Samuel, Seer

Since October, I've been busy revising and republishing books. So far, we've re-published Scott's Tanella's Flight, Natalie's A Gigolo for Christmas, and The Mom's Place, and my Clues to Food. We've also republished our anthology, Bits and Bites.

Additionally, as an Editor with the Electric Scroll, I've been working with four other authors, and their books are in various stages of publication.

Today, I want to talk about the newest book out, Samuel, Seer. It's the fictionalized autobiography of the Old Testament prophet, Samuel, and it's...hmm...what's a better word than Awesome? Well, it's better than Awesome!

Also, today, and until the 9th, the Kindle ebook version is free! (Get it here.)

A M Jenner

Bubbaloo Gets a Clue!

By virtue of being the only entrant yesterday, Bubbaloo Magoo's persistence finally paid off. Let me know how to inscribe the book and where to send it, and it will be on its way, bubs!

~Marie

Get a Clues!

My new book, The Siege of Kwennjurat, is scheduled for release eight days from now, and I feel like celebrating. For the next eight days, I am giving away one signed book each day. Here’s how to enter:

Making a comment on the blog gets you one entry. If you’re a blog follower, say so for a second entry. Tweeting and sharing to Facebook or Google+ are worth one entry each (post a link to where you shared in your comment). First thing tomorrow morning, I will put all the entries in a hat and draw a winner. I’ll announce the winner, and then they can email me their real name and address, and their signed book will be on the way!

Today I’m giving away Clues to Food, a cook book full of yummy tried-and-true recipes along with a little tom-foolery. One of my favorite recipes is for my great-great grandmother’s spice cake. It reads: “To your basic white cake recipe add 1/2 tsp. ground cloves, 1/2 tsp. allspice, 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg, and 1 tsp. cinnamon.” Please include your favorite recipe in your comments. See you tomorrow with a new giveaway and the announcement of today’s winner.

Wow! What a week!

First off, and most exciting, my book A Heart Full of Diamonds has finally been published in print and ebook! Some of my fans have been waiting ten years for this event, so I'm understandably excited. I love the new cover, too. It's been a lot of fun learning to make my own covers, and with this one, I'm feeling confident that I finally know what I'm doing.

What's this one about? Here's what's on the back cover.

Once she saw the diamonds, she was out of options.

A wig, a change of clothes, and nerves of steel freed Marilee from her diamond-stealing husband, but Tony has too many friends in too many places for her to trust anyone.

A thousand miles away, she's fashioned a new life in a safe haven. Her brawny neighbor Richard and his engaging son Derreck would do anything to help her, but she keeps her past a secret until two of Tony's goons kidnap her in broad daylight.

The race is on, and Marilee's life hangs in the balance!

A Heart Full of Diamonds is available in print here, and in ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

In other news, the renovations have been finished on the older books. Clues to Food and Fabric of the World have new covers and lower prices.

Due to requests from blog readers, I'm working on preparing Assignment to Earth and Inherit my Heart for publication in print and ebook. I'm also putting together a short story collection and a sampler book, which should be out shortly. I expect that The Siege of Kwennjurat will be coming out sometime this winter. It needed more work than I had time to complete during summer break.

School starts again in two weeks and I've got a very full schedule this fall, so if you think I've dropped off the face of the planet, you'll know where I am. In the mean time, I can promise there will be a new blog post every Tuesday on something related to writing.

~Marie

Winding Down...or Ramping Up?

Two weeks. Four more "Instructional Sessions" in each of my classes. And Finals. then I'm out for the "summer". I'm worn out and looking forward to the break.

As soon as I'm free of schoolwork, I'll return to my very neglected writing. Anne has been working over Deadly Gamble, and should pass it to me soon.

I will be diving into learning photoshop, with the idea of making our own cover this time instead of using a CreateSpace template. It's not that we don't love their templates, but if we use their template, they own the copyright on the cover, and I can't use the same cover for the ebook. If I make the cover, I can use the same one for the ebook, and I like that.

I'll also be learning better ways to format the ebooks so they look better internally.

I'll go over Deadly Gamble, and then it can be formatted for print and ebooks, and the cool cover put on it, and sent out into the wide world.

There will be website updates as well, something I've been neglecting. Does anyone know how hard it is to make a shopping cart for your website? I was going to take a class on that this fall, but they've decided not to teach it (now that I've completed the prerequisites!)

As soon as I've finished that, I'll be making new covers for Tanella's Flight, Fabric of the World, and Clues to Food, and uploading those for print; then I'll be reformatting the ebook versions and republishing with the new covers and better internal formatting.

If it's still not time for school to start, I'll get working on final edits for The Siege of Kwennjurat, which is the sequal to Tanella's Flight.

The fall semester will be challenging mentally, but not as challenging physically, because most of my classes are online, and those that are on campus are lined up in neat, compact blocks on Tuesday and Thursday, so I'll have a lot less travelling and wasted time than I have with the swiss-cheese schedule I have now.

~Marie

Happy January!

Life has been a little chaotic around here in the office of A M Jenner. First, we’ve been editing like crazy on our next project, Clues to Food: A Letterboxer’s Cookbook. That project started mid-November, with the official submission cut-off being “the end of the year or when the book reached 250 pages, whichever comes first”. In this case, the end of the year came first. We’ve been trying some of the recipes, and we haven’t found a loser yet. Everything we’ve tried has been very scrumptious! The special air mattress on my husband’s hospital bed went flat, and he was sleeping on camp pads on the springs while we tried to jump through the paperwork hoops to get it replaced—and in the mean time, the bed itself broke and also needed to be replaced. That entire process took about a month to complete. We shared Christmas with those most dear to us, giving and receiving mostly hand-made presents. We also shared cold and flu germs with the near and dear, and our home has been filled with coughing, sniffles, and explosive blow-the-top-of-your-head-off sneezing. I’ve been working on finishing my NaNoWriMo novel, which is now around 80,000 words. My partner’s been editing our next novel, Deadly Gamble. Some filing cabinets have fortuitously and gratuitously come our way, and at the best price. In order to fit them into our cramped office/school room/craft room/storage room, we’ve had to do a lot of cleaning, organizing, throwing out, rearranging furniture, and totally taking our office apart and putting it back together again. Hopefully this project will be finished up by the end of the weekend. An update to the last post...several changes, none of them to the story, were made to Tanella's Flight, but they would not allow us to shorten the author name from Anne Marie Jenner to A M Jenner. Sigh. Those searching Amazon and other places for our books will just have to know enough about us to search under both names. School is back in session, and our youngest child is working her way through her last semester of High School. We’re looking into GED testing and grant applications so that college can be begun this fall. Two universities far out of our budgetary grasp are pursuing our home-schooler. Although not required to take them, she just received word she passed the standard tests required for graduation from High School here in Arizona. And finally, we got a chance a couple of weekends ago to get in a little letterboxing. It was nice to be out on the trails again. Happy Reading! —Anne