Category Archives: Uncategorized

Downloads of my first book have continued with over 100 occurring in the last three days. Today, I broke the 1,000 total downloads mark between Barnes & Noble, iBooks, InstaFreebie, Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon ebooks), and Smashwords. It is amazing what concentrating heavily on marketing for a couple of months can do. In a few days, I am going to look at my daily statistics and try to figure out which of the many marketing approaches I’ve been using have been the most effective. For example, one of the companies I’ve used for Book Tours seems to be far more effective than another. Similarly, book spotlights on some eNewsletters also seem better than others (probably due to subscription size and genre makeup).

In about a couple of weeks, I am going to be interviewed live on the weekly podcast, Back Porch Writer. There is some confusion as to the exact date and time so I will let you know as soon as I know for sure. The podcast will be broadcast on Blog Talk Radio. This will be my first live interview as an author (I have had several written Q&A interviews), and I hope you tune in and join us for the 15 minute broadcast.

“I couldn’t put this book down! I started it just after breakfast and finished it around eleven that same night! I loved the way Mr. Firesmith combined science and a bit of paranormal to tell his story. James Rollins watch out!”

By Lori Beasley Bradley, Author of The Legend of the Swamp Witch and The Ruby Queen: Book 1 of The Soiled Dove Sagas

I made it! I had really hoped that I would break 500 copies of my book Hell Holes: What Lurks Below before the end of the year, and as of yesterday, it wasn’t looking good. But I just got a lot of downloads from InstaFreebie, and as of now with 13 hours to go, the number stands at 518 copies. Now I’m looking forward to seeing whether priming the pump on book 1 will lead to increased sales of book 2.

I also got another interesting positive Amazon review. For some reason I can’t quite fathom, I have been getting an inordinate number of good reviews from people who don’t ordinarily like the book’s genre (science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, horror), but do like the book.

“Hell Holes: What Lurks Below is not in my favorite genre. It is actually in one of my least liked… I ended up being surprised by a story that held my interest… I enjoyed it much more than I expected to.”

Not that I’m complaining; I’m just surprised and a bit puzzled.

I just spent the last two days reading the first two novels in the Leviathan Trilogy: Leviathan and Behemoth. You can find my reviews of these two excellent books here and here.

Check out my blog post on being an Indie Author on the Mystical Books Blog.

I reviewed Shadow Stalker 1 and am in the process of reading Shadow Stalker 2. I like both books, and although I have several books in the queue ahead of it, I fully intend to read Shadow Stalker 3 now that its out. If you are interested in paranormal fantasy books with a strong female heroine, I recommend you check out the series.

I just completed this book and used it to improve the book blurbs for my Hell Holes novels. If you are an indie author and want to improve your book sale, this is a great little book to have.

I have just finished a first draft of the book cover and description of Hell Holes: To Hell And Back, the exciting third book in the Hell Holes series of paranormal fantasy and apocalyptic science fiction novels that I am currently writing:

The beautiful young photojournalist, Aileen O’Shannon, is not who she seems. For centuries, she has been a demon hunter, a sorceress who has tracked and killed small bands of demons that occasionally crossed into our world. But that changed when she joined Dr. Jack Oswald’s expedition to study one of hundreds of huge holes that mysteriously appeared overnight in the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle.

Instead of small sporadic incursions, hordes of demons now pour from these hell holes like water from a sieve. With bombing little more than a losing game of whack-a-mole, Earth’s armies are unable to destroy the portals. When Jack suggests a desperate plan, he is drafted to join Aileen and a team of other sorcerers and Army Rangers to travel to the demon homeworld. Once there, they will unleash a plague virus and set off a nuclear bomb to destroy the portal complex. It’s a suicide mission. But Aileen has given the Jack’s wife her word to bring him back safely, and the demons have already killed three men under her protection. Just how far will Aileen go to avoid losing another?

Check out my post on researching in support of writing fiction on the blog, The Sinister Scribblings of Sarah E. Glenn, the editor-in-chief of Mystery and Horror, LLC.