Now available on Kindle: Her Name was Amber

My new short story, Her Name was Amber, is now available on Kindle for only 99 cents.

I am giving myself a sweet birthday present today and announcing that my new short story, Her Name was Amber, is now available on Kindle for only 99 cents!

It feels great to get back on the fiction-writing horse. I wrote this 4,000 word story in one day! (Don’t worry, I edited it before I published it! Although, if you do find any errors, please let me know so I can fix them!)

Description

Amber is finally forced to deal with her dysfunctional marriage while mourning the death of her teenage daughter. Meanwhile, an even bigger disaster looms near as the outside world struggles with its own uncertain fate. In this prequel to her upcoming novel, Valley of the Bees, author Amanda L. Webster introduces you to the matriarch of what is destined to become a powerful – yet still dysfunctional – family in a not-so-distant dystopian future.

Buy your copy of Her Name was Amber on Kindle today!

Now available on Kindle: Rain at Three (with a bonus free download!)

“Rain at Three” is now available on Kindle for 99 cents.

My short story, Rain at Three, is now available on Kindle for 99 cents! Here’s a brief description:

Can you ever really know the man you’re marrying until you’ve really gotten to know him? Vicki is beginning to learn just what kind of man she has married. Is the honeymoon over so quickly? It may be 73 degrees and sunny in Hawaii, but it always rains at 3 p.m.

Download your copy of Rain at Three today! If you like my story, please do me a favor and review it on Amazon.

As an added bonus, for today only, you can also get a free download of my son’s book, Avery Moves. Avery was eight years old when he wrote and illustrated this book for a school project. He had so much fun with it, we decided to take the fun one step further and publish the book on Kindle! He would love to see that people are downloading his story. If you have any words of encouragement for him to keep writing, please post them to the review section on Amazon. 

How to ensure your novel is what’s read next

Determining what to read next can be far more complicated than simply grabbing a book off the shelf. | Goodreads Avatar (Photo credit: minifig)

I have a complicated system for deciding what book I want to read next. First, I constantly keep my eyes peeled for books I might want to read. For example, this morning I read a blog post interview with self-publishing author Aimee Kuzinski. She caught my attention when she mentioned that the hardest part of writing her latest novel, Eye of the Storm, was realizing during the editing phase that she had a major plot hole that needed to be fixed. The fact that she took the time to go ahead and plug that hole rather than rushing her book to publication made me want to read her book.

I should probably mention that the premise of Kuzinski’s novel sounded promising as well. Seriously, what is wrong with me that the writer’s effort to produce a quality product is more likely to catch my attention than her story telling? Maybe I need to work on that. But I digress.

Try this new motivational strategy next time you’re stuck in an unproductive day from writing hell.

This is reading. Old school

Want a rush? Try this little motivational strategy I just stumbled upon. I was having one of those really productive days where I had so much I wanted to do I ended up taking a nap instead. I needed to do a read-through of my current novel draft, but I was SO sick of looking at it on my computer screen. I considered printing it out, but my printer can’t handle such a large job. And I wasn’t in the mood for an expensive trip to the library printer. So yeah, I took a nap.

I woke up groggy and continued to accomplish nothing for the rest of the afternoon while I watched cruddy daytime television and the minutes crawling by on the wall clock. My kids were going to return from school soon. After 3:00, my chances of accomplishing anything for the day would drop to around 0%.