West of Mars

Well, I gotta tell you. I’m glad to see this summer end. Talk about a summer of upheaval.

Okay, that’s enough talk about the summer of upheaval. The kids went back to school today and that means summer’s over. So let’s move forward…

* Check out my review of Jeremy Wagner’s The Armageddon Chord over at Rocks ‘n Reads. I love, love, love the plot of this book!

* I need new windows, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Like clothes. And chocolate. Which means I’ll be ramping the promo machine back up, so please join in and help out. More books sold equals windows I can open without fear.

* I’ve also opened myself up to freelance copy and line editing work. If you’d like to have your book copy edited or have the grammar, language, and word choice worked over, drop me a line. I’m starting out cheap, too, especially if you’re someone who’s done me a solid in the past.

* I am hunting for someone who can help tweak this here blog, and do it for a price that’s not exorbitant. If you are that person, or know the right one, please get us in touch. I haven’t made significant changes since 2009. I’m totally overdue (as many of you will agree).

That’s it for now. I’ve got a few other things I’d like to work on, like books, so I’ll go tend to that now. All your support and help during this transitional time for me will be GREATLY appreciated.

And did I mention Rocktober? I’ll put that in its own post…

I have given the most important interview of my life. It’s over at Jemima Valentino’s blog, so head on over and check it out.

Very very important. I promise.

In other news, I miss being online. School starts soon, so even though middle school will cause my day to be shortened, I’ll be back!

Whoops! I forgot the link, huh? Let’s fix that…

Yeah, I’ve been quiet. Lots going on behind the scenes as we get ready for school to start in these parts. So I asked my good friend Thea Atkinson to stop in and talk about her new book, Throwing Clay Shadows.

You guys know what that means … I had to ask her the famed West of Mars Question: What song makes you think of your book?

Like is starting to be the trend around here, she outdid herself. Bring it!

It’s pretty hard to pick a song that would fit Throwing Clay Shadows since it’s set in 1800s Scotland and deals with a young girl who thinks she has killed her mother with bad words. It’s the story of this child finding a way to overcome her sense of guilt, a guilt that is nothing, really, but an echo of the remorse she feels from betraying a loved one in an earlier incarnation.

Usually, I have a full soundtrack that hits on themes and plot points from the entire novel. So to pick one song is even tougher.

I would say that I listened to “Orestes” a lot by A Perfect Circle because the singer uses the metaphor of the Orestes myth to speak of making the decision to pull the plug on his mother’s life support. This is probably the closest song in the soundtrack that translates the agony of losing a loved one and feeling responsible. It’s a beautiful, haunting song that delivers an evocative message about the bond between a child and mother.

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All about Thea:
Thea Atkinson is a writer of character driven fiction; call it what you will: she prefers to describe her work as psychological thrillers with a distinct literary flavour. As in her bestselling novel, Anomaly, her characters often find themselves in the darker edges of their own spirits but manage to find the light they seek.

She has been an editor, a freelancer, and a teacher, but fiction is her passion. She now blogs and writes and twitters. Not necessarily in that order.

Please visit her blog for ramblings, guest posts, giveaways, and more, or follow her on twitter, or like her Facebook page.

Book Blurb:
On the Isle of Eigg, in 1807, four-year old Maggie believes she has killed her mother by saying bad things, and now she won’t say a word. It’s true that Ma’s voice stays in the cottage, and sometimes Maggie can see her in the shadows, but it’s not the same thing as having a real ma. She’s worried if she says anything, she will kill her da too. She doesn’t want him to die, and so no matter how much he tries to get her to, she won’t speak.

The trouble is, the consumption that really took her ma and her premature sister’s lives, has marked Maggie too and forces her da to marry Janet so she can have a woman to look after her.

It gets harder to stay silent because Janet tries just as hard to get her to talk. Maggie’s not sure she can hold out when this new ma reveals secrets that make her squirm, that make her feel like Da is doing things he shouldn’t be.

It seems there is more to worry about than a few words. He is indeed in trouble and much of that danger comes from the things his new wife isn’t saying.

If she can just understand what Ma is telling her from those corners, Maggie will be able to face her fears and find her voice and true power. And her true power should be enough to bind the family together even against the darkest secrets.

Book buy link

Seriously. We set off for a place called Joe’s Barbecue, or something like that. Joe’s something or other. Only… it’s not there anymore (thanks, Internet, for telling us that!). Okay, we figure. That’s how things go. We’ll go down to the next beach town and try one of the two restaurants next to each other. We hear they are good.

Only… there’s no parking. Well, there is but it’s competitive and I’m on vacation, thankyouverymuch. Besides, we brought MY car and heaven forbid it get dinged up. Or worse. (Besides, it’s got to get us HOME in a couple of days.)

I suggest going past our beach town, to the seaport south of us. But it’s another 8 minutes and there’s been a serious rebellion against the car on this vacation. With a 13-hour drive home, can you blame any of us?

So we stop at the base of the bridge, at a place called The Bridge Grill. Can you say DIVE?

It surprises none of you to hear how much I love dives. This one does a robust mini-golf business, but at the same time has such a fantastic beer list, I was sorry I was driving. I don’t know where everyone else was ’cause the food — basic burgers, dogs, chicken fingers — was darn good, with the best fries this side of home.

And the guys working? Awesome. Total fun, laid back, eager to please… I laughed from the time I sat down, even when our dude almost spilled my husband’s drink in his lap, when I found that the women’s room was out of commission (apparently, part of the toilet seat was broken, making one of the regulars wonder why no one had run up to Wal-Mart and bought another) and everyone had to use the men’s…

Definitely my kind of place.

Now that you’ve all Googled The Bridge Grill (they are on Facebook!) and found where I am, I fully expect my stalkers to show up and take pictures of me shaking the minnows out of my board shorts… Look for those to be on Facebook before I get home.

*sigh*

Hey, stalkers. Stop in at The Bridge Grill for fries and beer, will ya? This place rocked. I’m giving them a definite West of Mars Stamp of Approval.

Okay, I am an idiot.

When I truly am an idiot, I have no problem owning up to that fact. Thus, I am an idiot.

You see, I’ve been asked, by various writer and reader friends, to attend various writerly events held in Charleston, West Virginia. “Too far,” I’d always say. “It’s like six hours or something, and this excuse and that excuse and a third bad excuse thrown in for good measure.”

I am an idiot.

We got down there in four hours today, including a couple of stops. Now, that’s just travelling down to the exits on 79, not trying to navigate the city itself. But holy heck! It’s ONE ROAD, a road that’s literally three miles from my house. It actually might be less than three miles. In all these years of living West of Mars, I’ve never thought to clock it.

How freaking easy is that????

It was a beautiful drive, too. I loved the mountains. Loved the trees.

So, the next time I hear of a writerly event down in Charleston, you’d better believe I’ll be checking my calendars. My kids are still young enough that leaving for a lot of weekends is tough on everyone, and I do have other commitments that will make it tough sometimes to travel to as many events as I’d like. (Which means: as the kids get older, expect to see me road tripping WAY more often. That also means you need to buy more of my books so I have the funds to make these things happen.) But the intent is there, and it’s a super-duper drive. I’ll be doing it again. Definitely.

And not just ’cause I need to walk the bridge over the New River Gorge.

In other notes of my trip thus far….

* Cell phone towers are ugly. And tall. They stick up over the trees and mountains like invading aliens (anyone else watching Falling Skies?).

* We had either the incredible luck or the incredible misfortune of driving past an accident scene on the interstate just as Life Flight landed on the opposite side of the highway. We were close enough to be caught in the wind from the chopper’s rotors. I hope whoever had driven through that guard rail and caused the highway to be closed (for how long, I have no idea) is okay.

* We are headed to an undisclosed location, but it involves the letters A-B-C-E-H. You may hear more from me this week. You may not.

* We are spending the night in a city where, I realized when I saw the billboard, an old frenemy lived. Maybe she was always an enemy; she never made any bones about holding her enemies closer than her friends, as in the old adage. It’s strange to think of her again. It’s stranger to have seen the billboard, which I only caught a glance of. Can you say Adam & Eve?

* The beloved satellite radio makes road tripping almost like being in a time warp. It somehow removes the feeling that you’re actually going somewhere, even as the miles tick by, along with the minutes. It has to do with the fact you never have to find a radio station you can stomach. It spoils us but at the same time makes road tripping sooooo easy.

* My travelling companions are lame. They read almost the entire 8 hours it took us to get here. I have informed them all that they only brought so many books and if they complain once we’re at the A-B-C-E-H place, I’m going to SMIRK at them. I saw amazingly cool things today. Makes me wonder what I would have seen if I hadn’t been the driver. Why read when there’s an ever-changing show outside the window????

Now, I knew Maria Savva was one of the coolest of the cool women who I hang out with (at least online, since Maria is in England somewhere). That’s why I invited her to join us over here for a Featured New Release spot for her new book, The Dream. I knew she likes to rock out, too, but to this extent? No way.

Anyway, here you go… The song that makes Maria Savva think of her book, The Dream.

There are a few songs that I think of when I think of ‘The Dream’. ‘Stranger in a strange land‘ by Iron Maiden, because of the time slip element, ‘White Wedding‘ by Billy Idol, because the story starts off with Lynne, the main character thinking she’s marrying the wrong man. But I’m going to say, ‘Stairway to Heaven‘ by Led Zeppelin is probably the one that conjures most memories of the book for me. The fantasy type feel to the song, and the line ‘there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there’s still time to change the road you’re on’, fit well with the time slip element of ‘The Dream’ and the way the book explores whether fate dictates our lives.

Here’s the book summary:

Lynne cannot shake her feelings of dread; her dreams tell her she is making a terrible mistake, she must not marry Adam. But, how can she believe the dream? Lynne and Adam have shared their lives for three years now. She is certain she loves him. It is not that love, which her dream warns against. It doesn’t matter that she loves this man she will soon marry. If she marries him, the voice in her dream says her soul mate will die. Her true love will perish. Soon, Lynne’s world is transformed and becomes almost unrecognisable, except for the déjà vu. Time doesn’t seem to mean much anymore, and things are not quite as they seem. As her world spins out of control, Lynne must sort out what’s real and what isn’t to fulfill her destiny

This one link will take you to a spot that’ll connect you to your favorite book retailer. Pretty spiffy, no?

On the one hand, I want to say the Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale was a huge success. I sold WAY more books than I had dared to dream of. New sales record? Dude. And then some.

I don’t think many of those books went to you guys, either, but to people who were encountering me via the site. As I am typing — although it’ll probably have changed by the time you read this — I am the #11 Most Viewed author on Smashwords. That’s pretty incredible, especially when you consider how many authors are using Smashwords. That means people are looking. They were buying during the sale. I hope it’ll continue.

I doubt it will, though. Know why? Because the two books — Trevor’s Song and The Demo Tapes: Year 3 — that weren’t free sold a whopping three copies each. At $1.50 per book.

I won’t try to figure out the percentage. It’s single-digit. It’s sad.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind that it was the free books that moved. I like that people find themselves drawn to my fictional worlds and like most authors, I am pleased to see the books moving.

The problem is that people are picking up the free stuff. I hope they’re reading it, but that’s the one thing we authors rarely know, unless you readers post reviews or drop us authors a note. Let’s assume they’re reading it.

I doubt they don’t like it enough to spend money on the rest of my books. I don’t think it’s that at all. Rather, I think what’s going on is that there’s so much out there that’s free, people are snapping up the free stuff first, and waiting for the paid stuff to get to the point where the authors are willing to make them free. Then readers can repeat the cycle: picking up only the free stuff.

That’s still fine, especially because the pattern has been that when people pick up one of Trevor’s books, they tend to love the guy. How can you not? He’s a wounded soul, a bad boy whose persona has more holes than Swiss cheese, but of course, Trevor can’t see those holes in his armor. And he’s a rock star. Baby, we all love our rock stars.

So why does it sound like I’m about to whine? Well, because I am, of course.

I get the free thing. I do. I am all about free books, myself. That’s because money’s tight. Know why money’s tight?

Yep. Because I’m not earning any. Smashwords doesn’t pay royalties on free books, folks. There’s no portion of sales to hand back to us authors. Which means it doesn’t matter how many books I do sell during these promotions — and don’t get me wrong. They are awesome promotions — because unless that royalty rate ticks upward, I’m still a broke, struggling writer.

That part sucks. I hate it. Even more, I worry that one day, I’ll wake up and the only option will be to hang up my purple pen that writes in red ink, and get a job. Even minimum wage will pay me more than I’m earning right now.

There are a lot of ways to support your favorite authors. One is to write reviews of their books. Another is to buy copies to share with your friends and family. (Books make great gifts, especially when they come with a personal recommendation!)

But the best way is to spend your money and BUY those books.

So… to those couple hundred people who picked up my books during July, thank you. I hope you’ll love Trevor and the rest of the band as much as those of us who hang out here regularly do. Heck, I hope you’ll come join us here. And then, I hope you’ll go back to Smashwords, or over to Amazon, or B&N, or Powells, or wherever you buy your books and spend some green stuff.

Your new favorite author will thank you. I promise.