My Reading Mission

 I know it's late in the year to be accepting new reading missions, but with the holiday season approaching, what better time of year would there be for this particular mission?  What is it, you ask?

Well, when I was searching for ebooks to read, it occurred to me that I had a mission once and I have forgotten it and its importance.  Here's the best way to explain it... My self-appointed mission to find underappreciated books, read them, and if they warrant it, give them the love they deserve.  So, I went to the Top 100 lists on Amazon and scanned through them, only picking books with a low # of stars - ideally less than ten but never more than 50.  

I ended up with five books that fit the bill in Suspense/Murder.  I finished the first one yesterday and it was really good (from an entertainment aspect, although it was also well-written).  I typed out a glowing review for Goodreads, posted it to Amazon, then to Facebook, then a truncated version to Twitter/X.  

And I feel really good about it.  I get to read a great book and I get to maybe help the author sell a few books.  I got these book for free, but I hope to, in some small way, pay these authors for the stories they gave me by posting reviews.  Win win.

I don't care if they ever know or even notice.  I'm only talking about it here to encourage others to try doing the same.  There are a boatload of awesome, underappreciated authors out there, slogging away with no feedback.  New reviews are at an all time low.  Most people just leave ratings and most of the new ratings seem to suck - like people only bother when they didn't like something and not when they did.  It's sad really.  So, in my own way, I'm striking out against that and leaving credit where credit is due.  

Hopefully, when I have a little extra scratch, I can purchase these authors' other books and support them in a monetary way, too.  We do what we can.  

Anyway, keep your eyes on my Books Read post and my weekly Saturday Reading Wrap-up posts and find some awesome things to read, too.  Or if you have FB or Twitter, follow me and see what I have to say about the books I'm reading.

Oh, and for the record, I don't finish a book if I feel I won't be able to give it at least 4 stars.  And I don't review books I don't finish.  I think that's only fair.  (Also, I don't give the titles of my DNF books - just the reasons. I can get kinda snotty with my reasons and there's no need to harsh some poor author's day because their book didn't suit me.)

Have a great day and keeping on reading!

Sunday Update 11/17/24

Whoa, this year is going fast.  It's hard to believe I've been post-employed for over 6 months now.  Woot.

Okay, so this past week... Well, the beginning of the week started okay pretty okay.  I did stuff.  Then the end of the week, I felt like crap and didn't do much of anything.  Still, you came here for an update and here it is:

No writing, but I did get 16 pages edited and I'm through 6 pages of edit notes now.  Yeah, none of that sounds like a lot, but it is.  I'm going to try to boost those numbers this week.  We'll see.

I did marketing every morning of the work-week. This moved 146 copies of Early Grave.  No residual stuff yet, but I have hope.  I think I'll take this coming week off of marketing and see what happens.  Probably nothing.  :shrug:  I can handle nothing, I guess.  I've handled it a lot over a long stretch of the past ten years. ;o)

I read some stuff.  You can go to yesterday's post to see that.  Except the ebook I started reading is a suspense with few reviews and I'm enjoying it.  Is it perfect?  Nope.  Still enjoying it, though.  Yay.  I should be able to leave a good review for this and help a fellow writer out.  

Last week, I made Outrageous Chocolate Chip Cookies, pizza, and a big vat of chili.  Yummers.  I picked up the stuff to make French bread pizza instead of regular pizza, so that's what we're having today.

On the activity front, like I said, I did stuff early in the week.  In fact, I did three days in a row throwing logs around in the woods... maybe that's why I got to feeling pooky... ya think?  Anyway, I feel better in general when I'm active, so I'm going to get back at it soon.  Weight: 175.0

What else... let's see... I'm back to being 'active' on Twitter... X... whatever.  I'm still weeding my feed, following new stuff, unfollowing crap stuff.  Posting interesting things when I can.  It probably won't be the most exiting place to follow, but follow me anyway.  @BE_Sanderson

Okay, I think that's it.  There may be other stuff, but it's lost to me right now.  Tra la la.  Have a great day and a great week, wherever you are.  Hasta la bye-bye.

Saturday Reading Wrap-up 11/16/24

It's been a couple weeks since I did a wrap-up.  Sorry about that.  Anyway, here goes...

I snagged 5 new ebooks - all from the Amazon Top 100 free lists in either Suspense or Murder.  I tried to only get books with fewer than 50 reviews and often less than 10 reviews.  We'll see how that goes.  I'd really like to be able to read some good, underappreciated stuff and give it 4 stars or better.  No new hardcopies.

Books Read:

26) The Border Legion by Zane Grey (11/9/24) - Western - 4 stars. Neither new to me nor underappreciated.  I've had this one for a while.  In fact, it's my last unread Zane Grey.  I'll have to start scouring the used bookstores again soon.
Review: "Not my favorite Zane Grey. It certainly held my attention, but there were aspects of the characters I wasn't exactly keen on. To each their own."

25) The Case of the Waylaid Wolf / The Case of the Restless Redhead by Erle Stanley Gardner (11/2/24) - Mystery - 5 stars.  Neither new to me nor underappreciated (except this edition doesn't have loads of stars).  I've had this since Colorado and I think I paid like $3 for the whole box of these.
No review.

DNFs:

11/11/24 - free - suspense.  I tried, really I did.  I made it about halfway through before I just couldn't take it anymore.  Ugh, the whole 'skipping around, head-hopping, too stupid to live, WTF is going on here' killed what was a pretty good premise.  =o\

Currently Reading... I'm reading this huge compendium of HG Wells works.  I finished War of the Worlds yesterday and set the volume aside.  Not sure when I'll get back to that.  Then I started one of the new ebooks I picked up.  So far, so good.  I'm about 9 books short of reaching my goal for 2024.  I could reach that if I tried.  

What have you been reading lately?

Back on Twit... Err, X

For the first time since 2016, I am active on what used to be Twitter but is now X.  (I still call  it twitter.  Sorry, Elon.)  If you're interested, I'm @BE_Sanderson.  I'll try to remember to post stuff, but you know me.  Some weeks I can hardly remember to post here.

I stopped visiting Twitter because of all the crap I was seeing.  I did not delete my account, because I'd be damned if I was gonna let someone else have my user ID, but I relegated it to the unused links section of my Bookmarks.  And the only thing I did with it was let Goodreads post my reviews to it.  So, I'm back to see if I can generate interest in my books and other fun junk.  So far, so good.  My password still works, and all of my goodies are still there.  Woot.  I posted a notice that I was back, liked a bunch of posts, and then posted a funny thing.

"When your KDP sales graph is sick of your shit."

Eh, it amused me.  I mean, come on... it looks like a hand flipping the bird.  And yes, that's my graph as of first thing this morning.  Today's orders are still climbing, which would screw up the whole 'this is a hand' thing, so I snapped it as soon as I saw it.

I have to amuse myself where I can.

What's amusing you today?

2024 Books Read

 Yeah, yeah... this is way later in the year than I would've started one of these lists, but I was working and not reading up until recently, which meant I didn't actually finish many books before now, so I didn't see the point.  However, I'm reading again, so I thought I'd make a reading goals thing on Goodreads.  And this post.  If you've been here before you know the drill...

(psst... * means ebook, # means underappreciated)

27) The Raff Memorandum by Nick Webster (11/17/24) - Suspense*#

26) The Border Legion by Zane Grey (11/9/24) - Western

25) The Case of the Waylaid Wolf / The Case of the Restless Redhead by Erle Stanley Gardner (11/2/24) - Mystery

24) Love Blooms by Jennifer Faye (10/31/24) - Romance*

23) Moonstruck Mafia: Boston by Silver James (10/27/24) - Paranormal Romantic Suspense*#

22) Biker Funeral by Jamie Mason (8/31/24)  - Hard-boiled Crime*#

21) James Herriot's Dog Stories by James Herriot (8/30/24) - Literature

20) Brother Assassin by Fred Saberhagen (8/24/24) - SF

19) The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife by Erle Stanley Gardner (8/12/24) - mystery

18) Oblivion's Cloak by Dylan McFadyen (8/9/24) - epic SF*

17) The Tuesday Club Murders by Agatha Christie (8/4/24) - mystery

16) The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks (8/2/24) - fantasy

15) The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie (7/24/24) - mystery

14) Cinder by Marissa Meyer (7/21/24) - SF dystopian

13) Mystery of the Haunted Pool by Phyllis A. Whitney (7/19/24) - YA mystery

12) The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie (7/15/24) - mystery

11) Sweet Smell of Revenge by Pam Clifford (7/10/24) - mystery*

10) The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brook (7/8/24) - fantasy

9) Midnight Clear by Silver James (7/1/24) - SF holiday romance*

8) Hercule Poirot's Casebook by Agatha Christie (6/30/24) - mystery

7) Perfect Pending by Lucia Ashta (6/25/24) - paranormal romance*

6) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (6/14/24) - mystery

5) The Case of the Mythical Monkeys / The Case of the Angry Mourner by Erle Stanley Gardner - mystery

4) The Goggle-Eyed Pirates by Lee Falk - adventure/mystery

3) The Case of the Green-Eyes Sister / The Case of the Spurious Spinster by Erle Stanley Gardner - mystery

2) The Case of the Darling Divorcee / The Case of the Runaway Corpse by Erle Stanley Gardner - mystery

1) Award Science Fiction by Various - science fiction

0) Rumor Has It (Duke Noble, Private Investigator #1) by B.E. Sanderson - hard-boiled crime

Thursday This n That

I've been working in the woods these past few days.  It feels good to be back at it again.  Two years of not doing it means there is a LOT to clean up down in there.  Unfortunately, we lost several dogwood trees.  We have no clue what killed them.  Especially since there are live dogwood trees right near the dead ones.  Anyway, with all this deadfall, our firewood hoard is growing.  When we eventually get a woodstove, we're going to be golden.  Until then, though, it's just really good exercise.

Yes, I am sore from all the wood hauling - Hubs has been doing the cutting - but I'd rather be sore than turn into Jabba the Hut.  

I'm trying to make marketing images this morning, but the internet is killing me.

Mmm, cheese.

Right now, I'm reading a compendium of HG Wells' stories.  It starts off with War of the Worlds.  I'd read that once years ago and not since, so it's pretty interesting.  Nothing at all like the movie (the old one... I refuse to acknowledge that weird thing Tom Cruise did).  This whole volume could take me the rest of the year, but I think after WotW, I'll read an ebook or two before forging on.

I think I made a pretty good graphic this morning.  It might be too creepy, though.  What do you think?

Hey!  Blogger let my graphic load!  Yay!

Okay, I've gotta go get life started this morning.  Have a great day.

Insights and Other Fun Stuff

I know you're probably sick of listening to me talk about marketing.  I get sick of doing it, but it's a necessarily evil if you want to sell books.  Word of mouth can only get you so far, especially if you haven't published a new book in a while.  So here I am, posting marketing copy and images every morning - and sometimes night, if I can wedge one in there.  It is working.  I mean, if it wasn't I wouldn't still be beating my head on this particular rock, now would I?

Anyway, here's this morning's ranking snapshot for Early Grave:

Freaking photo wouldn't upload and I hate blogger sometimes. It's ranked at #9 in Serial Killers and #2963 overall in free books.

Not too shabby, eh?  And that's after moving only 82 copies.  Fingers crossed it turns into page reads and sales of the other books in the series.  

I have about 30 groups I post to now - more or less... some of them are genre specific.  And it usually takes me about 30 minutes for the posting.  The generation of new images every day?  Well, that takes a little longer.  Yep, a new image every day minus the one day I let the link provide the image for five days straight.  

Yes, you have to do the free thing for the whole five days.  If you do less days, you run the risk of the book not reaching the KU magic spot where it shows your book to its subscribers.  Go figger.

Now, this only works for freebies.  I've tried doing it for 99c books and I get :sad crickets chirping in the background:.  

An unfortunate side effect of this marketing is I am getting inundated with spammers and scammers.  They're only commenting and not messaging me much.  One of them emailed me.  It's all easy enough to ignore.  Plus, I get a chuckle out of some of the shit they try to pull.  A lot of them shower you with insincere praise and then ask you to message them.  ROFL  According to them, I am amazing, my covers are amazing, and my books are the best thing since the sun started rising every morning.  (Yeah, I'm that good.)

Anyway, that's the skinny on this marketing thing.  If you'd like to join me in this death by a thousand papercuts, and have any questions, let me know.  Otherwise, have a great day!