AI - Robot Story Selling Well

My novella "Have Spaceship, Will Travel" has found some small success. Barnes and Noble marked it as a 'New Release' after a week on their Best Sellers List. The book has been out for more than a year, shhh, don't tell Barnest & Noble.

I couldn't be more pleased.

This little story is about Gus Furguson, a man who has sold everything to buy a little spaceship so he can mine asteroids for metals, water and gases.

As always, the success is modest. I've sold what would be three years of books so far this month. But I can keep advertising and let the book find it's readers. What is most encouraging is that my other books, there are 36 in all, are also picking up sales.

"Luck of the Draw" has sold more copies this month than ever before. More than all my books sold last year in fact. Yet "Spaceship" has sold more than double those sales. This is great fun! It may not last, of course, but then again, it might.

Luckily for me, I have a sequel to "Have Spaceship, Will Travel" in the works, as well as another book in my "Venture Universe" series. I'm gonna have to settle in for some series writing very soon. Cheers!

There's a Lot of AI Stuff Out There

I can't help wonder how much AI content is already swimming the seas of Amazon? Somehow, I think it's already a thing. I'm wondering if I should tag my e-books "No AI content" as if it was a flag. Hmm...

Luck of the Draw - In Paperback

This wonderful little story, barely more than three thousand words, is a lot like "The Little Engine That Could" because it has come a long way. Now it's a 30 thousand word novel, available in paperback here at Amazon.

Now in Paperback - Doyle Road Bridge

I admit that I freaked out when Create Space and Kindle Direct Publishing merged. I wasn't sure if I could make a real paperback all by myself, after all, formatting was a real issue for printed books.

But after seeing a handful of other writer's printed books. I realized that I was already half-way there because of advice I'd gotten from my friend Andre Jute back when the Indie Publishing market got started. I knew when to flush left the start of a paragraph, to use indents instead of tabs, and to use Style Settings for the document.

I'd already been desktop publishing as a professional since I learned how to use PageMaker in the 1990's. I loved that job, but I left it to work in a Call Center. (Oh the money I made and the money I lost when the Dot Com Bubble burst!) But I digress.

Doyle Road Bridge is the first 10 I. C. Talbot short stories in one volume. There are others, but these are the ones she wrote and I published without much editing. There are more paperbacks now, and I'll showcase each one here in the coming weeks.

This volume contains the following stories: Death of a Family, Mitzi's Exit, Turnabout, Dumped, Beware Marjorie, Character Flaw, The Courtship of Millie, Skin Deep, The Secret of Aleworthy Acres, and Turned Out. Each of these are available individually on the I. C. Talbot Amazon Page.

I miss my mother, especially now that I've been able to get so many of her stories edited and published. She was so happy when we had just a handful published, now that there are more, she'd be tickled pink.

Stay tuned.

Now on the Short List!

"Luck of the Draw" has gone on to the next level. This has really made me happy. This is a great little story.

There are are 447 worthy stories on this list. "Luck" is about #421 on the list. Some stories have thousands of votes and hundreds of thousands of views.

Not sure what this means. I don't know how the site works and I don't know if winning will have any impact on my other work. However, it's another step in the right direction.

I've been working on Maizie's Diner and I'm ready to finish up. It was cute to begin with, now it's much longer and more detailed.

So stay tuned, we'll see what happens at the end of the month when The 2018 Wattys are announced.

Luck of the Draw and Other Stories

There's been so much going on with Icy Road Publishing! The last two months things have been ticking along, very quietly, as I make up my mind on how to proceed.

Back in July, when I was miserable with a bunch of bad teeth, I made up my mind that 2019 was going to be a record year. So when I had about 50% of "Luck of the Draw" finished, I up-loaded it to WattPad, just to see if I could get some eyeballs and some feedback.

Well -- "Luck of the Draw" got a lot of attention, and got on the Long List for the 2018 Watty Awards. I'm still not sure how that happened, but I'm sure glad it did. Now, 800 other works have been on that list all year, so there's little chance that "LotD" will make any headway, but getting some interest has really perked me up.

With that bit of encouragement, I finished up "Luck of the Draw" (set in Andover, Ohio) and sent out other I. C. Talbot stories to a family member for Beta reads. Also on the list for 2018 is "Maizie's Diner" (set in Ashtabula Harbor), and "A Little Stimulation" (set in Cleveland, Ohio) and "A Ride in the Park" (set in Victorian England).

I picked up the rest of the Volume 3 and Volume 4 short stories and added them to the que. So now, there is a list of 36 of Mom's short stories to be worked on this year and published in 2019.

WattPad.com is a nice place to get some feedback, but the website itself is slow and quirky. Like just an hour ago, all my covers were changed to the cover of "Luck of the Draw" and I had to change them all back.

The site is a lot like Authonomy, but seems to have missed all the foolishness that turned Authonomy from a serious site for writers into a playground for Trolls looking for LULZ.

So stay tuned. The family has banded together and if we can keep this ball rolling we should have a great 2018 and 2019 here at Icy Road.

Worse for Wear - Goes Wide Today

Today --after being exclusive to Amazon Kindle Unlimited for two years -- Worse for Wear is available at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribed and iTunes once again.

The reason for this change is that I'm taking all the K. A. Jordan e-books 'wide' for the 2019 Winter Reading Season.

The first time I did this, 2010, I only had one e-book. Now there are 9 e-books with my by-line, and some of them started out as I. C. Talbot stories.

Since I. C. Talbot does well on Kindle Unlimited, there's no reason to move her short stories. My own work has always done better on Barnes & Noble and iBooks. "Impressive Bravado" has been read over a thousand times on iBooks.

Behind the scenes - I've decided to publish as many I. C. Talbot short stories and novellas as I can in the next two years. Most lack enough detail, backstory and, unfortunately, conflict, to be little more than synopsis. I've given my sister the green light to edit and update as many as she likes. I'll make sure her by-line is on any of them that she edits.

But I've posted a few to WattPad - here - and they are being very well received. "Luck of the Draw" has been included in the 2018 WattPad Watty Awards Long List. (There's 800 works on the Long List. I'm not sure how it works.)

Meanwhile, I've been looking into putting several short stories together by genre. There are a couple Westerns, Victorians, two diner stories and a few 'He Done Her Wrong' tales that might go together in an anthology.

Stay tuned.