Book Signing

Hi Everyone, I will be signing copies of my books, Colorado Sunset, Breakfast for Two, and Chicken Soup for the Soul, Thanks to my Mom this Saturday, the 21st, at the Barnes and Noble at Centerra Mall, Loveland Colorado.  If you are in Northern Colorado, stop on by.  There will be eight other amazing authors there, too.  Signed books make excellent Christmas gifts 🙂  Oh, and there will be chocolate

. cover_art_thanks to my momViolet cover_edited-1Colorado Sunset final cover

Successful promotion

fall 1I want to thank everyone who downloaded Colorado Sunset when it was free the first few days of October.  I was amazed by the thousands of people who took advantage of the free price. I hope many of you read my book and enjoyed it. I have received many wonderful emails from readers who said I gave them hope. In my mind, if I can make even one person’s day a little brighter, then I’m a success regardless of the financial gain.  Although the financial gain was there too, I am most proud of being able to inspire others and hope I continue to do so in all of my future books.

If you haven’t read the second book in my Peakview series, Breakfast for Two, be sure to get it today on Amazon. Come home to this small Colorado mountain town.  I am diligently working on the third book, Colorado Cabin in the Pines, and plan to have it available sometime in the first few months of 2016. Yikes! Its almost 2016. Christmas will be here before we know it. It’s still in the 80’s here on the front range, but in Colorado the weather can turn quickly this time of year–the first snowfall is never far away.

I’m heading to the mountains for the weekend. So happy Autumn, enjoy the warmth while it lasts.

The nightmare that is formatting

So as you may know I recently published my first novel, Colorado Sunset, in Ebook format on Amazon. That was the easy part. I paid a wonderful lady (shout out to Lucinda Campbell) to do all of my e-formats for me and they look great.

But… then it came to the paperback version. Not finding anyone to do that for me, I plunged ahead. Like plunging into a deep dark ocean, but scarier!  I discovered cool features, like drop caps, to make my book look professional. That part was fun.  Then I muddled through the front and back matter, not as fun, but not too difficult, or so I thought.

Then came the headers, page numbers, etc, and this is where the nightmare really got going.  Of course, the odd and even pages had to be different so would be right in an actual book.  I would fix one, which would then mess up the other.  Fix that and suddenly all the numbers would disappear, or every page in my book would simply be page 2.  Finally, after many, many hours I got them all working AND THEN, I added my front matter-title page, dedication, copyright info, and yikes they had page numbers and now my other numbers were all off again. So, after much searching, I learned about sections, if the front pages were “simply” in a different section then I could delete, in theory, the page number from them. Right? Easy enough. NOT.

Finally, after several days, and I mean long days, the book looked perfect in Word format, I was thrilled and off I sent it to CreateSpace. First, it wouldn’t even accept my manuscript because there were blank pages, What? Where did that come from? No blank pages in my documents. So  back to the drawing board.  I could take out those pages, and  like magic the page numbers were now back on my front pages!  Hours and hours of more playing with it, reading countless proofs and I think a good majority of the errors were fixed before I uploaded it to Amazon.

If you order my book, please be forgiving.  And the worst part, I really wish I could tell you that I learned so much through this process that my next book will be so much easier. But that would be a lie. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how I did it, it was all dumb luck! Anyone want to format my next book?

Colorado Sunset

Colorado Sunset final cover

So here it is at last!  My very first novel, Colorado Sunset!! It’s available in Kindle format at Amazon.com and a paperback version is coming soon!  So exciting and so scary at the same time. What if no one ever buys a copy? What if they do and they hate it? It took so much of my time and energy to get this out there. I sure hope someone likes it, maybe lots of someones, that would be good. But even if no one ever buys it, I sure had fun writing it!  If you are looking for a good light romance, older characters, located in the beautiful Colorado Rockies, this book might just be for you! This book is the first in a series of novels that all take place in the small, fictional town of Peakview, Colorado. I am hoping that readers will fall in love with this town the same way I have. Here’s a preview:

After June Meyers devastating divorce six years ago, she remained devoted to her children and their home in Ohio. Now her youngest child is off to college, and June faces her future with a mix of anxiety and excitement.

The Walker Horse Ranch in isolated Peakview, Colorado, provides the perfect setting for Jeff Walker to hide from the pain of losing his wife to cancer eight years ago. He’s raised his sons and now his ranch and horses are his life. It’s just simpler that way.

Avoiding making any long tern decisions about her life, June embarks on a cross country road trip to visit her son and grandchildren in California. After car trouble strands her in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, she lands at the Walker Ranch, where she encounters the handsome, rugged rancher, Jeff. While neither is looking for a relationship, they can’t deny the chemistry that draws them together.

Can they drop their barriers and take a second chance at love?

That’s it in a nutshell.  Sound like your kind of book?  Tired of reading about heroines and heroes the age of your daughters and granddaughters then my book is for you. We are never too old for romance.