Tilly!

My Tilly balloons came a few days ago, a couple of days ahead of schedule. They look amazing, and I can hardly wait to open them up and try them out. But, of course, I have to wait, because I'll have no privacy until school is back in session.

My wife and I are going to try to arrange some alone time in September, which seems like years away, and balloons are definitely on the menu. I won't report in detail on the alone time (don't think my wife would care for that), but I will report on the balloons.

A reminder, if you're reading this on the day of publication, Popping Out will be available for free on Kindle from tomorrow through Wednesday. Good time to get in on some very stimulating reading.

The Cover Saga

I have decided that I need to spruce up the covers for all of my stories. I started, naturally, with Blowing It! because it is both the oldest and the longest of the three. Although no one has complained about the cover design, I always felt that it should have a woman on the cover and not just a bunch of balloons. Having no easy way to shoot such a cover, however, I figured I had to get along without.

Then along came Fiverr. It was inevitable, I suppose, that someone on Fiverr would eventually offer to pose with balloons, and sure enough, a couple of young women have. One of them was commissioned by my book designer and publishing helper to provide a few photos to choose from.

What we finally selected for the cover barely shows the young lady at all, and yet the difference, with just that little bit of nose and hand and the black front of her blouse, is remarkable. It says so much more about the book than the stock image I used before. I am inspired enough to move ahead with changes for the other two stories, and to make sure that my next story, when it finally comes, is launched with an appropriate cover photo.

I hope that balloon lovers who browse the new covers will be more inspired to have a read.

A New Story, Finally

I know that I have neglected this blog for a very long time; I have spent most of my balloon-fetish-writing energy on fiction for the past three months. And the result is a story that ended up being a novelette: Popping Out.

You can buy Popping Out on Amazon.com now. I'm still working out a few kinks that fail to link the  Kindle and paperback editions, so if you want print, search for "Tim Popper Popping Out" in Books, and if you want an e-book, search for that same set of terms in the Kindle Store.

Not sure if you're ready to buy? Then download a sample of the Kindle edition. Because the story is so long, the preview actually gives you quite a good feel for the story, without really giving anything away.

And, as I've mentioned before, if you don't have a Kindle, you can still read the sample (or the whole book—hint) on a free Kindle reader for your tablet, phone, or computer, or in the Cloud Reader.

And if you haven't yet, why not download samples from Blowing It! and Eric's Secret?

So no excuses! Download the samples today and get a little taste of inflatable latex fun.