Early Release of Kindle Pre-Orders

This week I received a summons for jury duty selection. I am to show up in the county seat, which is 100 miles away, on the day I had appointed for the Kindle pre-orders of Gone for a Soldier to be sent to buyers.

Because of this, I've changed that release day to Tuesday, September 2. I hope you enjoy reading Gone for a Soldier sooner than you had expected.

Authors work many hundreds of hours in isolation to write novels they believe will be satisfying to their readers. When the book is released, they often never hear any feedback, and can only guess through sales numbers how it has been received. That guestimation isn't fool-proof. A purchase does not equal a satisfied reader.

For this reason, I'm putting out a couple of pleas:

1) Once you have had a chance to read Gone for a Soldier, if you enjoyed it, please consider encouraging me by putting a review of the book on Amazon.com, Goodreads, your blog, or mentioning it on Twitter or Facebook. Your enthusiastic mentions help other readers become aware of books that YOU enjoyed, and might help them decide to make a purchase, too.

2) If you think Gone for a Soldier is a work of quality, please consider nominating it for a Whitney Award. This is a high honor for the book and author, but it depends on readers to make a start.

"The Whitney Awards were founded in 2007 by Robison Wells with the object of honoring the best fiction written each year by Latter-day Saints (Mormons). The program has grown from five genre categories to eight and from two overall awards to three. A three-tiered system—with input from readers, judges, and a large academy of publishing professionals—is used to determine the finalists and winners."

Eligibility
"The Whitney Awards are solely for novels. Eligible titles for any year’s awards must be released between January 1 and December 31 of the calendar year and must be at least 50,000 words in the adult categories and at least 20,000 words for the youth categories. In addition, the author must be a Latter-day Saint."

Gone for a Soldier meets the three tests of eligibility: release window, length, and author's religious affiliation. The first step in the three-tiered system is where YOU come in:

Tier I: Nomination
"Any reader who has no financial interest in a book (e.g. the author or employee of the publisher), and who is at least twelve years old, may nominate it for a Whitney Award. Nominations are sent in via the web form found HERE."

"When a book has received five reader nominations, the Whitney Committee contacts the author to confirm the book’s eligibility. The book is then placed into the category in which the author has deemed his or her book best fits."

Of course, the novel has to work its way through the other two tiers in order to be a winner, but the beginning belongs to you, the reader.

Thank you for your support now and in the past. I hope to continue writing novels with heart and grit for many more years.

Marsha Ward