#wordmongering for the win! :) And Seeds of Discovery is free!

I know I’m supposed to be putting up a Twitter Tuesday blog. It hasn’t been the week for blogging for me, though.  I have been busy writing — the rough draft of Thorns of Decision is complete, and I am in the process of finding beta readers to help me begin the hard work of shaping it into something actually readable. 🙂

In the meantime, for today and tomorrow (March 13 & 14), Seeds of Discovery is free on Amazon! Grab a copy for your Kindle, or Kindle App on your computer or smartphone.

If you happen to have a different kind of e-reader, please know that Seeds of Discovery is DRM-free, and can be quickly adapted to a different format for free, using a program like Calibre (which is also free). Once you convert it, you can download it onto your Nook, Kobo, Sony Reader, or whatever you have. 🙂

If you need help figuring it out, please let me know.

Roots of Insight will be available for sale in all formats sometime in mid-April, and Thorns of Decision will also be on all formats from the first day it’s released, on June 1, 2012.

If you are interested in being a beta reader/early reviewer for Thorns of Decision, please leave a comment or e-mail me! 🙂

Five More Days! :)

To celebrate today, I invite you to pop over to Better Read than Dead, where Kristin has posted an awesome review of Seeds, and you can join the giveaway, too!

If, by chance, you already have a copy of Seeds of Discovery, and that giveaway wouldn’t do you any good… leave a comment on Kristin’s review mentioning that fact, and I will put your name in a hat to win an ARC of Roots of Insight! 🙂

Also, don’t forget to enter the drawing for a $10 Amazon gift card by clicking HERE.

 

I’m still looking for a few good bloggers to help me out with the scavenger hunt that begins on Monday — and a few authors who might be interested in donating e-copies of their fantastic books as prizes.

So far, we have some great hunts lined up! You can join the party, too!

Happy New Year! 8 More Days, and More Happy Hunting! :)

Happy New Year everyone. I hope you’re all as excited as I am about starting a new year fresh.

I’ve decided this year that resolutions are a bad idea. Most of them are about taking some part of yourself that you currently see as “bad” and trying to change it. For me, the new year is going to be about taking what’s good, and growing it.

2011 was monumental for me. It was the year I finally stopped buying into the myth of “security,” or doing “what I’m supposed to do.” The year I stopped believing in should be,  and started asking what could be.

My dream for 2012 is that it will be a year of exploring that further, and really coming to terms with what it means, and then, just living it.

One dream that came true this year was finishing a book and actually allowing people to read it. That has been more fantastic than I ever imagined it could be, and I am so grateful for everyone who has shared that with me. The writing community is AMAZING.

If you are a writer, and it’s part of your “could be” to see where that journey takes you, then something you NEED to check out is Cara Michael’s #WIP500. I will be doing this, starting today. Every day, growing at least 500 words closer to my writing dreams. 🙂

Tomorrow, starts my first ever blog tour! And you’ll be able to party right along with me!

Starting tomorrow, check back right here for a blog to visit, and a question to find an answer to! I’ll be giving away fun prizes to those who can answer the questions! 🙂

Speaking of prizes, don’t forget to enter the contest for

a $10 Amazon.com e-gift card by clicking here.

And, if you are a blogger or an author, don’t forget to comment below or send me an e-mail to participate in the upcoming blog hop scavenger hunt for the release of Roots of Insight! Bloggers … all I will need from you is a few questions about content you ALREADY HAVE POSTED on your blog, and I’ll be sending people over. Authors … I could use e-copies of your books or anything else you might like to give away (and links to your blogs, too!) 🙂

10 Days and Counting (Calling all Bloggers and Authors)

With ten days to go until the launch of Dusk Gate: Roots of Insight, I’ve decided to have a little fun with it! 🙂

With a little help with some friends, especially Kristy K. James, and Tonya Cannariato, we are going to have a fun release party! 🙂 Starting on release day, January 9, 2012, we’re going to have a blog hop scavenger hunt. You’ll be able to go to various blogs to find and answer questions and win prizes!

If you’re a blogger (of any kind!) or an author, I’d love to have your help and participation! Just leave a comment below, or send me an e-mail at breeanap@gmail.com

I need blogs willing to post questions and answers for the scavenger hunt, and authors who are willing to give out e-copies of their books as prizes.

There will also be other awesome prizes like Amazon e-gift cards, and e-copies of Seeds of Discovery and of Roots of Insight! Hopefully it will mean some extra visibility for your awesome books and blogs, as well.

If you’re a blogger, and you might also be interested in hosting a guest post, a Dusk Gate character interview, a review of one of the books, or anything else, I’d also love to have you! (And, we could work out some other awesome prizes for any of those).  Any blogger willing to host ANY of this, will receive free e-copies of both Dusk Gate Chronicles books (including Roots of Insight before release day).

If you’ve made it this far, to start the fun, I’m running a giveaway of a $10 Amazon gift card. You can enter as many times as you’d like, between today and January 8th, the eve of the release. ANYONE can enter, blogger, author, or the most amazing people of all — READERS!

Just click HERE to find out how to enter!

I might actually start freaking out here …

 

The last few days have been pretty exciting around here in book land. 🙂 Well, exciting in that teeny-tiny fish in the big huge ocean that is Kindle books on Amazon kind of way.

As you know from my previous post, I had been experimenting with using my free promotional days on Amazon, and it was going pretty well. Really well, actually. In the end, Dusk Gate: Seeds of Discovery made it all the way to being the #72 best-selling free book on Amazon.

The promotion expired at midnight last night, Pacific time, and my fun little book is now back among the ranks of paid Kindle books on Amazon. And I’m still having trouble staying in my chair today, because …

Well, let me start with a comparison. Last week, before the free promotion, Seeds of Discovery had been consistently ranking somewhere above #200,000 in the paid rankings on Amazon all of this month. And before today, the highest it’s ever hit has been somewhere in the high #20,000.

Today? Well … right this minute, it is number 2,270 overall.

It is also #41 in Contemporary Fantasy.

And #84 in Children’s Science Fiction and Fantasy … yes … 83 books below The Hunger Games.

We’re celebrating here tonight. It’s a small celebration, sure, but big for me! 🙂

And a huge, enormous, monumental, earth-shattering, THANK YOU to all of you who have supported me, and read the blog, and taken a chance on picking up the book. The success is really yours.

It’s November….

Yes, I realize I’m a bit behind the times. Definitely had an off-week (or two!) in terms of posting and writing. Strep has been circulating in our little house, and I’m pretty sure it finally hit me yesterday. With a tired and cranky Little Goose who is already going through this lovely four-year-old phase of arguing and whining about EVERYTHING, I haven’t gotten much accomplished. 🙂

 

So, rather than coming up with some fever-induced topic, I thought I would share one of my favorite “November” books.

In November, by Cynthia Rylant

 

 

I have read this book to my second graders every year for the last several, this year I’m sharing it with my daughter and the preschoolers I teach at home.

This is a beautiful, richly illustrated book about the quiet magic of this time of year. The images Cynthia Rylant creates in the minds of her readers are priceless, and Kastner’s illustrations are perfect.

“In November, the trees are all standing sticks and bones. Without their leaves, how lovely they are, spreading their arms like dancers. They know it is time to be still.” (p. 8)

If you happen to be a teacher, this book is a must for your classroom library (as are most of Rylant’s books). It’s also perfect for sharing with your little ones at bedtime if you’re a parent, and if you’re a writer, you should own it purely to study the craft of Rylant’s descriptions and the soft emotions she evokes with her words.

 

And … for those who are curious. 🙂

Book Two progress so far: 44,143

I very much want to break 50k this week!

My First Blog Review

This journey to sharing a story with the world is filled with new adventures and experiences. The biggest, and definitely best, part of this journey has been the people. I’ve met so many completely wonderful people throughout this process of learning to write (and share! sharing is the bigger learning curve) this story, that it really is giving me renewed hope that there is a good future for us crazy humans.  Even better has been the re-discovery, and in some cases re-connection with the people who have been there all along.

To all of you – thank you. From the bottom of my heart, whether you are new in my life at this point, have always been, or are yet to come, you will never know how much I truly appreciate you.

And, a really special tribute to those of you who have read my story and enjoyed it, and have lived for just a few short moments with me in Eirentheos … wow.  I know everyone has different tastes, and I still love you even if you think my story is terrible, or boring, or whatever, really. 🙂  But finding those people who really do like it, who have connected with me in that deepest of places inside my mind … that is a feeling that cannot be matched by anything else. It’s amazing, and you are my kindred spirits, and the story is as much yours as it is mine. Thank you.

And now … check out this FANTASTIC blog review, by the amazing and talented Tonya Christensen on her blog, What All the Kids Are Reading.

 

 

Yay, Internet Again!

I know, I know, it’s been WAY too long since I last posted. Thanks to those of you who have stuck around. 🙂  The last couple of weeks have been pretty insane around the Puttroff house. 🙂 After the whole lovely HOA thing, we are finally (almost) all the way moved. There are still a few trips of random stuff left at the other house … my computer chair and water cooler are among the pile, and I am missing those. I am WAY behind in everything, which is nothing new of course, but the piles are a bit more overwhelming at the moment – most especially after moving in on Saturday and starting with a couple of temporary new kiddos on Monday morning. So, in addition to being buried underneath piles of my own accumulated JUNK (trash bags, here we come!), I have also been trying to keep up with two babies under a year, plus a slew of 2-5 year olds who circulate in and out. It may be, *ahem* a few days before I’m back to normal writing/blogging/communicating status.

So, for tonight, to save us all from my rambling, I will direct you to the amazing piece of awesomeness that happened today – my first video review! And, it’s from someone I’ve never even met!