Proofreading news

Hello, fans!

Because of the success of Gray this past month, I can now afford better proofreading services. Thank you to my readers for helping me get to this point. If I could shake every one of your hands in thanks, I would. I'm getting Quake and Erupt proofread this week and next, and by the first of May they should be as error-free as human effort can make them.

If you keep your updates turned on when you buy indie books (and not just mine), you can always have the best, current version of those books. Not every indie author has the money in hand to pay what can be thousands for developmental editing or hundreds for proofing or hundreds or thousands for a professional cover. My budget certainly did not allow for any of that, except for a few pre-made covers.

A friend of mine joked with me a few years ago that we looked up at the poverty line with great longing, even awe: wow, maybe we can be up there one day! I'm still laughing, not whining, about that. I made the choice to be poor, and I made the choice not to seek any governmental assistance when I was. But a decade of living on very little (often only $350 US per month), while it left me with time to write, did not leave me with a big pile of loot to pay for the launch of the books I had written during that time. Now, I can return my profits into the business and offer readers a better product. (Getting a phone can wait, right? I've lived without for many years, so it must not be that important.) Maybe I'll even be able to afford a real website by the end of 2015.

I thank you for your patience, and I thank you for your patronage. And a grateful shout-out to my family and friends who did my proofing these past six months. (No one proofs the blog but me--we'll all have to live with the occasional typo here.) Now...back to drafting the last chapters of Gray II, which I hope to have out in June.

Hello to the UK

I wanted to give a shoutout to my UK readers, who have been buying my novel Erupt at such a healthy pace. Thank you very much!

Boom! My imagination did not fail me

In my novel Erupt, I have several people experience the shockwave and sound wave of a volcanic eruption. I read up a lot on it, but I had to imagine it. Now this, posted this week originally on Facebook, reassures me I imagined pretty closely. Look at the cool shock wave. I'm in love with a video.

Erupt as paperback

Erupt is available as a paperback book at createspace.com, or through amazon.com.

A Smithsonian article on dangerous volcanoes

What makes a volcano dangerous? People

Their point is: volcanoes are most dangerous when there are people living nearby. They mention seven dangerous volcanoes, and of the Cascades picked Rainier (while I picked Hood for my novel!)

It's live!

The first book is on amazon, for sale as a kindle.

Mt. Hood in Oregon erupts with terrifying power. A shock wave slams into a helicopter carrying two volcanologists. A thousand-degree cloud of ash hurtles at hurricane speeds down the mountainside toward two hikers. Suffocating ash rains down on the campsite of a troubled teenager, stranding him and his family miles from help. Massive mudflows rush down the river valleys and into 23-year-old Chad Keppler's small town. His lifelong dream is to be a firefighter, but after he fails the physical test, that dream seems about to slip away. But he can do this one thing: wade into the swirling, debris-filled mud, to prove to himself that he has the strength and courage it takes to save lives.