Dew Lines

Not Dew's lines, although she had some pretty good ones.  (You have to read the Flashes to get that.)

I'm trying a promo effort for Bad Apple starting Dec. 1 so we'll see if that intrigues our potential audience.

Who wants to confess to wanting to see Joe make peace with Neal?

Update:  Did you change your vote on Joe?!  I voted for Neal to leave the band, if I can do that, you can vote for Joe to turn into a creampuff.

Bad Apple Author Interview & Giveaway

Very good questions and nicely done!  By Pretty In Fiction who are extremely, way over the top generous and I highly recommend the site.

Pretty In Fiction

Bad Apple Review

We have another convert to Maisie and The Boys' Night Out!

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, believable, the best apple I have ever encountered! November 25, 2012

By Aka

Format:Kindle Edition

Its hard to put into words the feeling you get when you come across a real treasure. This book is sensational, believable, unique and the writing is beautiful. This is work of a true talent. Be prepared to be surprised. I love this book and recommend it for everyone who is looking for something unique and captivating. 

 

 

Thank you, Aka.  We all thank you.  Tell your friends!

Bad Apple On The Slow Rise

And I mean slow but it's going in the right direction.  So thank you to everyone who has taken an interest in it.
Tell your friends if you like it.  Leave a review if you enjoyed Neal and Truly.

Hopefully over the next few weeks more readers will become aware of it.

Yes, Bittersweet 2 is still in progress. Then BA 4, I promise.  Then perhaps HHH.  No, I'm not telling you the title other than that.  No, it's not Hazy Hot and Humid but that actually could be the weather during the span of the story.  Not it's not about Hubert H. Humphrey the politician who if I barely remember, most of you certainly don't know.

How about that Lindsay Lohan trying to look like Liz Taylor?  Is that miscasting or what.

Most Wonderful Time of The Year

Why, though?
But it is.
It is a bit strange to see people fighting over cell phones and huge TVs.   That's a new definition of  "the Christmas Spirit".  Seems more like they've been DRINKING spirits and lost their inhibitions.

Since I can't seem to make youtube videos work here, click on over to the Robin O'Neill blog
Christmas in Connecticut
and see the trailer to one of my favorite movies.  I think they should have had a dinner scene, all of them at a big table, candles, Christmasy decorations.  Maybe they did and it was cut. 

I have a couple of promo events coming up in the next few weeks so that will be fun.  It's much easier to answer a good question than a not so good one--I learned that so far.

It snowed earlier today.  It's that time of year, too.

Pass or Fail

I don't believe I mentioned this Mature YA.  I'll explain why.  It contains some very difficult situations and I didn't want someone to be excited by Dream Horse and say (like an adult did not long ago) "I'm going to buy everything by Barbara!" and then find out there's sex, drugs and rock and roll in this, very unlike pony club.  So I published it under another pen name but then this Mature YA label started to surface and I thought, okay, if I can put that label on it, maybe the wrong audience won't be so easily exposed to this material.

I'm sure kids see far worse at 7:30 on their televisions.  But that's not my problem.  I have to do what I think is right.

That's why you haven't heard of this book.

Pass or Fail is based on some rumors I once heard and that's as far as I'll go with that for the moment.

It's a story about desires so deep and so demanding that all sense of what's right and good and appropriate is swept away in order to fulfill those needs.

Jingles Lamb Author Interview

I'm pleased to introduce you to Jingles Lamb, author of the quite marvelous short book, Jingles All the Way.

Portrait of Author, Jingles Lamb by evarin20

Me:  Welcome, Jingles.

Jingles: Thank you for the invitation.  Is there a snack afterwards?

Me: Lunch will be provided with a fried egg.

Jingles: Don't overcook it, I like when the yolk is runny.

Me: Can we stick to the book?

Jingles: Of course.

Me: What inspired you to write Jingles All the Way?

Jingles: ME!

Me: Could you expand on that a little for our audience?

Jingles: I had an adventure, both amusing and frightening, that I wanted to share.

Me: Please, don't make me drag this out of you.

Jingles: I was living with people who only got a dog because all their friends on the Upper West Side had dogs.  Little did I know they had another purpose in mind entirely.

Me:  What was the purpose?

Jingles: People should read the book to find out, but I will say my former people worked with numbers, really worked them, in the Financial District downtown and made me complicit in their dirty dealings.

Me: Who is your current person?

Jingles: (Sigh) Sassy Collins.  She's beautiful.  She has brown eyes just like mine and hair the color of my ears.

Me:  What is your favorite movie?

Jingles: Mastiffs of the Universe.

Me:  I think that's titled Masters of the Universe.

Jingles: It shouldn't be.

Me:  What movie star do you most identify with?

Jingles: Jet Li.

Me: What's your favorite Christmas Song?

Jingles:  Jingles All the Way.

Me:  I think that's called Jingle Bells.

Jingles:  It shouldn't be.

Me: Is there anything else you'd like to say before lunch?

Jingles:  My book is available as an ebook and as a paper version which makes it an excellent stocking stuffer.  I don't wear stockings or the ridiculous booties either.

Everyone who leaves a comment will receive a free ebook.  Merry Christmas.
If you're having trouble leaving a comment, just use the contact email and tell me if you prefer epub or mobi.

Treasure Hunt

Readers do seek out books.  It's remarkable, really, the energy they must expend.

They could read through the top 100 and buy from there
yet they are searching for something else.  Some hidden gem.
I do it, too.
You want something specific.
Amazon's search engine is quite good--not perfect.
When you search for Bad Apple, the Apple computer is at the top of the list.
You need to be specific about what you want. 
Sometimes I feel so unspecific.

Making a Reader Case of a Hardcover

This seems one of the easier methods but still looks fairly time consuming.  It requires a trip to Jo-Ann's or a craft shop for some supplies.  Having an Exacto knife in the house is always a good idea.

Sorry I can't get the vid to embed but click on the link

How to Make a Cover for a Kindle

The problemish with it is most hardcovers have a thicker spine than a reader.  If you used some batting underneath, that would compensate for the height differential.  You can still just glue it together.  I'm not sure I'd use Elmer's Glue--sorry.  I'd probably use a dedicated heavy use craft glue.  The benefit, of course, to using some batting (it's what is used in quilts and comes in long rolls, from which you can buy what you need.  Buy 12" or something like that in the thinnest weight they stock.) is that it offers padding and protection for your reader.

Flash Blog Tour

I'm a complete beginner to blog tours, but a very nice woman, Megan McDade, set up one for me in England.
Here is the first review Flash received and you can't ask for a better reception than this.  If 5 stars is Shakespeare....

My Thoughts:

Flash by Barbara Morgenroth is a book that hooked my from page one and didn't let me go until I had finished the very last page. And even then, it played on my mind for so long after I finished reading it!!!

Kip Chanin dreams of being a news photographer. Graced with talent and artistic intuition when it comes to her craft, but to support herself and her mother she puts those dreams aside and reluctantly joins the ranks of the paparazzi. She takes a photo of actor Alex Milne and from taking one single image both of their lives will be changed.

Kip is such a strong female lead. She's pretty much had to grow up incredibly quickly to be able to get by, but she has this underlying layer of vulnerability. Having been independent for so long it was nice to see the relationships that she formed and see her allow someone to get close enough to offer her some support. As for the relationship that she has with Alex... It was very much a will they or won't they, are they or aren't they scenario for a lot of the book, but there is no doubt the impact that they each had on the other!! There is definitely an intensity to their feelings for each other.

The author had this ability to end a chapter leaving me with so much anticipation as to what was going to happen next that there was no way that I could stop reading. I don't know how many times I said to myself "Just one more chapter" and before I knew it, I had completely finished the book.

I'm not usually a fan of huge cliffhangers, and let me tell you that the end of this book was a doozy that completely blew me away. It was definitely an "OH. MY. GOD. ending!!! But thank heavens that the sequel is out and ready for me to purchase and read.

Never having read anything by Barb Morgenroth before, Flash turned out to be a real gem of a book and I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to read it. A fantastic book full of gritty and real characters!!

4.5/5 Stars!!

Young Adult Book Addict

I Wanted To Be A Photojournalist

Yup, that's what I went to college for.  Then when I graduated (I'll bet there are people who've read my books and left 2 star reviews--if I'm that lucky--who doubt I even went to high school!) I taught riding.  Yes, that undoubtedly surprises those who say Charlie is full of equestrian errors.

Sigh.

I did quite a bit of equestrian photography and wound up doing the covers for my first two published books, so it's not so outlandish to think I'm doing the covers for my books now.  I started out that way even if it was traditional publishing.

I'm getting back into photography but that doesn't mean the writing part changes.  Joyful Spirit is chugging along with CB's little swish.  There's so much to fit in I'm not sure what's going to wind up in book 3.  I think book 4 (I'm optimistic!) will be titled Available.  All the middle books will be named after horses.  First one Mounted, last one Dismounted.  So I think now.

Nothing Serious

Most of us who enjoy old movies love screwball comedies.  My Man Godfrey, Bringing Up Baby, and Palm Beach Story come to mind.  Ridiculous situations with perfect scripts and wonderful actors who made it all work.  I don't think we have the knack for it anymore.

My novel, Nothing Serious, is a tip of the hat to those movies.  It's a ridiculous situation--a young woman lives her life through the internet (that's not so unbelievable!) and one day after being the victim of identity theft, Paige rips the connections out of the wall and leaves the city for a rural town.  They're nuttier than she is.  She's almost thrown in Zoning Board Jail for painting her store, Nothing Serious, colors that are too bright.

Avalon probably would have bought it but it was just when I was getting into indie publishing and I wanted to do it myself.  It's had a couple of titles and several different covers.  I like this one.  The argument would be "This illustration is from 1920!"  Yes, it is.  And there's a party in the book where everyone dresses up in Jazz Age style.  So maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.  Maybe Montlake will publish it and give it a different cover.  Otherwise in 6 months or a year, I'll give it a new cover!

For anyone interested in the process, I tried to content aware fill out the young man standing underneath her.  I can't make that function work in Photoshop so I clone stamp tooled him out, then eventually also removed the background/hills.  In Adobe Bridge Camera Raw, I improved the colors, employed clarity, brighten, saturation, sharpen, bumped the black.
In Photoshop I added a luminance because the image is deteriorating with age and I wanted to soften or smooth it out a little.  I used the dodge tool to lighten up some sections.  The title is a font called Gatsby and my name is in Minion Pro.