Last night my daughter told me that I could start my own used book store with all the books I have on my shelves.

I laughed, then wondered again, about storage for my darling hardcovers, all those signed and first editions- books that I imagine will be called “antiques” before I die.

I know publishing is a changing industry. I accept that. I bought my Kindle, and shopping for tablets, read downloaded material all the time.

I even have my own e-book at all the retail outlets.

Simple Intent

* on sale for the next fews days at a discounted rate of $4.99

Though I still buy books in all forms, I must admit, the nights of wrestling with a 600 page hardback book while trying to get comfortable in bed, only to have it bonk you on the bridge of your nose when you fall asleep… won’t be missed.

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.

As the reviews on my ebook, Simple Intent come out. I begin to wonder what it would sound like if I wrote a review on my latest reads… and then I wonder why don’t I?
I think it’s a matter of time, and of space. How can I tell you that one book made me immeasurably sad but not why, and yet another made me angry and the last one? Although a raving success out in the world… I could not and have not finished it.
sigh.

thanks to this reviewer: who read and liked my e-book..

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.

The old FAMILY ANNUAL REPORT poking fun at all those holiday letters you can’t wait to mock then toss in the fire.

Check it out over here:

http://linda-sands.blogspot.com/

One piece I’d written and entered in a spoken word contest, but the others had never really been completed, I think there are about nine total.

I found an interested editor, sent in three to his new journal and they liked them, publishing them immediately.
A wildland fire service organization got hold of the link via Facebook, liked what i had to say and how I said it and now I may have another project in the works.

I love how my work is like knitting… the ball of yarn unravels, the needles click, something is born and inevitably, a stitch is dropped and the yarn runs out, because nothing is ever perfect and nothing is ever done.

Here’s hoping my knitting doesn’t catch fire.

You can read it here: linda-sands.com
or on the journal, Moronic Ox

and yes, that is just perfect for me.