The Dime

After months and years of delay, I’m sort of pulling the trigger on this story. Originally titled Northville Five & Dime, it’s been renamed The Dime to eliminate any issues with using the name of a real store in the town of Northville.

I had planned on publishing Part One, a novella length piece, then once I complete Part Two, publishing it separately. But while I’ve dithered on publishing Part One, I realized that Part Two is a whole lot closer to being finished than I thought. So, I’m working on that now. V-e-r-y slowly.  And while I’m doing that, I decided to see what would happen if I published Part One on WattPad, chapter by chapter.

A couple of days, I published the first two chapters. Today, I published the second two chapters. Every few days, I’ll publish a couple more chapters until Part One is up, and hope that by then I’ll have Part Two completed.

Here’s the link for the story on WattPad. Go there and read, comment, vote for it, help me generate a bit of buzz for the story.

 

Advertisement

Photos of You

When I started my own blogging, writing, indie publishing journey here on WordPress, I got to know a range of other bloggers and writers. A lot of whom were pursuing their own publishing dreams. One of my favorites over the years has been Tammy Robinson.

In 2013, she published her first book. Charlie and Pearl. It’s a tear-jerking story of love and loss. Once I read that story, I was absolutely hooked on what Tammy does even though, as I like to joke with Tammy, I am most certainly not the target audience for her stories. Cause you know, men aren’t supposed to like tear-jerkers. But the thing is, Tammy writes stories that create such a connection, such a feeling for the characters. Every story she has published is something that has left me both shaken and rejoicing by the end.

Over the years since Charlie and Pearl was released, Tammy independently published a few more books and eventually won herself a publishing contract with Hachette. The first book Hachette published was Differently Normal. The second was Photos of You, which was recently published in the United States.

Tammy lives in New Zealand, where the book was published first and it has ever so slowly moved across the globe, published in Australia, throughout Europe and, finally, landing on American shores earlier this month. It’s a book I’ve been waiting for, not so patiently, for more than a year.

I finished Photos of You last night and, once again, Tammy has done it. The book tells the story of Ava Green, a young woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer and beat it, only to be diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years later. She has barely begun to live her life before she receives this fatal diagnosis. Having spent her life imagining her wedding, she decides to have a wedding before she dies. Whether or not there is a groom involved. One thing leads to another and she meets the man of her dreams, and I’ll leave the story details right there. No spoilers here, but …

Here’s the thing. Once you’ve read a couple of Tammy’s books, you’ll know what’s coming. There aren’t necessarily any surprises. And on some level, that’s what makes her writing and her tales so incredible. Even though you know what’s coming, she draws characters and fills them with thoughts and feelings and experiences in a way that you can’t help but be sucked into their lives, and feel something for them while reading. When the inevitable ending comes, even though you knew what it was going to be, you can’t help but feel something deeply about the whole thing.

And this is what I feel when I read Tammy’s stories, including Photos of You. If you’re looking for the “happy ending,” you won’t find it with Photos of You, or just about anything else Tammy has put out there. What you will get though is real life, and characters who experience that life and still find something that we are all looking for before the end inevitably comes.

That is what I love about Tammy’s books and what brings me to tears whenever I have the good fortune to read her work. There is happiness in sadness and good things that happen even in the darkest of days.

Tammy — I hope you read this. You’ve once again written an incredible story that has left me in tears, but filled with hope. Don’t ever stop doing what you do.

An Update On The Irrepairable Past

Thirty-five purchases, and the reviews are starting.

 

And here’s the link on Amazon.

The Irrepairable Past is Live

From my writing blog

Or just go here (only for the Kindle now, paperback soon):

 

An Antidote …

,,, to The Worst Book Ever.

For every indie author who puts lousy product out there, I come across a handful that do much better work. Kevin Brennan is the gold standard. Tammy Robinson is right up there also.

Sidetrack here. Tammy was one of the first indie authors I “got to know” when I started blogging and publishing myself. Her first book Charlie and Pearl just absolutely knocked my socks off. She self-published a few more books, ending with Differently Normal. It was that book that got Tammy a two book publishing contract with a major publisher. The second book, Photos of You, was recently published in New Zealand (coming to other countries slowly) and went to #1 there. Such success couldn’t have come to a better person.

Anyway, there are plenty of others out there. Two who recently came to my attention are Audrey Driscoll and Berthold Gambrel.  Audrey and Berthold write in genres that I don’t read much of these days. As a result, I’m not going to try to “review” them in the true sense. Hell, I never really try to review books. I do reviews my own way.

The best description I can provide for Audrey’s work is supernatural, historical fiction. She’s been compared to H.P. Lovecraft. Not having read Lovecraft, I have no idea if the comparison is valid. But I have read two of Audrey’s books — The Friendship of Mortals and her most recent work, She Who Comes Forth. Both books are well written with fascinating characters. They also are clearly the result of study and research. It’s clear that Audrey cares about her craft and want to put quality in front of her readers.

Berthold writes in science fiction. Through the course of a novel and several short stories he is creating a future world that you might compare to the Star Trek world. I’ve read his novel The Directorate and just completed his long short story 1NG4, with another short story he published several months ago still unread, waiting quietly on my Kindle. I also, maybe, had the opportunity to grab a sneak peek at something that’s coming up.

What I like about Berthold’s stories, and I think I said this before when I posted a review of The Directorate, is that they are science fiction stories with real people in them. The people and their feelings and how they deal with things haven’t necessarily changed because they exist in a future world. No, they’re just like humans today — it’s just that the world has expanded to planets and solar systems and travel by light years. His stories also don’t overwhelm the reader with the technical realities of the future world. Those details are embedded in the story naturally as you go.

So, there you have it. Just in case you think all indie authors publish typo-filled, poorly written schlock … it ain’t true. Go to Amazon, give Audrey and Berthold a try and while you’re at it, check out Kevin Brennan and Tammy Robinson. I don’t think you could be disappointed by any of them.