Kobo, Apple, Barnes and Noble and Google Play are getting a Cozy Mystery Series!

Yep, I'm doing it. I'm taking the first three books in St. Ives Book Club Mystery Series to Kobo, Google Play, Barnes and Noble and Apple iBooks this Fall 2023!

• Advertisement for Murder (Oct. 18)
• Death Knocks Twice (Oct. 30)
• Dead to the World (Nov. 27)

For those of us who don't understand what this means - Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service for book lovers. For a monthly fee, subscribers can borrow 10 (or is it 20 now?) books in a month. For big readers, this is an economical choice. 

For authors who enroll their books in the program, we cannot publish anywhere else for 90 days. In exchange, we're paid a percentage for every page of our books that are read. It's a great way for a new author to gain readers and fans for their series. However, it means we are not spreading our wings to other retailers.

I decided to wait until St. Ives Book Club Mystery was almost finished and reads had plateaued in Kindle Unlimited before moving the series out. It's like seeing a series on Netflix but it's not available on Prime. That sort of thing. 

I'm excited to introduce readers who frequent the other bookstores to the St. Ives Book Club amateur sleuths. The last book in the series, The Final Chapter, will be released in Kindle Unlimited Dec. 12, 2023 as usual. 

If the series does find readers in other markets, I'll move all of the books out of Kindle Unlimited gradually throughout 2024. 

IN OTHER NEWS:

The Missing Foote Mystery : Book #9 in St. Ives Book Club Mystery Series is out now!

On Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited

One country fair. Two dead bodies. Hundreds of suspects.

Avery Holmes is chagrined when the debut of her thriller, The Spy Wore Heels, is held at Northumberland County's Agricultural Fair but when a body is dug up during the plowing match, her book launch goes from bad to worse.

Agent Lannister Foote vanished last year under mysterious circumstances that CSIS analyst Elliot Marks refused to investigate. That the missing Foote turned up (literally) is not surprising to Marks. But who is the killer? A farmer's field hints at someone local. Someone they all know. Someone who is at the scene the moment the corpse is unearthed.

Then another body is discovered in the corn maze - this time bizarrely hung up like a scarecrow. The fair-goers and organizers are starting to panic.

​​​​With the sprawling five-day event under threat and pressure from the big commercial farming interests to solve the murders and fast, the St. Ives Book Club rally together to uncover a shocking secret. 

LAST BUT NOT LEAST:

THANK YOU ARC team members (advance reader reviewers) for reading this series and leaving reviews on the various book sites that we all love. You have helped readers decide to take a chance on a new mystery (and me) and we all appreciate it! 

I am looking for readers to review for Kobo, Google Play, Barnes and Noble and Apple. If you like to read murder mystery for free (that is on the cosy side of the spectrum), subscribe to my newsletter The Butler Didn't Do It  and get a free short story, Long Shadows Fall, to sample the series and my writing style. Then, if you would like to read the first three in the series for review on the sites listed, contact me through the newsletter and I'll be in touch. 

HOW TO BECOME AN ARC READER:

1. Subscribe to The Butler Didn't Do It

2. Download your free copy of Long Shadows Fall

3. Reply to newsletter with request to be added to the Team

4. I send you the link to download your books to review

5. Read. Review. Post on your favourite retailer site. 

My Secret Weapon for 2022 - Plottr

I've always been a pantser. I'd get an idea for a story, see the end or the main point in my head and off I'd go writing myself in and out of corners until I lurched to the finish line. 

The "finish" line was followed by weeks of (hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing) editing until I could declare the book complete or too stupid to live. 

My process was long, tedious and increasingly joyless. Worst of all, it did not result in book that was as tight as I would have liked it to be because I was exhausted and hated the thing by the end. 

There has to be a better way, right? Well, there is. It is called drafting an outline which is something normal people do. I've tried to nail that sucker down for years without success. The act of writing an outline to write only led to me hating my story faster. 

I can't even remember when I heard about Plottr or where, but on impulse I signed up for the online demo of the software. I am cheap. Some might even say stingy. I am immune to impulse buying or sales pitches. But I loved the demo. I could see instantly how this program could work for me. I could play with it, I could manipulate it to work the way my brain works. Sometimes I plot very tightly with it. Sometimes I follow one of the templates. Sometimes I use it for the timeline to shift scenes where I need them to be. I can see how the story is progressing in each box where I jot down everything from dialogue to clothing to weather.

The random bits that flesh out a scene get plugged into Plottr and make writing faster, easier and stronger. Less editing, less time wasted hunting around for where I put what. My daily word count went from an exhausting 2K day to a relaxed 5K a day.

I'm not sure how it does what it does. It's visual so that's a huge help when you're trying to figure out what comes next. It's also liberating because it's easy to plug in the bits that come to me and dump them if they're not working. I can move stuff around. It's not set in stone. There's room for some pantsing but I get a look at the dead ends before I start writing. I waste less time and brain energy when I'm cranking out the words. 

To make a living in self-publishing, we have to produce and Plottr is my secret weapon to amp up production. I have five books planned and instead of feeling overwhelmed and discouraged, I have this cool little tool at my side to get the stories out. 

If you are interested and want to check it out for yourself go to www.plottr.com. There is a rate for a lifetime license which is what I bought. The service is excellent. The thing works. 

Canadian Cosy Mystery Cover Reveal!

You know that old saying "Don't judge a book by its cover"? Yeah, well, it wasn't written by a self-publisher. I'm on my third cover for the St. Ives Book Club Mystery series. The retired covers are still out there because I made paper copies and thus forever will be haunted by my old "what the hell, it's only a cover" covers. 

Hair-pulling, tweaking and gnashing of teeth later, I've settled on this design for the series. If you are a lucky owner of one of the old covers, well, that's what you get for being an early adopter.

Lord, I hope this is my last foray into covers. Trying to nail the cosy-amateur-sleuths-vibe is not easy. Without cats, cupcakes or witches in my books, I didn't fit in with the other cool kids in the cosy mystery section of my favourite book site. (Goodreads)

While I'm here, the third murder mystery in the series, Dead to the World, is coming out in November, exact date is still to be determined. But follow me on Amazon to be notified when it releases. 

When Bernie Dixon falls to his death from the belfry of the St. Ives clock tower while ringing in the Third Night of Christmas, the book club is approached by his widow to find out if his death was indeed an accident - or was it something far worse?

 

New Book Launch Day!

A St. Ives Book Club Mystery

Death Knocks Twice

 

The St. Ives Book Club is at it again when one of their members discovers human remains in Lucinda Pye's field. The grisly discovery turns out to be Professor Gower Pye, Lucinda's common-law husband, who disappeared after a fractious dinner party at the farm seven years ago. St. Ives's amateur sleuths have questions. Why was Gower not found by before this? If the professor of medieval studies was murdered, who did it and why? Their questions lead them to an abundance of suspects. Eight guests at the dinner party had reasons to wish Gower dead. A scandalous tell-all memoir, a tawdry affair, a bitter family feud and a reputation destroyed surface as motives to kill. But if the professor was murdered that October night seven years ago, how do they prove it? And if they can't prove it, how can they accuse? When a second body is found, the gang knows that if they fail, a killer will go free. 

Set in the tiny hamlet of St. Ives in Southern Ontario, a murder mystery book club discovers they have a taste and talent for solving unsolved crimes. Led by the brilliant and eccentric Elliot Marks, five active retirees and two young reporters unearth secrets certain residents of the cosy village would prefer remained buried.

Available on Amazon in ebook and print. Click on the title to be taken to the product page. 

Death Knocks Twice

Make mine a cozy mystery series, please.

It has been 5 years since I published my crime fiction series on Amazon, Kobo, Google Play, Barnes and Noble and Apple iBooks. Since that time, I've been ghost-writing, writing under a pen name, trying out genres, testing my skills and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Some stuff worked, some stuff didn't. Some stuff worked for readers but not for me, and vice versa.

It was fun and educational. But after five years of experimentation, I started thinking about killing people--cozy mystery-style. To scratch that itch, I wrote a traditional mystery (also known as a 'whodunit') and it morphed into a full-blown series with five titles in the pipeline.

A St. Ives Book Club Mystery is set in a tiny hamlet in Southern Ontario where a murder mystery book club decides to try their hand at solving cold cases.

Who killed Jenny Blake?

In the gentle hamlet of St. Ives, a killer roams free.

In 1975, seventeen-year-old Jenny Blake was found strangled in the ruins behind the abandoned St. Ives Abbey. Her murderer was never caught. Forty-four years later, an advertisement in the local newspaper draws seven people, including Avery Holmes, to the home of Elliot Marks with the purpose of forming a murder mystery book club.

Within minutes of the first meeting, Marks puts forward an intriguing proposal: Instead of reading about murder, why not try solving one - beginning with who killed Jenny Blake?

Was it her ex-boyfriend, the brilliant but withdrawn Jesse Sutcliffe? Or Duncan Carmichael, the attractive local politician who was dating Jenny at the time of the murder? Or was it the eccentric Elliot Marks himself, who is hiding his connection to the dead girl. For Avery Holmes, poking into an old murder case is a risky proposition. After all, waking a killer who thought he or she had gotten away with murder could lead to ... well ... murder.

Advertisement for Murder is available for pre-order on Amazon. Launch date is October 1, 2019.

For 90 days, it will only be available on Amazon. The side hustle to writing is marketing and I'm experimenting with Kindle Unlimited. If the KU love isn't there, I'll release this title and subsequent titles to all retailers. It's not an easy call to make, choosing to be exclusive for 90 days. I could be making a mistake. We shall see. The print edition is out now and available on Amazon. I don't do Expanded Distribution anymore because I'm not interested in competing with third-party sellers for sales. A sale through them nets me 0.23. Um. No. So it's available in print through the regular Amazon channels for $8.99 and if you buy the print, you can pick up the digital for 0.99.

digital ISBN: 978-1-988003-63-4
print ISBN: 978-1-988003-62-7

And I'm back to writing mystery! (I wonder what is says about me that I'm happiest when I'm thinking about how to get away with murder....)

Happy October!

Google Love

Google. I loved you when you were just a baby search engine and everyone was hot for Yahoo and its ilk. I remember when Yahoo was king and Ask Jeeves and how they clogged up the search with advertisements and confusion. I took one look at Google's clean, readable pages and I had found my Web Search soul mate.

Then came Gmail and Blogger and our love deepened. Now there is Google Play where I've listed my books and sales are anemic but I'm not worried. We've been down this road before, haven't we, Google? We'll get there.

Now my kid, who grew up only knowing the great Google, is working on a Google-related product. Heck, yes, I'm proud. Check out this YouTube video of Salman Sajun Productions working on a project for a cool Google phone case.

It's neat to see how it all comes together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv-P8QG4JXc

And here is the making of the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv9svoypuUs

Google, thank you for all the good years and here's to many more. Stay the course and all will be well.

Books2Read Universal Link and the Independent Publisher

I am an independent publisher. I also write but because I manage four pen names, one imprint, two blogs and forty titles, I am considered an independent publisher. I use Smashwords, Kindle Direct Publishing and Draft2Digital to get the titles into the world. I use CreateSpace for printing and print distribution. After twenty years of trying to make a living at writing, these service providers have made it possible for me to actually make a living at writing. Whoo hoo!

You'll notice I've changed the sales links to the titles on this blog from individual ebook retailers to one link per title: Books2Read Universal Link. ( https://www.books2read.com/ ) 

This amazing little tool was developed by Draft2Digital for authors and book-buyers to streamline the shopping process. Instead of half-a-dozen links (that I may or may not get right) I only have to provide one. 

1) The book-buyer clicks on the link and is taken to a landing page for that book where all the stores that carry the book are listed with logos readily identifying each  store. Cool!

2) Book-buyer chooses store he or she likes, clicks and boom--there you are on the product page. Read the blurb, mull over the price and buy. Swell! 

3) The buyer is prompted to request the same store for future purchases. Nice!

I like stuff to be as uncomplicated as possible. Shopping online is very difficult for me so anything like this helps cut out the clutter and I don't feel pushed or hassled into looking at a bunch of stuff I don't want.

Draft2Digital did not charge me as a publisher for this new tool. These savvy ebook distributors are quietly remapping the publishing industry one book sale at a time.

Smashwords is another forward-thinking distributor that also has a hopping book store. They sell in all formats, retailer direct, give an outstanding royalty to the author, host author pages, giveaways and work with libraries to promote independent titles. They are super international and have a free section to sample new authors. No pop-ups or advertising or spam emails--just books in all genres at great prices.

Check them out:   Smashwords Book Store

Hey! Happy Reading!

Unpublishing a book is like....

Getting a divorce.

It smarts. But I had to do it.

My foray into the fast-paced world of writing fast and dirty was a bust. I conceived the idea for Razor Wire for the brand-spanking-new Kindle Unlimited program. It was designed to be read in installments, ending in a cliffhanger like a thriller television show. I'd outlined 6 'episodes', wrote 3, and then Kindle Unlimited changed its royalty structure for payment and the serial format lost its value overnight.

I bundled the installments, thinking I would come back to the series in future to write Razor Edge and Razor Close.

Heh. Well, here's the thing. I lost steam or my mojo or whatever that thing is that makes a writer connect to a story long enough to get it out. I tried many different methods to get going again but my brain wasn't having it. Creatively, the series was dead in the water.

And dead sales-wise too. I think I sold less than 10 ebooks and 5 print books that were mostly pity sales. A local fan said it wasn't anything like my other books. Yeah, well, a girl's gotta try new things or she becomes stale. I'm not sorry I wrote it because it pushed me out of my comfort zone to explore a new sub-genre. I think of Razor Wire as a creative experiment in writing to market, in which I proved to myself that the book market is a moving target.

Razor Wire is unpublished (or is in the process) at all retailers as of today. CreateSpace will still sell the print edition. My plan for the thriller is to go back to my original idea and publish it as a trilogy. I'll beef up the story, explore some themes I rushed through and go deeper into the psychology of the characters. I believe there's a good story there and I didn't give it its due. I'll release the serial in July in three complete installments. CreateSpace will get the complete edition for print at the same time.

Writing fast is dandy for first drafts, but the process has to slow down after that to get to the good stuff. Lesson learned. It only hurts a little. Lives were not lost.

Takeaways:

1. Stick to your vision.
2. The story wants to go the way the story wants to go. Be the pencil.
3. Slow down. You are creating worlds not making a cheese sandwich.

Daniel Razor and his troubling sidekick, Charlotte Dawson, will return new and and improved in the summer. Bigger and brighter in three juicy installments. 

A Writer's New Year's Resolutions

1. Write better books.

2. Get more exercise.

3. Write more books.

4. Make more money (anything above poverty level will do)

Resolution 4 used to top my list. Year after year, making money was my number one priority and year after year, it was never enough. I make more now than I did last year but at the expense of my body, emotional well-being and the joy of writing. So I'm ditching Resolution 4. 

Selling books is a crap shoot. Writers can spend years crafting novels and never make enough to pay the Hydro bill. Or they can spend 14 days writing a novel that lies there like a dead dog in August and never sells a copy. Or they can spend years working on craft and net thousands upon thousands of dollars from one book, or the exact same result could be achieved after a weekend of booze-induced scribbling. Total crap shoot.

I hereby resolve to ignore sales reports, do my best and let the money take care of itself. Sink or swim, the book is on its own. 

Next!

Resolution 1 and 3 can grow to like each other with steady, daily application to the word count. 200 words a day for 365 days equals one reasonably-sized book. 200 words is a walk in the park. For me and other writers, the demarcation between "good writing" and "cranking it out" is 2000 to 3000 words a day. 2K for me is a good day's work. A friendly, patient approach and good books will come in great quantity.

I resolve to write good books and more of them with daily dedicated application of 200 to 2000 words.

Which brings us to Resolution 2. All of us who sit in front of a computer for hours at a time need to stand up. Right now. I can see you. You're not standing. It has become life-threatening to sit for hours. (It probably always was but we're just learning about it.) I've restructured my office to allow me to stand and work. But that's not enough. Daily exercise outside improves just about everything.

I resolve to take a daily walk, which will help me stick to Resolution 1 and 3 and increase the odds of number 4 happening in my lifetime. 

I'll report back on December 31, 2016 (God and Blogger willing) on how my 2016 Resolutions panned out. Because that could be fun. Or not. We shall see!

Kindle Unlimited Royalty Structure - My Thoughts

Oh to live in a world where things stayed the same for more than a calendar year. Rapid change and publishing do not mix. As a writer on KBoards said: "This is why authors drink."

Amazon's KDP platform rolled out its new royalty structure for titles exclusive to KDP on July 1st. If you enrolled your book in Select, your book is subject to borrows. Borrows used to be paid at a flat rate (the amount varied from month-to-month) of $1.35 for a book read to 10%. Under the current structure, royalties are paid for pages read at a rate of 0.005779/page.

A 300 KENP (the term for Amazon's calculation of a page) book read to the end would earn $1.73. Under the old system (fondly known as KU.1) that book would have earned $1.35. 300 KENP breaks out into roughly 150 regular pages depending on how it's formatted. So let's say a price point of $2.99 with a $2.09 royalty on a sale and a $1.73 on a borrow. A sweet deal, right? Oh, but that's the honey-trap. Let's run the math....

10% read under KU.1 earned $1.35. 10% read under KU.2 earns 0.17. Yes. 17 cents. (Cents is such an old-fashioned word. I feel I should be wearing a newsboy's cap as I write this, fingers inky with newsprint.) One hopes one has written a high-octane, addictive page-turner but it's a little late now if it isn't. The book is exclusive to Amazon for three months.

With Kindle Unlimited, a subscriber is allowed up to 10 titles at a time per month on their Kindle for $9.99. Maybe my book will make it to the top of a reader's TBR pile. Maybe not. In the meantime, Amazon does not pay out for more than what is read that month. There are obvious reasons why the old system was unsustainable for Amazon, at the same time it was an excellent strategy because the retailer was able to quickly build a huge catalogue of books for their subscription service. It is equally obvious why KU.2 is a bottom-line dreamboat.

(Sadly, I would've done exactly the same thing if I were Amazon. Actually, I'd be even meaner. I'd start culling books from my store that were not performing. I'd be analyzing the Pages Read Data to identify a break-out book that hasn't broken out yet and then I would snap up that author for my Imprints. I'm horrible.)

KU.2 has deep ramifications for publishing and I'm still mulling the possible outcomes. But in the here and now, what it means for this author is something like 17 cents a day. (30 KENP pages x 0.005779 = 0.17337 cents; 30 pages is approx. 3 chapters)

Drinks are on me!

Day 12. iTunes Legal. The Sequel.

Two years.
Five DMCA take down notices filed.
One query from an Apple legal representative.
Two emails from beleaguered author.
Result:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-grey-lady/id560171274?mt=11

I swear I will leave this post up for posterity if they remove The Grey Lady and the last laugh is on me.

Here's the thing: If you are not ready to sell books, then don't sell books. If you don't like dealing with authors and their pissy-diva complaints, then don't sell books. If you want lovely content to lure buyers to your freakishly expensive devices, then you'll be dealing with human beings who write books. If you don't want to deal with them, then don't sell books.

The thing about Corporate Image is it can't just be an image. The way a corporation treats its smallest customer is the measuring stick of their integrity, not a glossy ad campaign telling us you have integrity. I wrote a book. It was published. Shit happened and now we want the book removed from the iTunes Store. Easy-peasy. Literally every other book retailer managed to pull off this wondrous feat as soon as they were notified.

At the moment, I can't enroll The Grey Lady in KDP Select because it is being SOLD on iTunes without permission or payment in direct violation of copyright. This means I can't hold the promotions I planned for this summer. This means lost revenue.

It's not rocket science, Apple iTunes. It's book-selling and if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

(Speaking of ad campaigns, for the love of God, will the Conservative Party give us a break from those truly stupid Justin Trudeau attack ads? Running them every 15 minutes is not helping. One of the actors carps from a script about Mr. Trudeau's hair and all I can think about is his hair compared to Mr. Harper's hair and then I wonder 'Why am I thinking about hair?' In the meantime, Mr. Trudeau has an ad running about the issues facing middle-class Canadians. No mention of hair. Do the math, gentlemen.)

Kindle Unlimited and Indie Publishing

I'm not going to get into a semantic wrestling match over whether or not a self-published author is an independent publisher. I call myself an indie author. It has fewer syllables.

Amazon recently announced changes to the Kindle Select/Kindle Unlimited royalty structure. An author will be paid for the number pages read when their book is borrowed. How much will they be paid? We don't know yet. I expect Amazon will walk the tightrope between paying just enough to keep authors in the program but less royalty than a sale would deliver.

The caveat is the reader has to finish the book to get the full amount. Can you imagine? How many of us abandoned War and Peace? (I'm raising my hand) We are biting our nails, hoping that we've written a book gripping enough to keep the pages turning. (This does not apply to the trade-published novels by the way. Indie is a whole 'nuther universe.)

Here's the interesting (to me) twist to the story. I woke up on June 2nd, suddenly resolved to remove my three Gatineau Hills Mystery titles from Kobo, Apple, and Barnes and Noble (among other places) and enroll them in Select. I didn't know this new royalty structure was in the wind--it was only announced last week. I would have received $1.37 per borrow (est.). A sale would net me $3.50 (give or take). But I figured it was worth it to promote the books, find readers willing to borrow an unknown author and the enrollment is only for 90 days.

Under the new royalty, a borrow read all the way through could net me closer to $3 (assuming a 0.01/page royalty). Am I psychic? Hah! I'm very happy I trusted my intuitive voice this time and made the move. I created new covers especially for KDP and I'll hold a promotion over the coming months.

The flip side of this new event is that shorter works such as the Razor Series will be bundled and take longer to release. NJ Dorrian's Wuthering Heights Variations Series will be released wide as soon as her 90 days in Select expires. That series was designed to be novella-length. Besides, in watching buying and borrowing habits, I believe readers of historical fiction prefer to buy over borrow. So look for NJ Dorrian on Kobo, Apple and Barnes and Noble this August.

As for me--holy hannah! Too much writing to do. My brain gives out after four hours and then I run off to make covers, ponder promos, write blurbs, tweak keywords, post updates to the blog, and plunk updates in the Excel spreadsheet I had to create for this enterprise.

Sounds like an independent publisher to me. Indie all the way.

The Trouble with Kindle Select

If you are traditionally published you delude yourself that your publisher will honour the contract. If you are self-published you delude yourself that you are in control of the contract. I'll say this for Kindle Select--it has a way of disabusing authors of the notion that we are anything but in control.

A Case Study:

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 11:06 PM, Kindle Direct Publishing wrote:

Hello,
We found the following book(s) you've published doesn’t meet the KDP Select content guidelines. Books enrolled in KDP Select must be exclusive to Amazon in digital format during the entirety of their enrollment in the program.
Iced Under (Gatineau Hills Mystery Book 1) (ASIN: B00JR9ZSAW) is available on: http://www.nook.com/gb/ebooks/iced-under-by-nadine-doolittle/2940045818025

Our records indicate that we previously informed you that submitting non-exclusive content to KDP Select is not acceptable and may result in loss of KDP Select benefits.
As a result of repeat violations of the KDP Select exclusivity requirement, we have removed all of your books from the KDP Select program. Your titles remain available in the Kindle Store. Please note that repeat violations of the program’s exclusivity requirement may result in loss of KDP Select benefits, including participation in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL), Kindle Unlimited, and the usage of free promotion days. To ensure KDP Select benefits are not revoked, please be sure that all of your KDP Select-enrolled books are exclusive to Amazon in digital format at the time of enrollment.
Check out this page to learn more about the KDP Select guidelines: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=200798990#eligibility For all other KDP questions visit: kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/contact-us

Best regards, Kindle Direct Publishing http://kdp.amazon.com

MY RESPONSE:

How is this even possible! I closed my account with Smashwords months ago which was the only distributor I used for these ebooks. I unpublished them long before that. I fully understand Select's requirements and I have adhered to them. You say there have been repeat violations:

1) The Grey Lady found at iBooks (for which it was removed from Select) was not even the same ISBN! I emailed Apple immediately to remove this previously published edition; the book was removed immediately. I was still penalized.

2) Lie For Me was removed Select although the product page at Kobo clearly indicated the book was not available for sale until after the term ended. I queried before I listed it there and was informed pre-orders were okay. Apparently not. ​​

3) I did everything in my power long before enrolling Iced Under in Select to remove all digital copies. It wasn't enough. Apparently ebook distributors are just as irresponsible as traditional publishers.

Finally, because this is the third time I have experienced trouble "adhering to the guidelines" it is perhaps best if I don't participate in the program. If a backlist book has been published anywhere in the world, the author has no hope of finding every digital copy that has been distributed. I did my very best to make sure I was following the rules and it wasn't good enough.

I give up.

Sincerely, Nadine Doolittle

I know I did what was legally and ethically required of me to remove my ebooks from all channels before enrolling them in Select. But it wasn't enough because the guy at the other end did not do all that was legally and ethically required of him to remove the ebooks from all channels.

And so endth the lesson.

On Receiving One's Editorial Letter

One edits. One does not blog. Or wash. Or visit people (the real ones at least). Or get out of the bathrobe. Or vacuum up dog hair. Or eat sensibly. 

I AM DONE! The edited manuscript has been sent! I'm exhausted. But the book is better. It was not very good before. I have no idea how agents and editors see diamonds in the dull, bloated rocks that come across their desks. X-ray vision, they must have.

Kudos and kisses to all the steely-eyed agents and editors who do far more than midwife books into print. All a midwife does is deliver a perfectly beautiful baby. An editor has to crawl into a writer's mind and root through the gunk and the booze and the excuses, sweetly whispering "I know you left the story in here somewhere, dear. Don't you worry, we'll find it." And then she pulls out her scalpel....

I hardly felt a thing.

THE GREY LADY

Some of you have been asking when THE GREY LADY is available. This interest is so gratifying, I cannot tell you. It makes it doubly thrilling to have an update to share at long last!

Pre-orders are open at Amazon.ca for THE GREY LADY

ABOUT THE BOOK:

“A line exists between the person we control and the one who lurks in the corner, waiting. Useful in a crisis, completely without conscience, ruthless and loyal, our other will come when called but will not respond to whistles to draw it back. Our other will destroy a friend, burn out an old man, cheat a lover and steal a life's work. Cross the line at your peril”.

In 1974, twenty-two year old Hester Warnock’s love affair with Malcolm Driver on a farm-turned-commune led to the death of a young pregnant girl named Beth Sherry. Thirty-five years later, now a successful magazine publisher, Hester is invited back to the scene of the crime to participate in a documentary of Malcolm’s life and times. The next morning, in the middle of a fierce rainstorm, she finds her ex-lover hanging from a tree.

Battling the driving rain, Detective Sergeant Rompré lacks physical evidence of a crime but doubts Driver killed himself. Hester holds a clue that proves Malcolm’s death wasn’t suicide but her own past with him haunts her. Meanwhile, the secret resentments and hidden hates of the seven other guests are revealed; a trail of deceit, adultery, abortion and murder which all leads back to Malcolm Driver. Hester's own story of betrayal is unravelled as she draws closer to the truth about herself. The two tragedies collide, past and present, on a wild rain-filled night. Hester confesses to Rompré that she drove Beth Sherry to suicide with an act of cruelty and Rompré offers absolution that Hester can’t bring herself to accept. Her story is the final proof the detective needed that Malcolm’s death was not a suicide, but it is not enough to lead him to the killer.

Set in the wilds of Quebec, Grey Lady is a tense psychological thriller which explores the power play between men and women and asks whether crimes of passion can ever be excused.

From Diane Banks Literary Co website

 

vigil: n. 1. night-time period of staying awake to look after a sick person, pray, etc.

My fledgling career as a writer is either on life support or growing healthier by the second--I have no way of knowing because I'm not there. Literary forces are at work in faraway lands.

Nothing to do but light a candle. Hold vigil. Seek solace in company of same in Rejection and Dejection at Absolute Write's Water Cooler. My personal favourite is: Purgatory's Pit of Doom.

It's funny like a heart attack. Speaking of heart attacks...

A gentleman called my home the other day looking for my Significant Other, but finding me in a weak moment of answering the bloody phone, said brightly: "I understand you're an author."
Me (deep in Slough of Despond): "Um, yep. I, yeah, wrote a book."
Gent: "That's wonderful. You know, a friend of mine--nice guy--had a triple bypass and when he came out of the surgery, he sat down and wrote like crazy every day for like 6 months. The words just poured out of him. And then..."(Gent gives a soft chuckle that speaks volumes) "He shows his writing to an agent and boy! He landed a huge contract with a big publishing house and I think there's even a movie deal. And it all happened in 6 months!"
Me (mercifully too sleep deprived from nightly vigils to feel much): "Wow. That's, um, swell."
Gent (after a respectful silence signalling he expected more enthusiasm from me for his triple-bypass buddy): "And so you're an author too?"

Lessons from the Pit: Writing is not for wimps and triple bypass guys have all the luck.

I am launching...

Today is the first day of my blogging life.

I like this Blog Host whoever they are. This was not stressful.

I had a website but it disappeared. Since I prefer to read what other writers are doing and saying, and how their writing life is going, and as I rarely visit websites anymore, I thought: Hey! A blog might be the thing for me too.

Day One of This Writer's Life went something like this:

Put 300 page manuscript on thumb drive.
Drove to Bureau en Gros to have printed.
One hour and $40 later, picked up mss.
Drove to Canada Post, bought oversized bubble mailer.
$50 later, mss is off to London, England to be perused by agent.
Shell shocked and weak, I drive home to eat salt and vinegar chips
and drink tea. Channelling my inner Brit.

Decide to set up blog to ward off feelings of inadequacy.

Cheers.