Jarrett Writes

Some thoughts on Alcatraz

2012-01-25T14:20:00.001-06:00

We are three hours into the new Fox TV series Alcatraz. So far, I'm a fan. I like the show. I'm enjoying the action. The acting's not bad. I actually like Jorge Garcia as Dr. Diego Soto, and I was concerned about seeing him as anyone other than Hurley.

The third hour devoted to inmate Kit Carson had a pretty creepy moment in a prison exchange between Carson and the warden.

This is a good show. Worth the time investment. But I do have concerns. Two, actually.

The premise of the show has all of the inmates held at Alcatraz disappearing in 1963. Now they are coming back to present day the same age they were when they disappeared. And this is where my first concern comes in. I posted it on Twitter the other night. None of these guys are freaked out or baffled by the new technology they're seeing. No one is baffled by the way things look. Not the fashion. Not the cars. Not the TVs. Not people around them looking at their cell phones.

My cousin says he noticed the same thing, but he feels confident that there is a logical explanation for it, and that it will be explained in the end. I'm not so sure.

And that brings me to the second concern. I want to say again that I like the show. I'm a fan. But I'm afraid that with the pedigree this show has we won't get the explanation. Or at least one that's satisfactory. This is a JJ Abrams show. He's not a creator, but he is a producer. I've liked other Abrams shows. I really liked Alias. I was a fan of Lost. But there was a problem with each of the shows. The big mystery overtook the story. I'm afraid that's what could happen here.

It's natural. It's understandable. It's the way of TV. You have these stories planned. You can have explanations. You can have endings. But if your show is a success then all of that likely goes out the window. You have to stretch the story out longer than you planned. On the creative end things get forgotten. Not everything gets explained. And that's my worry. Too much here will go unexplained if the show runs for a few years.

An even swap

2012-01-21T22:15:00.003-06:00

Chasing Filthy Lucre is stuck. It's been out for almost a year now and the reviews it's received have been good. Really good, actually. But I could use more. When you are doing the publishing yourself you could always use more reviews. Can never have enough.

Back to being stuck. Over at Amazon.com, Chasing Filthy Lucre has had nine reviews for a few months now. They are all 4 and 5 stars. But it's killing me to see it stuck at nine. I want that tenth review. Heck, I want 20 reviews. I want 30.

Same goes for my newest story, Reunion. That story needs more than the one review it has right now.

I don't know how to get more reviews other than offering a free book to anyone who agrees to read either book and then provide an honest review at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble.

Interested? Email me at jarrettrush@yahoo.com and I'll send you a copy of either book in whatever format you need.

Or leave a comment here with a way to get in touch with you and which format you need.

Thanks in advance.

Prioritizing priorities

2012-01-19T16:57:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I posted this on Twitter. (What? You didn't know I was on Twitter? I am. I'm here: http://www.twitter.com/JarrettRush. You should follow me. I'm much more active there than I am here, even though that's not something I'm proud of. Just what it is.)

Just got an idea for a novel. Bigger and more complex than anything I've ever tried before, but it could be AWWWE-SUUUM.

You were supposed to read that last part in a sing-song voice. No matter how you read it, though, the idea is awesome. I know that I probably shouldn't call my own ideas awesome. I should call it an idea with potential. I should call it something I'm excited about pursuing. But I'm not calling it any of those things. I'm calling it an awesome idea, because it is.

Now, making sure the awesome idea becomes and awesome story is completely up to me. Like I said on Twitter, it'll be a bigger, more complex book than anything I've ever attempted. It'll have more settings, more characters, more action, but I think I can pull it off.

This all got me thinking, though, about priorities and where to stack projects. I have the follow-up to Chasing Filthy Lucre that I've been working on and really need to finish. I have the rest of the Jackson Cane stories to write. I have another story that I've started and want to finish. And it could become another Jackson Cane-type series of shorts. I have a short story that I need to write to submit to an anthology. It's due in April.

So where do I work in this new story? Do I move it to the top of my list? Do I just jot down the idea with enough detail that when I can get to it I won't forget it?

I know that the professional thing to do is just stick the awesome idea at the end of the list. Finish everything as it comes up next and get to the new story when it's its turn. I don't know that I have a point to this post. I guess I'm just venting here.

I know that it's a horrible problem to have. Too many good ideas. Oh, poor Jarrett. His wallet's so full of hundreds that it makes him sit lopsided. Who knows? Maybe these aren't good ideas. I like them, though. They have potential. They're fun. But which do I tackle first?

The second Jackson Cane story is coming soon

2012-01-18T09:00:00.000-06:00

Last week I put the finishing touches on the second Jackson Cane story. It's been sent off to my writers group for them to look at it. I've got a copy I'm hacking up right now. Then Gina gets her turn with it. Hopefully, though, I can get the editing done on this one pretty quick and make it available.

It came in at 13,000 words, or pretty close to it. So it's 5,000 words longer than the original. At least for now it's longer. Who knows what it will be after editing. Longer for sure, but maybe not 5,000 words longer. And I know longer doesn't mean better, but it does mean more involved in this case.

If you think of the Jackson cane series like a TV series, and I am, then this is Episode 2. It's the episode that follows the pilot and the one that gets the story going. In the first episode you establish characters and relationships. In episode 2 is where you start telling your story. That's what happens here. I'm happy with Reunion, the first episode in Jackson Cane's story, but this is where the story that will carry us through the whole first season of the Jackson Cane saga gets started. Right now there are four more stories planned in this first series of tales. At the end of it things will look much different than they did at the beginning. It'll be a bigger world that we are dealing with, and some of the restrictions established early on should be gone. Should open up the stories creatively, which will be good for me and for the reader.

The story is called Scouts. Here's the cover. Look for it soon.

Go get a kick in the butt from Wendig

2012-01-12T16:26:00.004-06:00

"Let’s just say it now and say it proud, trumpeting it so loudly that You All The Way In The Back can hear: this should be the year that self-publishers take responsibility. For themselves and their work as well as the larger body of DIY work existing out there in the world. Let this be the year that indie writers step into Thunderdome armed to the teeth with all the best weapons and armor. (Instead of, say, a mop handle “sword” and a flak jacket made from Schlitz cans.) Let this be the year that you do the work and take the time to get your books up to speed so that self-published books become indistinguishable from any other book on the shelf. Because, let’s be honest: 8 times out of 10 you can spot a self-published book a mile away.
Let this be the year that self-publishing serves readers as much as it serves writers."

Chuck Wendig spends some words kicking the butts of us self publishers. He wants 2012 to be the year we start thinking about the readers. He makes lots of great points. There were several quotes I wanted to pull. There's a bit about self publishing being an insular world that I couldn't have agreed with more.

I left the post excited and inspired. There's so much that self-publishers can do, but it's going to take us thinking differently. Thinking about innovating. Thinking about the responsibility we have. We can't just pat ourselves on our backs for going the "indie" route.

What I copied above is just the nut graph. Go read the rest for yourself. Be warned, though. Chuck writes this in the way that only he can so watch out for the dirty, dirty words.

Fingers Murphy for free

2012-01-06T19:15:00.001-06:00

I mentioned at Christmas that you all needed to get Fingers Murphy's Follow the Money for your new e-reader. I meant it. You need to get it. Trust me. But if you don't, you do need to get his novella Everything I Tell You Is A Lie. Why do you need to get it? Because he's a great writer. And because it's free for the next couple of days. You get a chance to try him out. I have no doubt you'll like him. Go here and download it to your Kindle. And sorry Nook users, looks like this one is only for the Kindle.

A look ahead to 2012

2012-01-02T10:54:00.003-06:00

I know I was supposed to write this post some time last week and post it yesterday. But I've been enjoying spending time with Gina while she's been on Christmas break from school. Besides, it doesn't seem like a new year until Monday when everyone goes back to work.

I haven't had a lot of motivation to write much here, especially nothing that looked back at 2011. It was a weird year for me. There were a lot of downs. I lost my aunt in January and my grandmother in October. I lost my job in September. But there was one really huge up in 2011. In October, Gina found out she was pregnant. That sort of helped gloss over all of the bad stuff. It sets up 2012 to be my best year so far.

On the writing side of things, 2011 wasn't too bad. I published two stories, and hit almost 200 sales. I started to build a readership. I've got a few plans for 2012. I'm not calling them resolutions. The only resolutions I've made are with Gina and probably of little interest to those of you who are here.. The plans I've made are goals.

1. Publish the second book in the New Eden series.
2. Write and publish the rest of the Jackson Cane series. It's five stories right now, and I've got the second almost finished. The remaining three are loosely plotted. They should be easy to write.
3. To keep building my readership. Or following. Or presence. Or platform. Or whatever they call it. That's going to include blogging more regularly. Tweeting more and with the right people. When I started using Twitter I was getting so much more out of it. I'm not getting that now and I really think it's because I'm not using it like I should. I'm planning on making some changes there, but that's another blog post for another time.

Pretty simple goals, honestly. And all stuff I can control. Notice, there are no sales goals on there. That's because I can't control those. I can make sure people know about my books, and I try to do that, but I can't make them buy. But, hopefully, if I can be successful at goal No. 3 then sales will follow.

So, auf wiedersehen to 2011 and guten tag to 2012. It's going to be a good year. I'm going to be a dad.

Something for your Kindle or Nook

2011-12-26T13:22:00.000-06:00

It's the day after Christmas. Congratulations on getting your new Kindle or Nook. Your reading wold is about to change. Not only can you put thousands of best-sellers on your new device, there is a whole world of authors who are principally available in ebook format. They may be published by a small press. They may be going out on their own and self-publishing their books. Either way, you probably won't find them being promoted in an email from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. But they are talented authors writing great books. Since you and your new device need some content, I'm going to let you in on three books I read this year that I really enjoyed. I think you will too. They are three different genres, so there should be something here for everyone.

Gabriel's Redemption
by Steve Umstead

Steve's a guy I met through Twitter. He was actually my first interview here a few months ago. He's a great guys and written a great book. This is the first book of the Evan Gabriel trilogy, and it had me from the first page. The future Umstead has created is believable, the characters are worth pulling for, and the technology he describes is easy to understand. He tells the story of a disgraced military man given a chance at redemption. There's plenty of actions and plenty of politics. And, while this story comes to a satisfying conclusion, there's plenty here to set up the rest of the trilogy. All three parts are available now, but you can get the first book at Amazon and Barnes and Noble by following the links below.

Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Follow the Money
by Fingers Murphy

Fingers isn't his real name. I've interviewed him, too. He explains the name there. This is also his first book, even though he's released two others and a novella this year. I loved this book. I loved the characters. And I loved the setting. The story takes place in L.A. and Murphy does such a good job of painting the scenes that I found myself wanting to go see these places for myself. I identified with the main character, Ollie. He's a kid from modest means that finds himself in the world of the upper crust. A law student, Ollie lands an internship at a prestigious law firm. He's assigned to a case and quickly finds himself over his head. Ollie returns in The Flaming Motel, also a good book. Get a copy of Follow the Money at the links below.

Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Burden, Kansas
by Alan Ryker

I'm not a horror fan. I've read a few Steven King books, but that's it. I picked this book up because of the setting. I'm from Kansas City, and every year when I was a kid we would drive form Texas to Missouri to see family. Our route took us straight through the part of Kansas where this book is set.
I didn't know what to expect from this vampire story, but I was pleasantly surprised. These vampires are scary, more animal than human. I liked that. I'm not a fan of the pretty boy vampires, and there was nothing pretty about these guys. I also liked that this was a personal story about revenge and redemption. The fighting here is personal. It's not just between a farmer and an invading band of vampires. It's between people with a history. That was a great unexpected twist. Like the two other selections, if you like this book Alan Ryker has other books available. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this one is available for Nook users so the Barnes and Noble link below will take you to the paperback version.

Amazon
Barnes and Noble

So, there it is. Go get some content for your new e-reader. You'll like all these books. And while you're at it, grab mine also. You'll like those too. Each is the first in a series, and the second book in each series is getting close to being finished.

CHASING FILTHY LUCRE
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

REUNION
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

The Greatest Story Ever Told, Chapter One

2011-12-25T05:00:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I haven't been around here much, and that's a bad thing. It goes against about every list of tips I've seen on how to build an audience and a readership. The job search has kept me busy. And Gina says I haven't been in the best of moods the last few months. I haven't noticed it, but I wouldn't really. She's the one who has to live with me every day. I felt like I've dealt with this whole situation well. And, really, she's not saying I've been insufferable, just down. I get that, and, if she says it, it's probably true.

But today is Christmas. A day for family. A day for fun. A day for good times. It's a different Christmas for us. We don't have the usual budget for gifts, so we've spent not as much time thinking about the material aspect of the holiday and focusing more on the real reason that we celebrate. The reason for the season as the fans of rhyming like to say. Gina and I have volunteered at church during the Christmas services. We bought a few gifts for the giveaway that the church is doing for some underprivileged kids that live close by. And as tough as we feel we have it sometimes with my job situation, there are plenty of people far worse off than us.

So in the spirit of a more focused Christmas, I wanted to include here the classic Christmas story from Luke. Just a reminder that there's a reason for the season. And talk about flash fiction. Luke told the story of the birth of our savior in just over 400 words.

Luke 2 (New International Version)

The Birth of Jesus

¹ In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. ² (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) ³ And everyone went to their own town to register. ⁴ So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. ⁵ He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. ⁶ While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, ⁷ and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
⁸ And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹ An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
¹³ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
¹⁵ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
¹⁶ So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

I like reading that story, but I like hearing it better. And this is the best version anywhere.
Preach it, Linus.

Once again, Merry Christmas, everyone.

A December goals update

2011-12-19T16:01:00.001-06:00

I promised to keep you posted on my ambitious December goals. I needed to sell roughly 60 books in the month to hit the 200 mark for total sold. It was ambitious, but I was hopeful that I could do it. What good are goals if they are easily accomplished?

The month started out well. At the end of the first week I'd sold five books. That's a number some would sneeze at, but for me in a week that's great. However, it wasn't going to be good enough to make my goal. Sales needed to pick up the pace. They didn't. At the end of week one I was at five sales for the month. That's where I was at the end of week two. And that's where I am today. Five.

Unless things pick up considerably that last week of the month after everyone has opened their new Kindles, Nooks, and other e-readers, I'm going to miss the goal by a country mile.

I know there's very little I can do to actually influence sales in a significant way. A lot of the advice from people I trust is to not think too long about sales. Instead, focus on writing the next book. One book sells the other, and until you have a good-sized back list then sales are more likely going to be slower. But I promised some updates so consider yourself updated.

Do you have marketing tips?

2011-12-02T09:28:00.001-06:00

A woman I know from my newspaper days has asked me to come speak to her creative writing class. I think it's going to just be a general info session, but I think she'd like me to focus a bit on marketing. I can tell them my experience, but I'd like to share what others have tried. Stuff that's worked and stuff that hasn't. If you have any tips or advice that students could use, would you leave me a comment?

Laying out my ambitious December goals

2011-12-01T08:26:00.001-06:00

I've got a few ideas for more posts and I'll write those soon when I have a chance. But let's stick with the begging theme for now. Well, not so much begging as informing. I've got a couple sales goals for December. Thought that since I shared total sales last post I'd share sales goals this time.

Adding all my sales since March, I'm at 144 books overall. Not bad, but I like round numbers. I'd really like for this year to end with 200 books sold. That means I'd need to have, for me, a record month. I'd need to sell 56 books in December. Is it ambitious? Absolutely. But what else do I have to do? I still don't have a day job. Might as well pour some of the time I'm not using to look for a job into trying to sell books, right?

So you may see me pushing my books hard. Lots more tweets. Hopefully more interviews and guest posts that I'll be pushing you toward. It'll be whatever I can think of that might move some books.

And if you wanted to help me push the books, please do. Retweet my tweets if you follow me on Twitter. Leave a review at Amazon and Barnes and Nobleif you've read and liked either or both of my books. Host me if you have a blog. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm up to writing a few guest posts or doing interviews.

I'll try to keep you updated on how sales are going throughout the month,.

The post where I grovel

2011-11-29T17:43:00.001-06:00

UPDATE: Sold two copies last night. Only six more needed to make the monthly goal.

It's time for the end of the month begging post.

In the past I was shy about sharing numbers. Part of me was embarrassed. The other part was proud. My sales numbers have never been great. I'm OK with that now. They are what they are. I'm a virtually unknown writer. I didn't have an online following because of short stories. I didn't have a previous three-book deal with a publisher. I'm just a guy trying to make a go of the writing thing in a changing writing world. It was foolish to think they'd be anything other than what they are.

I added all my sales up earlier this month before I released REUNION. It's been nine months since I released CHASING FILTHY LUCRE, and it has sold 130 copies. Those aren't stellar numbers. I was hoping for more. I was hoping that it would take off. Go great guns. Out of control. But it didn't. Still, it's averaging more than 10 copies a month and that's not bad. I know there are authors out there who'd love to be able to say that. And I've met some great people and gathered some great reviews. Nothing less than four stars. That makes me happy. There are people who truly enjoyed the book. That feels good. Perspective. Perspective. I'm not doing that bad.

All that said, I did call this the begging post. So far this month we've sold 12 books total between REUNION and CHASING FILTHY LUCRE. I'd love to sell eight more before the end of the month. That would bring us up to 20 for November. For anyone who also earned a liberal arts degree, that means, basically, selling eight books on November 30. Is it possible? Absolutely. Eight isn't a big number. It's more than I've ever sold in a day, but not impossible.

If you are among those who haven't read either of my books, then help me out and buy one. If you've already read one, then buy the other. They are definitely different books, but I guarantee that if you liked one you'll like the other.

I've got all of your e-reader needs covered. You can find both books at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and at Smashwords. And there's even a print copy of CHASING FILTHY LUCRE at Amazon if that's more your speed.

My own Black Friday deal -- updated

2011-11-25T07:49:00.001-06:00

UPDATE: The sale I mention at the bottom of this post has been extended until 10 p.m. Sunday night. That's a full weekend to jump on this buy-one-get-one deal. Don't pass it up. Buy CHASING FILTHY LUCRE and get my new short story, REUNION, free.

It's the day after Thanksgiving here in the U.S. We call it Black Friday. All the stores have crazy deals that only last a few hours, and people rush out in the early morning to scratch and claw through the crowd to make sure they get whatever it is they came out for.

Gina and I have done the early-morning-get-there-before-they-open thing once. Office Max was selling a digital camera for a really cheap price and there was one around the corner from where she lived. This was before we were married so I got to her place extra early, and we waited in line for half an hour for the doors to open. We were in and out of the store in less than five minutes.

These days we don't bother with the early Friday deals unless there is something we think is too good to pass up. There wasn't anything this year, especially since I don't have a day job still. We'll go out later in the day. We've actually found this a a good day to go shopping if you wait until about noon to go out. All of the serious shoppers have already come and gone, and the stores are mostly bare. You may not get any of the early-morning big deals that were advertised, but there are usually other deals that are going on all day.

Here's the real reason for this post, though. This is the first time I've had something to sell on a Black Friday and I want to get in on the fun. Here's what I'm going to do. A free story. If you buy a copy of CHASING FILTHY LUCRE any time between now and 10 p.m. tomorrow night, I'll send you a coupon code for a free copy of REUNION from Smashwords. How does that sound? Think of it as a buy-one-get-one sale. Or 33% off the complete Jarrett Rush collection.

If you want to take advantage of this deal, after you buy your copy of CHASING FILTHY LUCRE send an email to jarrettrush@yahoo.com or leave a comment on this post. Let me know where you bought it and leave an email address so I can send you the coupon code for the free copy of REUNION.

The only thing I'd ask is that after you read each of the stories that you'd leave a review to let others know what you thought. Reviews are key for those of us just getting our feet wet in this writing game.

To help you out, You can get CHASING FILTHY LUCRE here:
Amazon: http://bit.ly/fdPGAo
Barnes and Noble: http://bit.ly/gfFg44
Smashwords: http://bit.ly/fa4Rbl
Print copy: http://bit.ly/nKdIag

Go get my newest, Reunion

2011-11-22T08:50:00.001-06:00

I teased everyone with a new cover a few weeks ago. It was for my short story Reunion. It's the first in a series of stories featuring Jackson Cane. I've struggled with a way to describe what it is he does and finally settled on using the term I've been using informally since I've had him in my head. Cane's a member of the Freak Police. And to find out what that means you're just going to have to buy a copy of the story. It's available now at Smashwords and Amazon. It should be showing up on Barnes and Noble soon, so if you're a Nook user then check there later today or tomorrow.

And please let me know what you think. This is a bit of a departure for me, but a total blast to write. I'm already halfway through story two and am hoping to have it available very soon.

Sample Sunday: Chasing Filthy Lucre

2011-11-13T17:49:00.001-06:00

I haven't participated in a Sample Sunday in a long time. Here's a little something from Chasing Filthy Lucre. Hope you like it. If you do, leave a comment. If you really like it then buy a copy. It's in all the usual spots. For direct links click the "Where to read me" tab at the top of the page.

There was an older gentleman who spent his nights sitting in the lobby watching the people pass on the street and reading a book. He couldn't sleep and he'd rather be downstairs than up in his apartment. At least he told me that’s why I always saw him when I came in at night. A nice guy. Never said more than a few words to me.

“Good evening, Mr. Rexall,” he said when I’d come in late.

“Please,” I’d say, “call me Weber.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Rexall.”

That was it, our entire exchange. It always made me smile. He was there when I got home that night carrying my haul from Raul’s.

I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I sat the bags down in front of my door and fished in my pocket for my keys. Inside, I sat the bag from Raul's on the kitchen counter. If this were a few years earlier, I would have plugged in as soon as I was inside my apartment. The port in my arm would have itched, would have begged me to put it to use.

There was a wire straight from the wall, added as a convenience years before I moved in. Easy data access for anyone with a terminal. I’d had it converted to my own personal hot jack. Plug in. Heat up. Pass out.

Plugged into the feed, I could forget about life for a few minutes. The experience started as a tingle near the port where the wire connected to my arm. It started like something crawling under your skin but quickly turned to a burn that rushed across the entire body. For a few minutes it was uncomfortable. You wanted to pull off your skin. But, if you could wait -- if you could push through the hurt -- your body would settle into the rush of data that was assaulting every last nerve. You would calm. You couldn’t hear anything. You couldn’t think anything. You just were. For your time on the wire you didn’t have to deal with life in the present or remember life in the past. All of those things you’d seen or done were gone. They weren’t affecting you anymore. That was the appeal. That’s why so many soldiers were the first to abuse the technology.

When someone said they were "on the wire," the wire referred to was the one that ran from your port to your brain, not the one from the source to your port, although that’s what most people thought. It was an understandable confusion.

It was a technology developed by a team of Dutch doctors and scientists. Exactly how it worked I couldn’t tell you, but it’s made up of three parts.

There’s the port. It’s typically inserted into the arm, but really it could go anywhere. The older a person was the more discrete the location of their port. The younger, the more visible. Many kids were opting for a port in the neck. The thinking was that the shorter the distance from the port to the brain, the more intense the sensation. How much more intense the experience needed to be, I wasn’t sure.

The second element was the wire itself. It’s a fine piece of microfilament that ran from the port to the brain and the third element, the net.

A net, also made of microfilament, was woven into the different parts of the brain. The digital came into the port, ran along the wire, and then spread across the net and into the user's head.

The original applications were military. Soldiers were given their mission details with the port. They’d plug in at night and wake the next morning with their orders and all pertinent background information.

The original ports came with a governor that controlled the flow of data to the brain. Hackers cracked those soon after ports were approved for commercial use.

Mine was a military unit, first generation. I had it cracked in a small computer shop two blocks from base as soon as I was discharged. Done by a hack in a back room. Me laying on a table and him plugging a beaten up laptop into my port.

He punched some keys and I laid there and felt the flush of digital for the first time. It started with a tingle that ran up my arm and into my shoulder. It crossed over to my neck and then into my head. It became an intense heat that left me dizzy and light headed.

From my head, it ran down my chest, past my waist, and into my toes. For the first time I felt my head tip back and my mouth drop open. I could no longer think. Nothing was in my head. All the things I’d seen and done had been replaced by the heat of the data.

After thirty minutes and twenty bucks I was on the wire.

Autographed print copies available

2011-11-10T17:08:00.001-06:00

I finally set up everything needed to sell autographed print copies of Chasing Filthy Lucre. It's the box over there at the top of the right column. So if you were waiting with bated breath, wait no more. Click on the "Buy Now" button. I'll send one your way.

Coming soon

2011-11-06T00:01:00.002-05:00

A little sneak preview of something I've got planned for release soon. Hopefully before Thanksgiving. Should be 99 cents. It's a little different for me. No sci fi in this one but there is a bit of paranormal.This is the cover. Let me know what you think.

A modest request

2011-10-30T10:39:00.002-05:00

I need your help. I'm very close to a sales goal for this month. It's not a big goal, but one that I'd love to meet. To do it I need to sell four more copies of Chasing Filthy Lucre by the end of the day tomorrow. It doesn't matter what kind of copy it is. Could be an e-book. Could be a print copy. Just as long as I sell four I'll make my goal.

I debated on whether or not I should share the number that I'm shooting for. The private side of me says no. It's a personal thing and in the end doesn't really matter. The prideful side of me also says no. It's a pretty small number. Almost embarrassingly small. So I've debated and my private side and prideful side have lost out. I'm going to do it. I'm going to share the number. It's 20. If I sell four more copies this month I'll hit 20 sales. And this will be the best month I've had since the spring. Even though it pales in comparison to many other authors, I'm excited.

So can you help? Can you buy a copy? Already have your copy? Then tell someone else about it. Help me make my modest goal. Needed links are below.

For a print copy click here: LINK
For a Kindle copy click here: LINK
For a Nook copy click here: LINK
For every other e-reader version, or a PDF, or a Word file click here: LINK

UPDATE: Two sales yesterday. Just need two more by the end of the night tonight, to make the goal.

UPDATE UPDATE: One more sale needed to hit the goal. Help me out, folks.

So, where have I been?

2011-10-28T14:09:00.000-05:00

Please don't look at the dates on the top of these posts. If you do you'll see that I haven't been posting often. Once a week, actually, and it's been interviews. Good interviews, I think. But I haven't been posting otherwise. I'd planned on it. I've meant to, I just haven't done it. This looking for a job has been eating up all of my time. And the time that hasn't gone to that has been eaten up by the baseball playoffs. If you haven't noticed, the Texas Rangers are back in the World Series. I'm a fan. A big one, and I've been sucked into the playoff experience again.

Just because I haven't been here, though, doesn't mean I haven't been writing. I have been and I've made some good progress on the second book in the New Eden series. I've also started and made some progress on another story that could easily develop into an ongoing serial. I'm thinking it could be something in the tradition of the old pulp-style stories.

I've also got a few ideas that are still in the "thinking" stages. These aren't necessarily stories but something bigger. Depending on where these ideas go I'll let you know more about them soon.

Anyway, sorry about the lack of posts here. Hopefully you are liking the interviews, even though there isn't one for this week. I'm enjoying doing them.

Get to know Court Merrigan UPDATED

2011-10-21T11:43:00.000-05:00

I'm just now getting to know Court Merrigan. He joined a writers' critique group that I'm part of so I've read some of his fiction. But I didn't know anything about the man other than he's a fantastic writer. Read some of his stuff here. Then, when you're done reading his fiction come back and read the answers to the questions I've sent him. We talk short fiction. It's good stuff. And after reading this you're going to follow him on Twitter. Click here to do that.

First,tell us a little about you in under 200 words. How'd you get started writing?

There'sa picture of me, 5 years old, writing my first little story. My mom usedto put together little books with cardboard covers and yellow-paper pages, sewntogether and everything. I remember from the very first stories I wasable to read, wanting to write my own.

Iwrote off and on for a long time, through high school, college, wanderingaround Asia; but I didn't get really serious about it until about 2004. And I didn't start getting really serious - e.g., getting up at 4 o'clockto write - until 2005-ish.

Irecently read about some 16-year old girl who has a chapbook or somethingcoming out and has already started college and wants to be in an MFA programbefore she can legally drink. God, I would have broken my hands punchingwalls if I had tried to chain (as is necessary) myself to a desk any timebefore age 26.

You said 'wandering around Asia.' What took you there? What kept you there? And what brought you back?

What took me to Asia was 22 years in Nebraska. I was done with college and I just wanted out into the world. Got a job teaching English in Japan and went about as far away from my homeland as I could go without starting to come back again.

What brought me back was my daughter. We were living in a village in Thailand and I knew I couldn't send her to school in the Third World. Someday she (and my son, who was born later, in the US), may choose to go cross the pond and live for a while on that side of their heritage, and that'd be wonderful. But I felt it was my responsibility to bring them up here so they'll have that choice to make someday. For lots of reasons, going from the US to Thailand is far, far easier than the reverse.

Andwhat are you doing when you aren't writing?

Atthe day job at a community college. Playing with my kids. On FB andTwitter and the blog more than I should be, probably. During the fall,watching the Cornhuskers on Saturdays. Exercising.

Writers requirea lot of endorphins and dopamine and you can't get it all from bourbon. Exercisehelps keep those flowing and you feel better the next morning.

Igallivanted around in my younger years, but I'm a pretty staid family man thesedays. Mortgage and everything. In bed by 10 at the latest.

Does your time in Asia affect your writing? If so, how?

Absolutely. When I'm not writing about my rural homeland, I'm writing about Asia. The experiences I had over there gave me an inexhaustible trove of material to work with. (Not that you need to go to Asia or anywhere, really, for that. Wasn't it Flannery O'Connor who said that anyone who's survived childhood has enough stories to last for life?)

I'm working on some stuff these days that mixes the two. Imagining characters who look like my kids will twenty years from now, and then having bad things happen to them.

Whatattracts you to short fiction?

Therush of finishing, I think. The fact that when you start there's always aglaring light at the end of the tunnel.

Anovel can be such a slog. I've written 3 of them. (Want to see?) Gearing up to write another, but I keep getting sucked into thegratification of keeping it short.

Weswapped some messages on Twitter and you said you are moving from literaryfiction to crime and pulp fiction. Why?

Youknow what Nabokov said: "You can always count on a murderer for a fancyprose style."

Theolder I get, the more I like stories. Plot. Forward progression. Something besides beautiful sentences to keep me flicking through thepages. Don't get me wrong. I like artful sentences strung together oneafter another. I just want them to tell me a story.

Ifeel likewise in my own writing. I want to tell a story. To quoteBrad Green in his intro to the PANK Crime Issue,"Whereas the literary story is often concerned with how characters reactto a given situation, the [pulp story] is obsessed with showing us how webehave during the situation itself." I agree with thiswholeheartedly.

Iwould say, though, that there's a difference between good pulp fiction and theformulaic potboilers put out by the James Patterson and Nora Robertsons orwhoever of the world. A story's no good if it's wrapped in turgid prose. The sentences still have to sing.

WhatI'm writing now is story. If it doesn't contribute to the forwardnarrative of said story, I delete it. No subtext. No symbolism. Just story.

Whichis easier to write? I assume that many people would hear you're switching topulp/crime fiction and they'd think it's because it's easier to write.

Idon't think any good writing comes easily. Emphasis on the good. For me, it's all about mutilated drafts, dozens of them. Theprocess hasn't gotten any easier; it's just that the categories are different. In some respects, writing pulp is a lot harder, because you can't hidelimp-wristed character development and hackneyed plot lines behind prettysentences.

Literaryfiction at its best moves you to a state of aesthetic bliss; pulp at its bestkeeps you riveted to the story. Both are rare.

Whenyou finish a piece of mediocre literary fiction, you're thinking, "Sowhat?" Finishing is like eating a whole bowl of cold oatmeal becauseyou don't want to waste anything on account of the kids starving in Africa. (Which may have something to do with why so few non-writers start suchstories in the first place.)

Amediocre piece of pulp, you're not likely to ever finish. You'll startyawning and find a better way to spend your time. All perfectlyguilt-free. Pulp that doesn't keep you entertained isn't doing its job,and that's how it should be.

Maintainingthe fictive dream in the reader is a hard job to pull off in any genre, but itseems to me that it's harder when the reader has no qualms about looking away.

Ilooked at your blog and your current acceptance rate is roughly 10percent. I think someone who doesn't write would look at that number and say,"What's the point?" So, what is the point? How do you keep fromgetting discouraged?

Anunknown writer like myself is paid in the currency of hope. It only takesone after all, right? The right magazine, the right editor, the rightagent, the right Twitter contact, the right amalgam in the marketplace, theright google algorithm.

Theamount of luck required is outrageous.

Butthanks to the internet, we're living in a world where the supply of fictionvastly outweighs the demand. Them's the facts. I don't think you doyourself any favors by ignoring reality.

Idon't keep from getting discouraged. I'm discouraged all the time. Allthe time. Especially now that I've been writing a lot for a number ofyears, and success remains elusive. Every time another rejection arrivesfrom one of those prestigious, super-cool mags I lust to see my name in. Every irretrievable day passing by that didn't see me get any worthwhilewriting done.

I alwaysfeel like I'm on the outside looking in. Like all the real, successfulwriters are enjoying solitary parties in vast mansions of acclaim and prestigeand money up on the hill, and I'm in my jackshack in the valley, one nakedlight bulb strung from the ceiling, that distant music tinkling through thewarped tin roof.

PossiblyI suffer under the delusion of the sunk cost fallacy . But then that dionysian demon Hope raises her ravishingly hideous face,and it's back to the page I go.

Whatmakes a good piece of short fiction?

Ifyou read it all the way through in one setting.

Howabout flash fiction? It has so many different definitions, but, in general,what are your feelings on it? I know that, for me, if it gets too short I findit a little too sparse and the stories hard to follow.

Ireally like the form, myself. But, like any other form, it has to be donewell. A thousand words or less is an excellent length to explore oneincident or impression, maybe two. Sort of like the Iambic tetrameter ortanka poetry, it enforces a certain discipline, an insistence that every wordbe pared down to its maximum meaning.

It'sa mystery to me why, in this Twittified and Facebooked era, flash fiction hasnot achieved more prominence outside writerly circles. I suspect it'sbecause we're all doing it wrong, somehow.

UsuallyI ask for three essential books, but since we are talking short fiction herecan you give us three essential pieces of short fiction. Pieces that eithershaped who you are as a writer or just stuff you thought was really cool.

"AtomicSupernova", by Scott Wolven

"TheNeed," by Frank Bill

"EscapeFrom Spiderhead," by George Saunders

"ThePeony Garden," Nagai Kafu

Whatabout some writers you think are underappreciated. Who's out there that morepeople should know about?

Writerswho aren't nearly well-known enough:

ScottWolven is my nomination for best unknown out there. Why this guy isn'tfamous, Hollywood directors flocking to his door, editors stepping over deadbodies to get to him, is beyond me. I wrote more about him here.

TheBritish writer Danny Hogan wrote a cracking good novella called JailbaitJustice.

DavidCranmer, editor of Beat To A Pulp, is single-handedly transforming the Westerninto a noir showpiece with his Cash Laramie & Miles Gideon series.

GoogleMatthew C. Funk and you can't go wrong. Everything that guy writescrackles like a live wire.

Myfriend Brad Green can elevate a sentence to Elysium in a single comma splice.

MarcHorne wrote my favorite indie novel of all time, Tokyo Zero.

GlennGray is also a doctor and therefore knows how to induce delicious willies.

RoxaneGay has a following among the internet literati, but on the strength of herwriting she deserves more. I think she's going to get it in due time.

What'sup next for you? Anything coming up that we should look for?

I've got stories coming out next year in All Due Respect, YellowMama, Flywheel, and Necessary Fiction. I'malso going to be in the Off The Record anthology put togetherby Luca Veste, and the upcoming inaugural Dirty Noir quarterly.

I'malso going to be editing a special Pulp Issue for PANK that will come outnext spring. Subs are going to open next month, so send your best storiesmy way.

Get to know SM Reine

2011-10-14T08:17:00.001-05:00

This week's interview is with SM Reine. She's a great writer, a wonderful cover artist, and, now, a publisher. Her new book, Death's Hand, comes out next week. She has a great blog with great tips. Take a couple of minutes and get to know SM Reine.

Give us the elevator pitch, not for your book, but on you. Give us the down and dirty on SM Reine.

By day, I'm immersed in information systems (mainframe and server operations, to be exact), general office work, and motherhood. By night, I'm sleeping. I cram writing and publishing somewhere in between all of that.

Now, how about your books. What do we need to know about Six Moon Summer, All Hallows Moon, and The 19 Dragons?

Six Moon Summer and All Hallows' Moon are in the same series. They're a refreshing take on werewolf mythology following a character named Rylie Gresham, who's this teenage vegetarian that ends up turning into a flesh-hungry monster. She's her own worst enemy. The 19 Dragons is a steampunk novella with a surrealistic fantasy bent... if I can get away with crossing that many genres.

You're a fantasy writer. I assume that means you're a fantasy reader. Have you always been and what is it about the fantasy genre that draws you in as both a reader and a writer?

I'm actually into speculative fiction at large. As a kid, I sharpened my teeth on writers like Tamora Pierce, KA Applegate, Christopher Pike, you name it. Of course, I also had a hearty dose of the classics-- HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle... Choking down realistic fiction is like trying to swallow rocks for me. I have no interest in it, although I couldn't tell you why. Maybe I'm too much of an airhead.

How about steampunk? You describe The 19 Dragons as a steampunk novella. Steampunk is a sub-genre that fascinates me. How did you get interested in it? And what's it like once you start writing a steampunk story?

Steampunk is something I discovered through movies and TV shows rather than literature. It's been one of my creative influences for years. For instance, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a great example of early steampunk. I should have known I was in trouble when I found myself lusting for the goggles and gloves worn by Caractacus Potts as a kid!

But I found writing steampunk to be a harrowing experience. The subculture is huge. People will put so much money and time into adapting their appliances, fashion, and even their entire house to this elaborate Victorian aesthetic, and since I took a lot of artistic license with the genre, I was afraid of disappointing the fanatics. I really second- and third-guessed myself over The 19 Dragons for the weeks leading into its release. It turns out the fans are forgiving. The warm reception was pleasantly surprising.

I love your book covers. You do those yourself, at least as far as I know. What's your background in graphic design and, as far as covers go, what's your creative process like?

Thank you! Yes, I do all my covers, and I also offer inexpensive cover design for some of my indie friends. I've made covers for Kindle-bestselling writers like Heather Hildenbrand and John O'Brien. That said, I have no background in graphic design whatsoever. In the industry, I'm what's called a "self-taught Photoshop hack." Years of fiddling with personal photos turned into fiddling with stock imagery to create photomontages, and then it somehow became an important (and fun!) part of my career.

When I'm about to embark on a project, I spend time researching similar books and how their covers were designed. I focus primarily on recent and upcoming releases, although I also like to dig into the history a bit because what's fashionable in design is cyclical. Then I pick out hundreds of stock photos I think might fit the project and start whittling down concepts. I usually make at least 3-5 covers for any one book. It's horribly inefficient! My process is growing more streamlined as I mature.

What's the biggest problem you see with most book covers from indie authors and how can it be fixed?

The biggest issue I've seen is distorting photographs. A lot of sins are forgivable in the indie world, but when you have an image stretched to a different ratio, it looks horrible and it screams "unprofessional." Good typography also determines if your cover is effective or not.

OK, on to Red Iris Books. How did that come about and what's the plan for it?

I've been sitting on this business plan for a small, web-based publishing company for years. I actually went to college for business (which, as anyone can tell you, might be one of the less useful degrees you can obtain) and I developed this idea as I trudged through classes on accounting and marketing. Since then, I've been sitting around tweaking it as I see changes in the market, and dreaming of the day I would get the time and capital to make it happen. There will always be excuses to put off big decisions. It sounds cheesy, but becoming a mother made me realize how fleeting time is, and I decided I was done waiting.

I am currently building a platform as one of the best sources of dark fantasy for teen and adult audiences. In the next year, Red Iris Books will slowly open its doors to adding new authors, although it's going to remain extremely selective. I want to help foster careers. The idea is to provide quality control without requiring the authors to sacrifice creative control.

I was at a sci fi convention recently and I listened to a panel of small press publishers talking. Most everyone in the crowd wanted to know what the publishers were looking for. Specifics on lengths, rights purchased, services provided to the authors. If Red Iris were on that panel what would have the answers been?

I am currently acquiring projects by invitation only. As such, the answers to these questions vary widely depending on the needs of the individual author. In the future, I will open submissions to novel-length dark fantasy, and provide editing, formatting, cover design, and promotional services to the authors. Since we will be adding authors to the Red Iris family selectively, we will be able to give each project a lot of individual attention to ensure it reaches its full potential.

What's been the most surprising thing you've learned since starting Red Iris?

Publishing, as with all small businesses, is much more than a full time job. You don't take vacations. You don't get breaks. You can only get out of it as much as you put into it. Yet while it's definitely a tough industry -- and this economy makes it tough to get into selling a product -- everyone involved shares a passion for books, so I make quite a few friends and have a lot of fun while exhausting myself with work. Readers, reviewers, authors, and publishers-- they're all fantastic people. I couldn't do any of it without my support network.

A scenario: A benevolent tyrant comes to you and tells you he's going to ship you off to a small, unpopulated island. He hands you a bag that will hold just three books and tells you to fill it. Which books do you put in there and why?

Firstly, Peter Pan. That book is very special to me. I loved the adventure and fantasy of it as a child, but as I've matured, the book becomes a deep meditation on childhood, aging, and death. They say in the book that Peter takes children who have died partway to the afterlife so they aren't afraid on the journey. It's touching and frightening.

The second book I would take is the Lord of the Rings omnibus edition. Can I get away with that? I could hardly be much of a fantasy fan if I didn't adore the original work of fantasy by the master of world-building.

Finally, I would have to take the unabridged edition of The Stand by Stephen King. It's not my favorite of his books, but it's a heck of a read. If I'm going to be on some boring island (I hate beaches!) I need something long to distract me. Of course, every time I read it, I get a horrible cold and become convinced I'm going to die, but I'll consider that part of the excitement of being abandoned.

Give us a recommended reading list. What are a few underappreciated books you love that others need to know about?

Benighted by Kit Whitfield is the first book to come to mind.

Wrap this all up by telling us what's up next for you and what's next for Red Iris Books.

My next release is Death's Hand, which I'm using to launch Red Iris Books along with Angela Kulig's Skeleton Lake. It's the first in an urban fantasy series about an exorcist and her warlock partner who have gone into retirement, and what happens when old enemies catch up with them. After that, I have some very exciting things planned for the Seasons of the Moon series, but I don't want to talk about it too much yet. I'll be announcing a new author or two for Red Iris by summer 2012, and we'll be opening for submissions by the end of next year. These next few months are going to be very busy!

Thanks so much for having me!

Get to know Neal Hock

2011-10-07T07:31:00.000-05:00

As part of this interview series I wanted to talk to more than authors. I wanted to talk to book reviewers. I wanted to talk to editors. Well, Neal Hock is both. He's also another person I met through Twitter. Are you noticing a pattern here? I think I got his name through Misty Baker, but I'm not sure. Take a few minutes and get to know Neal and what makes someone want to be an editor or book reviewer tick.

On your blog you area book reviewer, yet there's a link to your editing services on there also. Sowhich came first, the editing or the reviewing? And is that one your firstlove?

Well, I guess it depends on your perspective. When I workedin the corporate world, I was the informal editor of performance reviews andbusiness-related materials. However, I didn’t consider pursuing editing at thattime. I started a book-review blog because I have a consuming passion for goodbooks. So with regards to sharing my views on the Internet, the reviewing camefirst. As to what my first love is, I’d have to say I have a love ofwell-written, good stories. That’s my motivating passion for both editing andreviewing. However, real life has a way of funneling you in certain directions,and due to time constraints, my book reviewing is taking a backseat right now.

What makes someonedecide that they want to review books?

A love for good stories. At least that’s what motivates me.I love the exhilaration I get when I finish a good story, and I can’t wait tofind the next one.

What about editing?Were you the one weird kid in class who looked forward to diagrammingsentences?

It’s funny, but I wasn’t that interested in grammar-relatedtopics in school. Hell, I didn’t read a lot books throughout high school. Ijust didn’t get excited about The ScarletLetter, The Good Earth, and The Great Gatsby. However, when I wentto college, I had a professor for freshman English that encouraged us todiscover modern authors, and from that moment on, my passion for interesting storieswas ignited.

As to being a weird kid, I had my quirks. I’m probably amuch weirder adult. My wife still gives me a strange look when I bring my Chicago Manual of Style to bed forbedtime reading.

Seriously, though,what kind of editing services do you provide? Do you work primarily withindependent authors/self-publishers?

I provide proofreading, copyediting, and concept editing.The vast majority of my clients are independent authors, but I’ve also workedwith publishers and websites.

What's the biggesterror you find yourself correcting? Do you have a most infuriating mistake youfind?

Wow, I’m not sure there is one that stands out. Each authorhas personal tendencies, so that kind of evens everything out. There are alwayswayward commas and misspelled or missing words. I guess the most common mistakeI find across the board is missing hyphens in compound modifiers. I’ve neverbeen infuriated when I find mistakes. It’s really quite the opposite, becausemistakes mean I’ll continue to have work.

For years I didnewspaper copy editing work. My favorite Associated Press style rule was forunder way. It's two words except when it's used in a nautical sense. Do youhave a favorite style or grammar rule? Please say you do. It will make me feelmuch less like a language loser.

Anyone who can appreciate such a nuance is not a languageloser in my book. I’m a sucker for a hyphen in a compound modifier, and I loveapostrophes of omission. When to use everydayand every day always gives me thewarm fuzzies, too. See, now I look like the language dork.

Since you reviewbooks, it stands to reason that you've read a lot of them. What are three booksthat came across your desk that surprised you? And they don't need to besurprisingly good books. We all know that something can be unexpectedly bad.

Well, I’ll stick with the good. The whole point of mybook-review site is to share good books. If I read something that I’m not crazyabout, I usually just set it aside and keep my mouth shut. You know, the whole“if you can’t say something nice” thing. The biggest thing that has surprisedme since I started reviewing books is the number of quality works beingself-published. There are a lot of talented writers out there that arerelatively unknown.

Three books that blew me away when I read them: As I Embrace My Jagged Edges by LeeThompson, The Pack: Winter Kill byMike Oliveri, and Identity Crisis byDebbi Mack.

I'm sure there are afew indie authors reading this. How can they contact you if they wanted to?

The website for my editing services is http://www.hockseditingservices.com.The website for my book-review site is http://bookhoundsden.blogspot.com.An e-mail address to contact me directly is on each site.

Can you give us arecommended reading list? What books do we need to read if we haven't yet?

Sheesh, you’re trying to get me in trouble here. I’m afraidI might leave someone out. Here’s a few authors everybody needs to try: GuidoHenkel, Stephen James Price, Debbi Mack, Mike Oliveri, Lee Thompson, AnthonyNeil Smith, Scott Nicholson, R.E. McDermott, Willie Meikle, David T. Wilbanks,and Jeff Bennington.

What's the biggestpiece of advice you have for authors as a reviewer? What about as an editor?

From a reviewer’s standpoint, I’d advise authors to notargue with a reviewer about the reviewer’s review. Especially if you solicitedthe reviewer. Recently I’ve seen a couple of authors say all kinds of thingsabout reviews they didn’t agree with. If you get a review that’s bad, see whatyou can learn from it and then move on.

From an editor’s standpoint, I’d advise authors to alwayscontinue to learn more about their craft. Continue to put tools in yourwriter’s toolbox. If there are things that you struggle with, pinpoint them andtry to improve. In this new digital age a writer can’t afford to put out asubpar product.

A price change and an update

2011-10-06T11:00:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but Monday I'm going to do it. On Monday I'm raising the price of Chasing Filthy Lucre to $1.99.

I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. One, is I want to see if a price change, even on that's an increase can't boost sales a bit. Hopefully people who would buy at 99 cents will still buy at $1.99. I think they will. And maybe people who see the 99 cent price and associate that with low quality will take a chance on Chasing Filthy Lucre if it's a little more expensive.

The bigger thing, though, is that I feel like Chasing Filthy Lucre is underpriced for what it is. When I launched the novella in March, there weren't nearly the number of short stories available as there are now. Most of those stories range in length from 3,000 to 10,000 words. They are priced at 99 cents, just like my book. Difference is my book is twice as long as the longest short story. That says to me that I'm underpriced for what's out there now. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. If I am then I'll readjust the price back down. One of the nice things about doing this all myself is that I can experiment with price like this.

I'm telling you all this so you can grab a copy at 99 cents if you've been thinking about it but haven't done it yet.

UPDATE
Now a quick update about what's coming up at the blog. Look tomorrow for an interview with Neal Hock. He's a book reviewer and editor. He gives us some insight into what makes someone want to edit books. Then next Friday we talk with SM Reine. She's a writer, and just recently, a book publisher. She's running Red Iris books. She'll tell us about her new venture and a little about herself.

A birthday wish

2011-10-04T11:45:00.004-05:00

Wanted to take a minute on the blog here and send out a special happy birthday message to a very important person in my life. Me. It's my birthday. I'm turning 38 today. Two years away from 40.

It's a little hard for me to believe. I don't feel nearly 40. Not every day anyway. I almost feel like life is just now starting. No, I don't have a job, but that's OK. That's part of the fresh start. I am getting a chance to start my professional life over. I'm still a newlywed, so that part of my life still feels like it's just starting. And I'm still working on the beginning of this writing life. See, everything is just starting.

We've already done plenty of celebrating this weekend. Met and celebrated and with both my family and Gina's family over the weekend. We went to the state fair yesterday. And tonight we are going to a small celebratory dinner before an event at church. See, big last four days.

So yeah, I'm 38, two years from 40. But life's just beginning.

Feeling moved to do something for me for my birthday? I can't think of anything better than buying a copy of my book.

The print version is available here: http://bit.ly/nKdIag
The Kindle version is here: http://bit.ly/fdPGAo
The Nook version is here: http://bit.ly/gfFg44
A Word file, a pdf version, and all other ebook versions are available here: http://bit.ly/fa4Rbl

Amazon says 'Merry Christmas, authors.'

2011-09-30T11:26:00.000-05:00

So Amazon decided this was as good a week as any to shake up the e-reader/tablet computer market. The big headline, or at least the headline that everyone expected to be the big one, was about the Amazon Fire. And I'll admit that another tablet on the market is cool. And, yeah, this one probably has the best shot at challenging the iPad. Although, I'm not really sure that the iPad is challengable at this point. Besides, with its features and size, the Amazon Fire looks more like Amazon's attempt to go after the Nook Color and not the iPad.

What excited me more about Amazon's announcement was the new line of Kindles. Especially the new prices on the Kindles. Those are game changers. The $79 and $99 price points that Amazon announced earlier this week make the ereaders a little more than an impulse buy. More people with readers mean more people needing books to fill them. That's what has me and other authors excited.

I read several blog posts about the whole thing. I grabbed a few snippets I wanted to share. Like me, they seem to be looking forward to the holiday shopping season.

The first bit is from Jon F. Merz. You can read the entire post HERE.

Amazon’s drastic price reductions will mean that more people than ever before will start to embrace ebooks. They’ve been hearing about them for a while. And now they can actually see what the fuss is about. Dropping the Kindle to below $99 bucks is a huge move and psychologically, the purchase of an ereader now becomes an-almost impulse buy. With indie authors pricing their ebooks intelligently between $2.99-$4.99 the lure of ebooks has never been stronger.
It’s going to be one very interesting holiday season, indeed.

Sean Sweeney looks at lots of things in his blog post HERE. I particularly liked his take on the Barnes and Noble response.

Of course, B&N is coming out with new devices later this year, a new Nook Color rumored to be among them.

Here's what I think B&N will do: panic. They'll see the writing on the wall and try to undercut Amazon like they did in Summer 2010. Amazon will then calmly cut the price of their devices even further, which they did after B&N brought out the 3G Nook. Bezos makes the guarantee: Amazon WILL have the lowest price ereader out there.

That is how you revolutionize reading. By being the affordable e-reader that everyone wants.

Let the holiday shopping begin.

Noir and music : A guest post by Sean May

2011-09-29T09:10:00.000-05:00

Today I turn the blog over to Sean May, a writer currently living in Indianapolis, Indiana. His work has been featured in Crimefactory, Diagonal Proof and 5923 Quarterly. His debut novel, The Case, is available for the Kindle. His collection of short stories, Crimewave is coming to the Kindle and the Nook this October.

Singing a darker tune

The impact of noir on our culture is far-reaching, encompassing seventy or so years of dark alleyways, femme fatales, shifty criminals and crooked cops, but typically when people talk about noir, their focus goes to two specific mediums: film and literature. And why shouldn't it? Noir was born in the pages of pulps and explored even further on the sliver screen. But noir goes deeper than those two medium, and its influence can be seen in just about every form of entertainment, but it has had a significant impact on music. With that in mind, here's a quick list of 3 artists that have a decidedly noir tone to all or some of their work, in no particular order.

The National

Hailing from Brooklyn by way of Cincinnati, The National evoke a sense of James M. Cain style domestic dread, full of people who have given up on their dreams to settle into a world of tense, drunken parties and illicit rendevous. Their 2007 album Boxer is a gin-soaked masterpiece, with each song portraying an often dismal relationship. Lead singer Matt Berringer's rumbling croon leads you down into the deep, dark recesses of your soul, and you may not like what you find once you get down there. Their follow-up, High Violet, is a bit more upbeat, but still retains Boxer's sense of dread with songs like Conversation 16 and Anyone's Ghost.

Neko Case

If your first experience with Neko Case is with her power-pop supergroup The New Pornographers, you haven't even seen the half of her talent. While Case's New Pornographers' work is bright and shiny, Case's solo work is gloomy and forlorn, taking a decidedly rural bent, but with a definite noir core. Case's voice glides like a hawk above the fray of the treachery that she depicts in her songs. Tracks like Deep Red Bells, Twist The Knife, and Margaret vs. Pauline are tiny dramas set against a bleak noir background. Case avoids being a one-note femme fatale in the sense that her lyrics often reflect an enjoyment of the dire situations she participates in, or even creates.

Kanye West

Now, this will probably be a controversial choice to say the least, but stay with me for a minute. Kanye's inclusion on this list is due almost entirely to his 2010 masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Across the album's tracks, West portrays the hardships and darkness that lies behind even the most apparently glamorous lifestyle. Tracks like Power and Devil in a Red Dress show that the pressures of excess can be deadly, while Monster casts West and his cohorts as vengeful miscreants who will spill as much blood as they need to get to the top. If you're looking for more noir in Kanye's work, it'll be tough to find, but My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a prime example of how the darker side of fame can weigh heavy on the shoulders of those at the top.

A day late

2011-09-27T00:30:00.000-05:00

At the sci fi convention I was at over the weekend there was an author who'd put a sign on the table they'd rented. It said something like this "Rent the other half of this table for $5 for half an hour." I would have. In a heartbeat I would have. If I had the books I'd ordered I would have. But I didn't have the books and it didn't make sense to rent the table with nothing to sell.

I was hoping at the end of the week last week that the books would get here in time, but they didn't. So I just took my postcards on the freebie table with about 100 other cards. I did have 15 taken so I count that a success.

But what I wanted were the books. Those were going to go for $5 a piece. I really think I could have sold several of them at that price. Heck, I think I could have sold all of them. But they didn't get here until about 5 p.m. today. A day late.

Really, though, what this means is that there are more books for you to buy now. I'm still trying to work out how that will work. I've been looking into adding a way to buy the books from the blog. I know there has to be a way to do it, I just don't know how. I'm sure I'll figure something out. What I do know is that when you buy a copy from me I'll sign it unless you tell me you don't want that. It will be like a perpetual book signing. So stay tuned. Something's coming.

If you just want to buy a copy of the book right away, you can do that too. It's on Amazon. Click HERE.

Get to know Fingers Murphy

2011-09-23T00:53:00.000-05:00

This week's interview is with Fingers Murphy. No, that's not his real name, as you'll find out. He's another someone who I met through Twitter. You seeing a pattern yet? If not, give it time. You'll see it. Fingers has two books out right now, Follow the Money and The Flaming Motel. As you'll be able to tell from the questions, I really liked Follow the Money. The story is great, but I really loved how L.A. became so much a part of the story. I'm in the middle of The Flaming Motel now and it's just as good. Once you get done reading the interview go and buy the books if you don't already have them. You'll love them.

So where did FOLLOW THE MONEY come from? Give us the story behind the story in 150 words.

The murder at the center of the story was adapted from a real case that occurred in the Seattle area in the late-80s. The defendant in the real case was tried three times and lost every time. I thought that would make a great jumping off point for a much more sinister plot. The legal machination at the center of the story takes an obscure legal doctrine -- obscure to non-lawyers anyway -- and turns it on it's head.

I decided to try writing a legal thriller about ten years ago. I wanted something very accurate. That really captured the world I was in, which was one very much like the firm in the book. What I found interesting was that these white shoe law firms are not at all bad places like you see in movies. But there are compromises people make to work at these places and the result of those compromises is that people often end up very different than they intended to. That fascinates me. Very smart, ambitious, hard working people who sometimes contort themselves to justify who they are and what they've become.

Was it always a plan for Ollie's story to evolve into a series?

No. I had no intention to write a sequel to Follow the Money. That idea came from my agent. I was going to write a stand alone crime novel and she said that was crazy. Publishers wanted a series and she believed that if this was a series she could get me a very big deal with a major house. So, I sat down a came up with a second Ollie book, which became The Flaming Motel.

You're in the legal world. How much of you is in Ollie?

There are obvious parallels. We both come from blue collar backgrounds and knew nothing about being a lawyer. I always tell people that the only lawyers anyone in my family ever knew were court-appointed. And that's true. Ollie and I both went to work at major law firms, probably seduced by the same basic things, status, money, and the sense of surprise that someone from where we came from could ever even get access to this world.

But beyond that the parallels end. I'm still in that world and was probably never as naive about it as Ollie is. Ollie's life in The Flaming Motel, which is the sequel, is much more the fantasy life I think about when I imagine how things would have gone if I'd chucked it all and walked early on.

What drew you to the law as a profession, and is it the same thing that draws you to it as a writer? Or is it more of a case of writing what you know?

I came to the law the way many people do: because I didn't know what else to do. I'd gotten a psychology degree. Your choices at that point are basically to become a teacher, go to grad school, or enter the job market and be one of a million others entering the market with no marketable skills. I had no interest in teaching, so I went to grad school. I settled on law because I thought I had some idea of what lawyers do and the subject seemed interesting. Turned out that, like most people, I had no idea what being a lawyer is really like. But the subject is inherently interesting.

As for writing about legal settings, it probably is a case of writing what you know. Although I do think there is a reason legal thrillers are so popular, along with movies and TV shows about law: the subject touches our lives in so many ways. So, in that sense, the legal thriller is really just a framework to talk about anything else you might want to talk about because there are legal issues to just about everything. So you can tell endless stories within stories in the legal genre.
That said, $200 and a Cadillac is not a legal thriller at all. So I'm trying to get outside my comfort zone.

What's the story behind the name Fingers Murphy? Why the need for anonymity and how did you decide on Fingers Murphy?

It's actually a joke between my wife and me. When she was pregnant with our son and we were going through the inevitable hand wringing over names, we kept trying to come up with good Irish names. We never settled on one that we liked, but during the process I kept agitating for what sound to me like old school gangster names. "Knuckles" Murphy was my favorite, but I liked "Fingers" too. Needless to say, the name was still available when I needed a pseudonym, and it was thematically appropriate for what I was doing.

As for anonymity, I work in a world that is extremely sensitive about how even the smallest thing is perceived. To the extent I say anything negative about the practice of law, or large firms, or even have the characters say negative or aggressive things about the law -- which they definitely do in The Flaming Motel -- the pseudonym provides a buffer. I've also published a legal book under my real name and the thinking was that it's better to separate the two identities. One is the professional lawyer/legal scholar identity, the other is the fiction writer.

That legal book was published by a major publisher, so I actually did go through the process once. It was a good experience, but when it was all done I thought: Is that it? Is that really all you guys do? I can do this myself.

Any chance we ever find out who you really are?

Honestly, if some enterprising person who knows the legal world really wanted to figure it out, it wouldn't take too long to come up with a short list of possibilities. I challenge someone to do that, and make a big public spectacle of it too! Might sell some books that way. New York Times? Are you listening? I think we have next week's magazine piece all ready for you.

Without getting too specific and revealing your secret identity, give us your writing history.

Like a lot of writers, I knew early on that this was something I wanted to do. I wrote my first novel when I was 15 or 16. Truly awful stuff. And I kept at into my early twenties. Then I realized I needed to have a day job, so I put the writing on hold, went to law school, became a lawyer and started practicing. Then, in my late-twenties, I started feeling this real urgency, like if I didn't get serious right away I never would.

I always imagined I'd write serious novels, whatever those are. The kind of crap people thinks is great when they're in college. But then I realized that, not only is that not what most people actually read, it wasn't even what I was reading. I used to look down on genre writing and then I realized that that's often where the most interesting stuff really is. So I challenged myself to write a legal thriller and I sat down and pounded out Follow the Money.

I sent it off to some agents and, after a few months, I got one. Amazingly, this was an agency that specialized in mysteries and had a very good track record and I thought, what are people talking about when they say this is hard? This is easy! Little did I know.

Well, the agent was very excited. I had just turned thirty, she loved the book, started sending it around, and she told me I had to get working on a second in the series immediately. She was pretty convinced that we were going to land a major deal. This was 2003. I was the perfect age to break out as a hot young writer. She thought the book was one of the best debuts she'd read in a long time. The certainty she had was infectious.

So the book goes out, editors at some major houses start asking to read the whole thing, they're asking if this is a series, if I have another book underway. It was pretty heady. We got to that stage with three houses and my agent was talking about how to do an auction. All of that. And then it all just died. It was stunning.

The editor at St. Martins actually wrote us a letter (after she called my agent to tell her the bad news) where she said that she thought the second half of the book was one of the most addictive page-turners she'd ever read. And yet, they were declining because their marketing department didn't think the market would support another major legal thriller writer. It was just too crowded. Basically, because they weren't certain that they could sell a million copies, they weren't going to take the book at all.

I thought, what kind of insane business model is this?

So, freed up from having to write the series, I went ahead and wrote the stand alone crime novel I'd wanted to write, which is called $200 and a Cadillac. At that point I was just having fun, writing for me alone. I sent it to my agent and she declined it! She thought I'd lost my mind! Then I sent it to another agent who had liked Follow the Money and he loved it, but he declined it too. He wrote me a letter, this was probably in 2006, and basically said, I love your book, it's exactly the kind of thing I personally love to read, but there's no way I can sell it. No major house is going to buy it. I appreciated the honesty.

So I sat down and wrote another. This one is a very dark novella. I kind of laughed when I was doing it, because I thought, a 25,000 word novella? Talk about something no publisher is going to buy! But I didn't care anymore. I decided the guiding principle had to be to write something I would find interesting. I had to trust that there would be other people out there with similar taste.

What's your relationship like with the city of Los Angeles?

I'm not from LA. I often think that nobody really is. That's not true, of course, but I always find it curious when I hear someone refer to LA as their hometown. The city is a lot of things, but it's hard to think of it as a "hometown." The word just doesn't fit.

I first came to Southern California when I joined the Marines at 19. And I found it so iconic. I mean everyone in America has an idea about LA because it's so pervasive in our culture. It's weird to drive around as an outsider because the whole place is eerily familiar to you. After all, you've seen it in moves and on TV since your childhood.

And yet, it's like seeing a famous person. You know who they are, but you don't know them at all. And like any complicated person, LA takes time to get to know, and once you do, you discover that it's nothing like you thought. It's a complex, contradictory, interesting, and infuriating town. And it either works for you or it doesn't, but you won't know that until you've been there for a few years.

In FOLLOW THE MONEY I got a real sense of LA. I think I mentioned to you on Twitter that the way you described it made we want to move there, a place I've never even visited. Was it a conscious choice on your part to make LA as much a part of the story as it seemed to be to me? Or was I just reading way too much into it?

It wasn't conscious. But I do think that locations are important. The two books I have coming up, the crime novel $200 and a Cadillac and the novella called Everything I Tell you is a Lie, take place elsewhere. The first in the Mojave desert and the second in rural eastern Washington state, and I hope the locations in each are equally evocative.

I am a believer that place defines us in more ways than we realize. We carry the place where we come from with us our entire lives, and that affects our relationship with whatever place we're in. How we react to it, what we see in it. Ollie comes from a poor, working class neighborhood. So he sees money in everything. From the opening page of the book where he's obsessing about the cost of the lunch and Jim Carver's shirt to the end, much of what Ollie observes about the world is economic. The place he comes from is economically deprived and the place he's in is one of the richest places in the world.

Time for another story-behind-the-story moment. How did THE FLAMING MOTEL come together? This time take as many words as you need.

As I said before, I had no plan for a series, so when my agent demanded that I write a second book, I found myself scrambling to come up with an idea. The basic event that starts the book, the shooting of Don Vargas at a Halloween party, actually happened in LA. In the real case it was an actor who was shot. It was one of those terrible stories about police overreaction that are unfortunately too common. I took that incident and built a plot around it.

I wanted to write a story about redemption and whether some things are just unforgivable. I also wanted to explore the idea of ambiguity in relationships and the corrosive effect of secrets between two people.

And I wanted all of it to get rolled into something that, for me, had the feel of an old school 50s or 60s detective novel. Like a legal thriller written by Ross MacDonald.

God comes to you and says I need all of your books but three. Which three do you keep and why?

Wow. That's a good spin on the favorite book question. I guess I'd start with The Old Man and the Sea. I really think that's one of the greatest books ever written. I love it when a master who's been working at it for his whole life finally strips his work down to its barest elements. That book is Hemingway giving it his all, but at the same time employing total self-restraint. I could say the same thing about Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I would take McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. To me, that book does everything a huge, sprawling epic should do. How do you write something a thousand pages long and leave the reader begging for more? I wish I knew. I'd love to write a crime novel that long and engrossing some day.

Lastly, I'd take Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I love him for that bold language. I've been trying to teach my son to find his barbaric yawp since he first started to talk. I think he's getting in touch with it.

And hey, Whitman was self-published too, so we're all in good company.

Give us a recommended reading list. What are some little-known books that more people should be reading?

I tell everyone who likes crime and detective novels that they need to read Ross MacDonald. He's not "little known" among fans of crime fiction, but the wider public has forgotten him. I think The Chill is one of the greatest books of all time. But you could say that about a lot of his books: The Underground Man, The Far Side of the Dollar, The Blue Hammer. He's awesome.

James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss and One to Count Cadence are two books that should be in every bookstore in America. I feel the same way about Jim Harrison's Letters to Yesenin. I actually carry a copy of the recent Copper Canyon Press reissue of that book in my briefcase with me. It goes everywhere I go. It's been all over the world. There may be no better book for a struggling writer to read. How can you argue with a guy who writes: "Years ago I was ambitious/But now it is clear that nothing will happen"? Especially when that guy goes on to become one of the best writers of his generation? There's hope for us all. I'd probably hide that one from God too.

What's up next for you? What can we look for in the future?

The next book, $200 and a Cadillac will be out as soon as I can get it out. The novella Everything I tell you is a Lie comes after that. Then I've got four different novels that are in various states.
One is another Ollie book that, if it gets written, will be told in third person and will feature, Ollie, Liz, Detective Wilson, and Max Stanton from The Flaming Motel all in equal portions. It's a risk because the book won't have that first person Ollie narration.

Another is an offshoot of the Ollie books. Ollie could be a minor figure in it, but the central character would be Max Stanton, who is thrown out of his firm and ends up "retiring" in Montana, only to get drug into a bizarre case. I've thought about writing that one as straight Ollie book too. The plot is all worked out around the Stanton character. But I could change that.

Then, I've got a stand-alone book about a man who abducts his son and takes him on a road trip from LA to Seattle, all the while being pursued by the FBI. I love the story and have a bunch of great scenes written for it, but it hasn't gelled for me yet into a complete narrative. I'm missing a couple key pieces. Who knows if I'll ever find them.

Finally, the book I might actually complete first is a real departure for me. It's a comedic picaresque novel about a mysterious guy who shows up in a small mountain town and tries to return to nature as a modern day Thoreau. Of course, he ends up running for mayor, backed by a group of ultra-libertarian secessionists. Given the political climate in our country, I actually think that one's pretty timely.

A little of this, a little of that

2011-09-21T14:51:00.000-05:00

I'm at the library looking for jobs and doing a little writing. I am finding it tough to stay at home and be as productive as I want to be. Too many distractions. Whether it's a chore to take care of, or just a TV show to watch, there's always something to distract me. I think I am most productive when I'm away from the comforts of the casa. This is only the second time I've been here, but I feel like I'm getting more done. Applied for one job. Searched several sites for others. Even wrote 500 words on a short story that came to mind the other day.

I'm enjoying the short story so far. It has a younger protagonist than I'm used to writing, so that's making it fun. And I like the dynamic I've established between the two characters in the opening scene.

If you've been following this blog for any amount of time, you'll know that I don't really plot out my short stories. I have an idea where they're going to go, but nothing in stone. Same is true with this one. I have an idea, but it's only a rough one. The only thing that came to mind the other day was the opening. Where it goes from there, who knows?

You may have seen the blog post last week about wanting guest bloggers and interview subjects. The offer still stands for both. I've got one interview ready to go for Friday. Well, almost ready to go. And I have a guest blog post that is being finished for next Thursday. That will be the schedule, by the way. Planning interviews for Friday and guest blog posts on Thursday. This will allow me to keep the blog filled with content. It also gives me a chance to keep my editing and interview skills sharp while I look for that new job.

Hope you all like the changes and let me know if you want to take part.

Back home and ready to go

2011-09-19T11:09:00.002-05:00

I got back from Kansas City yesterday afternoon. We had to go up for my grandmother's funeral. She passed very early Sept. 11. She was 93. For the last few years she was having a hard time seeing and hearing. Her memory was also failing her.

Gina and I went up to visit her a few years ago over a long weekend. I was amazed at her mind. She had a hard time remembering who I was at times. She'd ask questions about my dad and my uncle and my brother, not remembering that I was related to any of them. Then she'd go into detail about how you harvest, hang, and dry tobacco, something she hadn't done in 80 years.

It feels weird to say you had a good time at a funeral. At least it does for me. But I did have a good time. I got to see cousins I hadn't seen in almost 20 years. Maybe longer than that. I enjoyed getting to see them and catch up. I also got to listen to my dad, my uncle, and their cousins tell stories of growing up. It was special. We are all going to miss my grandmother, but it's nice having a family that's close no matter how many years pass between us seeing each other.

But now I'm back home and ready to focus, both on the job search and on the writing. I've been working on the former and not doing enough of the latter. Spent last week writing and polishing my resume. It's going to be sent out starting today. And I've got a story outline for Book 2 that needs to be filled in.

Get to know Anthony Neil Smith

2011-09-16T09:55:00.000-05:00

I met Anthony Neil Smith through Twitter, but I knew about him before that. I found his site Plots With Guns years ago when I first started researching writing markets. He was editing it at the time. He doesn't anymore. He's the publisher now. But he's also an author. Find his books here and buy one or two. They don't cost more than a couple of bucks, tops. And, if you're on Twitter you need to follow him there. Honestly, with all his promotion, I think he's responsible for about half the sales of Chasing Filthy Lucre.

In 100 words or less, give us the writing history of Anthony Neil Smith.

Read HARDY BOYS in 2nd grade. Wanted to do that. Wrote little stories. Moved on to adult fiction. Loved crime stories. Then--comic books, rock and roll, guitar, religious conversion, more music, religious de-conversion, Creative Writing Classes, James Ellroy & PULP FICTION (same year, I think), grad school, published short stories, published novels. Now trying to write more.

If you had to classify yourself as a writer, put yourself into a genre, which one would it be? And you don't have to stick to the traditional genres. Make one up if you think it'd fit better.

Yeah, really, I have no problem at all with the label of crime writer. I embrace it. The coolest writers, to me, were always the crime writers--usually smart and respected by literary folks while simultaneously being accepted by the commercial crowd. I write stories about characters dealing with the consequences of crime. And I like that.

Following some of the conversations you've been having on Twitter with others, you seem to spend a bit of time contemplating the direction of crime and noir fiction. So, what is their future? What direction are they heading in, and is that good or bad?

I don't know anymore. There are things I hope will happen, like a lot more literary writers embracing genre and thus doing cool shit with it, but I'm not sure what's going on with publishing right now. Seems harder for edgy crime writers. I see a lot more use of noir as a flavoring in other genres or lit fiction. I like that, too.
With ebooks flourishing, I hope we'll see a return to shorter novels like they had in the 50s and 60s. And I'd like to see prices of ebooks settle at a level that will attract a lot of new readers rather than just folks with a lot of money. 10 bucks for a book just doesn't seem right. 10 bucks for an ebook, even less so.

Another Twitter based question. You seem to spend as much time promoting other people's work there as you do your own. Is that just the good, Christian thing to do, or do you have sinister motives?

I've always been a fan. I started PLOTS WITH GUNS as a way to read more stories in the vein I liked, which we didn't get from the BIG TWO crime mags at the time. And when I get around other writers, I talk about the writers I like, and the ones I don't. If I find a new write through PWG who deserves attention, I work like hell to do whatever I can to get it. So with Twitter and ebooks, I've found a new way to do that. And it's fun.

I know your books are like your children, all little snowflakes and special in their own way. Still, crush the dreams of all of the others and pick a favorite. Then tell us why you love that one more.

Well, there is an unpublished one about a nerdy, shy PI who, for some reason, is irresistible to women, so he ends up having sex with allllll sorts of people. Not a "pan to the curtains" type of thing you see in older noir flicks. And, well, he can't help himself, but it makes him tired. Oh, and his older sister has him trapped in an incestuous relationship, too, that he can't free himself from. Somewhere in there, he tries to find a missing pregnant teenager.
I think that book really taught me how to write the sorts of books I've written since. It was my third one, and it didn't sell, so I moved on to YELLOW MEDICINE and HOGDOGGIN.

At what point in your career did you say to yourself, "I'm a writer."

     Either when I sent a story to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine when I was 19 (terrible story. Rejected), or when I made the decision to go to grad school. At that point, I knew I wasn't going to stop until I got to publish books.
     What's been the biggest challenge of self publishing? Most rewarding experience of self publishing?
     The most rewarding is the surprise of having new readers get so excited about the books. The internet makes that easier than ever. I love to hear from them. The challenge is reaching them. How do I find these people and market myself in such a way as to make them want to give my stuff a try? I keep looking.

What's the one piece of advice you'd give to someone thinking of putting their own work out there?

Make sure it's ready -- editing and formatting solid, reviewed by several readers -- and then be smart about promotion. People want to get to know you, not constantly hear your pitch. Give it some variety. Play around.

Give us a quick recommended reading list. What little-known books have you discovered that more people should know about?

That would take forever. And forever. Seriously, follow me on @docnoir on Twitter, and you'll see. I will say that I'm excited that PLOTS WITH GUNS alums (whom we call "Crimedogs") Frank Bill and Greg Bardsley both landed cool book deals. Awesome!

Now how about the three books you couldn't live without?

Collected Stories of Flannery O'Connor, LUSH LIFE by Richard Price, and the Dave Berry book where he went to Japan. The single funniest opening 30 pages I'd ever read.

Finally, what's next for you? Anything we should know about?

I've got a new e-book coming out in October called ALL THE YOUNG WARRIORS, more of a thriller than my usual noir chops. Still, very dark. Keep an eye out for that and the new company publishing it soon.
I'm working on some new novels. Seems like I have so many I want to write that I ended up freezing myself. Chipping away, though.

The print copy. One step closer.

2011-09-14T15:36:00.000-05:00

I mentioned a post or two ago that I was working on a print edition for Chasing Filthy Lucre. Well, today I got the final proof of the book in the mail from CreateSpace. It looks great. This will be the version of the book that I order for the coming convention that I mentioned previously.

Not sure exactly how many of them I'm going to order, but whatever I don't sell at the convention I'm going to make available to everyone here and on Twitter. I'm going to mark them somehow so that it will be obvious that these were from the first bulk printing of the book. I'll probably call them certified convention editions or something similar. I'll write that on the front page, number the book, and sign each copy. Not sure what the cost will be, but it shouldn't be too expensive. Something for folks who really enjoyed the ebook version -- or who just really like me -- to buy and have on their shelves.

I'm excited about this if you can't tell. I've got other plans that I spelled out in the previous post. For now, I'm just going to enjoy having a book in with my name on the cover in my hands.

Wanted: Guest bloggers and interview subjects

2011-09-10T08:56:00.002-05:00

So now that I've got a little time on my hands, I think I'd like to make some changes to the blog. Right now I'm thinking guest posts and author interviews on a regular schedule. Still working out the details in my head, but if you're an author of crime or sci-fi fiction and would be interested in participating, let me know.

To get an idea of how I'd do the interviews, look at this one I did recently with Steve Umstead.

Losing the day job

2011-09-08T09:48:00.000-05:00

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook then you likely know this already, but I lost my newspaper job on Tuesday. There was a pretty big reorganization and my position was eliminated. I was hoping that in the reorganization I'd be moved to a different department. It was a possibility, but it didn't happen.

I've been telling everyone that I'm OK with losing my job, and I am. Honestly. Thinking about a new job, a new career is exciting.

This company was the only one I'd worked for so there wasn't a lot of need to keep a real up to date resume. Any time I moved positions, they already had my work history on file. So that's what I'm doing today. Updating/creating a resume so I can get serious about my job search. I've spent some time this morning looking for jobs. I'm seeing some things that seem like they'd be lots of fun. Good jobs with good companies that could use the skills I've spent the last 14 years building.

Gina seems to be taking this job loss harder than I am in some ways. I think we are both understandably a little scared about what the future holds for us. We are in decent shape financially. We will be able to weather the storm for a while if I can't find something. And I've reassured her that I don't plan on being out of work for long. If I can't find a career job, I'll start looking for any job. I'm a healthy guy with two strong arms and two strong legs. I'm not proud. I'll put those to use if I have to. But that's not why she's sad. She keeps telling me this was your dream job. And it was.

Newspapers are all I've done since I graduated from college in 1997. They're all I'd wanted to do before that. Since I was a kid. In the fourth grade a friend and I drew up a newspaper. It had four or six pages. There was a sports section. There were comics. I made a World Series prediction. The Yankees to win it I think. This was 1983 or 1984 so I was way off. My friend's mom made photocopies of our creation and we passed them around the grade level at school. It was called Revealed.

I worked on the newspaper in sixth grade and then again in high school and in college. I was a journalism major. See? Newspapers were it for me. It took 10 years of professional work to get to the job I'd always wanted to do, the one I was doing when I was let go. I think that's what has Gina so sad. I was finally getting to do what I'd always wanted.

But I keep telling her that I got to do that job for four years, and it was a blessing. I did work I'm proud of and got to collaborate with some truly talented people. I won a couple of awards that will look good on that new resume I'm making. Would I have liked to keep the job? Of course. But I was in a vulnerable position in a company that's struggling, just like all newspaper companies are right now. It was just my time to go.

So, that's the update. The job search is on my mind a lot right now so you will be seeing more about it here. Hope you don't mind. And I hope you don't see much more, that'll mean I found something rather quickly.

In the meantime I'm looking at this as an opportunity to be a full-time job searcher/full-time writer. I am going to concentrate more on my writing and on getting the word out about Chasing Filthy Lucre and the world of New Eden that I've created.

So if you are inclined to help, you could do it by buying a copy of the book. I could use the 35 or 40 cents I get per copy. And, if you've already bought the book, you could leave a reviews somewhere. I can definitely use more of those. And if you've done both of those, you can help by telling others about Chasing Filthy Lucre.

To wrap this up, a lot of my writing friendships are the virtual kind. Many of you wouldn't know me if we passed in a crowded room, Still, you offered kind words when you heard about the layoff. I truly appreciate that. It's a comfort to me and to Gina.

Plans for print

2011-09-05T09:59:00.001-05:00

I've signed up for my first sci-fi convention. It's in a few weeks and I'm excited. It's a convention that's much more literary than what they put on in San Diego every year. It's much more literary than the conventions that are put on around here every year. At least that's the impression I get. One of the local newspapers called the convention one of the best annual book functions in the area. It should be fun. I should get to meet some cool people who are fans of sci fi. These should be my potential readers.

I am going to do what I can to meet folks and network since I won't be the only writer there. I'm also going to do what I can to hand sell my book. I've planned to have some postcards made up that will include the Chasing Filthy Lucre book cover on one side and information on how to buy the ebook on the other.

I'm also going to have hard copies. I'd never planned on putting out a hard copy of Chasing Filthy Lucre. It was just too short to make it worth while, or so I thought. But this convention got me thinking about selling a small number of hard copies. So the plan is to have some hard copies printed and carry them with me in a bag. If talk to someone and they want to buy a copy then I can go to the bag. I'm expecting to see a proof from the good folks at Createspace in the next few days. If it looks good, I should be able to order some hard copies in time for the convention.

But doing the work on the print edition made me think a little more about possibilities and I've got some ideas. Exciting ideas, at least on this end. It'll involve print editions, autographs, selling books through the blog and, potentially, a personal web site. The plan still isn't fully developed but right now I'm thinking there will be limited first editions copies that will be available for a little more cost, second and third editions that will be a little cheaper. And overall they will be cheaper than most self-published print books. That was a goal when I started putting these print editions together. I wanted to be able to sell them for less than $10.

One of the problems I've always had with self-published print books is the cost. For the author to make any money they have to charge a price that most people aren't willing to pay. Chasing Filthy Lucre, though, won't be that. I'm keeping the profits low in the hopes that I can move more books, make it almost an impulse purchase.

I'll go more into my print plans as they become a little more set in stone. But I'm excited about what's coming up, and wanted to let you all know.

Some advice from Chuck Wendig

2011-08-23T12:22:00.002-05:00

Haven't done one of these in a while, but if you're a writer here's a little wisdom from Chuck Wendig. If you like this, go read the rest of the post at his blog. There are 24 other tips on using social media. And, as is typical with a Chuck post, don't go if you have easily offended eyes. Chuck has been known to work blue.

"You are not a brand. Social media is not your platform. The world has enough brands. You are not a logo, a marketing agenda, a mouthpiece, a Spam-Bot. Approach social media not as a writer-specific tool (keyword: tool) catered only toward your penmonkey self and see it instead as a place where you can bring all the crazy and compelling facets of your personality to bear on
an unsuspecting populace, your audience. People want to follow other people. People don’t want to follow brands."

And we hit 100

2011-08-22T07:34:00.000-05:00

I wrote yesterday's post before church, not expecting that by the time I arrived for the service I'd find out that I'd sold the 100th copy of Chasing Filthy Lucre. However, that's exactly what happened. I'm excited about that. Happy to say I've sold 100 copies.

Ever since I started writing regularly in junior high school, this has been the dream. Not to sell 100 copies of a book, but to have people read and enjoy what I write. Thanks to a rapidly changing publishing world, that's happening.

Worrying about what you can control

2011-08-21T10:01:00.001-05:00

I'm getting close to a milestone number as far as book sales go. I'm one sale away from hitting 100 total sales. Honestly, I thought I'd be there by now. I started the month of August just four sales away from 100. So, a little quick math, that means I've sold three books this month.

I've heard from lots of independent authors that summer sales are slow and that August is the worst. "Sure," I thought, "but it can't be that bad." No, it can be worse.

Honestly, I thought that August would go well. July started slow. No sales for the first two weeks. After that, though, I sold almost one book a day for the rest of the month. Momentum, I thought, I finally have some. This will carry over into August. And I was fooled, because for a day or two it did carry over. I sold a book on the fist day of the month. I hadn't done that ever. Then I sold another on the third day. So far so good. Then I didn't sell another book at all until this weekend. Someone on Barnes and Noble picked up a copy.

I was checking every day hoping to see that third and fourth sale, but nothing. Until this weekend, I was stuck at two. I've been tweeting about Chasing Filthy Lucre. I've been pushing it on Facebook. I've had interviews and reviews posted. Still, nothing moves the sales.

I am starting to realize that what some of the more successful writers have been saying. You can't control how many copies you sell. You do what you can to let people know about your book or books. You make your best effort and hope that works. You can't, however, make anyone push that buy button.

That's why you concentrate on the one thing you can control: writing your next book. There's one thing that almost all the successful indie authors say will drive sales, and that's having more books available. Two books will sell better than one book. Three books will sell better than two. Four better than three, and so on. I'm about 15,000 words into Book 2 into and it's really starting to take shape. I always knew where this book would go but the details are in focus now, and that's a good thing. I have a goal, the second book being published by my birthday, October 4. That's very doable.

So for now, I'll keep doing what I've been doing and hoping that these slow sales are just the summer doldrums. That things will pick up once the weather turns cooler and the kids go back to school. And I'll keep writing.

And speaking of milestones, here's a little something I just realized. That last post -- the interview with Steve Umstead -- was the 400th post on this blog. That's kind of cool. Didn't know I was getting close to another round number.

Get to know Steve Umstead

2011-08-03T23:34:00.003-05:00

I met Steve Umstead through Twitter. He's a great guy and a great author. He wrote a fantastic book titled Gabriel's Redemption. It's the first book in a planned trilogy and a great value at $2.99. (Amazon/UK/Barnes and Noble) It's an interplanetary adventure that races to an exciting finish. I sent Steve a few questions. He sent me a few answers back -- while on a vacation out of the country, no less. Take a few minutes and get to know him.

Give me a three sentence summary of Gabriel's Redemption.

Gabriel's Redemption is a near-future science fiction/adventure story of a man, a disgraced Special Forces soldier, who lost his team and his command on a far-off planet called Eden. Now, plucked from the slums of the Caribbean, he is given a chance for redemption, with a new team, a new mission, on a new world. However, the mission, and the people behind it, aren't quite as they seem.

Where did the story for Gabriel's Redemption come from?

The story was written during 2010's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but the premise behind it was a scene I've had in my head for perhaps a decade. That one opening chapter, the people in it, the past that's behind it, created the entire story, and the character of Commander Evan Gabriel himself. I just knew there was a complete story behind it. And since it's an ebook, readers can download a sample and see what I mean by that first chapter...

Now pitch me on the next book in the series.

The next in the trilogy, Gabriel's Return, is, as of this writing, in the final editing stages and should be out for public consumption by mid-August. Commander Evan Gabriel and his team, having survived the previous mission mostly-intact, are being sent on a highly secret new mission, one to rescue an important relative of a good friend, and to take down a terrorist organization. However, the mission takes Gabriel back to Eden, the planet where he barely survived a massacre that killed his entire team five years ago, and the mission which cost him his command. Plenty of jungle-based combat scenes intermixed with political intrigue on three different worlds.

What are your plans for future books, both in and out of this series?

There is a third, and final, book in the Evan Gabriel trilogy (obviously!), tentatively titled Gabriel's Revenge. Things happen at the end of Book 2 that Gabriel struggles with and teeters on the brink of losing control, and he has his enemies in his scope.

As for after that, I've already got a half a page of notes on a different type of science fiction story, one involving a planetary disaster and time travel (I'll have to ask my teen son, who apparently knows quantum physics better than I do, for assistance). Also, I plan to drift a bit out of my usual genre for a stab at a present-day technothriller, as I was a big fan of Tom Clancy (back when he actually wrote his own books).

I'm stealing a question from Declan Burke. What three words would best describe your writing?

Hmm, good question. Um, Pulitzer Prize worthy? No, probably not…let's go with imaginative, realistic, and enjoyable.

As a self-publisher, you're really the head of a small publishing company. Has your experience owning your own small travel business helped you in your publishing endeavors? If so, how?

Actually, yes. Last year, before the writing bug ever became real, I set up our company's social media program from scratch. Facebook company page, Twitter account, Flickr, LinkedIn, et al. That gave me a big leg up (in my opinion) on having to launch my own program soon after publishing the book. Yes, absolutely, I should have started the social media program before publishing the book…but I didn't expect to actually publish. It was done for fun, so, when it happened, I found it easy to put a social media program together. I also think I have a pretty good grasp on web design to appeal to customers, an understanding of the financial and tax processes, that sort of thing. Whether that will ever translate into success…we'll see!

What's the most surprising thing you've discovered in the writing/publishing process?

That there are SO MANY other people, great people, out there, that are all in the same boat. I've been alive for forty *cough…mumble* years, and I'm not sure if I've ever run into such an amazing group of people. Everyone with the same goal, the same challenges, the same drives. Real, true, down-to-earth people; best I've ever run into. Truly incredible -- if I never sell another book as long as I live, I know I've found a form of success in the people I've met, people I know will be there for years to come. (As an aside, yes, most of them have been online. However, I was privileged enough to meet nine of them in person at Readercon, and they're just as fantastic in person -- if not more so -- than online…and I look forward to meeting many more.)

How long have you been reading science fiction? What authors influenced you?

I have been reading voraciously since I was very young -- one of my first memories was when I was 7 and read both Jaws and All The President's Men in my mother's room. As for science fiction, Star Wars in 1977 changed everything for me. Reading-wise, early on Arthur C. Clarke (there's a nod to one of his postulations in my novels) would be one of the first I can remember. I'm actually not a classic scifi reader; most of what I enjoy have been fairly recent, most notably David Weber, Charles Sheffield, Peter F. Hamilton, and John Scalzi.

Give us a quick recommended reading list. What little-known books have you discovered that more people should know about?

The Ragamuffin series from Tobias Buckell I felt was so amazingly entertaining and well-written, but you never hear anything about it. And while Weber is widely known, his Safehold series (number four is in my TBR list) was fascinating.

Now how about the three books that you couldn't live without.

Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising was probably the book that influenced me most, and I might not have had the writing bug without it. Great multiple plot, world conflict, tech and characters blend. I think I've read it four or five times. David Weber's first in the Honor Harrington series was excellent. He's an absolute master at realistic (physics-wise) space combat. And let's go with Peter Benchley's Jaws, in the original printed form (not movie). I still, after thirty *cough…mumble* years, can picture scenes from it in my head, scenes that were not in the movie. It really had a profound impact on me as a reader.

Finally, what's next for you? Anything we should know about?

For me? Finishing off the Evan Gabriel trilogy, hopefully by the end of this calendar year, and closing out his story. A few new works I mention above, as well as working on getting the Gabriel name out there to potential readers. But maybe the most exciting thing I have coming up is helping further my son's writing career as best I can. He published his first work last month, a young adult science fiction novelette called Shifter, for Amazon/BN/Smashwords, which honestly blew me away. I knew, know, that he's an incredibly gifted and intelligent kid, but seeing 10,000 words on paper, as well-written as they were, took my breath away. It's the first in a series of novelettes about the same character, and he's spending his summer working on a full-length novel. Big proud papa here...

Check out more from Steve at his blog.

I'm an author. A real, live paid-for-my-writing author

2011-08-02T07:21:00.000-05:00

Using the strictest of terms, I became a professional writer in college. That was the first time anyone paid me for something I'd written. I was on the staff at The Shorthorn, my college newspaper, and I was paid by the column inch. For every inch of copy that I wrote I was paid between one and two dollars. I don't remember the exact amount. But that's when I first became a professional writer. That was nearly 20 years ago.

But it wasn't until this weekend that I became a professional author. That's when I received my first check from Amazon for sales of Chasing Filthy Lucre. It's not for much money. I could treat Gina to a fast food meal out somewhere and that's about it. I knew the check would be small since my sales aren't at blockbuster levels. Things seemed to be picking up at the end of last month and I have already sold a book in August, so I'm hopeful. But I've been paid for sales from a book I've written. Using the strictest terms, I'm a professional author.

Summer sales and the dog days

2011-07-29T09:03:00.001-05:00

The talk among the indie authors that I have been following for a little while is that the summer months are pretty lean. Sales slow, sometimes to a trickle. It's not something that happens just to indie authors, either. The entire publishing world slows down in the summer. That's why I was trying to keep my head up when sales for July were non-existent early on.

The first week of the month went by and I hadn't sold any books. It was OK. I've had slow starts to months before. The second week passed with no sales and I tried to tell myself that it was OK. The summer is slow. But, to be honest, I was starting to worry. Had I tapped out my market? Had everyone who was interested in buying a copy of my book already bought one? I felt like most of the copies I'd sold up to that point had been the equivalent of hand sales in a bookstore. Someone had met me online somewhere and decided they either liked me well enough that they wanted to support me with a purchase, or they liked what I'd said about Chasing Filthy Lucre and they wanted to buy it. Either way, my sales required some interaction with me. And that's all fine, but at some point if you aren't meeting dozens of new people every day you'll eventually run out of people to buy your book.

I mentioned my sales drought on Twitter and someone who's been following me for a while bought a copy. I didn't care if it was a pity purchase. It was something. Then, just a few minutes later, my mother-in-law bought a copy through Smashwords. So two sales in a matter of minutes. That's great, and if it ended there then I was happy. At least I wasn't shutout for a month. But it didn't end there. I've continued to sell about a copy a day since then and right now July is turning into a pretty average month. Not a record-setter, although it could be if sales pick up and we can get more than one a day to close the month. But July won't be my worst month ever. It will land somewhere in the middle of months, and, after the way it started, I'm perfectly happy with that.

I have some more thoughts about July and sales, but I'll save those for next week. This post has already gone on too long. I'll leave you with links to places you can purchase Chasing Filthy Lucre, you know, in case you wanted to help turn July into a record breaker.

Click here for Amazon or Amazon UK
Click here for Barnes and Noble
Click here for Smashwords

Playing a little catchup: A trip and me elsewhere

2011-07-27T07:00:00.001-05:00

We got back from a quick trip to Galveston last night. We are trying to wring the last bits of fun we can out of the summer before Gina goes back to work. She's at less than a month now. Kids come back on Aug. 22 and she has to report a week before that.

We had a great time. Gina and I had each previously been to Galveston, but it was years ago. Back then neither of us left the place that impressed. It seemed like a bit of a dump, so we were in no hurry to go back. But so many people we know had gone there this summer that we both thought that maybe we ought to give the Texas coast another shot.

I won't bog you down with a detailed description of our trip, but, other than Gina's sunburn, the only thing we'd change is to make it longer. We had a great time and getting to spend a few hours on the beach was just what I needed. We got to drive around the area a bit and more than once we said, "I can't believe this is our state." It's easy to forget when we are up here in Dallas sweating out 25 straight days of temperatures above 100 degrees that there is an ocean less than a day's drive away.

I haven't been on the blog in a few days, but I have been other places online. I was at Allan Guthrie's Criminal-E blog on Monday. It features crime writers with e-books out. You can read the interview by clicking here.

And today I have a guest post at author Thea Atkinson's blog. It's a writing prompt post, but I talk about ideas. If you ever wondered where the idea where Consider Us Even and Chasing Filthy Lucre came from then click here.

My interview with Declan Burke

2011-07-24T06:50:00.002-05:00

Author Declan Burke sent me a few questions. I answered them. He posted my answers this morning. Check it out if you want to get my thoughts on which crime book I wish I'd written, my most satisfying writing moment, and a very small sneak peek at the next book in the New Eden series.

And, yes, Declan Burke is Irish. I'm international.

If you've found your way here because of the interview and are interested in buying a copy of my book then, first, thanks. I appreciate it. Second, use these links.

For Kindle: http://bit.ly/fdPGAo
For Nook: http://bit.ly/gfFg44
All other formats: http://bit.ly/fa4Rbl

The truth about beards

2011-07-21T08:01:00.000-05:00

I still have my beard. It's neatened up from when I was on vacation, but it's still here. I've had it three weeks now and I've learned a couple of things while having it. Here they are.

1. Both men and women will notice you have a beard, but very few women will compliment it. They'll say, "You have a new look." Or they'll say, "You have a beard." They will rarely follow that initial statement with a compliment. Men, however, almost always start with "I like your beard," or something similar. I think it's more an appreciation for what it takes to grow a beard rather than actually liking your beard. And, yes, it does take some effort on the owners part to grow a beard. Pushing through the urge to shave it off early on when it's just a scraggly mess is a real challenge. And, no, I don't really care what others think. Gina likes it and that's the only opinion that matters.

2. Beards always itch. Always. It may not itch as much after it's been given a few weeks to grow, but it will always itch.

Cover changes

2011-07-19T08:18:00.001-05:00

Hello, blog and followers. Been a while, huh? Sorry about that. I don't have a great excuse. I've been busy, but not so busy that I couldn't have posted here. I should have. I didn't. I apologize.

If you can forgive me, I need your help with something. I have a friend named Dave Wilson. I've known him since college. We met on the newspaper staff. He was our design editor. I was the managing editor. We worked together every night making sure the newspaper came out. He's a whiz with all of that design software and I asked him if he'd like giving a new cover for Chasing Filthy Lucre a shot. He'd mentioned an interest in designing book covers in the past so I thought he might be interested. He said yes and got to work. This weekend he sent me the first attempts. They are just take offs of what I'd done with the original. We are still working on a few things, but thought I'd ask all fo you what you think. Are we headed in the right direction? Is there something we should be doing but aren't? Help us out. We are thick-skinned journalists. It takes a lot to hurt our feelings so don't pull your punches thinking we'll get upset. Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

*Click on the cover and you can get a bigger version. Once it's up in a new browser window, click on it again and you get a REALLY large version to inspect.

Back to work

2011-07-05T07:21:00.000-05:00

Hello, vacation beard.

I head back to the day job today after more than two weeks of vacation. We went to Colorado for a week. We hung out at home for a week. We celebrated an anniversary. We celebrated a birthday. It was fantastic. I have a great wife who made it a lot of fun. But now it's back to the day job and bringing in some money.

Heading back to the day job also means I have to say good bye to vacation beard. After almost two weeks of cultivating it's going to be hard to say goodbye. So hard that it may stick around for a few days in a more neatened up version. That picture of vacation beard is from last night while Gina, Molly, and I waited for fireworks. That explains the sleepy look. It was dark and the light from Gina's camera was bright.

But I'm not just getting back to work at the day job, but at the writing job too. I've been slacking. I've been writing on Book 2, but not near as much as I should. I've also been slacking on my promotion for Book 1.

I have a few things in the works. I bought an ad at the Red Adept Reviews site. That should appear in a week or two. I also sent a request out on Twitter asking for promotion help. I got a few responses so there should be a few interviews coming out some time soon. I'd still love to do more, though. So if you'd be interested in helping me promote Chasing Filthy Lucre let me know in the comments. We should be able to work something out. If you can scratch my back, I can scratch yours. I'm up for guest posts, interviews, features of any kind.

Another review and another guest post

2011-06-29T10:02:00.001-05:00

We got back form Colorado late Sunday night and then spent yesterday celebrating Gina's birthday. It was a great week and, so far, a great vacation. Some hiking, some whitewater rafting, some hot springs soaking. The rest of this week is going to be spent doing some things around the house and sprinkling in some fun things too. May be running up to one of the Oklahoma casinos later in the week. Always fun if not always profitable.

Now for something else. This is going to sound incredibly vain, but I sometimes Google my name and the title of my book. I do it to see if anyone has mentioned me. I never find anything I didn't already know about until today. There's a review at the Vintage Crime Blog. You can read it by clicking here.

Also, I guest posted yesterday at Kindle Obsessed. You can read it here. I talk about the importance of supporting authors you like. And I wish Gina a happy birthday.

No Friday Flash this week

2011-06-24T00:42:00.001-05:00

Just a note to say that there won't be a Friday Flash post this week. I had enough in the tank to get through seven or eight weeks. This one was going to have to be new, and, since I'm on vacation I didn't get a chance to write a new episode today.

I did, however, get to see the town of Creede. It's a cool little mining town up in the mountains of southeastern Colorado. We stopped at the continental divide and took a few pictures. Gina grabbed a handful of snow at the end of June. We visited some shops, bought some fudge and some jewelry. That's a word that I really want to spell "jewelery." Have to look that one up every time I spell it.

At the end of the day we went to some hot springs for a soak. Here's what I learned. Water at 91 degrees, not hot enough. Water at 111 degrees, much too hot. Water at 105 degrees, just right.

Anyway, like I said, no new Friday Flash this week.

A freebie update: 1,000 downloads

2011-06-23T00:37:00.001-05:00

Still on vacation and not wanting to spend too much time writing. However, I'm trying to be better about posting regularly, so here's something.

Smashwords just got a sales figure update from Sony. Apparently, my freebie story, Consider Us Even, is pretty popular over there. I've had just over 300 downloads there since November. That means that, overall, that book's been downloaded more than 1,000 times.

It's astonishing to know that there are 1,000 people out there who have thought my book looked interesting enough to put on their e-reader. Seriously, astonishing.

I've also had a few sales at Sony and a few at Apple. Nothing great, but sales I wouldn't have had if Smashwords wasn't able to get me in front of those readers.

I mean, 1,000 downloads. Astonishing.

Checking in from the road

2011-06-21T22:59:00.001-05:00

We are in Colorado for the first week of our vacation. Look at that. Blogging from vacation. That's how dedicated I am to this blog. It was our first full day here, and we didn't waste any time. We hiked. We saw waterfalls. Well, waterfall. But it was awesome. In the interest of not spending my entire first night of vacation writing this for you all, here are a few pics of Day One.

A couple of other things before we go. First of the others is wishing a wonderful Happy Third Anniversary to my beautiful wife, Gina. The three years have absolutely flown by. It really does seem like just a few months ago we were saying "I do." I know that I will get some arguments from other guys, but I really do have the most wonderful woman to call my own. I said it in the dedication to Chasing Filthy Lucre, but I really would not be trying this whole writing thing without her support
I love you, Gina. Tons and tons.

The last of the other things. We are still quite a few books short of our sales goal for the month of June. We've had a few more since I did a little begging last week, and I am truly grateful for those sales. But we are running short on time here. If we don't make it, we don't make it. Still, I'd like to give it a shot. So, I'm asking again for your help. If you've thought about buying a copy of Chasing Filthy Lucre, grab a copy. If you've read it and you know someone who may be interested in the book, let them know. If you read it and liked it and thought you should post a review, go for it.

And to help you out, here are the links to all the major sites where you can grab a copy.

At Amazon.
At Barnes and Noble.
At Smashwords.

And like last time, let me know if you do something to help us reach our sales goal. I want to be able to thank you publicly in the comments section.

Friday flash -- Pirate's Bay, Part 7

2011-06-17T07:23:00.000-05:00

We are up to Part 7 in our Friday Flash adventure. If you've missed any or all of the previous installments click the Friday flash tag at the bottom of this post. Welcome back to Pirate's Bay.

We stood in the center of the yard for what felt like days, all of us back to back. We were expecting to have to fight a rush of guards coming to defend their own, but our attack was so fast and so unexpected that instead of charging the other guards just stared at us.

These clubs that we'd pulled from the fallen guards were heavy in our hands. They were made of a cold and smooth metal and I had never noticed until I help one that they were more than just something to smack someone with. That's all the guards had ever used them for. One of the prisoners would get mouthy or obstinate and he'd get a thump across the forehead. It'd either lay him out or kill him. The guards never cared which it was.

But now that I was holding one I noticed the knobs and buttons near the handle. They were all labeled with some sort of lettering that I didn't understand. It was mostly shapes and dashes. I twisted my hands around the handle and it felt like a baseball bat -- thin and comfortable. I twisted my wrists and the club swung back and forth in front of me. It felt lighter when I did that for some reason. But when I stopped and dropped the club to my side the weight returned. I swung it in small circles by my legs a felt it go light again. I watched the end of the club as I swung it as quickly as I could. That's when I saw the dirt. It was disturbed. A small tornado had built up, spinning clockwise. As I slowed the club the tornado began to fall apart. I spun faster and the little dirt devil grew larger.

Help me meet my sales goal

2011-06-16T06:07:00.002-05:00

I am uncomfortable asking folks to buy my book. If you follow me on Twitter (@JarrettRush) you may find that hard to believe, but it's true. Every time I post something there that's "buy my book" related, my finger hovers over the tweet button for just a second before I pull the trigger. My concern is that I'll become the guy I hate, the one who says nothing other than "buy my book." I've unfollowed those guys. I know how annoying they can be. I say that so hopefully you'll know how hard it is for me to type the next sentence.

Buy my book.

Here's why. I have sales goals each month and this month we are short of meeting it. It's a modest goal, honestly, and we aren't that far behind. Actually, if 10 of you would buy a copy then we'd be a little bit ahead of the pace.

I'm asking for your help now because Gina and I are going to be out of town the next week and I'm not going to be as visible online as much as I am usually. I'm hoping to have internet access where we are headed to, but there's no guarantee I'll be able to log on. So, I'm turning to you, my Internet friends. If you like me here and/or like me on Twitter or on Facebook, buy a copy of my book. Support me with your 99 cents. Links to several sites where you can buy the book are under the "Where to read me" tab up above. If you don't have an ereader, you can buy Word documents or pdf files from Smashwords.com. And if you do buy a copy, let me know in the comments so I can publicly thank you.

Now, to those of you who've already bought my book, thanks. You're not off the hook, however. I need your help,too. I need you to be my voice next week, and all the time really. If you've read my book and enjoyed it, tell others about it. Tweet about it to your followers. Put up a post on your blog. Mention it to a colleague over lunch. Tell a friend. Help me get the word out and help me make my modest sales goal. I don't have anything to offer than my gratitude, but I would truly appreciate the support.

Giving it some thought

2011-06-15T08:02:00.001-05:00

I've always doodled. It's a distraction. Plus, I'm a fidget and need to keep my hands moving, otherwise I'm tapping my fingers on a desk or the edge of a chair. It wasn't until I met Gina that I learned that the doodling was maybe just a part of how I listened and how I think. Gina's a teacher and she said that some kids can look like they are daydreaming or not paying attention, but, really, they are. Whatever they're doing is just how they think. It's how they concentrate. This drawing is me thinking and concentrating during a meeting at work.

Blog changes: Cracking open the door

2011-06-13T06:56:00.000-05:00

I haven't talked much about my ebook sales here so far. There are a couple of reasons for that.

One is that I don't think it's really anyone's business but mine. There are plenty of writers out there who will do regular updates on sales. That's not me.

The second reason is that I don't think it's that interesting for people who aren't writers, and that's who I should be writing this blog for. Ive been reading a bit about platform and establishing my presence online. I love interacting with other writers here and on other social media sites, but the people I should really be trying to reach are readers. And, yes, I know writers are readers. But the majority of the readers I want to reach aren't going to also be writers. One of the things I read repeatedly is that everything we do online should be about establishing your presence and letting people get to know you. Not just you as a writer, but you as a person. I mentioned on Friday that there would be some changes to the blog, and that's what's changing. Future posts won't be solely about writing and books. I am going to open the door a little bit on my personal life.

There will still be plenty of posts on writing and books and publishing, but there will also be more. Hope you like it.

Friday flash -- Pirate's Bay, Part 6

2011-06-10T07:04:00.001-05:00

Before we get to Part 6 of the Friday Flash story, just a couple of words to say that I've been thinking about making some changes to this blog. To say I'm not happy with how often I update it would be an understatement. I've been reading a lot of other writers' blogs. I've found approaches I liked and approaches I didn't like. It's all helped me to develop a plan for how to move forward with this. blog. Yea, if you've been around here for awhile then you've heard me say this before. This time I mean it. My plan is something that I think I can maintain.

One of the features that's not going to go away is this Friday Flash serial story. Here's this week's installment. Hope you're enjoying the story so far. And yes, they are all linked. If this is the first one of these you're reading then click the Friday Flash tag at the bottom and read the rest. Get yourself caught up.

They never saw it, our bums' rush.

Ivanov was in from the beginning. We also recruited Abbey and Jefferson, although they both backed out before we actually did anything.

It was a simple plan. Daily during lunch a group of four guards would gather in the middle of the yard and divide up the meager amount of food we were fed. They would then pass out the rations to each man. During their gathering is when we'd attack. The four of us and Mason would walk in a line toward the guards with Ivanov following a distance behind. As we got closer Ivanov would start running and when he let out his rebel yell our line would break and he'd come charging through.

And that's what happened. Ivanov broke the line with his head down and his arms spread wide. He hit the first two guards like a linebacker and dragged them both to the ground. He put his boot in the face of one of them, pinning him to the ground. He wrapped the other's neck up in his massive right arm and gave it a violent twist. The guard dropped to the ground in a heap and Ivanov made short work of his second man.

While Ivanov worked over his two guards, Tucker and I got the third. Carlson and Wicker handled the fourth. Tucker went high and I went low, wrapping up our man's legs. Tucker smashed him across the face with a rock and a long line of blood shot from his mouth, landing in the dirt next to me.

Wicker and Carlson took a bit longer with their guard, but in their defense he was the largest. They each buried a shoulder under their guard's ribs. He took about four steps back and then planted his heels and grabbed the back of each man's uniform. As he lifted each man from the ground a small Englishman named Mason came in from behind and took out the guard's legs. He made some sort of screaming sound and fell to the ground with a crunch. Ivanov put his heel in the guard's jaw, driving his lower teeth past his nose.

Ivanov and Tucker each grabbed a weapon from inside a guard's jacket. Carlson handed me and Wicker a weapon and pulled one for himself. We all stood back to back to back to back in the center of the yard. Mason stood in the middle of all of us.

2011-06-09T07:38:00.001-05:00

" ... writing takes more than wanting to be a writer.
Writing isn’t about making money or reading writing blogs or seeing your name in print. Those things will come, but they’re side effects.

"Writing is about writing."

This is from a post by Chuck Wendig. Go read it. Find out if you should give up on your writing dream. But take a case of Irish Spring with you so you can wash out your eyes. Chuck likes to work blue.

Friday flash -- Pirate's Bay, Part 5

2011-06-03T07:28:00.002-05:00

Part 5 of our flash fiction series. If you like it, let me know. If you don't, let me know that, too.

We sat in silence for more than a month. I was chained to Wicker who was chained to Carlson who was chained to Tucker. None of us knew why we'd been strung together like this, but it wasn't the first time it'd happened. It was, however, the longest we'd been kept this way. We were attached right arm to left in a long line that wrapped around on itself at least three times..

An overgrown Russian named Ivanov had been making tick marks on a wooden slat that held up the wire fence. He'd gotten to 35 when the guards came around, muttered in their gibberish that they speak to each other, and unlocked all of our cuffs.

Ivanov rubbed his wrists and grumbled something none of the four of us could understand.

The guards herded us all to the middle of the yard and we stood there for a few moments not understanding what was happening. The largest guard, the one with the tattooed designs up and down each arm and who we all assumed was the leader, came out of his room in the high tower and said something with a voice that sounded more than angry. He then turned to his guards and said something that caused them to back away from all of us by a few steps.

The leader then pulled something from his pockets. Small round balls that he tossed high in the air. We all followed their flight from his tower and into our cluster of men. The balls landed on the ground,made a screaming noise, and then exploded. We were all blown back and seven men never got up to dust themselves off.

It's been four days since, we know because of the ticks Ivanov has made on his wooden slat. The bodies are still lying in the middle of the yard. Whenever some of us try to move them to the perimeter the guards rush us screaming in their pig Latin and we all move away. It's been four days and the bodies haven't moved. It wouldn't have bothered us before. Something this time tells me that we will move those bodies, because now, four days later, things are different. For all of us.

Friday flash and another story

2011-05-27T10:40:00.004-05:00

Quickly, I never mentioned it here, but I have a story up at Shotgun Honey this week. You can read it here. If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter (and, really, why wouldn't you?) you already know about the story so you don't really need to click on that link. If you haven't read it, though, please click. Take a look and leave a comment. It's not a big time investment if that's something that will go into your decision-making process. Just 700 words in all.

Now onto our Friday flash series. Hope you're enjoying it so far.

He was geeked up, bouncing around and talking so fast that his accent made him almost unintelligible. He was saying something about a plan and a sprint and I had to calm him down.

"Stop jumping," I told Johanssen, my hands on his shoulders pinning him to the ground. He started shaking his head from side to side like a boxer getting ready for a fight.

"I have a plan," I think he said. "I'll run straight there." He pointed toward the gap between the mountains in the front of the camp. It was at least a half-mile away and all of us -- Tucker, Wicker, Carlson, and myself -- just shook our heads.

"He'll never make it," Wicker whispered.

"Nope," Carlson said.

"Then I run through the gap. I can get there I am free."

Johannsen twisted and his back let out a loud crack. Tucker winced.

Johannsen got down like a sprinter with one hand on the ground and looked up at us.
"Someone tell me to go. Play like you are a gun. Say bang."

The four of us looked at each other. Wicker said "Bang" and Johannsen sprang forward.

But none of us could look at Johanssen after they brought his body back. We assumed he looked like all the others. A crooked near grin. A rash on his cheek from the sliding across the rough sand. Likely one arm turned into his chest. His eyes opened wide, staring into the distance.

But none of us looked so we couldn't say for sure. We just played cards. I had three crudely drawn queens. One looked like a man except for the lipstick someone had drawn on with the red pen they had given us early on. The other two had long hair.

Thinking visually

2011-05-26T07:32:00.001-05:00

In the interview I did with Aden Penn I mentioned that I always thought that Chasing Filthy Lucre would make a great comic book. The other day I found that picture up there. It's by artist Skottie Young and that is the exact style I pictured when I thought about CFL in comic form.

An interview and Friday Flash

2011-05-20T06:10:00.002-05:00

Before we get to this week's installment from Pirate's Bay I wanted to point you toward an interview that's recently been posted. Aden Penn sent me some questions. The answers are here. If you wanted to know a little more about me, including who I'd cast in the movie version of Chasing Filthy Lucre, give it a read.

Now onto Part 3 of our adventures in Pirate's Bay.

Our uniforms have faded. The grays of the federation have become nearly white. The blues of the allies are now nearly gray.

We haven't had new prisoners introduced in more than six months so now it's becoming harder to tell who got here when. My uniform is more like a white jumpsuit now. You can hardly read the Hardesty stitched above my left pocket. The bars on my shoulders fell off more than a year ago.

The sun here gets hot, which isn't surprising. This is the middle of the desert. There are mountains to our left and right which causes the heat to sit on top of us like we were in the bottom of a swimming pool. Three men have died just from the heat alone. It's also why some have tried to escape. Johanssen went stir crazy. Nuts from the heat. Sad, too. We all liked him. Cussed like a sailor but funny as all get out.

Reviews: The key to success

2011-05-16T06:33:00.000-05:00

One of the things that seems to be universally accepted in the whole indie writing game is that word of mouth is critical. You have to get people talking about your book, have to get them telling others about it and why they need to read it. That's why last month I was offering free copies of Chasing Filthy Lucre to people as long as they promised to tell others about they story if they enjoyed it. While I haven't seen a huge bump in sales, they are going at a steady pace and I'm happy. I'm also seeing a steady increase in reviews praising CFL. Thought I'd share a few of those with you all today. Maybe convince those of you who haven't dropped your 99 cents on CFL yet to do so.

This bit is from the first review the book received. It's by Aden Penn and is at the site Pink Raygun.

This little novella is how I like my science fiction stories. Less shiny spaceships, and more dystopian grit. ... If you are jonesing for a little bite sized entertainment,this is right up your alley.

From Steve Umstead, a good guy I met through Twitter.

Rush seamlessly blends cyberpunk technology and post-apocalyptic settings with deep characters the reader can truly feel for. ... The story is fast-paced and progresses logically, with a couple of twists, and an exciting climax, then easily feeds into the next novella in the series.

From Elizabeth White, another Twitter friend and respected book blogger.

Chasing Filthy Lucre is a fast-paced, engaging look at an all too realistic possible future in which the rule of law has been replaced by the rule of the urban jungle. A little dystopian, a little cyberpunk, a little noir, Chasing Filthy Lucre is entirely thrilling.

Then this weekend I was mentioned in a Tweet. JT O'Connell posted an unexpected review, picking up on a small theme that I'd played with in the book.

Now and then, it is good to run across an author who appears to have a firm grasp on the differences between intentions and results. Jarrett Rush may be just such an author ... Check out Chasing Filthy Lucre ... It’s a good read and promises decent sequels to come. A solid purchase!

It's great that people seem to be liking the book and reviews like that are crucial to success. But what also helps is when people post reviews at the bookseller sites. Most of the people who have written longer reviews of CFL have also posted reviews to Amazon and/or Barnes and Noble. There have also been a couple of reviews that were only posted at those sites.

This one is from Jeffrey Rice at Amazon.

Chasing Filthy Lucre is a cyberpunk tale in the tradition of high tech, low life. But the tone is faithful to cyberpunk's noir roots, more than its scifi roots, giving it a real edge to it. Kind of a rusted, chipped, brutal edge. Sure, if you like Gibson and Dick, you'll like this. But probably even more so if you like James Cain and Richard Stark. The tension and desperation is that real.

And this one Margarte Yang at Barnes and Noble is my first, and so far only, five star review.

Jarrett Rush has an engaging writing style, and the first-person narrator brought you into the story quickly. The action is never bogged down with too much description, yet I felt fully grounded in the world of the story. It's hard to find a good cyberpunk story nowadays. I'm very glad I found this one.

I am fully aware that all of this looks like me bragging, and I guess on some level it is. But it's also me trying to encourage any of you who've read Chasing Filthy Lucre and enjoyed it to go to one of the bookseller sites and leave a review. If you have a blog, take a minute or two to write down some thoughts and post them. Because the key to succeeding as an indie is getting the word out about the book, and I'll take all the help I can get.

Friday Flash: Pirate's Bay Part 2

2011-05-13T11:43:00.002-05:00

We continue with our Friday flash fiction story from Pirate's Bay. Part 1 is here.

Carlton is dealing poker and his stubby fingers make the whole affair a mess. If you don't get two cards at once, the single card he manages to pull from the deck slides off the edge of our table.

The guards always seem to take a special interest in our games. It starts with a pair of them but more soon join. They pace around our table looking at each of our hands and then smile or frown depending on what we are holding. None of us are certain they've figured out the game.

The tall guard, the one with the tree-trunk arms who carries the long staff, he was walking behind Thompson a week ago and stopped. His face brightened and he called the other guard over. They both studied what Thompson was holding and started chattering to each other in a happy tone. Thompson turned to look at them and pulled his cards to his chest. The rest of us shoved our cards to the middle of the table and Thompson threw his hand down, face up. It was mixture of hearts and diamonds that added up to nothing. He just smiled and put a tick mark in his column on our ledger. One more win and he'd be tied for first.

A fantastic review of CFL

2011-05-11T11:13:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth White, who hosted a guest post form me yesterday, has her review of Chasing Filthy Lucre posted. It's great. She liked the book a lot, and that makes me happy. She also did a better job of summarizing the story than I think I ever have. The review is here. Go read it.

Inspiration

2011-05-11T07:38:00.000-05:00

At the day job there is a building outside the fence along the back of the parking lot. I have absolutely no idea what the building is. I guess it may have something to do with the train tracks that run next to it. I could be completely wrong, though. The only thing I do know is that it's a building that I love. I love the symmetry. Everything is even. I love it's color and how the roof hangs far out over the walls of the building. I love everything about it, except I don't love it there. I see it as a building that sits out in the open somewhere. It's surrounded by miles and miles of nothing. Just this building. There are people in the top floor. They look through the windows with over-sized binoculars, watching for anyone approaching who shouldn't be. If you ever see a building like this one in a story some time, you'll know where it came from.

I'm guest blogging today. Check me out.

2011-05-10T08:30:00.001-05:00

The gracious Elizabeth White has allowed me to take over her blog for the day. Go read my post over there. Leave a comment. Talk back to me and tell me what you think. Her review of Chasing Filthy Lucre will be coming tomorrow.

Last thing, and I don't think I've mentioned this here, I've got a 700-word flash fiction story coming up at Shotgun Honey later this month. Be warned that if you click that link the language in some stories can get a little salty.

Welcome to Pirate's Bay

2011-05-06T19:02:00.003-05:00

Something new for the blog. A few years ago I wrote some flash fiction pieces. All of them run together to make a series. It's called Pirate's Bay. Here's part one. I'm going to post each part the next few Fridays. There are eight parts already written so that should take us a few months. After that I'll add to it. It was something I enjoyed writing once, I'm guessing I'll enjoy it again. So here you go, Pirate's Bay:

They are holding us in a place called Pirate's Bay. At least we think that's what it's called. None of the guards here speak English. It's some sort of pig Latin gibberish and when they are talking they keep saying something that sounds like "Piree Bah." We've figured they are trying to say Pirate's Bay, so that's where we say we are. Who we say it to is each other, but when someone tries to make a break we always remind him not to forget the boys in Pirate's Bay.

The last to try was Johannsen, a dorky little Swede with confidence two sizes bigger than he was. Have to give him credit, and we talk about him with respect when we talk about him, because he made it farther than any of us thought he would. He was a good two hundred yards outside the barrier, running at a dead sprint toward the mountains, before he went down. His right arm started to swing higher than his left. His left leg went stiff forcing him into this weird hop step. He ran like that for a few steps before his legs failed him altogether and he went over face first. It took the guards twenty minutes before they pulled a cart out there and brought him back. None of us could look at Johannsen's face when they dumped his body onto the pile of others.

A critical moment for the WIP

2011-05-06T08:32:00.000-05:00

I'm in the messy middle of the follow up to Chasing Filthy Lucre. I've been thinking about the story a lot lately, mostly because I don't think I like it all that much. I mean, It's fine. It moves the overall story arc along. It serves its purpose, but I want it to do more than that. This one needs to be better than Chasing Filthy Lucre. The action needs to be turned up -- crazier, more exciting. Right now, it's not those things. There are a few fun parts, but it doesn't move fast enough just yet. I've printed out what I've written so far -- about 12,000 words -- and am reading it. I am starting to think that the best thing to do may be to scratch it all and rethink. Start over. Come up with a better followup that will move the overall story forward but be a little more action-packed than what I've got now. I think the key is going to be whether or not I'm comfortable abandoning 12,000 words of work.

I've deleted big chunks of stories before. Even abandoned pieces after a few thousand words. But I've never just given up on something after I get this far in. That's a lot of work down the drain.

If you're a writer, what's your biggest delete moment? Mine's looking like it will be about 12,000 words.

Sample Sunday

2011-05-01T10:50:00.000-05:00

A little something for Sample Sunday. It comes from Chasing Filthy Lucre, my novella that's available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and many other ebook retailers. If you like this sample, go grab a copy. It's just 99 cents.

I slid the keys to the truck across the hood to Berger and he grabbed them just before they fell to the ground. We eased it out of the alley and onto the street. Berger was behind the wheel and he grinned like a little kid.

We pulled to a stop at the intersection in front of Raul’s and I asked, “How long’s it been since you drove anything?”

“Ten years at least,” Berger said. “Don’t know exactly, but I can tell you that it’s been too long. I’d forgotten how much I liked it.”

I rolled the window down on my side and stuck my arm out, grabbing the top of the door.

The night air was cool and it felt good to have it race past me again. I had to sell my car five years ago. I hadn’t driven it in seven, but it took me two years to realize that I was better off getting what cash I could for it and letting the car go. But Berger was right, there is something about being in a vehicle, even if it’s in the passenger seat that made you want to smile. It’s what pushes those kids to try and get the privilege of driving as soon as they can. There is a freedom behind the wheel that you can’t get most anywhere else, especially walking everywhere by foot, which is what I’d been doing.

Berger kept his foot on the clutch and gunned the engine. It roared loud and we felt it struggle under the hood. The truck wanted to run and we didn’t want to deny it one last request. Berger eased his foot off the clutch and the tires squealed for a moment then we jerked forward and sped off down the street. Berger chuckled, and I told him to open it up.

He pushed his foot to the floor and we took off. We ran the length of the street we’d pulled onto and took a right once we could go no farther.

I let Berger drive us around for a few minutes before giving him directions to an abandoned parking garage near my place. We planned on keeping the truck on an upper floor until we were ready to execute our plan. And if everything went well later that morning, that wouldn’t be more than a day or two.

An avalanche of downloads

2011-05-01T10:22:00.001-05:00

Gina and I were at a wedding all day on Saturday. It was a beautiful service and a great reception, but it took the better part of the day. By the time we got home in the evening we were both tired, and Gina wasn't feeling well.

We relaxed for a while and took it easy. I didn't even sign on to the internet until nearly 10 p.m. But when I did, I got quite the pleasant surprise. I jumped on Smashwords to check sales and download numbers there and found that yesterday I had more than 150 downloads of my free book, Consider Us Even. Up until yesterday, I had just over 300 downloads of the book. As of this morning, I've had roughly 25 more downloads. That's almost 200 since I last looked on Friday. I'm astonished.

I have no idea what's prompted this. I have to think that it's being featured somewhere, either on a page at Smashwords or at another site. I've looked. I can't find it. I'm not complaining at all about this. I hope that it continues and I hope that it leads to massive sales of Chasing Filthy Lucre. I just wish I knew why it was happening. I'd love to be able to keep it going.

If any of you find out how people are coming across Consider Us Even, will you let me know?

Back to submitting

2011-04-27T19:03:00.001-05:00

It's been a while, but I've got something out on submission again. This one is a 680-worder that's in the hands of the editors at Shotgun Honey. Hope they like it, but, if they don't, I do. It's a piece that I wrote and edited over a couple of days. It got a bit of a revision in the writing. The initial idea was a good one, but a little too dark. I changed the end about halfway through. It's similar to what I had originally conceived, but this one seems truer to the characters I created.

I'll keep you posted on whether or not the Shotgun Honey folks say yes.

Submitting, in general, is something I intend to do more of as we spill on into the future. I read something on a blog that said the best thing a writer can do if he's wanting to build his audience is give them something to read. Made sense to me. That means I need to be doing more than writing novels/novellas for the e-bookstores. I need to be submitting short fiction. So that's what I'm going to try and do. Besides, submitting is kind of fun. Getting that email that your story has been accepted is very validating. Even rejection can be validating if the editor does it right.

Also wrote the beginning of something today that I like. Not sure where it's going, but I have an idea. Could be fun. Here's the start.

The corn spread out beyond the Ferris wheel, and when you were out a hundred yards deep in it all the sound from the carnival just faded away.

We’d been warned, once when we got into the fair gounds and once, again, when we asked to go off on our own to the midway, to be careful.

“I don’t want you getting into trouble,” mom said.

“Yes, ma’am,” we’d both shouted as we ran away.

The stalks now were tall and dry and they rustled in the wind that was beginning to pick up. We were both on our backs, Jake struggling for breath. We’d run hard and far, trying everything not to get caught. A long run in a straight line out into the corn was our last resort.

“Follow me,” Jake shouted and I ran after him, my feet falling just exactly where his had been.

That's it for today. Or for now. Who knows if I'll check in later. I could surprise you.

My time at the top is done

2011-04-26T11:49:00.000-05:00

Sorry it's been a week since I've said anything here. It's never my intention to be away that long. Seeing a tweet today about the weekly five minute fiction contest made me realize that I never told the blog how it all turned out. I won. So those of you who helped by voting, thanks. I appreciate it. But my weeklong reign as champion is over this afternoon. It's been a good run. I feel like I've made a difference with my platform encouraging literacy.

But my run is over. It's time to crown a new champion. I'm not going to be able to participate this week. Not enough time. So, to whoever wins, serve with honor.

I've dabbled

2011-04-19T12:53:00.003-05:00

Leah Petersen hosts a 5 Minute Fiction writing contest on her blog each week. She posts a prompt at 12:30 and you get five minutes to write. I decided to try my hand at it this week. The prompt word was greed and after five minutes this is what I came up with. It's not great, but I like it.

UPDATE: I'm a finalist. You don't necessarily have to vote for me, but I'd sure appreciate it. Click here if you want to show some support.

“Want to know what’s good?” Jill asked, sliding closer to me.

I sat my drink on the bar, paused for a beat, and said, “What?”
“More.” She turned to face me.

I faked a laugh and looked her in the eye. “You’re never satisfied are you?”

“Why be satisfied?” She waved two fingers and called over the guy behind the bar. She needed a refill.

“Because this is stupid.” I was watching the door in the reflection from the mirror behind the bar. I was expecting muscled-up company. We were sloppy. Working too fast. Doing this too often. Leaving too much behind. Creating a trail. The bell above the door rang as a pair of college girls giggled their way through.

She took a sip of her new drink and started talking again. “It’s not stupid. It’s profitable.” She tapped the front of my jacket and I felt the jewels in the inside pocket shift.

“Careful,” I said.

“Awww, you and careful.” She dropped from her stool and turned to face the door. “You need to loosen up, Thomas. You’ll have much more fun.”

“I’m not in this for fun. This is a job.”

“Not a legitimate one,” she said.

“Not in traditional terms,” I said. “But it’s not a game either.”

I kept and eye on the mirror and the front. Waiting. She was having fun and we were getting sloppy. It wouldn’t be long before the bell rang for us.

The way this works now is someone picks five finalists then it's up for a vote by readers. I'll let you know how it goes. You don't win anything but bragging rights.

Dabbling in flash. Again

2011-04-18T00:53:00.001-05:00

Everything I've been writing lately has been Chasing Filthy Lucre and two other stories in that world. One is the second book in the series. The other was going to be a stand-alone story. Got about 10,000 words into that one and realized that it's just not all that interesting. I may pick it up again later, but, for now, it's dead.

While I love writing these stories and spending time in New Eden, I need a break. A little time away from New Eden and Berger and Rexall. That's why I think I'm going to dip a toe back in the waters of flash fiction. Chuck Wendig, over at his blog, Terrible Minds, has been running a flash fiction challenge for the last few weeks. This week's challenge is a five worder. He's given us a list of words and we must work them into a story. The list:

“Figure.”

“Dusk.”

“Flirt.”

“Mobile Phone.”

“Wig.”

You get 1,000 words and all of those items have to be in the story some how. I've got a little something bubbling in my head. It's just the start of something and it works in words one and two. It's not plotted and I don't know where there story will go. I typically write flash pieces from the seat of my pants. The only thing I know about the next word in the story is that there will be one. No clue what it will be.

The second flash piece I'm going to try and tackle is something for a new fiction blog called Shotgun Honey. Be careful if you click on that link. The language, in at least one of the stories, is muy, muy caliente. The maximum word limit on their submissions is 700 words. I've got an idea here too. It could be interesting and something easily told in 700 words. I just need to figure out my characters now. I have a few ideas, but nothing in stone yet.

Flash fiction is something I started writing about ten years ago when I started writing seriously. It was something I enjoyed doing quite a bit. It gives you an immediate sense of satisfaction. From start to finish in a few hundred words. It takes a few hours to write and edit a flash piece, at least for me. Not saying they're perfect, but I'm happy with them after that time. I think these two stories could be fun to tackle and give my mind a break from New Eden.

If you're interested in reading some of my flash fiction back in the olden days of the late 1990s then click here.

Thea Atkinson streaks by

2011-04-15T01:00:00.000-05:00

For the month of April, fellow author, Thea Atkinson is streaking through 30 blogs and flashing us a piece of fiction. I generously offered her a space today so she could expose a piece. My blog will be back to normal tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy and follow the links at the end to see who she flashed yesterday and who she will flash tomorrow. Feel free to leave a comment to let me know if you enjoyed the streak, and you are welcome to tweet it or share it on Facebook. You can also follow the chain through twitter with the hashtag #blogstreak

Lights in a Blackened Sky

By Thea Atkinson

http://theaatkinson.wordpress.com

I see the fireflies first. They blip out Morse code to each other in the darkness: dot dot dash… dot dot. Then the stink of exhaust comes, the smell of fish. Rotten. Left in the hot sun and smeared like oil over cement. Wharf, I think. I'm at a wharf and I try to burn the thoughts into my cells in case my real memory isn't around to tattle when I'm found. Something tells me to scratch into the rug beneath me. The tender flesh beneath my nails clogs with fibre and dirt and rust. Rust. Would the original metal have been blue? Red?

"Get up," my captor says. I know he has a pimple on his chin -- I remember that. I'd seen his face before the hood came down over my eyes. "Get up," he says again, and I realise that if I don't make some move, I might die right here.

I roll away into the depths of the stinking trunk, my face shoved into the darkness, and run my tongue along the dirt caked along the sides. Engine oil. Fish. Don't gag. Just try to keep from swallowing down any evidence that might have collected in my mouth. Instead I scrape my tongue on the ridges of my back teeth.

"You don't listen so good," he says when I don't even try to get up; then he calls me a bitch. Says all women are bitches, why don't they ever mind? He grabs my arms as he says this. Yanks. Maybe I should say something, tell him I'm different. But he'll know better. He's been watching me. He said so when he bundled me into his trunk, when I'd snatched off the hood and my eyes went to that pimple on his chin. He’d touched it when he followed my gaze. His thumb had a bed of warts that formed the profile of an angel. Angel. Of mercy or of death? I wonder.

He muscles me out of the trunk. My legs forget how to stand.

Sounds of waves lapping at rocks and it's the only noise for a moment. He's a thick blur beside me in the dark. Fiddling with something. Bent over. Coming up with a long snake. Rope. Must be.

"You don't have to do this," I say as he drags me, stumbling, from the cement to the breakwater boulders that protect the wharf from invasive waves.

"Shut up."

He wraps lengths of hemp around my wrists. The rope cuts me. I don't bother to struggle. The ropes will still be there tomorrow; the authorities won't need to search for fibres.

He doesn't pull at my clothes when he pushes me down, doesn't force himself on me. No DNA, then. Just the rug under my nails, the oil on my teeth. But I know -- know -- I won't live to tell. And it will be just some mute bit of me in the end, left with the tale.

I close my eyes as I lie there, bits of debris sticking into my back. I feel him heft something (a rock, an axe, maybe) above my face and despite my resolve, I panic.

"At least kiss me," I say, and he pauses. "No one should die without comfort."

I worry he won't care how I die except that I should feel pain, but he shifts his weight and lowers the object to my side. I feel it pressing into my ribs, a solid mass with no jagged edges. Even though I open my eyes, he's still a bulky shadow that lowers inch by inch until I smell the onions on his breath. His lips are soft. Babyish. His tongue a butterfly in my mouth.

I bite down hard, tasting his scream. Chunks of his skin and the rusty tang of his blood fills my mouth. Was the rusty car red once?

Now there's fireflies again. Dot dot dash…

-30-

Where Thea was April 14

http://www.gaylecarline.com/

Where Thea will be April 16

http://ghostplanestory.blogspot.com/

Another nice review of Chasing Filthy Lucre

2011-04-14T07:32:00.000-05:00

Steve Umstead has some nice things about Chasing Filthy Lucre over at his blog. You can read the whole thing here, but here's an excerpt.

"The story is fast-paced and progresses logically, with a couple of twists, and an exciting climax, then easily feeds into the next novella in the series. Definitely a page-turner ..."

We'll be having a guest

2011-04-13T12:01:00.000-05:00

I know I haven't been around much. Not living up to my promise of three posts a week. I'll try to do better, but for today this will have to be enough. Wanted to let everyone know that we'll be having a guest on Friday. That's the day we are hosting author Thea Atkinson on her #blogstreak blog tour.

She's a Canadian author of psychological and historical fiction. She's written a dark bit of flash for us that I'll post on Friday.

So, pleas, be on your best behavior and make her feel welcome.

Want to know a little more about her? Check out her site here.

Where I ask again for help.

2011-04-07T10:21:00.000-05:00

I did this before and gave away a few copies Chasing Filthy Lucre. Got one very nice review and I know others are reading it. But, I'm going to ask again for help in getting the word out about Chasing Filthy Lucre. I think I've written a good story. I think many people will like it, whether they are a sci-fi fan or not. So why aren't people buying it? Because they don't know it's there. That's why I need your help.

If you will agree to read my novella and, if you like it, tell folks about it, then I'll give you a coupon for a free copy at Smashwords. Telling people may mean a review at Amazon or Smashwords. It may mean posting something on a message board, Twitter, or a blog. It may mean just talking with friends and mentioning you liked it. But tell someone.

So if you agree to help, leave me a comment with your email address and I'll send you a coupon code.

Thanks in advance.

No killed little darlings, just stored away

2011-04-07T08:21:00.000-05:00

Aaron Polson wrote on his blog yesterday about killing your darlings, not being afraid to take things out of your story that just aren't working. It can be hard to do. You struggle with a phrase and finally nail it. A certain paragraph is just so perfectly written. But they don't work in the story. They don't add anything of advance anything. They've got to go. You have to kill your darlings. Except you don't.

They may not work in that story, but they could work in others. That's why I don't kill mine. I shove them into a very crowded box on my computer and store them there until I can use them again. Several times I've been writing something. I get to a certain point and realize that I've already written something that would work perfectly in that spot. So I go to the box, dig around, and boom. No effort wasted. No darlings killed no effort wasted. Now those bits of writing may never leave the box. And, from time to time, I do go through the box and delete the stuff that is truly bad or just won't work anywhere. But I like that I have them to pull from. To use again if I want to.+

I have an idea for a superhero story that has been with me for a couple of years. It's a big story. It'll be one of those doorstop novels. Multiple generations. A family history as circus performers. I love the idea, but it'll be a tough write. I know because I've tried to start it multiple times. All of my attempts have either flamed out or just crawled to a stop. But I've got all of them. There are some good bits in each, and once I actually start writing the thing I want to make sure that I have every one of the attempts to draw from.

So, by all means, pull stuff from a story if it's not working. Being objective enough about a story and to be able to tell when something's not working is tough. Be glad it's a skill you develop(ed). It's a necessary one. But, kill your darlings? No, at least not for me. Just cram them away into a tiny box so you can pull them out later and dust them off.

A Consider Us Even update

2011-04-05T08:24:00.001-05:00

Smashwords just reported the numbers from some of the sites to which they distribute. Something surprising, at least to me. On Barnes and Noble there were 26 downloads since the story went live on their site. Not bad. I figured I had a few there. The story's rank has been in the 30k range for quite a while. But the surprising thing was that in the same time frame at the Sony e-bookstore there were 27 downloads. Never expected that. Honestly, I'd forgotten about the Sony site.

Overall, since the story went up on Smashwords there have been 350 downloads of the story across all sites. Those aren't world-beating, bestseller numbers but I'm pleased. Now if I could just translate those numbers to Chasing Filthy Lucre sales. Especially at the Sony site where apparently I'm doing better than expected.

Ebook pricing and loss leaders

2011-04-03T11:04:00.001-05:00

There was a debate a week or two ago on Twitter and a few blogs about pricing and the insult that is the 99 cent price point for ebooks. I stayed out of the debate because I figure that each author is essentially his or her own small business. A business is welcome to price its product however it wants to.

There are two arguments against 99 cents as the price of a novel in e-form. The first is that a writer's time and effort should be worth more than that. It takes quite a bit to actually get 75,000 or so words onto a page. Then to revise and rework. It's a lot of effort. In that case, I understand the argument. The other argument is that if readers get used to and expect 99 cents to be the price of an ebook it hurts everyone. Once anything more than that is seen as "expensive" then it's going to be tough to price anything higher than that. Again, I kind of understand that argument. It goes hand in hand with argument number one.

But like I said before, price your book wherever you want to price it. There are people making a good amount of money from 99 cent books.

If you haven't noticed, Chasing Filthy Lucre is 99 cents. A more than fair price in my eyes. For less than a dollar, you get roughly 80 pages of, at least in my eyes, a fun story. It's fast-paced, has lots of action, and a satisfying ending that also leads you into the next book.

For 99 cents, it's a great deal. I wish I could charge more, and I suppose I could. But I didn't feel comfortable charging $2.99 for it. It's a novella, just over 21,000 words. What I had originally wanted to price it at was $1.99, but that seems like a dead zone in ebook pricing. So, if $2.99 seemed too high I wasn't left with much choice. It was 99 cents or nothing.

And now, to get to the point I was really wanting to make. Wow, I'm long-winded on this blog sometimes. One thing you won't ever hear me call Chasing Filthy Lucre is my loss leader. I hear lots of authors calling their 99 cent book their loss leader. Except it's not, at least not by any definition I've ever heard of the term. A loss leader is a product you take a loss on as a way to introduce a consumer to other products you have available. That's not what these authors are doing at 99 cents. They are still making a profit of 35 cents on every sale through Amazon, and more when sold through other sites. That's a 35 percent profit margin. Are they making a killing per sale? No, believe me, they're not. But they are making money. Will it mean they have to wait a little longer to pay for whatever personal funds they sunk into the book's production? Yes. It's an introductory price. It's a smaller profit. It's a way of making less, hoping you'll make more later. But it's not a loss.

So are 99 cent novels hurting ebook authors in the long run? No, I don't think so, but it's a discussion worth having. Maybe my mind can be changed. But one thing we do need to do with 99 cent books is stop calling them a loss leader, because they're not.

Happy Opening Day

2011-03-31T00:30:00.000-05:00

The Rangers don't start until tomorrow, but today is still baseball's Opening Day. The world is right again.

The first Chasing Filthy Lucre review

2011-03-30T07:59:00.000-05:00

One of the people who took me up on my free book challenge liked Chasing Filthy Lucre and gone and told a bunch of people about it. Thanks, Aden Penn. Not only did she post a review of the book at Smashwords and Amazon, she submitted a review to the site pinkraygun.com. Here's an excerpt. You can read the full thing here.

This little novella is how I like my science fiction stories. Less shiny spaceships, and more dystopian grit. It opens up with a great action scene that is well paced and draws you right in.

How do you get my book?

2011-03-29T23:16:00.001-05:00

I've had a couple of people ask exactly how to get Chasing Filthy Lucre, so here's a quick tutorial.

There are a few ways, actually. First, if you have a Kindle or a Nook just go to whatever online store feeds you ereader. Search for my name there and you should find me. If you have one of the other ereaders then go to Smashwords.com and search for me there. You can download your preferred file format there and load it onto your ereader.

If you don't have an ereader already then you can get one of the ereader apps. Pick either Amazon or Nook and go to the proper site and download an app that you can run on your computer desktop or on your smart phone. Don't think you'll like reading on your phone? It's really not bad. I tried it out first before my family bought me a Kindle for Christmas. Wasn't sure I'd like reading on a small screen, but it's a reading experience that is easy to get used to.

Once you choose your reader, go to the proper site and search for my name. The site should automatically deliver the book to your reading app.

Now you're thinking, "That's nice, Jarrett, but, man, it's a lot of work." Granted, it is. One time work, but it's not just an easy one or two steps. If you don't want any ereader app then you can go to Smashwords and download one of their files that doesn't require and ereader to open. There is a PDF file, and RTF file that can be opened on most work processors, and a plain text file. All of those files should be something you can open.

So there you go. Where and how to get Chasing Filthy Lucre. No more excuses.

Can I get a hand here?

2011-03-26T13:50:00.001-05:00

Ask Gina. I need help. This writing thing is something that I have wanted to do forever. Forever and ever and ever. I've been writing since I was a kid. Literally. Like elementary school. Well, maybe junior high. Still, I was young.

But another thing I've also done since I was a kid was be painfully shy. I know I shouldn't, but I've always cared about what others thought of me. Not all others, just others that I know and will have to interact with on a regular basis. That's why the writing thing was something I did in a deep, dark cave where the only light was the little that came from the screen of my laptop. I didn't want anyone I knew to know I did it.

It's not that I thought what I wrote was bad, I just didn't want anyone to have a chance to judge my writing, and by extension, judge me.

I'm slowly getting over that, because I have to. If I want to sell any of these books, the first people I had to ask were friends and family. So I did. I swallowed my pride and posted links to it on my personal Facebook page. And I got some good reaction. People seemed eager to read it. That's great, but their friends and family. I'd hope they wanted to support me.

I also sent out daily promos on Twitter. Got some good reaction there. That was nice. A real ego boost.

But here's the deal. I feel a bit like I've tapped those markets. Anyone who sees me regularly on Facebook or Twitter and was interested in buying my book has likely already bought it. So what I need to do now is get more people to read the book. I need to get it in front of their eyes and let them know about it. Give them the opportunity to buy the book.

So, now I have to figure out a way to do that. I think I have an idea, and here it is. I'm going to give away ten copies of the book to the first ten folks who leave a comment here and say they're willing to do one thing for me. If those people say they'll be willing to read the book -- it's only 21,000 words, shouldn't take too long -- and then, if they like it, tell someone about it, those people will get a coupon code for a free copy. And if they're willing to buy a copy then that's fine too. Links are up top in the "Where to read me" tab.

Now, telling someone may mean just telling people you know who may like the book. It could mean leaving a review at Smashwords, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble. It could mean telling people about it on your blog or a message board. But tell someone. I need to start building word-of-mouth buzz about Chasing Filthy Lucre and the only way to do that is to get people talking about it. Are you willing to do that? If so, leave your email address in the comments or send me a message at jarrettrush@yahoo.com.

Hocking signs traditional deal

2011-03-24T11:45:00.000-05:00

It's in the New York Times. Amanda Hocking has signed a deal with St. Martin's to publish her next series. Apparently the bidding for it passed the $2 million mark.

Good for her. I can't imagine there are too many people on the indie path who would turn down money like that.

And I found this quote from the Times article interesting:

“I want to be a writer,” she said. “I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full time corporation.”

They attribute it to her blog. Read the whole post here.

Thursday quote

2011-03-24T07:55:00.001-05:00

"I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard saying, “But paper isn’t going to disappear.” That isn’t the point! If you ask the wrong question, the right answer to that question isn’t going to help you. So the question isn’t, “Will paper disappear?” Of course it won’t, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that paper is being marginalized. Did firearms eliminate the bow and arrow? No--some enthusiasts still hunt with a bow. Did the automobile eliminate the horse and buggy? No -- I can still get a buggy ride around Central Park if I want."

Barry Eisler at Joe Konrath's blog in a conversation on Eisler's decision to self-publish his next novel. It's a long back and forth between the two but worth a read.

Eisler and Hocking, a delayed reaction

2011-03-23T08:16:00.002-05:00

So my first full week as an indie author, the week my novella is available for sale at Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well as Smashwords, is also the week that Barry Eisler makes his announcement that he's saying no to a $500k deal from a traditional publisher and is going to self-publish his next novel. A huge turning point, right? A best-selling author saying that this indie thing may not be such a crazy venture afterall. Hooray! Validation!

Except this week was also the week we learned about Amanda Hocking, indie publishing's uber-successful poster girl, and the seven-figure bidding war between traditional publishers to sign her up. Oh, no. The indie standard-bearer ditching the indie life and going traditional. Failure! Un-validation!

All of this has me thinking a couple things. First, I think it's great for both of them. Both moves make a lot of financial sense for each. Eisler has a base of fans already built. Indie success should come easily. I doubt any of them are going to care whether his next book came from a traditional publisher or not. They just care whether or not they can get a copy. He can get the book in their hands faster and keep more of the money for himself. And for Amanda, it's a seven-figure deal. That's crazy money.

But the bigger thing I was thinking was, "Who cares?" I mean, really. I think both stories paint a very interesting picture of where the publishing world is right now. But who cares how someone publishes? We all make our choices. Decide what path is best for us and then pick up our bags and start walking down it.

I made the decision that I was going to give the indie thing a shot. I don't feel better or worse about that decision because of Barry Eisler or Amanda Hocking. I also don't feel like Eisler is some kind of better guy now because he's trying the same thing I am. And I don't feel like Amanda is a worse person for attracting the kind of attention she has from the traditional publishing world. But the reaction of some folks, especially to Eisler's announcement, was one of vindication. And, really, who cares? Walk your path. Walk it as straight as you can, no matter what your final destination is.

It's real now

2011-03-18T07:41:00.001-05:00

Chasing Filthy Lucre should be available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble some time today. And if not today, then some time this weekend. It's been available at Smashwords for a week now.

That means that this dream I've had for a long time, this dream of becoming an author, isn't a dream anymore. It's real now. I have a book for sale. It's weird to me to say that. Weird, but exciting. I like my story. I think it's good. I'm hoping readers agree with me.

I've sold four copies at Smashwords. From everything I've heard from other writers, any sale through Smashwords itself is great. Most use the site as a way to get into other online retailers. (If you want to buy it click here.)

As much work as it was to write and edit the book, the real work starts now. I have to market this thing. I have to let people know it's available. I have to try and get it reviewed. I need to find where my potential readers are hanging out and talk to them there. I need to see if there are any bloggers who might let me hijack their blogs for a day.

And speaking of blogs, this place is going to have to change too. What I write here can do as much to sell me to potential readers as anything else. No more rambling on about book progress all the time. Now I need to offer real content on a regular basis. It's something I've been trying to do lately, although I haven't been so successful.

It'll all be hard work, but I knew that going in. And it would be tough work if I were traditionally published instead of trying to do this myself. I'm ready, though. Ready to make this work. I have some sales goals that I'm aiming for. I'll keep those to myself. I don't know whether or not I'll share sales numbers specifically. We'll see what I do when the time comes. For right now, though, I'm just waiting on Amazon and Barnes and Noble to finish processing the book so it can be made available to the general public. Because now, this dream is real.

Help me critique my cover

2011-03-10T08:14:00.000-06:00

I'm reading Zoe Winter's book on being an indie author. It's great, by the way. Written well. Very conversational. It's like you are sitting in a room with her and she's just telling you how she's made a go of it.

Right now I'm on the chapter about cover design. She's talking about hiring a cover artist. She says it's not a necessity that someone be hired to do your book cover, but it's nice if you can afford it. I agree. It'd be nice to get a professional to do it for me, but I don't have the few hundred dollars it would cost. That means I'm doing it myself.

I've worked up something I like but wanted to see if I could get others' take on it. I was going for something bold and eye catching. I also wanted to get across the roughness of and grittiness of the story. So, others, tell me what you think. Did I succeed?

Thursday quote

2011-03-10T08:11:00.001-06:00

"Traditional publishing and indie publishing aren't all that different, and I don't think people realize that. Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it's harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house."

Amanda Hocking at her blog.

The Girl's seal of approval.

2011-03-09T10:35:00.001-06:00

Gina has been reading Chasing Filthy Lucre the last few nights. She's going to be the last set of eyes on it before it makes its way into the wide, wide world. Having her say she likes it is something that's very important to me. As long as she thinks it's good, then I'm happy. I hope other readers like it. Hope they love it. But as long as Gina thinks it's good then I can live with whatever reaction I get from the public. So, yes, I write so I can impress the girl in the end. Sue me.

Anyway, last night she's reading the last few pages. I know where she's at and what's coming up and I'm watching to get her reaction. I want to see if she's surprised in the place I want her to be surprised.

She's reading. I'm watching. Then her eyes get a little wider, her mouth opens in surprise and she says "What?"

Perfect. Exactly what I was looking for. I can't tell you how satisfying it felt to see that what I wrote had the exact reaction I was wanting it to have, not only for her but, potentially, for other readers too.

A little something in the mail

2011-03-08T15:39:00.002-06:00

On January 19 I posted a little thing sending everyone toward Sabrina Ogden's blog, My Friend's Call Me Kate, where she had posted a guest post I'd written for her. It was all about why I write. And since that time, that post has become the most popular ever on my blog. It's the one that's been visited the most. I can't explain it. I have no clue why so many people are finding that blog post.

Sabrina sent me a message on Twitter saying she'd send me a little thank-you gift for being a guest poster. It arrived in the mail a few days ago. Here it is sitting on top of my idea notebook that I always take with me to the day job. Thanks, Sabrina. A pen is always appreciated.

"Stuff I like" Friday

2011-03-04T08:54:00.001-06:00

Wanted to share a few things that I've found and I like. This may become a regular Friday staple. May not. Guess we'll see next Friday.

NEEDTOBREATHE

I stumbled across this band on the Internet. I was listening to an online radio station and the song in the first video below came on. I loved it. Musically, I'm pretty open. I'll give just about anything a chance. But there are a couple of things that are automatics for me. A horn section and an organ. If a song has either of those there's a very good chance I'm going to like it. If it's got both, forget about it. Well that song has the organ. I checked out the rest of the songs through the band's web site and you tube. The rest of the songs from that album were just as good. I listened to them over and over again at the day job. Gina eventually bought me the CD for Christmas that year.There is something about that singers voice. The impurities in it or something. It's just a unique sound.

She bought me the band's next album this year for Christmas. I think I might like this one better. Favorite song off it is the one below. This album has much more of a country feel to it. There's slide guitar and some fiddle. But, if you're worried, they aren't going to be playing it on your country radio station.

The recording quality on those videos isn't the best, so if you like what you hear go search them out and look for the real videos. The official videos are what I wanted to embed here, but that functioning was disabled.

DEAD DROP by Jon F. Merz

I started reading this short story while in the waiting room at the doctor's office. As I got farther into it I kept finding myself hoping that the call back to the exam room would be delayed. I wanted to finish this story. I got my wish.
On the drive to work I was still thinking about the story. It's a taut tale, with nothing wasted. Lots of action. It's a great introduction to Merz's character Lawson -- who, I think, can be best described as a vampire cop. I'd never read any of Merz's series, but that didn't matter here. He does a great job of placing the new reader into his world without wasting time or words. The thing that I liked best -- and, after reading the beginning of the first Lawson book, a strength of Merz's as a writer -- is the dialogue. There is a natural feel to it. These are genuine exchanges, something that's not easy to write. So check it out. The story is free and includes an excerpt of the latest Lawson boon, The Kensei. Grab your copy here.

2011-03-03T00:12:00.000-06:00

"The ebook revolution means that I have the freedom to write whatever I want and get it out there as soon as it’s ready for mass consumption. No longer do I have to slave over a proposal and hope that an editor in New York understands the scope of the project, gets excited, can then pitch it to a room full of supposed experts, gets the green light to acquire it, makes a decent offer (lol), and then tells me the book will be out in about a year. Now, if I have an idea I think is cool, I can just write the thing and put it out. If it flops, no biggie. If it’s a hit – all the better. But the amount of time and number of hoops to jump through for me to reach my readers has now been drastically winnowed."

Jon F. Merz, in a guest post over at Joe Konrath's blog.

My weekend at DFWcon

2011-03-02T01:07:00.001-06:00

Because I have a wife who supports this crazy goal I have of becoming a writer, I got to spend the weekend at the DFW Writers Conference.

I think of this thing as our little hometown convention. A gathering of local writers. That's why it was always a shock when I saw people from out of state there. Heck, even out of town surprised me. There was a woman there from North Carolina. I ate lunch on Sunday across from a woman who came down here from Independence, Missouri. Even a guy came from California.

I learned some things. I met some people. Made some connections. Picked some brains. I won't bore you with everything I took away from the conference here. I plan on doing that over the next few weeks with posts recapping some of the sessions I sat in on.

Just wanted to tell everyone that I went and say thanks to Gina for OKing the expense to go. It's nice to have someone in my corner believing that this writing dream ain't so crazy.

Told ya so

2011-02-22T11:59:00.001-06:00

Sometime yesterday afternoon Consider Us Even was downloaded for the 250th time over at Smashwords. I said we'd get there by the end of the month and we are a few days early. So that's pretty cool.

No idea how many people have grabbed a copy at Barnes and Noble, but I'm assuming some did. They rank their books and right now it's No. 57,066. That sounds horrible, I know. And, truthfully, it's not great. But I have looked and there are books wit numbers that are twice that. So that means some people have grabbed a copy.

My first rating

2011-02-21T14:42:00.001-06:00

Got my first rating on the Barnes and Noble site. Just two stars. Ugh. Wish it was more. At least three stars. That would have felt better. I have received some good comments from others on Consider Us Even and that eases the sting a bit. But the thing that may bother me more than the rating is that whoever left it didn't leave a review. That means I don't know what didn't work for them. I'd love to know why it was only a two star for them. I'd like to know if it's something I can work on or if it's just a preference thing for them.

That's all I've got today. Busy with the day job, but wanted to share that with everyone.

I'm up at Barnes and Noble's site

2011-02-18T08:04:00.001-06:00

Unless you know me from Facebook, obsessively keep up with the "Where to Read Me" page up top, or stalk me all across the Internet, you don't know this. Consider Us Even has been uploaded to the Barnes and Noble website from the Smashwords catalog.

I'm stumbled across it the other day. I was expecting it to go up sometime next week at the earliest, but I was on the site the other day and figured I'd search my name. And there it was. I know that if things go according to plan then I'll have many, many books up at many, many sites. But this is the first time I've seen something I've written on a big site like that, and it's kind of exciting.

And a quick update on numbers. Not sure if anyone had downloaded the book from B&N, but we are at 245 downloads from Smashwords. I'm guessing we'll be at 250 or better by the end of the month. That will mark three months since uploaded.

Also, we are getting very close to releasing Chasing Filthy Lucre. I'm making final corrections and shooting to have it ready to go by the end of next week. A little later than I was hoping, but I want to get it right.

2011-02-17T13:09:00.000-06:00

"Do not have your story began with the main characters reflecting on life, thinking about their current or past situation, or contemplating doing certain activities. If the opening introduces something unique happening, or about to happen, chances are you have an appealing hook. Start at the moment closest to the beginning of the main conflict of your story as possible."

From a post by Sherry over at Dark Angel Fiction. Read the whole thing here. Good reminders if you've heard them. Good lessons if you haven't.

Jarrett Writes

Some thoughts on Alcatraz

An even swap

Prioritizing priorities

The second Jackson Cane story is coming soon

Go get a kick in the butt from Wendig

Fingers Murphy for free

A look ahead to 2012

Something for your Kindle or Nook

The Greatest Story Ever Told, Chapter One

Luke 2 (New International Version)

The Birth of Jesus

A December goals update

Do you have marketing tips?

Laying out my ambitious December goals

The post where I grovel

My own Black Friday deal -- updated

Go get my newest, Reunion

Sample Sunday: Chasing Filthy Lucre

Autographed print copies available

Coming soon

A modest request

So, where have I been?

Get to know Court Merrigan *UPDATED*

Get to know SM Reine

Get to know Neal Hock

A price change and an update

A birthday wish

Amazon says 'Merry Christmas, authors.'

Noir and music : A guest post by Sean May

A day late

Get to know Fingers Murphy

A little of this, a little of that

Back home and ready to go

Get to know Anthony Neil Smith

The print copy. One step closer.

Wanted: Guest bloggers and interview subjects

Losing the day job

Plans for print

Some advice from Chuck Wendig

And we hit 100

Worrying about what you can control

Get to know Steve Umstead

I'm an author. A real, live paid-for-my-writing author

Summer sales and the dog days

Playing a little catchup: A trip and me elsewhere

My interview with Declan Burke

The truth about beards

Cover changes

Back to work

Another review and another guest post

No Friday Flash this week

A freebie update: 1,000 downloads

Checking in from the road

Friday flash -- Pirate's Bay, Part 7

Help me meet my sales goal

Giving it some thought

Blog changes: Cracking open the door

Friday flash -- Pirate's Bay, Part 6

Friday flash -- Pirate's Bay, Part 5

Friday flash and another story

Thinking visually

An interview and Friday Flash

Reviews: The key to success

Friday Flash: Pirate's Bay Part 2

A fantastic review of CFL

Inspiration

I'm guest blogging today. Check me out.

Welcome to Pirate's Bay

A critical moment for the WIP

Sample Sunday

An avalanche of downloads

Back to submitting

My time at the top is done

I've dabbled

Dabbling in flash. Again

Thea Atkinson streaks by

Another nice review of Chasing Filthy Lucre

We'll be having a guest

Where I ask again for help.

Get to know Court Merrigan UPDATED