A bit of housekeeping, with prizes

Jan Sikes was here this week announcing her new book baby, Ghostly Interference.

As part of this tour stop, she had a couple of prizes for those who participated in the comments. This morning she emailed me the winners and I agreed to post them here today.

Staci Troilo is the big winner of a free copy of the ebook.

Sharon Marchicello won the $5 Amazon Gift Card.

Congratulations to the winners, and we did have some lovely comments that day. Jan will be reaching out to you to deliver your prizes.

It’s a party, yo! #RRBC style

Welcome to my stop along the Springtime Book & Block Party route. Let’s get the preliminary stuff out of the way first. I’m giving two prizes away, and you don’t have to be a member to win. All you have to do is leave a comment, and a random draw will decide the winners. Contestants are only eligible from North America, due to the restrictive cost of shipping.

So what could you win? How about one of these awesome coffee mugs, featuring my personal assistant, and the spokesmodel for my writing career, Lisa Burton the robot girl.

Look how beautiful that marble bust looks, oh and Lisa looks nice too. These things are huge, and you’re going to want one.

This time the party took me by surprise. Last time we did one of these, I timed a book release around it, and that worked out extremely well. I don’t have a book release today, but I can still give you the tour.

At the top of my blog there are a couple of pages that might interest you. There is the standard “about me” page, but there is also a free selection of Lisa Burton paper dolls if you’d like them. I wanted to come up with some swag for an author who only has ebooks available. Make sure you print the pdf files and not the images shown.

The fun one is called Lisa Burton Radio, I’ll let her tell you about it.

“Hi everyone, welcome to the new visitors, and I see some familiar faces here too. The show is really fun, and I interview the characters from your books. At the end I include covers, bios, purchase links, whatever you want, really.

“When the post goes live, I share it to Flipboard, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and two Facebook sites. I try to help as much as I can. I’m always looking for guests, so drop me an email. If you want to check out past interviews there is a link in Craig’s sidebar. I’ll let him tell you about the sidebar, he loves his sidebar.”

Thanks, Lisa. I also tweet out the five most recent interviews every week after Lisa finishes with them. My sidebar starts out with a link to obtain a free reading app. As an ebook guy, I don’t want to make it difficult for anyone to read my stories. Then I post the two most recent publications with direct links to those books. I have all the covers in a slideshow, because it doesn’t feel right to have them all on there. Lisa mentioned the blog categories, and this is where you can always find her interviews. Those of you who write speculative fiction might find some inspiration in the Idea Mill posts too. Oh, and before I forget, there is an Entertaining Stories Facebook page too, if any of you are so inclined. It’s the only place you can see videos of my dog, Otto. (Don’t laugh, I know some of you are into this stuff.)

That’s the grand tour. Hope everyone is enjoying the party, it’s one of my favorite events. I hope to have two new books coming out soon, but I got caught without them ready yet. One is a collection of short stories called The Enhanced League, about a futuristic baseball league. The other is kind of an alternate world fantasy novel called The Yak Guy Project. Coming soon, I promise.

I guess if I’m going to promote something, The Playground could use a bit of review love. I know some of you are holding shiny new Amazon gift cards at this point in the tour. The club even has a list of who you are. Mwa ha ha…

For those of you who aren’t RRBC members, this is an awesome club. We thrive on mutual support, and it’s kind of a pay it forward system. We’re growing by leaps and bounds, and we’d love to count you among our members. There are too many benefits to mention here, but things like this blog party are happening all the time. Why don’t you check it out at this link.

Party on! Sign up for your own character interview. Leave me a comment. I love interacting with everyone, and you could win a prize.

Squeezing a post in

It's Sunday, it started like every Sunday, with a call to my parents. We talked about family triumphs and struggles, the opening day of Major League Baseball, and other things.

My son and I went to see Ghost in the Shell today. Everyone seemed to be wondering what I thought, because the reviews weren't that good. I thought it was awesome to be honest. One of the things I wanted from it was visuals of the futuristic environment.

My next novel (possibly 2018) is going to be called Grinders. It's about bio-hackers, and I want to use setting similar to what I saw in the film previews. (Okay, I'm old enough that I was thinking Blade Runner, but you get the gist.) Ghost in the Shell delivered big time, in fact, I may have to step up my setting beyond the ideas I already have.

I thought the story was good too. It wasn't overly complicated, and it suited the genre well. I would have liked to see more familiar faces, but it could be that I wasn't looking at the faces. Scarlet Johansen tends to make me look many places at once.

Tomorrow kicks off the Story Empire Blog tour I already shared with you. This is going to keep me busy. I will have a guest here tomorrow, and at the same time, I will be a guest somewhere else. Never one to slack-off, I also have the regular post in the rotation at Story Empire. This means I have some serious comments to follow across the internet.

I will not be reblogging my own tour posts, because I won't step on my guest's toes during this event. If you want to win one of my prizes, you'll have to visit my host's sites. This is the tour schedule, and there are some fun prizes up for grabs, and some great deals on good books.

Then there is the social media support to go along with it all. There are occasionally comments there that I need to respond to, on top of the WordPress comments.

During all that, I want to move ahead with my reading responsibilities. I may try reading a few chapters, surfing all the sites and media, then reading a few more chapters.

Lisa Burton, my personal assistant thinks she can explain it better than I can.

Wish me luck. Have you seen Ghost in the Shell? What did you think? Do you have any tips for keeping up with all of my blogging responsibilities?

Kind of an Odd Day

How is, or did, everyone survive without Twitter and several other forms of media? Here in Idaho, Twitter has been down all day due to a malicious hacker who decided we all have better things to do. (we probably do, but that’s not his choice to make.)

For me, it prevented some of my promotional efforts. Today was supposed to be a light day anyway, but I have a couple of things going on I’d like to spread the word about. I’ll just regroup and mention them here.

First, the Paranormal Bar & Grille is at the CBY Book Club today. This post has excerpts from all the books being promoted. I’d appreciate it if people would check it out, and Twitter isn’t available. Here is the link (LINK), maybe you’ll find your next great reading adventure.

Second, my Amazon Giveaway is still going on. It has exceeded my expectation, because I set it up to run until the 30th of this month and it’s almost over. I purchased five copies of Will O’ the Wisp to giveaway. The odd thing is that three of them went in about 30 hours, the fourth one went about ten hours later. Now it’s been seven days, and that last copy is still there. I really don’t want to run a second giveaway for one copy. Therefore; I’ll give you a little inside information.

When I set this up, I had several options. One invoved the first five contestants winning the prizes. The second one involved some kind of convoluted algebraic thing that I couldn’t make much use of. The third one is what I did. It works like this, pick a magic number and every multiple of that number wins a book until they’re all gone. I chose the magic number of 70. Someone won at 70, 140, 210, etc.

Right now the entrants are standing at 338. This means the odds of winning this thing are astronomical right now. You just have to be the one to hit 350 on the nose. If anyone is interested, Will O’ the Wisp is a great Halloween story. Here is the contest link (LINK)

Third, I’ve compared notes with some of my Story Empire compatriots, and the entrants into our various scavenger hunts have slowed down. There are ten Amazon Gift Cards you could win. You can spend these on anything you like, and aren’t limited to books. In addition, there are five ebooks being handed out. But wait, there’s more. There is also a Rafflecopter for a larger Amazon Card that doesn’t even require any thought.

The best page to link to is the Paranormal Bar & Grill homepage. Right in the middle is the path to the Rafflecopter. At the bottom are links to the individual scavenger hunts. Just pick an author’s name and have fun. Here is the link to get in on these prizes (Also a LINK)

Like I said, Twitter is a decent place to share this info, but it’s not available right now. Besides, I’d like to see one of you guys win something anyway. When my month of promotion ends, I’m going to post an assessment, but I’ll probably post it over at Story Empire. That site needs some love too.

It sounds like Old What’s Her Face and I are going out for pizza and beer tonight. That means I drink beer while she goes deeper into the Boise Townsquare Mall and spends money. At least today is payday. There is no baseball tonight, and Boise State played last night. I’ll take my phone, maybe some of you will comment here.

Don’t get left out

Lisa Burton, the robot girl here tonight. As Craig's personal assistant, I am the one who put together most of his current promotions. I'm also the spokesmodel for his writing career, but there is no new poster to go along with all the stops he's been making. Although we do have a poster for his Macabre Macaroni stories.

I decided to put my insane sign shaker skills to help with the promotions. Craig thinks I'm silly, but I can toss this thing in the air, spin around and catch it. Robotic precision baby.

First, let's talk about The Playground. This is Craig's latest novel, and it has a decidedly Halloween vibe going for it.

Basically, some nutjob created a social network that targets children. He's brainwashing them to create his own homegrown army. To speed things along, he turns to the occult.

There is this girl who becomes one of the victims, and you get to follow her through the story as her life gets darker, and more desperate.

Then there is the doctor lady. She's a cancer survivor, and is avoiding a return to work by helping end-of-life patients. She takes a job with this goofy old guy, and catches a parasite. It's not just any old parasite though, this one allows her to see into the world of shadows. She has the ability to talk to ghosts, see demons, and that kind of thing.

The next generation software goes missing, so the crazy business guy sends this huge thug after the culprit. This guy is kind of a force-of-nature, and is not to be taken lightly.

The whole thing becomes a chase for the missing software, but in a dark paranormal kind of way. You know, good guy chasing bad guy to fetch the prize before the little girl does something she can't recover from.

Anyway, Craig has The Playground on sale for 99¢ through Friday. Get it now, at the sale price, just in time for Halloween.

Craig also had a story chosen for an anthology called Macabre Sanctuary. There are ten short stories from some incredible authors, and they all have a freaky paranormal thing going on.

Miraculously, there isn't a single werewolf or vampire in the whole book. I told you these are some creative folks, and there are other things out there that are just as spooky, maybe even more so.

Macabre Sanctuary can be read in small bursts, like coffee breaks or while picking up parts for your own robot. At the price of free, what are you waiting for?

But wait, there's more! Craig and several of his friends formed a new blog called Story Empire. They are on a huge blog tour right now called The Paranormal Bar & Grille.

To drive interest in the tour, each author is running a scavenger hunt. I know, crazy right? All you have to do is go to The Paranormal Bar & Grille and click the author links at the bottom of the page.

These links will take you to the individual scavenger hunt for whatever author you choose. It's about too easy. Just answer a few questions on each site to enter. All the answers are found in the Story Empire Book Library.

There are a bunch of Amazon gift cards to win, and the occasional e-book of the winner's choice. Odds are pretty good right now too, so get your entry in.

But wait, there's more. Oh, I already said that. But wait, there's even more than more.

On The Paranormal Bar & Grille page, you will find a link to that massive blog tour I told you about. If you click on it, you can see all the stops along the route, and there will even be book reviews. At the bottom of that page, there is a Rafflecopter for a big old honkin' $30 Amazon gift card.

You have a pretty good chance of winning, but you've got to enter to win.

The second week of October, now with #prizes

I may have mentioned doing a bunch of promotion during October. Several of my titles have a paranormal theme to them, and it seemed like a natural time to hit it hard.

Last week I used some Amazon free days for my novel, Panama. I gave away hundreds of copies, but that's always a crap shoot. There is no guarantee that anyone will read their copy, and less chance that they'll leave a review. Still, it is a reasonable opportunity to make some fans. Everything worked according to plan, and it remains to be seen how it will shake out in the long run.

There are several things going on this week. The first one is a 99¢ sale for my newest novel, The Playground. I felt like Panama was an older title and the free days made more sense there. The Playground is my newest publication, and I'm not quite ready to give it away yet. I won't drone on about it here, because I made a separate post about it this morning.

To support the 99¢ sale, I did a Facebook push. I immediately kicked myself for one small mistake. I included the link to my blog post and not the Amazon universal purchase link. Then I received a comment from someone who bought the book and promised a review. Maybe it wasn't a mistake after all.

I also updated my pinned tweet on Twitter to reflect The Playground and the 99¢ sale. Every little bit helps, right?

I have more things planned as the month shakes out. Watch this space for updates.

I also appeared on Bad Moon on the Rise, over at Teri Polen's blog. In fact, I kicked the event off. I've been following this event every day and tweeting out the new posts. I've discovered some books I need to read too. I honestly hope some of you are interested in my Halloween themed promotions, but I'm not the only one doing this. There are some great things over at Teri's and you really should check it out.

I also started my annual tradition of posting some micro-fiction every week during October. I call these Macabre Macaroni, and they will include the Lisa Burton art as part of the promo. I don't always include graphics, but know posts with images draw more eyes. In my experience, Lisa draws more eyes than anything I've ever posted, so I included her here. I want this post to get some readers.

I was lucky enough to get included in an anthology called Macabre Sanctuary. This includes ten short stories for the price of free. I'm in the process of reading it now and all the stories have been great so far. You can't beat the price for a little bit of Halloween reading, and I'd appreciate you checking it out.

Another of the big ticket items kicks off this week as well. Regular readers will recall the announcement of Story Empire. This is a group of five authors who came together originally with the idea of some mutual promotion during October. It's evolved into so much more. There is a blog that features some nice writing tips, a Facebook page, and even a Twitter account.

The key piece of Story Empire this week is called The Paranormal Bar & Grille. We're doing a massive blog tour through Reading Addiction Tours. You can follow the tour at Reading Addiction, but you really need to visit the Bar & Grille site too. Each of the authors is holding a scavenger hunt and we're each giving away some pretty darned good prizes. You can find all of the answers by surfing around the Story Empire site. All of the top prizes are gift cards, and not an electronic copy of the book I gave away last week. (You know, unless you want one.)

There is also a Rafflecopter giveaway at Reading Addiction. The prize is a $30 Amazon gift card, so make sure you get in on that too. On both sites, you have to play to win.

I have other things in the works for later this month. Rather than tell you about them all right now, I want to concentrate on the timely things you should be taking advantage of right now.

So yeah, I've been kind of busy. The setup for everything happened while I had visits from my parents, two different groups of in-laws, and a convention I had to attend as part of my paycheck job. I expect a little smoother sailing as the month shakes out.

Sunday, hope I covered everything

I'm having some connectivity issues here today. Everything else seems to be hunky-dory, but my iPad is acting up. I hope this doesn't mean bad things for my precious baby.

I have a post scheduled every day through friday now, with the exception of wednesday. If nothing else, this will give me one day to make some kind of adjustment. I might have an announcement to make, but that involves a team effort, and I need to hang tight. I can always post a picture or two from my field trip for work.

My friends and I, over at Story Empire, have a month long scavenger hunt going on. There are five separate scavenger hunts to check out at our Paranormal Bar & Grille page. We're taking our books on a huge tour, and there is a grand prize to be found there too. You have to play to win, and you could win as many as five of the regular prizes. We weren't exactly ready to pull back the veil, but I already have one entrant so the time is now. Go down to the bottom, and the highlighted names will take you right to the scavenger hunts.

Story Empire is growing, but we can always use more followers. You might want to check out the blog page while you're there and see if it might be for you. Right now, the content is directed more toward authors and contains tips and advice that's pretty helpful. It may evolve over time, most blogs do.

In other news, I bought the new iPhone. My old one was one of the 16GB models and it was full. No more music, inability to get my documents off the cloud, etc. Other than that, it was wonderful. I would have kept it, but I just needed more room.

Well, a new phone needs a new cover. This model is so new, there aren't many to choose from. I usually choose something macabre and creepy. My old phone had a full moon with bats flying across it. This time, I decided to have Zazzle make me a custom one. What do you think?

I really want to get a box of coffee mugs with something similar. They aren't cheap though. That way, I can include a mug when I have another scavenger hunt, or get involved in something with prizes. Would that kind of prize interest any of you? I would include some kind of promotional link on it too.

One of the other things I'd like to do is get some stickers made. I have a lot of Lisa Burton art right now, and could hand out stickers to various people. This wouldn't be guerrilla sticking, but to those who want something like that. Even sticking one on the back of my iPad could get someone to ask a question.

Back to the grind tomorrow, and on the airplane Tuesday well before sunrise.

Errands, guests, then goofing off

I managed to read most of a book I've been wanting to finish. We had company again this weekend, so all my efforts were in tiny chunks.

Today mostly involved some errands I needed to run. Then my father-in-law decided to drop in for a few hours. He always shows up unannounced, and is on his way back to Reno. He never stays more than a couple of hours. We visited with him, and I spent the remaining time building a page for Story Empire. Some of us are really good at this kind of thing, but I have to experiment my way through. We'll probably launch those pages in early October. They involve a scavenger hunt, and there are prizes. Watch this space and I'll keep you updated.

My oldest son is here between job sites. He never knows when he's going to get called out again, but he's been in Wyoming most of the Summer. Tomorrow morning, he and I are going grouse hunting.

Most of you may not understand this, but it isn't about the grouse. They make wonderful table fare, but getting a brace for supper is pretty low on the list. It's all about time together, and getting some fresh air before Winter closes the forest for the year. We'll get to talk and hang out and that's the important part. If I bring home a bag of blackberries or raspberries I'll be just as happy. My favorite wild apple tree is up there too, so maybe I'll eat an apple. (After checking the area for bears.)

Tomorrow afternoon we're getting more company. My sister-in-law is staying for a week.

Writing? What's that? This weekend is a total bust for writing progress. My usual method of operation is to set an alarm for early morning and hit it hard tomorrow. This time, I'm playing hooky and hanging out with my son. I actually need this more than I need words on paper.

The next two weeks are going to be strange. I'll have company here, then I have to go to Coeur d'Alene for a week with my work. Somehow, I'll have to share two guest spots I'm making, a Lisa Burton Radio spot here, and the first Macabre Macaroni story in October. Thank God for the scheduler in WordPress.

Rave Reviews Book club 2016 Block Party #RRBC

Welcome to the party, but I hope this isn’t your first stop. There have been prizes and fun posts all month long. There is a prize today too, and anyone can win. It isn’t limited to club members. I’m giving away a $25 Amazon Gift Card. This is an E-card so it will be delivered via email. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment. I thrive on comments anyway, so leave as many as you like.

There are several Grand Prizes to award after the tour ends, so leave those comments and get in the running for those too.

I volunteered to close this party out, but there is a method to my madness. I know some of you are packing bright shiny new gift cards of your own. I’m going to try talking you out of 99¢. There could be alcohol involved. You see, today is a very special day.

When you do a pre-release sale, you get to have two announcement days. The first one is when the pre-release starts. Today is the second one. This is the day the book delivers. Those first few sales really help as far as the Amazon lists go, so don’t be shy.

My second Experimental Notebook is a collection of short stories and micro-fiction. They are speculative in nature, with a little science fiction, a little paranormal, and one that might pass for fantasy.

This time, there are two stories with no speculative element. So I made sure to have extra stories. Those who only want speculative stuff are getting more than what I included in the first Notebook.

I was in a pulp mood when I wrote these, so some of them reflect that style of fiction.

Here is the link for The Experimental Notebook of C. S. Boyack II.

My hope is the Notebooks will appeal to the lovers of short form fiction, but also serve as a gateway to my longer works. If you’ll take a glance to the right, my two most recent titles have their own linked images, and there is a slideshow of all the titles.

We might as well talk about what you can find here. The right hand column includes the most popular recent posts, the categories I post under to help filter my posts, and a chance to follow my Facebook page. It’s kind of new and could use some help. Those of you who write speculative fiction might enjoy the Idea Mill category.

If you take a look at the top, there are several pages on this site. You can find out more about me, get a free Lisa Burton paper doll, (My attempt at swag since I produce ebooks), and participate in Lisa Burton Radio.

Lisa is my personal assistant, and the spokesmodel for Entertaining Stories. She’s also a robot.

She’s heading out on a world tour after this party to help promote the newest Experimental Notebook. Today she’s generously volunteered to tend bar, but refuses to open the bar until I tell you about her radio show.

Lisa is my fictional character. She has a place on this blog where she interviews your fictional characters. It’s been pretty popular and several of the RRBC members have taken part. If you want to participate, the page at the top includes an email address to make contact.

Her show has its own blog category and you can check a few of them out in the sidebar.

Now, Lisa’s downloaded the Savoy Cocktail Manual into her internal drive, and she’s been watching video of flare bartenders. She’s excited to show off her new cocktail skills. Don’t be shy, and we have clean towels in case of an accident.

Have fun, ask questions, leave a comment to get in the drawing, get tuned up and buy my new book, and let’s party.

 

***

Update:

It’s noon here in Idaho, and we just cracked two of the Amazon lists. I’m so excited you guys. Thank you so much.

It’s a PARTY, and you’re all invited #RRBC

I’ve posted about my membership in the Rave Reviews Book Club before. This is a collective of authors who support each other via social media, and other venues. I think it’s a fabulous group, and I’ve benefited many times over from being a member. Now it’s your turn to benefit from a blog party we’re all throwing. This party is open to the general public.

The name of this party cracks me up, it’s called The Rave Reviews Book Club Back to School Book and Blog Block Party. For a bunch that loves Twitter, that one eats up a bunch of the characters in a tweet.

Here’s how it works: Seventy-one individual blogs are going to post throughout the month of August. There are prizes at every stop, and some of them are pretty awesome. All you have to do is visit the post and leave a comment. This will enter you into the daily contest(s). Hopefully, you’ll take a gander at the host’s blog and may even sample their wares while you’re there. Anyone who leaves a comment can win, and some sites are offering multiple prizes.

Remember, these hard working people would love a Tweet or a Facebook share while you’re there. (Or both)

I have a regular group of authors who follow Entertaining Stories. You’ll see many of your friends along this tour, but you could meet some pretty cool new authors too. Readers should pay particular attention, because the prizes include books and Amazon gift cards. (Which you can use to buy MY books… joking, kind of.)

The only hitch is that you have to visit on that author’s designated day to be eligible for the prizes. I’m a little slow in getting this posted, and the first few stops have already handed out their prizes.

There are some wonderful grand prizes that will be awarded at the end of the party too.

To get on this party-bus, simply go to this website. The blogs scheduled that day are one quick link away. Bookmark it, save it on your iPhone screen, and visit every day during August. You have to play to win, etc. ( I won multiple times last year.)

I haven’t written my post yet, but I’m closing this party down at the end of the month. There’s still time for me, and I intend to make it a fun one.

If you’re an author yourself, you really should look into the benefits of membership. We do a lot of things like this, and it’s a pretty good time. Last year’s party brought hundreds of visitors to my blog, and I sold books for the next week because of it. Because I like to be helpful, here is the link to the main page so you can check it out. Rave Reviews Book Club

What are you waiting for? Hit my Tweet button to tell your friends, then get over there.