Picking a winner: Kindle Scout

Hello, lovely readers. I was scheduled today to do a Back Jacket Hack Job, but alas, I'm going off book (pun!) to self-promote. I know, for shame. But seriously, folks, I could use your help.

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post about Kindle Scout. You can read it more in-depth here, or if you don't want to, I'll do a TL;DR thing.

Basically, Kindle Scout is Amazon's crowd-sourcing publishing imprint. Readers, like yourself, nominate books they like based off the cover, blurb, and excerpt. If Amazon's editorial team at Kindle Press like the book, they acquire it. The author gets another dose of edits, an advance, and marketing support, and the readers who nominated the title get the whole damn book for free.

I won my last campaign in 2016 for my spooky YA mystery Dead and Breakfast (which you can check out here). It took two years (to be fair, I wrote another book in between), but I'm back with the second book in the series Ghost and Found (I do pat myself on the back frequently for my clever titles), and the campaign could use some help.

Books that are frequently viewed and nominated get put in the Hot and Trending category. This gives the book extra visibility and nominations. So help me out and nominate it. Tell others to nominate it. If I get picked, you get the book for free. It's a win-win deal.

Here's a tweet I drafted if you'd like to copy and paste this bad boy into Twitter....

You like ghosts and gangsters? Then nominate Ghost and Found on Kindle Scout. If it wins, you get the book for free. @KGGiarratano #kindlescout https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1OSY20EKYZUBY

 And thank you to everyone who has supported the series. I'm so encouraged by the support.

May the new year be....well, anything's better than this

Last year around this time, I was all ready to say good-freaking-bye to 2016. Man, was that a tough year. Okay, maybe the last two months sucked big time. Other than that, I was feeling good. I had a book published in March and I was just finishing up the last edits on a YA novel I was particularly pleased about -- a mystery I planned to query, and hopefully sell. I saw hope, professionally if not globally.

Fast forward a year and I am in no better a place. Someone tweeted (and I'm paraphrasing) that if were you able to write anything in 2017, you did good. Well, it was tough. My writing, creative energy, and motivation were spent on political news and developments. Writing scathing letters-to-the-editor of our local paper, trying to rally folks on Facebook (Ha! Like that's a thing you can do), trolling my politicians on Twitter (I guess it was kinda cathartic) and, not to mention, watching a lot of escapism on Netflix. It's amazing anything got done. Actually, little got done. I queried my beloved YA book, secured an agent, fired an agent, and the book is trunked. I'm still in the midst of finishing edits on a sequel to Dead and Breakfast that I've been working on for year! 

Life can be paralyzing. And because I'm not at the point where an editor is pressing on me to finish a project, my work ethic is what I make it -- weak and unfocused. But 2018 will be better. It has to be better. For one thing, I'm the only one pushing me. And I have a lot of great project ideas that I want to see bloom. Only I can do that.

Every January, the majority of Americans pledge to eat healthier, exercise, and spend less money. Well, I already do two out of those three things, so I'm promising to get my ass in gear. To work for the betterment of my mental health and to force change where I can -- with my art.

And to celebrate the new year, here's the cover art for my next mystery. Set to be published in early 2018.