So
Where Do I Go From Here?
I
thought I’d write about something I feel many long established legacy authors
are going through right now…deciding if they should stay with the traditional
publishers or going it on their own with self-publishing. I mention this
because I’m one of those lucky legacy authors who have jumped one-hundred
percent into self-publishing on all my books (22 of them now going back to 1984
when my first book, Evil Stalks the Night, was originally published by Leisure
paperbacks), my new novels as well as my older ones. I’ve been writing for over
forty-four years and until I started self-publishing in 2012 I never made a
living with my books. Now I do; more every year. Though I’ve always been known
as a horror author, I also write romance, suspense, murder mysteries and romantic
time-travel, but my novels blend genres and all of them have a large dash of
romance. And, thus, I consider myself basically a storyteller. My paperbacks
used to sit on the book shelves next to Stephen King’s and Anne Rice’s. I was
published with Leisure and Zebra paperbacks in the 1980’s and 90’s, Avalon
Books and a series of smaller publishers. My Dinosaur Lake series and my
Spookie Town Murder series are my best sellers. My first Dinosaur Lake book was
a 2014 Epic EBook Awards *Finalist* and so was my The Last Vampire in 2012.
Yet
as the end of 2015 came and went I (miraculously) found myself in the amazing
position of finally owning all my novels for the first time in thirty-two years
because my last publisher was sold. I was given the choice to stay with the new
owners or take my books and run. I ran – and ecstatically self-published every
one of the last fourteen I’d still had with them. It was scary at first, yet I
did it.
It’s
an amazing feeling to now have complete control of my whole body of life’s work.
Truthfully, I can’t believe so many years have gone by so quickly. I will say,
through all the nightmares of dealing with publishers in the past – and there
were many – I never stopped writing; never gave up and now here I am all these
years later at long last reaping the rewards. Where has the time gone? It’s
flown by like wild birds. I’m so proud to be a writer these days.
So…I’ve
put new covers on all my older books (Dawne Dominique is my wonderful cover
artist and now she’s done all of my 22 novels’ covers), tweaked them here and
there, formatted them, and self-published them wide, which means they’re
available everywhere now as eBooks, for the Kindle and Nook, and paperbacks. It
was a lot to learn, but I learned it, with help from other Indie authors and
KindleBoards. I’d already spent the last three years through ACX having them
turned into Audible audio books, so now they’re also in audio. I’ve also placed
my eBooks with a brand new program for libraries all over the country, and
maybe someday over the world, sponsored by J.A. Konrath and August
Wainwright…ebooksareforever. So soon (they haven’t officially launched yet) my
eBooks will be available in libraries. It’s a new world out there for authors.
Egyptian Heart: Amazon link: http://tinyurl.com/ptvspqy
Barnes & Noble link: http://tinyurl.com/hgjmx2p
Genre:
Ancient Egyptian Time-Travel Romance
Self-Published
everywhere.
Blurb for Egyptian Heart:
Maggie Owen is a beautiful,
spirited Egyptologist…but lonely. Even being in Egypt on a grant from the
college she teaches at to search for an undiscovered necropolis she’s certain
lies below the sands beyond the pyramids of Gizah doesn’t give her the
happiness she’d hoped it would. There has always been and is something missing.
Love.
Then her workmen uncover Ramose
Nakh-Min’s ancient tomb and an amulet from his sarcophagus hurls her back to
1340 B.C–where she falls hopelessly in love with the man she was destined to be
with, noble Ramose, who faithfully serves the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaton and his
queen Nefertiti.
She’s fallen into perilous times
with civil war threatening Egypt
The people, angry the pharaoh
Akhenaton has set his queen Nefertiti aside and he’s forced them to worship his
god, Aton (instead of their many Egyptian gods), are rising up against him.
Maggie’s caught in the middle of
it in a dangerous land and time she doesn’t belong in.
In the end,
desperately in love with Ramose, will she find a way to stay alive and with him
in ancient Egypt–and to make a difference in his world and history?
Because Maggie has finally found love. ***
EXCERPT of Egyptian
Heart by Kathryn Meyer Griffith:
Yet I lingered and listened to the whispering
outside on the wind, the compelling words in my ear...in my heart, urging me to
listen to what they said: come to the tomb. Come to the tomb...right now!
Dizzy for a moment, I blinked and found myself
in the tomb, standing beside Ramose’s sarcophagus. Someone had lit a
lantern. At least there was light.
“How did I get in here?” I rubbed my eyes and
shook my head. “I must be dreaming, that’s it. But this is so real.” I squeezed
my eyes shut. Maybe if I kept them closed long enough I’d wake up.
But, eyes shut or not, I could feel I was still
in the tomb. I could smell the dirt, the dust and the mold. I could feel the
slight heat from the burning of the lantern.
Opening my eyes, I was alone and, yes, in the
tomb. The workmen who hadn’t run off were asleep out on the desert in their
tents. My trembling fingers brushed across the golden engraving on the
sarcophagus. By the length of the coffin I believed the mummy must have been a
tall man for his time. I’d only been able to decode a small part of the surface
inscriptions so far and I’d been eagerly anticipating being able to finally
lift the massive lid and see what we’d find underneath.
No matter the mystery of how I’d gotten into the
tomb in the middle of the night without remembering it— perhaps I’d
sleepwalked. I had been working awfully hard the last few days. Exhaustion
could do funny things to a mind. I had to get back to my tent. I wasn’t dressed
to meet people and sleep was
what I needed...look...I was
hallucinating. Grabbing a lantern, I turned to leave as shadows danced on the
stone walls. Murmurs and rustlings drifted on the stale air and as I moved I
glimpsed an object, a link or two of shiny silver I’d not seen before,
sparkling on the lower base of the catafalque. Curiosity got the best of me.
I stooped down, reached out and pulled at the
fragment of chain and a miniature compartment at the base of the sarcophagus
was revealed. With my fingernails I pried open the tiny drawer and yanked its
contents out into the light probably for the first time in thousands of years.
It was almost an identical match to the amulet
hanging around my neck. The one Sayed had given me weeks ago. In the lamplight,
I compared the two necklaces and they were the same. Almost. A luminescence had
begun to emanate from the sarcophagus’s necklace. It was glowing.
I didn’t have time to think about why the scarab
had turned into a lightning bug before I heard someone move behind me. I swung
around, the shimmering amulet in my hands.
“Jehan, what are you doing here?” I was startled and
couldn’t hide it. He’d disappeared weeks ago and no one had seen him since. Now
he just appears out of
nowhere?
Since childhood I’ve been an artist and worked as a graphic designer in
the corporate world and for newspapers for twenty-three years before I quit to write
full time. But I’d already begun writing novels at 21, over forty-four years
ago now, and have had twenty-two (ten romantic horror, two horror novels, two
romantic SF horror, one romantic suspense, one romantic time travel, one
historical romance, two thrillers, and four murder mysteries) previous novels,
two novellas and twelve short stories published from Zebra Books, Leisure
Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books/Eternal Press; and
I’ve self-published my last ten novels with Amazon Kindle Direct and my
Dinosaur Lake novels and Spookie Town Mysteries (Scraps of Paper, All Things
Slip Away and Ghosts Beneath Us) are my best-sellers.
I’ve been married to Russell for thirty-seven years; have a son and two
grandchildren and I live in a small quaint town in Illinois ,
which is right across the JB Bridge from St. Louis ,
Mo.
2012 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS *Finalist* for her horror novel The Last Vampire ~ 2014 EPIC EBOOK
AWARDS * Finalist * for her thriller novel Dinosaur
Lake.
*All Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s books can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/ld4jlow
*All her Audible.com audio books here:
Novels and short stories from Kathryn Meyer
Griffith:
Evil Stalks the Night,
The Heart of the Rose, Blood Forged, Vampire Blood, The Last Vampire (2012
EPIC EBOOK AWARDS*Finalist* in their Horror category), Witches, The Nameless One erotic
horror short story, The Calling, Scraps of Paper (The First Spookie Town Murder
Mystery), All Things Slip Away (The Second Spookie Town Murder Mystery), Ghosts
Beneath Us (The Third Spookie Town Murder Mystery), Egyptian Heart, Winter’s
Journey, The Ice Bridge, Don’t Look Back, Agnes, A
Time of Demons and Angels, The Woman in Crimson, Human No Longer, Four Spooky
Short Stories Collection, Forever and Always Romantic Novella, Night Carnival
Short Story, Dinosaur Lake (2014 EPIC EBOOK AWARDS*Finalist* in their
Thriller/Adventure category), Dinosaur Lake
II: Dinosaurs Arising and Dinosaur Lake III: Infestation
Her Websites:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KathrynG64
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