A new realease and new direction heading into 2013...

Hi, everyone. First, I want to thank all of you who have been regularly emailing, Facebooking, leaving messages on Twitter, Amazon and all the many other places that we're all connecting in this modern social network age. I really appreciate your feedback, comments and support. Thank you.

I especially appreciate those of you who have taken the time to leave reviews for my print and audio books wherever you might find them. Your willingness to share your time and effort is amazing and will never be forgotten...and believe me readers pay attention. Every review you leave means there are hundreds if not thousands of potential readers deciding to take a chance on my work because they trust your opinion. Those reviews are absolutely the biggest favor you can do for any author. For the record, I leave reviews for every book I read, and this year I'm going to leave the same reviews on many more sites so that the authors get a wider benefit from my feedback. I definitely believe that anything I can do to help my fellow authors is a privilege and a responsibility.

2012 has been an amazing year. My available titles have more than doubled. My sales have been shooting straight upward, and Focus House Publishing has been working hard to improve the quality of my covers, edits and all other aspects of my releases. I am appreciative for every effort. THANK YOU!

So what's coming up and how are things changing? First of all, until today, I had no idea that there were readers who actually pay to receive my blog on their ereaders. It's just a little tidbit that Focus House never happened to mention, so for those blog subscribers I apologize for not posting more often. I honestly didn't realize you were in the wings. I promise your subscriptions will be much more worthwhile because I will be posting here regularly for the remainder of this year and all throughout 2013. If something changes beyond then, you will be the first to know.

Today's news: "The Santa Shop, Anniversary Edition" is now available on Amazon. It's 50% longer than the original story, which equates to 60+ pages in a print edition. You'll find out more about Skip's history, his family and all the characters around him. I've also updated the story for our modern times and have reimagined and added several scenes that I think you'll enjoy. "The Santa Shop" has now been read by nearly a quarter million people, and judging from the feedback (97 reviews on Amazon averaging 4 1/2 stars) most really love the story of grief, emotional struggle and redemption. I wrote the novel as a simple Christmas story, but it has grown WAAAY beyond that in the past ten years. The accompanying Samaritans Conspiracy twist is earning me regular emails, and "Red Gloves" the 2012 second book in the series has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas and is currently my second bestselling novel. So, because I never intended the Santa Shop storyline to be complex, it's not surprising that the few negative comments it receives are that it is too simple. Well, I promise the Anniversary Edition is not. If you wanted more from "The Santa Shop," you now have it; the Anniversary edition provides a deeper, more descriptive experience but with the same emotional payoff throughout. Please try it and leave a review to let me know what you think. I have a few other quick points to make, but here are the Amazon links to all the Samaritans Conspiracy books. Of course, you'll find them at every other retailer as well. Santa Shop paperbacks are available and within a few months paperbacks and audiobooks will be available for most if not all of the titles.



While we're still on the Samaritans Conspiracy discussion, I should mention that Focus House has been telling me for a couple of months that a new cover is on the way for the "Hollywood Ending," which for those of you who aren't aware is the extra chapter, one year in the future, that I wrote for one of the major movie studios. Focus House released it because of feedback from a blog post, but no one expected it would sell in the hundreds or thousands of copies per year, which it has. In short, a new cover is coming sometime soon. I should also mention that "The Santa Shop" is absolutely FREE everywhere in ebook right now. I'm not sure how long that will last, but please feel free to take advantage. Remember, if you like it but want an even more emersive experience, pick up a copy of the Anniversary Edition next.

Since I'm now starting to feel as though I've gone from saying nothing on this blog to saying too much, I guess we'd wrap up today with a brief discussion about the direction that I'll be taking this year. A new novel in the Samaritans Conspiracy is coming early in the year. The working title is "The One Who Jumped." It's the story of the very first person in the Santa Cyle who actually leapt from the bridge in Gray, Vermont. You'll be shocked at the turmoil it causes. My next novel-length release will be a real estate thriller. For those of you who aren't aware, I was a top selling broker in Southern Maine for many years and was the number one broker in my region when I walked away from the profession in 1997-98. 2013 will also see the continuation of "Her Yearning for Blood," "The Dislocated Man," and my "Colonial Evil" serial novels. The first section of all of those series are FREE and will remain FREE everywhere.

 



Regarding these serial novels and all the other projects I'm working on, please know that readers have direct feedback about which serials and series get written and how fast. If you love a book or series, leave reviews, tell your friends, make sure they're buying it; tell everyone on Facebook and all over the net as well. If a particular series or serial does well, I promise you Focus House is going to lean on me to work on that first.

So, to wrap up today's post, you can expect to see a lot more of me on my blog, and I have a lot of great projects in the hopper (including a continuation of the Zachary Pill series) for this year. I'm looking forward to sharing a little bit more about the process of creating books as we move into the new year!

Your friend always,

Tim Greaton