by john | Oct 26, 2011 | Fiction, Return to Eden, Writing
Aside from being a killer book cover, it might help to know a little about the book, huh?
Genesis is the first volume of the Return to Eden trilogy. Unlike The Black Knight Chronicles, which is an open-ended series of stand-alone stories featuring the same characters in a string of related, but largely unconnected adventures, Return to Eden will be a traditional trilogy. It’s a three-book story, then we’re done.
The story centers on 17-year-old Christin Kinsey, her brother Matt, and the group of survivors they assemble in their journey. In the aftermath of an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) attack, everything with a computer chip is fried, effectively throwing the world back a century in our technology. Most cars don’t work, most household appliances don’t work, and even if they did, there’s no electricity to power them. There’s no TV, no internet, no game consoles, no cell phones and no iPods.
Sounds like Hell for Teenagers, doesn’t it?
Well it gets worse. Not only do the teens have to learn how to survive in a world suddenly devoid of most of the creature comforts we’ve grown up with, but the basics of civilization start to erode with the infrastructure. Small-town sheriffs become more like feudal lords than law enforcement officers.
And then there’s the odd little fact that everyone between 13 and 20 seems to have suddenly developed superpowers. With the interference from technology gone, people are able to touch magic again, old, elemental magic. But only if you’re young enough, or open enough, to believe. So now the adults are acting like the kids in Lord of the Flies while a bunch of super-powered teenagers try to stay alive.
And all Christin really wants to do is make sure her mom is safe.
That’s a brief rundown on Genesis and the whole Return to Eden series. Available 11.11.11 wherever books are sold.
by john | Oct 25, 2011 | Business of publishing, Fiction, Return to Eden, Writing
Baen Books is one of the pioneers in ebook sales, particularly in genre fiction. While I think they do a lot of things right, there are a couple of things I think they miss the boat on (notably, not having their ebooks available for purchase from Amazon, you know, the largest seller of books in any format in the world??). But since I don’t run the company or have any financial stake in anything they do, it’s not really any of my business.
But one thing Baen does that I’ve never seen anywhere else is offer e-ARCs for purchase. What’s an e-ARC, you might ask? Well, let’s start with what an ARC is. An ARC is an Advance Reader Copy, a pre-release copy of a book typically provided to journalists, reviewers, or people of note to garner blurbs, reviews or hype about a book before it is released to the general public. An e-ARC is an electronic version of the same thing.
What Baen has done is turn this into a marketing tool, and a revenue stream as well. They sell e-ARCs on their website, making it very clear that these are not the final versions of the books. Things might change a little, there might be some further polishing, some cover edits, things like that, before the final book is released. But a hardcore fan doesn’t want to wait. Not only that, but these hardcore fans will actually pay a premium to get the book early.
I’m hoping that I have a few hardcore fans, because as of today I will be offering e-ARCs of Genesis for sale here on the website. These will not be sold at a premium, but will be the same price as the release price of the book – $2.99. These are ARCs, though, so don’t kill me on typos. If you find one, please send me an email and point it out, so I can change it before the final release. The cover is also not finalized, but will be close. So this is the whole story, the completed story, just not at its final polished state.
But if you’re one of those people who has to be the first one on your block to have the next cool thing, then this is your deal. This is the kickoff volume to my new series, a very different series than the other stuff of mine you’ve read. This is much less silly, and it’s designed to be teen-friendly, so no f-bombs.
And that was tough, let me tell you!
But here’s the link to buy with PayPal. Just shoot me $2.99, and within 24 hours I’ll email you the file in whatever format you choose (PDF, ePub or Kindle).Enjoy!
by john | Oct 24, 2011 | Writing
But just a little. Genesis:Return To Eden Book I will release officially on 11/11/11, not 11/1/11 as previously announced. This gives me a little more time to push the promo, tweak the cover, and generally make the book a little better.
Still hoping to get another Bubba story out this month. But it’s not looking good for our hero. Need a few hours to focus. Anybody got a spare Time-Turner lying around?
by john | Oct 10, 2011 | Appearances, Real Life, Travel
This past weekend the wife and I ventured out in public more often than is natural for us, with great results. You see, we’re kinda boring nowadays. We like to be at home, and aren’t much for going out in crowds. That’s more me than Suzy, because while I love meeting new people and don’t ever mind getting up in front of people, I kinda don’t like crowds. I get a little freaked out when I don’t have a clear path to an exit, and I really don’t like hanging out too much with my back to an open door. But this weekend presented us with multiple opportunities to be social, and this time we actually participated.
Saturday I lit the second wedding I’ve designed at Theatre Charlotte, which also happens to be the second wedding that’s taken place in the 80+ year history of the facility. Our friends Nick & Kaddie got married, and I designed and ran the lights for the wedding, and also dealt with the pipe and drape to hide the set in progress that was on the stage. Suzy did all the flowers for the wedding, which kept her working for pretty much 48 hours straight. But the wedding went off almost without a hitch, the bride was lovely, the vows were lovely, and the reception was fun. I even danced, something my knee are reminding me about today in an unpleasant fashion.
Then Sunday the Metrolina Theatre Association hosted the annual theatre awards gala, and Suzy and I were both nominated for awards. She was nominated for two different costuming awards, and I was nominated for best lighting design for RENT. IT was a good night for the home team, as we both brought home new hardware for the trophy case. Suzy’s costumes for King Lear won the prize, and I received my award for RENT as well. It was nice hanging out with theatre people away from the stress of a production, and remembering why I like these people in the first place. We had a good time, but my ass is dragging this morning. And getting Facebook reminders from my banker friends about having Columbus Day off doesn’t really help.
I go back into the theatre this afternoon for tech rehearsals for You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, a new play that I’m designing. We’re in tech and previews this week, then my high school reunion is this weekend, then the show opens next week, then I go to Columbia for RoundCon. It’s an exhausting month, but I’ve got all November to sleep, right?
On the weight loss front, I backslid a little in week 2, putting back on four of the first six pounds I lost. But I got back on the horse last week and am down a total of five pounds since the beginning of the bet. Five pounds in three weeks isn’t great, but with my schedule right now it’s as good as it’s going to get, and it’s five pounds that I don’t have to carry around anymore. So overall I’m pretty happy with that.
How was your weekend? What are you working on? I’m still revising Genesis for a November launch, so hopefully we’ll still be good for that.
by john | Oct 8, 2011 | Business of publishing, Writing
Last night I was pleased to see a comment show up on my post from August about Yog’s Law. In it, I theorized that Yog’s Law does still apply to self-published authors, but maybe not in the same way that some people who are anti-self-publishing use it. I’m just going to drop the whole comment in here, because that, and the blog post, sum up my feelings on the matter pretty perfectly.
Yes, Yog’s Law still applies to self-publishing, because self-publishing is a category of commercial publishing.
Sure, in self-publishing the publisher only has one author, but if the publisher can’t see his/her way clear to putting 15% of the cover price of each book sold into a separate bank account labeled “Author’s Money” (or “Retirement different hobby.
The money flow is still toward the author. That it’s only moving from one pocket to another in the same pair of pants is immaterial.
The individual, in his/her persona as publisher, should say “Would I do this/spend this if the author were Joe Schmoe, writer?” and the person, in her/his persona as author should, simultaneously, say “Would I sell my book to this guy if it were the Joe Schmoe Publishing Company?”
As you say, the Publisher and the Writer are two different people, and wear two different hats, even if they wear the same pair of shoes.
Writers who think about self-publishing should remember that, if they don’t want unhappy surprises.
The author of this comment is one of the most famous people to ever comment on this little blog, and that’s kinda cool. James D. Macdonald used to play around on a listserve back in the early days of the internets. Back in those days, he used the handle “Yog,” presumably taken from Yog-Sothoth, the Lurker at the Threshold from the Cthulu mythos.
He knows a little about Yog’s Law. He came up with it. So that was kinda cool. I’m guessing he’s got a Google Alert or something set up and just now found his way around to the post, but I appreciate him stopping in. Yog’s Law definitely does apply to self-publishing, even though as Mr. Macdonald says, it may just be moving money from one pants pocket to the next. But it doesn’t apply in the sense that writers shouldn’t sometimes lay out money to bring their books to market, because as I said in the post, sometimes we take off our writer hat and put on our publisher hat. And it was nice to have the creator of Yog’s Law stop by and agree with me.
There are a lot of potholes on the road to self-publishing success, and I’ve driven through plenty of them. But the road does eventually go somewhere, so know that there is a destination involved, not just more winding roads.
by john | Oct 5, 2011 | Writing
I’ve come up with a title and the talented Rob Hinckley and I are finishing up a cover, so hopefully Genesis:Return to Eden Volume 1 will be ready to go on November 1. Here’s a little sneak peek at the cover that I posted to the Twitter this morning –
Yes I said “the Twitter.” I can do that.
No, that’s nowhere near the whole cover, it’s just a corner of the image, enough to give you a sense of the setting.
Yes, I’ll be posting some sample chapters and other fun stuff here in the near future.
Yes, this will be the last self-pubbed book I put out this year, because I got my contract from Bell Bridge and it’s all signed and everything, and the schedule we’re going to be on to release Black Knight Books is aggressive, and I will have little time to work on anything outside of that and maybe a few short stories for the next year at least. But the good news is that there will definitely be at least one new Black Knight book out in 2012, and quite possibly other goodies as well.
Bubba the Monster Hunter will be making a Halloween appearance (assuming I can find enough downtime to get the story written between now and then) and he’ll be battling the scariest monster I can come up with – or more to the point, the scariest monster YOU can come up with! That’s right – you get to pick the next monster Bubba hunts. Just leave a comment here and let me know what’s the scariest thing you can think of, and if I pick your creature, I’ll dedicate the story to you. You’ll be forever immortalized on the internets and in e-books. Second place gets their name used as a victim of the first-place monster.
Dick Cheney has already been suggested, so that one’s taken. By entering this contest you waive any and all rights to me having to pay you anything for this – it’s just for funsies and you agree you can’t sue my ass later. So let me know what scares the crap outta you, and I’ll have Bubba kill it. Because that’s what he does.
by john | Oct 4, 2011 | Writing
Let’s start at the very beginning. That’s a very good place to start, don’t you think, Julie?
Never mind.
Amazon unveiled four new Kindle devices last week, for all types of users and at multiple price points. Let’s look briefly at the devices and what they seem to mean in the e-reader world.
The Basic Kindle – $79 (with special offers, $109 without) – This is as close as what I own as the new models get. I have the Kindle with Special Offers that I paid $114 for a few months ago. I love this device. It’s small, fits happily in the back pocket of my jeans. The e-ink display is amazing! It looks like a real books. And I love the way the device turns pages with either hand, so no matter whether you’re right-handed or lefty, you can always operate the device one-handed. I kinda hate that the keyboard is going away, but honestly I never use mine, so I guess that’s what they’re finding in a lot of people, so they’ve killed the keyboard.
The special offers don’t annoy me at all. They only show up when I turn the device off, so that’s oddly enough when I’m not looking at it. So I don’t care what’s on the screen when it’s sitting in my bag, or on my bedside table, or wherever. And for $79, this is clearly meant to be an entry-level device, and I think most people will opt to not play the $30 extra charge just to not have screen savers.
I don’t think we can ever discount the price point of this device. For a long time $99 has been touted as the tipping point for e-readers. That’s been the theoretical price at which the sales growth of these device skyrockets. Amazon not only hit that price point with this device, but blew through it. For a ton of people, anything less than $100 is an impulse buy, and getting all the way down to $79 is going to be huge.
And having now two choices in the sub-$100 market is even bigger.
The next two models of Kindle are really just variations on the same device – the Kindle Touch. Amazon’s first entry into the touchscreen device market promises to be lighter, smaller and generally cooler than its predecessors, although I don’t necessarily agree with that assessment. There are plusses and minuses to the touchscreen device, in my opinion, but I think the price and the cool factor will pretty quickly jump the Kindle Touch to the front of the e-ink device line.
Honestly, I’m not going to buy one of these. I have an iPad, so if I want to read on a touchscreen, I’m good. I have a Kindle, so I’m covered for e-ink display (which really is tons better for long reading sessions). But the thing that I dislike about the Kindle Touch is that you have to use two hands to turn the page. It’s a little thing, I know, but I’m spoiled by my Kindle. I can sit in a restaurant, eat a burger or a pizza with one hand, and have one hand free to read. And I can turn pages without putting my device down. I know, it’s a little thing, but that’s what makes decision-making happen in the world of competing electronic toys.
There are four versions of the Kindle Touch – with and without special offers, and with and without 3G. For my money, if I were to buy these items, I’d go the cheap-o route, because I rarely am in a situation where I have to have a new book right damn now, unless I’m at home, and I have wi-fi. I think most of the time you could go to a friggin’ McDonald’s in a pinch. But that’s me. If I lived in rural SC where my parents still live, I’d be all about some 3g.
Then there’s the mac-daddy – the new Kindle Fire. But I’m out of time, so we’ll talk about the spankiest of new toys tomorrow or the next day. In the meantime, go buy a book. Keep me fed.
by john | Oct 3, 2011 | Book Spotlight, Writing
Your Perception of Poker and Life Should Be the Same
Barry Greenstein said that the way you handle everyday life situations is a determinant of how effective of a poker player you are. For instance, what do you do when someone cuts you off? Some of you may fly into an angry rage and yell obscenities to the top of your lungs. For many of these people, the anger will lead to them driving more aggressively. Some might speed up to catch the driver and cut him off, and some will find themselves in a nasty car accident due to their aggression. Others will be put off by the driver’s sheer stupidity for the moment, but will maneuver out of the situation and drive to the destination without giving it a second thought. The saying to football quarterbacks when no receivers are open is to throw it away and live another down. The guys who can overcome adversity the most will be the most successful in poker.
In paraphrasing Barry Greenstein, I think the people who are best able to let things roll off their shoulders are the best poker players and enjoy the most satisfaction with life. The people who react negatively to someone cutting them off, or their spouse eating the last Ho-Ho are the average poker players who play badly after a bad beat. These guys are dead money in many instances. The ones who choose maneuver out of the situation are the ones who are the most resilient after taking a bad beat and will not become dead money.
In my eyes, poker and life are the same and exist as one. That’s my subjective opinion, but poker does hold parallels to life within itself. For instance, I’m sure you’ve heard the expression that you gotta know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. The parallel to life, and in your game selection is that you gotta know when to stick with a good situation and when to bail out of a bad one, just as you must know when a game is a good one, and when you’re at a disadvantage and need to leave the table.
Some may call it common sense, I think it has more to do with perception. Your perception of a bad beat can be that you’re the unluckiest guy in the world, or that you’re getting action on a move that nets you a winning pot 90% of the time and that the game is good, the player is bad and that dead money still exists in a world of poker books and hard economic times. That may not turn around your current poker session, but its food for thought that you can take into your next session and your next decision when playing a hand. No need to remember that you got your aces full set cracked with a royal flush when you realize that your opponent was chasing 1 out holding AK suited. You need to remember that you’re getting your money in good and that you’re going to win more times than not. In life, if you fail at something look at it as “at least I know what doesn’t work.”
Glenn Gamble is the author of A Thousand Chances, Bon Appetit, Escape, On the Run, and James. All of his books are available on Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook and Smashwords
He also encourages you to go to his website
by john | Oct 2, 2011 | Uncategorized
Another guest post by another talented indie writer. Please welcome Erik Lynd!
Thanks for having me over at your blog John.
Let me start with a quick description of my novel, Asylum.
“I am going to tell you the story of how and why I killed my brother. You can think what you want about me afterward, but I want to tell you the whole thing. Even the things I didn’t tell the police, the things I didn’t tell my own family. I am going to tell you what really happened, the truth. But then maybe it is a fiction . . . perhaps a truth existing merely in my head. Truth or fiction, I don’t know, but I do know it’s a horror story, and I will only tell it this once.”
Andrew Harland has been a loner since being diagnosed with schizophrenia. He is shuffled around from juvenile detention centers to outpatient clinics with expensive doctors. Nothing seems to help. His parents, desperate to have him out of the house, decide to send him off to a revolutionary new psychiatric hospital in the Pacific Northwest.
Andrew is different, and he knows it. He always has. So he doesn’t hesitate when the voices in his head tell him to climb out on a window ledge . . .
Haunted by his own son’s suicide, Dr. David Styles rescues Andrew from the ledge and takes a personal interest in his case. After getting to know him, Dr. Styles becomes suspicious of the boy’s diagnosis. What he uncovers sends him on a desperate journey to rescue Andrew.
Because something is terribly wrong at the hospital.
Treatments are conducted at odd hours. Patients disappear into the bowels of the massive, aged building, sometimes never to be seen again, and Andrew is plagued by visions stranger than any he’s ever known.
About writing this novel…
This novel had a strange beginning for me. I am not a big outliner, but I tend to have some sort of basic path mapped out. Maybe it is a series of bullet points, maybe a more detailed outline of specific scenes. When I sat down to write Asylum, however, I only knew two things; it started with a boy on a ledge and ended in a mental hospital.
I set up both the main characters, Andrew Harland and David Styles, at the beginning and then just followed what they did. It’s a great way to write a novel. In some ways it is like reading the book for the first time while writing it, even as the author I wasn’t sure what would happen next. My wife thought it was creepy when I would come from the office after a day of writing and “Wow, I didn’t see that coming.” She would look at me and ask how I could not know what was going to happen. The closer I came to the end the more exciting it became. By this time I knew the ending, but getting there was still a surprise.
There is a downside to writing this way. Frequently the characters would get off path and I would need to give them a nudge in the right direction. For me this type of writing also means I have to do a lot more editing after I finish the first draft to tighten it up.
I also have a lot more important characters popping up throughout the book who wanted their own stories and had their own motives. This is great, but I spent a lot of time keeping the book focused on the core story.
I can only hope readers have as much fun with this novel as I had writing it.
Erik Lynd is the author of horror and dark fantasy novels including ASYLUM and THE COLLECTION. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two kids. More information about him and his work can be found at www.eriklynd.com.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Asylum-ebook/dp/B004478FJS/
Barnes and noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/asylum-erik-lynd/1103017088?ean=2940011908651&itm=3&usri=erik%2blynd
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26553
Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Asylum/book-c8F_gvUdnESkTWxxAf8vjw/page1.html
sony: http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/erik-lynd/asylum/_/R-400000000000000359810
by john | Sep 30, 2011 | Uncategorized
My buddy Stuart has a new book to promo, so I figured I’d lend him my little corner of the interwebs to promo his stuff.
Hi all! To start, a quick Thanks to John for letting me guest post today. If you haven’t treated yourself to a slice of John’s writing, you should do so now!
Okay, to the post:
Since my post-apocalyptic fantasy novel, The Way of the Black Beast, has just been released, I thought I’d share how this one came about. It’s by far my most interesting (and longest) experience in writing a novel.
In order for you to get the full scope of how I created this, here’s the book blurb to give you an idea of what the final product is like:
Malja wants answers. She wants to know why the two most powerful magicians in all of Corlin ripped her from her mother’s arms, raised her only to fight, and then tossed her away to die at age ten. She wants to know why they are trying to recreate the spells which caused the Devastation that wiped out most of the world’s population, leaving behind skeletal cities and abandoned technology. And she wants to kill them.
With Tommy, an orphan bearing the tattoos of a sorcerer, she crosses this shattered land. Despite the challenges they face — crazed magicians, guitar-playing assassins, mutated beasts — Malja pursues her vengeance with a single-mindedness that may destroy all she holds dear, forcing her to make a terrible choice between the family she lost and the one she has built.
Okay — to start we have to go back to 2004/2005 — I was attending the first Ravencon (my favorite con, BTW) and met Tee Morris. Tee was raving about this new fangled thing called podcasting and he got me really excited about its potential. I went home trying to think up of ways to use it. I ended up creating The Eclectic Review which I co-host with my wife to this day. But one of the early ideas was to do a monthly “radio play”-type thing. I wrote out 8 episodes and planned out 12. The story was called The Way of the Sword and Gun. It was a science fiction tale that followed Dana, an ex-security agent struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world and seeking vengeance on those who wronged her. With her is Owl, a master of the Way of the Sword and Gun, and Tommy, an abused orphan who never speaks. The idea was to blend Western and Samurai tales (which share a lot in common) with an apocalypse.
Though I tried a few times, the podcast never got created. Over the years, I kept coming back to those scripts, though. I tried writing a few short stories from the material there but the ideas in it were too big.
Fast forward to 2009. ConCarolinas. After a long day of panels, networking, and drinking with friends, I sat in my bed too wired to sleep. The spark of an idea hit — what if I wrote about a post-apocalyptic world in which magic had caused the apocalypse? From that grew the character of Malja and the country of Corlin. And, of course, I now had a place to plunk down and tweak all that work I had done years before.
Malja replaced Dana and did so with an entirely new character. Nothing of Dana remains except her desire to protect Tommy. Tommy was the only core character that made it into the book but he went from an abused kid who never spoke to an abused kid who never spoke but also could create magic. And Owl? Poor Owl and his special fighting style didn’t make the cut. Malja had too much else to deal with and Owl was too undefined in this new world of magic.
Side note: This odd mixture of magic with Western with Samurai led me to analyze Japanese story-telling and archetypes which I eventually overlaid onto a classic monomythic structure. And if you followed that, you’ll have an extra level of fun while reading the book.
Now that The Way of the Black Beast is out, I’ve started to work on the sequel where I get to mine my old scripts some more. The sequel’s title: The Way of the Sword and Gun. Owl now gets his due with a story that comes crashing into Malja’s story at lightning speed.
Moral of the post: Never throw away the material that doesn’t work for you at first. You never know when it’ll come in handy.
Aside from being a killer book cover, it might help to know a little about the book, huh?
