COLD BLOODED 5 Star Review

Award winning true crime author and friend RJ Parker gave me a wonderful boost in a Facebook post about my writer/assassin novel, COLDBLOODED. He also donates his books to our men and women in uniform: military, police, fire fighters, and EMT’s. In 2012, he donated 1500 books to the Wounded Warrior Program. It is an honor and a privilege to know such a man. His web page with links is here - RJ Parker

A young reviewer contacted me about COLD BLOODED. I gave Angelique Engelbrecht a reviewer’s copy of COLD BLOODED for her blog. She also interviewed me for her blog review. It was fun, and she loved the novel, which doesn’t hurt. As an author, I hope to reach a broad range of readers, and knowing I can entertain readers far out of my original targeted readership is a terrific feeling. If anyone would like to see the review and interview, here is Ms. Engelbrecht’s blog link - Angelique Engelbrecht

Angelique does a great job on her blog. Her book reviews are insightful and entertaining.  

P.I. Rick Cantelli Part 4

Some interesting news has come out in the used digital book reselling paradigm. Redigi actually has a program where the digital books can be resold once with a royalty going to the author. The book cannot be resold again. They at least have a suitable royalty program. No one except this Redigi seems to have a viable plan for all parties involved. If Amazon does, they’re not stating it.

A few good things happening on the writing front. Sales have been up. I received the Author of the Week award from AuthorsdB, which means I get a banner for the week, and they claim their banners get over 15,000 clicks. I'm also number 15 on their HOT list.  :)  I finished another Rick Cantelli P.I. story of 4,000 words this week. His partner Lois invades Rick’s beach house vacation where she finds him with her movie star half sister. She has to put payback on hold though because Lois needs him to help her find one of their company’s investigators missing on a case. Humor and action abound. The sequel to HARDCASE is nearing 50,000 words, so I should be releasing it this summer. I will be releasing the second part in my YA trilogy this week: DEMON INC. My screenplay writing proceeds, but not with anything tangible for interest. I did have a San Francisco producer request a network connection in my STAGE 32 group site.

The Rick Cantelli P.I. character has been a real kick to write. I can do so many things with the dialogue between him and his partner Lois, it’s as entertaining editing his stories as writing them.  :)

As a postscript funny one for my writer friends – COLD BLOODED, my writer/assassin novel has begun to do pretty well. Wild Child Publishing took three years to publish it after giving me a contract. Except for a brief blurb on release day, they did absolutely nothing to promote the book other than send me a list of all the things I should be doing to sell it. When I sent them queries for other novels I didn’t even get a rejection letter back. After all the ads, social marketing, releasing other novels, and continued struggle in my own nonsensical ways, COLD BLOODED has begun to spike. Then in my e-mail last weekend, I get a note from Wild Child Publishing stating there was a spike in sales, and they wanted to know how I was accomplishing it. And they wonder why we self-publish.  :)

 

P.I. Rick Cantelli, Back Again

My aging Private Eye, Rick Cantelli, could not stay out of my head. He demanded a Part 3 in his adventures. It’s the funniest one yet and another 4,000 word excursion with the best P.I. since Magnum. Writing needs to be profitable, but if you do it for profit, good luck to you. My character, Rick Cantelli, reminds me on a daily basis why I write. I have parachuted out of an airplane in the Philippines when I was stationed on the USS Ranger. They had a parachuting club. I have scuba dived for over forty years. Nothing compares to the adrenaline rush I get when a character like Rick forces me to relate his adventures on the computer.

My friend, Jordan Summers, blogged about the coming Amazon selling of used digital books among other things. If they want to commit suicide relating to their book business, I can’t think of a better way. Why would an author ever publish for Amazon Kindle if all the readers buying their novel can immediately put it up for sale again with no royalty generated to the author? This is coming because of the excruciatingly high numbers of self published material. I foresee a revolt at hand also. The moment Amazon does it, without a royalty payment to the author, I will remove all novels from Amazon, and never publish again on their site.

I pray we have another venue that resists this perversion of the marketplace.

Rick Cantelli, P.I., The Sequel

I thought up another humorous adventure for my aging private eye, Rick Cantelli. I couldn’t wait a couple weeks before putting out the sequel to the first story, An Old Acquaintance. The over 4,000 word sequel, Rick Cantelli P.I., developed on Word in a couple sit downs, and I laughed through most of it, even the editing. I’m glad Triond put it up so quickly on AuthSpot. I have a feeling another Cantelli story will pop into my head quicker than the two week increments I was considering for publishing these short stories. I still have a great sequel in my head for my other short story, TheReunion, but Cantelli and his partner Lois just couldn’t wait.  :)

My novel HARD CASE climbed up the Amazon rankings in a couple categories. It hit #5 in Criminals, and #8 in Crime & Criminals. I have no clue how they come up with this stuff, but it’s neat to see it up there. I have 40,000 words done in my sequel. I’ll also be releasing the sequel to my YA novel DEMON in the first part of March. As I’ve mentioned, the title will be DEMON INC. It’s both funnier and darker than the first, but also still staying within the young adult parameters. My character Demon the dog, and sidekick Mike, expand their new enterprise of paranormal reality gigs.

I’ve found out a bunch of stuff on the screenplay writing front. There are a myriad of contests all over the place for paying to enter your script, supposedly to be looked over and judged by producers, directors, and high ups in the film industry. Having actually communicated with some professional screenwriters on the Stage 32 site I belong to, I’ve found out these are nearly all gimmicks, a lot like the poetry.com scam from decades ago. They select finalists for some big final reading. Only one problem – you pay your own way to get to the place. As one screenwriter posted on Linked In, ‘you would have a better chance of winning the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes’. Needless to say, I’m not blowing any money on an unknown entity like my screenwriting ability, but I’m not giving it up either. It’s fun and exciting. I’m over 40 pages/40 minutes in my third feature length screenplay based on my DEMON trilogy. I’m becoming more and more adept at the Final Draft software.

Anyway, that’s it for now. If you like humor mixed with a little action, check out my Rick Cantelli stories.