You know you are making it when they start to help you promote your books. In this case one I am the publisher/editor of, not the writer.  Lulu.com, my printer of choice, just sent me a coupon to promote the third in the Hilda Hopkins Machine Knitting Serial Killer series, saving 15% off the cover price! This is a great book with the infamous Hilda jumping from a train to escape the Law and landing on her feet once again, this time as maid to a Mistress of BDSM! The mind boggles yet the book is very much a PG rated volume any parent would comfortably give their teen to read.

The first in the series, ‘Hilda Hopkins, Murder She Knit’ and the second, ‘Hilda Hopkins, Bed & Burial’ are ripping yarns in the traditional English detective/murder mystery genre but with a twist. That twist is put there by the machine knitted garrotte used by Hilda once she puts her victims to sleep with a nice cup of tea… laced with a little something special, of course. She always knits an effigy of her victims, so they can be remembered of course.

I am editing #4, ‘Hilda Hopkins, M.I. Knits’ at the moment. This time Hilda answers her country’s call and becomes a secret agent assassin, shopping trolley and all, for Her Majesty’s Government. Who knows what she will get up to in #5, not even Vivienne Fagan, the writer. Vivienne has an inside line on the secret agent gig as she was in military intelligence and then worked for the ‘Home Office’ herself for 30 years but she won’t say more than that. She could, but then she’d have to get Hilda to serve you tea…

Buy a copy and enjoy, and get the other titles while you are at it! Before they become super valuable first editions of the next Agatha Christie-J.K. Rowling. To use the coupon click on the link Hilda Hopkins Machine Knitting Serial Killer and insert AUGUST306 into the panel marked Discount Coupon Code when you hit the checkout. Offer ends September 15, 2011.

On my other website, the eWriter Project, I have a page with a list of 28 places where you can find paying work as an online writer. I have also linked a blog post there to a list of 40+ writing sites that also pay and none of these include places where you have to bid for the job or just leave articles there and hope someone comes along and buys them. That list has been vetted and checked by the writer who compiled it, Julie Scott and she asks just $2 for her hard work. I have bought two copies of the list so far and sent one to a friend who has recently found himself, like too many American writers, out of full time work.

I could have sent him a copy of my copy but that, to my mind, would be unfair and cheating Julie of her fair reward. $2 is not much but it will add up as more and more of us get the list and use it to make a lot more than two bucks. I also see it as a way of acknowledging her initiative in compiling the list. Well done Julie. She could have asked $9.99 but at $2 I think it is a fair reward for the work and a price even someone who is unemployed and broke should be able to hunt up.

For those too hard up to even scrape two bucks together, check out the list of 28 sites on my other blog, some of which are on Julie’s list. Good luck.

OK, I am lying through my teeth here but I wanted to get your attention. I have just returned from perusing my local bookstore and once again I noted how so many books released of late are co-written. Tom Clancy has three other writers, so too Clive Cussler and James Patterson. Eric Van Lustbader is writing under the Robert Ludlum name with a Bourne sequel (call me a cynic but I expect to see it in the cinema soon). So many writers, big names, have ‘and Bob Nobody’ in much, much smaller font on the cover.

I know it is because the big name sells books and the big name is now so well off he or she no longer A) needs to work so hard and B) the publisher needs to make money. They get to pump out inventory that they are pretty sure will sell purely because of the BIG NAME on the cover. Few will notice the little name, or care. The style will be similar to the BIG NAME’s original and at best all they will have done is proof read and make a few suggestions. Given how meddlesome some editors are, completely revising the original manuscript at times, I would not be surprised if the true story was ‘little name and BIG NAME’s regular editor with BIG NAME simply agreeing to have his name on cover and take a cut.

OK, we know it is a business, we know it is all about selling paper but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Although, I am the first to confess that were I offered a crack at being a little name next to a BIG NAME, I would not knock it back. I am a freelance writer, a literary mercenary. I write for money just like BIG NAME does.