Thanks to good friend Aggie Mitchkoski, our MurderProse.com is brand new again!
The old site, which I created years ago with “iWeb” software no longer supported by Apple, had become cluttered and nearly impossible to maintain.
Then Aggie, bless her generous heart, stepped in and updated the site! So now we’ll be able to maintain and update the site more regularly. Check it out and let me know what you think….
Wonderful post from Jaye Manus, who formatted the just-published revised Kindle versions of Eye Sleuth and Eye Witness for Hazel Dawkins and me. Not only did Jaye do a beautiful job on the books, she’s an absolute joy to work with.
Hurray! the much-revised Eye Witness, book two of the Yoko Kamimura mystery series, which Hazel Dawkins and I co-wrote, is now available on Kindle.
How does it differ from the first version of the book (which was called Eye Wit)? Well, it’s the same story, but this adds more than 70 black and white and color illustrations, a spiffy new cover, and a prettier page design. Because we feel ebooks should look just as good as print books—better, if possible.
Is it worth buying it again, if you already have the first version? Don’t worry about that, because it’s FREE, tomorrow and Sunday:
US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D45L1A6
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00D45L1A6
Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00D45L1A6
France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00D45L1A6
Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B00D45L1A6
Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B00D45L1A6
Japan: https://www.amazon.jp/dp/B00D45L1A6
Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00D45L1A6
Brazil: https://www.amazon.br/dp/B00D45L1A6
Help me understand something, folks.
Since the 12th of this month, the iBook versions of Mommie Dearest, my hard-boiled accidental detective story, and Inn Sight, my late wife Liz’s cozy B&B mystery, have been available from Apple—both of them FREE until the end of August.
To date, 1276 people from a total of six countries have downloaded a free copy of Inn Sight—a gratifying number. But only 19 people have downloaded a free copy of Mommie Dearest. Not so gratifying. But I’m pretty sure that, somewhere, my late beloved wife is chortling.
Rather than falling into a “nobody-likes-me-think-I’ll-eat-some-worms” mindset, I need to figure out what’s happening. Obviously, Liz’s cozy mystery featuring a female sleuth is beating the crap out of my hard-boiled accidental detective. But what am I supposed to do about that? Specifically, what should I be working on now?
Should I stop working on a sequel to Mommie Dearest, and instead create a sequel to Liz’s Inn Sight? Or make my Mommie Dearest sequel a bit cozier? Maybe meld the cozy and the hard-boiled by having Inn Sight’s female B&B sleuth fall in love with Mommie Dearest’s accidentally hard-boiled amateur detective? Would that work?
Or do I need to subsume my inclination to write hard-boiled stories altogether, in favor of cozier stories? Could I do that? Do I want to? Would that require a sex-change operation? If so, I’m gonna decline. No, that’s definitely a no-go, a price for success I’m not willing to pay. Besides, Medicare doesn’t cover elective surgery. So forget I brought that up, okay? Just forget it. I’ll try to forget it too.
Okay. I’ve decided. Inn Sight‘s Kate Holland is gonna meet Mommie Dearest‘s Andy Eastman, in a winner-take-all blockbuster B&B cozy with a few blood spatters—and lots and lots of good recipes.
While I’m outlining the plot, be sure to download BOTH free books, if you haven’t already. You’ve got until the end of the month—five more days. And if you download only one, make it Mommie Dearest. Please.
The neatest thing about self-publishing is that I get to make all the important decisions about the ebooks I publish. I can decide what the books look like, what they contain, where to sell them—and for how much. The hardest part of self-publishing is actually getting things done.
Some months ago, I promised that there would soon be an iBook version of Inn Sight, the Malice Domestic Award-winning mystery written by my late wife, Elizabeth, and an iBook of my own Mommie Dearest, too. An easy promise to make. Not so easy to keep. I had figured I would use Apple’s then-brand-new iBooks Author program—a free download from Apple—to produce the books. And indeed I did.
Dumb move. The powerful iBooks Author program is a marvelous text-book production tool, once you become accustomed to its somewhat counter-intuitive interface. And I’m convinced that iBooks Author will become the program of choice for folks who produce textbooks that contain lots of multi-media content, built-in tests, easy-access glossaries, and comprehensively linked indexes.
But I don’t publish textbooks. I’ll never know enough about any subject to publish a textbook. I publish novels like Inn Sight and Mommie Dearest—straightforward books that need only a pretty cover, a table of contents that works and, of course, a story worth reading.
Nonetheless, I used iBooks Author to produce both books, then proofed them on my iPad. They looked okay, but not great. A particular annoyance was that neither book seemed to support that nifty page-turning animation you see in all the iPad TV commercials. But I uploaded them to Apple anyway, and after I corrected some “Error Tickets,” Apple made both books available in the iBookstore. They also sent me a message that if I wanted the books to include that page-turning animation, I’d have to use a different program to produce epubs—like Apple’s Pages program.
So I did that—reformatted book books once again, using Pages. Now, finally, I’m inordinately pleased to announce that both books are available—with the page-turning animation feature intact.
In fact, I’m SO pleased that I’m giving both books away FREE through the month of August. On September 1st, they’ll go back to their normal price: $3.99. So if you’ve got an iPad, get both books now, while they’re free. And tell your friends, too. I love giving away books!
Get ’em here:
Supposedly, Amazon will make the Kindle version of both books free as well, under their “Price Match” policy. So if you don’t have an iPad, you can order the Kindle version of the books here—and if they’re not free, please blame Amazon, not me, okay?
And PLEASE. Do let me know what you think of the books—and post reviews at Apple and/or Kindle, if you’re so moved.
Thanks!
Eye Sleuth and Eye Wit, the first and second Kindle books featuring Dr Yoko Kamimura, intrepid behavioral optometrist turned sleuth, are absolutely FREE this weekend!
Psst…Don’t tell anyone, but they’ll also be free over Memorial Day weekend….
It’s not often you get something for nothing. Rarer still to get four things for nothing—in this case, four perfectly good books.
This coming weekend, Friday and Saturday, Feb 3 & 4, you can download all four of the ebooks that Hazel Dawkins and I published in 2011
Two ways to get them:
1. Go to our website, http://murderprose.com/ and click on the Kindle link for each book,
(OR)
2. Just click on each of the Kindle links below:
Eye Sleuth, by Hazel Dawkins (book #1 about Yoko Kamimura, behavioral optometric detective for the NYPD): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005M5PJ1S
Eye Wit, by Hazel Dawkins and Dennis Berry (Book #2 of Yoko’s continuing saga—who knows where it will end; Hazel’s writing Book #3 right now): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005OSZNAU
Mommie Dearest, by Dennis Berry (the first and perhaps only novel ever published about a former Boeing technical writer who is confronted with dire situations threatening all that he holds dear: wife, son, a laissez faire attitude): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005EV0PS2
Inn Sight, by Elizabeth Berry, winner of the Malice Domestic prize in 2002: http://www.amazon.com/Inn-Sight-ebook/dp/B003LBRNUU/
Yup, all four books are absolutely FREE—and if you don’t have a Kindle device, download the books anyway. Amazon will give you a free Kindle Reader App for your PC, Mac, iPhone, Android smart-phone, even your iPad.
So… no cost, no obligation. We’re giving the books away. Why? So you can talk about them with your friends.
This is how newly published writers get noticed, right? Later, after your friends know about these terrific books, they’ll order their own copies, paying full price—and get Hazel and I can get off food stamps. That’s how it works, right? Right?
But we do have a favor to ask: After reading the books, how about going back to Amazon and posting some reviews? Again, no obligation. Feel perfectly free to ignore this request.
Especially if you hate the books.
