My podcast called “Meet the Thriller Author” and that is where I publish author interviews with bestselling authors of mystery, thriller, and suspense books. I’ve interviewed close to sixty authors, so far!

I post new interviews on Tuesdays. I’m on a bi-weekly schedule but that changes depending on my writing schedule, but I try hard to have a new interview to publish at least on a bi-weekly schedule and always on a Tuesday. I interview authors that indies as well as traditionally published. I’ve interviewed authors of hard-charging action stories, political thriller, espionage, crime fiction, cozy mysteries, legal and medical thrillers, and more.

Here is the link to my podcast website.

You can also subscribe to my podcast via all the popular podcatchers and you can find “Meet the Thriller Author” in all the popular podcasting directories like iTunes, Google Play, TuneIn, Stitcher, and others.

Here are a few of my latest author interviews (this includes a good mix of indies and traditionally published authors).

You can click on the author’s photograph or on the links to listen to the interview.

Tess Gerritsen Interview

My interview with the internationally bestselling author, Tess Gerritsen (Rizzoli and Isles series): Author Tess Gerritsen interview.

Kyle Mills Interview

My interview #1 New York Times bestselling author of political thrillers, Kyle Mills. Who took over the Mitch Rapp series for the late Vince Flynn.  Author Kyle Mills interview.

Interview with author Tim Tigner.

My interview with international bestselling author Tim Tigner Author of the wildly popular Kyle Achilles series. Author Tim Tigner interview.

Interview with author John Ellsworth.

My interview with USA Today bestselling author of legal thrillers, John Ellsworth. Author John Ellsworth interview.

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I recorded a video of the unwrapping and the reveal.

The post New Book Cover for She’s Gone appeared first on Alan Petersen.

Those were the factors I considered before I decided to re-design the book cover for She’s Gone. I liked the original cover, but I felt it was causing some genre confusion. It was giving off a romance vibe and not really a non-stop action thriller vibe that this book is, so I contacted my designer and we go to work.

Book Cover Redesign: Before and After

I really liked the new cover and I now believe there won’t be a question on the genre of this book to folks who might be perusing Amazon for a thriller! Below you’ll see the new cover for She’s Gone as well as a “before and after” side-by-side comparison so you can really see the changes.

The new additions to the cover makes it clear that She’s Gone is an action thriller and not romance or any other genre, other than a hard-charging thriller.

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For the last few months, I’ve been interviewing fellow thriller authors for my podcast, “Meet the Thriller Author” (link to podcast).

I have met wonderful authors, and it’s been a lot of fun to see what motivates other writers to write, where they get their ideas and ask them other questions about their work and the genre that I love (thrillers).

I update the podcast on Tuesdays (I’m trying to get so that I post a new podcast every Tuesday but it takes time to find an author to interview and in keeping with my writing schedule, it can get tricky, but whenever I have a new show, it will be posted on Tuesday).

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and Stitcher (Android friendly) and directly from my RSS feed.

You can also listen or download the MP3 right from my podcast website, so lots of choices on how to listen to the podcast (that’s one of the reasons I love podcasts).

The podcast is geared for fans/readers of thrillers (just like me). I’m not a huge fan of pigeonholing novels to one specific genre, but for simplicity’s sake of this podcast, I’m defining “thriller” as novels published within Amazon’s Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense category (and its many sub-categories).

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I purchased Royalty Free Music (you pay a one time fee and so you don’t owe royalties to the copyright holder) to use in the “She’s Gone” book trailer. You can watch and hear it here:

Not long after I uploaded the video to YouTube, I noticed ad banners were embedded in the video.

That was odd. YouTube does allow content providers to “monetize” their videos on YouTube. I’m sure you’ve experienced this phenomenon if you’ve ever watched a video online (especially on YouTube). It’s a way for the video creator to make some money off their video. But it’s an optional feature. You have to log into your YouTube account and turn that option on.

I don’t want ad banners displayed in the video book trailer, so I figured I must have accidentally turned that feature on.

I logged into my YouTube account to turn ads off, but I was surprised to learn that I hadn’t enabled ads accidentally. YouTube had done a “third party match” with the audio track on my video triggering a copyright claim on behalf of the musician/company that created the music track I was using. Use of the audio was allowed as long as ads were embedded with the proceeds going to that person/company.

Notice from YouTube that a copyright claim was filed and ads “might appear” (they did) on my video.

The above scenario unfolds automatically by software bots without human intervention. YouTube doesn’t send out a notice that they’re going to do this–they just do it.

If I wanted the ads removed from the video YouTube would strip the audio. And well, a trailer without music is a bit odd.

I was confused since I had purchased a “Royalty Free Music” track so I had the proper license to use it.

I visited the site where I had purchased it and this is such a common occurrence that they had an entire page in their FAQs to deal with this same exact scenario I was going through with YouTube.

That’s when I discovered there are these companies that provide “content ID audio detection system” so that musicians, podcasters, etc. can register their audio file with these companies. The company bots crawl around YouTube looking for audio matches and when they find one it triggers YouTube’s “third party match.”

What happens once these companies find a match, depends on what the original copyright holder chose when registering the audio file, they can either have the audio stripped from the video or (what happened to me) have YouTube inserts ads into my video (without my knowledge).

This is done to protect copyrights, and hey, as a writer, I’m all for that, but I bought royalty free music and I had the license which allowed me to legally use it, so I felt a bit miffed as if I was accused of being a pirate stealing the music track and violating copyright.

Luckily, the site where I bought the royalty free music from had detailed instructions on what to do in this situation since I had a legal license to use the royalty free music that allows me to use the music on videos uploaded to YouTube.

I had to file a dispute on the copyright claim with YouTube. It’s not as scary as it sounds. I clicked a “file a dispute” link and I copy/pasted the verbiage from the company I bought the music from (included my license number and other pertinent information) into their dispute form and I clicked enter.

YouTube removed the copyright claim within hours and within 72 hours the ads were removed from my book trailer video.

So in the end, it all worked out and although it was easy to fix, to get that juncture of knowing what to do, took time researching and reading the terms and license agreements, so that part was a time suck I could have done without.

So if you ever you Royalty Free Music in your videos, which you upload to YouTube, make sure you double check to make sure they don’t have ad banners in them.

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I’ve just approved it, so it should be available as a paperback on Amazon and Barnes and Noble in 3-5 days. The digital version ebook will continue to be available exclusively in Amazon’s Kindle Marketplace.

I recorded a short video of me anxiously tearing into the mailing package to check it out. I recorded this with my phone so it’s a bit jerky and my thumb makes a couple of appearances, but I wanted to share it with you. You watch it below.

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Unfortunately it’s not open to the public and most artifacts aren’t even shown to journalists, but a cool peek inside the CIA museum. Artifacts of the spy trade from the days of the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA during the WII) to today are in the museum.

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Pete Maddox and Sonia Collins are back, and this time, Maddox will use his skills to track down a young girl that has fallen prey to a vicious drug cartel’s human trafficking network. The story takes place in Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, and in the United States. I’ll have more details in a few days.

I really appreciate the emails and Facebook messages from readers of The Asset who have been waiting for She’s Gone. It means a lot to me that you enjoyed The Asset and that you’ve been looking forward to my second book!

From Manuscript to book

Here is a fun photo from manuscript to Kindle ebook and in a few weeks it will be available in paperback and Kindle ebook formats! I will be having a special sale that will only run for a few days and which will only be announced to folks who have subscribed to my newsletter or that follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook. If that’s you then you will be able to get She’s Gone for a very special price. Stay tuned for the details.

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The book I borrowed from the San Francisco Public Library, Flashfire by Richard Stark, was instantly downloaded to my Kindle:

Flashfire borrowed from the San Francisco Public Library

The process was very simple. I went to my public library’s website searched for the book I wanted to borrow, I noticed it was available as an “Ebook” so I clicked on that. I was given the option to download it as a Kindle ebook, so I selected that and I was then redirected to Amazon:

Borrowing a Kindle ebook from the San Francisco Public Library via Amazon.com

That was it. Once I clicked on the “Get library book” button on Amazon the ebook was downloaded to my Kindle. Once I was done reading (it was a fun read) I simply clicked on “return book” and that was it. I received an email confirmation:

Confirmation email sent regarding the return of ebook.

It’s an easy and great way to download some great books from the public library (which as tax payers we support). So just go to your public library’s website (google it if you don’t the website) and start searching for great Kindle ebooks to read. All you need is your library ID (which you can find on the barcode of your library card).

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She now has to wear a cone around her head for a few days to prevent pawing at it. Here she is recovering on my lap while I’m trying to write.

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