Competition and Giveaway

No, not from me! One of my favourite Indie authors, Laurie Boris, is part of a multi-author, print book promotion that includes:

• A new Fire HD 10 tablet.
• A new Kindle Paperwhite.
• A new 9 watt Fire tablet / Kindle eReader charger (you never have enough).
• A signed print edition of RP Dahlke’s A Dead Red Cadillac.
• A signed print edition of Donna Fasono’s Following His Heart.
• A signed print edition of Laurie Boris’s The Call.
• A signed print edition of Melinda Clayton’s Return to Crutcher Mountain.
• A signed print edition of Dianne Greenlay’s Quintspinner.
• A signed print edition of Julie Frayn’s Mazie Baby.

I’ve read ‘The Call’ and even though I know nothing about baseball, I still loved it. I haven’t read Melinda Clayton’s ‘Return to Crutcher Mountain’ but I have read an earlier book of hers and it was brilliant too.

If those two authors are anything to go by, the rest of the books will be fantastic as well. And then there are those Kindle goodies as well…

You can find all the details here:

http://fkbt.com/2017/11/13/time-big-november-giveaway/

Go on…what’re you waiting for? -grin-

Meeks

3 hours to enter a great sci-fi competition

I don’t normally enter competitions because I never win anything. No, seriously. Nevertheless, the thought of winning a new Kindle as well as a stack of new books made me change my mind.

 

Click the link below to go to the competition page being promoted by Andy McKell, one of the sci-fi authors participating in the competition:

https://booksweeps.com/enter-win-space-opera-science-fiction-novels-july-17/

Best of luck everyone!

Meeks

The problem with capitalism…in a ball

Unless you’re a golfer, you probably don’t think about golf balls. But a new US lawsuit about these little dimpled spheres has an economics lesson for all shoppers, showing why consumers have cause for concern when companies use court for sport. Costco, the wholesale membership club, rocked the golf world in 2016 when it started…

via A lawsuit over Costco golf balls shows why we can’t have nice things cheap — Quartz

The practice of Capitalism is more people-friendly than say, Totalitarianism, because it requires people to be consumers, and that is something people are happy to be. But to work properly, Capitalism requires the checks and balances of a healthy, competitive marketplace.

Using the law as a way to get rid of the competition may be ‘legal’ and ‘clever’, but it’s also a bully’s scam. The law is meant to be an equalizer, not a weapon. Frivolous legal action should have punitive consequences. While it does not, the law becomes complicit in the scam.

Perhaps I’m naive. Okay, I know I’m naive, but I did not expect the companies being bullied to accepted the inequity of their situation without protest. Excuse me? You’ve just lost your company for no good reason, and you grudgingly admire the tactic that made you lose?

Is this really the way we want our world to run?

In Australia, we have something called the ‘pub test’. If the common man in the pub thinks something stinks, then the authorities need to take action, even if it isn’t strictly illegal, because there’s the letter of the law, and then there’s the spirit of the law, and we all know the difference.

Meeks

And the winner of Episode 5 is….

Honie Briggs. 😀 Congratulations Honie, that Amazon gift voucher will be heading your way very soon.

But first, a wrap up of the very last competition. The answer to the multiple choice question was, of course, Innerscape. I could have picked a more exciting Q&A but it seemed like a nice way to finish off this long experiment.

I’ve learned many things during the last five weeks, but perhaps the most unexpected was about Twitter.

I’ve flirted with Twitter for years without ever really ‘committing’ to it. I saw myself as a blogger and not much else. But the truth is that there are a heck of a lot of really interesting people on Twitter, and it is possible to have a conversation with them. 140 characters may be tricky for verbose people like me, but the exchange of ideas is real.

More importantly, I’ve made some new friends, thanks to Twitter, so there ya go…old dog, new tricks. 😀

Finally, I want to say an enormous THANK YOU to my blogging friends. Your support has meant a lot to me, and I honestly don’t think I could have kept up this marketing stuff for so long without your help. You’re the best, all of you.

And now, I’m very relieved to announce that life on Meeka’s Mind will return to normal – odd posts about odd things that catch my interest. 🙂

I will be here over Christmas but only sporadically…mwahahahahaha…-cough-…sorry about that. 😀

Have a safe and joyous holiday,

love

Meeks

‘Innerscape, Episode 5 is live’ rhymes, badly :/

Now everyone knows why I don’t do poetry. But my prose ain’t that bad, and it so happens that the very last episode of Innerscape is now available for free download from Amazon. This is where you can get it:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NAINA5W/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1481705627&sr=8-6&keywords=kindle+Innerscape

And in the spirit of giving…or is it bribery?…the very last competition is now also up and running. As always, at the end of the competition, all the correct entries will have a chance to win a $20 gift voucher from Amazon.

Entering the competition is dead easy. Start by reading the ‘Look Inside’ below [just the first few pages]. There you will find the answer to the multiple choice question for this episode:

Drum roll…and the multiple choice question is:

Where is David and Jane’s wedding to take place?

1. Innerscape?
2. New York?
3. Sydney?

Once you know the answer, write it [or just the number of the correct answer] in comments and that’s it. Just one entry per person though. 🙂

The free download and the competition will both end on December 18, 2016. After that, the price for Episode 5 reverts to 0.99 cents till the end of the week. And after that, every episode, except for no. 1, will rise to $1.99. Episode 1 will stay at 0.99 forever, or until I can make it permafree.

So please, take advantage of the free dowload and the competition while you can.

cheers

Meeks

 

And the winner for Episode 4 is….

Congratulations, George! Your prize will be winging its way to you very soon. As some of you may know, George is the creator of the game ‘Adventures of a RubberBall’ 🙂

To everyone else – apologies for drawing the winner so late. For those who didn’t catch my tweet last night, the reason was that the Amazon the free download was still available when I went to bed last night so I couldn’t close off the competition.

Speaking of the competition, the correct answer to the multiple choice question was, of course, ‘the common cold’.

Normally by Sunday [in Australia] I’m busy preparing the launch of the next episode of Innerscape. The last couple of weeks have seen late starts due to timing issues with Amazon, but this week I’m the one out with the timing. The reason is that I’ve been rewriting a couple of chapters near the end of Episode 5. The outcome hasn’t changed, but the path to it has. I think, I hope, it’s become more…satisfying.

Anyway, I’m a perfectionist, and I simply could not publish something that I knew was not quite right. I couldn’t leave it alone. Hence the rewrite, and hence the delay. I know how busy things are going to get with Christmas just around the corner, so I apologise again. Episode 5 will be out there as soon as humanly possible.

cheers

Meeks

 

 

 

Allelujah! Innerscape, Episode 4 is finally free…

I’d better make this quick. Episode 4 is now available for free download from December 6, 2016 to December 10, 2016. To get your free copy, please follow the link to Amazon below:

https://www.amazon.com/Innerscape-Episode-4-C-Flory-ebook/dp/B01N0MZ35R/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1481019068&sr=1-4&keywords=kindle+innerscape

The Innerscape competition is ready to go as well. Simply read the ‘Look Inside’ below [use your browser’s back button to return to this post] and answer a simple, multiple choice question in comments, and hey presto, you’ll be in with a chance to win a $20 Amazon gift voucher. 🙂

The question for Episode 4 is – what did Alex Tang die of?

1. pneumonia?
2. a heart attack?
3. the common cold?

If you know the answer, please write it in comments [only one per person please] at the end of this post. When the competition finishes, I’ll write each correct entry onto a piece of paper which will then be folded and placed into a vessel of some kind, maybe a hat. Finally, the Offspring will come along to select the winning entry. Easy.

The winner of the competition will be announced on this blog, plus I’ll email or contact the winner directly. Then it’s just a case of deciding what to treat yourself to…erm, with.

If you haven’t entered the competition yet, please do because I get as much fun out of it as the winner does. 🙂

And now for a music track that I didn’t listen to while writing Innerscape. It’s a cinematic from Advent Children, an animation by Square Enix. This scene depicts the final fight between Cloud and Sephiroth, iconic characters from Final Fantasy 7. Even if you don’t like fighting, please watch the incredible cinematography and animation. 🙂

cheers

Meeks

The free Amazon promotion…that wasn’t :(

Having learnt from my experience last week, I enrolled Innerscape, Episode 4 in KDP Select early yesterday afternoon. Then I specified the free promotion I wanted, clicked the appropriate dates on the calendar and sat back to wait for the promotion to go live.

At 7:30 this evening I went in to KDP Select to check when the promotion would go live and discovered that there was no promotion.

I have no idea what happened, but now, despite my best efforts, the free download days won’t start until December 6 – i.e. tomorrow instead of today.

I’m more than a little peeved about this delay. It sets everything back and takes the promotion into the weekend, and we all know that very little happens on the weekend. Ah, well, too late to do anything but apologise. Episode 4 will be free tomorrow, and the new competition will begin tomorrow as well.

Thanks for bearing with me,

cheers

Meeks

And the winner of the Episode 3 #Competition is….

Cue drum roll!

Sherry Fundin of Fundinmental.com is the latest winner in the Innerscape launch competition.

Congratulations, Sherry, you have won a $20 Amazon gift voucher, and I’ll be sending it your way as soon as this post is done. Thank you for entering my little competition. It’s been fun meeting you. 🙂

And thank you to everyone else who entered the competition as well. Now that you know how easy the competition is, I hope you’ll all join in the next one.

Speaking of, there are two more Episodes to go and two more competitions, with the next one due to start [fingers crossed] on Monday, December 5, 2016. Due to timezone differences, the competition should begin at around 8:00pm for my Australian friends.

Until then, it’s goodnight from the Antipodes,

cheers

Meeks

Innerscape, Episode 3 – late but live. :)

At last! The price on Innerscape, Episode 3 has finally dropped to $0.00. It will stay free for the next 5 days [November 29, 2016 to December 3, 2016], so please grab your copy while you can. I know I shouldn’t say this but…Episode 3 will shock you. And that’s all I’m saying. 😀

You can download a free copy of Episode 3 from Amazon at the following URL:

https://www.amazon.com/Innerscape-Episode-3-C-Flory-ebook/dp/B01N69SI93/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1480406798&sr=8-4&keywords=kindle+Innerscape

And now for the competition.

Duration: 5 days from November 29, 2016 to December 3, 2016

The prize = a chance to win a $20 Amazon gift voucher.

The rules = read the Look Inside below, find the answer to the multiple choice question, also below, and write the answer in comments [either as a name or the number of the option]. Only 1 entry per person.

The question = Who was Alex Tang’s husband?

1. Mei Lin?
2. Barry Majors?
3. Peter Ngugen?

You will need to use the back button on your browser to come back from the Look Inside.

And now that the official business is taken care of…LOOK!

-blush- Sorry, I have never had one of my novels in the ‘Also Viewed’ list before. You guys must be doing something right. Thank you. 😀

-hugs-

Meeks