Julia Barrett's World

Why I won’t renew with KDP Select.

Julia Barrett — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:58:29 +0000

I’m now entering a second 90-day period with KDP Select. I suspect this will be the last for me. The experiment has been worth it, in terms of getting my work into the hands and minds of new readers. Giving away many free books kept my books high up in the rankings for a considerable period of time after the free promotion ended and significantly increased my visibility and, more significantly, my sales.

However, with the advent of Amazon’s new ranking algorithm, that advantage has come to an end. There is no longer a 1-1 ratio between books uploaded as freebies and books sold. Therefore, your book drops in the rankings quickly as soon as your promotion ends and there is no rebound effect. The law of diminishing returns…

As I said, KDP Select has been a valuable promotional tool because it made my books visible, i.e., discoverable, to the casual reader. This is no longer true.

Therefore the value of enrolling in Amazon’s KDP Select program has just been nullified for me. If I’d known about the change in algorithm before I enrolled for a second 90 day period for all my books, I wouldn’t have bothered. Instead I’d have made my titles available via multiple outlets, as I did before the advent of KDP Select.

I figured it was too good to last. But then, most things are.

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Exploring Ecstasy… now that I have your attention…

Julia Barrett — Wed, 16 May 2012 04:01:12 +0000

Tessie Bradford is a dear friend of mine. She’s been a cheerleader since the day I signed my first contract. Welcome Tessie!

Thanks so much for having me, Julia!

I’m so excited to announce that three of my books are together in the paperback print anthology titled Exploring Ecstasy! It is available now on amazon:

Exploring Ecstasy

These stories are very different from each other, while sharing extremely important aspects – love, respect, laughter, commitment, and of course, happily ever after! In Possessing Eleanor, I explore my visions of a modern Dom/sub relationship.Pampering Jessica was my 50^th birthday present to me and celebrates maturity. Sensations allowed me to take a walk on the wild side.

Possessing Eleanor

Eleanor Lewis is perfectly content with her comfortable, quiet, relationship free life until she finds herself on all fours at the feet of Jackson Royce. Eleanor is stunned by her instant and intense attraction to the power and confidence radiating from the devilishly handsome building contractor. He scrambles her brain and heats her body to the boiling point.

Jackson always trusts his gut instincts. The ultra sexy woman sprawled on the floor is a sexual submissive. How intriguing that the all business, sensible shoe wearing office manager has absolutely no idea? The moment he takes her into his embrace he vows to possess her mind, body and soul.

From their first sizzling encounter, through a whirlwind courtship, Eleanor discovers being possessed by a man who loves her absolutely is what she had been searching for all along.

Pampering Jessica

David has been planning Jessica’s birthday weekend for months. His wife of almost twenty five years is having issues with turning fifty and he vows to do everything in his power to remind her how incredible she is and how much he loves her.

Jessica’s birthday wish is to spend quality alone time with the man of her dreams, her husband. When David presents her with a gold gift bag full of sensual surprises, Jessica is more than eager to enjoy every one of them. What she doesn’t realize is that her husband has much more in store for her special celebration.

Sensations

Vivian Walcourt is completely out of her conservative, sheltered element when she finds herself at an ultra-exclusive adult club. Her free spirited best friend may think she’s in love with one of the owners, but Vivian doesn’t believe in whirlwind courtships.

Paul Landis never imagined the woman who has haunted his dreams for years would walk into his club with his partner’s fiancé. More beautiful than ever, unattached, and worked into a heightened state of horny by the evening’s entertainment, he sweeps her away to experience the very special pleasures found behind the closed doors of Sensations.

Tessie

http://www.tessiebradford.com/

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The Best Music Video in the History of the World.

Julia Barrett — Tue, 15 May 2012 04:15:44 +0000

Damn I love that poodle skirt!

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2 tsp. vanilla

Julia Barrett — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:29:55 +0000

Remember my list? Well, Penny wanted a post about 2 tsp. vanilla. Here ya go!

Just before I left for Boston I baked myself a birthday cake because, well, it was my birthday. I baked a Whiskey Cake since that is the traditional birthday cake – for at least four generations – in my family. I ate one piece and left the rest for my hubby who was disciplined enough to leave me half the cake, cut into individual slices, in the freezer. Remember, he left the day before I got home. So I got to eat a piece every day – there were a couple pieces left when he came home too.

So how does that relate to my list? I wrote the recipe down from memory and 2 tsp. vanilla and 2 1/2 sticks butter ended up on the list page of my little note pad.

A Whiskey Cake is this moist, tender white cake (you know me, I’m a chocolate girl but I love this cake), leavened with 4 beaten egg whites– so you don’t want to Zumba around the kitchen while the cake is baking.

The frosting is simple – powdered sugar, corn syrup, butter, 4 egg yolks (wouldn’t want to waste the yolks!) and well, yes, whiskey. A minimum of 4 TBS. My mom usually tosses in a shot or two or three. She’d let me taste the frosting when I was a kid, just to make sure she’d added enough whiskey. Sometimes she used Kentucky Bourbon or Mash, sometimes Scotch, sometimes Jim Beam… depended upon what we had on hand. I usually grab the Scotch or the Bourbon.

Anyway, after the cake is baked and cooled, you frost it and here’s the best part, drizzle on 2 melted squares of bitter and I do mean, unsweetened, chocolate. That’s one of the many contrasts that makes this cake a favorite of every single person in our family.

I’d give you the recipe, but that would mean betraying a closely guarded family secret. Or as my dad says whenever I ask him about his days with the CIC… “If I tell you I’ll have to kill you.”

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Some Poems.

Julia Barrett — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:25:24 +0000

I Cling To You, Julia Barrett

The fog pours over the
low mountains
in a slow cascade of
wet curls.

It clings
to the folds
the hollows
the deep valleys.

Its pale tendrils reach
into the earth’s secret places.

If I were the fog
I would cling to you
just like this.

Thirst, Julia Barrett

I am
lost in the desert
alone and parched.

By day
my feet blister
by night
I sleep in the hard places.

Your brown hand waves to me
from every heat sink.

I could drink the heavens
written in your name.

Time Passing, Many Afternoons, Ellery Akers

Weeds rustling,
the afternoon pulling its heat after it,
coming on like a dark hand
pulling me into the hill.

Often, I stop to see this:
the hill drinking, and lifting its head up,
at the end, the last tree:
the dark moving the light upward.

Going home, I noticed
the comfortable shadow of the car
pacing beside me as I drove,
the cold shells of abandoned cars by the road.

As a child, I played on the lawn,
watching the afternoon gathering in a corner.
Dark under the dark elm. The latch getting dark.
The short grass, dark. My dress, soaked with it.

The Traveler, Pablo Neruda

The stones do not mope.
within lives the gold;
the seed-bearing planets
with bells in their depths,
gauntlets of iron, weddings
of time and the amethysts;
within is the laughter of rubies
and the bread of the lightning.

Traveler, beware: keep
a curious eye on the glooms of the highway,
the mysteries crowding the walls.

This I know at great cost:
all life is not outward,
nor is all death from within:
time writes in the ciphers
of water and rock for no one at all,
so that none may envision the sender
and no one be any wiser.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Dream Dust, Langston Hughes

Gather out of star-dust
Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust,
Storm-dust,
And splinters of hail,
One handful of dream-dust
Not for sale.

A Selection of Japanese Poetry (my favorite)

The mists rise over
The still pools at Asuka.
Memory does not
Pass away so easily. Akahito

I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always. Akahito

I should not have waited.
It would have been better
To have slept and dreamed,
Than to have watched night pass,
And this slow moon sink. Lady Akazome Emon

I think of the days
Before I met her
When I seemed to have
No troubles at all. Fujiwara No Atsutada

We were together
Only a little while,
And we believed our love
Would last a thousand years. Yakamochi

I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today. Narihira

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