Crazy Water in Publishing on Amazon Kindle

Crazy Water mergedI just hit publish on Amazon Kindle for Crazy Water. It generally takes 12 to 24 hours, so sometime tomorrow it will be available for purchase.

Crazy Water:

Crazy Water – is he Comanche, half-breed, or white? The four men who find him with a head injury on the riverbank, name him Crazy Water. He doesn’t know his true name or where he comes from. He is dressed in Comanche garb, speaks the Comanche tongue fluently, and has more knowledge of hunting and tracking than most boys his age. He remembers nothing of his life before he was found at the riverbank.

For nearly ten years he lives as a Comanche. When the Jerome Agreement is put into effect, giving each Comanche 160 acres of his own land, thereby breaking up the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache reservation, Crazy Water and his friends decide to take advantage of this and return to the reservation for their share of the land.

When he meets beautiful Kyah and they fall in love, he concentrates on building a life without ever learning the answers to his questions. Will he ever learn who he is? If he has parents or other family? Or will his past remain a mystery forever?

Is There a Right Book Length?

Big BookHow long should a book be? Epic novels of 800 or more pages can be very daunting to some people. They fear they’ll never finish them. I like a good epic novel; I get all wrapped up in the characters and I want to find out what happens to them. But they do take a long time to read and if it’s a book that tends to drag on and on, I begin to feel as though it is keeping me from getting to other books in my large unread pile. Short stories are my least favorite, I always want to know more and am rarely satisfied with a short story. My ideal length is somewhere between 200 and 400 pages. I can usually finish a book of that length in a week or less and move on to the next one. Aside from my large stack of unread printed books, I have dozens of ebooks sitting on my Kindle. They’re all there, patiently waiting for me to get to them. So what’s your ideal book length?

What I’ve Learned About Editing

I’ve always known how important  editing is. We first learn about it in school when we write book reports, essays, etc. I  review what I’ve written whenever I’ve finished a paragraph. When I finish a chapter, I review it. Then when the first draft is complete, I read the entire thing from the beginning, correcting errors as I go. When I’m done, I start again at the beginning and repeat the process. My plan is to keep repeating the process until I get through the whole manuscript without finding any errors. That never seems to happen. There is always a typo or something that I feel can be better said. Other authors tell me they experience this as well. I have a few friends read over my manuscripts and they always find a few errors I’ve missed. On my third book, Gray Cloud, I hired an editor. More errors were found and corrected. The book was at last published on Kindle. Then I submitted it for publication in print form. When I received my first proof copy I read it once more. Guess what? I found more errors! I corrected them and resubmitted. The second proof copy has arrived and I am currently going through it, and yes, I’ve found a few more errors. I’ve come to the conclusion that editing is never complete. It does give me a small amount of comfort when I read books by popular authors and discover that they too have errors.

Gray Cloud now available!

Gray Cloud, the third book in the Captive Hearts series, is now available in Kindle. It will be available in print form on or before August 15, 2012. The story of Carrie and her family continues in this book and has an exciting cliffhanger ending.

I’ve already begun the next book, Hawk. The first chapter is included at the end of Gray Cloud.  For new readers, I’ve gone back and included the first chapter of Eagle’s Wish at the end of Captive Hearts,  and the first chapter of Gray Cloud at the end of Eagle’s Wish.

Hawk is already shaping up into an exciting addition to the series. Happy reading and I look forward to hearing from you!

Eagle’s Wish – Sequel to Captive Hearts

Good News! I just uploaded my second book, Eagle’s Wish, to the Kindle site. There’s a process it has to go through before it will be “live” and available for purchase. This can take up to 48 hours, but I did just check the status and it should be up in less than 12 hours.

I hope everyone enjoys it. I’ll be starting on the next book shortly. I have lots of research to do first but I”m looking forward to see what happens next.

Eagle’s Wish sales

Wow! Eagle’s Wish has been up on the Kindle store for just about a week and I have to say the response has been amazing!

I’m very excited about the next book coming up. It’ll be all about Gray Harding and how he deals with living in the white world. There’ll be some scandal and we’ll see how the Harding family deals with it.

Gray has issues with the pull his Comanche roots have on him. How will he work through these issues? Sorry readers, you’ll have to wait until the book comes out to find out.

In the meantime, thanks again for all your support! I look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you!

First, I want to say thank you to all my readers who have emailed and asked when the sequel to Captive Hearts will be available. I hope to have it up on Kindle by February 18, 2012. The title of the new book is Eagle’s Wish.

My editor wanted a few revisions and that’s taking a little longer than anticipated. But I’m working hard on it and will get it done as soon as possible.

Thanks again for all your support!