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I am racist.



The first thing I ever remember doing that was specifically racist was in middle school.



I’m ashamed and I don’t want to be writing this. It was so, so stupid. But I’m going to write it.



I’d been reading a bunch of YA books of the Sweet Valley High/Nancy Drew variety. In one of them, I don’t remember which, a black character gets called an Oreo. The white friends all act

My superhero, comic book inspired novel, The Thoughts Within, will be posted on Wattpad over the coming months!


Wattpad is free to download and free to use. It's available at the Wattpad.com website, or via the mobile apps for iPhone and Android. 



Check it out and let me know what you think! Wattpad is great because it lets you "vote" on chapters you like, and leave immediate feedback and

Remnants Saga Book 2: Broken Remnants is now live on Wattpad!

Wattpad is free to download and free to use.

This second installment will be the last, for a while anyway. I've had fun with these characters, and it was nice to get inspired again. However, the project has run its course for the time being, and I have a few other things to work on.

I hope you've enjoyed the Remnants duology! I'll

Now available via Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, enter to win one of three free paperback copies of Remnants! Checkout the details here!





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For today only, get Remnants, book 1 of the Remnants Saga, for free on Amazon Kindle!

If you enjoy it, please leave me a review on Amazon! I love to receive your feedback.

One of the biggest struggles I’ve had as an indie author is switching
caps between my Writer Self and my Business Self.



For me, my Writer Self is the one who loves writing,
creating, imagining, and dreaming. I’d rather focus on the fun stuff � the craft
of writing, if you will. It’s why I do this in the first place.



However, my Business Self is what needs to kick in when it
comes time to

The Apocalypse.



The End of the World (as we know it).





Dystopia.



Whatever you want to call it, we’re pretty obsessed with it.


From The Walking Dead to The Hunger Games, plus hits like Divergent and just about every zombie
movie ever made, we are fascinated with depictions of the end times. We
ruminate over barren wastelands, isolation, and the musings of what a desolate
future might

Interested in winning a free eBook? Follow me on Twitter and you'll be entered to win! Must use the link provided, no purchase necessary: click here to enter.

So, after spending the past couple months re-working parts of the book and editing some more, I released Remnants on Amazon today. Give it a look, and leave a review if you enjoyed it! Thanks everyone for your support. This has been a long-running project and I've really had fun working on it, and I look forward to seeing what it holds for me in the future.

So, I've finished my Kindle Scout campaign. My campaign ran from April 22nd until May 21st, 2017, and now I'm in the nebulous waiting period that can last anywhere from 1 day to 15 days. They will email me to let me know if I'm selected, and if I am, we work through their process and their timelines (generally, their program literature says I'll have about 30 days to spruce things up, then my book goes live, and the nominees get their free copies, and get prompted to review the book to increase visibility, and they'll use a few little promotional tools on my behalf, and they own the rights to my book for a certain period of time, with specific options for renewal, reversion, and things of that nature).

If I'm not selected, I still have the option to launch the book independently, I just won't get the advance, or the Amazon editing process, etc. If I launch the book independently, I retain all rights and can just advertise the book myself, as an independent author. If I choose to do this, Amazon seems to offer the ability to at least let my nominators know that the book has been released independently, which is nice.

Sitting here at the end of 30 days, I have a few things in the "if I had it to do over again" column I wanted to share, in case anyone else is thinking of doing Kindle Scout as well:

1) It's important to be Hot & Trending, as it increases your visibility, as well as your credibility to casual observers. It seems that relatively unknown authors, like me, are more likely to be Hot & Trending at the very beginning of their campaigns, and at the very end. This is because of the "Recently Added" and "Ending Soon" promo bars on which you can be featured during those timeframes. After that, getting and staying Hot & Trending is very challenging.

2) In light of this information, I would have picked a launch day where the beginning and the end of my 30 day campaign would land on a Tuesday/Wednesday. My campaign began on a Saturday and ended on a Sunday. Frankly, not many people are cavorting the Internet over the weekend. My clicks from Facebook were down those days, as were the organic Kindle Scout clicks. Based on my Campaign Views dashboard, regardless of when I posted on social media, my highest traffic days were usually Tuesdays or Wednesdays, with the exception of the very beginning and very end of my campaign, where activity spiked.

NOTE: Part of this is how nominations work. Users can only have 3 nominations active at a time. Your friends and family will probably only nominate you, so they will just set it and forget it right at the beginning of your campaign. Kindle Scout followers are more likely to Save your book, then nominate you during your final days, so they can maximize the number of nominations (and potential free books) and not have your book taking up a slot for the book's entire 30 day campaign.

3) Also in light of this information, I would have staggered my roll-out. I posted so that all of my Facebook friends (which was my biggest source of traffic) jumped on at once. This was great for the first five days of my campaign, but then things tapered off until the last 3 days. I think a better strategy for someone else doing this would be setting the Privacy settings on the Facebook posts so that you post only to 1/4 of your friends at the beginning of the campaign, then add friends to the posts as your campaign goes on so in week 2, 1/2 of your friends are seeing the posts, then 3/4 in week 3, then all of them in week 4.

This would be easy enough to do on Facebook - plus you could group it so that your most supportive friends see the posts first, and can do what they do best. Then, your more distant friends could be in later groups, sparing them spam until the end of the campaign. This would make your campaign traffic a little more consistent throughout the campaign - you'd (hopefully) get new nominations and new, fresh page views each week, from people who didn't know about it before.

4) I would also suggest networking actively with the other authors who are doing Kindle Scout. It's no time to be shy - if you like their book, reach out, and offer to cross-promote. I wouldn't suggest doing this if you don't like the author's book to begin with. But, for those you peruse and like, you have access to their campaign pages, where they link to their Facebook and author pages. So, make contact, and discuss some exchanges. The worst they can do is say "no." I did not do very much of this, because I am currently at a level where I don't have much to offer in exchange - my author page has limited followers, and I don't have a solid base of readers yet, but once I've grown a bit, I'd definitely do this in a heartbeat.

If you're thinking of doing Kindle Scout for yourself, I hope you'll find these ideas useful. If you've done Kindle Scout and have anything to add, feel free to chime in.