I have to admit that I’ve been surprised that THE HAG RIDER is almost universally liked. It appeals to both adult readers and YA readers.
Yes, it’s about the Civil War and yes, it’s about a Confederate soldier, but it’s also about his struggle to come to terms with his conflicted viewpoints. And through it all, he is protected by a slave witch hired by his best friend and mentor, another slave. His allegiance is not to the South, it is to his soldier brothers for whom the war is camp duty and friendship.
Give it a try. It’s free May 18-21.
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Thomas Fenske is a writer living in NC. His next novel, Harmon Creek, is due out in June 2022 http://tfenske.com
Today at 12PM EDT my friend and fellow writer Staci Morrison will be hosting an event on Facebook to celebrate both the one year anniversary of the inauguration of her MILLENNIUM epic fantasy series AND the publication of the fourth volume in that series, Sword OF THE SPIRIT.
Congratulations to Staci … four books in one year is quite an accomplishment!
I’ll be participating at 1PM EDT with some information about my own books … You can join at 12 for Staci or you can join at 1 to see what I have to offer. Other authors will be participating. There will be drawings for free books and some other stuff as well. I’ll be giving away a copy of THE HAG RIDER!
If we were having coffee today I’d remind you to enter my giveaway. Yeah, I’m shamelessly using our coffee share to point it out. Well, it IS what I’ve got going on this week.
Actually, I have had one in quite a while. I recently had the opportunity to purchase several copies of my ebooks for a reduced price so I got them, basically book purchase redemption links. I got enough for three sets of all three books. Yes, they are all kindle copies. What? You don’t have a kindle? Did you know you can get a kindle reading app for just about every type of device? I even have one on my Nook (which still somehow seems so wrong).
So, mosey on over to the contest entry link and try your luck. While there you can read all about the books and even buy them if you don’t like the disappointment of not winning.
Thanks for your support. Please reblog this post to get the word out.
If we were having coffee today I guess we’d both mention April Fool’s Day. It always seems so appropriate to “do” something on April Fools Day. The fact of the matter is, I joke all the time so I’m a bit jaded by April Fools. It’s a bit like a heavy drinker making a big deal over New Year’s Eve or St. Patrick’s Day as a drinking day. I mean, for them, every day is a big drinking day so why seize on those events, right? So, anyway, I’m just not in the mood this year. Maybe it’s my weeklong backache, or the reorganization at work, or the growing grass and weeds in the yard which brings me back to, well, back to my backache.
Sigh. With my back, I know I just need to give it some time. It always manages to work itself out. It twinged up on Friday a week ago and was feeling better last Sunday so I did a little bit of yard work but paid the price. If I’d let it go last week, I’d probably be ready to go out and do battle now. As it is, I’ll probably need to wait until next weekend.
As far as the reorganization goes, they are a way of life at work. Somebody is always reorganizing something. I’ve worked at the same place for seventeen years and I have completely lost count of the reorganizations. The other day I tried to remember all of my bosses names and I drew a blank on a couple of them. It is simply a way of life in big corporations. I have two theories about why that is, and I think they are related.
One: some form of movement gives the outward impression of progress. In fact, it is really just moving the many pieces around. Oh, little things change, sure, but basically, it ends up being the same work. Nothing ultimately changes.
Two: by its nature, this form of change tends to cause anxiety and discontent. This leads to what I call passive layoffs. These occur if people are already dissatisfied with the company and the unnecessary changes might just spur them to quit and move on. This is a win-win for the company because formal layoffs are very expensive. If they can up the irritation factor just a little, they save a ton of money.
Silly April Fools notion? Think about it. Think about times you’ve worked at a job and some inane policy has come up that made you seriously consider moving on. As far as I know, I made this term up but deep in my heart, I know it is a real thing. No joke. It’s a subtle form of managerial influence. It is akin to the theory that fast food eateries have color schemes designed to influence you to eat fast and get the heck out of there by using a subconscious influence to increase their customer turnover and make more money. We’ll have to see how all that plays out for me. I’m pretty used to these changes, but we’ll have to see. It’s a big unknown. Yesterday I had one manager, today I have another.
In other April Fool’s Weekend news … there is an important sports milestone this weekend. No, I’m not talking about Basketball. Never have been a big fan, although sometimes I’ll watch the last two minutes.
No, I’m talking about a real sport: BASEBALL SEASON STARTS TOMORROW.
Note: there is no “last two minutes” in baseball.
Downloads of the new cookbook have slowed down. Please check it out. It’s fun, it’s got some good recipes, and it’s free. It’s also a good introduction to the world of my two novels. As a reviewer put it this week: “This little cookbook makes the novels seem almost like reading about friends” … ebook only right now, but like I said, it’s free and there are versions for virtually any device.
So, even though I haven’t joked at all … that is so out of character for me, I think I can say, April Fools.
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Thomas Fenske is a writer living in NC. You can make his back feel better and make him less uneasy about his job if you BUY HIS BOOKS. More info at http://thefensk.com. At least download the cookbook … you know you can get the pdf and read it at the office while you are pretending to work. At least an increase in free downloads gives the impression of some form of progress. 😉
If we were having coffee today I’d have to break the news.
You’d say, “It’s not the freaking cookbook again, is it?”
I’d smirk, and say, “I’m afraid so.”
The first thing I’d say is that I’m embarrassed. Ever since I got this idea, I’ve been hammering away at it. I recruited family members, friends, and acquaintances to give me feedback. Most have read my novels. I wrote my novels. Finally this week, I was ready to take a big leap and upload this thing to Amazon. I had second thoughts about the title. I loaded up my first book and did a quick search. Ack!!
Okay, I admit it. In the novels, I never called the restaurant The Mossback Inn. Never. Not once. Always Cafe. Nobody noticed. Especially me. As big a problem as it now seems to me, it probably doesn’t matter. Still, I could have sworn I did that search earlier, but obviously, I didn’t. So I considered my options. Although I’ve marketed it informally for a couple of weeks, I still considered it in beta mode, that is, in computer terms, a high-level test. If I still need to make changes, now would be the time. Thank heavens I hadn’t uploaded it.
One option was just to ignore it, or add a paragraph in the forward about how it was originally called The Mossback Inn. That was a viable possibility. The other option was to just bite the bullet, make the changes to Cafe, and continue on as before. There really weren’t that many changes needed in the cookbook. There were quite a few on the website. I needed to change the cover, but once again, that is not a major change. I decided to check out one thing before I made the decision. I Googled it.
I found a minor wrinkle. There is a Mossback Cafe in Kingston Washington. I checked out their web page. It looks like a charming place, using locally sourced foods. Farm to fork, I think they called it. Heck, I’d like to eat there. There is no way my cookbook impacts that place. But I wrote them anyway, just to be on the up-and-up. The owner wrote me back, somewhat amused by it all, but he agreed, my cookbook would be fine as The Mossback Cafe Cookbook, saying they more call their place just Mossback anyway. He even commented on a few of the recipes and invited me up sometime. Awesome. You can check them out here: http://mossbackcafe.com — like I said, it looks like a really nice place
So, today, I’m launching an extended beta test with the rebranded title. The Mossback Cafe Cookbook. I think “Cafe” will likely play better in social media. What do you think? The rest of the cookbook is exactly the same.
Feel free to download a copy. There are files for epub (good for Nook, iBooks, Kobo), mobi (kindle), or pdf (just about everything will open pdf … hey, you could read it at work!).
Check it out and report back. It’s a small book, but it is packed with good recipes. And it gives a glimpse into one of the major characters of the books. No spoilers, you have to read the books to find out more. It’s a fun book to browse and hopefully a few who look at it will be enticed to check out the novels …
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Thomas Fenske is a writer living in North Carolina. You can find out more about his writing (including the cookbook) at http://thefensk.com
If we were having coffee today I would no doubt be complaining about Daylight Savings Time. Yes, I hate it. I mostly hate it for a week or so when the clocks go forward. After that things sort of settle out. My feelings, though, go more toward why is it even necessary?
I don’t buy most of the arguments. I frankly don’t see where it saves energy in this day and age. What it mostly does, is give people more play time in the evening. And since there is still the same amount of daylight no matter how you slice it, gradually increasing until the Summer Solstice, then decreasing until the Winter Solstice, all in all, I guess it doesn’t much matter.
I still have three favorite observations about DST. One, the popular slogan is invalid. Spring Forward and Fall Back sounds fine enough, but it has always seemed to me to be backward — it doesn’t make practical sense. If I fall, I almost invariably fall forward, or at least to the side. Ah, but if something startles me, I’m entirely likely to spring back. You see?
The other two observation have to do with the intent and the implications. I understand the concept of “who needs sunlight at 5AM?”. Sadly, we can’t change the way days progress. What DST switches show us is the true arbitrary nature of time. It’s arbitrary! Admit it. For all our dependence on it, we are dependent on something totally arbitrary. So, to my way of thinking, when it was arbitrarily set up originally, it was made just a bit askew. More on this after I make the second observation.
In the US, “STANDARD TIME” is now barely over four months of the year. MOST of the year is that special designation of Daylight Savings Time. What the heck? How is that “Standard?” And people wonder why the aliens are so hesitant to make contact with us.
So my arbitrary solution is this: Let’s just choose to buck up and change to a new standard time in the fall … Fall Back (ugh) not an hour, but a half-hour. And then just leave it there. We’ll sort of have the best of both worlds. It is probably how it should have been set up in the first place. It’s not as crazy as you might think … there are half hour time zones in some areas and the world goes on.
In more important matters, we’re likely to have another cup while I mention the cookbook I told you about a few weeks back. I have a pretty good version of it available NOW, free for the asking.
Just send an email to mossbackinn@yahoo.com and tell me what version you need, mobi (for Kindle), epub (for Nook, Kobo, or iBooks), or pdf (for everything, really, including downloading it and reading it at work). It’s really a load of fun, a companion book to my two novels, full of Tex-Mex and Southwestern dishes and some just down home good comfort food too. Like I said, it’s FREE! “Smidgeon Toll” is a character in both books and by character, I mean she IS a character. You’ll like her.
If we were having coffee today, well, we’d probably be doing it by phone or Skype or something … it’s snowing hard out there. It’s pretty and it’s nice and it’s a pain.
I grew up in Houston, Texas and I think I saw snow maybe twice in the first twenty years of my life. In looking at Houston history blogs it’s funny when they talk about snow … they’ll talk about this snow and that snow … basically a counting on the hands sort of thing. And although I haven’t lived in Houston since 1978 I know most of the earlier events they are talking about!
I’ve lived in North Carolina for almost thirty years. We don’t get a lot of snow here either, but we can expect at least one event a year. Some years more, some years less. We sometimes go two years with any. We also get significant ice storms every few years. I hate ice storms. You can expect days without power and I don’t care where you’re from, nobody is used to driving on ice. Don’t do it.
Now, don’t get all Yankee on me about driving in snow. It can be done, but you have to understand the fact that here, there just isn’t much snow removal capacity. Oh, they brine the roads beforehand … that always seems to me to be more like priming the pump. And sure, there is some snowplow activity, but the plowing appears to be more like they are using a Zamboni to prepare the ice rink. It amounts to scraping, scraping down to the point where they compact whatever ice is left onto the surface. We end up with a sheet of ice. If we are lucky and it gets sunny at some point, usually in the spring, the road clears pretty quickly. No word yet on when the sun will be restarted.
So, no matter what part of Maine or Minnesota or Chicago you are from, you’d probably be one of the people I really fear on the roads out here … zipping along with too much confidence and likely to slide and run into me.
Several times in my life I’ve had to drive long distances in snow and ice. Once, I was on a business trip, driving from central Virginia to Atlanta. I neglected to check the weather for my entire route. It was fine when I left. In NC I hit some flurries. As I went south, it got worse and worse. I just stayed in the wagon ruts and kept going hoping some overconfident Yankee didn’t run into me. Oh, I’m just joshing … it is the SUV drivers you have to worry about, really. I lost count of the number of SUVs I saw flipped, run into walls, or stranded dozens of yards out into fields by the side of the interstate. It was quite a trip. The entire state of South Carolina at twenty-five miles an hour … the only way to go.
There is a section in my novel THE FEVER where the hero gets stuck on the highway in such a situation … it was a compilation of some of those trips. One fan told me that was her favorite part but that she had to stop reading at some point and go put a sweater on.
So let’s sip our coffee and chat quietly and pray that the power doesn’t go out.
If we were having coffee today, I’d suggest you enter my Halloween Giveaway.
“Giveaway?”
Well, I’d explain, I just finished yet another lackluster Amazon giveaway. They are easy to set up, Amazon handles it all, but I’ve had mixed results with them. Sure, I’ve picked up twitter followers with some, have had a lot of entrants, but none of them have attracted as much attention as I’d hoped.
The way the Amazon giveaways work is that you buy the prizes up front and they take it from there. It’s a lazy-man’s giveaway.
“Oh, a perfect fit for you,” you might say .
Right. I had an extra copy left over … from the last giveaway. They give you the option of running another giveaway or getting a gift code for that copy. So, I decided this time, to get the gift code.
And here we are. I have this gift code for a kindle copy of my latest novel, A CURSE THAT BITES DEEP.
Here’s the deal … either comment here or leave a comment on my web page. I’ll take the names and throw them into a hat and pull one out and if you win, I’ll send you the gift code. Not as easy as Amazon … and maybe more depressing. But here we are …
Either comment here on the blog or on my web page (blog or web page comments only) indicate that you are interested in this Halloween giveaway … I’ll draw from the entries early on November 1. I’ll announce the winner on the blog.
WebPage comments:– just click >>. HERE
Or comment below.
If we were having coffee today I’d remind you to enter my giveaway. Yeah, I’m shamelessly using our coffee share to point it out. Well, it IS what I’ve got going on this week.
If we were having coffee today I’d have to break the news.
So, today, I’m launching an extended beta test with the rebranded title. The Mossback Cafe Cookbook. I think “Cafe” will likely play better in social media. What do you think? The rest of the cookbook is exactly the same.
If we were having coffee today I would no doubt be complaining about Daylight Savings Time. Yes, I hate it. I mostly hate it for a week or so when the clocks go forward. After that things sort of settle out. My feelings, though, go more toward why is it even necessary?
Scratching the Surface 