The Nonplus Adventures of a Self-publishing Writer:
Merry Christmas, and happy holidays!
I thought I’d put out a Christmas newsletter, to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season, as well as let you know what’s going on at the ol’ Faircloth Family micro-farm.
One of my doe rabbits had a litter of bunnies on Thanksgiving morning. Though several didn’t make it through our cold snap, four are still growing and putting on hair.
I dug sweet potatoes, which my wife has been converting by some magical process into casseroles and pies. I have also been harvesting kale. Do you like kale? Several people told me that it was very nutritious but also bitter. I gotta tell you, saute some onions and a little bacon or ham (or a lot- your call), add a teaspoon of sugar and you won’t leave any on your plate! I also have carrots, collards and cauliflower plants (no heads yet).
My two-year-old pit bull mix, LeeLuu, has healed from her sudden back-leg paralysis. It was a horrible time of watching, praying and waiting, but she began to stumble around after several days. She is almost 100% now, though she still occasionally smacks the side of the door when her back-end doesn’t do what her front-end tells her to do.
I will soon be starting on Just Us 2. I’ve tentatively titled it, “Not Alone.” In this follow-on, I intend to move Team Tobi through what was once the United States of America but is now a new and wild frontier. They will meet new and interesting cultures, as well as new animal and plant life. I can’t wait to find out what happens!
I think I will begin putting out a monthly newsletter starting in January. My initial reason for a quarterly newsletter was because I had a full plate. I have recently cleared some space in my schedule so that is not currently an issue.
I hope you all have a blessed Christmas, a happy holiday season, and a great New Year.
Cheers,
Anthony Faircloth and Family
Be sure and check out my webpage, anthonydfaircloth.com, for my other books and some short stories you’ll only find here.
A Pleasant Surprise!
As an author, its no surprise that I live an exciting life, so as I was going through my Sunday ritual of looking over my empty eMail box, marking SPAM on comments two out of three of my blog sites, and looking over my low sales numbers, I found some encouragement.
I pulled up Amazon, put in Anthony Faircloth, and BAM, all five of my books displayed. I was particularly interested to see if anyone had commented on my new scifi, “Just Us,” and was pleased to see a “2” near the Comments link. I clicked there and was excited to read two good reviews. I backed out and slid the bar down a little, looking at the number of comments for each book, then suddenly stopped. There were sixteen comments for my “Build an Aquaponics System,” sixteen! Excited to have so many comments, I began to read them.
The first one was great, except when I got the last paragraph where it said that my book was a good primer but if one wanted more detail, buy <insert the name of this guy’s book on aquaponics>. Yeah, it took the edge off, but it was still a good review, in fact it was a great marketing strategy. I mean, this wasn’t the standard SPAM with couple vague sentences with the hyperlink so their product could be highlighted. This person wrote an honest critique, and at least sounded as though they had read it.
I closed that review and read the next. This one was great! It talked about my conversational tone and my many pictures. At once I was proud stood along side the greats like Twain, and King! The next was good too and I scrolled through several and was quite uplifted. Then the two star. This author read my book and was disappointed by the simplicity of my writing, the LACK of pictures and details. Though I won’t get too defensive, I do say in the opening paragraphs that this is NOT a DIY book.
I finished reading all sixteen, most were positive but I seemed to come back to the couple of low ratings. Then it hit me, and for a second I felt like the wisecracking Mike Wazowski of Monster’s Inc fame, seeing the company’s TV commercial where his entire body was covered by the logo. The thought ran screaming through my nogg’n – I GOT SIXTEEN COMMENTS!! Sixteen people decided, good and bad, that my book was worth commenting on!
As I closed out and began running through the rest of my chores, I smiled, hoping for seventeen by next weekend.
– Anthony Faircloth
I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly. – Edgar Rice Burroughs
Read more at Writer’s Digest.
Story Spotlight
The Shield by Joe moore
& Lynn Sholes
OSI special agent Maxine Decker is back in this riveting follow-up to THE BLADE. She is called upon to locate and recover a mysterious artifact stolen from a blacker-than-black government facility. The missing item is a fragment that was found at the crash site of the Roswell UFO incident in 1947.
Following the trail, Maxine discovers a sinister plot to use the technological data stored in the artifact to build a device called the Shield. The result will bring the United States and its allies to their knees without ever firing a shot. She soon shifts from being the hunter to the hunted as she becomes a falsely accused international fugitive. Her only hope to redeem herself and stop the most dangerous event in modern history is to gain access to an underground facility in the remote desert of Sudan. As the clock ticks down to zero, Maxine risks all to save her country.
You can find, The Shield on the Sholes and Moore website, as well as other stories by Lynn and Joe. You can also find it on Amazon by clicking on this link.