Feb 3, 2016 | Marketing
This is the promised followup post to Barbara Hinske’s Facebook Really Can Help You Sell Books and my Can Facebook Really Help You Sell Books? posts, and the first of a 3-part special on Facebook ads. I spent some $350 on Facebook ads in December with the twin...
Feb 1, 2016 | Entertainment, Maps and Infographics
Seeing how much you enjoyed my post, Of Canker-blossomed Fishwives and Faithless Prunes: Creative Insults, here are a couple of Infographics and photos with Shakespearean insults. This proves that (a) Shakespeare was beyond doubt a creative genius, and (b) you can...
Jan 30, 2016 | Marketing
The Social Media Hat recently published the latest numbers for social media users. So, how many active monthly users does each social medium have? Facebook: 1.55 billion As expected, Facebook is the largest and most active of all social networks. YouTube: 1 billion As...
Jan 28, 2016 | Events and Giveaways, My Publications
Musiville, the second children’s book in the award-winning Niditales series created by Dimitris Fousekis and me, will be free between January 27th and 31st on Amazon. This is to to encourage people to review the book, so if you’ve read it and enjoyed it,...
Jan 26, 2016 | Publishing
I found in the Guardian a fascinating article: Readers in Grenoble can now nibble fiction instead of vending machine snacks, after publisher Short Édition introduced eight short-story dispensers around the French city. The free stories are available at the touch of a...
Jan 24, 2016 | Writing
Writing a long series is hard work: how do you churn out book after book while keeping it all fresh and avoiding repetition? Author Toby Neal had some interesting thoughts on the subject, which she shared in her post, Writing more than ten books in a series and...
Jan 22, 2016 | Publishing
I’ve already written about piracy. Twice, in fact: in Har! How to Deal with Book Piracy and in Should I fear Piracy? Insights from the PWC report. In both cases, I advised people to keep calm about it. There is a kind of piracy that ticks me off, though. That of...
Jan 20, 2016 | Marketing, Publishing
This is a recurring theme, as I’ve already posted twice on the subject: Pricing your ebook: Is free the new paid? and How to price your Indie book both deal with this. I’m writing about it again, as Written Word Media recently published an excellent post...
Jan 18, 2016 | Entertainment, Other, Random Musings
Dedicated to my crime author friend, Sue Coletta, whose excellent blog is chock-full with tips for crime authors, today’s post will introduce you to the Honorable Gustav Scholer; the now forgotten first Head Coroner of NYC. It is based on research conducted by...
Jan 16, 2016 | Other, Random Musings
Since you all enjoyed my post on Mary Natalie so much the other day, I thought I’d share some proper photos of her. After the previous one, I hope she keeps this in mind when it’s time to ship me off to that home… If these look lovely, let me caution...
Jan 14, 2016 | Interviews Features and Reviews
Eva Xanthopoulos has just published her first book, The Escapist. This is the first book in the Sought After Blood Lines series, with book 2, The Peacekeeper, expected summer 2016. She writes in a YA Fantasy genre, with Romantic, Utopian, and Dystopian elements....
Jan 12, 2016 | Entertainment, Other, Random Musings
Dedicated to my blonde author friend, Lucy, this post was inspired by a friend commented that I was rather phlegmatic in my approach to the new baby. I wasn’t sure what she meant, as, in fact, I feel ecstatic about it. So, I looked it up. The word comes from...
Jan 10, 2016 | Entertainment
Dedicated to my author friend, Helen Jones, the conclusion to my three-part bird special has to do with my getting into the role of dad. Obviously, a crucial part of the preparation is reading parenting comics. Some of the best I’ve come across are by Brian...
Jan 8, 2016 | Blog hops tours & reblogs, Interviews Features and Reviews
This book feature is part of a blog tour organized by 4WillsPublishing. Join me and author D.M. Cain, as she explains her fascination with ravens. Why is there always a ‘Raven’ in my books? The raven: A stunningly majestic bird, imbued with both power and grace....
Jan 7, 2016 | My Publications
As you know, I switched to a self-hosted WordPress.org solution for this blog about a month ago. Since then, I have noticed that my stats have declined slightly. What’s worse, I don’t seem to be gaining new followers quite as fast as before. I attribute...
Jan 6, 2016 | Entertainment, Fun Historical Facts, Writing
Continuing the three-part special on birds that started with A 400-Year-Old Book Made Entirely of Feathers, here is a post that deals with a truly thorny issue: You’ve just spotted a bunch of birds. Excited, you rush to tell your friends. Which is great, until you try...
Jan 4, 2016 | Entertainment
This post kicks off a 3-part special on birds with a most unusual book I came across on Atlas Obscura. In 1618, Dionisio Minaggio, Chief Gardener of the State of Milan, created a series of pictures. They were images of birds and scenes from the era: hunters,...
Jan 2, 2016 | Events and Giveaways, My Publications
You may remember my recent post, Help Needed: Nominate Runaway Smile for the Best Indie Book of 2015. You very kindly responded to my request, and nominated my work. In total, over 10,000 books were nominated this year, and now the results are in. At #47, we find...
Dec 31, 2015 | Events and Giveaways
Happy New Year to all of you wonderful people – or, as we used to say in Scotland, Happy Hogmanay. A big, big thank you for being part of my journey. May 2016 bring you nothing but joy. Oh, and if you’re wondering, Lang may yer lum reek is roughly...
Dec 29, 2015 | Entertainment, Writing
I was reading the other day on Gizmodo a fascinating post about a bunch of computer scientists who have trained artificial intelligence using human knowledge of the, uh, carnal variety. Specifically, they used 14 million passages of romance novels to create little...
