by john | Feb 20, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Serialized Fiction, Writing
It’s Monday, so here’s another Chapter of Amazing Grace. That’s at least what I’m tentatively calling it. Hope y’all enjoy it.
Chapter 2
It took a week and a half, but I soon found out just how right Sheriff Dunleavy was. I was bringing in tomatoes when I first saw the poor dear, sitting on the steps to my back porch with her head in her hands. Not literally, of course. Even the dead have some sense of propriety.
I walked past her at first, giving her a glance to make sure she was really dead and not just some misguided cheerleader from the high school selling candy for the prom, or magazine subscriptions for the winter formal, or seed packets for the study abroad program. I’ve disappointed so many of those children for so many years, it’s almost like a game now. They come up with new and even more interesting ways to get me to part with my money, and I come up with different ways to say “no.” But no, this wasn’t a living child here to be disappointed by an old woman on a fixed income. This child was dead, all her disappointments were now behind her.
I laid out the tomatoes on top of the washing machine on a dishtowel I’d put down that morning just for that reason, and went into the kitchen. I washed my hands and face, put my gardening gloves on the windowsill over the sink, and went back out to the porch. I sat down in the rocker my nephew Jason and his second wife gave me for Christmas one year and looked at the child sitting on my steps.
“Well, come on,sweetie. Let’s have it. What’s got you coming to see the crazy old woman that talks to dead people? Except you being dead, that is?”
The girl spun around on the step and stared at me, her mouth hanging open. I laughed so hard I almost spilled tea all over myself, but managed to get myself together before I really made a mess. “Oh my good Lord,” I said, “If you could see the look on your face, child! If you was still alive, I’d tell you to close that thing before flies got in it, but I reckon that ain’t much of a problem now, is it?”
“Y-you can see me?” the child asked. “You can hear me?”
“Of course I can see and hear you, sweetheart, ain’t that the whole reason you and your little girlfriends toilet papered my front yard two Halloweens ago?” It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a ghost blush, but it was still a rare enough occurrence to make me grin.
“I’m sorry about that. We didn’t think about…”
“About how hard it would be for an old woman to get all that toilet paper out of the trees and the grass? Of course you didn’t, that’s what being a teenager is all about. And don’t think you invented anything new, honey, I’ve been getting TP’d on Halloween since your mama was a young’un. It’s a lot easier to take care of than you think. You just take a lighter to it, it burns right out before any part of the tree catches, Easy-peasy. Now, what brings you to my front porch looking all distraught? And who are you, firstly? Ever since I quit teaching Sunday School at the A.R.P. Church, I don’t know as many of you young people as I used to.
“We’re Baptists anyway,” the girl said.
“Well, I forgive you,” I replied. The poor child looked terribly confused, which just made me laugh again, which just made her look even more confused. “Anyway, honey, you were going to tell me who you were?” I prodded.
“My name’s Jenny Miller, and I reckon you can see I’m dead.”
“I noticed that first thing. How did you die and how long ago?”
“About three days ago, I guess. Time is strange now, and I don’t have to sleep, so it’s a little odd. But they had my funeral today, and I think it was a Friday when I died, so it feels like about three days.”
“Well, let me go get the paper and we can see if you’re in the obituaries. That can tell us quite a bit.” I went into the house and pulled out the last three days’ worth of The Herald and carried them out to the porch.
I opened the first newspaper, Saturday’s edition with high school football on the front page, and a big picture of a smiling blonde girl on the back page of Section A. I compared the photo with the ghost on my steps, and sure enough, it was a match. “Yes, honey, you died on Friday night after cheering our Bulldogs to a victory over Dorman in overtime. It says here that you fell down the stairs in your house and broke your neck. But I suppose that isn’t what happened, was it?
The pretty blonde ghost looked up at me, her eyes brimming. “No, ma’am. I didn’t fall. I was pushed. Somebody pushed me down the stairs and broke my neck, now I’m stuck here until I get justice!” Her words built and built on each other until she was almost shouting. I felt the power roll off of her, full of anger and pain. I knew if I didn’t find a away to send her to her rest, that she could turn into a powerful poltergeist. This child needed to move on, and fast.
“Okay, sweetie, just calm down,” I said, putting my tea down and using the same tones I used to use to calm spooked horses when I was little. “Now tell me what you remember, and we’ll work from there.”
“I don’t remember anything,” she said, her voice shaky and thready. “That’s the problem. I remember leaving the game with Shelly, and then nothing.”
“How did you get home?” I asked. I knew if I could get her to realize that the memories were there, that it would all would all work out.
“Shelly drove us. She got her license last month, and this was the first game her mom had let her drive to.”
“Alright. Did Shelly come in with you, or did she drop you off in the driveway?”
“Neither one. She just stopped on the street in front of my house, and I got out. I walked up the steps to the front porch, unlocked the front door, turned around to wave goodnight to Shelly, and went inside.”
“Then what?” I kept my voice low, not wanting to break her out of the almost-trance she had slipped into as she walked back through the night in her memory.
“I reached over to turn on the lights, but nothing happened. I remember thinking that was strange, because the porch light was working fine, but then I remembered Daddy had installed one of them fancy battery backups on the porch light so we’d have some kind of light when the power went out. It was dark as could be, but there was a little bit of light coming in the door from the porch light, and that streetlight the power company put up in the front yard shines in through the living room window something fierce, so I could see plenty.”
“What did you see, honey?” I asked.
“Nothing. I mean, nothing unusual. It just looked like my house, you know? Only dark. I went to the kitchen and got a flashlight out of the drawer beside the sink where Mama keeps all the hurricane stuff, and I went to the basement to look at the fuse box.”
“Only you never made it down to the basement,” I added.
“That’s right,” the pretty little ghost agreed. “On account of some sumbitch shoving me down the stairs as soon as I got the door open good. I remember feeling two hands in my back, then I went forward, and I remember a big flash when I hit my head…then…I’m sorry, I don’t remember anything else. I woke up the next morning to the sound of my mama screaming, and I was looking down at my own body, lying there at the bottom of the stairs…” her words trailed off into sobs, and I wanted to put my arm around her and try to give the poor child some comfort, but I knew my arm would just pass right through her. I’d done it before with other spirits, and it never went well. It just made the ghost more upset and left me feeling a little bit embarrassed.
“Okay, sweetheart, it’s okay,” I said in a soothing tone. “Let’s go inside and have a seat while you try to think of anything else you remember from that night. You’re doing real good, better than anybody would expect.” I stood up and she followed me into the house.
She stopped by the washing machine and looked at the tomatoes all spread out waiting to be washed and canned. “Did you just pick these?” she asked. “I love fresh tomatoes!” She reached out for one, but couldn’t touch them. Her tomato days were over, unfortunately. She looked up at me, stricken.
“I’m sorry, honey. You can’t touch things anymore.”
“I know. I just forget sometimes, you know?”
I did know. I’d seen it for years with other ghosts I had known. Sometimes a very powerful spirit can move things around them, but that kind of poltergeist energy is real hard to sustain, and it makes a ghost become thin and wispy, and before long it fades away entirely. I don’t know if the spirit moves on, or just…fades.
That was something I didn’t dwell on too much. It was more for the ladies in my Sunday School class, and I tried not to ask too many heavy theological questions around that bunch. They just let me start coming back to Sunday School about six months ago, so I didn’t want to push my luck. I led the teenager’s ghost into the house to see if we could come up with any other clues about her untimely demise.
by john | Feb 18, 2017 | Podcast, Writing
Hey y’all, watch this!
Actually, listen to this.
I’ve started a new podcast, which is a translation of Colt Cabana’s Art of Wrestling Podcast, but for writers. It’s called The Writer’s Journey, and on the first episode, I talk to Drew Hayes, GM of the Authors & Dragons podcast and author of a ton of stuff, including the new book, Forging Hephaestus, which releases on 2/24, the same day as my new book, Calling All Angels, hits.
Excuse the squeaking in the background. I have an old desk chair and a fat ass. It happens.
Soon it’ll be up on iTunes and all those other places, but for right now, you have to go to the website to listen or download.
So give this a listen, and then go buy our shit!
by john | Feb 12, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Serialized Fiction, Writing
That’s my new working title for this. I dunno if I’m going to keep it or not. This is something I’m messing around with and thinking of serializing here. If you like it, go buy one of my other books, or join my Patreon.
Chapter 1
“So you’re a medium?” The large man asked me in the tone of voice usually reserved for the mentally ill or the tragically stupid. I wasn’t sure which one he thought I was, but I had a pretty good guess. “That means you talk to dead people?”
“Sheriff Dunleavy,” I replied, working very hard to keep a civil tongue in my mouth and remember that my mama raised me to be a lady. “I’m Southern. We all talk to dead people down here. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe I can truly trust anybody that doesn’t speak to at least two or three dead relations on a daily basis. The difference is, they talk back to me.”
Jeff Mitchum, one of the deputies, piped up. “She’s right, Sheriff. Miss Lila Grace can find things you thought was lost forever, and tell you if your wife is fooling around on you, and all sorts of things she ought not to know.”
I sighed a little bit. I knew Jeff was trying to help, but he never was the sharpest knife in the drawer and I could tell from the look on Sheriff Dunleavy’s mustached face that Jeff’s endorsement had most of the opposite effect the poor deputy was hoping for.
“Thank you, Jeff, I said, setting my purse down in the one chair in the waiting area of the Union County Sheriff’s Department. I stepped up to the counter, resting my elbows on the chipped and stained formica surface. “Jeffrey, darling, it is powerful hot out there today. Would you be a dear and get me a glass of ice water?” I pulled a Kleenex out from the sleeve where I had it tucked away and dabbed at my forehead.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jeff said, hopping up from his ancient rolling chair and walking back behind the four desks that made up the “bullpen” of the Sheriff’s office.
Sheriff Dunleavy remained exactly where he had been since I stepped into the building, leaning on the frame of his office door, one eyebrow climbing to where his hairline probably used to be. “I can’t get Mitchum to move that fast when a call comes in, much less to run fetch me stuff. Maybe you do have super-powers.” He gave me one of those little half-smiles men get when they think they’re being clever.
“Maybe I taught that child Sunday School every week for six years and brought him up to respect his elders,” I replied with an arched eyebrow of my own. We stood there for a minute staring, neither one of us saying a word, ’til finally Dunleavy cracked.
“Well, what is it?” He asked.
“What is what, Sheriff?”
“What do you want, Ms. Carter? I have a department to run, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I noticed, all right, Sheriff. I notice all the people clamoring for attention for their complaints.” I gestured at the empty waiting room. “I notice all those cars in the parking lot.” I pointed out the glass door where three police cruisers and my well-loved 1986 GMC Sierra pickup sat alone in a parking lot built for thirty or more. “And I certainly notice the preponderance of victims you are consoling right there in your very office.”
I never blinked. I just looked at him. After a minute or so, Jeffrey returned with my ice water. “Thank you, Jeffrey. I appreciate that. Now, may I come in, Sheriff, or are you going to stand there and be stubborn while my talent and news go to waste?”
Dunleavy sighed a huge sigh. But I suspected everything this man did was huge. He stood about six and a half feet tall, and was a fit man, rare in law enforcement down here. Too much rich food and front porch sitting for a man to keep himself trim much past twenty years old.
“Please come in, Mrs. Carter,” he said, walking ahead of me into his office. I followed him into his office, which was almost completely unchanged from how it looked when Dunleavy’s predecessor, Sheriff Johnny Thomas held court in the room. The pictures on the wall were different, shots of Dunleavy in a tailored suit shaking hands with various smiling important-looking people from his last job, Chicago if I recalled correctly. A light dusting of Sheriff Johnny’s cigar smoke still coated everything else, especially the padded high-back rolling chair behind the desk and the surface of the desk itself. The computer was new, one of those big all-in-one jobs, and looked out of place in the cramped room, like a spaceship in a Sam Spade novel. I ran my fingers across the top of the monitor and took my seat in the wooden visitor’s chair nearest the desk.
Like most people who had been in the office more than once, I knew that the chair on the left was for normal people, and the chair on the right was the “lawyer chair.” Sheriff Johnny had his brother Red take the other visitor chair out one afternoon and shave a quarter-inch off one of the front legs so it never would sit quite right. Sheriff Johnny never had much tolerance for lawyers. But the Sheriff was gone now, succumbed to a heart attack in the middle of umpiring a softball game between the Baptists and the Methodists back in the spring. “Gone” of course is a relative term for me, since I saw Johnny clear as day standing in the corner of the office staring down at the newest occupant of his desk.
“Now, Mrs. Carter—“ Sheriff Dunleavy began, but I cut him off.
“Ms.” I corrected.
“Excuse me?”
“Ms.,” I repeated. “I am not, nor have I ever been, married. And while I appreciate the flattery inherent in the idea, it has been some number of years since I felt reasonable answering to ‘miss.’ Therefore, please call me ‘ms.’ Or Lila Grace, if you tend toward the informal. I assure you I do not find the use of my given name offensive.”
“Okay, then Lila Grace, what can I do for you today?”
“I mostly wanted to call on you to introduce myself and determine to what degree we can work together.”
“Work together?” There went that eyebrow racing skyward again.
“Jeffrey explained to you that I was of some assistance to your predecessor on more than one occasion. I would hope to be able to continue that relationship with you.”
“You want to work with the police department?”
“Not work with, per se. I would simply like to be able to bring you information from time to time and know that it will be treated with respect, and not dismissed out of hand because of where it came from.”
“And where does your information come from, Ms. Carter?”
“From the dead, Sheriff. I thought we had covered that. I am a medium. I converse with the spirits of those who have passed on. They tell me things. Sometimes I need to pass those things along to you. I need to know whether or not you will believe what I tell you, or if I will need to pursue other avenues to satisfy the spirits.”
Sheriff Dunleavy’s eyes went cold and he leaned forward in his chair, putting his elbows on the desk. I thought for a moment I saw a hint of an old tattoo poking out from under his short sleeve dress shirt, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe the tip of an anchor? Was our new sheriff a Navy man? Rural South Carolina typically produced more Army men and Marines. Not many of our boys on boats.
His stern voice brought me out of my reverie. “Ms. Carter, I don’t know what kind of relationship you had with Sheriff Thomas, but this is my office now, and we will run things by the book. I will take any information you bring to me seriously, and I will investigate every lead in every case, but I will not have a civilian going around town on her own sticking her nose into police business. Are we clear?”
I looked up into the corner where Sheriff Johnny stood with his arms across his chest. He was grinning fit to beat the band, and I chuckled a little. I tried to hold it in, but I couldn’t.
Sheriff Dunleavy’s face and forehead flashed red, and I saw a little bead of sweat pop out at his temple. “Is something funny, Ms. Carter?”
“I’m sorry, Sheriff. It’s just that Sheriff Johnny is standing over in the corner behind you laughing his dead fool butt off.”
“What?” Dunleavy’s head whirled around, then he turned back to me, scowling.
“I’m sorry, but he’s there. He’s amused because this is very much like the first time I sat in this office and talked to him about a murder. He yelled at me, called me a crazy person and told me if I ever stuck my nose back in police business that he would have me arrested and shipped off to Bull Street for a psych evaluation.” I pointed at the corner where Sheriff Johnny was standing.
“So he’s in the corner of my office, just hanging out? What does he want?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked him yet. I figured since it’s your office now, I should deal with the current occupant before trying to communicate with any prior tenants that might be lingering past their expiration date, if you will.”
“Well, ask him,” Sheriff Dunleavy said, leaning back in his chair and folding his muscular arms across his broad chest. He did cut a fine figure of a man, if a little thin on top. If I were twenty years younger, I might have set my cap for him. As it was, I wondered if he might make a good match for Jane down at the Children’s Desk in the library.
I turned to Sheriff Johnny and said, “What do you want, Johnny? Why aren’t you back where you belong, watching soaps with Linda or doing whatever y’all do in the Great Beyond?” I’m sure Sheriff Dunleavy was disappointed that my conversing with the dead didn’t seem much different than me conversing with the living, but that’s how my life has always been.
Sheriff Johnny opened his mouth once or twice, but no sound came out. This happens with spirits after they’ve crossed over and come back, sometimes they forget how to talk. I had faith in the Sheriff, though. He hadn’t been dead more than four or five months. He should still be able to converse relatively easily.
“Go on, Johnny, spit it out. We ain’t got all day, now.”
“Trouble’s coming, Lila. I can’t see more than that, but something bad’s coming to Lockhart, and it’s gonna take both of y’all to deal with it.” Sheriff Johnny said, his voice hoarse with grave rust and thin like the wind.
I relayed his message to Sheriff Dunleavy, then looked back up at Johnny. “Now you know he’s just gonna say that’s what I would make up to have you say, so you gonna have to do something to prove that I’m not a fraud now, Johnny Thomas, or this man ain’t never gonna believe me.”
“Tell him the key is taped to the bottom of the middle drawer.” The shade said, then turned and walked through the wall out into the sunlight.
“Wait, Johnny, I don’t know what key you’re talking about!” I stood up and hollered as the ghost vanished. “Dammit. Excuse me,” I said as I sat back down.
“What key?” the sheriff asked.
“Exactly my point,” I grumbled. I reached down to the floor and picked up my purse. I stood up and extended my hand. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Sheriff Dunleavy. It’s obvious that you don’t believe in my gift, so I will take my leave.”
The sheriff stayed seated. “What key, Ms. Carter?”
“I don’t know, Sheriff. That’s what’s so damn frustrating about dealing with dead people. They tell you half what you need to know, then wander off and go back to being dead. It’s worse than dating, I swear to God.”
“What did he say about the key?” Sheriff Dunleavy’s voice was calm, but he was working to keep it that way. I could tell by the way his knuckles went white around the arm of his chair.
“He said it was underneath the middle desk drawer, whatever that means.” I replied.
“Sonofabitch!” Dunleavy sat up straight, then dropped out of his chair onto one knee and yanked out the center drawer of his desk. I sat back down in my chair as he felt around the bottom of the drawer, then got down on his hands and knees and vanished behind his desk. He emerged a moment later with a brown envelope clutched in his fist. “Got it!”
He sat back in his chair and ripped open the top of the envelope. A small brass key fell out onto his calendar desk blotter, and he pounced on it like a kitten playing with a junebug.
“What’s that, Sheriff?”
“This is the key to Sheriff Thomas’s file cabinet, Ms. Carter. He had one copy on him when he…”
“Died is the word you’re looking for, Sheriff. Remember, I still get to talk to people after they die, so it’s not quite the hardship for me that it is for most people.”
“Yes, well, he had one copy on him when he died, but those keys were lost after the autopsy. And I’ve had no access to any old case files, or even his current case files, since I got here last week.”
“Until now,” I said.
“Until now,” he agreed.
“When the sheriff’s ghost told me where to find it.”
“When you used some resources unavailable to most people to assist me in finding it,” the sheriff agreed, nodding in unison with me.
“So we have an understanding?” I asked, standing and holding out my hand.
Sheriff Dunleavy stood up and shook my hand. “Ms. Carter, I’m not sure what we’ve got, but I’m pretty sure I’ll never understand a minute of it.”
by john | Feb 6, 2017 | Amazing Grace, Serialized Fiction, Writing
I don’t like that working title, so it’ll change at some point. This is something I’m messing around with and thinking of serializing here. If you like it, go buy one of my other books, or join my Patreon.
Prologue
When I was a little girl, my best friend was named Tina. I met her the summer after my fourth grade year, and we played together all summer long in the woods behind my house. I didn’t have many friends, so when I started telling my mother about Tina, she was thrilled. I’d finally found a girl my own age to be friends with. I suppose she thought this would make school easier in the fall. I didn’t believe that, I just thought it might give me a nice summer before I had to go back to school, where the girls teased me about my clothes and asked me why I always wore boys’ shoes and why my clothes were old and frayed at the hems.
Tina never asked questions, just played Star Wars on our swing set Millennium Falcon and always let me be Princess Leia and never made me be Chewbacca because I was “dirty” and “smelled like a Wookie.” Tina was always there that summer, just hanging around outside whenever I got done with breakfast in the morning, ready to play. She never came into my house, not even for afternoon snack, and I never went to hers. We just played together, exploring the woods and the creek and the red clay banks and getting the mud between our toes and making mudpies and taking off our blue jeans and sitting on the wet rocks in the creek in our underwear, pretending we had on bikinis like the older girls we saw on TV.
Until one morning Tina wasn’t there. I hopped down the cinderblock steps at the back door of our trailer and looked around, but she wasn’t nowhere to be seen. I wandered around my back yard for a little while, swung on the swing for a bit, but she didn’t show up. So I went to look for her. She wasn’t down by the creek, not even in the deep pool where we liked to catch crawdaddies. She wasn’t in Old Man Perkin’s field seeing how far she could fling cowpies before they broke. She wasn’t in the old barn across the road at Aunt Hazel’s place, with all its smells of hay and old horses.
Finally I found her all the way down at the old Martin place, sitting all by herself on the steps. There weren’t no house there no more, it having burned up a long time before I was born, so there was just a concrete slab foundation poured with three brick steps leading up to it, and a chimney sticking up like a red brick finger pointing at the sky.
“What you doing sitting out here all alone?” I hollered as soon as I saw her. She was still tiny off in the distance, and when she didn’t say nothing I figured she didn’t hear me. I ran down the overgrown gravel driveway, thistles and grass seeds catching all up in my white tube socks I had to wear on account of the handmedown boots Mama got me from the church was still a little big. She allowed as how I’d grow into them by the time school started.
I was out of breath from running up that whole long driveway, so I leaned over and put my hands on my knees like I seen people do on TV when they were tired. It didn’t make me feel no better, so I just sat down on the top step next to Tina.
“What you doing all the way out here?” I asked again, panting a little. Tina never got out of breath, no matter how far we ran or roamed. She could run for days if she needed to. Me, I had a little belly from watching too much TV, so Mama liked that I spent all day running around outside with Tina. She said all the fresh air was good for me. I thought she liked it that I was out of the house for her to watch her stories.
Tina didn’t answer me for a long time, then she finally said “I’m waiting for my mama.” I hadn’t never met Tina’s mama, not in all the time we’d been playing together. I hadn’t never been to her house, neither. She’d always just showed up outside in my back yard, ready to play.
“Okay, I’ll sit with you. Is she gonna bring you lunch?” Tina shook her head and didn’t say nothing. I just sat there with her, quiet. Sometimes she was like that, quiet and still. Other times she was just like a normal girl, least as much as I could tell, not really having any other friends to speak of.
We waited for a long time, but nobody came. After a while, I got bored and started to look around the old burnt down house. I’d been there before, a couple of times, but I always got scared and left before I could see anything. Kids on the school bus would point at this place, nothing visible from the road but the chimney, and say somebody died in the fire and that it was haunted. I wasn’t scared of ghosts, not as long as Tina was with me, and it was daylight.
I found a nickel, and a Bible that you could still read some of the pages in, then I was rooting around in a back room and found a golden locket. The chain was melted away, but the locket itself looked like it had been under something when the fire happened, so it wasn’t hurt too bad. I couldn’t get it open, not even with my pocketknife. I messed with it for a long time, then turned to Tina to see if she could open it.
Tina was standing at the top of the steps with a pretty woman with long dark hair and eyes that hadn’t smiled in a month of Sundays. I don’t know how I knew, but I could tell that I’d never seen anyone so sad. She wasn’t dressed to be outside, wearing slippers and a housecoat over her pale green nightgown, but she didn’t seem to care, and I wasn’t going to tell a grown-up how they should or shouldn’t dress.
I walked over to them and stuck my hand out. “Hey there,” I said. “You must be Tina’s mama. I’m Lila Grace Carter and I appreciate you letting Tina come play with me. She has been a good friend to me this summer.”
She knelt down in front of me, putting herself eye-to-eye with me, and smiled. It was a winsome thing, a little flutter of a smile that might run away if you looked at it too hard, so I tried to pretend like I couldn’t tell she didn’t have many smiles in her life. “Why, thank you, Lila Grace, I appreciate you keeping my baby company these past months ’til I could come be with her again. I expect we’ve got to move along now, but know that wherever you go, Tina will always be your friend.”
Then she stood up, motioned Tina over to her side, took her hand, and they were gone. That’s all it was; one second they were standing in front of me, the next they were gone. I turned around in circles and ran around that burnt-up homestead looking and hollering for Tina, but she was gone. After what felt like hours of looking, I decided she was gone for good and trudged on home.
Mama was standing at the sink peeling potatoes for supper when she saw me walk up the driveway. “Lila Grace you leave them nasty boots on the back porch and wash up before you come in this house!” She hollered through the screen window. I took off my boots and turned on the spigot by the back door, then let the water run through the hose for a minute ’til it got cold, and washed the dirt and soot off my hands and feet and face. I dried off with an old towel hanging by the back door that Daddy used to clean up with before he came in from the sawmill at night, and I carried my boots in and set them on the porch before I hopped up to the kitchen table for some lunch. We never ate in the dining room except on special occasions.
Mama brought me a glass of sweet tea and a tomato sandwich, and I could see on her face she’d been crying. “What’s wrong, Mama?” I asked as she sat down, washing down a big bite of home-grown tomato and mayonnaise with tea sweeter than lemonade.
“A woman from our church passed this morning, honey, and the whole thing made me a little sad. I was glad when you came home for lunch instead of going off all day playing today.”
“Who was it?” I asked, taking another too-big bite of sandwich. Mama smiled at me as the tomato juice ran down my chin. She picked up a paper napkin off the table and wiped my face for me. I grimaced a little, I wasn’t a little kid anymore, but she was upset, so I let her do it without fussing.
“I don’t think you knew her, but it was Clara Good. Her family lived down the road a piece before you were born. Her husband and daughter were killed in a house fire years ago, and poor Clara never was right after that. She couldn’t keep a job, and finally they had to put her in a home up in Rock Hill. Well, she died today, and it all reminded me of how sad the whole story was.”
“She lived in that old burnt-out house on the other side of Mr. Sam Junior’s place?” I asked, slipping the locket deep into the front pocket of my jeans.
“Yes, that was the place. You know it?”
“Only that some kids on the school bus say it’s haunted.” I had never lied to my mother before, but something told me that no good would come of telling her where I had spent my morning.
“She had a daughter about your age, I can’t remember her name…” I watched my mother’s eyes go wide, then she looked at me. I looked back at her, ready to tell her everything if she asked, or to tell her nothing. It was the first time I remember us talking like that, having a whole conversation without speaking a word, but it certainly wasn’t the last time it happened.
“Finish your sandwich, sweetie. Then I need you to help me hang up the laundry this afternoon.” She got up from the table and went back over to the sink and went back to washing and peeling potatoes. I finished my sandwich and carried my paper plate to the trash can on the back porch. While I stood there, out of Mama’s sight for the time being, I pulled the locket out and looked at Tina’s face staring into her mama’s, both of them smiling like there was no tomorrow.
I closed the little golden oval and slipped it back into my pants pocket. I looked out the back door and thought for a minute that I could see a woman walking away from my house holding hands with a little girl, but in a blink they were gone.
“Bye Tina,” I whispered, and went inside to help Mama with chores. That was the day I realized how different I really was.
by john | Feb 6, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Writing
Now that I’m in publishing, I’m working with a lot of writers. A lot of these writers are publishing their first book, or their first stand-alone work, after having been in a number of anthologies over the years. One question I get a lot of times is “How do you sell books on social media?”
Well, there are a lot of disparate opinions on that. Some people, who sell a lot of books, think that you can’t actually sell anything on social media. They feel that it’s all about building your brand, and engagement, and getting people to like you and be interested enough in you to go buy your stuff. I tend to tell those people that they have very valid opinion, and it’s one way to approach social media. These folks frequently build a very rabid following for their blogs, or their twitter feeds, and are able to parlay those readerships into readerships for their books. Chuck Wendig and John Scalzi both built a lot of their fanbase off their blogs early in their careers, and still have very popular blogs today. They’ve done a great job of building engagement, and almost surreptitiously selling their fiction while building real engagement with other things they had to say. It’s very much a good way to work it, and can be very successful.
Some other folks think that social media is the devil, and they hate it, and just want to stay in their ivory towers and write. I usually tell those people that they are not going to make much money writing, and they should leave that J.D. Salinger/Emily Dickinson shit in previous centuries where it belongs.
My method is different, and it’s one that a lot of people don’t care for, but it results in actual sales for my books, so I’m not likely to change it anytime soon.
I promote the hell out of my stuff on social media.
Like, a LOT.
Every weekend, I spend an hour or so writing tweets or copying old tweets from a master list I keep on my desktop, and I paste them into Hootsuite to automate the cross-posting to Twitter, Facebook, and my author Facebook page. Every hour on the hour from 9AM – 5PM Eastern, I send out one tweet promoting one product. Sometimes, when a product is releasing that week, it will get two tweets per day, but usually just one.
Here are some samples of things I tweet –
You need more Sasquatch dick jokes in your life. Pick up Grits, Guns & Glory, Bubba Season 2 Today! http://amzn.to/1IZQSkO
Late to the Harker Party? Check out Harker Year One for the collected adventures of this badass magician! http://amzn.to/1TxBjVG
My Patrons get exclusive content like my writing advice blog posts, cool giveaways, and free stuff! https://www.patreon.com/johnhartness
Keep up to date with all my appearances, releases, podcasts, and get a #free #ebook! Sign up for my email list – http://eepurl.com/fV4In
Typically my breakdown will be – One post per day for my mailing list. One post per day for my Patreon. One post per day for the latest Harker release. One for the newest Bubba. One for the latest Black Knight. One for an older release. One for a recent audio release. One for a release that doesn’t sell as well and needs some love, and one flex slot. Some weeks the flex slot is pimping other writers, which engenders a lot of goodwill and retweets. Some weeks it’s pimping a con I’m going to, or other guests at that con. Some weeks it’s a podcast or an Audible subscription promo code. It just depends on what I’m thinking.
This is in direct opposition to what I and other people have said for years about social media. It’s using it as a billboard, and not as a conversation. It isn’t building real connections. It isn’t creating true fans. It’s very much a shotgun approach to marketing, with almost no way of knowing whether it has any effect or not.
Except on the weeks that I don’t do this promotion, I can see a noticeable dip in sales.
So it sells books.
That’s why I keep doing it. Because it sells books. And that’s my job. One of them, anyway. That’s what’s important to remember as a writer. You have many jobs, and one of those is to sell books. It doesn’t matter if you’ve written the next War and Peace if nobody reads it. So if you have to sell War and Peace as 50 Shades of Grey, so be it. Sell the book. If you want to be a professional writer, and pay your bills with your book sales, it’s on you to sell some damn books.
“But John, I only have three stories in anthologies and one book out. How am I supposed to make nine social media posts a day?”
You’re not. You should make five or six. Make one for each anthology you have a story in. The publishers will appreciate the fuck out of it, and are likely to invite you to be in more anthologies. Trust me, we notice who promotes a book and who doesn’t. Especially if it’s a Kickstarter anthology. We know who is working to promote the hell out a Kickstarter and who sends out one tweet in the 30-day funding period. You should make one post per day for the book that you have out. And one post per day about your mailing list.
Yes, I just said that you should be on social media EVERY SINGLE DAY telling people to buy your book. Yes, it is shameless. Yes, it is unseemly. Yes, it is brazen. Yes, some writers will consider you unprofessional for doing it. And yes, it will sell books. People cannot buy the book they have never heard of, so make sure they have heard of it.
I also said that you should have a mailing list, and be actively working to build it. You should have a website, and there should be a place on the website to sign up for the mailing list. Those are people who have already expressed an interest in your work, why wouldn’t you want to be able to reach out and touch them? Even if you only have one book out now, unless that’s the only book you ever plan on writing, you need to be building a mailing list. Right damn now.
If you want to promote other authors, great. It’s a great way to make friends and influence people. But you HAVE to be visible. I am at a place now where I have invited a bunch of authors to play in my Harker and Bubba sandboxes. Some of those authors were chosen because they are extremely talented. Some were chosen because they are some of my best friends, and extremely talented. And some were chosen because they are extremely active on social media, and extremely talented. Which ones do you think I expect to sell more books?
Get out there, get visible, get active. If you think you can “just write” and make a living, go lie in the dirt with Salinger, because that career path is as dead as old J.D.
This post is part of a book I’m working on about my methods for selling books and making a living. Pretty much everything that ends up in the book will be from either posts I make here or stuff I’ve written on Magical Words in the making Money Mondays posts. So you can get all the info for free. But if you like it and find what I’m writing useful, I’ hope you’ll buy the book when it comes out next year, or consider joining my Patreon.
