Lizzy Ford's Blog, page 61

Winners of Talia Jager's "Secret Bloodline"

Winners of Talia Jager's "Secret Bloodline": Jennifer Diem (who 'liked') and Maegan Morin, who commented on the post.  Congrats, and thanks for taking the time to enter the drawing!

Lizzy

Paperbacks: War of Gods, Rhyn Trilogy, Kiera's Moon, etc.

I lowered the prices on my paperbacks on Amazon US to between 5.99 – 6.99.  The easiest way I could think of to support domestic and international readers!

For US customers

Amazon is going to be the cheapest and fastest method of ordering paperbacks!  Links below to the books.  Please note: if the price below is not reflected yet at Amazon, wait about two days.  I just updated the prices.

Damian's Oracle (6.99)

Damian's Assassin (6.99)

Katie's Hellion (6.99):

Katie's Hope (6.99)

Kiera's Moon (6.99)

Maddy's Oasis (5.99)

A Demon's Desire (5.99):

The Warlord's Secret (6.99)

For non-US customers

Send me an email with the books you'd like to order.  Please specify the country, currency, and your PayPal email (if any.)  I'll send you the total before I send an invoice for the price + shipping that can be paid via PayPal's credit card service.  I'll honor the Amazon price and use this website to convert into pounds/Euros/etc.  I will not ask for your credit card number – this will be handled by PayPal!

Book feature and giveaway: "Secret Bloodline" by Talia Jager

Today I'm featuring Secret Bloodline by another of my Indie Eclective friends, Young Adult author, Talia Jager.  She's never been here before, so everyone welcome Talia! This will be a Kindle ebook giveaway …

Secret Bloodline is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and Smashwords.

As always, to enter the giveaway: comment on this post OR share it with your network via one of the socil media buttons OR RT my tweet OR like, share, or comment on the post on FB OR +1, share or comment on Google+.

What sixteen-year-old Kairi doesn't know is that vampires do exist and she's one of them. She was left in foster care when she was very little and grew up away from her world. Then she began to change. Feeling out of place and confused, she ran away from her foster home. A coven takes her under their wings and trains her. When she is told her parents didn't just abandon her, but died protecting her, she sets off on a mission to find their killer.

And then she meets Aiden…a vampire hunter.

About Talia: Talia Jager has been writing as far back as she can remember. As a child, her summer vacations were spent writing stories. Bedtimes were ignored when she hid under the covers with a flashlight, a notebook and a pen. At school, she kept her works-in-progress under her classwork.

She took creative writing and journalism in high school and graduated with a major in English and a minor in French. She later earned her college degree in early childhood education. Writing was pushed to the side when she fell in love and had a family.

Now, with the support of her family, she has several published books and continues to write young adult dramas.

Talia lives in Texas with her husband and five daughters. Her published works include Damaged: Natalie's Story, Teagan's Story: Her Battle With Epilepsy, If I Die Young, and The Ultimate Sacrifice. She hopes to have her next book out by the end of 2011.

Talia can be reached via her blog, Facebook, or Twitter.

Winners of Danielle Blanchard's "Death Wish"

I let this one run a little longer than usual!  The winners of Danielle Blanchard's "Death Wish": Pao Mtz Parente (who left a comment on the post) and Monica Garcia Donato (who 'liked' the post.)  Monica – send me an email!  I have Pao's!  LizzyFord2010@gmail.com.  Congrats winners!

 

Updates: info on paperbacks, War of Gods gift set, Rhyn Trilogy gift set

Hello, Lizzylanders!  I'll post some info about buying paperbacks in the next few days.  I just adjusted my paperback prices on Amazon and am waiting for all of them to lower to either 5.99 or 6.99, depending on the book.  I'll include info for international customers, too!

War of Gods news

One week left 'til "Damian's Immortal!"  Woohoo!  I'm so excited!  The release is still scheduled for 02 December (Smashwords and Amazon) and 03 December (Barnes and Noble).  It'll be available on iTunes around 10 Dec.

I'll be launching a limited edition War of Gods trilogy gift set, consisting of the first three books, prior to the holidays.  It'll be available through Amazon (ebook and paperback) and will include an awesome, special edition cover by Dafeenah! The trilogy gift set will be available until February.

Rhyn Trilogy news

I'll release the first two Rhyn Trilogy books in a gift set in the next couple of days.  It'll be available from Amazon as well until February.  I'll post an update when it's ready!

Fiverr Review – Directory Submission Service

Click to view full size

The first fiverr gig I purchased was a "submit your site to 40 internet directories" offer from seller softtouch66. Since it was the first fiverr gig I purchased it might as well be our site's first fiverr review. Let me first state that I don't know softtouch66 and I'm not saying he provides the best service in this area. He is just who I choose to try for my first fiverr experience back in early September.

I ordered the service and was told that the expected delivery date was in three days. I did indeed get a "your order has been completed" notification three days later but there was an error stating that the attachment had been corrupted. I choose the "reject sellers work" button and asked for a re-upload of the attachment. Within five minutes the seller re-uploaded the report and I immediately accepted the work and left positive feedback. If you want to see what the report looked like I've included a picture of it in this post.

The report has the name of the directory, the Pagerank of the site, whether the submission was only submitted or instantly listed (only five were instantly listed) and the URL for the five that were listed. One important note is that the Pagerank is for the site itself and not for the page which your link will be on. A lot of people will advertise your link on a site with a PR of 5, but then bury your link on a page of the site with a PR of 0 or 1. This isn't a big issue, just something to keep in mind.

I didn't think that this gig would make a huge difference in my search engine but I was curious to see which 40 sites the provider would submit my site to. I know that DMOZ and Yahoo are the two biggest directories but I thought that maybe I would discover one or two other good ones. The 40 the seller used are listed below with the sites Pagerank.

40 sites from this service








Sr
Directory

Name
PR


1
flashthief.com
3


2
httprevealer.com
3


3
filmington.com
4


4
help-on.net
4


5
jam2007.com
2


6
oxenoxen.com
3


7
williamsburgwarriors.org
4


8
pbhelp.com
3


9
onemission.com
5


10
freewebsitedirectory.com
3


11
geeez.com
3


12
ladder97.com
2


13
nju-jp.com
4


14
rankbl.com
2


15
yourjoker.com
4


16
piyy.com
3


17
freeprwebdirectory.com
6


18
busybits.com
5


19
seagrance.net
4


20
kiwidir.com
5


21
somuch.com
5


22
skoobe.biz
5


23
marketingwebdirectory.com
3


24
submissionwebdirectory.com
4


25
sitepromotiondirectory.com
4


26
hydeparkbooks.com
4


27
acsprf-ar.org
4


28
africancouncilcomed.org
4


29
auhana.com
4


30
cultuurtechnologie.net
5


31
imadec.com
4


32
kacsca.com
4


33
permacharge.com
4


34
rdarestructuring.com
4


35
secondwavesystems.com
4


36
pxdaj.com
4


37
nuoret.org
4


38
linkaddurl.com
4


39
9sites.net
4


40
webnetclick.com
3

I just checked the five submissions that were listed and four of the five URLs still have a link to my site. For the other 35 you're basically taking the sellers word that they submitted your site to them. You could always check back in a few weeks but I never did. A bit on the lazy side, but hey, that's why I'm using fiverr in the first place I just check a few of the 35 and didn't see our site there. That doesn't mean that he didn't submit them or that they're not there, I just didn't see them.

Fiverr Review Results

This particular service isn't necessary but it's not a bad idea or a waste of $5. The effect of having a site listed in minor directories is debatable but SEO firms still do it so it's definitely not a bad idea. With these links you could do it yourself, but it wouldn't be quick or fun. I would rate the general "directory submission" concept as a 4/5 but this particular seller as a 3/5. The 3/5 may be totally unfair but it's hard to give any higher with 35/40 on the report having no URL and a quick glance at a few of them not showing up when I search. I'm also not going to give any lower grade because the report was well laid out and I don't doubt that he submitted my URL to all 40 sites.

I would probably try a different seller next time just to compare results but that's a reflection of my curiosity rather than his results. And remember, that's the main joy of Fiverr, it's only five bucks!!! I hope you enjoyed my first Fiverr review. I've got several more planned and if people like them I'll keep reviewing them.

Damian's Immortal excerpt 2 – 22 November

Just thought I'd torture … er, I mean, SHARE another excerpt.    Again, the book is with my editor, so I posted the raw version.  Ignore glaring grammar/typos – Christine is beating this thing into shape.  Ha!

Excerpt from "Damian's Immortal:"

"You hit me," Jule managed at last. He struggled to sit up, and she helped him.

"I thought you were the other guy," Yully said, distraught.

"Where is he?"

She pointed.  Jule widened his eyes then squinted in an attempt to focus.  The swordsman who attacked them was flailing again, pinned to the wall of the garage by her car.  Frantic, Yully pulled Jule to his feet and tried to balance him.

"I'm good," he said. "I can still fight."

"You're a bloody mess!" she snapped.  She strained under the weight of his body, and they staggered to her car.

"And whose fault is that?" he challenged.

"I could've left you!"

"Oh, and not run me over?  I think I like that choice better."

She all but fell with him into the car.  The man with the sword was beating it against the hood of her car, as if trying to chop himself free.  Yully shoved Jule fully into the passenger seat of her car and ran to the driver's side, throwing herself into her seat.  Backing the car up, she watched the man with the sword drop to his knees and slowly stand.

She sped away, and they took off up the driveway with the swordsman chasing.  The small car fishtailed around a curve, but she kept up the pace until she no longer saw the man in her rearview mirror.

"What was that thing?" she asked, her whole body trembling.

"Immortal bad guy," Jule said. "Never thought I'd say this, but I think I need a doctor."

"He'll follow us, won't he?"

"Probably."

"Why aren't you more concerned?" she demanded.

"Sweetheart, I'm sitting in your car bleeding to death.  I think I'm doing pretty damn good, considering I would've been able to kill him if you hadn't shot and run me over," he replied in irritation.

Yully glanced at him.  He looked bad.  His eyes were glazed and the car seat bloody.  She squeezed the steering wheel then reached into her coat pocket for her cell phone.  The moment she unlocked the screen to call her father, Jule's gaze sharpened.  He snatched the phone and rolled down the window, tossing the cell.

"That's all I need is your father finishing me off," he muttered.

She almost objected but realized it was futile.  Neither of them believed her father would let him live.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Take us somewhere safe, where your father won't know where to find you."

She chewed on her lip, thinking hard.  Her father kept her on a tight leash; was there anywhere he wouldn't find her?

"Hello?" Jule prompted. "Somewhere safe?  A friend's house?  Preferably if the friend

is a doctor?"

"I don't have any friends," she said.

"I find that hard to believe."

"Stop mocking me.  I'm so fed up with people making fun of me because I'm different," she said, frowning.

"That's what you thought I meant?" he chuckled then coughed, a painful hack.  "You're beautiful and courageous.  I'd have thought you had tons of friends."

Yully shot him a look, suspecting he was messing with her. He appeared to be serious.  Her anger turned to embarrassment.

"You're getting weaker," she said, as aware of his condition as she was the nearness of his warm body.  The bond between them was weakening with him.

"Yeah."

"I think I know a place," she murmured.

"Don't take me to your father," he said again.

"I won't.  I kind of owe you.  You saved me.  Well, you tried anyway."

He muttered in response.

"If it helps, you're the only one who's ever tried," she added.

"Glad I could almost help."

Fiverr Tips

The Things People Do For $5

For those who haven't tried it yet, Fiverr.com is a site where people from all over the world post things that they are willing to do for $5. Over the next few weeks, I will be writing articles about my experiences with specific fiverr gigs.  This article will just be some general fiverr tips. Fiverr ends up keeping $1 for playing the middle man and the service provider gets $4. Using Paypal makes the process extremely fast and simple. The first question that probably popped into your mind when you first heard about Fiverr was "Is there anything on there that I would want or could help me?" The answer is probably yes, but you have to sift through a lot of other stuff to find them. I'm going to give a few fiverr tips on finding quality services and avoiding services which can do more harm than good.

A quick glance at the front page of fiverr shows that your hard earned $5 can buy you a video of a stuffed monkey saying your message, a physic reading and an attractive female who will claim to be your girlfriend on Facebook for a month. I'm not sure how Lizzy would feel about that last one. The first of the Fiverr tips I will give is that instead of looking for a life changing service, you should look for things that you could do yourself but would rather not due to time involved (with things like directory submissions) or due to lack of skill (like me with graphic design). A lot of people write off fiverr as a lot of junk, the same way I used to hear people make the same claim about eBay 13 years ago. I think that they are completely missing the point.

If you start working on your site's SEO and decide that you want your site submitted to 30 different internet directories, you can do it yourself or pay someone on Fiverr to do it for you. If you decide that the task is going to take you two hours to do, and you decide you would rather pay someone $2.50 an hour to do it for you, then you can find a well reviewed service provider to do it for you. That's another big fiverr tip: make sure you check the providers reviews. Reviews aren't a guarantee, as there are groups who provide fake fiverr reviews just like any other site on the internet.  However, if someone has a lot of positive reviews, then you should feel relatively safe. I also make sure to read the negative reviews for any hidden "gotcha's" that aren't discussed in the listing's description. The good part is that – worst case with a service like this - you're out 5 bucks. We're going to talk about a few other bad scenarios in a bit.

The thing I love about fiverr is that I've been wanting to dabble in outsourcing for about a year, but it seemed little daunting to get started. Fiverr lets you take advantage of outsourcing without lengthy searches and without any commitments. There are a lot of "full service" businesses that charge a high fee and then hire multiple "sub-contractors" on fiverr. If you know reliable providers, it's a great idea. For most of us that's overkill though. We only have a few tasks that we don't feel comfortable doing or don't have the time to do. I'm going to talk about a few types of services that are a good idea and a few that are not so good.

Fiverr Tips : Good things to outsource

Graphics work – For me, this is the biggest no brainier on Fiverr. I use Photoshop or GIMP several times a week but I have no artistic ability whatsoever. I would much rather pay a few dollars to someone like Dafeenah and get something that looks great rather than spend an hour or two myself and end up with something that looks like a first graders art project.

Website / RSS directory submissions – These aren't hard to do at all, but they can be time consuming. If you decide that you these things done you can spend some time or pay someone $5 while you read Lizzy's books.

Press Release / Article submissions – The effectiveness of the press releases and article directories has plummeted since the Google update "Panda" earlier this year. They still MAY be worth doing, but they are extremely time consuming. If you can find someone to send your press release to 30 services for $5, that would save you some time.

Fiverr Tips : Bad things to outsource

Twitter followers – Anybody who has read me series of Twitter articles has no need for these services since I showed how to get targeted fans for free. Still, there are a lot of people offering this service, so there must be a lot of people buying it. Long story short: the followers you get are going to be garbage. Regardless of what sellers say, the followers are likely not real people but rather fake accounts generated by automated bots. Even if they were real they would be random people rather than the specifically targeted people you can easily acquire yourself for free.

Facebook likes – These are tempting! Twitter followers are easy to get but Facebook likes take a lot of time and usually money. The lure of 1,000 new likes that somebody SWEARS are real people for only $5 seems like a no lose scenario. Every negative we discussed with Twitter applies to Facebook with a few extra bonus dangers at no additional charge. I said in the Twitter that the followers you got were likely real people. The scary part is that fake accounts are the better of the two alternatives! If they aren't fake accounts, they are indeed going to be real people, real people whose accounts were tricked or hacked into following your account. When they notice that they are mysteriously following you when they never asked to, they aren't going to be real happy.

When I decided to write this article, I spent some time in the seedy underbelly of the internet where people deal in things like Facebook likes to discover the methods. The "industry" standard was to provide about 90% fake accounts and 10% real people whose accounts would be hijacked with malicious code and made to like specific targets. Scary stuff which you should stay clear of.

Fiverr Tips : Dangerous things to outsource

Google +1 clicks – Trying to game Google is never a good idea, as the penalty for getting caught might be getting de-indexed in Google which is the internet equivalent of the death penalty. I read a post last week where a person bought 50 +1 clicks on his page from fiverr. The problem is that the 50 clicks came in a two hour period and all from IP addresses in India. His site was subsequently removed from Google. How's this for the king of all fiverr tips: don't do anything that may get your page removed from Google.

Anything that requires you giving someone Admin access to your site – This is a tricky one. About two months ago I discovered a WordPress plugin that I thought was worth buying. The plugin cost $20 to buy for your site or for $30 you could buy a "developer" license which let you install it on "client" sites. Since $5 is cheaper than $20 I decided to go to fiverr to try and find someone who had bought the developer license who could legally put it on our site.

I found two people on Fiverr who were advertising the plugin. I emailed the first seller and asked him if he had a legitimate developer license or if he was using a hacked version. He admitted that he was indeed using a hacked version so I thanked him for his honesty and went onto the next. The second seller stated that he had a legitimate developer license. The only caveat was that he needed temporary admin access to install the plugin on our site. The guy seemed legit but had no fiverr feedback and no website to point me to. Once someone has admin access to your site, they can modify any code they want, insert anything they want, etc. I decided that I just couldn't risk giving someone access to our site's backend just to save a few dollars.

I ended up buying the developers license of the plugin myself so I could install it on a friends site too. If I decide to try to install it as a fiverr service I'll have to try to convince people that I can be trusted to go to their site, perform the installation and then leave without doing anything else. That would probably be worth its own article. The morale of this story is if they need any type of access to perform the service, be VERY careful.

Links – buying back-links to your site is the trickiest fiverr service of them all to cover. I've talked about the dangers of buying links before so I won't go into too much detail here.

A fiverr gig from a well reviewed seller that offers 10 links to your site that are manually acquired is probably safe. They aren't likely to be relevant links so they probably won't do too much to increase your site's search engine visibility but they also probably won't get you kicked out of Google.

On the opposite side of the link spectrum are the services which offer literally thousands of links to your site for $5. Some of these even claim (laughably) to be manually acquired. These can be every bit as dangerous as the +1 clicks we talked about earlier. If your site is an older and well established site that gets good traffic and natural links, then you may be able to survive a link bomb of this size. If however you have a new site or a site without a lot of traffic or links, there's a much better chance Google will notice your newfound link bonanza and reward you with the dreaded "Google slap".

I could easily find 100 website owners who have bought these services and had no ill effects, but I'm far too paranoid to try with our site.

This was intended to just be a general overview of fiverr tips for what's safe and what's not. Over the next few weeks I will be buying several fiverr services and posting my experiences here. If you've got any that you've had a good experience with feel free to post them here!!

Book feature/giveaway and Guest Post by Indie Chick Danielle Blanchard

Please welcome Danielle to Lizzyland!  Danielle's guest post, "Write or Die," is about a woman who found her way in the midst of the worst time in her life.  It's an awesome piece, very personal and very inspirational about finding the strength to make tough choices.  I've also featured Danielle's latest book, "Death Wish, (Book I, the Vamp Saga)" of which she graciously agreed to do an ebook giveaway!

Death Wish is available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

To enter the giveaway: comment on this post OR share with your networks via the social media buttons OR RT my tweet OR like, share, or comment on FB OR +1, share or comment on G+!

The year is 2020.

Vampires not only exist, they control the government,

the pharmaceutical industry and the world.

Manon Mourey is a Let It Ride card dealer at Transylvania Hotel, Spa & Casino in Summerlin, a suburb of Las Vegas, when Mikkel Damgaard enters her life.

As Manon accepts her position as one of the elite undead, her very existence sparks a war that begins to consume the International Vampire Council because a new breed of vampire sits at the top of the food chain and they're hungry for something more than mortal blood.

Guest post:

"Write or Die" by Danielle Blanchard 

2010 was the worst year of my life.

After a very successful career in the banking industry, I suddenly found myself  unemployed, my marriage falling apart and to add insult to injury my father

dying. I had a 10 month old daughter and suddenly, I was back living with my unmarried, child-free sister with two children. Life was bleak and the most

terrifying part about the whole situation was I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do.

I was attending university for a degree in International Business but who was I kidding? I'd always hated business; I was good at banking but should I base my

career on something I was simply good at or should I be doing something I love? This was my dilemma and I had no one to blame for my predicament but myself.

Plenty of women had overcome more tremendous obstacles so why was I feeling sorry for

myself? I steeled my spine and decided to make some real decisions. In the middle of the detritus which was now my life, I found a wonderful and caring man I fell hopelessly in love with but the problem was he didn't live in this country and he was a successful and driven attorney. What would he want with someone like me? Unemployed, two children, divorced and somewhat shaky ambitions at an age where most women had it made, were married and excelling towards middle age. My life was a mess and I needed a man like a fish needs a bicycle (thanks, U2!).

I took a long hard look at my life and realized I had failed to plan and therefore I had planned to fail.

When I stood at that podium and looked at the few family and friends who had bothered to show up at my dad's funeral, my life became so clear. My father had had so many chances; so much lost opportunities and had blew all of them due to fear and inertia. I was my father's daughter; I was falling into that same black hole of despondency with no way out.

It took another fourteen months before I had the actual courage to see out my dream and make it a reality. Isabelle Solal had written a book, In The Past Imperfect, and her good

friend, Sion Dayson, had promoted it on her blog. She was tired of waiting for the agent who would never accept the publisher who could never take a chance and had decided to self-publish her fictional book on Amazon. Was this possible? Could I self-publish? Could I take my book which I had tried to find an agent for the past eight years or so and do it myself? Say it isn't so!

I was so excited about the possibility of publishing, I dug it out of the place it'd warmed my different hard drives and laptops over the years, decided at over one thousand hard back pages, it was much too long to publish as a full length novel, chopped it up into eight parts and hit publish on the first part. I was ecstatic as I had done my own cover (a beautiful statue which captivated me while I was on my European vacation) and it was just so perfect. Unfortunately, no one else knew I existed and that is when I realized publishing was more than just about hitting a button. I had to make sure my novel was edited, the right cover was used to attract attention and there was a whole list of indie writers I

didn't know about but they were there and ready to be at my service.

In the beginning, I only used Kindle's Direct Publishing board because that was the only one I knew about. Another writer, Athanasios, who wrote a thrilling book titled Mad Gods, told everyone on the KDP boards about a new Facebook board group called Indie Writers' Unite.  I joined, Cheryl Bradshaw, the creator of IWU accepted me, and the rest is

history.

I wish I could say I am selling thousands of copies and I got the guy but that isn't life and nothing happens without time. I am selling and many people have discovered my work; I have met some of the bravest men and women on the planet at IWU and I feel like a million bucks even if my life still isn't a bed of roses. The guy, like everything good in life, will take some time and I am willing to put it in and make the effort; nothing worth anything is easy to accomplish for the matter.

I love to write so that is what I'm doing. I enjoy writing whatever moves me, thus I have work in several different genres including Women's Literature, Contemporary Romance, Paranormal, Science Fiction and Fantasy. I also plan to do a novel I have had in the works for a while that is firmly Mystery with a Thriller twist.

For the first time, I stayed true to myself, my ambitions and what I want my life to be and represent. I know it will get better and all my dreams will come true—many of them already have. My life is still changing, still revolving but I have come out ahead, stronger and more positive than I ever thought possible. I learned the hard way either I write or I can simply subsist and die. Life is like writing; it isn't about perfection but it is about the possibilities we are given every day, the decisions we make and what we want to do with them. It is about forks in the road and deciding which direction to take and making the

best with whatever is thrown at us once we make our decisions. It is the way it

should be and that is simply imperfect.

Danielle can be reached via her website, Facebook, or Twitter.

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! All proceeds go to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer.

 

 

 

Indie Chicks is available on Amazon

and Barnes

& Noble.

 

Giveaway winners: "Abigail" and double giveaway "Kiss of the Wolf" & "Shadow of the Wolf"

The winners for this week's giveaways!  Woohoo!

"Abigail" by Heather Marie Adkins

Winners: Kitty Corgi (who RT'd); Martha Schlegel (who 'liked' the post); Fatna (who left a comment on the post)

Double giveaway: "Kiss of the Wolf" and "Shadow of the Wolf"

by R. G. Porter

Winner (who left a comment on the post): Jacqui Knight Moyaln