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Freebooksy data on how to price your bargain ebook. (spoiler: $.99 works best)

You can now spend your vacation running  a bookstore in a small town in Scotland. This sounds like a dream holiday to me...or a romantic comedy plot.

Kindle counterfeiting. So many scams...so little time.

A book about a haunted IKEA store. This is brilliant!

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Maybe you don't need a kickass first line. Good to hear since I'm not good at first lines. I keep working and working at them, but the hooks elude me.

Heroes and Heartbreakers has a post on romances based on Astrology. Pretty cool! One of my plot bunnies features an astrologer heroine (based on Susan Miller of Astrology Zone fame) so I'm interested to see if this trend has legs.

Is Ghost Hunters fake?

Penny Watson on staying outside the box. This is a really cool post. People who write different (quirky!) book can be successful too. That's good to see.

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I can't believe I missed this April Fool's prank by the British Museum: Proof of Alien Abductions Found in 15th Century Manuscript. Cue X-files music.

Michael Flynn wrote a book about medieval alien abductions. I'm adding it to to (quite large) TBR pile. Now I feel like writing Historical Science Fiction Romance. How's that for a gender-bender? ;)

Book cover fonts by genre. I really wish I'd had this reference guide while I was making my cover. It would have saved me a lot of time.

Vivi Andrews on author branding.

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Interview with cover artist Patricia Schmitt (a.k.a. Pickyme) who has designed covers for Sylvia Day and J.R. Ward.

How to keep your sales steady after release from Lindsay Buroker.

Getting the most for your editing dollar.

Set the DVRs. X-files will return on January 24th.

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Bookbub Q&A.

Godzilla hotel opens up in Japan.

David Gaughran breaks down and embraces the Bella Andre method.

Lisa Renee Jones on how to promote books in a saturated market. This post is kind of depressing. She uses the word "saturated" a bajillion times. :(

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The story behind the Winchester Mystery House. This is one of my favorite ghost stories. They are going to allow sleepovers now. Would you do one? I honestly wouldn't. I'm too chicken.

Ilona Andrews on how to branch out without compromising your author brand. This is a very timely post for me, as I am finishing up my Banshee Creek series and wondering what to do next. Small town sci fi with aliens and FBI agents? Sexy ghost hunters? Hmmm.

Recycled cover art in YA.  I love how artists can make the same stock photo look so different. I'm researching the heck out of this because I'm making my own covers and the dearth of appropriate stock is starting to get to me. Some of the images I'm using are pretty common and I'm going to have to come up with ways to freshen them up.

Today's Google Doodle - Nessie Edition

I absolutely adore today's Nessie-themed Google Doodle. The alien-powered Nessiecraft is fantastic!

Is it a ghost... or is it worse?

This series of tweets from Karina Halle (@metalblonde) led to an hour of compulsive googling. Yes, exploding head syndrome is real. It happens to me and, honestly, I'd rather it be a ghost.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I Put a Spell on You...

Annie Lennox put on a spectacular performance last night.

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An owl steals hats in Oregon. This is hilarious and I need to add it to my book. Banshee Creek owls go rogue!

Another fabulous Zoe York podcast. This time there's juicy Facebook info. Facebook is such a frustrating experience for me. I made an author business page (which is what everyone recommends) but couldn't get any "likes" for it (cause, duh, I have no books out so no one knows me). I now have a personal author profile (separate from my personal-personal profile, which is all in Spanish and is mostly Puerto Rico gossip) and have managed to collect some interesting author friends. For the first time in YEARS author Facebook is actually fun. Here's my profile in case you want a whole bunch of writing links and Zac Bagans pics littering up your feed. I still have to do that page thingie for the Banshee Creek series, but I think I'll procrastinate that for a while.

Amazon squeezes small presses. Interesting article. There's a lot of small romance presses and I wonder if this is affecting them. Food for thought.

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How stories act as agents of personal transformation. Powerful essay.

The cost of self-publishing a book (with numbers!) Great post. Few writers are willing to share financial information, which makes it difficult to judge one's publishing options. I'm always grateful when someone decides to open up the kimono.

Mae Clair on Corpse Roads. Fascinating stuff. I have to add a corpse road to my paranormal small town. These things are creepy.

One Indie author's debut year income. Great post that compares a year of traditional sales income for a book with a year of indie income. Eye-opening!

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Murakami fans gather at a small sheep farm every year. Every. Single. Year. Dude, that's a lot of sheep chasing.

The world's most haunted bodies of water. Cool! I new about the Bermuda Triangle and the Sargasso Sea, but the rest are kind of obscure.

The importance of Amazon also-boughts. Also, a useful list of places where you can sell your e-book.

The Facebook algorithm hid Mark Zuckerberg's book club thread from the people who had signed up for it. *Facepalm*

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Smart Bitch Sara on why you should be watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. She had me at sumptuous costumes. I'm definitely putting this on my Netflix queue.

Lindsay Buroker on e-book marketing strategies that still work.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch on "churning out," romance, and genre publishing.

Catherine Ryan Howard on rejection and happy endings.

An Austin TX cottage haunted by... frat boys?

Movie Review: Hallmark's Christmas Under Wraps

This movie has one of my favorite tropes: fish out of water. In this case, uptight doctor meets small-town hunk and holiday hijinks ensue. I loved this movie and I'm naming it my favorite holiday movie of 2014.

The premise is simple, our career-oriented lass, Dr. Lauren Brunell, is a newly-credentialed doctor in San Francisco. Her ritzy fellowship in Boston falls through and she's stuck with a family doctor position in rustic Garland, Alaska. I love this plot. L-O-V-E. I liked it when it was called Northern Exposure and I still like it now.

Andy, the love interest is, as you would expect, a fan of plaid. He's also a pilot (All Alaskan guys are pilots. I think it's in the state constitution somewhere), which comes in handy since Garland is nowhere near Anchorage. Oh, and he drives a red pickup truck. Seriously, a plane and a truck? This is Hallmark Hero overkill.

The town is small, there's the requisite diner and hardware store. It's supposed to be a rustic Alaska hamlet, but it looks more like a ritzy ski resort town. The houses are enormous with stone cladding and wood paneling, and the downtown is cute in an Aspenish kind of way. The main employer is an outfit called "Holliday Shipping." Yep, you guessed it, Andy is the owner's son. He used to be an architect in Seattle, but, as Hallmark Movie heroes are wont to do, he returned to Garland to serve as the resident handyman-slash-heir-to-local-shipping-empire. Oh, and his dad looks just like Santa Claus, if old Santa wore buffalo plaid flannel shirts that is.

Lauren is appalled to find out that she has to stay in a gorgeous log cabin.  Yeah, right, the kitchen has so much granite she could open up her own quarry. Super-picky Lauren is even more horrified when she finds out that the Garland General Hospital is located in an old Victorian home. Needless to say, I'm in love. I adore old houses. The sets and wardrobe in this movie don't quite reach the levels of fabulousness of The Twelve Trees of Christmas, last year's favorite, but they come close.

As you would expect, our uptight doctor loosens up and learns to love flannel shirts and hunky pilots. The knight-in-shining-flannel looks heart-broken when he thinks he's getting dumped. The townspeople are quirky and adorable. None of it comes as a surprise, but it's all heart-warming and adorable.

I'm not going to spoil the big secret (hint: there's reindeer involved), but suffice it to say that this is my favorite Christmas movies of 2014, although Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever is a close second. Cute premise, great scenery (the Alaska shots are gorgeous), and good acting make for a very enjoyable film. Two thumbs up (with antlers!)

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Brenna Aubrey on her decision to turn down a trad pub contract and self-publish. (Numbers!)

Why is Pennsylvania so haunted?

Courtney Milan on self-publishing.

I just found out about The Haunting of Sunshine Girl. It's a YouTube series about a plucky girl with paranormal powers. The episodes are all about ghost hunting. It's pretty good! They're coming out with a YA book which also sounds pretty interesting. The cover is certainly very striking.

In the mood for a holiday-themed alien abduction romance? Me too! I'm adding Eve Langlais' Alien Abduction to my TBR list this December.

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Great Jenny Crusie thread on unforgettable story moments.

The legend of the Maryland GoatMan.

The story behind that creepy Mockingjay song.

Ten nearly perfect movies and what they teach us about storytelling. Ghostbusters is number 4.

Attack of the Arkansas Vampire Deer. I know it's a joke, but it's a cool one. My favorite part was when the victims asked for an ebola test. Classic.

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A cool reddit post on ghost hunting. I think my favorite ghost hunting stories are the ones where the creepy events are kind of mundane. In this one it's a foggy car window. It reminds me of the "Nerak" scene in Watcher in the Woods, one of my favorite childhood movies. Very interesting.

"Infodump," "Mary Sue" and other words authors are sick of hearing.

9 indie publishing lessons we learned in 2014. Man, remember way back in the beginning of the internet when authors used their blogs as writing diaries? I loved those blogs. People would put up their word count, favorite typos and post pictures of their mug-of-the-day (Cthulu coffee mug FTW). Once in a while someone would hit the gym and post pics. Those were the days. Then the whole social media thing happened and everyone felt compelled to turn their blog into a marketing tool with tons of giveaways and promo whatchamacallits. Ugh. Then that stopped working and the conventional wisdom was that blogging wasn't worth the bother. Well, the old-fashioned kind of writer's blog is now called a "development diary" and, wonder of wonders, it still works. Plus ça change...

London hotel has Hogwarts rooms and Muggle tour in its Harry Potter package. This is awesome! I love the room decor.

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Dear Author dug out some numbers on Kindle Unlimited. The payout is going down (boo hoo!) but the service seems to help new authors with discoverability. The Dear Author tour of the Harlequin offices in Toronto is also really cool.

The truth behind "antique" vampire hunting kits. Fascinating article. Here's the researcher's conclusion:

"So, although I had set out to 'debunk' their very existence, I came to realize that these enigmatic objects transcend questions of authenticity. They are part of the material culture of the gothic; aspects of our shared literary and cinematic passions made physical. Lacking any surviving artifact of vampirism either folkloric or fictional, fans of the gothic had created one to fill the gap. So whilst we at the Armouries still plan to scientifically test our vampire kit, and there is the possibility that it's early rather than late 20th century in date, for me the outcome has almost become moot. Vampire killing kits are genuine artifacts of the Gothic fiction that still provides sustenance to our most beloved monsters." 

How data can help you write a better screenplay. Very cool data crunching analysis.

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Scientists figured out how to make people feel ghosts. "The sensation of an otherworldly presence, they found, actually derives from garbled sensorimotor brain signals, in which a person's self awareness of their own body is projected into a seemingly disconnected space. In such cases, the researchers explained in a release, the brain mis-assigns its own life signals as belonging to someone or something else."

Super cool Reddit AMA from a historical curator at a small historical site. Very interesting stuff here. Check out his take on paranormal research groups:

"There definitely has to be a line. I think it helps that everyone on the staff is on the same page when it comes to the paranormal - none of us are believers! We only hold this paranormal event once-a-year and always around Halloween. I too have museum patrons who ask, "is the house haunted?" Well, I don't like to answer, "I don't know" to any question and just end it there. Now I can at the very least mention a piece of "evidence" that the group captured - but still say that I don't believe the house is haunted.And while we do get a few requests every year from other amateur paranormal groups - we've really only given our "seal of approval" to the Johndale Paranormal Group (the group that gives our presentation). They take a skeptical eye to paranormal claims and use as scientific methods as possible, which is why we are willing to host an event run by them.Everyone else has to be willing to pay a sizable fee to perform investigations in the house. When another group does come in, if they lie about their findings, act unprofessional, or use hokey methods - they won't be allowed back in the house. We would never sacrifice our ability to share real, verifiable, actual history in favor of promoting a haunted reputation of the museum. But here's the thing: do you know how many radio or newspaper interviews I've been asked to perform when we have a historical author come in? Or even the Warden of the State Prison? The answer is never. Not once. But for the paranormal events, our executive director, the investigators themselves, and myself have all been interviewed multiple times. A typical event we hold at the museum gets about 20-30 attendees. Last year we had 170 turn up for the Paranormal Event. I've never seen a line outside of the museum except for that day. We also made about $700 in book sales and donations that afternoon...My board has been extremely supportive. I'm free to essentially 'try anything' at the museum I manage. The only disagreement we had is that one of the members wanted me to charge admission to the event, while I preferred to draw in a larger audience and keep it free. (In the end, the event is free)"

Pretty exciting. I knew the paranormal stuff could boost attendance, but it's good to see some real numbers. From 20 to 170 is a big bump.

An paranormal investigator taped a bunch of noises allegedly made by Champ, a sea monster living in Lake Champlain, Vermont.