Quick Note about a FREE eBook!
Happy Thanksgiving! Pardon the interruption, but the Rhode Island Authors Showcase is still going strong! I just wanted to let you know about this freebie for the next five days.
My novel, The Way to Remember, is actually a reworking of the original Best Seller, released way back in 2014. It did well, too - 70 ratings and an average of 4 stars (out of five). Here's what one reader said: "Martha Reynolds is the sort of author one hopes to find. She is a natural storyteller, and if you enjoy one of her books, you are sure to enjoy them all. In Best Seller, all of her best skills as a writer are on display. Her characters are real flesh-and-blood beings, and they learn and grow as real people do. Her settings come alive so fully, you feel you know these places. Best of all, her stories unfold in perfect time. Best Seller bears the perfect title. I expect we will see Martha Reynolds's novels on many bestseller lists for years to come."
How great are reviews like that one?! But then.....the 'Zon strikes you down. Five years after its release, Amazon contacted me by email and said the title of my book was misleading and unacceptable, and unless I changed it within five days, they'd removed it from their selling platform. What??? I freaked out. I remember my husband was in Salzburg at the time, visiting family. I called my friend Dawn, who works in publishing, and she advised me to call Amazon directly. I did. I had at least five conversations with representatives (a different one each time). Each person I spoke with seemed sympathetic to my pleas ("It was optimistically titled!" "It never was a best seller!" "It's a novel, for crying out loud!"). In the end, they wouldn't budge.
So, I deleted the book, and there went all the nice reviews. I had to rename it (The Way to Remember is the title of the book my main character is writing), get a new cover, and while I was there, I tweaked the writing a little. It took over six months to get it re-published. And it has 18 very kind reviews. So I thought that by making it free for five days, maybe I could get it noticed. Again.
If you haven't read it yet, here's an opportunity to download the digital version for free! Go ahead, download it. And if you're so inclined, your thoughtful and constructive review on Amazon is very much appreciated.
Here’s the blurb:
Set in New England at the time of the American Bicentennial, The Way to Remember is the poignant story of a displaced young woman struggling to figure out who she is within the context of her hometown and the carefully masked dysfunction of her family. "Everything can be fixed by writing a check." Words to live by for Robin Fortune's wealthy father, until he can't buy her way back into college after she's expelled for dealing pot. Now he chooses not to speak to her anymore, but that's just one of the out-of-whack situations Robin's facing. At nineteen, she feels rudderless, working in a diner by day and sleeping with a buddy from high school by night - all so strange for her because she was always the one with the plan. While her college friends plotted how to ensnare husbands, she plotted a novel, which she scratched out into a series of spiral-bound notebooks she hides in the closet. But now, there's nothing. No vision, no future, no point. In fact, the only thing she feels she has to look forward to is that her favorite author, Maryana Capture, is paying a visit to the local Thousand Words bookstore. Robin surmises that if she can convince Maryana to help her get her novel published, she'll finally get herself back on track. Except that life never takes a straight path in this intensely satisfying coming-of-age novel.
Here's a link: https://tinyurl.com/2p9ypw7a
Thank you! Now, back to the Showcase. Get those comments in and you could win!