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Coming June 23: Life of Secrets!

Life of Secrets, the sequel to Death of Secrets, will be available for sale on June 23, 2014.

I ordered the proof copy today. If it checks out on Wednesday, I’ll order a bunch of paperbacks so I have them available.

I love this book. I feel like it represents tremendous growth as a writer since Death of Secrets. This is a roller coaster thrill ride with twists, turns, and surprises at every new page. Hidden in all that fun is a powerful emotional story about forgiveness and redemption.

It also represents growth as an indie-author-businessman. The book is much more professionally presented, with far better editing.

Warm up your Kindles, friends. Life of Secrets is almost here!

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Life of Secrets: Ambassadors Wanted

I’d like to recruit some Ambassadors to help spread the word about life of Secrets when it launches. As an independently published author, there’s no publishing house marketing budget behind my books. I manage all the promotions myself. And word of mouth is a crucial part of that marketing. Ambassadors will have specific things they can help with. Read on!

Who should be an Ambassador?

Did you read Death of Secrets? Did you like it? Have you been looking forward to Life of Secrets? Are you comfortable telling other people that, including strangers and friends? If so, you’re the perfect candidate.

What do Ambassadors get?

You will get a FREE e-book version of Life of Secrets, and you’ll get it weeks before anyone else. (So, one more qualification for Ambassadors: you should enjoy reading electronically, whether on a Kindle, iPad, tablet, nook, your laptop, or whatever.)

Sounds great! What do I have to do?

Ambassadors commit to three things:

  1. Posting an honest review of the book on Amazon.com within 24 hours after the official launch date. This is the biggest, most important duty of an Ambassador. The most successful e-book marketing tools are all based on the number and average star rating of your reviews. It takes at least 4 to get listed in some places, and as many as 20 in others. I need reviews, and I need them quickly, in order to get started on the advertising campaign to sell the book. Remember: honest reviews. Ambassadors are not obligated to write a good review, or give it five stars, or anything like that. They only commit to posting a review that tells how they really felt about the book. The official launch date is likely to be the last week of June, so you’ll have  quite some time to read the book and craft your review to get it ready to post on Amazon.
  2. Sharing Life of Secrets posts on Facebook. This really helps increase the awareness of the book.
  3. E-mailing me any typos or edits you might find. The great beauty of electronic publishing is that mistakes can be corrected at any time, even after the book is published. Life of Secrets has already been worked on by very skilled editors, but the lesson I learned from Death of Secrets is that typos still crop up no matter how many times you think you’ve polished it.

Ambassadors are a fundamental part of my marketing strategy. I want to be clear about this: I am asking for your help. If you’re willing, and the above description sounds good to you, then fill out the form below and I’ll get you started!

UPDATE: Life of Secrets is published, so the Ambassador program is over now. Grab your copy on Amazon!

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Life of Secrets is being edited

The rough draft of my next novel is done. My editor is working on it right now. I’m incorporating her changes as they come in. Very soon, the sequel to Death of Secrets will be ready for readers.

These are my plans: Very soon, I hope to begin recruiting ambassadors for the book. Ambassadors will get a free copy with a unique commemorative cover in exchange for committing to post a review on Amazon the day it comes out there, and sharing about the book on their social media account.

After the ambassadors, it’ll be time to sell advance copies. Everyone who buys in advance will get a signed copy with a unique cover.

And then, Life of Secrets goes live on Amazon! The day is not far ahead of us!

In the mean time, if you haven’t read Death of Secrets yet, get your copy on Amazon today!

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Death of Secrets now includes a sample from Life of Secrets

The e-book version of Death of Secrets has been updated with a sample chapter from the forthcoming sequel, Life of Secrets. To celebrate, it’s free for download today.

Life of Secrets is a thriller about a professional thief framed for an assassination. It’s also a character driven novel exploring why a person comes to do bad things. Most important of all, it’s a story of redemption.

Return to the world of Mike Vincent, Kathy Kelver, and D. W. Tilman. Meet Alyssa Chambers. Go deeper into a political world where secrets and betrayal can be the difference between life and death.

You can start reading early by downloading the Kindle version of Death of Secrets today!

 

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Sample Chapter Coming April 28!

Life of Secrets is now to the point where I’m ready to release a sample chapter! Starting a week from tomorrow, I’ll make it available on www.bowengreenwood.com. At the same time, the Amazon.com listing for Death of Secrets will also change to include a sample chapter from Life of Secrets.

As for the full novel, although I’m a bit behind the schedule I set for myself, it will still be published on June 1. The timeline was built to allow for a few delays.

Currently, the manuscript is in what I call the “rough rough draft” format. The story is finished, and I’m cleaning up some of the errors that result from the way in which I work on books (several different files, writing the beginning, middle, and end in different documents, constant revision of what’s already written to accommodate new ideas — etc.).

My first choice for editor doesn’t have the time right now, so hopefully this week I’ll learn about my second prospect.

The book will be substantially shorter than Death of Secrets. Currently it’s 53,000 words, and I doubt it will grow much beyond 55,000. Death of Secrets was closer to 90,000. Hey, that’ll cut the cost of editing almost in half!

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Sequel-izing

For people who enjoyed Death of Secrets, it might raise questions that Life of Secrets is a sequel, but features a completely new main character.

Don’t worry!

Congressman Mike Vincent is back in a pivotal role, and Kathy returns as well. D.W. Tilman will pass across the scene in flashbacks to his younger days.

Vincent finds himself a key player on the Presidential campaign of a man who might finally give Americans a leader who’s humble and sincere. Since it’s part of the marketing blurb for the novel, it’s not giving anything away to say that candidate dies early on. The whole story hinges on choices Mike makes.

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Life of Secrets is 99% finished

Today I expect to write the climactic fight scene and the epilogue. After that, it will become a simple matter of polishing, submitting the manuscript to an editor (I have her picked out – hope she agrees!) incorporating edits, polishing again, and beginning the marketing process leading up to the June 1 launch.

I expect Life of Secrets to come in shorter than Death of Secrets. Probably about a third shorter.

I wrote the start of the novel, then started a second file to write the end of the novel. Since then I’ve been writing forward in one and backward in the other. Tonight, the two files caught up to each other and I merged them.

Life of Secrets is on the cusp of being finished.

I can’t wait to show it to you.

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Writing about evil is hard for me

Life of Secrets is a much more character-driven story than Death of Secrets. Death of Secrets is running, hiding, action, intrigue… Life of Secrets has all that, but mixed in is a woman trying to deal with the garbage in her past that holds her back.

When one gets into emotion and mental state, one has to look at motivations. One has to spend more time trying to describe why someone hurts — why she is angry. That requires writing about someone having hurt someone else.

That’s hard for me.

I like my writing to reflect my value system, and the God who loves — who literally is love — is central to that. I’m most comfortable writing about people doing right by one another, being kind to one another.

But those things shine brighter when set alongside a person who does the wrong thing. It’s just that writing about those wrong things is hard for me.

I just try to keep my mind on the ending of Life of Secrets, which is beautiful. That makes enduring some of the bad characters along the way a little easier.

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Kindle Nation Daily

As I evaluate the various electronic places where I have marketed my book, Kindle Nation Daily stands out as one of the more effective ads I placed. Although I would rank it slightly below e-reader news today, it was still very good.

My “Thriller of the Week” sponsorship there yielded over 100 sales, which is more than any other single form of advertising except among my personal friends. I studied the statistics they publish about sponsor sales figures, and saw that DoS had a bigger bounce from their advertising than any other sponsorship for which the book wasn’t free. It worked quite well for me.

It has to be said that my total sales were far from earning back the cost of the sponsorship. So from an entrepreneurial perspective, it was not a success. However, I view the writing project on an 18-month long timeline. The question isn’t what I’m making right now. The question is, what will writing earn for me in June of 2015. My hope is that, assuming my current job ends then, I will be able to write full time. So all the marketing efforts for Death of Secrets, Life of Secrets, etc are aimed at building an audience who will buy future books.

From that perspective, KND definitely succeeded. I assume that essentially every one of the 100+ sales was a new reader. Will they buy future books? Time will tell. But I hope so.

I have promotions upcoming with ereadernewstoday.com and thefussylibrarian.com. I will evaluate their effectiveness as they happen. I am also planning at least 2 more free promotions, and I hope to study on whether any one day works better than another. Posts on all those subjects will be published as the data comes in.

The big one is bookbub. They are supposed to be the giant of indie author promotion right now. so far, I have not had success in getting listed there, but if I have the opportunity to work with them, I will certainly post about the effectiveness.

Perhaps, once I’ve run through the marketing plan for Death of Secrets and life of Secrets, I’ll be able to write a book about successful marketing of e-books. How very meta…