As anticipated, self-promotion is very difficult, but I've got to get From the Chrysalis out there or nobody will ever find it. I feel like an ant pushing a bread crumb up a mounting pile of books, though. It wouldn't surprise me if a thousand new novels get published on Amazon every day, most really bad, but some very good. I don't know which is scarier--that so many bad novels get "published" or that even some really good books can't find traditional publishers. What are the authors thinking!? Well, it can't be about money, that's for sure and if they're anything like me, authors just want people read their book and maybe fall in love with their characters.
On the subject of falling in love with characters, reviews have started to trickle in for my hybrid novel and it is indeed fascinating to get unsolicited opinions from complete strangers:
The characters were lifelike and the storyline intense. It is a story that will captivate readers and cause them to think.
Much of the book is centered around the prison riot of 1971 in Maitland,
Ontario. Dace Devereux, residing there at the time, is a key player in the riot.
It was at this point of the novel that I fell in love with the
character of Dace. His perseverance and resilience, whether making good
or bad decisions, can’t be matched. The riot is based on the real life
Kingston Penitentiary Riot of April 1971, one of the largest riots in
Canadian history. Mixed in among the fiction are some true details that
lend a sense of believability to the plot. I could have happily read a
complete novel based around this event and Ms. Black’s characters in the
prison. This was by far the most entertaining and fast paced section of
the entire book. I was completely enthralled. It was also the part
where we truly get to know the character of Dace.
Tuesday 21 February 2012
Thursday 9 February 2012
An Introvert's Attempt at Self-Promotion
I haven't written a thing since I uploaded From the Chrysalis to Kindle and that's the rub. Each step is onerous. Tracking down reviews, for example. Most people I know don't even have Kindles.Why is that? I work in a library, for God's sake, so theorectically I'm surrounded by readers. Ah, but you'd be surprised by the number of librarians (people with Masters) who don't read. A good thing I have five children and gave them each a Kindle two Christmases ago, and I've got a daughter-in-law and son-in-law with access to Kindles too.Won't they be surprised when they see what's in my book. Well, I'm sure my children will be too. My formatter liked Chrysalis though--thought it was a "damn good book." I suppose I should have been more assertive and asked why and got it in writing. I wasn't paying him/her all that much though to relieve me of the tedium of learning to typeset on top of everything else.
And this blog's another problem. What to leave in and what to leave out. And how to interest anybody [who doesn't love me] in my ramblings.
And this blog's another problem. What to leave in and what to leave out. And how to interest anybody [who doesn't love me] in my ramblings.
Wednesday 8 February 2012
From the Chrysalis
After much soul searching, I finally uploaded my first novel From the Chrysalis to Kindle KDP (7 Feb 2012). What do I care if I had to give them exclusive rights for 90 days? I know everybody doesn't have a Kindle, but at least they can download a free one to read on their PC.
Btw, a good thing the cover's a stand out because there are an amazing number of books on Amazon with "the chrysalis" in their title.
http://www.amazon.com/Karen-E.-Black/e/B0076LCJ1O
This is my description:
A forbidden love affair between a college student and an ex-convict threatens to destroy them both.
Liza's bad-boy cousin, the handsome, magnetic D’Arcy “Dace” Devereux is nothing but trouble. Falling in love with him can only make things worse. Especially for a girl who knows more about books and monarch butterflies than she does men.
The cousins’ mutual infatuation flares into an obsession long before Liza is out of her teens. Even when Dace is arrested for manslaughter and sent to a penitentiary, their feelings don't change.
When she’s old enough, Liza enrolls in a local university to be closer to him, but a prison riot breaks out and Dace is forced to make decisions that will jeopardize both their relationship and his life. He's always been loyal to his old buddies—too loyal some say.
The cousins spend one wonderful summer together when he's briefly paroled, butDace is still drawn to trouble like the monarchs down to Mexico.
In the end, nobody—not the biker gangs, the authorities or Dace's own demons—is going to let him go. The only way they can both break out and fly free is if Liza walks away. But how can she leave him when he has become her whole life?
From the Chrysalis is a taut novel of romance and survival against all odds,set in the shifting political and moral background of the early seventies.
My work as a reference librarian has helped me enrich the setting and heighten the suspense of this novel by using historical detail about the deadliest event in Canadian penal history, the Kingston Penitentiary Riot of April 1971.
Btw, a good thing the cover's a stand out because there are an amazing number of books on Amazon with "the chrysalis" in their title.
http://www.amazon.com/Karen-E.-Black/e/B0076LCJ1O
This is my description:
A forbidden love affair between a college student and an ex-convict threatens to destroy them both.
Liza's bad-boy cousin, the handsome, magnetic D’Arcy “Dace” Devereux is nothing but trouble. Falling in love with him can only make things worse. Especially for a girl who knows more about books and monarch butterflies than she does men.
The cousins’ mutual infatuation flares into an obsession long before Liza is out of her teens. Even when Dace is arrested for manslaughter and sent to a penitentiary, their feelings don't change.
When she’s old enough, Liza enrolls in a local university to be closer to him, but a prison riot breaks out and Dace is forced to make decisions that will jeopardize both their relationship and his life. He's always been loyal to his old buddies—too loyal some say.
The cousins spend one wonderful summer together when he's briefly paroled, butDace is still drawn to trouble like the monarchs down to Mexico.
In the end, nobody—not the biker gangs, the authorities or Dace's own demons—is going to let him go. The only way they can both break out and fly free is if Liza walks away. But how can she leave him when he has become her whole life?
From the Chrysalis is a taut novel of romance and survival against all odds,set in the shifting political and moral background of the early seventies.
My work as a reference librarian has helped me enrich the setting and heighten the suspense of this novel by using historical detail about the deadliest event in Canadian penal history, the Kingston Penitentiary Riot of April 1971.
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