Slightly Off the Mark

It occurs to me that time is running out to convince you to buy our books for Christmas. Okay, time actually has run out, depending on how you take delivery, but there are New Year’s presents, of course. It’s traditional in many parts of the world to read a book New Year’s morning while nursing your hangover.

 

Say, maybe I could sell more books by lying! After all, that’s what fiction is: Making up stories. Some people would say that’s what advertising is, too. Advertising is also short, so I’ll just give you a tasty sample, as if the books were made out of chocolate. (They aren’t—don’t try it.)

At the bottom of this blog, as always, are sites where you can find our books and/or find us. I use "us" in this case because without my wife/editor/cover designer/setup person/IT Department/butt kicker Emily, most of these books would have never seen the light of day.

 

Have you ever wished your history teacher stopped lecturing, and did a standup routine making fun of the subject, instead? That's Hoosier Hysterical. I've started taking notes for a sequel.

So all those unpublished columns ended up in a book. Later I collected some of the older published columns and put them in another book, so you can read Slightly Off the Mark and More Slightly Off the Mark without getting newsprint on your hands. And that saves soap.

Sadly, there are no (current) plans for a sequel, although just for fun I did once cross this world over with Storm Chaser in a Christmas short story.

Storm Chaser and Radio Red were originally released by the same traditional publisher. After that publisher was bought out, I got the rights back to the Storm Chaser stories. Radio Red doesn't get as much love because I don't have those rights back yet, and in my opinion they have the e-book price set too high for seven year old book by an unknown author. You're welcome to spend the $3.99, of course! And I had a lot of fun writing Radio Red, a romantic comedy pairing a small radio station owner with his new air personality.

But am I an unknown author, really? Well, according to official sources there are some 50,000 book authors traditionally published in the U.S. Including self-published works, about four million new books are published every year. So yes, unknown, just like everyone else. This is why I'm begging working for an audience.

Finally we have Images of America: Albion and Noble County and Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights: A Century or So With the Albion Fire Department. They were a lot of work, but well received by anyone who's read them. But both are local history books, which by nature are usually of interest only to local readers. My newest local history book, Haunted Noble County, Indiana, is with the publisher right now, but should come out late in 2025.

So that's it ... for now. But I have--brace yourself--no less than ten other books in various stages of production, from initial note taking to submitting completed manuscripts to publishers. Meanwhile here's a list of websites where you can peruse books, buy books, or just ponder my genius or lack thereof.

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

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

·        Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

·        Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

·        Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

 The Earth is dying. Isn't it always, in today's YA dystopian novels?

The government has hatched a Hail Mary plan: They'll send small teams to various planets, to investigate whether those worlds can be used to resettle the human race. 17-year-old Matthew, in return for money to save his sick mother, agrees to join one of those teams for the Exo Project. It's pretty much a death sentence, since most will awaken a century later to planets that can't support life.

But Mathew's team gets lucky: They land on a world with a breathable atmosphere and life. Oh, and intelligent alien beings who are less than eager to find their home invaded. At least, not all of them are.

https://www.amazon.com/Exo-Project-Andrew-DeYoung/dp/1629796107

 

Kiva is the young girl who's just been picked to lead the matriarchal society of her people. She also has dreams, and she's seen Mathew's ship coming. While she tries to investigate the newcomers and keep peace between them, others on both side are determined to sabotage her efforts. It doesn't help that Kiva, as leader, cannot marry or have any romantic relationship, and you can just guess how that will go.

But while romantic complications might be inevitable in this YA science fiction, there are plenty of surprises to come in Andrew DeYoung's fast-paced exploration of culture clash. It turns out there are dark secrets behind both The Exo Project and Kiva's people, secrets threatening to destroy everything.

Certainly there are echos of Earth history in The Echo Project, but Andrew DeYoung mixes it up pretty well, giving us a rich culture on the alien planet as well as well-rounded characters on both sides. It's a fun read, and I'd recommend trying both this book and anything else Andrew DeYoung has written.

• Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
• Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/
• Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
• Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

Remember: Even space travelers need a good book or three.

 The No-Campfire Girls is featured today on The Fussy Librarian newsletter, which is a great way to see free and bargain books. Check out their website:

https://www.thefussylibrarian.com/

But The No-Campfire Girls is always 99 cents as an e-book and just five bucks in paperback, which is pretty darned good. There's a nice article about the book and how it came to be written (complete with a picture of our dog!) here:

https://www.kpcnews.com/news/latest/newssun/article_3353901e-ff14-5d01-a815-e78667f481be.html

 Good publicity is ... well, good. As usual the book and all our books can be found on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K3OS35C

Or on our website:

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

 After all, no one ever got hurt by reading a book. Um, except maybe The Anarchist Cookbook.

Get the whole set!

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

I've been kidding myself with the name of one of my novel manuscripts. It's not that I was in love with the title: I was more in love with the possibilities the title represented.

Many readers are familiar with book series that have a progression in their titles. One For the Money, for instance, is followed by--well, what are the Stephanie Plum stories up to now? 27? And each numbered in order.

Sue Grafton has a letter in each title of her series, meaning that Z has to be her last one unless she starts throwing in subtitles, or something. AAA Is For Roadside Assistance might come after Z, but she started way back with A Is For Alibi.

When I started my young adult mystery novel, I wanted it to be a series, so I looked for something like that. Famous author names, cities, types of flowers, whatever. That would also make it clear to editors and agents that I was interested in a series, and series are big these days.

So, for instance, A Is for Asimov, or Boston Mystery, or Carnation Crime, or something like that. After thinking not long enough on it, I chose colors. For one thing, I could do those without going alphabetically. I'm not that good.

So I chose Red Is for Ick. I didn't realize at the time that all of Grafton's books have "is for" in the title, or maybe I'd have thought longer. But hey--red's the color of blood, and this novel would have a murder or two; and what would my fifteen year old hero, Cassidy Quinn, say about the blood? Yep: "Ick!" (You get to meet Cassidy, and briefly her father, in my YA adventure The No-Campfire Girls.)

It was brilliant.

Except for one problem.

The title makes sense when it's explained, but I just took three hundred words to explain it. You don't get that kind of space when you're querying an agent or editor. You need to cut to the chase.

I've been using this manuscript on the agent hunt, and got compliments and a few requests for the complete manuscript, one of them very enthusiastic ... but in the end, three dozen rejections. No, no one ever said they rejected it because of the title, and maybe the title's just fine and doesn't need explaining. But in the crowded world of publishing, you need every advantage you can get--starting with your title.

So what do you, the reader and/or writer, think? Granted, many titles are changed after the book is picked up, but (assuming you don't self-publish) you have to get the proverbial fish on the hook, first. Yay or nay on the title?

Here's a brief description of the book, if it helps:

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Happy 68th birthday, Camp Latonka!

Today (Friday, 6/28), The No-Campfire Girls is being promoted on The Fussy Librarian, an e-book website that can be found here:

I had a business plan all ready to go when we published The No-Campfire Girls, and it was, if I do say so myself, fool-proof:

First, we tell everyone half the proceeds to go a good and worthy cause, and that much of the other half go toward advertising that good and worthy cause.

Second, we set the e-book price at only 99 cents and, even better, the print book at just five dollars. Hey, you can find 99 cents in your navel lint collection. (It's up to you to dig it out.) Not only that, but these days 99 cents worth of navel lint is worth five bucks, so there you go.

Third, we spread the word among Girl Scouts, since that good cause was to support a Girl Scout camp. There are about two and a half million Girl Scouts in America today. So the Scouts of Camp Latonka would spread the word about this cool new young adult novel to other Scouts in Missouri, who get the word out through the Midwest, and before you know it I'm on Oprah's book list. No, I have no idea of Oprah was a Girl Scout, but she would know a fun read when she sees one.

I do sneak in a book cover, every now and then.

But speaking of Oprah, the next step would be to have The No-Campfire Girls endorsed by famous Girl Scouts. I may only remember a few Taylor Swift songs, but I know a former Scout when I see one.

By which I mean, I looked it up. 

 So pretty soon Swift, Gwyneth Paltrow, Susan Lucci, Abigail Breslin, Dionne Warwick, Kattie Couric, Martha Stewart, Mariah Carey ... let me take a breath ... Celine Dion, Dakota Fanning, Barbara Walters, Venus Williams, and my favorite, Sheryl Crow, are all telling their fans, "Buy a book and save a camp!" (trademark pending) ... "Oh, and enjoy reading!"

According to my math, these steps would result in 8,914,976 sales. If every one of those buyers likes the book, that in turn will result in approximately 475 book reviews. Since online publicity depends so much on book reviews these days, that many should result in at least another ten billion sales.

I confess, my calculator app froze up a few steps earlier, so that's some quick and dirty napkin calculations that I had to read off my face in the mirror, after an unfortunate chocolate mishap. But I think it's a fair approximation.

So, Girl Scout Camp Latonka is saved, and I see a book series in my future!

Well, I did. The plan stalled along the way, possibly during the "going viral" stage. Or maybe I should have led with, "It's a fun, story--really it is". But I'm working on it.

And, just in case, I've already got a sequel planned out ... maybe I'll put in a cute puppy.

Please spread the word about The No-Campfire Girls, and leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, your blog, wherever, if you’ve read the book. (If you haven’t read it, pass it along to yourself!) Just 99 cents on Kindle, with half the proceeds going to support Girl Scout Camp Latonka.