All Aboard the Choo-Choo Train!

Shameless Self-Promotion

My ‘ol Daddy back in Georgia had some great old sayings.  Most of which I thought made him dumb as a red brick when I was a kid and heard him saying them.  As I got older, I began to realize who the red brick was.  I will share one of them with you in a minute because it pertains directly to this week’s blog.

The newest book in my Max Maxwell mystery series will be available on 7 April. It’s called SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY and you can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million or your local book store.  For those too young or not a fan, it, like the last one is named for one of the big band songs popular during World War Two.  I figured if the late Sue Grafton could make a career out of naming her books after the alphabet, (tragically she recently passed away after writing the “Y” book,) I could do the same with song titles.  The next one after SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY will be called LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY and it’s already written, so pull out your parent’s old albums and listen to the songs.

Here’s a little teaser for SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.  Max Maxwell is working on a stalking case involving the unhappily married lady he has been seeing when he gets a call from an old army buddy, Bill Hart, who is now running an off-the-books intelligence operation in Washington, D.C.  Bill asks Max to help out with a situation involving another one of his associates.  All Max has to do is pick up a sailboat and get it back across the Puget Sound to Seattle.  He wasn’t told that Bill’s associate was working undercover and had been murdered on the boat or that the Canadian Intelligence Service, a Korean smuggling ring with a deadly mission and a double agent might also be involved.  This will turn out to be a Sentimental Journey Max will never forget-if he even survives.

I will be sending out notices via my facebook and email and any other means I can come up with to get the word out about the book.  I am very fortunate in that I have a publisher and I am not doing this as a self-published book.  The publisher has a website and I have already been asked to be interviewed by several magazines devoted to publishing and mystery books, so that will help.

As with any product or service, word of mouth is the best publicity.  If you drive a Toyota and a friend is looking to buy a new car and is thinking about a Toyota, they are going to come to you for a recommendation.  It’s the same with books.  If you have read any of mine and like them, tell someone, better yet, and this seems to be the hardest thing writers have to do, is get people to write a review on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  “Good book” or “Really liked it,” is sufficient.

What’s all that got to do with my Daddy and his advice?  Glad you asked.  One of his many sayings was “If you don’t toot your own horn, you may never hear any music.’

Toot! Toot!