Today's reviews are from books by Margarat Tanner

Yesterday I did one romance author so today I will do another one.  Romance to me is a fun, fast read for rainy days.  I can read them quick, like popping a sweet piece of candy.  They don't last long but they are hopefully tasty.

Margaret Tanner is a talented author who sets her tales in the wilds of Australia.  While the themes are pretty much what you expect from a good romance the sweeping vistas and the history of this country from all the way around the world from me has been a great set of tales to read.  I have reviewed two so far

		A Wicked Deception Price: $2.99
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful Love in the times the Australian gold rush, November 3, 2013 Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: A Wicked Deception (Kindle Edition) Readers of historical romances generally find stories set either in the wild west of the United States or in Britain. This lovely tale is set for a large part in Australia. With the detail Ms Tanner added the story comes alive with the sights, sounds and flavors of that wild land. She teaches you a bit of history while telling a tale of love, betrayal and classism. While at times you want to take her heroine and shake her soundly for the pure silly innocence she has, you come to care for the characters. You feel sadness at the loses they survive and happiness at the neat ending to the tale. A good read for a lazy afternoon.    Frontier Belle Price: $2.99 2 of 3 people found the following review helpful lovely little tale, September 26, 2013 Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Frontier Belle (Kindle Edition) Love, hardship and the Australian frontier. This book, while brief, is full of all the things a romance reader looks for. A strong willed heroine, a brooding hero and a vast vista to pit them against each other. While the conclusion was a little rushed for my taste this was a fine read for a quiet afternoon.

Reviewing indie author works

As many of you know i am an indie author.  I write a ton of short stories, poems and even novels and put them out toe the world.  In the past few years I have met a number of highly talented authors and I have decided that one way I can help them is to put my reviews up on my blogs so that other people can see how good these writers are.

I thought I would start with Simone Beaudelaire.  This young woman is a mom, a teacher and a writer of some very fine historical romances.  I have reviewed five titles of hers so far and here are the reviews.

		Amor Maldito: Romantic Tragedies from Tejano Folklore Price: $0.99
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful Three interesting tales told, September 15, 2013 This review is from: Amor Maldito: Romantic Tragedies from Tejano Folklore (Kindle Edition) When I read these three tales at first I was a little confused. These romantic ghost stories are from a culture that I don't know much about but as I read them I found myself transported. I could see the young people in these tales walking into their fates like I was watching a movie. Well told stories that just need a tweak here and there to help the flow but otherwise this is a grand set of stories. Perfect for a dark and chilly night.

		Into the Darkness Price: $2.99
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful Three out of four ain't bad, November 3, 2013 Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Into the Darkness (Kindle Edition) An interesting collection of four tales told very differently. While the first story did not hold my attention well the other three were very well done. Each tale is very different from a twilight zone to time travel story this book is well worth the price.

		Watching Over the Watcher Price: $2.99
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful Love gentle and sweet, November 4, 2013 Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Watching Over the Watcher (Kindle Edition) A lovely story with the hint of the paranormal. This tale takes a number of the most popular romance themes pulled together into a sweet story of love, innocence, crime and family. A read that should make most of the romance community proud to own it.

		Wallflower Girl Price: $2.99
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful Very sweet, November 4, 2013 This review is from: Wallflower Girl (Kindle Edition) An incredibly sweet and powerful little love story that shows even those not noticed among us long for love. finding a true love from a past life made this yet another wonderful little paranormal romance by a talented new writer

		Keeping Katerina (The Victorians) Price: $2.99
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful Should be Saving Katerina, I know I will, November 9, 2013 This review is from: Keeping Katerina (The Victorians) (Kindle Edition) A tale of abuse and love and redemption. So well and touchingly written that you really have to finish it in one sitting. You really hope that she can grow past what happened to her. Add this to your bookshelf. You won't regret it.

As you can see I have really enjoyed these works of fiction.  Try one or more.  I bet you will too!

Making a frankenstein afghan or oh geez how many unfinished sweaters did she have?

As a lot of you know my mother in law was a knitter.  She made lovely sweaters for my daughter and her other grandchildren.  When she passed away I found a TON of yarn (mostly in pink) and many many many unfinished projects.  Now usually I try to work on one thing at a time when it comes to my yarn crafts.  I have used up all the squares she left making up some nice little afghans that help us stay warm but I found a lot of sweater sleeves as I went through the bags and bags of yarn left when she passed.

One of the piles I found had a lot of yellow, green and black sweater pieces and I thought I would instead of tearing them out and balling them up to just piece them together.  This lead to a very strange piece.  As you can imagine with knitted sleeves they are not squares or rectangles.  but I perservered.  With a bit of patience and a lot of creativity I managed to finish up a good size afghan. 

Now it didn't quite come out even but I expected that.  I had to make sections myself.  Using my afghan hook and two other regular hooks I filled in the spots that didn't quite match up.  The photos below show you just what you can actually do.

So this crazy quilt style afghan is a mix of many different knit and crochet stitches.  Of the parts I made myself I used the afghan stitch and the basic single stitch.  I used the single stitch again to put the parts together.  Oddly enough this blanket feels lighter than I expected but it is big enough to cover me up nicely on the couch.  So you see you can use anything to make your afghans. 

You don't just have to recycle the yarn and spend ages pulling it out of the shape it is in.  With a bit of patience and creativity you can piece together something that will look fun and funky on your couch or chair.

Trying out a new selling place

Well you never know where an author will sell a story.  As part of my on going search for new places to sell my stories I found this new store front.  They say that I will get 85% of what ever I sell over there.  At the moment I just put up one tale and we will see.  If you are interested in picking up the Sudden Disappearances novella this would be the place to go.  The only other place to get it would be as part of the Guardians of the Gate city collection. 

If you are interested why not pop over here and pick up a copy?

http://www.lelivro.com/sudden-disappearances.html

Finding new avenues to promote

Finding your place as a writer can be a tricky process.  I have been writing for a long time and in the beginning no one saw my work.  As I grew more confident I started to share my work with friends and then on the net.

The various places that allow you to post your work for free are amazing as a tool in the beginning but there is only so much you can do in those places.  Spring boards like Wattpad and Storyenet or Fictionpress and fanfiction.net are great if you are say a teenager writing YA fiction but if you write things that are a bit too odd for them ore take a more adult mind to understand well you are over looked or at worst slammed .

but the thing is  once you start selling your work you don't want to put them up for free.  I have 60 odd titles up for sale, which makes me proud but the hard thing is getting sales.  As a barely noticed author I don't have a lot of readers and I don't have any cash.

In the old days you had publishers who did the marketing.  Now a days you have to do it yourself.  If you have money you can advertize and hopefully pull in those readers that we all live for.  If you have no cash, like me, you need to hit up social media.

Now like a good online person I have done my best not to flood the places that I have access to.  the MOA boards on Amazon, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Google Plus Group and twitter.  These places can bring awareness if you are lucky.  If you arent well you just have to hope for the best.

I am happy that I get some sales each month.  So far I have thirteen for the month of October.  Not great but not shabby.  The thing that surprises me is that most of those sales have come from barnes and Noble which I have no way of nudging and from my erotic titles which I do not promote.

Does this mean I should be just an erotic author?  Should i give up on trying to sell my novels?  Well I don't think so.  I want to see my novels finding readers, getting reviews and yes of course making me a little bit of money.

As a writer I have made about $150 over the past year and some but that is $150 that I didn't have before.  I might not be rich, I might not be famous but I am enjoying what little attention I get. 

So in conclusion of this ramble, go look up those less popular titles, check out the less expensive books and then review them.  Help some poor struggling author like me.  We have tales that are new or old and told in new ways.  Some are bad, some are good and some just might be great. 

Back to working with yarn

With a friend having a baby I got to play with different ways of making things.  Crocheting a carriage blanket and making little bootie shoes and using my knitting loom to make a hat and scratch mits.

Now you might not know what scratch mits are so let me explain.  Scratch mits are little finger/thumbless mittens to cover a newborn's hands and keep them both warm and stop them from scratching themselves and you.  They are very simple to make and dont need much yarn at all.  As you can see by this picture they are kinda cute and I used a simple braided cord for the tie on.

The other thing I made up was of course that carriage blanket.  Simple strips in shades of green done in single stitch and then multiple rows of double stitches around the outside.  This is not a square blanket because it is meant to tuck around a baby in his/her carriage.  It is pretty and warm and that is essential at this time of year.

One of the best things about doing baby stuff is if you have a lot of left over yarn from other projects you can use it up making things for babies.  If you don't have any yourself why not make them up and donate them to the local neonatal unit at your nearest hospital?  They never have enough warm and colorful things for the babies in their care.  The more they have the better those babies will do.  Or give them to your local women and children's shelter.  A good deed makes your day and may make their month.

Writing and music

As I sit here with my earbuds in listening to Annie's song from John Denver I realize that I write more to music than I do without.  While my songs are not the songs of the characters they do set me in the mood to work.  There are a lot of distractions in a simple day even for a stay at home mom, wife and writer.

As my other blogs have shown there are a lot of things i work on during the day.  From crocheting blankets, to painting to making little plastic models of robots, I can get myself distracted.  I bake a lot, cook a lot and try to do many things each day.

This is both a good and a bad thing.  As a writer I should be sitting my butt down and typing up a storm every single chance I have.  And to be honest I do do a lot of writing.  In the past year I have written 41 separate tales that have been published and I have 15 more that are finished and either submitted to anthologies or pages or are waiting for covers to be released by me.  That is all since the first of the year.  A lot of work done yes.

Now though I want to complete the novel I started last year.  I have spent two days editing and now I need to settle down and write and write and write.  This tale is a good one i think with a touch of romance, magic and of course conflict.  There are good guys, bad guys and everything a tale needs but can I finish it this time?  Who knows but I plan on it.  So off to work I go.