Monthly Archives: August 2026

Aug 30 2026

Burned by Greta Rose West

Burned cover art

First off, let me say that my favorite sub-genre of romance would be those set in the American West, while my second favorite is sci-fi romance. And, while I enjoy period pieces, I also enjoy modern westerns. Whether the romantic lead saddles up a Quarter Horse or a Ford F-150 doesn’t much matter to me. What matters in a romance is that the formula is there, but with some innovation or at least a bit of surprise here and there. Gotta keep things interesting, you know!

Burned, by Greta Rose West, entertained me until the last swipe of the page. In some ways, the book is standard fare: the romantic lead is a busy guy, with lots of problems, and he isn’t looking for love. The lady isn’t much of a lady, and she has a serious aversion to getting emotionally close to anyone. The point of view shifts with each chapter change, and the reader gets to know each party fairly quickly, which is necessary nowadays. Modern readers are not patient when it comes to character building or world building, for that matter.

In Burned, our male lead is Jackson Cade, the eldest brother and owner of a horse breeding operation. Yes, he is busy, and no, he isn’t wealthy, at least not in a monetary sense. He does have plenty of good company, as he lives with his four brothers, and he is the person on call for an elderly neighbor, Mrs. Mitchum. When she needs him to help her as she embarks on yet another course of cancer treatments, he responds to the call, despite his lack of time.

The female lead is Everlea, a volunteer at the local hospital, who has been tasked with assisting an elderly cancer patient. When Eve (short for Everlea) literally stumbles into Mrs. M’s room, giving herself a cut forehead and a concussion, Jackson ends up with two patients, Mrs. M, and her young helper, who isn’t to stay alone as she recovers from her concussion.

However, Everlea has secrets associated with a dark past, so she spends most of her waking moments trying to keep her lies straight. Perhaps this would be easy in a city situation, but the Cade ranch is on the fringe of the tiny town of Wisper, Wyoming, where everyone tends to know everyone else’s business. Before long, Jack realizes two things: Everlea isn’t what she seems, and he is falling in lust with her.

Since this is a western as well as a romance, there are horses to be born and named, there are scenic vistas to behold, and local decor is sometimes made of elk antlers. Everlea seems to enjoy it all, but she is ready to move on, with a packed “go bag” in her rented cottage. And, since this is also a mystery, there is a villain waiting to ruin Everlea, and he will enjoy killing anyone unfortunate enough to befriend her.

In hopes some of my readers will become West’s readers, I’ll skip the rest of the plot points and any spoilers. But it’s good, y’all.

After the epilogue, the author requests reviews. As an author, I get that. I’m not inclined to beg for those, but if more satisfied customers had written reviews, I would have been encouraged to write more books. So, Greta Rose West, here is a review by a very satisfied reader! Keep writing, please.

Aug 9 2026

Kindle Create as a tool for revising and publishing

Book Cover image for Trinity on Tylos by Pamela J. Dodd

Recently, I came upon a forgotten file wherein I mapped out a possible sequel to my science fiction novel, Trinity on Tylos. The scenario took up a few pages, and I had also written an in media res opening for the new book. However, since so much time had passed since I even read this book, I re-read the ebook version which I published in 2014. The ebook formatting seemed a bit dated, so I decided to see how best to update it. Lo and behold, big A now has a downloadable program called Kindle Create, which is a little like riding a bike with training wheels, but I did enjoy giving this newer application a spin. I uploaded a “new” version of the manuscript, which had about ten minor corrections, into the Kindle Create interface. The program is a step by step process, from the title page, to the copyright, to the preface. The fun began with tools which created a table of contents, another which added a drop cap at the beginning of each chapter, and so forth. Once I thought the manuscript was updated and the formatting tweaked, I uploaded the new version of the novel to the Kindle Dashboard, and it will be updated within three days.

Then I noted the “create a paperback” button. Having once self-published a paperback (The Gift Horse) I was rather shocked that this option was no-cost for me. I can’t remember the exact price, but Booklocker did charge me for setup and my author copy price was about $10 per book, and that was in 2004. Also, there was a yearly maintenance fee to keep the files for printing the paperback, which is why it is only available as an ebook now. Should anyone want to buy a paperback copy of Trinity on Tylos, the price is set at $9.99, but the only cost to me was a similar price for a “proof copy” which is similar to being published by a conventional company, because Whiskey Creek Press sent me a proof copy before the novel was published by them. (I still have that copy, with its post it notes and highlighted errors.) If all goes well, I will have one paperback copy of the revised novel. I might be the only person to ever buy one, but hey, that’s a heck of a good price!

The cover art on this “new” book is the same as the ebook; hopefully, it will look great. I had forgotten that the cover artist who did the image above sent print and web versions of the image, so I didn’t have to buy or create a new cover.

Will I ever finish the new book? Gosh, I don’t know. But once a manuscript is written, Kindle Create is a good piece of software. The pricing at Big A is unbeatable, too. So, if I were to pull it together, I would certainly use this method of publishing.

Of course, self-publishing has brought many, many bad books into the ebook/print on demand marketplace. But it has also brought such books as Andy Weir’s The Martian into the market as well. I’m not expecting many sales of a book first published two decades ago, but I think I will enjoy having that proof copy as a souvenir.