To Peddle a Story

Update:

I just updated Where's My Book? for the first time since creating the page.

As you can see, yours is very likely on the way or in my office waiting to be hand-delivered right now!

I just need addresses for one last fistful of folks.


To Make Contact . . .

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Confession: Marketing is never been my brand of whiskey. Now that In Verse has been released into the wild in paperback form, and the Kindle Edition is set to release on April 1st, the challenge shifts to getting it noticed.

I believe it's a great story with the potential to sell, but "Read my book!" feels like "Hold my baby!" You never have to ask your mother twice, but its long-term success is out of her hands. Whether it flies or dies will depend on unbiased opinions and word-of-mouth. A story must prove itself worthy, one stranger at a time . . . or have enough cash and advertising prowess behind it to arrest or hoodwink the masses.

I don't have an agent or the means to fund a media blitz. So as I christen the double decker strugglebus that is self-promotion, I hope to garner some favorable reviews from strangers and possibly some awards that I can point to and say, "Look what she said! No! She's not even my sister!"

There are a lot of fiction contests out there that only accept novels published in the previous calendar year, which means it will be a while before my title is a contender in those arenas. In the meantime I aim to get creative. Going door to door like an old school encyclopedia or Hoover salesman is completely against my nature, but you never know what getting a free copy into the hands of a modern-day Midas might achieve.


By the way, I just noticed that the "Look Inside" feature for In Verse on Amazon is now available!

Mary and The Witch

Medieval Princess Mary-Ann was strolling piously along the beach one humid, fish-scented day when she heard a small, somewhat cracked voice peeping just above the shush of the tides.

“Excuse me, Miss! . . . Madame!”

Mary-Ann gently scanned the beach with her royal retinas.  At long last she spotted a tiny witch with a characteristically crooked nose, orange skin, and a pointy navy-blue hat standing on the drawbridge of a respectable sand-castle just beyond reach of the high tide. She had no broom at hand, only God knows why.  There were several tiny goat-heads bearing long droopy tongues awkwardly perched on stakes rising from the moat, but that doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t pertain to the story, and Mary-Ann was very tolerant, not to mention fictional, like Harry Potter.

The tiny witch standing on the tiny drawbridge above the tiny moat adorned with tiny goat heads on tiny stakes was in a major pickle.  She was covered from fashionable flats to furrowed forehead in a densely sticky purple slime.

“Me Lady!  Verily, verily, I have been brutally, brutally, mauled by a bi-polar jellyfish and cannot move!”

Struck with compassion, Mary-Ann replied, “Art thou not freezing, dear witch-with-the-skin-of-a-tangerine?  Let me escort you to my ample water-basin in the royal outhouse for a proper cleansing of that abominable jellyfish’s violent violet marmalade excretion!”

“Oh thank you, me lady!”  croaked the witch as she burst into joyful forest-green tears of relief.

Medieval Mary-Ann carefully plucked the witch from the drawbridge like a mouse from a glue-trap and trotted elegantly down the shoreline as fast as dignity and Elizabethan whale-bone corsets would allow.  As they neared the royal outhouse--built of hewn boulders and stained glass with ample girth, beautiful lighting, and offensive ventilation--Sir Honeybucket, on guard duty, stood at arms adjacent to said marvel of medieval relief architecture.  He simultaneously hoisted his eyebrows at the site of the witch and acknowledged the presence of royalty with a solemn bow from the hips.

All of a sudden Mary-Ann and her purple-plastered passenger were overtaken by a flurry of thundering hoofs, horsehair, and armor--knocking and crashing like a barrel full of cymbals chasing a cheese wheel down Mount Sinai!  Mary Swooned.  The witch shrieked.  Sir Binjalot, the modest yellow knight! Temporarily blinded by Dutch courage and floating molars, he nearly trampled the princess, so desperate to train Thomas on the terracotta!

Sir Honeybucket would have nothing of this brash disrespect of the nearing nobility and her feeble friend!  Drawing his sword, the protector of the potty placed it smartly between the sanctuary door and the charging Sir Binjalot!  Pointing toward Mary-Ann with his free hand, he shouted at the top of his lungs,  “Pee not!  But her and jell-y sand witch!”