Lizzy Ford's Blog, page 60
December 7, 2011
Book feature and giveaway: "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Michelle Muto
Isn't this cover fantastic?! Welcome, Michelle, to Lizzyland! Michelle is the author of two young adult fantasy novels, Don't Fear the Reaper and The Book of Lost Souls. Today, we're featuring Don't Fear the Reaper, a dark YA fantasy about a girl who takes her life when her twin dies. She finds death isn't any easier than living, and there's a whole lot more at stake: eternity. Check out the first chapter for free by clicking here.
"Don't Fear the Reaper" is available from Amazon-US, Amazon-UK, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and Smashie.
As always, to enter the giveaway: leave a comment on this post; OR share with your networks via the buttons following this post; OR RT my tweet; OR like, share, or comment on the FB post; OR +1, share or comment on the Google+ post!
Grief-stricken by the murder of her twin, Keely Morrison is convinced suicide is her ticket to eternal peace and a chance to reunite with her sister. When Keely succeeds in taking her own life, she discovers death isn't at all what she expected. Instead, she's trapped in a netherworld on Earth and her only hope for reconnecting with her sister and navigating the afterlife is a bounty-hunting reaper and a sardonic, possibly unscrupulous, demon. But when the demon offers Keely her greatest temptation—revenge on her sister's murderer—she must uncover his motives and determine who she can trust. Because, as Keely soon learns, both reaper and demon are keeping secrets and she fears the worst is true—that her every decision will change how, and with whom, she spends eternity.
About Michelle: Michelle has always loved storytelling. When she was a child, her favorite
stories were of monsters and things that lurked in the dark. Telling stories often frightened her classmates and got her into a lot of trouble with her teachers. They had no sense of humor.
As an adult, Michelle traded her love of writing for the corporate life where she was an IT professional. Today, she's doing what she loves best – writing and storytelling.
Michelle grew up in Chicago, but currently lives in NE Georgia with her husband and their two dogs. She loves scary books, funny movies, sports cars, chocolate, dogs, and changes of season.
Michelle can be reached via her blog, Facebook, and Twitter.
December 6, 2011
Tips for Starting a Website
When people find out that you're a "computer guy," they ask you a lot of questions. I think "Which laptop should I buy?" is the current leader. One of the other popular questions is "I want to start a website, what do I do?". You're on your own for the laptop question, but I'll give my thoughts on the website question here. If you already have website, this article may not for you, but feel free to forward to a friend or family member who is thinking about starting one.
The first choice you likely face: should you use a free blogging site (like blogger) or buy your own domain? There are many good reasons why you should buy your own domain, and only one real negative one, which is: you're going to spend around $80 a year for your domain name and hosting. If that price is acceptable to you, go for it.
A gentle warning: don't make the mistake of thinking that you'll start off with a free blog and transition later to your own domain. While you can copy and paste your articles to your new site and tell your fans where you're moving, any authority and credibility you've built with Google stays with the original blog and is not conveyed to your new website. You do NOT want to split the authority and credibility you've established with Google. One website on page one of Google search results gets far more traffic then two separate websites on page 2 or 3.
Ok, I've broken down the main steps in creating your website.
Step 1: Choose and buy your domain name (.com)
Go to godaddy.com and start plugging in names you like until you find one that's available. Me personally, I buy the .com I want, pay a couple of extra bucks for a private registration (to cut down on spam) and that's it. Godaddy will try to up sell you on EVERYTHING, but don't fall for it. The links in this article are affiliate links. I get a few cents if you buy extra services from Godaddy, and I'm still telling you just to grab your .com and make it private.
The first thing they will try to do is convince you that you need the other extensions. "Grab the .net & .org before your competitors do!" . "You want your site to be visible on on peoples phones right?? Make sure you buy the .mobi!". I never buy them, and I tell my friends not to waste their money either.
The next round of upsell is the most devious of all. "You want your site to be visible in search engines? You need our search engine power pack!!" & "You want email right? add on this option". Don't fall for it. The stuff they're offering is free elsewhere. Trust me. The private registration is all I ever pay for. People who consult with me first about their websites end up with a $18-$20 bill from Godaddy a year. Those who talk to me me about their Godaddy experience after they've paid have usually paid over $200 for things that Godaddy makes them believe are necessities.
Why even use them at all then? Because they're cheap, and most importantly, stable. If you buy your .com from ebay or some site you've never heard of, there's a chance that they go out of business or one of 1000 other malicious things happen to your site. You're then fighting for control of your own website. Sound far-fetched? I've seen it with my own eyes from a cheap domain name registration/web hosting package on ebay. Don't do it. Give Godaddy their $18-$20 a year and move on to step 2.
Step 2: Web Hosting
The last round of Godaddy up-selling is website hosting. They offer the lure of your website already being there, you might as well host it there. Where to begin with this one….
I'll start off by saying their web hosting is bare bones. Things that a lot of other web-host's throw in for free (like email) they don't, because they try to charge you for it. If that alone doesn't seem like a deal breaker, check this story out.
When we first started this site, we bought the domain from Godaddy and a hosting package as well. There were a lot of features that good hosts have that Godaddy either didn't or wanted to charge extra for but nothing that forced us to switch. Our first big day came on January 25th, 2011 when "Damain's Oracle" hit the front page of getfreeebooks. Our site had 271 visits that day and we were thrilled!! Our baseline after that was around 100 visits a day, but we were just waiting until "Damian's Assassin" hit getfreeebooks for our next big spike. Our website started to run a lot slower than it should of (Google even flagged our site as flow saying it took around 7 seconds to load) and our site seemed to go down a lot. I contacted Godaddy support and they assured me that they were working on it. I knew I should have switched hosts, but it was already paid for and I didn't want to deal with the hassle.
The day we had been waiting for came March 14th. "Damian's Assassin" hit the front page of getfreeebooks and hundreds of people clicked on the cover to download it. What a lot of them found was a website that tried to load for a long time and then failed. We felt like our big break had arrived, and we were wasting it. A few hundred visitors was a ton to us, but nothing close to the amount of traffic it takes to crash a server. I instantly called Godaddy tech support and basically got a yawn in reply. They were working on it, maybe in a week or so. Of course in well under a week, "Damian's Assassin" would be off the front page of getfreeebooks and our opportunity wasted.
A non-technical podcast that I listened to a few months early had spent half of one episode raving about hostgator and how good their technical support and customer service was. I knew they were one of the biggest and most popular. Based on the podcast's recommendation and our site (which was down for a day at that point) I got an account from hostgator that afternoon. When I got home from work that evening, our website was still a joke, loading up in about 15 seconds, if it even loaded up. I backed up all of the files for our site and tried to work up the nerve to transfer them to another server. I moved the files, modified some code, and after about a grueling hour I went to load up our site and got an error message. I had been a hostgator customer for only a few hours and it was already time to put their famous customer service to the test.
I went to their website site and there were 3 options: email, chat and 24 hour phone, all of which were 100% free. I didn't feel like talking to anyone, so I picked chat. Within seconds, a rep joined the chat with me. We spent several minutes trying to figure it out, and nothing worked. What we found was that the hosting wasn't the problem – I'd done something wrong with my WordPress migration. What was awesome, though, was how much the customer service rep knew. A LOT of companies wouldn't have helped me, because their hosting wasn't the problem. After ten minutes or so, he said he was going to go grab his WordPress expert. A minute later he came back and within two minutes he said ok, the problem is fixed and explained to me what the problem was. I tested our site and it worked great. That was by far the best tech support experience I've ever had in my life, and hostgator made me a fan for life. I haven't used tech support one time since, but I now understand the hype from the commercials.
In addition to the tech support, they are also cheap. Their basic plan, which is all you need, starts at $4 a month, and they offer everything you could imagine, all for free. Email, easy WordPress setup, unlimited bandwidth and storage space, all for $4 a month. Switching to them was the best move I've made.
These horror stories weren't to scare you away from getting a webpage. These are just things I wish I would have known before I started. Last week my buddy Lee at work told me he wanted to make a webpage. I told him what I've told you here. When I walked in the next morning he couldn't wait to call me over to his desk. He showed me the site he had made the night before. He bought his .com from Godaddy, got his hosting at hostgator and setup WordPress at hostgator (which takes literally about five minutes). He even had two articles on there and had a nice banner and background. His total cost for a year's domain registration at Godaddy and a year of hosting at hostgator was about $80. It's not hard and it's really quick, as long as you make the right decision from the beginning. He will most likely never have a problem on his site like I had.
Another note of caution: if you're considering trying one of the free web-hosting services, be very, very careful. One thing that Google looks at is the IP address that your site is hosted at, and if you're hosted in what Google considers a "bad neighborhood," then your rankings and web traffic will suffer severely. If your website is hosted on the same server as adult content, hate sites or other things that Google frowns upon, then you will find yourself almost invisible on Google. I haven't experienced this problem yet, but there have been people who've poured a ton of time and resources doing SEO work on a site and were unable to figure out why they weren't seeing an improvement in their rankings. One day they thought to do a scan of other sites on that IP and saw that their web host had been kind enough to host them with several undesirable sites. After moving to a separate server and an "adjustment" period, their rankings rose to the appropriate level.
I really hesitate to spend money on anything related to our internet presence but the $80 or so you'll end up paying your your .com and a reliable host is money well spent.
I'll cover step 3, why you should strongly consider WordPress in a separate article.
One last thing, if you're using something else for your website and you're happy with it, STICK WITH IT!!! This article is mainly for those starting out and not an encouragement to leave something you're happy with to go somewhere else.
December 5, 2011
Book feature and freebies: "The Holiday Collection" & "Santa's Ninja Elf"
Click here to download the PDF version of "Santa's Ninja Elf." By the title, you can probably guess I wrote it. I'm not capable of writing anything normal. Ha! This short story appears in the holiday anthology, "Christmas Lites," by Creative Reviews, a collective of writers and reviewers who are donating all proceeds to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Now, on to our second freebie: "The Holiday Collection" by the Indie Eclective. It's also FREE at Smashwords and features my short story, "Snow Whisperer." Many of the authors who drop by as guests are also featured, including: Shea MacLeod, Julia Crane, Heather Marie Adkins, Alan Nayes, Jack Wallen, M. Edward McNally, Talia Jager, and PJ Jones. This collection has something for everyone!
Click here to download for free from Smashwords!
The Holiday Collection
"The Holiday Collection" is the second anthology of short stories from the Indie Eclective: 
A group of nine authors crossing genres. These holiday-themed stories range from serious to humorous, and all express the sentiments of the season in their own "Eclective" way.
In many traditions, the cold of winter is perfect for curling up and spending time with family. We cordially invite you to spend some time with ours. (Curling up is optional.)
Alan Nayes—St. Claws
Ever made a wish? Ever wished you hadn't wished what you wished? Matt Haskel has.
Lizzy Ford—Snow Whisperers
Winter brings the holidays…and snowmen, the quick-witted snow creatures that drive Sandy crazy every year. Until one is turned into a human—and tries to win her over.
Julia Crane—Saving Grace
Grace is an Empath with a problem—she's chosen to work for the largest department store in New York City during the holiday season. Dealing with other people's issues has destroyed her sense of the Christmas spirit, until a chance encounter with a special boy changes her mind.
M. Edward McNally—O Cactus Tree, O Cactus Tree
"How beautiful thy…green arms full of prickly spikes."
P.J. Jones—Fred's Best Christmas
Fred's determined not to let mental illness stand in the way of his 'best Christmas'. When painful childhood memories threaten to ruin his day, will his friends be able to help him overcome his fears?
Talia Jager—Fresh Snow
Orphaned and alone, Chloe is hit by a car on Christmas Eve. What she doesn't know, is the woman who did it needs love as much as Chloe. Together, they will remember the true meaning of family and Christmas.
Shéa MacLeod—Let's Ride
Zala Lei's bid to stop a dangerous criminal leads her to Omicron 5 and a very special box of surprises. She can only hope that what she finds in the box is enough to stop evil in its Santa posing tracks.
Jack Wallen—A Very Shero Christmas
Dickens gets a smack upside the face with a size-12 Blahnik in A Very Shero Christmas.
Heather Marie Adkins—The Darkest Night
Before there was Christmas, there was Yule—the Winter Solstice. For modern-day witch Mena McGinty, it may still be the season of rebirth, or at least second chances.
December 4, 2011
Guest Post by Linda Welch: "Never Too Late"
Welcome Linda Welch to Lizzyland! Linda is the author of the Whisperings paranormal mystery series and another of the Indie Chicks I've been featuring every week! Linda's post, "Never Too Late," also appears in the Indie Chick Anthology, which is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. All her book pictures are clickable, so feel free to check out her books!
Linda can be reached at her website, Facebook, or Twitter!
Never Too Late (Linda Welch)
I'm going to tell you something I don't think you know.
I haven't been a "chick" for many a year. I'm a couple of months shy of 61. I have been married to the same man for 39 years. We have two sons and four grandchildren. And you thought I was a tall, slim young thing, didn't you. I am what is called a late bloomer and I'm writing this for other old biddies who had a dream and let it pass them by, or think they are too busy, or it's too late to fulfill their dream. I don't mean just writing, but any dreamed-of achievement you hide in your heart.
I was born in a country cottage in England. My father was a restless man, so we often
moved and never had much money. I remember days when only Dad had meat on his
plate at dinner, but we never went hungry. We had vegetables and fruit from the
garden, eggs from the chickens. Times were hard, but we children never knew that. We were loved. When Mum and Dad met during World War II, Mum was a privately educated "well-bred" lady. I doubt I will ever meet anyone as smart as my mother. At 88 years, she is still as sharp as a tack. Dad was a countryman to the bone. He had many artistic talents he didn't pursue until later in life. When he did, he excelled at them. I like to think some of their intelligence and talent rubbed off on me.
So much has changed, in my life, in the world. I hold memories of my childhood close.
I won't let them fade. One day, I will write about them.
I had a good basic education, first at a village school, then an all-girls school, but I left at 15
(at that time the legal age in England) and worked first as a telephone operator before I went into office occupations. I did not see authorship in my future.
But I have always daydreamed. Often, I recreated the same daydream multiple times, constantly elaborating. I did not realize I wrote books in my head.
I began writing words on paper in my mid-forties, but it was a hobby. Somewhere
along the way, I thought, Could I publish this? and then I'd like to publish. But I talked myself out of it. Authors were young men and women who decided they wanted to write at a young age and worked to improve their skill their entire life. They went to college and university, they had degrees in writing, creative writing or journalism. I was inexperienced; I didn't have their dedication or education. Anyway, I had a husband to support, children to raise and part-time jobs to supplement the family income. I didn't have time to write and send queries, synopsis or sample chapters to agents.
In 2008 I discovered the Lulu publishing platform and took the plunge. I published the space opera Mindbender and science fiction Galen's Gate. I subsequently unpublished them, with every intention of revising and republishing. Some copies are still floating around out there somewhere. However, Tiff Banks, who had been swimming around
in this murky thing I call a brain for several years, chose to come out and play. She took over my life. She became my second skin.
When I think back to why I did not publish until in my fifties, I realize it had nothing to do with inexperience or lack of education. I was not ready. I had to marry a dashing young American airman, leave my homeland, raise two sons, spoil four grandchildren, live and work with Americans and become entrenched in the way of life. I was not ready to write Along Came a Demon until I came to the mountains of Utah, stood looking over my mountain valley, and knew, "this is it. This is where Tiff lives. She knows the bitter cold and snow of winter, the harsh heat of summer. She knows her city and the people inside-out. This is Tiff's world, and now, I know who she is."
Then the hard work began. My education was strictly "King's English." I wrote formal letters, contracts and legal documents at work. I had to take the starch out of my writing. Research didn't help. It seemed that each time I read an article or blog about word usage, in particular overuse and what to avoid, the next book I read was a best-selling novel by a best-selling author who broke those rules. And having decided to barge into my life, Tiff was very positive about how she talks. She's a born and bred American, a slightly snarky, slang-wielding gal who speaks to the reader on a personal level, individual to individual. I had to use a style that practically screamed "you can't do that!" in my ear every other sentence.
I published the first Whisperings novel for another reason: Nobody seemed to believe in my writing. Not friends, relatives, friendly acquaintances. I think they supposed a 58-year-old with no education in the literary field, who suddenly came out of the woodwork and decided to publish, must be a "vanity publisher" who wanted to force poorly-written books on readers. When I said I wrote fiction, I got blank looks, followed by, "that's nice. Now, as I was saying. . ." Nobody wanted to read my work, not even my sweet husband. But he joyed urban fantasy and I thought he'd like Tiff Banks. So in a way, I also published for him.
I published Along Came a Demon in November 2008. It was supposed to be a stand-alone novella, but readers wanted more and Tiff obliged. Along Came a Demon became book one of the Whisperings series of paranormal mysteries. I published the sequel, The Demon Hunters, in November 2009. In 2010 I added material to Along Came a Demon to make it a full-length book and at the same time made small changes to The Demon Hunters to
reflect those in Along Came a Demon. I published book three, Dead Demon Walking, in March 2011. Being a wordsmith, I should be able to express my joy each time a reader tells me they love my books, but it truly is beyond my powers of description. Now, when someone asks me what I do for a living, instead of telling them I am a part-time administrative assistant and adding (hesitantly) "I also write fiction," I say I am an author. When I fill out a form that asks for my occupation, I proudly write "author" in the little box.
Mary Wesley published Jumping the Queue at age 70 and went on to write ten best sellers until she died twenty years later. Harriett Doerr was 74 when she published The Stones of Ibarra. Laura Ingalls Wilder published her Little House on the Prairie series when she was in her 50s.
Mary Lawson was 55 when Crow Lake was published.
Flora Thompson is famous for her semi-autobiography Lark Rise to Candleford, published when she was 63.
Age is irrelevant. You are never too old. For anything.
This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon
and Barnes & Noble. To read all of the stories, buy your copy today.
Also included are sneak peeks into 25 novels! Linda's novel, Along Came a Demon, book one of the Whisperings paranormal mystery series, is one of the novels featured.
All proceeds go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
About Linda: Linda Welch was born in Hampshire, England and lived in New Mexico, Idaho and California before settling in the Wasatch Mountains of northern Utah, where she lives with her husband, Scottish terrier, cat and a whole lot of wildlife. She is the author of the Whisperings series of paranormal mysteries: Along Came a Demon, The Demon Hunters, and Dead Demon Walking. Coming next: Demon Demon Burning Bright.
December 2, 2011
New Releases: Damian's Immortal, Holiday Bundles
Woohoo! Damian's Immortal is out!
***Update: Damian's Immortal is now available on Barnes and Noble, too! Link below!***
It's available on Amazon and Smashie right now, and should be available on Barnes and Noble today/tomorrow. It'll hit iTunes in about two weeks. Links below:
War of Gods trilogy (ebook and paperback)
*** Update: the War of Gods trilogy is now available on Barnes and Noble, and the paperback is available from Createspace, too! Link below!***
This bundle consists of all three books and is $4.99 for the ebook version and $14.99 for
the paperback version. The ebook version is available on Amazon and will be up on BN today/tomorrow for the Nook, and the paperback version should be up and ready on Monday on Amazon.
Rhyn Trilogy
The Rhyn Trilogy bundle consists of the first two books (Katie's Hellion and Katie's Hope) and the short story, "Rhyn Trilogy: Origins" for $2.99.
Enjoy, and thank you for your support! 
December 1, 2011
Winners of this week's giveaways: "Coexist" by Julia Crane & "The Willing" by C. S. Splitter
I pulled the winners of this week's giveaways!
Julia Crane's "Coexist" (Keegan Chronicles)
Carolyn Cleverley (who commented on FB)
C. S. Splitter's "The Willing" (Crayder Chronicles)
Lisa Vella (who commented on FB)
Melina (who commented on my site)
Crystal Young (who 'liked' the post!)
Fiverr Review: Social Bookmarking Services
This will actually be two reviews for the price of one: one fiverr service I was less-than-impressed with and one service from someone I saw advertising in a forum that was actually a bit cheaper ($4) and a lot better. Both services were offering social bookmarking services, as in, they would feed our site link to bookmarking sites. I wanted to see if this type of service would increase traffic to our site or improve our standing with Google or both.
I've been a computer guy my whole life but I still can't describe how much I've learned in 2011. I started focusing on SEO at the start of the year and have recently started to learn more about social media, social bookmarking and internet marketing in general. Writing this review makes me laugh realizing how much more I know now about social bookmarking then I did when I purchased this gig back in September.
Similar to the directory submission gig I purchased in September, I bought this service more to try to learn from the results then to gain a benefit for the website. I'm constantly performing little SEO experiments and this one was no different. The service was provided by alim87 and was for:
I will submit your website MANUALLY to Stumbleupon, Folkd, Delicious, Digg, Mixx, Linkagogo, Excite Bookmarks, Mylinkvault, Secondbrain, Twitter, a for $5
The MANUALLY part appealed to me as I didn't have a good understanding of social bookmarking and am beyond paranoid about doing anything to anger Google. When I go to SEO forums I read tactics that would make me faint at the thought of trying them but those people have lots of sites, and if one gets banned, they will just make two more. We only have one site and we obviously can't afford to do anything stupid with it, so I'm very careful with all these experiments I try.
A few days later I got a completed notification with these results as the report:
1. http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/a...
2. http://www.folkd.com/user/alim87
3. http://www.delicious.com/ndtara02
4. http://digg.com/sultanmd79
5. http://www.mylinkvault.com/alim87/pag...
6. http://twitter.com/#!/MDSULTAN3
7. http://www.myspace.com/571636139
8. http://blinklist.com/users/raisulislam02
9. http://www.allmyfaves.com/alim8773/
10. http://bookmarks.excite.co.uk/user/al...
11. http://www.oneview.com/user/samad5124/
12. http://www.delicious.com/nahidmia15
13. http://www.delicious.com/miabelayet58
14. http://www.delicious.com/sakilmd26
15. http://www.delicious.com/ranamd07
16. http://www.delicious.com/hasanmd07
17. http://www.delicious.com/mohonmd35
The seller did what he said he would do, it just wasn't too terribly much. I still left him a positive review beacuse he delivered what he said he would and it was only $5.
After I learned more about social bookmarking, I learned that it was pretty safe as long as you didn't do anything too stupid (like blast hundreds of bookmarks to a brand new site) so I decided to try a second social bookmarking gig. I saw a provider who had good feedback and was offering his "50 social bookmarking submissions" service for $4. I decided to give it a whirl and was very pleased with the results. He ended up doing 53 submissions instead of 50 and emailed me an excel report complete with a URL for each submission so I could verify the submission. By far the best report I've received from the few providers I tried.
For those of you wanting to try this at home, here are the 53 sites he submitted our site to:
http://www.google.com/bookmarks/
http://www.oknotizie.virgilio.it
http://www.a1-webmarks.com/login.html
http://www.mylinkvault.com/users/
http://www.medical-articles.net/
Not bad for $4!
If I was to grade the specific providers, I would give the fiverr provider a 2/5 and the mystery forum provider a 5/5. The fiverr provider did exactly what he said he would do, and the emphasis was on the manual aspect rather then the total amount of sites he submitted to. However, after seeing the report from the second provider, it was hard not to be impressed.
I'm also going to give two grades for social bookmarking submission services in general. If you have a site with very few links, I would rate this type of service as a 4/5 with a caveat to be careful and choose a small package first (similar to my first example), so as not to double your site's links in one shot. Doing so looks unnatural to Google, and you don't want Google to push you into their Sandbox/penalty box. If you have an established site and are looking to drive traffic to it, I would rate this as a 1/5. Neither service would've brought me one direct visitor, but they did improve my websites internet profile by a small amount.
November 30, 2011
Book feature and free ebook! "Crayder Chronicles" by C.S. Splitter
Welcome to Lizzyland, C. S.! Instantly, there is something to like about C. S. Splitter: the first book in his Crayder Chronicles is free at Smashie, BN, iTunes, and GR! Since that's the case, he's graciously allowed me to give away three copies of the second book in the series. So, go grab the first one, and enter the drawing for the second!
Book 1: The Reluctant is FREE from: Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and Goodreads. It's .99 at Amazon.
Book 2: The Willing is available at: Smashwords, Amazon, and Goodreads.
To enter the drawing for the second book: comment on this post OR share this post with your social media networks via the buttons at the bottom of this post OR RT my tweet OR like, share, or comment on Facebook OR like, share or comment on G+!
Book 1: The Reluctant
Action, adventure, suspense, and thriller, in one story told with a liberal dose of humor.
Tom's problems are not unique. His business is failing and his wife has to work too many hours to make ends meet. He is under some rather large financial pressures and wants more from his marriage and his life.
He finds his respite in the air as a private pilot. Unfortunately for Tom, he is behind on payments for his plane and is forced to take odd jobs from a local crime boss. Tom is no criminal, but the errands he is running are just slightly on the wrong side of the law.
Just as things begin to come under some semblance of control, he meets a woman who just might represent the adventure he seeks. He soon discovers that appearances, and beautiful women, can sometimes be deceiving.
Book Two: The Willing
How far would you go to protect your friends and family? 
Tom Crayder is the All-American guy next door with a business, a wife, a son, a mortgage, and an expensive hobby. He is also a politically incorrect, wisecracking, operative working for a shadowy organization dedicated to administering justice outside of a broken system. Not even his wife knows of his other life when she finds herself unwittingly involved in a drug war.
Strap in with Tom as he navigates his way through the strata of a drug cartel. Lock and load with Lorena, a hard hearted assassin, as she lends her deadly skills to Tom's fight for his family.
Sit back to watch Tom and Lorena figure out how to work together without killing each other. Join the rest of the cast from "The Reluctant (Crayder Chronicles)" as they pitch in to track down the hitmen that threaten their associate.
Some mysteries are solved. Some questions are answered. Some live. Some die.
About Splitter: C.S. Splitter is a businessman, author, and stand-up philosopher living in rural Maryland with his beautiful wife, small dog, and astonishingly large cat. He is an avid shooter and loves being 5000 feet above the ground, upside down, in an open cockpit.
He will never again jump out of a perfectly good airplane and feels the need to color outside of the lines.
Feel free to contact C.S. via his blog, Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads!
November 29, 2011
Social Bookmarking 101
I've got a few posts scheduled to come out over the next few weeks discussing social bookmarking so I thought it would be a good idea to start off with a short post covering the basics.
Social bookmarking sites like Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg & Delicious are designed to let internet surfers "bookmark" pages they like and share them with other users. If you have a blog or a website this is obviously behavior that you want to encourage. I wrote a few weeks ago about using the ShareThis plugin to make it easy for your site's visitors to share your site with social bookmarking sites so I won't talk about that part of the "how to" here.
Advantages of Social Bookmarking
There are a two big advantages to using social bookmarking. The first one is that it can work as intended and bring users to your site. We've never never gotten a huge flood of traffic from any social bookmarking site but what traffic we have gotten is well over 90% new visitors. Bringing new eyes to your site is never a bad thing.
The other big advantage of social bookmarking is that when you submit your article to these sites, you're placing a link on those sites to yours. These aren't mega valuable links (since there are so many of them) but they're not bad links either and they will help with your site's SEO.
Is there a Disadvantage to Social Bookmarking?
Not really but there are a few caveats. The first being that one person sharing your post will probably not bring in a flood of visitors. It's possible, but usually it takes a few people sharing a post to get it to rise up to where other people see it. When we share our articles they usually don't catch on, but when we share author interviews they sometimes do since in addition to us sharing it, the authors are sharing it and encouraging their friends to share it too. That's exactly how social bookmarking was designed to work. Some people try to jump start this process by having multiple accounts on each of the big social bookmarking sites but that brings us to the second caveat, time.
I only set up one account at a few major social bookmarking sites and it was still a pain in the butt. I can't imagine trying to set up multiple accounts on multiple sites. Even with one account per site social bookmarking can still be a time sink and nothing is more valuable to authors then time. Like most of my SEO and social media activities I try to find out where the point of diminishing returns is and stop there. With social bookmarking so far that has been Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg & Delicious. In the video below I show how quick and easy it is to share your new content on these sites.
Reddit picked that time to make me verify my email account but you got the picture as far as the small amount of time it took. Doing these steps will cover you for the major social bookmarking sites but there are literally thousands of smaller social bookmarking sites on the internet besides these. Are they worth time? The answer is probably no unless you can find a way to do several with only a few seconds worth of work.
These smaller sites are almost guaranteed to not bring you traffic but they can still provide links which can help your site's SEO a tiny bit. In my usual style I have scoured the internet and found a site which will let you submit your content to over a dozen random smaller social bookmarking sites for absolutely free. The best part is it's even quicker to do that then it is to do the four I showed in this video. I've got the article written, the video made and I'll be posting it next week.
November 28, 2011
Book feature and giveaway: Coexist & Coexistencia (Las crónicas de Keegan)
Today is a super-special book feature and giveaway! I'm giving away my dear friend Julia Crane's book, Coexist (Keegan's Chronicles #1)
: one in English and one in Spanish. Woohoo!
To enter the drawing: comment on this post; OR share with one of your social media networks via the buttons following this post; OR RT my tweet; OR like, share, or comment on the FB post; OR +1, share, or comment on the Google+ post. If you have a preference on whether you prefer the English or Spanish, let me know with a comment somewhere!
To buy in English: Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes, and Barnes and Noble.
Compra en Espanol: Amazon
y Barnes and Noble.
Sixteen-year-old Keegan is struggling to keep her huge secret from her friends–she's an elf, descended from a long line of elves that live in secrecy alongside humans.
In elfin society, mates are predetermined but not allowed to meet until they are eighteen. Against tradition, Keegan's brother Thaddeus told her Rourk's name because his visions warned him she'd need Rourk's protection, especially since Keegan will play a key role in the coming war between the dark and light elves.
Rourk finds himself drawn to Keegan's side every time she thinks his name. He wants to talk to her but remains in the shadows, silently guarding her every time she mentally beckons him. A twist of fate thrusts the two of them together when Rourk is forced to step up his protection and make his presence known.
An ancient prophecy deeply entwines Keegan's family and the future of their society. Somehow they must find a way to thwart fate and win the battle…without losing Keegan. With war brewing, and dark forces aligning, will Keegan and Rourk ever have the life together that they both desire?
Keegan de Dieciséis años, esta luchando por mantener su gran secreto entre sus 
amigos; Ella es un elfo, descendiente de una larga línea elfica, que vive clandestinamente con los humanos.
En la sociedad elfica las parejas están predeterminadas, pero deben conocerse hasta los dieciocho años. En contra de la tradición, el hermano de Keegan, Tadeo, le dijo el nombre de Rourk, una visión le advirtió que tal vez ella necesitaría la protección de Rourk, especialmente por que Keegan jugaría un papel clave, en la Guerra venidera entre los elfos de la luz y los elfos de la obscuridad.
Rourk se siente atraído hacia Keegan, cada vez que ella piensa en su nombre. El quiere hablar con ella pero
aguarda silencioso en las sombras, cada vez que lo llama. Un giro del destino, los empuja a estar juntos, cuando Rourk se ve obligado a proteger a Keegan y revelar su identidad.
Una Antigua profecía se encuentra entrelazada profundamente con su familia y el futuro de la sociedad. De alguna manera tienen que eludir al destino y ganar la batalla… sin perder a Keegan. Con la Guerra en puerta, y las fuerzas de la obscuridad alineándose, ¿Tendrán Rourk y Keegan, la vida que ellos desean?
About Julia: Julia crane is the author of the "Coexist" and "Conflicted", Book 1 and 2 of the Keegan's Chronicles series.
She has a bachelors degree in criminal justice. Julia has believed in magical creatures since the day her grandmother first told her an Irish tale. Growing up, her mother greatly encouraged reading and using your imagination.
Although she's spent most of her life on the US east coast, she currently lives in Dubai with her husband and three children. She is currently at work on the third book in Keegan's Chronicles.
You can reach Julia via her website, Twitter, or Facebook.
Book Trailer for Coexist
