You Can Now Search My Books By Genres!

"Do you have anything about (insert topic)?"

I often have people comment on the fact that, because I have so many books, it's hard for them to tell at a glance which ones are in a particular genre, or have a specific trope that they favor.

When I'm at a book-signing, it's easy to steer them to the types of books they're looking for. But I understand why there's some confusion, even though my book titles are listed as either fantasy, paranormal, or sci-fi.

"Do you have any dragon shifters?"
"I like to read romantic suspense."
"What do you have with zombies in them?"

In the middle of the night, I woke up with an idea. (As most writers can attest, that's when most of the good ones pop up. Then, or when you're in the shower.) Why not make a spreadsheet of all my books under all my pseudonyms, so that each book's contents are easy to understand?

So - voila! - I did!

It's listed as GENRE BREAKDOWN. When you go to my Linda Mooney webpage, and click on My Books, you'll find yourself on the Choose Your Destination page, where all my pseudonyms are located. There, on the right, you'll see Genre Breakdown. Click it, and you'll see the spreadsheet where all my books are listed, their genres, tropes, and other kinds of information that will help you discover books you probably never realized had just the thing you were looking for!

Psst! If you don't see something, want to add something, or to correct something, don't hesitate to comment below to let me know! Thanks!
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SLASH
Paranormal Romance
by Linda Mooney
Word Count: 38.2K
$2.99
#K9cops

Officer Sonia Sparrow is an introvert of sorts, spending her workdays on the force, and her off days alone. But lately it seems she’s acquired a new partner. A dog, that she’s dubbed Slash, keeps showing up at the nick of time to save the day.

Michael Masson, a former Marine, is looking for a quiet life, but he can’t help the desire he still has to serve his country. Having been burned in love once before, he’s vowed to never show his other side to anyone else. Instead. he chooses to spend his life roaming the country and not getting close to anyone. But when he spies the female police officer in trouble, he can’t just sit back and let it happen.

Sonia has been burned in relationships in the past as well, and if she can’t find a trustworthy man, she’s decided a dog would be the perfect companion to keep her loneliness at bay. What she didn’t bargain for was getting both.

The truth is almost too farfetched, but Michael is determined to make her believe. He hopes this new partnership will not only heal old wounds, but evolve into a deep and loving relationship for the both of them.

Warning! Contains beef jerky, once for yes, a coffee break, the constant fear of discovery, an unexpected ally, a trial run, and two broken hearts finding comfort and love within a common goal.

Excerpt and Buy Links

How do you organize your books?

I have a history of posting about tech around here! Today, though, I wanted to talk less about tech per se and more about a topic I'm willing to bet is near and dear to the hearts of folks likely to read this blog. Namely, how we all organize our books. Since I read both print and digital, I can talk about both!

Print-wise, my main shelves are easy. I've got the things I've read organized alphabetically on most of the two shelves, with about four shelves' worth of things that I haven't read yet. In theory, the "Not Read Yet" section is also alphabetical. But in actual practice, the bottom couple of shelves can get kind of random, as I have a bunch of books there that are too tall to fit the shelves, so I have to slant them in sideways.

Likewise for several supplementary shelves that hold books too tall to fit the main ones. In general I try to organize those by "Read" or "Not Read" first, and then alphabetically second.

For my ebooks, the question gets trickier. My primary reading device these days is a Kindle Oasis, and I have acres of space on it, enough to contain my entire digital library. Therein lies the problem. I've got a lot of ebooks, and as anybody who has an e-ink device knows, it can get tedious to page through dozens of pages to try to find the book you want to read right now.

So I've been experimenting with the Kindle's Collections feature, trying to figure out the best way to organize my library. Here are some criteria by which I've created Collections!

Digital Magazines: I've got several Collections that contain issues of different digital magazines.

Favorite Authors: Certain favorite authors, specifically ones for whom I have a whole lot of titles, get their own Collections.

Series: Books that all belong to the same long-running series get a Collection, such as "Dresden Files", "Harry Potter", and "In Death".

Same Publisher: Certain publishers will get their own Collections too. I have a "Carina" one, as well as a "Drollerie" one (which has a bunch of titles released by my first publisher, Drollerie Press). In this category, I've also got a "Gutenberg" Collection for titles I've pulled down from Project Gutenberg.

Same General Category: Certain general categories get a collection, like "Classics", "Star Trek", "Star Wars", and "Doctor Who". In this category, I can also add "French" for titles I've got that were either originally published in French, or are translations of things I wanted to read in French as well as in English.

(Important side note re: French, though: I have French and German translations of certain things that also fall into other Collections. I've got French and German translations of Harry Potter titles, for example. Those go into the Harry Potter Collection!)

Read: Self-explanatory. This is the Collection where I stick things I've already read, just to get them out of the general list.

Anna's Current Reads: Also self-explanatory! These are the things I'm working on reading right now, because otherwise I have a hard time finding them. And it's tedious to have to search for a thing that fell off the catousel on the device's homepage.

This has whittled down the length of my book list pretty well. But it's still quite long, so I'm thinking about what refinements I may want to do to this system!

So let me turn it over to you all. How do you organize your books? If you're a Kindle reader in particular, how have you set up your Collections? If you're a Nook or Kobo reader, do you use equivalent features? Tell me about them in the comments!

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Angela writes the Free Court of Seattle urban fantasy series as Angela Korra'ti, and the Rebels of Adalonia high fantasy series as Angela Highland! Also, she has a staggeringly ridiculously large library, and is exactly the kind of person for whom the Japanese word tsundoku was coined. Come tell her about the size of your To Read List on Facebook or Twitter or angelahighland.com!