Books – A.E. Prero: Yoga, Books and Beyond

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Life. It has its good days and its not-so-good days. Ups and downs. roller coaster

And then there are stages of life. These were some of mine. Being a kid. Being a teenager. Being on my own. Being a student. Being part of a couple. Being a parent…with little kids in the house and then bigger and bigger and then no longer in the house. Being a worker. Being partially-retired. Maybe someday being just plain retired.

Sometimes we don’t even notice that we’ve switched stages

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until we’ve been in the new one for awhile.

Each stage has its rewards and challenges. I just took a couple of seconds to remember how I walked around in a fog of no sleep when I had infants under my care. And then took a couple more to remember how nothing melted my heart more than my children’s faces.

There’s a stage of getting old and then there’s a stage of being old. Technically, I guess we’re all getting old from the minute we take our first breath but we all know that, really, getting old is something altogether different.

While it’s politically correct or just polite to talk about getting older, there comes a point when you’re just OLD. Getting older is the gentle surprise of an ache here and there or less drive to get out there and jog a few miles, or grab a few more clients. Being old is more a not-so-gentle shock than a gentle surprise. old young shadow

They say that old is a mindset. They are young.

So I’ve created a new website and blog about being old. Yes, folks, I’m 65 years OLD; no longer 65 years YOUNG. (is that even a thing?)

This website will remain for yoga, books and beyond and I’ll allow myself to ruminate on my new website, in brutal honesty, about the challenges and rewards…yes, there ARE rewards…of BEING OLD.

You can find that part of my life here:

https://aeprero.wixsite.com/gettingold

Meanwhile, a word about my latest book. I tried to market this one. Read some articles. Spent some money. Alas, it hasn’t sold any better than my first book. I’m wondering what’s up with that.

Maybe Jaya and friends just don’t appeal to readers. Have you read it? Can you send me some honest words about it? I’ve pretty much decided to abandon Jaya for now – and mysteries altogether – and move on to a totally different genre.

quirky books 2 quirky books 1 quirky books 3

What do you say?

Buy it On Sale – Just 99 cents!

The Kindle edition of my second book, Yoga for Detectives: Interconnected, is on sale for the next two days – Oct. 31 – Nov. 1. If you haven’t already bought it, now’s your chance!

The paperback edition has undergone significant changes in formatting. Several people complained that the print was so small it was giving them headaches…

headaches and that can’t be good. It was partially an optical illusion because the paragraphs weren’t indented and there wasn’t enough space between the lines but I changed all of that.

Marketing a book is harder than I thought – and I thought it would be pretty hard. It’s been an adventure and I’ve been enjoying the collateral benefits. I’ve received some interesting correspondence from people to whom I reached out. I’ve gotten a heads up about some books that I’m reading happily and never would’ve found otherwise. Turns out there are lots of self-published authors out there whose very good books are languishing unnoticed.

I started a third book which was to be a political thriller and was enjoying the new challenge. Having heard from several people that they were eagerly awaiting the continuation of the mystery series, though, I decided to write one more before my thriller experiment.

please Hopefully, this time next year I’ll be marketing a third mystery before taking a break to tackle that new genre.

I’d love to hear from those of you who have read Yoga for Detectives: Interconnected. Is there something more you’d like to know about any of the characters? I know them really well; just ask. Is there an unexplored direction you’d like to see? They’re adventurous and willing to go anywhere. Is there something annoying about any of the characters and you’d like them to PLEASE CUT IT OUT!? Hey, even an old dog can learn new tricks, or try to.

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To those of you who haven’t yet read Yoga for Detectives: Interconnected, get your 99 cent copy and enjoy!

Book Cover: A Work in Progress

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I created the book cover for my first book and it was okay. Not great.

Figured I’d create the cover for my second book, too. Worked at it. Learned how to find good images in the public domain. Found a decent design. What got me hung up was the font. The templates I found for design had their own, very limited, ideas about what fonts I could choose from and none of them were good.

I kept running my creation by the two writers’ groups I work with and getting bad reactions to the font. It looked like a textbook. It looked unprofessional. It looked…bad.

I looked at sites which offer book design at low prices but how to choose one of the many, MANY people out there who do this stuff? Back to my writers’ groups to ask how to choose.

The administrator of one of the groups asked if I wanted him to try his hand at it. We wrangled a bit about the price and then worked online together for 5 hours to come up with this:

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It’s not quite finished. I’ve decided to take “A Jaya Frankel Mystery” off the front cover because it’s too crowded. There are two typos. The bar code has to be added.

But I’d be happy to hear your reactions.

Would you pick up this book?