Happy Mother's Day!  Wow, is it May?  What happened to April?  Apparently we at JournalStone are unsure since we missed our April newsletter, but let me try and catch everyone up.  There is a lot, so hang on.

We might want to start with what we are giving away.  We love giving stuff to our readers for free and this program is the best we have come up with yet.  Free Fridays!  Every Friday on www.journal-store.com one of our electronic books will be available for free!  Yes, Free!  Every Friday we will feature a different one.  We never know which one so venture by the store and check it out -- for free!

Since we also like giving away money, we should mention our $2,000 in 2012 writing contest is drawing to a close.  Congratulations to our top ten winners.  You can see the list in the right-hand column, and thanks to everyone for participating.  By next month's newsletter, we should be announcing the winner so keep an eye out for the announcement.

JournalStone recently signed a distribution agreement with OverDrive, the leading electronic book distributor to libraries.  We are excited about the new channel and we will be doing some programs focused on libraries in the summer/fall.  We can't thank Library Journal enough for helping us with the connections and continuing to build a strong partnership with us.

For anyone who missed the April 16, 2012 issue of Publishers Weekly, you should pick up a copy.  JournalStone was featured on the cover and Brett J. Talley, JG Faherty and Jeffrey Wilson were the highlighted authors.  Thanks to our friends at PW for making that happen and to Denise Daniel for the awesome job of pulling it all together.  The cover looked amazing.

We continue to sign some very talented authors and April/May was no exception.  We want to welcome Kristina Meister, represented by Laurie McLean, Douglas Wynne, Ed Erdelac and Patrick Freivald.  We are very lucky to have this talented bunch join the JS team and look forward to a strong showing in the fall when their books start hitting the shelves. 

We have also signed on for some new advertising with Dark Discoveries magazine and HorrorWorld.com.  We are excited to add these new venues to the mix.  You should also check out the just released issue of Cemetery Dance.  We have a fantastic-looking back cover ad.

As always, stay tuned to some pending news.  We have something to announce in the next week or two that will absolutely blow your mind.  I will most likely be sending out a special e-blast so make sure you keep an eye out.  The announcement will dwarf everything we have done to date, combined!