FREE BOOK offer!

OH GOD YOU ARE SO SICK OF SEEING BLATANT SELF-PROMO HERE AND ON ALL OF THE 'NET, but bear with me a moment. One more time, with feeling. A BET, like Lucy and Ricky Ricardo made all the time!

Last night, my elderly mother asked me if I thought I could sell 10 books before the end of the week. (She meant NICE WORK, but I got her to count ANY book of mine, including the Shalanna Collins books such as APRIL, MAYBE JUNE.)

Well, I wasn't sure she was serious, but she TRIPLE-dog-dared me. Skipping entirely over the DOUBLE-dog-dare. Completely out of protocol. She mentioned something she'd make me do for her if I *didn't* sell. And, yes, I'd like to be able to say I met the challenge.

I know people are being conservative with their money, so here's my promo idea. In this promotion, to last from yesterday until Sunday at midnight, I will not mention going to the Oak Tree Press direct site to buy the book because I want to see how long it takes for people to receive the books they've ordered from that site, and the experiment is ongoing. Unfortunately, this means we have to deal directly with Amazon--which makes people more comfy, because they know they can trust Amazon, even if it costs a widge more.

If you go to Amazon and buy NICE WORK by Denise Weeks before Sunday at midnight, and you snail-mail me the paper invoice that comes in the box when you get the book, I will personally send you a check reimbursing you for what NICE WORK cost you AND a signed bookplate. If you then write a review on Amazon for NICE WORK--pro or con, whatever you really feel--I will send you a code that will let you get a FREE Oak Tree Press book by mail. Any book they sell. Honest!

Interested? Email my assistant (Mama!) at jodie.gerneth AT gmail DOT com to get the mailing address for the invoice. This offer is good for the first 25 people who take me up on it. (I can't extend it indefinitely, because my royalty for the book is around a dollar, and we're talking about my sending out ~$20 in return, so I could go broke doing this.)

Yes, I'm trying to get the book kicked off. It is my hope that once some of you either read the book or pass it along to your husbands/wives/mothers/kids to read it, you will like it and change your low opinions of my writing in general. This would be a good thing. I would like to see this. I would LOVE to see more Amazon reviews. Then I might become a Real Girl. As dangerous as that might be.

We may not make 10 and I might have to make Mama a sweet potato pie, so HURRY! (You know she has diabetes! This isn't good for her health, although occasionally one does have to say fikkit and just splurge.)

You all know how to search Amazon. But if you like clicking through, you'll see NICE WORK listed on my Amazon page below.

Denise Weeks' Amazon author page

Oh, all right, here's the direct link to NICE WORK. Remember, it is a BIG book in trade paper.

NICE WORK at Amazon

And the link to my Shalanna Collins author page, in case you don't care for mysteries but you do like fantasy/YA or you have a student/kiddo/acquaintance who does.

Shalanna Collins' Amazon author page

I don't know what else I can do (short of hanging out at the corner of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn, and I simply don't have the wardrobe or the bod for that) in order to get this book rolling and kicked off. The publisher had expected to see my family and friends buying the book as soon as it went live. A few loyal and decent and wonderful people DID (and I will not forget you, EVER), but not as many as she had expected. She expressed her disappointment to me in e-mail on Wednesday, because she usually sees contest winners take off (probably because they have lots of acquaintances who have money and/or jobs, and I happen to run in circles of artists and am related to many elderly folk who can't afford anything, and I understand that). This is one of the remedies I thought I'd try. It isn't that I'm not confident of the book's quality when compared to traditional mysteries by my favorites like Diane Mott Davidson and Anne George. In fact, I don't think I've posted snippets of this one on this journal, or at least not in ages. So no one can come out and say, "If it's that one you posted on here, I don't like it." At least not YET, not until you actually see a copy.

NOTE: I know that Amazon has not yet activated the "Look Inside!" feature that we asked for on the NICE WORK page. I don't know how much longer they'll take to do it, although I really want them to hurry. However, if you'd like a sample in PDF form, e-mail Mama (I'm trying to get her to learn how to use gmail, and that's why I'm having you do her) at jodie.gerneth at gmail, and she'll send one along. Mr. J. Michael Orenduff has advised me that Amazon customers won't buy a book that they can't LOOK INSIDE of, and I trust his judgment. Let's use the power of our minds to make them add the feature soon. And make the book sell by magic. You are getting sleeeepy--

zzzzzzzzz

*Pop* Um, right. What was I typing again?

OH, yeah. So the rabbi says to the priest, "Throw the money in the air, and what God wants, he keeps."

(Hey, don't blame me. That joke was the one that proved Number Five was alive in "Short Circuit." It's a really cute flick. If you haven't seen it, do.)