So, unless you are always reading free books, those titles start adding up. Fifty books at $3 each is $150. That is definitely getting into the realm of buying a subscription to Kindle Unlimited. There are hundreds of thousands of titles available for KU subscribers for no additional cost. And those aren’t all unknown authors or $3 books. Some of the titles are as much as $10.

So, if you like to read a lot, it can be a pretty good deal. And, all of my books are currently available on KU, too. Except, of course, the book you can get for free for subscribing to this blog… the form should be over to the right.

Just in case you are wondering, as authors, we DO get paid for KU reads. We are paid per page. The actual payment varies each month, but in general I make just a little less than I do on a purchase, IF you read the whole book. It also bumps the book up in the ratings as more pages are read.

Right now I am well behind where I need to be in order to reach my book sales/KU reads goal for September. But if a few of you that are KU subscribers give me some reads, I’ll be right on track again.

As if you didn’t already know where to find my books… Here is my Amazon Author link. For good measure, here is my Vocal Media link, too. There you will find a lot of my short stories. Those are FREE to read, always, but if millions of you go and read my stories, I’ll make enough money to buy a happy meal.

I offer an ebook called Escape for subscribing to my blog. You can get the whole thing free… or you can catch Escape on Vocal and read the first three chapters. You can click from one to the next at the end of each segment.

If you want to catch a little of Planning Vengeance (which has just had an update on Amazon…) then there is this clip available on Vocal. Or you can get the whole book for just THREE BUCKS. If you are a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can read ANY of my books on Amazon for free… all are enrolled in KU.

The next one (chronologically on Vocal) is an excerpt from Lies and Omissions. So, you can pick up a clip for L&O on Vocal or buy it on Amazon.

Triple Cross was the next one that I set up to have an excerpt on Vocal.

From the book Who, What, When, Why? I included a bunch of clips. All of the Vocal links (a couple are multi-part, so the first one is linked) are as follows. The Cliff The Angel The Busboy

From the book Grafton, I included a clip from Melody on Vocal. I really ended up liking her backstory. She doesn’t get enough play in the mainline books… at least not befitting how important her character is to the stories. But here she was able to shine. I think she was pretty good in the other Grafton stories, too.

Finally, Unknown Caller. There is only one excerpt, but I did a bonus story ONLY on Vocal. So, the excerpt on Vocal is here, but the bonus story about Colt on Vocal is here…

The first was for a challenge. The subject was confessions, and I have to admit that mine was pretty light… not the deep, dark secret for which they were looking. But it is funny. Now. Trapped in the Closet.

It didn’t get much attention, and I guess that’s because it hasn’t been promoted very much, but there was a challenge about animals, and I wrote about a dog I rescued. She was a wonderful dog, too. Little Orphan Annie is her story.

My father has snuck into some of my writing (as has my mother), but this one was written for his birthday. Often, in my old blogs, I would pen something to him each year. It is simply Happy Birthday, Dad.

The Culvert Pipe has become one of my most popular stories. I don’t remember much about the original incident, except what I have been told for years, but the conversations with my father are very much in my mind. Still. Often.

Again with a challenge entry, A Tale of Two Stories made me push to figure out what to write about bedtime stories.

First, the blog.

I used to have a few hundred readers a week. But, in February, FB changed their algorithm, and engagement from there fell off a cliff. In two weeks it fell to 5% of what it had been before. Oddly, I started getting a LOT of ads from FB offering to sell me traffic. Nice, huh?

Getting back to the level I was at before will take a while, but I want to start on that path. So, between now and the end of September, I would like to add 15 subscribers to the blog, and increase my readership from 2-3/day to 3-4/day.

If you weren’t aware, if you subscribe, you can get a FREE ebook. I even have instructions on Vocal telling you how to load it onto your Kindle device or app. Why, yes, I did just link them there…

Speaking of Vocal.

I only started on the platform a few months ago, but I’ve added over 60 stories. Some of the content is shared between here and there, but some isn’t. Going forward there will be more promotion of content from Vocal, but less shared content… I’ll tell you about it here, but it will be there to read.

Here is my profile…

Currently, I average about 7 reads/day. In a given thirty day period, I am hanging around 215-225. 300 is a pretty big jump, but I’d like to try to get there. in the last thirty days, I had 9 that were over 10 reads. If not for the dumb zero read days…

And Amazon Books.

This is the big one, the one that scares me. It is more important than the others, but the others can help drive this one. And it can help the book sales sustain themselves.

I want to sell 50 books in one month.

I have given away thousands of copies of my books. Each time, it has taken advertising that I had to pay for, and has resulted in an increase in sales… but usually not enough to cover the advertising. Offering up discounted books was actually worse. there wasn’t a big jump in sales, and the cost was not even close to covered.

Lane’s books on Amazon.

I do plan on doing some marketing, while I might offer a freebie (Planning Vengeance… so, if you are thinking of buying it, hold off… it will be free at some point in September, I think). the major push will be full price ($2.99) Kindle books. I mean, if you WANT a book in print, that’s cool, too. But the goal is based on Kindle books, and Kindle Unlimited reads.

As a side note, I make almost the same from a Kindle sale as from a Kindle Unlimited full read. It doesn’t matter to me which you prefer… just please give a review.

Making a hundred bucks is a pretty modest goal, but it is also a stepping stone to making the books economically viable. I enjoy writing them, and a few people seem to enjoy reading them. I also think I’m getting better at it. I do know that I would probably be better served to hire out cover design and a few other aspects of marketing, but I need a basis from which to do that.

So, buy a book or eight and then leave me reviews… even if they aren’t five-star. Even personal feedback is good. I’d LOVE to know people are reading what I write.

The next story, also for the barn challenge, was Shelter of Providence. the characters were mentioned in The Magic, and they are the beginning of the Hammond Family. We find out about the origins of the barn.

The next prompt was a slice of chocolate cake. The story is called Waiting for Cake, and details a woman’s wait for the man she loves returning home after a war. Will he remember her and still have the same dreams as when he left?

The third challenge in the SFS was about a brown paper package. In this episode, the widow of one of the Hammond men gets a surprise visitor. He delivers the last effects of the man he knew while they were together… shortly before her husband’s death. The Visitor.

The next two stories are more connected. Love Grew Among the Marigolds required a marigold to be mentioned. The action in this story moves from Ohio to Alabama and New York, all set in post Civil War America.

But all was not certain. For the bull challenge in the SFS, there was a duel. The bull watches as a life ended in the field next to his. The Rest of their Days is the recounting of their events leading to the duel.

Dancing in the Sky was the SFS entry for a story requiring a green light. Again, we join the Hammond family as one of the members travels from Ohio to Canada, and then back to Michigan, driven by a desire to see the Northern Lights.

The Frozen Pond prompt was very different from most of the previous pieces. It is more contemporary, with one of the children of the main characters from the first story revisiting the property to recharge. Break Away.

The final SFS challenge entry needed a pear tree included in the story. I decided that the pear tree would be integral to the story, as the main characters moved through time, the tree helping to document their lives and providing a type of allegorical parallel. Through The Lens served as a nice wrap up to the Hammond Saga.

The second challenge involved a chocolate cake. Again, I reached into my novels and pulled out one scene from Lies and Omissions, but again, the end result is very different. Burger, Meatloaf and Cake is about a young man’s conversations with his father before the father’s passing.

Viewfinder is completely different. The brown wrapped package in a camera that frees one young man from his visual limitations. It is based on an experience I had selling cameras. I obviously didn’t know everything that happened away from the store, so it is highly fictionalized.

Because I love writing action, I knew I needed an action story. Death by Any Other Name was the entry for the marigold prompt. We have an assassin with something to prove.

For the raging bull, I stretched a little bit. We have Colt Dixon, from Unknown Caller, but this is a new story from the time before he shows up in the novel. There are allusions to his life before being sent to St. Croix, and this is one of those stories. Colt Dixon and his LM002. The marquee badge for Lamborghini is a raging bull… exactly what I needed for the story.

For the green light challenge, I picked the most obvious green light I could think of… a traffic light. Add in some illegal street racing, a ringer, and some terribly cool cars, and the resulting story is Thunderbolt.

After Thunderbolt, the next prompt was writing including a frozen pond. This one has had some great comments on the FB groups for Vocal writers… A middle schooler walking home takes a shortcut in An Adventurous Boy.

The final prompt was to include a pear tree. In most of my stories, the prompt was featured prominently, but in this one, because of the inspiration for the story, the pear tree isn’t nearly as visible. It isn’t a central part of the story, but the story is fun and lighthearted. I was really looking for another word to add to the alliteration, but settled on Vodka and Vanity.