P.B. Cannon's Blog, page 20

Boucher’s World: Emergent (was 4.99 now 2.99!)

Part 1 of a full length novel chronicling the tale of a society of humans and a race of beings called the Elvwists, who have been trapped together within a mysterious dome on a far-away world for over two thousand years. Over the centuries, the humans have developed various psychic abilities which their Elvwists friends already had.

Learn what happens when a young human female and her cat partner find a way out and they finally emerge from the dome.

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Interruptions (wass 1.99 now .99 cents!)

A short story.

Werewolves Cady and Sam’s attempt to live a normal, quiet life in the small town of Matthews, North Carolina is interrupted. Will they be able to handle a bad situation and get back to the slow pace they love?

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Living in the Moment (was 2.99 now .99 cents!)

A novelette.

Cady and Sam are back to their daily, more or less normal lives in their beloved little town of Matthews, North Carolina, in their nice and quiet neighborhood. Then Sam’s estranged family shows up on their doorsteps. With luggage.

Will they be able to continue to keep the fact that they are werewolves a secret from his snobbish folks who never liked Cady for being from the wrong side of the tracks?

 

Boucher’s World: Emergent (use coupon# FL72E)

Part 1 of a full length novel chronicling the tale of a society of humans and a race of beings called the Elvwists, who have been trapped together within a mysterious dome on a far-away world for over two thousand years. Over the centuries, the humans have developed various psychic abilities which their Elvwists friends already had.

Learn what happens when a young human female and her cat partner find a way out and they finally emerge from the dome.

**********************************************************************************************************

Interruptions (use coupon# AW92A)

A short story.

Werewolves Cady and Sam’s attempt to live a normal, quiet life in the small town of Matthews, North Carolina is interrupted. Will they be able to handle a bad situation and get back to the slow pace they love?

**********************************************************************************************************

Living in the Moment (use coupon# KU43S)

A novelette.

Cady and Sam are back to their daily, more or less normal lives in their beloved little town of Matthews, North Carolina, in their nice and quiet neighborhood. Then Sam’s estranged family shows up on their doorsteps. With luggage.

Will they be able to continue to keep the fact that they are werewolves a secret from his snobbish folks who never liked Cady for being from the wrong side of the tracks?

 

The second book in my Boucher’s World series will be out soon.  I’m aiming for somewhere between June 1st and 15th.  I’m working fast to make that date!

Coming soon!

In the meantime, the first book in the series, Boucher’s World: Emergent is available atSmashwords, Amazon (where you can also get the paperback, but that costs more so you may want to stick with the ebook), B&N, Kobo, Diesel, Apple (view in iTunes to buy), Sony, and Versant.   Reviews at any of those sites are welcome.  So are comments.



Synopsis: In the year 2347, the people of Earth sent colonists to an uninhabited planet discovered the century before in the star system of Epsilon Eridani.


As it turned out, the world was inhabited; by a race of gentle giants with certain psychic abilities, called Elvwists.  Since the humans couldn’t go back, they had no choice but to come to an agreement with the Elvwists, who fortunately were an amicable race of beings.


A year after their arrival, one day they awakened to discover themselves surrounded by an impenetrable, transparent Dome.  This caused a huge disruption in the societies of both races, with the Elvwists eventually withdrawing behind force shields for their own safety and the humans degenerating into savagery.


Two thousand years later, a way out was finally discovered by a young woman, and the descendants of both races, having reconciled a thousand years before when the humans suddenly developed psychic abilities of their own, emerged from the Dome together.


Boucher’s World: Emergent is the chronicle of how the exit was found, what happens when they leave the Dome, and how some unfortunate things about some humans have not changed in two thousand years.

Today as I was clearing out some old papers, I found this. It was one of my few attempts at poetry and I wrote it for my granddaughter back in 2005 after the loss of her first child, my first great-grandchild.  We have never forgotten him, but finding this brought him back sharp and fresh in my mind.

Le’Aedyn

He came into being beneath his mother’s heart,

Soothed, nurtured, loved unconditionally

He lived beneath his mother’s heart,

Comforted, safe, floating in a world created especially for him.

He waited without anticipation, without knowing he was waiting,

No fears, no worries, dreaming unborn dreams.

He breathed his first breath and lay in his mother’s arms,

Soothed, nurtured, loved unconditionally.

He lived in a bright new world, bringing joy, happiness, tenderness,

Gentling everyone around him.

No fears, no worries; for a fortnight and a few, he tarried…

Now he lives in his mother’s heart,

Soothed, nurtured, loved unconditionally,

And in God’s bosom, heaven’s littlest angel.

No fears, no worries.

Le’Aedyn, one week old.

It’s been a month since I resolved to do my return.  Then I got sick and didn’t feel like working on it.  When I did feel better, I went back to procrastinating, doing everything but that. I kept feeling that if I went to work on that, then I’d just feel bad again.  Yeah, I know, any old excuse will do.

My daughter kept nudging me (bless her heart!) until I decided to check with some of the tax return businesses to see how much it would cost to get a simple return done.  Well.  That didn’t work.  I had no idea it would cost that much to get a simple return done.  I’m retired and on a fixed income, and paying someone to do this for me wasn’t going to fly, so I got on the internet and went back over to irs.gov to check out the free efile thingy.

I searched through them until I found one that would do both federal and state, and I sure am glad I didn’t just take the first one that popped up on the list.   That company would do the federal for free but would charge $29.95 to do the state!   There were a number of them like that, some charging even more.  It seemed to me that they were just making up for filing your federal for free by overcharging you to do the state, since that’s about what I paid to file both a couple of years ago (last year, I used Turbo-tax and it didn’t charge for federal but charged 14.95 for state).   Seemed kind of deceitful to me.

Anyway, I found one, OLT, that would do the federal for free and only charge $7.95 for state.   I felt this was a good deal, so I had at it.  I got all my stuff together and started working on it last week.  Then I had a relapse of feeling bad, and laid everything aside.   Then one of my granddaughters and her five-year old son came to spend a few days with us, and I enjoyed their visit but didn’t feel like working on taxes while they were here, so in between bouts of feeling like crud and having to lie down, I got in a little writing and did a post or two somewhere (I know, I know, I was back to procrastinating.  So sue me!).

The grands left Sunday and I didn’t feel well Monday, so yesterday I hopped right back on it.   Heh.   No, I didn’t.   I was going to, but felt bad again, so I wrote instead.  Today, I did my taxes.   In fact, I just hit the efile send button after printing and going over the forms to make sure I didn’t miss anything.   And guess what?  OLT did not charge me that $7.95 to file the state!  It seems I was poor enough to qualify for free federal and state.

This made me very happy.  I would dance if I felt well enough to get up and do it.   Maybe tomorrow.

Is it just me, or has Microsoft Word’s grammar check gotten even more quirky lately?  Like, gone around the bend, quirky?  I mean, it has always done its best to get me to re-phrase everything, or change my tense when I didn’t want to, or – this is a favorite  – it tells me I’ve got a fragmented sentence. Uh-huh, yeah, I know it’s a fragment.  Dammit!  I meant for it to be!  Now, leave me the f…- uh – the flock alone!  Damned thing would have every manuscript be a dry string of perfectly constructed crap.

It has always been good at telling me such things as, what I really meant was “her” instead of “she”( as in “Her ran up the stairs”) or it would tell me I meant “he” instead of “himself” (that would be “He scratched he on the rosebush”).  Yesterday, though, it gave me a whole new perspective on first person contractions involving the verb “to be”.   This is my new all time favorite example of its insistence that I should change what I’ve written.  It told me what I really wanted in my sentence was – and I swear to God this is true – it told me I wanted “me’m” instead of “I’m”.  So.  My sentence should have read, “Me’m going to load the dishwasher, now”.

Uh-huh. Who the hell wrote the grammar program? I wish I had thought to copy that one. I did show it to my daughters.  After all, they came running,wanting to know just why I was rolling on the floor, howling myself silly (I know, I know, grammar check; that should be “howling me silly”.  Hush).  Of course, now neither of us can resist making that particular substitution in our speech, you know, just to see how it works.  And, we’ve managed to come up with some others, too (such as we’m, it’m, you’m, etc.  There’s more, just can’t remember them all right now).  We’ve had some interesting conversations since then.

Okay, gotta get back to writing, so me’m finished with this post, now.

Last day to use coupon YY77N  to get the ebook short story “Interruptions” FREE at Smashwords!  A variety of available ebook reading formats.

Free short story at Smashwords until 3/31 use coupon YY77N

Cady and Sam don’t like excitement. Consequently, they love their unexciting lifestyle in the small town of Matthews, N.C. They’ve got a cute kid, good jobs, great neighbors, and as Cady says, their home beats the wheels off their last address. Unfortunately, interruption rears its ugly head when you least expect it.

So I put my KDP select novelette, Hard Changes, up for free for three days.  Then I forgot I had it scheduled until a few days before.  Bad move.  I rushed to put up a post about it then went looking for sites that allow you to put your free book up.  Unfortunately, a lot of them require you to have reviews and at least a three star rating.  Heh.  It has no reviews and no stars. And most sites require a heck of lot more lead time than two or three days.  I did find a couple that put it up for me, but apparently, judging from the number of downloads, that wasn’t enough.  It’s a science fiction story, and even there it’s sort of a niche book.  Or, maybe it’s just a rotten story.  Sigh.

Oh, well.  I have two more free days left.  I’ll schedule those and try to get a little more going in the way of promotions.  Poor little thing’s got a few hours left free today so maybe somebody (or somebodies) will still give it a whirl.

My novelette, Hard Changes, which is FREE through 3/23 at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Changes-ebook/dp/B00BG9KN8S/ref=la_B00AZVR0AM_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1364011663&sr=1-7 ), will be featured at 12am PST on http://www.freebookdude.com/.