends, and vampires have in common enough to put them all in one post. Worry not, dear reader. I have a point to make.

Enter the vampire fiction trend. I hate that my one enduring fiction love is turning into a mass, BigMac drive-through, one-stop-shop kind of trending affair. I almost stubbornly refuse to jump on the Twilight bandwagon, the True Blood bandwagon, and The Vampire Diaries mostly because I didn’t think anyone could do vampires like my fav Anne Rice series. Plus, those trending stories were too YA for me. I like my demons dark and brooding.

Eventually, however, I know myself. If it’s vamp related, I’m gonna give in.

So you guessed it: I read Twilight. Um. Yeah. In four days, I read all four books. Well, 3.75 books. I just couldn’t take any more by the last book and gave up 3/4 of the way in. I hated the characters. Every one of them. I kept hoping that would change, and I do so dislike stopping a book/series if I’ve invested time in it, but by book 4, I figured it wasn’t going to get better and finally gave in to my frustration. Don’t get me wrong, I admire Stephanie Meyer for creating such a viral narrative, but I just didn’t cotton to it. I started to believe the trend had ruined the genre. Oh horrors for a gal who spent many nights reading, writing, and watching vampire stories.

Then came True Blood. It became an almost obsession for me thanks to the Eric Northman character. Cheesy vampire fiction at its best, dear lawd, and I couldn’t get enough. I downloaded and read all the books and am eagerly awaiting the premiere of the new season. I could have cared less about Sookie, to be honest.

And now. Sigh. Well now I’m stuck on The Vampire Diaries. Woe is me. My husband, oh how he judges me for this one.

Last week I Netflixed three whole seasons and glutted myself like some folks do on chocolate. I don’t remember ever loving a character like Ian Somerhalder’s Damon. He’s delicious in just so many ways. I especially love the little references to the Buffy series that the writers have him make every now and then. His smirk, his humor. When he finally shows some humanity it’s all the more satisfying because he so relishes his dark nature.

Take an old gal with a deep love of vamp fiction that got started long ago during late night reads and movies who has begun to get sick of the genre and put her in front of a character like this, and like Eric played by Alexander Skarsgard and…well, she’s in love with the genre all over again.

Because these vamps have all the allure of the original, of the cultish bloodsuckers like Louis and Lestat, and it seems that without the trend that nearly ruined the genre for me, I’d never have found two vampire characters to love again.

Sigh.

What do you think of trends and how they can almost ruin something you love? Feel free to comment. I don’t bite.

Subscribe to my newsletter Thea Reads for goodies, freebies, and news, but never spam. Never.

Buy me from other retailers:

Itunes
BN
Kobo
Sony
Smashwords

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Filed under: Thea bits

Find a free Thea read from the iBookstore and more

Thea Read freebies throughout the Internet

 You know I’m a nobody, I know I’m a nobody, everybody knows I’m a nobody. And yet, some folks enjoy a good Thea Read. It’s different. It’s dark. It’s sometimes thought provoking. Least I hope so. It’s often hard for people who know me to separate the Thea they know from the Thea who writes about murder and abuse and yeah, sometimes sex. My mom has a hard time. Ho Boy. Does she. But I think she’s getting better at it.

 So those who know me sometimes assume the regular ole gal they know can’t possibly write anything they’ll like. I get it. I’m a nobody. I’m not Alice Munro or Stephen King or even Stephanie Meyer. Nope. I’m Thea: a gal who enjoys writing in all sorts of genres. Sometimes a gal who writes several genres in one novel.

 So for those who aren’t sure I’m their type of thang, I always offer small bits of reads throughout the Internet. There’s freebies in them thar hills if you look for them.

 Today, I won’t make you look. I’ll just list em. Your job is to download em and share em. Send folks you know to the links. Heck, copy and paste the list into an email or a Facebook post or tweet this here blog link. (the buttons are all below). Just take em and run and spread the word as you sprint along. Someone you know just might enjoy a Thea read after all.

 The following short stories in ebook format are FREE:

 God in the Machine at Itunes
God in the Machine at Kobo
God in the Machine at Smashwords

 

Whitecaps short story at Itunes
Whitecaps at Kobo
Whitecaps at Smashwords

 

 The Atlantic’s a Woman to Ride: a light erotica short story at Itunes

 

 

 

Filed under: Thea bits

Smashwords affiliates get 25% of Thea Reads. See how.

Last month, I started taking a better peek at my traffic on Smashwords. What is Smashwords, some of you might ask? Well, dear reader, it’s a nice little retailer/distributor of ebooks that will let you download ebooks in any format you require. Sometimes authors offer free reads via coupons, and sometimes a hefty percent off. If you’re an author, you can upload your ebook for sale at Smashwords and have them distribute to a large amount of ebook retailers.

Smashwords has a lot of perks but as an author, I’ve been ignoring it in favor of letting it distribute my books to places like Itunes and Sony. As I started noticing that I was getting a few views of my books over there, I began to wonder why they rarely SOLD there.

So. I thought I’d offer affiliates of Smashwords the opportunity to pick up 25% of my royalties instead of the standard 11%. If you’re a Smashword affiliate that means you get 25% of the booty when one of your visitors buys a Thea read from a link on your site.

I just set the affiliate setting to 40% this morning, so come February, those links will earn affiliates 40% instead of 25%.

(For info on the affiliates program at Smashwords, click the link.)

How do you get this 25%? Easy. Just sign up for the affiliate program at SW then provide an affiliate link on your blog or website to my Smashwords page or to individual Thea reads over there.

Subscribe to my newsletter Thea Reads for goodies, freebies, and news, but never spam. Never.

Buy me from other retailers:

Itunes
BN
Kobo
Sony
Smashwords



Smashwords is Now Accepting Epub (the-digital-reader.com)
Smashwords Sets New Record in 2012 With $15 Million in Revenue, 190 Thousands Titles in Their Catalog (the-digital-reader.com)


Filed under: Uncategorized

Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

Been a while. I know. I know.

I’ve been off my schedule for months now. (RIP big brother) I did promise to attempt to become more regular on my blog, so since it’s January, here tis. My first of the year installment.

TADA!

I write to keep my sanity at times, and at times….well, to lose it. You know how it is. So to ease in to the new year of blogging, I thought I’d offer other writers a lil something to help spread their words.

I’ll post a short sample of my new WIP, and you can post a short sample of yours in the comments with a link to your own blog so we can visit, comment, or see more writing.

How’s that?

Short and sweet now, cause they won’t fit in the comments otherwise. wink.

I’m writing a new novella: Sons of Alkaia. It’s an installment in the Water Witch series and picks up after Theron’s Taless, but before Water Witch. I’m having fun with it.

Remember: this is first raw vulnerable draft, my pretties.

Sons of Alkaia

The wolves smelled the milk and womb blood on her–and they came. Alkaia heard them snuffling at the perimeter of the darkness where the firelight couldn’t reach. It had taken her far too long to tinder that pitiful flame that separated her from the night and she’d protected it like she’d protected nothing in her life before.

Except for the man, she reminded herself, and then quickly threw ash on the light of that memory. Truth was, she was here now. Exiled from her people and her land. Alone in the night with a paltry flame. No. Not alone. The babe mewled from the spot where she’d left it, close enough to the fire that the predators wouldn’t dare make for it, and far enough away that the sparks wouldn’t land and catch his swaddling fur afire.

She supposed the wolves heard its piteous cry as well. More reason to come stalking a warrior in the night when they thought her vulnerable. Alkaia considered leaving the squalling thing where it lay, taking a stick with a good burning end off into the darkness and making camp elsewhere. Leave the wretched child to the wolves. But the bare truth of it was there were too many beasts in the pine forest to be sated by a newborn male. They’d come for her afterwards, their appetites piqued by the flavor of tender meat and newborn milk.

Subscribe to my newsletter Thea Reads for goodies, freebies, and news, but never spam. Never.

Buy me from other retailers:

Itunes
BN
Kobo
Sony
Smashwords

Related articles

New Blogging Schedule (paulaacton.wordpress.com)
WIP it good (diannegray.wordpress.com)
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Filed under: Thea bits

How Many Licks, um Books, Does It Take to Get to the Top of the Best-Seller List?

Reblogged from Kristen Lamb's Blog:

Image courtesy of The Dork Side

Most of us, especially when we’re new, want our first short story to be a major contest winner or our first novel to be a runaway success. That’s natural. Of course, this is not reality for us mere mortals.

Just like most of us never picked up a violin and magically busted out a flawless rendition of 

Read more… 719 more words

I just love love love this blog of Kristen Lamb's. If you're interested in ebooks and marketing as well as branding, a bit of really tongue-in-cheek humor, you gotta go look up this Texaschick.

A Rosy gift on an Apocolyptic day

I’m excited to be guesting Suzanne Tyrpak today. I read two of her historical novels on my Kindle and just devoured them. I already have a copy of Rosy waiting for me over the holidays. Squeee! Please enjoy this post from a truly gifted writer and consider grabbing Rosy while it’s FREE today. Maybe even gift it to someone while it’s FREE Dec 22 and 23rd.

Writing Rosy—a Fifteen Year Journey

Rosy: A Novel began as an assignment for a writing class. A short story poured out of me, but the words refused to stop flowing and the story demanded to be developed into a novel. The first draft took a few months to write, and I called it finished, but that proved to be only the beginning.

Wanting to hone my writing skills, I signed up for the Maui Writers Retreat and Conference—eager to study with the likes of New York Times bestselling authors including Elizabeth George, one of my favorites, and legends including Terry Brooks and John Saul.

Credit card in hand—along with my word-processer and the paper manuscript of Rosy tucked into my suitcase, I headed to Hawaii. (Poor me.) The six day retreat proved to me more rewarding than I’d imagined. Days were spent in a small class where we went over our manuscripts with our assigned teachers. The intense classroom sessions were interspersed with lectures and interactive critiques by leading writers—many of them (like Terry Brooks and John Saul) offering their expert advice for nothing. In the evenings, after meeting fellow writers at the bar, more events were offered. One night I attended an event called The Dread Overhead. The first page of my novel appeared on a screen and received editing in front of a room of writers—not a pretty sight. I remember Bob Mayer advising me to dump my main character. After being ripped to shreds, I gathered my composure and spent the night rewriting. In fact, I spent every night rewriting.

Upon returning home, I rewrote Rosy, cutting many pages of extraneous information that didn’t progress the story. I added conflict, developed the characters, made the prose more active and compelling.

That summer in Maui, I secured my first agent. She shopped the book around, but never got a deal.

I put Rosy aside. Wrote another novel called Sisters of the Nile (award-winning, but unpublished).

The next summer, I went back to Maui. Studied with Terry Brooks, working on a new idea called Agathon’s Daughter.

Two years later, I rewrote Rosy.

I put the book aside again.

Decided it would never see the light of day.

I went back to Maui. Studied with Terry again. Went again and studied with Dorothy Allison. Went yet again and studied with Karen Joy Fowler

Took a trip to Rome with Terry Brooks, John Saul, Dorothy Allison, and Elizabeth Engstrom Elizabeth Engstrom.

I wrote Vestal Virgin—Suspense in Ancient Rome.

I went through a divorce. Felt depressed.

Went back to Maui and studied with Tess Gerritsen. Tess encouraged me when I felt like giving up. She helped me get another agent.

Nothing happened.

I almost quit writing.

Wrote only short stories and bad poetry.

Lost myself in reading.

For several years.

Then two summers ago, my friend Blake Crouch convinced me to publish a (short) short story collection on kindle, Dating My Vibrator (and other true fiction).

To my amazement, I sold thousands of copies. That Christmas I published Vestal Virgin and the novel took off. Ghost Plane and Hetaera–Suspense in Ancient Athens followed. Each book had success, so last summer I decided to rewrite Rosy yet again!

I’m extremely proud of the resulting book. In fact, I think it’s my best. Because I’ve written the book through so many changes in my life, it contains many levels. I’m especially happy with the character development of Sarah (aka Rosy) and Robin, but I love all the offbeat characters.

Part love story, part thriller, the book is dark coming-of-age set in New York City in the late 1970s. Each chapter is named for a song, and the chapter headings are linked to an MP3 download of each song. I call the Table of Contents Rosy’s Playlist, and I think the music adds yet another dimension.

Rosy: A Novel will be FREE on Amazon December 21-23, just in time for Christmas (and the end of the world, according to the Mayans). Please pick up a copy!

Rosy: A Novel

Dreams can become nightmares. Small town girl, Sarah, hopes to find love and fame in New York City, but following her dreams leads to a downward slide into the insanity of the late 1970s: nightclubs, sex, drugs, and violence ὰ la Magic Mike.

Desperate to dig herself out of debt, Sarah becomes pole dancer, Rosy Dreams. But the more money she makes, the darker her nightmare becomes as she sinks into a world where no one can be trusted—especially the men who claim to adore her.

As Sarah slips deeper into the underworld, she questions not only her dreams, but her sanity. She battles demons—imagined and real—fighting to survive the city’s brutality, fighting for her dreams, and ultimately fighting for her life.

Note: Chapter Headings are linked to Amazon MP3 of song

Connect with Suzanne on Facebook and on Twitter @SuzanneTyrpak

Filed under: Thea bits

Stocking Stuffers for your ereader

Well, I’m planning to pick my blogging habit back up in the new year, but alas, not till the new year. I do promise to spread my wings in 2013 and try new things on the blog. I’m welcome to suggestions as always.

In the meantime, I’m merrily adding stocking stuffers to my online sales outlet at GumRoad. Do go take a peek and see if you’d like to purchase a few cheapie reads to stuff on those lovely ereaders you’re gifting  loved ones this Christmas.

I also have a nice little erotic freebie over at Kobo. It’s literotica, not that 50 Shades of Grey stuff, mind you; it’ light, very light.

I wish you all the best in 2013 and the safest and merriest of the season for the remainder of 2012. (Assuming we make it through the Apocalypse tomorrow. Got my katana for the zombies just in case. grin. )

Filed under: Thea bits