Manly Men

Yes, I love my hubby of almost 30 years.  He has many wonderful qualities.  But he has no man skills.  I don’t mean he can’t build furniture or anything that requires a power tool, we’re talking none.

Zero.

Zippo.

He had to read the manual for my car to figure out how to pop the hood.  Then he had to read on to figure out where to put the windshield washer fluid.  No skills.  We once paid an electrician $75.00 to change a light bulb.  True story.  My hubby couldn’t figure out how to put in a florescent bulb.

But the worst part is he insists on trying.  And usually failing.  Or doing something stupid.  Like climbing up on the roof with a power washer.  At 70.  Can you say dumb move?

On a more positive note – he buys me great jewelry.  And at the end of the day I’ll take diamonds over light bulbs any day.

So what does your hubby/significant other do?

The Skinnyy on eBooks from National Award Winner Traci Hall

The elusive sales data… There are pros and cons to enrolling in Amazon’s Kindle Select program.  Five days in every ninety of being able to give away the title for ‘free’, is a great marketing perk. The bad part is having your novel only available on Amazon. I was interested in having Diary of a Bad Boy available for library lending, too, where an author could gain a percentage from Amazon’s royalty pool.  The book is near and dear to my heart so I really just wanted people to read it. That said, I decided to pull Diary from Smashwords and Barnes and Noble and see if I could pump some life into it. An experiment where I had nothing to lose - the book was selling less than five copies a month. You had to commit to ninety days, and they were upfront about the author needing to opt out of the program, because once enrolled they automatically renewed at the end of the commitment. I know other authors who utilized the program and did very well – reaching the top one hundred of the Amazon Free list.

Diary of a Bad Boy only got to 162, but I was pleased just the same.

I’ve been under killer deadlines for the past four months (yeah! Not complaining, lol) so I sort of forgot about the program until I heard a friend talk about how well she was doing. So just before Sleuthfest, I stuck Diary of a Bad Boy up for free – then went away and again, forgot about it. Poor Diary 

So I tried again. This time I promo’d on my loops, facebook and twitter. I told people about it and asked my friends to tell friends. I almost didn’t do this topic because the numbers are so small, lol, but then I decided to be honest and share.

In the past six weeks, from 2/18 to 3/31, I have sold – not given away – 31 copies of Diary of a Bad Boy. It sells for 2.99. The book has never once been taken from the cyber library.

For the 3/1 to 3/3 promotion, I gave away 1242 free copies in the US, and 142 in the UK

For the 3/28 to 3/30 promotion, I gave away 2043 US copies, and 15 UK copies.

I’m hoping that the promo got my name in front of readers.  I really can’t do much else with the royalties but get a manicure, lol.  The numbers for Diary in the past month are consistent with my two other self pubbed YAs – Wiccan Chalice sells for 1.99, and Wiccan Wishes, a short short <g> sells for .99 – they are steady performers around the twenty five sales, each title, per month.

As you can see, I won’t be buying that mansion across the ocean just yet – but I am banking on the long term. I will continue to write and add more to my self pubbed list. I am selling with a small publishing house, and a boutique publisher. My agent is shopping to New York publishing houses – eventually, things should come together and one project will help the other. Then – look out mansion!!

My new older teen novel, Zombyre, My Love, will be available on Amazon and e readers everywhere April 6^th.  It is also available in print, if you prefer the old fashioned way of reading!  Thank you, Rhonda, for inviting me to your blog!

Traci  www.traciehall.com

Finley is soooo not me

I’ve heard that a lot since the debut of my of the Finley Anderson Tanner series.  I can’t attest to how much she and I are alike.  Yes, Finley and I share the same sense of humor and I suppose her moral code mirrors my own.  That’s pretty much where the similarities end.  Well, excluding the fact that she’s blonde and short.  That’s a function of practicality.  Being blonde and short myself, I know how to dress Finley (fairly high heels are important) and the physicality of the character’s actions reflect the fact that unless she started dating Michael J. Fox, she’d never know what it felt like to dance with her head resting on a guy’s shoulder. 

In all other aspects, Finley and I couldn’t be less alike. 

She’s a shopper, something I personally loathe.  I’d rather remove a kidney than go to a mall.  The whole idea of window-shopping makes me want to stick pencils in my eyes.  Finley’s also heavily in debt, another personal taboo of mine.  But the biggest difference is that she’s an underachiever by choice.  I’m so much of an overachiever that I probably could benefit from lengthy therapy.

Crafting a character is never easy – nor should it be – and there will always be a sprinkling of the author’s personality and/or personal experiences in his or her characters.  Figuring out where to draw the line can be tough, especially when doing an on-going series. 

Knowing Finley needed room to grow, so I gave her some hefty flaws.  In the first book, KNOCK OFF (available at all bookstores and for download), she takes her first foray into the realm of solving a crime.  She isn’t all that adept in the beginning, but by the end of the book, she’s learned a few things, although she’s a long way from attaining the moniker of amateur sleuth.  At best, she’s an accidental sleuth. 

In the second book, KNOCK ‘EM DEAD (also available at retailers and for download), she builds on what she learned in the first book, though she’s still a long way from a crime-solving whiz.

In the third installment, FAT CHANCE (also available at retailers and for download); Finley is getting a tad better at sniffing out clues. 

We’re now on to book #4, SLIGHTLY IRREGULAR (release date April 17^th), and Finley is better equipped to solve crime.  And she’s starting to find balance in her love life.  Though this is Finley, so she hits some bumps in the road.

Finley marked a detour in my career.  After writing more than 25 romantic suspense novels under my pseudonym Kelsey Roberts, I wondered how books penned by Rhonda Pollero would be received.  Different name, and different flavor.  Was there enough mystery to satisfy mystery fans?  Was the sizzle between Finley and Liam enough of a subplot to draw fans of my romantic suspense?  I honestly didn’t have a clue and after a lot of angst filled soul-searching, I decided I had to put those concerns on the back burner and just tell the story. 

I’m glad I took the chance.  People seem to love Finley as much as I do.

And that’s the bottom line, isn’t it?  A writer is a storyteller; everything else is just window dressing.

Happy Writing . . .  Rhonda

www.rhondapollero.com

Breaking into America

YORKSHIRE, USA

The Long Hard Road to Breaking Into America – by Colin Campbell

First let’s get one thing straight. When I was a Yorkshire cop I was glad we didn’t have as many folk on my beat as you have in America. Fewer to arrest. Not as many throwing bricks, petrol bombs, and insults at me. (I never got shot at although one or two did try to knife me.) Now that I’m a crime novelist it seems like a good idea to get published where the most readers are. That would be your neck of the woods. Across the pond. America.

Working that out was easy. Putting it into practice was a lot harder. It started out okay, attending Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime to promote my English crime novels. Tales from the thin blue line. Uniform cops dealing with everyday crime and how that impacts on their lives. Got some good reviews. A few enthusiastic readers. And a big full stop from the American publishers. Too English was the cry. Not big enough, the criticism.

It was time for Plan B. Hatched with my American accomplice, New York literary agent Donna Bagdasarian. How about writing a novel set in America? Great idea, except I’m a Yorkshireman. If I tried writing an American character I’d be unmasked in no time. Road to Damascus moment. So simple it was obvious. Instead of trying to emulate Lee Child, who very successfully did what I knew I could not, I wrote about a Yorkshire cop sent to America to interview a prisoner. Things go wrong. The story gets big. And any errors in tone would be down to the character being from England.  Simple.

Not so simple. I wrote Jamaica Plain in six months and both Donna and I were hugely excited. Jim Grant was going to be the next big thing. I let Donna do her thing and began to write Montecito Heights, the second in what should become a series.  Six months later. Two books written. Big full stop from American publishers. Lots of positive feedback. In fact the rejection letters included the most praise I’d ever had. Nose to the grindstone. Write number three, Snake Pass. It should only be a matter of time. I now had an agent, an entertainment attorney in New York and one in Los Angeles. Jamaica Plain was represented in Hollywood by CAA. (I had to ask Donna what that was. In case I was joining the 10-step programme.) Still no book deal.

Then it happened. A three-book deal with an enthusiastic US publisher. First option on a fourth. Show me the money. They didn’t. Things slowed down. It was like the old crime scene adage, hurry up and wait. The deal went sour. The deal just went. Back to square one. Keep writing to avoid the depression. A couple of separate books including a young adult mystery and the final part in a gargoyle trilogy. Plotting and outline for book four in the Jim Grant series.

I was like a swan on the river. Calm on the surface, paddling like mad underwater. My agent must have been doing the same because she paddled us right into a better deal with Midnight Ink. Three books. First look at the fourth. The news broke on Publishers Marketplace and the next thing I knew, a very large TV/Film company was ringing my agent for a look at the books, including my young adult mystery. To say I was ecstatic would be an understatement. I am absolutely over the ***king moon. Long hard road? Yes. Petrol bombs? No. I call that a good result. Thanks Donna.

Could I have some customer service?

I love gadgets, I’m a technophile.  So after watching a friend’s high-speed cable versus my DSL, I knew it was time for a change.  Well, that and we were paying out the ying to have DIRECTV and cable.  The DIRECTV existed because my husband is a sports junkie and insists he needs all the baseball channels and football channels to live.

So, I called Xfinity and made arrangements to make the switch.  I saved money in so many ways.  I switched from AT&T phone service to cable phones and dumped my dsl in favor of the more powerful cable high speed.  I also explained that I had no idea how to set these things up, so I gladly paid the $50.00 to have a human come and do the techie things.

But I made a mistake.  I bought a Blu-ray player for my bedroom so I could access Netflix.  I already set it up on iPhones, iPads, computers and Wii.  But no Blu-ray for me.  I went into Best Buys (they had the lowest price) and bought the thing and asked a customer service person for anything I might need to connect the Blu-ray via wireless Internet – cables, cords, etc.  He sold me a cable.  All well and good, but when I tried to set it up, it wouldn’t go to the internet.  So off to the manual I went.  Seems the model I bought needed a USB LAN plugged into the back before it would recognize the equipment.  Easy fix.  I went on Stapples.com and ordered the LAN.  Then as I continued to read the troubleshooting section of the manual, it tells me the system will only work with a LAN from Toshiba USB.  I couldn’t find one other than on Toshiba’s site.  So I ordered that.  I called Best Buys and told that little weasel that there was another part to wireless functionality for the player.  He could have cared less.  Blew me off insisting he gave me that information.  Really?  Cause for $20.00 more, I could have gotten one what came with all cables and other hardware necessary to be “up and running in minutes.“  Including the cost of buying 2 LAN connectors, I could have saved money if I bought the 

more expensive unit.

On the bright side, I didn’t have to go through New Delhi to get the information.  And eventually I will have my Netflix and my YouTube but a little customer service would have gone a long way!