Danika D. Potts's Blog, page 6
April 22, 2012
Rabbit in the Road: Over 10,000 Free Copies Downloaded on Amazon!
You’ll pardon me if I have to take a moment to be completely uncouth:
HOLY SHIT.
Okay, I’m better now. It’s still hard to believe. Our free giveaway weekend is coming to a close with a monstrous, unexpected bang of over 10,000 free copies distributed for the Kindle platform! There was no advertising, no budget, nothing. JUST pure word of mouth. This was a giveaway that wasn’t funded by a bloated wallet, or driven by big business. This was all driven by the MOST IMPORTANT PART of any book, any story:
The readers, the consumers, the customers.
Not only did we move a tremendous amount of units and now have a readership larger than some small towns in America, we busted right through the roof of Amazon’s best sellers charts for Kindle!
#4 in Free Mysteries & Thrillers!
#11 in ALL FREE KINDLE EBOOKS!
#11 in ALL FREE KINDLE CONTENT! (This includes newspapers, blogs, magazines, and ebooks!)
There’s not a whole lot else I can say really, except this: Never, EVER underestimate the crowd. Because if they can make you, they CAN break you. And believe me when I say, the crowd MADE US this weekend!
There’s still a few hours left in the giveaway, so if you haven’t snatched up your copy yet, by all means do so!
Enjoy the free read, folks. We think you’re going to enjoy it and experience something you can rarely say that you’ve experienced before. If you love it, let us know! Leave us a review on Amazon, or hit us up on twitter, or on Rabbit in the Road‘s facebook page, or even ours.
Be good, keep reading, and remember; all y’all is dynamite.
~Oliver & Danika
April 21, 2012
Rabbit in the Road: 2400 Copies Given Away In 24 Hours!
And just like that, Rabbit in the Road’s first day of our great free kindle giveaway was a smashing success, pulling over 2400 unique downloads on Amazon in 24 hours! That’s 100 copies every hour!
We’re incredibly grateful and super excited to see our reading in front of so many people, and we can’t thank the most important people, those who SHARED our giveaway, enough!
Remember, there’s just one day left on our free giveaway on Amazon, so if you haven’t picked up your copy yet, I suggest you do so!
Happy weekend reading!
~Oliver
Rabbit in the Road Free Giveaway Going Strong!
The Rabbit in the Road free giveaway weekend on Amazon is still going strong right now, folks!
In case you hadn’t heard, that’s right. We’re giving away the book for no charge this weekend only, no hoops, no catches. Just hop on over to Amazon and get yourself some free enjoyable reading.
Performance wise, it’s doing far better than we ever dreamed of expecting. In about 15 hours of time, we have moved OVER 1500 INDIVIDUAL DOWNLOADS!
If you haven’t gotten a chance to grab yours yet, don’t be shy! Jump on over and grab yours. It’s on the house. And make sure to tell your friends! There’s nothing better than the gift of giving!
If you’re feeling so inclined (and you finish the book), be sure to leave us a review on Amazon, and head on over to our facebook pages and let us know how much you liked it! And if you’re really saucy, you can hit us up at Twitter, too! Don’t worry, we’re friendly!
Rabbit in the Road on Facebook
Oliver Campbell on Facebook
Danika D Potts on Facebook
@oliverbcampbell on Twitter
@DanikaDPotts on Twitter
~Oliver
April 20, 2012
Rabbit in the Road Free Giveaway All Weekend Long!
Yes, you read that correctly.
Rabbit in the Road will be available and given away for FREE TO ALL this weekend on Amazon for the Kindle platform.
What’s the catch, you ask? There is none. Nothing to fill out, no information to give, no hoop to jump through or other craziness that you’d expect nowadays. This is a completely free giveaway promotion. Why? Because we’re a couple of wild and crazy guys, that’s why.
So what do you have to do to take advantage of this ludicrous offer? Nothing in particular, actually. If you already have an Amazon account, you’re good to go. If you don’t have one, sign up for one. It’s free too! The book will be free beginning 12:01 am PST April 21st until 11:59pm PST April 22nd (this Saturday and Sunday) for anyone who wants to download and give it a read. The best part is, the book is YOURS TO KEEP.
If you’ve been waiting to give the book a try, this would be your best opportunity to do so. Grace Snoke from Kayhynn Turns The Page loved it, and even Susan Anderson of the LL Book Review says that it’s a book to be savored.
So what do we want in exchange? If you read the book, pop on over to our facebook page for Rabbit in the Road and give that Like button a big ol’ press. Or if you’re feeling PARTICULARLY saucy, you could even come over to our respective author pages for myself and/or Danika and tell us in person! Or if you were feeling like a bird, you could tell us that on the twitter, too! Make sure you use the hashtag #RabbitintheRoad when you do. We’ll be watching for it!
But most of all, tell your friends. Friends share, and share alike!
Rabbit in the Road, Kindle Edition
~Oliver
P.S. Plus, you can say that you spent the entire weekend in bed with me. Now isn’t THAT cheeky? I thought so.
April 7, 2012
Back On The Horse
It's been a long time since I've posted. Too long. I've fallen off the horse, readers. Events conspired to buck me off. I want to say it's everything else's fault but mine. I know better.
Life has been really hard lately. I've gotten derailed. And now that I've been derailed for a little while, it feels too big to start again. This rut is a lot easier to stay in than climb out of.
Ruts are comfortable places, even when they're filled with suffering. They're what you know. They are full of the usual, the expected, the normal, and require nothing of you. All you do is keep on… doing, and the rut is there to hold you. Welcome you back. Stick around a while. You don't have to try and fail, there's no disappointment, just the confinement and misery of the rut. If it's all you know, then it's a perfect fit.
Misery tempts me. I've had a pretty miserable time lately, and misery seems like a good fit. I want to be brusque, sour with people I know and love. I want to fuss and humbug and grump. I want to not DO.
I haven't been writing. I've been waiting to feel better, and waiting a long time.
I'm done waiting today. Today I'm DOING. Maybe I'll still want to grump and be sour. Maybe I won't do a very good job at it. Maybe every word I put down today will be garbage.
I have faith, though, that even if today is a disaster, tomorrow will be that much easier.
Take that, rut.
-Danika
Have you ever lost your way? What was the trick, the catalyst for getting back on track? Was there someone who pushed you and helped you through? Did you push yourself? How did you turn from just existing back to living again? Talk to me in the comments below.
March 24, 2012
The Tale of a Wizard: How A 9 Year Old Girl Got Published
You read that correctly: A nine year old child, with just a few ideas and a few very short stories scrawled on a few sheets of line paper, is now a published author. How did she do it?
The simple answer? She did the work.
The long answer is a bit more complicated, but I'll keep it fairly short and sweet, because this isn't my story; it's Hannah's.
Hannah is a 9 year old elementary student in Washington State. She recently wrote 3 short stories as part of her assignment for school. Needless to say, her teachers were so impressed with her work that she was invited to attend a young author's conference. Eventually through word of mouth, it got back to me through her mother, who happened to tell Hannah that she knew two authors. This made Hannah BEYOND excited, so I'm told.
So, about a week and a half ago, this tiny child got an opportunity to approach me, after I requested to read her stories. Initially, I thought they were going to be somewhat okay, fairly good work.
I was wrong. Dead wrong.
Hannah's work is, for lack of a better statement, beyond amazing. It is DIVINE, inspired writing for such a young child.
As I sat down and read through her work, I was constantly and repeatedly blown away by her ability to craft an actual narrative. It was so good, that I had to stop every few sentences and ask her questions about what she wrote, and why. The first story, The Tale of a Wizard, came in at about 500 words long. In that short amount of space, Hannah was able to create intrigue, surprise, mystery, and action. I truly found myself unable to wait to get to the next paragraph to see what happened next.
When I finished reading all three stories, I stopped and turned to Hannah, as well as her mother, and told her, "Hannah, I need you to know something right now. I'm not your Mom, or your Dad, so you know that I'm not being nice to you for the sake of being nice. And I am telling you, that your writing is BEYOND good. You should not be able to write this well for your age. This needs to be a full book, because it is THAT good. There's nothing wrong here, the only things here are things that you will just learn as you get older and get more experienced, just like the rest of us at pretty much… everything."
At this point, they were both excited.
There's a funny thing that my mother used to say to me when I was a little kid: "The Lord loves a working man." She explained to me her interpretation of that as being, if someone is working hard, and doing the very best that they can, we should always pitch in to give them an extra hand and help them succeed even more, especially when they're on the straight and narrow. And that's when it clicked in my head:
Oh wait. I KNOW how to get this book published. I did it myself, so why can't I do the same for her?
And so, I decided to take on that very task. Hannah and I sat and talked about it for a few minutes, and we pinky swore on it (that's serious business!) that we would turn her stories into a full book before her author's conference. I offered to do this work pro bono (and I jokingly said to her mother, "You know why? Hey, she's like, 9 years old. She doesn't have a job, how would she pay me?")
Over the next week and a half, I sat down and tasked myself to putting her book together. At no point was there another adult involved in the process besides myself. This was Hannah's book, Hannah's project, and it was her baby. All during that time, I took my direction purely from her, explaining the process as it went and showing her how I build the pieces that put the book together into a finished product. I asked her for an illustration to go with each short story; She delivered faster than I've ever seen. I asked and conferred with her whenever I needed to make an editing change or to fix typos, and got her approval each time.
She's the boss; I just work here.
A week and a half later and after a few minor hiccups, I finished the book and submitted it for print review, all ready to go with Hannah's blessing and approval. While I did this work, I briefly mentioned it a few times casually on facebook, as well as shared the process of putting her book together with a few pictures. The response was AMAZING.
People wanted Hannah's book. Here's a few of the things said:
Iowan 3rd Grade Elementary Teacher: "I want a copy for myself and each of my teaching partners. I want my students to see that if you strive for excellence in writing, you can be an author, regardless of your age and whether anybody else says you "can"!"
Wisconsin Mother of Three: " You'll have to give us a heads up when it's ready for purchase
I really think I might need to pick up a couple copies for a couple kids in my life "Anonymous Male Commenter: "That young lady will remember you forever. And, call me crazy, but I smell a future story in there somewhere. Also thanks for proving that good and kind people are still out there doing things to make our world a little better one child's smile at a time."
That really was it. I stopped and thought about it for a while and really realized what I was doing there: I was showing Hannah early, that if you sit down and do the hard part, where you really bust it out and get the work done, that you will be rewarded for your effort. But what REALLY happened? How did all this come together?
Hannah never complained. She never made excuses for why she couldn't FOLLOW HER AMBITION. She never said things like she "couldn't make time" for it, and she never doubted herself. She believed in her OWN ability to write and craft; It wasn't that other people believed in her.
Hannah BELIEVED IN HERSELF. The rest of US had to catch on.
I never did any actual real "work" on this project; I simply was the right person in the right place, at the right time, with the correct skills to help make this happen. I didn't do it for pay, or some kind of expected return. I was happy to take the time to do it. If I was able to make and find time to help realize a young dream, and Hannah was able to make and find time to realize HER dream (she's also a little cheerleader!), then the only question left is… why haven't YOU?
The Tale of a Wizard And Other Stories is available for sale, RIGHT NOW.
$6.99 USD
8.25″ x 6″ (20.955 x 15.24 cm)
Full Color on White paper
32 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1475056211
Any and all revenue generated by sales of Tale of a Wizard go 100% to Hannah Woods' college fund. She did the work, she holds the copyright and the publishing rights. It won't be tainted by adult hands!
So what are you waiting for? Support our writing youth, and we might all be sitting on the dawn of a new best-selling author in a decade or so. Or… maybe even now. Who knows? But you know what? ALL OF US can make that happen, if we just give a tiny bit of our time. She might have written a story about a wizard, but I think that SHE was the one that pulled the real magic trick.
Congratulations, Hannah. You earned it. Thank you for being a great author, and letting me help you fulfill your very young dreams. I can't wait to get my autographed copy.
~Oliver
P.S. Unfortunately, this is the last time that Hannah and I will get to see each other for a while (circumstances are making me have to relocate back home), and so she and I sat down and had a long talk. She wasn't very happy about it. So, as a good bye gift….
….Hannah gave me her rough draft of the stories to keep. My heart is breaking. I made a new pinky swear with her that I would come back and see her as soon as possible. I told her that I would take her drafts and lock them up somewhere safe, so in 10 years when she's all grown up, I can give them back to her and she can see how far she has come.
A bit later on, I will be doing a Q&A with her about her story, and it will be posted here!
March 23, 2012
Rabbits and Snow Geese
Heads up folks, I can officially tell you that Snow Goose Bookstore carries Rabbit in the Road.
8616 271st Street NW Stanwood, WA 98292
(360) 629-3631
So if you're in Washington State, drop on by and tell 'em Large Marge sent ya. Oh, and you should probably pick up the book, too.
~Oliver
March 21, 2012
Review - Rabbit in the Road
Reblogged from An Opener's Closing by L. E. White:
So, I was actually asked to read and review a story by someone who I didn't already know. You could color me surprised and I was happy to agree. I then received an Amazon gift of "Rabbit in the Road". A joint venture from authors Danika Potts and Oliver Campbell.
To sum it up in a short and sweet way, not bad.
March 19, 2012
Rabbit in the Road Review (5 Stars): “Not Your Mother’s Love Story”
Susan Anderson, L.L Book Review
The following review was done by Susan Anderson of the LL Book Review. It has been reposted in it’s entirety. To see more of Susan’s reviews, you can check out the LL Book Review, as well as her Amazon Reviewers Page, and also Goodreads.
Not Your Mother’s Love Story
Hold it. This is NOT you mother’s boy-meets-girl book. RABBIT IN THE ROAD is the amazing, genre-straddling debut by Oliver Campbell and Danika D. Potts. Is it literary horror? Psychological Thriller? Paranormal Mystery? The book is all of these, a spellbinding psychedelic trip, a shimmering novella with a shattering voice. It deals with love and hate between two not so normal shape-shifters. It is violent. It is tender. It’s about running from and running toward at the same time. It’s about bliss and the dark night of the soul. It’s about all that is in us.
But it is Bevie’s story. In 1966 a record store clerk meets Ray, the man of her dreams on a train. She takes him home. “Ray gave me a brief hug. It made fireworks go off behind my eyes.”
And the girl experiences for the first time what she calls “the gleam,” something akin to a paranormal power or the might derived from a drug-induced trip.
“I wanted to slap my hand into his, quest along the gleam with him, to feel that deep connection. I wanted to hear it in my bones, truth or lie, souls met or falling away.”
Ray knows her, she avows, as if they had been together since before the world turned. She, the shape-shifting Bevie, experiences obsessive bliss, and through her story so exquisitely told, so do we.
If it is about fatal attraction, RABBIT IN THE ROAD is also about escape, and the character we first know as Bevie morphs into others, wanders, quests for purification, seeks to quench her hunger for she knows not what. Along the way she meets various shaman-like figures. Shurlock John is one of my favorites (“A coyote ain’t a dog, wont never be a dog …”) He’s the character that gives Bevie the moniker, “Rabbit in the Road.”
Does she find peace? What happens to Ray? You’ll have to read the book and I highly recommend that you do. A word of caution: there is violence. But it is a book to be savored.
-End Review-
Rabbit in the Road is available in both paperback and digital format at Amazon, as well as select retailers.
~Oliver
Rabbit in the Road Review (5 Stars): "Not Your Mother's Love Story"
Susan Anderson, L.L Book Review
The following review was done by Susan Anderson of the LL Book Review. It has been reposted in it's entirety. To see more of Susan's reviews, you can check out the LL Book Review, as well as her Amazon Reviewers Page, and also Goodreads.
Not Your Mother's Love Story
Hold it. This is NOT you mother's boy-meets-girl book. RABBIT IN THE ROAD is the amazing, genre-straddling debut by Oliver Campbell and Danika D. Potts. Is it literary horror? Psychological Thriller? Paranormal Mystery? The book is all of these, a spellbinding psychedelic trip, a shimmering novella with a shattering voice. It deals with love and hate between two not so normal shape-shifters. It is violent. It is tender. It's about running from and running toward at the same time. It's about bliss and the dark night of the soul. It's about all that is in us.
But it is Bevie's story. In 1966 a record store clerk meets Ray, the man of her dreams on a train. She takes him home. "Ray gave me a brief hug. It made fireworks go off behind my eyes."
And the girl experiences for the first time what she calls "the gleam," something akin to a paranormal power or the might derived from a drug-induced trip.
"I wanted to slap my hand into his, quest along the gleam with him, to feel that deep connection. I wanted to hear it in my bones, truth or lie, souls met or falling away."
Ray knows her, she avows, as if they had been together since before the world turned. She, the shape-shifting Bevie, experiences obsessive bliss, and through her story so exquisitely told, so do we.
If it is about fatal attraction, RABBIT IN THE ROAD is also about escape, and the character we first know as Bevie morphs into others, wanders, quests for purification, seeks to quench her hunger for she knows not what. Along the way she meets various shaman-like figures. Shurlock John is one of my favorites ("A coyote ain't a dog, wont never be a dog …") He's the character that gives Bevie the moniker, "Rabbit in the Road."
Does she find peace? What happens to Ray? You'll have to read the book and I highly recommend that you do. A word of caution: there is violence. But it is a book to be savored.
-End Review-
Rabbit in the Road is available in both paperback and digital format at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as select retailers.
~Oliver
