Popular Posts and Christmas Wishes

I've just been looking through my blog stats and noticed this is post 100 for this year.  Yay, as that means I'm not far off my goal for the year of posting twice a week.

I've been writing this blog for just over two years now and I've been amazed and humbled at how the readership has grown. When I first started it felt as though I was talking to myself, but then we writers are used to that!

My first posts were just before I had a publishing contract for Driftwood, and as I look back on them I realise how much I've learnt in that time and how much the publishing industry has changed, and the opportunities we now have as authors.

This time last year I published my second novel, Lives Interrupted, through Kindle and CreateSpace, and that was another learning curve.

The posts on my experiences on formatting and uploading a manuscript to Smashwords and KDP are searched regularly, and it's good to know they're  useful.  I've had some great emails from people asking questions and sharing their experiences.

I was interested to see what posts were the most popular for this year and thought I'd share links to the most viewed, excluding the formatting and uploading ones for Smashwords, KDP and CreateSpace as they're only interesting if you need the information.

So of the non-writing posts, one of the most viewed this year was The Sound of Thoughts. The photo of the Opera House is there because I wrote this post in Sydney.

Quite a few of the posts are writing related in some way, and another popular post was on Positive and Negative Character Traits, and this one on the topic and CSI.

I like sharing resources and interesting things I find and a TED talk inspired this post on what makes a good story, and I'm obviously not the only one who enjoys daydreaming.  

It's been an interesting year, and I'm looking forward to 2013 and am busy concocting plans and goals for the things I want to achieve.

Lives Interrupted is free to download on Amazon US and Amazon UK today (21st December), and if you missed it, or are waiting for Santa to deliver your eReader, it will also be free on 26/27th December.

Have a great weekend. 

It's Beginning To Feel A Bit Like Christmas

The work projects are in their closing stages, the Christmas tree is up AND I’ve actually wrapped presents and put them underneath the tree, so to misquote a song title, it’s beginning to feel a bit like Christmas.

I walked along my local beach earlier and the pohutukawas are looking beautiful. There are some photos of them sprinkled through this post. They bloom in December and so are known as New Zealand’s Christmas tree.  The cliffs at the end of the beach are ablaze with them at the moment.

Christmas in the southern hemisphere takes some getting used to if all you’ve known is northern hemisphere snowy celebrations.  At the moment all the windows and doors are open, and it’s still hot.

I do feel sorry for the shopping mall Santa's.  They’re dressed in warm red robes while the rest of us are in shorts and t-shirts.  Hearing/singing  traditional Christmas songs about the cold and snow also seems a little out of place.

We are approaching the longest day of the year, and the children have just started the long summer holidays. This means that Christmas and New Year holidays tend to stretch well into January in New Zealand, as families head off to the beach for holidays. Turkey and ham are Christmas favourites, but so also are family BBQs at the beach.

I’ll put my hand up for some extra reading time during the holidays.  I’ve been doing some serious work on the Leaning Tower of Pisa that is my ‘to be read’ pile, and that’s just the overflow from the bookshelves. My Kindle is also bursting, though fortunately no-one but me knows that!

It’s a year since I first published Lives Interrupted, and as it’s a present-giving time of year, Lives Interrupted is free to download on Amazon on 20 and 21 December  - Amazon UK. 

If you don't have an eReader, but are getting one for Christmas it will also be free on 26 and 27 December. 

Happy holidays and happy reading.