Bibliophilic Blather

Posted by KAREN WOJCIK BERNER

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the release of my first novel, A Whisper to a Scream. Five years ago, I uploaded my story on Kindle, pressed “Publish” and crossed my fingers.

I had no idea what I was doing.

I started learning about this relatively new thing called social media. I met all sorts of people crazy enough to do the same thing at Kindle Boards, people you might know like Al from BigAl’s Books and Pals, Lynne from Red Adept Publishing, and Karen McQuestion, the first indie darling of Amazon who had her work optioned for film. And yes, Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath were there, too. We shared helpful hints as we all mitigated our way through this infant of an industry alongside birth announcements. It’s amazing what a close community can spring up from a virtual world.

Exciting. Rebellious. We made our own paths, blazed our own trails while Konrath banged the drum of independence.

My first sale was exhilarating. And the one after that. And t…

Posted by KAREN WOJCIK BERNER

I'm happy to announce that A Groovy Kind of Love has been nominated in the Women's Fiction/Chick Lit category of the 2015 Readers' Choice Awards over at the awesome BigAl's Books and Pals review blog.

Voting started on Saturday, 3/14, and will continue until Saturday, 3/28. You could win a ton of books and even a $75 Amazon gift card if you head over to BigAl's Books and Pals to vote. If you were to vote for A Groovy Kind of Love, I'd be eternally grateful. Just sayin'.

Here's what the Pals had to say.

"In the twelve months ending February 28th, 2015, BigAl and the Pals will have received over 3,000 review requests and published more than 300 new book reviews. From those, we chose the books we felt stood out from the pack as exceptional examples of Indie (self-published and small press) writing and divided them into fourteen categories."

Here is the list of nominees.

Children/Middle Grade

Kid Nitro and the Sinist…

Posted by KAREN WOJCIK BERNER

Writing each book is a great learning experience, and A Groovy Kind of Love was no exception. Cheshire Cat's Looking Glass blog asked me three things I learned while writing this latest novel. Here are my answers.

1. My co-protagonist Spring Pearson’s mother and father were Hippies. There’s a common misconception that all Hippies did was smoke pot, listen to music, and roll around in the mud at Woodstock. While I’m sure a few did, that’s definitely not all. Many marched for civil rights, protested the Vietnam War, and truly believed they could change the world and its societal ills.

My father was delirious with joy I was only a toddler in the mid- to late sixties, because he was sure if I were older, I would have been out there protesting with the Hippies, and he would have had to bail me out of jail on several occasions. He’s right.

2. The other co-protagonist, Thaddeus Mumblegarden IV, plays baseball, much to his dismay and to the delight of his ov…

Posted by KAREN WOJCIK BERNER

As you know, my latest novel, A Groovy Kind of Love, has been on two book tours for the past month and a half. These promotional opportunities were supposed to provide me with the freedom to write while others did the work.

Instead, however, I was sucked into a vortex of checking each spotlight, review, interview, guest post, and mention like some crazed Pavlovian dog awaiting the electric shock of positive reinforcement.

Multiple times a day.

Blogs. Facebook. Twitter. Google Alerts. Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo, and Smashwords reviews.

If I didn’t check for a few hours, I’d get jumpy, like I was missing out on something. It was all so readily available on my phone, iPad, the computer, I lost control.

Once you get caught up in the promotional cycle, it’s difficult to get out. There’s always more that can be done, you see, whether you are traditionally published or self-published. More reviews to court. More guest posts to write. More interviews to give.…