{"id":507,"date":"2009-01-01T22:43:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-01T22:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/?p=507"},"modified":"2009-01-01T22:43:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-01T22:43:00","slug":"so-far-so-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/?p=507","title":{"rendered":"So far, so good&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, the first day of 2009 hasn&#8217;t been too bad. I&#8217;ve sold three copies of <em>Mortal Touch<\/em> today, one paperback and two Kindle editions! Total sales ticked up for December, too. <em>Mortal Touch<\/em> has been out for 17 months and sales are chugging right along, getting stronger rather than flagging.<\/p>\n<p>I just got another five-star review on Amazon&#8211;from Harriet Klausner. Ms. Klausner is an extremely prolific reviewer who was actually profiled in <em>Time<\/em> magazine a couple of years ago. I tried to get in touch with her last year when I was sending <em>Mortal Touch<\/em> out for reviews, but I couldn&#8217;t find solid contact information for her and I&#8217;m not sure I reached her. Evidently, <em>Mortal Touch<\/em> finally sailed into her radar screen, because just before the ice storm she e-mailed me asking for a review copy. I sent one out just before the holidays. She&#8217;s already put her review on Amazon! I&#8217;m not sure where else it might appear, her reviews tend to pop up all over the place. But that makes eight reviews on Amazon now, all five stars.<\/p>\n<p>I recently sent a PDF out to another reviewer who asked to see it, as well, so I hope I&#8217;ll have another new review before too long. Meanwhile, I have three reviews to <em>write<\/em> and get up on Blogcritics!<\/p>\n<p>I tried a culinary experiment: cheesecake without sugar, refined grains or corn syrup. I used Neufchatel cheese and honey, and for the crust I crushed some reduced-fat Triscuit and mixed the crumbs with melted butter, honey and cinnamon. The cheesecake came out really well! Spongier and a little more &#8220;custard&#8221; flavored than your classic New York cheesecake, but extremely tasty. Recipe on request if anyone is curious.<\/p>\n<p>I actually got an e-mail from Dad! I&#8217;m stunned! The last e-mail he sent me is dated May 14, 2008! That clinches it&#8211;2009 really <em>is<\/em> going to be different! *g*<\/p>\n<p>Just to balance things out, I gained a whole 1.2 pound yesterday (drinking white zinfandel wine and eating too many tortilla chips and cheddar cheese \ud83d\ude41  ), it&#8217;s just as bitterly cold tonight as last night&#8211;but at least the wind is dying down&#8211;I discovered that two squash in my fridge have spoiled, and I finally learned that I did not win the Massachusetts Center for the Book award for 2007. That was the very last contest entry I hadn&#8217;t heard about. Oh, well! I may not bother with any more of these contests, their impact on sales seems dubious. No one&#8217;s opinion really matters but that of my readers, bottom line! Therefore, the only promotional efforts that are worth doing are the ones that my readers actually <em>see.<\/em> At least <em>Mortal Touch<\/em> is on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.massbook.org\/Census2007.html\" target=\"_blank\">the &#8220;census&#8221; of Massachusetts-related books for 2007<\/a>, and it isn&#8217;t that long a list. In fact, I&#8217;m first on the list because it&#8217;s alphabetical by author&#8217;s last name.<\/p>\n<p>I hope everyone has been having a relaxing New Year&#8217;s Day. Aside from going out to shovel snow, haul in firewood and get the newspaper in a wind chill of -5 degrees (brrrrrrr!!!!), I have! Except that now I need to quit procrastinating and go do a workout. I&#8217;m trying to find a treadmill free or cheap because I&#8217;m bored to death with the exercycle. January 1st, unfortunately, is not the best time to look for exercise equipment!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, the first day of 2009 hasn&#8217;t been too bad. I&#8217;ve sold three copies of Mortal Touch today, one paperback and two Kindle editions! Total sales ticked up for December, too. Mortal Touch has been out for 17 months and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/?p=507\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vyrdolak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}