Patricia Fry Shares Last-Minute Christmas E-Book Tip

No review today! Rather, a quick tip directly from my #SharingwithWriters newsletter to you because--though Amazon has been letting their customers buy books quickly and easily for some time--there still seems to be a lot of confusion about "Kindle" e-books.

So I have made this tip from Patricia Fry, founder of SPAWN, a semi permanent part of my newsletter. I also wanted to be sure subscribers and visitors to this blog benefit from it, too. And it seemed an appropriate time to share because I am pretty sure that many of you who come to this blog will need a truly last minute gift.

So . . .SharingwithWriters newsletter and Patricia Fry to the rescue!

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Did you know that you can buy your e-books from Kindle, even if you don’t have a Kindle? Patricia Fry, founder of SPAWN says, “If you need an e-book but don’t have a Kindle, just go to any Kindle book page look for the buy options. [You may find a widget there offering a free app to make your download easier.] Choose Kindle. After you’ve done that, the site gives you several options or platforms for that book so you can buy the e-book for yourself or to send one as a gift to someone else whether or not you (or they!) have a Kindle. I believe this shows up on any Amazon page where they are selling Kindle. 

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MORE ABOUT PATRICIA FRY

Patricia Fry, author of the Klepto Cat Mystery series. First in the series is Catnapped, http://amzn.to/14OCk0W And her most recent in the Klepto Cat Mystery Series is By Cat or By Crook (ISBN 9780997519075). I just read it and loved that it would make a great gift for, say, readers from the ages of maybe 9 through any old age at all! Family fare! And, yes, available as a last minute e-book from Kindle (or any other  reader your recipient happens to use!) Buy the e-book on Amazon. 

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor
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MORE ABOUT SHARINGWITHWRITERS NEWSLETTER

My #SharingwithWriters newsletter has been serving authors--all authors from traditionally published by New York's big five to those who truly self-publish to those who partner-publish--since 2003. It is an interactive newsletter where authors like Patricia can share their tips and articles with fellow authors and in doing so increase the exposure of their own books and successes. You may subscribe and get a free booklet--and e-booklet, of course!--at http://howtodoitfrugally.com http://howtodoitfrugally.com. There is a subscription form in the top right corner of most every page.

KDP Select Freebie for (Gasp!) Christmas Freebie?

Hi everyone, my poetry partner Magdalena Ball asks if KDP Select is good marketing or a gimmick. It is now up here:
http://www.writersonthemove.com/2012/12/kdp-select-good-marketing-or-gimmick.html

She's written about something she suspects will interest all writers and most reviewers and readers and finshed the post with a link to two books available free in KDP Select this month. I hope you'll all drop by and retweet (or tweet using one of my handy links below), and download the books even if you already have them. It would also be fun if reviewers who follow this blog would go back and leave a quick review!

 I'd love to hear your experiences - positive or negative and what you think of KDP. Jury is still out for me, but I'm giving it a whirl and will happily share my experiences with you.

Easy Tweet:

Great e-card idea! "Rational" Christmas chapbook available free. Go to http://amzn.to/BloomingRedKind on Dec. 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18. 

 

We encourage you to buy and then pass the pdf or e-copy around AS an e-greeting this season. There are many secular seasonal poems in it, too, for those who don't celebrate Christmas.

 

 

Happy holidays!

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Celebrate Earth Day. Give a Book to a Kid

Because Kathy Stemke is an author who has written about Earth Day for Children, I asked her to share with my New Book Review Readers. Her essay will be interesting to all. Her book will be the perfect gift for any child who is destined to grow up in this world.  Keep scrolling for ways to celebrate Earth Day and ways to share with a child.

 

The History of Earth Day

 

 By Kathy Stemke, author of  Trouble on Earth Day

The height of hippie and flower-child culture in the United States, 1970 brought the death of Jimi Hendrix, the last Beatles album, and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. Protest was the order of the day, but saving the planet was not the cause. War raged in Vietnam, and students nationwide increasingly opposed it.

At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity.

The idea of Earth Day came to the founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California.

Senator Gaylord Nelson said, “At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they did so with spectacular exuberance.”

As a result, on the 22nd of April, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.

In time, Earth Day went global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting environmental issues onto the world stage. Earth Day 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It also prompted President Bill Clinton to award Senator Nelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1995) -- the highest honor given to civilians in the United States -- for his role as Earth Day founder.

With Earth Day Approaching on April 22nd it's time to focus on educating our children about conservation. Troubleon Earth Day would be a great resource for this purpose and a super addition to any school or home library.

Learning how each of us can take steps to protect our environment is important for children and adults alike. It will take all our efforts to help improve the environment for a healthier tomorrow. Trouble on Earth Day is a great start for children.

Here’s an excerpt from the resource section
of Trouble on Earth Day:

A-Z Let’s Go Green

Arrange a wildlife refuge in your backyard with a birdbath, nest building project, bird feeder, and plants that attract birds and other animals.

Bicycle instead of using a car.

Create posters about caring for the earth.

Don’t leave water running when brushing your teeth or bathing.

Eat organic foods.

Feed the birds.

Grow a flower or vegetable garden.

Hold on to your helium balloons that can hurt animals when they fall to the ground.

Insulate near doors and windows.

Join with your friends to clean up the neighborhood.

Keep stuff in a box until you can reuse it.

Light your home with compact fluorescent bulbs.

Make scratchpads with old paper.

Nurture the soil with coffee grinds, eggshells and other compost.

Omit aerosols because they damage the ozone layer.

Plant a tree.

Quit wasting food.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

Stop throwing out old toys. Donate them instead.

Turn off the lights.

Use paper on both sides.

Visit a recycling center to see all the things that can be recycled.

Write a letter to the newspaper encouraging your neighbors to recycle.

eXercise your body while collecting tin cans.

Yell, “I love the Earth!”

Zero in on helping the earth!

Trouble on Earth Day is available at a discounted price on my blog: http://educationtipster.blogspot.com and through Amazon, B & N, and other online stores.

Sh Sh Sh Let the Baby Sleep is available through the publisher, http://guardianangelpublishing.com/shshsh.htm and through Amazon, B & N, and other online stores.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Inexpensive Love Gift For Moms in Your Life?

By

Cherished PulseSubtitle: Unconventional Love Poetry
Authors: Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball
Genre: Poetry/Love
Author's Web site: www.howtodoitfrugally.com/poetry_books.htm
Available on Amazon as paperback or for Kindle www.budurl.com/CherishedPulse

Reviewed by Mark Logie (London), originally for Amazon

 

Magdalena Ball's poems in this collection display a considerable interest in, and enthusiasm for, nature, both on this planet and in space. This is appropriate for "unconventional love poetry" as love for someone else often makes them seem to be everything (ie, the universe); it is also not what we expect since, on the face of it, love has no connection with outer space or the natural world on earth. This particularly appeals to me.

The awe in which we hold the cosmos together with its beauty and loneliness also make it ideal for poems about love. For instance, "Galactic Collision", one of my favourites, is about the virtually catastrophic fusing of two people in love with each other. The comparison of a human heart to a black hole is amazing, bold and apt: after all, a black hole is so powerful that nothing -- not even light -- can escape it. And true, deep love, draws us in and won't let go. She then goes on to underline this by going to the other end of the scale: light ("black hole/ expanded into a cartwheel blaze"). Love it.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson, on the other hand, explores the inner recesses of the human world: the heart, the mind and the home, neatly complementing and counterpointing Ball's macroscopic world-view (or should that be "universe-view"?). As they say, "Home is where the heart is".

Howard-Johnson's skill is in choosing original settings for poems that address different sentiments from the expected. It is also evident in her relaxed style, which cuts to the emotional crux of her works in a simple yet elegant way and embraces the real issues rather than the simplistic pseudo-sentiments of most commercial greetings cards. For example, the bittersweet "Dreaming Lilacs", primes the reader to expect a poem about intoxicating, fulfilled love through its vivid evocation of place and utilisation of all the reader's senses ("It's you who had me dreaming lilacs,/ breathing April's sweetest tears, tasting sugared lemon rinds,"), then reveals that it is really about expired or unrequited love ("... As if you/ were with me,/ as if you loved me."). Brilliant.

All in all, a superb collection: different yet not totally unfamiliar.

Roll on the next collection!

~Mark Logie is an award-winning poet & short-story writer;. He is the author
of "On the Road to Infinity" & "You Have No Power Over Me"

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :