Too cute!

Karen McCullough Posted on by

A grey squirrel goes nuts for Allison Carrick’s peanut-flavoured smoothie. Alison, from Stubbington, Hampshire came up with the idea of the peanut  treat after getting a smoothie maker for her birthday. She says the squirrels in her garden just love it and have even learnt to drink  it through a straw. Alison said: When I first offered them the drink they just lapped it up from a dish but then I put out a sundae glass and a straw to see what they would do and to my amazement before long they were sucking away to their hearts’ content. It’s great fun to watch them and it keeps them off the bird table.Picture: MIKE WALKER PICTURES

From Picture of the day at the U.K. Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/picturesoftheday/9138081/Pictures-of-the-day-12-March-2012.html?frame=2165270#?frame=2165244

Free eBooks!

Karen McCullough Posted on by

For anyone who might be interested — I’m participating in Smashwords’ Read an ebook week, with several of my books.

My vampire novella, A VAMPIRE’S CHRISTMAS CAROL, is free until this Saturday, March 10.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/109662

My romantic paranormal suspense novel, MAGIC, MURDER AND MICROCIRCUITS, is also free until March 10.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100257

My award-winning romantic suspense novel, A QUESTION OF FIRE, is 75% off until March 10.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43245

Look in the box in the upper right-hand corner of the page for the code to claim these deals.

Hurry, time is limited!

How to Watch All the Star Wars Movies

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I was delighted to find this amazing post on how to watch the entire Star Wars series without wanting to crawl under your chair during the worst parts of the “Prequels”:

http://static.nomachetejuggling.com/machete_order.html

Try the Machete Order.  I think it’s a great plan.

The only thing I disagree with: The first of the “Prequels” wasn’t the worst of them. The second and third are tied for that honor. The first one had some terrific acting from Liam Neeson and Ewen MacGregor, and, as my son has pointed out, by far the best light-saber battle of the entire series.

 

The Night Prowlers is Available Again

Karen McCullough Posted on by

The very first book I sold to a publisher was a short, fairly light contemporary romantic suspense with some Gothic elements.  The Night Prowlers wasn’t my original title for the book, but it’s actually better than the one I was using, so I’ve decided to keep it.

It was  published in hard cover by Avalon Books in 1990, and made its way into a lot of libraries.  A few years later, when they were all out of print, I was able to get the rights to my four Avalon books reverted back to me.  At the time I got the reversion letter, there was nothing obvious I could do with the books, so I sat on them for a long time.

Then came epublishing and Amazon’s self-publishing platform for Kindle, followed rapidly by Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and others.  Time to consider those older books again.  I pulled them out and was pleasantly surprised to find that they were still pretty good stories.  Unfortunately they were so old that I no longer had the manuscripts in electronic form.  They were originally writing on a PC and saved on a handful of 5 1/4″ floppy disks.  Anyone remember those?  Me, either.  Nor could I find those disks. Not that it mattered since no one I knew would have any way to read them, and even if I did, they were stored in a propietary format and I no longer had the software to interpret it.

So I got out my scanner, got OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software and set to work scanning them in. I started with my very first. Once I got through the scanning, I had to go through it to edit out scanning errors.

I also realized there were a few awkward phrases and some things that were dated, so I fixed those, too.  Then I hired my daughter, a professional editor, to go throught it.  Finally I formatted it for epublishing, put it up and now it’s available again for the first time in more than 20 years!

To the left is the original Avalon cover for comparison with the one above, which I created for it.

I’d love to hear what you think abou it!

Links to buy the current version:

Amazon Kindle

B&N Nook

Smashwords

Interview and chance to win

Karen McCullough Posted on by

I was interviewed today at Anne K. Albert’s blog, talking about a variety of things, including my road to publication and my electronic release of my paranormal romantic mystery, Magic, Murder and Mircrocircuits.

Comment to be entered in a drawing for a digital copy of Magic, Murder and Microcircuits.

http://anne-k-albert.blogspot.com/2012/02/magic-murder-and-microcircuits-by-karen.html

Year of the Dragon

Karen McCullough Posted on by

This is the Chinese Year of the Dragon.  I don’t really know enough about Chinese culture to understand the significance of that to them, but given my love of dragons, I’m taking it as a good sign for me!

I have a couple of new dragons to add to the collection, courtesy of my wonderful critique partner, Elysa Hendricks.  I’ll try to get them posted soon.

Look how much he’s progressed!

Karen McCullough Posted on by

For those of you who’ve followed the adventures of my grandson and his abrupt, premature entrance into the world – here he is now, technically almost four months old, but just a month and a half beyond his original due date. Isn’t it amazing?  He’s now over eight pounds, kicks,coos, and smiles at his mother.