an audio interview with me…

… on YouTube.

This was a lot of fun. Watch it (and it’s only the first third). I’m hoping Rick will post the reast too, some time soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Enjoy your weekend,

Cat

My first ever Blog Tour…

…is for my novel Urchin King. It was the first Fantasy novel I Indie-published and although the reviews are extremely favorable, I’m not getting the results I had hoped for. However, I do not think it’s a quality issue (it was semifinalist for the KBR 2012 Best Indie Book award) but a visibility issue. Hopefully this will change with the tour.

There are going to be interviews, reviews, giveaways and other goodies. I’ll post a schedule as soon as I can with links to the sites involved.

If you’ve read the book (or plan to) could you tell your friends about it? I’d love to have as many participants as possible on the tour. Grab the graphic below and send them to my homepage.

or grab the code:

<a href=”https://www.katharinagerlach.com” target=_blank”><img alt=”Blog Tour Badge” src=”https://www.katharinagerlach.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Blog-Tour-Badge.jpg”” width=”247″ height=”531″/></a>

Thank you for your help. I will post more information as they come up hoping we’ll have a great time before Christmas.

The Advent Calendar is now available

Sign up for a countdown for Christmas. The first Advent-eMail-parcel will be delivered on the first of December for all who sign up in time (the others get their parcels later). In total, you will get 25 eMails with stories, Character studies, recipes and original music from six talented authors. And the best is, it’s absolutely free.

Check it out and join the fun!

I’m an award winning author now…

Its really true!

Mid October two of my books won awards. First, “Scotlands Guardians” won the B.R.A.G. Medallion for high quality Indie publications and a day later, “Paralan’s Children” was nominated Indie book of the day. I’m very proud of this. Here comes proof so you can believe me:

It’s my daughters’ fault

Now, I haven’t posted in quite a while. You could say it was my daughter’s fault. I always push them to spend as much time outdoors as they can because it’s healthy and trains their imagination. But two of three are in puberty  at the moment, and they accuse me of forcing them to do something I’m not doing myself. They are right (partially).

I worked a lot this year (new novels and short stories, becoming an Independent Publisher, Webdesign, several publications, marketing plus a course and much more), which meant I spent a lot of time in front of my computer. Incidentally, it’s a desktop PC and cannot be carried outdoors.

The kids have been on holiday for the last two weeks, and I tried to make amends and be a good example for them. One week we went horse riding on a pony farm we have been visiting for the last few years. By now, the kids are capable enough to go riding on their own (with a mobile in their pocket and us walking somewhere close). The days flew past so fast, I barely noticed.

One questions remains: How can it be that my garden is still a mess despite the time I spent outdoors?

How about you? Do you have a garden? Do you like to roam around outdoors like my kids (if they’re not throwing a puberty-related tantrum)? Let me know and enjoy the golden autumn.

“Hangover” — have you ever listened to the lyrics?

When I drove to the shopping center yesterday, I head the song “Hangover” by Taio Cruz on the radio. For the first time, I really listened to the lyrics and was shocked. There’s a boy singing about getting drunk and linking it. He’s even asking for more. No wonder that so many kids think that binge drinking is OK.

Why doesn’t anyone ever make a song that’s just as addictive (the music alone is wonderful and memorable)  about the dangers of alcohol? Why not devote a song to FASD-children who are born with severe handicaps because their mothers drank alcohol during the pregnancy (and it doesn’t even have to be much alcohol since the drug goes through the placenta unhindered and kills the fetus’ cells — mostly brain cells)?

These are the steps of drinking alcohol. Believe me, it’s not much fun at a party to have someone around like this:

Remember that it’s your body and it will have to last for a hundred years (best case scenario). And, what’s worse, your alcohol drinking habits will affect your children directly (FASD) or indirectly (“following in your footsteps”-mentality).

Rant over (for now),

The Lost Day (incl. roman/germanic battle)

Wouldn’t the header for this post make a great title for a book? So, what happened?

On Tuesday, my day went haywire. First I went to a wonderful exhibition with my husband about a Roman/Germanic battlefield from 335 a.D. It was discovered a few years back and shocked the scientists since they had been sure that Romans had never been this far into Germany since Varus lost 3 legions in 9 a.D. The exhibition was great and we enjoyed it a lot.

Since it took us all morning and the lunch break too, to go there, look at it and return, we had given our middle daughter (12) a key so she could get in when she came back from school at 12am. Unfortunately, she left the key in the house when her friend came and requested her to help catch their sheep (4 of the herd had broken free from their compound).

We spend two hours waiting for the car service to come and open the door to my husband’s car (the key was in the house too) where we had a spare key to the front door. Of course, everybody was starving by then, so I had to cook and walk the dog (which had been in urgent need). Well, with shopping and a few telephone calls, the day was gone before I realized I hadn’t been on my PC at all. Strange feeling but not unwelcome.

Now, I’m back on track. The revision of my newest novel, “Juma’s Rain”, is nearly done and the first 50 pages are already translated. If all goes as planned, it will be available in the usual shops early next year.

Have you ever had a day like this? Tell me. I’m happy about every comment I get.

Podcast Interview with me – funny accent for free

Hi,

Yesterday, I was interviewed by Voice Over artist Katie Adler. Before the show started I wondered, “How will we fill a whole hour? I’m not really that interesting.” Man, was I wrong. Time flew by, and I even surprised myself with some of the answers I gave. Truth be told, you only get a good interview if the interviewer knows how to ask good questions. I had a lot of fun and highly recommend her site. She has this kind of podcast every first Sunday in the month (mine was a week late due to technical problems).

You can find the short stories I wrote (two 500 word flash stories) on Katie’s site:

Short Story Sunday with Katie Adler

and while you’re there listen to the replay, or listen to it here:

Have a great day,

Heroes Wanted, 99ct

When I tried to set up the audiobook I prepared, I found out that I have to have the eBook in place first. So I used most of the week to publish a two-story collection (roughly 25 pages) outside my normal schedule. The eBook “Heroes Wanted” contains two short stories:

Life™ – Divisions of Myths and Legends
or How to order a dragon
Mondays are hard in any office. When Siegfried von Xanthen is calling before opening hours, the day at Life™ – Divisions of Myths and Legends goes downhill for Rose.

A Different Perspective
Romans attack, and Freyja flees with the women of her clan while the men fight, including her beloved Thordal. Can Allfather Odin help Freyja to save Thordal’s life?

As an eBook, “Heroes Wanted” is only 99ct — as an audiobook it’s bound to be much more expensive (but you get nearly a full hour of audio for the money). I’ll post a link as soon as I know when the audio will be available. It will take some time to get approved and everything.

Have a great day,

Up, Up, and Away

Have you ever been to the Baltic Sea? I went very often when I was a kid. My father’s side of the family lived a long time in the (then) GDR, and he had friends that we visited every year. There was a forced money exchange of 25 DM per day and grown-up (1 DM for one GRD-Mark), children were a little less expensive. So, staying there for a fortnight with 2 parents and 4 kids was just as expensive as flying abroad would have been. But I gained some of my most favorite memories there (despite possibly spying neighbors). Those memories sparked “The Witches of Greenwitch”, the novel you can get for free if you join my no-spam mailing list. This is what it looks like (except these days there are many more people around, bathing in the sun or the sea).

Beach at the Baltic Sea, photo taken by Ostsee-Action.de

I am officially leaving the day after tomorrow and will spend two whole weeks there with no Internet access (yay), no writing(boo), no husband (boo), my kids (yay), my brother (yay), his wife (yay), and his boys (yay again).

Unfortunately with the upcoming anthology, there was so much to do that I did not manage to schedule posts in advance. So you’ve got to live without me till the beginning of August. I promise to be back shortly after my birthday. I think I’ll post some pictures when I return.

Enjoy the summer,