New Releases by Cedar Sanderson

Breaking from the schedule, today, I'm bumping up the signal for a new release I read at the end of 2020 (you know, a couple weeks ago) - The East Witch by Cedar Sanderson (no relation).  It was a helluva good read with great characters, an awesome plot, harrowing adventure, fun mythology, and a little romance.  

Click the link and snag yourself a copy.

Also, for the younger set, there's a children's book that Cedar illustrated coming out 1/31/21 - The Hungry Werewolf.  (She's a woman of many talents.)  At the time of this posting, it's #136 in Children's Scary Stories.  Not sure if it's actually scary or not, but I was totally into this stuff when I was a kid.

When you're a werewolf, you make your own friends...
Step inside the covers and meet the monsters so creepy and so adorable that you may want to invent a new word to describe them! We like "creepydorable" but you could come up with your own.
Inside you'll find blobs, a mad scientist, and an awful lot of bats, but we invite you to begin at the beginning, with just...
One Hungry Werewolf.

I haven't read the above, but I assume if Cedar's associated with it, it's got some pretty good stuffs in there.  Pre-order a copy for your little reader of scary tales today.  

Enjoy!

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 12/12/20

Well, hello there.  Fancy meeting you here.  It's almost the end of the year, ya know, and we're coming to the end of these wrap-ups for 2020.  (I have a flare for stating the obvious, doncha know.)

I picked up four new ebooks this week - paranormal mystery, UF, paranormal romance, romance.  And I have one book left from before - a thriller.  No new hardcopies this week.

Books Read:

82) Drop Dead, Gorgeous by Mike Jastrzebski (12/6/20) - Supernatural Mystery*# - 5 stars.  New to me and while it does have loads of ratings, it doesn't have many reviews, which is too damn bad.  Free off the ENT newsletter.
Review: "Wow, that was a really fun story. I loved the characters and the premise was interesting. It was well-written with an intriguing plot. Plus, it hearkened back to the old noir crime novels I love. Supernatural mystery for the win."

DNFs:

12/11/20 - romance. Free.  I read this about 2/3rds of the way through and then I realized there was no way I was going to be able to give the book more than 3 stars, no matter how it finished.  So I stopped.  I mean, there was sooo much unnecessary stuff in there.  The author could've trimmed a lot and had a much better book with fewer pages.  One I probably would've read all the way through.  =o( 

Currently reading... the thriller left over from earlier in the month.  I'm not loving it, so I'm not sure if this will become a DNF today.  

How did your reading week go?  Anything awesome to report?

Writerly Depression

Always on the lookout for ways to boost sales, I read Amazon Decoded by David Gaughran this week.  If you're not familiar with Gaughran, he also wrote Let's Get Digital and Let's Get Visible - two books that were instrumental in my self-publishing decisions early on. 

Now, you can only get Amazon Decoded if you subscribe to his newsletter, but the newsletter is chock full of useful into, so it's a good idea anyway.  Plus you get this book.  I reviewed it on Goodreads.  If you're interested in that, you can see the review over there or you can wait and see it on my Reading Update over on The Writing Spectacle tomorrow.

It's a good book.  It was also depressing as hell for me.  Because I am not anywhere near where I want to be.  He's talking about sales way above anything I've ever gotten.  And ranks I don't know if I will ever hit.  And he's talking about them as if they were old hat.  Not for me, man. 

He's also talking about ads I am not in a position to pay for.  I mean, you gotta spend money to make money.  But you gotta HAVE money to spend money to make money.  Know what I mean?

I don't even want to think about how many spreadsheets I have to do to scrape together $500 for an ad.  One ad.  That may or may not pay for itself?  Ugh.  Not happening any time soon.

Still, the book gave me some ideas.  I'll give them a try and see how things go.  Maybe I'll be better prepared with Unequal launches in... well, whenever it launches later this year. 

I do have an ad going live today with Authors' Billboard.  I have low expectations.  But it's a $6 ad, so maybe I can break even.  Fingers crossed.

On a side note, I saw an author complaining that they only got 50 sales on launch day for their new book.  I kinda hated them a little right then.  Then I hated myself a little because I don't know what I'm doing wrong.  What can I say, it's been a week for the writerly depression to rear its ugly head.  Which is why I've been spending a lot of time in the gardens instead of at the keyboard.

Disappointing Read

If you know me, you know I rarely leave a bad review.  Part of that is because I rarely finish a book that would result in a bad review.  I realize it's bad partway through and quit.  Who's got time to read bad books?  I also know that bad reviews can hurt a book's sales and since a review is just my opinion, why do that to someone? 

But this weekend, I had to give a book three stars.  (Yes, for me, 3-stars is a bad review.)  The book was Mickey Spillane's The Erection Set.  From the title and the cover, I already had an inkling it was going to be tawdry.  And let's face it, Mickey is sometimes a little tawdry.  It's part and parcel of his books.  But this... this was over the top. 

It seemed like it was nasty for the sake of being nasty.  Full of shock factor snippets tossed off for effect.  I felt like Mickey was told to sex the book up a bit and took the editorial notes to a ludicrous level.  

And even then, I could've forgiven it.  I read books with sex in them.  I read books with some nasty bits in them, too.  I flip past that stuff and move on to the story.  Which was what I was doing throughout The Erection Set. 

But partway through the book, I found something familiar.  And even with my piss-poor memory, I could tell it had been ripped off from another book.  It was the same plot devise Mickey had used in his earlier book The Deep (which I totally loved).  And I thought to myself, he can't be doing the same thing in this book.  So I kept reading.

Oh, things were just different enough to make the story interesting, but it was, in essence, the same book.  All the way to the end.

Guy who's been away fighting in WWII and then stayed away for some amount of years afterwards, comes home.  He's got a reputation of being a criminal and a general bad guy.  Since he was something of a hoodlum in his youth, it's easy for everyone from his past life to believe he's bad.  And with bad things happening, he's the easy suspect.  So the police pull him in and question him.  He writes a number on a piece of paper, slides it across the table at the detective and tells him to call that number.  After the officer does, he's told he can go. 

There's a gal in the story who falls in love with the bad guy.  She's pretty sure he's not as bad as everyone thinks and she falls in love.  When confronted with what she thinks is the proof of his evil doings, she hates him, but she sticks around to see how it all plays out. 

In the end, it's revealed that he's been working for the government all along and the assumptions she's made are proven false.  All is well.  The end.

That's an easy description of both books.  And it gave me a serious sad last night.

I depend on certain authors to give me what I expect - well-written stories I haven't read before.  And Mickey had let me down.  I wondered if maybe in his old age, he was getting cantankerous, but then I realized he was only 54 when he wrote this.  Then I wondered if he'd perhaps gotten sick of people trying to tell him what to write, so he thumbed his nose at the establishment and gave them a regurgitated book so thick with raunch, they'd have to see how bad it was and leave him the hell alone. 

Then Hubs brought up an interesting point - Mickey allowed them to publish this book.  He put his name on it.  (Yeah, contracts... I know, but still...)  To Hubs, it sounded like Mickey had sold out.  The thought of which made me even sadder. 

So, yeah, 3-stars.  If it had been anyone but Spillane, it would've gotten fewer, but the writing was still there and still awesome, if you ignored the nasty and the regurg.  Hell, if it had been anyone else, it wouldn't have finished it.  But I learned an important lesson here.  I won't be reading anymore of his post 1970s novels.  Stick with the early stuff and I should be fine. 

And the other important lesson I learned.  Don't regurgitate your stories.  I'm lucky because I don't have any telling me what I should write or any editorial board telling me how to write what I write. 

And another thing... Don't write something just because someone thinks it's what the public might want.  Again, I don't have anyone telling me what I ought to write, so I'm lucky there.  I could write what I think the public might want, but that's just not me.  I write what I write.  Hopefully, readers will enjoy it and buy my stories.  If not, there's really not much I can do about it without selling out.

Not that I don't think about it on occasion.  Ah, the sweet siren song of sales... 

A Sale, A Little News, and A Series Review

First things first... Dying Embers is on sale for 99 cents right now.  Spread the word.  Snag a copy for yourself.  Gift a copy.  Anything you can do will be greatly appreciated. 

Secondly, my maiden newsletter went out on Friday.  Did you get yours?  It has fun stuff in it and a giveaway and news. 

Next, I'll be letting the world know about the cover and the blurb for Accidental Death on Friday - when it goes live on Omnimystery News.  If you don't subscribe to them, though, don't worry.  I'll post it here, too.  

Finally, I know you're probably fans of suspense and junk, since you're here, but I'm a cross-genre reader.  To that end, I'd like to point you toward a SF series I've been enjoying.  I haven't read them all, and I'm way behind, but still I do love every installment I've been able to get my hot little hands on.

Mike Shepherd's Kris Longknife series.

Kris is the daughter of the Prime Minister, she's the heir to a family fortune, and the grand-daughter of a war hero and a corporate hero.  But rather than be a princess, she wants to fly.  So she's in the Navy - piloting ships through the galaxy. 

In Mike's own words: "The Kris Longknife saga is the story of a young woman coming of age during a time when things are falling apart and discovering that maybe humanity still does need heroes."

Damn straight!

Kris Longknife kicks ass, takes names, and still manages to be snarky.  I love her.

I've read the first four and just snagged the fifth this weekend.  Squee!  Now if I just had time to read. 

Monday Stuff and a Series Recommendation

Hey all!

It's Monday and I'm guessing since I didn't put a line in here about who won the contest, I haven't had enough coffee to think properly yet.  I'll draw a name shortly and post it at the bottom of this post as an ETA (Edited To Add).  Thanks to all y'all who signed up for my newsletter.  I expect to have a maiden flight around the first of May - when I'll have a better idea of a release date for Accidental Death.  You'll hear it there first, so sign up now.

Speaking of Accidental Death, I'm in edit mode.  In fact, I'm taking a break from the laborious, but oh-so necessary task of finding every instance of the word 'just', determining whether it is necessary where it is, and replacing it or deleting it when it isn't.  I should've done that before I sent it to the editor, but I forgot.  Derp.

Of course, being in edit mode means I'm out of interesting things to say about me, so you get to hear about another series I think deserves some attention. 

Way back when, and don't ask me to go look it up now, I won a contest for the first four books in Debra Webb's Faces of Evil series.  She sent them to me signed and I loved every one of them.  That was about the time that her publisher decided they'd published enough of those, thank you very much, and Ms. Webb was on her own to finish out the series.  Well, she did it.  And I bought every single one of the rest of the series in paperback.  They do look so lovely on my shelves all cuddled up next to each other.

They're about this disgraced FBI profiler who goes back to her hometown and gets embroiled in a serial murder.  Meanwhile, the serial killer who made her look like shit with the FBI is still stalking her, and he has evil minions willing to kill for him, and... OMG, the tension over the course of the series is delicious.  Add in the fact that her old boyfriend is the chief of police and he still loves her, but there's all this tension, and yes, folks, we have a winner!

Now, I don't know why the publisher decided to stop publishing this series.  It irritated the crap out of me as a reader because I wanted... no, I NEEDED to know what happened, dammit.  Thank goodness, Ms. Webb decided to help her readers out and find a way to publish the rest.  Hallelujah!  Now the series is finished and I got the HEA I was after, plus the justice I desire, and some good old-fashioned suspense along the way.  Totally yummy.

So, if you're looking for a series with a few ongoing plot lines and story ARCs - like one big long book, only not as heavy - check out The Faces of Evil.  I had to wait for each book to come out, but lucky you, they're all out now, so no waiting. (I hate waiting, but this series was worth it.)

ETA:  Okay, I'm up and even if the coffee isn't quite enough yet this morning, I drew a name.  The winner is Deb Salisbury!  Shoot me an email, Deb, and let me know how you want it signed (to you, to someone else, etc.), and give me your address.  I'll get that out in the mail sometime this week.  Congratulations!

Trying New Things

In the interest of mixing things up a bit and trying new things, I'd like to devote a post each week to another writer or a book or a series of books I enjoy that maybe might be overlooked or underrated or whatever.  I know the following here isn't huge.  I'd like to rectify that, but I can only do what I can do.  Having said that, though, maybe my little blog will do someone some good someday.

To that end, I'd like to take a moment and plug a series that really hasn't been getting the attention it should be getting.  You may all know my friend, JB Lynn, and her awesome Neurotic Hitwoman series, but did you know she also writes a Matchmaker Mystery series.  She spun it off the Neurotic Hitwoman universe, but only the character, Armani, is a fixture in the Matchmaker Mystery series, too. 

Anyway, her third book in this new series is coming out shortly, and I think you all should give the series a try.  It's fun and quirky with romance and mystery and pets!  I love the characters and the writing and they're just good books to lose myself in from time to time. 

The first book is The Mutt and the Matchmaker.  The second is A Match Made in Mystery.  And the soon-to-be-published book is Catnapped!  Good stuff all the way through.

So, if you're in the market for a fun read, give JB's Matchmaker series a try. 

Oh, and before I forget, speaking of new things, if you scroll back up to the top there, you'll see a new tab.  Click it and it takes you to the sign-up form for my newsletter.  I promise not to mailbomb you or be annoying.  Just news and updates and contests and junk. 

True Crime TV Friday

As I'm testing out new things for this blog, I'm thinking about discussing various True Crime shows here on Fridays. 

First out of the gate is a show I just recently started watching called The Killer Speaks on A&E.  They start out with a murder, and then they shift to talking with the murderer.  It shifts back and forth between the crimes and the question/answer part.  To me, it's very insightful.  I mean, sure, these people make my skin crawl, but what better way to get a glimpse into the mind of a real killer?  You know, without actually meeting a real killer. 

It gives you a real chance to see the dead eyes and the cold, expressionless faces.  To witness the hint of glee behind it all when they think you aren't paying attention.  To hear the words they use to describe their crimes. 

Sometimes they try to convince the viewers that they're remorseful, but you can tell they're lying.  Sometimes they make excuses for why they're just wrong inside.  Sometimes, it's even true - as in the case of the man who is schizophrenic.  That guy knows what he did is wrong and he never wants to be let out because in prison, they make him take his medicine and he doesn't want to kill people anymore. 

But the psychology of it all is fascinating.  Especially if you're writing crime fiction. 

Have you ever caught the show?  If you're a writer, do shows like this help you build your characters?  If you're a reader, what do you think of learning about the psychology behind a killer?