I started thinking about what I want to accomplish this year. After reading J.A. Konrath's blog and about how he's earning a fine living with his books, I realized I need to get my butt in gear and write a lot more. I am woefully thin in the shelf space department. Just two books. So, with this in mind, I've come up with some goals for 2012.

1. Finish Deeds of Mercy--I am SO close, I know I'll finish this one very soon. Possibly in the next week or so.

2. Finish a romantic suspense I started 2 years ago! I keep putting it on hold to write more Mark Taylor books, but no matter what happens with DOM, I need to finish this unrelated book. My reasoning is that most series dwindle in sales the farther they go. The first book is almost always the best seller, but not every single person who buys it will go on to buy the second book, and even fewer will buy the third. However, those that do are my most loyal readers and if they want more books about Mark Taylor, I'll do my best to keep writing them, no matter how few people there are still buying them. Thing is, I still want to expand my reader base. I know that there are readers out there who might buy a romantic suspense, but shy away from typical thrillers because most thrillers are less about the characters and more about the plot, and romance readers love great characters and interaction. I think if I can get them to read a romantic suspense (that strays more into the No Good Deed type of characterization than typical romance books), I might get some of them to try the series. Even if they don't, the book allows me to go in a direction I don't feel comfortable taking the Mark Taylor series.

3. Write a fourth Mark Taylor book--See? I'm not going to abandon the series, but I haven't decided whether to do one that follows Deeds of Mercy, or a pre-quel to the series so we can see Mark before he's had all of this heaped on him. Maybe I'll do both books, but not sure I can do both in one year.

4. If all of the above works out, I'd love to go part-time at my day job. Right now, I'm between a rock and a hard place. I work full-time and have a family, so that leaves me less time to write, and when I do have time, I'm often exhausted from work. (Every week, I  do 2 days with back to back 12 hour shifts--I'm useless those evenings.). I'm not quite at that place where my writing income is steady enough to take the plunge of cutting back my hours. The main thing is insurance. My cost for that will double when I go part-time, otherwise I'd go part-time right now. I won't complain too much though because I feel very fortunate that in my profession, I can still get insurance while working part-time, and that I can also pick up extra hours pretty much whenever I'd need them if the book sales are slumping. (the catch is the hours might be night shift, and I'm not too eager to work that.)

A camera store I spotted in Chicago a few years ago. I immediately knew it was where Mark worked in No Good Deed. Just thought I'd share even though this has nothing to do with my blog post!

Last week, Red Adept Indie Review blog handed out awards to the favorite books by each of the reviewers in various categories. I secretly hoped, and thought maybe there was a chance, but then I remembered that it's been a year since No Good Deed was reviewed (my post about it) on the site. Since then, I've seen so many wonderful books reviewed, and many also received 5-Stars. I thought for sure NGD would be long forgotten. In fact, on Thursday last week, I knew that the Thriller/Suspense category hadn't been announced yet, and knew it must be one of the last categories that would be announced on Friday. I forgot about it when I woke up and was half-way to the gym--and btw, I practically had to use a GPS system to find the way, it's been so long--when my husband called me to tell me that Cutting Edge Indies had posted a congrats about No Good Deed on Facebook.

I almost turned around to go home to look for myself, but I decided I could check at the gym because they had been advertising their newly installed public wi-fi, and I had my Kindle Fire. Except, when I got there, the wi-fi was being 'enhanced', but wasn't functioning at that moment. Uuuggghhh! Yes, I cut my much needed workout short just so I could race home to see for myself--but I still did 20 minutes of elliptical and 20 minutes of shooting baskets, along with a little bit of weights. (pathetic, I know.)

So, long story short, here it is at Red Adept Reviews: 2011 Red Adept Review Indie Awards: Thriller/Suspense

Tentative cover. Thoughts?

is in sight--and it's not a freight train coming from the other direction. At least, I hope not. Deeds of Mercy: Book Three of the Mark Taylor Series is almost done. I've sent out the first 2/3s to betas already and so far, the feedback has been very good. If No Good Deed was your favorite of the two books so far, then you'll be happy to know that Deeds of Mercy is more like that book than March Into Hell. I did try to capture one aspect of that book though. I didn't really tell the betas what I was going for, but here's a comment from one of them:


"In DOM you have recaptured a lot of the injustice of NGD but you have added to it the loneliness and frustration of MIH."


Don't worry though, I promise it's not unrelenting misery for Mark, but there's enough if you like that aspect. I also brought back some characters from No Good Deed that I think readers will like.


You might be wondering where I came up with the title. I actually wanted The Quality of Mercy, from a quote in The Merchants of Venice, but it's already fairly popular. As I read through the whole excerpt though, I realized that the end of the scene ends with Deeds of Mercy. Here's a dissection of the scene according to some internet sites--yeah, I'm not literary enough to figure it out on my own, but once it's explained, the light bulb went off in my head. 

The quality of mercy is not strain'd, 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 'T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's, When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy.

 It's the true mercy--the rendering of the deeds of mercy--that I'm trying to capture in Deeds of Mercy and I was thrilled to see that phrase. 
I'm crossing my fingers that I'll have the book uploaded in a month or so. In the meantime, if you are interested, I've added a few short excerpts from the book. I chose these to give the flavor of the book, but to not give away too much of the plot. I don't know how they'll come across out of context, so I'd love to hear what others think.


From chapter one  here's one I'm not going to explain. *grin* : 

As Mark coughed and sputtered, it crossed his mind that he needed new friends since at least two of them were familiar with the finer points of water-boarding.

Mark shoved out of the chair, arms spread. "Damn it! What do you want me to do? Manufacture evidence?" He gestured toward his computer. “Create some images with my graphics program? Or should I just say I planted the bomb so that somebody will go investigate?" He turned away in disgust and vented his anger by slamming shut an open drawer of the filing cabinet.

"Did you?" 

Mark glared over his shoulder. "Get the hell out." 

Dan stood and shrugged. "Look at it from my angle. I can't go to the transit authority with some half-assed claim that a guy dreamed a train would blow up this afternoon. Naturally they're going to want details. What train? What time? How do you know? How credible is the informant? And to tell the truth, Mark, your history is going to come back to bite you in the ass when someone looks it up." 

 "Yeah. I get it. I have no credibility. Sorry I wasted your time." The apology tasted bitter on his tongue.

And finally, here's one from Jim's point of view. I'm half-tempted to give Jim his own series. What do you think? Anyway, he's a main character in this book too.

What he was doing could cost him his career or worse, and his common sense screamed at Jim to take Mark into official custody. All his life, he’d done things by the book and for the most part, that strategy worked for him. This one time, he closed his ears to the pleading of his common sense and listened to his gut. The damn book didn’t have a chapter that dealt with guys who could see the future. Jim supposed one day he’d be an expert and could write that chapter, but until then, he was forced to improvise. 

Just a quick post with an update on how it's going so far. My book, No Good Deed, was free on Friday, along with over 600 new freebies. Yeah, you read that right. It was kind of crazy! I was happy that even though this was the third time NGD has been free, it made it to #60 in the Kindle Free store and had about 3,000 downloads.

For the first few days, I didn't have many Prime Lending borrows, but that is picking up. I have about 20 total now. You'd think that would cannibalize my sales, but I've seen the opposite happen--at least so far.

Initially, No Good Deed went back to paid status early Saturday morning at the 'matched' price of 99 cents, because I had it listed as 99 cents at B&N. Obviously, it was no longer listed there, so late Saturday evening, after about 70+ sales at 99 cents, it went back to $2.99, and sales literally came to a screeching halt. I was bummed, but understood. However, Sunday, I sold a few, plus a few of March Into Hell. Yesterday, the same. It was actually the best Monday of sales in a few months, but still nothing spectacular. I think I sold 20 No Good Deed and 8 March Into Hell. I was happy even though my ranking of NGD went from the 2,000s to the 3,000s.

Strangely, today I woke up to over 30 overnight sales of No Good Deed. I have no clue why. It used to be, in the early days, that a site like Pixel of Ink or Ereader News Today, would feature a random book, but even then, it was never in the middle of the night, and those days are gone.

Could my increased sales be connected to KDP Select somehow? I have no idea. It could be a fluke or maybe the book had a mention somewhere that I didn't find on a Google search. Your guess is as good as mine.

*Update* 12/14

Since I went to bed Monday night, I have sold 100 No Good Deed and it has been borrowed another 29 times (to make 39 borrows for that book total).  Ranking has gone from the low 3000s, to a low of 757 this morning. It's up to 806 as I type this.

I'm pretty sure KDP Select is the reason for the jump because in the UK, I've not had the same surge. It was free there as well, and I had 73 free downloads, but since it went back to paid, only 11, and none yesterday. The UK doesn't have the Prime Lending Library yet, that I know of, or if they do, not many people must use it. No borrows there yet.

Yesterday morning I woke up fifteen minutes before my alarm was set to go off at 5a.m. Needless to say, I was blurry-eyed and foggy-brained, but I picked up my android phone, like I do every morning, and checked my KDP page. Even in my half-asleep state, and minus contact lenses, I noticed the new link called KDP Select at the top of the KDP page. I'd heard rumors, so I wasn't shocked. Instead, I was thrilled. Still, I read the whole contract and the FAQ twice before I even put my feet to the cold, wooden floor.

I'd forgotten how reading a bunch of blogs could inspire me to write my own blog post. So many interesting topics out there! I know when my comments start getting long-winded on someone else's blog, that I need to edit that comment and then make a blog post about the topic myself, so today, I'm going to blog about validation. I saw the topic twice today--once on a Kindleboards thread and once on another blog. I've addressed the topic before, but it can never be stressed enough that validation, at the end of the day, should come from readers. They are the ultimate stamp of approval.

There are different routes to attracting those readers. Some authors go the traditional route, some the indie route, and some do both. I'm not here to debate the merits of any of them, just to point out that authors looking to get an agent or publisher might be so focused on receiving validation from a single agent, that they might lose sight of the fact that one agent, in and of themselves, isn't really capable of validating your writing. Agents are looking for manuscripts that they feel publishers want, and if your werewolf/deer hybrid paranormal space opera isn't on that years list of 'hot' topics, your chances of landing that agent plummets to almost zero--even if your writing is spectacular. That's when they send those rejections saying that as much as they loved the manuscript, the book isn't right for them. (Mind you, I never received such a nice rejection, but I've heard of others receiving them.). So, does that mean your writing sucks? What about if the next agent turns around and accepts the same manuscript? The manuscript hasn't changed, so what has? Maybe that second agent just got word that MegaPublisher is looking for a werewolf/deer hybrid paranormal space opera. Score! It has less to do with your writing at that point, sad as that may seem, and more to do with being in the right place at the right time with the right book.

But let's say no publisher is looking for your kind of book, and you self-publish. You're feeling all depressed because an agent didn't touch you with the magic validation wand and proclaim you an "Author". Still, you smile and pretend it's just fine, but inside, you're feeling like a fake and failure. Every time you tell anyone you're an author, if you even get up the nerve to say it, you feel like a complete fraud. You stick with it though, and suddenly, your book is selling by the thousands! Same book, nothing's changed except some readers liked your book and via word of mouth, blogs, and review sites, spread the word that Herds of Space Wolves is an awesome read. Suddenly, it occurs to you that the readers didn't care how that book reached them, only that it did, and they loved it!

Now, you proudly tell anyone who will listen, and even those you have to run down in the mall and grab by the sleeve, that you are an Author.

Authors who go the traditional route might feel validated that an agent accepted them, but I have a feeling that they'll agree that the real satisfaction is in receiving the emails and reviews from readers.

Different routes, but same outcome. Just write a good book, and you'll get all the validation you need.

I had a huge thrill last week when a Canadian friend spotted my book on the Kindle Fire shelf of the reviewer for the Globe and Mail. (Sixth slide) How awesome is that? He was posting his review of the Kindle Fire, along with five other reviewers from various media sources (Wired, NY Times, etc) It is right above The Hobbit, and a shared screen space with James Clavell's King Rat, which now that I think about it, that makes sense as there is a bit of similarity to my book, No Good Deed in that the main characters are prisoners and are interrogated.