As an indie author one of the greatest challenges you will face occurs not when you are writing your book, but once the work is published. The writing, editing, proofreading, artwork design and publishing parts are all easy when compared to trying to make your work known to potential readers. Books are not sold in the way that other consumer goods are sold. Rarely will you be able to convince someone they need to buy and read your book. The only possible exception to this is if you are publishing a non-fiction work and are a known expert on the topic of your book. Think about it: when was the last time someone walked up to you with a book, told you what it was about and then you purchased it? Never, right? Most books are "discovered" and the decision to purchase the book is made after reading a few pages which catch the interest of the reader. Other books are sold based on recommendations made by friends or co-workers, or through book reviews. In the world of the indie author, it is not good enough just to write a good book, have an excellent, eye-catching cover and then publish it online and hope for the best. There are literally millions of ebooks and paperbacks published on Amazon alone, so your book will probably quickly become lost in the pile. So how do you make people aware of your masterpiece? You need to advertise. Now there are a LOT of businesses and people online that target indie authors and are more than willing to help you part with your hard-earned money. From my research and personal experience, most paid advertising brings little in the way of returns. Companies that offer to promote your book to thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people, will most likely just mention your book in an email blast or tweet. I like to call this the "shotgun" approach which may or may not result in any reasonable quantity of sales. So what is the best way for an indie author to make sales? Unless you have unlimited funds for advertising, which most of us do not, there are several things you can do: 1) Give free copies of your books to local book clubs. If you have written a good book, word of mouth will help sell copies and develop a fan base. 2) Set up a Facebook page and post "teasers" from your story for potential readers to discover. You can also post updates on new stories. 3) Open a Twitter account separate from your personal account, and follow other authors and post interesting tweets in order to garner interested followers. Do not only send tweets asking people to buy your book though, that is a quick way to be unfollowed. Instead, post updates, special sales, links to articles about your book and free previews. 4) Start an author webpage. This one is a must in order to establish your credibility as an author. Your books should be posted, along with links where readers can purchase them, but should also contain some interesting information about you, the author. Include a biography and tell your readers what motivates you as an author. Make sure you add a form for interested parties to sign up for updates and from this you can generate an email marketing list. 5) Start a blog. A blog is a fun way to practice your writing skills and also let potential and existing readers learn about your writing style. Do not use the blog only to try and sell your books though, include helpful information for readers that they will find of interest. 6) Use pay per click advertising on Amazon. Most indie authors use Amazon as a primary sales channel for their books, and Amazon has millions of paying customers looking for e-books, so using Amazon to make those customers aware of your work makes sense. However, you can quickly spend hundreds of dollars or more if you don't use the Amazon pay per click correctly. I have found that the most effective advertising is their manually targeted ppc ads set with a maximum daily spend. I use $5.00 per day as my maximum and once that is reached (which rarely happens), your ads are paused until the following day. In the meantime your book will be placed where interested parties can see it, often thousands of times. Since a book ad generally has to be seen by someone several times before they click on the ad and investigate it, you are putting your books in front of thousands of potential readers and only paying when someone clicks on the ad. The cost per click can be set by the advertiser and usually starts at $0.25 per click, depending on the key word popularity. Choose your key words carefully and increase the amount per click to $0.50 which should guarantee you more postings (called impressions) than at the $0.25 level. On the Amazon author boards I see a lot of indie's complaining about the lack of ad impressions, but I have found raising the cost per click rate greatly improves my impressions, and with a $5.00 daily limit, does not increase my costs. There are also a number of "free" websites where you can advertise your books but do not all guarantee placement of your ad. To guarantee your ad will be placed, most require a fee. Use the free service - it will take some time to post on each of the free websites, but you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Above all else remember that books are not fresh bread - they don't go stale. Selling books is a marathon, not a sprint, and building your reputation as an author will take time. Don't ignore the importance of advertising, but don't spend all of your time and money doing it. Instead, continue to work on your craft. If you have written a good book with an interesting story, the sales will come. #advertising #ebook #publishing

I have been an indie author now for around 9 months, and it has been quite an interesting and educational journey thus far. Sales of my first two novels have been strong, and the feedback from readers has been positive. Writing a story - a good story, one that flows, makes sense and entertains the reader - is only one part of the process. Once you have finished your story, proof-read, edited the content, formatted the layout and are happy with the results, the work is not over - not by a long shot! Once all of the writing work is finished, you need to design an eye-catching cover (contrary to what you have been taught, people DO judge a book by its cover!), write a back page synopsis that will intrigue readers, publish and then market your book. Then you sit back and wait for readers to discover your work and, hopefully, read it. Indie authors have to be more than just authors, they also have to market and promote their work, but they should never try and sell their work to readers. Books are not like other consumer products and unless you are writing a non-fiction book that contains information that someone has to have, nobody really needs to read your fictional masterpiece. This doesn't mean you cannot sell your book, but you cannot sell the book by trying to convince people to buy it. Instead you need to make potential readers aware of your work, provide snippets of your story as a teaser, and get potential readers interested in perhaps reading your story. Think about this: has anyone ever come up to you and talked you into purchasing a book? No, probably not. Instead you are likely to have purchased a book based on the recommendation of a friend, through picking up an interesting looking book at a book store or library or you became aware of a certain book or author as the result of a review you read. As an indie author, marketing can be done in several ways. Traditional publishing houses have large budgets and can make potential readers aware of new works through national advertising campaigns on TV, radio, internet and print advertising. The average indie author doesn't have that kind of budget, so what can they do to make people aware of their book? First, take the time to establish an author page on Amazon and create an interesting profile, one which will make potential readers want to investigate your books. Second, set up a website and provide more information about yourself and provide photos of your books and include some teaser pages from each book. Make sure you link the books to where they are being sold on Amazon or other e-tailers such as Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc. You should also start a blog, which can be incorporated into your webpage and begin to write posts at regular intervals. Use your blog posts to provide your followers with interesting information, but do not use your blog strictly to flog your books. Your blog should allow readers some insight into your personality, your qualifications and can offer helpful advice on topics with which you are familiar. By creating interesting and appealing blog posts, potential readers will become familiar with your style and may decide to read your books. There are also a myriad of paid advertising sites, some making outrageous promises that they will make your book a #1 bestseller. Be very cautious where you spend your money on paid advertising - check out author forums, research online reviews of the advertising company and don't be afraid to ask other authors their opinion of what forms of advertising worked well for them. In the end though, you are trying to make your books visible to potential readers so they are aware of your book. Writing should be a passion, done because you enjoy writing. In reading author forums such as the Amazon community forum, it quickly becomes apparent that a lot of new authors believe that writing and publishing a book is a means to becoming rich. The reality is that most indie authors are lucky to earn $500.00 a year from their book sales; a part-time job would generate a lot more income for you so if you think writing a book is a means to becoming a millionaire, think again. If you wish to generate some additional income, add paid-click ads on your website. These ads can be placed using Google Adsense and, if you qualify and meet Google's requirements, can generate some additional income for you every time a visitor clicks an advertiser's link. If you have written a good story, formatted and edited your book, designed a professional looking cover and made people aware of you and your book, you will get sales. The sales may come in slowly or quickly, but they will come. You may never be a New York Times bestseller, but you may just end up entertaining people. In the end, as a story teller, isn't that what we all want?

In April of this year I started exploring the various options that were available for publishing my novel, Bloodlines: Cove Point Manor in different languages. The two languages I was most interested in having my book translated to were Chinese and Spanish. I started to do some research online and after a fair amount of research, I chose to work with Babelcube for the Spanish translation and Fiberead for the Chinese translation. You can read about my experience with Fiberead in an earlier blog post. Babelcube is an online crowd-sourcing translation service that connects authors and translators and then publishes and markets the translated books. The royalty structure is somewhat more favorable than Fiberead and is set up on a sliding scale as shown in the chart below. For the initial sales up to $2,000.00 (US), the author receives 30% of the sale, Babelcube receives 15% and the translator receives 55%. When sales go over $2,000.00, the author's share increases to 45% and the translator's royalty is reduced to 40%. When sales go past $8,000.00, the author's royalties increase to 75%, the translator's decreases to 10%. Babelcube's royalty rate remains the same at 15% regardless of the amount of sales achieved. For translators, this is an opportunity to earn additional income while building a portfolio until they can freelance at standard translator rates (which are quite high). For the author, this opens up an opportunity to enter different markets. The one significant caveat is that the author must be able to review the translation to ensure that the meaning of the story is not lost in a "literal" translation. There are subtle and not so subtle nuances when writing in one's own language that may not translate literally from one language to the next. For example, the English word "mansion" when translated into Spanish may be "la casa grande" which translates back to "the big house" in English. The more appropriate phrase would be "el palacio" meaning "palace" or "mansion". Translating words from one language to another is easy, but translating the intent behind the words is an art form. Bloodlines: Cove Point Manor, is now being released in Spanish courtesy of the hard work of my translator, Gisela Rodriguez and Babelcube. My book will be made available through over 100 e-book retailers through the Babelcube service so I am hoping that it will find a new audience in Spanish. In a few more months, the same book is being released in Traditional and Simplified Chinese in one of the largest e-book markets in the world. If all goes well with my first foray into selling my novel in different languages, I will proceed with having my 2nd novel, Bloodlines: Of Noble Blood, translated as well. Time will tell if these two translation services will work, but in the meantime they are opening potential new markets for me and I didn't have to spend thousands of dollars to have them translated. Once the book is launched in these two new language markets, I will update my readers on how sales progress. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

As a Canadian, I grew up speaking, reading and writing English as my primary language and French as a secondary language (mandated in our school system). Canadian English is based on the original British English but heavily influenced by our great neighbours to the south, America. American English and British English sound the same (excluding regional accents, of course!) but there are many words which are spelled differently, such as "neighbour" and "neighbor". Some other words which Canadian and British (and, most likely Australian, New Zealand and other former colonies of Great Britain) spell differently from our American cousins are: British Spelling American Spelling colour color centre center fibre fiber litre liter theatre theater flavour flavor humour humor labour labor travelled traveled travelling traveling traveller traveler manoeuver maneuver defence defense licence license offence offense catalogue catalog The list goes on, but you get the idea, English can be confusing! Living in Canada, our media (TV, movies, etc.) are heavily influenced by America so we are exposed to various spellings of common words from a young age. While the words sound the same when spoken, they look very different when written which often causes a reader to declare that a word has been spelled incorrectly, even though it has not; the writer has only chosen to use either a British or an American spelling. In my full-time, non-writing career, I deal with an international group of people, including many Americans. Whenever possible I try to adjust the spelling of my words so that the recipient of my correspondence is not distracted by what they may consider to be "incorrect" spelling. The same holds true with my novels. When I published my first novel, Bloodlines: Cove Point Manor, I received a couple of quasi-negative comments about spelling errors. There were a couple of errors that slipped through, but not to the degree that the reviewer commented about. With further research I discovered that the reviewer was an American and made the assumption that the words were misspelled as they were written in British English, not American English. I had a similar comment made to me on my second novel when I made the decision to write in American English, only this time the criticism was from a British reader. As a Canadian, I am accustomed to seeing different spellings of words, whether they be in British English or American English. Either form is acceptable to me, and if I am reading a book or article by an American author, I expect to see American English. The same holds true for a Canadian or British author. The spelling does not distract me unless I start seeing a mixture of American and British spellings being used. My largest reader based is in America, so I have made the decision to spell my words using American English rather than Canadian or British English. Sometimes I still slip up and spell a word using British English, but with my spell check program set on American English, most of the words are caught and corrected. I will still, undoubtedly, receive comments about incorrect spelling of words (nobody is perfect!), especially from my Canadian and British friends, but I am targeting my books to my market, and at the moment my largest readership is based in America. Oh well, you can't please everyone!

Like most independent or "indie" authors, I have a love-hate relationship with Amazon, the large online retailer who is largely responsible for upsetting the traditional publishing market. I published my first book, Bloodlines: Cove Point Manor exclusively with Amazon. At first I was impressed with the sales which were, for me at least, quite brisk and generated what I thought was more than an acceptable income. However, as I read more articles published by other indies, I began to second guess my decision. Once my exclusivity with Amazon ran out, I "went wide", a term used by authors when they offer their books on multiple retailer sites. When I did this, I lost the per page read payment that Amazon pays when their Kindle Select subscribers read a borrowed e-book. The per page read payments were not very generous - around $0.004 US per page - and this is NOT a typo - less than a half-cent per page! This meant that my 300+ page novel returned only $1.20 for a full read compared to the purchase price of $3.99. My first 6 weeks going wide brought in reasonable sales, but nowhere near what I was pulling in with Amazon. I also lost the per page reads which, as meagre as they are, still added to my monthly royalties. After 8 weeks, I stopped going wide and went back to exclusivity with Amazon. The sales were not thrilling, but were steady, and the page reads were increasing. Last month I decided once again to pull my book from Kindle Select and go wide. Since publishing with 7 other online retailers, my sales with Amazon have plummeted and, of course, the page reads are zero. This move also had an adverse effect on my 2nd novel with sales and page reads disappearing from Amazon for it as well. Today I have made the decision to pull my wide publications and go back with Amazon, even though this goes against my personal belief that my books - and those of other authors - are worth a lot more than $0.004 per page. However, there is no doubt that Amazon is the king of e-book sales, and they have a huge number of monthly subscribers that can borrow e-books and never have to pay for them. Without Amazon, I no longer have access to these millions (?) of subscribers. Since these Amazon subscribers no longer have to pay to read an e-book, why would they pay full price for mine? I don't like this situation, but like thousands of other indie authors before me have discovered, without Amazon, an already tough road becomes almost impossible. Until another disruptive retailer comes along and offers indies a better deal than we have with Amazon, it looks like I will be with Amazon exclusively. Better to have a little piece of the pie than no pie at all!

In April of this year, while I was on a business trip to Shanghai, I discovered a Chinese publishing group called "Fiberead" which translates books from foreign authors into Traditional and Simplified Chinese. After several days of investigating the authenticity of the business, I submitted my first novel, "Bloodlines: Cove Point Manor" to Fiberead to be translated. The Chinese eBook market is estimated to be worth around $1.6 billion US dollars currently, and is still very much a growth market. Teaming up with Fiberead allows authors to have their books translated, published and advertised on numerous Chinese sales platforms and tapping into the large Chinese eBook market. For their efforts, Fiberead will take a 70% cut of sales (split between the translation team and Fiberead), leaving the remaining 30% to be paid to the author. A 30% royalty may seem minuscule, especially when you also take into consideration that eBook prices in China are much lower than in the west, but isn't 30% of something better than 100% of nothing? I think it is, especially when you consider the volume of potential sales. An average sale price in China will yield an author approximately $0.39 US per eBook sale, which really isn't much worse than when you sell on Amazon at $0.99 and receive a $0.30 royalty. Where things really get interesting though is in the sheer size of the Chinese eBook market. One eBook distributor, Zhangyue, owns the rights to 350,000 books and sells 1 billion eBooks a year. Another distributor, Dangdang, owns the rights to 200,000 books and sells 66 million copies per year. These are just the estimated sales figures for two eBook distributors so you can see just how massive the Chinese eBook market is. When you multiply your $0.39 by only a fraction of these two distributor's sales, you end up with very impressive returns. My book is currently undergoing the final typeset process, having gone through translation and proof-reading over the past 5 months. There is still some time to have the final version approved by the censors, but by the end of 2017 my first novel should be on sale in China. I submitted my second novel which is currently undergoing the initial translation process. The Fiberead process is lengthy - my first novel will have taken 9-10 months from submission to sale - but once it is done, it will join a fairly small list of Western authored eBooks for sale in China. Whether my books become sales successes in China or not remains to be seen, but I am excited at the prospect of reaching such a large number of readers.

Here is a little teaser from Bloodlines: Cove Point Manor Connie may not have been overly bright, but she knew who Tiffany was, and she knew that their products were expensive, and antique Tiffany products were very expensive. Connie made a mental note of the candlesticks and would tell her mother about them later as she put the candlestick back on the mantle. Looking into the mirror one more time before leaving, Connie thought she saw another face in the mirror…and this time it wasn’t her face, it was the face of an old woman. The old woman looked angry. Connie screamed again, this time loud and long as she looked at the face that had appeared over hers in the mirror. Upstairs, Brenda heard Connie’s screams and sat bolt upright in bed. Connie screamed again. “What the hell is going on?” Brenda said aloud, getting herself out of the bed. She went out into the hallway and looked around. Connie screamed for a third time and Brenda realized that she must be downstairs. “Connie?” Brenda bellowed as she headed down the hallway towards the stairs. “Where are you?” Brenda rushed as quickly as she could down the stairs, holding the railing as she went. “Mom?” Connie yelled out; “I’m in here!” Brenda stopped just as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Where the hell is here?” Brenda said angrily. “Connie? Where are you?!”. “I’m in the living room.” Connie answered, still sounding frantic. Brenda looked around, wondering where the living room was. “I’m in here!” Connie yelled out. Brenda headed towards Connie’s voice and found the living room. As she rushed in, she saw Connie staring at the mirror, looking like she had seen a ghost. “What the hell is going on?” Brenda demanded. “What are you screaming about.” Connie pointed at the mirror, not looking directly at it. Brenda looked, but all she saw was a reflection of her daughter, pointing at the mirror and her own reflection looking back. Brenda was suddenly filled with rage. She hated being woke up with a start, and when combined with being tired, she found herself angry. “What the hell are you pointing at? Brenda demanded; “And why are you covering your eyes?” Connie just continued to point, not looking in the mirror. “I asked you what you are doing” Brenda started; “screaming like a damned fool and pointing at a mirror.” “There’s a woman’s face in there.” Connie said, still not looking at the mirror. Suddenly Connie felt a whack on the back of her head. “Ouch!” she exclaimed; “Why did you hit me?” “Of course there’s a woman’s face in there you fool!” Brenda answered; “It’s your stupid face!” Connie finally looked at the mirror. She saw her own reflection looking back, and the reflection of her mother, and her mother’s face was angry. “Th-th-there was someone else in the mirror…” Connie stuttered, trying to explain. “an old woman, and she was angry!” “There is an old woman in there…” Brenda said in a nasty tone; “and she IS mad, and that woman is ME!”. Brenda gave Connie’s head another smack. “Ow!” Connie said, grabbing her head. “You’re an idiot.” Brenda said, glaring at her daughter. “Just like your father. What are you doing down here anyhow?” Connie tried to explain that she couldn’t nap and wanted to check out the house. Brenda dismissed her, called her an idiot one last time for good measure, then started out of the room. As Brenda left the living room, Connie suddenly realized she was again alone in the room and quickly bolted after her mother, almost running into her. “For Christ’s sake Connie!” Brenda hissed; “Act your age and stop being so stupid!” As the two women headed back upstairs, the old lady’s face reappeared in the mirror. The face of the woman was angry…very angry.

Using and understanding DNA has become a large part of both my ancestry research as well as a key theme in my "Bloodlines" novels. DNA has helped me prove beyond a doubt my connection to several relatives and has helped me find relatives I previously did not know existed. DNA, or Deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule that carries the genetic instructions to allow every living organism to grow, develop, function and reproduce. In many ways DNA is like a computer code, or a recipe with instructions on how to make "us" unique. This coding is passed from one generation to the next with some similarities, but also many unique qualities as well. Deja vu is a sense of familiarity with an event or surroundings with which you are not familiar. Deja vu can best be described as a feeling that you have been somewhere that you have never been before, or are reliving a moment which you know has never happened. Is it possible that Deja vu is really a result of a stored memory contained in your DNA, but the memory is not yours, but one of a stored memory of your ancestors? Scientists have already proven that DNA has the ability to store text and audio files that have been converted into code, and then recover the data with 100% accuracy (see paper published in 'Nature', January 2013). I started considering this possibility after my first real trip to London, England. I had been to London before, only briefly for a night or two, but I had not had a real chance to explore the city. On this trip, I found myself "knowing" the city; it felt oddly familiar and I "knew" where places were located without the assistance of a map. These were not major tourist attractions either, they were obscure parks, short-cuts that I "knew" would take us to our destination faster, and secret little spots where historic events had occurred. I found one part of London - Westminster - to be as familiar and comfortable to me as my own neighborhood back in Canada. I was able to navigate all of Westminster, including tiny alley ways, without any need for a map or directions; I somehow just knew where everything was. On our second trip to London, my friend and I chose a small boutique hotel in which to stay. The hotel is in close proximity to some of the touristy areas of London, but really more out of the way. We had seen the hotel on a previous trip and decided to try it on our next trip. From the minute we checked into the hotel, it felt comfortable and familiar. After I returned to Canada from the second trip to London, I continued working on my family history. I then discovered that my maternal Great Grandmother and her family, as well as many of my paternal relatives, had all lived very near the hotel we had stayed at. Some lived within a block of the hotel, and even more coincidental, I discovered that another relative had co-founded an exclusive club located directly across the street from the hotel. The most recent relative to have lived there was my Great Grandmother (who died when I was 7), and that was still 100 years prior to my visit. My other relatives who had lived within a stone's throw of the hotel had all died well before the end of the 19th century. Prior to my research (after my return to Canada), I had no idea where my relatives had lived in London, or that some of them even did live there. The city of London has almost 9 million inhabitants and covers 611 square miles. The odds of my choosing a hotel that was within a 10 minute walk from several of ancestor's homes is, well, staggering. I don't think that my choice of where to stay in London was merely a coincidence, especially when combined with my uncanny familiarity with that part of the city. I have had similar deja-vu experiences while traveling through New England, especially while in Connecticut. Until recently I had no prior knowledge that a large number of my paternal ancestors helped settle New England, dating back to the early 1600's. Is it possible that our DNA contains the stored memories and information of places and events that our ancestors once knew and experienced? If our DNA contains physical and often psychological details passed down from our ancestors, then why not memories? Maybe one day science will have an answer for us. In the meantime I find the hypothesis intriguing, and I think there just may be a story or two waiting to be written about this topic!

Most people know that Amazon is largely responsible for shaking up the publishing industry by allowing almost anyone to self-publish books. Amazon is also responsible for bringing the eBook into vogue and making e-readers such as the Kindle a part of our popular culture. By disrupting the old guard, Amazon has allowed tens of thousands of authors to write and publish their works. Millions of people are now able to discover and enjoy stories that otherwise would never have been published. No longer are authors and readers held hostage by the big publishers who choose which author will be published and which select stories the public will read. One of the many marketing tools Amazon has used to entice readers is the introduction of their Kindle Select program. For a monthly fee, readers are able to "borrow" eBooks (up to 10 at a time), read what they want and then "return" the book when they are done. For each page that is read, the author of the story receives a royalty. Amazon has created a new market of paid subscribers who get to read as many books as they like, yet never have to purchase the title. In order for an independently published author, or "indie", to have access to this group of Kindle Select subscribers (estimates of the number of KS subscribers are in the millions), the author must agree to exclusively sell their eBook through Amazon for a 60 day period. This means they cannot make the eBook version available through ANY OTHER retailer during this period. In return, the indie author puts their eBook into the pile of millions of other eBooks and hopes that Kindle Select members borrow and read their books. Not a bad deal for the reader or the indie, is it? Well, in my opinion, it's a great deal for the reader and for Amazon who gets paid a monthly subscription fee, but for the indie the story is not so great. Amazon pays the indie $0.004 - $0.005 per page read. That is not a type, it's not $0.04 or $0.05 per page, it is $0.004 - 4/10th's of a cent - per page read! Amazon also counts pages differently from the actual published pages in a book, so a paperback that has 300 pages may be counted as only 275 pages by Amazon. If someone reads the complete eBook with 275 pages, the author is paid $1.10 for the book. That works out well for an author who sells their work for $0.99, but for books that would normally retail for $2.99 or more, it's not so great. There are arguments both for and against enrolling in the Kindle Select program for authors, but for me, I feel that my work is worth more than $1.10. I don't have a large publishing house behind me, paying for marketing, proof-reading, cover design and formatting. All of those expenses come out of my own pocket, and they are not insignificant. Then there is the actual story writing process that, while fun, takes time, effort and a great deal of thought. All worth more than $1.10. For now I have "gone wide" as they say in the industry, meaning that I have pulled Bloodlines: Cove Point Manor out of the Kindle Select program and made the eBook available on other retailer sites. No longer will I receive $0.004 per page read, but my book will be available to everyone, all around the world, and at a fair price to the reader and to me, the author. I may end up putting Cove Point Manor back into the Kindle Select program after a few months, but in the meantime I will see how it performs by "going wide".

After enduring months of dissatisfaction with my previous website, as well as the poor performance of the web hosting service, I have finally made an upgrade. At least I hope it is an upgrade! True to form, the previous web page provider has managed to lose all of my previous posts and information. Rather than become upset with the loss, I've decided to take the opportunity to apply what I have learned and have my site redone. My new site should be easier to navigate and more informative than before. So this is my new website and my first blog post. Over the coming weeks and months, I plan to populate this site with information about my thoughts, inspirations and comments about various topics, author related and otherwise. While I will continue to post about my existing and upcoming novels, the intent of this site is to inform, not to sell. I don't believe you can "sell" someone a book, but I believe that I can inform a potential reader about my stories as well as about me, the author. Thank you to everyone who has been following my blog posts and I appreciate your patience during this period of transition.