Escaping the Cauldron by Kristine McGuire

 

A powerful , true story in a great bible study format. Easy to read, but you can't stop thinking about it even when you turn the last page.

MY REVIEW
If you've been following my book reviews for several years, thank you! You might remember I reviewed a book with this very title. Make no mistake. This is the same message, but so much more powerful than the first edition. Kristine McGuire uses personal experiences, and explains her thought processes for why she fell into the dark hole of the occult...and how God pulled her from that abyss.

She uses study questions and Bible passages to underline the message that the occult is nothing to dabble in or to embrace. I firmly believe that if she had not become a Christian as a child, she would never have been able to claw her way out of the hole. The Holy Spirit protected her, but God allowed her to see just how dangerous a game she was playing. God showed her that what she was searching for was a much deeper and closer walk with Himself rather than a cold and malicious demon.

We live in a world whose prince is the Prince of Darkness. He is the father of lies, and his job is to steal, kill and destroy. His minions are adept at finding our weaknesses. 

Kristine McGuire

McGuire walks you through the ever descending steps into occult practice that she took, always pointing out where she was wrong and what God says about each thing she did. She explains that as she became more deeply immersed in the occult, she became more accurate as a medium. The hiding of her occult books and tools, the secrecy of her practices, the secret worship of a demon disguised as a goddess tells a tale of shame and darkness. She dragged guilt around like a 500 pound ball and chain. She correctly states the Holy Spirit was convicting her of her sin, but Satan was using guilt as another tool to manipulate her. 

If you know someone who is fascinated by ghost hunting, or the occult and you are worried about them, I strongly recommend you read this book. It is well worth the money. If you have every wondered about the occult... if you want to know how Satan tempts a Christian into turning her back on God then you must read this book.

Five of five stars

BOOK BLURB

After 29 years in church, Kristine McGuire left to pursue her lifelong fascination with the occult. For the next eight years, she stayed in that world: as a witch, medium, and ghosthunter. 

But an encounter with a demon showed Kristine Who really holds the ultimate power. She returned to Christ. 

Kristine's story (releasing from Charisma House this month) will open your eyes to the occult influence in your everyday life - and equip you to address it.

The Santa Papers by Wally Metts

MY REVIEW

I loved this book. It is 40 pages of an excellent reminder of who Nicholas actually was. It would be a great story to read to your kids. It is easy to read, and perfect for kids 4th grade up to read by themselves.

I highly recommend this for and Christian family to read because it is always good to remember the why, how, and who in legends. I give it 5 of 5 stars. You can purchase this book here.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Santa, of course, is a commercial icon. But it is good to remember that the original version was a real pastor remembered for his kindness to children and to strangers 1700 years ago.

It is good for kids to know there was such a person and it is good for adults to be such a person.

To the degree The Santa Papers helps you think about an ancient pastor when you think of Santa, it will be a success.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wally Metts is director of graduate studies in communication at Spring Arbor University in Spring Arbor, MI. He and his wife Katie raise barn cats and Christmas trees on a farm south of campus. His grandchildren call him Santa. He blogs on faith and culture at http://thedaysman.com
 

Marketing from Randy Ingermanson's newsletter

4) Marketing: Measuring Your Marketing

Marketing your work is crucial in today's publishing environment. If you aren't out there marketing yourself, then your publisher probably won't be either.

You might take a cynical attitude and decide to do a lousy job marketing, just to get your publisher to do something.

Or you might take a naive attitude and blindly throw yourself into marketing without asking whether what you're doing actually works.

But I believe that if you're going to market yourself, you should do your best to do it well.

That means that you need to measure what you're doing. If you don't measure anything, then you have no way of knowing whether you're doing a good job or a bad one.

How do you measure your marketing?

Marketing has three major steps:

* Attract

* Engage

* Convert

I owe these terms to Michael Alvear's recent book MAKE A KILLING ON KINDLE. However, he uses these words in a slightly different way than I do.

Michael is talking in his book about short-term marketing. This is marketing where the attraction, engagement, and conversion phases all happen on the same day. Somebody is attracted to your Amazon page, is engaged by your product description, and buys the book.

This typically happens in a few minutes.

Short-term marketing is fine, but I believe that long-term marketing earns you more money in the long run. Long-term marketing for an author means that you attract new potential readers, engage them in a long-term relationship, and then sell them every book

that you ever publish during your long career. It may take months or years from the time you attract your audience to the day they finally buy a book.

Here is how I define these terms for long-term marketing:

"Attract" means that you somehow get the attention of your target audience, at least for an instant.

"Engage" means that you actually interest your target audience in what you have to say, enough so that they give you permission to continue the conversation.

"Convert" means that you make a sale to your target audience.

You must attract before you can engage. You must engage before you convert.

Let's look at a few examples of each of these steps and see which of them we can measure and which we can't.

Some examples of the attraction phase:

* Somebody visits your web site. You can measure this by looking at your web site statistics. The numbers to look at are the "page views" and the "visitors". (Only

amateurs look at "hits", which are not a meaningful statistic.)

* Somebody visits an entry in your blog. You can measure this by looking at your blog statistics. Again, you care about page views and visitors.

* Somebody receives a forwarded copy of your email newsletter. I don't know of any way to measure this.

* Somebody views your Facebook fan page. You can measure this using Facebook Insights. The number to look at is the Total Tab Views.

* Somebody sees a retweet of something you posted on Twitter or hears about your Twitter name in some other way. I don't know how to measure this.

In each of these examples, somehow or other, a member of your target audience was exposed to your ideas. It may have lasted a few seconds. It may have lasted hours. Many of those exposures had no result.

The ones you care about are those that led to engagement and eventually to conversion.

As I noted earlier, you can either think short-term or long-term. In short-term marketing, the engagement and conversion  either happen right away or they don't happen at all. Let's look at some examples of that first, and then we'll look at some examples of long-term engagement and conversion.

Some examples of short-term engagement/conversion:

* Somebody who has never heard of you reads an article on your web site or blog and finds it so interesting and useful that they get interested in you and your writing. They notice an ad for your books on your page, click through to the product description, and buy a book.

* Somebody who has never heard of you sees a post on Facebook or Twitter about your  book, clicks the link to the product description, and buys the book.

In either of these cases, if you want to measure the process, you need to be able to measure clicks to the product description and then measure sales.

You can measure clicks by using link-shortener tools that include statistics. For example, bit.ly or is.gd. Then you can look at the statistics to see how many people actually clicked the link and when.

You can measure sales by signing up as an affiliate for the various online retailers. Then your link to their sales pages can include your affiliate code. You'll get a report of all sales made, so you'll know if all those clicks are actually selling anything. As a bonus, you'll earn money for each sale.

There is nothing wrong with short-term marketing, but it's basically a one-shot deal. You either make the sale or you don't. Making the sale has a low probability. If you don't, you've lost the potential customer and may never make a sale to her.

This is why long-term marketing is important. It gives you more time to engage your target audience and build a relationship before making a sale.

Some examples of the engagement phase in long-term marketing:

* Somebody reads an article on your web site and finds it so useful and interesting that they subscribe to your email newsletter. You can measure this by looking at your new email subscriptions.

* Somebody reads an article on your blog and finds it so useful and interesting that they subscribe to the RSS feed on your blog. You can measure this by looking at your new blog subscriptions.

* Somebody reads a forwarded copy of your email newsletter and comes to your web site. I don't know of any way to measure this.

* Somebody Likes your Facebook fan page. You can measure this by looking at your new Likes.

* Somebody finds your Twitter feed interesting enough that they follow you on Twitter. You can measure this by looking at your new Twitter followers.

Some examples of the conversion phase in long-term marketing:

* A potential customer has been following you for some time. They may have been subscribing to your email newsletter, reading your blog, following you on Facebook or Twitter. One day, you mention one of your books and this person decides to check it out. They click through the link to your product description and buy the book.

* A potential customer has been following you for some time. You have a new book that is launching and you've created a number of incentives for anyone who buys during your launch period. You send out a notification via email, your blog, your Facebook fan page, or

Twitter. Your potential customers know you, know that they want your book, and want the incentives, so they click through to the sales page and buy it.

You can measure the clicks and the sales exactly as I described above for short-term marketing.

Notice that with long-term marketing, you have many chances to make a sale. For as long as your potential customer stays engaged with you, you have an opportunity to keep selling. You should not abuse this by being a pest, nor should you waste the opportunity completely. Find the right balance.

Why should you measure your marketing efforts?

Because when you measure your marketing, you know if it's working. And when you make a change, you can tell if you've improved things or disimproved them.

If you don't measure your marketing, then you're flying blind.

Knowledge is power. Marketing measurements give you marketing power. You know the drill -- with great power comes great responsibility, so be a good citizen.

This article is reprinted by permission of the author.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 32,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Crazy Dangerous by Andrew Klavan

MY REVIEW
I just loved the beginning of this book. What a great way to draw a reader in! This is superb as a teen read. I think every teen would enjoy it, probably 10-17 range. It's got everything you could possibly want in a suspense, Christian fiction for teens. I did think it got a bit too sassy in tone at times, but then most teens are sassy, so it is true to life.

The character development is excellent. The descriptions are on target -- not too involved and not to light. The characters are believable and relationships have that real, human feel to where you almost feel the bike rolling in the potholes, and the sweat beading on the forehead.

I really wish this guy would delve into the problems and tensions in an adult realm.

Book Description

"You probably want to hear about Jennifer and the demons and how I played chicken with a freight train and—oh yeah—the weird murder . . . you're definitely going to want to hear about that."
Sam Hopkins is a good kid who has fallen in with a bad crowd. Hanging around with car thieves and thugs, Sam knows it’s only a matter of time before he makes one bad decision too many and gets into real trouble.
But one day, Sam sees them harassing an eccentric schoolmate of his named Jennifer. When Sam finds the courage to face the bullies down, he loses a bad set of friends and acquires a very strange new one.
Because Jennifer is not just eccentric. To Sam, she seems downright crazy. She has terrifying hallucinations involving demons and the devil and death. And here’s the really crazy part: Sam is beginning to suspect that these visions may actually be prophecies—prophecies of something terrible that’s going to happen very soon. Unless he can stop it.
With no one to believe him, with no one to help him, Sam is now all alone in a race against time. Finding the truth before disaster strikes is going to be both crazy and very, very dangerous.

Angels, Miracles, and Heavenly Encounters compiled by James Stuart Bell

 MY REVIEW
I have never enjoyed a missive so much as I have with this book. The stories are exquisite and you can tell straight from the heart. So many of them made me cry. I can identify with several experiences, and I think we Christians miss a lot of miracles just because we do not look for them to savor or to use them as witness to others.

The first story captures the essence of the book. God had promised eleven year old Derek that he could say goodbye to his pawpaw. The way God allowed it was so precious. I've told that story several times because it answers the question, how can we know God pays attention? It's all in the details, I'm thinking, and what truly unique details are revealed in each story. I'm going to treasure this book for years to come. It would be excellent for any Sunday school teacher to illustrate God's promises. Excellent for a daily devotion. Excellent for encouragement, or for a daily dose of something good for the soul. Purchase this book right now! You will be so very glad you did.

There's more going on in the world than meets the eye.

There is an unseen spiritual realm, and occasionally God allows us glimpses of it. Angels, Miracles, and Heavenly Encounters offers a fascinating look at the supernatural world. It includes more than forty true stories of miraculous provision, encounters with angels and demons, near-death experiences, and incredible rescues.

You'll marvel at how God and His angels are working behind the scenes to protect and guide us. And you'll be comforted by glimpses of the peace that awaits us in heaven. The God who pulled back the curtain for a moment in the lives of these writers is the same God who works all things together for our good.

Whether you're simply curious about the supernatural world or longing for a fresh experience of God's presence, these amazing stories will touch your heart and strengthen your faith in the God of miracles.

 James Stuart Bell is a Christian publishing veteran and the owner of Whitestone Communications, a literary development agency. He is the editor of many story collections, including the Cup of Comfort, Life Savors, and God Encounters series, and the coauthor of numerous books in the Complete Idiot's Guide series. He and his family live in West Chicago, Illinois. Read the first chapter... Angels, Miracles, and Heavenly Encounters

The Stars Shine Bright by Sibella Giorello

MY REVIEW

Raleigh Harmon finds herself in a bit of a jam after solving the murder on the cruise. Her mother is in a psych ward and she is undercover in the same city. While you do not need to have read the first books in the Raleigh Harmon series, it helps just a bit so you can get all the nuances. 

I quite enjoyed this novel. I did, however, get rather tied of Raleigh having such a horrendous time with lying, always getting sick at her stomach over a lie. Remember, she's an FBI agent, and she's undercover. Her whole life has been a lie, especially her engagement to a man who is not even close to being a soul mate. 

Giorello does a wonderful job with story, suspense, and the mystery. I do have a bit of a problem with the back story, though. I completely understand the logistics of storytelling when the author sets up a scenario for conflict, and the backstory continues the thread between books in a series. It’s the basic soap opera tactic. The Harmon stories do not need this tactic (or as much of it as Giorello writes in). I’m a lover of less is better. And in this book, so much is spelled out that you’ve already guessed from the last one. You are thinking… “Great granny, Harmon, when are you going to wise up?”

So, I give it 3 out of 5 stars. The story is good, at time funny, and characters are very believable. But, it isn’t my favorite one Sibella Giorello has written.  

ABOUT THE BOOK

After the FBI suspends her for bending its rules, Special Agent Raleigh Harmon is looking for a chance to redeem her career and re-start her life.

Sent undercover to a thoroughbred horse track, Raleigh takes on a double life to find out who’s fixing the races. But when horses start dying and then her own life is threatened, Raleigh realizes something bigger—and more sinister—is ruining Emerald Downs.

Yet she’s never felt more alone.

Her one contact with the FBI is Special Agent Jack Stephanson, a guy who seems to jump from antagonistic to genuine friend depending on the time of day. And she can’t turn to her family for support. They’re off-limits while she’s undercover, and her mother isn’t speaking to her anyway, having been confined to a mental hospital following a psychotic breakdown. Adding insult to her isolation, Raleigh’s fiancé wants them to begin their life together—now—precisely when she’s been ordered not to be herself.

With just days left before the season ends, Raleigh races to stop the killing and find out who’s behind the track’s trouble, all the while trying to determine if Jack is friend or foe, and whether marrying her fiancé will make things better—or worse.

Raleigh is walking through the darkest night she’s faced, searching for a place where the stars shine bright.

Rare Earth by Davis Bunn

Another winner by Davis Bunn. There is so much great about this author that I fear I'm beginning to sound like a broken record (that is a vinyl disc for you digital natives).

In this novel, we are transported to Africa's volcanic field where people are suffering from drought and an eruption of a volcano. Mark Royce is hired to find out who is the bad guy. Bunn as usual infuses a situation with almost unbearable tension. (You'll bite your nails when reading the hotel room scene!).

Character development is quite interesting. With a few words, you can picture just exactly what each one looks like, and the personality development lends such color and dimension to the story. This is a completely stand alone story, although Marc Royce's story is continued. If you didn't meet him in Lion of Babylon, you'll be delighted to meet him in Rare Earth.

This is a 4 out of 5 star book!

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing Rare Earth Bethany House Publishers (July 1, 2012) by Davis Bunn

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Born and raised in North Carolina, Davis left for Europe at age twenty. There he first completed graduate studies in economics and finance, then began a business career that took him to over forty countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Davis came to faith at age 28, while living in Germany and running an international business advisory group. He started writing two weeks later. Since that moment, writing has remained both a passion and a calling.

Davis wrote for nine years and completed seven books before his first was accepted for publication. During that time, he continued to work full-time in his business career, travelling to two and sometimes three countries every week. His first published book, The Presence, was released in 1990 and became a national bestseller.

Honored with three Christy Awards for excellence in historical and suspense fiction, his bestsellers include The Great Divide, Winner Take All, The Meeting Place, The Warning, The Book of Hours, and The Quilt.

A sought-after speaker in the art of writing, Davis serves as Writer In Residence at Regent’s Park College, Oxford University.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Marc Royce stares out of the helicopter, a sense of foreboding rising with the volcanic cloud. Below, the Rift Valley slashes across Africa like a scar. Decades of conflicts, droughts, and natural disasters have left their mark.

Dispatched to audit a relief organization, Royce is thrust into the squalor and chaos of Kenyan refugee camps. But his true mission focuses on the area's reserves of once-obscure minerals now indispensable to high-tech industries. These strategic elements--called rare earth--have inflamed tensions on the world's stage and stoked tribal rivalries. As Royce prepares to report back to Washington, he seizes on a bold and risky venture for restoring justice to this troubled land.

But this time, Royce may have gone too far.

If you would like to read the first chapter of Rare Earth, go HERE.

White space magic by Randy Ingermanson

One of the most common mistakes I see when I critique manuscripts is that the paragraphs are too long.

When I see a dense page of text that has only three or four paragraphs, I suspect the pace is going to be slow and the writing is going to be boring.

When I see a page with a lot of white space, I suspect the pace is going to be fast and the writing is going to have a lot of conflict.

Part of this is just a psychological illusion.

When a reader is reading a scene with a lot of white space, her eye zips rapidly down the page. Before she knows it, she's flipping the page, and then the next, and the next.

White space makes your reader feel like she's flying.


As I said, this is a psychological trick, and by itself it doesn't mean very much. Pace is about more than reading pages rapidly.

Pace is about the amount of conflict coming at the  reader on each page.

Fiction thrives on conflict.

Don't confuse conflict with mere physical action. Conflict is about trading punches, but most often those punches are verbal or psychological, not physical.

Conflict is a lawyer cross-examining a lying witness.

Conflict is a woman trying to get her man to tell her what he's really feeling.

Conflict is a baseball player stepping up to the plate with the tying run on third and facing the league's toughest pitcher in the final inning of the World Series.


Conflict is about back-and-forth.

You get the least conflict per page when you use a lot of description, narrative summary, and exposition. All of these tend to use long paragraphs that focus on a single thing.

You get the most conflict per page when you have a lot of action and dialogue and when you alternate rapidly between characters. Doing that will naturally give you a lot of short, punchy paragraphs.

The more paragraphs you have, the more white space on the page.

This isn't complicated, so I'm not going to belabor it. White space is magic, not because it CAUSES good writing but because it's an EFFECT of good writing.

If you've got a scene that your critiquers are telling you is slow and boring, take a look at how much white space you've got. You probably need more.


Look for every paragraph longer than five lines. Can you break it up?

It probably has some description or long explanation or something else that you're certain your reader can't live without.

Kill it. Get rid of it. Be a brute.

Here is where you protest that you can't do that -- your reader will hate you forever for cutting out that long horrible explanation about the history of mildew.

Fine, if it's that important, then cut it down to three lines.

But you know in your lying little heart that it's not that important.


It may be that the paragraph has no description or explanation at all. In fact, you may believe it's packed with action. The tiger and the vampire are locked in a wrestling match to the death.

But if that paragraph is longer than five lines, you're probably using narrative summary. You're telling your reader about the fight, rather than showing the fight.

If a fight is worth having in your story, it's worth showing, punch by punch, snarl by snarl, bite by bite.

Break up that long paragraph into a sequence of actions and reactions. One paragraph for the vampire, one for the tiger, back and forth, until you have a victor.

When you do that, you'll naturally produce a lot of white space.

Your eyes will tell you when you've done enough.


It's possible to go too far, of course.

You don't want to have an entire novel of one-line paragraphs. White space is wonderful, but there can be too much of a good thing.

I've seen two writers who used too much white space. Oddly enough, both of them are best-selling authors. I've never seen a bad writer use too much white space.

If too much white space is your problem, there's an easy fix for it. Just add in some interior monologue, some sensory description, and even an occasional bit of exposition to fatten up a few paragraphs.


White space is magic. White space is power. You know the drill. Great power, great responsibility.

Use it well.

This article is reprinted by permission of the author.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 31,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.

Long Game Discoverability by Randy Ingermanson

The buzzword that authors and publishers are using these days is "discoverability."

Is this sensible, or is this just the latest quackery? I'll give you my opinion, but first some context.

An enormous number of books get published every single day of the year. How is any one book supposed to stand out in the crowd when the crowd gets bigger and noisier every year?

That is the problem of "discoverability."

In the old days (say two or three years ago), publishers and authors had a few standard tools for getting a book discovered.

Publishers sent their books to the major reviewers. They paid hefty money to buy placement on the front table at Barnes & Noble and Borders and other booksellers. They paid publicists to get their authors on radio or TV.

Authors held book signings at bookstores. They put up web sites and blogs. They went on speaking tours. They hit the social media networks.

The purpose behind all of these methods was to get word-of-mouth going. Quickly.

The problem is that the old ways aren't working as well as they used to. There are far more books than there used to be.

Truth be told, the old ways never worked very well in the first place. For every success, there were plenty more failures, with no rhyme, no reason to explain the difference between success and failure.


Notice that most of the methods I mentioned above are actions with short-term effects.

The review magazines have an influence for the month they're printed. After that, not so much. Placement on the front table works for as many as days as you keep paying for that front table real estate. After that, not at all. A radio or TV interview is on today, gone tonight.

A booksigning works for the three hours you're in the store. After that, the bookstore people might remember you, maybe. When you give a talk, you can move a lot of copies at the back of the room today. As soon as you leave the venue, you don't move any copies. A tweet has
an effect for a few hours and then it's gone.

Short-term marketing made sense in the old days. Back then, a book had a shelf life of a few weeks. If it hadn't been discovered by then, the bookstore sent it back to the publisher for full credit and the book disappeared.

Publishers and authors had to play a short game because that was the only game in town.

They hoped that somehow, playing the short game hard enough would generate word of mouth.

Sometimes it did, and when it did, great things happened. But the short game has always been hit-or-miss. In the old days, if it didn't hit, the
game was over.

E-books have changed all that, because e-books are forever. There is no three-week ticking clock for e-books. Once an e-book goes on sale, it has an infinite length of time to be discovered.

That means that it now makes sense to put more effort into "long game discoverability."

If you spend all your marketing in short-term efforts, you are going to get all your returns as short-term results. But the instant you turn off the electricity, the marketing machine stops.

I suspect that there will be more winners in the future because there will be more choices. Because there is more time for each book to find its audience. Because more of the actual money goes to authors and less goes to those pesky "middlemen."

If that's true, then publishing is becoming a long game, and much more of your marketing effort should go into things that last. Things that make you discoverable next week, next month, next year, next decade.

You can only be doing so many things each day. If everything you do is for short-term results, then you can never get off the marketing treadmill.

Here are a few of the thousands of things that might make you more discoverable for the long haul. These are not guaranteed to work. A lot depends on how well you execute. But these are things that last:

* Web site articles or blog articles with content good enough to attract traffic from search engines.

Imagine spending an hour to write an article on a topic related to your book. Imagine posting it on your web site. Imagine that it brings in 100 page views every day. (This is not a huge number.) Imagine having a blurb about your book on that page.

In a year, that blurb would be seen by more than 36,000 people. In a decade, 365,000 pairs of eyeballs would see it.

That's not nearly as sexy as spending an hour on a TV show. But which do you think is more effective at selling your book, long-term?

* Guest blogs with an "about the author" blurb that links back to your web site.

I saw a question this morning on an e-mail loop for authors asking whether blog tours work. I have my doubts about the short-term effectiveness of a blog tour.

But I know for certain that a link from a blog to your web site lasts pretty much forever. Incoming links really help your site get noticed by the search engines. Incoming links last a long, long time.

If this is part of your marketing strategy, then do your guest posts on blogs that actually get traffic, because a link from a high-traffic blog is worth more to you.

I suppose doing a guest blog isn't as exciting as speaking to 100 people in a room and selling 25 copies of your book. But guess which one lasts longer?

* Your author page on Goodreads.

Goodreads is a social network for readers. That's the whole point of the site -- to help readers discover books and authors.

Any author can have a profile page on Goodreads. It lists all your books, with links to major retailers. It includes blurbs for each one. It lets readers click a button to become your fan.

There is a lot to like about Goodreads. You can post excerpts of your books. You can get various widgets to embed in your blog or web site. You can link in your blog so that new blog entries show up in Goodreads.

Facebook and Twitter get all the hype right now. But neither of these social networks are exclusively about books. Goodreads is.

If you've got limited time to spend on social media, then Goodreads seems like the smart place to spend it.

* The "Also Bought" list on the online retailers.

On every book page on Amazon, there's a section labeled "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought". There are similar sections on B&N and Smashwords. This is the online equivalent of browsing in a bookstore.

The "Also Bought" list means that each of your books is an advertisement for your other books.

If you have a sizable backlist of books, then your books can cross-promote each other very nicely.

This means that it's entirely possible that your best marketing strategy might be to just write more books. I don't know any way to prove this, but it's possible.

In my opinion, the days of exclusively using short-game marketing are over. If you want to see a quick bump in sales, then yes, use some of the short-term marketing methods.

But a long game now makes sense. Think about marketing tasks you can do today that will still be working for you ten years from now.

And relax.

Marketing isn't a lottery anymore. Now it's a matter of making smart long-term investments that will pay off forever.

This article is reprinted by permission of the author.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 31,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.

Nothing to Hide by Mark Bertrand

MY REVIEW...
I've been intrigued by Bertrand's Roland March series. Bertrand has developed his characters into something that is compelling enough for you to keep turning pages. He also excels in writing in the present tense which is one of the hardest forms of writing prose. It is so difficult to keep the pace within the correct tense, be it something that a character did in the past, or will do in the future or what is happening at the moment. Present tense, for many readers, adds a breathlessness to action because you are running after a suspect; not the character ran after the suspect in the past tense. If not done correctly, the storyline can get convoluted.

In the first two novels, Bertrand accomplished the feat superbly. In this one (all books are stand alone) he doesn't seem to be on top of his game. It almost seems hurried and the quality has suffered. However, only someone who has read all the books would be able to tell. You won't be disappointed. The story line is good, new characters are developed well and you, dear reader, become suspicious the same time March does so you are not reading along and saying to March, "Dummy, you forgot that clue! Think about this! Sheesh, what a stupido." The suspense is very good, and you really feel for March as he once again stands on his conviction all by himself against the stacked odds.

I give it 4 of 5 stars. It's worth the money.

 

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing Nothing to Hide Bethany House Publishers (July 1, 2012)
by J. Mark Bertrand

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

J. Mark Bertrand lived in Houston, where the series is set, for fifteen years,
earning an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Houston. But after
one hurricane too many he left for South Dakota. Mark has been arrested
for a crime he didn't commit, was the foreman of one hung jury and served
on another that acquitted Vinnie Jones of assault. In 1972, he won an
honorable mention in a child modeling contest, but pursued writing instead.



ABOUT THE BOOK

A grisly homicide. An international threat.
The stakes have never been higher for
Detective Roland March.

The victim's head is missing, but what intrigues Detective Roland March
is the hand. The pointing finger must be a clue--but to what? According
to the FBI, the dead man was an undercover asset tracking the flow of
illegal arms to the Mexican cartels. To protect the operation, they want
March to play along with the cover story. With a little digging, though, he
discovers the Feds are lying. And they're not the only ones.

In an upside-down world of paranoia and conspiracy, March finds himself
dogged by injury and haunted by a tragic failure. Forced to take justice into
his own hands, his twisting investigation leads him into the very heart of
darkness, leaving March with nothing to lose--and nothing to hide.

If you would like to read the first chapter of Nothing to Hide, go HERE.