Big Lake Ranger

Terry and I spent all day yesterday making last-minute changes to my new book, Big Lake Ranger, and getting the e-book version of it formatted, which turned out to be a bear because it seems like Amazon changes the way they want things done from book to book.

But I finally got that part of it done and uploaded it to Amazon at 6:13 in the afternoon. They always say it can take up to 72 hours for a book to go live, and early on in my publishing experience with them, one of my books did, but since then it usually happens pretty fast. I wasn’t sure what to expect this time around, it being the day after Christmas, but at 7:30 I got a notice saying the book was available for purchase. That’s pretty darn fast!

This is my 48^th or 49^th book (I really do need to take the time to count all of them someday) and my fifth book of the year. It came in at 98,372 words, not counting front matter like the title page and table of contents or the teaser first chapter of the next book in the series, which I always include at the end of a new book release. That makes it my second longest Big Lake book, with the longest being Big Lake Lynching.

I also put together my free author’s newsletter announcing the new book yesterday, with the first chapter as a sample, and today I will send it out to my subscribers. If you would like to be included in the mailing list, just send me your e-mail address at editor@gypsyjournal.net. I promise I won’t spam you or share your information with anybody else. I hate junk mail as much as the next guy or girl.

The next couple of days will be spent doing marketing for the new book, and then I might jump into the fourth book in my Tinder Street family saga. Or I might not because I have another quick project in the works that I would like to get put together and out before my daughter Tiffany and her daughter Destiny arrived for a visit on the 12^th. The only thing I’m going to accomplish work-wise while they’re here is the daily blog. We’ve got a lot planned for them during the visit and nothing is going to get in the way of that.

Congratulations Kathy Starkey, winner of our drawing for an audiobook of The Scribe’s Daughter, the first book in Stephanie Churchill’s Crowns of Destiny historical fantasy series about a young heroine who escapes a brutal prison to journey through imperial cities, dark swamps, and across stormy seas to unravel clues to the mysteries of her family’s past. In doing so, her discoveries make her the target of a man who would use her for his own dark ends. But first he has to catch her. We had 29 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – Class is when you have a lot to say, but you choose to remain silent in front of fools.