H.S. Stone's Blog, page 29

Amazon's Kindle MatchBook

Next month, Amazon is launching its Kindle MatchBook program, which will allow owners of selected print books to buy the Kindle edition for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free. The e-book discount is up to the author/publisher.

As a reader, this is a great deal because I still like to read the paper versions of books, but sometimes I also wish I could upload them to my Kindle. Under the MatchBook program, I can do both at a lower cost than before. If I understand the description of the program correc...

Book review: Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman? by Eleanor Updale

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Description:
When a petty thief falls through a glass roof while fleeing from the police, it should have been the death of him. Instead, it marks the beginning of a whole new life. Soon he has become the most successful -- and elusive -- burglar in Victorian London, plotting daring raids and using London's new sewer system to escape. He adopts a dual existence to fit his new lifestyle, taking on the roles of a respectable, wealthy gentleman named Montmorency and...

What is success?

My idea of what it means to be a successful author has changed in the time since the publication of my first novel. Inspired by success stories like Amanda Hocking's, I originally thought that was my measuring stick -- to become an indie author who sells a million copies of his books. Obviously, I was misguided. As reality set in and I realized how hard it really is to make a living as an author, I've now come to appreciate the accomplishments I've already achieved.

They include:
Finishing and...

Book review: Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari

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Description:
A thrilling tale of adventure, romance, and one girl's unyielding courage through the darkest of nightmares.

Epidemics, floods, droughts -- for sixteen-year-old Lucy, the end of the world came and went, taking 99% of the population with it. As the weather continues to rage out of control, and Sweepers clean the streets of plague victims, Lucy survives alone in the wilds of Central Park. But when she's rescued from a pack of vicious dogs by a mysteriou...

Writing what you enjoy or writing what sells

If you've scanned the best seller lists recently, you'll find that they have been dominated by three types of books:
Books by authors who are already wildly popular, like James Patterson or J.K.Rowling (even when writing as Robert Galbraith)Books in a popular series, especially if that series is tied to a movie release, such as Divergent or City of BonesRomance booksIf you're an unknown author like me who's writing a new book, there's nothing you can really do so that your book falls in the fi...

Book review: Everlost by Neal Shusterman

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Description:
Nick and Allie don’t survive the car accident, but their souls don’t exactly get where they’re supposed to go either. Instead, they’re caught halfway between life and death, in a sort of limbo known as Everlost: a shadow of the living world, filled with all the things and places that no longer exist. It’s a magical, yet dangerous place where bands of lost kids run wild and anyone who stands in the same place too long sinks to the center of the Earth....

"Drive" is FREE on Amazon Aug 21 and 22

You read that right! My new short story, "Drive", is FREE on Amazon for the next two days!
Click here to get it.

Book review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

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Description:
Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the spaceship Godspeed. She has left her boyfriend, friends--and planet--behind to join her parents as a member of Project Ark Ship. Amy and her parents believe they will wake on a new planet, Centauri-Earth, three hundred years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed's scheduled landing, cryo chamber 42 is mysteriously unplugged, and Amy is violently woken from her frozen slumber.

Someone tried to...

Drive is available on Amazon

The short story I've been working on for the last month, Drive, is now for sale on Amazon for 99 cents!
Click here or on the cover image below to go to it.


Claire knows only a world where most of humanity lives inside sparsely populated cities protected from the Outside by guarded walls. She is a new Driver whose job is to transport items between these cities. Under the watchful eye of her Protector, Shaun, Claire makes her first run from San Jose to Angel City to bring back medicine needed to...

Book review: The 500 by Matthew Quirk

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Description:
Mike Ford is a former con artist who's been plucked from his Harvard Law School classroom to be an associate at The Davies Group, Washington's most high-powered and well-respected strategic consulting firm. Their specialty: pulling strings and peddling influence for the five hundred most powerful people inside the Beltway, the men and women who really run Washington—and by extension the country, and the world.

The namesake of the firm, Henry Davies,...