Angst & writing book #2

Once upon a time it was a dark and stormy night and I wrote a book. You can't tell from this cover but Jump/Drive, my book, won an award even from TheKindleBookReview.net for best YA from a new author in 2013 which I find pretty cool.

I have been very lucky and found quite a few very kind people who have enjoyed my book and the reviews are pretty nice as well, especially when they're from people I don't know. *grin* Hey, if you've read it and haven't reviewed it yet feel free to go drop me a few stars, the more the merrier, over on amazon why don't you? lol

I've started a second book with the same protagonists, Caleb, John, and Devon back in the town they'd lived in their whole lives. It was, and is, a sort of modern day Hardy Boys, a Scooby Doo & the Gang with a smaller cast and less Scooby & more gang... I've started that second book three different times three different ways, they're around here somewhere on a google drive, or dropbox, but the problem is as I write it all I can think about is this book and how well it did for me. Now, it didn't do Stephen King well for me. It didn't sell enough for me to buy a car, but it has garnered me some royalty payments from more than one country and that's fun right? But all I can think is what if book two isn't as good as the first book? Then I freeze and the words dry up and I can't do anything. Caleb and John sit around in the Prius just looking at each other wondering what to do next. Devon sits at the ice cream shop eating a banana split waiting for a call to come that never does. Adrian... well, he's not really in any of the other books so much. He's alive out there, just not necessary in future stories really.

So, I've decided, after being asked yet again, when the next book is coming out, that I can't handle it lol. That sounds funny because I should just shut up and write the next book. I'm not good at that though. I need to do something else. I need to write some other story, some other different story to sort of free myself up to revisit those characters that people really connected with. I'm a little scared to visit them so soon after the minor success, major for me as a new author, but in the scheme of things not really all that great.

So, I'm going to write another book, I've been going to write another book for a while. Now I know it's not going to be in the same series as the first book. It'll be new, no pressure that way, no expectations. Same target audience. It'll be Young Adult with male protagonists, no love triangle, no vampires, but maybe a little urban fantasy just because fantasy is cool right? I like to read it, and well... it's different from the first one and I need that right now.

Yeah, Author... that's me. HA! :)

Guess who is going to call himself an author now?

This guy. That's who.

My book Jump/Drive is available on amazon.com now for the kindle. The paper version will happen later. It's $2.99 for the e-book and if you're an amazon prime member you can borrow the book for free.

When a sink hole swallows up a small mid-western town's mall three teens decide to find out what happened and let the world know what happened in their small corner of the world.

Relationships are explored, old friendships deepened, and unlikely friendships formed in the backdrop of conspiracy and adventure created by the disaster. 

Adolescents bring all sorts of strange ideas to sex, love, and how those two are related, but when there is past sexual abuse in the picture the strange ideas can be even stranger and the at night, when the lights are off and they can't see each other's faces, they talk about it and learn things about themselves, and each other.

Kindle Fire & Amazon Customer Service

So, my Kindle Fire developed a weird screen thing where the screen would shoot vertical lines through it and then go black. In the dark you could sometimes see it was half the blacker-than-black from between scanlines on a TV and the other half was a dark gray. But the screen wasn’t viewable. Just the slightest tweak, or holding it ONLY on the left side would fix the problem stutteringly. Then it would stay OK for a while. Other times it’d be touchy and seemed not willing to stay on at all. Still other times it would go a negative so white was black and black was white. blue was red, etc. It was a negative… you know what that is. It got worse over time. I didn’t have a lot of time so I didn’t do much with it.

Finally tonight I went through the steps on amazon to do a return and got a message saying, “Can’t just return this item punk! You gotta talk to someone in a foreign country who is awake this late.” or words to that effect. With great trepidation I called the 800 number and got someone whose name I didn’t understand but his name was NOT “Peggy” and he did NOT tell me I couldn’t turn my airline miles into cash.

It was a guy, with an accent yes, but he was super friendly. Very helpful and never once asked if I’d dropped it, thrown it across the room, left it in a car overnight when it was eleven-degrees outside, shipped it across the country twice in a shoe box or anything else that might cause problems. He simply apologized for the problem and asked where to ship the replacement item. I told him and while we were talking an e-mail showed up with a link to print a shipping label. When the new one arrives I’m to put the broken one in the box, hand it to any UPS driver or store and toddle off to enjoy the replacement item.

No muss. No fuss. Free 2 day shipping to me. They couldn’t have been nicer, more solicitous, helpful, cooperative, or excellent to deal with. Seriously. I can’t imagine anything he could have done to make the experience more pleasant.

To answer your unanswered question: Would I still recommend someone get a Kindle Fire? The answer is absolutely YES if you have wi-fi at your home or work. If you don’t have wi-fi it’d be a harder sell for me. But with the wi-fi I have available to me at home, work, and the coffee shop it’s as good as always on for me. I love it for Netflix, facebook, comics, and reading websites. I don’t love it for books because the battery doesn’t last 2 weeks like my Kindle Keyboard (Which I love a little more than is healthy I think.). But I like it for books at night when the lights are out and I don’t want to turn on a table lamp.