A Sci-Fi Book Recommendation for Your Summer/Beach Reading: J. W. Garrett's Remeon's Destiny

Remeon's Destiny, Book One of J. W. Garrett's sci-fi Realms of Chaos series, releases on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, on Amazon. It's available for preorder now at this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CK5MF2X/ref=pe_385040_112047530_TE_DP

He is the key to a world's survival.

Here's the cover art and the Amazon description to lure you into this wonderful read:



A boy seeking adventure … A world that's dying … A war that may have no winners …

Thomas longs to escape the drudgery of farm life, dreaming of adventure and running away from his demanding parents.

Planet Remeon is on the brink of destruction, fighting a crippling disease that threatens to wipe out their civilization.

Thrust into their world, Thomas is caught in the middle of telepathic mind games between the Day Watchers and the Night Dwellers.

Alliances will be broken. Thoughts will be controlled. Will anyone survive?

* * *

Enjoy!

Denise Barker

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Jodi Taylor's Just One Damned Thing after Another

This is Book One of her series entitled The Chronicles of St. Mary's. It's simply wonderful. This UK author has a wicked sense of humor and obviously a love of ancient world history. As an American, just reading her British idioms transports me to another place, while the main character, Alex, takes me to some more. Love her and the other creative rule-breakers who work for St. Mary's. Except for the bad guys of course.

If you like your sci-fi/fantasy/time travel stories with comedy, tragedy, adventure, romance and a smattering of history lessons, this one's got it all. Even work intrigue. I read it in one sitting. What fun! There are seven books in the series, counting this first one plus the one due out May 5, 2016, which you can preorder now on Amazon.

Can't wait to read the rest of them. Enjoy! 

"If your vocation isn’t a vacation, then quit, leap, change careers."

Denise Barker, Author, Blogger, Copy Editor
Books that Build Character(s)

amazon.com/author/denisebarker

http://denisebarkerauthor.blogspot.com/

http://bit.ly/DeniseBarkerBlog

http://bit.ly/AMAZONDeniseBarkerEbooks

http://bit.ly/BNDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/SMASHWORDSDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/KOBODeniseBarkerEBooks

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you give someone a book, you don’t give him just paper, ink, and glue.  You give him the possibility of a whole new life. Christopher Morley
The best inheritance you can leave your kids is an example of how to live a full and meaningful life. Dan Zadra

What Is the Basic Word Count for Flash Fiction, Short Story, Novelette, Novella, Novel, Saga?

I've been working on my Short Story Collection #2 and, by some definitions, these three "short stories" are each long enough to warrant the novelette designation.

But it depends on which source you check. I went to my two mainstays, 16CMS and Web11, and neither provided me with word counts per category. And you'll find variations when searching the Internet or while checking submission instructions online.

If you are going the traditional publishing route, by all means go by prescribed guidelines for the line best suited for your work within that house. For instance, a quick search finds at least twenty-one imprints under the Simon & Schuster publishing umbrella.

However, if you are going the Indie route, then research the offerings out there and pick your own standard to go by. After reading several sites, I compiled what I thought was the best of the best with my gut as the official tiebreaker, when needed. Here's my working theory to date:

3–1,000 WC = Flash Fiction	~4 pp. "He died alone" tells a story, brings forth emotions, has the reader asking questions; so must have ≥3WC to start a tale.
1,001–7,500 WC = Short Story	~4–30 pp.
7,501–20,000 WC = Novelette	~30–80 pp.
20,001–40,000 WC = Novella	~80–160 pp. MG readers
40,001–60,000 WC = Novels, category	~160–240 pp. Genres like romance, western, etc.
60,001–90,000 WC = Novels, singles	~240–360 pp. YA, paranormal, fantasy/sci-fi, etc.
90,001–150,000 WC = Novels, mainstream	~360–600 pp. Thriller/horror, mystery, crime fiction
150,001+ WC = Sagas	~600+ pp. Michener's Hawaii, Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Mitchell's Gone with the Wind

As I mentioned above, this is my current working theory, subject to revisions as I refine it. But it works for me. And there are always exceptions, so we can agree upon that.

Oh, and I estimated page counts based on 250 words/page.

One thing to always remember when e-publishing anything other than a novel/saga, be sure to clearly mark same on your cover, in your online description, in your title even. Not all people check the page-length info given on amazon.com and other venues. So readers get understandably upset when purchasing what they think is a full-length novel and getting shortchanged with only fifty pages' worth. Better for them to purchase what they think is a midsize novel of three hundred pages and get one of five hundred pages instead.


LEGEND:
16CMS = The Chicago Manual of Style, Sixteenth Edition
Web11 = Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition
WC = word count
MG = middle grade
YA = young adult

"If your vocation isn’t a vacation, then quit, leap, change careers."

Denise Barker, Author, Blogger, Copy Editor
Books that Build Character(s)

amazon.com/author/denisebarker

http://denisebarkerauthor.blogspot.com/

http://bit.ly/DeniseBarkerBlog

http://bit.ly/AMAZONDeniseBarkerEbooks

http://bit.ly/BNDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/SMASHWORDSDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/KOBODeniseBarkerEBooks

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you give someone a book, you don’t give him just paper, ink, and glue.  You give him the possibility of a whole new life. Christopher Morley
The best inheritance you can leave your kids is an example of how to live a full and meaningful life. Dan Zadra

What Do Readers Choose to Read?

This is a related post from the one earlier today.  Something within that first blog stirred my need to know.  So I did more unscheduled research and came up with the following interesting info.  My apologies for any errors or math miscalculations.  Believe me, they were not intended.  However, with that caveat, here we go.

As authors we should consider this:  What are our potential readers reading?  What genres do these Kindle Million Club authors encompass?  Does offering a huge selection of books to the public help generate these one million books sold?  

Restricting this discussion to the Kindle Million Club authors, here is a thumbnail overview:

Line No.	Kindle Million Club Author	Novels Published to Date*	Genre
1.	D. Baldacci	22	Thriller**, Children's
2.	A. Hocking	9	YA Paranormal
3.	S. Meyer	8	YA Vampire Romance
4.	S. Larsson	3	Thriller
5.	J. Patterson	48	Thriller
6.	Nora Roberts	209	Romance
7.	Nora Roberts aka J.D. Robb	42	Thriller
8.	C. Harris	12	Vampire Thriller
9.	Lee Child	16	Thriller
10.	S. Collins	8	Children’s, Sci-Fi
11.	M. Connelly	25	Thriller
12.	John Locke	12	Humorous Thriller
13.	K. Stockett	1	Historical
14.	J. Evanovich	45***	Humorous Thriller, Humorous Romance
15.	G. R.R. Martin	14	Fantasy, Sci-Fi

* -  no short stories or anthologies counted (at least not on purpose)

** - "Thriller" includes mysteries and police procedurals

*** - some of Janet Evanovich's novels counted here were co-authored

NOTE:  The children's genre is skewed as I was ignoring it at first, like I did the short stories and the anthologies--based on the fact they are probably not novel-length books, may not be necessarily offered via Amazon (such as articles, another category I overlooked, would most likely be published in magazines, periodicals, etc.) plus any anthology purchase could be deemed due to another contributor's name on the cover.  Hence, not part of why these authors made Amazon's Kindle Million Club.   However, it shows up for Collins as her bibliography has more books in that genre.  I plan to update this category with more research later (hopefully not today as I am already so off track--ha!).  At that time, I'll add the appropriate entries where needed and a confirming postscript at the end of this entry.

The million-sales-generating genres include crossovers so here's that tally per the authors referenced above, starting with the most desired/bought and working down to the other favorites:

     9 Thrillers/Mysteries/Police Procedurals, including the two mixed genres noted below

     3 Romance, including the two mixed genres noted below  /
3 Humorous, including the two mixed genres noted below

     2 Young Adults  /  2 Science Fiction  /  2 Humorous Thrillers  /  2 Children's

     1 Paranormal Romance   / 1 Historical  /  1 Fantasy / 1 Vampire Thriller  / 1 Humorous Romance

Remember, these numbers here indicate genres shared among these Kindle Million Club authors, not the number of books written.  If I have the genres wrong, then my math here is inherently erroneous, so take that into account.

Obviously Nora Roberts aka J.D. Robb has the greatest number of books written to date among this selection of novelists.  Even adding together all the other authors' publications from the chart above, I come up with roughly 223 novels compared to 251 just by Nora.  That is incredible.  As author Nora Roberts, she has written 209 romance books.  Under the J.D. Robb pen name for her In Death murder series, she's created another 42.

Still, you have a debut author making this list with her lone contribution (K. Stockett).

So just because you aren't as prolific as Nora or have a humongous backlist to convert to e-book format, you can still accomplish great things with one individual story.

The other single-digit-book-producing authors here have trilogies--or a quadrilogy--going for them (Hocking, Meyer, Larsson, Collins).

The beginning of the double-digit producers (covering 11-19 books) seem to be replete with authors doing a longer series.  Look at Harris with her book/TV series, Child's Reacher series, then Locke's two series with his start on a third, ending with Martin who has one series among his other standalone books.

For authors offering twenty-something books to choose from, we have the series theme popping up again, with Baldacci's four (counting the children's series) and Connolly's three.

Nobody considered here has thirty-ish books published.  They either have less or more.  So we jump into the forty-plus-books-published category:  Patterson and Evanovich.  They both have embraced the book series, too.

Also, per our Kindle Million Club author listing, you can be traditionally published or Indie-published, as Hocking and Locke attest to, and still make the cut.

To recap, here's what readers want based on my personal analysis of Kindle's Million Club authors. 

A great entertaining read, first and foremost would be my generic answer, whether (1) hundreds of books prolifically written throughout the decades (keep 'em coming) or (2) a standalone adult novel, your first even, in whatever category (every one of these extraordinary authors started with Book One).  (3) Both traditionally and Indie-published authors appear in this list.  Top-selling genres include (4) Thrillers, then (5) Romance and Humor genres.  (6)  Create a series, at least a trilogy, but longer is better.  (7)  It is okay to mix genres.  Plus, as you see fit, (8) add in these elements:  fantasy, paranormal, vampire and/or sci-fi; (9) feel free to write to these audiences: young adults and children; and (10) they want more serious reads first and lighthearted reads second.

One final point.  No matter what genre of book is selling big at the moment, no matter what genre of movie is drawing record numbers at the theaters, no matter what genre of TV show is a huge hit, write from your heart.  Write what you want.  Write what you are drawn to.  If it happens to be the current "thing," so much the better.

Just as I am compelled to do this research and these two blogs today no matter what my To Do list may dictate, sometimes you gotta go with your gut.  Trust your instincts.  If they are nudging you now, then now is the right time to do it.

Like Kathryn Stockett's "differences" stand out among the other authors within Amazon's Kindle Million Club on so many levels (it's her debut novel, it's the only historical on the list, she made her one million in sales from one single book--that's a big following), she could be deemed the anomaly.  So could one of us someday.

And that's it.

For now.