A Life Without Love Is A Year Without Summer

Summer is the time of love and marriage and candlelight dinners on floating boats. It’s also the time of bug bites, sunburns, flip flops, bad horror movies, and hot, hot, HOT. So grab your iced lemonade, sunscreen, bug spray, flip flops and head outside by the pool to nestle down with a book. Or, if you're sensible like me, stay inside with the AC, lemonade with ice that won’t melt in three seconds, and that comfy chair no bird has ever pooped on to read. Whichever you prefer, check out Epstein LaRue’s novel Crazy thoughts of an Online Romance.

I have several thoughts about online romance, but don’t worry, I won’t share. Mostly because they’re crazy, and have to do with the whole…nevermind, this isn’t about my nutty thoughts—it’s about the book.

It’s actually three books. 1) A fictional nursing duet: Crazy Thoughts of Passion.  2) A story of love nurtured online: Love At First Type: On Online Romance, Based On A True Story.  And 3) the added NEVER RELEASED Epstein’s Guide To Online Romance. All for $19.99 (which may as well round up to $20 if you ask me…I sound like a commercial). Now if you’re a math geek like me, you’ll have worked out it’s about $7 bucks for each book. Can you say bargain? I can. (Buy one and you get one free…just kidding. You buy one, you get one.)

We’ve all had nutty thoughts over other people. It’s like you see them for the first time and all you can do is…*drool*…ahem. What was I saying? Oh, yes, crazy thoughts of passion will drive you crazy, but you can’t live without ‘em. (Or is it with them?) In Crazy Thoughts of Passion, Kaitlyn Malloy is a registered nurse and insanely attracted to gorgeous Lance Rosanthol. Only problem…he’s the son of her patient. Enter nursing ethics to complicate the already complicated situation. And we’ve all dealt with those. Minus the nurse part for me, because, seriously, hello..needles. But we can relate to those situations where your brain screams NO, NO, NO…and something else (heart, maybe) is all YES, YES, YES!  So, like romance, general craziness and passion? Here you go.

Love At First Type comes with a great pun and a great story. Nurse Kathy meets Jack over the internet and it’s love at…well, you know the rest. However, they’re not only separated by 1000 miles, but also, wait for it…24 years! Yikes. How will they make that work? But love knows no bounds, and after chit chatting more and more, Kathy and Jack want to make their Cyber Relation a Reality Romance. Odds are against them, but love is love. Or something like that. And, stunningly, it’s based on a true story, one of Epstein’s own love.

At the end, Epstein imparts her own tips for online dating, which, judging by her real life experiences, must be golden and successful. And, besides, who doesn’t want a guide to online romance nowadays? Everyone’s on those dating sites; just watch TV to hear all about those people Match-ing, e-Harmony-nizing or ChristianMingle-ling. It can’t hurt to have a guide. And, if all else fails, it’s amusing to read how you should do it even if you’re intent on doing it wrong or not doing it at all.

So, sit down. Read. Like romance? Here’s your next book. Not your usual cup of tea? Branch out and try it anyway. No harm ever came from reading a book. (Except in The Mummy. Bad Evy. But let’s not go there.)

Check it out more at http://www.starpublishllc.com/id20.html

Star Publish LLC steps up to ebook challenges

"It's so easy, you can do it yourself." That's what THEY say. Like so many things in life, nobody seems to know exactly who THEY is. Without being able to identify them, how do you know if you can trust them?

As both an author and the Marketing Director for Star Publish LLC, many people have told me that it is pretty simple to submit an ebook to Amazon, Lulu, or any number of other places and it is FREE. Anybody who knows me, knows that I like free. But when it comes to my books, I don't have a clue how to do all of the formatting, create a cover, and all the other things that go into coming up with a professional looking good final product. If my books don't look good, nobody will ever know how good the story inside the covers is. That's why it's much easier for me to leave all of that to somebody who knows how to do it. I admit I am not that person; I don't know how to do it, and I don't have any interest in learning. I'd rather be writing, or even marketing my books.

The growth of the ebook market is astonishing. It is advancing by leaps and bounds. I have not been a huge fan of ebooks. Maybe it comes with age. I prefer to think that it is because I spend so much time staring at a screen that when I sit down to relax with a book, I want to do it in the old fashioned way. Still, every time I do any sort of personal event about my books, more and more people are asking me, "Are any of your books available as ebooks?" or they are saying, "I only read on my Kindle, Nook, etc." So, I have given in to the demand and some of my books are available as ebooks. Eventually, I hope they all will be.

If you are in the same boat, that of not knowing how to do-it-yourself and don't want to learn, Star Publish LLC offers a great deal for getting your books available to the public as ebooks that includes a full professional edit, creating a cover, doing all the formatting, getting it listed on hundreds of places where people can find it, and just about everything you need. It sort of reminds me of the old Greyhound Bus ads, "Take a bus, and leave the driving to us."

Here is what they offer, as well as the price, and if you have more questions, contact tcmcauthor@hotmail.com. Don't wait. Every day you don't take action could be the sale of at least one copy of your book.

E-book Only Production Fees:

Base production fee starts at two hundred ($200) USD and must be paid at signing of contract.

Further costs must be agreed upon using the details below:

Editing (must be paid in advance of service):

Star full edit: $200

If editing has been done outside of Star and is acceptable in quality, i.e.: the manuscript is free of careless errors, the cost of the edit can be reduced to $100

Cover designs (must be paid in advance of service):

Author provides cover (must be up to Star quality standards): Free

Star creates cover from photo author provides: $50

Star creates cover using their own photographs or doing manipulation on provided photographs: $100

Star creates cover using artwork designed and painted by Star artist $200 to $500 depending on the complexity of the project.

Formatting (includes file types for Kindle, Nook, Apple, Sony, Kobo and other popular devices and must be paid in advance of service):

Must be done by Star Publish $100

Including any extras including images or non-standard fonts: $200

Any further formatting, i.e. any text deleted or added after production, warrants another $100 fee

  With the fees paid here, and this agreement, Author is also entitled to a reduction in publication fee for the Star print version of their Work in Trade Paperback if ever they choose. The credit shall be that of four hundred ($400) USD. The Star print package for any Author with this contract, therefore, will be eight hundred ($800) USD.

Hiding in the closet

Sometimes our skeletons hide in the closets. Sometimes they hide in treasure chests or under the bed. Sometimes they are buried deep within the confines of our minds.

Star Author Janie Lancaster has written a wonderful children's book, Emily: Out of My Mother's Darkness. It will help children face their own monsters, as Janie was forced to do in her own life. Here is the description from the back of the book.

Join Emily as she opens a forbidden cedar chest, unlocks a Chinese box and discovers dark secrets. Share in her struggle to climb out of her mother's darkness.

Emily, a work of autobiographical fiction, is a character-driven story of a young girl's desperate search for her missing father. A memoir of the author's traumatic adolescent years. A time when a whirlpool of sadness pulled and tugged at her very existence. A time when darkness threatened light, extinguished hope and demanded courage.

In addition to this book, Janie has written and published some e-books that are available in several formats. To see a You Tube promo for these, please go here. Star Publish LLC has published her book, Julie and the Lost Fairy Tale.

Our world today is full of things that cause fear in our children. Please let Janie, through her writing, help you help them through the tough times.

Escape to Paradise

As I sit looking out the window of my office in Northeast Wisconsin, I see the after effects of our 2 feet of snow that fell on us last week. It is pretty, but enough is enough! And with the horrible tornadoes that ravaged the mid-section of the nation last week, topped by 2-5” of snow to hamper salvage efforts, the thought of escape looms large on the horizon.

Star author Linda Ballou offers the perfect getaway. Yes, she would like to whisk you off to Hawaii. She has written a delightful novel, Wai-Nani: High Chiefess of Hawai’i. You will meet a fascinating woman from the history of Hawaii, learn a bit about the background of the state, but there is far more.

Linda has also created a wonderful blog where you can get to know the author, but she also has a series of Sacred Sites in Hawaii on her blog. You can not only read about it, but you can almost smell the aroma of the flowers, feel the ocean breezes, and enjoy the foods. It is like taking a virtual tour of the country, both the old and the new.

Here are some links to additional interviews and book reviews for Wai-Nani.

First book stories

The Best Travel Novels

Interview with Linda Ballou

You can purchase the paperback book here or the Kindle version here.

Enjoy. It sure beats staring at a snowbank!

Creating High Emotion in Fiction

Many works have been called masterpieces of literature. Some for their wonderful imaginative writing, some for their style, but all because their stories have the power to make us as readers experience, with the very core of our being, some emotion whether it be fear, hopelessness, astonishment, or laughter. Something true and similar to all of us throughout this world is our emotions. We feel the same range of emotions no matter what our ethnicity, income, or lifestyle. It is one of the most important things that make people love a work of fiction. It’s what readers hunger for.

Emotion, I’ve found, is also something many writers struggle to accurately portray.

Often an author will tell us how the character feels as in:

Johnny felt saddened, walking to his uncle’s shiny, dark casket. Tears dampened his eyes. The room was hot and quiet sobs drifted through the air as his mother led him toward the casket where he would see his uncle’s body, cold and stiff.

This works of course, but it doesn’t show anything of the character’s feelings. It simply states a fact and unless a reader has had the same or very similar experience, they will relate very little to the character’s sorrow, fear, or joy. Instead, authors should strive to show readers, as in:

Johnny’s palms grew sticky as he moved closer to the shiny, dark casket. The carpeting was soft under his feet, seemingly muffling all sobs and whispers in the room. His breaths grew shallow and the air suddenly became hot. He didn’t want to look at the body, pale and stiff. It wasn’t the way he wanted to remember his uncle. It wasn’t the last vision he wanted to lock away for revisiting. What he wanted was his uncle to toss a ball to him, to drive him to the swimming hole, and to take him for ice cream. But Uncle Gerald wouldn’t be coming in his shiny, silver pickup ever again. Johnny swallowed, forcing down the hot tears filling his eyes.

This second example puts readers in Johnny’s thoughts and helps them to feel what he feels, helps him become real.

Another of the most common things I find is overstatement. In this I mean when an emotion is told after it’s been shown as if the writer doesn’t believe the reader will get it the first time. This works just the opposite; it actually dulls the impact. In the second example above, notice that Johnny’s grief was never stated as sadness. Yet his sorrow is unmistakable. Often times a writer will create a passage like the second example above and then go on with a statement such as, "His sadness overwhelmed him." Such an explanatory statement ruins whatever impact the preceding passage had provoked. Another form of overstatement is repeating the exact same emotion over and over every so many paragraphs, as if the writer is afraid the reader will forget how the character is feeling. Once an emotion is established, it should be left alone — although the character should react in ways he would, feeling the way he is — until the emotion deepens, lessens, or otherwise changes somehow. When self-editing a work, a writer must be aware of these easily overlooked effects and weed out the explanatory and repetitive occurrences as much as they possibly can.

By T.C. McMullen
Star Publish Owner
Author and Artist
www.tcmcmullen.com
www.starpublishllc.com

It's not Disney, and she's no lady!

Sometimes the stars shine on us. Such is the case of Star author Kristie Leigh Maguire. The book we are featuring here today is No Lady and Her Tramp. It was written several years ago by Kristie and Mark Haeuser. It is now available as an ebook. (This is not a Star Publish LLC ebook, but Kristie is more than just a Star author. She is the founder of Star Publish and all Star authors owe our success to Kristie's vision and dreams for her own books as well as those of other authors. Kristie does have several print books available from Star. You can find them listed at the Book Catalog at Star's website.

No Lady and Her Tramp is not for children. You can send them to watch the new release of Disney's Lady and the Tramp on the DVD or Blue Ray versions that were just released yesterday, after being locked in the Disney vault for many years. Then you can settle down with Kristie and Mark's version. It's a bit rough around the edges in places (what else would you expect from a tramp?), but it's also laugh-out-loud funny. There are surprises at every turn of the page.

Kristie also has a brand new interview up here about her latest book, Second Chances (click on title to order). In my opinion (comment by JES, Star Publish LLC Marketing Director, author, and editor), this is Kristie's finest work to date. It is very different from her other books, but it will take you to the mountains of Wyoming, where the air is clear, but people's heads aren't always. All they have to do is follow their heart and they can find happiness.

A tasty tidbit

Yes, we have already established that everybody likes something for nothing. Of course if you've seen that commercial where the banker asks the kid in the highchair, you know that to every rule there is an exception. When he throws his food at the banker, it sort of makes you want to go help the kid.

With our economy in the dumpster, it's time for Star Publish LLC to step up to the plate and do their part to help you dig your way out. Even with the low cost of ebooks, it is frustrating to buy something and as soon as you start to read it you discover that it certainly is not your taste in reading.

With that in mind, you can find Star's Ebook Sampler here, just waiting for you to download it to see if it's worth spending your hard-earned money on a certain title. But don't stop with just that one book you had heard about. Try all of the excerpts to see if something else also appeals to your literary tastes. You'll find mysteries, thrillers, historicals, fantasy, and a literary romance. Trying a Sampler is a great way to wander into uncharted territories. A reader once asked Janet Elaine Smith, Star's Marketing Director, why she should "waste her time and money on something as stupid as a time travel." She rightly concluded that time travel is something that is totally impossible, so she was not wanting to take the risk of spending hard-earned money on something she was pretty sure she wouldn't like. Janet made her an offer that she couldn't refuse. She told her that if she bought the book and didn't like it, if she sent a proof-of-purchase to Janet, she would refund her money and she could still keep the book. About two weeks later, the reader emailed Janet, simply asking, "When is your next time travel coming out?" And that's how Janet came up with her first Sampler, to cast that lure out to people who might otherwise read a book in some of the other genres she writes in.

Now Star Publish LLC has taken that same concept and we are making our very own ebook Sampler so you can see what you're missing by not clicking through to purchase the ones you like the most.

Happy reading!

It's a mystery to me

There is nothing I enjoy more than a good mystery. This week's featured e-book is Gifts of a Dead Man, by Derek Davis. Nothing mysterious about a church choir--until you read the first few pages. You'll soon discover that they are singing a different tune.

Not only can you read an excerpt of the book here, but if you tune in to radio station WVIA at 88.9 FM or on the Internet at WVIA.org at noon, you can hear Derek discuss the book. If you miss it when it airs live, it will be available as a PODcast beginning on Jan. 24th.

Up your sales with your website

A question I am often asked is, "Why do I need a website?" In today's modern technological age, if you are going to succeed in any business (and yes, writing IS a business) you have to have a powerful presence online.
Someone asked me if I would draw up some of the best tips on how to make a GOOD website. I decided that I would include the information for each of you as a bonus. This is not just for Star Publish LLC authors, but for anybody who is looking to succeed in their business. Nobody does something with the hope of failing. I hope these will help you towards that success.

WEBSITE TIPS

(Main website: http://www.janetelainesmith.com/)

1. Make it interesting—and fun. There are at least hundreds of thousands of business websites today. If people open your site up and see that it is the same boring thing they’ve seen on the other sites they’ve looked at recently, they will probably not bother reading it, even if the products or services you have to offer are new, different and exciting. They have to read on to find out about them.
2. Make it easy to read. Remember, not everybody has perfect eyesight, especially if you have some elderly readers. Even if you have to use a larger font, the readability is crucial. Also, check out the colors you use. Red print on a black background is very hard to read. The same is true with a light green type on a yellow background. White background with black type or black background with yellow type are supposed to be the easiest to read.
3. Don’t drag it on too long. If you have too much material to put on the home page, instead of making people scroll down forever. Instead, create additional pages and include a link to that page. Make sure you mark it to open in a new browser window to make it easy to get back to the home page so they can continue reading.
4. Make your site interactive. Link to other sites that you think will offer things your readers are interested in. For example, if your new book has a castle from Scotland in it, link to a site that has good historical resources listed, or to the website for the actual castle.
5. Use your site for a roadmap. If people like what they see, let them know where else they can see articles you have written, your blog, other websites you might run, etc. Be sure to include easy-to-follow links. Consider your website as your readers’ GPS system.
6. Keep it fresh. Update your main website often. I used to do mine every month. I now do it at least every two months. Frequent changes are the best way to get repeat visitors. I try to keep mine seasonal. That helps raise your rankings on the search engines.
7. Share the spotlight with fellow authors. One of my most popular features on my main website is my “See your name in spotlights” section. When somebody says something kind about me, whether it is about my books, my books, my marketing, or just me in general, I will pick a different quote each time I update the site and put it up on a billboard with lights flashing all the way around it. I then link to that person’s website, blog, book, or whatever is available for your readers to find out more about that person. This not only makes the person feel good about themselves, it is also a great way to spread the word to your website. They are not going to keep quiet about this. They will probably put a link on their website or blog to yours, and will also tell others about it. Word-of-mouth is still the most effective advertising there is.
8. Be creative. You use your imagination in your writing. Creating a website is just an extension of that creativity. A couple of years ago USA TV was running a little image on the bottom of their programs, announcing “Characters welcome.” It was to try to get people to follow not only their programs, but their favorite characters. I set up a website (characters welcome websites) to highlight my characters, and I offered to do websites (at a low fee) to bring their characters to life. I had already done that for a couple of my characters. (Monday Knight and Patrick and Grace Mysteries) It is fun to have your characters get e-mail and other things of their own. Monday Knight, a top model in the high society world of fashion, has had no-interest loans offered her, grants to complete her college courses, great discounts on cars and travel. I think the funniest one, though, was when I got a sample pair of pantyhose in the mail. (Snail mail, of course.) I opened the little package and held them up. There was no way on earth I could stuff my more than ample body into them! I laughed as I made that comment to my late husband. He picked the package up and looked at the name on the outside. “It’s no wonder,” he said, laughing. “They aren’t meant for you.” He handed me the package. There, in bold letters, was the name “Monday Knight”!
9. Be daring. Don’t go looking for a webmaster as soon as you decide you need a website. There are a lot of free easy-to-build web hosting services. Most of them also offer upgraded reasonable services. The primary two things the fee-based offer that the free ones don’t are: (1) no pop-up ads, and (2) more storage space. My own preference is Tripod . They are very easy to use, have a lot of variety in preset templates, have many clipart and photo images you can add to your site, and they have a very easy-to-follow tutorial that will walk you through the actual building of the website. One of the biggest advantages to doing your own website is that when you want to add something, you don’t have to wait for somebody else to do it, which can sometimes take weeks.
10. Make your product easily available. Every single time you have an image of your book up, or even if you just mention it, make sure it is a link that goes directly to a source (such as amazon.com) where they can purchase it. I have read that for each additional time a person has to click an additional link, you lose 25-30% of your potential customers. At that rate, it doesn’t take long to lose most of the people who might have purchased it if they had been able to get there on that crucial first click.
11. Advertise, advertise, advertise! You can have the best website in the world, but if nobody knows it is there, you have wasted your effort in building it. Make sure you have the link in your signature line on every single e-mail you send out. Every time you leave a comment on a blog or another website, make sure you include the url to your website. Include the url to your website on all of your promotional materials. List it (as well as your e-mail address) at the end of your book or on the back cover. One of the best parts of being an author is the feedback you get from readers. Make it easy for them to find you. I also use ineedhits to get my websites and blogs onto over 100 search engines at no cost to me. Make sure your keywords are not only important to your book, but also those that will catch the most attention from people who might be searching for similar topics.
12. Keep track of your viewers. Having a counter on your website is not an ego trip; it is important to see if you need to find new ways of drawing an audience. There are many such services available. I have found the best and easiest add-ons are available (again free) from bravenet.com. They have a lot of things to add (daily comic, counters, chat rooms, guest books, and much more). One that I have found particularly helpful and informative is that when you add their counter, they have a map option so you can see where in the world your viewers live. You will be surprised at how international you can become in short order.

           

Get your Star e-books here

Click here to get to one easy stop where you can get your Star e-books. There are other Star authors who have e-books available independently too, so if you have a favorite author you want to read that way, please either do a search at Amazon.com, BN.com, or your favorite e-book supplier. If all else fails, leave a comment here and we'll try to provide the information you are looking for. Happy Reading!

Freebies--everybody loves them

Star Publish LLC is soon to release a Star E-book Sampler, which will have a direct download link to test the first chapter of each of their e-books. The link will be posted here, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Star's home website (http://starpublishllc.com) and on some of the authors' websites.

In today's economy, everybody is pinching their pennies. This is better than a cents-off coupon. If you don't like the first chapter, you don't have to waste your money on something you don't enjoy. If you do, the cost of an e-book is much less than that of a print book.

Once you have read the book, if you really liked it, you can then purchase the print version of the book for your personal library or for gift-giving to your favorite friends and family members.

Stay tuned for the link!

2012--It's not the end of the world!

The Mayan calendar is supposed to have foretold 2012 as the end of the world. Star Publish LLC refuses to accept that. We are set to make this the best year of our history. Granted, our history is not as old as the Mayan calendar, but we have a lot of new things in the works. This will be the fastest place to find out what is happening in our little corner of the publishing world. We hope you will tune in often for late-breaking news, great books, author interviews, excerpts, contests, and much more.

So, Happy New Year to all of our devoted readers and authors. We promise we won't disappoint you. E-books is one of the biggest things in the current literary world, and while we will still devote much of our work to books in print, we won't be left behind in the electronic world. Watch for a freebie to whet your appetite. Coming soon!