Maggie Pill Mysteries

Book #1 I looked up the word benchmark but I didn't learn much. It's a combination of bench + mark, and it represents a new standard. (So what's the bench got to do with it?  Do we sit down and rest when we reach a point where we've done something really cool? I don't intend to. Who wants to rest when you're on a roll?) Wherever the word came from, I'm approaching a benchmark with The Sleuth Sisters, the first book in the series. Sometime in the next week it will hit 1500 in audio book sales. For a book I wrote under a pseudonym, published myself, and promoted haphazardly at best, that's amazing. The production company people are pretty happy, too, since I did a 50-50 share of the profits with them rather than pay upfront. With a second, third, and soon a fourth installment in the series, we've got a small but reassuring stream of money coming in. In e-book, print, and audio sales, I'm earning more on the Sleuth Sisters than any of my ot...

Anyone who reads knows there is a huge industry out there trying to grab your attention. Big publishers wave their "golden" writers in front of your face with words like "gripping" and "must-read." Small presses try to get readers to their niche market by promising can't-put-'em-down books tailored to your tastes. And self-published writers beg you to sign up for their newsletters and blogs so you'll know when they get that next book ready. Books are offered daily at great prices, even for free, with the hope that you'll love them so much you'll come back for more and more from that author or that publisher. You could download enough free books from BookBub or InstaFreebie that you'll never catch up on your TBR. Though most of them won't be worth your time, it's there, and it doesn't cost you a cent. I have friends who love the adventure of looking for pearls among the grains of sand. Smart readers ignore the hype...

When I go places to promote my books, I usually begin with an introduction to the Sleuth Sisters , explaining that Barb and Faye start a detective agency but don't want Retta involved because she's so very bossy. Audiences get a kick out of Barb's penchant for secretly correcting grammatical errors around her home town. S ome who've read the books tell me what a sweetie Faye is, and a few have confessed that though they didn't like Retta at first, she's become tolerable because her strengths contribute to the agency's success. What's most rewarding about talking to audiences about the books is that women tend to compare their own sibling relationships to my characters' situation. "I have a sister who--" or "There are four of us and--" and interestingly enough, "I'm the bossy one in my family. I'm Retta." They see their own families in the Sleuth Sisters, and they try to decide which sister they're mos...

An author in an online group I visit did an informal survey to discover reading habits, and it was interesting to me. I don't recall specific numbers, but here's the gist of it. Most people who read still read print books. The percentage was in the 90s. Many people read e-books in addition to print. I think that was 67% of her responders, and that's where I fall too. Some listen to audiobooks as well. That was twenty-something percent. I haven't joined that crowd yet, mostly because I'm a fast reader and I don't like waiting for someone to read to me. The author's respondents were about the same demographic as my readers: mostly women, mostly over 40, mostly lovers of  the mystery genre. I haven't done any research, but I'd agree with those results just from talking to many, many readers over the last few years. We like print books, but some of us find them heavy or hard to manage as our hands get arthritic. It's sometimes hard to take t...