Sylvia Shults's Blog, page 76

Read an eBook Week Continues!

There’s one more day to save BIG on ebooks from Crossroad Press, including, well, every ebook they carry! March 5 through 11 is Read an eBook Week. And to celebrate, Crossroad Press is running a humongous sale. Just follow THIS LINK to get half off — half off! — on every single ebook put out by Crossroad Press. That includes titles like Fractured Spirits, The Dark at the Heart of the Diamond, and The Taming of the Werewolf. So whether you want romance, horror, or true ghost stories, Crossroad Press has got you covered, with 50% off ebooks all week!

 

Celebrate Read an eBook Week With Me!

It’s Read an eBook Week, all this week from March 5 to 11. And to celebrate, Crossroad Press (purveyor of such fine ebook titles as Fractured Spirits, The Taming of the Werewolf, and Double Double Love and Trouble) is partnering with Smashwords to offer 50% off ALL ebook titles!

Just follow THIS LINK to score ebooks at half off all week long!

How Does 50% Off Sound?

Hey guess what? One of my publishers, Crossroad Press, is running a yuuuuuge sale this coming week!

It starts today and runs through March 11. If you like ebooks, you can get almost ANY of my books through Smashwords, which is one of Crossroad Press’s suppliers of ebooks. Just follow THIS LINK to get ebooks for half off. Half off! Seriously! They have all formats, too. So visit the link, and type in the title, or my name, or Crossroad Press to discover other authors.

Salem Township Library

So this week, I got to drive to the smallish burg of Yates City, to do a presentation on Fractured Spirits at the Salem Township Library. Small town libraries rock, you guys, seriously! I had a full crowd of appreciative folks who came to hear me speak about the asylum. One of the ladies in the audience was the librarian at nearby Maquon Library. She told me that she had closed her library early so that she could jet to Salem Township to hear my program. How cool is that? And the evening ended with Denise, the librarian who had invited me, asking if I had any other programs on offer. So mark your calendars, because I will be back at Salem Township Library on Thursday. See ya there!

Oh, and check out the display the library had up in their foyer. Can you spot the cover of Fractured Spirits? Pretty nifty of them to tie in the book display with the program!

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Lights Out #34: Cleansing

Think your home might be in need of a little more “spring cleaning” than Mr. Clean can handle by himself? Listen to this episode of Lights Out

[image error]Even more podcasty goodness!

for a few handy hints for ridding your home of unwanted entities.

Goodreads Review: The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck

     I didn’t realize this at first, but this is actually a parody of another self-help book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo (which, full disclosure, I have also read). (What? I read self-help books. If only to find out what I’m doing wrong.) The original was about keeping house. The parody is about keeping sane. In the original, Marie Kondo suggests taking a look at every one of your possessions and deciding if it does indeed bring you pleasure to own it. If not, thank it for its service, then discard it. In the parody, Sarah Knight takes much the same approach — only this time, it’s people, habits, obligations that are under the microscope. If there is a relationship that is no longer working for you, get out of that relationship! If a bad habit is dragging you down, change it! The author tells us that it is, in fact, quite all right to just not CARE about the things society tells us we SHOULD care about, things like, oh, attending graduation parties or baby showers when we really would rather stay home and do something else, perhaps something productive. The author argues that it is in our best interest, for our own mental health, to concentrate on doing things that bring us joy, pleasure, and sanity, rather than suffering through things that we don’t … well, that we don’t give a darn about.

     The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck was, in my opinion, a much more useful book than the original. Sure, we all have those evenings (especially this time of year!) when we’d rather stay home and snuggle on the couch with our cats or work in the garden than go out and subject ourselves to karaoke with people whose company we don’t particularly enjoy. It is so freeing to be told — in black and white! — that this is perfectly acceptable, and even something to be encouraged. The book is presented in a light-hearted way, of course — with a title like that, you know the author’s not going to take herself too seriously — but it really does have some pertinent advice for our overscheduled, obligation-filled lives. The book’s message is that it is okay to bow out of doing things you don’t want to do. The further message is to find things that DO excite you — things about which you do give a … darn, and turn your attention and energy to them, instead of wasting your energy on doing things that really don’t bring you joy. We can giggle with guilty pleasure about skipping out on our grade-school reunion. But the book’s real takeaway is this … find things to do that bring you fulfillment. And go out and DO them.

Library Love!

How cool is this? I made the library book display for Illinois authors! I’m also immortalized on a bookmark, thankyouverymuch.[image error]

Brain Weirdness

Last night, in the middle of the night sometime, my brain decided to wake me up. I don’t know if it wanted to chat, as it does sometimes, or if it simply wanted me awake while it obsessed about things … but somewhere in the blackest hours of the night, my brain blasted a doorbell sound in my ear. No kidding — “DING-DONG!”, the classic doorbell sound, just exactly like that.

I came bolt awake, then relaxed with a sigh and an inward grumble at my EVER SO HELPFUL and INVENTIVE brain. I knew the sound hadn’t been real. My husband slept peacefully next to me, so obviously he hadn’t heard a thing. Also, the doorbell sound my brain chose to wake me up with didn’t even sound like our actual doorbell. Smooth move, brain — I know you’re fibbing.

So yeah, it took me about half an hour to fall back to sleep. Thanks, brain ….

Exciting Publishing News!

Boy oh boy, we live in the most wonderful times. I recently got a very interesting email from one of my publishers, David Niall Wilson at Crossroad Press. They’re the outfit that puts out Fractured Spirits for me, as well as taking care of all my fiction backlist.

Crossroad Press is partnered with a nifty company called Espresso Book Machine. Get this — you can pull up to one of these kiosks, and have a book printed on the spot. How freakin’ cool is that? This even beats Amazon Prime for speed. And it’s green, so very green, because the books are being printed right there, just when you ask for them, and not sitting in a box in a warehouse somewhere. You can find locations here . Go follow the link — there’s a map of the WORLD there. Someone in Botswana could print out one of my books. Or all of them, pretty much. But you don’t have to be in Botswana, just sayin’. There are loads of pretty orange “you are here” pins in the United States.

So if you’ve enjoyed my true ghost stories and you’d like to see what led me to this point, take a chance on some fiction. Double Double Love & Trouble  is a fun, light-hearted humorous romance, with several ghostie characters. And one of my favorite horror novels, The Dreamwatcher , is about twins, ghostly possession, and illicit love. Fun stuff! Or if you’re in the mood for something bite-sized, try Timeless Embrace (four romance novellas) or The Dark at the Heart of the Diamond (a collection of horror short stories).

And if your heart still lies with nonfiction, Fractured Spirits  is also a title carried by Crossroad Press, available now through Espresso Book Machine. So join the technology revolution!

How My Brain Works

So I had another work-related dream last week. I say dream, but I actually do consider it a nightmare, because there is no redeeming value in any of this.

I have these nightmares on a regular basis, and they are very often about work. And they follow a pattern, so I KNOW I’m in the middle of yet another soul-sucking work dream. If I’m dreaming about my current job, the program we use to check out books isn’t working, and the computer screens are filled with arcane symbols. (Usually pertaining to some sort of weird game, which is strange, because I do not ever ever play computer games at work, so I don’t even know why my brain would associate those two things.)

I worked a job years ago in which I worked only for tips. I still have nightmares about that job too. In those dreams, I’m working away, getting “paid” … until I realize that everyone who’s supposed to have been giving me money has actually been giving me hand-drawn coupons for worthless crap on blank pieces of paper. Oh boy. Yippee. And the coupons are all expired.

And oh yes, I do still have school nightmares too, oh, you betcha.  College, high school, even grade school. And each one of THOSE follows its own pattern.

The only thing in my life that I DON’T have nightmares about is writing, and getting up in front of audiences to speak about the Peoria State Hospital. Considering the attitude most people have about public speaking, I think I’m doing pretty well with NOT having nightmares about that.

But seriously, I’ve never (knock on wood) had anxiety dreams about writing, or about doing presentations on the PSH. I must be doing something right!