A very delayed update!

 Well, it's been a while!
Since I've last updated, Halloween has treated, Thanksgiving has been and gone, Christmas and New Year's have been celebrated, and the whole world has come to a grinding halt due to a microscopic enemy.

I won't try to fill you in on everything from the past few months, but when a fan asked me about my blog this morning, I realized I've not treated my readers well by allowing this page to languish. I decided to rectify that right away.

This old dog is actually our new dog - we adopted Cooper from the shelter on the last day of 2019. He is in the area of six years old, we were told, and is the sweetest, most gentle creature.

His one fault, which is certainly not one he is responsible for, is that he was not raised as a pet - he was a hunting dog who, for whatever reason, didn't work out. We don't hunt, so that is not the problem - but a dog who is not raised as a pet, was most likely raised in a pen, has not been properly house-trained.  We are working on learning his "tells," his behavioral signs that he needs to go out, because he does not make noise (!) to let us know.

In fact, I've only heard him howl once, when he didn't know I was home, and have heard him whine when he is sleeping...that is it. I don't know if he knows how to bark! He doesn't seem to know to play with his toys - we've bought him a couple of squeaky things and a few balls, all of which he has batted at once or twice and then ignored. He does seem to enjoy certain of my granddaughters' stuffed animals, though.

The other thing I wanted to update you on was that I asked readers of my newsletter (if you don't already get my newsletter, which gets updated once or twice a month, sign up here) to take a poll for me, letting me know what it is about a new book that will make them choose to read it. I know that if you are like me, it is likely a combination of things, but the polling service only let people pick one answer. The question was which answer was most important in choosing to buy/download a book to read. There were five possible answers. As you can see, four answers received clicks. The fifth possible answer was "the number/rating of reviews."

As an author, I was surprised that not one person selected the number/rating of reviews, although, perhaps if people had been allowed to answer with more than one answer it would have been selected. Perhaps it's not the most important - but that doesn't mean that it's not important at all. As an author, I've been encouraged to ask readers to rate and review my books because that is one of the things that Amazon considers when showing books to readers - the more reviews, the more the book is shown, because Amazon (and other selling platforms, I'm sure,) wants to make money, and promoting things that are well-liked has proven to work for them.

To that end, if you have read my books and enjoyed them, I would like to ask you to consider leaving a review. Reviews don't have to be detailed - even a simple star rating can help get the books shown to more readers. 

   

Thank you for checking in with me. I hope you are well, and continue to stay well. I'm going to get back to working on the sequel to Shades of Deception. What else is there to do while socially isolating? Plenty, actually - I'll also be repainting my living room and starting spring cleaning. But, since all of that is work, and writing is much more fun, that's what I'm starting my day with!