One Reason Amazon Rules the Book Publishing World and an Opportunity for Great Free Reads!

Foul Wind by Kathy McIntosh is a humorous mystery set in wacky North Idaho. Want an opportunity to read it for free? Then read on!

The publishing world keeps changing and Amazon keeps coming up with excellent ideas that are part of that change. One of Amazon's newest publishing ventures is KindleScout, in which the readers act as acquiring editors and pick the titles to be published! I think this is a brilliant idea. Who better to pick books they want to read than the readers? And Amazon came up with a great idea to "pay" those readers, if a title you nominate is bought and published by Amazon, you get that title for FREE when it's published! Woot! 

Plus, it's easy to do. Just head over to KindleScout and sign in with your Amazon account. The site is easy to navigate and each book has a cover, a blurb and the first three chapters for you to peruse. You can only nominate three books at a time and they are only up on KindleScout for 30 days so I usually go to "Ending Soon" first and take a look.

Except when I know the book is something I want to read! Foul Wind by Kathy McIntosh is such a book! Here's the blurb: 

Noses wrinkle in Hancock, Idaho, when a foul wind blows from the new wind turbine at a nearby hog farm. When a blackmailer threatens to reveal secrets about the development and its investors, suspicion falls on Feather Sullivan and her sister, compelling their mother to meddle. Interfering moms on a hog farm get messy—and deadly—fast! When the blackmailer ends up murdered, Feather and a mouth-watering PI seek answers while she tries to keep her snooping mother from becoming another victim.

Just my type of humorous mystery, perfect for an cup of tea and cozy chair afternoon. If it's your cup of tea too, head over to Foul Wind soon as there is only 8 days left to nominate this title!

Dear readers, what do you think of KindleScout? Love it? Hate it? Or?

Great Writer's Advice, a Book Sale, and a Granola Recipe too!

Havoc overtakes a peaceful North Idaho town when feuding brothers combat a proposed safari camp. Mustard's Last Stand is the first in the Havoc in Hancock humorous suspense series.

Creating Believable Lies … and Granola

Thanks so much to Conda for inviting me to guest blog today! My post is about making fiction (and lies) seem real. I hope you will love the recipe that follows as much as I do. And that's no lie.

My novel, Mustard's Last Stand, is on sale today as part of an Amazon Countdown. Only 99 cents for a humorous suspense Kindle book that retails for $3.99. It's also available in audio format. 

In a recent conversation with my spouse, I said, "People will believe almost anything if it is told with conviction." We actually weren't discussing writing, but birding. Never an ornithologist, my dh proposed coming up with his own "life list," of birds observed, naming them whatever he chose. Today's was the Guatemalan Junko. Don't ask what it really was. Neither of us has a clue.

At any rate, the comment about belief in statements told with conviction transfers easily to writing: create a believable setting with strong characters, and readers will believe it exists. I was finishing up a mystery novel last night, set no doubt in a fictional town. The protagonist went to a café that served food so appealing that I considered trying it on my next visit to Pennsylvania. Then I remembered I was reading a story! The details made it come alive … the smell and taste of the food, the aromas abounding in the room, the personality of the server, the feel of the chair cushion beneath the character's (ample) butt. Add a sprung wire in the cushion, if you wish. Or a cranky host. Read a great sci fi novel, and soon you'll be looking for some of the inventions that made up daily life in the story world.

That is the result we're seeking when writing, and one way is to add flaws: perfection, even if it exists, doesn't seem real. 

Just this week, a reader posted a review of my novel on Amazon, and said, "What I liked most about this story was the very realistic and fascinating characters. By 'real' I mean that they did stupid things; they did wise and courageous things." 

It is cool when a reviewer makes your point for you. 

Are you a good liar, or do you stretch the truth only in fiction? What do you do in your writing to make it seem real? 

The recipe I'm including today makes a great hostess or last minute Christmas gift, and as granola goes, comes close to perfection. I tell you this in all sincerity. Believe me. Or try it and believe. With many Merry Christmas wishes, everyone.

Spiced Pumpkin and Brown Sugar Granola

Servings: Makes about 5 cups (large batch: 15 cups)

Ingredients

•           3/4 cup canned pumpkin puree (large batch: 2 1/4 cups)

•           1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar (large batch: 1 1/2 cups)

•           2 Tbsp. canola oil or olive oil (large batch: 6 Tbsp.)

•           1 Tbsp. vanilla extract (large batch: 3 Tbsp.)

•           2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (large batch: 6 tsp.)

•           1 tsp. ground cardamom (large batch: 3 tsp.)

•           1 tsp. kosher salt (large batch: 3 tsp.)

•           3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (large batch: 9 cups)

•           1 cup roughly chopped pecans (large batch: 3 cups)

•           1 cup pistachios (optional; large batch: 3 cups)

•           1 cup golden raisins (large batch: 3 cups)

•           1 cup dried cranberries (optional; large batch: 3 cups)

Directions

Active time: 15 minutes

Total time: 45 minutes

Preheat oven to 325°. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together pumpkin, sugar, oil, vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, cardamom, and salt. Add oats, pecans, and pistachios (if using), and toss to coat. Spread evenly on prepared baking sheet and bake 30 minutes, stirring halfway through. Stir in raisins and cranberries (if using), and continue baking until oats are just crisp, about 15 minutes more. Stir one last time, then set aside to cool completely. When hard, break into chunks and store in an airtight container.

Kathy McIntosh, a recent voluntary transplant from Boise, Idaho, to Tucson, Arizona, is enjoying the change in scenery from cottonwoods to cactus. She often sees javelinas, coyotes and roadrunners strolling through her neighborhood. She assures her concerned readers that she can still write about Havoc in Hancock, her humorous suspense series set in North Idaho, and will finish book two, Foul Wind, as soon as she rappels from the stack of moving boxes! Read more at www.KathyMcIntosh.com and visit her blog today for a delightful, easy Cinnamon Pecan recipe, just in time for the holidays!

Thank you, Kathy, for this delightful blog post and recipe! And dear readers do you have your own believable lies to tell in the comments? And/or a recipe to share?

And don't forget to pick up a copy of Mustard's Last Stand while it's on sale!

A-bundling we go! A great deal! Four Mysteries for $1.99!

Sirens on Death Starke Blvd is out! Available everywhere! Tons of great reading!

Released today! I've found that bundling eBooks is a great way for readers to find new authors and for authors to find new readers. I often buy these myself, lots of reading for cheap! What could be better? I love this new publishing world. Here's one that includes my award winning mystery, Starke Naked Dead, plus three other five star mysteries. 

In Starke Naked Dead, the gossiping women of the Widows Brigade in the new ski resort of Starke, Idaho love a good scandal—this time it’s a murder mystery, and a stark naked corpse! One reviewer said, "Funny small town murder mystery, that will have you trying to figure out who did what!"

In Death Scene by Sara Jayne Townsend, British-born, Toronto-based, actress Shara Summers turns amateur sleuth when her sister is stricken with a mysterious illness. One reviewer said, "Looking for a genuine character in real circumstances with a puzzle to unravel, read Death Scene."

In Sunshine Boulevard by JQ Rose, who or what is killing the seniors on Sunshine Boulevard? One reviewer said, "Baby Boomers are coming into their own as Snowbirds. J.Q. Rose brings them into the realm of Crafty, Amateur Detectives with LOTS of time on their hands to devote to this new passion...solving murders."

In The Sound of Sirens by Heather Fraser Brainerd and David Fraser, having narrowly survived an encounter with murderous black magic, private investigator Josie P. Cates has settled into the humdrum life of her new profession. But she now faces a challenge far more terrifying: spending a week with her mother.One reviewer said, "The Sound of Sirens (José Picada, P.I. Book 2) by Heather Fraser Brainerd and David Fraser is a marvelously entertaining read for people of all ages."

Dear readers, do you buy bundles? If you do or don't, why?

For more on the authors, visit their blogs here:

J.Q. Rose-http://www.jqrose.com

Fraser and Brainerd-http://drivingblindproductions.wordpress.com/

Sara-Jayne Townsend-​http://sayssara.wordpress.com/

Book Bundles, Promo Cookbooks and Free Books: Author Marketing that Works

Now through October 14th, Book Bundles, 20 reads for under 5 bucks! Get Prodigies of Mystery II here at iBooks, 99 cents for three full length novels!

How are midlist and new authors going to stand out in today's overburdened publishing biz? Here's a few recent methods I've found successful.

First up: Book Bundles. My publisher is running a special on five bundles, one of which, Prodigies of Mysteries II, includes my cozy mystery Starke Naked Dead. As a reader, I've noticed that I often buy these bundles because there's a lot of reading for cheap and it's a great way to find new authors. As an author, I discovered that Starke Naked Dead is coming up in the rankings considerably while offered in Prodigies of Mystery II. A  great way to get noticed and to brand your author name and series.

Here's another great way to get your name out there, thank you, Lois Winston, for this great idea. Bake, Love, Write is a compilation of dessert recipes with authors' advice on love and writing, 105 authors in all. Lois Winston is donating the proceeds to a worthy cause. The eBook is for sale for 99 cents, that's less than a penny a recipe! My recipe is easy, cheap and delicious soda cracker pie. Again, I often find myself buying just this type of book because I love to cook, love inexpensive dessert cookbooks and love finding other authors to read. Plus, with 105 authors, there's oodles of cross-marketing going on!

There's a lot of controversy about whether to ever have anything free, even promo cookbooks. The detractors say that being free only means that you are giving away content to people who may never read it, much less review it. However, I think there is a place for free, especially if it's a certain sort of free book. I've downloaded free short stories about a series and then gone on to buy books from the series. With my promotional cookbooks, I have found that after they're free that I do get reviews, perhaps because a cookbook is something that people do read after downloading. Plus, if you have a lot of downloads of your free book, Amazon will heavily promote it once it's no longer free. So, here's one of my cookbooks that introduces my Starke Dead cozy mystery series, Starke Deadly Delicious, and it's FREE today, October 8th!

So dear readers, what do you think? Do you do the same with these promotions? Or not? Do you think they work? Or not? Let us know in the comments!

Free eBooks, free audio books, No eReader? No Problem!

The new edition with added bonus recipes and FREE today!

It has come to my attention that in this time of eBook prominence, there are a lot of people who still believe they can't participate in the wonderful world of FREE and cheap eBook promotions, including audio books, because they don't have an eReader. But these people usually have computers, cell phones and/or tablets and laptops (I know this because they complain to me that they can't get my books when they are free) and they can get all this and more! (EBooks are also usually cheaper to buy than print, just saying.)

Here's the secret: Download the apps to whichever device (or devices) to getting all sorts of great reads, for example go to Amazon and search for Kindle app (if they haven't already asked you if you'd like the Kindle app!) and Amazon will take you through the download step by easy step. Same for Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. They want it to be EASY to buy eBooks!

I've downloaded oodles of great stuff to my cell phone. I've got great reading wherever I go! AND when I'm doing a recipe from my cookbook I just set the screen to be on for the maximum time. It works great!

AND: if you visit The Cellophane Queen today and comment you'll be entered to win a copy of either The Mall Fairies: Exile or The Mall Fairies: War, the first and second in my Mall Fairies trilogy!

What works and what doesn't with marketing books

 The re-release cover of my cozy mystery novel, Starke Naked Dead!

Best thing about this new publishing world: No longer do authors have their books pulled from the shelves after a measly 3 to 6 months. All the marketing authors do online stays online and continues to market.

Worst thing about this new publishing world: No longer do authors only have to worry about a book's release for the three months before and after the release date. Books remain published and available for years and the pressure is on to promote each title all the time they are available. Plus, authors are always grinding out "content" for all the social media and other online sites, while reading the arguments pro and con for this site or that strategy, on and on. When do we write?

So what's an author to do? Relax, there's help for us all! I've found a secret through the marketing maze. And it's simple, if three different steps.

First step is to do what you enjoy. Okay, I can hear you all saying, "Yeah, right." But there are numerous social media sites that all provide a different approach and will get your name out there. You can't do them all, trust me, I've tried. If you choose one that you enjoy, you're much more likely to visit, post, comment, whatever more often and get more followers, views, whatever. For example, I adore Pinterest and so visit it daily. Daily I repin and pin (it's like having hundreds of great teapots, all for free and none that need washed, ever!). As a result I have 1300 followers and more people follow me all the time.

Second step is to provide content that is pertinent to your interests (see teapots above) and not only around writing or selling product. Yes, I have writing boards on Pinterest, but most of my boards are about my interests, jewelry and jewelry making, recipes, fitness and of course teapots. Some of these are tangential to my novels, I have a main character who is a jeweler, for example, but not most. This avoids the dreaded "Buy my book!" syndrome as well. People will "discover" you as an author instead of being annoyed by endless pitching.

That brings me to the third step, which is think outside the promo box. It's a different world because of eBooks, so don't be trapped inside of "you must belong to Facebook and Twitter and Google+ and post daily, etc. etc." My example? I love writing reviews, all kinds. I have over 80 reviews on TripAdvisor. So what, you ask? So I've had 19,000+ people read my reviews. Since I've placed one of my book covers on TripAdvisor as my profile photo, that's 19,000+ people who've seen my name and cover. If only a tiny portion of them register this ...

What do you think, dear readers? Useful ideas? Or?

Starke Deadly Delicious FREE March 17th in honor of St. Paddy's Day

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

In honor of this oh-so-Irish holiday, Starke Deadly Delicious Recipes is FREE, Monday March 17th! One reason? It contains a recipe for slumgullion, that oh-so-Irish dish. And here's a variation on slumgullion, a slumgullion salad recipe, great for lunch if you overindulge celebrating the holiday! ENJOY!

SLUMGULLION SALAD

A twist on an old traditional salad

The inspiration for this "leftovers" salad came from the simple Greek salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and feta cheese, with vinegar and oil dressing. But never stop there—slumgullion salad can be any mixture of vegetables that you like. You can even mix cooked and raw veggies.

Some combos that work well are:

Either raw or cooked broccoli and cauliflower (or one can be cooked and one raw, trust me, it works) with raw or cooked carrots.

Cold cooked brussel sprouts with garbanzo beans and raw carrots

Add fresh tomatoes to any slumgullion salad (not cooked or canned, because it is too reminiscent of spaghetti sauce and the tomatoes are too liquid)

Add garbanzo, lima beans or white beans to the Greek salad

Add olives to the salad, or capers 

Add nuts and/or dried cranberries or raisinsAdd chopped apple or pineapple, or even mangos, if you like sweetness with your salad

Some combos to avoid:

Tomatoes are a strong flavor, so be careful what you mix them with, apples and tomatoes don't mix well, for example.

Avoid adding too many ingredients together, this will create a murky, muddy taste, with no one taste standing out.

Avoid too much of the strong tasting topping, for example too many nuts or olives or capers will overwhelm the salad, and in the case of pickled olives and capers, will make the salad too salty. 

The Great Ongoing Scarcity Hoax Rant

My new short story, BETTER TO BITE, coming out from Muse It Up March 15th, pre-order here for 20% off until then!

Here's my rant:

The publishing world continues to change daily. E-books have destroyed all of the old ways. And yet, and yet, some of the publishers, especially the big traditional publishers, plus some of the (physical) bookstores and some of the agents continue to insist that it is 1982, or earlier, perhaps 1882.

One of the reasons for scarcity is the old belief that readers hate to read and will only real a very limited amount of books. Newsflash! Readers love to read. Their limited reading has been self-imposed by a publishing world that again, because it was only print, could only provide a limited amount of titles.

Plus, because in the old days books had to sell enough to pay for print runs, the old-fashioned publishers (and agents) often rejected and still do reject new untried new authors--the authors who could not prove a track record. There were plenty of reasons to reject, and very few to accept. Often, perhaps even usually, it has little to do with the quality of the work, and much more to do with whether the publisher thought it would appeal to a large enough group of readers to pay for the print run.

Nowhere is this more obvious than with short stories. For decades, publishers have insisted that the huge majority of readers don't read short stories. Another newsflash! Readers love short stories, when they can buy them cheap and not as an expensive hardback anthology or expensive printed magazine.

The one annoying thing about all of this? The scarcity is now a hoax! It no longer exists! But I hate when new authors quit writing because their writings don't fit a narrow band of old time traditional publisher requirements.

Having written this rant, I've realized that the annoying hidebound practices of the old-style publishers, agents, and etc. are truly the last gasps of a world no longer relevant.

And that most of all, I'm very grateful and happy with this new world, both as a reader and a writer. I love having oodles of great and different stuff to read, all lengths, all genres. I love how the wonderful publishers of my novels, short stories and articles have published and sold my wide range of different writings. I love the synergy and energy and most of all the abundance of this new world.

So, dear readers, what do you think? I believe we're now in a world of glorious plenty--which brings with it a different set of problems--do you? What's your experience?

A Crispy Rice Christmas and a recipe

Here's the cover for my brand new ebook short story, available now here and here and lots of other places soon!

Just in time for Christmas, my short story A Crispy Rice Christmas is released! The tag line: 

If Beth can't figure out a way to seduce her love's picky appetite, she fears her relationship is toast—burnt. She cooks up a plan only to have it boil over. What's a terrible cook to do? Can Beth brave a winter storm in search of a Christmas dish to save her relationship—or will the holidays be a distasteful disaster?

And in honor of the release, here's a Pumpkin Pie Rice Crispy Treat recipe--I just discovered that they come out with different flavors of marshmallows, including pumpkin pie, during the holidays--how cool is that? 

Pumpkin Spice Rice Krispy Bars
 
4 tbsp butter or solid margarine, room temperature
10-oz Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows (1 large bag)
or 10-oz plain marshmallows + 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice mix (or make your own pumpkin spice mix: 1 teas. cinnamon, 1 teas. nutmeg, 1/4 teas. cloves, 1/2 teas. ginger)
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 cups puffed rice cereal 

Combine butter and marshmallows in a large, microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 60-90 seconds, until marshmallows have melted. Stir the marshmallow mixture, add the teaspoon of vanilla (adding spices, if using), then add in the cereal. Stir with a large spatula until everything is evenly combined. Or melt the butter in a saucepan and then slowly melt the marshmallows and add the vanilla and spices, if using. Yes, this is the old fashioned way, but it reminds me of doing it as a child.

Spoon/Pour into a 9×13-inch pan and press into an even layer. Let cool completely (if you can wait that long) before cutting into bars. I usually end up cutting and pulling off a couple of pieces long before--and eating them too--good while warm!