Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Operation Ebook Drop for the Military

I am honored to be a part of a great service that is helping our military personnel overseas. Operation Ebook Drop is a program to provide FREE books to those serving our country. I am now providing, THE CARD, for free to any person serving our country overseas. In conjunction with Smashwords, the distributor for most ebook formats, my book is now available to all military personnel and their dependents.

The program has over 500 authors that provide every genre available for free to our military personnel. 

If you know of someone overseas that would enjoy THE CARD, have them contact me directly or have them go directly to the Operation Ebook Drop site right here to look through the library of books that are available. I can be contacted through that site under the posting for the Van Stone Novel.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

BookDads.com Review is in...and it's a Hit!

Please check out BookDads for the latest review of The Card. There's a spoiler alert in the review because of the emotional nature of some of the events. Here is an exert of the review by Chris Singer:

...The Card is a fast-paced, entertaining action-adventure story both fathers and sons can read and enjoy together...
... All in all, a terrific first effort by Jim Devitt. The Card is the first of what looks like a series of Van Stone novels. I’m really looking forward to seeing where the author is going to take this series. I’m especially interested in seeing if there is further development around some of the themes discussed above. I think many other readers will be looking forward to this as well...

Book Dads mission is to highlight books which show fatherhood in a positive light. Some of the content they hope to bring to you includes:
* Book reviews
* Author spotlights and interviews
* Advice and resources for dads to help promote reading to their children
* Parenting resources for dads

Friday, April 22, 2011

How I started the writing process


I’ve been meaning to get back to the original purpose of this blog, which is to give others an idea behind what I do, how I do it, and what path I took to self publish. It all begins with putting the pen on paper or fingers on keyboard. If that never happens, then nothing will come of the desire to write a book (or books.)

While I’m no expert, maybe by chronicling my process, someone else out there just starting out will get either some inspiration or figure out that if I can do it (Jim Devitt) then anyone can!

My two greatest influences in my beginnings of writing have been Stephen King’s On Writing and Larry Brooks Story Engineering and his blog storyfix.com. Stephen King does a great job of showing how he not only approaches the art of writing, but also the path that he took to get where he is today. Several times throughout the book, I looked up and said, “I can do this!” The feelings and frustrations that he underwent were the same things I was feeling through the process. So, thank you Stephen King for helping me realize that I could do this, too.

Larry Brooks is a different animal all together. His witty and engaging blog gets to the heart of Story Structure. He lays out a definite and specific plan that you must follow to bring together the right ingredients for a “sellable” novel. I encourage everyone to visit his blog and you will quickly become a fan of his style and candor. He pulls no punches. Thick skin is required. 

The bottom line is, regardless of who your influences are, you must have a plan. You need a goal. To decide you are going to write a novel is not enough. I look forward to our next installment, where I will discuss a little about goal setting and how that comes into play with something as diverse, and from the heart, as writing. It is art, but you need a blueprint to come out on top and to finish when you want to finish, rather than when you get around to it.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Upcoming Reviews for THE CARD

Lots of activity brewing with The Card! Please take a look at some of the great blogs that are helping to support the release of our new Van Stone novel. 

Look for a review at the end of the week on Books Dads, a great blog who's mission is to highlight books which show fatherhood in a positive light. 

The site includes book reviews, advice and resources for dads to help promote reading to their children and parenting resources for dads.

As you can imagine, I am honored to be a part of their mission and I hope that many dad's and kids out there can benefit not only from The Card, but from the resources on their site.


Stimulated Outlet Book Reviews has received The Card for review and you can see it posted on their site currently. SOBR conducts reviews that are broken into five categories: Overall, plot, originality,language and believability. Her reviews are a no-holds-barred analysis of the writing and the overall story. I look forward to seeing her upcoming critique.  

I'll post more sites as I have time, thanks again for your support, I couldn't be doing this without all of you.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Barnes and Noble

We are now live online at Barnes and Noble for the hard copy of The Card. The Nook edition should be available through B&N shortly. If you are looking for the Nook edition now, you can get that here. Thanks for all the support ... now off to the Tacoma Rainiers game for our bookmark event.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Tacoma Rainiers Opening Day Event

We're getting ramped up for another Bookmark event. We'll be out at the Tacoma Rainiers Home Opener tomorrow night handing out bookmarks for THE CARD. The 2010 Pacific Coast League Champions will open the newly renovated Cheney Stadium at 7:05 and we'll be out front sharing the Van Stone novel with the crowd. Hope to see you there! Stop by and say, hi.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Book Bloggers

Many people have been discussing book bloggers and ways to market themselves out in the blogosphere. For those who have ended up here looking for a solution, I will direct you to a recent blog about this topic.


The Book Deal, The Inside View of Publishing performs an in-depth analysis of this topic with some very helpful hints. Just as important, the comment string gives you additional insight as to what others are doing and how blog reviewers perceived the article.

There is no question that book review bloggers play an important role in the promotion of self published and traditionally published authors!

To give you an idea, in the coming months the following sites have either completed a review or agreed to review THE CARD:



Full Moon Bites
Book Dads
Kristi's Book Nook
Mystic Thoughts
Two Kids and Tired Book Reviews
Bloggin about Books
Welcome to My Life
Two ends of the Pen
Tic Toc
The Book Tree
A Soul Unsung
Stimulated Outlook Book Reviews
Silvers Reviews
Rita Reviews

That is all that is lined up right now, with more coming online everyday. One of the advantages of blog reviewers is that most will post their reviews on their own blog, Amazon, Goodreads and just about any other place you request (Barnes and Noble, etc.)

It is a win-win for everyone involved.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Bookmark event at the Seattle Mariners Opener

We had a great day out at Safeco handing out bookmarks for The Card. Thanks to Jill, Meli, Christy and Gavin for all the help. We've already seen the impact as The Card has gone from a 96,000 ranking in Amazon (out of over 5 million books) to a new ranking of 22,177 as of 5 pm tonight, not even 24 hours after the event. Thanks to everyone who is supporting The Card! Click the links on the sidebar to get your copy of The Card on either Amazon (Kindle or hardcopy) or Smashwords (Nook, iStore, and other ebook versions.)

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Mariners Home Opener

Look for us in front of Safeco Field for the home opener, tomorrow afternoon.


We'll be handing out bookmarks for The Card!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

New Review on Amazon

A new 5 Star review has appeared on Amazon, check out what the readers have to say! Click here.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Breakthrough Bookstore

Just got accepted in the Breakthrough Bookstore, a resource to help people sift through the tons of books that are available. Offering a special section on Young Adult self published books is a perfect way to get THE CARD out to others who might not have ever found it.

http://www.selfpublishedauthorsmarketplace.com/

Friday, April 1, 2011

Hard copy proof is in and it looks great!

It's official!

We are now live for ordering the hardcopy edition of THE CARD

We just received the review copy and it looks fantastic. I am really impressed at how well it came out.

You can purchase it directly here at the CreateSpace store and I'll add the link to the sidebar in case you want to come back at another time to order.

Thanks again for everyone's support!

Amazon Kindle version now available

It took us awhile, but we are now live on Amazon with the Kindle version, just click here to go right to the page. 

Thanks for being so patient. We will be proofing the hard copy  today. Look for a link to that version, coming soon.