My latest post-apocalyptic novel out now!

We Had Flags, the third in my Toxic World series of post-apocalyptic novels, is out now. The series starts with Radio Hope and continues with Refugees from the Righteous Horde. The Scavenger is a novelette in the same world.

In We Had Flags, the residents of New City face their biggest challenges yet. For those of you familiar with the series, the main characters in this volume are the Doctor, Pablo Cruz, and someone you haven't met yet. A blurb is below.

A law doesn't work if everyone breaks it.
For forty years, New City has been a bastion of order in a fallen world. One crucial law has maintained the peace--it is illegal to place responsibility for the collapse of civilization on any one group. Anyone found guilty of Blaming is branded and stripped of citizenship.
But when some unwelcome visitors arrive from across the sea, old wounds break open, and no one is safe from Blame.

We Had Flags is available via Kindle's Prime program, so if you're a member you can read it for free!

The Rat Killer and other Weird War Tales out now!

My latest short story collection, The Rat Killer and other Weird War Tales, is out now on Amazon and Smashwords. It's going through the Smashwords system of Premium distribution and will soon be available in all major online retailers. The cover is, as usual, done by my talented brother-in-law Andrés. It looks a bit different form his regular stuff and I think it works well. The book retails for $2.99. A blurb is below.

A rat hunter on the Western Front suspects his prey are plotting against him…
A routine trip through the trenches leads to an unexpected insight…
A soldier discovers the most dangerous enemy can't be killed…
A bereaved woman performs a forbidden ritual to avenge her father’s murder…
A doomed militia is offered a path to victory that leads to damnation…

Here are five tales of war from the pen of military historian and novelist Sean McLachlan. From the bushwhackers of the American Civil War to the trenches of WWI, these stories walk the line from the strange and paranormal to the frighteningly real.

My new WWI novel now available for preorder!

My latest World War One action novel, Digging In, is coming out December 5 and is available for preorder. The story takes up where Trench Raiders left off and continues the adventures of Crawford, Willoughby, and Thompson, while introducing some interesting new characters. Here's the blurb.

October 1914: The British line is about to break.
 
After two months of hard fighting, the British Expeditionary Force is short of men, ammunition, and ideas. With their line stretched to the breaking point, aerial reconnaissance spots German reinforcements massing for the big push. As their trenches are hammered by a German artillery battery, the men of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry come up with a desperate plan--a daring raid behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy guns, and give the British a chance to stop the German army from breaking through.
 
Digging In is the second in a new series of World War One action novels that will follow the brave men of the BEF through the major battles of the First World War a hundred years after they happened. The Battle of Ypres was the first of many great slaughters on the Western Front, and it was there that both sides learned the true horror of the world's first global conflict.

It's now available on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. It's also available on Smashwords and will soon be at all other major ebook outlets.

(By the way, if you're still following this blog, head on over to Midlist Writer, that's far more active)

Trench Raiders now available!

Just in time for the WWI centenary, I've come out with Trench Raiders, the first in a series of World War one action novels. Here's the blurb:

September 1914: The British Expeditionary Force has the Germans on the run, or so they think.
After a month of bitter fighting, the British are battered, exhausted, and down to half their strength, yet they’ve helped save Paris and are pushing toward Berlin. Then the retreating Germans decide to make a stand. Holding a steep slope beside the River Aisne, the entrenched Germans mow down the advancing British with machine gun fire. Soon the British dig in too, and it looks like the war might grind down into deadly stalemate.
Searching through No-Man’s Land in the darkness, Private Timothy Crawford of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry finds a chink in the German armor. But can this lowly private, who spends as much time in the battalion guardhouse as he does on the parade ground, convince his commanding officer to risk everything for a chance to break through?
Trench Raiders is the first in a new series of World War One action novels that will follow the brave men of the British Expeditionary Force through the major battles of the First World War a hundred years after they happened. The Battle of the Aisne was the start of trench warfare on the Western Front, and it was there that the British and Germans first honed their skills at a new, vicious brand of fighting.

Trench Raiders is available at Amazon, Smashwords, and within a few days will be available at all other online outlets.

KOBO UK banned my books!

If you pay attention to publishing news, you've probably heard about the great self-published porn scandal. The media discovered that some indie publishers have been uploading incest and rape porn, and probably making tons of money in the process.

Online bookstores have gone into panic mode. Amazon is cleaning out adult titles, WH Smith shut down their entire website, and KOBO UK has been deleting self-published books. KOBO UK hasn't just been deleting porn, though. They've cast their net wide and are deleting ALL indie books, including my three fiction titles.

Wait, what? My books are fantasy and horror. They don't even have any sex scenes in them! Fifty Shades of Gray is still available on the site, though.

While KOBO UK claims they will bring legit books back online, that hasn't happened with my titles yet. Meanwhile erotica readers have started a petition demanding that erotica be allowed. The petition makes it clear that they don't support underage sex scenes (even though Lolita is considered literature) and they've garnered more than 14,000 signatures.

In the meantime, I'm not going to shop on KOBO anymore. If they have such bad business practice as to punish innocent authors such as myself after being caught profiting from porn they let on their site in the first place, they don't deserve my money.

(Yeah, this image is a bit over the top, but I'm really pissed off right now)

Reader News for October 6, 2013

A couple of new books from blogger buddies this time around! Have some news you want to share? Drop me a line!

The Maze of Mist, the latest fantasy novel from A.J. Walker, is for sale in the Kindle store. For the first month he's priced it at only $3.99, and it's free for Prime members.

Here's the blurb:

When the heir to the throne is treated as an outcast, he has to prove himself before he can rule.

Prince Metis Itxaron is the son of a human father and a goblin mother. As heir to the Twin Thrones, he will some day bear the responsibility of ruling two peoples while protecting the kingdom from the vicious armies of the Bandit Queen and the Elves of the Great Forest.

Instead he spends his time getting drunk and sleeping with the few women willing to look beyond his mixed heritage.

In a desperate attempt to make a man out of him, his parents send him on a secret diplomatic mission to prepare for an upcoming war. What they don't expect is that he will come upon visitors from an unknown land beyond the Sea of Mist, a strange labyrinth of fog that has baffled navigators for all of recorded history.

Metis sees a visit to these new lands as an opportunity to escape his responsibilities and prove himself on his own terms.

Then he discovers that representatives from his kingdom's enemies are coming along for the voyage. . .

This is the second book in the Chronicles of the House of Itxaron series. The first volume is Roots Run Deep. While set in the same world, each title is a standalone novel.

Missouri historian Larry Wood also has a new book out. Murder and Mayhem in Missouri tells the story of some of Missouri's toughest outlaws.

Desperadoes like Frank and Jesse James earned Missouri the nickname of the "Outlaw State" after the Civil War, and that reputation followed the region into the Prohibition era through the feverish criminal activity of Bonnie and Clyde, the Barkers and Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd.

Duck into the Slicker War of the 1840s, a vigilante movement that devolved into a lingering feud in which the two sides sometimes meted out whippings, called slickings, on each other. Or witness the Kansas City Massacre of 1933, a shootout between law enforcement officers and criminal gang members who were trying to free Frank Nash, a notorious gang leader being escorted to federal prison.

Book Review: Nanok and the Tower of Sorrows by Jack Badelaire

Nanok and The Tower of Sorrows by Jack Badelaire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This novella is by Jack Badelaire, better known for his excellent Commando series of war novels. Here the author takes on a different subject--old school pulp fantasy in the vein of Robert E. Howard.

There are far, far too many Conan pastiches circulating these days, but fortunately Badelaire takes a lighthearted approach. There are lots of jokes and pratfalls mixed in with Badelaire's signature fight scenes.

I especially enjoyed all the references to fantasy fiction and movies. In his adventures Nanok even meets The Beastmaster (oh, sorry, The Master of Beasts!), one of the more embarrassing fantasy films of our youth. There could have been more, though. What? No reference to The Barbarians or Willow? I would have loved seeing mighty-thewed Nanok cleaving Willow's head in with his massive sword.

Anyway, this is a fun little read, nothing Earth shattering, nothing you'll be tempted to read again, but an amusing way to spend an hour or so. If you want something meatier, check out his Commando books. Those are more serious, and seriously good.


View all my reviews

The Apocalypse is here! Yippee!!!

Today is "The World Ends How?" blogfest to celebrate Hart Johnson's latest book. More on that below. But first she's asked fellow bloggers how they think the world will end.

My answer? Slowly, painfully, and through our own ignorance. We will keep poisoning the air and seas, keep fighting each other, keep increasing our population, until it all begins to fall apart. And we won't change even then.

For more, check out my personal vision of the apocalypse. For Hart's vision, read on!

Deadliest virus in a century, or a social experiment gone awry?

Every year they warned about the flu and more often than not, it amounted to nothing. Sidney Knight, a young freelance reporter had certainly never written on it. But a trip to Lincoln City, Oregon, cut short by a beach full of dead seagulls and a panicked warning from her brother the scientist catch her attention.

This batch is different. Deadlier. And the vaccine doesn't seem to be helping. It almost looks like it's making it worse...

A Flock of Ill Omens: Part I is the first episode of A Shot in the Light, an Apocalypse Conspiracy Tale about what happens when people play God for fun and profit. There will be approximately ten episodes, each the equivalent of about 100 pages. Good Reads has a sneak peak posted. You can find the purchase link and more information about the book here. And if you want it FOR FREE, I will be offering it free on the release dates of at least the next two in the serial: September 19 and October 10.

Hart Johnson writes books from her bathtub and can be found at Confessions of a Watery Tart, though be warned. She is likely to lead you into shenanigans.

Indie Life: Let's Stop Review Inflation

Anyone who has been to university is familiar with the phenomenon of grade inflation: students are given better grades than they deserve in order to make the department or university look good. There's a similar process going on in indie publishing that I call review inflation.

It's simple: an indie writer gets her friends to give the book five-star reviews, lavishing praise on the book. Sometimes it's quite obvious. I've seen books that have only been published for a day that somehow have half a dozen reviews, all of them five stars. The idea is that this will help sales.

In the end, this hurts the author and indie writers in general. When real readers buy the book, they're often disappointed and take out their sense of betrayal with especially bad reviews. Readers are also getting more sophisticated. I've seen more than one review on Amazon or B&N which complains there are too many fake reviews for a book.

It's also just plain dishonest, and trying to pull one over on your readership is not going to help your career in the long term. I have never asked my friends for reviews. For my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness, only one reviewer is someone I know. ACLopez is a friend of mine. I didn't ask her to write a review, but she did anyway and gave it five stars. I'd think she really enjoyed the book and was probably tickled that much of the action took place in her county, but would she have given it five stars if she didn't know me? Probably not.

The only other unsolicited review from a friend was for The Night the Nazis Came to Dinner and other Dark Tales. On Amazon UK, Critch gave me only three stars and said, "He needs to improve if his fiction is to equal his non-fiction, but there are glimpses of potential in this collection."

Well, no review inflation with that guy!

My fantasy novella gets its first review, and it's five stars!

My fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence has been out barely a week and it's already garnered its first review.

Kathleen Keenan gave it five stars and said:

"The Quintessence of Absence" features a seriously flawed protagonist--Lothar, a wizard who is addicted to nepenthe (a bit like opium). Lothar is reluctantly drawn into a mission to rescue his former employer's daughter, who has mysteriously disappeared. Lothar's addiction threatens to waylay him, but no more than an assorted cast of wizards, evil nobles, and other nepenthe addicts.

"The action is nonstop, and the author skillfully draws the reader into an alternate history that might have been our own if magic were real. The only real flaw in this lively fantasy is that it is too short. I was disappointed when I reached the end, which is my criterion for an excellent read."

That just made my day!

My latest fantasy novella is out now!

I'm proud to announce that my latest fantasy novella, The Quintessence of Absence, is out now on Amazon, Smashwords, and will soon be at other outlets as well. This 25,000 word story originally appeared in Black Gate magazine. A blurb is below:

Can a drug-addicted sorcerer sober up long enough to save a kidnapped girl and his own Duchy?

In an alternate 18th century Germany where magic is real and paganism never died, Lothar is in the bonds of nepenthe, a powerful drug that gives him ecstatic visions. It has also taken his job, his friends, and his self-respect. Now his old employer has rehired Lothar to find the man's daughter, who is in the grip of her own addiction to nepenthe.

As Lothar digs deeper into the girl's disappearance, he uncovers a plot that threatens the entire Duchy of Anhalt, and finds the only way to stop it is to face his own weakness.


The cover is by fellow indie writer Jack Badelaire, author of the awesome Commando series. He saw my struggles with designing a cover and sent me this one to me out of the blue. Now that's the indie spirit!  You can read his take on the indie life in an interview here.

I'd love to have some help getting the word out. Please tweet, share, and blog about this release. But if you're considering buying it, please jump the cut.

Help me pick my next ebook cover!

Next week I'll be releasing a dark fantasy novella titled The Quintessence of Absence, a reprint that originally appeared in Black Gate magazine. Set in an alternative 18th century Germany, it deals with a struggle between good magic and the darkest regions of the occult.

I decided to try designing my own cover for a change and used the free template software at Copysafe. Here are some I've come up with. Which do you like?

Cover #1

The templates are a bit rigid. For example, I can't center this byline. But hey, it's free!

Cover #2

Cover #3

Cover #4

So which one do you prefer, numbers 1, 2, 3, or 4? (Oh, and those white boundaries are a product of blogger. They won't be on the actual covers)

Ten things I learned from Lousy Book Covers

Welcome to this month's Indie Life post, where indie writers talk about life in the cold, harsh world of independent publishing.

I have no talent in the visual arts, so when it came time to publish A Fine Likeness and The Night the Nazis Came to Dinner I got someone who knew what they were doing to design my covers. It's important to know your limitations.

Not everyone does, however, and there's a site dedicated to them. Lousy Book Covers is a daily dose of the worst covers out there today. If you haven't seen this site before, go check it out. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you might even spit blood. Besides the comedic value, the site is an educational one. Here are ten things I've learned from it. I knew most of them before, but they bear repeating.

1. Just because you CAN design your own cover doesn't mean you SHOULD. This is the site's motto. Words to live by.

2. Be honest with yourself about your talent. See above.

3. Make your fonts readable. See here for an example of what not to do.

4. If you draw like a high schooler, don't design your cover. If you are a high schooler, get an adult to help you. See here for an example of what not to do.

5. Comic sans never makes a good cover font. See here for an example of what not to do.

6. The cover should actually be related to the content. See here for an example of what not to do.

7. Layering isn't always your friend. See here for an example of what not to do.

8. For the love of all that is holy, check your damn spelling. See here for an example of what not to do.

9. Know what an aspect ratio is. See here for an example of what not to do.

10. Don't make your cover too busy. See here for an example of what not to do

I'm not saying I can do any better. Quite to opposite. The important thing is I know I can't do any better. These folks obviously don't, and are cursed with overly supportive friends and family who don't tell them the truth. As indie authors, we should seek honest feedback, not back scratching. Otherwise we may end up with lousy book covers.

I thought of illustrating this post with examples, but the guy over at Lousy Book Covers has been threatened by angry authors, even though posting covers for the sake of criticism comes under fair use. I don't have time to deal with that sort of inanity.

Reader News for March 12, 2013

More of my writer friends are getting published! As you probably already know by now, M. Pax has come out with Book 3 of her Backworlds science fiction series. Boomtown Craze is available now in ebook and paperback.

Friend and fellow expat in Spain Andrew Leon Hudson has gotten two of his short stories published this past week. "Tear Drops" is out now in the Mythaxis science fiction webzine. "Easy as ABC", a short story about bullying, is out in the latest issue of Young Adult webzine. For the second one you have to register at the site.

Do you have any news to share? It doesn't have to be related to writing as long as it would be of interest to my readership. Drop me a line at the email on the lefthand column.

Reader News for February 3, 2013

Two interesting books are the subject of today's reader news. Sharon Bayliss has just published her first novel The Charge, an alternative history set in the Texas Empire. I'm curious as to how Texas became an empire. Did it never join the U.S.? Went its own way after the Civil War? I might have to check this one out.

Yesterday I finished doing a beta read on COMMANDO: Operation Bedlam, the sequel to COMMANDO: Operation Arrowhead, which I reviewed here. It's not coming out until later this year, so I won't steal any of Jack's thunder by going into detail. I'll just say that it was as much of a kickass action adventure as his last World War Two novel. British Commandos fighting Nazis? I'm there.

Do you have any news to share? Drop me a line at the email address on the left-hand column of this blog.

Reader news for February 19

My readers have been pretty busy lately. First up is Shelly Akron, who has just come out with the print version of her ghostly novel Secondhand Shoes. To celebrate, she's made the ebook version free! She's also hosting the Run Away Bride Give Away and Blog Party on Feb. 19th, 20th, and 21st. You could win a 15 dollar Amazon card or an autographed copy of Secondhand Shoes.

Tyrean Martinson recently came out with Champion in the Darkness, book one of her YA Christian fantasy series The Champion Trilogy.

At the beginning of the month, Jack Badelaire announced that he was finishing up the draft for Commando: Operation Bedlam. This will be the followup to his awesome Commando: Operation Arrowhead, which I reviewed here. It will come out this spring and it's on the top of my to-read list.

David Meyer, author of Chaos, has finally restarted his Guerrilla Explorer website, one of my favorites. It features "mysteries of history, lost treasure, strange science, cryptids, conspiracies, forgotten lands, and explorers." Welcome back to the blogosphere, Dave!

Are you a reader of this blog and have some news to share? It doesn't have to be writing related. Drop me a line at the email address to the left and I'll add it to the next Reader News!

Indie Life: Free photos for your book cover!

Welcome to the second month of the Indie Life bloghop, where we indie authors talk about the trials and rewards of going independent in the tough world of publishing.

As I mentioned in my previous post asking How can I help you? I want to do what I can to help my fellow indies. I just realized that in addition to hosting guest posts and announcing reader news, there's another thing I can do.

As many of you know, I travel a lot. In fact, one of my day jobs is as a travel blogger for Gadling. I've accumulated thousands of photos from more than two dozen countries and while I've published many of them, many more are just sitting on my hard drive. Let's put them to work.


Some subjects include:

Castles
Medieval weapons and armor
Medieval manuscripts
African markets
Mosques
Churches
Hyenas
Scottish countryside
Old English buildings
military hardware
graveyards
graffiti art
Rome
Iraq
Ghost towns
The Orkney Islands
. . .and much more

I've even done some rather silly experiments with horror photography and haunted graveyards.  

If you're looking for a photo for your book, I'd be happy to help. All photos were taken in the highest resolution and can be used for print as well as ebooks. All I ask in return is credit and a copy of the book.

I'm in Estonia this week adding to my photo collection so I may be a bit slow in replying to email at the moment.

Interview with men's adventure author Hank Brown

Today we're chatting with action author Hank Brown, who is doing a blog tour for his most recent release, Tier Zero. Hank has come out with several novels and short stories in the men's adventure genre, a genre that was in the doldrums before the current publishing revolution. So with no further ado. . .

Checking out your list of publications, one that jumped to my attention was Radical Times, a Civil War story. Actually it's a Reconstruction story set in Arkansas right after the war. What made you pick a setting well away from the epic drama of the major battles?

Mostly it was because of history and my exposure to it. In school I had only learned the superficial facts about the Civil War...North, South, slaves, Abraham Lincoln...that was about it. Public school taught us even less about Reconstruction, which is to say: nothing.

Then about a year or two before I wrote Radical Times, I checked out a book from the library about that historic period. It blew me away how much I didn't know about it. And when that happens I'm compelled to set off on a researching spree. It annoys me how the truth of this tumultuous period are ignored, at best; or censored, at worst. Our present political dynamic depends on that ignorance (or censorship). Anyway, as all this information was floating around in my mind I began conceiving characters (as often happens). The story grew out of all that.

You served in the Armed Forces. Beyond the obvious, what are the main differences between warfare in the 1860s and the modern day? How is the soldier's experience different? Are there any similarities?

Beyond the obvious, I'd say it's the officers and men themselves that are most different, followed by the command doctrine. The US armed forces have become extremely top-heavy organizations, with a cumbersome bureaucracy only slightly less inept than the non-uniformed government institutions. The technology which enables unprecedented micromanaging runs the risk of turning fighting men into robots. The technological advantages and overwhelming air support our troops have enjoyed since WWII glosses over the chinks in our armor, of which I believe this is an example.

When Von Steuben was drilling Washington's troops to fight the British he remarked on what made the American soldier unique: You couldn't just institute a policy and expect Americans to follow it, without first explaining its purpose. That does not seem to be the case any longer. Once when training with some soldiers from the Mother Country, after Desert Storm, I remember the ironic moment when one of the Brits cried out in frustration about all the suffocating regulations he had to abide by while attached to the US Army. Holy historic role-reversal, Uncle Sam!

Indie Life: Reaching Beyond the Indie Authors' Echo Chamber

Today I'm participating in the Indelibles Indie Life blog hop. On the second Wednesday of every month we talk about various aspects of being an indie author. So let's get to it!

As every author knows, marketing a book is as hard as writing one. One trap many people fall into is to communicate only with other writers, a trend one author whose name I now forget called "the indie authors' echo chamber".

It's understandable. These were the people in the chatrooms and newsgroups who supported you as you wrote your book. These are the folks who followed your blog and you followed theirs. They feel your pain and share your joys. There's only one problem:

There are too few of them.

Sure, some indie authors will buy your book. Some may even review it. But they constitute a tiny fraction of your potential readership. You need to make your voice carry beyond the indie authors' echo chamber and reach the world at large.

There are many ways to do this and I'm still learning. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated. My main marketing platform right now is blogging. I'm a professional travel blogger for Gadling so it comes easily to me. On my own blog I try to make my posts have a wide appeal to my target readership. You'll see few posts about writing. There are plenty of other bloggers who do that well, like Cynthia Hope Clark and Dean Wesley Smith. I want to reach readers as well as writers.

I also do lots of guest posts on non-writing blogs. One of my favorites is that run by Osprey Publishing, which publishes my military history books. Since my Civil War novel has a military theme, this is a good audience, and of course I always mention my novel in the "about the author" section! I even focused on the book for a post on Weaving Military History into Fiction. Yeah, my traditional publisher let me push my indie book. They're cool.

Genre magazines often have blogs and they're a good place to pitch since they have readers who already like your genre. One of my faves is Black Gate. I've done a few posts for them, including one on Spiritualism during the American Civil War. Smaller blogs with a wide appeal such a Guerrilla Explorer are also good bets. They published my post on Did Jesse James Fake His Own Death?

All my guest posts include a links to my novel and personal blog. I also tweet about each guest post, using appropriate hashtags to reach beyond my followers.

So. . .how do YOU reach beyond the indie authors' echo chamber?

My Writing Year: A Look Back and a Look Forward

It's a new year, the traditional time to take stock of what you've done and what you're planning on doing. Yes, it's completely arbitrary, but it's good to do these things every now and then.

The year 2012 was so-so for me. I only had one nonfiction book come out: The Last Ride of the James-Younger Gang, Jesse James & The Northfield Raid 1876. I also came out with the print version of my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness. Both have gotten good reviews, although I wouldn't mind better sales on the novel. I did get some nice attention when the city of Madrid paid me to give a reading at their annual Noche del Libro festival. Considering the state of the Spanish economy, I doubt I'll get to do that again!

Another milestone was seeing my fantasy novella The Quintessence of Absence come out in Black Gate Magazine. It's free online, so click that link!

For my travel writing, check out this Gadling post about my year in adventure travel and what to expect from me in 2013. I'm much more satisfied with that part of my career, with popular series on Iraq and the Orkney Islands. Lebanon won the "where to send Sean next" poll, so it looks like I'm going there, editor willing!

So what's up for 2013? I'm making fiction a priority. My dream has always been to divide my time evenly between fiction and nonfiction. My history and travel writing careers are humming along nicely, while fiction still lags behind. I wanted to finish the sequal to A Fine Likeness in 2012 but didn't. I'm also way behind on a story I promised A.J. Walker for an anthology we're doing. Several other fiction projects got nowhere fast.

It's time to get cracking. My goal this year is to write 200,000 words of fiction. While that sounds like a lot, it's actually only 550 words a day. Quite doable. Some days I'll write more, and some days I'll write none because I'll be traveling. When I'm on the road I need to focus on what I'm seeing and how I'm going to communicate that to my readers.

To keep myself honest I've put a word count bar at the bottom of this blog. I'll be updating it once a week or so. Light a fire under my ass if I'm not writing enough.

I'll also be ramping up this blog, reaching out to other bloggers for guest posts and to guest post on their own blogs. You'll see me participating in more blogfests too. This blog started the year with only 100 hits a day and finished with almost 300 daily hits. I'm going to see how much I can raise that.

It's going to be a fun and challenging year!