Rabbletown Live as a Print Book

Rabbletown: Life In These United Christian States of Holy America is now live on Amazon as a print book. I've priced it at $7.99. I found a really good designer/formatter who prepared the pdf and cover files for me to use. His name is Edwin Stark (esterkus@hotmail.com). Very reasonable. Couldn't be happier.

Seems to make sense to move forward now on getting my two most downloaded works available in print: Crazy About You and One More Victim.

Crazy is a novel size. One More Victim is a novella, so I'm going to use that as the collection title and wrap it together with another novella, The Saltness of Time, and then three short stories: Blue Kansas Sky, Innocent Passage, and Downswing. That will bring the word count to around 48,000, which seems reasonable. Innocent Passage hasn't been published yet. I'm looking for a photo of an abandoned farm house to use as the cover art. Open for submissions.

Get into the print business and dedications suddenly pop into one's mind. Here's the one I'll be using for Crazy About You:

DEDICATION

In memory of my father John Kenneth Attwood, DDS,

and all who worked and work in the struggle against mental illness.

I donate $1 of every sale of this book to Headquarters Counseling Center, Lawrence, Kansas. Those wonderful folks work the Suicide Prevention Hotline.

How We Live in the Epublishing World Today

Seems a good idea, from time to time, to sit back and reflect on where I'm at with this whole epublishing business.

Curiosity Quills is at work getting Blow Up the Roses ready for ebook and POD publication. I hope that will happen in August or early September. I'm very anxious to see how they market a book. They're building an impressive community.

 It appears more of these operations are starting up. I've submitted Crazy About You to Jaffabooks in Australia.

Curiosity Quills has right of first refusal on my next two works so I've sent them Heal My Heart So I May Cry and A Heart to Understand. I've also submitted them to Paradon, which is also a new book publishing venture.

I've been very happy in my dealings with Curiosity Press so far. They seem to be reputable and talented people. I have no way to judge with Jaffa and Paradon. Just have to see if they are interested and offer a contract and then study the contract. If that bombs at both places, I'll self-publish. I have a growing list of Twitter friends who are Navajo and I'm most anxious to start marketing and getting reactions. Several have replied to the blog about book covers.

Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America has been professionally edited and proofed. I am always aghast at the errors I make. I've read each of my works dozens of times, and I still miss stupid things like waver for waiver. And trying to parse grammatically where commas go gives me a rash. Rabbletown is being formatted now so I can use Amazon's Createspace to produce a POD book. So that may be my first work actually available in print. Katy Sozaeva who did the edit and has become an ambassador has written on her blog that it's the best work she's EVER read. I kid you not.  Here is the comment.

If Jaffa doesn't respond soon regarding Crazy, I'll get that one in print next.

I'm tempted to bundle One More Victim, The Saltness of Time and The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley into one volume for a POD.

One More Victim got a really nice comment from a Goodreads reviewer, Anthea Carson:

"It is so rare to find a book you can't put down. That's why I am so happy I discovered this writer. I couldn't stop reading this and my only disappointment with it was that it ended. It is the intriguing story of kids discovering things that people throw away. A young romance develops between two kids rummaging through trash cans and discovering things. The things they discover in those trash cans would haunt them forever and change their whole lives. Amazing book. Can't wait to read the next one by this author."

This is a young writer worth keeping track of. She's already developed her own writing voice and putting it to good effect.

The Saltness of Time has also been professionally edited, so it is ready as we move forward on the Kickstarter project. I'm working with local artist/printmaker Nick Naughton, who teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute. W want to use his letter press to turn The Saltness of Time into a fine art book with great paper and locally bound. That is, if we can fund it through Kickstarter. Nick's been very busy this summer so this will probably be a fall project. He would also do etchings for illustrations and, wow, is that guy good, and he likes realism. Former KC television news photographer John Tygart has agreed to do the video work for the promo spot with Pete Wilkerson doing the sound and editing. Then if we get funded we'll include costs to use them to document the process so that backers can receive not only the book but a DVD about the process.

Haven't heard from my agents for a long time about SPILL: Big Oil + Sex = Game On. Always afraid to press them because the news may be bad. I still have hopes one of the traditional publishing houses will publish that book. They still have the big marketing connections that are so important in this whole game. I think the day is far down the road when you might see a self-published ebook reviewed in the New York Times.

An odd thing has happened with SPILL. Its Facebook page has received a lot of likes from some hotties in India. I know it has "Sex" in the title, but is that all it takes to get attention? And from women? I have no evidence that a single one of them has bought the book and read it. So what is going on? Some of them even post it on their info pages as books they like. The whole thing baffles me. But I enjoy looking at their profile photos. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spill-Big-Oil-Sex-Game-On/134440113311148

Best news is I've started writing again. I found a project I stalled on several years ago, but think I can move it forward. It's a science fiction work set in the near future here in KC on the Plaza. It's one of those stories where time stops for everyone except the protagonist. That's been done, but I think I have an interesting twist.

Blogfest an Opportunity to Promote "One More Victim:" Has Not the Soul and End Which Nothing Else Can Fulfill?

The Buccaneer Blogfest sails on and we're at the stage when we are supposed to share and promote one of our works. I've chosen One More Victim and wanted to share some recent positive, really positive, comments about Victim.

One More Victim is a literary novella that contains a Holocaust element and when offered free (and I'm not going to do that anymore) has gone to #1 Amazon ranking for World Literature>Jewish. As a paid ranking, it once it #92. I think that gave me the right to call it a best seller, but that is term much abused. It has a strong romance element, too. And it can be considered a coming-of-age young adult work, as well. Most of my works are pretty difficult to put into genres. How about the genre of grab-the-reader?

Anthea Carson recently had this to say.

Page Turner

I could not put this book down. It was absolutely mesmerizing. First of all, I have a thing for books about loves that start in childhood, so it had me hooked right there. But also, this writer is just amazing. The way the language flows makes you want to keep reading. There is something very erotic in the story too, even though it was not cheap eroticism. I like that, when a book is sexy without overdoing it. Anyway, I highly recommend this book, and I will be looking for more books by this author. Can't get enough of his work.

Nicola Lawson

just wish there was more

This short story packs so much into a short length it's hard to believe. It's very well written and like I say in my title I wish there was more of it, not because the story doesn't satisfy because it definitely does. I guess I'll just have to get some more of the authors work.

CJ

A flash novel?

I'm an older gentleman living out in the boonies, so sometimes I forget that the world has seemingly sped up, even as I've slowed down. Having said that, this book felt like a duststorm packed in a tornado and wrapped in a hurricane. And I say that in the most flattering way. Attwood (this is my first experience with this author, and I'm pleased to say a surprisingly delightful one) manages to include so much back story in such a short space that I couldn't help but feel a bit rushed...and yet it didn't feel rushed. It was just the right back story and it was well constructed. The story itself was such a delight to discover. It left me breathless.

These and other reviews can be found here.

Welcome to the Buccaneer Blogfest

I'm participating in one of those Blogfest things, and if you don't know what that is, I'm not sure I can explain. You sign  up and for about a month post on specific topics and you go to other people's blogs and read their posts and they come to yours. I've only done one before and it created quite a bit of traffic. And traffic brings potential readers who may be interested in your offerings. I think that's what it's all about.

This is the introductory post and that's pretty simple for me. I simply direct people to the best explanation of my writing life that I've already posted and that's right here.

I hope this link takes you to the other participants:

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Input from Navajo Readers Appreciated

A Heart to Understand has a major character who occupies much of the book who is half-Dine and half-White. I started this mystery/suspense/thriller in Lawrence, KS with the premise (and several more premises) that two women were missing from Haskell All Nations University. I researched Haskell and found that the majority of students there were Navajo. That led me on what turned out to be a quest, really, to learn more about the Navajo culture. I encountered the Navajo creation story and was blown away: Here is a creation story as every bit as complicated and wonderful as the Greek myths. I did the best I could to incorporate that creation story into A Heart to Understand. Obviously, I hope it will appeal to the Navajo people and to readers who are interested in Navajo culture. So, I really care about the cover design. And, if you are Navajo, I hope you'll comment on which cover approach would appeal to you. Here is the prologue to the story:

In the beginning was the wind. And when the earth came, the wind cared for it. And when the darkness came, the wind breezed across it beautifully. And when the dawn came and laid its lightness over the darkness, We, the People, were created. And the wind kissed our faces.

Here are the cover design approaches I'm looking at.

Cover Design Discussion for Heart Series

I've got my two Philip McGuire novels ready to publish. Both professionally edited and proofread and I want to issue Heal My Heart So I May Cry and A Heart to Understand simultaneously because I've included the beginning of each at the back of the other one. So if I reader likes one he or she can make a quick decision to go get the other.

Cover designs are tough for these so I'm using pinterest to put them up and seeking feedback. I'm now leaning to the landscape look. http://pinterest.com/randyattwood/upcoming-book-cover-drafts/

Philip McGuire is a burnt out foreign correspondence who has given up journalism to go back to his college town and buy and run a bar. But his past keeps coming around to visit him.

Price Reduction in July on Smashwords

I've enrolled ten of my works in the July summer sales at Smashwords. You'll see a code to enter that will be you a 25 percent reduction. One of my fans, Katy Sozaeva is promoting it on her own blog and here's what she had to say:

"I have read every single book and story he has available out there (and one he doesn't yet have available to younyah nyah!) and just loved every single one! You won't find all my reviews on Smashwords, unfortunately, because they won't allow folks to review a book they haven't purchased there, but you CAN find my reviews on his Goodreads pages for his books, so feel free to check there if you want to read my opinion (which, as you know, is better than yours laugh)! I've also posted most of them here on my blog. He offers 12 of his 13 stories on Smashwords. Ten of those works will be listed at 20% off; you should just go ahead and buy the rest of them while you're buying, 'cause they're totally worth it!"


My titles are here.


And a reminder that I donate $1 of every sale of Crazy About You to Headquarters Counseling Center in Lawrence, KS. They are the people in this area of he US who work the suicide prevention hotline. That donation won't get cut 25 percent. Those people offer an outstanding service.


And the Fourth of July is my birthday. The best gift I can think of would be to gain a new reader!