…so we’re checking out. Out for the day, that is.

DOCTOR SLEEP: A NOVEL, Stephen King’s sequel to THE SHINING (also A NOVEL but we guess he forgot to remind us), made its appearance yesterday. Renee had her purchase on insta-Kindle download, checked to make sure all 544 pages had arrived electronically, then set today aside for a bookgasm.  

Which, of course, IS what happens when someone spends all day in bed with a book. Back when she was a teenager, Renee used to do that kind of thing quite often. Less so, the last couple of decades.  Instead, she’s been spending her time by taking care of the kids or the pets or the husband or the career. You know, doing all of the life stuff that everyone does, almost automatically, and that no one really remembers having done.

On the other hand, most people remember the days they’ve devoted solely to a book. Harrell still remembers his first (THE PRINCESS BRIDE) and his second (‘SALEM’S LOT), which is pretty impressive for a guy who can’t remember what he had for breakfast yesterday. If you’ve never bookgasmed out, find a good novel, turn off the phone, and climb under the covers. You won’t regret it.
 
The picture above? It's from the zoo in Seoul, South Korea. Because someone we love sent the photo to us recently and we wanted to post it, that's why.

Checking Amazon yesterday, we noticed that SLEEP was #1 in Books, #1 in Horror, #2 in Suspense Thrillers. Ten reviews had already been posted, ranging from terrific -- “a wonderful sequel”--  to less grand -- “a huge disappointment”. This disparity of opinion is pretty much par for the course for any popular work.  (Even Dr. Seuss’ FOX IN SOCKS, the children’s classic, has its critics. “It basically has no story or interesting plot at all,” one person stated when giving their one-star review. We won’t argue the point because FOX IN SOCKS is a rhyming book and the book’s engine is silly rhymes, not intricate plotting. However, this reader’s harsh response to rhyming tales has caused us to abandon our next effort, THE SLUT IN THE HUT.)

What surprised us about the reviews for SLEEP wasn’t that people had varying opinions. We were surprised that there were critics of the critics, attacking even the reasonable, well-considered, negative reviews. Under Comments, one reviewer was called a “hater”. Later, the same reviewer was accused of attempting to “torpedo” the latest King hit.  (If one of our stories is ever #1 in Books, #1 in Horror, and expected to top the New York Times Best-Seller List on the week of its release, feel free to unleash your venom.  We don’t think a few contrary voices are going to stop that train.)

Earlier this year, one of our friends told us that she no longer posts book reviews on Amazon. She said that people ignore the good ones while slamming the bad ones.  She isn’t going to play that game any longer. Our problem with that is, we rely on both good and bad reviews to guide our purchases. We’d hate a candy-coated world of book reviews, where only positive word-of-mouth is ever allowed.

Except when it comes to our writing. If you see a negative review on one of our stories, you know the person is a hater who’s only trying to torpedo our novel.
 
Quote o' the day: "If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mister Brave Man, I guess I am a coward" -- one of Jack Handey's favorite Deep Thoughts

...stay out of the kitchen, or so the saying goes. Our entire adult lives, both of us have made an effort to abide by this bit of wisdom. As we mentioned last week, our daughter, Rachel, is much more oven-oriented than either of her parents. Our culinary skills have forced us to seek out Early Bird dinners all over town while Rachel's love of the kitchen has made her a Pillsbury Bake-Off semi-finalist in their Quick Rise and Shine Breakfast competition.
 
We learned, when you're in the Bake-Off competition, the Pillsbury team sends you a special branded apron to use as "whenever wear" (as in, we'd like you to wear this whenever someone is pointing a camera in your direction). The contestants get a free apron, the Pillsbury Corp gets their name out there, it's all good.
 
Team Pillsbury also shares some media tips with the contestants; you know, in case they're interviewed for the local t.v. station, the hometown paper, or a popular website. No, not this site; a popular site. Those tips must be golden because the NWF Daily News knocked on Rachel's door and she told all. Plus, the words "Pillsbury" and "Bake-Off" enter the conversation frequently. Her interview is here.

One fellow who is also a baker but who has yet to hear from the NWF Daily News is Inom, the man on the left. (You might not appreciate the sexiness of Inom's name on first listen but give it some time. If the sullen but steamy vampire in Twilight was called Inom, everyone would think the name sounded oh-so-hot. If there was a popular actor named Inom Clooney, babies everywhere would share the moniker. Deny it if you must but you know we're telling the truth.)  Although, honestly, the NWF Daily News might have made a good call. Inom doesn't look like the kind of guy who welcomes reporters. Or photographers, either.
 
Would it kill you, buddy, to break a smile?
 
Whether he's smiling or not, we're on Team Inom. We had some royalty money to spend so we headed to Kiva.org, our favorite micro-lending organization. On the Kiva site (here),  we read, "Inom works as a baker and sells baked goods. He is 32 years old. He is a married man, has two sons and two daughters, and lives with his family in the town of Qurgan-Tube in the Khatlon region. The children are in school and his wife helps him in the activities". Inom wanted two thousand dollars to buy the ingredients (flour, sugar, margarine, yeast, eggs, raisins and baking powder) he uses in his biscuits. Since the average annual income in Tajikistan is only $1,388, you might think that's an inordinately large amount of cash. But then you see the size of those biscuits and you realize, hey, those things are HUGE. Is two thousand dollars going to be enough?

So we opened our wallets and contributed to the cause. If Rachel wins the bake-off, she's promised to use part of her million dollar prize to take us to Qurgan-Tube to try Inom's biscuits. And, if we go, we're going to ask the Pillsbury people if we can bring Inom one of those bright blue Bake-Off aprons. Then, if we can somehow talk him into putting it on, we're going to take a picture and share it with you.
 
Because that's what it's all about, you know? Sharing the love.
 
Quote o' the day:  "Baking makes me focus. On weighing the sugar. On sieving the flour. I find it calming and rewarding because, in fairness, it is sort of magic. You start off with all this disparate stuff, such as butter and eggs, and what you end up with is so totally different. And also delicious." -- Marian Keyes

…in a big baking contest, there are all kinds of rules and regs to follow. Some things are allowed, other things aren’t, and stuffing the ballot box is absolutely against the rules. One person = one vote is pretty much the theory and we’re good with it. 

Since we’ve had our turn at the internet voting box, we’re hoping you’ll consider placing your vote, too. Because – be prepared for bragging – it’s just been announced that our daughter, Rachel Ruiz, is one of the Pillsbury Bake-Off’s Quick Rise and Shine Breakfasts semi-finalists.

Proud? You bet we are -- even if we’re a little confused. Where did the girl get her cooking genes? Renee’s favorite dessert is No Fat Chocolate Pudding, found in the bakery aisle of our local mega-mart. Peel off the top lid and the brown goo is good-to-go. Harrell’s favorite breakfast is Maruchan Ramen at 15 cents a packet. Add boiling water, let the block of pressed noodles steep for 60 seconds, and it’s a meal. As you can see, we’re pretty casual about the meaning of the words, dessert and meal.

In our house, “home cooking” meant we were having dinner at the neighbor’s house. So, when our teenaged daughter blew the dust off of our pots and pans and starting preparing real food, we were more than a little surprised. (Also, more than a little pleased. Shhh, don’t tell her.) Then Rachel went off to college, joined the Air Force, met Ben, the man o’ her dreams, married and moved away…and we returned to a life of non-refrigerated desserts and sodium-laden noodles.

Meanwhile, Team Ruiz produced two of the world’s cutest grandbabies. In between diaper changing, still ongoing and ever so much fun, Rachel began developing her own recipes. She frequently provides treats for Ben and his co-workers but a stay-at-home mom has limited opportunities to display her skills. Wanting to stretch her culinary muscles, she began to enter on-line cooking contests. She told us, “I love, LOVE to bake and recipe contests give me an outlet for my creativity.”  The Pillsbury Corp offers the biggest recipe contest in the world.

There are thousands of entries chasing the million dollar prize so it’s an honor to be selected as a semi-finalist. Truly. However, as we learned during the Disney Fellowship Competitions, life rarely rewards the world’s semi-finalists. There are three categories in the contest and the first two (Appetizers and Dinners) have already been completed; only Breakfast is still in play. Sixty recipes were chosen in the contest’s breakfast category and only 33 of the Quick Rise and Shine Breakfast contestants will be going to Las Vegas to continue competing for the prize.

Those 33 contestants are chosen via internet voting. The one person = one vote is in full force but you can vote for as many recipes as you like. As it happens, we think her recipe for Spicy Tortilla Breakfast Empanadas is really inventive and pretty terrific. (No, we haven’t made it ourselves. Haven’t you been paying attention? We wouldn’t make it even if the ingredients included No Fat Chocolate Pudding and Maruchan Ramen. Also, it’s not take-out pizza. On the other hand, Rachel has made it and it tastes wonderful!)

“It’s pretty much a twist on one of Ben’s and my favorite breakfast dishes, the Tex-Mex version of migas,” she told us. Tex-Mex migas traditionally include scrambled eggs, tortilla chips and salsa. Her version? Even with only seven ingredients and a 20-minute prep time, it came out really different and fun. “It just came to me one day and I decided to try it. I liked it, Ben really liked it, and I decided to enter it in the contest.”

So that’s where we are today. Since it’s a short contest – it runs September 12th through September 26th -- we’d appreciate it if you’d swing by the Pillsbury site and sign-up today. (Go here.) It’s pretty easy; if you’re 18 years old, you give ‘em an e-mail address, make up a password, and you’re in. Then go to the Voting Gallery, review the 60 different breakfast recipes, buy all of the ingredients, make every dish, and then vote for Rachel Ruiz once you’ve decided you like her creation best. Or, if you’re a little busy, just check out Rachel’s recipe and, if you like it, cast your vote. You can finish the other stuff later.

Thanks. And happy eating!

...or so the song goes. In our experience, love and family and conservation of angular momentum is every bit as important but that's not what we're talking about today. Today, we're talking about money.
 
Our money, to be more specific. Yes, it's crass to talk cash. Still, we said the same thing a few months ago then went ahead and talked about money, anyway, so what does that say about us?

On some level, it says we're professional writers. Maybe we hang with a crass crowd but they seem quite comfortable talking about their cash flow. When we speak with other writers, people we know on any kind of personal level, the conversation inevitably swings to (a) sales (b) royalties (c) contracts (d) money. Oh, and how are the kids?

The kids are doing well, thanks for asking. We plan to do some serious bragging in the very near future so please return to this space.

As far as money? Just days ago, Amazon sent us a pair of lovely royalties checks -- one for its US arm, one for Amazon EU. Combined, this was the largest number of dollars we'd received since going the self-published route. Since Amazon pays a couple of months after sales have been recorded, we anticipate receiving some decent checks over the next couple of months, too. Sadly, this bump in sales isn't seen under the "Renée Harrell" semi-pseudonym. All of our favorite novels, Aly's Luck, The Atheist's Daughter and Something Wicked, are struggling to find an audience.

In fact, 'Wicked' was on life support before we did a rewrite and plugged it into KDP Select. We did our first two-day KDP giveaway in true lame ass style (failing to share that we were doing a giveaway but only because we forgot), our lack of effort resulting in a new positive review and a single additional sale. Determined to do better the next time, we hired eBook Booster to find promo sites for SW on its second and last, three-day giveaway. Initially, it seemed to help, as the novel was listed on a half-dozen different sites. Almost magically, we remembered to plug the second giveaway on this website, too.

At the end of the three day “sale”, ‘Wicked’ ended up #2 in Amazon's YA Mystery/Thrillers and #2 in its YA Paranormal. The ratings were nice but  the number of total downloads wasn’t impressive. For the first two-day handout, when we did nothing at all, we gave away 656 copies. With eBook Booster’s assistance, over a three-day period, we sent out all of 752 copies. Still, we collected another nice review (thank you, Jamie, whoever you are) and sold three copies of the novel.
 
Financially, this was not a win.

But we can't be too grumpy. Some of our other work is finding a readership and, for now, that's going to have to satisfy us. If you're wondering what we're going to do with our royalty windfall, well, it wasn't THAT much; it was just several times better than our usual monthly collection. So, tomorrow, we're going shopping for people.
 
That's right -- Kiva, here we come! But first things first: Next week, we're talking about family.
 
Can't wait to see: Cockneys Vs Zombies. It never showed up at the local theater but, in the States, its being released on DVD today. 69% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and possibly stupid. We love stupid.
 
Reading: Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen. If we could write as well as Hiaasen, that's all we'd do. Do you hear us, C. Hiaasen? Back to the word processor for you!
 
Quote o' the day: "A guy will say, 'Well, I make my luck.' And the same guy walks down the street and a piano that's been hoisted drops on his head. The truth of the matter is your life is very much out of your control." -- Woody Allen