Category: Books

It’s published – you can now hold the book in your hand and turn pages. Just like in the old days!

The paperback version of the Digital Choke book is now available from Amazon – click here. Check it out on the main site here.

I added a few ‘Easter Eggs’ to the book, but it’s the same story. Has the ‘old-time-technology’ terms from around 2001, but the story could still happen today.

Everything on the Digital Choke web site. Or check out my author page: http://bit.ly/2QcnEcf . And go to my FaceBook author page here – there may be a giveaway of a ‘proof’ (not-for-resale) paperback happening there soon to anyone that ‘likes’ that page.

And I will be giving away a free autographed (or not autographed, your choice) paperback copy of Digital Choke. Just sign up for the spam-free newsletter here. Everyone gets a free PDF of the Pre-Blink short story. You can’t lose!

I was going to mow the lawn today (it’s not that big of a job, takes less than 10 minutes if I go slow), but today is a rainy day here in my little part of the Olympic Peninsula. So I got out of that job.

I did a few modifications of the blurb for Book One and Two. And a status post on the FaceBook page, pointing people to the free book page (here, if you are interested: http://bit.ly/2Qh4jXr ). I’m thinking about adding a subscription page here, but need to figure out how to integrate the subscribing plugin with the external database that I use for newsletter subscriptions.

And doing some more research on how to do marketing for the books. Turns out that marketing is harder than writing books.

I am also continuing to work on Light Blink – Book Three. It looks like ‘our hero’ needs to go on another quest to fix things in the Alt Worlds. There appears to be some unauthorized use of the Alt world transfer portals. I’m at the point where he and Butler have started their journey.

About 15K words so far. Not sure how long it will be. Or even how it ends; the outline is not yet done. But a good day for writing inside, as I listen to the “Moody Blues” station on Prime.

I have publicly released Light Blink – Book Two today. It’s live on Amazon here  .

And all of the web sites that promote it are also updated and live. They have a new ‘landing page’ for subscriptions to the newsletter. One is here. That’s a new-ish graphic with all of the books, and a simple newsletter signup form.

All the pages have a link to the subscription page. That’s part of the marketing plan. Like I have said before, writing is hard, marketing is harder. Both take a lot of effort to do well. So hoping that my new marketing plans – including FaceBook pages and posts – will help out with the book sales.

The Digital Choke book is also released. And all have some sale prices to help the sales a bit.

Hard to wait for all of that to happen. I have to force myself not to continually look at the sales graph page.

Worked a bit on the Light Blink – Book Three story; mostly outlining the story progress. Early days on that.

The last couple of days, I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the marketing side of book writing. I’ve done a lot of research, and then tried to apply that research to the book and author web sites I have.

The main focus has been the Light Blink book site at http://bit.ly/2IH9RdS . That’s because Light Blink – Book Two is ready for publication. That required a bit of work on the submitting the book to Amazon, with some tweaking of the book description and pricing. (The prices of the Light Blink books are being reduced during the Book Two introduction.)

That required a bit of tweaking to the Light Blink book site. Some updated of graphics, and a new ‘landing page’ to quickly capture newsletter signups. When you sign up for the newsletter, you get a free copy of the Pre-Blink prequel story of the Light Blink series. You can do that here http://bit.ly/2weP5cd.

And I also did some tweaking of the Digital Choke book. It got a new cover, and some minor changes inside. And a new lower price. You’ll find information about all that on it’s own web site http://bit.ly/2QaJFs2 .

Then some updates to the FaceBook pages for the Light Blink book, and the author page. And some new graphics. And some final tweaks to the author site at http://bit.ly/2QcnEcf .

And, for fans of the Light Blink series, I am doing some work on Book Three. Still in the first draft mode, and not quite sure of the ending (and most of the middle). But, progress is being made – which you can see on the Light Blink web site.

Hopefully all of this marketing effort will pay off. At least enough income to pay for this place.

I’ve been spending the past few months working on (and enhancing) the Light Blink book series. Book One has been published. Book Two is almost ready – it will be published ‘Real Soon Now’.

Plus I wrote a short story prequel to the Light Blink series, called Pre-Blink. It’s a free story, and you can get it if you sign up for the newsletter on any of the new sites.

Those new sites are:

• Richard Hellewell author site – Facebook page
• Light Blink book series site – Facebook page
• Digital Choke story site

So I have been spending time getting those sites ready, along with new book covers, and a consistent look for all of the sites. Plus writing and editing the stories. Plus a marketing plan for promoting the books. It turns out that writing a book is hard, but marketing those books are harder. All of the books are (or will be) available on Amazon. If you are a Kindle Unlimited user, they are free. There’s a paperback version of them also.

I’ve also been thinking about a Book Three for the Light Blink books. I’ve started it – there are about 10K words so far. Still early times for the story, and how it will turn out. So stay tuned for that.

I’ve also set up some new and updated FaceBook pages for the books – and the “Richard Hellewell” author page. There are links to the FB pages above. I’d appreciate it if all of my readers (yes, both of you) to check out the site and FB pages (and like/share them).

The Digital Choke story is one that I wrote back in 2002, and has been available as an ebook since then. It’s getting a slight re-write, and a bit of editing by an editor. Plus a new cover. The new version is not quite available yet, but will be “Real Soon Now”.