Merry Christmas Eve!

Just in time for Christmas...  All of the Once Upon a Djinn book are now available at many of your favorite retailers.  Here are the universal links:

Wish in One Hand
In Deep Wish
Up Wish Creek
Wish Hits the Fan

Some of the retailers aren't quite ready yet, so if you don't see the one you prefer, check back.  I've also added the links for Amazon and Amazon print to make things easier for everyone.

I've also uploaded Rumor Has It, but I'm not seeing any links for that yet.  Soon, I hope.

Anyway, have a Merry Christmas!  See ya Monday.

Last Day for FREE Genie Awesomeness

Today's the last day to get Wish in One Hand for free.  Well, until the next time it's free.  Which probably won't be until 2022.  So, if you want to read it for free and don't want to wait, I suggest you hie yourself to Amazon and download yourself a copy.  Tomorrow the price goes back to $3.99.  Save yourself four bucks.

Just do it.  You know you want to.

Upcoming Book Birthday!

Lest you think I have, in my total immersion in this fantasy, forgotten my other books...

On Wednesday the 18th, it will be Wish in One Hand's book birthday.  Six years old.  Just a wee babe in the scheme of all written materials but probably, in book years, middle-aged or something.  

To celebrate, starting Monday, this first of my forays into urban fantasy will be free for five days.  If you enjoy it, I hope you'll pick up the other three books in the series.  

As always, all my books are available through the Kindle Unlimited program, so if you're into that, you can get all the Once Upon a Djinn books free with your subscription to KU and read to your heart's content.

Enjoy!

It's Sale Time Again

Woohoo!  With Halloween fast approaching, what better time for a sale on the Once Upon a Djinn books?  They're full of paranormal awesomeness.  And snark.  And mystery.  All wrapped up in a four-book series.  

Wish in One Hand
In Deep Wish
Up Wish Creek
Wish Hits the Fan

99c/99p each.  Less than $4/£4 each.  If you haven't read them all, now's your chance to get them way cheaper than you would on any regular day - when they're $3.99 each.  Save yourself $12.

I love these books.  You can, too.  =o)

Sale Time Again

Staring today all of the books in the Once Upon a Djinn series are on sale for 99c/99p each through next Tuesday night.  Get the whole damn series for less than $4.  (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.)  See where Jo starts out and where she ends up, with many twists and turns and snarks along the way. 

There's no paid advertising for this sale, so any sales are strictly reliant on how much interest I can drum up here and on FB.  As we all know, having a sale without having advertising is pretty much crickets, so I'm not expecting great things.  If I sell a couple of each, that would be awesome.  And if I get page reads, too, that would be more awesome.

I'll be trying to have a sale on the SCIU books again next month.  We'll see how that goes and whether the advertising budget can cough up enough for a paid ad.  You know the drill... you have to spend money to make money to spend money to make money... ad infinitum.  Since I haven't spent any money I haven't made any money to spend.  Bleh.

Anyway, I know most of the people who stop by here have already picked up their copies of OUAD and enjoyed them.  Thank you again for all your support.  It means the world to me. 

And if you haven't yet read the genie books, now is your chance to get them cheap.  I hope you give them a try and enjoy the hell out of them.  =o)

It's Sale Time Again!

Wednesday, the entire Once Upon a Djinn series went on sale - 99c US/99p (UK) each.  That's a $12 savings there, folks. (Always free with Kindle Unlimited, of course.)

Advertising will go out Sunday, but the sale is going on until Tuesday night.  Shop early, shop often.  And they're all available in paperback, so if you want to hold them in your hands and see them on your shelves, there they are.

If you're not familiar with the series, it follow genie Jo Mayweather - who has made it her mission to rescue her fellow genies from the slavery of being tied to a Master - as she tries to figure out who is killing genies and then finds out there's a whole weird plot to ruin her life.  Or so she thinks.  There's action, adventure, suspense, mystery, and whole lot of magical goings-on.  Plus a little divine intervention and a host of otherworldy beings.  Jo's got issues and snark and a backbone. 

All in all, a fun series to read.  And it was a fun series to write.  I hope you enjoy it.

The August Genie Sale

Time for another sale - this one with paid advertising.  All four Once Upon a Djinn books are on sale right now (through Friday night). 

Wish in One Hand - 99c
In Deep Wish - $1.99
Up Wish Creek - $1.99
Wish Hits the Fan - $1.99

Get the whole complete series for less than $7.  (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.)  Yep, it's complete.  The arc wraps up in book 4.  Promise.

Read one or read them all.  And if you've only read part of the series, now's the time to finish it.  (I wish I could coax the one less-than-stellar reviewer of In Deep Wish to finish the series, so she can see her comments there don't hold true across the series.)

The ad goes live tomorrow with Ereader News Today for Wish in One Hand.  It's going out in the Fantasy section this time.  My only other choice was to put it in Paranormal/Romance, but there's no romance in this.  So, we'll see if having it the Fantasy section this time shows better sales.  

If you read them, I'd really appreciate a review.  Once you've read the series, it would be awesome and super helpful if you could jot a review down at the series page.

AND if you enjoy them, give Sleeping Ugly a whirl.  There are two more books in the hopper for that series.  Honest there are.  And I promise I'm actually working on them.  I'd like to promise they'll be out later this year, but some things have to align in the universe - things I have no control over - before I can promise anything.

Anyway, thanks everyone for your support in all this, and if you're new to Once Upon a Djinn, thanks for stopping by.  I hope you download them and enjoy the hell out of them.

Once Upon a Djinn Sale

Hey, Folks.

All this week, the Once Upon a Djinn books are on sale.  You can get all four books for under $7.  Or if you've already read some, or don't want to foot the bill for the whole series, here's how they break down (in series order):

Wish in One Hand - 99c
In Deep Wish - $1.99
Up Wish Creek - $1.99
Wish Hits the Fan - $1.99

That's more than half off the regular ebook list prices.  We won't go into how much less that is than the print versions.  Hooee.

Anyway, they're a boatload of fun to read if the reviews are anything to go by.  I know I enjoyed writing them.

-B.E.

Sale Day Pimpage Post

Wish in One Hand is on sale for only 99c now through the 28th.  (Or for .99p in the UK.)  The rest of the series is still $2.99 each, but what a deal when you can get 4 books for under $10.

The big ad for WIOH goes out with ENT tomorrow.  Cross your fingers for me. 

I love those covers so much.  

By the way, the above image is also a postcard.  If you want one, let me know in the comments and I'll drop you my email address so you can send me your snail mail addy.  (Which I don't save unless I know you well enough we've been sending Christmas cards or something.  You know who you are.)

Here's the Once Upon a Djinn series in a nice list for you to click upon:

Wish in One Hand - Book 1
In Deep Wish - Book 2
Up Wish Creek - Book 3
Wish Hits the Fan - Book 4

If you've already read them and have yet to leave a review, I'd really appreciate it.  Nothing fancy unless the mood strikes you, but every review helps.  Thanks bunches.

Feel free to spread the word.  Or not, as the mood strikes you.

Updates and Advertising Stuff

Okay, so I got the edits for Wish Hits the Fan yesterday afternoon - well ahead of the expected date of 9/4, so yay.  (I was thinking 3 weeks, she was thinking 2 weeks, so it went quicker than I thought.)  This, of course, means I have to figure out if I'm going to 1) work exclusively on that, or 2) work on that and Early Grave at the same time. 

I hadn't decided by last night, so I took the night off.  (Which is fine.  I have until next Tuesday to clean up WHTF, format it and get it loaded for pre-order.  Easy-peasy.)

Today, I'm still not sure what I'll do.  All I know right now is that I have to get some advertising in place for the series in the general timeframe of my release on 9/15.  I've got the first book set up as Free from 9/14-9/18, and the next two as 99c from 9/14-9/21.  This morning I sent an ad request* to Paranormal & Urban Fantasy Bargains for all three of those.  (They're running a special right now, 2 days for $3.)

I've also made a spreadsheet of all the advertising venues I'm aware of and their costs, so I can figure out where to best spend my money.  Go for the high dollar ads and hope they accept my submission?  Stick with the lower cost ones that are more likely to accept my books?  Try both and hope I don't over extend myself?  Did I leave all this to too late again?  Gah.

This might be why I get burned out...  Hmmm...

Anyway, I'll get 'er done.  Wish Hits the Fan will be live on September 15th, and the other books will be on sale then, too.  WHTF will be $2.99, so you could conceivably get the whole series for under $5.  (free+.99+.99+2.99 = 4.97...Yep. It's early yet and the coffee hasn't kicked in.)

So, spread the word.  Buy the books.  Leave reviews.  I'll be eternally grateful.  I'll even send out some swag if you let me know you've been talking up my books...

Oh, crap.  I have to make bookmarks and postcards... 

:runs screaming into the dawn:

* Do not do work before the coffee has kicked in.  I sent the wrong dates on the request for Wish in One Hand.  But the gal there is nice, so she should be okay when I tell her I fucked up.

Genies for Free and Cheap!

Okay, so maybe not the genies themselves.  We're against the sale of sentient beings, after all.  But the Once Upon a Djinn books are either free or for sale this weekend.

Wish in One Hand  - US
Wish in One Hand - UK

In Deep Wish - US
In Deep Wish - UK

Up Wish Creek - US
Up Wish Creek - UK

IN DEEP WISH is Out in the World

Yesterday was release day for In Deep Wish.  It went pretty well.  I had the most pre-orders out of any of my five books, so I'm happy with that.  Opening day sales got my book a rank of 135,000 out of all books.  I won't go into the specific genre categories.  Suffice it to say, urban fantasy is a full genre out there in Amazon land.  Getting into the top 100 there would take an act of APUG (All Powerful Uber-God*) and he's got better things to do.

The jury's still out on expanded distribution sales.  Apparently, there's a delay there somewhere because I know at least a couple people who bought - one from B&N and another from Kobo - but I haven't seen that yet.  Today maybe. D2D finally updated, so those sales are now official.  Yay.

Anyway, here are the links:

Amazon
Apple 
Kobo
Barnes & Noble

Thanks to everyone who made release day awesome by buying a copy, tweeting about the release, posting about it, blogging about it, etc.  It was really cool.  :hugs:


If you're still not reading the Once Upon a Djinn series, that's okay.  If you want to start, Wish in One Hand is still 99 cents at the major e-tailers. 

Amazon (Amazon UK, Amazon CAN),
Barnes & Noble 
Kobo
Apple

I think that Friday, I'll post the first chapter of In Deep Wish here, to give y'all a taste of what's going on all up in there.  ;o)  

*This is a reference to something said in In Deep Wish.

Once Upon a Djinn - The Facebook Page

So, I mentioned on Monday that I have a new page for my Once Upon a Djinn series.  It's totally new and I have two followers at the moment.  :waves:

My vision for this page is to use it to interact with fans of the series, provide some fun links to things related to the series, use it to announce new stuff and upcoming stuff, etc. 

There will be antiques posts - because, if you haven't read the first genie book yet, the main character owns Mayweather Antiquities - an antiques business and auction house.  She sells the things her genie friends and no longer want or need, and she uses the fundage to keep her real business of genie rescue and rehabilitation up and running.  (Wishing up money upsets the global financial balance, don't ya know.) 

There will be posts about things supernatural - including, I hope, links to paranormal book releases, reviews, etc.

I plan to share links about people who may or may not BE genies or OWN genies - you know, the extremely lucky, the weirdly successful, and the strangely beautiful and.or ageless.  (I think Dick Clark was a genie... is a genie... who couldn't keep up the human act any longer as Dick Clark. His appearance and name are probably altered now and he's working in some other occupation.)

If you have any ideas about what might be cool there, let me know.  If you have any suggestions for genie sightings or interesting antiques that might be appropriate for a Mayweather Auction, shoot me an email at be.sanderson.writer at gmail.com.  Or Facebook message me.  (Talk to me first, though.  I won't open links from total strangers because, well, viruses.)

If you are not on FB, that's okay.  You can still read the page.  You'll still see all the news and posts. You can still interact with me about it.  You just can't interact with me THERE.  No biggie.  And don't worry.  News and updates about my genie books will still be posted here and in my newsletter. 

I want this to be fun.  I'll try to remember to post there often, so you don't get bored.  I hope you'll stop by.

Merry Christmas!

I hope you're all having a wonderful Christmas morning and that you got everything you wanted from Santa.

To help in that endeavor, I decided to make all my books 99 cents each. From tomorrow through New Year's Eve.  Yep, every single one.  If Santa brought you a new Kindle, or an Amazon gift card, or you got them for someone else, now's the best time to pick up a copy of any of the four - Dying Embers, Accidental Death, BloodFlow, or Wish in One Hand.  Or if you've been given a Nook or some other ereader, and don't want to use the Kindle app, Wish in One Hand is also available through Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple.

(This special pricing on DE, AD, and BF is for US and UK residents both.  Sorry about everyone else, but Amazon only lets me do so much. WIOH should be low-priced everywhere.)

Oh, and if you're a Kindle Unlimited Subscriber,  Dying Embers, Accidental Death, and BloodFlow are available for you to read with your subscription.

So, enjoy today with your family.  Eat lots. Have fun. Read tomorrow while you're recovering.  ;o)

Merry Christmas, Everyone.  (Even if you don't celebrate, I wish you the merriest of days.  Because, hey, who doesn't want to have a merry day?)

News

Hey All!  Sorry the newsletter still hasn't gone out.  I'm working on it, but I'm up to my underoos in alligators and pretty much everything else is taking precedence.  I had been wondering when I would officially get too busy.  The answer is now.  And here's why...

BloodFlow releases on Tuesday for all intents and purposes.  I did go ahead and approve the paperback, so it's already available from Createspace.  If you pre-ordered on Amazon, the ebook will hit your Kindle on the 24th.  If not, you can order a copy on that day and it'll be there lickety-split.

The new cover for both the ebook and the print copy of Wish in One Hand are here and ready for purchase.  And I dropped the price of Wish in One Hand to 99 cents for the remainder of 2015. And through the power of Draft2Digital, I made Wish in One Hand available to Kobo, Apple, and B&N.  So, if you were hesitating because you don't do Kindle, you can now get a copy - and for just 99c.  Sometimes it pays to wait.

So, I've been trying to do marketing for both of those books.  Contacting various advertising venues, setting stuff up, etc.  Twitter tweets.  Facebook posts. 

AND updating the blogs to reflect the changes.

Plus, I'm finally getting back to work on editing/rewriting In Deep Wish. Which means typing and changing what needs to be changed.  This is due to the editor by the first week of December.  And I'm beginning to work with my cover artist to make that happen, too.

Dump in regularly scheduled work stuff. Add in life stuff.  Mix thoroughly.

Poof!

(that was the sound of my head imploding)

The newsletter will go out by Monday.  Promise. 

Cover Reveal - Wish in One Hand (v 2)

Hey All.

My brain is pudding, so I'm not sure if I mentioned that I was having a new cover done for Wish in One Hand.  (Probably did, but pudding.)

Oh, my old cover was okay.  The artist gave me pretty-much what I asked for (kinda, sorta).  But what I had in mind didn't translate well and apparently, it wasn't blowing anyone's skirt up.  Too old-fashioned, perhaps?  Not in keeping with current-day readers expectations of what a paranormal cover should look like?  Probably.  I'm still hooked on the old fantasy covers of my youth.

Anyway, like I said, no one was getting their skirts blown up and sales are way off expectations, so I figured finding someone snazzy to do my covers couldn't hurt. Plus, I needed someone to do the rest of the series covers so they'd have some continuity. (And for price, she undercut the hell out of the other guy anyway.)  So, without further gum-flapping on my part, here's the new and improved cover of Wish in One Hand...

Sparkly!  Let's give a round of applause to my new cover artist extraordinaire: Jessica Allain.  She rocks.

The new and improved print cover is still in the works, but this one has been uploaded to Amazon.  Give it 12-24 hours and it'll show there, too.

Oh, and since I have a new cover, I changed the blurb.  

‘Be careful what you wish for’

In hindsight, Jo Mayweather should’ve taken those words seriously back in 1926. Of course, spoiled brat, flapper-girl that she was, Jo probably would’ve made the not-so-clever wish that turned her into a genie anyway.
Being endowed with phenomenal power may have its perks but, for the most part, life’s been a pain in her tiny hiney. After running into a ‘slash first, ask questions never’ genie, her problems only worsen. Some demented thing is making wishes that can’t be granted and djinn are dying. Now, instead of freeing her brethren from their bonds, Jo has a killer to neutralize.
If she’d kept her mouth shut ninety years ago, she wouldn’t be in this mess. But she’s got a job to do despite some reject from a bad B-movie trying to ruin everything she’s worked so hard for. Too bad this time doing her job might get her killed.
Or worse—enslaved again.

Here's hoping this sparkly new stuff attracts some readers. 

There Are Rules

Hi there.  Jo again.  B.E. asked me to explain the Rules to you guys, so here's the short version:

When the gods created the djinn race, they imbued us with a boatload of power.  And saddled us with Rules so we wouldn't ruin the world.  Makes sense to the us rational djinn.  The Efreet? Not so much.  Anyway, as near as I can tell, the big Rules are basically

1) No harming of the Master by direct wish.
2) No killing by direct wish.
3) No messing with time.
4) No messing with free will.
5) No unmaking the Universe.
6) No stealing another genie's sanctuary.
7) No raising the dead.

Simple stuff on a grand scale, but not nearly enough to keep wayward genies from getting into trouble, so the Council governs a set of rules that are kind of arbitrary and subjective.  Things like 'no public displays of magic' and 'don't do anything to out the djinn race to the world' are pretty good ideas.  Others, like 'don't talk about the Efreet' are pretty stupid.  But all governing bodies tend to make stupid rules here and there.

Of course, there are ways to circumvent some of the Rules and the rules.  Want to kill a human but can't wish for it? Drop a tree on them.  Stab them. Shoot them. Mundane and non-magical is hunky-dory with the gods, I guess.

Obviously, since the gods made them, you can't break the Rules outright.  Breaking the rules, on the other hand, is easy.  I'd know.  But, if they catch you, breaking their little rules comes with a steep punishment.  And who wants to wear a fur coat for centuries? Not me.

So those are the Rules.  I'm not exactly an expert, but I'm the only one who'd talk to B.E. about them, because talking about them is... you guessed it... against the rules.  Big surprise there.

If you could have one wish, what would it be?  Not that I can grant it, but you never know. What the Council doesn't know won't hurt them.  (And they're not exactly internet savvy, so I'm not too worried about them finding out here.)

If you want to read more about me and my adventures, pick up a copy of B.E.'s book Wish in One Hand.  It's on sale until Halloween night. 

Halloween Week Sale

Saturday is Halloween, so what better week to put the genies on sale? 

Go forth and get your wish on.

And yes, the cover will be changing soon, but the words inside are the same. 

The genie Josephine Mayweather’s father gave her for her 18th birthday tricked her into trading places 90+ years ago. But hey, everything should be peachy for an immortal gal with phenomenal power, right? For Jo, immortality is more than lazing around wishing. When she’s not rescuing brethren who don’t always want to be saved, she’s juggling a halfway-house for the humanity challenged and an antiques business dealing in previously genie-owned goods. 

When some demented being starts murdering the very people she’s trying to save, she almost wishes she’d chosen the lazy life. 

Too bad for her, she can’t sit back and let this maniac ruin everything she’s worked for. All she has to do is stop a super-powerful supernatural killer and hope the Council doesn’t shut her down for breaking rules she didn’t even know existed. It’s either that or sit and watch her brethren die as her life collapses around her. Good thing for djinn-kind, Jo’s daddy didn’t raise her to back down from a fight, even if this battle could get her killed. 

Or worse—enslaved again.

Jo Talks Genies - Part Two

Sanderson here asked me an interesting question the other day. It's one I've been asked time and again over the years. 

"What's this whole 'freeing genies' thing about? I mean, why do you do it?"

First off, think about it.  A whole species of intelligent beings starts their existence out as slaves.  Who wants that shit?

Now, some have argued - the Council, for instance - that slavery is decreed by the gods and it's a way to keep being with incredible power from taking over and ruining things for the rest of the sentient life on the planet.  I figure if we're so damn incredible, we should be able to put a rein on our own damn selves.  All it takes is a little knowledge and a good moral compass.

Okay, so not everyone has that.  And lord knows, it's not like the best and the brightest of the lot get chosen somehow to become a genie.  Look at me.  I was an airhead without the common sense frogs are endowed with.  But I learned.  And the big Rules keep us from doing anything really stupid - like unmaking the universe.  What I started with the Network was a way to take the genies who might not have the knowledge or the good moral compass, and train them to be productive members of society.  So far, it's worked pretty well. 

I also admit there's a good amount of guilt behind my mission.  I got my freedom because my Master died, and then I spent it playing hedonist.  What a waste of forever.  Now I spent time trying to free other genies without someone having to die.  All it takes is a little wish and POOF they're free.  Or to use a phrase Basil likes to toss around - easy peasy.  If the Council or the Efreet or the gods don't like it, they can lump it.  (Or they can try to stop me - which is the more likely scenario.) 

If you're interested in learning more about genies, or my escapades of trying to do my job when not everyone wants me to do it, grab a copy of Wish in One Hand.  Right now, I have genies to wrangle and Efreet to chase.

Trying Stuff and a CONTEST!

Hubs and I were talking the other day about ways to sell more books.  I've hit a slump, you see, and we were brainstorming different ways to boost things without breaking the bank.  What I learned from that discussion is that there are things I am unwilling to do and things we are unwilling to do to accomplish the goal of selling more books.

For instance, I have mentioned before my fear in crowds. So that flat cuts out writing conferences, book signings, etc.  I mean, it would be kind of hard to accomplish anything if I went to those things and spent the entire time hiding in a corner, trying not to barf.

I read the other day that one way to boost sales is to put in an ad or get an interview with the local paper.  Here we run afoul of our overriding need for anonymity.  Sure, it would be easy enough to locate me should someone have a sufficient motivation, but I really don't want to make it any easier.  We moved out to the back of beyond so we could be out of the public eye.  :shrug:

So, what's a hermit to do?

Basically, I'm doing it.  I'm writing books, I'm getting my name out there online where I can without being too annoying, and I'm placing the ads I can afford to place.  (When they let me.  ENT turned me down this time around.  I'll try again next month.)

One thing that would help are reviews.  Of course, I said something about reviews on Twitter and got my first one-star*.  Might've just been coincidence.  Correlation is not causation.  :shrug: 

Another thing I thought might help is I changed the cover for Wish in One Hand.  Something about the image of Jo was driving me nuts, but I wasn't sure if I could fix it and I did not want to go back to the original artist.  Then as I was trying to take a nap, I figured out how to do fix her.  I'm still waiting for Amazon to put the new image on the sales page, but here it is:

 And here's the old cover:

You can't see the lamp anymore, but you also can't see the weird way she's standing.  :shrug:  Maybe that's just me.  I also think this is more in line with other covers in the genre.  Again, might be just me. 

Anyway, I'm doing what I can.  I think.  I always feel like I could be doing more.

Now, because I have it on good authority that giving books away helps with sales and reviews, I'm putting this out there for all of you.  Leave a comment here, on the FB status update with this post, or retweet the tweet from this status update, and get entered to receive a copy of the limited print run of Wish in One Hand with the original cover.  I'll be changing the print cover today sometime, but I have stock of the first print run here.   I'll even sign it and put in some swag.  Pass it around.

The entries will be tabulated next Monday.  I'll draw one winner from them and announce the winner on Wednesday the 30th.

*My first one star review was for Dying Embers and she says the book just wasn't for her. She didn't like the writing, she hated Jace, and she didn't finish the book.  Okee doke.  I knew going in not everyone would like what I write, and I'm totally cool with it.  So, I guess this means I've 'made it' and I'm a real boy now.  Err, girl.  Err, writer person. ;o)