Happy Autumn!

Some exciting news to report on here at the ole blog. Waiting For Spring has been picked up by AmazonEncore, the publishing arm of Amazon.com. A little background from their website:

Even great books can be overlooked. And authors with great potential often struggle to connect with the larger audience they deserve to reach. We’re fortunate at Amazon.com to have customers who know a good book when they read one, so we’ve introduced AmazonEncore to help connect authors and their books with more readers.

AmazonEncore is a new program whereby Amazon will use information such as customer reviews on Amazon.com to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors with more potential than their sales may indicate. Amazon will then partner with the authors to re-introduce their books to readers through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon.com Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers.

Yes…this is a huge deal. I can’t accurately express how thrilled I am to be working with the amazing people at Encore. Already, copy-edits are finished and the new cover is ready (which, for the record, I LOVE). Here it be:

The Encore version is available for pre-order now, if you’re so inclined.

I’ll post more information in the days, weeks, and months ahead. In the meantime I want to tell each of you how very much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me over the past three years. This would not have been possible without your support and encouragement.

I finished the first draft of my upcoming novel, The Wendy House – a not-quite-prequel/not-quite-sequel to Waiting For Spring – early this afternoon.

The writing of it caused many tears, sleepless nights, joy, headdesk moments, and spawned a coffee mug.

The plot itself didn’t change very much during the last two-and-a-half years, but pretty much everything else – point of view, characterization, narrative style, supporting characters – did. Goodness only knows how the rewriting process will go. But I’m very pleased with how the thing has fleshed out so far. There are lots of interesting and surprising twists for readers who think they know the story of Rick and Wendy LaChance, and I hope you all will be happy with it when it’s finally released.

Several weeks ago, I posted the first chapter here for y’all to read. What I didn’t tell you is that the novel will actually open with the first of many entries from Wendy’s diary. Here it is:

——————————————

July 17, 1992
I met Rick on a hot August afternoon. That seems important now, since I may never see another August. It was thirteen years ago, almost. We were both seventeen. It was on a dry dirt road and his car—it was a brown Chevy something-or-other—stirred up too much dust and made me cough. He pulled over when he saw that I was struggling to bury a porcupine in the hard ground beside the road. He didn’t ask me why, just grabbed the shovel from my hands and started digging. I told him anyway and he grinned.

It was the grin that did it. It was crooked, cocky. It crackled with sex, with life, and I wanted to soak it all up. To soak him up. I wanted him to be my first, my first everything, right at that moment.

When he was finished, once the corpse was safely hidden, he gave me back my shovel, lit a cigarette and asked me my name. I had to take a deep breath before I said, Wendy. He smiled again and told me his.

I knew at that moment a door had opened up for me. I just didn’t know that when I walked through it a thousand others slammed shut.

Please give a very warm welcome to guest blogger Zoe Winters, author of the Blood Lust series and passionate advocate of independent/self-publishing, and check out how you can enter to win a Kindle

Thanks to Kel for having me on her blog today to promote my new release, Blood Lust (my first print release, yay!) I met Kel about two years ago when I was weighing the pros and cons of going indie. Needless to say, despite some stigma still existing, it wasn’t nearly as cool to digitally self-publish then as it is now.

And Kel did it before me. 🙂

Originally the idea was that I was going to start an imprint and just do my thing and not be really “vocal” about being self-published. But me not being vocal about something is about as likely as a cat going swimming.

I couldn’t help myself. I was so excited! So being me, I ran around and started talking about the stuff I was learning about self-publishing and about marketing. Even in the beginning before I’d released a thing, I seemed to get into little cat fights on the Internet on the validity of self-publishing. I think this was how Kel found me and stalked me back to my blog. 😛

I’m glad she did. Kel and several other indies I’ve met along the way have been like Dorothy picking up all these friends on the yellow brick road. And I’m not saying I’m Dorothy and they’re my sidekicks. Sometimes they’re Dorothy and I’m the sidekick. We all learn from each other. The point is, the community feeling of going indie and the journey has been one of the coolest experiences ever.

Becoming indie has been like stepping into technicolor with singing munchkins after my house fell on the Wicked Witch of the East. Before going indie, it was all black and white and fairly depressing. At least for me. Okay, if you know me, you knew I was going to just drag that metaphor kicking and screaming as long as I could. I think it’s dead now. We can continue.

I love my indie peeps. And I love being indie. And now, finally, after releasing only digital books (which isn’t a bad thing), I’ve got my first print book in my hands that I can hold. I recently had the experience of signing my first books and that was really cool, too!

And now we’re to the marketing portion of the program. This week I’m doing a book blitz with giveaways. Each day I’ll update my blog showing where I’m guest blogging and I’ll give away a signed copy of Blood Lust to commenters at each guest blog location.

The big part of the contest can be found here at my blog, where I’ll be giving away an Amazon Kindle.

And oh yeah… I had a book to promo… Here’s the description for Blood Lust, I hope you’ll check it out!

It’s all about the blood…

Comprised of three novellas, Blood Lust gives readers a snapshot look at the world of the Preternaturals Series. (Future installments of the series will be novels.)

KEPT:

As a cat therian (shifter), Greta’s blood is already sought after to enhance spells and potions, but due to a quirk of her birth, her blood is potent enough to kill for. When her tribe plans to sacrifice her, Greta must ally herself with Dayne, the dangerous local sorcerer, and the only person strong enough to protect her.

CLAIMED:

For a vampire, Anthony isn’t a picky eater, but he’s drawn to Charlee’s blood more than any other. Like a fine wine saved for a special occasion, he’s denied himself this pleasure. But one night, high from the potent magical blood of another, he claims his prize and loses control. Ashamed of almost killing the one woman who means anything to him, he wipes her memory of the event. When Charlee awakens with complete amnesia, Anthony is the only one who can clean up the mess he’s made.

MATED:

Because of the vampiric blood that has run through her veins since birth, Jane has been a target for vampires who resent a human being “kindred.” She’s forced to disguise herself as a vampire groupie to appease them and safeguard her life. When she’s abruptly given to Cole, the leader of the werewolf pack, to satisfy a gambling debt, she discovers the blood running through her veins has a far greater impact on her destiny than she ever imagined.

Print and ebook copies are available at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. (other retailers coming soon.)

Buy links are available from my blog (The top stickied Amazon contest post.)

You can find me here:

Author Website

Author Blog

Twitter

Poet, and Paper Rats’ fan, Joe Glasgow posted a poem about “Inside The Writers’ Studio” on Facebook. Naturally we pestered him until he turned it into a song. Then we pestered him some more until he recorded it. Because that’s how we roll.

(CLICK HERE to watch earlier episodes of Inside The Writers’ Studio.)

Heads up indie authors: For the low, low price of $149, you and your book may get a mention in a Publishers’ Weekly quarterly self-publishing supplement. Or, uh, you may not. Agents and others in the publishing industry may take a look at your book! Or, uh, they may not. (ie, Be smart, people. Think. Do some research. Please do not let yourself be taken advantage of.)

For more words of wisdom, please see:

Self-Publishing Review

Zoe Winters’ blog

Joe Konrath’s blog

POD People

Presenting the cover for my upcoming novel, The Wendy House (coming spring 2011). Much thanks to Kristen Tsetsi for bringing my vague idea to life so beautifully.

Same photo, but brightened up a bit, and a cleaner font.

Coming soon: The Wendy House cover reveal.

…of my blog’s Indie Author Appreciate Contest is…

LuvMyKindle!!!

Congratulations, and thanks to all participants! (“Luv”, please email me at rjkeller.wfs@gmail.com so we can work out the details of the gift certificate exchange.)

Paper Rats’ newest episode of Inside The Writers’ Studio is now ready. Entitled It’s Not Hemigway, episode v was written by Holly Christine (author of The Nine Lives of Clemenza and Tuesday Tells It Slant) and the winning entry in our Very, Very, Very Short Script contest. Enjoy!

Episode V. In which Kris and R try to improve their writing the old fashioned way.