Category Archives: Writing

Zombies Ate My Mom

Get Zombies Ate My Mom For Free (This Week Only)

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Zombies Ate My Mom!Down along the right side, right below the “Recent Releases”, is a little widget that lets you sign up for my newsletter (there’s also one at the bottom of this post). If you sign up during the next seven days (March 16-March 22), the first newsletter to go out will contain a link to a free electronic copy of Zombies Ate My Mom, my new zombie novella. You will get this BEFORE it’s available anywhere else.

What else will be in the newsletter, you ask? The newsletter will keep you up to date on my latest releases and where they might be found. I expect I will release a short story a few times a year, and some of those will be free to subscribers.

You will get the newsletter only when something happens (a new release, a special deal, etc…). You won’t see the same piece of spam mail every week. You won’t see mail about my software (I know some of you might want that – but that’s why there’s a link in the apps to check for updates). You won’t see cat pictures (unless I get lots of feedback that you want pictures of my cats).

So, sign up for the newsletter in the next seven days, receive a free electronic copy of Zombies Ate My Mom, and get notified of cool stuff (and the occasional freebie)!

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The Sacrifice of Mendleson Mooney, Writing

New Release: The Sacrifice of Mendleson Moony

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The Sacrifice of Mendleson Moony CoverToday is Release Day for The Sacrifice of Mendleson Moony!

And this time, I’ve almost got it right, I think. If you click through to the Mendleson Moony page, there are links for each of the retailers that are currently available, including Amazon, DriveThruFiction.com, Barnes & Noble,  and Smashwords. Kobo and Sony should be along in the next few weeks. I wish I could speed those up, but there is little I can do about it. (Sony hasn’t even put up Questioner’s Shadow yet 🙁 ).

The paperback is also available from CreateSpace, and Amazon. In about six weeks, you should be able to order it from other outlets like Barnes & Noble.

I’m pretty excited about this book. Its roots are in the Marketing workshop I took from Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch last March. We had to write a proposal for a new novel each day, and this is based off of the third proposal I wrote.

I was laying in bed at the hotel, staring up at the starry sky (there are stars on the ceilings of the rooms at the hotel), knowing that I had to write a proposal that day before the session, and I had nothing. I must have lay there for an hour before I decided to forget worrying about a plot and started thinking about the characters, and right at that moment, Mendleson Moony’s name popped into my head. Following on that, I came up with the name of Henrietta Swooth, and about two minutes later, I had the title.

This is the book I tried to write in ten days. It took me quite a bit longer due in part to a wall I hit in the middle and some other life issues that caused a lot of stress, but I think it turned out well, if a bit different from my previous novels.

There’s a two chapter excerpt on the book page, too!

 

Short Fiction

Game Interrupted

Game Interrupted
What is a game designer supposed to do when his net-junkie girlfriend is jacked in at a lavish party thrown by his old partner and is singled out by a woman with red-colored eyes?

I’ve always been interested in the terminology that doesn’t change, even when the technology does. For instance, my girl, she’s over there, sitting on the couch, oblivious to the world around her because she’s jacked in.
‘Jacked in’ used to be the term people used when they plugged their cranial implants into the network. People had jacks in the side of their head and just plugged in. The plug-in would charge the battery at the same time as giving them access.
For the most part, you’d look like a junky when you were jacked in. Your eyes would roll back into your head, and for those that were prone to additional loss of body control, they might drool down their chin, or worse.
That lasted a decade or more until the computer manufacturers figured out two things. The first involved shrinking the computer so that it could run off the electrical energy of your body while still providing the functionality people had come to expect. The second was the invention of a shield that was small enough to put in your head, but was still capable of keeping the radio antennae from frying your brain.
Even after these upgrades to the basic personal computer, people still called connecting to the net ‘being jacked in.’

For the next week, you can read the whole story here for free.

The Sacrifice of Mendleson Mooney, Writing

Mendleson Moony Cover

The Sacrifice of Mendleson Moony CoverHere’s the cover for Mendleson Moony. I’m currently working on reading the proof and the final edits. It should be available sometime in mid to late March in most formats from the major stores. Sometimes Sony takes a while (Questioner’s Shadow is STILL not available there for some reason).

And here’s the back cover copy, in case you’re interested.

Fisherman Mendleson Moony lost his family in a fire. Four years later, he still mourns and has given up the sea to farm his land.

Henrietta Swooth, the Seer that has lived across the road from him for the last three years, has a secret. She knows the time and place of her death, and she must soon leave to meet it.

A vision sends her to the summer festival where she and Mendleson talk for the first time. When he touches her hand, everything changes, and not for the better.

Mendleson comes away with a desire to save her. She comes away knowing his attempts to save her will see him dead at her side.

Can Mendleson overcome his loss to find love again? Is it already too late?

Writing

My Thoughts On KDP Select

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By now, you might have heard of Amazon’s new program for Indie authors called KDP Select. It’s a program that allows authors to get their eBooks into the Kindle Lending Library, and also gives them 5 days out of every 90 in which they can give away the book for free.

There’s a catch, though. In order to participate, the author must remove the participating book from every other store that they are selling it in. This means they can’t sell it for the Nook, or for Kobo’s reader, or in Apple’s iBookStore. They can’t even sell it from their own site. Even crazier, they’re not allowed to have excerpts from the book anywhere.

This has led to thousands upon thousands of books being removed from eStores not named Amazon, and to a deluge of free titles on Amazon.

There is no doubt that Amazon is the #1 eBook store. Most indies make far more from Amazon than from other retailers, though for many, this number isn’t really that high. There are lots of stories of people giving away thousands of copies of their book during their free period, and then making significant money once it’s out of the free period because of its new visibility in various lists.

In the short term, this is good for the participating authors. I think that over the long term, it will prove self-defeating.

When you pull your book from every other store except Amazon, and you get more exposure on Amazon, this exposure won’t translate to other platforms. And, when Amazon stumbles, or when they change their algorithms, and your books all of a sudden nose dive in sales on Amazon no matter what you do, you won’t have any other stores in the world where people know your name. You will be screwed and you will cry “woe is me!”

One last thought, Indie Author. In the past, if you were published by a publisher and people couldn’t get your books, you could blame it on the publisher. When YOU are at the helm, you will only be able to tell them that YOU decided their platform of choice wasn’t worth selling on, and by extension, they weren’t worth selling to.

I don’t want to have to write that email, so I won’t be participating in KDP Select.

Fragments, The Sacrifice of Mendleson Mooney, Writing

Moony Is Written

I finished the draft of Mendleson Moony today, which makes me very excited. It’s a bit of a departure from the other books, which makes me very unsure if I hit the target I was aiming for, but all in all, I’m pleased.

What’s next?

For Moony, it goes to a few early readers for about a month. I’m hoping they can get back to me early because I’m really anxious to hear what they have to say. After that, it will take some time for me to fix any issues and prep it for publishing. Well, really, it will only take a month if I’m still writing Fragments. However, if Fragments goes well, I’ll do the work on Moony in between the time I finish Fragments and the start of work on the next book.

What’s the next book? I’m not exactly sure. I have an idea, but it will depend on what else is going on and how long it takes me to finish Fragments. More than likely, it’ll be another standalone novel like Mendleson Moony (though not LIKE MM).

Whatever the case, Fragments is next up, and I can’t wait to get started on it, though I have to wait a week or so. I have to reread Shattered, and then I have to do a quicky outline for fragments (I never bother to do extensive outlines because I end up changing them, anyway).

With any luck, there’s only a few months wait until you get to find out what happens next to Robert and Angela.