Winning free stuff has never been easier

I've had a number of folks tell me I need to establish an author page on Facebook. I'm not exactly sure why I need one, but all the cool kids are doing it. Now, I've had a personal Facebook page for years, and having an author page too always seemed to be not only a duplication of efforts, but kind of self-indulgent, too.

Well I've finally knuckled under. The Allan Leverone author page is live, and now that I have it, I'm looking for readers and interested Facebookers to populate it.

So, to that end, I'm running a little promo. To qualify, all you need to do is "Like" my Facebook author page by 9:00 a.m. Friday, May 25. That's it. Just click "Like" on my author page. Do that, and you will be in the running to win one of the following:

- A signed trade paperback copy of my Amazon bestselling thriller, THE LONELY MILE. This book's sales exploded in February, reaching #21 overall at Amazon, #16 in all fiction titles, and #2 in Suspense Thrillers, behind only Lisa Gardner's CATCH ME. Scott Nicholson calls THE LONELY MILE "a taut crime drama," and it has earned a 4.2-star rating on seventy Amazon reviews.

- A signed, limited-edition mini-hardcover copy of my Delirium Books novella, HEARTLESS. This is an author promotional copy of the 19,000-word novella, of which only 150 retail-sales copies were printed, and sells for $30.00. The striking cover art was created by the amazing Daniele Serra.

- A signed, hardcover copy of NORTHERN HAUNTS. This 2009 anthology from Shroud Publishing sells at Amazon for $26.59 and includes 100 terrifying New England tales from a diverse collection of authors, including Nate Kenyon, Steve Vernon, Stephen Mark Rainey and many others. My story, "Heart and Sole," is included.

- A signed, trade paperback copy of Northern Haunts. This is the exact same book as above, except in paperback rather than hardcover. The paperback edition sells at Amazon for $18.99.

- A signed copy of the Summer 2010 issue of Needle: A Magazine of Noir. This is Issue #2 of the magazine that has quickly become a noir legend and features stories from Ray Banks, Chris F. Holm, Nigel Bird, Frank Bill and others. My story, "The Waiting," is included.

- A signed copy of the Fall 2011 issue of Needle: A Magazine of Noir. This is Issue #11 and includes stories from Keith Rawson, Stephen D. Rogers, a brand-new, previously unpublished story from the late Gil Brewer and others. My story, "The Ticket," is included.

Here's how this will work. Friday, May 25, I will draw the first winner and contact that person via Facebook message. That person will get the choice of any of the above six prizes.

Once the first winner has selected a prize, I will draw the second winner, who will get the choice out of the remaining five prizes.

We'll continue until all the prizes are given away. I'll post the selections of the winners on my author page as they are picked, and depending on how long it takes for people to pick, may take a couple of days to complete.

There you go...good luck!

Winner of the Free Kindle Fire!

My "Win a Free Kindle Fire" contest ended Monday at 9 a.m., and I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to enter. My goal in running the contest was to introduce my work to some new readers and maybe gain a little exposure prior to my new supernatural suspense novel, PASKAGANKEE, being released by StoneGate Ink later this month.

In conjunction with the running of the contest, I lowered the price of THE LONELY MILE to 99 cents for six weeks, a savings of 67% off the regular ebook price of $2.99, so even if you weren't the winner of a Kindle Fire, I like to think you took a little something out of the contest, anyway.

So here we go. Just in case you weren't glued to Twitter or Facebook to find out the results of Tuesday's drawing, I thought it might be nice to post them here, too. Congratulations to Karen Maria of Rollinsford, NH, the winner of the Kindle Fire! Hopefully you get lots of use out of it...

If you're curious, the way I ran the drawing was to assign a number to every entry. I then went to http://www.random.org/ and fed the numbers into their random number generator. The number that was spit out belonged to Karen.

It was a lot of fun doing the contest, and while I don't have immediate plans to run another, I fully expect to do more promotional stuff in the future. If that sounds enticing to you, be sure to follow me on Twitter, @AllanLeverone, on Facebook, or sign up for my (very sporadic) newsletter under the "Contact" tab at my website, http://www.allanleverone.com/.

Thanks again to everyone who entered!

Google Plus must be lame because here I am

If you know me at all, you know I'm not a "tech guy;" I've never exactly blazed any kind of a trail in the digital revolution. And I know that may seem kind of strange considering my first two novels have been published exclusively electronically.

The fact of the matter is I don't enjoy electronic gadgets, mostly because I don't care about taking the time to learn how to use them. This explains why the years when VCR's were changing over to DVD players was such a stressful time for me.

Sure, I have a cell phone - I have three kids, how could I not? - but while the rest of family owns Droid smart phones, and I'm constantly suffering serious pressure to join the club, I'm happy with my LG something-or-other that doesn't get the Internet. Although I can check my email on it, so maybe it does, I'm not quite sure.

See what I mean? I don't care much about that stuff.

But here's the thing: When I decided to start writing books, I knew I needed a way to market my work, as well as to network with readers and other writers.

The solution? I opened a Myspace account (or, to be more accurate, my wife opened it for me)! But just about the time I cowboyed up, everyone else was jumping the Myspace ship for that shiny new Facebook thing. I didn't want to leave Myspace, because, after all, I had taken all that time to learn how to use it and Facebook seemed so . . . foreign.

Eventually, though, I could no longer ignore the mass migration. I would make a post on Myspace and could practically hear it rattling around in cyberspace.

So, when I could no longer convince myself Myspace was where it was at, I opened up a Facebook account (or, to be more accurate, my wife started it for me)! But, you guessed it, just about the time I figured this Facebook thing out, everyone else had discovered that shiny new Twitter thing.

Well I haven't quite worked up the courage to start a Twitter account yet, although I'll probably do that fairly soon (are you listening, honey?). I still find it very hard to believe anyone besides my immediate family would want to hear my 140-character thoughts on anything, and I know even they're ignoring me most of the time.

And now there's another problem: there's a newer shiny thing taking off, called Google Plus, or maybe just Google +, I'm not too sure. This is supposed to be like Facebook, only better, and of course Facebook was supposed to be like Myspace, only better.

What's a Luddite to do? I'm just about ready to dip a toe into the Twitter ocean and here comes something else! Pretty soon the world will be all social media, all the time. Or maybe we're already there. As you may have noticed, I tend to lag a bit.

Anyway, I'd like to apologize to the folks at Google who, I'm sure, have worked very hard on their Google Plus (or Google +) project. I just joined, thanks to the possibly misguided invitation of Chris White at StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink.

This, of course, means you are no longer cool, Google Plus, because by the time I find you, all the cool kids are on to something else. Sorry about that.