So I'm on Authorgraph

There are so many different ways to promote one's book that it's actually mind-boggling, and I've just recently discovered a site that allows you receive a digital autograph from your favorite author!  It's called Authorgraph.

Authorgraph makes it possible for authors to sign e-books for their readers. Really! Getting an Authorgraph is easy: 

• Search or browse for your favorite authors or books 

• Click "Request Authorgraph" (you can include a short message to the author) 

• Receive an email when the author has signed your Authorgraph 

• View your Authorgraph in your favorite reading apps and devices

I actually found a few books that I own so I'm going to request an author-graph from the respective authors and just have fun with it.

But don't let me be the only one to have any fun!  If you have my books, you can even get me to author graph your copy! Yup, I signed up with them and here are my books on their site which I recently added.  You'll probably end up searching for my books once I cycle through the "Recently Added..." section but it would be fun, wouldn't it?

It's Cover Reveal Day for "A Collateral Attraction (Fire & Ice Series 1)"

When hippie Billie Delphine joins her sophisticated twin sister, Blythe, in New York for a vacation, the last thing she expects is for Blythe to disappear with embattled heir, Ethan Kheiron, or be involved in an embezzlement scandal. So when Ethan's brother, Heath, suggests they work together to find Blythe before the scandal is exposed, Billie agrees, even if it means entering a whole new world of personal shopping sprees and private planes, where millions of dollars hide decades of lies.  

But a life of luxury, no matter how temporary, is no match for the years of unresolved differences between sisters. And even as Billie fights the attraction she feels for Heath, she knows that they're all just pieces on someone else's game of power, where some of them are more expendable than others.

Cover designed by @Dani_CoverArt

Wattpad Favorites: Mission Macabre by Kevin Gebhard

Time to get your Halloween groove on, folks, and get reading!

Kevin Gebhard's first foray into vampire fiction is a guaranteed hit with Mission Macabre, free to read right now as it's being serialized on Wattpad.  When a vigilante detective teams up with a sexy vampire, it only means a whole new brand of justice to hit the city!

Wattpad Review: The Body by TheAlvarezChronicles

Sometimes there are stories that just grab you and don't let go at all, and The Body by Robert Alvarez or @TheAlvarezChronicles on Wattpad does just that.  From the moment we're introduced to the case, we know that we're in for a wild and bumpy ride.  A girl is missing, and the detectives on the case immediately sense that she's not just missing: she's dead.

The suspect list isn't long, and there aren't exactly any surprises as in, whodunnit?  That's because we're investigating the case along with the detectives.  It's not just about catching the killer, it's about building a strong case against him.

The Body is a non-fiction account of an actual case (as far as I know) and Alvarez knows what he's talking about.  It's a riveting read and one of the best on Wattpad, hands down.  But you don't have to take my word for it.

Book Review - Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies and The Making of a Medical Examiner

Look what just came in! Working Stiff by @drjudymelinek #amreading #research #nonfiction pic.twitter.com/0tKInbDaNM

— Liz Madrid (@LizMadridauthor) October 6, 2015

Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the first shows I fell in love with a child was Quincy ME even if at that time I had no exact idea what a medical examiner's work really entailed. It was my mother's favorite show, along with Murder She Wrote and so we all sat in front of our one TV set on Sunday nights and watched it. If I had any questions about what an ME does and how he/she gets there, Judy Melinek, MD answered all my questions, and then some. I always knew that CSI and all those other shows depicted many of the job description wrong, but what makes for good work practice (bright lights, caps, gowns, face masks, and months before getting toxicology reports) doesn't necessarily make for good TV. But behind the Gil Grissom's and the Temperance Brennans of TV was dedication to their jobs, and I love seeing that in books like Working Stiff.

Working Stiff: 2 years, 262 bodies and the making of a medical examiner is Judy Melinek's journey to being a medical examiner where two months into the job, she is among those responsible for doing the autopsies on the 9/11 victims. I remember the containers she talks about because I remember walking past them among the throng of people making their way to "Ground Zero" then and always wondered what was inside. I still remember the makeshift memorials people put up months after.

I honestly could not put this down - although I did so I could make dinner and sleep and do some work in between. I finished it at about 3am and my only advice is, if you're at all squeamish, don't read this right before bed. The one death that stays with me the most is the one that gave Melinek nightmares and I won't spoil it for you - but you'll know it when you get there.

I'm giving it 5/5 because I love her style of writing. It's far from too technical and there were times that it felt like she were just telling me how her day went which brings back memories of my best friend telling me about what they did in med school that day while dissecting a cat cadaver in her backyard. I also felt for her whenever she talks about her father, who committed suicide when Melinek was just a teen.

View all my reviews

Can You Really Pitch Your Novel on Twitter? Apparently, Yes

A few months ago, I read about someone who sold her screenplay on Twitter for up to six figures.  When I told one of my massage client this, he asked, "how could anyone pitch anything using only140 characters?"

Well, I had no idea either.  And when an author pitch event happened on Twitter a month ago and everyone was telling everyone not to favorite any of the pitches (that's reserved for the publishing house; if they do fave your pitch, then be ready to submit your manuscript), it scared me enough not to even understand what was going on or how it worked.  Two fellow authors did do the event and their pitches got picked.

So anyway, as of this morning, I can now say that I do have an idea on how it's done.  And it's not as nerve-wracking as I thought it would be, though narrowing your blurb to less than 140 characters can be tricky and you'll need to craft a few versions of them to tweet out.  I only tweeted the best one I could come up with out of 6 versions.

What is nerve-wracking is when your pitch does get faved by a publisher, as mine did during this morning's pitch event.  It got faved five minutes after I tweeted it.

So what's next? Well, I'm supposed to send them the first four chapters of my manuscript and they'll let me know if it's good enough for them or not.  I still need to see what else they'll need besides those chapters and work from there.

And whether or not the outcome is positive or not, I did get to learn what all the pitch madness is all about on Twitter and not be overwhelmed or intimidated by it when it happens again.  And to answer that question whether someone can really pitch a novel or a screenplay in less than 140 characters?  Yep, it can be done!

Growing Pains of An Indie-Author

I'm still trying to navigate this overwhelming new world of marketing for writers, especially self-published writers like me.  There's so much to do that I have to keep a notebook and jot down all the notes, all the websites, all the tips that everyone else swears will work to promote your book - turns out I'm such a visual-kinesthetic learner that I have to actually jot down, scribble, sketch the ideas on paper before it makes its mark a bit more permanently than just plain reading or watching some how-to video on Youtube.   And while my notes are constantly growing, the toughest part will be the execution of these tips successfully.

And in the process of the execution, there will be mistakes.  And because I'm easily distracted, there will be lots of mistakes.

Take Loving Ashe for example, which is going through a re-release party of sorts in mid-November, when the paperback version will be released.

When I first published Loving Ashe, it was to no fanfare at all. Why? Probably just excitement, but part of the reason was that I wanted to gather reader reviews on sites such as Amazon and Goodreads, even Smashwords.  Then barely one month after publication, I made the decision (as an experiment) to have the book exclusive to a Amazon's Kindle Direct Select or KDP for 90 days.  I figured, I'd see if that would help increase my sales.  It's also part of the Kindle Unlimited lending library.

With only one month left to go in the 3-month term, I've un-checked the box that says "Automatically renew this book to KDP in another 90 days..." because while there are sales, right now 1 book per day and sometimes 2, when I went to check my Smashwords dashboard, I found out that I made more money selling Loving Ashe on iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and even Scribd in less than a month than I have on Amazon.

And I also hate having all my eggs in one basket.

There are also many people who refuse to buy from Amazon, and from among my bodywork clients alone, I've counted 6 people alone.  That's 6 sales I would have lost - and am losing - while my book remains solely on Amazon.

So starting November 10th, Loving Ashe will be back up on Smashwords and made available to other retailers like iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, though I think Scribd is out of the running if Loving Ashe is categorized under Romance since they've pulled out romance books from their library. Turns out, romance readers were driving their company model to the ground - they were gobbling up more books in a month than was financially feasible.  I'm actually a Scribd subscriber and one who barely has enough time to read any of the books that I've earmarked in my library. Most of the books I read on Scribd happens to be Charles Bukowski's poetry - go figure.

Anyway, so if you haven't yet gotten your copy of Loving Ashe because you refuse to buy it from Amazon, which is the only place you can get it right now, don't despair.  November 11 (hey, that's 11/11!) is the date it will go back up to all the other online retailers and I'll be doing a happy dance then, too.  Now my only problem is figuring out how to get the paperback available from sites other than Amazon.  But then you can always buy that from me :)