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Pets and Assorted Animals in Stories. Love ‘um or Not? By Connie Vines

September 13, 2015 by in category Archives tagged as , ,
This month’s Topic: Pets or other animals in your stories? What function do they perform in the story? Do they need to have a function? Can they be a character? 

Since I am an animal lover and owner of a multitude of pets (exotic, barnyard, and typical suburban) at various times during my life, it only goes to reason that I will have them peppering my short stories, novellas, and novels.  

My Rodeo Romance Series (understandably) incorporates a cast of horses, sheep, cattle, dogs, cats, etc.  Some of these animals only have Cameo roles, while others are characters in their own right.  My Fun & Sassy Fantasy Series also features a pet as a main character in each story line.  Gertie, a pet Teddy-Bear Hamster, is Zombie Meredith’s BF in “Here Today, Zombie Tomorrow”.  “Brede” Rodeo Romance, Book 2 features a horse and cattle dog.  “Lynx” Rodeo Romance, Book 1, features the hero’s horse named Texas. The next book in my series, “Rand” Rodeo Romance, Book 3 features a poodle who belongs to the heroine.  Rand’s interaction with this very unrodeo-like dog is priceless!

For realistic purposes I select animals/breeds that I either have owned, or have working personal knowledge (chickens, turkeys, quail, pheasant, pigs, sheep— bred for. . .well, dinner during my rural days).  My dogs: Greyhound (my favorite & a rescue) Poodle (AKC champion pedigree), and– my husband’s dog, a Chi-wienie (Chihuahua Dachshund mix). I also like to add my horses (Quarter horse, Arabian) into the mix. 

 Due to my allergies to cats, my info in developing feline characters comes mostly via friends and the Animal Channel.  Now the unconventional pet experiences, were discovered firsthand (I did raise sons and have three younger brothers).  Iguanas, horned toads & hamsters, parakeets, an Amazon parrot, a runaway (flyaway?) cocktail, all have a way of finding a place in my life and my stories. 

Future adventure with pets?  

Probably. 

Right now I seem to be fixated on goats–pygmy goats to be exact.

I simply adore baby pygmy goats.  Mind you, I reside in the suburbs of Southern California.  Frequently, my husband reminds me,  â€œYou cannot raise a goat in our backyard, there are zoning laws.” 

Of course I know there are zoning laws J.  I also know goats are herd animals.  “We will need to have two goats,” I remind him. 

“We?” He grunts and goes back to his ‘man-cave’.

If you look at a YouTube video and read the mentioned online article titled: Pygmy Goats. The opening hook states: You should reconsider your choice in pets if you want an animal to stay indoors with you.
Well, sugar.  I really don’t relish those cute little darling’s chewing my maple furniture.

I did find one particular fact of interest while websurfing —(probably only humorous if you’re the sole female in male household)  â€˜Goats are messy eaters too, pulling feed out of buckets and leaving it on the floor.  Once it’s trampled, they really don’t want to touch it.’  Ah, the bygone days of life with teenage sons and team members.

While my characters do not always have pet, my characters have often had a pet during childhood, interact with an animal, or (YA stories) would like a pet. 

Why, do I believe animals are important to a story line?
It is a way to show character, good and bad.

How people treat animals will give a reader insight into my main character, or my villain.  I believe treatment of an animal hints at how he/she will treat a vulnerable person (child/spouse).  If the hero seems uncaring and selfish to outsiders, give the heroine a view into an unguarded moment he shares with an injured puppy, or his care of his horse.  His truck may be battered and dirty, but his horse is well groomed, fed, and sheltered each night.

However, my animals need to have a purpose.  Sometimes it may only be comic relief, or a confidant in a YA novel, but unless it is a Cameo role (or red herring), my animals have a personality and a place in the storyline.

Who doesn’t remember, “Call of the Wild”, “Old Yeller”, “Misty of Chincoteague”?

I believe pets, can enrich a story—my novels, as are (in my opinion) as most genre novels, a story about life and the human need for love and companionship.

Not every novel calls for an animal to part of the story. 

Not every person wishes to be responsible for a pet.
I did a bit of research and discovered these stats (the info about fish surprised me).
*Stats: 2014, 83.2 million dogs live in U.S. households, 95.5 million freshwater fish live in U.S. household, and 85.8 million cats live in U.S. households.
* Statista.com

So, what do you think?  Do animals add depth to a story?  Do you love un, or not?

Happy Reading,

Connie

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Cinderella turns Video Belle: My Kindle Scout Experience Part 5 by Jina Bacarr

September 11, 2015 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

(You can read my previous posts about my experience with the Kindle Scout program by clicking on Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.)

Do your characters keep you awake at nights?

Mine do.

First, they wanted to be Kindle Scout winners…

Now they want to be video stars.

And it’s all Cinderella’s fault.

Cindy had so much fun at the ball and then meeting the queen and getting her picture taken everywhere she went, she didn’t want to give it up and spend her days sitting in the castle watching old movies.

So she riled up the characters in my Kindle Scout winner, LOVE ME FOREVER, and convinced them they could be stars.

Cindy went Hollywood on me.

She’s now producing a bunch of short videos with highlights from LOVE ME FOREVER and yes, she even convinced me to do the voiceovers.

How could I refuse? You want to shout your book to the rooftops and do your very best to promote it, so I’ve been slaving behind a hot microphone, and guess what, I’ve got some videos for you.

I hope you enjoy them…

 
Civil War: “Love Me Forever” time travel romance from Jina Bacarr on Vimeo.

 
Civil War Sister against Sister: “Love Me Forever” Time Travel Romance from Jina Bacarr on Vimeo.

 
Women Soldiers in the Civil War from “Love Me Forever” from Jina Bacarr on Vimeo.

So what’s the next step in the Kindle Scout experience? I’ve received tons of support from other Kindle Scout winners with retweeting, blogging, YouTubing, etc. It’s been an extraordinary experience, kinda like joining a sorority or fraternity. A sense of having each other’s back and always being there if someone has a question.

And we’ve started our own Facebook page: KP Authors. Check it out!

More exciting news: Ken Burns’ Civil War has been remastered and is being shown in high definition on PBS. This is the last night, so be sure to tune in! It’s been thrilling to see the battles in my romance novel come alive…

Thanks for coming along on my journey with me…and come back next month for more on my Kindle Scout experience as the program grows…I wouldn’t be surprised if I have more videos for you.

~Jina
Website: www.jinabacarr.com
Blog: www.jinabacarr.wordpress.com
  ================

 
Tennessee Belle goes to a Confederate Ball in 1862 from Jina Bacarr on Vimeo.
 
https://twitter.com/JinaBacarr
www.pinterest.com/jbacarr
https://instagram.com/jinabacarr/

And on Vimeo you’ll find my videos covering my books, poems, etc.:
https://vimeo.com/user216350

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Cinderella turns Video Belle: My Kindle Scout Experience Part 5 by Jina Bacarr

September 11, 2015 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

(You can read my previous posts about my experience with the Kindle Scout program by clicking on Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.)

Do your characters keep you awake at nights?

Mine do.

First, they wanted to be Kindle Scout winners…

Now they want to be video stars.

And it’s all Cinderella’s fault.

Cindy had so much fun at the ball and then meeting the queen and getting her picture taken everywhere she went, she didn’t want to give it up and spend her days sitting in the castle watching old movies.

So she riled up the characters in my Kindle Scout winner, LOVE ME FOREVER, and convinced them they could be stars.

Cindy went Hollywood on me.

She’s now producing a bunch of short videos with highlights from LOVE ME FOREVER and yes, she even convinced me to do the voiceovers.

How could I refuse? You want to shout your book to the rooftops and do your very best to promote it, so I’ve been slaving behind a hot microphone, and guess what, I’ve got some videos for you.

I hope you enjoy them…

 
Civil War: “Love Me Forever” time travel romance from Jina Bacarr on Vimeo.

 
Civil War Sister against Sister: “Love Me Forever” Time Travel Romance from Jina Bacarr on Vimeo.

 
Women Soldiers in the Civil War from “Love Me Forever” from Jina Bacarr on Vimeo.

So what’s the next step in the Kindle Scout experience? I’ve received tons of support from other Kindle Scout winners with retweeting, blogging, YouTubing, etc. It’s been an extraordinary experience, kinda like joining a sorority or fraternity. A sense of having each other’s back and always being there if someone has a question.

And we’ve started our own Facebook page: KP Authors. Check it out!

More exciting news: Ken Burns’ Civil War has been remastered and is being shown in high definition on PBS. This is the last night, so be sure to tune in! It’s been thrilling to see the battles in my romance novel come alive…

Thanks for coming along on my journey with me…and come back next month for more on my Kindle Scout experience as the program grows…I wouldn’t be surprised if I have more videos for you.

~Jina
Website: www.jinabacarr.com
Blog: www.jinabacarr.wordpress.com
  ================
 
https://twitter.com/JinaBacarr
www.pinterest.com/jbacarr
https://instagram.com/jinabacarr/

And on Vimeo you’ll find my videos covering my books, poems, etc.:
https://vimeo.com/user216350

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KDP Select Ad Results August 2015 by Kitty Bucholtz

September 9, 2015 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as , , , , , ,
Bringing you another episode of “What Might Be Working in Book Ads.” 😉
 
You may remember, I added my chick-lit book, Little Miss Lovesick, to KDP Select in March 2015. The book wasn’t really selling, so I figured it would be a good time to do some experimentation. After all, you can’t sell fewer than zero books, right?
 
I took advantage of the five free days at the end of May 2015 and shared my results with you here. Things went so well that I wanted to continue my experiment, so I left the book in KDP Select and did another five free days August 18-22, 2015. I am happy to report that the sale went even better the second time! Here are the details…
 
Before the sale:
 
I applied for the same ads that I purchased in May since they did so well. I didn’t get all of them, but I also asked other writer friends what worked for them and picked up a couple of new ads on recommendation (Ereader News Today and Robin Reads).
 
In May I paid $14.99 to use Book Marketing Tools™ ebook submission tool to somewhat-automatically apply to 32 websites at once that accept submissions to advertise your free book. (During a promotion last year, I used Ebook Booster, which submits your free book to 45+ sites for $35.) In August, I decided to try the free membership tool at Author Marketing Club to manually apply to about a dozen sites by clicking through from buttons on AMC’s web page.
 
It’s difficult to know which sites are going to list your book as they don’t all reply back to you. And in the past, I haven’t been able to find my book on all the sites that did reply back. In any case, I’m pretty sure the book was advertised on DigitalBook Today and FreeBooksy, and probably others, but I didn’t double-check any of the sites during the free period.
 
I applied for the “free ebook of the day” ad at Indie AuthorNews, which appeared to be a good ad for me last time, but I didn’t get it this time. I also wrote down that I used a pre-paid ad credit at The Romance Studio blog page for one day, but I forgot to follow-up and see if the ad appeared and on which day. So I don’t know if I got any traffic from there.
 
What I did during the sale days:
 
Tuesday, August 18: 2645 free downloads today
* KENP = 0
* Free ad on ReadCheaply.com
* $45 premium ad in Choosy Bookworm email newsletter to 40,000+ subscribers, on their website all week
 
Wednesday, August 19: 1963 free downloads
* KENP = 470
* $21 to BKnights on Fiverr to 4800+ active Facebook users for 7 days, “extra” promotion with viral Facebook post for 7 days, promote on website with 2000 visitors/day for 1 day, promote in email newsletter to over 2500 subscribers for 1 day
* Julie Kenner’s Hump Day feature, no charge promoted with other books on a blog post
* $25 Ereader News Today ad in email newsletter
 
Thursday, August 20: 850 free downloads
* KENP = 515
* $25 InDtale Bargain Book ad to 10,000+ email newsletter subscribers
* Blog posts on Romance Readers Club, The Romance Studio, and Coleen Kwan sites
 
Friday, August 21: 2080 free downloads
* KENP = 1131
* $20 ad in Robin Reads email newsletter
* Blog post on Tracy Reed site
 
Saturday, August 22: 561 free downloads
* KENP = 2066
* Blog post on Alina K. Field site
 
On the last day of the freebie sale, there are always a few copies that get downloaded early the next day before the price goes back to normal, and 9 free copies were downloaded on Sunday. The grand total of free ebooks downloaded in this 6-day period was 8108. In May, the total was 7312, so I’m quite happy with the 11% increase.
 
Comparison of KENP pages read in Kindle Unlimited:
 
In May, Kindle Unlimited still counted each title as one borrow rather than counting the number of pages read (KENP) as has been the case since July 1. It also took me six weeks to get my results to you last time, and it’s only been 16 days since my most recent sale. So the comparison here is going to be a bit shaky.
 
In my prior post, I reported about 138 borrows over 6 1/2 weeks. Little Miss Lovesick has 402 KENP pages, so that’s approximately 55,476 KENP pages if every person read every single page (unlikely).
 
The above numbers include part of July as well, but the July total alone was 2381 KENP pages read (with a payout of about half a cent per page, which is very close to what I got paid for a “borrow” in the past). In the 17 days of August before the book went free, there were 697 KENP pages read. But from the day the book was free to the end of August, there were 24,899 KENP pages read in 14 days. In the first seven days of September, the daily average dropped 40% with 7831 pages read.
 
Totals are:
July KENP = 2381
August 1-17 KENP = 697
August 18-31 KENP = 24899
September 1-7 KENP = 7831
 
Total book sales:
In addition to wanting to get more people reading Lovesick for free, as a borrow through Kindle Unlimited, and as a sale, I also wanted to get people trying my other books. (I have four titles total.)
 
There are three titles in the Adventures of Lewis and Clarke superhero urban fantasy series–the first is a free short story, the second is a long novella (45,000 words), and the third is officially the first book in the series at 100,000 words.
 
At the beginning and end of Lovesick, and the beginning and end of the free short story, there is a note to join my newsletter and get the novella for free. That means that if someone downloaded Lovesick for free, and followed up to see what else I had, and read the note about how to get the novella for free, they could’ve gotten three of my four titles for free. If they do that, I think I’ve got them as a reader. And they’re on my newsletter list. 🙂
 
So total book sales are:
 
July = 12 (0 for Lovesick)
August = 24 (9 for Lovesick)
September 1-7 = 8 (0 for Lovesick)
 
Total spent on ads to get to this point was $136 in August. I’m estimating that I’ve earned more than twice that so far in the last three weeks. Excellent! Compare that to the first time I used a KDP Select free period when I spent less than $100 and didn’t break even, the second time when I spent less than $100 but did break even, and now this time I’ve made about a 100% or more return on investment (ROI).
 
This is by far the best result I’ve had so far with any kind of advertising, any kind of freebie/sale. I’ve let Little Miss Lovesick stay in KDP Select for a third period. I’ll let you know what I decide to do this next time.
 
Meanwhile, I’m going to put Unexpected Superhero on sale for $2.99 (down from $3.99) October 1-10 and use the same Choosy Bookworm feature ad to see how it works on bargain-priced books. I chose to discount it only $1 because anecdotal evidence shows few books sell at $1.99, and the number of books (104) I’d have to sell at 99c with only a 35% royalty is more than my sales history says I can expect to get to cover the cost of the ad. (I only need to sell 17 books to break even at $2.99. I’ll try the 99c test later when overall book sales have increased.)
 
I hope this has been useful in helping you decide what you might want to try in your own advertising and promotion. Good luck!
 

 

 

 
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My New and Hopefully Lucky Romance Release

September 6, 2015 by in category Events, Pets, Romance & Lots of Suspense by Linda O. Johnston tagged as , ,

by Linda O. Johnston

 I’m full of it.  Romance, I mean.  This month marks the release of CANADIAN WOLF, the seventh book in my Alpha Force miniseries for Harlequin Nocturne, a paranormal romance about a covert military unit of shapeshifters. 

That should be lucky.  Why?  The number 7 is considered to be lucky, and I also write the Superstition Mysteries.  Number two in that series, KNOCK ON WOOD, will be published next month, and I’m knocking on wood that readers enjoy them both. 

Will that consist of the same readers?  Not necessarily.  I realize that, and of course I’ve blogged here before at A Slice of Orange about writing in multiple genres, and all the different kinds of conferences I consequently wind up attending.  

This month, I’m looking forward to attending the OCC meeting, and next month I’m looking forward to attending the OCC Birthday Bash.  In between, I’ve got events and meetings both of Los Angeles Romance Authors and the mystery organizations I belong to.   

It’s all fun.  But I’ve been a member of OCC for a long time now and consider it very good luck that I joined all those years ago! 



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