Free is Good…Yet ANOTHER UPDATE November 27

Today’s the last day to download Past Lives: A Journey free. Tomorrow, November 24, we’ll have a complete change of pace, when Redeeming Stanley: Redeeming Stanley: A Savage Little Tale of True Love, Old Gods, Bitches, Bestiality, Burnout, and Above All, Payback becomes the free download. Stanley’s been popular since he first met the public way back in 2009 (and won Audiolark’s Best of the Best e-books award, incidentally). Stanley is, of course, available in paperback and Kindle (and for free from November 24 to 28!), but he’s also available as an audiobook from Audiolark. He’s not free there, regrettably, but he’s still a darned good deal. So go on, download…download…

Available in paperback and on Kindle from Amazon

November 19-23: Past Lives: A Journey
This is a tiny little collection of short stories that grew out of a series of past-life regression exercises. The stories are poetic, evocative, and thought-provoking, from the girl trapped in the desert to prove a point to the mistress who has discovered too late that relationships can be transforming to the milkmaid who lacks the courage to fight back to the woman who discovers that she has lost something she never realized she had–and in redeeming her present rewrites her past and her future, these are stories about love, what it means, and how we find it, lose it, and sometimes, if we’re lucky, discover it again within ourselves.
Reviews Download FREE November 19-23 (it’s always free to Amazon Prime members)

November 24-28: Redeeming Stanley: Redeeming Stanley: A Savage Little Tale of True Love, Old Gods, Bitches, Bestiality, Burnout, and Above All, Payback
This little book right here is the reason I sometimes am startled to find myself turning up on Alternative Porn Sites. I think it’s the “bestiality” in the title. Which is warranted, but it’s the sort of warm, fuzzy bestiality that sort of slips by, only later provoking a double-take and a “Whoa, did she really go there?” Why yes, this book does indeed go there. It’s a fun, unlikely story about a collection of characters who really should have mutual restraining orders–old gods, the born-again christians who try to Save them, self-described Babe Magnet and armchair explorer of the female psyche Weldon Frame, The Freak, Satan, the Whore of Babylon, the Coppess (body by Frigidaire) and some trucker in a Peterbilt and a gimme John Deere cap. It won a “best of the best e-books” award back in the day, and has continued to sell steadily ever since. Also, reviews keep popping up from time to time, so word on the street is that it’s still a fun, funky, “guilty pleasure” sort of book, ideal for anybody who has discovered that she’s been dating in the shallow end of the gene pool, decides to stop, and learns that sometimes things can get a little messy. But funny. Book clubs like this one. I think you will, too.
Reviews  Download FREE from November 24-28 (it’s always free to Amazon Prime members)

November 27-December 1 Good on Paper
Once upon a time, a king named David got the hots for a steamy little number named Bathsheba. Lucky for David, Mr. Bathsheba was busy being one of David’s best generals, so Bathsheba was home all by her lonesome…

See where this is heading? Of course you do.

So does Sarah Conrad, reluctant Bible scholar and unwilling paramour of televangelist Pastor Jimmy Jay Rayburn. It’s a destination she knows well. But the destination is only the beginning. Sarah doesn’t wind up sleeping with an aging “man of God” by accident. Eldest sister Elaine’s minister husband isn’t divorcing her on a whim. And middle sister Elizabeth doesn’t vanish in a fit of pique, leaving a dead dog, a roomful of blood, and Sarah and youngest Conrad DJ behind.

The Conrad children survive by keeping up appearances. But it costs them. When family patriarch Dan Conrad is diagnosed with terminal cancer and the children come home to help appearances are no longer enough, and tensions rise. When somebody winds up murdered the Conrads are forced to unravel their past in order to survive their present.

Set on a family farm in a fast-disappearing slice of America, Good on Paper is first and foremost a story in which to lose one’s self–readers consistently comment that they “couldn’t put it down.” But beyond that, the story raises questions. How do we determine who is “good?” How do we decide what is real? Do we respond to the victimization of others, and if so, how? How do we integrate a painful and abusive past into a vibrant and creative present and future? Above all, this story leaves readers wondering, with DJ Conrad, “…what it is about our family, our church, our society, that allows abusers to not only survive, but thrive.”

By turns infuriating, hilarious, magical, frightening, and lyrical, the Conrads’ story captures the paradox lying at the heart of abusive relationships, as well as the courage, honesty and humor that the Conrad children use to survive.

Tracing the Conrad children’s journey to healing and resolution makes for a powerful and haunting read, one that should appeal to a many, particularly those interested in understanding how the pain of an abusive past can become the fertile soil from which a rich, meaningful future can spring.

Reviews  Download FREE November 27-December 1 (it’s always free to Amazon Prime members)

So that’s what’s happening–don’t be shy about downloading, and if you like the books, we’d love it if you’d post a review or response on Amazon–or even write about it here! I’ll be reposting this from time to time, to just keep everybody updated on what’s going on, free-wise. Happy holidays!

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Read Bodie Parkhurst Books for Free

For the next five days, Amazon is running a promotion on Bodie Parkhurst books–five titles can be downloaded and read for free. Free is good, but it’s not forever. Download your free copies today.

So here’s the deal, if you’ve been waiting to sample until the price was right, now’s the time. Here, for your information and delectation, is a list of the free titles, and what you can expect from them. For more information, visit the links at the top of the page, or check out Amazon’s “search inside” function.

Here’s the list:

Redeeming Stanley: A Savage Little Tale of True Love, Old Gods, Bitches, Bestiality, Burnout, and above all, Payback  The winner of AudioLark’s Best of the Best E-books contest in 2009, Redeeming Stanley is the cautionary and hilarious tale of Weldon Frame, his ex-girlfriend Annie, and what happens when they get all tangled up with the Old Gods, who have taken new jobs and are living just outside of Los Angeles. Check out the Amazon reviews for reader responses.

Benchmarks: A Single Mother’s Illustrated Journal  A memoir about mothering–and single mothering, specifically. It’s a warm, lovely book that challenges a lot of assumptions about what single parenting is, and is not.

And while you’re at it, check out the Benchmarks Baby line of mom and baby stuff at Magic Dog Press’ CafePress store.

Good on Paper  A book full of farmers, and staunch christians, and witches, and smart-mouthed women, and magic, and televangelists who sleep with the wrong women. Most of all, it’s a great story, narrated by four women, each of whom has a very different take on life. It’s terrifying, hilarious, magical, sarcastic, and poetic by turns. Set in a slice of America that’s fast disappearing, this is first and foremost a good story–a story in which to lose yourself–but it also raises questions worth asking about the links between abuse and fundamentalism, and about the nature and goal of healing from a painful past. So–a good story, with a sting in its tail.

Past Lives: A Journey  A small collection of short stories that grew out of a foray into past life exploration. While they don’t provide empirical evidence for or against the idea of past existences, they do make good reading–and they raise some interesting questions.

Force of Nature a sweet, sexy short story, just for mature readers, all about love, romance, magic, sex, and cows. And Russell. You don’t want to miss Russell.

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A Story Worth The Hearing

I’m going to blow my image as a reasonable, sane, comparatively mature woman here and admit, right out in front of [insert deity of your choice] and everybody that I love pirate movies, and of all of the pirate movies I love the one I love the most is Muppet Treasure Island. I love Mrs. Bluberidge’s tardy efforts at political correctness. I love Tim Rice doing Long John Silver. I love the music. I love the way the movie plays with words and pirate conventions. Most of all, I love Billy Bones’ drunken ramblings that invariably end, “Now isn’t that a story worth the hearing?”

A story worth the hearing: the words are magic to me, maybe because I love telling stories. But here’s the thing: the jury’s still out on whether the stories I tell are “stories worth the hearing.” I hope they are, of course, but the world is full of people like me–people who looked inside themselves, spotted a story lurking somewhere (possibly behind a kidney), and at the cost of considerable pain, effort, and often money, had the story removed, pickled, and put up for sale.

The idea, of course, is that others will see the story and fork over cash to make it their very own. This doesn’t often happen; the market for things removed from one’s innards and preserved–be it ever so carefully–is not great, unless you’re an oyster. Something is inevitably lost in the journey from inside to outside and up for public view.

But there are those few, though, those pure souls who, like the oyster, can take the story lurking inside, bring it out into the light of day, and reveal not a shriveled, stinking, and somehow embarrassed-looking pancreas, but a pearl, glowing and lustrous and infinitely desirable.

You’d think it would be easy to tell the difference between pancreas and pearl, but I’ve never found it so. Because they are my own, I of course consider every one of my books pearls–some perhaps are slightly irregular freshwater pearls, but others, well, others are so wonderful they defy appraisal. But that’s me. I considered each story worth the telling, and I worked years, in most cases, to tell it as well as I could.

But are they stories worth the hearing? I don’t know. My sales to date would answer, “No.” Redeeming Stanley sells–slowly–on Kindle. It’s won an award, and it’s been done by a local book club, so there’s some consensus that it’s a story worth the hearing, but Good On Paper has yet to sell anywhere except at signings. Surely that should tell me something. And it does. I cushion the blow by reminding myself that I haven’t been marketing it properly, that I don’t have an agent, that when I get all the press kits sent out, it will of course go gang busters.

There’s just enough truth to that to make it comforting. It’s true I haven’t been marketing. But why not? Could it be that, all my protestations to the contrary, I myself have doubts not about whether the story was worth telling, but about whether it’s worth hearing? I don’t like to think so, but I suspect I’m too close to it to know if I’m looking at something better left inside, or a pearl.

I need some perspective. Maybe you can help. If you’re up for it, send me an email and I’ll send you an e-book version of Good On Paper. Before you make up your mind, you might want to check out the tab at the top of this page and read the book information and excerpt. Read as much or as little of it as you like, then send me a note with your opinion. Is this a story worth the hearing? Why, or why not?

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Heads Up! It’s A Trailer!

Just got this from an online review service, Apex Reviews. Paying for a review isn’t the best, most credible way to gain product endorsement, but as part of their package, Apex includes a book trailer, which can come in handy for all kinds of marketing endeavors. One thing that I’m discovering about marketing my books is that getting the word out online involves reaching a lot of different sites–and different kinds of sites.

Services like Apex Reviews are helpful, I think, because when they review your book they also post the review in about a bazillion different places. I’m finding those Apex reviews all over the place. While I wouldn’t rely on them as my exclusive means of publicity–and while I’m hesitant to quote the review in the marketing materials I put together myself because hey, it would be like quoting my mom, assuming that my mom liked what I wrote–I think it definitely serves a function in terms of getting my name out there. Here’s the trailer: enjoy!

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