Sharing the love....

After a very busy week on Facebook and welcoming a BUNCH of new friends/fellow authors there, I'm sharing something from one of the new friends....because she has had a brilliant idea that we should all support each other by sharing news of the releases of others in the groups we belong to....

So, with no further ado...

 ☆҉‿➹⁀☆҉☆ NEW RELEASE ✯ ☆҉‿➹⁀☆҉☆

BACKUP PLAN -by- Alisha Tanner

SYNOPSIS :

“She’s given some meaning to the chaos that I happen to call a life, and I want more.”
If someone asked whether or not you wanted to know something that would be life altering, what would you say? Would it really be worth knowing at the risk of changing your world?
Dax Blakely wasn’t given this choice. With the unknown diagnosis of his brother lingering at the forefront of every thought, all he can do is immerse himself in thoughts focusing around the worst outcomes. When Dax learns of the bleak prognosis, he is unable to sit back and watch his world crumble, so he demands the top experts treat his only living family member. The last thing he expects to interfere is an off-limits romance.
Being thrust into a position where he must quash his desires, Dax isn’t willing to let the woman he wants get away.
Unfortunately, he’s fallen and there’s no turning back. With her evading every advance, his need to pursue her grows deeper and deeper, until an unexpected familial turn of events makes him realize what he wants may not be what he really needs after all.

AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A1JPGYE/

‪#‎newrelease‬ ‪#‎backupplan‬ ‪#‎unthinkableseries‬ ‪#‎debutauthor‬ ‪#‎alishatanner‬@AuthorAlisha

I haven't read this yet, so I can't give you my review at this time, but come back to this post from time to time and you may well see my review of Alisha's work - and I'll be sure to also post my review on Amazon, as I've been pestering friends, relatives and total strangers to try to get some reviews up for all the versions of my books. (One of the "bad" things about not wanting the Northern Bard Publications editions showing as an "alternative edition" to the Write Words Inc. versions instead of standing on their own is that those who put reviews on Write Words don't transfer over, so the newer editions don't have reviews....yet......*please...please....pretty please*)

Thank you to Amber Starr for her idea to do this. Please hunt her down on Facebook if you're an author and you wish to join her revolution.....

(That's not quite how she describes it, but that's kind of what we're doing here. A new way of advertising for the indie authors who are talented, but don't know any agents to get the contracts with the big publishers.....)

As always, thanks for reading my blogs, and for thrilling my little ego by coming to my blog from other countries. For a small town kid from Maine, any attention is thrilling....*grin*

The heck with cheeseburger. I can has lottery win, please?

In my house, we have a wire basket where all the mail goes. This practice was established when the children started wanting to bring in the mail, but would just drop it wherever they happened to be instead of putting it in a specific spot, which resulted in lost mail, late fees, occasionally credit collection agencies getting involved.....

In short, putting a wire basket just inside the door that ALL the mail gets put into until I have a chance to sort it has been a life saver for our credit ratings. (I've had people tell me that I should stop doing all my paper bills and go the paperless route, but since I live in a state where one of the primary jobs available has been, since Maine became a state, the lumbering and paper making industry, I see no reason at all to take the jobs away from the lumbermen whom I meet out in the woods every summer. I also prefer to have paper backup, as several companies over the years have tried to claim "no payment" when I've been able to go into my file cabinet and prove that we not only paid the bill, we did it with a check and the check was processed before the bill was due. (This hasn't happened in several years, but I'm a creature of habit, and despite the extra work, I'll continue to keep my file cabinets busy until I can no longer keep my own books.)

The down side of this "wire basket" system is that, particularly around the holidays, I don't always go through the mail like I should, so it will pile up - and sometimes, my husband opts to "help" by going through the basket for me. Unlike when our daughter was still in the house, he doesn't just put the bills in one stack and toss the junk mail. He feels the need to open every envelope and see how current it is. (He also doesn't understand the filing system upstairs, so if a bill was due last month and has been paid, he'll destroy it instead of sending it upstairs for me to file with the printed off "proof of payment".)

Now, if you go back to when this blog was started, even you will know that I started my own publishing company in October of 2013, when I had "paid" a friend with books for doing a cover for me that then got "fixed" by the publisher to the point that it looked cheap and less eye-catching than what I had "paid" for. Therefore, knowing there would be some costs involved in a business start up, I took a PayPal account that I had opened in my own name some time ago, did what I needed to do to make it my business account, and all the costs involved in the covers, the ISBN's and marketing things I've tried have all gone onto this one credit card.

Unfortunately, the things I've done to "boost sales" haven't panned out, so right now, the credit card is being paid out of my pocket, because the other two who are helping me to run Northern Bard Publications are doing so as a favor and aren't being paid for their services. Until the credit card balance is zero and we start making enough in sales to support my support staff, Northern Bard is being run about the same way as a non-profit.

My husband, who has known from Day One that I was doing my own publishing, but got that "blank stare" whenever I tried to talk to him about finances, suddenly realized when opening the bill from PayPal that there has been a fairly good sized amount spent on this business venture, but until it starts showing a profit, the small business loans I've applied for have been denied....

So either I have to find another means of advertising that doesn't cost money or keep trying to explain to him that the money I've sunk into Northern Bard is sort of like gambling - and at this current moment, I'm losing.

Welcome to the wonderful world of starting your own business. *smile*

All that said, and with the Powerball Jackpot now at $1.3 billion in the US, I'm gambling in another way, playing four different lotteries with a set of numbers that mean something to me on the off chance that, even if I never win the jackpot prize, I may be just lucky enough to win enough to pay off some of the smaller debts.

Of course, if any of my faithful readers is a marketing expert who can advise us as to the best marketing strategy to actually boost the book sales - or get us into the bookstores, which seems to be as difficult for an indie publisher as breaking into Fort Knox - I would LOVE to hear your advice. Should I get truly lucky and win that Powerball Jackpot, we can talk reasonable payment for your advice.....

In the meantime, I'm begging all the powers that be to let me win a lottery and prove that I won't be spoiled should I ever get rich. To be brutally honest, I'd probably end up giving massive amounts of such a windfall to the charities that I support with my measly donations each year. Instead of just the $20 that I can spare, how much cancer research, or cystic fibrosis research, or multiple sclerosis research could get done if I was able to give them $200,000?

For those who are reading my blogs to get suggestions as to how to start your own business, I strongly recommend telling your significant other everything you're doing, even if they get that blank stare and don't remember the conversations when they open your credit card account for your business and blow a gasket. I also suggest keeping up with the sorting of your mail bin so that they WON'T get the shock of a lifetime by opening your mail for you.

Blessed be, my lovelies, and thank you to all who give my my thrill of a lifetime by coming and visiting to the tune of 25 hits in a single day from Russia - or Germany - or China. Now if I can just find the right way to advertise so that those visits become book sales, I'll be the happiest author in the world.....

"If wishes were fishes we'd all swim in riches"

Happy 2016!

I started the year with an old idiom I used to hear a lot because I have several wishes that have been rolling through my head as we neared the end of 2015. Here are just a few:

First and foremost, I have a soul-deep wish that all who read this line will have a happy and prosperous new year. In short, I hope that all my readers swim in riches in 2016 and beyond. No matter where you live, you deserve a safe place to live where rain, snow, heat and snow are kept at bay. You deserve enough food to eat and perhaps a bit more to share with others who are not as lucky. And above all, you deserve to be respected and loved.

My other wishes mostly revolve around the other names that I'm seeking after finding that a good friend passed away a couple of years ago. The discovery that a seemingly healthy man who encouraged me to try new, healthy foods and led me to find many new "favorite foods" over the years had passed from the same health issue that is currently plaguing my husband has made me recall other names from my past - and I'm listing the people I'm seeking here on the off chance that one of my blog readers may know this person and can instigate a reconnection in the coming year...

So, here is the list of people (including the last place I saw them):

Donald T. Wyman, Jr. - my sister's first husband - who was called "Tommy" by his family to avoid confusion when he was in ther presence of his father, who was usually called "Don". When my sister divorced him, the man she called "Donnie" was living in Bangor, but his parents were living in Kissimee, Florida. I would love to reach him to find out if he ever got a photo of him and my husband (who was still my fiance at the time of the divorce) fake kissing under the mistletoe at my mom's house in what I believe was a Christmas 1982 prank. Our camera malfunctioned and my sister destroyed all photos of him after their divorce, so it's one of those "fond memories" I'd love to have in a photo album for my kids.

Kimball Blake, who was living in St. Cloud, Florida in an apartment with my sister and the above man in 1979 when I attempted to begin my college years in Orlando. I've always wanted to tell Kim "Thank you" for trying to help out a total stranger when I was struggling to break away from my sister's influence and find myself. Some things, like the description of a love bug smashing against his motorcycle helmet (which won him extra fried chicken when he grossed out my sis) and a joke about me being "the White Tornado" when he'd step into the shower and step out to a clean apartment, have followed me into other situations....

Blair Colyer, a truck driver whom I "dated" off and on at Bangor Community College in 1980 and 1981, He inadvertently became part of my first published novel's lead character, as he was a truck driver with long hair and a beard, he smoked, and he introduced me to Bloody Marys. I'd love to be able to send him a book and see if he still likes the blues, as he used to gather up a group of people to go to a blues bar in downtown Bangor, driving us there and safely home in his van.

David M. Faunce, whom I met at a religious retreat called "Antioch" and who became a pen pal for many years afterward. The last time I knew where he was, I had sent a letter that I was breaking up with Bill and was thinking about where to go and what to do next, thinking that I might go back to Orlando and apply for a job at DisneyWorld (which was one of the places that I wanted to work while living in the apartment with Don and Kim in St. Cloud, but which my sister absolutely refused to let me apply for because she'd heard "bad things"). Dave offered to let me stay in his apartment in New York along the way, but when I sent a follow up letter that we'd reconciled, the second letter came back. I've often wondered what happened between the break up letter and the reconciliation letter.

The list may grow in future posts, but those are some of the names that are coming right to the forefront this morning, as I eat my cereal and drink my coffee to prepare for a 10 hour shift at Staples. My body, as always, is complaining that I'm getting too old to be doing this to myself, so I'm going to close on one last wish:

I wish that either my books would sell or that I can find a job that is gentler on my aging bones. This weekly "pallet workout" thing is really getting old.....

Blessed be, and may your New Year be truly happy.


Addendum January 2:

On another drive with my husband, we were discussing this blog post and who we've found over the years among our friends and family we'd lost track of. Some of the ones we've searched for over the years have been found in the obituary pages. Heart attacks, car accidents, some "after a long illness" and others simply listed as "died suddenly". Others have been located, most on Facebook, or through others who know them and pass on messages or get us snail mail addresses....

We came up with one more person to add to the above list:

Barbara Johnson, a beautiful singer from Oakland, Maine whom I met at B.C.C. - and who introduced me to a friend of hers. He was dating another girl at the time, but then they broke up and we started dating....and then we stopped for a while....and then we started again....and then we lived together ....and then we got married....and it might be fun to let Barb know that her innocent introduction has resulted in almost 35 years of my hubby and I being together.

While we both express the hope that this post doesn't result in an attentive reader sending us another obituary, we've come to understand that nor everyone gets to grow old and complain about their bodies falling apart. As the hubby likes to say "It's always a good day when you're above ground."