KILLER INSTINCT Goes to Press

KILLER INSTINCT, the second Snake Jones adventure, goes to press in two weeks. It's been a long journey for this book but we're both very proud of it. In fact, we and our editor think it's better than DEATH ROLL. Wolves and the North Woods of Minnesota were the inspiration for the story. Michael volunteered at the International Wolf Center in Ely where some of the story is set at its fictional counterpart. And we absolutely love the cover!

Gary Shulze, co-owner of Once Upon A Crime Books in Minnesota, and a reviewer for Crimespree Magazine, wrote these wonderful comments which appear in this month's Crimespree:

"Killer Instinct is both a great entertainment and a compelling mystery, with a strong sense of place (fans of Kent Krueger take note) and really cool, interesting characters. Marilyn Victor and Michael Allan Mallory have seamlessly combined their voices into a well-tuned and expressive unison."

Adventures in KindleLand

Death Roll is on Kindle!

But, man, it wasn't easy. After three weeks of research, experimentation and diddling around, I finally got things to work and thought I'd share some of my bumps and bruises for anyone else trying to take the journey to KindleLand.

First, you need an Amazon account. Easy enough. Then come the ton of Internet links about formatting your book for Kindle. And they don't agree. Change your Word.doc to HTML. Download a converter. Huh? Finally, I did find good info at Amazon's site at their DTP--Digital Text Platform page. Some good stuff here about removing page breaks, using the Veranda font. Stuff like that. But how would I know things looked okay? I don't have a Kindle. Then I found the link to Amazon's Kindle Publishing Program.

Ignore the Download Kindle Generator at the bottom of the page. That got me off track. I didn’t find it necessary. The top link at the Kindle Publishing Program page goes to the DTP is where the work is done. Option 3 saved my bacon! It let's you upload and preview the book. After cleaning up the manuscript in Word, I uploaded it to this site and could PREVIEW what the book would actually look like on Kindle. Yay! This allowed me to go back and make adjustments until things looked pretty good.

Oh, another issue was the cover art. Marilyn and I do not own the cover art to the published version of Death Roll, which meant we had to create our own cover for the Kindle version. A little work with Microsoft Publisher and we had something we liked. Various web sites suggested numerous formats for the cover. (Not this again!) I ended up ignoring those sites and went with what was on the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidlines link.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000234621

Another thing I learned is that things don't all update at once on Kindle. While the book and cover were available immediately, the product description didn't appear for several days, and a change I made in another part of the text three days ago hasn't yet updated. On the plus side, two days after making the Kindle book "live" (you can turn it off) the Kirkus Review and other info that appeared for the printed version of Death Roll was automatically copied over to the Kindle version. BTW, you aren't allowed to put in reviews or blurbs on a Kindle book; however, if the book exists in print, Amazon will transfer the existing blurbs for you. Nice!

Not a painless a process but it worked. Now comes promoting the book, itself a delicate dance. It's considered bad form for an author to go on Kindle book forums and tell people to buy his book. Very crass. One has to be artful and considerate. More to do.

--Michael

What's your HPI?

The United States may be #1 in GDP (that's gross domestic product for those of you who, like me, don't pay much attention to that stuff), we fell short in HPI -- Happy Planet Index. The HPI, thought up by the New Economics Foundation, is a way to measure something other than how many products and services a country has to offer. The index measures environmental sustainability relative to well-being. In other words, how many resources does a nation use to ensure the well-being of its citizens? While it may not be fool proof, it is interesting. Costa Rica, with its rich bio-diversity and environmental saavy, ranked #1 out of 143 countries. Zimbabwe ranked #143. And the US? Not so good. We only ranked 112. That's behind Russia and Cuba. Iceland, my favorite country and one I always considered to be particularly protective of their environment, only ranked #94.



Read more at //http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2009/new-york-times-07-06-2009.html

A Hot Read for Summer

This week the Woodbury Review News named Death Roll a "Hot Read for Summer."

We were thrilled to be one of the five books selected by the weekly newspaper. Woodbury is a suburb of St. Paul, MN.

"With the hottest days of summer now arriving, you might want to stay indoors and read a good book. The following works were penned by Minnesotans or surround the events of our great state." --Heather Edwards, the WRN.

Heather's personal comments to us were: "This book is excellent! I've read the entire book this weekend; I don't remember the last time I had the interest to read a book in such a short time period."

The five books selected were:

Death Roll by Marilyn Victor and Michael Allan Mallory
Garden of Darkness by Anne Frasier
The Great Starvation Experiment by To dd Tucker
Minnesota 150 by Kate Roberts
Stalking Susan by Julie Kramer