One More Victim Keeps Getting Downloaded

My work most currently downloaded is One More Victim. I don't understand how readers find or choose one work over another. One More Victim has a Jewish and Holocaust tag because those elements are essential to the plot. It's a story I started writing in the mid 1970s when I looked outside the window of our back door and saw crows pecking their way into our garbage. That started a poem in my head. And a story. The story got written, but the last lines of the poem that ends the story didn't come to me until some 30 years later. Victim is getting some good reviews. Like this one:

WOW! What a wonderful short story. This book starts out in 1958 but ends up in 1994. This book has so much in the few pages that I am amazed at how well the author was able to created such a wonderful story. Please be aware that this review may contain spoilers.

This book starts out with Greg being a 5 year old child woke up by a strong thunderstorm. He walks in the living room of his home and sees his father holding a flashlight looking out into the night sky. 

Greg has a father and a step-mother but his real mother died a couple of years ago during a different thunderstorm that had a tornado with the storm. Greg talks about the storm to others but not his father. Greg remembers the storm but is sad that he does not remember the mother who died in the storm. 

Greg is a little bit of a weird child. He goes through people's trash for treasures. Greg find some amazing stuff. After the storm Greg builds a hut so help hide some of his treasures. While there one day Greg has an unexpected visitor, Kathy. 

Greg shares some of his treasures with Kathy and that starts everything in motion. 

This book covers so much in the few pages that it is just a great read. This book can be read in less than an hour but it is an hour well spent. I have not read anything by this author before but I look forward to some of his additional work in the future.


http://www.amazon.com/One-More-Victim-ebook/product-reviews/B006J0C6T8/ref=tsm_1_tp_un_cr_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0#R2EHTCAFIX9Z6S


I used a wonderful image from the penetrating Kansas photographer Jared Wingate for the cover.

Nice review for Then and Now

I wanted to acknowledge a nice review for Then and Now: the Harmony of the Instantaneous All by blogger and twitterer Hales, who uses the same design template for her blog as I do. If you lived through that turbulent spring of 1970 or are curious about the 1960s, I think you'd enjoy Then and Now. The occupy movement reminds me much of those times.

http://myloveofreading.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-then-and-now-harmony-of.html

Book itself is on Amazon and Smashwords and at B&N

http://www.amazon.com/Then-Now-Harmony-Instantaneous-ebook/dp/B005QUEQSQ/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322880632&sr=1-8

Time to Tease About "A Heart to Understand"

Dear Readers,

A writer is in his heaven when he has found an editor he trusts doing a final run through on a manuscript and makes good suggestions and catches stupid typos. It just gets better when he has found a beta reader knowledgeable about the subject matter in the book and finds errors easily correctable. And to have a cover designer at work as well!

A Heart to Understand--finally a book of mine that easily fits into a genre, this one thriller/suspense--is getting close to publication. The book features a half Navajo, half white young man who believes he is a witch and knows how to open the gates to the Holy People so he can trick Changing Woman into giving him new gifts so the White Man can be defeated.

The beta reader has 25 years experience in New Mexico and a deep understanding and appreciate of the Navajo culture and their fascinating creation stories. And those stories figure prominently in A Heart to Understand.

I have learned how to work with editors and respect their suggestions. I look at each one and if I don't have a good reason why I have written a sentence the way I have written, then I follow the advice to make a change.

Cover design is so important and I'm delighted Michael Irvin has agreed to read the book and work on a cover design. All books about the Navajo are instantly compared to Tony Hillerman, but this is not a Hillerman-like book (and I respect his work) and I don't want a Hillerman-like cover.

Can't wait to get my hands back on that manuscript and start the process that will lead to the final product.

To give you a taste: here's the prologue:

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.

Donating to Suicide Prevention Hotline

Donating $1 of every "Crazy About You" sale to Headquarters Counseling Center in Lawrence, KS, which is the area group that works the suicide prevention hotline. Just sent them my first $10 donation for ten sales: http://www.rabmad.com/authors/randy-attwood/

413 downloads for SPILL and so far one nice review

Nice review for Spill from one of those 413 free downloaders:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2R20UU3MMGOHU/ref=cm_cr_dp_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview

SPILL is free for five days at Amazon

I've enrolled SPILL in the Kindle direct program and it is free for download Until midnight Jan. 25. This meant I unpublished from Smashwords because one has to give Kindle exclusivity. But my experience with One More Victim was positive enough for me to try it now with SPILL, which is a novel that should have far wider appeal than the literary audience for One More Victim. Kindle Direct is finding out that many people who will borrow a book in that program will return then to purchase it. They added additional money to the pot to redistribute to its participating authors and my cut will be $1.70 per borrow. But I have had more sales than borrows and I have no way of knowing if a borrow turned into a sale. This whole ebook sales business is a murky murky area.

http://www.amazon.com/SPILL-ebook/dp/B005MRA588/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316031857&sr=1-7

Time to Summarize 11 Available Works