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In the USA, it's Super Bowl Sunday...

2/1/2015

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…which means, let’s be honest, no one in North America is going to read this blog today. Overseas, we might get a few readers, but we figure the guy to the left, Harun, isn’t going to be one of them. We hope not, anyway.
 
You see, Harun is part of a farmers group in Kakamega North District, Kenya, and they’re needing a loan to buy “cost efficient maize seeds and fertilizer for the coming harvest season” – and, via Kiva, we’ve just tossed a few bucks in the pot. However, if Harun is taking the day off, kicking back with a Budweiser and watching some football with his five kids, we might have backed the wrong horse.

Yeah, we understand, a man has five children, he probably needs a few hours to relax. But not today. After all, we hear that harvesting season is coming.

We’re not watching the big game, either. Super Bowl overkill has dampened our enthusiasm to the point that we kinda don’t care. Instead, we’re pulling tax forms from all of the distributors of “Renee Harrell” books and stories: Amazon, SmashWords, Draft2Digital, Apple, Kobo, B&N, a few others, and, running the numbers just now, we realize that Renee Harrell made very little money in book sales and electronic downloads this year. Our other pen name saw a significant increase in royalties, thanks for asking, but this pseudonym is scrambling to make a buck.

If we wrote follow-up novels to our existing R.H. books, we’d probably see an uptick in sales. It seems likely, anyway. A reader of The Atheist’s Daughter or Something Wicked will occasionally send us an email, wanting to know what happens next, but almost no one has contacted us in regards to Aly’s Luck. Luck was one of our first novels, and we love it still today, but that love is not shared by a large readership.

So, of course, shortly before Thanksgiving, one of us wakes up and tells the other, “We have to write a sequel to Aly’s Luck.” Since the sequel idea was fantasy-oriented – heavy on the dragons, sprinkled with fairies, absent of almost all of the elements of the published version – this led to a rather interesting discussion. Then the waker-upper reminded the sleeper-inner that Luck was originally written as a fantasy (heavy on one particular dragon, sprinkled with buckets of fairies) but altered to satisfy a publisher’s sci-fi request.

To make the sequel work, all we had to do was change the first story back.

If we weren’t our own publishers, we could never do this. But since we are, we did, adding 9,000 words to the manuscript along the way and returning the glossary we’d once created for the novel. Using a new pen name, we ran the story past several beta readers, found an amazing artist for the new cover, and we’re readying the manuscript for March launch date. If it finds a readership, we’ll tackle the sequel. If you’re one of the dozen fans of the original Luck, it’ll still be out there, but only in audiobook form. Since Alexander McConnell did a great job with the narration, you might want to try it, anyway.

Meanwhile, enjoy the football game, the chips and a few bowls of Nacho cheese. Except for you, Harun.

Reading: Stephen King’s Revival. It’s as dark a story as he’s written in some years, but we love his love for H.P. Lovecraft.

Watching: People keep telling us we need to grab the second season of American Horror Story (Asylum) but we’re in the mood for something light. It doesn’t get any lighter than Scorpion King 4. Oh, and if you’re a Lou Ferrigno fan, don’t be fooled by his appearance on the DVD’s cover. He’s in the flick for about eight minutes. Maybe seven.


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As Halloween approaches...

10/24/2011

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...these are a few of the things we’ve learned recently.

This Blake M. Petit guy is more popular than we are. After we chatted with him (here), traffic to the Blog-O-Rama jumped by a factor of three. So, Blake, big guy? Next time you need a plug, you just let us know, you Louisiana wildcat. We’ve got your back.

To our surprise, After Things Went Bad floats in and out of the top 100 of Amazon’s paid s-f short stories section.  For the last couple of weeks, it's been ranked just below an Arthur C. Clarke collection and somewhat higher than H.P. Lovecraft’s 99-center, At the Mountains of Madness.  We’re surprised because, like Arthur and Howard Phillip, we haven’t done any marketing on the title in a long time. 

The price of an Atheist’s Daughter e-book on the Zimbabwe black market? It's $100,000,000,000,000 – or, with less zeroes, 100 trillion dollars (plus shipping).  Zimbabwe has struggled with mega-inflation for years and, in 2006, the country’s Reserve Bank flooded the country with money. If you, too, would like to be a 100 trillionaire, hit eBay, where you’ll find the currency going for a sweet $2.99. But you've gotta shop. Some of those sellers are asking $3.99 and $4.99, and that's simply too much for 100 trillion dollars.

It ain’t easy to get a Candy Butler. After our recent family reunion, Renee stopped at a California pharmacy and discovered the fellow on your left, whom she immediately named, ‘Buntley’. When her writing partner expressed some concern that (1) the airlines would charge greatly to carry a Buntley-sized box in cargo; and (2) $50 was too much to pay for a Candy Butler, she left her prize behind. Upon returning home, she discovered that Arizona is bereft of Candy Butlers – although a few enterprising internet marketers did offer this 36” marvel for the bargain price of $100 and up.  Relatives were called, a box was shipped at no small expense, and if you ring our bell on Hallow’s Eve, Buntley will greet you at the door. Yes, he will, because Buntley is a talking Candy Butler. And Harrell has learned not to say a thing.

Watching: American Horror Story. Which is quite creepy and seems absolutely appropriate, considering the season.

Reading:  Maxine Paetro and James Patterson’s Private. We were in the mood for cheese but the mood passed about twenty pages in. Remembering that life is short, we grabbed Elmore Leonard’s Road Dogs, instead.

Drinking:  Santa Julia Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon 2009. And, to think, we could have purchased a second bottle if we hadn’t picked up the hardcover of Private.

               


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    Come on in! This

    is the electronic home of Renée Harrell. Did you bring any wine?

    Picture

                       Renée         &       Harrell


    It's about time you got here.

    We aren't kidding about the wine.
     
    This is where we talk about writing...
    ...our writing, mostly. We also discuss kiva.org, Hunting Monsters Press, the magic bakery, self-publishing, pseudonyms, life itself -- a bunch of things.
     
    Thanks for stopping by. It wouldn't be the same without you.

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