The Windy City Author (now in Maine) Sends Kind Words...

Maureen McDermott Gill, formerly of Chicago but now living in Maine, is the author of an excellent police thriller, January Moon, and an avid blogger with two excellent blogs, Tides & Currents and The Windy City Author...in New England. Yesterday she posted a lovely and generous plug for my forthcoming novel Depraved Heart. She and her husband Al, who is an excellent book critic, are beta-reading the manuscript and this is what she had to say:

...books, obviously, deserve to be savored... and one of them is Kathleen Valentine's third novel, "Depraved Heart," which I'm reading as a beta reader. She's hitting it out of the park with this one. My husband read it before I could start it; he enjoyed her two other books, "The Old Mermaid's Tale" and "Each Angel Burns," but said he thinks "Depraved Heart" may be her best yet. 

Kathleen's lyricism blows me away, as well as her strong story telling skills. I think "Depraved Heart" is an outstanding achievement. 

I have other friends who write great stories (my friend Nicole Daines Gibeaut comes to mind) and I've learned wonderful things from each of them, but Kathleen is teaching me something special about focus and discipline. She's been laying it on me pretty thick... chiding my ass for spending too much time on Facebook and not enough time writing fiction. I'm very flattered that she thinks I'm a gifted writer -- which is part of the reason she rides my butt (and we're going to talk more about that in another post!). Today, though, I want to direct your attention to Kathleen. 

Kathleen's Kindle sales are soaring and I can't think of a writer who deserves success more than Kathleen. Last summer she decided to hunker down and get very, very serious about finishing "Depraved Heart" while also devoting herself to promoting herself as a writer. 

Kathleen's as gifted with short stories as she is with full length novels. In a blog post she wrote this past Wednesday, January 25th, Kathleen describes how she's unbundled some of her short stories from their prior book formatting and sold them separately and how that has proven very successful; those short stories have driven sales for all of her books. Kathleen's determination to focus on her career as a writer, eschewing almost all other distractions, coupled with her talents as a writer and keen business acumen have all come together. In her post on Wednesday, Kathleen wrote that so far in this month alone (3 weeks!) she's seen over 9,000 books fly "off the digital shelves...." 

I spoke with Kathleen last week and we discussed in more detail how her shorts have enjoyed explosive sales and those sales continually beget more sales. I have at least twenty short stories in various states of completion -- some have been in my files for thirty years and I never even showed them to anyone. Now I'm eyeing them like possible buried treasure.

Kathleen Valentine is going to be one of those highly successful indies who prove indies are a mighty force to be reckoned with -- gifted writers who not only write beautifully but have also mastered the business end of the deal and found clever ways to market multiple talents. 

Thanks, Maureen! Now get to work on that next book!!!