#ROW80 Goal Achieved! New E-Book #FREE 'til Friday!

Well, I actually pulled an all-nighter on Sunday night, re-releasing all 3 of my previously published works with  new and improved back matter (samples, works list, etc) but more importantly for this ROW80 round, published A Matter of Honor: A Mister Wickham Adventure.

Then, I went off to work, got quickly sucked into a busy day, and logged onto the Amazon KDP Select dashboard at lunchtime to find that, unpromoted, the book had 300+ downloads and had jumped to #488 on Amazon's free book list.

Of course, that's all very exciting, especially since this short fiction is a tie-in to my on-going serial novel, The Perfidious Mister Wickham.

I'd like to think that this one has a shot of getting into the Top 100 by the end of the week, but in fact, it was only released to maintain continuity with the serial novel (a post for another time, but it turns out there is no better or more stressful way to keep yourself on-track writing a novel than to promise legions of fans that there will be a new chapter out every Monday!)

So, I wasn't really prepared or planning to do much promotion, and I guess we'll just see where Monday's momentum takes this one.

I hope you'll take a moment out of your busy day to grab a free copy for yourself, (click here for US readers, or here for UK readers) - and of course all Tweets, FB posts, etc. will be greatly appreciated!

Have a great day, and I'll look forward to penning another post sometime soon!

Best,
Edward

A Death in the Family (Circle of Life, Part One)

5 September 1977 - 15 July 2012

Friends, followers, fellow readers and writers...

I know I haven't been very active online for the last couple of weeks, but my commitments in the real world have taken me away from the virtual world of blog posts, Tweets, Facebook posting, etc...

As you may or may not know, I recently returned from Indonesia to take over as the Executive Officer at a Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron in Beaufort, SC - the Number Two man in a unit mustering 600-plus Marines... Still single after all these years, my family is my squadron; my Marines are my sons and daughters, my brothers and sisters in arms.

Sadly, only a couple of weeks after I arrived, every officer's worst nightmare happened - we lost one of our Marines in a senseless, tragic accident. It happened on a lovely Sunday afternoon just after I'd sat down to do some writing - and since then, I've done a lot of writing, all the sadly necessary paperwork to document this tragic event and ensure that our fallen brother's relatives get all the support that they are due.

This event saddened me personally, and also gave me a renewed appreciation for how much life is, in the end, so much sound and fury. As important as you may think you are, if tomorrow you are no more, the world will still keep turning. So stay safe. Keep yourself healthy. Say "I love you" to the people that you care about. Hug your kids, your significant other. Do something nice for yourself that you've been putting off.

That's all for now... I'll get back to blogging about happy topics in the days and weeks to come, about new writing projects and great novels I've read, but for now, I'd just like to dedicate this one to the memory of Staff Sergeant Jerome H. Carter, USMC. You were well-loved by your community, you made a daily difference in your squadron, and you will be missed. Semper Fi, brother. See you on the other side.

Dedicated to the Memory of Staff Sergeant Jerome H. Carter, USMC 

Chapter Two Posted! Take that, #MrDarcy!

Well, I'm another week into my serial novel, The Perfidious Mister Wickham... I cordially invite you to pop over and check it out here, and let me know what you think, not just of the story, but the concept of a serialized novel, and the presentation method, which is a rather neat embedded book made using FlipSnack... 


If you're thinking about presenting written media online, this might be a way to do it to stand out a bit from the norm...


A few other notes of interest - Triberr users, consider adding hashtags (sparingly!) to your post titles, as this will cause your Triberr-tweeted Tweets to get better visibility from people following a particular item of interest... And foreign audiences - are you making an effort to engage with them? I've recently discovered there's an ardent base of Jane Austen fans in Brazil, and I'm preparing to release my first German translation of a short story, so as I figure out what the best way to connect with an audience when you don't speak the language, I'll be sure to post and let you know... But if you have any experience or suggestions, I'm all ears!


Have a great week!
Edward

#ROW80 Round Three Goals...

Well, I'm afraid I stumbled at the finish of the last ROW80 round, and I'm slow out of the gate at the start of this one, missing both a final post last round, and a timely opening post this time... Which just shows why now, more than ever, ROW80 is an important tool for me to help focus my limited time on the things that matter when it comes to writing, publishing, etc...

What's the difference between this and the first two rounds of ROW80? Well, I've just completed (more or less, still waiting for one shipment of stuff to arrive) a move from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Charleston, South Carolina... I've also started a new and highly demanding position at work, have some work to do on my new house, and am a bit behind of where I'd like to be on my Perfidious Mister Wickham project. Last but not least, I just had a new little nephew born, so I'm spending a good bit of my weekends helping take care of my brother's two-year-old son so he and his wife can get a bit of a breather.

Looking back at the last couple of rounds, I've tended to over-commit by about 30 percent, so my goals this time around reflect the fact that I set some initial goals, and then sculpted the original set by about three-quarters...

All that said, here's my list of goals for Round Three of ROW80.

 WRITING
- Write 10 Chapters of The Perfidious Mister Wickham
- Write 3 Chapters of my Learning Indonesian book
- Finish Charming
- Finish The Welsh Mouse
- Finish The Artillerists
- Finish Merry Christmas, Mister Washington
- Finish Intercepts

PUBLISHING
- Publish the German Translation of Happily Ever After
- Publish A Matter of Honor

FITNESS
- Score 300 on the Combat Fitness Test
- Bench Press over 100 kg

LANGUAGE
- Five hours of studying French per week

NETWORKING
- Execute my “Social Media Plan”
- Build my “Core Group” to 25 people

ADMINISTRATION
- Re-Design my blog
- Create a Kickstarter Project to support The Perfidious Mister Wickham


Those are my goals! Looking forward to keeping you updated on my progress through the next couple of months, and following the progress of my fellow ROW writers...

Best to all,
Edward