Tag Archive: “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”


Taking a Few Steps Back…

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June 13, 2019

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Every so often we come to a realization that something we’ve been doing hasn’t been working as well as we’d hoped. Admitting you didn’t do something right the first time is not a sign of weakness, it actually shows growth. Learning from your mistakes is just as important as getting things right the first time.

Recently, during a book release party (for someone else) a mutual friend who is a librarian started talking to me about the Para-Earths series. She’s watched trends and keeps a close eye on what’s popular in the industry and she pointed out to me that the Para-Earths might actually do better aimed at a Young Adult (YA) audience. This would still make the books quite available to the adult crowd of course, while opening the series to more readers.

I gave this a lot of thought, especially after several others readily agreed with her. So I spent the next week or doing some serious research into YA books. To my surprise, what I found there really made me rethink my marketing strategy when it came to part of our Para-Earth Series.

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In “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”, two seventeen-year old girls who played a very big part in the story. Now the entire story is told in the same style as Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” where various characters tell part of the story, allowing the author to use the first person perspective, while giving multiple points of view at the same time.

However, the fact that we had two young characters did not necessarily qualify the book itself to be considered YA, did it? Well, when I went back over the book and carefully looked over the number of entries by each character I found that those two young ladies made up a large majority of the entries.  Plus their experiences carried most of the story as well. I then checked with several other readers who loved the book who confirmed that they felt the story was mostly centered around Lisa and Marisa (the young ladies in question).

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This left me with a lot more thinking to do. Despite receiving 4 and 5 star reviews, both “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” and its companion anthology “The Vampyre Blogs – One Day At a Time”, have not performed as well as “The Bridge” and “The Ship” in overall sales. So the question for me now became “Have I been marketing these incorrectly the whole time?” The answer seems to be a resounding YES!

So what to do about this? Was it too late to try and re-market the books as YA instead of simply a mature audience?

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Designing Your Own Cover: Not As Easy As You Might Think — Part II

Filed under: About Writing, Uncategorized — 2 Comments
January 18, 2019

When it came time to work on the cover for “The Vampyre Blogs – I: Coming Home” I was finding myself coming up against a wall as far as cover art ideas went.  The other books had been relatively easy because of their two word titles: “The Bridge” and “The Ship”. But this time the title was much longer, so I needed to come up with something different.

Since we were using the word ‘blogs’ as part of the title, I thought about incorporating a computer or laptop into the picture.  So I experimented with Adobe Photoshop and came up with this image:

While very effective in many respects, some people told me they missed seeing my original artwork on the cover. Many said it helped make our books stand out more.  So I began wracking my brains for a a new cover style and wasn’t coming up with much. Mind you, at this point we had not even started writing the novel and decided not to worry about it.  I figured once the story was written I’d get some inspiration from what we created and borrow from a scene in the story.

Eventually we completed the first draft and started work on a second one and I still hadn’t come up with any solid ideas for the cover.  I’d considered showing the interior of a coffin with a laptop resting on top of the occupant who was typing on it.  The logo I created for the original image could stay and I thought that would be great.   However, my skills at designing and creating a convincing laptop in soft pastel was not up to snuff.  Furthermore, our vampyre does not use a coffin at all, so I scrapped that idea.

Finally, Helen suggested the idea of a room in the old manor that belongs to our vampyre, and to have a laptop amidst all the antique furnishings and cobwebs.  Alas, my skills at making a decent-looking computer had not improved as much as I’d have liked so that held me back.  However, another thought did occur to me.  What if I created an image where we are looking out of one of the windows of the old manor and seeing a shadowy figure (our vampyre) on the night he finally comes home to stay.

I quickly began sketching and testing out a color palette for the view outside the window. Since he was coming home during the autumn I figured lots of leaves on the ground would be appropriate, so I whipped out my reds and golds pastels and set to work. As soon as I got the image started I knew I was onto something. Looking over the story I reminded myself that we’d established there was a small family cemetery out back, and it occurred to me that would be the first place Nathan (our vampyre) would go upon deciding to come home for good. And because people associate coffins with vampires, I threw in the shadow stretching from behind him to help prospective readers make the connection of what he was right away.

 

As view outside the window evolved, I still had to decide whose room the window belonged to. To create a touching contrast to the little cemetery and shadow, by making it the room of his little sister who he adored with all his heart. So I researched some toys a little girl might have back in the 1860’s and put them in front of a window.

After I got the image just the way I wanted, I had to decide on how to present the title and our names. First I tried putting the lettering on top of the image as seen below:

I didn’t really care for this as I really wanted the image to be seen, so I went for borders on the top and bottom of the image and placed the words there instead.

  As you can see I wound up having to put borders on the sides as well, because too much of the image was being cut off in those locations.

Up until this point all the books were novels, but Helen and I decided to try a collection of short stories involving characters from our Para-Earth Series. Most of the collection focuses on the characters from “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”, however there are a few that also feature some familiar faces from “The Bridge” and “The Ship”. Of course when dealing with multiple stories, we had to come up with a whole new concept for cover art.

On this occasion Helen asked to be the one to take up the challenge and I agreed, especially after I heard what she had in mind. Instead of a single image, she was planning on doing a number of small pieces that would capture scenes from some of the stories in the collection. Originally the idea was to go with eight images, but due to time and life demands she completed four and we went with those.

We thought about using these on the front cover:

Then the other two on the back:

However, once more once we started putting the lettering over the images, things weren’t working. Dark letters blended in too much, and lighter ones were too startling. So we went with all four, sandwiched between a green border with the lettering:

Again this left the images clean and easy to see, while also keeping the lettering away from the edges without being cut off as had happened on “The Bridge” and “The Ship”. I also really liked this concept as it allowed us to give visual glimpses of what the reader would encounter in the collection.

We’ve already decided to keep doing multiple image covers for future short story collections which we already have under way. But that’s a tale for another entry.

Keeping with creating your own cover art, we recently got back to work on our novel “The Door”, which is a sequel to both “The Bridge” and “The Door”, and focuses on the cast of characters from those books. With this in mind, I knew we’d want to keep the cover for the latest installment in the same style as those two books. So I began sketching and experimenting with designs….

TO BE CONTINUED…

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REFLECTIONS ON 2018 AND WHAT’S TO COME IN 2019

Filed under: About Writing, Personal, Uncategorized — 2 Comments
December 31, 2018

With 2018 drawing to a close, I’m sure a lot of us are reflecting on what’s happened in each of our lives as well as wondering about what 2019 holds. For me 2018 was a strange year of revelations, new opportunities, as well as upheavals. Two bouts with bronchitis, the second one becoming pneumonia, really took a lot out of me and my vacation time from work. I was supposed to be off this last week and not returning until January 2nd.

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Our 1st anthology “The Vampyre Blogs – One Day At a Time” had been slated to be released in late September/early October but didn’t see the light of day until early this month (not a great time to push a new book, not when the big publishers are pushing a bunch of titles they’ve been holding back in time for the holidays). However, things will pick up. I know this from past experience, so I’m not too worried.

However, the big question of course is what can you all expect from us in the coming year? Well, quite a lot. Firstly, we’ve been gathering our thoughts on a number of writing topics to share here on the blog. We’ve got plenty of insights from our adventures to share with you all, so we hope you’ll still be checking in regularly and re-sharing our posts with others.

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Secondly, there are things that have been happening behind the scenes we haven’t shared with you yet such as what’s been happening with the collaborations. As you know, my high school friend Rich Caminit and I have been working by e-mail and Skype on a project involving Chinese vampires and actual historical events. I am happy to announce that the first draft of our collaboration “The Pass” is nearing completion as I write this post. Part of the reason the project has taken so long is the fact that the story was becoming more and more lengthy and farther removed from the Para-Earths vision Helen and I created. So, we decided to make “The Pass” the first in a new paranormal/historical set of books we are considering calling “The Paranormal History Series” (tell us what you think in the comment section below please). Furthermore, we decided to break the story up into two books because it was getting so long. We’d already found the perfect cliffhanger for the end of the “The Pass”, as well as a startling beginning for the second part of the story which will culminate in a battle scene of epic proportions.

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Thirdly, Helen and I have embarked on yet another new series that she is taking the lead writing role on, called “The Forever Detective Series”. The first book is “Forever’s Too Long”. Set in the late 1940s, the detective, a former policeman and officer has opened his business as a private investigator to find out that the cases he’s working on are leading somewhere there is no coming back from. She’s already written over 19,000 words of the first book and we have already started building a website for it over at https://foreverdetective.com/. Mind you the site is still under construction, but if you click on the “Blog” tab you’ll find some interesting background information about her leading man. And there will be a lot more coming soon to that site, so you might want to bookmark it. Her current goal is to have the book out by summer so stay tuned. She’s a lot faster writer than I am so the likelihood of it being out on time is very good.

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Finally, I want to let you all know that the long-awaited sequel to “The Bridge” and “The Ship” is once more fully under way. “The Door” takes up where both those books ended in a hospital where the wail of an infant leads Alex Hill, Veronica Ross, Cassandra Elliott, and Julianna Cloudfoot to face old and new threats from the realms of two different Para-Earths. Part of the reason this book has taken so long to write was the simple fact that I had a good idea of what I wanted the main story to be, but not a clear vision of how it should unfold. This is what led to our branching off and doing “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” tale, which was more clear and complete in my mind.

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That book also allowed me to find the missing pathways I needed to get “The Door” back on track with new characters and scenes that will “bridge the gap” (please excuse the pun) between the first two books and “The Vampyre Blogs” part of our Para-Earth Series. The story that will be unfolding in “The Door” will start the beginning of bringing the casts between all three books together creating opportunities for many more stories down the road, including one that will bring Alex face-to-face with the nightmare dwelling that nearly destroyed him in every sense of the word. I am of course referring to “Harlequin House”.

As you can see, there’s a lot coming your way in 2019 and beyond. We hope you’ll keep joining us for the ride ahead. It will probably have more twists and turns than a roller-coaster, and I hope will be just as exciting.

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Until time, we wish you all a very Happy New Year, and urge you all to keep writing!

 

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Birth of a Series Part II – “What IS a Para-Earth?”

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March 8, 2018

 In my last entry I explained how I had settled on the idea of Parallel Realities for the premise of my series.  But what could I do with it that was new and different? Well as Doctor Who would say, “This is where things get a bit tricky.”

      We all know that a lot of choices are man-made, but events are also a major player in our world and our lives.  There’s an old school of thought that says, for whatever choices we make another alternate timeline exists where a version of ourselves exists who follows the path not taken.  I began pondering this concept and asked myself, “What if not just choice could lead to a parallel reality?  What if events that didn’t happen in our reality, did happen in another reality?  And what might be the consequences and effects of that event?”  This idea really intrigued me and I began to think about the concept on a much LARGER and OLDER scale…

      Current theory says that that moon we all know and love was made as a result of an event that took place in Earth’s very early childhood, long before the first dinosaurs or any life-forms evolved.  At the time our planet was much bigger than we know it to be now and it was hot and molten.  Then another planet crashed into our world and literally knocked the stuffing out of us.  Debris was scattered into space and floated there for centuries while the two worlds slowly fused into the size and shape we know now.  As for the debris, caught in the new Earth’s gravity it circled around our world and slowly coalesced and formed the moon we all know and love.  This also explains why moon rocks brought back by our visits showed the same compositions as are found here on Earth.

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      With this thought in mind, suddenly all the beings and entities I had been thinking about writing suddenly became more real to me.  They weren’t aliens from other worlds, or magical demons from other dimensions, they were Earth beings.  Just not from this reality.  They came from alternate Earths where either the creation of the moon or some other kind of cosmic event (an asteroid that missed us in this reality, actually struck and brought some microbes, or some other kind of calamity) changed that other Earth’s development which in turn altered what kind of life might or might not evolve.  I quickly realized that the possibilities were endless and that I wouldn’t have to limit myself to just one alternate version of Earth.  I’d have dozens or hundreds available for storylines…  In that moment I came up with the phrase Para-Earths.

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      Of course this led to new questions I needed to answer such as how do these beings slip out of their versions of Earth and into ours?  Do people from our Earth wind up slipping into those alternate earths?  Are the beings from these Para-Earths malevolent, friendly, or simply following basic instinct like herbivores and carnivores, etc.
      As for the how they manage to intrude into our reality I propose thinking of reality as a tree with loads of branches.  If you actually look closely you will find that branches of course give birth to new branches and in turn to the same, and so on.  Yet a number of these branches will rub up against each other at one time or another. 

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     Now if you picture Earth as we know it to be one branch, and one of those Para-Earths as another branch, they too can brush up against each other and a doorway opens between the two.  In my writings, this is a naturally occurring phenomenon that occurs every so often.  The reason no one notices is that it doesn’t always happen when someone’s around to see it, from either this Earth or the Para-Earth that is brushing up against us.  Sort of like the old “If a tree falls down in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?” concept.  Even though no one witnessed it, the event happens.  But occasionally someone is there and they see something strange in the woods or out of the corner of their eye.  However, the timing of the opening can be short or long so by the time that person who saw something out of the corner of their eye can turn to focus the event is already over.  Other times, they stare and stare, or maybe they walk towards it and suddenly the doorway closes and they’re left wondering if they need glasses or to stop drinking.
      My first two stories (“The Bridge” and “The Ship”) focused on two occasions when many years ago two openings lasted long enough for strange beings from two different Para-Earths entered our world and got stuck here. 

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        In the third installment “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”, two new dimensions were added to the mix.  First I invited my wife Helen, who knows much more about actual science and science-fiction than me (and who had also helped me develop a number of the characters and concepts introduced in “The Bridge” and “The Ship” to actually join me in writing the story.  The second dimension that was added to the endeavor was to focus on a man from our Earth being the one who intruded into a Para-Earth and the consequences of his being there for that world as well as his own. 

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    Of course there are many more stories to come.  Even now Helen and I are currently putting the finishing touches on our first anthology that mainly focuses on characters from “The Vampyre Blogs”, but also re-introduces a couple of characters from “The Bridge” and “The Ship”.  The collection will be the first of what we hope will be many and is currently titled “The Vampyre Blogs – One Day At A Time”.  And for those who are wondering, yes we are planning on a major crossover where all these characters comed together and many secrets are revealed.  

     We’re also working on at least 4-5 full-length novels, several of which are already under way.  And we have countless ideas for many more.  In time, depending on how popular the series becomes, we may invite other authors to join in and help expand the series, just as HP Lovecraft gave permission to fellow authors like August Derleth, Robert Bloch and others to expand and build upon his Cthulhu Mythos. (Note: to this day, his Cthulhu mythos is still being expanded by modern writers long after his passing back in 1937). 

     As for how many of these Para-Earths exist alongside our own, we don’t know.  Nor do we know all the different life-forms that may be encountered in the stories down the road, for not all of them have presented themselves to us, much less shared their secrets.  What we do know is that some can exist in this reality, or try to, but don’t always succeed.  Think about all those articles that appear in news feeds about the remains of ‘monsters’ being found.  Suddenly all those stories take on entirely new implications, don’t they?

         

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      In the meantime, Helen and I hope you enjoy the stories we’ve already put before you.  Let each tale open your imagination and fill it with wonder.  There are rules and science behind a lot of the lifeforms you will encounter in these books, and we will do our best to explain them.  In fact, we will be eventually adding another section to the blog called “Encyclopedia Para-Earth” or something along those lines where Helen will go into the science aspects of our series, exploring certain creatures we use and their real-life counterparts from the real world.
      We’d also like you all to keep in mind that not every Para-Earth being we introduce to you and our characters will be hostile. Some are simply strangers in a strange world, and just because their appearance may be monstrous, does not mean they are.  In some cases, you may find yourselves being introduced to lifeforms that have become the stuff of legends in our reality.   So strap in and join the adventure, you never know who or what you might meet along the way.
      Until next time, keep writing!

You can find our books at these online stores:

Amazon: The Para-Earth Book Series

AmazonUK: Para-Earths UK

Smashwords (Nook, Apple, Sony, Kobo, PDF): Para-Earths

Barnes and Noble: The Para-Earths Series

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PICK THIS UP IF YOU LIKE VAMPIRES!

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June 9, 2017

NEW 4 STAR REVIEW OVER ON AMAZON FOR OUR LATEST RELEASE… 

PICK THIS UP IF YOU LIKE VAMPIRES!

By Da Man on June 15, 2017

Format: Kindle Edition

I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

Do not pick this book up if you think you know everything about vampires! It will completely change your thinking about them…

Click on the link below to see the rest of the review and what others have been saying:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MDO8SLO/ref=series_rw_dp_sw

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Updates From The Author…

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April 8, 2017

First I’d like to thank everyone who took advantage of my “Hobbit Birthday” party.  Over 30 copies of “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” were snatched up.  While I would’ve loved to have seen triple digits, I’m not going to complain.  The book got into more readers hands and that is always a good thing in my opinion.  Hopefully, this will lead to some more reviews.  Sadly, Nathan and company have been stuck in the single digits as far as reviews go on Amazon, with absolutely none on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.

So I’m going to offer everyone who is interested the opportunity to get a free copy of the book (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, PDF, even paperback) in exchange for a fair and honest review.  Reviews are important to bringing a book to a wider audience.  We all know that whenever we think about purchasing a book or almost anything these days, we check online to see what kind of rating the item has.

Naturally, I’d love to see a lot of 4 and 5 star reviews, but I leave that up to the reviewers.  I ask for honest and I mean it.  If you found the book wasn’t to your taste and you don’t wish to leave a review, just let me know so I’m not left in limbo wondering what happened.   The only thing I ask is that the reading and the review be done within 2 months of you getting the book.  If by chance you volunteer and life gets in the way, again just let me know.  Life happens to all of us including yours truly, so no worries.  Just stay in touch is all I ask.

So if anyone wishes to be a reviewer, please e-mail me at:

allan.krummenacker@gmail.com

Please include your name, e-mail address, and what book format you want and I’ll be in touch with you shortly.

 On another note…

I’m happy to announce that there will be an anthology involving my vampyre and friends, which will be released this December.  This volume will contain ‘select’ short stories from my other blog “The Vampyre Blogs – Private Edition” (link: https://thevampyreblogs.wordpress.com/).  The reason for this is that I’ve been told by a number of people that they find it hard scrolling through a bunch of old blog entries to find the short stories, even though they really want to read them.  And since that blog is over two and a half years old, I know there’s a lot of stuff to wade through.

However, the anthology will not just contain stories from here, we are including 4-5 brand new stories just for the collection, which will NOT be reproduced here.  They will only be found within the pages of the anthology itself.  The total number of tales to appear in this first anthology has yet to be decided so stay tuned for more details.

In other news:

Book 2 of the Vampyre Blogs is now officially under way.

At this time “The Vampyre Blogs – Family Ties” release date should be early October 2018 (which is why I’m releasing the anthology in the meantime, so as not to leave you all high and dry without anything new).  The story will take place two weeks after the conclusion of the first novel and will open with Nathan’s return, along with new trouble brewing.

The presence of Isabella will raise new questions and concerns for all who dwell under his roof, while an unscrupulous developer tries to influence the upcoming town council elections so he can get his hands on 1000+ acres of land Nathan’s home stands on.  Then there’s Marisa’s father. Are the cancer treatments he’s receiving really helping or will Nathan have to undergo a procedure that could leave him more vulnerable than ever to an attack from an old foe he believed had been vanquished?

Finally, “The Door” which has been plagued by numerous starts and stops has been growing and is coming along very nicely.  This book continues the saga of Alex, Veronica, Julie and Cassandra and will wrap up several lingering story fragments including who the mysterious white-haired man is that has been stalking Cassandra for the last year.  It will also reveal why the ghostly Brandon has watched over the heiress all these years, as well as introduce some new characters who will play a pivotal role in the entire Para-Earth Series in the future.

So as you can see there’s a lot going on in the writing department for me and I hope the results will please and intrigue you all.

Until next time, stay tuned to this blog and keep writing.

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My “Hobbit” Birthday Party Is Officially Started…

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March 31, 2017

The party has begun, we’ve got presents, cake, candle, plates and above all else a gift for you.  Namely a FREE Kindle copy of our latest book….

 

Just click on this link to grab your copy:

 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MDO8SLO/ref=series_rw_dp_sw

And don’t forget to grab a slice of cake to enjoy while you’re at it.  Remember, cake and reading go hand in hand, as does sharing this link with everyone you know.  The party comes to an end at midnight on April 3rd to spread the word and thanks for coming.

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 ****ALERT: HOBBIT BIRTHDAY COMING SOON****

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March 20, 2017

For those of you not familiar with a Hobbit Birthday Party it goes like this…

 

My birthday is coming up on March 30th, but instead of asking for presents I’m giving one away to anyone who wants it. The present in this case is a FREE Kindle copy of “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”! The catch… none.

I simply want to get the newest installment of the Para-Earth Series into the hands of as many readers as possible, because word-of-mouth is THE best promotion tool out there.

So stay tuned and start spreading the word. It all begins on March 30th and will last until midnight April 3rd. That’s a whole five days to grab a copy and meet the newest vampyre in town. What is he like?

For starts, he does NOT sparkle. He’s much more your traditional style of vampyre: drinks blood, sleeps in dirt, shape-shifts (animals, mist, etc.). Best of all but he’s a hundred and fifty years of fun with life experience both here and in other versions of Earth. Want to learn more?

You can check out some of the free short stories over at his Blog site:

 

 Or take a sneak peek into the novel itself at:

So start spreading the word and marking your calendar to take advantage of this opportunity. You’ll be glad you did…

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Start the New Year Off With Some 99 cent Books

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January 1, 2017

****HAPPY NEW YEAR ONE AND ALL****
 
To help start the new year off on a good note, we’ve lowered the price of all 3 books in the Para-Earth Series to just 99 cents (just the e-book versions mind you, I’m not THAT generous) for the entire 1st week of 2017.
So from now until midnight January 7th, 2017, you can get any one of these 5 star rated books: “The Bridge”, “The Ship”, or”The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”, for just a third of their normal price ($2.99). And remember, you can also gift one of these to anyone who has a birthday or other special occasion coming up.
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“The Bridge” is where it all begins as Alex Hill, reluctant psychic, and his girlfriend Police Sergeant Veronica Ross investigate what starts out as a simple car wreck but becomes much more. Soon their friends Julie Cloudfoot, niece of a Seneca shaman, and Cassandra Elliott a billionaire heiress with psychic talents and a ghostly guardian, join them to learn what has been drowning people inside cars and empty rooms. Their journey will bring them face to face with a threat that is of Earth, just not this one.
 
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The adventures continue in “The Ship” where we find Julie and Cassandra heading to Santa Cruz California to bring the ashes of Julie’s late uncle, and family shaman, to his children for a proper send off. The two women are also hoping to learn if their new romantic relationship is destined to be. As it turns out their desire to be together will be tested much sooner than they’d hoped. For not only are they being stalked by a mysterious white-haired man who has been haunting Cassandra for the past year, they also come face-to-face with a new Para-Earth threat from the sea. A legendary ghost ship aptly nicknamed “The Deathship” has arisen from water and is now hunting Cassandra. It’s goal, to make her a part of itself in a most horrifying fashion. Now the two women must rely on family and ghostly ancestors to thwart the nightmare vessel by launching an all-out attack from the decks of a concrete boat from World War I.
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In “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” we are introduced to Nathaniel Steward, who at the age of 16 left home to fight for the Union Army in the Civil War. During the battle, an event takes place that changes him and the course of his life forever. Forced to drink blood, and avoid the light of day as much as possible, he spends the next 150 years wandering the world helping others using his newfound talents of shape-shifting, turning into mist, being practically unkillable, and aging ever so slowly. But when the house he grew up in is slated for the wrecking ball he comes home to claim his birthright, not knowing that an old foe, a being he battled in the same Para-Earth where he was forever changed, has entered this world. And now it is hunting him to finish their fight and anyone who stands by him. For he is the only thing that can stop it from devouring the dead, while making more, so it can slowly envelope the entire world.
 
All three books are available in Kindle, Nook, Apple, Sony, PDF (for desktop/laptop computer users), phones, etc. Just click on the appropriate link below to get the one that works for you:
 
Kindle:
 
Smashwords:
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More About Gifting E-books…

Filed under: About Writing — 3 Comments
December 3, 2016

A short while ago, I posted about gifting e-books and how simple it was.  For those who missed that entry, I’ll briefly recap the basic idea here.  When one goes to Barnes and Noble or Amazon, you have the option of ‘gifting’ an e-book to someone and having a notice sent to their e-mail that they have a new book waiting for them.  The e-mail will also provide a link so that person can claim their gift.  Pretty straightforward and simple right?  Of course it is.  But there’s also an added feature that allows you to determine when that e-mail goes out to the recipient.  You can schedule the day that e-mail goes out so they can be notified of the present on a specific day such as a birthday…

Christmas…

Hannukah…

or whatever the special occasion is.

*To see the full entry click here: http://allankrummenacker.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-holiday-season-is-coming-and-you.html

However, there was one little feature I did not mention at the time I posted that entry and that is, any sales made as gifts will NOT be reflected in your sales report.

Why?  Because until the gift is actually claimed by the recipient the sale is not considered FINALIZED.  I only found out about this recently myself when a person who had won a copy of “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” in a poetry contest run by my fellow author/blogger Aurora Jean Alexander (blog link: https://aurorajalexander.wordpress.com/).  I knew the sale had taken place from my end and that an e-mail had been sent to the recipient informing them the book was waiting.  But after several days I saw no sign of the sale on my KDP Report.  This confused me and as the weeks progressed I still did not see the sale show up, even though when I had ‘gifted’ someone an e-book previously the sale showed up rather quickly.

Puzzled, I got into contact with Amazon and was informed that until the gift was claimed the sale was not done and would not show up in the report.  I am following up with Aurora Jean to have her get in contact with the recipient to check their e-mail, specifically their ‘Spam’ filter, so they can claim their prize.

But this experience was an eye-opener for me and based on the number of thanks and kudos I got from fellow authors about my article on gifting e-books, I felt it important to share this new piece of information here.  I recently ran a 50% off sale on all the e-books in my Para-Earth Series and did not see much sales happening at all.  Then I remembered, I had mentioned in my advertising the benefits of ‘scheduling’ when the books should arrive and will be waiting until Christmas and Hannukah to see if sales were actually much better than I’d thought.

So the lesson here is patience my friends.  I still highly recommend gifting e-books and that all writers should mention the scheduling feature of when the book is to arrive.  Just don’t be discouraged if sales don’t seem to be picking up right away.  They may be waiting in the wings to surprise you especially around this holiday season.

So until next time.  Take care, be safe as you shop, and keep writing.

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