P.B. Cannon's Blog, page 18

Book Review for “Fin & Tonic, Talon & Tombstone”

A Review of “Fin & Tonic, Talon & Tombstone by David Moss & Lance Carney 

What an entertaining read! This book of well written short stories span a range of topics, some dealing with the supernatural or paranormal, some with science fiction.  Some are horror, and quite dark, guaranteed to give a delicious shiver, or in the case of “The Pizza Man”, a shiver and a laugh.  One favorite of mine, “You Do What You Gotta Do”, a science fiction piece dealing with an alien come to do some abductions, I found to be downright hilarious – and surprisingly sweet.   A few of the stories can’t be categorized into a specific genre as they contain elements of more than one, but they are, nevertheless, a delight to read.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys any of the above genres, blended or otherwise, especially if they don’t have a lot of time to read, or to anyone who likes a good short story.

Five stars for excellence!

So I’ve been absent for a while…

I’ve been absent for a while.  I’ve been dodging between raindrops, so to speak, what with the holidays, trying to get in some reading, working on the first draft of the third book in my trilogy (Boucher’s World: Encounters, remember?), which, by the way, I’ve finished and am in the middle of a first edit before getting beta readers.  I’m also trying to finish proofing two short novellas I’m publishing on Createspace.  I got sick on the second day of the new year and couldn’t function for nearly a week (except to tweet – only missed one day of doing that, LOL), so I’m not nearly where I’d intended to be by now.  Oh, well.  Stuff happens, and then you move on.  I’m not sweating any of this, just taking it one day at a time.  I’m feeling better now, though I had a slight set-back yesterday, but today, I’m moving on.

I did manage to get to the first meeting of the year for the writing meet-up group I’m a member of (the University Area Write to Publish group), and lo and behold, there was a very nice young lady there who’s a free-lance writer for our local newspaper, The Charlotte Observer, and she has written a wonderful article about our meet-up group.  It can be found here.  I thought she also took a great picture of the group to go along with the article.  This young lady, Marjorie Dana, is also starting down the road to becoming a novelist herself, so I’m wishing her the best in her endeavors, and, judging from how well she writes articles, I can believe she’s going to be quite impressive with her book.

My First Year in the World of Writing and Publishing

It has been nearly a year, now, since I published my first book.  I’m an indie author as it’s referred to, and what that means is I don’t have an agent or a publisher.  I arrange for proof reading, editing, and publishing. I do most of it myself and I even do all my own covers.  I’ve seen all sorts of articles and blogs, and postings in forums, that decry this method as being the worst possible way to go about putting out the “perfect” book, and I must say, they have a point.

I do get some help from my very sharp daughter who also is good at pitching ideas to me, but basically, I read and re-read my story ’til I’m blue in the face then after its published, I still find typos and errors.  Sigh.  So, I go back and do updates ’til I’m blue in the face than pray I didn’t do something stupid in my formatting so the manuscript will get past that meat-grinder converter at Smashwords or that Amazon or Createspace doesn’t sneer at what I’ve wrought.  I have to admit that I haven’t had a lot of trouble with that, although a couple of times I found I’d re-uploaded the exact same error-ridden manuscript and had to go back and do a re-re-upload.  Heh.  That’s life.

I’ve redone some book covers because they were terrible, and even now am in the process of redoing several more because they’re not so hot.

In case you’re wondering why I don’t just pay someone to do these things for me – because, after all, all of these services can be bought and some of the prices are quite reasonable – it’s because I’m broke.  I can either pay my mortgage and other bills, and buy groceries, not to mention keep my internet connection, or pay for all those wonderful services.  So.

Truth be told, I never set out to publish in the first place.  I just wanted to write a book – mostly because I’ve always liked to write.  The book was actually one I started some years ago but living got in the way of writing so I laid it down and forgot it for a while.  Then I retired.

I twiddled my thumbs for a while, did a little drawing and painting, joined Facebook and played Farmville and various other fun games over there.  Then, one day my old desktop computer started acting up and I decided to get a new one before it went all the way kerplunket.

When I checked to see if there were any documents or files I wanted to save from the old one to the new, I found the book I’d started years before, hiding in an old version of Word.  So I hauled it out and began fiddling around with it.  It actually turned into a trilogy once I got going because it was ‘way too much for one book.  I’ve already published the first two books and am currently writing the third. As a matter of fact, I’ve found that I’ve published ten altogether in this year since I got started.

Didn’t set out to do that either; it just sort of happened.  Oh, most are not novel-length, just the two in the trilogy. There are a couple of novellas, some novelettes, and some short stories.  Still, it’s quite a bit more than I ever set out to do.

I probably never would have published the first book at all if one of my daughters hadn’t said, “Mom, you gonna publish that?”

Anyway, I’ve been asked why I decided to self-publish instead of trying to go the traditional route.  Here’s why: knowing absolutely nothing about it at all, I did what you do when you don’t know how to do something: I Googled it.  After looking up a lot of stuff and learning I’d need an agent before I could ever get to a publisher, I Googled “agents”.

After some judicious reading, it gradually began to dawn on me that I’d probably be dead and cremated before I ever got anything into print.  Or, as my other daughter said, too old and addled to remember I’d ever written anything.  Then I ran across an article on self-publishing, did more Googling, found Smashwords, and thought: “I’ll do that!”  And so I did.  And it was sooo easy!

The thing is, you can publish all you want but if you don’t promote, no one knows it there because there are a kazillion other writers out there, all clamoring to get some attention for their work.  This presents a problem in being seen for the the individual author, and if you want to actually sell some books, they have to be seen.   So…back to Googling.

Sigh.  Promoting means “selling” and a salesperson I’m not.  I’ve tried some of the suggestions I ran up on, such as getting a blog – which I had no idea how to use once I (Googled how and) got one.  Then, there was the Facebook author’s page, setting up other author’s pages at Smashwords and Amazon, then I was told I should put my books on  Goodreads and set up an author’s page there, too, and  I should sign up for Twitter and various and sundry other social media.  And I did.  I’m not good at any of that stuff but I did it anyway.

In between trying to learn how to use all that stuff, I’m still plugging away at that third book in my trilogy, plus, there are four others I’ve got started (don’t ask me why! It just happened!) that I haven’t worked on in a while.  Plus, I haven’t played Farmville in a loooong time. And I liked that game.  It helped me relax.

Today, it occurred to me that I’m missing something else important to me: I haven’t had time to read! I love to read and my Kindle is loaded with books that I truly want to read. Before I got on this kick of trying to promote books that I never set out to publish in the first place, I read a lot. Now, the last book I read was back during the summer, and I only read that one to do a review. And I’m tired and headachy from trying to keep up with all the Facebook groups I’ve joined, the blogs I follow, Goodreads, Wattpad, my blog(s), all the other social media…double sigh!

I’m retired but lately I’ve begun to feel as if I’m back to working  a job and I don’t want a job.  I worked all my life and that was fine.  It’s what people do who want to take care of their families, have a house to live in, food to eat, maybe get a few little niceties.  No problem.  But I don’t want to do it now.  I want to read.  When I want to.  And writing is fun, I absolutely love it, so I want to keep doing that, too. Promoting and selling?  Not so much.  Maybe if I had started doing this years ago, when I was much younger, it would be different.  I had more energy then, so perhaps, but that is neither here nor there.  It’s the present and I’m going to relax, get in some reading, write a little, and enjoy myself.

Besides, I’ve given away a lot more books than I ever sold.

Short Stories

I’ve been writing some really short stories lately, something I’d never done before.   I think the shortest story I’d ever written had around seven thousand words.   I have Michael Brookes, the  author of several successful books,  to thank for my even trying.   He runs a monthly five-hundred-word-or-less contest on his blog, The Cult of Me, and I decided to enter the one for July.   Well, I was hooked so I also entered for August, September, and his latest one for October.   So far, I’ve not won one, but I have truly enjoyed the challenge of writing such a short story as I tend to sometimes get wordy when I write, and I found that restricting the number of words I can use makes me try and think of  a different approach, another way to put the words together.

(Michael did an author interview on me a few months ago, which, for some reason, I neglected to mention before *shaking my head*.   It can be found here)

Michael also writes extremely (at least I think it’s extreme!) short stories called “drabbles”, which are full stories of less than a hundred words.  Heh.  I have not tried writing any of those!  Or at least not yet.   As soon as I work up my nerve I think I’ll give it a whirl.

I haven’t published any of my shorts yet but they are posted on Wattpad.  Click the following links to check them out:

The Desire -Horror

Martin’s Cafe -Horror

The Man in the Armani Suit -Horror

Shelter -Horror

The Tech -Science Fiction

And God Said “Let it Ride” -Fantasy (sort of)

Smashwords Interview

Decided to do the Smashwords interview yesterday.  It can be found here.  Writers can use all the exposure they can get and I’ve gotten a number of views already, so I figure that’s a good thing.

There are a series of questions for you to answer – you answer as many as you want or you can supply your own – then you hit “publish” and that’s it.   You can even go back and edit your interview if necessary, say if you forgot something you meant to put in, or if you decide to answer more of the questions or add more of your own.  Very easy.  The site even places a clickable list of your books at the end of the interview.

I think it’s a pretty good feature, and ties in well with all the other attractions Smashwords has to offer.  I don’t know if it will translate into any more sales, but it can’t hurt.

Our Dangerous Fixation With Genres

Reblogged from The Musings & Artful Blunders of Scott D. Southard:

The writing world is full of factions.

Each of these factions, have their own heroes (or leaders), their own book clubs, their own book dealers, their own sites, their own rules, their own readers, etc.

Sometimes I like to imagine them as armies, each with their own distinct style and strengths and weaponry.

The romance army is nothing more than a collection of men with long flowing hair and amazing abs.

Read more… 1,198 more words

I'm reblogging this because I totally agree!

Hummingbirds…

Today I finally managed to get my hummingbird feeders refilled. I haven’t been feeling well for a few weeks and the daughter who helps with keeping the feeders filled is in Massachusetts visiting her brother at the moment. But, I felt pretty good today so I made up a batch of nectar and filled the containers which have been empty for about a week.

I’m not a “birder” so I don’t know much about hummingbirds (though I have looked up information about them: see this article and this one about making nectar) Heck, I never even saw many of them when I lived in the center of the city.

When we moved here to a suburban neighborhood seven years ago, we planted hibiscuses in large pots and put them on the deck. I was thrilled to see a whole bunch of hummingbirds show up to feed when the plants bloomed (I found out the ones around here are called ruby-throats). I was absolutely astonished to see one land on a flower stem one day. Heh, it hadn’t occurred to me that they ever landed. Then we planted the hibiscuses at the bottom of the yard, and I could no longer see the wonderful creatures feed, so I went down to the local hardware/gardening store and bought a feeder and a bottle of nectar (I no longer buy nectar as it’s very easy to make).

At that time, I learned the tiny birds have to eat more than their weight each day to survive so I went back a few days later and bought another one, and have always kept them filled since then, starting in the spring when the first ones show up until the fall when the last one leaves.

It has been a real pleasure to watch the little things feed, so I was bummed when I was too sick to refill the feeders. They still had the flowers around the yard but at those distances, I couldn’t see them.  Besides, the feeders are a easy source of food for them.

But, today, I’m happy. As soon as I got the feeders filled and back out hanging over the edges of the deck, my little friends started showing up, and, as usual, engaging in little hummingbird wars. They jockey for position at the feeders, running each other off, facing off while hovering in the air twittering excitedly at each other. They do this at both feeders as they strive to hog both. Every once in a while, one would zip across the deck, and hover in front of me with what I could have sworn was an indignant look its eyes, as if to ask why was I there.

I was wishing I could find my little digital camera to get a snap-shot or two, or at least knew how to work the one on my cell ‘phone, but alas, I didn’t feel like trying to remember what I did with it or hunt for the camera, and I’ve never learned to work the one on the cell (haven’t wanted to.  I feel that it’s a ‘phone, darn it, and why should I have to take pictures with it?). After a while, I got out of their way and went into the kitchen to watch them through the door.  I didn’t want to keep interrupting their feeding – or their battles.

I did a watercolor of a hummingbird a while back for my daughter, and as soon as I get around to it, I’ll scan it into my computer so I can post it on here. But for now, I’m just glad to be able to, once again, provide food for them, and to watch them going about living their fast little lives. They always brighten up my day.

What Makes a Book a GOOD Book?

Reblogged from Authors Helping Authors Resource Site:

Is it the idea, the imagination of the thing? Is it the author's style of writing, crisp and concise to intricate and elegant? Is it the polishing work that should happen once the writing is done, from editing, proofreading, cover design, formatting, etc.? Is it a combination of all of the above or some other combination of factors?

We are all, for the most part, readers too.

Read more… 84 more words

Just wanted to share this....

Ramblings on Being Profiled…

I’m sure that just about anyone who is black has had the experience of being followed around a department store while shopping, and/or being ignored when trying to find something or trying to get a price.  This has happened not only to males, but to females, too. Of course, now days, it doesn’t seem to happen as often as it did when I was a child.

I was a child during the nineteen fifties (back when we were “colored”), and sometimes my mother would take me with her when going out to shop or pay bills.  We were always watched when going into stores, and I remember the time we went out to pay utility bills one day (yeah, in those days we walked to do this because she had to pay in cash or money orders, and by the time she’d gotten to somewhere that sold money orders, she figured she might as well go the few extra blocks to the water department and power building.  Saved on those two or three cent stamps).  On the way back from taking care of those, we stopped at a dress shop where she had some clothes on lay-a-way, to make a payment. The year was about nineteen fifty-three and I was around six years old.

She made her payment at the service desk, grabbed my hand to leave the store, and we headed for the door. On the way, something caught her eye on a rack, and she paused for moment to look, then we continued on our way.  Or we tried to.

We’d gotten a few steps when we were accosted by a big, burly white man who, very roughly, asked my mother what had she put into her purse.  I’m sure that she was surprised by this but my mother, who was a very meek person, answered in her soft voice that she’d put nothing in her purse and she clasped my hand, tightly.

Well, this man didn’t believe her and refused to let us pass, demanding that she open her purse so he could check. He insisted he’d seen her take something off the rack and was extremely loud with his accusation.  By now, a female salesperson had walked up and was listening. This white lady, who’d seen my mother come into the shop for years, watched her go to the service desk numerous times to pay on her lay-a-ways, and knew my mother’s name, grabbed my mother’s purse and opened it up, of course finding nothing that shouldn’t have been there.

Since there was nothing in her purse that belonged to the store, the man insisted the woman take my mother to the dressing room and have her remove her clothing since “she must have stuck it under her dress”.  My mother went with the woman, but she was humiliated.  She was an honest, hardworking, church-going woman who taught her children not to steal, cheat, or lie, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. This frightened me as I’d never seen my mother cry, so I began to sniffle, and I tried to follow her but was not allowed.  She told me to wait and be quiet.  The man pulled me back and held me by gathering the material in the back of my dress and holding on to me that way (I guess he couldn’t hold my hand because the black might have come off and soiled his hand).

Of course, as my mother disappeared into the room with the woman, being the (dis)obedient child I was, I squirmed like crazy to get away from the man and began to bawl at the top of my lungs, which caused the man to curse and call me some very bad names (I didn’t know what his words meant at the time, but he was loud enough for my mother to hear, and though she told me later when I asked what they meant that they didn’t mean anything, years later when I was much older, I still remembered the words and knew what they meant).  Fortunately for me and my mother, all this noise attracted the attention of the foot cop who was passing by the shop at the time and he came in to see who was killing a kid.

There were no black policemen in my (southern) city at that time and, unless you were committing a crime (or construed as committing one), and you were black and a kid, you were generally ignored.  This cop, however, upon learning that I was screaming because I’d been separated from my mother who had been taken to another room to be searched, immediately demanded that the man turn me loose, and insisted my mother be brought back and released.  By then, the search was over anyway – with nothing having been found, of course. At least the cop was an honest and fair one.  As I recall, he had harsh words for the man (I never knew who he was; could have been some kind of security guard, I suppose, or maybe he owned the shop.  Don’t know) and the saleslady.  Needless to say, my mother never went into that shop again. I learned later that she sent my aunt in to get her things out of lay-a-way.  Back then, law-suit never entered most blacks’ heads so that was the end of it.

You might say that for the times and the place, what happened was not unusual since that was still in the days of Jim Crow.  Except, of course, at the time I did not understand. Took some time before I did and even then I never actually understood  until I was grown, and I never accepted it.  Over the years, I’ve been followed in stores, watched but ignored when it came to finding what I needed, and asked constantly if I “need help” with something, even after I’ve smiled and said “no” numerous times.  Now, I can’t say all of it is because I’m black, and truthfully, such incidents have become much less in recent years (or less obvious), but still, they happen.  Even to an old(er) black woman.

When I was raising my children during the seventies and eighties, it was still quite common to be tailed in a store when all you were doing was trying to find the aisle where they kept the socks so you could replace the tatty ones your kids’ toes ate.  Very annoying, but even then you just seethed and kept going.  Once, during the nineties, I went to buy a car and was ignored so badly, I left and went somewhere else.  Guess I didn’t look as if I could afford one to those particular people, though why the heck else would I be standing in a dealer’s showroom looking at sticker prices?  Must admit that particular one hasn’t happened again.

Still, during the nineties,  I did have to leave a computer store when I went shopping for my first desk-top, due to a lack of interest in my questions – and, apparently, my money.  I had finally gotten the reluctant attention of one of the numerous salesmen on the floor when a (white) guy walked up and the salesman immediately dropped me like a hot rock to go wait on him.   Bought one somewhere else where they didn’t seem to mind my color, answered all my questions and didn’t leave me to go wait on someone else.   They seemed to like me and ever after that, would always help me with questions or buying computer accessories when I went back.  Or, it could have been the fifteen hundred dollars I left with them in exchange for the computer.   But they were nice and helpful.  At any rate, haven’t had that kind of problem since, either.

When he was a teenager, my son got a job and bought a car.  Nothing fancy, a Ford Escort, but he got stopped by cops with great regularity and asked to assume the position while they searched him and his car and any male passengers he had with him when all he’d been doing was driving down the street at the correct speed.  The explanation was that there was some thugs going around committing crimes who had a preference for that type of car, so every black male seen driving one was pulled over. There was no explanation of why he got pulled over when driving my car which was not a Ford Escort.

Since I wore my hair very short at that time (as I’ve recently gone back to doing), I was even pulled over a few time while driving his car, though once I was seen to be an older black female, they never asked me to lie down in the street with my arms and legs spread or searched the car.  And, my daughter, who’d bought a Mustang, got pulled over, too, for no obvious reason that we were ever able to see.

I warned my son – and his cousins who rode with him from time to time – to always be cooperative so as not to get shot.  Warned my daughters, too, just in case.  In fact, I gave them all kinds of what might be taken to be odd warnings, to try to keep them safe, such as certain clothing not to wear, cultivating a neutral but pleasant expression, not getting into an elevator alone with a white person especially a female (that one was mostly for my son), and various other such items.   Sad that I had to do that but I didn’t want them in jail for no reason – or dead.  After all, I couldn’t tell them not to be black.

It’s a pity that even now, you have to be careful if walking, driving, shopping, or doing just about anything, while black.  But I am not surprised.

A Blankie for Baby published today on Smashwords…FREE ’til 7/31!

A Blankie for Baby published today at Smashwords.  FREE until 7/31

Cady and Sam are werewolves just trying to live a quiet life with their nine year old daughter, Annamae, in the small town of Matthews, North Carolina.  Recently, there have been a couple of incidents of not-so-quietness that has been somewhat disturbing, so they have decided to take Annamae to Cady’s parents in Massachusetts for safe-keeping.  In the meantime, a good friend of Cady’s is expecting, so she decides to make a baby blanket as a gift, but, this will be no ordinary infant as the parents are…different, and she will need special yarn for her project.  She knows exactly where to go for help with this, and luckily, that will be in Massachusetts, too.

Will this be as simple a task as Cady supposes?

This is the continuing story of Cady and Sam’s quest for a quiet, uneventful life.