You’ll thank me.

I loved discovering it, enjoyed the research and the detail that went into creating the book, but never felt it was “mine”… in that totally weird artist way of owning something…

But someone saw another side of the book, and brought it to life as an international electronic book.

Thank you, Open Books.

Simple Intent is a fast paced legal thriller. When two interns uncover details about a cold case and work together to free an innocent man from prison, their simple intent is thwarted by crooked cops, a slick prosecutor turned defense attorney and a bunch of Philly bad guys.

Hold on tight…

JOIN US ON THE FACEBOOK PAGE

Read the REVIEWS

http://bookdout.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/review-simple-intent-by-linda-sands/

http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Intent-ebook/dp/B00413QN2G

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9199054-simple-intent

http://socratesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2010/12/simple-intent-by-linda-sands.html

You can buy and download here:

http://www.angusrobertson.com.au/ebook/simple-intent/13784419/

http://www.whsmith.co.uk/CatalogAndSearch/eBooksProductDetails.aspx?productID=OD00488901410

http://www2.smashwords.com/books/view/22826

http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Intent-ebook/dp/B00413QN2G

( one link even offers a free excerpt)

We are looking for more reviewers and bloggers, and will trade.

Especially if you read this article about his retreats called Little Nicky Camp. Oh, to be a fly on the wall… I mean, if those camps really exist.

But what we do. Changes lives.  There is nothing more important than giving a creative soul, a writing mother, a working woman who’s been sneaking away to the basement at night to write her novel… nothing would say I LOVE YOU more than  giving them space and time and an ocean view.

Just sayin’

Write by the Water , an amazing Christmas gift for the writer in your family.

The first e-book offering from little old me.

Yep. I did it. It wasn’t traditional. It wasn’t even my favorite book. I know, you shouldn’t say that. But I have become filterless in the last short while… beware the “f” bomb, people.

I blame it on the world. I am, like most writers filled with doubt about the publishing world- the book as we once knew it is probably changing forever. And along with that, is the way we acquire, market and buy both the author and the book.

So what’s a girl to do? Give up her dream? Stand there and just take it? Nope. Not my style. I have been patient. I have been understanding, forgiving and kind. Ask my agent.*

I believe there is “the right time” for everything, but seriously… does it take 4 months for an editor to reply? I know I always think I can do something better than the guy in charge, but imagine this… an email comes in. You read the query.  You say, nope. not for me. you reply. You delete, and repeat. A pitch comes from an agent, you like it, you request manu.  She sends it, you skim, trust your gut. Offer or decline. Done. Next?

Don’t even get me started on the army of marketers and accountants it takes to push a manuscript into book form. Or the way most people only read what they find listed on a BOGUS best-seller list. ANd please, we do not want to talk about the way some writers are more magic web masters and salespeople than wordsmiths.

ARGH.

Let’s just say, I want to keep writing novels, even if no one ever reads them. Even if I have to buy the whole stock myself and fly around the world reading chapters to blind people . I want to believe in the power of words, be sucked into the imagery of a place I will never go nor have never been. I want to be responsible for taking one person out of their reality and dropping them smack into a place from my dream. I want to mess with your head and I want you to love me for it.

Well, there. that’s why we write. For love. Or… to annoy the shit out of you.

I do both.

*note to agent   forgive my candor…now go pitch We’re Not Waving, We’re Drowning, and 3 Women Walk into a Bar

From The Writer’s Almanac: January 25th

It’s the birthday of the novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf, (books by this author) born Virginia Stephen in London (1882). She never went to school, but her father chose books for her to read from his own library. She was only allowed to move out of her family home after her father’s death, when she was 22. She moved into a house with her brothers and sister, and instead of writing letters about what she’d been reading, she began to write literary criticism for the Times Literary Supplement, and she became one of the most accomplished literary critics of the era. Woolf believed that the problem with 19th-century literature was that novelists had focused entirely on the clothing people wore and the food they ate and the things they did. She believed that the most mysterious and essential aspects of human beings were not their possessions or their habits, but their interior emotions and thoughts. She considered her first few novels failures, but then in 1922, she began to read the work of Marcel Proust, who had just died that year. That moved her to write her first masterpiece: Mrs. Dalloway (1925), about all the thoughts that pass through the mind of a middle-aged woman on the day she gives a party. Woolf went on to write many more novels, including To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931), but she was also one of the greatest essayists of her generation. In her long essay about women and literature, A Room of One’s Own (1929), she wrote: “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.” It’s the birthday of the man who wrote, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley” and “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, / And never brought to mind?” and “O my luve’s like a red, red rose, / That’s newly sprung in June; O my luve’s like the melodie / That’s sweetly played in tune.” That’s the “Bard of Ayrshire,” the ploughman poet, Robert Burns, (books by this author) born 251 years ago today in Alloway, Scotland (1759). Today people in Scotland and groups all over the world are holding Burns suppers to celebrate his life and work. They read Burns’ poems, sing his songs, eat haggis, and drink lots of whiskey.

I read this in The New Yorker and think the charity contribution part is brilliant. I have attended many book launches where they request a donation to a charity that is linked to the book’s theme or a character in the book.

When I finished writing We’re Not Waving, We’re Drowning, I began thinking about marketing, about tie-ins about media… this is all part of the business. The part we’re not supposed to think about while writing, and yet…

I have begun searching for charities in Savannah, charities related to literacy, book provision, education, and even joined a few lighthouse restoration groups. This type of  donation, of awareness, acts as dual marketing, and maybe in the end is more proactive that merely tithing 10% to your church.

Here’s the article:

by Thom Geier

This was fun, though they sort of got the thing wrong.
It wasn’t about me.
It was about a whole bunch of new talented writers.

It was about scratch.

contributors, see their bios

We’ve only been around online since February of 2008 and debuted the annual anthology this past June.

be in the next one: scratchcontest.net

We had a really fun night, and pretty good crowd for a bunch of unknowns. We never expected to get rich or famous- I think I’m speaking for all the contributors, but the idea of small press journals of short fiction is to get your author publication credits, to get your name out there, to build a following and to pump up the solitary writer’s ego- at least a little bit.

Compared to this VERY big festival, I realized two things. More planning, emails, marketing, begging and wine is needed when selling a virtually unknown book.
We came up with a lot of great promotion ideas, fueled by Belgium beer and Margaritas and will kick some serious butt next year. Watch out Hotlanta!

Besides being there to promote scratch. I had fun talking some of my favorite writers and meeting some new ones, like Sara Gruen.

Michael Malone and Robert Olen Butler on a panel that was so hot, someone fainted.

Unlike prior festivals, this post will not be peppered with pictures of me with authors signing my books. Of course, I bought books, and of course went to panels and stood in line and got my books signed- some for my sister Patti’s Birthday gifts! But, I guess I’ve finally reached that Literary Groupie status where everyone who was there that I was interested in, I’d already met. Man, that sounds like I get around.

There was a little lull time on Sunday afternoon to take the Marta over to Dragon*Con.

There is never a dull moment there. From architecture that blew away a Brooklynite

to potent Margaritas served with the creatures of Alice in Wonderland. We had our glass elevator ride and shot some film

before hurrying back to the other side of town, where the lit set were winding down with a picnic.

A few days of this kind of living, and I was almost ready to go home. Almost.

Certainly could have done without the false fire alarm at the hotel after 3 bottles of wine and a very large Belgium beer… but the rest of it?

The rest of is something to write about, until next year that is.

Have you seen this story? Got to agree with the author on that one.
And then there’s this one: Yikes.

There is even a contest for the worst covers. Here’s the 2005 finalists.

Some bad book covers I found are funny because they’re out dated: like these
and some I have to say I like, you know, for the art.