April 1st is approaching, and...

The good news is we're selling more books. The bad news is that makes doing payroll a longer and more complicated process.

April 1st is time for quarterly reports and pay checks again. Some will be large, some will be small and a few won't have any sales at all, but all the books have been marketed at many of the larger sites on the web--as many as we can get to.

Each of those sites has to be checked for the numbers of who sold what, the data has to be integrated and compiled, so that each author is paid for every sale they made, no matter where it happened.

This is a complicated process and must be done in the morning when I am fresh, for the last thing I need is to make a mistake. So expect it to take some time away from our regular work. What that means is that if your book is in the process, it will remain in the process, but will likely go on hiatus until the 350-some authors have all been paid what they are owed--a week or two at best.

On the work front this week --

Galleys came back this week from:

Terry L. White for CHESAPEAKE VISIONS

KS Brooks for THE KISS OF NIGHT

Shel Damsky for DEATH ON APPEAL



Galleys went out to:

Elizabeth Eagan-Cox for GHOST MEETS AN ANGEL

Erin Aslin for THROUGH THE CLOUDS


Post production corections came in on:

Joan L. Cannon's MAIDEN RUN


Final Corrected Files went out to
David Berardelli for DEMON CHASER


Books that went to press again (repeat submissions):

Jeanine Malarsky's MAGGIE'S MIRAGE

Elena Bowman's TIME-RIFT


I also finished the typesetting for the non-fiction book
FROM JESUS TO HEAVEN WITH LOVE, by Barbara Garro.

Also please bear with me as April 1 is coming around and the good news is we're selling more books, but the bad news is it will take me longer to pay authors.

arline

Never draw to an inside strait -- writing tip

That was my Daddy's advice when he taught me how to play poker. Do you ever play poker? When I was a kid I wasn’t very good. I always drew to inside straights. I’d keep all my face cards, even if I had a pair of threes. Then I took college math at the advanced age of 40, and learned to figure the odds. I win at poker a lot more often these days.

Now, let’s talk about marketing. Do you play the lottery? Entering writing contests is a lottery. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people enter them, and the outcome is controlled by a matter of the judges' personal taste. The story the selection committee likes best is judged the winner. Still it’s okay to buy a lottery ticket once in awhile. Someone will be a winner and you might just get lucky. But I wouldn’t view not winning as a “failure.” A lottery ticket is an opportunity, never a guarantee.

Writing is a game, too. And marketing stories is also a game. Like any game, it has rules. Manuscripts must be neat, clean and error free. The story must be as good and well written as you can make it. Then you choose magazines that best fit your story’s premise and you also (if you’re into poker) choose markets carefully by the odds. At first you don’t concern yourself with money, but choose new magazines (who are looking for new writers) or you choose magazines that don’t get many submissions.

Where do you think the odds are best? At Redbook where they receive 10,000 manuscripts a year and buy 10? Or at Rosebud where they get about 500 manuscripts a year and buy up to 40?

What if Rosebud is no longer in business -- small magazines come and go, after all. New ones often advertise in the classifieds at WRITER'S DIGEST and that's one good reason for reading the ads....

Saw my first Dandelion today! -- Recipe

It is spring for sure. And here's a recipe from Mary Cox (Bilz) Pace to prove it.


Mary Cox-(Bilz) Pace’s Dandelion Wine

1 gallon Boiling water
2 qt. Dandelion blossoms
3 lb Sugar
1 Lemon; thinly sliced
1 tbsp Good yeast (If using powdered yeast, mix 1 pkg. in half a cup of lukewarm water before adding to the pot and do NOT add it until after pot cools to lukewarm.

Put blossoms in a large kettle and pour boiling water over them. Let stand 1 hour. Strain, add sugar to liquid, boil a little and skim. Allow to Cool.

When lukewarm, add lemon and yeast. Let stand 24 hours, then strain and put into sterilized clean Mason Jars or wine jugs, filling (with some room at the top) as it’s working until only the impurities (lemon, etc.) are left in the bottom of the pot. The wine will be a beautiful pale gold color.

(In making this wine, be careful to keep all stems out, as they make the wine taste rank and give it a dark color). Seal tightly.

Contributor’s Note: Since I’m quadriplegic, I’ll get my sister Donna or my niece Jennifer to pick the dandelions. Then my Mom or Dad will do the thing with the boiling water, sugar, and Mason Jars. Then if it turns out well, I’ll just smile and say, “It’s my recipe!”

Contributed by Mary Cox(Bilz)-Pace, author of How to Promote Advertise and Market Your Published Book (with Arline Chase)...A step-by-step guide that offers tools you can integrate in your own marketing plan....Marketing strategies that have been used by authors to pull their books out of boxes, onto book store shelves, and into a customer's hands.

Update

My business partner, Sandy, was down for a couple of days catching up, so I didn't do much on line. Instead we caught up on things and played with the new computer.

Goint to press in paper this week will be:

MAGGIE'S MIRAGE, by Jeanine Collins Malarsky

DEMON CHASER, by David Berardelli

Galleys received back this week, and corrections will be done next on:

CHESAPEAKE VISIONS by Terry L. White

DEATH ON APPEAL, by Shel Damsky

More later....

No Wrong Way to Do IT -- Writing tip

There's no wrong way to do this. In the beginning, teachers told me again, and again, what I must NOT do. Quite often that advice was contrary to my own instinct for a good story and now that I am a "more mature" writer, I wish I had listened more to my own gut and less to those you said, "YOU CAN'T."

In my writing tips, I will try to give you some pointers on how to do things including how to make up characters. But take it all with a grain of salt. Because it's not always a good idea to limit your character's experiences OR your own. In fiction, your imagination almost always comes into play, when you ask yourself the question, "What if--?"

So ask, "What if?" and then follow your instincts. Don't let anyone tell you, you can't. As Jean Auel once said, when you have written 400,000 words, you will know how to write. So spend your time writing, not worrying about HOW.

Write in Scenes, not Chapters - Writing Tip

In the beginning, I planned everything. Then found that, for me, the characters oten had other plans.

I have learned never to divide my book into chapters until it is finished. I just write the story all in one big file. I also never pad the story to make it a certain length and I don’t advise you to do that either. Write the story one scene at a time. Then go on to the next and the next and so on, always following the action. Some scenes will be only a few paragraphs. Some will be several pages long. Mine average about five pages. Though they can be less than one and up to nine. If a scene runs more than nine pages, I know I’ve lost track of something.

Once the story is finished, I go back and put chapter headings in at scene breaks, between 15 and 20 pages at a time. If I want a three chapter sample, I can go and do that at the beginning of the book -- copy and paste those pages into a separate file called sample, and so on. But I don’t like to break the story up until it is pretty well finished.

The reason is that quite often I find I need to insert scenes in places I had not anticipated.

For instance: in GHOST DANCER, I had no plans for Elaine to come west. She was only to be mentioned as a reason for Christy’s leaving home. Then I wrote a scene and Elaine walked in the middle ot it, saying, “I’ve had a perfectly miserable trip!”

I wrote her out, but she kept coming back. So then I had to go back and write in a scene where she found out a secret and left home, and another scene to show the perfectly horrible trip, and so when she showed up on the train, she had been foreshadowed and the reader was ready for her – and not as shocked as I had been.

Prizewinning Watergate Salad - Recipe

Oysterback Jell-O Mold-off’s Prizewinning Watergate Salad

1 (3 3/4 oz.) box Pistachio flavor instant pudding (prepare according to the directions on box)
1 2 oz. can pineapple
1 9 oz. container Cool Whip
½ cup pistachio nuts
½ to 1 cup miniature marshmallows

Combine instant pudding with Cool Whip and stir until creamy. Add other ingredients, place in mold, and refrigerate over night.

Contributed by Helen Chappell, author of the OYSTERBACK TALES I and II, as well as the “Sam and Hollis” mystery series,SLOW DANCING WITH THE ANGEL OF DEATH, DEAD DUCK, etc. Her short stories are available at www.fatbrain.com. Her books are available at www.writewordsinc.com, and Helen insists that no cookbook is complete without a recipe that includes mini-marshmallows, or tater-tots, or both.

The Eyes Have It -- writing tip

You might want to watch how you use eyes. I have seen printed stories, where eyes "slid up and down" someone else's body, "dropped into a coffee cup," and "rolled around the floor." Good editors catch such phrases, as with few exceptions eyes, of anatomical necessity, remain inside one's head. People with little compassion and a mean sense of humor make cruel fun of "wandering eyes." Sometimes you can substitute "gaze," "glance," or "look."

Second print galleys going out today for

the following books:

Berardelli DEMON CHASER

Malarsky MAGGIE'S MIRAGE
Also,

Elena Bowman's TIME RIFT will be reposted to Create Space ONE MORE TIME, today. My regrets, Elena. I thought the files looked pretty good, but CS still is unhappy with them.

Shelley is working on a number of books at her house and I am typesetting

FROM JESUS TO HEAVEN WITH LOVE by Barbara Garro. Non-fiction books are complicated to typeset, but this one should be worth the effort.

arline

National "Read an E-book Week" March 7 to 13

Get a free e-book to celebrate National E-book Readers Week.

To honor e-book readers everywhere we will be celebrating here at www.ebooksonthe.net by handing out free PDF copies of any e-book title on the site this week (one to a customer) if the recipient will e-mail me the title and ask for their free copy. Just e-mail me at arline@mail.com with the words FREE BOOK on the subject line of your e-mail.

This offer is good until March 13 only and will only be publicized on this blog, or by word of mouth from its members. Yes, it's okay to tell your friends, or to post this information on lists, but the information must start from here :)

arline chase, publisher

Catching UP and FW Best Sellers

Print Galleys will go out by this weekend on the following titles:

DEATH ON APPEAL. by Shel Damsky
CHESAPEAKE VISIONS, by Terry L. White
DEMON CHASER, by David Berardelli
KISS OF NIGHT, by K.S. brooks
OZARK WOMAN, by Terry Piper

Best Sellers* on Fictionwise this week
*only for Write Words, Inc., not for the whole site!**
are listed as follows:

BEST SALES
1. MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES, by Agatha Christie
2. THE SECRET ADVERSARY, by Agatha Christie
3. TRAVELER, by David Yates
4. FORCED PARADISE, by J. C. Compson
5. LOVE AND WAR IN TEXAS, by Jack Lyle
6. MINDER'S OATH, by Nina M. Osier
7. HIGH PLACES, by Nina M. Osier
8. EXILES AMONG THE STARS, by Nina M. Osier
9. THE LITTLE PRINCESS, by Frances Hodgeson Burnett
10. THE ODYSSEY, by Elena Dorothy Bowman

HIGHEST RATED BY READER RESPONSE
1. THE LITTLE PRINCESS, by Frances Hodgeson Burnett
2. CAPTAIN BLOOD, by Raphael Sabatini
3. GHOST DANCER by Arline Chase
4. MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES, by Agatha Christie
5. BODILY HARM, by Arlene Stadd
6. THE SECRET ADVERSARY, by Agatha Christie
7. LADY LIGHTKEEPER, by Nikki Leigh
8. DARK ELF: Red Knight Chronicles, Vol. 2 by Ray Morand
9. SLOW DANCING WITH THE ANGEL OF DEATH, by Helen Chappell
10. BLEEDING HEARTS, by Josh Aterovis

** Please remember that these ratings are based on sales from our small company and not for the whole site. Reader response ratings are based on ratings given by buyers after they have read, however.

Banana Bread - Recipe

Dean Hinmon’s Super Healthy Banana Bread

2 1/3 Cups flour - I use whole wheat
1/8 Cup sugar
1/4 Cup chopped walnuts (optional, I sometimes throw in some roasted, unsalted soy nuts)
1 Cup raisins
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
7 large bananas pureed in the blender.
1 teaspoon vanilla

Notice that there is no oil, eggs, butter, and only a few grains of sugar in this recipe. Super healthy, yet delicious!

Thoroughly mix the dry ingredients, then blend the bananas, add vanilla and mix banana mix with dry ingredients. Pour into an oiled loaf pan and cook at 325-F or 163-C degrees for an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Depending upon your altitude and attitude.

Eat a slice and then you can leap tall buildings and fly at the speed of a bullet. Feed it to insensitive people and they suddenly take on the caring personality of guardian angels.

The banana bread has other uses. It can be used as a door stop, an anchor for the boat and can be attached to a steel pipe for weight lifting. It can be used as a step for reaching into a high shelf in the cupboard. There is a case reported recently of the woman who killed her husband by beating him over the head with a loaf and then hid the murder weapon by eating it. Generally, this use is not recommended. You can't make banana bread while incarcerated.

The banana bread IS recommended as a cure for all diseases known to man and woman kind, but for athletes foot, contrary to logic, it should be taken internally. One man applied the banana bread to his toes and an army of ants ate off his leg right up to his hip in the short time it took him to smack his lips after downing the remainder of the slice. There is a case reported in the AMA Journal of a woman in the last stages of terminal cancer who ate a fourth of a loaf of this banana bread and did not die from the cancer. She died from indigestion– only kidding, this bread is healthy and delicious.

Contributed by Dean Hinmon, author of The Fate of Haile Selassie’s Great-grandchildren... When foreign correspondent Mitch Hanley lands in Ethiopia he thinks that the game of death will be the same as in Vietnam and every hot spot he has covered since. He is wrong. In Addis Ababa he becomes a central player, in trying to save the lives of five children, caught in between the Marxist assassination squad and an unknown killer--an unnamed fellow correspondent who might well be the young woman with whom he is falling in love.

***

Be Concise - Writing tip

I remember when I couldn’t write “Hello” without using 500 words and there are those who still call me long-winded. But it’s real good discipline and will serve you well in the future if you can learn to write short. Hemingway once bet someone he could write an entire short story in six words.

According to some, he was very drunk at the time and the other writers who hung around at Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West were certain they would win.

“You need plot, a character who changes, and a resolution,” they warned, naming the elements necessary to every story. Hard to do in six words. Everyone agreed it couldn’t be done and put a lot of money on that. Hemingway who had been telling someone with writer's block that he could find stories anywhere, pointed to the classified section of the newspaper — and he collected his bet.

The ad said, “For sale. Baby shoes. Never Used.”

Nancy Madison's Potato Puff - Recipe

Nancy Madison's Potato Puff

8 ounce package of cream cheese
4 cups of mashed potatoes (about 3 large bake potatoes)
1 beaten egg
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
1/3 cup drained, chopped pimiento
1 teaspoon salt and dash of pepper

Soften the cream cheese, blend with mashed potatoes. Add the beaten egg, finely chopped onion, drained, chopped pimiento, salt and dash of pepper..Bake in buttered 1 quart casserole 350-F or 177-C for 45 minutes. Serve at once.Serves 4.

Contributed by Nancy Madison, author of What the World Needs Now and Clues to Love ...Investigating a murder, DCI Nick Connor concludes Kate was the intended victim....While Nick struggles to find the elusive killer, he falls in love with Kate, in spite of his vow to never love again. Can Nick catch the killer before the killer catches Kate?