Books, Birthdays, and Bottles!

Let us bullet point the last few days...

• My niece had her birthday! I can't believe she is five.  As she gets older I smile to watch her become more and more of a "person".  Her personality is distinct already.  What is better, is she seems to enjoy Uncle Nick and that makes me very happy.

She had a Hello Kitty cake :)

• I got to see some of my extended family that I love and miss very much.  It was a treat to get to see them while they were here. 

• I had a birthday of my own as well, which actually is today.  But we celebrated it at the beach, in style, over the weekend.  Tonight I will be going to a fancy dinner too! 

Yeah, we played volleyball Top Gun style. He was Goose.

• Two of my good friends gave me the same gift.  It got awkward. 

Jack meet bigger Jack. No need to feel inadequate. 

• Picked out a logo, business cards, and made reservations at the London Book Fair for our company. Our sales rep is lining up clients faster than we can get them on board, and business is not only trending upward, it is really fun as well.  

• I read a bit of a cool book called Nameless by Joe Conlan.  Check it out. 

Not only is he pretty talented, he is also a pretty good dude.  Genuinely a nice guy.

• I managed to get a bit of writing done as well.  I am excited to get the third novel out to you lovely people that ask me about it every week.  It makes an author feel excellent to be "anticipated."

TTFN Denmonites!

-ND

Good News All Around

My business partners and I recently re-tooled and opened up a marketing side of our business.  We had done social media blitz campaigns in the past and it worked well for us as well as the clients that we took on.

Recently, through some one on one conversations with author friends of ours, we have succeeded in signing up quite a few monthly clients (monthly so it is affordable) and with great success.

In order to expand our reach we brought on a Director of Sales and he has really embraced his role thus far. 

The whole endeavor is exciting because we have seen the results of a well disciplined social media campaign and it feels good to help our fellow writers get their voices to a larger, targeted, audience.

This also helps us round out the services we offer authors and we are pretty much a full service company at this point with our previous coverage in editing, formatting, e-distribution, and now full scale social media marketing.

It frees up writers to actually write versus spending all of their time on Twitter and Facebook seeking out an audience for their work.

Speaking of writing and things related....

I have re-signed my cover artist Jesse Horst to do the third cover in the Upstate New York Mafia Tale series.  He did the first two covers and his work on For Nothing was voted one of the Top 5 Best Book Covers of 2011.  I consider this a coup and am pretty sure if we weren't pals I wouldn't be able to afford him.  

His work is that good.

I can't wait to see what he comes up with for Ashes to Ashes.  Watch this spot for a preview in the next few days. 

To hold you over, here is a sweet picture Jesse took of the old Bethlehem Steel administration building.  The factory had a prominent role in Buffalo Soldiers and this picture provides at least some insight into Jesse's talent.

Looks like it could be the cover of a Horror Novel, no?

TTFN Denmonites!

-ND