Howard

Truer Words Have Never Been Spoken

Words to the Wise

Words to the Wise

Epic Giveaway: Our 1st Tea Mug Winner

Be a winner! Enter today!We have our first Tea Mug winner! Carlene Flynn has won an Urban Mermaid tea mug and it will be on its way to her as soon as:

  1. She sends me her mailing address
  2. I can find the right sized box to accommodate the Styrofoam shell in which the mug is encased.

Here’s how you can can be a winner:

I have a limited supply of Urban Mermaid – 5, to be precise – tea mugs to give away to some lucky winners. While tea – hot or cold – is the drink of choice on Colony Island, those of you who are java junkies can use these mugs for your favourite brew.

By the way, if this is the first time you’ve heard about Urban Mermaid, you can learn more here.

The Give-away Ground Rules

Be a winner! Enter today!

The Official Urban Mermaid Tea Mug

The whole thing is very simple. I’ll be giving away one Urban Mermaid tea  – or coffee, if you insist – mug per week. At the end of that week, the lucky winner will be selected. They will have seven days to claim their prize. Other than the congratulatory message, I will send only 1 “nag-mail” during the week.

If the winner has not informed me of his or her mailing address – or even acknowledged the congratulatory message – after seven days, the prize will be awarded to another participant chosen at random from the remaining entries.

I’m opening up this portion of the giveaway  to all comers.  It doesn’t matter if you won a copy of Urban Mermaid in the first phase of the giveaway. You’re elligible to win a tea mug as well.

While it is pretty easy to ship books anywhere in the world, things become a bit more tricky and expensive when you try to ship non-print items. Therefore, I’m going to have to limit entries to the US & Canada.

All you have to do is enter your name and e-mail address in the contact form at the bottom of the page. Pretty darn simple, right? If you don’t win this week’s prize, you’ll have a another chance the following week.

You will only need to enter once. The sooner you enter the Giveaway, the better your chances are of winning one of the tea/coffee mugs. Duplicate entries will be discarded.

OK, that’s enough blether from me.  The only thing left to say is “Ready. Steady. Go!!!” Good luck, everyone.

 

Author at Work: Another chapter for another story

Another chapter for another storyI spent a good part of yesterday working on a new chapter. It took me a while, but I finally whipped it in to pretty good shape. At least I think it’s in pretty good shape, anyway.

There’s only one minor problem. The chapter is not for the 2nd book in the series, It’s for book # three. Or four. Or . . . you get the picture. So, here’s how I went off on this tangent.

I was working on a scene for one of the later chapters in Book # 2 and decided to add a paragraph or two with a POV (Point of View) from a human observer. Once I had that nugget, my wandering mind led me to that same human observer, around six weeks in the future. I suddenly discovered I had stumbled on to the plot for another book. Or at least half of a book, anyway. We’ll have to see how things develop.

My mind has been running a background task which speculates on the major scenes in that story. No heavy thinking, mind you. Just a rumination on what would happen and where. I was happy with the way things were cooking on this mental ‘back burner’ when another new scene bubbled to the top.

The way I visualized this scene was electrifying. OK, so maybe it was more like static electricity. Nonetheless, it was something I just had to put in to words as soon as possible. And that’s how yesterday came and went.

You may notice that I’ve avoided telling you any of the story’s details, thus far. What I will say, however, is that this book will deal with “The Lost”; those mermaids who have left Colony Island to be with a human lover or to be something other than a part-time sea creature.

I’m not sure where this story will appear in the series and if it will be the main plot or just a secondary one. What I do know is that it’s a story I want to tell.

A Bit of Housekeeping:

For those of you who have noticed the ‘Chamber of Commerce’ page is a bit light on businesses, I need to mention that this idea was a bit of whimsy intended to give some depth to the town of Colony Island, the back-drop for the series. I have more businesses to add to the page but have not had the time in which to do so. This situation should be rectified in due course.

Epic Giveaway: The Next Phase

logo-UM-1I’ve just returned from posting the last copies of Urban Mermaid to the lucky winners in the giveaway. By way of celebration, it’s time to launch the next phase of this epic event.

I have a limited supply of Urban Mermaid – six, to be precise – tea mugs to give away to some lucky winners. While tea – hot or cold – is the drink of choice on Colony Island, those of you who are java junkies can use these mugs for your favourite brew.

By the way, if this is the first time you’ve heard about Urban Mermaid, you can learn more here.

The Give-away Ground Rules

The whole thing is very simple. I’ll be giving away one Urban Mermaid tea  – or coffee if you insist – mug per week. At the end of that week, the lucky winner will be selected. They will have seven days to claim their prize. Other than the congratulatory message, I will send only 1 “nag-mail” during the week.

If the winner has not informed me of his or her mailing address – or even acknowledged the congratulatory message – after seven days, the prize will be awarded to another participant chosen at random from the remaining entries.

I’m opening up this portion of the giveaway  to all comers.  It doesn’t matter if you won a copy of Urban Mermaid in the first phase of the giveaway. You’re elligible to win a tea mug as well.

While it is pretty easy to ship books anywhere in the world, things become a bit more tricky and expensive when you try to ship non-print items. Therefore, I’m going to have to limit entries to the US & Canada.

The Official Urban Mermaid Tea Mug

The Official Urban Mermaid Tea Mug

All you have to do is enter your name and e-mail address in the contact form at the bottom of the page. Pretty darn simple, right? If you don’t win this week’s prize, you’ll have a another chance the following week.

You will only need to enter once. The sooner you enter the Giveaway, the better your chances are of winning one of the tea/coffee mugs. Duplicate entries will be discarded.

OK, that’s enough blether from me.  The only thing left to say is “Ready. Steady. Go!!!” Good luck, everyone.

 

Author at Work: Wheat from Chaff

VaBookFestival2016-Horiz1-datesNow that the Virginia Festival of the Book is over for this year, it’s time for me to take advantage of being retired and get to work on Book #2. The working title is Sirena, by the way.

I have six chapters which are, more or less, complete and a number of unfinished chapters as well. Right now, I am focusing on Chapters one thru six.

Like many authors, I write a bunch of stuff for a chapter and then go back to wrestle it into some sort of reasonable form. This means, deleting unnecessary scenes, dialogue, events, and ideas cluttering the chapter. Some things are saved for ‘later’ while others go straight to the bin. All this is before my editor ever sees it and has a go at improving my work.

At the moment, I have Chapter 1 just about ready to go. It’s a long-ish one – 5 and a quarter pages in MS Word, down from 7 and one-half pages – but I feel I’ve tightened it up as much as I can. My editor will probably have other ideas about this.

Chapters two and three are now four pages, each. Number four is seven pages but a lot goes on in that chapter. The remaining two need a bit more to round them out so they may creep into the five-page range. All of this is the result of just over a day of slicing and dicing all six chapters.

My goal is to introduce the main conflict as soon as possible. I think I already have to some degree or at least I’ve dropped some significant hints along the way. Nonetheless, it will still be be a few chapters more before the gloves really come off.

For those fans who may be worried about certain characters, I can reveal that Penelope and Peter are still very much in love and will be that way when the final page is turned. There will be a bit of strain on their relationship in the process but they’ll persevere.

If you’re wondering about the plot itself, I can reveal that someone has a very big crush on Peter.  puffy

Finally, I do not plan to give a blow-by-blow account of developing Book # 2. < A sigh of relief is heard without > I will, however, give occasional progress updates. This has been one of them.

VA Festival of the Book

small-UrbanMermaid-coverAttended a pair of events at Barnes and Noble, this afternoon. I perused the shelves and, sadly, Urban Mermaid was not amongst the titles . . . yet.

Author at Work: Starting the sequel

cropped-tailandbackground.jpgNow that promoting Urban Mermaid is well underway, it’s time for me to get going on the sequel. I know how it will begin and I know how it will end. It’s those worrisome middle bits that I need to deal with, now.

In Book 1, the relationship between Penelope and Peter drove the plot. In Book # 2 – the working title is Sirena – relationships are still important, but this time there’s real conflict and it’s not between Penelope and Peter.

I still plan to keep it on the light side and Peter will still be hit by Colony Island curve-balls. Nonetheless things are starting to change; for Peter, for Penelope, and for Colony Island as a whole.

I had originally planned for the sequel to have a two-part prologue in much the same way that Urban Mermaid did. My thinking, however, has changed with regard to that and I’ve decided omit the prologue. Fear not! The two part prologue will be published as one or two short stories here on ColonyIsland.com. I plan to write these stories as a knock-up for the main event.

Speaking of the main event, a story is a series of events and I’ve set up a master spreadsheet in order to keep track of all the events comprising the plot. Needless to say, that spreadsheet is kept under lock and key.

I don’t anticipate the sequel being as long or quite as detailed as Urban Mermaid. There was a lot of world building and scene setting that went on in the story. There were also a few things that really did not add to the plot. These scenes were put there as set-ups for Book # 2 as well as others in the series.

There have been a number of remarks made by reviewers concerning Carl, the pizza guy, and his lack of a girlfriend. Fans of Carl Fisher need not worry. He will find true happiness in the third book of the series.

Now, it’s time for me to get back to tinkering with that spreadsheet.

What Happened to the Giveaway?

What happened to the giveaway? Retirement.Nothing, really. The Epic Urban Mermaid Giveaway is merely taking a brief pause for the following events:

  1. Retirement – Yep, the author has called time on his career and is getting ready to start work on the sequel to Urban Mermaid.
  2. The Virginia Festival of the Book – This is a big 5-day literary event in Charlottesville, VA. The author’s full-time home is in Charlottesville and now that he’s retired, he has time to attend things like this.

Getting back to the Epic Giveaway, the bad news is the book portion of the giveaway has ended. The author is choosing some ‘Last Chance’ winners from those who entered in the early weeks but were not selected in the prize draw.

The good news is that the ‘major swag’ portion of the giveaway is about to begin and everyone is eligible to enter. We’ll start on March 21st – or the 22nd if the author is late in returning to his ancestral home following the aforementioned literary festival.

 

Epic Give-away: Week # 5

Urban Mermaid give-away: Week # 5It’s the start of the fifth week of our epic Urban Mermaid giveaway and we have three winners:

  • Christine Gregory
  • Beth St. Claire
  • Stephanie Schisler

We’ve made a wee change to the giveaway rules. Now, if you’ve entered once, you’re good for the rest of the book give-away marathon. However, this doesn’t mean you won’t be eligible for the major swag if you’ve won a book already. All book winners will will be eligible when we get around to handing out the Urban Mermaid tea mugs, polo shirts, and ball caps. At that point, we will ask that everyone submit a new entry. Why? Because not everyone may be interested in vying for a tea mug, etc. The book giveaways will continue until we run out of books.

Whether you’ve already entered or this is the first time you’ve paid us a visit, we hope that you’ll take the time to browse the Colony Island website. We’ve put a lot of hard work into adding content to our site and will continue as the weeks and months go by. It would be a shame if you didn’t peruse the list of FAQs or read Madison Bauer’s advice column.

Read What Our Winners Have To Say

Look what I received today! Can’t wait to start!! And it’s a signed copy! Thank you Howard T Parsons!!! – Roxanne Leavitt

Today your beautiful book arrived at my house!  I am so very grateful! It certainly looks like a huge amount of work you put into it! And, the included beautiful mermaid bookmark was a wonderful added surprise. It was very generous of you. I can’t wait to give it some quality reading time.

Thank you so very much.  I can’t believe my fortune, after simply stumbling upon you and it on the internet! – Sharon Austin

The Giveaway Ground Rules

The whole thing is very simple. We’ll be giving away one item per week. At the end of that week, the winner(s) will be selected and a new giveaway will begin. The winner will have seven days to claim their prize. Other than the congratulatory message, We will send only 1 “nag-mail” during the week.

If the winner has not informed us of his or her mailing address – or even acknowledged the congratulatory message – after seven days, the prize will be awarded to another participant chosen at random from that week’s entries.

All you have to do is enter your name and e-mail address in the contact form at the bottom of the page. Pretty darn simple, right? If you don’t win this week’s prize, you’ll still be eligible to win in the coming weeks..

We only ask two things of the winners:

  1. Please allow other folks to have a go at winning and not enter a second giveaway. When we get around to giving away the major swag, all winners will be eligible for the tea mugs and logo-wear. You will, however need to submit a new entry,
  2. If you are fortunate enough to win a print or digital copy of Urban Mermaid, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.com. It does not have to be deathless prose, though we well not say no to those kind of reviews. Just say that you – hopefully – liked the story and give Urban Mermaid the appropriate one to five-star rating.

Now that we’ve covered the ground rules, let’s get down to business.

This week, we’re offering another autographed copy of Urban Mermaid to be delivered to your front door or Post Office box. If you’re trying to save a few trees by keeping your collection of print books to a minimum, We’ll be happy to substitute a digital (Kindle) copy.

OK, that’s enough blether from me.  The only thing left to say is “Ready. Steady. Go!!!” Good luck, everyone.

Epic Give-away: Week # 4

Urban Mermaid give-away: Week # 4
It’s the start of the fourth week of our epic Urban Mermaid give-away and yet again, we have three winners:

  • Caitlin King
  • Becky Bertish
  • Creighton Wall

We’ve made a wee change to the give-away rules. Now, if you’ve entered once, you’re good for the rest of the give-away marathon. However, this doesn’t mean you won’t be eligible for the major swag if you’ve won a book already. All book winners will will be eligible when we get around to handing out the Urban Mermaid tea mugs, polo shirts, and ball caps. At that point, we will ask that everyone submit a new entry. Why? Because not everyone may be interested in vying for a tea mug, etc. The book give-aways will continue until we run out of books.

Whether you’ve already entered or this is the first time you’ve paid us a visit, we hope that you’ll take the time to browse the Colony Island website. We’ve put a lot of hard work into adding content to our site and will continue as the weeks and months go by. It would be a shame if you didn’t peruse the list of FAQs or read Madison Bauer’s advice column.

 

The Give-away Ground Rules

The whole thing is very simple. I’ll be giving away one item per week. At the end of that week, the winner(s) will be selected and a new give-away will begin. The winner will have seven days to claim their prize. Other than the congratulatory message, I will send only 1 “nag-mail” during the week.

If the winner has not informed me of his or her mailing address – or even acknowledged the congratulatory message – after seven days, the prize will be awarded to another participant chosen at random from that week’s entries.

All you have to do is enter your name and e-mail address in the contact form at the bottom of the page. Pretty darn simple, right? If you don’t win this week’s prize, you’ll still be eligible to win in the coming weeks..

I only ask two things of the winners:

  1. Please allow other folks to have a go at winning and not enter a second give-away. When we get around to giving away the major swag, all winners will be eligible for the tea mugs and logo-wear. You will, however need to submit a new entry,
  2. If you are fortunate enough to win a print or digital copy of Urban Mermaid, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.com. It does not have to be deathless prose, though we well not say no to those kind of reviews. Just say that you – hopefully – liked the story and give Urban Mermaid the appropriate one to five-star rating.

Now that I’ve covered the ground rules, let’s get down to business.

This week, I’m offering another autographed copy of Urban Mermaid to be delivered to your front door or Post Office box. If you’re trying to save a few trees by keeping your collection of print books to a minimum, I’ll be happy to substitute a digital (Kindle) copy.

OK, that’s enough blether from me.  The only thing left to say is “Ready. Steady. Go!!!” Good luck, everyone.

 

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