A birthday surprise!

I love birthdays.  To me it his not about getting older, it's about, well, everything else.  Birthdays always energize me.  Today is my birthday and I am extra excited because I've finally done something I've wanted to do since I started writing.  I have made Taken (book 1 and 2) into one book.  I remember how hard the decision was to make the story two books.  Most of this decision was inexperience (obviously).  I was impatient - I couldn't wait to publish it.  So since I had the first half of the story finished, and was still working on the second half, I decided to go ahead and publish.  Although, I must say people have loved it as two books (it is still my biggest seller), plus I wouldn't have two amazing covers, and I think I would have had a harder time with subtitling it.  Oh the nightmare of coming up with a new title if I didn't subtitle it ("Taken" is a popular title).  I cringe at the thought.

I wanted to do this a long time ago.  My biggest setback was I didn't know what to do with the cover.  Did I use the first one, the second one, the back from the paperback...?  I tried putting both covers on the one cover, you know one cover on one half, the other cover on the other half with a sold or blurred line running between the two.  I didn't like that at all - not vertically, not horizontally, not slanted.  This was so frustrating.  A few days ago as I was attempting to make myself like the half&half cover (because I wanted to have this out on my birthday) when another idea occurred to me.  I merged them.  Yea, yea, I know, it's still half&half.  (I'm sticking my tongue out in a child-like manner.) But now it flows together.  Two books as one!  If you're familiar with the story then you understand the importance.

I don't know if it will be at Barnes&Nobles, Apple, or Kobo today, but it is at Smashwords (selling for $4.99)!  I know you're probably sick of seeing me write how much I love Smashwords.   But I am not going to stop.  I just love what Mark Coker has done.   He had a dream and now he's helping other people achieve theirs.  If I don't support that, then why am I writing at all?   Life is about dreams: yours and mine.  It's passion that makes us love our lives - no matter what else is going on.

What better present for me than to do this!  So today I give you the story, that allowed me to realize my passion, in one book!