WeekEndCoffeeShare SALE!

If we were having coffee today I’d be telling you all about my big Labor Day Sale this weekend on my current backlist.

With the third novel in my Traces of Treasure series due out in a few weeks, I thought this would be a great time for the teeming masses to catch up on the first two books.  Both ebooks for The Fever and A Curse That Bites Deep are on sale through Monday 9/2 for just 99 cents on Amazon (99p on Amazon UK).

 

THE FEVER US Amazon Link
THE FEVER UK Amazon Link
A CURSE THAT BITES DEEP US Amazon Link
A CURSE THAT BITES DEEP UK Amazon Link

I tried to make the new book, Lucky Strike, as much of a stand-alone as possible, but your enjoyment is certainly enhanced by the stories in the first two books.

While you’re there you can also check out the free companion cookbook.

Of course, for your convenience, you can buy the paperback versions from both sites — but they aren’t on sale.  That’s out of my control.

Don’t sell ebooks short though, they have a lot of advantages.  You can carry an entire library around with you. You can easily read in the dark. You can adjust the text size. They are less expensive. They save paper. You can buy and get them 24 hours a day. There are free reader apps for almost any device.
The biggest comment I get is that people like to hold a book.  I got over that limitation by buying a nice folio cover for my tablet … it feels like a book, it really does, and the apps have a flip page function and you don’t even have to lick your fingers.

What excuses do you have for not buying a nice ebook for a great price?

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Thomas Fenske is an author living in NC.  More information on his books can be found at http://thefensk.com

 

WeekendCoffee Video

If we were having coffee today, I’d pull out my phone and show you my latest book trailer.

You’d probably say something like, “Book trailer? You mean, like a bookmobile?”

No, it is a video promotion for my upcoming book release.  Book trailers were all the rage a couple of years ago, but I haven’t noticed too many of them recently.  I have two trailers for both of my other books, one I bought, the other three I cobbled together. The first one I put together myself was made by putting tother music and text in a PowerPoint presentation.  I made the last two using the same app I used this time. Like I said, all of them have just been cobbled together.

It’s a good metaphor.  Generally, I gather a number of static images that hopefully relate to various themes in the book, then assemble them together with brief phrases that hopefully convey content.  I can’t take credit for the production. It’s all part of an app on my iPhone called iMovie.  The music, the backgrounds, and all the timing is part of a “trailer template” they offer.

The “free use” photos I used were chosen because I thought they reflected aspects of specific book content. I began by inserting them into the template. There were already words in the storyboard but those are easy to replace. You have to be careful with content as the splash phrases need to fit together but you can’t be too wordy or the text size is reduced. Brevity also helps with visual appeal … a viewer has to be able to read it quickly. You can play it at any time while to see if it works or if you need to tweak.  There is a lot of tweaking. I try not to overthink it.  Most of my tweaking is with the text content.

I don’t know that any of my trailers have generated sales, but I have to admit that they are a lot of fun to put together.  With the book release coming up, I’m excited to have it up on youtube to use in pre-release promotion.  You know, like this posting!

Oh, the link!  View my trailer here:  https://youtu.be/yMXbZoBdIx8
Be sure to leave feedback and if you like it share it!

How about you? Did you do anything creative this week?

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Thomas Fenske is a writer living in NC.
His latest novel, LUCKY STRIKE, is coming out in a few weeks.
Get more information on it and his other works at http://thefensk.com

WeekendCoffee Irony

If we were having coffee today I’d be wondering about the little ironies of life.  If you’re like me you’re seeing reminisces about the forty-second anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death.  Forty-two years.  What’s the irony?  Elvis was forty-two when he died!

Note: if you are a die-hard Elvis fan you best move on to the next paragraph.  I was never one of his biggest fans during his life.  I appreciated his place in the history of American music, to be sure, and I even liked most of his movies.  But in his later years, he had become almost a caricature of himself.  It was no illusion, and later accounts of his life support that notion.  At the time, most people I knew pretty much considered him as almost a joke and we were not far off the mark. He was sheltered, pampered, catered to, all while he was pretty much sewing the seeds of his own destruction.  He still managed to put on a hell of a show though, but let’s face it, the information age would have totally destroyed him.

Actually, I’m gratified that his image was rehabilitated … it survives now, after 42 more years.  If he had lingered around with the same excesses and abuses for another ten or fifteen years, I doubt his image would have survived as long as it has.  Hopefully, he would have rehabbed but it doesn’t sound like his cadre of enablers was ever going to let that happen. I won’t say that death was a good career move for him, but, well … forty-two years later Elvis is certainly not a joke.

Life is full of these little markers.  On my forty-second birthday, I happened to go to the grocery store and noticed one of those little “buy alcohol” signs with the year of birth on it.  I realized that day that it had been twenty-one years since I turned twenty-one!  I think that was the first time the concept of old-age seemed to dawn on me as a creeping glacier of inevitability.

What sort of life-markers do you like to note?

So, kudos to you, Elvis.  You did all right, buddy.

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Thomas Fenske is a writer living in NC.  The release date of his latest novel, Lucky Strike is inevitably creeping closer … look for it sometime next month!

More info on this novel and my others at http://thefensk.com

Just Saying …

Time’s a-wastin’ … the next book is coming soon, so you need to catch up!
Note: There May Be A Test!

What would YOU do if you caught Gold Fever?

This public service announcement has been approved by Author Thomas Fenske