YOU HAVE TO GIVE YOUR READERS WHAT THEY WANT

Check out this great book from my friend Elle Knowles

Finding Myself Through Writing

After an exhausting 2-hour phone call with KDP this afternoon I finally managed to submit Coffee-Drunk or Blind for the Kindle edition! You can find it here. You have to give the readers what they want and everyone wants an e-book.

With my first book, Crossing The Line, the Kindle publishing was easy-peasy – if I’m remembering correctly. I just uploaded the files, hit submit, and Ziiip-Ziiiip…it was a done deal.

Now CDB was a whole different story. The cover didn’t want to upload. The interior file didn’t want to accept my pictures – yes! there are pictures in this book! – and the technology to get this all done was waaaaaaaay above my head. Arrg!

The guys over at KDP were very patient with this technology-impaired person. Believe me though, if it ever has to be done again, I’ll need more help. My brain did not retain all that changing…

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Smorgasbord Christmas Party – Guest Author Linda Bethea – Fleas don’t come home for Christmas, Willie Tharpe

Re logged from Smorgasbard

Not Always the Best Memories of Family Christmas

Reposting a story

Holidays with my cousins were a lot more like cage boxing than Hallmark Christmases. I had more than forty first cousins, mostly wild animals. By the time my aunts and uncles herded them to the scene of the crime, they just opened the car doors and all Hell broke loose. Exhausted from defending themselves and the babies on the ride over, it was every man for himself. God help anybody in the way.

They’d rip through the house under the guise of needing the bathroom and a drink of water, destruction in their wake, before being cast out into the yard or to the barn if it was raining, like demons into swine.  While they passed through, they destroyed anything in their wake.  We always hid our loot, but the evil little devils usually managed to mark something for destruction, even if it was no more precious than a dish…

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Hard Time Marrying Part 27

About three weeks later Anya awoke to a back ache.  It got worse as the morning drew on till she suddenly wet herself.  She was mortified, though she’d gotten used the increased demands pregnancy put on her bladder.  As she corralled Sally and set about cleaning herself up, labor pains began in earnest.  Anya knew little about birth except what she’d seen from her step-mother and from life on the farm, but she knew she’d better get help.  Joe and Little Joe were working in a far-off field, so she started a fire and loaded it with pine straw so it would make an impressive smoke to signal him home.  Home in minutes, he found Anya with her pains regular and about twenty minutes apart.  Hitching up the wagon and loading the children, he kissed Anya and warned her.  “Stay in the cabin near the bed.  I’ll be back with Emma quick as I can.  Git up an’ walk if you have to, but don’t leave the cabin.”  The horse trotted across the prairie, bouncing the kids Joe had taken time to tie in the wagon bed.  Over the next two hours, Anya’s pain increased in frequency and intensity.  Just as she feared the baby would come into the world unattended, Joe showed up with Emma.  Within minutes, Emma handed a baby girl off to Joe, waiting behind her with a warmed blanket.  “This baby ain’t big as a minute, but she’s purty like her mama.”

Joe held the baby close as his eyes filled with tears.  Moments later, Emma took the child and helped Anya put her to the breast. He looked from the tiny girl to the woman he loved.  “Our first baby. I ain’t never felt so fine. Thank you, Anya.”

Anya wept, feeling her life had finally begun.