by john | Aug 21, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
28
I pulled my truck off to the side of the dirt road as soon as I saw the lights of the trailer up ahead. It looked to be about a quarter mile away yet, but my big old Bessie made enough noise that if Jeff was paying any kind of attention he already knew we were there. Willis got out of the passenger side and made some kind of gesture to me like he expected me to wait in the car.
I hate to disappoint people, really I do. Except it seems like my whole life has been one long string of disappointments to somebody. I disappointed my daddy by not being a boy he could teach to play baseball. I disappointed my mama by not being the normal little lady she wanted to raise and marry off. I disappointed more than a few boys in high school by keeping my knees together a lot longer than they hoped, and now I was about to disappoint Sheriff Willis Dunleavy, because there was no way on God’s green earth I was staying in that truck.
I opened the driver’s door and got out, leaving the door hanging open behind me. The dome light in old Bessie burned out about seven or eight years ago, and I never bothered replacing it. I left the keys in the ignition in case we needed to get out of there quick, and besides, the number of grand theft auto cases in the woods of Union County are about even with the number of votes George Wallace got in Harlem when he ran for President.
“Get back in the truck,” Willis hissed at me. “I am not taking a civilian into what might an active hostage scene.”
“Then you should have thought about that before you let the civilian use her truck to drive you to the scene. I’m going up there. Jeff and I have always had a good relationship. I might be able to help the situation.”
He glared at me, and I could see the wheels turning behind his blue eyes. I know he was weighing his chances of getting me to do what he wanted, and after a few seconds he came to the right decision – his chances were slim and none. And Slim just left town. I relaxed a little bit when I saw that acceptance come over him, because the last thing I wanted to do was waste time and energy arguing with Willis in the middle of the woods while Jeff was a couple hundred yards away maybe hurting Jenny’s mama.
“Come on, but stay behind me,” he grumbled, starting back toward the house.
I nodded, and reached back inside the truck for the double-barrel 12-gauge behind the seat. I was willing to go into the house, but I wasn’t going in there without a little backup of my own. Just because I wasn’t the son Daddy hoped for didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to teach me how to hunt, fish, and shoot. That old gun hadn’t been fired in months, but I took it out to behind Karen Montgomery’s house a couple times a year and shot up some tin cans to make sure I still knew which end to point toward the target. I cracked the gun open to make sure it was loaded, then slung it over my shoulder and caught up to Willis.
“I thought you told me you kept the shells in the glove compartment,” he said, his voice low.
“I keep the extra shells in the glove box,” I said. “Out here in the country we’ve got a name for an unloaded shotgun.”
“What’s that?”
“A bat.”
He snorted a little laugh, then sobered as we stepped into the clearing around the trailed. It was a single-wide that had seen better days. And better decades. It started life as white with a wide blue stripe around it, but most of that was replaced with rust. The underpinning, if there’s ever been any, was long gone, and what passed for steps was just a half dozen cinderblocks with nothing resembling a handrail. A couple of the windows were gone, and yellow lamp light shone from what I assumed was the living room. I saw a figure moving inside, waving his arms and pacing, and from where we were it looked enough like Jeff for me to decide we were in the right place.
Jenny appeared at my elbow, rising up out of the ground with Sheriff Johnny at her side. “Dad’s okay. He doesn’t have a concussion, so they’re sending him home. Is she in there?”
“We don’t know yet,” I whispered. Willis’ head whipped around at my voice, and I pointed to where Jenny stood, invisible to him. He nodded, then put his finger to his lips. I nodded, and fell silent.
Jenny walked up to the trailer, then through the door. It always strikes me funny, how long it takes for the dead to shake their hold on habits from life. She didn’t need to go through the door, she could have walked through any wall just as easily, but the habit of years had her use the door, even if she was passing through it. I made a mental note to myself to ask Johnny about that when we finished up here. Of course, he was less than half a year dead himself, so he probably still had quite a few hangups from his time walking the earth.
Willis started forward, and I put a hand on his shoulder. I leaned down close to his ear, so there was no chance of my words traveling, and said, “Jenny’s inside. She can tell us what’s going on in there.”
“I hope her mother is still alive,” Willis said.
“Me too,” I agreed. “The poor child doesn’t need to see that.”
Jenny returned seconds later, a worried look on her face. “She’s alive. He hasn’t hurt her, but he’s got her tied to a chair. The place is all made up with candles and flowers, like he’s trying to make it romantic. He keeps yelling at her, telling her how she ruined his life at the prom, how he couldn’t help it when Shelly and me said that to him about going out with him, how he’s sorry, but she’s got to see how much he loves her. He’s crazy. Y’all have got to get in there.”
I kept my face next to Willis’ and relayed everything just as it came out of Jenny’s mouth. He nodded, then turned to me. “He’s devolving. We don’t have much time. If we don’t get in there in the next couple of minutes, he’s going to kill her. I’ll go in the front door, you go around to the back. If he draws on me, shoot him.”
“Give me thirty seconds to get back there. It’s dark as the bottom of a well out here,” I said. I took a deep breath, steadied my nerves, and peeled off to the right to creep around the trailer as best I could. I felt like I stepped on every branch and dry leaf in the county walking that fifty yards, and froze in my tracks three times waiting on Jeff to shoot me from a window, but I made it to the back door and up the rickety cinderblocks. The knob turned under my hand and I pulled the door open, sticking my head in a foot or so above floor level. I looked down the fake wood-paneled hallway toward the living room and saw Karen Miller’s back to me. She was tied to a ladder back wooden chair, the kind found in countless dining room sets all across the south.
I didn’t see Jeff at first, but he came into my view a second later, pacing and shaking his head. He was muttering something I couldn’t hear, but to be honest, all my attention was on the pistol in his hand. It was a boxy black thing that I guessed was his department-issued gun, and it looked like a handful of deadly in the light of the small lamp on the end table. Jeff’s head whipped around, and he trained his gun off to his left toward something I couldn’t see, then I heard Willis’ voice cut through the night like the crack of a whip.
“Drop the gun, son. This has to end right now.”
The second Willis spoke, I pulled the back door wide open and stepped up into the hallway. The top step wobbled as my weight shifted, and it threw me off balance. I stumbled forward and crashed into the wall. Jeff spun in my direction and fired his gun, missing my head by inches. The bullet dug into the wall behind me, and I dove onto my belly. My shotgun hit the brown shag carpet and tumbled away from me, leaving me unarmed and sprawled on my face less than twenty feet away from a murderer that I still remembered as a cherubic little boy in my Sunday School class.
I heard another shot boom through the enclosed trailer, and Jeff whirled around, firing his gun three times. There was a crash from somewhere in the living room that I couldn’t see, then Jeff was back in my line of sight, standing right in front of Karen Miller with his gun aimed at her face.
He looked down the hall at me, and as I got to my feet and picked up my shotgun, he got a confused look on his face. “Ms. Carter? What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to end this, Jeff. You need to let Mrs. Miller go and put the gun down,” I said, walking down the hall toward him.
He pointed the pistol at me, but I saw his hand shaking even as far away as I was. I didn’t stop. “You’re not going to shoot me, Jeff. You always liked me in Sunday School, and I always liked you. Now put that gun away and let’s talk about this.”
“I can’t talk about nothing no more, Ms. Carter. I done killed the sheriff, and I killed them two girls, and now I’m going to kill this bitch here. Then I’m going to shoot myself and go to Hell for all eternity where I belong.” Tears ran down his face, and rage mixed with terror at what he had done.
“Jeff, this isn’t you,” I said. “Tell me what happened. We can work it out. We can get you help. You—“
“There’s no help for this bastard!” Karen Miller screamed from the chair. She’d been so quiet to this point I thought he had her gagged, but evidently not. “Don’t you lie to him. You tell him the truth. That he needs to just blow his damn brains out and rot in hell until the end of time for what he did to my baby girl.”
“Mrs. Miller, that isn’t helping,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm while wanting to smack her upside the head with the butt of my shotgun. I looked over at Jenny, who shrugged as if to say “what can I do?”
I stepped into the living room and leaned the shotgun against the wall. “There, Jeff. See? I put my gun down. Now I’m not going to hurt you, and I know you don’t want to hurt me. So let’s talk about this, and see what we can figure out.” I looked past the distraught deputy, sweat stains soaking the armpits and neck of his uniform shirt, his normally neat brown hair disheveled, and tears streaking his cheeks.
Willis lay slumped against the far wall of the trailer, half on the threadbare carpet by the door, half on the worn linoleum of the kitchenette area. His gun was loose in his grip and his eyes were closed. I couldn’t see enough to tell if he was breathing, and the dark shirt he wore hid any signs of blood, but he didn’t even move an eyelid at my voice.
“I told you, there’s no helping me now, Ms. Carter,” Jeff wailed. “It’s just like high school, only worse! I should have never trusted her then, and I should have never spoke to her kid now. These damn women have ruined my life, and now I’m going to kill the last one, and be done with it. I’m real sorry, but since you’re here, I’m going to have to kill you, too.”
He raised the pistol to aim it at my face, and this time his hand was rock steady.
by john | Aug 16, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Writing
Well, I guess we were going to have this conversation eventually, and now seems like as good a time as any. Last weekend, a bunch of Nazi dickbags staged a march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one of the aforementioned dickbags murdered a woman with his car. Said dickbag was arrested, but the rest of the Nazi dickbags were not, and many online Nazi dickbags started trying to spin the whole mess to make it look like the dickbag driver was actually a liberal protestor. He wasn’t. There are photos of him in the line of Nazi dickbags earlier in the day.
This may come as a surprise to you, but I am not a fan of Nazi dickbags, or dickbags in general, but I particularly dislike Nazi ones.
As a writer of fiction, and someone with a (very limited) public profile, I am sometimes asked about taking public political stances and whether I think that’s something that writers and celebrities should do. Sometimes this is accompanied by the person asking the question continuing on by saying that they don’t care about Chuck Wendig’s or Orson Scott Card’s or Larry Correia’s or John Scalzi’s politics, they just want them to shut up and make with the entertaining. These folks also often rage about Colin Kaepernick not standing for the national anthem or Susan Sarandon speaking out against the death penalty.
If these people are folks I actually know, and we’re speaking face to face, I call them idiots to their face and tell them that since my art is part of me, and my beliefs are part of me, that I can no more divorce my beliefs from my work than I can painlessly amputate my own nutsack, and am about as likely to do so. If this encounter happens on the internet, I may not call them an idiot, because believe it or not, I’m more polite when people don’t have the opportunity to punch me in the face, not less.
I’m also six feet tall, weigh over three hundred pounds, and look like a day player on Sons of Anarchy. I’m not any flavor of badass, but I kinda look like one. So I don’t often fear people just randomly punching me.
But the fact of the matter is that I am a political person. I’m about as liberal as the day is long, and I’m pretty damn sure that shines through in a lot of my work. There are certain things I’ve written because there were issues of social and societal weight that I want to explore, and my own exploration of race, sexual identity, gender equality, and other issues comes through in my work. Yeah, I use my writing to work through some shit. I hope I take readers along for an enjoyable ride, but sometimes your punching in the face may be accompanied by a side of social justice. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read it. It’s cool. There are way more people in the world who don’t read my books than there are people who do.
There are probably more people in the world who have never even heard of my books than there are who have.
Wow, now I feel fucking insignificant. Excuse me while I go look at my Goodreads reviews to re-inflate my ego.
Time passes.
Well, that was a stupid goddamn idea. Note to self – if you want someone to blow sunshine up your ass about your writing, call your sister. No, she doesn’t read your books, but she loves you, and will tell you they’re great anyway.
But back to politics, or when to be political at least. I don’t advocate that everyone drop a bunch of heavy-handed preachy-preachy bits in every book they write. I actually had a conversation with a writer friend not long ago where I told them that too much of their religious views were seeping into the work and undermining the narrative, and they needed to cut that shit out. I’ve done the same thing with my work, telling editors “look at this section and tell me if I need to pull it back.” But to all the people who say “entertainers should entertain and not have political opinions,” I say, “go fuck yourself.”
But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.
I’m not going to wear a “Fuck Trump and the horse he rode in on” shirt to Dragon Con. I don’t own one, and wouldn’t wear it in public if I did. That gains me nothing. It’s attacking, and by extension it’s attacking everyone who voted for our sitting President. That gets me nothing. I have in the past, and if I ever lose more weight, will happily again wear t-shirts promoting equality and LGBTQ rights. That promotes something positive, rather than attacking someone. I’ve heard many times that people in authority should never punch down, meaning that I shouldn’t slag on new writers or writers with less success than me, and Jim Butcher shouldn’t pick on me so much (Jim has never been anything but nice to me, he’s a very kind dude in every encounter we’ve had). I actually amend this to tell people not to punch up either. Taking potshots from the bottom of the ladder at someone higher up than you only makes you look small, bitter, jealous, and petty. None of these are traits that will attract readers.
So it’s better not to punch at all. Except Nazis. What’s good for Captain America is good for everyone.
So I try not to attack individuals for political stances. I try not to let the politics or the issues overwhelm the narrative, because that is our job – to tell a good story, and any teachable moments that come along with that are a bonus. And I try not to let my political beliefs color the way I interact with fans, which I hope is always polite (or at least funny) and approachable.
And if people want to avoid my politics entirely, they can follow my Facebook Author Page, join the Facebook Group, or follow the Falstaff Books website, which have appearance and publication updates, but nothing about my personal life. This blog is my personal blog and predates my professional writing career. My Facebook page is my personal page, and it’s wide-ass open. I approve most friend requests that aren’t obvious fake profiles, but you better understand that you’re getting unexpurgated Hartness on there. The Facebook group is a 100% no-politics zone, and anything political there gets pulled immediately. So there are places that I don’t mention politics, but I don’t try to keep it out of my work, and I sure as shit don’t keep it out of this blog or my personal FB page. that’s my personal balancing act, which I think gives people that liken my words but don’t agree with me politically (some of them are my real-life friends, even!) an opportunity to keep track of my work without getting constantly reminded that we are polar opposites on many things.
So that’s what I do. Does it work? I don’t know. But I have to write the stories I want to tell, and I’m not going to hide my beliefs. So that’s the compromise I can figure out.
by john | Aug 15, 2017 | What I'm reading
Hey gang – I decided that I should share some of the awesome stuff I’ve been reading recently, so I’ll try to keep y’all updated. I don’t do the whole Goodreads thing, and Amazon doesn’t like writers reviewing other writers’ work, which is fine, because I won’t be doing any reviews. I’ll just post images and links every once in a while to stuff I’ve read that I enjoyed.
Let’s start with this one.
I’m not a huge mil SF guy. I just haven’t read a ton of it. But I really enjoyed Cartwright’s Cavaliers by Mark Wandrey. It’s got a great sad sack turns tough protagonist, with a lot of heart, and I found the book to be very enjoyable. It’s a tight, fast read, without a ton of subplots, but there’s plenty of behind the scenes machinations going on to keep stuff moving. It’s set in a world that is well-established, but I had no problems getting everything I needed to know about the world (and universe) without reading anything else in the setting. I think Mark knocked this one out of the park and I really enjoyed it.
I’ve mentioned on Facebook that I’m totally addicted to Melissa Olson’s urban fantasy stuff right now. I’ve been kinda off reading UF for a little while because I felt like I’ve read it all before, but these series push back against that mold for me. They’re very “closed-world” in that the supernatural beings want to keep their shit secret, at any cost, which I like, and the protagonists are well-rounded women with flaws and issues, but they aren’t totally broken (always), which is another trope that gets a little old. These are tough, strong women, but not heartless, and not cold. I really like the characters a lot. There’s some romance, but not much, just enough to where you feel like people can like each other, which is nice. I’ve read the first three Scarlett Bernard books, and moved on to the first Boundary Magic book. There will be more. Oh yes, there will.
My favorite book I’ve read in months is the first Soulwood book by Faith Hunter. Holy shit, Betty, this is a kick-ass novel. It’s so very Southern, and so very Faith, and so very tough, and has soooo much heart. I really love this character – there’s something so sweet and childlike about her that I adore. I can’t wait to read the next books in the series. For real, I’m late to the party on this one, just like with Melissa’s books, but goddamn this is a killer novel. I’ve read a bunch of Faith’s work, and this is the best thing I’ve read by her. Seriously fantastic blend of Southern Gothic with Urban Fantasy. I love it.
And yeah, because I’m a huge whore, I won’t hesitate to remind you that I have a new book out, Fireheart, which is very different from anything else I’ve released. It’s a YA standalone with dragons, and kissing, and a love triangle. Maybe even a little bit of a love rhombus. But I’m pretty proud of it.
by john | Aug 14, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Fiction, Serialized Fiction, Writing
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
PS – It’s my birthday – buy me something pretty. Or just buy something I wrote. Either one.
27
Willis and I left the Miller house not long after, after Willis directed Larry to take Jenny’s dad to the hospital and left Chuck at the house in case any calls came in about ransom or anything else. We didn’t expect the phone to ring; we both knew exactly what was going on here. I sat in the passenger seat of the sheriff’s patrol car while he got on the radio and ordered dispatch to call in the auxiliary deputies. There were half a dozen or so men and women that were deputized in case of missing children or elderly folks, lost hikers, or any large-scale emergencies. Jenny rode along to the hospital with her dad, unseen and unheard, but there to see he was taken care of.
Willis opened the door and slid in behind the wheel. “Everybody will meet us here in a few minutes. I’m going to station two of them in the house, probably Gene and Clyde. They’re old enough and trustworthy enough to babysit the place while Mr. Miller is getting checked out. I’ll have Chuck start the canvass in one direction, and get Ernest McKnight to head down the other side of the street.”
“You think that’s gonna work out okay? This is still South Carolina, Willis. Some people see a black man knocking on their door in the middle of the night, they’re going to answer with a twelve-gauge before they ever look to see if they know him.” Ernest McKnight was a respectable businessman, one of the best mechanics I’d ever seen, and about six and a half feet tall and blacker than the ace of spades. I did not want to see that gentle giant killed by some nervous homeowner while trying to help the police.
“I’ll send Irene Middleton out with him. Make sure she does the knocking, and Ernest can ask the questions. He’s been an auxiliary deputy for a long time, and was an MP in the army, too. He knows what kind of things to look for.”
“You know they ain’t going to find anything,” I said.
“I know we have to try everything we can think of,” he growled.
“I’m not arguing that, Willis,” I said. “I’m just saying that…well, I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I can’t help none with the living.”
“You’re helping me, Lila Grace. This is my first real case in this town, with these people. I need somebody to be my touchstone, to keep me grounded. That’s why you’re here – because I trust you, and because everybody here trusts you.”
“Everybody here is scared shitless that I might really be able to talk to their dead relatives and find out all the dirt on them.” I was grumbling, but Willis’ words made me feel good, like I was useful.
“Well, there’s probably a little of that, too,” he agreed, and I slapped him on the arm. We both laughed, then headlights appeared and he was out of the car to give instruction to the new arrivals.
I waited patiently for about three seconds, then started to fidget. I got out of the car, knowing full well that if I sat there much longer I was going to start messing with the switches and buttons on the dash. The last thing any of us needed was me firing up the siren on Church Street in the middle of the night. Not that anybody within a mile of us was asleep. If there’s one sure way to wake up small-town folk in the middle of the night, it’s turn on some police lights.
I felt a chill on my arm and looked to my left, starting a little as Sheriff Johnny looked at me, his hand on my shoulder and a worried expression on his face. “Good Lord, Johnny, you scared the fire out of me!” I said. “What’s wrong? I mean, more than what I already know about, that is.”
Johnny didn’t speak. Johnny never spoke, except for that one time a couple days ago. He was a quiet man in life, and death hadn’t loosened his tongue any. Some ghosts are just barely different from when they were living, but some are mere shades of their former selves, no pun intended. Johnny seemed to be fading the longer he was around. I had a fleeting worry that he needed to cross over soon, or there wouldn’t be anything left to pass on to the other side.
I don’t know what that means, what waits for anyone after they leave our world for the next, but my faith tells me that even though some souls wander the earth for a time after their bodies die, eventually they move on to a better place. Well, not all. Young Jeffrey was very quickly getting relegated to the list of people I wanted to see go to a much worse place.
“What is it, Johnny? Did you find something?” He nodded, and motioned for me to follow him. I did, walking down the sidewalk several houses to the Terrance house. I knew that Jackie and Mike Terrance were in Michigan for a month, visiting their new grandbaby, so I wasn’t sure what Johnny wanted me to see there. He stopped at the mouth of the driveway and pointed down, but of course O couldn’t see anything. I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight app, shining the bright LED beam down at the ground. There, in the mud built up in the dip between their driveway and the street, was a set of fresh tire tracks. There was no reason for anyone to be at the Terrance house with them gone, and it had just rained a few days ago, so these tracks were almost certainly from tonight. Which meant they were Jeff’s.
“Well, what about it, Johnny? We know he drove here. Are you telling me there’s something about these tracks that Willis needs to know?” He nodded. “Alright, then. Let me text him, and we’ll see what we can figure out.” I took a photo of the tracks with my phone and texted it to Willis, telling him that Johnny pointed them out at the Terrance house.
“Stay there. Don’t touch the tracks. Be there in 5.” Was the reply I got, so I went over and sat down on the retaining wall Mike Terrance built out of rocks he picked up out of the Broad River last summer. A few minutes later, Willis came walking up, his own flashlight cutting a narrow beam through the dark night.
I got up and walked over to the tire prints. “Here you go. I don’t know what good this does us. We knew he drive here. It ain’t like he was going to carry Mrs. Miller off over his shoulders.”
“It tells us he ain’t in his squad car,” Willis said. “The treads don’t match the department-issue tires. And these are big tires, not like the car I’ve seen Jeff drive around town. These are from a pickup, or an SUV. Maybe something with four-wheel drive. From that, I’d guess he had to do some off-roading to get to wherever he’s holding Mrs. Miller, or at the very least, down some rough dirt roads.”
Johnny was nodding so hard I thought his head would pop off. Obviously Willis was saying what Johnny was thinking, I just couldn’t figure out all the connections. I wracked my brain, trying to remember anything from Jeff’s childhood about hunting cabins, or favorite spots in the woods, or…
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s got to be where he took her.”
“Where?” Willis asked.
“I’m not real sure, we should probably ask Cracker, but I seem to recall there being something about Jeff’s daddy having a little piece of property over on John D. Long Lake, with a trailer or a fishing cabin, or something like that. I think his daddy called it his quiet place. Jeff talked one time in Sunday School about going with his daddy to the quiet place, and how much he liked it there.”
“That sounds like the perfect place to take somebody if you don’t want to be seen,” Willis said.
“And it’s not far from where he dumped Shelly’s body. Do you think he might have…”
“I don’t know,” Willis interrupted me before my thoughts went too far down that path. “Her body was in the water too long to know if there was any kind of sexual assault, so don’t think about that right now. Just think that if he’s got some kind of deranged fantasy playing out in his head, that Mrs. Miller might still be alive.”
“As long as we can find that place and get to her fast enough,” I said.
“Welcome to the wonders of the internet,” Willis said. “Let’s get back to the car.” We can look up property records online with the computer in the car.”
I followed him back to the car and slid into the passenger seat. He tapped a few buttons and looked annoyed.
“Nothing under his name. I know he rents the house he lives in from Clint Maxwell, but whatever other place he’s got oughta show up in the tax records.”
“Maybe it’s under his daddy’s name still?” I half-asked, half-suggested. “Try Richard Walker.”
He tapped the keys, then grimaced, shaking his head. “What’s his mother’s name?”
“Serinda Walker. Her maiden name was Cowen. Try that, too.”
A few more taps, more head shaking, then more tapping and more scowling. “Nothing. How does a person as transparent as Jeff keeps something like property hidden. I wouldn’t think he was somebody that would think like that.”
“I wouldn’t think he was somebody that would kill two teenagers and kidnap a woman, either,” I said.
“We don’t know that he did, Lila Grace,” Willis said, a cautious tone to his voice.
“Don’t use that policeman tone of voice with me, Willis Dunleavy,” I snapped. “You know as well as I do that boy is our best and only suspect, and if he don’t have that woman in his fishing trailer, wherever the hell it is, we ain’t got a snowball’s chance in Hell of getting her back. I looked into that man’s eyes and I promised him we would bring his wife home. He’s already lost his little girl. That woman is the only thing left keeping him in this world, so if we can’t do that, we might as well put a bullet in his head when we give him the news.”
Willis’ eyes were haunted, and he wore the face of a man who had told too many families their loved ones weren’t coming home. “I know, Lila. I know.”
I felt a little twinge in my chest. “Nobody calls me just Lila,” I said.
“I do.” Those two little words, in the middle of the night, sitting in a police car hunting down a murderer and trying to bring Karen Miller home safely, rang deep inside me. This was not a man who planned on just visiting in my life. He was part of me to stay. I took a deep breath, realizing I liked that feeling, then turned my attention back to the task at hand.
“Try Dargin Feemster,” I said.
“What the hell is a Dargin Feemster?”
“That’s Jeff’s granddaddy. He’s liable to have never switched the deed over when his Pap died, just kept paying the tax bill every year. The county wouldn’t care, as long as they got their little piece of money, and Jeff probably never thought anything about it.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Willis muttered. “There it is. A little six-acre plot on the lake, a couple miles from the main road. Ain’t no way to get there in a car, but I reckon that old Bronco of Jeff’s would do just fine. It’s got about fifty yards of frontage onto the lake, just enough for a little dock to fish off of.”
“If he’s anywhere, that’s where he’ll be,” I said. “We ain’t getting there in this Chevrolet, though. We’ll take my pickup. It’ll get us through about anything.”
“Then let’s go bring her home.” Willis said, putting the car in gear and tearing off on a ghost-fueled rescue mission.
by john | Aug 8, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Promos/Giveaways
A lot of people have asked me how I can find the courage to promote my work without feeling like an asshole. Well, I can’t tell you how to do that, because I can’t help how you feel. I can’t even tell you how to promote your books without other people thinking you’re an asshole, because I can’t help how they feel, either. No matter how often I ask my cat to build one for me, I don’t yet have a functioning Public Opinion Control Ray Gun.
And I should never, ever be trusted with such technology. With great power, comes great potential for hilarity, and I think I would do lots of funny shit with that, but not very much good.
But I digress.
So there are two kinds of writers – the kind who promote their shit, and the kind that don’t make any money. You decide which one you want to be, and behave accordingly.
That is, of course, a vast oversimplification. But let’s take a look at some ways that you can promote your book without being an asshole.
1) Promote to your mailing list – I might have mentioned before on this blog that mailing lists are pretty damned important. These are people who already want to read your shit, and are inclined to give you money for the privilege. Let them. Take their money. They want you to have it. Do not be ashamed of taking their money. Instead, think of what a favor you are doing these poor people who have too much cash, and need some way to spend it. Be a giver. Give them the warm fuzzy feeling of spending money with you.
Some people post to their mailing list every week. I think that’s a little too often. Some people post to their mailing list only when they have a new release. That’s probably not often enough, unless you release a book every single month. I think you should probably communicate with your mailing list at least once a month.
“But what do I say?” “I don’t have anything to say!” “I’m booooooring!”
Well, you’re probably right. But if you are, then what are you saying on Facebook all the damn time? Are you going to a convention next month? Newsletter. Are you releasing the audiobook of the book you released two months ago? Newsletter. Did you just sign a contract for four books? Newsletter.
The point is that you can come up with something relevant to your writing career once a month, unless you just aren’t writing anything, aren’t releasing anything, and aren’t doing anything to promote yourself. If that’s the case, then you’re not a writer, you’re someone who talks about wanting to be a writer, and that’s not who I’m talking to here. I’m writing these posts for people who actually want to sell books. If you want to talk about being a writer, or want to writer for the love of it, that’s fine. But you’re not the audience for these posts. You should read my serialized fiction every Monday and buy all my other shit.
So yeah, you need to send out a newsletter at least once a month. Some folks like to send out serialized fiction once a month in their newsletter. This is a great idea and it gives you potential readers a reason to sign up and stick around. I personally don’t do it, but I’m serializing two novels right now, so I think I give away enough writing. The first one is on this site every Monday, and the other is on my Patreon.
So by sending out newsletters, you are communicating with people who have already said they want to hear from you, thus – you are not an asshole.
2) Post to your Author FB Page – You do have one, right? If you have at least one book out, you need to have a presence on Facebook. If you use Facebook at all. Don’t do it if you hate Facebook, but if you have any use for FB, you need to have an author page.
Then you need to write shit on there. Frequently. Like, all the fucking time.
This is just like a newsletter. The people who like your FB author page want to hear about your work. If they don’t, they won’t follow the page. I feel like you should promote each thing you have out in the world once per day on your author page. Got an ebook? 1 Post. Got a newsletter? Another post. Blog? Another post. Audiobook? Another post. Before you know it, you can have a dozen things that you’re promoting on your Author page.
Don’t get all shy and awkward about posting there, because 1) the people who like this page are still predisposed to give you money, and it’s rude to turn them down, and 2) FB throttles your feed so much that only 10-20% of your friends and followers see the things you post. So it’s entirely possible that if you have eight posts on your FB wall, any given person who likes your work may only see two of them. So while you think you’re blasting the universe with a million bits of spam, they think you’re super-restrained and only post a couple times a day,
It’s okay, I won’t tell them.
3) Post things with cute pictures – When Natania Barron got print copies of her new novella, she posted an adorable picture of herself holding them. People love that shit. They love seeing you get excited about shit. So post pictures. Take your new book on a tour of the country, and post with it at landmarks. Or ask your FB tribe to send in pics of them holding your book in various places, and share those pics. Images are awesome on the internet, and funny pictures are even awesomer. That’s why I use the pic of the grinning chimp for all these posts. That, and it’s not a terrible likeness. 🙂
4) Post in threads where people ask for people to post what they’re working on – A bunch of folks will make posts like “Tell me about your new release.” DO IT. FFS, they’re asking you. They’re begging you to provide content and engagement with their page, and they’re offering promotion in exchange. Take them up on their kind offer.
Same for blog posts. Remember, I offer a guest blog spot every Friday for people to send me stuff about their new books. Just write up a post around 500-1,000 words on where the idea for your book came from, and send it along with buy links and a cover image. You’re reading this, so obviously somebody sees this site, right? Take advantage of the opportunities that people offer you. Because if you provide them content, they will link you, and give you a shout out, and make sure generally your guest post is at least somewhat promoted, because they want you to see value in it for you as well as for them.
There’s a few ways to promote without looking like an asshole. Some of these are easy, some are less so. They all take a certain amount of getting out of your own head to do. But they all pay dividends. So get your ass to writing, and send me a post for Evolution!
