Wow! After self-publishing five novels, I've been "discovered" by a New York publisher, DocUmeant Publishing. It's definitely a big deal in my career as an author. I'm discovering that having a publisher, however, means a lot of work - work I should have been doing all along, but wasn't savvy enough to know what to do. It's all good though - very good.
Who knew how much stuff an author needs to do to get their book out there? Millions of books are published every year, so getting the attention of readers, like you, is challenging. My new publisher, DocUmeant Publishing, has just provided me with a Media Kit with tons of incredibly good information and links to sources of marketing expertise.
I'm still working on my marketing plan, but I can tell you I expect to be doing blog tours and a book trailer for my upcoming newest novel, Trouble in Choctaw County. There's lot more, and I'll let you know more about all that in the next blog, creatively called, My Blog.
Hellanback was the name of our ranch out in the back country of San Diego County, California. My wife, Paula, and I had a 50 acre ranch where we raised livestock (cattle, pigs, donkeys, and horses) and also had a vineyard and winery. It was a lot of work and we wanted a change after twenty-some years, so we decided to sell the ranch and move to Florida. Yep, Florida. We actually met in Florida way back in 1990, in Fort Lauderdale. We loved the name Hellanback Ranch and the place. It's kind of a kick back, frame-of-mind place (when you're not working your butt off, that is).
How did we come up with the name? Before we had the ranch, Paula and I would ride our horses on the weekends, and she would always ask me where we were going. Being a wise cracker, I always told here we'd probably go to Hell and back. When we finally found the very remote property that eventually became the ranch, we had to give it a name. Hellanback seemed the logical choice - this was the place.