What I did on my Summer Vacation–by Deidre Daily-Havrelock

Tags

holy spirit

Remember those great essays from grade three and four: “What I did on my Summer Vacation”…well, I thought I’d share a bit from my adventurous summer. First there was driving my daughter to bball practice every day for five weeks, then the in-laws came for a brief visit, then more bball, then my youngest daughter had a soccer tournament in Portland–and her team won! Then my sister in-law came to visit with her wonderful family. During that time my husband and I took off to meet Jack Levison and Priscilla Pope-Levison for dinner (both of them are speakers at our up-coming MotherHeart conference on “Biblical Evidence for the Femininity of the Holy Spirit.” Go to www.motherheartconference.com to check it out OR to purchase a ticket.

Check out Jack’s book here Fresh Air: The Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life.)

We met at a French restaurant and had a wonderful time yapping up a storm. After that I spent a week writing a paper on the topic “the family of God” (I know… sounds fascinating), then my family and I left for Canada where I visited my dad and his wife Cheryl. I also ran up to Saskatoon, the last city I lived in, to meet with Pastor Gary about the up-coming MotherHeart conference (he is also a speaker and he, by the way, called the conference “a historical event.”) I then spoke to my wonderful editor about starting up our own publishing house (more on that later), then I and my family got in our mini-van (with my dad in tow) and returned home where we are now watching movies (we watch a lot of movies!) By the way, my dad started a blog of his own (and his dog Tipper); together they are reviewing movies…meet my dad here–Mickey’s Movie Reviews.

Awe summer! How I love thee!  But seriously, I really need to get some writing done.

Ebook Tour at Tourz de Codex

Tags

ebook tour, ebooks, Saving Mary

This is my last ebook tour, check out the links below.

Tour Schedule:-
2nd July, 2012 - Ashley @Dr. Pepper Diva
3rd July, 2012 - Stephanie @A Dream Within A Dream
4th July, 2012 - Beth @Beth Art From the Heart
5th July, 2012 - Lisseth @Read-A-holicZ
6th July, 2012 - Sage @my name is: Sage
7th July, 2012 - Aliaa @Mademoiselle Le Sphinx
8th July, 2012 - Molly @Reviews By Molly
9th July, 2012 - Aparajita @Le’ Grande Codex
10th July, 2012 - Gretchen @Creative Writing Addict
11th July, 2012 - Marissa @For The Love Of Film And Novels
12th July, 2012 - (read, watch, listen) – Disincentive Reviews
13th July, 2012 - Nicole @Purple Penguin Reviews
14th July, 2012 - Pragya @Reviewing Shelf
15th July, 2012 - Emily @On Emily’s Bookshelf

Finalist on Global Ebook Awards

Tags

awards finalists, ebook awards, memoir

 

 

 

 

 

Saving Mary: The Possession made it to the finals in the category of memoir!

FINALISTS ANNOUNCED FOR GLOBAL EBOOK AWARDS

252 category-expert judges evaluated nearly 1,000 entries,

in 101 categories, from 16 countries. Finalists in each category are published at

http://globalebookawards.com/2012-global-ebook-awards-finalists/

 

Ebook Only .99 For Summer!

Tags

ebook price, virtual book

I decided to lower my ebook price on Saving Mary: The Possession from $3.99 to a mere .99 cents. Why did I do this? Well, because I can. I like being a self-published author with a virtual book…and so I lowered my price just because at the click of a button I can. That’s some serious marketing freedom! But with that being said, my ebook won’t stay at .99 cents forever. This is for two reasons. Number one, I don’t want to devalue the amount of work that it takes to build a book (it’s hard work to create a book).  And number two, I wanted to see if more people would pick up the book if it were .99 cents, and the surprising answer is no, my book sales did not increase–they stayed the same. I can’t complain about this because sales are steady and that’s good! So enjoy my .99 price for the summer!

Tips on Marketing the Ebook

Tags

amazon, Amazon select, ebooks, marketing ebook, marketing ebooks

I’m finding out just how tough marketing is. It’s a big world, and finding your particular audience is an art that I have yet to master. It is a bind. I have to do it, but I’m not sure exactly how to do it. But the good thing is, I’m willing to try new things and I love this whole idea of ‘virtual tours.’ They make so much sense and are fun! As far as marketing goes, I have three blogs. My first blog is ‘theagentchallenge.blogspot.com.’ I created this blog to journal my experience towards becoming published and also to help out other writers who are sharing in that same rather difficult journey. I started out with the simple plan of following the advice of agents themselves in order to bag me my own wonderful agent. (By the way, I still don’t have an agent.) Along my journey, I met many bloggers who had positive experiences publishing ebooks and so the idea of publishing an ebook became glaringly obvious, and I dived in.

Marketing the ebook has been fun. Of course, some days it’s depressing. There are mounds of ebooks out there. But I think I stumbled into something wonderful in the way of marketing. Just recently, I gave my ebook away for free on Amazon’s Select program. Choosing to give my book Saving Mary: The Possession away for five consecutive days, I suddenly found myself taking the #1 spot in the category of “supernatural.” Due to my ranking, on day four my book suddenly began downloading like crazy. I gave away 2200 ebooks that day alone and 4623 altogether. I had been thinking to only do a three-day ebook giveaway and then changed my mind. Thank goodness I did. By the end of day four I hit the #2 ranking in the ‘free memoir list.’ All this helps build a reader base. My little memoir is now selling steadily.

But if I were to do the Select program again, I would do things differently. First of all, I would coordinate at least five bloggers to do a review on each of the days that my ebook was free. After all, the highest I got on the “Top 100 Free ebooks” list was #71. The second thing I would do differently is I would remember that my ebook is also available in the UK! (Which I sort of forgot.) Had I remembered, I would have advertised over there across the pond. I would have contacted bloggers and reviewers…but alas. I forgot. I only placed in the #7 spot for free memoirs in the UK. (I was #2 and #5 in the U.S.)

But I’m still looking for an agent. Ebooks may be great for fiction and narrative non-fiction, but I’m not totally convinced it’s the right avenue for straight non-fiction (which is what my other book is). I guess, I’ll see.

My other blog ‘deidrehavrelock.wordpress.com’ is my home base and it’s here just so I can connect with readers. I have a third blog in the making; this one is attached to my conference website (which isn’t quite ready yet). I created this blog to explore the topic of “the femininity of the Holy Spirit.” Which is a topic I’m fond of. I once read (in an agent’s book or blog somewhere) that you should market a book at least three years before it comes out, so since one of my books that I’m working to edit is called The MotherHeart of God: Biblical Evidence for the Femininity of the Holy Spirit, I thought it would be a good idea to have a conference and start a blog. You can check out the conference on Facebook, if you like. By the way, Wm. Paul Young (author of The Shack) has agreed to host the conference. No one said marketing has to be boring!

I’m now #5 on Amazon’s Best Selling Memoir List

 

My book Saving Mary:The Possession hit the  #5 spot in the memoir category–due to my giveaway–in fact my book is still FREE TODAY AND TOMORROW! 

AMAZON BESTSELLER LIST- MEMOIR

If you want to download a free copy go here.

Free Summer Reading Today

After working hard to upload my book Saving Mary to Amazon (the story of how I went and got myself possessed during a transcendental meditation session) and fixing html code, I’m glad to say I’m done and the book is up. By the way, if you plan on publishing an ebook, be sure to delete all code from your manuscript and then re-add what you need. I had weird things go on because of old code (at least I think this was the reason). The weirdest one: the word “paper” was changed to “papier” (French for paper). Other weird things included commas showing up in strange places. But at least the book is done, and with that being said, for all those who like free things…today my book is free!

Just go HERE and download a free copy onto your kindle. If you don’t have a kindle you can go HERE and download an app that will allow you to read a kindle book on your computer, phone, tablet or Ipad. So far, this morning, I’ve given away 45 free books.

If Something Can Go Wrong (with Amazon)…It Will

Tags

amazon problems, ebook issues, possession, Saving Mary

Working with Amazon is kind of like working with a very intelligent monkey who lives on the back of a giant elephant. You yell up to the monkey…”I want to publish my great book!” Then the elephant’s trunk comes swinging down and you quickly upload your awesome book into its curled and warm trunk. Normally the elephant drops the book into the monkey’s hands (paws?) and then the monkey sticks it onto a virtual book shelf up in the world of the internet. BUT…and here’s the catch, sometimes when the elephant uploads your book, he drops it and then scrambles to pick it up–swishing it around with his thick trunk. When your fab book finally gets to the monkey, sometime later, a few pages within it have been crumpled, but the monkey doesn’t notice because that is simply not her job (it’s my job), and so she plops my now not so perfect work into its place on Amazon’s virtual bookshelf–crumples and all.

Somehow, when my book uploaded it crumpled. What I mean is, the file became corrupted in the loading process, scrambling a few capitals (only capitals were affected)…how strange is that? When I noticed the weirdness (which was quite a while back) I let my publisher know and she began the process of whatever gets done to fix a messed-up file. Then she uploaded the new file to Amazon again, but for some reason that elephant just hung onto the book–he wouldn’t pass it to the monkey. In fact, he’s still holding onto the file as I write this! Of course I’ve contacted Amazon, and an email from the monkey said, my file is stuck and  the situation was being looked into, and she’s very sorry for the inconvenience.

So, with all this going on, what can we learn? (Besides working with large conglomerations and intelligent little monkeys isn’t easy). I guess I’ve learned this: publishing is difficult! And in this world of doing things faster, I have to remember to go slower, making sure all my i’s are dotted…and my capitals are still capitalized.

Book Tour Begins

Tags

adult novel, literature, virtual book tour, young adult

A virtual book tour, that is.

Check out Shadow Blog Tours where we are having a Quote Party! on May 5th (my B-Day, by the way).

I’m also at the Virtual Book Tour Cafe starting May 21

You can also follow the Orangeberry Virtual Book Tour starting June 8th

And I will be at the Young Adult Novel Reader in June

Saving Mary: The Possession is now on Amazon

Tags

deidre havrelock, demons, ebooks, memoir, possession

If you’re a fan of supernatural fiction then you will be captivated by this true story about a spiritually sensitive girl and the path that led to her possession. Part one of a two-part series, Saving Mary is the story of a modern-day Mary Magdalene—the woman from whom Jesus cast out seven demons.

Deidre Daily is drawn to anything seemingly spiritual, desperately seeking a spiritual existence. But inside this vibrant girl hides a terrified child who sincerely believes she has married the devil. Through a series of spiritual encounters her fear turns into reality, and she ends up possessed.

Deidre’s fascinating memoir relays her story from childhood to adolescence: invisible eyes leering at her from the corner of her bedroom, horrible nightmares tormenting her, and her desperate attempt to find God—only to end up possessed. It is a candid account of possession from a first-person perspective. This dark memoir brings to light an intricate world of deceitful spirits hell-bent on manipulating and damaging an innocent girl’s life, not only through her dreams, but also through seemingly every-day encounters.

The ebook for Saving Mary: The Possession is now up on Amazon.

My grandma tried to read it, but couldn’t work the touch screen on the Kindle. Keep in mind that she is 92! I left her at home with the ebook and when I came back she asked me if my book was about how women are treated in the church–I said, “No.” She said, “But is says here…” Somehow Grandma had gone into a different book on my Kindle (10 Lies the Church Tells Men) and had lost her page in Saving Mary. Grandma can’t work a Kindle! She wants a hard copy! (It’s coming, Grandma.)