March Madness, April Showers

Crying Call has been out for a couple months now, and as the weather begins to warm up, that means we’re heading toward market season. Now begins the difficult time management of working on my next novel (Drawing Dead) while getting out there and marketing my finished works. I’ve already managed to have several good outings.

My best sales day ever happened about a month ago at Blake’s Boozy Book Fest. I have to hand it to Blake’s — their six-hour ticketed event was hands down the most fun and best organized book event I’ve ever been to. I’m not sure when their next book event will be, but I hope I’m invited to that one too. For the record, I sold ten copies of my crossword puzzle book, and sixty total books from the Thomas Vale series.

Meanwhile, Blake’s also has a monthly book club, and they selected Crying Call as their current read. I’ll be going there Wednesday night to meet the club, answer questions, and probably sign some books for them. I’ve never done a solo author signing before, and I’m looking forward to it. Actually, I have two solo signings this month, because I’ll be doing a signing at Calliope Bookshelf in Washington, MI on April 18th. More on that in the next post.

Next Saturday, the 11th, I’ll be at the Washtenaw County Fairgrounds, a little southwest of Ann Arbor, for “Books in the Barn,” which I understand is sort of like a Boozy Book Fair without the open bar.

Probably the coolest thing that happened was when I went back to the Third Coast Book Fest in Grand Haven, MI. Last year was their debut year, and I was there for it — it’s where I made my first ever sales at a public event. Three hundred sixty-four days later, Becka was able to come with me this time. She took the picture below.

It’s a picture of me standing with Debra, the first person who ever bought a book from me at a book event. She came up to the table this year, told me how much she enjoyed Blood Game, and promptly bought Crying Call. Guess I owe it to her to finish Drawing Dead on time, so she can finish the trilogy next year!

I’ve Been Picked by a Book Club!

I kind of vaguely alluded to this in the previous post, and now seems the right time to announce the details….

Crying Call has been chosen as the April book-of-the-month by the Book Club at Blake’s Backyard!

Basically, they’re a gang of fervent readers affiliated with our favorite orchard and cider mill in our area. What a thrill! This is the first, hopefully of many, times one of my books will be read by a book club.

A lot of local folks are currently reading my second novel, or will be soon since they’ve just had their March meeting about the book they read before mine. Then, on April 8th, it’ll be Crying Call’s turn. And the bonus is … since they’re nearby, I’ve been invited to pop in on the second half of their monthly meeting, to meet them, talk to them, and maybe answer some of the questions they have. I’ll probably set up a signing table too, or something like that. I’m not sure about the logistics. I have no idea how it will go, but I’m excited, thrilled, and grateful for the chance to meet a lot of new readers!

If you’re a southeast Michigander or Michigoose and you’d like to join a large, growing, and fun book club … now’s the perfect time. Link below:

Happy New Year!

Good heavens! I just realized … I haven’t updated this blog since 2025!

Becka and the kids and I had a very happy and laid back holiday season, and relaxation continues for a little while longer. The kids don’t start back at school until January 5th, and my UDM classes don’t begin until the 12th. But you know me … I don’t know what to do with myself if I don’t have work or some sort of project to do, so I’ve still been busy.

I recorded two episodes for “Indie Reads Aloud,” which is Diana Kathryn Penn’s podcast where she briefly interviews writers before and after they read a selected passage from their book. Here’s a link to the YouTube video for Episode #271, where I read from Blood Game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUJxrda8gXc

We also recorded a video for Crying Call, but that episode (#283 I think) doesn’t come out until February 4th, the day after its official release date. However, a little bird told me that if you’d like to hear it early, you might find the audio-only version on Spotify. See below.

Other updates? Well, Becka and I broke 97K words on the first draft our romance/thriller, about 85% done or so, and I just broke 41K words on the first draft of Drawing Dead (about 45% done).

If you check out my website, you’ll see a lot of reorganization underway, most of which is finished, but Becka will be helping me with some flashy stuff over the next few days. Expect the Blood Game banner to soon be replaced by an equally cool Crying Call banner.

Another big additions is an “Appearances” page accessible from the main menu. It contains Spotify links to most of my podcast appearances, including the two mentioned above. Here’s a link for your convenience: https://jeffe.boats/appearances/

I’m redid my “Books” page and am working on each individual book page. I’ve added more songs to the Drawing Dead playlist (a song for each chapter, as I write them). But the biggest addition is the “Free Stuff” page, where buttons are available to take you to the first few chapters of all my books, plus I’ll be adding a few other writing samples now and then, just for fun. Here’s the link: https://jeffe.boats/free-stuff/

That’s where I’m at. Less than five weeks to Crying Call’s release on February 3rd. My next blog post will come out early next week, and it’ll contain an “early bird” discount code for anyone who’d like to get the book early.

Ho! Ho! Ho! Holiday Sale for E-books!

I was going to wait until Boxing Day for this, and make it a post-Holidays sale, but … what the heck. Time to deck the halls and jingle some bells! Kindle sale !!! 🙂

I went and marked down the Kindle version of Blood Game to $2.99, which was as low as Amazon would let me go without doing something weird to the royalties structure. Obviously I’m hoping to get more readers and more reviews, drawing in the people who were squeamish about buying the book before. Now they can get it for less than what Amazon offers in digital rewards when you to agree to later shipments.

And then I did something similar for Crying Call, the sequel, which comes out on my birthday (February 3rd). I priced that one at $3.99, and made it available for pre-order.

So this is important … if you’re one of the folks who pre-ordered it before now, or if you’d like to join that group of people, please click on the image of the book cover below. It’s a link to where you can pre-order it in its Kindle format. Pre-orders in the old format should disappear in the week or so, so switching to the new one will keep you on schedule to get Crying Call on the release date. And the fact that it’s now less than half the previous price is another nice perk!

One thing I’ve learned in my first year of publishing is that I probably overpriced my e-books the first time. So this is me correcting that mistake. Hopefully I’ll get a lot more readers this time around, and a lot more reviews.

And it’s the reviews I really, really need. Good reviews are way more valuable to me than the teeny tiny revenues I’m getting. Having lots of reviews is the only way indie authors like myself can be seen and get promoted by the cold, blind machines of Amazon and other online distributors.

If you like my work, and want to help me out, please leave a good online review. Amazon is the best place for that, but Barnes&Noble and GoodReads reviews help too. And please do that for every other author you like, too. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it.

Buon Natale!