Woot Root! Sign up for a free copy!

The Unfinished Song: Root (Book 4) is coming soon! And to celebrate, I’m making an insane offer. I will give you the book for free.

Sign up here… or just email me. But hurry up, because I’m going to cap this offer at 100 and I’m already almost halfway there. I want you to get your free book before they run out!

Why?

Well, two reasons.

One, I am crazy. My relatives will attest to that, if I ever introduced to you (which I wouldn’t because my relatives are also crazy).

Two, I want to recruit folks to the Faearth Fanclub, which I’ll be rolling out this month. Basically, it’s just a newsletter at this point, but I’m working on a website where fans will be able to get all kinds of cool, free stuff.

What better way to start than by giving away a free book? So fans, if you want to read Root, Book 4, for absolutely free, just sign up and I will gift you a copy on the Super Secret Release day!

(Reviewers, as usual, you can have a free copy, even without becoming fans. Yes, that’s right, you can have a free copy of my book for the sole purpose of mocking it. That’s just how nice I am. Or possibly, I have secretly bargained with the fae to put a Love My Book spell on reviewers. Bwahaha! Whoops, shouldn’t admit that in public. I’ll be stoned as a hexer!)

What juicy awesomesauce can one expect in The Unfinished Song: Root?

And finally…Dindi will meet the Man in Black for the first time. He plans to kill her.

Anyway, free books. Awesome! What more could one ask? How about a sneak peek at the cover? Yes, I love you that much. I have it for you! Yay!

More Great Things Spammers Say About Me

“I just want to mention I am just all new to blogging and site-building and definitely savored your web page. Very likely I’m going to bookmark your website . You really have exceptional writings. Bless you for sharing with us your website.”

“Wow, wonderful blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The overall look of your site is fantastic, let alone the content!”

“This is the topic that I have an amazing strong passion about. There’s no doubt that most people today forget how important this subject matter is. I believe the foundation upon which a great many other things are built of course , if we do this action wrong, there are several dire consequences in the long run. As a result, we has to be careful and think about how precisely we want to strategy this topic. I thank the writer for giving a excellent first try at getting close to it.”

“Hello! I believed I might send a quick remark considering that I’ve spent the better part of the previous 30 minutes scanning through your weblog posts. I am actually liking what you’ve obtained going on right here together with your blog and I do hope you retain writing it. Properly that’s nearly all I have to say! Many thanks and very nice to just about ‘meet’ you and your website.”

“Have you ever had difficulties with spammers?  I additionally use Weblog Engine and I have some beneficial anti-spam practices; please E-mail me if you will be occupied with an change of ideas.”

“I wish to say that this post is amazing, nice written and include almost all important infos.”

“You have got a way of writing compelling info that sparks significantly interest.”

“This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell you I really enjoy reading through your articles.”

“Oh my goodness! an amazing article dude. Thank you However I am experiencing issue with ur rss . Don’t know why Unable to subscribe to it. Is there anyone getting identical rss problem? Anyone who knows kindly respond. Thnkx.”

“Good write-up, I am normal visitor of one’s website, maintain up the nice operate, and It is going to be a regular visitor for a lengthy time.”

“I think that you should write more on this topic, it might not be a taboo subject but generally people are not enough to speak on such topics.”

“Hi from Cannes, France – we are convinced that our French readers will love what you are doing here.”

“I am glad there are blogs like this one that contribute to the interenet instead of spamming it.”

“As I web site possessor I believe the content matter here is rattling fantastic , appreciate it for your efforts. You should keep it up forever! Good Luck.

What Spammers Think of My Blog

I saved this remark from the plebian comments section, because it was so beautiful I felt it deserved more attention. Look at what this wonderful spammer has to say about my blog:

I’m impressed, I must say. Really rarely do I encounter a blog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me tell you, you have hit the nail on the head. Your idea is outstanding; the issue is something that not enough people are speaking intelligently about. I am very happy that I stumbled across this in my search for something relating to this.

See? This blog is both “educative” and “entertaining”! My ideas are outstanding and much more intelligent than most blogs the spammer is spamming. And a spammer would know, right? After all, their bots visit so very many blogs, most of which don’t hit the nail on the head at all.

There you have it. My blog is worth reading. You have it straight from the spammer’s bot.

Amanda Hocking Joins the Million Books Sold Club

Amazon announced today:

David Baldacci, Amanda Hocking and Stephenie Meyer are the latest authors to join the Kindle Million Club, selling over 1 million paid copies of their books in the Amazon.com Kindle Store. They join 11 other authors in the Kindle Million Club: Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins, Michael Connelly, John Locke, Kathryn Stockett, Janet Evanovich and George R.R. Martin.

As with John Locke before her, Amanda Hocking sold the majority of her 1 million Kindle books independently using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Since its launch in 2007, KDP has provided a fast, free and easy way for authors and publishers around the world to make their books available in the Kindle Store. In addition to the more than 2 million books sold by John Locke and Amanda Hocking, 12 KDP authors have sold more than 200,000 books and 30 KDP authors have sold more than 100,000 books.

3 Reasons to Read Novels

Why do we read?

Some people think we read only for entertainment (and usually complain about it). Others think we read (or should read) for education, or edification.

I’ve always believed that we read primarily to become better human beings. We read for entertainment, education and edification, sure, but above all that, and the reason we return to storytelling again and again, is to practice empathy.

Now a study has confirmed it. Reading makes us nicer people. People who were “transported” into a story were more likely to be sensitive to the facial expressions of others and more likely to engage in prosocial behavior. This was true of both those who were more prosocial and empathic to begin with and those who were less so.

And this makes sense. The brain, like a muscle, needs exercise. The more you practice certain kinds of thoughts, the easier those thoughts become. This is why there are whole self-help industries devoted to convincing you to try positive thoughts, compassionate thoughts, empowering thoughts. The problem is that positive self-talk can seem pretty vapid, especially when one is faced with extremely difficult circumstances. As for compassion, it is hard to practice in the abstract. Or perhaps it is easy in the abstract, but falls apart in the face of actual flesh and blood people.

Reading allows us to run complex simulations in our heads. These “What If…?” simulations allow us to address two crucial aspects of our survival: how to overcome problems and how to understand other people. Since most of our problems are caused by other people

There’s a beautiful story in Robin Black’s anthology of the same name, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This: Fiction about two neighbors fighting over where a wall between their property should go. One neighbor finds out that his property actually extends one foot further, and he wants to build his wall there. What he doesn’t realize is how this will impact the elderly couple next door, as the woman has just been diagnosed with cancer. The story heartrendingly reveals suffering caused the dying woman and her husband and leaves open the question of whether that extra few inches of grass on the other side was worth it. The reader instinctively realizes it was not, and if the neighbor who insisted on building his fence right there had any empathy, he would have changed his mind.

If the point of the story were to just make us mad at the selfish neighbor, the story wouldn’t have such power. I think

When is a picture worth a million words?

Squeeeeeeeeee!

*ok, fan girl glee that my book is parallel to George R. R. Martin out of the way*

They say it takes 1,000,000 words to become a good writer. I have written more than that… most of it so awful, dreadful and nausea-inducing that a goblin wouldn’t even feed it to his mutant rat-horse. Many a day I despaired nothing I wrote would ever be worth sharing.

Now, it is true, that George R.R. Martin’s book is $15 and mine is free, but a lot of people must still want to read it to make it the number one downloaded epic fantasy on Amazon. And that feeling… it’s just… I’m going to have a write a whole new book just to capture that feeling in words. For now, all I can say is…

This picture was worth a million words.