Shades of Empire is up and reviewed!

Shades of Empire is now available in the Kindle store, and it already has a really nice 5-star review!  No, it's not from Harriet Klausner! But I did provide an ARC (advance reader copy) to a woman who is an active reviewer on Amazon and has reviewed my books before. Fortunately, she really liked the book.

Where Magic Rules got its first Amazon review!

A book lover (based on the number of reviews she has written) named Tina gave Where Magic Rules a very nice 4-star review! A lot of her review is a darned accurate plot summary, so don't read it if you don't want to know the plot ahead of time. I will only quote her assessment:

 “I simply base my reviews on my overall impression at the end of the story, and I liked this one.”

She especially liked the dragon!

Amazon delivers an amazing update

The other day I found a letter from Amazon in my Kindle home screen, alerting me that my Kindle Touch had been updated and listing some of the new features.  I have to say, it was an impressive list!

• You can go to landscape mode from the document menu. Yay!
• You can highlight across pages by dragging your finger down to the bottom right corner; this turns the page and lets you keep selecting the text you want to highlight.  Yay! 
• When you have text selected, in addition to the Add Note, Highlight, and Share options, there is now a "More" option that lets you either search the highlighted string in Wikipedia, translate that text into one of several foreign languages, or report problems with the content! Triple yay!
• You can set the KT to use a language other than English for menus.
• The Go To menu now includes the chapter titles as destinations, if the book has a table of contents. 

The translation feature is amazing!  I can't wait to try it out.  As part of the upgrade my Kindle downloaded a boatload of foreign language dictionaries, and I assume the translation program must use them.

The letter also said they had changed the home screen slightly, but the biggest difference I can see if the author name appears in smaller text underneath the title, instead of to the right. I think the sort menu (most recent, by author, by title) is a little cleaner, too.

This upgrade was so full of features it made me feel like I was getting something for free! If you have a KT, I think you will get the upgrade automatically, just by leaving your wireless on in wifi mode.

Today is a windup day

Today I sent my corrected files for Shades of Empire to 52Novels, the conversion/ebook design house I use. I also got the count for the giveaway yesterday of Where Magic Rules, which is back on sale today for 99¢. 


I gave away over 300 books in 24 hours, which isn't bad, for a brand new genre novella without a single review (it's only been out a couple weeks). I plan to wait a while before doing anymore Kindle promotions, but it was interesting to see how it went. Surprisingly, a number of copies were “bought” in the UK and a handful in the one in Germany.  None in Italy, Spain, or France, though.


Now if only Smashwords would update it's Apple iBooks sales figures, I could decide whether it will be worth it to launch Shades as a Kindle Select book! 
  

Where Magic Rules is free today!

My newest release, the fantasy novella Where Magic Rules is free in the Kindle store, today only!  Get it now!

Joseph Andrews wandered away from an Army Reserve training exercise and into an alternate world where magic rules science and mages rule the land. He has learned the language and taken service with the kindest mage he can find, but he still dreams of the real world.

When Joe rescues a wounded soldier in service to a dark lord, he finds he has saved not a young boy but a woman who calls herself Phillip and insists she's really a man. Joe is shocked when the Great Mage orders him to go on a quest with Phillip but his surprise is mild compared to Phillip's outrage. 

Part road movie, part romantic comedy, this novella follows Joe and Phillip as they try to fulfill the Great Mage's demand without killing each other along the way.

I know better than this!

But I can't help myself! I'm thinking of changing the title of my soon-to-be-released novel! I was thinking of calling it . . .  50 Shades of Empire.

Sorry, I never could resist a play on words. In case you're been living under a rock, the words I'm playing with are in the title of this best seller. Check the cover in the right-hand column for my real title.

I am guest blogging this week!

Head on over to the Indie Book Blog, and you will see that I am this week's guest blogger with a post called Y is for the Y Chromosome. That blog has run an interesting A-Z writing challenge where each guest blogger had to come up with a theme for a post based on a letter. I picked Y because a) it was one of the few slots left, b) being at the end of the alphabet gave me time to write the post, and c) I planned to write about YA fiction and why I like it.

However, when I started writing, I realized it was trying to describe why I like strawberries; the post was too short and too personal. Ergo, I decided to save the YA post for this blog (in a week or so) and to write instead about writing from the male POV when I am female.  That was much easier to do at length because I could use actual examples from my books, particularly in Tribes, where I attempt to turn gender stereotypes around by having a male character who has been a whore and a female character who has been a warrior.  Neither one is the sum total of his or her past, but they aren't coming from the usual Pretty Woman perspective, either.

Some of the other posts in the alphabet are really interesting, too.  Be sure to check out my favorites, the one on S for space hotel and M is for magic systems. It's a fun blog, and an interesting challenge,

Upcoming freebie and a new release is near

I have the converted copy of Shades of Empire back from the conversion house and I'm proofing one last time. In honor of that, I have scheduled Where Magic Rules to be free in the Kindle store on May 4. This is my first foray into KDP Select promotions. The KDP Select author interface allows me to select a date or a range of dates that a book can be free. I'm going to start with one day the first time, and see how it goes.

Funny to think that I hope to give away a lot of books!

My Amazon wish list

This isn't a list of things I want to buy from Amazon, it's things I wish Amazon would do for their Kindle platform and/or bookstore.

1. Allow the user to select which Kindle or Kindle app is the default. I constantly send things to the wrong Kindle when I buy a book or download a free book because it won't let me change the default "Send to" button from my husband's Kindle 3 to my Kindle Touch. 
2. Provide a button to pre-order a free sample. When a book is available for pre-order, you can either buy it or not, but you can't see a sample online and you have no way to say "Send me a sample of this as soon as it comes out." I see a lot of books in Amazon marketing emails that sound interesting but if I don't know for sure I want the book, I am not pre-odering it without a sample. If I forget to check my wish list, I might never check out that book any further.
3. Restore the header line! I really miss seeing the author/title of the book at the top of the screen when I am reading. I know it takes a line of text from the screen, but why can't they at least make it a display option for those of use who want it?
4. Make the page shorter when in read-aloud mode. On the Kindle Touch, the menu stays on the bottom of the screen when it is reading aloud. I like that because it is faster for pausing, turning it on and off, but it covers up the text beneath it. I like to proof on my Kindle, so I want to hear and see the text at the same time! The same is true for folks with dyslexia, who use ereaders to help with comprehension. 
5.  Provide an epub email conversion. They must be able to do this; converting from epub has got to be easier and more reliable than converting from MS Word. Amazon lets publishers submit epub books and converts them to Kindle format, so let Kindle owners use that conversion, too!    

There you go, five things! Is that too much to ask? Come on, Amazon, get with it!

Availability and pricing update

I have been checking the various retail outlets, and the price change to make Tribes and No Safe Haven $2.99 again is in place in the Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Smashwords, and Sony ebookstores. Kobo now has Tribes back (it had lost it for a while) but the book is still priced at 99¢, and there's no sign of the other two novels.  Diesel has still lost all my books! And the newest outlet, Blio, has Tribes and The Sixth Discipline, both  for 99¢ but with no sign of No Safe Haven.

Actually, Blio is no longer the newest outlet for me, because I recently uploaded The Sixth Discipline to Goodreads in ePub format.  You can buy it there DRM-free, just like Smashwords.