Kindle Voyager Giveaway

I want to bring some excitement to my book launch next week so I'm sweetening the deal.

I'll be giving away Trade Paperbacks of "Flypaper Boy: Coming of Age" through a contest on Goodreads.com and I will be giving away the brand new Kindle Voyager ebook reader. 

Here's where you can find details about the reader. If you are making the leap into reading ebooks, this is the reader to get. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IOY8XWQ/ref=br_imp_ara-5?_encoding=UTF8&nav_sdd=aps&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=12A10K3JZQJDMZSFYNPE&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1924735102&pf_rd_i=507846#lost-in-story

Here's how my contest is going to work.

1) Buy Flypaper Boy: Coming of Age from the Kindle store at Amazon on September 29th. If you buy the paperback, the ebook is free until October 31st.

2) Read it.

3) Write an HONEST review on Amazon.com.

The first person to write a review will get five entries. Sorry family members and beta readers. It wouldn't be fair to let you have a head start.

But, if you're not first, don't despair. Anyone who gets an HONEST review posted in the first week, (by Sunday, October 5th at midnight pacific daylight time) will get three entries. After the first week reviews will get one drawing entry and I will accept entries until midnight, October 31st, 2014 pacific standard time.

I've already ordered the Voyager and because of demand it won't ship to me until November twenty something. But the winner should receive it shortly thereafter.

What is an HONEST review? I don't expect or want you to write a five star review just to try and win the reader. If you don't like the story, or superheroes aren't your thing, I expect you to say so in your review. II have to hear how you really feel to be able to get better at what I do or write something you do want to read.

If you haven't done so already, stop by my author site at www.facebook.com/AuthorPhilipCarroll and get the lowdown on launch day. Follow me there to get more regular updates as well as absurd observations about life.

Thanks for stopping by and keep checking back for news.

Flypaper Boy is launching

Here's the invitation I posted on Facebook. Everyone is welcome. Please come by and like my author page. It is: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorPhilipCarroll

Facebook Friend:

Please forgive this spam. It's the only time I will ever spam my personal friend list on Facebook. But, right now, you're the only friends I have and I really need your help.
You may have seen that I've been working on publishing my first novel for about the last year. Well, "Flypaper Boy: Coming of Age" is finally happening on September 29th on Amazon as an eBook for Kindle and as a publish-on-demand paperback through Createspace.com (An Amazon company).
If I can get enough sales on September 29th it will push my book onto other lists which will make it more visible to people I don't know.
The eBook for Kindle will be just $2.99. If you don't have a kindle there are free Kindle apps for every kind of phone and tablet in existence (probably. . .the big names for sure.) The POD paperback will be $12.99 and if you purchase it, you can get the eBook for free for the next thirty days.
What I need you to do:
1) Like and follow my author page. (This way I can spam you when my next book comes out.) That's https://www.facebook.com/PhilipCarrollAuthor.
2) Share this with your followers, your friends, enemies, family members, anyone with a pulse and an internet connection.
3) Stop by Amazon on Monday, September 29th and purchase a book. I should have the link up on my author site no later than Sunday the 28th. (You could just search for Flypaper Boy. I searched it on Google and didn't get any hits with those two words together. . .Big surprise?)
And that's it! Simple, huh?
The story is about a sixteen year old boy with a lame superpower. . .he sticks to things. He gets manipulated into believing he's actually a supervillain and agrees to help kidnap the teenage daughter of the President of an Eastern European nation called Burgerslovegia.
If you've read this far, thank you. I hope you'll join me on the 29th. If you have any questions or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

I'm a novelist.

I crossed another milestone today. I'd submitted my YA urban fantasy to my first choice of a publisher, and apparently they didn't think it was as good as I did. Actually, I thought they would reject it, but I wanted the LDS fiction market to get the first choice.

I got my first "Rejection Form Letter" today. I believe authors used to paper their walls with these. To do that now, I would have to print it out. Instead, I think I'll just copy it into a Word Doc and start a file for them.

Onward and upward. I've already sent it off to another publisher. There was a third publisher I found who I think is my best bet for getting published. They are using the newer method of, No Advancement, but 50% of the sales. They also accept simultaneous submissions, so if it comes to that, in another 90 days, I can shotgun it out to a few of these new wave publishers.

Other projects right now are a short story for an anthology, my 2011 Nano is still out to Beta Readers and I'm getting some good feedback. My original plan was to do my first edit on my 2013 Nano rough draft, but I've had some experiences recently that pointed me to 2010 Nano and I've started to read/edit that one.

We'll just have to see what actually ends up as my next novel.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

My wife and I watched "Hunger Games: Catching Fire" last weekend. Don't tell her, but I've made a commitment to myself to go out with her more often. We haven't done that a lot in the past. But more than a month ago we went out to a movie. It was the first weekend that Hunger Games 2 was out and I frankly didn't want to see it.

My daughter was a big HG fan and I listened to all three of the books long before the first movie came out and I though each book was better than the next. In fact, I hated the third book, and it was based on that feeling that I chose to not want to see the second movie. But at that other movie we watched, they showed a preview of Catching Fire and said, "This movie was made to be experienced on the big screen." And from the preview, you could see why, and deep down, I believed them.

The following day I overheard some people talking about Catching Fire, saying it was so much better than the first movie. My problem with the first movie is that people who hadn't read the book often totally missed the premise of the whole story. I didn't think the directors did a good job of telling the story. I believe they did do a much better job with the second. In fact, there were some things that I thought were much clearer than the book.

I listen to most books. My family keeps Audible.com financially sound. I can listen at work, while driving, and when I want to tune out the kids. It would take me years to find the time to physically read as many books as I would like. So listening suits my needs well.

Finally, I will go see the third movie. There were some things in the third book the author did that I didn't agree with, that weren't necessary to the plot and I felt were only designed to elicit emotion. Also, as a reader of speculative fiction, and defining Hunger Games as a distopian urban fantasy I felt some duality when the author treated the story as a romance. From what I've heard from those who read romance novels, it appears that our heroine must make stupid decisions to perpetuate romantic tension. Again, I felt these plot twists were gratuitous.

I can only hope movie directors will improve the third installment of The Hunger Games as well they did in the second.

Happy New Year

In the last quarter of 2013 I stepped up my writing career to a new level. I feel like I made some significant progress. Here are my four successes of that quarter:

1) Submitted a novel manuscript to a publisher. This was the major turning point for me. After five years of practicing it's time to start playing the game.

2) Purchased my dedicated website. If you are reading this, you're at my site. That's good.

3) In November I took my sixth Nanowrimo challenge. I've completed at least 50K words each year, but never really felt like I had a complete novel in that amount of time. This year I finished the story in 28 days with a total of 100,138 words. That was almost 3600 words a day.

4) I edited my 2011 Nano, "Fly Paper Boy: Coming of Age" before January 2014. That ended up with 93K words.

What I believe this shows is that I can create a rough draft in a short period of time. With this years Nano, I did outline heavily in October, but ended up only covering the first third of the plot in this novel. It also shows that I can take that rough draft and smooth it considerably in an equally short period of time.

Goals for the first quarter of 2014 are:

1) Edit "The Pariah" (2013 Nano)

2) Write a short story for Jeff Hite's new anthology about a magic portal beneath the kitchen sink. I'll look for the link.

3) Fine tune Fly Paper Boy for submission. It's currently out to several beta readers and I've asked them to read it and get back to me with in 30 days.

Other things on the back burners are outlining the second and third books for "Shooting Stars", outline for the final book of "The Price of Friendship", a first edit on "Human Magnetism", my Nano from 2012, and finally, the second book after "The Pariah".

That should be enough to keep me busy.

Norvaljoe