NetGalley

For whatever reason, NetGalley has decided to start putting tighter restrictions implemented publishers’ tightening of restrictions on who gets free eARCs (electronic Advanced Reader Copies).

So what.

Here’s the thing: NetGalley charges what is, to me, a micropress, an astronomical amount of money to give away books. That’s right: I would be paying to give my product to people in exchange for…very little in the way of a quantifiable return.

NetGalley is not in business to lose money. It’s in business to make money by providing a publishers’ colony. However publishers decide to define their ROI (return on investment) is how NetGalley’s going to be bringing in the money.

Follow the money.

When all other explanations fail, just follow the money.

I’ve been published!!!

Like, by somebody else. (Inorite?)

So Freya’s Bower (one of the veteran epublishers in the landscape) has this annual anthology called Dreams and Desires, where the proceeds from it go to a charity. This year’s charity is A Window Between Worlds, a non-profit organization that provides art supplies and training for art as a healing tool free of charge to battered women’s shelters across the United States.

Marci Baun, Freya’s Bower’s Perpetrator In Chief, asked me to contribute a story to the anthology, and because it’s a) for a good cause and b) for the #1 cause on my personal list of good causes, I said SURE! The result? Short story “Twenty-Dollar Rag.”

For fans of the Dunham series, the hero in this one is the weird kid from Stay (who wears kilts and sleeps in trees), Vachel Whittaker, all grown up and possibly more normal than the rest of the Dunham men. Lo, there is no religion or politics in it.

Here’s the blurb for Dreams and Desires:

True love, freedom, self-worth, security… Dreams and desires of the ordinary woman, or man. From a thirty-something, single woman who wants a baby to a jeweler who finds love with the least expected man to a widow who wants to finish her degree and find love to a young, futuristic woman who’s still searching for herself to an 18th century saloon girl whose lost hope but still dreams of love to a man who has escaped his abusive lover but has lost himself. This collection of nine stories celebrates the attainment of all one can dream or desire. Which one do you secretly yearn for?

And here’s the blurb for “Twenty-Dollar Rag”:

One night. One man. One dress.

Regina Westlake sees nothing wrong with her clubbing lifestyle until the gorgeous guy cleaning her pool refuses to play her games. When he’s hired to be her arm candy for a formal event, he makes his disdain for her clear by re-dressing her in something far more appropriate than what she had worn to the party.

Shattered, she takes his contempt, his dress, the memory of his kiss—and rebuilds her life from the ground up. She never expects to see him again, but when she does…

Buy the collection, have a few hours of entertainment and help somebody out at the same time. Win-win!

Dreams and Desires ($5.99)

Twenty-Dollar Rag” (12,000 words) ($2.99)


This is handselling now.

This morning I butted into a Twitter conversation between @jackiebarbosa, @elyssapapa, and @growlycub about Romance heros/heroines who are struggling financially at the end of the book, but they shall live on love:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/MoriahJovan/status/13276067800293377″]

Which led back around to the title of the book which started the conversation I butted in on:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/jackiebarbosa/status/13279970579185664″]

and

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/victoriajanssen/status/13286262161018880″]

Which led to:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/MoriahJovan/status/13280763256508417″]

and:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/PortiaDaCosta/status/13281803079000064″]

This entire conversation happened in the course of an hour in casual conversation on Twitter, and money was spent. (More money would’ve been spent if the publisher had the sense to allow people out of the US to buy it, but that’s a conversation for another day.) (Also, it was $5.99 on the Kindle, which is my cutoff point for ebook prices, so there was another advantage.) As far as I know, I’m the only one who bothered to tweet that she bought it, but that’s not to say nobody else bought it.

The “need” was created.

The “need” was satisfied.

Immediately. Easy and with no friction.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this. Insert your favorite lesson here.

My Waterloo

You may have noticed I haven’t been here much lately. There are a few reasons for that, but I’ll spare you. Following is a series of picture galleries chronicling the project that A) forced me to admit that Bob Vila lied and B) released me from three years of guilt I didn’t know had weighed so heavily upon me. Out of my humiliation came peace and a life-changing epiphany.

I did not do this myself!!! I gutted most of it myself and couldn’t go on. Dude knew who to call to finish the job. It was a Mike, although it wasn’t (*sob*) Mike Holmes. Roll over the pics with your mouse and it’ll tell you the story.

OCTOBER 2005

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APRIL 2007

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SUMMER 2007

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MAY 4, 2010

The beginning of the end.

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MAY 10, 2010

End of week 1.

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MAY 15, 2010

End of week 2.

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MAY 22, 2010

End of week 3.

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MAY 29, 2010

End of week 4.

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JUNE 2, 2010

Almost there…

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JUNE 3, 2010

And…victory. At last.

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Next month…our front porch.