Disintegration breaking through

Thanks for helping my dark crime thriller Disintegration hit #147 in the Amazon Kindle store. I appreciate your help in telling friends about the book and reviewing it. I'll be talking more about my "evil twin" book in the days to come.

It's now #1 in the "Hard-boiled mystery" category, the third different category in which I've hit #1 this year for Kindle. It's a book I'm relieved to have out there and over with, and now all that's left is for you to take out of it what you can. This one feels like "success."

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Oct 30: Pre-Halloweening

Today's Kindle Giveaway Book Blog stop is at http://themindfulmusingsbookblog.blogspot.com/

Trade paperback graphic anthology Grave Conditions releases Oct. 31--J.A. Konrath, Brian Keene, Jonathan Maberry, Stephen Susco, William Harms, Lavie Tidhar, and more. Order today and get free bonus sketch cards from Shane Kirshenblatt and Digger. http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/comics.htm

My new crime thriller Disintegration officially launches Nov. 1. All author proceeds from sales of October Girls from Oct 25-Oct 31 will benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

If you're a writer, why not swing by and pick up your free copy of Write Good or Die?
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Think Pink--Breast Cancer Research fundraiser

In honor of my mother, a breast cancer survivor, as well as my wife and daughter, all author proceeds from sales of October Girls from Oct 25-Oct 31 will benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. I hope to raise $100, which isn't much, but I've been very fortunate with success and I am grateful for it. This is my opportunity to share.

Yes, I know men can get breast cancer, too, and I like to wear pink myself, but this is a way to honor all those wonderful women out there who raise children, hold communities together, offer compassion and guidance, and generally make the world a worthwhile, magical place. I hope you'll join in, whether by buying October Girls or by donating directly to BCRF, or launching your own fundraiser.

Here's my mom at 16, holding the family musket and powder horn (yes, they are real.) Thanks, Mom, for having me, raising me, and putting up with me.
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Disintegration launch approaching

Today I'm over at Gnostalgia talking about spirituality.

My new crime thriller Disintegration officially launches Nov. 1. In the meantime, all author proceeds from sales of October Girls from Oct 25-Oct 31 will benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

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Simon Wood-- The Fall Guy

(While I am cavorting over at Fishmuffins of Doom for the Kindle Giveaway Blog Tour, promoting the mystery collection Curtains that has a Simon Wood bonus tale, I have a bonus Simon Wood himself here at my blog--enjoy some time with one of the best crime-mystery writers working today).

Designated Hit and Runners
By Simon Wood

 

 

For every seventeen-year-old male in the UK, the number one purchase is a car.  It’s a rite of passage--the first step towards adulthood and independence.

 

I was in engineering college when I turned seventeen.  My birthday occurred late in the school year and several of my friends had already turned seventeen, passed their test and gotten cars--albeit jalopies for a couple of hundred quid.

 

John was the first of us to get his wheels, a ’72 Ford Cortina.  Instead of running for the train to get to and from college, we rode with John.  The convenience of car ownership was all too apparent to me, even by proxy.  The responsibility of this convenience came a few weeks later.  We’d returned back from lunch to the college parking lot.  John found a stall behind the science block and went to park.  He backed the car up, doing all the right things, but his skill deserted him and he reversed into the side of the Vauxhall Cavalier.  There was no mistaking the buckling of sheet steel.

 

We all froze and waited for John’s reaction.  Panic spread across his face.  He had just kissed goodbye any possibility of a no claims insurance bonus.

 

“Do you think anyone saw?” he asked us.

 

The parking stalls were pretty secluded from the main parking lot. We looked around and saw no one.

 

“We’re going.  Cool?”

 

We didn’t reply, just nodded.  John burnt rubber and parked on the street a couple of blocks from the college.  We walked back to our afternoon classes.  John told us we weren’t to talk about this.  He was stern, but I noticed his hands were shaking.  He knew the crime he’d committed and the one we were accomplices to.

 

I was beginning to think we’d gotten away with it by mid-afternoon, until the cops interrupted second period.  Two officers walked in with one of the college lecturers and some kid I didn’t know.  One of the cops asked for John by name, but not the rest of us. 

 

My heart was pounding, so I couldn’t imagine what John’s was doing.  Unlike most college kids, we had more to lose than the rest.  We were employed by an array of big name companies underwriting our college education and paying us a salary.

 

John came back thirty minutes later, looking sheepish.  We were forced to wait until break to find out what had gone down with the police.  We’d thought our crime had gone undetected but we were wrong.  One of the other lecturers had witnessed the fender bender from the classroom.  The lecturer not only knew us, but he knew the name of the second year student who owned the Cavalier.  Giving the cops their due, they were pretty cool about it all, all things considered.  They weren’t pressing any charges as long as John paid for the damage.  They would be checking in with all parties to make sure amends were made.   

 

John made good on his error and the event never made it back to our respective employers or parents.  We all learned our lesson.  It was a stupid thing to do and we were damn lucky to have gotten away with it.

 

About a year later, a form of retribution came knocking.  Kevin (who’d been in the car with us) came back from lunch to find a broken headlight and a note under his windshield wiper.  The note said: People think I’m leaving you my name and address.  I’m not.

 

No one had witnessed the incident and Kevin was left to carry the expenses.

 

These two incidents have always stuck with me.  It’s one of those situations where I’d been on both sides of the equation, even if it was by proxy.  So when it came to writing The Fall Guy, my thoughts fell upon these two incidents and the story was born.  In the novel, the down-on-his-luck protagonist, Todd Collins, backs into a Porsche and leaves a note not dissimilar to the one Kevin found under his windshield.  This sets in motion a series of calamities, which winds up with Todd being indebted to organized crime and spending the rest of the story trying to get the monkey off his back.

 

I don’t know if I wrote the story as a penance or a warning to others, but it may have something to do with a theme that occurs in many of my stories.  A crime, even a little one, can’t remain covered up for long.  I learned that when I was seventeen.

 

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THE FALL GUY at Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-Guy-ebook/dp/B00427YO2W

Tour hits halfway point!

Today's post at Larissa's Life address Crystal & Bone's life among the hotties. The Kindle Giveaway Blog Tour has hit the halfway point and I'm still standing. Or crawling. Hard to tell which. Don't forget to follow "hauntedcomputer" on Twitter to be eligible for the Pandora's Box of 100+ ebooks.

Grave Conditions shipping

The horror anthology comic Grave Conditions will soon be on its way from the printer, but there's still time to pre-order and get an original, limited edition sketch card by Shane Kirshenblatt. The 108-page trade paperback features stories by Brian Keene, Jonathan Maberry Stephen Susco, William Harms, JA Konrath and more. Books are $9.95 plus $3 shipping, order at http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/comics.htm. Just in time for Halloween!

Pop over to Dollar Bin Horror today for the Kindle Giveaway Blog Tour.

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Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, oh my!

Today's Kindle Giveaway stop is at Patricia's Vampire Notes about the "Cycle of the Vampire." Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter at scottsinnercircle

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Fake relatives review for Amazon

Today's post on the Kindle Giveaway Blog Tour is http://bookrat-misty.blogspot.com/, all about how your schizophrenic fake relatives need to give you five-star reviews. Don't forget Zombiepalooza going on over at Amanda Hocking's blog

LC Glazebrook is fully out of the closet and demanding equal play. Love her up at Amazon. (She also demanded a co-writing credit for Flowers, since it's also jammy packed with yummy Young Adult goodness.)

Aaaand, don't forget to follow "hauntedcomputer" on Twitter to be eligible for more than 100 free ebooks.

Also a new Scott interview up at Horror World.

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Book Chatter podcast 9 pm EST Oct 8

I'm one of several guests on Stacey Cochran's Book Chatter podcast tonight. Please tune in. It will also be archived. Today's Kindle Giveaway Blog Tour stop is at A Moment With Mystee.

The Digger at Bookgasm, LC at Zombiepalooza

Okay, Amazon blew up the bestseller list by switching a bunch of free books over to the "paid" bestseller list so The Red Church got pushed down a few hundred slots overnight. That's okay, though, it's sitting in the ballpark of Top 100. I also tried the trick of making The Red Church and Ashes free at Apple's iBookstore to see if Amazon matched the prices there (which is what happened to all those indie books the authors were giving away and suddenly they were top ten bestsellers!)

Come on over to Bookgasm today and see The Digger, my comic character, and also pop in my guest post at Amanda Hocking's Zombiepalooza and enter for signed books. And Creative Spirit is having its formal UK launch Friday, so tell your Brit friends to go buy a copy and review it so we can rush for the Top 100 there.

And, in case you missed it, LC Glazebrook came out of the closet yesterday at http://ajourneyofbooks.halfzero.net/

Red Church Rush and bonus kindles!

The Red Church at Amazon for 99 cents now ranked at #228 at 11 a.m. EST! Stoker Award finalist and Mystery Guild selection.  Buy it and put it in the Top 100 so I can give you folks an extra Kindle 3!

Can't afford it? Don't have a Kindle? Just go there and tag it--that helps more people see the book around the Amazon universe. Popular tags are: paranormal, mystery, horror, suspense, ghosts, thrillers, bestsellers, kindle, kindle books,  Christian fiction (yes, it has spiritual themes though it's not your typical category "Christian" novel), fantasy, dark fantasy.

Please review it if you've read it, even if it's just a line or two. If you reviewed the paper version, those don't carry over to the e-book so please copy your old review (even if you hated the book!).

As of today, Oct. 4, I have sixteen ebooks live for the Kindle on Amazon.

As previously announced, I am giving away (via Amazon) a Kindle DX through my 90-day blog tour and a Kindle 3 to a randomly selected newsletter subscriber, as well as the Pandora's Box of 100+ free ebooks to a Twitter follower.

And I was going to throw in a bonus Kindle if any book cracked the Top 100 on Amazon. Now I am upping the stakes: I will give away one free Kindle 3 for EACH of my books that cracks the Top 100 during the tour, in either the US or UK Kindle stores.

If one book does it, I will throw in one. If five books crack it, I will throw in five. For a total of up to 18 Kindles (well, actually 20, because I am releasing two more books during the tour--CURSED with J.R. Rain and my thriller DISINTEGRATION).

Sure, it's hard to hit the Top 100. Yet 100 books are always doing it at any given time, so it's not impossible. I'm not going to pester anyone any more than I normally do, and I am too lazy to track who does what. The tour is totally voluntary and winners are randomly selected by the local library staff.

If you want to increase your odds of winning a Kindle, you spread the word about the tour and my books. If you just want to show up at the blogs (in the sidebar to the right) and enter for free, then that's cool, too.

The idea is simple. You spread the word, I sell more books. You buy my books, I give stuff back to you. And we all sleep at night, hopefully with a Kindle under the pillow. Thanks for playing!

Today's stop: 20-Kindle Giveaway at Simply Stacie

Yesterday: See the sci-fi side of Scotty (me, not the dead engineer) at: http://cherylsbooknook.blogspot.com/

The day before: Visit the haunted church that inspired The Red Church at Inside of a Dog 

Last day to comment at Bewitched Bookworms, one of my favorite blogs

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20 Free Kindles!!! (eighteen exclamation points)

The Red Church at Amazon for 99 cents now ranked at #228 at 11 a.m. EST! Stoker Award finalist and Mystery Guild selection.  Buy it and put it in the Top 100 so I can give you folks an extra Kindle 3!

Can't afford it? Don't have a Kindle? Just go there and tag it--that helps more people see the book around the Amazon universe. Popular tags are: paranormal, mystery, horror, suspense, ghosts, thrillers, bestsellers, kindle, kindle books,  Christian fiction (yes, it has spiritual themes though it's not your typical category "Christian" novel), fantasy, dark fantasy

As of today, Oct. 4, I have sixteen ebooks live for the Kindle on Amazon.

As previously announced, I am giving away (via Amazon) a Kindle DX through my 90-day blog tour and a Kindle 3 to a randomly selected newsletter subscriber, as well as the Pandora's Box of 100+ free ebooks to a Twitter follower.

And I was going to throw in a bonus Kindle if any book cracked the Top 100 on Amazon. Now I am upping the stakes: I will give away one free Kindle 3 for EACH of my books that cracks the Top 100 during the tour, in either the US or UK Kindle stores.

If one book does it, I will throw in one. If five books crack it, I will throw in five. For a total of up to 18 Kindles (well, actually 20, because I am releasing two more books during the tour--CURSED with J.R. Rain and my thriller DISINTEGRATION).

Sure, it's hard to hit the Top 100. Yet 100 books are always doing it at any given time, so it's not impossible. I'm not going to pester anyone any more than I normally do, and I am too lazy to track who does what. The tour is totally voluntary and winners are randomly selected by the local library staff.

If you want to increase your odds of winning a Kindle, you spread the word about the tour and my books. If you just want to show up at the blogs (in the sidebar to the right) and enter for free, then that's cool, too.

The idea is simple. You spread the word, I sell more books. You buy my books, I give stuff back to you. And we all sleep at night, hopefully with a Kindle under the pillow. Thanks for playing!

Today's stop: 20-Kindle Giveaway at Simply Stacie

Yesterday: See the sci-fi side of Scotty (me, not the dead engineer) at: http://cherylsbooknook.blogspot.com/

The day before: Visit the haunted church that inspired The Red Church at Inside of a Dog 

Last day to comment at Bewitched Bookworms, one of my favorite blogs

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