Month: December 2014

Book Brief: Murder She Typed

Murder She TypedMurder She Typed
by Sylvia Selfman
Genre: Cozy Mystery

Izzy Greene, a widow of a certain age, joins a writing group in an attempt to actually finish one of her stories. She gets more than she bargained for, however, when her nemesis, sexy blonde bombshell Sondra Sockerman, disappears under suspicious circumstances. Izzy soon realizes that she has a natural detecting ability as she and her friend, Flo, set out to find the killer…who is now after them.

Murder She Typed is available at Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

Continue reading “Book Brief: Murder She Typed”

Calibre for Readers – Part 1

calibre logoA few months ago I did a post about using the free program Calibre to create a Kindle compatible eBook file. That barely scratched the surface of the program’s capabilities. In this series of posts I’m going to discuss some of those other uses with a focus on how the program might be used by a reader. This won’t be a full blown tutorial. Instead I’ll make some suggestions and point you in the right direction. Obviously before you can do any of this you’ll need to download and install the proper version of Calibre for your computer. Continue reading “Calibre for Readers – Part 1”

Featured Book: The Sense of Darkness

The Sense of Darkness Book CoverThe Sense of Darkness
by Cinzia De Santis
Genres: suspense, romance, thriller
Available from Amazon.com and Amazon UK

A world of smell and touch is all Clara knows. Blind from birth, she grows up in a remote village surrounded by violence. Gifted with an extraordinary sense of smell, she becomes a famous healer, but her world shatters when a wounded stranger bursts into her life.

 Book Excerpt:

Clara went back to the man’s room. There was no part of his body that didn’t smell of death. The bandage she had put on him was already full of pus, and she had to change it. She gave him two more spoonfuls of her medicine and sat on the ground next to his bed, waiting for the remedy to take effect. Exhausted, she leaned her head against the wall, hoping for some rest. Suddenly she became aware that, in the midst of the stink of death, there was another smell. It was something she had never known before, at the same time disturbing and exciting, and it intoxicated her.

What others are saying:

“The Sense of Darkness has love, romance, betrayal, compassion and mystery…an engaging story that I recommend without hesitation.” – RMacLean, Amazon Reviewer

Amazon and VAT

Euro_coins_and_banknotesAmericans who publish their books with KDP received an email earlier this month about VAT and how it impacts the prices of their books. If you were a lucky recipient of that email, you might have spent a split second wondering what it was about, just before your eyes glazed over.

VAT is the abbreviation for Value-Added Tax. It’s sort of the same as our sales tax here in the U.S., and sort of not. For the purchaser, it’s more or less a national sales tax. However, for sellers, it’s a tax on whatever they added to the product (or material or service) by what they did to get it in shape to sell. Here’s how Wikipedia explains it: Continue reading “Amazon and VAT”