FREE BOOKS: Edwina Ray and Sarah Billington - When 2 Become 1

Some of you may know that I sort of have two personalities. There is Sarah Billington who is kind of upbeat and happy and tortures her characters with humiliation, and then there is Edwina Ray who is a bit darker, a bit scarier and tortures her characters with actual torture.

I kept the two types of genres I write fairly separate through the two names, but by no means did I make it a secret that Edwina was Sarah but with more eye liner.

Let's face it, I can't tell lies, I get all weird and obvious, so if anyone was to ACTUALLY call me Edwina (even though it IS my middle name) I would go all red and weird and stupid.

I don't think any of us deserve to go through the awkwardness of that.

SO. Edwina Ray's stories are getting rolled into Sarah Billington! This means that soon, Sarah Billington, the author is going to have a dark side some readers might be a bit surprised about.

I was a little worried, as the author of a middle grade novel for girls (Life Was Cool Until You Got Popular) that those readers might inadvertently pick up another Sarah Billington story and end up scarred by the inner-workings of a zombie's food-related fantasies (I, Zombie) because they didn't realise there would be a big, big difference between the two types of stories I write.

But my readers are smart people. And the covers of the scarier stories sure give off a different feel to the covers of the humour titles. I think we're good.

To celebrate the merging of Edwina Ray and Sarah Billington, I have two short stories going COMPLETELY FREE on Amazon.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

FREE Aug 31 - Sept 3, 2012

In the small town of Carringwood, Doug and every other resident turn out to watch the drama as the Gabarski home burns down. Luckily Shana and the kids got out. And her husband Peter is mysteriously absent. Speculation runs rife through the town, why are arson investigators here? Did Peter do it? Why did he do it? But Doug wonders something else. If it wasn't Peter, who was it?

Life Was Easier When Boys 

Were Stupid

                                         FREE Aug 31 - Sept 4, 2012

Jess is at a party and girls and boys around her are locked together at the lips and hips. When did everyone grow up so fast? She's not sure she wants to, but her girl friend Carla points out a boy across the room with eyes only for Jess. 

Life Was Easier When Boys Were Stupid won the Gippsland Award in the Fellowship of Australian Writers Awards.

LIFE WAS EASIER INCLUDES A SNEAK PEEK AT CHAPTER ONE OF THE HIT NEW NOVEL: THE KISS OFF!

Get a taste of both sides of Sarah Billington FOR FREE. If you feel so inclined (and I really hope you do), leave a short review, as reviews are integral to any author's success.

BUT THERE'S MORE!

The Kiss Off

99c FOR ONE WEEK ONLY

WARNING: Sexual references, occassional course language.

When sixteen year old Poppy Douglas writes a song about her ex-boyfriend Cam and ex-friend Nikki, she has no idea that her heartbreak is about to go global. 

A local band picks up her song from Youtube and soon she's along for the ride with her own fanbase as they blow up on the local club scene and hit the international charts. Though it turns out leaving Cam behind isn't as easy as she had hoped. 

Tangled in a web of unfinished homework, ill-considered sexting and a new lead-singer boyfriend, Poppy has a choice to make between the ex that inspired it all and the rock God whose poster lines the inside of half the lockers at school. But as she struggles to keep her emotional dirty laundry private, she learns that the truth can be hard to find when your life is in the headlines.

Just as an added extra. :)

Happy reading, lovelies!

Help International Authors Get Paid

On a somewhat serious topic today, it's about Amazon and international authors and money.

Sign the petition Help Indie Authors.

As I publish mostly short stories for 99c, it takes awhile for my royalties to build up enough for Amazon to actually pay me. 

As an international author, they only pay authors by cheque, and only once you have reached $100 or more in royalties (or 100 pounds in the UK store, 100 euro in the French store etc). So they pay in $100 installments. 

I can understand this, as mailing out thousands of teeny tiny cheques a month would be time-consuming and costly (can you imagine the postage on that?)

US and European authors on the other hand, get paid every month straight into their bank account, regardless of how much they have earned.

I received my first ever royalty cheques last week, one for $17 and the other for $56. I don't know how this happened, as it's not $100, and it was split between 2 cheques, but okay. It happened.

I tried to bank my cheques. ROYALTIES. REAL ROYALTIES. I'M A REAL AUTHOR.

Except it costs $25.00 for the bank to process one international cheque. So of my $83, $50 was going to be taken in fees.

I have heard of other authors tell me that at their bank it costs $40.00.

This means, for my $17 cheque? I will be out of pocket $8 if I went through with depositing it. Royalties COST me money. And this is before foreign currency conversion.

Smashwords pay their authors by Paypal. And though I'm not Amazon, I don't know how simple this is to implement, but it sounds pretty simple.

Sign the petition (all it takes is a click of a button) in order to encourage Amazon to consider switching from cheque payment to PayPal for international authors. We may be further away, but just like US and European authors, we deserve to keep ALL of our royalties, instead of handing them over to the bank.

If you support this cause, and I hope you do, you can tweet about it and Facebook it to your friends and colleagues.

Sign the Petition! Amazon: Pay International Authors via PayPal/bank account instead of cheques http://www.change.org/petitions/amazon-pay-international-authors-via-paypalbank-account-instead-of-cheques?share_id=kdxAJBnjmB via @change

Thanks lovelies,

Sarah

The Death & Life of Rocky the Crab - FREE for 24 HOURS ONLY!

Go get it right now, people!

The hilarious story The Death & Life of Rocky the Crab is available for FREE. RIGHT NOW.

Even though I'm the author, I can say it's hilarious - wanna know why? Because it's based on true events! This ACTUALLY happened to someone I know.

Awesomesauce. Check it out if you're intrigued!

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon DE
Amazon ES
Amazon FR
Amazon IT


WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
Lisa was supposed to be pet sitting. Looking after a crab is easy, right? Unless you forget to feed it. And then you find it dead minutes before its owner is back in town. 
There's something a bit different about this dead crab though.


WHAT READERS SAY:


GOOD DEED GONE BAD
Short but sweet, The Death and Life of Rocky the Crab is an amusing look at a good deed gone wrong. Lisa volunteers to pet sit her friend's crab while he's away, but after failing to feed it the entire time, wakes up the day of her friend's return to find the crab has escaped and nearly died. In a chuckle-worthy confrontation with one pissed-off crab, Lisa--stuck under a bed with the crab--defends herself with kitchen tongs. Billington is talented at bringing a kind of slapstick humor to life on the page and yet keeping it real enough that readers can stay immersed in the story. The ending is unexpected and brings the story full circle in a way that makes it wholly satisfying.
Erin Fry (author of "Losing it", coming September 2012)




THINK TWICE BEFORE OFFERING TO PET-SIT
Lisa offers to pet-sit for Caleb's crab, Rocky. Big mistake. When Caleb calls to say he's coming over to reclaim Rocky, Lisa checks on the little fella, maybe for the first time. He was gone. The frenetic hunt that ensues is hilarious. And I love the irony of the ending. 

Sarah Billington is a creative storyteller whose tales will put a smile on your face...and maybe give you pause before you agree to pet-sit anything!
Gail Handler


As you were.


Sairz

The Death and Life of Rocky the Crab - FREE eBOOK Voucher

The downfall of juggling a gazillion tasks is you (or me...yeah, we're talking about me here) let important things slide through sometimes.

So in order to celebrate the release of a short I'm really proud of, again, I'm giving you the opportunity to get a copy for FREE.

But what I ask in return is that you write a short review - one or two lines - on Amazon or Smashwords in return.

If you have a Smashwords account, you can download it from the site for FREE with

Coupon Code GA92C. 

You can read it online through html or javascript, download the PDF, Kindle, ePub, Rich Text, LRF (for Sony Readers) or Palm Doc versions.

If you want to review it through Amazon, I don't have a voucher but I would love for you to email me at SarahERBillington AT gmail DOT com and request a copy.

This freebie is only until Sunday 22nd May!

The Death and Life of Rocky the Crab is AVAILABLE NOW on Amazon and Smashwords and awaiting approval for Apple, Kobo, Sony, B&N and more. 

The Death and Life of Rocky the Crab is a story you just can't make up. It's based on a true story which happened to Amy a young lady I met over Christmas 2009 in a haunted castle in the Scottish Highlands. I wish I had her contact details, she was an awesome chick.

The Death and Life of Rocky the Crab

Something moved in my hand. I looked back at Rocky in the tongs. Something was weird. I stopped shuffling and narrowed my eyes at it. Was it…looking at me? Suddenly its legs unfurled from under itself and its pincers sat up at attention. In front of my face. And they snapped together.

Lisa was supposed to be pet sitting. Looking after a crab is easy, right? Unless you forget to feed it. And then you find it dead minutes before its owner is back in town. There's something a bit different about this dead crab though. 

Happy Wednesday, peeps!

Love Sairz

Resistance is futile: Bookstore sales and eBook updates

 So I tried really hard not to go to any bookshop sales. A bunch of them are closing down and selling their stock for ridiculously awesome prices but I was NOT GOING. I don't need more books, I don't have the money to justify buying more books. I will not succumb!

Until this morning, I did.

I gotta say, I didn't do too badly. Since the sale's been on for awhile now, most of the stuff on my list of must reads were gone, but I got a couple of promising titles, including this one which I've had my eye on for awhile now:

It totally looks like a zom com. I'm currently writing a zombie comedy myself so, naturally, it caught my attention.

Though I gotta say, the ultimate zom com is most definitely this:

If you have not watched Shaun of the Dead then you are missing out on something magic. For realz.

Moving on.

There is still time to grab my award winning short story eBook Life Was Easier When Boys Were Stupid for FREE from Smashwords with the coupon code TB47A. You can read it online through HTML or Javascript or download the Kindle, ePub, PDF, LRF or PDB versions, depending on how you want to read it. Coupon code ends Sunday!

You can also get a story of unrequited love, The Ballerina & My Best Friend, which, like Life Was Easier, is available from Smashwords and Amazon.

Aaaand....Coming soon!

A completely free short by Edwina Ray.

More later,

Sairz