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Today is November 1st, known as All Saints' Day in many parts of the world...

11/1/2014

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…and as the post-Halloween hangover in many others. We realized a couple of things about Halloween this year: (1) It’s much more fun when there are little ones in the house; and (2) we really, really need to get a couple of new costumes.

For too many years now, Harrell has gone as Clark Kent-changing-into-Superman and Renee has been a Medieval Farm Wench and/or Maiden, depending on her mood on the particular day. Two such disparate costumes don’t play well together (“So pleased I could save you, Medieval Farm Maiden,” says Superman. “Aieee!” cries the rescued Maiden. “It’s a demon from the skies!”) and neither outfit is looking any better for all of the wear. So, as soon as we’re done here, we’ll be hitting the Spirit Store to search for discounted alternatives.

We can afford to do this because, thanks to the team of story translators at Babelcube, we have a little extra change in our pockets. According to the Babelfolk, the Spanish and Portuguese editions of After Things Went Bad are now available pretty much worldwide. And how many sales has ATWB netted, secondary to this massive distribution?

Not quite as many as Harrell had hoped. And exactly as many as Renee had feared. Our royalties to date have totaled…thirteen cents. (Our poor translators are paid along with us, penny-for-penny. We feel so bad for them.)

In other news, we finished our five-part romance/sf/horror/fantasy serial before realizing it needed to lose the horror and fantasy segments and be put out as a standalone novel. Under a brand new pen name, since standalone novels issued by unknown writers are always popular in the e-book world.

That’s what Harrell planned, anyway. Renee has her own opinions about such foolishness but has tabled the discussion until our latest set of beta readers weigh in. Which oughta be any day now.

Watching: Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise. A lot of fun even though, seriously, who came up with that title? Oh, we got around to Gotham. A lot of fun and we should have started watching sooner. Why didn't you tell us?

Reading: Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials. Which, believe it or not, is the exact same title we intended to use for our new novel, even though our story focuses on one woman, is set in modern Mississippi, and doesn’t include a trial, of witches or anyone else. Still: talk about coincidence.

Happy All Saints’ Day!


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A well-known publisher wants us badly...

9/30/2014

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...and in a big way. Although, they could just want our money. You decide.
 
When we copyrighted our last novel a few months ago, we did so prior to publication -- and under a different title than the one we used when it actually hit the e-book market. So the only people who knew the novel as "Project: Runaway" (now you know why we changed the moniker) were the two of us, the crew at the U.S. Copyright Office, and...as it turns out...the marketing staff at Dorrance Publishing.
 
According to Dorrance Publishing, Dorrance Publishing is "America's oldest author services company". Which isn't what is said here and here, but it's better than being called a vanity press. It's believed by some of our fellow writers (but not by us, according to our lawyer's advice) that such outfits prey on the foolishly optimistic and the greatly uninformed, charging thousands of dollars for their services. For some absolutely legal reason, Team Dorrance is allowed to fish through the government's registration files and contact new copyright holders.
 
For the past several days, we've received multiple emails from Dorrance Publishing. They want us to know how interested they are in Project: Runaway and how eager they are to review the manuscript. The other day, they even called our house, such was their excitement. Since they know nothing about the actual story we've told, we have to assume they're motivated solely by the novel's title. The title that we've discarded.
 
But they're America's oldest author services company, so who are we to say we shouldn't have kept the title?
 
We've tried to direct their communications to our internet junk file but the Dorrance Jedi Spam Masters are smarter than Google and Firefox combined. Day after day, another one of their emails slips through Google's defenses, offering us yet another chance to give them our money...um, our manuscript. Hopefully, one of their sales people -- no, we're wrong, these are Publishing Consultants -- will contact us on a day when we're home. If that happens, one of us can tell him or her that we've already published the book, it's had time to climb up and down the sales charts, and we've already collected a dozen or so reviews as we write its sequel.
 
Or maybe it's better they never know. They love Project: Runaway so much, they'll only be heartbroken.
 
We've received a couple of other offers last month, too. A lovely gent contacted us through Bablecube, wanting to translate our short story set, After Things Went Bad, into Italian. We were open to the idea -- after all, the Spanish and Portuguese translations were kind of fun -- but he then added that he'd never done a written translation before. He hoped we could check his work, just to make certain he was doing it right. Since we didn't know how to do that, we decided to pass.
 
A week ago, we heard from a woman who wants to narrate one of our romance novellas. Not Twisted Games but one of the titles under another of our pseudonyms. This narrator specializes in super steamy erotica. We told her, politely, that our story lacked almost all of the elements a listener would want in a hot and sexy story. She said she didn't care, she wanted to do the narration, anyway. So we signed a contract and our non-erotic story, narrated by an erotic specialist, should be out in December.
 
Ho, ho, ho.
 
Reading: Poking a Dead Frog by Mike Sacks. And enjoying it very much, thank you.
 
Watching: Gotham. Well, not yet but soon. By Week Four or Five, certainly. Probably
 


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So it's Labor Day in the USA and...

9/1/2014

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…are we resting, as mandated by Federal law? We are not. We’re right at work, filling in this blog. We’ve learned a few things recently and we want to share them with you.

(1)   Don’t go to Mesa, Arizona, at the end of August. As it turns out, Southern Arizona is meltingly hot this time of year. You wouldn’t think we’d be surprised by this but, hey, we aren’t all that observant. We went to Mesa’s own Arizona Natural History Museum a couple of days ago and the nearby bank sign proclaimed it was 111 degrees (F). We don’t know what that is in (C) but, still, too damned hot.

(2)   Something else we discovered is, don’t go to Mesa’s own Arizona Museum of Natural History unless you have children with you. There were dozens of kids running around the place and, from what we observed, they loved being there. They can touch a petrified dinosaur bone, or watch a pretend T. Rex yawn (we think that’s what it was doing), and they can even pan for gold. For older folks? Well, we just got depressed. One of the museum's displays is an IBM Selectric Typewriter and visitors were supposed to guess the purpose of the machine. Because it’s such an ancient artifact. Harrell looked at it and said, “I used to type on one of those.” Right about then, a couple of children gathered around him, hoping they could watch him yawn.
 
(The image above? Harrell and Renée, enjoying downtown Mesa.)
(Yeah, Harrell should have put on sunblock.)

(3)   If you are in Mesa at the end of August (or any day except a Sunday), stop at Mango’s Mexican Cafe. The food is really, really good but they were out of tamales. Now we desperately want to eat an order of their tamales.

Meanwhile, while you enjoy a barbeque, or run off to see Guardians of the Galaxy for a third time, or simply soak in a tub while enjoying a glass of Picton Bay South Island Pinot Noir (cheap, Trader Joe’s, worth it), what are we doing for the rest of this holiday? We’re glad you asked.

Three months ago, one of our writing friends told us that serials are climbing the sales charts on Amazon. Serials aren’t new: The Pickwick Papers was the serial that shot Charles Dickens to fame – he put out a new part of the story every month, from March, 1836 to October, 1837 – and several modern writers are now following his lead. Our buddy suggested we try one and we thought it sounded like fun. Putting our other work-in-progress on hold, we dug in, rolled up our shirt sleeves, and got to work. We were almost finished with the first draft…when our friend called. She was disheartened.

Five segments in, her new serial is selling so poorly that she can barely drive herself to finish the tale. She tells us now, she thinks serials are overdone. People don’t want to buy ‘em, anymore. So, that’s –

(4)   – another interesting fact we’ve recently discovered. My but life is full of lessons, isn’t it?

Watching: From Dusk Till Dawn the Series. We enjoyed the pilot. Now it’s time to see if the rest of it’s any good.


Reading: Unsolicited by Julie Kaewert. It’s “A Booklover’s Mystery” and how can we lose? We like mysteries, we love books, and we think we’ll have a good time.

You have a good time, too. We’ll see you next month.


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July went out like a lion...

8/1/2014

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…and August is entering like one, too. Weather-wise, that is. We're not being stalked by actual jungle animals. As we write this today, lightning is flashing and thunder is booming and we’re well aware this post only goes up if the computer doesn’t go down. Yep, we’re old school, meaning we use a computer that’s plugged into a wall socket. So we’re crossing fingers but prepared for the worse.

 That’s not a bad life philosophy, either, even if it’s balanced toward the negative side of things. Outside the office window, the sky is black and threatening and gorgeous. We love to look outside when the weather is like this. (Look outside, not be outside.)  Of course, it’s probably not the best idea to be working on a plugged-in machine at this particular moment so maybe we’ll finish the rest of the blog with pen and paper before we transfer the words to Weebly.

 We’ve had a few busy weeks of late. Visitors have been staying with us for much of the last three weeks, including some pretty time-intensive but wonderful tiny visitors, and we’re exhausted.  During this same time, we also approved the Spanish version of After Things Went Bad (sí, es verdad!) and our latest novel-which-must-not-be-named was swept up by Amazon’s algorithms and became a short time, baby best-seller…well, a “best seller” by our standards. Our standards, as you must know by now, are pretty darned low, but none of our other novels have sold 1,000 copies in two weeks so we’ll take it.

We have a few other things to discuss – we have one writing friend who says we simply must start a mailing list but we don’t know if we want the hassle – and we have another writing buddy who says we simply must write a serial in the Charles Dickens’ fashion. She says this serial will make us rich if it includes (a) romance; (b) sex; a virgin, preferably female; and (d) a billionaire, who may or may not be a vampire but it must absolutely NOT feature (f) a virginal female billionaire vampire. Which kind of disappoints us because, now, that’s the story we want to write.

Watching: Fred Ward in Cast a Deadly Spell. F.W. plays Phil Lovecraft, a hard-boiled dick in the 1940s, battling supernatural forces of evil. Julianne Moore is in the movie, too, playing the femme fatale. Our local library has a VHS copy (you remember VHS, don’t you?), and it’s holding for us as we speak. Both of our team loved Fred in Tremors and Remo Williams, while half of us loves everything Lovecraftian. How can this not be fun?
 
Reading: Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives.
The team member who doesn't own every Lovecraft collection ever just happens to think Levin has the goods when it comes to writing. Both of us had read Wives before but it had been several years -- and this looks-like-new Fawcett paperback (pub date 1973) showed up at the library's used book sale for a dime. We're halfway in and, so far, it's better than we remember.

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Quer comprar nossas histórias?

7/1/2014

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...or, if Google's English-to-Portuguese translation service is correct, Wanna buy our stories?
 
Deciding it might be fun to spin old straw into new gold, we listed four of our stories on Bablecube. Bablecube states that their site provides the “easiest way for book publishers and authors to team up with translators and sell their books in multiple languages globally”, and it really was fairly easy for us. It works like this: A publisher or author lists a book on the Babelcube site. A translator searches the site until he or she finds a book that might sell to a non-English-speaking audience, and they then contact the author. If everybody likes everybody, an agreement is made between the parties.
 
The electronic contract is lengthy but understandable, without a heavy dose of lawyerese, and it gives Babelcube an exclusive license to sell the translated version for five years. Until the book (or, in this case, story collection) makes some serious money, the translator gets the biggest piece of the net.  The author may get a smaller cut but there's a sweetener for the people who created the story.  This is a "work-for-hire" deal for the translator and the author continues to hold all copyrights. After five years, should the writer so choose, they can kill the deal and keep the translated version as their own.
 
Overall, there didn't seem to be too many negatives that we could see. The whole thing sounded like fun, in a vague kind of non-fun way,  and not a lot of work (for us)
, so we put up a few stories and waited to see if anyone was interested in playing in our sandbox. In less than a week, a Spanish translator contacted us about the shortest of the offerings -- After Things Went Bad. When we reviewed her bona fides, she was more than qualified to do this kind of thing, so we signed our contract.  A day or so later, a Portuguese translator contacted about 'Things', too...and she also carried all the ups-and-extras you'd want in someone translating your work, so we signed that contract, too.
 
As part of the deal, the translator is to provide the first ten pages of a story for the author's approval. Our Portuguese-translating partner was the first to send in her ten pages, and we got them, and we looked at them, and....
 
It turns out, neither of us can read Portuguese. This wasn't a surprise, just in case you think the Arizona sun has been beating upon our respective noggins a little too fiercely,
but it did mean we had to find someone who could understand the language. Which we did, finally, and they liked what they were seeing with small caveats -- did you know there's a difference between Brazilian Portuguese and Portugal Portuguese? Oh, you fibber, you did not -- and our translator was lovely and receptive to changes and everything came together. You can find this edition right here or in some 300-other locations. Sooner or later, we hope to make a few euros.
 
And, then, the other day, we received the first ten pages of the Spanish version of 'Things'. It turns out, neither of us can read Spanish, either....


Reading: Dancing Days by V.J. Chambers. It's not only interesting, it's free, and who can resist a synopsis that starts with, "If Hogwarts were more like Woodstock, and Voldemort was your childhood sweetheart turned abusive boyfriend..."
 
Watching:
We're so torn. The new Robocop, with Joel Kinnaman? Non-Stop, with Liam Neeson? Jack Ryan, with Chris Pine? It needs to be fast, exciting, and not beyond-stupid. Oh, maybe we'll just go with The Lego Movie....

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Wanna trade some underwear? Because...

6/1/2014

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…we’re here if you need, like, twenty-five bucks to help with financing your next clothes-swapping venture. It won’t be our first time.

What happened was this: Kiva.org has recently been knocking on our e-door, wanting to know if we’ll chip in a few dollars for a new next micro-loan. We’d ignored their requests for a few weeks but, with the new novel in good shape, we decided to catch up with a few of our past obligations.  When it came to K.org., we were feeling a little punchy as we went through their list of candidates. We decided we’d choose our next worthy recipient by (a) their story, as presented by Kiva, and (b) the outside temperature in their part of the word. Since it’s been a little hot here, we wanted to help fund someone who was sweating as much as we were.

Finding someone who met criteria #2 was more time-consuming than you might have imagined but, at the Turner house, we’re willing to take the time to get things right. Besides, there’s just nothing on t.v. these days.

Today –you’re reading this on June 1st,  right? – the temp in our little town is hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit (or 32.2222 Celsius, if you want to go all Rest-of-the-World on us), if WeatherBug can be believed. Coincidentally, in the little village of Azatamut, Armenia, it’s expected to top out at 88 degrees Fahrenheit (or 31.1111 Celsius, if you reside in Armenia but can’t be bothered to go outside and check), but it’s a tad more humid there so, overall, we feel we’ve found our winner. Her name is Gayane.

It’s Gayane’s picture you’ll see in the upper left corner. In our Azatamut research, we discovered more than just the day’s temperature. We’ve learned that less than 2,000 people live in the village; there are no houses for sale there and we couldn’t find any apartments to rent, either; a Big Mac will cost a villager a fast $3.61 (or $2.64 Euro); and the village rests in the province of Tavush. Tavush sounds heavenly, with crystal springs and gorgeous lakes and mountains and mountains of virgin woods. While a resident may occasionally step over a discarded McDonald’s burger wrapper, it’s nearly idyllic.

It is in this modern Eden that, per Kiva, Gayane “rents a small store where she has been trading woman's clothing and underwear for a year.” We don’t have any idea how an underwear swap is profitable – volume! – or how you first approach your friends and neighbors with the idea, but we absolutely admire Gayane for thinking outside of the box. Because, admit it, you know you weren't coming up with this fresh, new concept.

And how is your day going?

Reading: Amped by Rob Lopez. Rob has taken some long strides with his writing and we're impressed. This story is a great start to his X-Troop series and, at 99-cents, how can you lose? But, Rob, man, each chapter averages less than five pages. (The good news? There’s 11 chapters!) That’s very James Patterson of you.

Watching: Tonight, we’re trying Felicia Day and The Guild, because Felicia Day makes Supernatural a little bit better so this might be good, too. Plus, Netflix has six seasons of the show available so, if we enjoy it, we can cut back on watching the Armenian Weather Channel.



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So many books to write...

5/1/2014

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…so little time. What we need is 72-hour days – or the ability to write much, much faster.

We don’t know about you, but it takes us about seven months to complete a novel. It can take longer, depending on the piece, but a full-length tome is rarely any less than a seven month project. As we prep our latest book baby (nine months) to go out the door, we realize we have a line-up of projects that we desperately want to finish. We have three sequels we’d love to complete, a romance that we’ve outlined, and one of our acquaintances has just told us that horror porn is HUGE right now.

No, no, we don’t intend to write horror porn, are you nuts? But we clearly need some time off to read the stuff, in the interest of market research and such. (Our fellow writer tells us that buyers love sexy stories that involve tentacles. The images that come to mind are hard to forget.)

The novel on our furthest back burner? Dead Sparrow. Yes, we know the title isn’t a winner but, once Renee gets an idea in her head, there’s no shifting it. Our basic storyline goes something like this: Our heroine, Catherine (Kit) Charbonneau, is an assistant on Danger Falls, an afternoon soap opera that’s struggling to survive. Since its inception in 1963, the show had enjoyed strong audience support until Dark Shadows premiered. Shadows influence has sent the Danger Falls producer chasing ratings, with a new head writer, a new emphasis on the supernatural, and a new star. The star, Derek Zarrowski…rebranded as Dan Sparrow…is moody, hot, sexy, and a complete jerk, with a large circle of girlfriends, former girlfriends, and one ex-wife.

The story is to be told from Kit’s point-of-view. In her early thirties, she’s a little too old to be a show assistant. She’s not cute enough, dumb enough, or obsequious enough to find favor. Her father, a disgraced ex-cop (bribes, and he took them gladly) pulled in a favor to get her the job. Self-doubting but ambitious and dedicated, Kit thinks she can fix the show, if someone would only listen to her. One of the first things she’d do is fire Dan Sparrow, especially after he threatens to quit the show and blames her for his meltdown.

Shortly thereafter, an on-air accident removes Sparrow from the call sheet permanently. As in, he's one Dead Sparrow. When a network executive (her father’s friend) lets it slip that the show is at risk of cancellation, Kit quietly starts a new job hunt. She quickly gets an offer of an interview from the ultra-handsome, ultra-rich…oh, but we share too much. Just know that Sparrow’s accident wasn’t, that Zarrowski’s ghost will soon appear in Kit’s bedroom, demanding she solve his murder, and that a lighthearted supernatural romance will ensue.

Someday. Maybe. If some sweet someone will only invent a 72-hour day for our use.
 
Until then, Renee has gone ahead and created a cover for our not-novel. We hope you like it.


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This is the greatest blog post you will ever read...

4/1/2014

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...April Fools'!
 
April Fools' Day is a holiday we don't cherish or celebrate at the Turner house but, if we've read our notes correctly, it's existed since the days of Geoffrey Chaucer -- we're talking the 14th century. The French embraced the tradition in the 1500s, the British took it up in the 1600s, and it's gone on and on until it looks as if we'll never be rid of it.
 
(The picture on the left? Geoff Chaucer, in his younger days. You might well say, "But Renee and Harrell, there were no cameras to take photographs back in 1346", and you'd be right if this was a photograph. It is, however, a remarkably life-like painting, created by the Italian master,
Paolo di Giovanni Fei. He was so ahead of his time, he painted this to look like a photograph in an effort to trick his companions into believing that cameras had already been invented. Which suggests that the Italians were into the "April Fools" thing, too.)
 
If you are one of life's mischief makers but somewhat short of imagination, the Huffington Post is offering 17 Easy April Fools' Day Pranks To Play On Your Friends and, we're telling you now, you'd best hope your friends are more easy-going than we are. If any of our buddies offered us a cream doughnut filled with mayonnaise, we would not rest until we'd gotten them back. In time, they'd tremble when they just heard the words, "Krispy Kreme".
 
We're also feeling a touch irritated at the spelling of both "krispy" and "kreme". If you go to Google and type in "crispy cream", the way your English teacher intended you to write the words, the screen actually defaults to Krispy Kreme. Geoff Chaucer would be disgusted.
 
Misspelled words and April Fools' pranks aren't any big deal so why are we feeling so grumpy this morning?  It could be that we're just feeling a touch stressed because of our current time-crunch. We're busily editing our new novel for the third time, trying to get it ready for an upcoming book tour.
One of our beta readers has reported in with a detailed report -- so far, so good -- while another couple are still flipping through the pages. The book tour people want...well, they want the sun and the moon, don't they?, and all in the next ten days. Cover images and a synopsis; book excerpts and ARCS for reviewers; gifts for each of the 20+ stops; and more! We can't supply a final edit or advanced reading copies until we've heard back from all of our beta readers and two of the team are taking their own sweet time.
 
And rightfully so. Our beta readers are WONDERFUL, especially since they're doing the work without pay, and it doesn't matter if they've gone a few days past their own self-imposed deadlines. We adore these people. And just to prove out much we love them? If they take much longer, we'll be sending them each a box of "cream-filled" donuts....
 
Reading: The Lovecraft Chronicles (2004) by Peter Cannon. Now we want to read Cannon's Scream for Jeeves
....
 
Watching:
Haunter (2013), free on Netflix but well worth the rental if you're not a 'flix'er. Abigail Breslin rocks...
 
Pleased to hear:
Luke Forney sa hard at work and will soon bring "Luke Reviews" back to life. Unless, of course, he was playing an April Fools' joke on us....

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Cats don't have a Plan B...

3/1/2014

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 …so they pretty much go with Plan A and stick to it: feed me, pay attention to me, play with me and, in return, you’ll get cat litter scattered everywhere, fur balls, vet bills, and love. Fifteen years ago, when we brought Zorro home, we wondered if it was really a fair deal.

Turns out, it wasn’t. Zorro gave us much more than we ever gave him.

He passed away on Wednesday, and Wednesday sucked on a level of terrible suckiness, and today, as this post goes up…there’s still such sadness. Which is all we care to say about this right now because our hearts are broken.

Until then, February was going fairly handily. We’ve finished the first draft of our new novel – it took nine months and, yes, we experienced periods of irrational moodiness and morning sickness – and we would have finished sooner except for all of the plumbers who kept knocking on our door.

So, in reflection, maybe things hadn’t been going all that swell. How did we forget about the plumbers? It took almost three weeks for the team to diagnose and resolve our water issues. After a while, it seemed as if another craftsman was always arriving at our doorstep just when we were sitting down to write or plot or edit a chapter.  We're not meaning to suggest these were random visits, we don’t have hoards of vagabond plumbers roaming the neighborhood, but having a tradesman in the house certainly takes the edge off of the daily word count.

After six visits from four different plumbers, our constant drip drip drip was fixed but it left us with a hole in the wall and bills totaling into the four figures. Coincidentally, our writing royalties for the last year were also in the four figures. So, happily, Something Wicked & Co. have covered this unexpected expense with a bit to spare.

Unhappily (and we kid you not), the sink in the master bathroom has just started leaking….

Oh, we’re so glad it’s March.
 
Watching: Bad Milo (2013). Free if you're a Netflix'er, a cheap rental if you're not, and we promise you nothing. But we liked it....

 
Reading: The Ten Word Game (2004) by Jonathan Gash. One of us is meeting Lovejoy for the first time....
 
Stunned by:  50 Shades of Grey
by E.L. James has sold 100 million copies since 2011 while Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is estimated to have sold less than a third of that number since its 1885 publication date. As the Wicked Witch of the West once said, "Oh, what a world! What a world!"....


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We meant to be back waaaaay before now...

2/1/2014

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...but it didn't quite work out, did it?
 
Like you, we've been busy. Not busy as in = actually accomplishing anything. Just...busy. Our son, Matthew, has been busy overseas, having adventures and meeting the amazing MeLisa. Our daughter, Rachel, has been wonderfully busy as well, winning multiple recipe and cooking contests, but she's been sharing her own adventures online so we'll let her speak for herself.
 
So what have we been doing the last couple of months? Well, we didn't travel overseas and we have yet to win any contests. Granted, we didn't enter any contests but we vaguely hope someone somewhere will award us a prize for something. Something good, though, not like getting our names on a new disease or strain of virus.
 
As 2013 wrapped, we weren't complete slackers. Check out the picture above and you'll see we have a new audio book available at Audible.com. With one audio book under our belts (Aly's Luck), you think we'd have remembered what a challenge this process can be. Well, one of us did but he somehow convinced the other one that this time it would be better.
 
Hahahahaha.

 
This time, we thought it might be fun to hear Something Wicked come to life in spoken form. After we'd rewritten the story, it had picked up a little steam, garnered a few reviews, and we were (and are) plotting and writing its sequel. So we posted the manuscript at Amazon's audio book factory, ACX, looking for a narrator. Since we weren't offering any money up front, the initial response was a bit muted. Which is to say, no one cared.
 
Then ACX got involved, deciding on its own to offer a very nice stipend to any actor or actress who did the project with us. (Why they pick some titles for a stipend is a mystery to all. We certainly don't know why.) Suddenly, there was a rush of interest in being our narrator. Flooded with audition tapes, we discovered there is some amazing talent out there. After much debate, we selected the gifted LC Kane, an experienced pro with a number of other titles to her credit.
 
She spent hours and hours on the job, responding to our requests and fixing the bits and pieces we wanted corrected. LC captured our heroine's voice perfectly.
 
Once they see the sales numbers, the Amazon shareholders may not be delighted but as far as we're concerned? This one is a winner....
 
Watching: The third season of BBC's Sherlock. We didn't think we'd like Watson's new flame. We were wrong...
 
Listening: One Republic. Where have you been all of our lives? We're going through one album at a time...
 
Reading: Nick Hornby's Ten Years in the Tub. They had us at "Nick Hornby"...

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                       Renée         &       Harrell


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    This is where we talk about writing...
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