It’s my birthday! (almost)

Free October 24-26

It’s my birthday! Almost. Technically it won’t be for two more days. But instead of you giving me presents, I’m giving you one! Amazing Grace is currently free for three days to celebrate. 😀 AND, A Mighty Fortress is on sale for just $0.99! So if you don’t already have a copy, pick one up today!

In other news, Lily of the Valley is now available for preorder in both paperback and ebook! To get an ebook copy delivered to your kindle on November 26, 2015, go here and preorder your copy. If you would like a paperback copy, email me at faith.blum.author[at]gmail.com and tell me how many you want. The paperbacks will be $15.00 + shipping. I also ordered the proof copy yesterday!!!!!! 🙂

Fun fact: Be Thou My Vision is now almost exactly one-year-old. It was published on October 26th of last year. Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?

Fun fact #2: I just had my first 10,000 word writing day yesterday. What does that mean? It means I wrote 10,000 words in one day. Not by hand this time, though. And yes, I am a little excited about it.

And as a bonus birthday surprise, we’ll do a giveaway! Answer the question below to enter to win a paperback copy (US only, if you are international and win, you can have your choice of two ebooks) of your choice of my books, including Lily of the Valley. The deadline for the entries is midnight Central time on October 26th and the winner will be announced on October 27th.

What is your favorite birthday gift?

I know my answer for this year. My favorite birthday gift would be for Amazing Grace to reach #1 in at least one genre category and in the top 100 free books overall on Amazon. An extra bonus would be to reach at least 20 preorders of Lily of the Valley. A girl can dream, right? 😉

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And the winner is…

You might recall about a month and a half ago, I announced a contest for anyone willing to help me get to 50 reviews on Amazon. Well, that giveaway is now ended. I even reached the 50 reviews for Be Thou My Vision and now have 52 reviews! I am super excited about that. If you would like a chance to win a $15 Amazon gift card, I still have a contest going on. All you have to do is read and review Amazing Grace. I’m even willing to give you a free ecopy if you’d like. Right now it’s open until the end of September, but I will extend the date if there are no entries before then. Here’s the link to enter: a Rafflecopter giveaway

And now without further ado, our winner is…

Elinor Ferrars!

Congratulations! I will be emailing you your gift card soon.

She tried writing 50,000 words in July by hand. You won’t believe what happened next!

She tried writing 50,000 words in July by hand…

Yes, the title is correct. I am trying to write 50,000 words in July by hand. All in one book. I have gotten away from doing it that way. Yes, it is faster to just type the story up. However, with just a pen and paper, you can get away from the computer (read: internet) and all the distractions that entails. And one thing I used to love about writing by hand is that when I went to type it up, I got the first edit/rewrite done as I typed! Especially when I can’t read my own handwriting. *innocent smile* Not that I would do that…

As for how I am doing, I am a little behind right now, but not by much so I expect that I should be able to get to 50,000 words before July 31st unless something unexpected happens.

As for the title, that is an experiment. You may have noticed all the sensationalized titles for articles and videos. I want to see if it will work for my blog post with my writing updates.

You won’t believe what happened next!

I have exciting news! (and a giveaway)

Well, it’s exciting to me, anyway. Be Thou My Vision is really close to having 50 reviews!!!

Fifty!!

There are currently 41 reviews on Amazon, so, I’d really like to get it all the way to fifty (or more). What better way to do that than run a sale and a giveaway! From July 19-23, Be Thou My Vision will be on sale for just $0.99 in the US and UK. To have full disclosure here, the 41 reviews are only on Amazon US. The Amazon UK page has a big 0 for reviews. So really, I don’t care if you post on the US or UK Amazon page because I’d love to have reviews on both.

Amazing Grace Blog Tour Wrap Up

Thank you to all those who followed, participated in, and promoted the blog tour for Amazing Grace. It’s hard to believe that it has been over two months since I published my third novel and now I also have a novella published, one more available for preorder and another novella almost ready to be published in August.

That being said, I am surprised how many books I have sold since this novel was priced higher and is longer than the other two.

As a reminder, there is still time to enter the Goodreads giveaway for Amazing Grace. Click on the link below and follow the instructions.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Amazing Grace

by Faith Blum

Giveaway ends July 02, 2015.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Novellas

If you haven’t checked them out yet, I also have two novellas for sale now. One is on preorder. They are in a series, but can very easily be read as standalones. They also have connections to Amazing Grace, but you do not have to read Amazing Grace in order to read I Love Thee or Pass Me Not.

Thank you again and I hope you have enjoyed the tour!

Novella Cover Reveal

I hope you have all been enjoying the blog tour. I know I have. If you have missed any of the posts, click here to check them out. Even though I have enjoyed every post on the tour, I’m most excited about this one. There are a couple of reasons for this.

1. I finally accomplished the impossible (for me)! I wrote a complete story in less than 20,000 words! And then I did it two more times!

2. I finally get to show you the lovely covers I have for the Hymns of the West Novellas and announce when the first one will be published!

Today dawn’s a new day

Wow. The last four weeks have been a whirlwind and very different. First, I published Amazing Grace on Kindle, then I finished the rough draft of Lily of the Valley and the editing of I Love Thee, next I had problems with the paperback for Amazing Grace. Through all of this, I resigned from my job, giving my boss a four week notice.

Yesterday was my last day working there and today is my first day of being home full-time to write full-time. It’s an exciting time and I am so thankful to have a supportive family. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to do this at all. So, thank you Dad, Mom, Lydia, Naomi, and Seth!

I’m really looking forward to what God has planned for me, but I also know I’m going to need accountability and support. If you would like to help hold me accountable, please email, Facebook message, or call me (if you have my phone number) and I would love to talk with you to figure out a way for you to hold me accountable. If you would simply like to support me you can either send me money (just kidding!), pray for me (requests listed below), or send me an encouraging note somehow at various times. Thank you!

Lookee here!!

Look at what arrived in the mail on Wednesday! That’s right, it’s the proof copy for Amazing Grace. Unfortunately, there were a few problems. Here’s one of them. Compare these two pictures. One is from my computer and the other is from the book.

God’s Amazing Grace

This year as I have been preparing my book for publication, I have learned a lot about God’s grace. It’s amazing how when you are learning something in one area of life, it keeps popping up everywhere. Every sermon you listen to seems to talk about it, every Bible class, a lot of the books you read, all of them seem to talk about the same thing. Do you ever get the feeling that God is trying to hit you over the head with certain lessons sometimes?

Although I didn’t necessarily see it as I went through my year, I have seen it as I look back. The end of December and beginning of January were hard. I had one book I was supposed to be editing and another I was supposed to be writing. And I couldn’t do anything either editing or writing. It was awful.

Sale and Excerpt

Last week I ran a sale on two of my books. It was awesome! Checking the sales dashboard was a little bit addicting. Anyway, I thought I would share a few stats and other numbers before I take Ashlee Willis up on her 777 challenge and share an excerpt from Lily of the Valley.

Be Thou My Vision was free from March 16-20. During that time, I paid for four promos and definitely saw results from each of them. Total, I gave away 7,460 copies during the 5 day promotion and was #1 & 2 in the Christian Westerns category for at least four of those days. And I already have five new reviews!! I also had 20 borrows and 4 Kindle books sold after the free promo was over.