Thank You Marie!

It's been a few weeks since I posted anything here, so I think it's time for an update!  I'm currently busy revising away at my latest effort, Bachelor Number Nine, and spending some time in lovely Laguna Beach.

We've had some epic surf this week here in Southern California, thanks to a hurricane named Marie.  Of course, as a surfer I had to take some time off this week to hit it!  These kinds of swells don't come around every day...

After surfing on Wednesday, I headed up to the famous Wedge in Newport Beach to take some photos of the body surfers who have free reign on the place during the day.  Lifeguards kick out all of the surfers and body boarders, just to keep things from getting too crazy out in the water.  Here are some shots:

Today the swell was finally winding down out there, but this is definitely one of those that will be remembered for years to come!

Bachelor Number Nine - First Draft finished!

Whew!  When I started working on the second volume in my Bachelor Series last May, I hoped to have a 65,000 word rough draft of Bachelor Number Nine finished by the middle of August.  Well, it is now August 14th and... I just made it!

I've completed my first draft, which came in at 64,911 words.  Only 89 words short of the target!  I'm pretty happy with it at this point.  We'll see how I feel once I get into the revisions, but hopefully I'll have it all done and ready to go by the end of September.  Knock on wood, anyway!

Not One Giveaway, but Two!

This month on Goodreads I'm giving away a free paperback copy of not just one of my books, but two of them!  These giveaways are open to readers in the United States (sorry foreign readers!).  The first book is my latest romance, Bachelor Number Five:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Bachelor Number Five

by Kenneth Rosenberg

Giveaway ends September 28, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

The second is my non-fiction Memoirs of a Starving Artist: An Itinerant Writer's Journey through an Unconventional Life:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Memoirs of a Starving Artist

by Kenneth Rosenberg

Giveaway ends August 31, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win 

Feel free to enter one or both!  Don't want to miss the next one?  Sign up for my New Release and Giveaway notifications list by entering your e-mail below! (No e-mail addresses will be shared with anyone, ever.  Also, signing up for the e-mail list below will not enter you into the giveaways.  Click on the links above for that).

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Good luck to all who enter!

Life Imitates Art

There is a term that screenwriters sometimes use called the "inciting incident."  That is the incident early on in the script that basically sets the story in motion.  For instance, think of the movie Titanic.  Early on, Leonardo di Caprio's character wins passage on the ship in a poker game.  He thinks it is a great bit of luck, but we all know better.  For his character, that one game sets the stage for what will come.  It is the inciting incident.

In my latest novel, Bachelor Number Five, the inciting incident comes when our heroine, Amanda, sees a magazine cover on the rack at her local grocery store.  She is fed up with her life in small-town Iowa.  When she sees a tabloid magazine with a cover promoting the bachelors from her favorite TV show, it sets her own story in motion.  That one image leads her to pack in her life and move off to Hollywood.

The magazine cover in question shows her favorite bachelor standing bare chested on an L.A. beach.  I thought it was a pretty good idea when I wrote it.  Then yesterday I had a bit of a deja vu moment.  I went to my local supermarket and saw this in the magazine rack at the checkout stand:

I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  Hollywood is always trying to sell sexy bachelors and bachelorettes.  Why else would I have written the book?  It is nice to see, however, that my imagination isn't too far off the mark!

European Sojourn Winding Down

As an itinerant writer, I've spent a big portion of the last five years in Europe.  I've lived in places where the atmosphere is thick with inspiration and the rents are cheap.  This means primarily Lisbon, Tallinn, and most of all Budapest.  Now I'm visiting friends in the south of France, which has been terrific.  I also caught up with some friends outside of Venice and spent some time there getting to know the place.

Overall, I've enjoyed my time in Europe, and I've also found it to be a great place to write, with fantastic cafes and libraries to work in.  I do tend to get a bit homesick at times, though, and I miss the outdoor lifestyle of my native California.  I miss the surfing and snorkeling, mountain biking, hiking and snowboarding.  I miss being able to throw a bunch of camping gear into my pickup truck and head off at a moment's notice on a wilderness adventure.

And so, this present sojourn is coming to a close.  In two more days I'll say au revoir to France, goodbye to Europe, and I'll head on back to sunny So Cal.  It's always sad to say goodbye to the many friends I've made over here, but home is calling my name!

Hitting the Big Time!

When I was younger and just starting out as a writer, my dad and I used to joke around about when I finally hit the big time with a big advance or a movie sale that I'd pull up in front of my parents' house in a brand new red Ferrari.  Not that flashy cars are even my style, but somehow the joke stuck, so I couldn't resist taking this photo when I was out in front of the casino in Monte Carlo yesterday.

So here you go, dad!  Not that I've quite hit the big time yet, but maybe this is what it will look like when I do. :-)

Going "Perma-free"

Since I started my self-publishing journey four years ago, sales tactics for self-published authors have constantly evolved.  Back in 2010, not many authors were selling their books for less than $2.99.  Some of us found traction selling ours at 99 cents.  My first book, No Cure for the Broken Hearted, really took off at that price, garnering 300 sales per day for months on end.  It was a good time.

Later, authors began giving away their books for free for limited time periods.  One could get a huge boost in visibility, and thus sales, coming off of a free run.  Amazon's algorithms favored this tactic by placing these books high on the "also bought" lists that customers see when they look at another book.

Eventually Amazon adjusted their algorithms and this benefit evaporated.  These days, one of the tactics self-published authors use is to go permanently free with one of their books, on the hope that if a reader likes it, they might buy other books by the same author.

To give my own sales a boost, I decided to go "perma-free" with No Cure starting last week.  The first week was interesting.  Downloads took off out of the gate, with nearly 500 the first day.  Then they dropped, and dropped and dropped again.  Here's what the sales chart looks like:

By the seventh day, I only had 10 downloads in 24-hours.  Not so stellar.  Oddly, I didn't announce or promote the book being free until the second day, where I posted it in a few places on Facebook and Twitter.  I'm not sure why it took off like that all at once in the beginning.  What I do know is that when I gave this book away for a week several years ago, I had 45,000 total downloads.  That time I was picked up for a mention by a prominent promotional website.

In any case, I'm planning to leave this one free for the time being.  I'll try promoting it here and there, and hopefully pick up a few readers along the way.  For anyone who wants to read the book but hasn't yet, feel free! :-)