Slightly Off the Mark

There's a new review of The No-Campfire Girls up on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/review/R39H3834BJOTK7/?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B00K3OS35C

I like it, because at no point do they use the term "talentless hack".

Half the proceeds from sales of that book still go toward supporting the Missouri Girl Scout Camp Latonka, and it's only ninety-nine cents for the e-book version, so get your copy right now!

Or, yeah, you could wait until lunchtime, if you're hiding this from the boss. Just don't forget.

Remember, every time you buy a copy, a Girl Scout gets her Fiction Reading Patch. And if they don't make one of those, they should.

The No-Campfire Girls was featured Sunday on the Fussy Librarian daily newsletter; the site's all about books of various genres, and can be found here:

http://www.thefussylibrarian.com/

It costs a few bucks to do the ad, but it did bring sales. The Amazon ranking for The No-Campfire Girls rose from just over three million to 41,341 that day, which is its highest Kindle ranking, so the extra effort clearly did something.

That's especially important because half the proceeds for the book go to support my wife's Girl Scout Camp Latonka, in Missouri. (Not "former" because once a Scout, always a Scout.) This is our second such effort, with the proceeds from another book, Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights, going to the Albion Volunteer Fire Department.

And they don't get charged for the advertising!

This is also why I didn't set The No-Campfire Girls to free: Can't raise funds that way. Not to mention the e-book is already only 99 cents. You can even pick up the print version for just five bucks: That's a lot of entertainment, for the price of an extra small plain black Starbucks coffee.

I'd planned to do a whole promotion thing around the Fussy Librarian appearance, with the idea of getting it as far up the rankings as possible. But my mother landed in the hospital (she's out now) and some other things happened, so now I'm going to launch that effort afterward instead, for about a week. I don't self-promote nearly as much as I probably should, so I think my readers will forgive me, especially when it comes to a good cause.

What will my extra promotion effort entail? In the immortal words of Indiana Jones, I dunno--I'm making this up as I go along. But look for more about the book later, and until then please support the Girls Scouts by picking it up on our website at www.MarkRHunter.com, or over on our Amazon page:

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

I’m a little late passing it on, but I did indeed get a review this month of The No-Campfire Girls. As all fourteen of my regular readers know, half the proceeds from sales of this YA humor-adventure story go to support Girl Scout Camp Latonka in Missouri.

Spoiler alert: I think they liked it.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1592531371

We’ve dropped the e-book price on The No-Campfire Girls from $1.50 to 99 cents, to celebrate the May 1^st release of my humor book, Slightly Off the Mark! The print copy of our summer camp story remains $5.00, but if you’re hesitant to give us too much money, then hear this:

One third of the proceeds from The No-Campfire Girls was going to support Camp Latonka, the Missouri Girl Scout facility Emily called home for many years. That is now increased: Half of all profits from the book will go to maintenance and support costs to keep the camp operating. Can’t afford the five bucks you’d spend on some fancy Starbucks drink that will make you die young? Then get an e-book for what you’d spend on a vending machine can of pop that will make you die young!

So read about the story and get it here:

http://www.amazon.com/No-Campfire-Girls-Mark-R-Hunter/dp/149755926X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429259259&sr=8-1&keywords=the+no-campfire+girls

Or read about all my stories and get them here:

http://markrhunter.com/books.html

Don’t forget to leave a review, retweet, repost, pass it on, support the Scouts! Or at least support our writing costs. I’m cool with that.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

            There I was, happily whacking away at the keyboard, working on a story that poked a little fun at the space opera genre, when they tried to shut down my wife’s Girl Scout camp.

            Well, we couldn’t let that happen. So I came back down to earth, rolled up my sleeves, and began whacking away at the keyboard.

            What? I have only so many skills.

            Emily’s second home was Camp Latonka. She first went there when she was three days old, became a counselor in training as soon as she was potty trained, and at age 12 was made a wrangler and put in charge of a string of eight hundred horses, which were later used to film a Clint Eastwood western.

            It’s possible I’m exaggerating. Just the same, my wife did spend many a summer there, became a counselor and an assistant wrangler, which I think means she had to hogtie the bad kids. She took me to tour the area in the off season, and I was also enchanted with Camp Latonka: rustic in a good way, wooded and hilly, bordering a beautiful lake. It’s a place, to coin a cliché, where memories were made. And of course, as any Scout will tell you, once a Scout, always a Scout.

            Then they, by which I mean the bigwigs in the Girl Scout organization, announced they were shutting it and a bunch of other camps down. I’ve already written a column about that momentous mistake, so all I’ll add is that saving Latonka seemed a lost cause.

            And I’m a sucker for lost causes.

            I mean, the only sports team I even follow is the Cubs, so there you go.

But how could I help? With maintenance? Their insurance is nowhere good enough for me to man a power tool. I could help with first aid, but as long as I’m not doing maintenance they shouldn’t need much. About the only thing I could do, especially from 500 miles away, is write.

What if I wrote a short story and sold it, with part of the profits going to a fund to help Camp Latonka? And some of the rest of the profits could go toward getting Emily and me down there when we’re needed to help with various non-maintenance things? I did something similar with the Albion Fire Department, writing a book that to this day remains one of the top five books about the Albion Fire Department’s history ever written.

So I set out, writing a short story that turned out to be a novella, because that’s how it works when I get excited about a project. A novella’s like a short novel, only I think these days you’re supposed to call them “little novels” to avoid offending short writers.

That story, The No-Campfire Girls, popped up on Amazon around May Third. Why May Third? Why not?

My girl’s camp is not a Girl Scout camp, because I don’t own the Girl Scouts (if I did I’d sell the corporate headquarters, rather than shut down camps). So I made up a new organization, and set my camp in Southern Indiana. It’s more or less halfway between my home and Camp Latonka. That’s the beauty of fiction: It’s fictional.

But by then I was tired of making things up, so I borrowed some characters from stories I’ve already written. After all, I needed teenage girls (Wow, that didn’t come out weird at all), and I already had a popular one from my first published novel, Storm Chaser. Beth Hamlin also had her own tale in my short story collection, so why not use her again? We should all recycle. I added her two friends, minor characters in the first story, so she wouldn’t get lonely.

Beth is playing double duty this year, since she’s also a character in The Notorious Ian Grant, which comes out in October. She’s fifteen: Keeping her busy keeps her out of trouble. The camp story’s not related to the others, so keep it quiet.

Then, because I needed some more characters for Beth to bounce off of, I stole three from my YA mystery Red Is For Ick. Don’t bother searching Amazon.com—it hasn’t been published. Yet.

            It’s so much easier—and fun—throwing together characters who already exist. Now I understand the attraction of writing fanfiction, except this story we can sell.

            The plot? Well, a story should have a story, and Beth’s the kind of girl who would love campfires. So what would happen if there was a drought, and the camp was told they couldn’t have campfires this summer? What if Beth, a do something type of person, went to extreme measures to bring rain so they could have campfires? And what if her attempts went horribly wrong, in a comic-adventure kind of way?

            Good questions.

            It being me, I threw in lots of disasters, along with humor that, as usual, I hope is humorous. It should be a fun read, and 30% of the proceeds will go to a good cause.

            Of course, proceeds of my next book after that will also go to a good cause: my retirement fund.

We received the first 25 print copies of The No-Campfire Girls today, and Emily spent some time polishing up the website to take orders. Of course, it’s still available on Amazon, but if you want one signed—by me or by both me and Emily, since she worked as hard at it as I did—you can order it here for $5.00 plus shipping and handling:

http://www.markrhunter.com/books.html#

Today my blog tour goes to the dogs with Bae, Sir Poops and Hair Ball on Shelly Arkon’s blog: 

http://shellysnovicewritings.blogspot.com/2014/05/sir-poops-and-hair-ball-napping-on-book.html 

Bae announces, in his own way, that we have print copies of The No-Campfire Girls on the way … and that the mailman who brings them is his.

            Welcome to my blog tour! I didn’t get around to announcing when it would start. *ahem*

            But it did start, with this blog by my writer friend Donna Yates. She asked questions about my new book, the humor/action/adventure The No-Campfire Girls, and it only seemed polite to answer:

http://dmyatesbelieveinyourself.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-no-campfire-girls.html

            When you’re done reading—and I hope you will read, because she says nice things—be sure to visit my webpage or amazon.com to order a book or two.

            While the “official” announcement won’t come until next week, it seems once we got the technical glitches worked out Amazon was quick to put The No-Campfire Girls up as an e-book:

http://www.amazon.com/No-Campfire-Girls-Mark-Hunter-ebook/dp/B00K3OS35C/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1399148095&sr=8-2&keywords=the+no-campfire+girls

            In fact, we got our first sale before I knew it was available! The print version should be for sale there before the end of the weekend, if it’s not already, and we’ll have the website at www.markrhunter.com ready soon to show the various ways to buy the book.

            Don’t forget, 30% of The No-Campfire Girls proceeds go toward Friends of Camp Latonka, to help with costs for the camp in southeast Missouri, which Emily attended and worked at. You can see the book’s description and dedication, and read chapter one, on Amazon.com.