Cover B: Money and Dark Rooms

Copies of Executive Retention are available at Amazon and Smashwords.

After solving one case of corporate crime, Sedona expected to get her peaceful life back. Problem: She is still a manager at Strandfrost, and there is still rampant jealousy over her promotion. Is the danger of being railroaded by her not-so-illustrious colleagues worse than taking a new undercover job from Steve Huntington?

Crooks are coming out of the woodwork and family troubles are stewing. Sedona needs to keep her sanity intact, piece together mismatched clues and dodge more than one stray bullet. If she can manage all of that, maybe she’ll have time to figure out whether her love life stands a chance.

Edit: It usually takes about a week. I’ll announce it here on the blog as soon as it is available. Executive Retention is now available.

I’d like to thank everyone for voting and for the comments and suggestions which improved all of the covers. Thanks also for the private emails with passionate arguments for or against a particular cover. You have been helpful, FUN and I’m looking forward to doing this again…I think!

Executive Retention needs a cover! Executive Retention is the second book in the Sedona O’Hala series (Executive Lunch is the first.)

After solving one case of corporate crime, Sedona expected to get her peaceful life back. Problem: She is still a manager at Strandfrost, and there is still rampant jealousy over her promotion. Is the danger of being railroaded by her not-so-illustrious colleagues worse than taking a new undercover job from Steve Huntington?

Crooks are coming out of the woodwork and family troubles are stewing. Sedona needs to keep her sanity intact, piece together mismatched clues and dodge more than one stray bullet. If she can manage all of that, maybe she’ll have time to figure out whether her love life stands a chance.

Some of you have already read the first book in the series so you’ll have a good feel for the characters and tone, but here is an excerpt of Executive Retention to help you with your voting! For those of you who have not read the first in the series, feel free to read the excerpt for book two or, you can read an excerpt from the first in the series: Executive Lunch.

Now, without further ado, here are the covers to choose from!

Cover A: The Writing is on the Wall	Cover B: Money and Dark Rooms	Cover C: Show me the Money!

Thank you very much for helping me choose the perfect cover!

Copies of Executive Retention are currently available exclusively at Smashwords. The cover on the Smashwords version will change to show the winning cover, but having an early means of distribution allows me to make the book available to reviewers and anxious fans!

Executive Retention will go on sale at Amazon and other outlets approximately one week after the poll closes (sometime around June 23). It will be priced at $2.99.

If you haven’t read Executive Lunch, it is available for purchase:
at Amazon
at Smashwords
at Barnes and Noble
at Kobobooks
at Apple istore

Thank you!

For years mom has endured kitchen tap water that takes anywhere from three to five minutes to get hot. She got wind of those little electric instant hot water heaters a while back. Last week, she finally decided she couldn’t live without one…uh-oh. Sure, I was the good daughter and found a deal, ordered it off the internet and had it delivered to the doorstep. Let’s hope they forget my part in this disaster sometime soon.

First off, let’s remember my parents live waaay out in the boonies. This meant that to get the connectors and various parts they needed, they had to drive about 35 miles into town–a couple of times because yes, dad sent mom and mom doesn’t really know a faucet part from a garden hose. That was bad enough, but it got worse when dad actually began the installation. See, dad really didn’t pay attention to this gadget that mom wanted, he just wanted it installed and over with. He glanced at the instructions; easy enough: Cold water inlet, hot water outlet…yeah. The only trouble with those instructions is that they meant: take the hot water line THAT DOESN’T GET WARM FAST as the inlet, not the COLD WATER LINE as the inlet.

By the time he was done trying to figure it out, he had both the hot and the cold running through the thing…

Several phone calls and a lot of yelling, we got it hooked up correctly. Only…the thing won’t turn on. Power? Check? Light? NOPE. ARGH. Thing doesn’t seem to work. So I tell mom to let it just sit and maybe it will heat the water, but the light isn’t working. It’s Saturday so there’s no point in calling the company until Monday.

“Just leave it alone for a couple of hours. Don’t run the water. Then in two hours, check the temperature of the water coming out the tap. Maybe it is heating, but the light doesn’t come on.”

Mom said, “I have to run the dishwasher. It’s ready to go.”

“How about you wait a couple of hours–just let the thing sit and then check the faucet in two hours and see if the water is hot.”

Never assume silence is agreement.

I finally call back 3 hours later when I hear no results. Oh. My. God. Have. Mercy.

Mom didn’t listen. She ran the dishwasher. Only…dad had assumed we were going to uninstall the water heater to send it back. So he had some hoses disconnected. Oh, My. Yes. Water all over hell.

Did anyone stick around to watch the dishwasher run??? Of course not. It’s an automatic device…

While the dishwasher was quietly pushing water all over the kitchen floor, older brother who is staying there, decided to wash his clothes. Older brother isn’t one for details. He wanted to wash clothes in hot, so he turned all the settings to hot and let’er rip. Two, maybe three loads worth.

Mom would like to get ready for church. Which used to mean taking a hot shower. Only…all the hot water was used to wash someone’s clothes. Another someone needs a shower also because he was in the kitchen mopping up water and connecting hose lines that he didn’t know anyone planned on using.

Oh. My. If I lived there, I’d be leaving home–in a hurry.

But here it is. The cover for Tracking Magic!!!

Currently, Tracking Magic is available at Amazon and Smashwords for $1.99.

Thank you everyone for your votes and comments. I think the end result is much improved!!! I had a lot of fun and I hope you did too!!!

“Get Smart” meets “Ghostbusters!” A humorous urban fantasy. Five case files from Max Killian Investigations:

Haunting Clues — Max is hired to expel a ghost from a mansion. To deal with the dead, though, he must first uncover the secrets of those still alive.

Curses! — Some days you curse, some days the curse gets you.

Dearly Departed — Max investigates a graveyard, but when it comes up empty, it’s his job to find the body–dead or alive.

Roadkill — Max can smell the dead long after they are gone. Of course, it’s not too hard to smell the ones that just died, but it could prove to be more dangerous.

Privy to Secrets — Some secrets are worth dying for. The trick is to know which ones make life worth living.

Socrates does book reviews. Yvonne was kind enough to cover Executive Lunch.

I noticed that the story displays much cleaner on Explorer than it does with Firefox (I haven’t tried other browsers). For that reason and because I’m into e-readers, I’m thinking of making the story available for download in an e-reader format. What do you think? It is short enough to read online, but it might be more convenient to read on the go!

Since it isn’t yet converted for download, feel free to go read it, but let me know if you would like a version for your e-reader.

As always, with my published short stories, after the exclusivity period is over, I also make them available over at AnthologyBuilder where you can add any of the very large inventory of stories into a print book and have it shipped to you.

Thank you!

Of course, I do try to be choosy about who I offer the book to for review purposes. I like a review site that is thoughtful, has reviewers who know how to spell and of course, has reviewers who love to read!!! It’s also nice if I like the same types of books they do–that way I also find new gems to read. Working Girl Reviews fit the bill for me, so I sent along a review copy and lo! I got a four-shoe review!

Here’s my favorite part:

To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy this book by self-published author Maria E. Schneider. I work from home and I’ve never been in the corporate world. Mysteries aren’t my favorite genre and I’ve never been much into sleuth capers. So, why did I even decide to read this book? I took a peek at Maria’s blog and online postings at bearmountainbooks.com. After a little reading there I felt like I knew her and wanted to give her book a chance. She is down to earth and realistic. She isn’t expecting her works to be on Oprah’s next book list but rather is writing for the enjoyment it brings to her.

That pretty much sums it up. All most authors want is a chance to be read!

My first international review: Paradise Blogspot reviewed Executive Lunch!

Woot!

Executive Lunch is also available on Smashwords.com. You can download a format for your laptop (see here for information on downloading a free reader), for the Kindle, the Sony, the Nook and in other formats.

Here’s the back blurb for Executive Lunch.

Sedona is given the opportunity of a lifetime: play an up-and-coming executive with all the trappings of wealth with someone else footing the bill. The catch: find out who is stealing company funds before the criminals find out that their program is being debugged.

Sedona runs into danger, the corporate glass ceiling, and an occasional chance at romance in her quest to figure out who is stealing money from Strandfrost.

Click for an excerpt.
(First chapter).