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July Featured Author: Denise M. Colby

July 7, 2021 by marianne h donley in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as Christian Historical Fiction, Denise M Colby, Marketing, Social Media, writing

Denise Colby |The Writing Journey

Denise M. Colby loves to write words that encourage, enrich, and engage whether it’s in her blog, social media, magazine articles, or devotions. With over 20+ years’ experience in marketing, she enjoys using her skills to help other authors. She treasures the written word and the messages that can be conveyed when certain words are strung together. An avid journal writer, she usually can be found with a pen and notepad whenever she’s reading God’s word. Denise is writing her first novel, a Christian Historical Romance and can be found at www.denisemcolby.com

She’s a member of RWA, OCC/RWA, Faith, Hope & Love Chapter of RWA, ACFW (where she is a semi-finalist in the Genesis contest Historical Romance Category), OC Chapter of ACFW, and SoCal Christian Writers’ Conference.

In addition to Denise’s column The Writing Journey on A Slice of Orange, you can read some of her magazine article here.

Denise M. Colby’s Books

SHORT and SWEET’S FAMILY ALBUM

THE SHORT & SWEET OF IT: When the Right Word Is a Short Word

WHEN PLANS GO AWRY

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The Value Of A Free Promotion

July 5, 2021 by Tracy Reed in category Pink Pad by Tracy Reed

Happy July. I hope you had a safe Fourth of July.

Last year before the pandemic I made a bold decision. I wasn’t going to do any book signing events. Let me clarify. I wasn’t going to do any signings out of state and very few local events. For me, it was cost prohibitive. It isn’t my attention to sound pretentious, because I’m far from it.

I do signings so I can meet and gain new readers. I discovered I was doing more selling and not getting sales. More specific, I was trying to convince people to buy my books. I know that’s part of the process, but it was a little disconcerting when you see most of the other authors in the room making sales, earning out their fees and you’re going home in the deficit. In some cases, not even getting new additions to my mailing list.

Of course there have been some incredible book signing exceptions. My favorite book signing event and one I hope to participate in again is the LA Times Book Festival. I love the diversity and atmosphere. I’ve met some amazing authors and the readers are fantastic. I met a reader who asked if I’d come to her book club meeting. I told her if she invited me and I was available, I’d attend. Ironically, she invited me to her book club a month before the shelter in place order hit California. I had a good time at the meeting talking about a variety of subjects including my book. Plus the food was amazing. But here’s the icing on the cake. One of the club members was someone I grew up with. We hadn’t seen each other since we were kids. Some of the ladies from this meeting are part of my reader group and mailing list.

Fast forward the pandemic and things changed. There were no signing events. I felt sympathetic to all the authors who had put out money for events that were cancelled or postponed. I saw the occasional virtual signing, but let’s be real most of those events yielded few if any additional readers. I set a goal to increase my mailing list. That was one of the main reasons I did signings. Now because of the pandemic I was forced to stand by my decision.

I searched for paid promotions and found a service I liked. I did pretty good…up a few hundred new readers. But shortly after the promotion the freebie seekers left.

I have worked hard to grow my list. It’s not huge, but respectable…3700+ and an average open rate. I think I’ve lost about twelve percent pre-pandemic.

I started participating in group promotions and that’s when things changed for my mailing list. I started last year with 2379 readers. Hallelujah. However, prior to the pandemic at the list peak it was approximately 3000+/- readers. In a matter of a couple of years, I’d lost about twenty percent of my readers. I was upset, but found solace in knowing that was normal and there’s a good chance they were freebie seekers.

I set a goal to get my list to 3000 and started looking for promotions. I did a couple of paid free giveaways and newsletter swaps. Those events added over 1300 readers to my list. But like any free promotional event, there’s some loss. So far, I’ve lost less than 200 readers, putting me around the 3700+ readers.

The other reason I am a huge fan of the freebie promotion and newsletter swap, is reviews. I have asked my readers to leave reviews and some will. I’m glad they bought the book, but it would be even better to read a review or even post a star rating. After my first newsletter swap, I noticed a few new reviews on the book in the promotion. But I really saw an uptick in reviews the second time I did a newsletter promotion. I talked about this before. I paid a service for reviews which was good. I got forty plus reviews. However, with the newsletter swaps the book I put up has more than tripled in reviews. I’m on my way to my first 100 reviewed book. Did I say that correct?

Another plus to a freebie giveaway promotion or newsletter swap event, backlist sales. I talked about this strategy before. For me, it’s a matter of selecting the right book for the giveaway. Let’s be real none of us wants to give away a book, but if me giving away a book hooks the reader they’ll keep buying until they’ve completed the series. And if I’ve done my job well, they’ll pick up one of my other series. When you look at it that way, heck yeah, I’ll give away a few books.

Heres some numbers. Last year, I gave away 7416+/- books, but I gained 500+ new readers. So far, this year I’ve given away 14276+/- books and gained 400+ new readers. Plus, I earned reviews on all the books in the promotions and backlist at Amazon and Apple Books. The pièce de résistance of this, during those events my books shot up the ranks…top ten in their categories in the Kindle Store, US and a few foreign markets. I think the thing that surprised me the most was hitting the top 100 Free Romance in the Apple Books store US and Germany.

I’m convinced because of the number of downloads and ranking, it effected the Amazon algorithm in my favor helping me sell my back list. This jump in free downloads has increased traffic at Apple Books as well.

If you ever get invited to a newsletter swap giveaway or a paid freebie promotion, do it. The benefits far out weigh the imagined loss in revenue.

Enjoy the rest of the month.

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The Mystery of the Solway Firth Spaceman

July 3, 2021 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger, Starting a Novel Series with a Partner by E. J. Williams tagged as 1960s, Men in Black, mystery, Photos, space, Spacemen

“We went on a normal outing and picked our spot,” Jim Templeton recalled of his May 23, 1964 outing. They sat down to take a picture of his 5-year-old daughter. He never expected anything out of the ordinary.

When they developed the pictures they found a figure of someone…or something.

Templeton contacted the Kodak Company. They found nothing out of the ordinary and offered a reward to anyone who could prove the photo was faked. Interestingly enough, the reward was never claimed.

The photograph eventually came to the attention of the local paper, the Cumberland News. A media frenzy followed. It was picked up by the Daily Mail and Express. Mr. Templeton began receiving letters from all over the world.

He then received a visit from two “Men in Black” who wanted to be taken to the location where the image was taken. They referred to each other only as Number 9 and Number 11.

Just days after Templeton had taken his photograph, the planned launch of a Blue Streak missile in Woomera, South Australia on the other side of the world was aborted by technicians who reported seeing two men in the firing range. Upon later seeing the Solway Spaceman picture on the front page of an Australian newspaper, they were stunned as the figure looked the same as the figures they saw close to the missile.

Templeton’s picture spiked public interest due to the space race between the United States and Soviet Union, and because the image behind his daughter looked like a NASA Astronaut.

More than four decades later, an explanation was finally found. Another photo taken that same day showed Elizabeth and her mother Annie. Annie was wearing a sleeveless dress of a very light blue color. They deducted that the “spaceman” was just Annie, with her hair tied giving the impression of an astronaut visor, walking away from her daughter. Templeton, however, remembers his wife was standing behind him when the photo was taken.

The eerie photograph can still send a chill

Janet Elizabeth Lynn
Author of mysteries, checkout my website

Check out our latest Skylar Drake Mystery.

Click on the covers for more information. Hover over the cover for buy links,

SLICK DEAL

GAME TOWN

STRANGE MARKINGS

SLIVERS OF GLASS

DESERT ICE

STONE PUB: An Exercise in Deception

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Multi-talented author Debra Holland and her Montana Sky Series!!

July 2, 2021 by Jann Ryan in category Jann says . . . tagged as historical romance, Montana Sky Series, sweet romance

Psychotherapist Debra Holland, Ph.D is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of the Montana Sky Series, sweet, historical Western romance. She’s a three-time Romance Writers of America Golden Heart finalist and one-time winner. In 2013, Amazon selected Starry Montana Sky as a top 50 greatest love stories pick. Her latest book is Beyond Montana’s Sky.

Dr. Debra is also the author of The Gods’ Dream Saga (fantasy romance) and the nonfiction books, The Essential Guide to Grief and Grieving and Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude: a Ten-Minute eBook. She’s a contributing author to The Naked Truth About Self-Publishing.

Learn more about her at https://debraholland.com

We’re here today with the multi-talented author Debra Holland, who will be talking about her award winning Montana Sky series and her writing.

Jann: You may have had a slow beginning, but when Wild Montana Sky made its debut in 2011, your writing career took off like a shooting star that is still shinning!! There are more than 28 books in this award-winning series. What is your secret to creating these wonderful characters and books?

Debra: Wait, there’s a secret? Haha. I don’t know the answer. I’ve had a lot of Montana Sky stories in my head for a long time, years in some cases. I’d often write the first scene of a book long before it was time to write that book. Then I keep a file on each story idea and add snippets as they come to me.

By this time, my town of Sweetwater Springs and the people in it are very real to me. That helps when creating new stories.

Jann: Do you think this series could someday come to an end?

Debra: Luckily, I have plenty more Montana Sky stories in my head. Getting them on paper…that’s always the hard part. I do plan to move to Montana Sky contemporaries at some point.

Jann: Do you have plans to write additional novels for The Gods’ Dream Saga or the Twinborne Trilogy? These fantasy romance novels have been well received by readers.

Debra: Yes and yes. The problem is that the fantasy series (The Gods’ Dream Saga) doesn’t sell nearly as well as the historical series. So it makes more sense to write Montana Sky stories. In fact, I priced the ebook of Lywin’s Quest book one of Twinborne Trilogy at $9.99, because I’m hoping no one will buy it. I don’t want to feel guilty for not (yet) finishing that series.

Jann: You have a busy schedule as Dr. Debra Holland, psychotherapist and corporate crisis/grief counselor. How do you keep your life balanced?

Debra: I don’t do anything full time. Pre-Covid, I spent a day at my office seeing psychotherapy clients, and the corporate crisis/grief work would drop on me any time and last for a few hours to several days. I’d write on the days I wasn’t working as a psychotherapist. (During Covid I’d saw people on Zoom.)

But I also carry around my laptop or hardcopy pages of my book, so I can write or edit between seeing clients.

I’ve been working almost full-time at a hospital since February, which is unusual for me. The job is supposed to last until the end of July. Unfortunately, the hospital staff are busy, work long shifts, and have a mentally tough mindset, so they haven’t really been coming to me for counseling in the way they should. So I’ve had a lot of time to write.

Jann: Tell us about Montana Sky Publishing? How did it come about?

Debra: Amazon approached me to open up a Montana Sky Kindle World, where authors wrote in my “world” and uploaded the books to the Kindle World portal. The authors would have a contract with Amazon, and I wouldn’t have anything to do with the editing or publishing process. So I invited many of my friends to write MSKW stories. Then, after a few years, Amazon closed down Kindle Worlds, stranding my authors.

So, feeling guilty, I opened a publishing company for those books as well as for new ones. A lot of my authors are from OCC—Louella Nelson, Linda Carroll-Bradd, Kristy Phillips, Alexis Montgomery, Patricia Thayer (Pat Wright,) Shauna Roberts (a former member,) and the late Linnea Alexis (Joyce Ward).

I’m slowly putting the books into audio, starting with Louella Nelson’s Harper Ranch Series, and OCC member Mary Castillo is our awesome narrator.

Jann: You have a great website. How involved were you in its creation?

Debra: Very involved. The same company has done all my websites–my writer’s site, my professional site, and the Montana Sky Publishing site. The graphics were done by another OCC member, Lex Valentine.

Jann: What are you working on now?

Debra: It’s been a year since I published Beyond Montana’s Sky. I’m jumping around between a novella trilogy and two other novellas and a contemporary short story.

I’ve also written three long nonfiction articles for medium.com.

But what I’ve really been working on since December is adapting both the Montana Sky Series and The Gods’ Dream Saga into television streaming series. Writing a pilot involved a whole new learning curve. So it’s been a lot of work (about four drafts each) but also a lot of fun. I’ve been working with industry mentors (a different one for each series) and the pilots are ready to go out.

But before that, I’ll have to put together a pitch document, which is almost as much work as writing the pilots and not nearly as much fun. Actually, not fun at all!

I have Sower of Dreams in a screenwriting contest and so far it’s moved through being a semi-finalist to a quarter-finalist. Luckily, if it actually becomes a finalist, I can exchange the script for the latest one, which is a lot different than the original.

Jann: Do you find yourself returning to certain themes in your stories? What? Why?

Debra: As a grief counselor, I have a lot of themes of loss and grief and moving through painful challenges to find love and happiness.

Jann: What’s the worst writing advice you ever received?

Debra: The worst advice is an author or guru who tells you to write a certain way. (I’m not talking issues of craft, which is something all writers need to learn.) I think everyone has their own writing style and what works for one person won’t work for another. That doesn’t mean you can’t experiment to see if something will work for you. But stay true to yourself.

Jann: Have you ever suffered writer’s block? If so, how did/do you get past it?

Debra: Not really. There might come a part in the story where I’m stalled, mostly because I’m missing what comes next or how to make the story work. Sometimes, I just skip that section and keep on writing. I’ll go back and finish it when I figure it out. Other times, I’ll stop and take a day or two to think through what comes next, sometimes brainstorming with another author or authors.

Jann: Where can we get your books?

Debra: All my books are on Amazon.

Jann: Do you have a website, blog, twitter where fans might read more about you and your books?

Website

Facebook

Thank you Debra for spending time here on A Slice of Orange. It’s been a real pleasure. Have a Happy 4^th of July everyone!!