alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Mascot)
It's always a relief when a very visible reviewer likes your books. I have the job right now of trying hard to gain readers for Night Calls, which was mishandled by New York publishing. (In hindsight I wish we'd sold it to Laura Anne Gilman at Ace, but that may be about the time she left for ROC--the problems of my memory since Life, Interrupted.) When you bring something out with a smaller press, it's a crap shoot whether anyone will talk about the book.

But friends and fans (and fans who are friends) do talk about the book, and slowly, reviewers take note, and people start finding the book. Over at The Bookpushers, E-booklover gives Night Calls her seal of approval. She also has a nice collection of links, much like my gone and lamented Backlist eBooks did, to multiple venues where the book can be found.

"Life happened to get in my reading way so I didn’t manage to read Night Calls until after the New Year when I was dealing with the post holiday slump. After I finished reading it I knew three different things. First, I really hoped she Kimbriel was writing more Alfreda stories. Second, I HAD to review this and spread the word. And finally Gilman gives good book recs."

Yes, there are more Alfreda books--Kindred Rites is in ebook, and coming in print as soon as CreateSpace stops messing with us. Laura Anne Gilman does give great book recs (and writes wonderful books, too!) I'm sorry the web site isn't up to date, but I have been debating moving it, or overhauling the code engine completely--and that takes time. (You see why I so miss Backlist eBooks?) Also, with everything else going on, it's update or finish writing Spiral Path, the third Allie book.

You choose. Write, website, or find a job. Pick two. Guess what I chose? ;^) But I hope to get to it soon--I kept the Backlist eBooks code!

Kimbriel-NightCalls300x200
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Kindred Rites)
Authors have their baby pictures in a different form:

Night Calls--12/2013 Version

Kindred Rites (Night Calls #2)

Kindred Rites is now available in ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Book View Cafe(discount). Backlist Ebooks will get you to all three!

Kobo is pulling their usual games--their "PreOrder" button has vanished and now there's nothing. Sigh. I'm trying, international folk. But they're fighting back.

iTunes has asked Draft2Digital what age the book is appropriate for, since one of the BISAC codes I gave them was for teens. I replied ages 12-120, since after that point you're a vampire and you're not reading fantasy, you're living it--or undeading it, whatever.

Also--PRINT Night Calls is available, too! At Amazon and at Barnes & Noble, as well as CreateSpace. (CreateSpace pays the greatest royalty, but I've been reliably told that setting up an account there is a PITA, and despite Amazon owning them, you can't use your Prime to ship. Bother.)

Working on Print Kindred Rites... As well as myriad other things to report upon at another point!
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Mascot)
I'll try to get the cover and new versions uploaded to the major distributors tonight for rollover as fast as they move.

Night Calls in DRM-free EPUB and MOBI.
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Mascot)
Kimbriel-NightCalls414x276
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Mascot)
So, bowing to the professional knowledge of friends, we are having a cover change. The last one--this is my promotional budget. Instead of PR, we get new covers. Mitch Bentley, Atomic Fly Studios, and I would like to introduce you to the ebook cover for Night Calls. Mitch has Life, Interrupted this week, but will soon be back on the wraparound cover for the print edition of Night Calls (yes, she's holding a lantern, hence the light!) and the ebook cover for Kindred Rites. I hope you like it. The art will stay--Mitch may mess with the fonts more as he finalizes the wraparound.

This is the stab to make Alfreda very share-able. I'll be finishing up #3 (if no one else gets ill!) learning MS Office 2010 and also POD this coming month. If this doesn't work? Mundane job, no matter how mundane, and contemporary fantasy...among other things.

Have picked up the Crimson template from Book Design Templates--I'll be using that for Kindred Rites and Alfreda book three. Leah Cutter did the PDF for Night Calls. I will experiment with the finalized WORD document from Book View Cafe. Book Design Templates has a free ebook to help you use their templates, so that will figure into my reading this weekend!

Can Book View Cafe folk drop their Word docs into Book Design Templates with a minimum of fuss? If so, I suspect we will choose a template for a house style and run with it! The great experiment will begin this month, slowed only if I get a mundane job quickly.

New Cover! )
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Night Calls)
So. Good news, bad news. Bad news first.

Kindred Rites is not coming out in December. Between everyone's health connected to cover and manuscript prep, we just lost too much time. The perils of self-publishing. It is coming out in January, 2014, approximately January 21st. The stupendous Vonda N McIntyre is whipping its formatting into shape, so I hope to have a readable ARC for reviewers soon. If you got one of the first book to review, you are welcome to the second. We want reviews! We want the world to love Allie! Feel free to recommend other review sites, but they have to wait until there's a cover. Reviewers, If you want to start on it faster and do not mind some ARC weirdness/no cover, I can make a basic PDF for people.

Good News. I did hire someone to do a cover with "Magic, Menace, and the Determined Girl". (Selling my firstborn child) It is cover art by a professional using recombined things in his copious files, plus a few special touches. In other words, good stuff I could afford. I like it. You will see hints of things all the way in the third book in it! Like a New York cover, it is not an illustration--it is marketing. I hope it will attract the teens and adults not trying the book right now. I hope you like it well enough to recommend it to friends. Ebook cover for Night Calls coming soon.

Still hoping for a POD this year. Depends on how hard it is for me to learn CreateSpace. Lightning Source has changed into IngramSpark for self-pubs, unless you can convince them you must be Lightning Source. I'm sorry, but I cannot afford the terms at IngramSpark. Returns and deep discounting would kill me. So if I cannot convince them that I only care about getting acid free paper and ink from them, and hardback potential, I will have to find a small press or small packager willing to do an acid free edition. As far as I can tell, CreateSpace never guarantees acid free anything. I want that. (I am an SF writer. When the EMF strike hits, I want my books to survive.)

My artist (yes, I am being secretive for a day or so longer!) is going to get back to work on the POD cover after Thanksgiving, and start Kindred Rites ebook as soon as possible. So--progress!

If I can get the PDF proofing done tomorrow, I am ready to tackle CreateSpace. I will get a template from Book Design Templates this week, too, for the other Allie books. After all this, back to the last of Alie 3. I hope.

And here ends the progress report!
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Night Calls)
Over at GoodReads. That's nice!
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Night Calls)
As part of my climb back into publishing, there will be a Night Calls POD. To get it out faster, I'm working with a friend who can format more quickly than I can. This means I won't have her system to add later reviews easily.

So if you have spotted a good review that you want to be sure I've seen, or authors, if you want to add your two cents about Night Calls? Now's the time. Let me know today if you can!

Seventeen years of reviews actually filled the Amazon text box. Good heavens. #FeelingBlessed

For more choices...

After first harvest, it's back to the Audible list and an editing job.

Work, work.
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Night Calls)
Honestly, I'm so excited I must sound like Seanan McGuire, so please forgive--I was hoping to attract some good library reviews for Night Calls, and thanks to Abe Books, I have discovered that they reviewed Night Calls when it first came out from HarperPrism, back in the day. Abe Books had a snip up:

"The underlying horror...builds slowly and inexorably to an exciting climax. Nordic superstitions and spirits combined with unusual ways to combat the supernatural make this a unique read for horror fans."

Rochelle M. Bilz, Voya, October 1996


Here's hoping it is accurate, so I can use it for the POD cover.

Wheeee!

I think I need to hit the library in search of back issues of VOYA and Locus. There might be some good Kindred Rites reviews out there, in the mists of time. We now return to regular life!

http://bit.ly/NightCalls
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Night Calls)
It's up to 28 reviews at Amazon.com, and 4 at Barnes & Noble. Thank you, everyone who has taken time to write a review! Positive reviews help! (Those of you who prefer my SF, your silence is appreciated... ;^) )

For those feeling review-ish....Amazon or Barnes & Noble Nook!
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Night Calls)
So--while I attempted to sleep the proverbial sleep of the just, Night Calls climbed to #20 on the Amazon Dark Fantasy Paid Top 100 list. I'm on the same page as Ilona Andrews. ((00)) {Those are my eyes...} It's reached #26 on the Children's/Teen Fantasy & Magic/Sword & Sorcery list. This is what it is supposed to mean:

"The Amazon Best Sellers calculation is based on Amazon.com sales and is updated hourly to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold on Amazon.com.

While the Amazon Best Sellers list is a good indicator of how well a product is selling overall, it doesn't always indicate how well an item is selling among other similar items. Category and subcategory best seller lists were created to highlight an item's rank in the categories or subcategories where it really stands out.

We choose a few of the most popular subcategories in which the item has a high ranking in relation to other items in that subcategory, and showcase the item's rank on the product page. As with the main Amazon Best Sellers list, these category rankings are based on Amazon.com sales and are updated hourly."


In reality, I've sold about enough books to pay my gas bill. I have no idea how fast they update the sales reports.

So I am looking at this as a way to put the book before a legion of potential new readers who will love to read about Alfreda. It's the only way to look at things right now.

Thank you, everyone who has bought a copy for their reader, who has told friends about the book, who has added a review at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com. You have participated in this effort to get Alfreda the fans that she deserves, and keep me out from under a bridge. Your doing this is what can make the magic happen.

You are all awesome.

And now, I have to explain to the person designing the template for the print version of Night Calls what I want.
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Night Calls)
Writer Deborah J. Ross talks about how some stories save their writers, some heal their audiences...and some do both. Night Calls is her topic.

"Some stories, on the other hand, do more than provide a framework for intellectual problem-solving. Whether they are characters, situations, or entire worlds we know and love, or whether they arise during our time of crisis, they speak to us – they call to us. They give us a voice. Perhaps a new voice, perhaps one we have lost or that life has battered out of us. Or maybe it is simply that when we are pushed to the wall, emotionally or physically, we need to connect with what gives us joy. Wellsprings of secret delight and unabashedly un-guilty pleasures. And healing."
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Mascot)
When a librarian likes your book, it's especially lovely.

"It takes talent to build a world so rich and lush that the reader cannot imagine it ever being differently, but that is exactly what Ms. Kimbriel has done. Readers are invited into Alfreda’s world, and will not want to leave. Alfreda herself is a joy to get to know and to follow as she starts along the path of a Practitioner. Her love of her family, her fascination and dedication to her craft, and the adventure she finds herself in the middle of all make her a magnificent protagonist that will appeal to young and old alike."

Kimbriel_NightCalls133x200And a NetGalley Professional Reader enjoyed Allie, too! Whee!

"...well-written, lovely character development, and a magic system that has real costs and dangers as well as rewards. I'm looking forward to reading more.

Highly recommended."
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Night Calls)
Kimbriel-NightCalls300x200It's been fifteen years since Night Calls was available.

I've been fighting illness for fifteen years, too. I've spent my life savings...saving my life. I still cannot not work at an office job. But I can edit up a storm, and I have an Allie book to finish. That is the reason I kept going.

Today we find out how high Allie is going to soar.

This is the series of my heart, the adventures of Alfreda Sorensson. Allie is back! Night Calls is now LIVE in ebook format: http://bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/book/night-calls/ You can find her at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes/iBook, and always at Book View Cafe. Print on Demand paper versions from Create Space will follow soon. Kindred Rites appears in January, 2014, and Universe willing, the third book comes out in 2014.

Can you help me spread the word? We are already live at Book View Cafe-- http://bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/book/night-calls/
Blurb & Review Quotes )
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Mascot)
When you have the Gift, your life is not your own.


I was born to a family that harnessed the winds and could read futures in fire and water. Yet my mother kept her secrets.

Then the werewolf came, sharing his madness.

Now it's my turn to keep secrets....


KatharineEliskaKimbriel_NightCalls200x300
alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Mascot)
Ninety pages left to copy edit.
alfreda89: (Tea -- the universal cure (ask the Docto)
Sometimes a copy editor makes a change and it just doesn't register that they have changed the MEANING of something you wrote. And this is serious, as in, I will from this point on hand-change EVERY copy of NIGHT CALLS from HarperPrism that I sign. And if you have a copy? Please change it.

Go get your copy. We'll wait.

On page 140, the third paragraph that starts "The important thing was not to lose eye contact." In the manuscript, the next sentence says that you can hold off a cougar with eye contact. As far as I know, and research keeps telling me, this is true. Don't break eye contact, make yourself look big, and better to make some noise so they know you're there and can avoid you. It's a cat thing. But HarperPrism changed that to say "predator," not cougar. NOT RIGHT. Eye contact is aggressive to a wolf or a bear. I think I must clarify this here, so no one gets the wrong idea. Allie knows better--and as she's never seen a wolf pack appear in front of a human like this, deep down inside she knows this is not a wolf. So I will clarify.

Allie is growing and learning. She can be and is wrong about some things. But I try very hard to make sure that if she's wrong about something that could get someone hurt? There's immediate consequences from the action, and she's learned what is right.

Whether her advice about black dogs, ghosts or unicorns is correct is another matter entirely...

June 2025

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