DEBUT NOVEL: THE MOMMY LETTERS, available now!

With an enormous sigh of relief and the urge to do handsprings for joy, may I present THE MOMMY LETTERS!

After six short stories, two compilations, and a half dozen books published as Tiffany Aller, I am thrilled to finally bring you my debut novel!

Join Sarah, Shawn, Kathryn and Elizabeth on their quest to bring Robin home. She's been missing without a trace for over 18 months...but now, a letter has come, and with it, all of the hope and uncertainty that the Universe can offer.

SPECIAL FOR FRIENDS, FAMILY and FANS: The Mommy Letters will be just 99 cents while KLG Press celebrates it's release, so grab it fast before it goes back up to it's normal price, $4.99!




BLURB:
A missing girl.
A brokenhearted mom.
A family torn apart.
How will it all end?

Sarah Hartsford arrives home from work to find a letter signed by her daughter. The only problem is that Robin left with her father on a business trip eighteen months ago...and neither returned. Could this letter possibly be from six-year-old missing Robin?

Shawn Caraway, Sarah's ex-husband and their small town's police detective, is determined to unravel the mystery. He regrets losing Sarah so many years before and wants now to be her champion. To find the missing girl, however, he must grill his former wife about the disappearance of her new husband and their daughter. Sarah wants to cooperate, but her hope is speared with doubts and frustration. Haven't the police asked her enough questions? Will the answers to any of those questions bring her daughter home?

When the investigation leads to a place Sarah doesn't want to return, an unlikely foe emerges. As her anguished past begins to threaten her very future, Sarah braces herself for the fight of a lifetime.


CAN YOU HELP ME?

Help me get out the word about THE MOMMY LETTERS! Can you help me out by sending a tweet, posting on Facebook, or recommending the title on Goodreads? I'd appreciate you more than you'll ever know!


ARE YOU A BOOK BLOGGER OR REVIEWER?

Ask me how you can get a free copy in return for posting a non-biased review to Amazon and Goodreads! Leave me your info in the comments and I'll have a copy off to you before you can count to ten!

Anne M. Carpenter is the Next Big Thing

Happy 2013, friends!

Several months ago, the lovely Julie Elizabeth Powell tagged me at the end of her Next Big Thing blog...and here I am, finally participating!

Without further ado... <insert cheesy daytime game show announcer voice here>

Anne M. Carpenter is the Next Big Thing!

The rules of the challenge are:

1. Answer 10 questions about my current WIP (Work-In-Progress)
2. Tag five other writers and link their blogs so we can all hop over and read their answers.

The questions are:

1. What is the working title of your book?
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
3. What genre does your book fall under?
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
9. Who or What inspired you to write this book?
10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?


Anne says...

1. My current work in progress is THE MOMMY LETTERS. It was supposed to go up a year ago. And then six months ago. And then four months ago. And then last month. I keep tweaking and rereading and changing a word here or there and tweaking a bit more. I have, however, have a come-to-Jesus meeting with my partner...and now realize that I'm editing the very life out of my baby. That means that I'm right now in my very last read through before publication. COMING SOON, I promise!

2. Back in 2006, a few months after I got married and combined households with my (new-at-the-time) husband, I had one of the most vivid dreams of my life. For those of you who later read my book, I'll just mention now that the dream centered on the church scene. Now, when you get to that part, you'll understand  why it compelled me to start writing.

3. THE MOMMY LETTERS is a missing child mystery with a dash of paranormal and a hint of romance. Oh, and some fun small town politics. Whee! We see the book unfold from three point of views - (1) the mom, Sarah; (2) one of the big sisters, Katie; and (3) the mom's first husband, Shawn.

4. Were THE MOMMY LETTERS to become a movie, I'd envision...

• Demi Moore as Sarah (Robin's mom, Rockingham Selectman),
• Tom Cruise as Shawn (Sarah's 1st husband, Rockingham police detective)
• Matthew McConnaughey as Jason (Sarah's 2nd husband, Robin's dad)
• Ariel Winter as Liz (Sarah's oldest daughter with Shawn)
• Bailee Madison as Katie (Sarah's younger daughter with Shawn)
• Mia Talerico as Robin (Sarah's daughter with Jason)
• Meryl Streep as Dr. Kimball (Sarah's therapist)
• Angela Lansbury as Grace (Sarah's mom, Sam's Ferry resident)
• Reece Witherspoon as Dina (Rockingham mayor)
• Denzel Washington as Lieutenant Dave (Sam's Ferry police officer)
• Billy Bob Thornton as Ben (Rockingham handyman, Sam's Ferry resident)
• Frances McDormand as Mary Ellen (Sam's Ferry postmistress)
• Diane Keaton as Dr. George (child psychiatrist)
• Georgia Engel as Louise (Sarah's secretary)

P.S. I think we'll need to mortgage Alaska to pay the tab on this all-star cast!

5. One sentence synopsis of THE MOMMY LETTERS: Sarah is beginning to pick up the pieces with her older daughters after her youngest's disappearance when a letter arrives that will shock her to her core and drag decades-old secrets out of the closet.

6. THE MOMMY LETTERS will be published by KLG Press, a company I co-own with romance author Patti Ann Colt.

7. It took me 5 years to write the first draft of THE MOMMY LETTERS - on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off and...

8. I would compare THE MOMMY LETTERS to a Mary Higgins Clark-type mystery. While writing, I also often thought of such YA/MG titles as THE YEAR WITHOUT MICHAEL and THE FACE ON THE MILK CARTON. I think lovers of any/all of the above will enjoy THE MOMMY LETTERS.

9. THE MOMMY LETTERS was born of a dream and that dream is still nagging me!

10. Fun fact: Katie, Sarah's middle daughter, "knows" things - she has dream-like communication with her missing sister, envisions situations before they occur, and has hunches on par with a seasoned detective - her father! But in small town New England, this is a bit hard to grasp, making her "talents" difficult for her family to believe in. Luckily, she's spunky and determined and, with big sister Liz's support, becomes a key player in bringing home their littlest sibling, Robin.

TAGGED: If you've read this, consider yourself tagged. Half the world has already done this meme, so I know if I use specific names, they'll probably already have done it.

Have a fabulous day!

Why I Became an Indie Publisher

Happy 12/12/12, ya'll!

I've been dying to talk about how and why I became an indie publisher for quite some time now.

But before we get to the meat of today's post, remember that the publishing company (KLG Press) I run with fellow author Patti Ann Colt is part of Intuit's Small Biz Big Wishes campaign. We'd love you forever if you'd hop over there for a minute and vote for our entry! Mwah! CLICK HERE!

Also, before I forget, KLG Press is running it's last 3 free days for HOW TO ROAST A TURKEY IN 10 EASY STEPS today thru Friday. Go pick up a copy! CLICK HERE!

And now, to the post!

I've always been a writer and a communicator. I know many of you can relate to that. I started writing a school newspaper in first grade; wrote my first fiction "novel" in fifth grade; edited my middle school newspaper and high school yearbook; anchored my middle school news broadcast; worked as a Top 40 and Classic Rock DJ in college; wrote for several corporations through my full-time jobs with them; and now make my full-time living as a freelance writer. I've also blogged here, there and everywhere for years, and started more novels than I could count. Plus, I've won a number of short story contests, typically in flash fiction categories.

So that's nice and all...but where did the leap occur to take me from professional corporate writer and fiction dabbler to an indie publisher who will have published almost 40 titles before year's end?

That's a funny story. Glad ya asked.

Patti and I are related by marriage; she's my mother-in-law's (much!) younger sister. She's also the only family my husband has living in our area. As a result (and, naturally, because she rocks) we spend a lot of time together.

And that was our setting on New Year's Eve, as 2010 was about to become 2011. My kiddos and I, plus she and her grandson, were gathered to hang out that night.

She'd long since invited me to join one of her writing groups and we commonly chatted on blogging topics as well. We had also co-authored a cooking blog for over a year at that point. She was a multi-published romance author, I was knee deep in more manuscripts than I could count and struggling to finish just one.

And then...lighting flashed, bullets zinged and a brainstorm was born.

We'd create our own company! We grabbed her handy dandy Flip Dictionary (don't have one? it's a thesaurus on crack!) and brainstormed a company name, purpose and foundation.

Voila! KnowLinkGrow was born. A year later, we'd complete the legal paperwork to become an LLC.

We toiled away at joining our plethora of blogs together in early 2011, figuring out designs and writing schedules and such.

And then, I had the first of my three shoulder surgeries, to remove a malignant golf ball sized tumor that filled the top of my right humerus. My husband, a cop working night shift, didn't have much time available to take off work, so Patti, with her grandson in tow, showed up at my house to take care of me for the first week or so. I had a 7 month old child at the time and could use one of my arms. Clearly, that meant I needed help.

Patti and I fell into a series of late night and early morning chats on taking writing to the next level. We both had Kindles and then, after another volley of lighting flashes and zinging bullets, brainstorm number 2 came about.

We'd publish eBooks!  We took months to learn the process and the craft, doing every single thing on our own. I still worked full-time, so we'd meet online at night after our kiddos were down, and on Friday nights and all day on Saturdays. We published a bunch of books that first year - almost a dozen - consisting of cookbooks, devotionals, romances, and short stories. Some took off. Others piddled around. But we were making some money and feeling happy.

Fast forward a bit and I quit my full-time job in early 2012. Then, we really worked our butts off. I finished a manuscript, finally...the one you're all tired of hearing about and I'm finally getting tired of making stupid tweaky little changes to. We published another two dozen books. We explored markets, neglected our blogs, ran campaigns, Twittered, Triberred, and more.

So here we are today! Hope you enjoyed the story of our journey. It's just the overview, really, but it's been a fun ride!

All I Want for Christmas is BOOKS!

Happy December!

Can't believe another six weeks have passed since my last blog post - I'm going to work my butt off to turn that around this month and in the new year. Come along for the ride!

I underwent my third shoulder surgery (Feb. '11 bone tumor removal, May '12 shoulder blade correction, Nov. '12 shoulder tear repairs + a bunch of other annoying and painful stuff) and am just getting back to work again.

Whew! For those counting, that's 3 shoulder surgeries in 21 months, 3 surgeries total in 2012, 4 surgeries between December 2011 and November 2012, and 5 surgeries total in 21 months. Yeesh.

I'm done now.

Done-ity done done done.

That means I'm working on my Christmas list, which is, of course, all book related.

#1 - publish Mommy Letters. I know, I know. I've been promising this since Eisenhower was in office. But it's really going to happen. I have 5 more chapters for my last run through (post-editor slash-fest) and then will pop it over to my proofreader. So it's near. Very near. So near I can damn well taste it. Thank you, thank you for your patience.

#2 - work on getting up a few more titles that have been waiting from KLG Press, which I co-own with fellow author Patti Ann Colt. Between us, our pen names, and several other writers we've been publishing, we'll close out the year with about 40 titles. More than 30 of those went up in 2012. Whew and YAHOO!

#3 - win a grant from Intuit's Small Biz Big Wishes campaign. We've nominated ourselves for consideration and, if chosen, will be able to use $5,000 to update our aging equipment. How nifty! We need your help to make our wish come true, though - please vote for us! Thank you!

#4 - relaunch the book review blog we abandoned when we got so busy starting up our indie publishing company. We've each read hundreds of books over the past year+ and are eager to begin sharing our feedback again. Stay tuned.

#5 - load my Kindle with tons of new books to read over the holidays and beyond. This, of course, excites me to no end. I read about 5 full-length books a week, which means I need a steady supply to be happy.

#6 - last, but not least, I wish to have a wonderful holiday with my awesome husband of 6.5 years, my 4-year-old daughter and my 2-year-old son. We've had a couple rough years recently but things have gotten far better over the last year and 2013 looks like it'll be our best year yet as a family.

What are all ya'lls holiday wishes?

Rich and Famous Yet?

I was on my personal Facebook last night and posted about the new non-fiction semi-fiction snarky travel book that I released under my real name. (Anne M. Carpenter is one of my fiction pennames; in real life, I'm Tiffany Aller.) It had a few sales right after it went up and hit 3 genre bestseller lists and 3 hot new release lists almost immediately. (Yay!)

One of my friends, who I've known since 7th grade (for anyone trying to do arithmetic on that, you're going to need a *few* more fingers) asked me if I was enjoying the fame and fortune that came along with having published several books. (Thanks, Jen! Boosted my ego a bit!)

In reality...not quite. Am I making money? Yep. Am I getting rich? Yeah, no. Do I ever expect to? No, but I've been trending sales on all KLG Press titles since we started self-publishing just over a year ago (26 titles out now with a bunch still coming by Christmas) and it looks like my partner and I should both achieve our full-time income goals by this time next year.

Will that make us rich? Nope - but we both have other income streams right now, and we anticipate being able to replace them just with our indie publishing. About 70% of what we publish, we also write. The other 30% comes from other authors and we keep only 10% of their royalties - our "fee" for proofreading, formatting, publishing and promoting their books. So that's not bad.

But here's what's even better - my short stories, things I would likely never have made a dime from after they were contest entries/winners - have found an audience. Ahead of my first novel releasing, I have people who know my (pen)name. And under my (real)name, I have already published my "travel funnies," largely mined from several old blog posts from years ago. And I will soon begin publishing career-related books, calling upon years of experience from my non-writing life. Where else but through indie publishing would I really have that opportunity to go in so many different directions?

With Patti, I've published four cookbooks. What fun that is! The income from those cookbooks goes directly back into our business and funds our business-related expenses like stock photography. And we've sold these cookbooks around the world, which is just amazingly mind-blowing for me.

Even more fun, I get to edit/proofread books by our other authors - devotionals, natural health books, video gaming books and more - that I might not have otherwise read. Broaden my horizons!

Famous? Oh please no. I'm beyond thankful to have so many Twitter followers and Facebook fans and GoodReads friends and now even Google+ circles. But I can do without fame. Because of a years-ago incident outside of my control, I ended up with local media following myself, my husband and my children around for several months. And getting crank calls and death threats phoned to my house. No fame, please. Enjoy what I write (I hope) but I don't need fame.

How about you? Are you rich and famous yet? Or just working along to build up to a liveable income over time like we are?

While you're here, KLG Press has a free cookbook on KDP Select today (9/6) and tomorrow (9/7) - go enjoy if you're so inclined.

Favorite Recipes Game Day

Worth a Damn Food presents our favorite party recipes, ready for the Big Game or any game. You gather your family and friends and we'll supply recipes for mouth-watering food to wow your crowd. From yummy nachos to spicy buffalo wings to decadent chocolate mudd, we have you covered from kick off to buzzer with more than 30 recipes. Up your game with these "keeper" recipes so your guests enjoy their fill of sports, food and fun.

Amazon US
Amazon UK


I also alluded to the semi-fiction travel parody that I put out under Tiffany Aller - if you want a peek inside what I write when I'm not scribbling suspense or women's lit, check it out!

Check In Sit Down Shut Up!

Check In Sit Down Shut Up! presents real life lessons for those among us who suck at traveling. It's also for those of us who have had just about enough of watching the hijinks of others screw up the whole shebang at the airport. This book will educate the flat-liners and tickle the funny bone of experienced travelers.
Proceed with caution if you have no tolerance for snark.  
You've been warned!

Amazon US
Amazon UK

Have a great day, ya'll!

Why I Loved - And Still Love - R.L. Stine

My latest issue of Newsweek magazine came yesterday. Tradition versus ideology continues my subscription; I've been a subscriber for nearly 15 years and I've spent the last several swearing that this was the time to cancel. I hate the editorial changes, the layout changes (where's my Periscope?) and the blatant liberal bent that I perceive.

But this week's issue had a redeeming article: one on the 20th anniversary of author R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series. Boy, did that bring back memories!

I'm a child of the 80s and 90s. I was born at the tail end of the Carter presidency, raised during Reaganomics and the end of the Cold War, and finished college just months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. That should give you some historical perspective on my upbringing.

On the personal side, I was the only child of a self-employed grocer and a stay at home mom. Only, in those days, women like my mom simply called themselves housewives. That should help you to understand my personal upbringing.

Now for a geography lesson: I grew up in a rural area of Pennsylvania, in a town that had about 200 residents, all of whom knew my dad and his family. All. Big fish, little pond. If I sneezed, someone from down the road - we didn't have blocks - called to say God bless you. On their rotary phone. The street where I grew up didn't get wired for cable television service until long after I was gone. TV and phone in a child's bedroom? Heck no! Video games? Snort!

Why am I telling you all of this?

Well, because I'm a reader. Shocker, I know. But the bigger point is that I've been a reader all of my life. My mom homeschooled long before it was fashionable, albeit only when I was between the ages of 2 and 6. I entered kindergarten knowing how to write in cursive, recite my times tables through 9 and reading books by Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume. In KINDERGARTEN. Yes, I spent the first three years of school getting in trouble daily because, bluntly, I wasn't learning anything my mom hadn't already taught me and that meant getting in trouble every.single.damn.day.

But my escape was always reading. I've already moved several hundred books from my mother's home in PA to my home in TX for my toddlers to read. More than a thousand more await transporting, as my children become old enough to read them. Complete sets of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, American Girl series, the Babysitter's Club...and R.L. Stine.

Truthfully, I was a bit too old for Goosebumps by the time it came out in 1992. In fact, I was hooked on Stine's Fear Street series. But my love of his twisted stories led me to acquire and read and enjoy Goosebumps titles as well.

This week's Newsweek article celebrates the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Goosebumps book. Other than making me feel a *bit* old, it also made me smile in fond remembrance of reading those and other books from Stine and contemporaries like Christopher Pike. I went on to love Stephen King - still do, of course. And in many ways, the improbabilities highlighted by those authors and the sharp twists at the end have greatly influenced my own writing.

Have you read Hidden Intent? Didn't see that coming, did you? How about Dream Scream - bleak, bleak, hope, bleak, BLAM. A Strange Place - now there's a story in the style of Stine or Pike if I have one.

The fact is, I haven't really thought about R.L. Stine or other authors I read 20 years ago in about, oh, 15 years. But looking back, and seeing what I've written in the meantime, makes me smile over the books that I loved to read and the stories I now love writing.

How about you? What books or authors do you look back on from your childhood?

Why I Write Short Stories

When's the last time you BOUGHT a short story? Do short stories - or collections of them - even sell these days?

Who do you even think about when the concept of a short story comes to mind?

Edgar Allen Poe?

Stephen King?

Perhaps Ellery Queen?

I love short stories. I always have.

But why?

Because they're a challenge - because they're captivating - and because the emotional ups and downs that have to happen so rapidly in short fiction is exhilerating!

I wrote my first short story in first grade. Published it in the school newspaper. Which I happened to co-found and write.

I have zero recollection of its plot (but I'm sure my mom has a dusty old paper somewhere in her crowded attic!) but I was hooked. Throughout elementary school, I went to young authors workshops and gleefully wrote every creative writing assignment.

In middle school, the school newspaper again published my short fiction. (Ok, I also co-founded and wrote that paper. Are we seeing a pattern here?)

In high school...I stopped writing short stories, other than class assignments. Decided to try my hand at a novel. What do high schoolers think about? Sex, drama and hot guys. Wasn't exactly the next breakthrough YA. But if I could only find that notebook (God willing my MOM didn't find it!), it might make a fairly good example of how NOT to write teenage erotica-angst-drama.

And then in college, I really stopped. I was doing so much non-fiction writing within my degree programs that writing short fiction would have broken my brain.

But as an adult, when I came back to fiction, short stories reeled me in. See, I had a brainstorm for a few full-length stories. And, as a freelance writer with well over a decade of experience, I was confident that I could once again apply my mastery of the English language to fiction.

But I wasn't sure of myself. It had been a long time. And what adults jot down as stories is quite a bit different than children, no matter how precocious I - uh - they - the children! - might have been.

So I joined a few writing websites and entered every short story contest I could find. I spent at least 2 lunch hours a week writing flash fiction - 1000 words at a time. And to my delight, I began to win!

Today, I get to share a collection with you of three short stories focused on contemporary, dystopian and fantasy women (one of each!) and it excites me that each won or placed in the contests where they were originally entered. They've changed since their original forms; all began under 1000 words, and they now range from 2k to 4k. Some details were added, some were changed. But I love each and every one of these stories, because I love short stories.

I hope you do, too!

Today on Kindle, All About Women Short Story Collection, Volume 1 is free. Give it a whirl. I hope you'll enjoy, and I hope you'll post your feedback on your blog, my blog, GoodReads, Amazon or wherever else you frequent! I love knowing the reactions my readers have to my stories and can't wait to hear yours!

Anne