Being Refactored

Now available on the Kindle/Nook/iPad!

On the Precipice

My first non-fiction book is now ready for download! The book is called “On the Precipice – Hosea Speaks to America”, a study/commentary on the Book of Hosea and the numerous parallels between ancient Israel and modern-day America.

The synopsis for “On the Precipice” is:

The Spirit of America is dying – many have grown increasingly aware of this reality since the Great Recession began, but few want to admit it. Today, America is deeply divided and filled with uncertainty, and a palpable sense of malaise has settled over her people. Could it really be that America’s best days are behind her?

We Americans used to be proud of our nation, and certain of who we were as a people. The general feeling that America was a moral and decent country was pervasive throughout the nation, if not much of the world. We proudly flew Old Glory and without reservation proclaimed that the United States of America was the greatest nation on earth.

But today that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Now we have brief, fleeting episodes of pride in our nation around the holidays or when we hear stories of our soldiers and their bravery. But the general feeling of pride in who we are as Americans and what we stand for is fading, and no one seems to know how to get it back.

Early in America’s history, Alexander de Tocqueville wrote, “America is great because Americans are good.” If America’s greatness is fading, could it be that something has happened to her people’s goodness? And if America is in permanent decline, will we accept that fate without a fight?

In 755 BC, the prophet Hosea was called to deliver a message to another nation in decline, the Northern Kingdom of Israel. But what would Hosea say if he had been sent to modern-day America instead? And if he had been sent to us instead of Israel, would we be receptive to his message or scorn him as Israel once did?

Are we prepared to honestly look at what has happened – and what is happening – to our country? Are we prepared to examine the heart of our beloved nation and diagnose the disease that is threatening to take her very life?

“On the Precipice” is available on the Kindle, Nook, iPad, and other eBook readers/distributors.

Now available on a Kindle/Nook/iPad near you!

The Siege of Zion - Book 3 of "The Time of Jacob's Trouble"

The Siege of Zion
(Book 3 of “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble”)

I’m proud to announce that my latest book, “The Siege of Zion” is now available on Amazon, Smashwords, and at Barnes & Noble!

The third book of “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble” opens several days after the close of “The Son of Shinar” and moves through the first second half of the Tribulation period (the Great Tribulation) and on into the Millennium.

The synopsis for “The Siege of Zion” is:

In one day, Supreme Leader David Medine desecrated the Jewish Temple and set up his image in the Holy of Holies.

In one day, both the government and military of Israel have been overthrown, and the nation has been placed under the authority of the World Union – under David Medine.

In one day in 1948, the State of Israel was born – and in one day, the State of Israel has been destroyed.

And now, rumors of a worldwide financial system are emerging, along with something referred to only as the ‘Signets’.

The Great Tribulation has begun and the future of Israel – along with all humanity – hangs in the balance.

As with ‘The Last Aliyah’ and ‘The Son of Shinar’, this title is being published exclusively to the eBook market rather than going through a traditional publisher.

The entire trilogy of “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble” will be tentatively released in both eBook and paperback formats in December.

The book is also available for review on BookBlitzer.com

After looking at the Kindle Lovers website this morning, I was trying to figure out how to get the iframe url for Customer Reviews on Amazon so I could post them to my own site (without copying/pasting). Linking to the Reviews page directly would include all the extra fluff on Amazon, which doesn’t look good. I just wanted the reviews.

I found this link/site (http://www.downintheflood.com/amazon-ecs-test/ItemLookupReview_v2.php5) that works pretty well.

To use it, just enter in your book ASIN, click the button, and then copy the url from the “see product reviews” link at the bottom of the page. This is the src url that you’ll put in the iframe, which links to a page on Amazon without all the menus and extra stuff on their site.

I made some minor updates to BookBlitzer.com over the weekend; most were due to some excellent feedback I received from a user who has a very strong web/IT background.

Here are some highlights of the update:

• Added a Reviewer Comments field to the Review form, so reviewers can add personal notes to the author. Intended uses are for grammar/spelling issues, explanation of a review score, encouragement, etc.
• Bypassing the Billing Entry form upon Check Out. Previously, the user would have to enter in their billing information before going on to PayPal. This step wasn’t needed and is now skipped so the Check Out process goes directly to PayPal.
• Coupon-Code/PDF upload or link is now checked on the Books page before an author is able to make a book available for review.
• Added “My Books” tab to the Home page for authors to quickly view/edit their books.
• The “My Reviews” area on the righthand side is now colored in light-blue.
• Added the “Edit My Profile” link to the Action Center items.
• Minor bug fixes to the Tweet page, caching, latest updates links, title-length display.

Now available on a Kindle/Nook/iPad near you!

The Son of Shinar - Book 2 of "The Time of Jacob's Trouble"

The Son of Shinar
(Book 2 of “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble”)

I’m proud to announce that my latest book “The Son of Shinar” is now available on Amazon, Smashwords, and at Barnes & Noble!

The second book of “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble” begins only moments after the close of “The Last Aliyah” and moves through the first half of the Tribulation period.

The synopsis for “The Son of Shinar” is:

After thousands of years of war and persecution, all the Jews of the Diaspora have been regathered into the land of Israel.

With their enemies devastated in the Magog Invasion, Israel now has enough weapons and energy supplies for seven years. The nation is prospering like never before in history.

The Guardians have come, promising to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for all the earth. But soon after their arrival, the Great Vanishing occurs, removing all the children and millions of people from the planet.

And now, rumors of a great leader and healer have begun sweeping through Baghdad. Has the Twelfth Imam returned? Could he be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah?

As with ‘The Last Aliyah’, this title is being published exclusively to the eBook market rather than going through a traditional publisher.

The last book of the trilogy, “The Siege of Zion” will be released in October.

The book is also available for review on BookBlitzer.com

We’ve made some significant enhancements to BookBlitzer.com over the last two weeks: integrating Smashwords eBooks and Coupon Codes into the review-process. Due to the changes (especially for authors), we recommending editing your book page to include these latest changes.

FOR AUTHORS: In order to have your book reviewed as quickly as possible, we recommend distributing your eBook through Smashwords so reviewers can instantly download it in their preferred format. Also, so your reviewers do not have to purchase your eBook in order to review it, please create a Smashwords Coupon Code for the full price of your eBook and enter it into your Book page. If you don’t want to use Smashwords, you can upload a PDF of your eBook directly to BookBlitzer, which your reviewers will then download.

Your Coupon Code and eBook PDF are available ONLY to the reviewers who you’ve approved to write reviews for you. No other users, authors, or reviewers will ever see the Coupon Code or the PDF.

FOR REVIEWERS:  To download eBooks for review, click the Smashwords link and then enter the corresponding Coupon Code when purchasing the book (which shouldn’t charge you for the purchase). If available, you can also download the book-file from  the PDF download link. If the book is not available from either Smashwords or the PDF download, or if the Coupon has expired, please send the author a message from the ‘Contact the Author’ link.

To download a Smashwords book directly to your Kindle, Nook, or iPad, browse to the book on Smashwords.com from your eReader’s browser and purchase from your eReader device (along with entering in the Coupon Code).

Also over the weekend, we added review-posting for Smashwords and Goodreads, as well as revamping the Confirmations screens to make the review-posting and verification process much clearer. Now authors will have more choices and flexibility when requesting reviews.

One final note:  we removed the hard-copy book review feature due to the increasing popularity of eBooks and the integration of Smashwords. Since the site is still relatively new, it seemed like a good time to deprecate a feature that would likely cause more problems than solutions.

If you have any questions about the site changes or the review process, please visit the FAQs page on the website or send us a message through the Contact Us form.

I recently sent in an interview questionnaire to FeatureMe2 that does a ton of author-interviews and book-reviews. Below is an excerpt from it:

1. Tell us about (your current book title) in a few sentences.

My current book is part of a trilogy called “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble” – it’s a saga about an Israeli family as it goes through the End Times as described in the Bible. It was the first novel I wrote in 2008, but I decided to rewrite it after touring Israel in 2010. The trilogy heavily builds upon current trends in the Middle East and weaves in passages from various parts of the Bible (especially the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation). I also have another book in progress called “The Castors of Giza” which is an adventure story about how the Great Pyramid was built.

2. What qualities do you need to be a successful writer?

First and foremost, you need to have a good story to tell, one that hopefully can catch (and hold) your readers’ interest. Secondly, you need to be able to describe characters, settings, and scenes in such a way that the reader feels like they can ‘see’ what’s happening as though they were watching it in the theater or on television. Third, you need passion and a certain ‘flair’ for story-telling.

3. What is your working method?

Typically, I start with a handful of ideas for a story and weave in an underlying message I want to communicate, such as repentance, forgiveness, etc. From there, I begin adding in the main characters and secondary characters, along with some of the scenes I think would catch the readers’ attention. Then I begin plotting out the book in rough chapters and scenes, and then plug them into the writing software I use – iWriterPro. I developed this software specifically for writing novels in 2009, and it’s been one of the best investments of my time I’ve ever made.

The rest of the interview can be found here:
Author Interview with Chris Hambleton

I’ve been “off the grid” for a week or two working on a couple of projects/features, so I thought I’d better post something. I tend to focus intensely on one project at a time, so if the posts become infrequent, it usually means I’m working on something BIG.

The first project that took up most of last week was adding the new “Book Tweets” feature to BookBlitzer.com, which gives authors the ability to schedule re-occurring tweets about their books to both Twitter and Facebook. Other sites have this, but you typically have to pay a small fee for it. That, and their scheduling isn’t usually that great. The book-tweets feature is currently being tested, along with the Contests feature.

The other “project” was continuing to research stone-casting and the pyramids (with special attention on construction of the Great Pyramid) for a book I’m starting: “The Castors of Giza”. The main source for this research has been The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved by Joseph Davidovits, along with several other books that detail Old Kingdom customs, practices, and their religion.

While I was building the new Contests feature for BookBlitzer, I read a handful of articles about on paying for book reviews. It seems that it’s largely dependent upon the author/editor about whether “paid” reviews can be unbiased or not since $$$ is involved.

Interestingly enough, I found that many of the detractors of paid or “expedited” reviews are also typically detractors of self-published books, POD books, and now independent-authored eBooks. The establishment/industry doesn’t seem to like us newcomers very much.

The question that seems to be missed is why did POD publishing become popular in the first place? The reason is because the publishing industry couldn’t keep up with increasing demand and there are so many decent authors (and/or books) who couldn’t get “published”.

The same holds true with book-reviews — there are simply so many books out there now that traditional book-reviewers simply can’t keep up with the demand and authors are wasting valuable time and money trying to get good, honest reviews.

BookBlitzer was created to give authors more control of the review process, primarily by providing them the means to name their own price and choose reviewers. Authors can spend an enormous amount of time and money trying to get reviews for their books, with little or no real results. BookBlitzer has the capability to change that.

We encourage our reviewers to write decent, thoughtful, and HONEST reviews about each book they review. Many reviewers are new to the process, and the quality of the reviews will improve with time and practice (just like writing books). But at $10-20 per review (at least for mine), the reviewers are much more likely to write honest reviews than a reviewer at other sites which require $50, $100, or even $250 for a review.

With the advent of POD publishing and Kindle eBooks, the publishing industry is rapidly changing AWAY from the traditional publishing houses/markets and now the authors are taking the future of their books into their own hands — where it should’ve been all along.

The same will likely hold true for book-reviews — especially in a market being flooded by new and unknown authors seeking new readers for their books.

Contests are the latest feature at BookBlitzer.com, which enable authors to quickly create and manage a variety of contests.

The basic components of a contest are the purpose of the contest (such as to grow your newletter distribution, twitter-followers, book visibility, etc), the basic rules of the contest, the prizes (which EVERY good contest must have), and then the promotion of the contest.

BookBlitzer Contests are designed with the busy author in mind. To create a contest, go to the Contests page (you must be an author), click “Create Contest” and step through the Contest Wizard. Once your contest is created, it’ll be sent to the Admin (me) for Approval (mainly so that no in appropriate content is posted). After the contest has been approved, the contest is invoiced and is added to the Contests page.

Once the contest has ended (either by date or by number of entries), the contest-creator is notified and picks the winners (generated completely randomly by the software) and then the winners are notified and the prizes distributed by the contest-creator.

Currently, this feature is closed while it’s being tested, but will be opened to the public within a few weeks.