Reading Out of the Comfort Zone

Every now and then I try to pick up new authors / stories / series.

As an author, looking for new readers, I hope this gives me some karma points. But it's also a way to expand my personal horizons.

As an experiment, sometimes it works out and sometimes meh. Since the explosion of Indies on the market, there are a lot more niches out there. Back in the stone age, when books were curated by publishers, the oddball niches were weeded out. Now there are so many I can't keep up.

I recently fell into a pile of magic/science fiction books. Wow. And very cool. I plan to work my way through them as Facade sort of falls into that category. I was trying to figure out some marketing when I discovered them. And as a treat, I get to read  all my competition. Although, not all of them are true comparables.

Having all these niches and sub-sub-categories can get very confusing. I look at the books listed and sometimes they don't fit at all. That could be authors squeezing their book into a more popular category for better discovery. But that's a bad idea, because if I want a magic / science fiction book and they give me space marines, I'm not going to be happy.

So I am still experimenting with the marketing. Still learning new things all the time. And this time, I get to enjoy myself along the way.

If You've Read It, Please Review It

That's a request for all readers and all books by any author.

Reviews are so important for an Indie author. Aside from letting other readers know how you felt about the book, it creates a benchmark for advertising.

There are some advertisers that use the number of reviews as a cutoff point. Since they are inundated daily with authors signing up their books, they need a simple rule of thumb to cut down on the sludge. My mysteries are well liked, but lack reviews, so they aren't admissible. As a result, I can't use a lot of the better advertisers. So they don't get a lot of notice.

So if you like a book, leave a review. It's important!

The Bunny War

They started it.

It's been a weird year weather-wise. Spring was too warm or too cold. Tender perennials that I expected to die out - didn't. Even though we went down below 10 degrees things came back that shouldn't have.

The spring vegetables didn't like the hot days. The warm weather vegetables are hating the cold rainy days. We have had a lot of cold rainy days followed by hot dry days that wilt everything in the garden.

So that's my excuse for forgetting. The weather has been all wrong. And I forgot to fence the beans.

Now I knew the bunny had been nibbling on the peas. I had to fence them and put in more seed where they had been pruned. And I had an inkling that the arugula bed had taken a hit. It was looking rather spotty. But today I went out to check the garden and my lovely beans looked like lollypop sticks.

Someone had eaten the tops off of every one. I don't think they can survive that, but I'll give them a chance. Fencing them now is like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, but it's up now. If there's no new growth, I'll just have to re-seed the bed.

Dang rabbits.