To E-Book or...

One of the first things I did when I got online for the first time was to find people to talk with from around the world. That first year I had pen pals in Australia, Japan, Indonesia, England, Turkey, Canada, all over the States, and in various other places in the world.

I thought it was great! You can still do that, but a lot of sites that were free back then have deteriorated into matching sites that charge for their services. Seems like we are going backward in that respect and that the matching sites are standing in the way of progress.

I believe it is a good thing to try to get to know people who live in different places. I know when I did, the biggest thing I noticed was that people are more alike than they are different.

One of the nifty people I met was this fellow from Canada who used to be a newspaperman. We had a lot to talk about, and I enjoyed his company. Our conversation often drifted to the art of writing and he suggested I write a mystery - these being more salable than the historical novels I loved to write.

Challenged, I wrote every night, every morning before going to work, and all weekend. It took me 28 days to pen Imagine, a whodunit in which the mystery revolved around the introduction of computer technology in a small-town police department. It wasn't very good, but my publisher liked it and it remains an e-book to this day, even though it is woefully dated. She even suggested I continue the tale as a series, but I didn't much like the genre and I went back to my beloved historical fiction.

Still, Imagine is out there for anyone to download into their Kindle or other reading device. I guess a copy sells every now and then, but it is darned hard to sign a download, so I don't get many requests for my signature.

I am still not convinced e-books are the wave of the future, but if anyone knows how to get noticed as the author of e-books, I hope you will let me know.

Have a great day and keep on the sunny side! Terry