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Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day

Be sure to see our slideshow of mer-themed Valentines as well as Ask Madison from the Colony Chronicle.

Epic Give-away: Week # 2

Urban Mermaid give-awayWe have a Winner! Actually, we have three winners!

I was inventorying the items for the epic give-away and discovered I had a few more books on hand than I originally thought. So, since it’s my party, I decided to kick things off with three winners instead of just one.

And those winners are . . .

  • Tord Ronn of Charlottesville, VA
  • Jen Gurien of  Woongarrah, New South Wales, Austrailia
  • Kristen Finlay of  (We’ll add her location as soon as she responds to the congratulatory e-mail)

For those of you who didn’t win, you’re eligible to enter the Week # 2 give-away. It only takes a minute so keep trying!

 

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 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 can always have a go at the one for next week.

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, I may make an occasional exception.
  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 tho 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.

 

Let the Give-aways begin!

Birthday give-awayIt is after 1:52 AM, EST, on  January 30th 2016, so let’s give away some goodies!

The whole thing is very simple. I’ll be giving away one item per week. At the end of that week, the winner 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 can always have a go at the one for next week.

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, I may make an occasional exception.
  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 tho 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.

Urban Mermaid give-awayThis week, I’m offering an 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.

 

Urban Mermaid Book Trailer

The World Premier of the Urban Mermaid Book Trailer

January 30th, 2016

Those of you with older eyes may want to watch this in full-screen mode.

This trailer was created by Ilsie Om of The Woodsy Fawn

Copyright 2016 by Howard Parsons

Urban Mermaid Book Trailer

My heartfelt thanks go to the (very) Talented artist,  Ilsie Om, Shelly & Caitland Moore of Gazebo Gardens Publishing authors Emm Cole & S.K. Munt, and most of all my wife, Judi Parsons, who believed in me even when I, myself, did not.

I hope that you will enjoy this wonderful trailer and will like it so much that you’ll want to read the book. It is available in both paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com. There are links in the right-hand column to make your shopping experience easy.

It’s My Party

Keep Calm & Celebrate My BirthdayYes, it’s the author’s birthday and just like Bilbo Baggins, he’s going to be the one to hand out the gifts. (Sorry. Magic Ring trick not included.) I’m using the occasion of my ⊗⊗th birthday to kick off a two month-long Urban Mermaid give-away. There’s nothing to buy, no jingles to write, and no box-tops to send in.[1] All you’ll have to do is submit your name and e-mail address and you’re in the running for one of the birthday gifts.

You can enter as many times as you like but be warned that the prize selection software provided by Parsonage Data Services will ensure that there is only one entry for each person when it comes time to choose a winner. Once the winner for the weekly give-away has been selected and announced, they will have seven days to claim their prize. Otherwise, the prize will be awarded to another entrant.

So, what sort of swag will be handed out? The prize list includes:

  • Autographed copies of Urban Mermaid
  • Urban Mermaid tea/coffee mugs
  • Embroidered Urban Mermaid ball caps
  • Embroidered Urban Mermaid polo shirts

I’ve also got Urban Mermaid bookmarks as consolation prizes for selected runners-up.

It all kicks off on January 30th, 2016. Simply book mark this page and there will be a link to the current give-away.

Here’s the link to the 4th give-away!

There you have it! Tell your friends! Tell your pets! Tell your mother-in-law! But be sure to stop by on Saturday, January 30th and join in the fun.

 Watch the Urban Mermaid Book Trailer!

Birthday cupcake


 

[1] Those of a certain age will remember that once upon a time, this is what you had to do in order to enter a contest.

Another Short Story

As promised, I have republished my short story, Emptiness, here on ColonyIsland.com. This story first saw light as an entry in a fan-fiction contest sponsored by S.K. Munt, author of The Fairytail Saga, and was published at the end of Stained Glass, the concluding novel in the series. As there are ample remarks on the same page as Emptiness, I will say no more in this post.

A possible short story in the offing.

The Turning Tides. A possible jumping off point for another short storyI have in mind, another writing exercise dealing with Derrolyn Anderson’s Marina’s Tales series. This short story would use several of the characters in her series and would be set sometime after the end of The Turning Tides, the final novel in her series. The seaside town of Aptos, was the locale for her series and makes a Cameo appearance in Urban Mermaid. It would be the main locale for the, as yet, unnamed short story.

Now before anyone starts unfounded rumours or points fingers in my general direction, I would like to state that I loved Derrolyn Anderson’s series, Marina’s Tales. It was her story to tell and she did a fine job of telling it. I have absolutely no issue with the way it was told or the way the series ended and I am not planning to do this as a way of correcting some perceived oversight on her part.

Instead, my idea is for a “what if” post script to her story. A bit of speculative fiction, if you will. Whether it ever sees the light of day is another matter. This is meant to be a writing exercise to get me back in the groove for  Sirena, the sequel to Urban Mermaid. I am merely going to borrow her characters and locales  as a set situation for cobbling this short story.

In may respects, this sort of thing is more difficult than writing something from scratch. At least there, you get to create the characters and warp them to your purposes. By using another novel as a jumping off point, you are stuck with the characters pretty much as they are and there is only so much wiggle room.

I also do not plan to emulate her writing style. That is hers and hers alone. I’m just borrowing some of her characters.

My aim is to get back to writing full time – or a much as a full time job will allow – and I do not plan to spend very much time debating whether to publish the short story or not. If I do decide to publish the story- with profuse apologies to Derrolyn Anderson, of course – it will most likely be here on ColonyIsland.com.

Emptiness may be found as a menu item under the  Writing Urban Mermaid tab on Colony Island.com. You can also cut to the chase by going to https://colonyisland.com/emptyness/. I hope that you’ll enjoy the story.

A perfect day for reading

A perfect day to read.

A snowy day on Oakwood Avenue.

It’s cold and snowy in the mid-Atlantic states today. Just the perfect opportunity to snuggle up with a hot cuppa tea and the digital edition of Urban Mermaid!

Get it now at Amazon.com!

Short Story

I’ve just republished a short story called ‘Dear Mom . . .’ on ColonyIsland.com. This story was originally published on Goodreads.com and was done as part of a contest. I won, but only because there were just 2 or 3 entrants. The story concerns Penelope’s cousin, Lindsey Tench, and will be expanded to be half of the third book in the Tails From Colony Island series.

There is another short story with a merfolk theme which I will republish in a few days or a few weeks. It has nothing to do with Colony Island and everything to do with S.K. Munt’s Fairytail Saga. Ms. Munt held a fan fiction contest following the publication of Heads or Tails, the third novel in the series. My entry sort of violated the parameters for the contest and I really didn’t mean it as a contest entry. It was more a writing exercise dealing with a person in a very dark emotional state. In Urban Mermaid, the title character starts off in a dark emotional state and I felt that this would be good practice for me.

Nonetheless, I sent it in, more curious as to what Ms Munt would say about it than as an actual entry in the contest. S.K. Munt is a very gracious lady. The story took first prize and was published at the end of Stained Glass, the concluding story in the series.

Dear Mom may be found as a menu item under the  Writing Urban Mermaid tab on Colony Island.com. You can also cut to the chase by going to https://colonyisland.com/dear-mom/. I hope that you’ll enjoy the story.

What Happened to the Front Page?

All of a sudden, our WordPress installation stopped liking the idea of a static front page. After perusing the list of issues with WordPress 4.4.1. we discovered the problem was caused by having mixed case domain names for both the WordPress and Site URLs in the general settings.

This situation was immediately corrected and now all is right with the world – or at least our wee bit of it, anyway.

So why is this post still here? Well, we auto-magically publicise our posts & pages on Facebook, Linkedin, Tumblr, Path, and Google+. Those links to this post aren’t going to go away so we decided to simply let it be so no one would be disappointed when they tried to learn just what was going on. We aim to keep our visitors happy and now you know the rest of the story.


Can an All-American Mermaid find love and happiness whilst living and working in the big city? 

Now, you can find out for yourself!

 

Welcome to ColonyIsland.com

The cover for Urban Mermaid by Ilsie Om

Publisher Logo

Published by Moonlight Garden Publications

An imprint of Gazebo Gardens Publishing

Renton, WA

 Now Available!

ISBN
978-1-938281-72-3 Paperback
978-1-938281-73-0 E-Book

More Swag!

IMG_2083Just received a shipment of Urban Mermaid give-away items. It’s almost time to start the raffling off this swag. All I need to do is to learn how to use the raffle software.

By the way, it’s the coffee/tea mug that’s going to be offered to some lucky winners, NOT the pipes. My collection of well over 300 pipes is NFS. Of course, my wife has other ideas!

For those of you who may have wondered what happened to the steady stream of FAQs here on ColonyIsland,com, I’m taking a wee break whilst I attend to other things like taking down two Christmas trees. Now that Epiphany has come and gone, it’s time to pack things away for another ten and a half months.

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