FREEBIES!

Too Late! Sorry!
FREEBIES!!

 

 

In celebration of my birth month -- and my inability to write a blog this month -- I'm offering my e-books for free!

 

If you've wanted to read them, but didn't have the money, now is the chance to download them.
 

Or if you live in another country and want to practice reading English, now is your chance to download them.
 

Or if you have a friend who wants to read them, but his/her mom won't let them spend the money, now is your chance to spread the word for the free download.

FEEL FREE TO SHARE THIS BLOG LINK AND THE INFORMATION WITH ANYONE AND EVERYONE!

 

FREE In chronological order:

 

To Gnome Me Is To Love Me -- August 5-7
 

The Fast and the FAERIEous -- August 8-10
 

A Maze of Monster Mix-Ups -- August 11-13
 

 For Whom the Bell Trolls-- August 14-16

Sugar Plum Disaster-- August 17-19 

Lost Leprechaun Loot  -- August 20-22

 

And if for some reason, you missed the free download time, I'm offering

ALL of my books for free on August 23-24!!

They are all here on my Amazon author page, M. A. Golla
 

Hints & Suggestions:

• The linked books above are for the US Amazon store. If you want the Amazon store in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, India, Canada, or Brazil, then click these links and it will take you to my Amazon author page for each country.
• Choose the free book and download to your Kindle or computer/phone with free Kindle app.
• Verify the free book prior to downloading! Amazon runs on Greenwich Mean Time . . . and I haven't a clue as to what that entails for other parts of the world! 
• Did you know that Amazon charges the author for every book returned? So please, make sure the book is free before you download it. I don't want to have to pay Amazon . . .

Enjoy my stories!

As always. feel free to post a review, good or not so good, on Amazon.

Thanks!

Later, Peeps!

 

 



Gadgets

Shoulder Update: In case you missed my tweet last night, I tweeted that my shoulder issue is not bursitis, but a cyst. I received a call from my doctor's office after the radiologist examined the x-ray. I will have to go in for an MRI. I've had an MRI before--tiny space, loud clunks and clangs, very claustrophobic. This time I won't take the two Valium I was told to take--talk about being totally loopy for the next 12 hours! They wondered if I was still breathing many times while in the MRI machine!

Last night I was flipping around on my Kindle because my font size looked a little off.

Yeah, yeah, I know, at my advanced age, I should be thinking of making it bigger, not smaller.

It's not like anyone else uses this Kindle. In fact, my kidlet won a Kindle Fire last year in my hub's company's safety contest--the top 12 pictures/slogans are on a calendar. Here's her picture:

 

This year she drew Scooby Doo and the gang--I think the slogan was, "Safety is no mystery!". We won't find out how she did until later in the year. She's in a new age category now, so the competition is tougher with the older kids.
Anyway, back to my story, I knew there was a text-to-speak option, but I never looked for it. Well, I found it. And for grins I turned it on . . . in the middle of a romantic scene I was reading.

I have never listened to anything funnier in my entire life! Well, I have, so that's an exaggeration! But it was so horribly wrong on many, many levels, with the robotic automation voice speaking in a monologue-tone . . . remember, the 7 AM college chemistry course you had to take because every other time was full? Yeah, that professor.

I won't use this gadget for myself, except maybe to listen to my story on Kindle as I make small changes on my computer.

But this would be wonderful for my mom to use. We gave her a Kindle a few Christmases ago, but since then her vision has gotten so bad that she can't read. Whoops, just discovered a problem. Every time I turn the Kindle off, the text-to-speech disappears. I'll have to figure out how to get Mom to turn it on each time she turns on the Kindle . . . this could be problematic.

I'll figure it out.

But the real question here is, "Will Mom?"

Another gadget that I like, but don't use too often are the gadgets on the right side of my computer monitor. I usually just have a calendar up for quick reference when I need to look for the date or look a head to see what day school starts or whatever.

Just look for Desktop Gadgets.

I like the Countdown Calendar. The biggies are countdown to vacation and countdown to when school either starts or ends.

Though if I ever had a writing deadline, this would be a good gadget to keep my focus!

That's all I have for today, folks! It's errand and Mom day today, so I need to get showered and ready to rumble. No walkies this morning, but maybe tonight after we finish the garden beds.

Later, Peeps!

I Love my Kindle, but . . .

what I really miss is the browsing, The wandering up and down the aisles, checking out new genres, new covers, new authors. It isn't as easy on the Kindle. Oh, they offer suggestions for new stories computer generated by the stories you've already bought, but it just isn't the same.

Sometimes I want to read something completely different.

That was how I 'discovered' Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden. I picked up White Night, the seventh or eighth in the series and enjoyed it. I then purchased the preceeding books and anxiously await the next one. I made the mistake of loaning the first three books to a friend, only never to see them again. Yes, I emphatically stated that I wanted them back. After a while, I gave up asking for them.

NEVER loan a book that is a 'keeper'. You will never see it again. Jus' Sayin'.

There's something magical about the smell of books. Not the dusty, musty old books, but the clean, "new car" smell of paper and ink of a paperback. Randomly picking up a title and reading the blurb on the back, or opening it up to read the snippet inside the front cover, or the first page or two.

Or for those of you who are like me . . . checking out the ending. I truly miss flipping to the last page to see if the hero and heroine managed to get together in a romance. Yes, I know that's how the story is supposed to end, but sometimes I want to make sure it's going to happen! This doesn't ruin the story for me, but it confirms why I want to spend the time reading their journey.

The Kindle allows for this function, but it isn't the same.

It's tough these days for many bookstores to survive. Even the big name stores are having a tough time getting merchandise to appeal to the masses. Our local Barnes and Nobel store has started offering toys for all ages along with the obligatory coffee shop. This is a huge store, but it probably offers only 5% of all the books offered on the Kindle. They simply can't house that many books. So they have to be picky about what books they showcase.

Which is why they lean toward the guaranteed sellers, the big name authors. Which is why publishers pay big money for their books to be 'featured' in one of those cardboard thingies--sorry, I forgot the name of those things! Every now and then, I've stumbled across one of my recently published author friends. It's rare, but it happens. Sometimes if an author has only a few books that sold 'okay', but hasn't cranked out more than one a year, they will disappear from the shelves.

Oh, many times the store says they'll order a book for you, but it's easier just to go on Amazon and do it yourself, plus you get it delivered to your door. Or you spend ten seconds to upload it to your Kindle.

I've never willing purchased a hardback fiction book. I could never justify the cost, though there are a few of them in my saved books, namely a couple of the later Harry Potter books. At the time that I bought them, they were just as cheap as a paperback book at a Sam's Club, so I bought them. Personally, I don't see how a publisher can make money on a fictional hardback. I'm sure they do make their money back, but the overhead is so much higher than an electronic book.

So the question becomes . . .

How do you discover new authors on your Kindle? Is there a trick that I just haven't figured out?

Curious minds want to know.

Later, Peeps!

Dealing with book reviews, or lack of them

I must confess that I'm sorely remiss about posting reviews of my book because,

1) I don't google alert myself. I tried, but it was old information and boring, so why bother? I know there's a trick to it, but I'm not really THAT interested. I should be, but . . .

2) I don't stalk my reviewers--well, not anymore. Stupid restraining order . . .  Just kidding! Again, this is a time consuming process. Many reviewers won't review electronic books and/or self-published books. There aren't that many reviewers of children's books who still review. Many of their sites are defunct.

3) I don't look my books up on Amazon that often. I used look them up, but when there are days and days of no sales and no comments. Again, why bother? I don't need to depress myself--I need to write the next book! Oh, I'll check Kindle DTP every now and then, but won't check Barnes and Noble's PubIT or Smashwords. Why? Because it takes FOREVER to log in.

4) I've learned that even when promised a review, it doesn't happen 85% of the time for various reasons. Disappointing, but true. I offered a number of my stories on various kindle boards and had a few people jump on the chance to read a free book by an unknown author. One of these kind reviewers was JML. No, I didn't pay her/him. No, I don't know her/him.

My first Amazon review of FAERIE: . . . uhm, YAY!

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast and FAERIEous, May 20, 2011
By JML - See all my reviewsThis review is from: The Fast and the FAERIEous (The Goblin's Apprentice) (Kindle Edition)

The Fast and the FAERIEous is another spectacular book by M.A. Golla. Continuing the story from To Gnome Me is to Love Me, 11-year-old Kyte has to cope with the drama of 6th grade while learning about and interacting with faeries, water nymphs, goblins, and the rest of the Mythical beings. These books keep getting better.

I do have a prequel to #3 called, A MAZE OF MONSTER MIX-UPS, which is a Halloween inspired short story that I plan to publish by the end of September.

I plan to publish The Goblin's Apprentice, book three, FOR WHOM THE BELL TROLLS, by the end of October.

AND I have another short story, SUGAR PLUM DISASTER, a Christmas inspired short story I will publish by the end of November.

So here's the dealio (guess which movie I stole borrowed this from?) I still need book reviews. I still need people to click, LIKE on my Amazon pages. I still need people to scroll down to the tags and agree with my tag cloud or add more tags. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Even if you aren't interested in reading this type of story, maybe you know someone who would be.

I will give away my books for any and all of these requests, BUT I want proof that you posted a review before I give away a free copy of book two, or Leprechaun.

And if you 'LIKE' my Facebook author page, you'll be the first to know when the other stories are up and I'll be giving away freebies through there.

That's it for today! Inspiration has struck and I'm writing The Goblin's Apprentice, book four, IT TROLLS FOR THEE.

Later, Peeps!

Kindle Me This, Riddler!

Short and sweet today.  Sorry, it wasn't as short as I figured . . . I'm going nutso with being housebound.  Ain't that the truth!  This snow stuff will be the death of me. Oh, so very tired of it.

One of my Christmas presents was a Kindle and I'm enjoying it, BUT I have noticed how easy it is to turn it off and forget about the story I'm reading.

With electronic publishing, there are no 'pages'.  There are increments, so you can figure out what % of the book you've read and how much is left.  Which is fine and dandy, except if you are like me and want to read to a chapter break (or cheat and read the ending).  There's no way to know where the chapters begin, since the font sizes can be changed, therefore the 'page' numbers would be changed.  So you read an ebook until you get bored or find a chapter break. 

I'm finding that it is easier to get bored and stop reading in the middle of a sentence.  It was evident when I forced myself to read all of TREASURE ISLAND, but I'm having a seriously difficult time working my way through ALICE IN WONDERLAND.  Ugh! I'll make it, but it will take longer than anticipated.

But I'm also finding it easy to stop reading Book 4 of the Ranger's Apprentice, a middle grade series that I'm reading.  One, the female protagonist is acting in a TSTL (To Stupid To Live) way.  Technically, children protagonists can act stupid because kids tend to react first instead of thinking, but this was more than I can stomach.  Yes, there is a bunch of eye rolling going on with this reader. Two, there is a lot of war planning in this story.  Guys might like this, but it's getting a little old.

So with my new knowledge, I edited GNOME and proceeded to beat my head against the keyboard.

Most stories have to have some slow parts, they can't all be action, action, action. And since this is the first book in a series, I have to show a little bit of the 'real world' before my character is 'called to action'. Of course,I managed to frustrate myself through the first three chapters.  After that, things pick up and I really enjoyed editing this story. I cut a lot of little stuff, but added other stuff.  Overall, the word count stayed at about the same place: 41,000 words. Roughly half of an adult novel.

But the story is in the hands of a CP (crit partner) and I expect her to find all sorts of errors, missing words, incomplete thoughts, etc.  And when she's through redlining it, I'll give it another round or two of edits before publishing.

All-in-all, reading on a Kindle has made me aware of my own ability to tell a story.  It's a good reality check. One I intend to remember with the consecutive stories.

Oh, and I gave my 89-year old mother a Kindle and she's getting used to it.  At least, she's reading LITTLE WOMEN and seems to enjoy it.

Time to work on my Writer's Digest prompt for February, judge a few contest entries, and then write my Easter bunny story.

Later, Peeps!

Winding Down the Old Year . . .

Yesterday we had our last 'hurrah'!  Which is why this post is late because I'm actually writing it at 6:15-7:15 on New Year's Eve morning!  Thursday was supposed to be one of the nicest days this week-overcast with temps in the 60's.  The hubster was planning on taking down the outside Christmas lights, except he had already done that on Monday. 

So we decided to take a short day trip to Silver Dollar City.   Short is a relative term.  It's about a 3-3-5 hour drive.

I packed up a ditty-bag with the scarf I'm crocheting for the kidlet and my Kindle.  The kidlet packed her Nintendo DS, a couple of books (and regaled us with information about Chupacabras and Leucrotta's--yes, I had to look THAT one up on wikipedia!) a pillow and blanket.  The hubster ALWAYS drives . . . for a couple of reasons:

1) I HATE DRIVING

2) I used to offer to drive, but when he wanted to change drivers we would be in a place (Denver, snow, mountain driving) that I had pre-negotiated my refusal to drive.

We stopped to eat lunch at Zio's in Springfield and continued on our way.  We knew it would be crowded because this was the last day SDC would be open until mid-March--but WOWZERS!  We opted for the paid parking that is available for season pass holders.  We'd have to walk to and from our parking space but it sure beats waiting for a tram along with a gazillion other people to take you to the North 40 parking area!

As I mentioned, we go to SDC for the rides.  Oh, sure, they have shows and craft demos, etc, etc, but why waste time watching a show if you can ride a rollercoaster????  The lines were hideous because some genius in SDC's management decided to have the mechanics start breaking down the cars on ALL the rides, leaving only one car per ride.  NOT SMART, PEOPLE!  (yes, I'm going to send them a letter.  And yes, I realize the didn't expect the last day to generate that many people.  And yes, I realize they hadn't calculated the temperatures would be in the 60's--but this isn't the first time someone messed up).  If you are scheduled to be open, then you need to anticipate a crowd. We waited an hour for Wildfire.  PowderKeg was better since they had two sets of cars running. 

While we waited in line for Wildfire, it got dark and SDC became a magical fairyland with lights.  The lights made up for my earlier crankiness. 

We left around 7:30 for the drive home.  It was too dark to crochet, so I pulled out my Kindle (with its handy dandy little light) and started to read Treasure Island.  I have NEVER read TI, so I thought it would be a good idea to get used to the Kindle by reading a 'freebie'.  I'm about 1/4 of the way finished.
And if they didn't provide the little line at the bottom of the page, I would never have figured it out! There are a couple of love/hate things I've discovered while using an ereader. 

--I enjoy reading on the Kindle.  Even though I needed a little light to read it at night, it was not distracting to the driver.  If you angled it right, it didn't glare on the screen.

--I HATE that I can't 'cheat' and read the ending.  Oh, I know things will work out, but I still like to check it out.

--I don't like the way the formatted the ebook.  I don't know if they screwed up because it is a freebie, but sometimes the paragraphs were indented and sometimes they weren't.

--I didn't like that I had no idea where the chapter breaks were.  True, skipping ahead I might figure it out, but they run the chapters together with the text--THERE IS NO EASILY SPOTTED BREAKING POINT.

--My eyes got tired quicker than I expected.  I don't know if it was because we had a long day, or if it was because of the ereader, or if it was the light.  I'll have to test a couple of theories.

--And I won't go into it here, but I STILL THINK IT'S A TOTAL RIP-OFF BY PUBLISHING HOUSES TO CHARGE THE SAME PRICE AS THEY WOULD A PRINT BOOK.  Talk about a 90+% profit margin!

Well, that's it for today.  I need to round up last year's goals and set some new ones for this year.  I tried to read 50 books this year and I'm on book #48--I should finish it today--so I think that is a good goal to keep for next year.

If the weather cooperates, we'll be hanging by the outdoor fireplace tonight before we transfer to the hot tub.  Hubster and I will have some bubbly and the kidlet will have sparkling grape juice. . . at least with a drink in her hand, she'll refrain from 'swimming' in the hot tub.--NOT RELAXING! O' child who sprung from my loins!

See you all in the New Year!

This and That

I turned on the news this morning and one of my old chapter mates was featured. I don't belong to the chapter any longer, but I try to keep track of people. Peggy Fielding, an 82-year old writer was the single protester outside her post office. It seems the government is closing down the office. Peggy is one of the spunkiest old people that I know. My mom (87) is the other one! And she's a little ticked that they are closing down her P.O. as she lives only 3 blocks away and uses a walker to get there. She has no other method of transportation.

Even in this day of modern technology, writers must depend on good old USPS at times. In fact, I have two queries ready to go to the PO to be mailed. Equeries will only get you so far, sometimes you have to resort to old school.

I just saw a MG contest that you have to mail in your manuscript. I'm surprised with how everyone is trying to go green, that publishing hasn't figured out a way to follow the trend.
But, then again, I still like holding and smelling a fresh new paperback in my hands. Somethings you can't imitate. Now, if the new Kindle came with the artificial smell of books, I might have to look into it!

Speaking of MG (middle grade), I just finished a MG novel, The Fire Within. I had bought it for my daughter, but I pretty much read it yesterday afternoon. She started it, but 8-yo's don't read as quick as 'aged' adults. All I have to say is don't down play MG authors. This story had multiple sub-plots interwoven to a final conclusion. And yes, I will be buying book 2 and 3.

Two days ago, I entered a few RWA contests with my new UF. There were a few things that I verified before sending the monies via PayPal.

1) Fairly generic score sheet--as a judge and contest entrant, I feel I get more bang for my buck when I enter a contest that isn't too detailed. True, the judge might still think my book sucks, but my odds are better with a generic score sheet, instead of losing 10 points because my H/H don't meet in the first 10 pages. Uh, this UF doesn't have a hero.
2) Final judge--I definitely chose these contests because of the final judges. And the judges are all from different Publishing houses.
3) Lowest score dropped--goes without saying. 3 judges, only top 2 are used.
4) Chapter members NOT allowed to enter--I like this one. As much as a contest tries to follow their own rules by not judging their chapter mates, those of us who are outsiders tend to wonder about their honesty. They many be true, but how can we really tell?
5) No synopsis--Yes, I know you need a synopsis to sell on proposal, but many times I don't have a synopsis figured out until I hit 1/3 of the way through the book.
6) Fresh eyes--Many times I enter a contest just to see if I'm on the right track. My CP's have heard about my story, ad nauseum, and they may not be the best judge at this point--I want a fresh opinion.

Well, I think that's enough lagniappe for the day.
I still have almost 5,000 words to write (like THAT's gonna happen!) and a couple of hours on the Wii Fit.

Write on!