I have finally found a kind of groove in my marketing of books, such that people are finally reading them, and that is good, because I find out both what's good and bad. With the short stories, for example, I have nine volumes, and have gone almost fourteen years dropping them in the infinite Amazon sea, with very little actual reader response. But now readers read them, and I am slowly being recognized as a short story writer. Maybe not a great one, but at least a prolific one, one who has nine volumes out there.

I've begun to study the people who run the sites that are most successful, because they are inevitably authors too. By running the sites they get to always have their book up there among the ones that are being chosen, and if their book is chosen and actually read regularly, their ratings stay low, which is another way of saying high (lower numbers are better). They take lots of abuse, though, I'm sure. One thing I've noticed is that if you take a wide swath of writers who are out there trying to plug their own work, not all of them are truthful or even scrupulous. And the site owners carry the brunt of the problem.

One thing I'll say, though, and that is that there is a lot of really good indie stuff out there. There's a lot of crap too, since anyone can publish anything, but I have faith that the cream will move to the top and the whole world will be healthier for letting us indies figure out how to compile the whole thing on our own every time. I feel in many ways like I'm just getting started, and I am. More coming.

Walking Boots & Pleistocene Geology

Walking Boots & Pleistocene Geology
Biography of Frank Leverett

Now available on Amazon

Paperback $6.50 + shipping
Kindle $3.99
Free on Kindle Unlimited

tall corn state - now on ACX

That's right. It's narrated by Donald Davenport.
HERE
Thanks for considering it!

The other day someone asked in a post in my word-geek group, what was the best novel of the last year? She got about 120 responses and I copied them down, so as to study their titles and try to remember the authors' names. Some were mentioned several times by people who didn't read earlier responses. Some were not novels, or were not of the last year, but I wrote them down anyway. It seemed like a good collection of about 120 books that people I value liked.

Two that got mentioned several times were A Gentleman in Moscow and Where the Crawdads Sing(?), but much to my surprise some people jumped in and said they didn't like them. It was like, here were books that clearly reached a Lot of people but clearly didn't reach a few. And much to my surprise, my wife verified that about the crawdads. Didn't get through it, she said.

This brought up the question: will your book be universally acclaimed or have some enemies? I can tell by my ratings, I have a few enemies. Mostly 5's, yes, but a few 3's. I take the threes as a begrudging admiration that, well yeah it's an ok book, I just didn't happen to like it. Or, don't happen to like the author.

It's a rough life, this author's life. I can see some people falling by the wayside already. Feel free to comment on this post (I believe I will see it). Thanks for the support. To read the best of my work, scroll down the template (on the right) and click on a few things. You'll find my stories, a surprising number of which have been here, free, all along.

Pioneer Leveretts & the 1600-mile journey

$5.99 in paperback on Amazon
$3.99 on Kindle
Free on Kindle Unlimited

Part of the Leveretts in the New World series






OK I admit this is for my family, as it's about my great great great grandfather. A legend was always told in our family about a 1600-mile stagecoach journey from Maine to Illinois, and I finally found enough information about it to put it in a book. That journey was in 1834, so this book starts at the beginning of the 1800's and moves right up through the Civil War. It is third in a series. I am finding it extremely interesting that truth, sometimes, is way cooler than fiction, and, it's true. Enjoy!

Tall Corn State

My first novel
$6.99 + shipping on Amazon
$6.00 on Kindle
on Kindle Unlimited
ACX coming

There wasn't much crime among the Actualist poets or the vegetarian restaurant people of Iowa City in 1975, but there was crime in the town around it. This is a crime and coming-of-age novel about those communities at that time.

e pluribus haiku anthology: 3487 haiku

Available by paperback on Amazon: $5.99 + shipping
Available on Kindle $4.99
Available on Kindle Unlimited

This volume combines all the haiku from e pluribus haiku 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and the original, e pluribus haiku (2011). The 3487 refers to number of haiku, not kind, as they are all 5-7-5, given a somewhat unique style. This single volume will ultimately replace the others, as it contains everything that is in each of them, with an updated style.