Since I had the house to myself most of the day, I decided it would be a good time to start recording the audiobook version of Waiting For Spring. Chaos obviously ensued.

 Backword Books is a new collective of self-published authors ‘who are united in purpose under one banner to accomplish three primary goals: 1.) Attain mainstream media coverage; 2.) Generate sales; 3.) Bring an aura of professionalism and legitimacy to self-publishing.’

 I’m proud and excited to announce that yesterday I was invited to become a member of Backword Books. Click here to go to the site, and to check out the other members’ books, as well as the blog (which I’ll be contributing to very soon). There’s some very amazing stuff there!

I’ll be blogging more about the site in the days and weeks ahead.

The family & I went to a Portland SeaDogs game this afternoon. Our seats were behind home plate, about five rows back, slightly to the right of home plate. From this vantage point I was able to ogle all of the left-handed players asses with impunity.

God bless whoever designed the modern day baseball uniform, with those snug, form-fitting pants.

The results of LLBookReview‘s contest for the 100th book to be reviewed on the site are in:

Waiting For Spring didn’t get the top spot, but it tied for second place, which is very cool, and I want to thank all of you who voted for it, and who spread the word about it as well. I also want to thank the LLBookReview team, not only for choosing Waiting For Spring as one of the six finalists, but for holding the contest in the first place. I’ve discovered some excellent books and very talented writers as a result.

All of the books featured there will be reviewed on LLBookReview during August, including Waiting For Spring. 🙂

 I just finished reading “Six-Hundred Hours of a Life” by Craig Lancaster, which chronicles 25 days (or 600 hours) in the life of Edward Stanton, a man with OCD and Aspergers syndrome. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s funny and touching and SO well written. I sat at my screen for over five hours and read it in one sitting. (I did get up once to go pee.)

 It had been on my To Be Read list for a few weeks, as it was one of the six books nominated for LLBookReview’s 100th book to be reviewed* but I bumped it to the top of the list after I read a review of it. I am SO glad I did.

It’s available on Smashwords in a variety of ebook formats (including PDF – which is how I read it – and Kindle/.mobi). It’s normally $4.99, but it’s part of Smashwords 50% off promotion, so you can get it for $2.50.  Or you can get it from Amazon.com.

Synopsis: Edward doesn’t trust anything he can’t verify. He lives in solitude in a house in Billings, Montana, and sticks to the few things he can rely on: the data he keeps, and his trusty videotaped episodes of the ’60s cop show Dragnet. But over the course of 25 days — 600 hours — events begin to draw Edward out and force him to confront a question: Can he deal with life on its terms?

Click here to read the review that prompted me to bump it to the top of my TBR list. I hope you all will do the same.

* Voting ended July 4th at midnight. Micha Berman’s Permanent Passenger won. I’ll post more about that later. 🙂

I was flipping through the older pages of my blog a little while ago (yes, there was a reason for it; something I’ll be discussing at a later date) and came across a few entries I posted while I was in the middle of writing or editing Waiting For Spring. I thought some of you might be interested in reading them. Here they are, in the order they were posted:

• Febrary 28, 2006: This was when I first dipped my toe into novel-writing waters. The post itself is rather boring, but the comments section reveals a nascent image of Tess (and my still-fresh resentment at the defection of Johnny Damon from my Beloved Red Sox to the Team From New York That Shall Not Be Named): A Novel Idea.
• March 23, 2006: While I was in the middle of writing my first draft and needed some help. (It’s kind of funny, because I was at a point when I wasn’t exactly sure how a certain plot line would be resolved.) Where’s a Lawyer When You Need One?
• October 19, 2007: A house of inspiration: This Old House.
• March 31, 2008: I posted WFS online at a Google Pages website in early March of 2008, while I was still querying agents. By this point I’d heard “I love it, but don’t think I can market it” several times, and decided to put it out there to see what people thought. I started getting emails within a week of the site going live, and many of them included fairly in-depth questions about WFS. It’s what gave me the courage to eventually forsake the traditional publishing path and put my book out on my own. Boa Constrictors From The Inside is my first answering-a-reader’s-question post.

My flash fiction piece, “Reflection,” won a spot in the Editor Unleashed/Smashwords Flash Fiction 40 contest! What it means is that my story will be included along with 39 others in an anthology that will be published through Smashwords later on this year. And I won twenty-five bucks. Whoo hoo! 

The announcement is here: http://editorunleashed.com/2009/06/29/flash-fiction-40-contest-winners/

“Reflection” is here, if you’re interested in reading it: http://editorunleashed.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1167

There are a lot of really great stories there. If you’ve got the time, it’s worth taking a look.

 Today, I was able to send a check to Spruce Run in the amount of $250.oo (US funds). This included the royalties from the Amazon version of Waiting For Spring – both the trade paperback and Kindle versions – as well as royalties from the ‘set your own price’ tip jar at Smashwords.

In other words, it was because of YOU.

So thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

All proceeds from the sale of Waiting For Spring will continue to be donated to Spruce Run, a domestic abuse project here in Maine that provides information and support to all people affected by domestic abuse. If you wish to donate to them directly, click this link. Or you can donate directly to a domestic abuse project or shelter near you.

“I’ll admit that I didn’t have very high expectations for this book – I’m not sure why. But I was so completely wrong, it floored me.

The writer’s voice is clear throughout the entire story, drawing you in, creating such real characters that I couldn’t force myself to go to bed without reading one more page, one more chapter. So many of Tess’ thoughts could have come from my own mind, her actions so clearly desperate. You could feel her fear, her insecurity. The way her thoughts mingled with her words, overlapping each other, just like they do in our own heads. Rarely have I read an author that could pull that off without seeming stilted and forced, until R.J. Keller.

While the storyline followed a completely possible and realistic path, there still managed to be many moments of surprise, not believing that something had actually happened.

Now I’m off to find out when I can expect something new from this author.”

 ~ Kay at GoodReads