Have you lost your mind? An excerpt from Losing Who

Welcome to another edition of the "My Sexy Saturday" blog hop tour. This week's theme is "Their Sexy Talk" and it's all about how lovers relate to each other. Hmm... What one couple finds "sexy" made be very different from what another couple finds romantic, but it takes all kinds of people to build a world, doesn't it?

Here's a  seven paragraph excerpt from my latest release from Mojocastle Press, Losing Who. When you're forced to wipe the memory of your lover in order to save her world, what can you to say to convince her that you still care about her? This is the dilemma alien time traveler John Smith faces with his human girlfriend Cici in this excerpt scene.

Losing Who
Book 3 in the Loving Who series
 

Cici Connors is losing her mind—or is she? John Smith vows to return her memories, but will his sci-fi convention only attract an invasion of Earth by artificially intelligent life forms?  

From Mojocastle Press  

http://www.mojocastle.com/losing-who.html 
Also available at Amazon, All Romance eBooks and wherever fine ebooks are sold.

(Excerpt set-up: A telepathic conversation between lovers John and Cici, wherein he tries to explain why he had to blank her memories.)

The time lines…They got a bit muddy. We had to undo them and start afresh in order to keep the universe from exploding. You’re sensitive to how the time lines flow, Cici, but you’re not one of us who can step totally out of time and look at them objectively. So, you’ve got to trust me on this point—you know me from before, and I’ve come back for you against the wishes of my own kind.

Some of what he was relating to her mind made sense. Cici had felt these past few days as if she’d been yanked out of time and thrust back into it at another spot against her will. She sensed that the clock had been turned back and that she was reliving the same days again, only this time with a slightly different cast of characters in a completely different situation. You’re risking your own safety to be with me? she wondered.

I am. I’m risking your safety, too. That’s why I wanted to confess as soon as you seemed able to deal with this knowledge. If you want me out of your time line, I’ll go, Cici. But before I go, I wanted you to know that it wasn’t my idea to leave you behind in the first place.

You want to be with me? Cici felt tears burning beneath her eyelids, but she couldn’t find either her eyes or her tissue to wipe them away.

My kind doesn’t know what romance or love means really, but I think I’ve learned more about it since we met. It’s why I came back for you.
 
Damn… You’ve wrecked my cynicism. She felt the warmth of a sun upon her cheek like a kiss of an angel. Anything is possible, isn’t it, John Smith?

She heard a soft chuckle then, It is when you love someone, Cici Connors. Love makes all things possible.

 
 

Losing Who is available from Mojocastle Press  

www.mojocastle.com/losing-who.html 

Read more excerpts from the Loving Who series at my fiction web site: www.cynthianna.com

Book 1 Loving Who                                                                                                               Book 2 Leaving Who

And don't forget to sign up for my e-newsletter--I'm giving away a FREE ORIGINAL EBOOK to all subscribers featuring a story with John Smith and Cici Connors. (The sign up form is located on the right sidebar. I just need your email. Thanks!)

Have a great My Sexy Saturday!

http://mysexysaturday.blogspot.com

My Books are Worth It!

After my last posting, I realized maybe I should have explained some of my frustrations with the recent deluge of free ebooks on the market, freely given away by their authors for promotional purposes. Frankly, they're robbing authors like me blind. 


When readers are getting free books everyday of the week, why would they purchase my inexpensive tomes?


I've been on book forums where readers openly state, "I have hundreds of free ebooks downloaded on my Kindle. By the time I've read those books, I'll have downloaded hundreds more. I'll never have to buy a book again!"

As a writer, my heart bleeds when I hear/read such statements. Sure, I'm glad readers are enjoying reading a wide variety of fiction. I, too, go to the library and check out books (the paper kind since I can't afford a Kindle or Nook), and I do like reading a book or two from a new author to see if there's a "good fit" there between us. What I don't like to hear is that after reading one or two freebies readers don't care if they read another book by that author again--not if they have to purchase it. (And why would these readers buy if they're sure these authors will give away their next books free "for promotional purposes" in a few months?)


The consequence of all these free ebooks being dumped on the market is that no one is rushing to buy ebooks by midlist authors at all. (Midlist = Writers who aren't J.K. Rowling, Nora Roberts, John Grisham and the like.) Midlist author sales are dropping or levelling off. No book sales equals no book royalties. No royalties equals no income for authors. To put this simpler yet, no income equals no eating for some of us who depend on our writing income to purchase groceries.

A book in need of a good e-reader!

So why don't I give away some (or all) of my ebooks for free for promotional purposes? The price of my books are out of my control. My books are published through legitimate publishers as opposed to being self-published as so many of these free ebooks seem to be. I suppose I could twist my publisher's arm and ask if I can, too, list one of my books for free on Amazon for a day or a week, but why should I? I sweated and toiled to write that book--don't I deserve the meager royalty I can make for a sale?


Face it--if a book is given away for free, is it really worth anything in the mind of the person receiving the freebie?

To protest the outrage I feel about this glut of free ebooks flooding the market (and destroying it at the same time) I'm starting my own campaign called "My books are worth it!" Feel free to borrow the banner above, link to this blog and spread the news. 


Our books ARE worth it! Because you get what you pay for!

You can find purchase links to my fiction books at

www.cynthianna.com

and

www.celinechatillon.com

And I ain't goin' to promo no more! Hallelujah!

I've pretty much had enough. I've had enough of this idea that somehow writers are suppose to be their own P.R. company on top of everything else. That's why as of today, I'm giving up... Giving up being a "promotion whore" because, frankly, I suck at it and it's no fun.

You will still see me around at the various social media sites, as this is the only way I seem to communicate with friends and family these days, but I will not be promoting my writing. Uh-uh, not at all. I will strictly be myself (whomever she may be). Anything I say or do will be coming out of the mouth of Cindy A. Matthews and not my writing personas (including the one with that very same name).

This should please my publishers to no end, as everyone is saying we authors should be "pleasant, kind, entertaining and, above all else, NONCONTROVERSIAL in our bloggings and twitterings." Okay, now that I'm myself (and not a writing persona) I can freely express how I feel: 

I'm fed up with nonexistent sales and the millions of free ebooks giveways for the Kindle lately. Since I am giving up the promotion business, I will longer be in the vicinity of all these other authors' promotions, and, hence, my blood pressure will drop. I will be blissfully unaware of how lousy I'm doing promo-wise, and I will rejoice in my ignorance of all things of a promotional nature.

If you have had similar ideas of going "no-promo" or are a reader who is tired of endless authors sending out endless tweets, emails, Facebook postings, blogs, press releases, etc., touting their next free ebook giveaway for the Kindle (the majority which seem to come from the "indies" or self-published and not the professionally published), feel free to vent in my comment box below.

Now, what will I be able to do with all this "free time" I'll have on my hands? Should I actually... don't say it... WRITE?

Container Gardening Part 2

I said I'd post some more photos of how our "container gardening" was going this summer, and I forgot. Truthfully, it didn't go well at all. The extreme heat our poor plants experienced on our second floor apartment balcony just did many of them in. The few that survived didn't start to thrive until later in the season. At least our pepper plant is still producing baby peppers.


I want to express my wholehearted thanks to my friend Michele A. for babysitting our carrots and beets while we've been in and out of town helping  Mom. We harvested what we could of these crops, and while our attempts at organic container gardening weren't successful by any means, we can at least say we tried. Next year, we hope we can obtain some actual land to plant seeds in. Keep your fingers crossed!

The green tops of the beets and carrots look quite healthy.

This is all we harvested, but we learned a lot.

Space--carrots and beets need more space to grow larger!

November will bring a lot of challenges--The Nanowrimo Challenge (write a novel in a month) for one of them. Stay tuned for updates and how you can enjoy a free story this holiday season. Don't forget to check out my newly updated web page at http://www.cynthianna.com/ too.

All you green thumbs out there--please tell us in the comments section below what we could have done differently to grow better crops in our containers. Thanks.

THE ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY FREE CAR WASH

Sometimes things seem too good to be true. You want to believe they’re for real, but you’re not certain you can let yourself believe them. But when you do, you are truly blessed.

Saturday I helped out at the Jefferson Hills Church Free Car Wash. Yeah, it was free—totally free. And people found it hard to believe.

The questions flew, “Why are you doing a free car wash? Do you really want donations? Do you have another, ulterior motive?”

The answers I gave were, “We’re doing this as a gift to the community. No, we really don’t want donations. We have no ulterior motive other than letting you know that as Jesus washed feet, we’re washing cars, and we want you to know about our church.”

A lot of people acted impressed that any group would do anything for anyone for no money nowadays. The idea of “community” is a foreign concept for many. They live in their cars—they drive to work, to school, to any outside activities they might participate in and then they drive home and close and lock their doors.

They never get to know their neighbors. They never really get to know the community where they live. They bought their homes because of the zip code. Literally. Someone told them to buy property in such-and-such suburb because in three years’ time they could sell their house at a profit. And they do just that usually, moving on to the next desirable zip code where, most likely, they’ll never meet their new neighbors, either.

People in suburbia these days are used to paying through the nose for everything—gasoline for the SUV, dance lessons for the kids, fake nails applied weekly, drive-through dinners, etc.

So the absolutely, totally free car wash concept just didn’t make sense to these folks. Their organic onboard computer (i.e., brain) said, “Does not compute!”

But it does make more sense to me now why Jesus came about 2000 years ago, before cars and air conditioning and cable TV and the Internet. People had to walk or take a donkey cart to get anywhere 2000 years ago. They knew their neighbors a bit more since they seldom wandered far from home. And they depended on their neighbors’ help and generosity to get by more often than not.

People weren’t as isolated from their communities. They talked to each other in person rather than to a stranger over a cell phone. And in community they shared their common experiences and related how Jesus had impacted their lives for the better.

This recent car washing experience gives me a bit more insight into writing contemporary characters. The suburbanite of today has a disconnect with the community he or she resides in. It’s rare nowadays for neighbors to share their common experiences or to even tell each other about how Jesus has impacted their lives for the better. Suburbanites hold a cautiously cynical view of the world and can’t believe that others would do anything for them free with no strings attached.

But they certainly like getting their Humvees and SUVs washed.