Marilyn's Musings

My very first book, an historical family saga was published by Dorchester Press, not the biggest New York Publisher, but right up there. It actually did pretty well--and might've done better if I'd had a clue about promotion back then. This was before everyone had a computer and no one knew anything about the Internet. Right after the book was published, my editor left and that was the end of my association with Dorchester. I had another saga published by an outfit that the owner and son turned out to be crooks--yes, crooks, they gambled away all the royalty money in Vegas and ended up going to jail. Oh, and my time with crooks wasn't over, my first mystery, The Astral Gift , was published by a co-op publishers who did well at first, then absconded with everyone's money. In my case, only 50 books were printed and ordered by a bookstore where I had my first signing. The 50 books were sold and no more could be purchased because the publishers had disappeared. Golden Eagle...

Hard Shell Word Factory posts their best sellers both in e-books and trade paperbacks for the year and for the last quarter. The first in the Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series, Deadly Trail , was the 20th best seller in trade paperbacks for the entire year. Pretty good since this book has been out for several years. For the last quarter, Wishing Makes It So was the 6th best seller in trade paperbacks. Again, this book has been out for awhile. Amazing, and also good news! That's one of the big pluses for print-on-demand, books using this technology never got out of print--they are always available when someone wants one. Wishing Makes It So has always been one of my favorite books. It was based on something that our family went through though I can assure you I made it much darker than what actually happened, and the end results were much different. Deadly Trail is the beginning of the Tempe series, and many of the characters in it have survived though they have grown and chan...