Beneath the Mountain Available Now!

Beneath the Mountain, Book #3 of The Futhark Chronicles, is available for sale on Kindle. At only $2.99, it's a real steal for nearly 400 pages of epic fantasy.

Available Now at Kindle

Beneath the Mountains continues the battle in the kingdom of Futhark. Marshal Cage Stone and his brother, King Jonared have pushed the demons out of the city of Futhark and regained the throne from the usurper. But they both know the peace is fragile and the demon solution is only temporary. Cage picks up the first hints of the evil power behind the plagues of illnesses and violence spreading throughout the city and into the countryside. He races to capture the demon lord before Keeper Sabelline Shelton embarks on a desperate mission to forever close off the opening to the underworld beneath the mountains towering over the city. Sabelline and Cage both believe going beneath the mountain will be a trip of no return.

The first book of this series, The Keepers of Sulbreth, Book #1, is now available everywhere for only .99 and the second book, Beyond the Gate, Book #2, is now only $1.99. 

There is one more book in this epic fantasy series, tentatively titled, The Heir of Futhark, is already completed in a rough draft. I'll be polishing it and getting it ready for my friend and editor, Gina. Since we're both teachers, the school year will slow us down a little. And I can't release a book without giving credit to my artist, Gayle Bower.

In a shameless bid for some free promotion, I hope some of my blogger friends will mention my new release.  Thanks for reading my blurb.

Is your TBR shelf full? I'm slowly working my shelf of paper books down, but I have a bunch on my eReader. I'll catch up on those during my lunch time at school and while riding bike as I rehab after my knee surgery.

Insecure Writer: Me, Me, Me

When I first starting writing, I thought all I had to do was sit down at my keyboard and spew out my creativity for all the world to read.  Then I joined a writer's group and learned how much I didn't know about editing, submitting, and the publishing world in general.

The glorious day came when a publisher offered me a contract for one of my manuscripts, and I thought the fame and royalty checks would soon be flying my way.  Little did I know how much work I had yet to do. That awful nine letter word, promotion. 

Promotion is time consuming, frustrating and difficult.  I know some people who do a great job of promoting their work, getting their name out there and building a reader audience.  I've tried to absorb the advice they offer so freely and generously and apply it to my own promotional efforts. I admit, except for blogging, I don't much enjoy promotion.  Appearances in person are usually fun but I find facebook, twitter and most everything else a chore. I'd rather be writing.

I've noticed some authors appear all over the web when they have a new release, but I have to push myself to even promote on my own blog. This I must get over and do more to make sure my books are seen, lots of places and lots of times.

One of the places I'm doing this is a new blog, called TBR.  TBR was started by Cate Masters, my heroine for promotional genius, as a place for a few authors each week to talk about writing and their latest works.  We all have 'To Be Read' stacks of books, and after you check out the lineup on the TBR blog for the next few months you're going to add a few more.

Today I'm appearing at TBR promoting my latest release, Beyond the Gate, the second book in my epic fantasy series.  Beyond the Gate follows The Keepers of Sulbreth, book #1.  To help celebrate, I'm giving away a print copy of Keepers to one commenter over at TBR and for those of you who prefer digital, I've reduced the price of Keepers to only $1.99 on Kindle and Smashwords. 

So for today, I've managed to do promotion for my books here and over at TBR, as well as helping other authors by directing my readers to TBR. 

So how do you feel about promotion? Are you confident in your commitment to it or do you think you could do more?

Insecure Writer in September

We all have some things in this business that makes our stomachs a little queasy.  For me the list is pretty long and I'm sure I'll have more than enough material to keep up with our monthly sharing of what causes us stress and discomfort.  Thanks, Alex Cavanaugh, for getting out all together.

If you're not interested in my problems, here is a link to the list of other insecure writers sharing their headaches, woes and also the expertise to help each other.

My insecurity this month isn't a little thing. It's a huge one.  I'm getting ready to publish my first book using Kindle Direct Publishing.  Though I manage to do lots of basic things on my computer, I really don't know my way around it. I'm extremely intimidated by the task in front of me. 

A few writer friends have given me starting points and I've ran off copies of the instructions from Amazon but I'm still dithering about jumping into this project.  Do I have my manuscript formatted correctly? Have I done enough editing? What have I gotten myself into? Should I pay someone to help me with the first time?