A Year of Great Literature

I've read and reviewed some awesome books this year and it's the perfect time to share a few of them with you. It's also a perfect time to fill-up that new eReader with great eBooks by emerging authors. No worries if you don't have an eReader. Free apps let you read eBooks on your phone, tablet, or computer. Even though I love my Kindle, I often read on my phone with the Kindle app for convenience on-the-go.

I read an eclectic mix of genres. That's reflected in my list. I'm not doing a Top 10, or a Best Of list. These are all great books from a wide range of authors, so you are sure to find something here to love. Many are by Indie authors, some from small presses, and some from the big houses in New York. I love great writing regardless of genre or how it was published, so you will find everything from young adult to erotica to non-fiction. Enjoy.

Thirty Something Girl by L. M. Stull: This amazingly gifted author wrote the most realistically emotional novel I have read. Read my Review

A Body at Rest by Susan Petrone: A beautifully written tale with a real twist. Read my Review

Fall Into Winter by Eden Baylee: Eden is the most generous and supportive author I know and she writes erotica that will set your pants on fire. Read my Review

Pull of Gravity by Gae Polisner: This YA author captures the voice of a male teen with amazing clarity and passion. Read my Review

Empty Chairs by Stacey Danson: This tragic and horrifying true story of child abuse and the author's survival on the mean streets of Sidney is a MUST read! Read my Review

Autism by Hand by Lorca Damon: This author allows us to share her life raising a beautiful autistic daughter. Another absolute must read. Read my Review

The Devil Made Me Do It by Amelia James: Amelia James has a way of making a committed adult relationship the most erotic thing in existence. Marriage is HOT! Read my Review

Dance of the Winnebagos by Ann Charles: This is my favorite feel good book of the year. It is a brilliantly written romantic cozy mystery. Read my Review

Reaper's Return by Ren Cummins: Ren Cummins sets an new bar for creativity in this mix of Steampunk and Fantasy. Read my Review

A Cold Day In Hell by Denise M Main: My favorite fantasy of the year. I fell in love with the demonic heroine and her imp sidekick rocks. Read my Review

Mayne Attraction by Ann Mauren: My favorite YA of the year. A romantic mystery with a twist, a heroine to fall in love with, and a mysterious hero that's every woman's dream. Read my Review

Ruby Red Metallic by Casey Sheridan: Looking for fast and blazing hot? You need to read this erotic novella. Read my Review

Viridis by Calista Taylor: A beautifully crafted classic Steampunk tale. There's nothing more romantic than the Victorian period, and nothing hotter than Calista's love scenes. Read my Review

A Walk in the Snark by Rachel Thompson: Known on twitter as the Mistress of Snark, Rachel Thompson takes us into her world of #Mancode and #Chickspeak. Read my Review

Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder: A manly book full of manly emotion - You've got to read this book! A main character Chuck Norris would love, and women will swoon over. Read my Review

Follow the Money by Fingers Murphy: This cozy legal mystery is a delightful page turner with a depth of eloquent prose. Read my Review

Mancode Exposed by Rachel Thompson: Another great book of essays by the Mistress of Snark, Rachel In The OC. Read my Review

Avalon Revisited by O.M. Grey: If you want a little bite in your steampunk, the vampires in this sexy steampunk novel do not sparkle - they are dark and sexy. Read my Review

I know I'm leaving out many great books and great authors, but these were some of my favorites this year. Many of the authors I mention are multi-published and I look forward to reading and reviewing more of their work in the coming year. I also have new authors loaded on my Kindle, but I haven't found time to read their books yet. So many great books - so little reading time. Load up your Kindle or reading app and enjoy the new year!

Review: Thirty-Something Girl by L. M. Stull

L.M. Stull, in her debut novel Thirty-Something Girl, has penned a literary classic. Strong words for what could be called a Chick-Lit Romance, but true none-the-less. The realistic emotion portrayed throughout creates more of a personal essay / memoir feel than fiction. The characters are as Hemingway demanded "more real than real." I was immediately drawn into the life of Hope, a woman trying to survive turning thirty as her life implodes. This novel could well be used as a textbook of well written prose. If you are a writer, in any genre, read it. This is how it is done.

As a reader, I totally lost myself in the story - relating more to Hope's trials, failures, fears, and triumphs than you would think a 50 year old man would. The writing drew me in and captured my heart. I cried with Hope and cheered for her. I totally could not put the story down, even reading it at work on my cell phone when I didn't have my Kindle handy. A Thirty-Something Girl is my Must Read of the year. Get it now. Give it to someone you love for Christmas. Author L.M. Stull is someone to watch. I can't wait to read what she writes next. 

Damn it, Jim! I'm a writer, not a used-car salesman!

The last few months have been incredibly busy - publishing two novels, several short stories, redesigning my website, promoting my work... That's left very little time for my first love, reading, or for writing reviews, working on my next novel, or social networking and blogging. I have a forth novel coming out in February, a paranormal historic romance set in WWII France, and plan to publish several short stories between now and then. The first part of 2012 looks to be as busy as the last quarter of 2011.

I currently have a reading list that looks like Santa's delivery schedule, and more books being added almost daily. There are so many awesome Indie authors out there, and so many great books. I'm planning to get back on a regular reading/reviewing schedule in the coming year. It's one of my New Year promises to myself. Another is devoting more time to writing. Unfortunately there are limited hours in the day, days in the week, and weeks in the year.

For any independent author, and more and more New York published authors, promotion eats up far too much time that could be spent reading and writing. We risk losing sight of what we love for the drudgery of selling our work. I know authors, published by the biggest houses in New York, who've spent their entire advance - and more - on promoting their work and have become so busy promoting that they haven't written a new word since being published. I know Indies who work nearly sixteen hours a day promoting their work and hardly any time writing new stories.

With THE COLLECTIVE, I did all the things authors do - blog tours, trailer, mass promotion. The book debuted as a best seller on Smashwords and pulled CybrGrrl along for the ride - she hit #1 the same week THE COLLECTIVE released. Both books stayed at #1 for the entire month of November. Great, right? But at what price? My every waking moment - and there were many all-nighters - was spent in promotion mode. I know many Indie authors who keep that kind of schedule going 24/7/365 and they consistently sell books. But is it worth the effort?

Every author must answer that question for themselves. For me, I don't think it is. I work a day job to pay the bills. I have two sons in their twenties, one still in college, a wife, and a cat. I have precious little time available and I want to spend that time doing what I love - reading and writing. But I also want readers to enjoy what I write as much as I enjoy my favorite authors. At one time I'd hoped to engage an agent who would sell my work and allow me time to devote to writing. What I have seen, as friends grabbed the brass ring of publishing, was that they are working as hard as the Indies promoting their own work.

Of course there are the Twilights and Harry Potters out there, but there are also people who win the lottery or break the bank in Vegas. If THE COLLECTIVE had the backing of a multimillion ad campaign, readers would be standing in line at theaters debating Team Archangel versus Team Collective. I enjoyed Twilight, but it wasn't better written or edited than any of the Indie books I love. Today's Best Sellers are simply the best marketed. There are thousands of amazing books which never sell more than a few copies.

I'm reminded of the greats, like Edgar Allen Poe who paid to have his work published only to lose money in the process. It was long after many authors died that their work became classics, and many struggled in obscurity their whole lives with no profit from their writing. It is the way of art. There are precious few fiction writers who can make a living at it, even fewer who hit the big time and join the ranks of the "Best Sellers." Many of those are one hit wonders, and will be forgotten in years to come.

I've taken a long look at why I write and what I really want. I write because I need to write. Most writers will understand what that means. I would write if no one ever read a single word of it. So first and foremost I write for me. I read because I love reading. No movie, TV show, or other form of art can ever replace that. Readers will understand that passion, even addiction, to the written word. I also love readers and writers. They are a special group of people and the only people who understand my passion for literature. So I need my fellow literature junkies as well.

I write for the benefit of my own soul and for the enjoyment of fellow readers. I network to establish connections with other bibliophiles who share my love of literature. Neither of those have anything to do with promotion, selling books, or making money. Of course there is the argument, which I have made to myself, that without promotion no one will read my work. Best Seller means more readers. But if promotion replaces reading, writing, and meeting other lovers of literature, why am I wasting my time?

I've decided in the New Year to devote myself to what I love. I will read, I will write, I will review and promote my fellow writers, and I will publish. If one person reads and enjoys what I write then I have succeeded in connecting with another soul and sharing my own. I hope this doesn't come across as smug on my part, but I'm 50 years old and life is too short to spend my time as an eBook used-car-salesman. I'm a writer. That's who I am.

I will do what I love and hope someone out there finds pleasure in what I offer. If I'm good enough, then someday a young reader may be inspired by my writing as I was by Poe, Verne, Bradbury, and all who came before. We live in an age when our words are far easier to immortalize than ever before. Unknown writers have passed by, their words forever lost, yet today we can easily offer our words to the electronic cloud and they will remain as long as the internet exists and there are people willing to read.

Keeping it Simple - Keeping it Real

I haven't written a tech piece in awhile. I've recently been updating my website and trying to organize my social media presence. Yeah, as if. Didn't I just do this? I'm on more social media networks than I can count. I'm sure I'm on some I've forgotten I signed up for. I try to keep up with the big ones: Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, Google+, deviantArt.... This could take awhile.

Writers can spend so much time on their social media and promotion that they stop writing. I've seen it happen. It's happened to me. It's easy to become stretched thin in the age of social media, but with a little thought and planning I think an author can be available to readers, promote their books, and still have time to pen that next great novel or short story the fans are waiting for.

The first step is an anchor. If you don't want to get lost in the raging sea of social media you need to be tied to something. It can be your favorite spot - Twitter, Blog, Facebook - or your website, but you need a base and then you can tie it all together and optimize your time online. I've decided that my anchor is my website. That's where I'm building my platform and connecting the web of tether lines.

As I said, it can be anything, but you need a hub - a base of operations, a headquarters, or an "evil lair" (voice of Dr. Evil). I spend most of my social time online on Twitter. I link my twitter feed everywhere. Next would be my blog where I review great books and write stuff like this. But I want to be wherever readers look for me. So I need to tie it all together. Twitter doesn't let me list all of my social media connections in my short profile. I could use the blog but...

My strategy is simple - I create a hub website with links to everything. I cross link what I can (twitter feed and blog to facebook for example) and post my main page url everywhere I can. Visitors come to my webpage and find links and info for all of my books, links to all of my networks so they can friend/like/follow me if they want. I even have my twitter feed running on the sidebar. But I'm not trying to pull it all onto one page, that would take days to load.

One problem in the age of widgets and apps is how easy it is to add content to a webpage or blog or social profile. Just copy and paste or in some cases point and click. You can have all of this cool stuff for your visitors to interact with. Problem - data rates and load time. If you fill your page with gorgeous graphics, cute animations, and awesome widgets your page takes forever to load and eats up data on small devices like phones. Your visitor just left before the page loaded.

I'm old school, like back in the day when everything was text and we still used DOS and batch files on our desktops and social networks were IRC. Do you remember Dial-up? I couldn't believe how fast my first 56k modem loaded pages. One thing mobile devices have done is turn back the clock. That awesome page that loads in a few seconds on your Alien Ware game computer just lost another visitor logging in from Droid. If you really need all those graphics and widgets you should at least set up a page for mobile users.

I've decided to keep it simple. Who needs flashing text and revolving graphics? What users want is information, not multi-media entertainment. If they wanted to rent a movie why are they looking at your books? The audience we are after are people who actually READ. I know, not many of us left. But we are readers and writers and text is our stock and trade. If you need all of those bells and whistles on your webpage how are you going to keep someone interested in your book?

It's not hard to optimize a page for small devices while continuing to be appealing on larger screens. Again, I don't need the cute little mouse pointer that sprinkles snow across the page when I move it around. That is so last century. And that music or video that auto-loads is annoying. If I want to watch your awesome book trailer I will click on it (don't get me started on book trailers - but yes I made one for The Collective). But maybe I don't want it loading on my Droid right now. Okay? I'll watch it later. I want to load your book into my Kindle App.

Text based web design is coming back. It may go all graphic and widgety when phones are more powerful than Big Blue in a few years, but for now simple is good. So my "hub" will have a lot of text links users can click on - easy to tab through and quick load times. I also have dynamic load items that visitors can click to load additional content without loading a new page - small data cost. I'm leveraging xhtml and xml and server side controls to keep it fast and simple. The new website will go live with the release of .45 Caliber Jitterbug before Christmas.