Scott Nicholson

Big Kindle Boogie begins. 10 free Kindle Fires, 75 ebooks.

2012-01-30T05:41:00.000-08:00

This blog is partnering with bestselling thriller writers J.A. Konrath, Blake Crouch, J. Carson Black, Lee Goldberg, and Scott Nicholson for the Big Kindle Boogie on Feb. 1-2 to give away 10 Kindle Fires, 75 different Kindle books, and a $500 library donation. Easy entries and contest rules are at http://bigkindleboogie.blogspot.com, but you can enter here by Tweeting and Facebook “liking” the contest. You can also enter ONCE PER DAY by emailing bigkindleboogie@yahoo.com with “Boogie entry” as the subject line.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Free Kindle Books, Big Kindle Boogie, Chinese edition, and your 1 percent

2012-01-29T09:53:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the woeful neglect here at the blog. I have been thinking about "the 1 percent." Not just the Rich 1 Percent that almost everyone hates. Why does everyone hate them? Because they waste their 1 percent on themselves and spend their 1 percent ensuring they remain the 1 percent and nobody else moves into the neighborhood.

But I'll bet you are in the 1 percent of something. It may be a specific field, hobby, community, or even your family. How do you handle your 1 percent? How much do you share? How much of your 1 percent is given even at the risk that you drop to the 2 percent, or the 10 percent, or all the way down to zero?

Before I protest or judge a different 1 percent, I am going to look at the areas where I am in the 1 percent. Or anything above 50 percent. It does not "knock me down" to help others up. I don't mind joining the 1 percent of those who are helpful, useful, grateful, and dead broke. I want value in my life, value spread out to others, and seeds for all our gardens. I believe we grow together. Maybe we can all be 1 percent together.

Current free Kindle books:

(Jan. 28-30)

Odd Stacks: Story Collection Box Set

http://www.amazon.com/ODD-STACKS-Collection-Stacks-ebook/dp/B0070NJ72M

These Things Happened: Stories and Essays

http://www.amazon.com/These-Things-Happened-ebook/dp/B004SQQWIQ

Too Many Witches (children’s picture book)

http://www.amazon.com/Too-Many-Witches-ebook/dp/B004WOXROG

And look for the Big Kindle Boogie on Blogspot and Facebook if you like more free Kindle stuff!

And my first Chinese edition out if you read Simplified Chinese!

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Church-Simplified-Chinese-ebook/dp/B0070OK8H4

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Busting out some Kindle box sets: The Stacks Series

2012-01-23T14:05:00.000-08:00

I have compiled my Kindle story collections into three easy-to-grab digital boxes in the Stacks Series:

ODD STACKS is science fiction, fantasy, and zombie tales, three collections for the special introductory price of 99 cents for Kindle!

BAD STACKS is mystery, horror, and ghost stories, three Kindle collections for $3.99.

MAD STACKS, tales of psychological horror, mystery, and dark fantasy, is currently undergoing final edits for release this week! I hope you give them a try.
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Free Scott Nicholson Kindle books for two days!

2012-01-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

My latest round of free Kindle books rolls out today and Saturday (Jan. 20-12)

For writers, philosophers, and lunatics, treat yourself to the strange bit of non-advice known as The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success!

American Horror, a multi-author extravanganza of vampires, monsters, and zombies, oh my!

Creative Spirit: A Supernatural Screenplay is my adaptation of my paperback The Manor! Spielberg, I'm here when you want me...

The Vampire Shortstop is a standalone short story that won the international Writers of the Future contest in 1999. Now I am just a Geezer of the Future, but hey, it's free!

I hope you enjoy the books, and thanks for telling your friends!
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So, 360,000 ebooks downloaded in three days?

2012-01-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

The Epic Kindle Giveaway really blistered the Internet wires as you and my other friends heated it up last week! We could not believe our eyes when the smoke cleared and we counted up our free downloads around the world in three days--360,000 free ebooks!

We don't have exact figures yet because we were so busy we didn't all keep a minute-by-minute tally, but we estimated based on average sales before the event and then rounded down a little just so it didn't seem like were bragging. We actually think it is a bit higher than this, maybe even 10,000 more, but we won't know for a couple of months. We are not saying all this to brag. We are as staggered by it as anyone, and it proves the power of people and what we can do when we are set free to create, dream, and have fun together.

Thanks for your support in this wild, crazy time! You are welcome to grab this T-shirt, share it on your wall, Facebook page, Facebook group, blog, Website, or other virtual real estate, and then email epickindlegiveaway at yahoo.com with the link.

Winner will be selected during the Kindle Fire drawings by the Watauga County (NC) Public Library staff on Tuesday, Jan. 13, and announced on the event blog and Facebook page after it is verified. Thank you. Thank you.

Epic Kindle Giveaway rocked my world!

2012-01-15T07:01:00.000-08:00

I didn't have much of a chance to tie my personal blog into the mad machine that became the Epic Kindle Giveaway last week, but thanks to all of you who joined in and made it really cool! It was good to see some of my personal principles (friendship, fun, community-building, and people energy) put into action to make something bigger than the pieces of its parts.

You're also invited to join the Facebook page for the event because, who knows, something crazy may happen there again someday! People asked me how my numbers were and I never even looked at the download numbers--I glanced at the Top 100 freebie charts once just to make sure all four of us were on it somewhere and moving up, just to validate evidence of the power of people behind you and what they can do with their awesomeness. I will probably go back and try to figure out what happened, but mostly I am stunned by all the warmth and getting to meet the weird, cool people who actually aren't freaked out by the things I put in books. So I appreciate every one of you and made some great new friends while we did something that had never been done before!

This event also inspired me to look at more ways to connect big ideas in different places. Those who follow me know I don't believe this e-book thing is going to last in its current state. It has already gone through tremendous revolutions in just two years, and I believe ebooks are going to become more interactive and places where ideas are shared in an organic way.

Sure, we will always want stories (I will break your fingers if you try to steal my ratty paperback of Huckleberry Finn) but I think we want experience even more than we crave stories.

Maybe we will meet together in a story somewhere soon!

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Free Kindle Fires and 13 more free books today!

2012-01-12T16:24:00.000-08:00

Thirteen free books again today, and some of them are different! Includes a four-book boxed set!
Amazon Author Central link in the US or in the UK to get them all. Just make sure they say "Kindle price $0.00."

I would also appreciate it if you go click "like" and "share" on my free books today so more people can grab them, and if you have time to share a few words of review on a few of them, that will help next week when I try to sort out the Epic Kindle Giveaway madness!

Free books vary by day so be sure to grab them while they are hot! And why not join Epic Kindle Giveaway on Facebook to learn about more ways to win a Kindle Fire, or enter today from the EKG blog and visit our bookblogger friends for more ways to win a kindle? Thanks so much for your support and good luck!

13 free Kindle books today! Oh, and free Kindle Fires!

2012-01-11T11:59:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have cracked like Jerry Lewis during a telethon over this Epic Kindle Giveaway and added even more of my books for free. Just click my Amazon Author Central link in the US or in the UK to get them all. Just make sure they say "Kindle price $0.00."

I would also appreciate it if you go click "like" and "share" on my free books today so more people can grab them, and if you have time to share a few words of review on a few of them, that will help next week and beyond when I have to go back to the boring hard work of actually selling books!

Free books vary by day so be sure to grab them while they are hot! And why not join Epic Kindle Giveaway on Facebook to learn about more ways to win a Kindle Fire, or enter today from the EKG blog and visit our bookblogger friends for more ways to win a kindle? Thanks so much for your support and good luck!

Going Mega-Epic with Epic Kindle Giveaway

2012-01-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to yesterday's $25 gift card winners, Linda Kujaca and LesleyBoogie! Two more gift card giveaways today so please visit me on Facebook or visit http://epickindlegiveaway.blogspot.com

Also, a limited time offer, the box set Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 3 for $1.99! Four paranormal books in one place for your Kindle.

Epic Kindle Giveaway starts today! Share the news for gift cards!

2012-01-09T06:27:00.000-08:00

The Epic Kindle Giveaway kicks off with two sharing contests! We are giving away two $25 Amazon gift cards, winners chosen via random.org based on total number of entries. Share as much as you like but don't annoy your friends.

To enter:
Facebook. Look for our Epic Kindle Giveaway posts and share them, or do your own post with this blog address (http://epickindlegiveaway.blogspot.com)

Twitter: Copy and paste this into your Twitter stream and you're entered for another $25 gift card today:

Four Kindle Fires, $200 gift cards, 45 free #kindle books http://bit.ly/yc92KC #epickindlegiveaway RT to enter

That is all you have to do today besides dream about how many books, movies, and songs you are going to put on your FREE KINDLE FIRE! Don't be shy, because the more we give away, the more we give away. Seriously. That is how we roll. Epic.

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Epic Kindle Giveaway. Six Free Kindle Fires

2012-01-07T06:27:00.000-08:00

Has James Patterson ever given you a free Kindle Fire? Stephenie Meyer? J.K. Rowling? I didn't think so. Join the madness. http://epickindlegiveaway.blogspot.com

Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter and follow JR Rain, Aiden James, and H.T. Night on Facebook to increase your chances of winning $1,000 in prizes.
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Free for Kindle today: Littlefield: Two Novels

2012-01-06T07:16:00.000-08:00

Complete text of the novels The Red Church and Drummer Boy are available in one boxed set, free for Kindle users today and Saturday! http://www.amazon.com/Littlefield-Two-Supernatural-Thrillers-ebook/dp/B004T3G12K

Also available for Kindle UK

Also last day free for the UK Kindle books Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 5, containing the complete text of Troubled, Solom, and The Gorge. (These books were published in paperback in the United States as The Home, The Farm, and They Hunger--I don't have U.S. rights at this time). Also, the new release of the former paperback known as The Manor, Creative Spirit: UK Edition

Stay tuned for the Epic Kindle Giveaway.

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Scott Nicholson free Kindle books for Amazon UK

2012-01-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

After last week's fun and successful Kindle freebie binge, I am trying a box set free in the United Kingdom. Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 5, containing the complete text of Troubled, Solom, and The Gorge, will be free Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday! (These books were published in paperback in the United States as The Home, The Farm, and They Hunger--I don't have U.S. rights at this time). Also, the new release Creative Spirit: UK Edition will be free Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Thanks for sharing with your friends!

And you may just want to follow my author page on Facebook if you happen to like free Kindles and Amazon gift cards! Yes, that's a hint...

Scott Nicholson free kindle books

2011-12-26T07:16:00.000-08:00

If you like to share with your friends, feel free to copy and paste in Twitter, facebook, and your favorite book forum: Scott Nicholson is giving away free Kindle books this week! http://hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com

(UK Kindle owners, just replace "com" with "co.uk" and you go right to the correct page for Amazon UK)

Sunday:

Mystery Dance: three books-The Skull Ring, Disintegration, Crime Beat
http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Dance-Three-Novels-ebook/dp/B004I8WNEQ

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mystery-Dance-Three-Novels-ebook/dp/B004I8WNEQ

Share today from my Facebook wall to be entered for signed copy of "Disintegration"

(UK only) horror thriller The Gorge by Scott Nicholson

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Gorge-ebook/dp/B00472O79W/

story collection Head Cases by Scott Nicholson, bonus tales by Willie Meikle and John Everson

http://www.amazon.com/Head-Cases-ebook/dp/B004G5Z4HO

(UK Kindle only) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Head-Cases-ebook/dp/B004G5Z4HO

That should keep you reading a while! Please tell your Kindle friends and look for an EPIC kindle giveaway coming soon!

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Santa Scott free Kindle book giveaways

2011-12-24T05:47:00.000-08:00

I'm shuffling down the chimney and handing out goodies for all the good little girls and boys who awake to find Kindles and Kindle Fires in their stockings (but you don't have to own a Kindle to read free Kindle books -- you can read them on your phone, iPad, computer, etc. What a truly marvelous age we live in!)

Free today, Dec. 24, is the paranormal mystery Transparent Lovers by Scott Nicholson
http://www.amazon.com/Transparent-Lovers-ebook/dp/B004LROVS0

and the mystery thriller Disintegration
http://www.amazon.com/Disintegration-A-Mystery-Thriller-ebook/dp/B0048EL5M6

Coming soon: Duncan the Punkin, The Skull Ring, and As I Die Lying. Please tell all your friends and pass the freebies along. Amazon Kindle books have been very good to me and my family and I am happy to share. Check this post daily for the next week for updated giveaways. Now I need to shake off this chimney soot. Ho ho ho!

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Liquid Fear, Chronic Fear, and the rebirth of a writing career

2011-12-21T07:24:00.000-08:00

By Scott Nicholson

Today, Dec. 21, marks both the solstice and the two-year anniversary of my indie publishing experiment. On a gray day as the sun reached its nadir across my northern sky, I clicked a button that sent Burial to Follow into the digital world.

I had no idea what I was doing, only that I had nothing to lose. Part of me was afraid, as those old whispers came. You know, the ones drummed into writers since the dawn of time: (“Only hacks self-publish! You can’t do anything without an agent! Just keep sending out query letters and focus on writing the next book! Self-publishing will kill your career.”)

In truth, the original act was a mix of desperation and inspiration. Despite six books in traditional publishing, I was basically dead in the water, haunted by midlist numbers. New York thought it knew what I was and had the data to prove it. I knew better in my heart, but I was unsuccessful in convincing my potential partners, and the world of publishing had grown harsher and colder, to the point of “Only responds if interested.” All I could think was “Maybe you’re not interested, but I sure am.”

The Burial to Follow novella was respectably published in a hardcover by Cemetery Dance, so it had provenance. I figured I’d hedge my bets against what my peers thought (not that peers were paying any attention at all to me in 2009) by self-publishing backlist so I would have a built-in defense. I created a terrible but sincere cover with art from my DIRT comic book and hit the Amazon button.

I believe I got one sale through the final nine days of the year, but it was fun to wonder about that one stranger who had clicked and purchased. So I prepped The Red Church, a novel that had been successful in its short life but had fallen out of print for five years. Again, I had the self-defense of prior publication. “See? I’m a REAL writer and I am just making these ‘legitimate’ books available again.” And then sales started trickling in, and the book steadily rose up the charts. People liked it! But the most immense satisfaction was in being able to reach readers years after New York was done with it. The story was still fresh, maybe even timeless. At least timeless enough for now.

Cool things happened. My daughter was most impressed when I hit #1 in “Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy” (boy, the categories were wild in those days), not because I was above Stephen King but above C.S. Lewis. I think that was the first time she ever viewed me as a “real writer,” despite the stack of my dusty paperbacks in the closet.

I was still sending stuff to publishers and agents during this time, because I was a “real writer” and that indie stuff was just a sideline until I got a “real deal.” My goal at the time was to earn enough to pay my power bill. So I clumped together some stories that had also been professionally published, and the nickels turned into dimes. There was also an exciting and growing indie community, writers either frustrated by the traditional system or new to the entire game and having no pre-conceptions. That was matched by the enthusiasm of readers who saw a whole new world of choice open up to them. The universe was opening to possibility in odd and thrilling ways.

By mid-2010, I stopped sending stuff out to agents and publishers because the power structure had shifted. Readers now ran the industry, although none of us really understood the concept, or maybe it was too large and simple for us to grasp. Readers created bestsellers, they created careers for writers, they created new genres and cross-genres and niches and book blogs. The whole job for a writer shifted from finding the intermediaries who would deliver an audience to removing as many obstacles as possible between you and your readers. I uploaded original novels that I had been sending around, and I wrote new ones with the sole intention of self-publishing.

By the dawn of 2011, I was able to leave my day job and fulfill the only personal goal I’d ever had as a writer. I had some luck with a couple of bestsellers, and Amazon picked up Liquid Fear for re-release, and the sequel Chronic Fear. Amazon is awesome to work with and has been the most enthusiastic partner of my entire publishing career.

I don’t know if there is a “next level.” I certainly don’t need any more to be happy, and I am incredibly grateful and humbled. All I did was do what I love and click a few buttons, and I happened to be doing the right thing when the right time came along. I wish I could make ego claims of genius and talent, but it’s simply the blessings of good fortune, simply doing what God made Scott to do that no other person can do.

Today, Amazon launches Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear. Two years after the sun hit its lowest point and started ascension. Two years to the day after I first hit a button and said “Yes.”

I still say it today. Thank you, God and the universe. Thank you, readers and friends. Thank you, my wonderful, beautiful family. Yes.

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Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear are $2.99 for Kindle, also available in paperback and audio. Current freebie through 12/25 is Transparent Lovers for Kindle. Thanks for your support and friendship, and tell your friends about the freebies. My pledge is always: The more I get, the more I give away.

Speed Dating with the Dead free for Kindle

2011-12-19T04:46:00.000-08:00

Okay, today's gift is Speed Dating with the Dead, a supernatural thriller. Inspired by an actual paranormal conference I held at a haunted Appalachian hotel--in the book, ghost hunters accidentally stir up demons. Free for two days!
http://www.amazon.com/Speed-Dating-Dead-ebook/dp/B003TZLWTG

Burial to Follow is still currently free at Amazon but probably not for long.

I'll be signing paper books at Black Bear Books in Boone (Dec. 20) and City Lights Bookstore in Sylva (Dec. 21).

The screenplay of the novelization of the book

2011-12-15T08:41:00.000-08:00

I'm one of the tens of thousands of authors trying the Amazon KDP Select program, where you make a book(s) available in the Prime lending library for a 90-day period. And the books are exclusive to Amazon during that period, too. Amazon also allows you to make an enrolled book free for up to five days during that period. It's too new to tell how this is going to affect the ebook scene, but I decided to roll out The Gorge: The Screenplay for a five-day giveaway.

I have never really promoted the screenplay, which I released as a Kindle-only ebook probably a year ago. It's my original screenplay adaptation of They Hunger, which is still in print from Kensington Books in the US and Canada, although I have released a digital version under the title The Gorge in all the other world markets. In case you are not yet confused enough, I also have a graphic novel in development called The Gorge, of which we've completed one issue.

All this is to say, well, grab the screenplay while it's free!
http://www.amazon.com/The-Gorge-Screenplay-ebook/dp/B004PLO6O6

If you are outside the US/Canada, the novel version is on Amazon UK. The Kindle and paperback editions in US can be ordered at Amazon.
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Win signed copies of Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear!

2011-12-12T14:52:00.000-08:00

Preorder Chronic Fear and be entered to win a signed paperback set of Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear! These books will be signed with "First copies off the press."

Chronic Fear is available for Kindle, paperback, and audio at Amazon, and at BN.com in paperback. After ordering, simply email hauntedcomputer AT yahoo.com with "Chronic Fear" in the subject line. Thanks and good luck!

KDP Select, aka Amazon lending library

2011-12-10T10:03:00.000-08:00

Having been put in the "stir" by the L.A. Times, and since every writer with an opinion (which is basically all of them--which is why we are writers) has to chime in on KDP Select*, here's my take:

1. More books for more readers.
2. Chance for writers to meet new readers.
3. Chance for readers to meet new writers.

Risks? Sure, but mostly for authors. This could signal the downward spiral of the value of ebooks, which could lead to fewer people bothering to write them and eventually fewer new books for people to read.There's the possibility a writer choosing Amazon exclusivity will alienate fans in other markets, but the author can opt in and out of the program every 90 days. That should give anyone truly interested in the author a chance to buy in the non-Amazon markets. Plus paper copies will be exempt from the exclusivity requirement.

Those who are screaming that Amazon is taking away the hard-earned freedom of indie authors, I have to snort coffee through my nose. Indies earned nothing (unless you were one of those who succeeded selling paperbacks out of the trunk of your car). Indies were just sitting there, largely either unpublished or cast off by the industry, when Amazon created a huge market and then let them in it. Amazon created the device, the market, and the audience, and Amazon's success forced other competitors to open up to indies and offer excellent compensation and terms. Any author who claims Amazon is "the enemy" is not working from facts but from emotion.

Every single move Amazon has made resulted in MORE money for all participating writers, MORE ebooks for all readers, and MORE opportunity instead of a monopoly (if you follow me at all, you know I'm a contrarian and I see huge, huge opportunity in the other markets now, which of course will have to do something to counter Amazon's big move.)

As The Dude says, "There are a lot of angles to this thing," but it looks like everyone wins for now. Who knows what the future will be, but did we ever know that anyway?
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*This is basically a lending library for anyone who is enrolled in the Amazon Prime program. You can check out any book in the library for one month.

The Book That Killed My Career

2011-12-07T10:29:00.000-08:00

Back in the paper stone ages, I had a nice start to my writing career. My first paperback The Red Church got a second printing and was picked up by the Mystery Guild Book Club as an alternate selection and sold a lot of hardcovers. My next book, The Harvest, sold even faster out of the gate, but it wasn't as good (I'd written it before The Red Church). At the time, bookstores were getting five to 10 copies of each book. I could go into a store and see a block of Scott Nicholson on the shelves.

And then The Manor happened. I didn't realize it at the time, but the old "order to the net" effect had hit me. If a store ordered five copies and sold three, they'd only order three the next time, and you'd sell two. With The Manor, I was only getting two copies on the shelves. Hard to find. It didn't help that the publisher's chosen title was bland, the cover said nothing, and that I was engaging in self-inflicted personal drama at the time. But the end result was that my traditional publishing career ended right there. The tragic part was that I'd just signed a three-book contract on the strength of the first two books, so I was stuck with a publisher that didn't have much stake in me anymore.

I can still remember the chill that went through me when I got my royalty statement. Sales had declined by nearly two-thirds. And I could not do much about it, because the stores would be making future orders based on The Manor's (lack of) performance. Meaning I would have an uphill fight to sell even that many copies on subsequent books. However, things did get a little better and They Hunger, the last book of the contract, was on the upswing (it's still in print, actually, for reasons I can't understand at all).

Despite my agent's best efforts and support, the numbers were a difficult obstacle to overcome, since New York works on perception--New York thought it already knew what I was, a low-performing mid-list writer. I can't really blame the industry. I guess they have to use some criteria, because so many books are of equal quality and they spend more energy weeding out books than they do selling them.

But, damn it, it was my book! I took my shot but a couple of months under a stacked system of disposable products wasn't worth sitting there with an out-of-print book for six years.I was so fortunate to be able to revive it, revise it, give it a new proof, cover, and title, and completely re-invent it. I am not saying I am a better publisher than my publisher, although I have a goal of selling more copies in a month than the publisher sold in seven years. I am saying I care a billion times more about the book than the publisher ever could--they have other books, other writers, other business pressures. I only have one me.

I revised it, got great editing and proof help from Neal Hock at Hock's Editing Services and a great cover from Neil Jackson, support from a bunch of great book blogs, and published it in every major ebook market. It's out there for all the world to love or hate or ignore.

I only have one career. I only have one book named Creative Spirit. Hell, the title pretty much sums up the theme of the book. You can't keep it down. This sucker is crawling out of the grave. It may not change the world, or prove that anyone did anything wrong back in 2004, but it is back! The manor is dead but creative spirit lives forever.

Welcome home, kid.

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View or sample Creative Spirit at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Kobo, Smashwords, BN.com, or Goodreads.

Why This Country Is In Bad Shape #112

2011-12-05T11:21:00.000-08:00

Here's what happens when you write a letter to your Congressional representative, in this case opposing Stop Online Piracy Act. I used a recycled envelope, sent to me by some bulk mailer. I taped a label over their return address, applied my own "Forever Stamp" (complete with an American flag, of course) over the "Put stamp here" block, and mailed it. There were no markings to indicate it was a recycled envelope.

Today it came back with the label peeled off, a "Return to Sender" sticker applied, and "cheap ass prick" handwritten near my return address.

So we have someone either in a Congressional mail room deciding what type of envelope is worthy of entry, or we have a U.S. Postal Service employee playing political mail cop. There were no markings on the envelope and nothing to indicate it was a recycled envelope. I think recycling an envelope is the very type of thing our esteemed Benjamin Franklin, our famously frugal and first Postmaster General, would have done.

So my conclusion is this. I may be "cheap," but I am not a prick. I pay my debts and taxes and own my house. I am cheap because somebody has to be--whether you are the government or its contracted employee. You've helped put my children's financial future and security at risk. You've overspent to the point that I have to give you all my savings. I don't think I can ever be cheap enough to take care of you.

In fact, You Who Didn't Have the Balls to Sign Your Name, I pay your salary. And maybe I'll stop. Maybe I'll vote against whoever put you in your job. Maybe I'll rethink what type of delivery service I use. I hear the USPS is making huge cuts, and maybe you're next on the list, because I am forwarding this information and your clever little critique to the Inspector General's office, because I hear tampering with the mail is a serious offense. Perhaps tampering with Congressional mail is an additional felony or two.

BTW my Congressional representative has an email address, too, so I can save my 42 cents as well as the cost of a new envelope. Happy Holidays, and let freedom ring.

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Book success and the art of the ego

2011-12-04T09:22:00.000-08:00

It's terrible to be a writer. We're all crazy. Writing--the act, the art, and the career--is a specific set of mental defects grounded in the most outlandish insecurities and wrapped in a poisonous atmosphere of ego. It's bad enough to think what you have to say is worth anyone's attention, but then you want money for it? Puh-leez.

I've served as therapist for several writers over the past year, and it's almost entirely about their numbers. I can't recall one writer saying "I'm stuck in my writing, and I need some inspiration." Instead, all I hear is "Oh my gosh, my numbers are down" or "Sales are hot, how can I keep it going?"

Because I've had exhilarating success and abject failure in my writing career, it's easy for me to seek the middle way. Being a taoist libertarian works fine when I'm sitting here in a Blue Ridge Mountain hollow with nothing out my window but the garden and the trees, but I can't afford to be a taoist unless people buy my books. Indeed, the primary goal of The Indie Journey: Secrets of Writing Success is to define happiness as apart from money while at the same time offering you tips to sell more books. The inherent contradiction drives me nuts, but at least I am not tricking you into believing you can sell a million copies. Because you won't. Neither will I.

So my advice to writers worried about their numbers is, "The numbers are numbers and the words are the words." I am not sure what that means, except after 15 years I've come to believe that sales are largely due to luck. Talent is luck, the mental stamina to work hard is luck, and getting book sales that stimulate book sales is luck. Indeed, in the larger picture, all writers sitting right here in the Great Digital Gold Rush of 2011 are lucky. It won't last, of course. No good thing ever lasts. But there will be a next good thing, and a next, just like always.

Nothing sells like sales. Nothing writes like words. I don't know if that's taoist or not. But your numbers are no more real than the stories themselves. This entire thing is impossible--from writing a book to finding a reader. The fact that it has happened once or twice doesn't make it any less impossible. You, as a person, are not your numbers any more than you are the words you put on a screen.

My thriller Liquid Fear hit the Kindle Top 20. Right now it's probably around #12,000-15,000. Yet it's the same book. Amazon will publish it Dec. 20th, and it will likely be a hit again with their promotion. Great editorial assistance aside, it's basically the same book. So am I the indie rock star from April, the forgotten shmuck from November, or the Amazon poster boy of 2012? All and none. All and none.

The book that didn't sell at first is still the same book as when it breaks the Top 100. No better or worse. You as a person and as a writer have no more inherent value than you did before or after your stardom. You will be forgotten. You will go out of print. We all do.

So what are you so worried about?

What am I so worried about?

All and none. I told you all writers are crazy.

###

Creative Spirit by Scott Nicholson U.S. ebook launch

2011-11-29T15:08:00.000-08:00

"Scott Nicholson explores the dark legends of the southern end of the Appalachian mountain chain, a nightmare country that ends in Stephen King's yard."-- Sharyn McCrumb, author of The Ballad novels

CREATIVE SPIRIT

A paranormal thriller by Scott Nicholson

After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with metastatic cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost at Korban Manor. She’s compelled to visit the historic estate to face her destiny and the fate of her soul.

Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to Korban Manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban's form out of wood, he is swept into a destructive frenzy that even Anna can’t pull him from.

The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams.

View or sample it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Kobo, Smashwords, BN.com, or Goodreads.

--------------

CREATIVE SPIRIT is Scott Nicholson’s revised edition of the 2004 U.S. paperback THE MANOR. Scott is Kindle bestselling author of 12 novels, including THE RED CHURCH, DISINTEGRATION, LIQUID FEAR, and SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD. Connect with Scott on Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Twitter, blogspot, website or Amazon page

Meme addiction. One day at a time.

2011-11-24T05:53:00.000-08:00

Instead of listing the many, many things I am grateful for today, I want to confess: I have become a meme addict. Yes, I have entered the land of Conspiracy Keanu and Excited Soccer Kid and Successful Black Man and my personal favorite, Disaster Girl.

I could go into how Pepper Spray Cop memes tell the story of the entire Occupy Wall Street movement, or how it is either an important social communique or a cultural touchstone or an example of technology running faster than our ability to process information. Yeah, the academic stuff that's not even cool enough to be geeky. There's even a site that analyzes the creation of a meme, charts its history and stats, and gives historical background. While talking heads and sociologists analyze what it means, the average person just looks at it and laughs and "gets it," or else gets furious. (Although I'd guess the memes mainly reaches the audience that gets it, because the fuddy duddies are too busy watching Fox News or reading the Wall Street Journal.

I haven't created my first meme yet, but I am considering ways to use it to promote the things I believe in. But I guess we all do that, by sharing and posting the memes we like, the ones that tell a bigger truth in one sentence or image.

I don't know whether to be overjoyed or very, very afraid.

###

Creative Spirit: Bonus Edition With Screenplay By Scott Nicholson

2011-11-21T11:26:00.000-08:00

If you've known me a looong time (at least in Internet years), you may remember a little mass-market paperback called The Manor. If so, you are one of the few, because it didn't sell a whole lot of copies. I worked very hard on the book, although I may have over-edited it in a misguided attempt to "broaden my market appeal." In short, I took out all the cussing and sex. I thought it would be the book that would launch my career, because they used to say the third book was the make-or-break point for a writing career. (Turns out a lot of what they used to say was wrong, but I was too dumb to know it.)

Seven-plus years and a rights reversion later, I get to find out if the book is truly not that good or if I was simply a victim of bad circumstances. The publisher did what publishers do, and the bookstores probably ordered like they always do, based on the previous books' sales, and the system worked the way the system worked. And The Manor was just one book of many, there for a couple of months and gone, pushed aside for the next run and never heard from again.

Until now.

I revised it, restructured it slightly, and generally went through to make sure I was happy with it. Yes, I am still happy with it. Maybe it's not Stephen King or Dean Koontz or James Herbert, but it is solidly Scott Nicholson. I didn't insert any cussing or sex in it just for fun, but it has a few "hells" and a romantic conflict at the core. It has some ghosts, a little violence, a lot of suspense, a fairly big cast of characters, shifting third-person viewpoint, and a little metaphorical theme that I didn't even figure out until years after it was published. I like it. It's part of my family and now it's back in the fold after a long journey abroad, sequestered by strangers in an unforgiving land. It's home again.

Creative Spirit (my preferred title) has been out for the UK Kindle for a year and is one of my bestselling books there. Now it's time for the U.S. release. I just released the bonus edition for Kindle with the novel, my screenplay adaptation, and an article about the real manor (you can read the article here.) I am putting out the basic novel, at a temporary lower price, after Thanksgiving if you prefer to wait, or you can get it at BN.com for Nook, all formats at Smashwords, or at Kobo

I believe readers will like this. Seven years later, I don't think the book is dated, because it's a modern Gothic removed to a remote location (it doesn't matter if the characters don't have a cell phone or wi-fi). And I have this goal: I intend to sell more copies of Creative Spirit than the publisher did.

The publisher had its chance. Now it's my turn. And your turn. Thanks for your support.

###

Kindle Lending Library and Amazon prime membership

2011-11-20T08:14:00.000-08:00

The big bubbling news of Amazon is the launch of the Netflix-style pool of ebooks rolled into the membership. Not trying to be a know-it-all since I am the world's dumbest genius, but this was an inevitable move that I predicted last year. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon. The initial pool of books is around 5,400 titles as of today. Expect that to blow up very soon, because of the other big development in the rumor stage: Amazon is looking to let self-published authors opt in to the library. I don't know anything of substance but The Passive Voice works off of an "informed tip" to explore the issue.

For readers, it is an amazing deal. Most Amazon customers would have Prime anyway, just to get the movies and the free shipping and the other benefits. Now you basically get 12 free books a year--and good ones, not just stuff an indie author made free (not that there is anything wrong with indies, but you will not see The Hunger Games free elsewhere.) More reading is always A Good Thing.

The biggie for writers will be: (1) compensation and (2) exclusivity. Amazon may well be worth the exclusivity. Obviously, I feel that way, having signed two books with them and happy to do more. A big library moves Amazon even further ahead of the other ebook markets, by orders of magnitude. It's the compensation question that's more of a concern, particularly long term.

One rumor is a payment fund by which writers will be compensated for checkouts. This is a good idea, but the size of the pie and the total number of slices are still uncertain. Even $100,000 a month is not very much if 100,000 authors are splitting it (I'd guess there are at least half a million indie authors at this point).

But writers ultimately write to be read. Back in the Stone Ages of pre-2009, we spent a lot of energy trying to get our books onto library shelves and getting noticed by readers. While discoverability will still remain a challenge, I like my odds a lot better when it's on a free digital shelf. Maybe those readers will connect and go on to try (and maybe buy) other books.

I write each book for one reader--the reader whose ideology may be changed, whose inspiration might blossom, or who might need those few hours of entertainment and escape. I don't know who that is. So I have to work as hard to reach as many readers as possible. The Prime lending library helps accomplish that mission.

***
If you have Prime, you can check out my Fear books (Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear are both releasing Dec. 20). I don't see a function to be able to "pre-checkout" but it's on the list of those available for loan. Maybe I'll have more there soon. Keep watching the skies.

Stop Government Control of the Internet: Oppose HR 3261

2011-11-16T08:31:00.000-08:00

(Are you opposed to government control of the Internet, such as the oppressive first step of HR 3261 (Stop Online Piracy Act)? Feel free to pirate, steal, borrow or copy any portion of this post and use it in your own letter to your U.S. Representative and editor of your local newspapers. Such letters are best personalized, in your own words, and politicians in particular value handwritten or personally signed letters, which they equate with active voters--but perhaps you share some of my ideals and are welcome to my words. Value and protect Internet freedom, or soon you may not be able to read this.)

Dear U.S. Rep. ________ and Editor:

I am writing to express my deep alarm at HR 3261 (Stop Online Piracy Act) and any government intrusion into the Internet use of United States citizens. It is not only a horrible precedent blithely couched in the guise of an economic security measure, it is opening the door to further government control of our speech, thoughts, and communication—indeed, the very fabric of our free society.

As someone who makes a living selling original digital content, I have no worry over people “stealing” my content or even selling it for profit. In fact, most of my books are easily available in illegal torrent streams, and I don’t give it a second thought. Digital piracy is a very negligible threat, largely exaggerated by the fear and hysteria of industries that are afraid of change. Even if the United States could police its own servers, the illegal content would still leak from cracks all over the world. The only possible outcome would be bigger government, higher taxes, and repressive control of our speech—and once the government has its prying eyes deep inside our Internet, do any of us really expect the government to turn a blind eye toward anything else it might not like?

What is the TRUE threat is the government making any move, however well-intentioned, into the public’s largest and most immediate discussion forum. The Internet is the biggest tool for free speech in our civilization’s history, and any regulatory shadow cast over it stands in direct contradiction to our First Amendment and, indeed, the foundation of the democracy we claim to espouse and defend.

I don’t lose sleep over Internet theft. But I lose a lot of sleep over the idea of Big Brother reaching into my computer and telling me what I can’t read, see, or believe. Say "No" to HR 3261 and value individual civil liberty over despotic government growth. Thank you.

YOUR NAME

YOUR TOWN

---

Nora Percival: Self-Publishing at Age 97

2011-11-14T08:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I helped my 97-year-old friend Nora Percival publish an ebook. We're still in the upload process, and it was a great reminder of how wonderful the digital era is. While Nora is still hale, hardy, and bright at age 97, she has little incentive to wait years to look for publishers of her set of memoirs covering her parents' relationship in Russia, immigrating to America in the 1920s and growing up in the Great Depression, and the new book The Whirligig of Time about working in a World War II defense plant.

While a few of her books were already out for Kindle and in paper from small press, we're reformatting the files to make them cleaner and I will also be building a three-set memoir omnibus for her. She's most excited about getting to see the real-time sales data, as she has just started blogging and using Facebook, too. We also adjusted her prices to more realistic levels--her list of Kindle books is here.

I don't know anything about whether authors are better off using a traditional publisher, doing it themselves, or looking for other distribution options. But in this case, for this one author, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a little instant gratification. After 97 years, she's earned it!
###

German Covers and Life Ain't Too Shabby

2011-11-08T16:42:00.000-08:00

It may not have been the best day ever, but it was typically cool. The morning started with signing a contract to publish The Skull Ring in Chinese, followed by sending a notice of a rights reversion for the book that shall be Creative Spirit (formerly The Manor), followed by receiving the translated file of Crime Beat (Ressort: Verbrechen in German from Stefan Mommertz), followed by writing some of the current thriller in progress, followed by helping the neighbor dress a deer. Plus I found my daughter's glasses that had been missing for a week, and I found where my wife has been hiding the cookies. I am so grateful to have such rich and abundant blessings (and the abundance is going to my belly if I eat too many cookies.)

You can help me out by weighing in on these covers (the base image is the same as the English version, so it seems simplest to just re-use it, although I could also go back to the drawing board completely if you hate them both)

FINAL VERSION

The Unofficial Scott Nicholson Ebook Predictions for the Future of Publishing: Updated

2011-11-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

Just for giggles, I thought it might be fun to go back to some of my "Predictions for the Future of Ebooks" I made in September 2010 at Debbi Mack's blog (complete post is here). I will give myself a grade from A to F based on what has happened since and where it may be trending. Even though the predictions were fairly tongue in cheek, they were based on what I knew at the time. As usual, I only learned that I don't know very much! Feel free to chime in with your own predictions.

1. The Kindle will deliver the knockout punch to the Nook, Sony Reader, and Kobo e-reader by Christmas 2011.

GRADE: F. I clearly botched this one, but I do believe Sony and the Nook are about at the end of the road, and Apple has still not entered the ebook market. Kobo has made great worldwide steps and looks to emerge as Number Two behind Amazon's Kindle.

2. By December, many of the indie writers who jumped on the $2.99 pricing bandwagon for e-books will drop to 99 cents in an effort to drum up numbers.

GRADE: B. Most indie writers do price their books at 99 cents, although an increasing number of the more successful indies are moving to $3.99, and it seems to work. Apparently, the $2.99 price point, like the 99 cent price, has become for some readers a warning sign that the book is indie. An author who charges more is worth more, even if it's the same author! Why didn't I think of that?

3. The Big Six group of publishers will be down to the Big Three in five years, and Amazon will be a bigger publisher than those three survivors put together.

GRADE: B. Still too early to tell at this point, but Amazon is trending up up up. I've been impressed by the transition big publishers have been able to make, steering the massive ship just in time to avoid a head-on with the glacier, but I still believe scraping the bow will be enough to sink her. Still, we can't discount the huge cargo of backlist she's hauling.

4. Small publishers with identifiable markets will adapt better than large publishers who have no identifiable markets, because publisher brands are meaningless to the average reader.

GRADE: C. Again, it's early, but a lot of small presses have done very well in the ebook era, thanks to low overhead and in the joy of ditching the whole bookstore distribution system that always freighted them with a disadvantage. But publishers have not lost their writers as fast as I thought they would, and there seems to be plenty more writers willing to board the sinking ship, just to say they were there when it happened. A small but vocal core of readers also seems to be demanding protection from those pesky indie authors and their millions of unedited books (while big publishers scan paper copies and dump out inferior formatting in far too many cases). I only give myself "average" because publishers have done better than I expected (for now).

5. In five years, there will be about 200 bookstores in the United States, centered in the major cities.

GRADE: A. And you can say good-bye to Barnes & Noble, which has pretty much gutted its shelf space to start selling Nooks and carpets and toys and beanie babies and iPads. (I guess it depends on at what point you stop considering B&N a "bookstore" and start calling it a "general merchandiser.")

6. In five years, there will be 10 million e-books for sale at Amazon.

GRADE: A. I'm sticking with this one. Ebooks passed the one million mark early this year and, at the rate at which indie authors are befriending me on Facebook and the frantic rush of veterans to get their ebooks out (not to mention everyone turning their short stories and articles and blog posts into ebooks), I'd buy stock in this prediction.

7. The publishing industry won’t exist in 10 years. Instead, we’ll have 20,000 cottage industries supplying digital content, very few beyond the hobbyist level.

GRADE: C. I believe something calling itself "the publishing industry" will still be around, but it will be fairly unrecognizable-- about on the order of what "record labels" and "movie studios" are now--a few big power brokers but tons of tiny cottage industries. And those agents are doing a pretty good job of turning themselves into epublishers, although I still don't see what advantages they can offer over doing it yourself.

8. In five years, even the e-book bestsellers will sell for 99 cents. Most of the rest will have no value.

GRADE: B. I'm sticking with this but downgrading myself because it's going to be difficult to determine "value"--because advertising will make a big impact on book pricing.

9. The 20 surviving novelists still getting published in print in 10 years will make out like bandits.

GRADE: A. I'm sticking with this one. And I'll bet half of those bestselling authors will be dead, with the names farmed out. For the record, the complete prediction was based on rack presence in retail stores, not POD or those antique specialty shops we'll nostalgically call "bookstores."

10. The authors unfortunate enough to have been moderately published in New York this decade will be the worst off in 2020, when most sales are digital and they have signed clauses that basically grant their e-rights in perpetuity.

GRADE: B. I've observed an interesting phenomenon with the authors who have signed major deals and kept publishing their own books. Their own books sell better than the major releases! Even at lower prices, they earn far more money. So they are using their major publishing deals as LOSS LEADERS!!! That is something I hadn't expected. But those authors locked in at 9.99 retail prices with publishers who have forgotten them will be lucky to ever see a nickel in royalties. And yet people are STILL querying agents, signing contracts, and banking their futures on someone else's needs.

11. The Big Three will have some spin-off revenue in enhanced digital books, but only for the brand-name authors who died and didn’t have heirs smart enough to start their own publishing companies.

Grade: C. Well, Pottermore is attempting to launch, and Pattersonville, ClancyPants, and Cusslerland can't be far behind, but the only people who get even remotely excited about enhanced ebooks are the middle players who want to "intermediate" themselves into the production process. For money. That no reader wants to give them.

12. In a desperate survival attempt, publishers will move to a subscription model, similar to the Netflix model, where consumers pay a flat monthly fee for the books they want to read.

Grade: B. I knocked this out of the park with Amazon, which last week announced it was rolling its own lending library into its Prime subscription (which is basically Netflix without the bad management). But I am flubbing on the feet-of-clay publishers taking advantage of their one main strength: an actual library of content.

13. By 2013, 85 percent of the writers who published their rejected manuscripts in 2010 will give up for good, retiring with $200 in net profit and a good story for the grandchildren.

Grade: C. I am already seeing dramatic announcements of "I'm quitting" from writers who nobody knew had even started. But it seems like a lot of writers are earning at least a little bit, and since there's no overhead, there's no reason to quit. If nothing else, 2011 will be remembered as the year shameless self-promotion crested into a tsunami and flooded every social media stream. And way more people are entering the game ("Gee, I hear you can make a million on Kindle. I'm going to start writing!") than are leaving it.

14. The smart writers who are dumb enough to stick with it will earn their money through content advertising, product placement, multimedia branding, and tireless promotion.

Grade: Incomplete. I still think ads are coming, presaged by Amazon's Prime library and the reduced-priced "Kindle with bargains," but it is still too early in the evolution to pat myself on the back or kick my rear.

15. Half of these predictions will be wrong, and no one will be able to tell which ones they are, because this blog post will be stored in a free e-book that no one ever reads.

Grade: C. I don't think I've put this in an ebook yet because it will date badly one way or another. Sorta like the guy walking around with a "The End is Coming!!!" sign. Even if you're right, you're still an idiot.

16. I will still be writing in 20 years, and no one will care about my predictions.

Grade: Makeup Test. Depends on how many people drop by to read this and comment.

Final Grade: Pass. By following what I believe, I've managed to carve out a career, so my predictions are working for at least one person. Okay, I admit, I graded myself on a curve. What can I say? I'm the teacher's pet.

###

Amazon's covers for the Fear series: Thomas & Mercer rocks it

2011-11-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

Don't look now, but here are the covers for Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear, from Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint. After winnowing through a few choices, I really like this unconventional thriller presentation. But if we continue the series, we may run out of face!

The paperback or audiobook of Liquid Fear can be pre-ordered at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or bug your favorite bookstore to stock it. Chronic Fear can be pre-ordered for Kindle, paperback, and audio or for audio and paperback at Barnes & Noble. Release date is Dec. 20!

Sean A. Lusher: Where Do Your Ideas Come From?

2011-10-29T07:36:00.000-07:00

Something really weird happened to me recently and it led to a revelation that every other author has probably had, since I'm pretty far behind the times. Or, I might be somewhat unique and this doesn't happen to most people.

There's this drain in my laundry room that my washing machine drains into. It looks disgusting, the water stagnant and black, with some unknown green mossy substance growing in it. The sight has always creeped me out. The mossy stuff, though, is recent. And I found myself muttering, “What is that?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I had an intense burst of ideas. Almost like a vision. A scene painted itself in my head, and, just like that, I had the groundwork for a new novella. It was as if the idea was locked in a box inside my head, and I just happened to find the key that unlocked it.

And that really got me thinking. Because, while not all my ideas are born of this manner, enough are to make me realize that this has been happening to me for years. I just never questioned it before. Well, I began to question it.

See, I've noticed that a lot of bigger name authors always skirt the edge of questions pertaining to where their ideas come from. I've always found it weird, until I began to realize a lot more about the publishing industry, human nature and the world in general.

It seems obvious now that ideas are generated from inspiration. And inspiration comes from a huge variety of places, but usually from other media. Books, films, art, etc. Personally, much of my inspiration comes from video games.

I think that a lot of authors feel awkward about admitting just where exactly they get their ideas from because, well, if you're a good author then generally you read a lot of books and, in turn, the books inspire you.

But everyone seems to forget that old saying, the sincerest form of flattery is imitation. Combine that with the fact that in our age of instantaneous information transfer and it becomes nearly impossible to be truly original. All you can do is put your own spin on the idea and deliver the best piece of work you can.

Now, personally, I'm super paranoid about imitation. There are some projects, what other people have told me are great ideas, that I'm still stalling on because I think they too closely resemble other, more official, pieces. With how sue-happy America is currently, well, it just gives me that much more of a worry.

But I wonder, am I a minority or do lots of others share this fear? And, if so, how many great pieces of work are we losing out on because the author is worried about ridiculous copyright infringement laws? Since my wife assures me that I'm being crazy and overly paranoid, as I'm wont to do, I haven't scrapped those ideas and still plan on using them. Someday.

Another reason I think we're afraid of fully admitting where our ideas come from is because we feel we might lose credibility. I mean, there's already enough people out there who think that writing isn't a 'real job' and doesn't even deserve payment. Why give them more ammo by admitting your latest idea came from watching an old episode of Scooby Doo?

In his book of short stories, Smoke & Mirrors, Neil Gaiman, the best living author I've ever read, gave a short explanation of each story. In one of them, he admitted that the idea came when a fan mistakenly asked him if he had written the script for a Baywatch reboot. (Neil had actually worked on the recent release of Beowulf.) And it was a great piece, too, made greater by learning its hilarious origin story. But, even then, at the end of it, he states, “Look, I don't give you grief over where you get your ideas from.”

But I think it would be better to 'cite our sources', so to speak. It's a way to help people understand what they're getting into. For example, if you say, “Well, my latest book was inspired by Stephen King's Duma Key and the video game Alan Wake.” Right off the bat, anyone who read Duma Key and played Alan Wake will have an idea of what you're talking about and might be that much more interested in seeing what you've got to offer.

Ultimately, I think everyone needs to be more open and free with where they gather their inspiration. The writing world would be a better place.

Author Bio: Sean A. Lusher is a horror/mystery author planning on expanding into more genres. He lives in Columbia, Missouri with his wife, some roommates and a few cats.

His novella, Liberation Road, is available for sampling at Amazon. His blog is This Thing Called Writing.

###

Slow Zombies and Halloween

2011-10-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

We hardcore horror fans think of Halloween as "Amateur Night," since we're 365/24/7, but there's no reason not to throw some extra monster love at the end of October.

While I prefer ghosts as my favorite supernatural entity, if you take it to the level of creatures, I have to give zombies the nod over their fang-bearing, red-eyed brethren in arms. The Night of the Living Dead ranks in my Top 10 pantheon, and last year I even participated in first zombie walk I just love the relentless nature of the living dead, their relatively calm persistence, their focus on the prize. As you may be able to tell, I am a fan of the Slow Zombie.

I remember watching Fulci's Zombie on back-to-back nights in a theater in Chapel Hill, NC when I was in college. It's the only movie I've ever seen twice in a theater, and I have no idea what I was thinking. I even went alone to that second showing, so I must have been seeking some private connection with the horrors that unfolded (or maybe I just dug the groovy synth soundtrack). I enjoyed 28 Days Later but I find most modern zombie movies are too jokey and self-referential and attention-deficit-disordered, as if zombies have now jumped the shark (cue that really cool scene in Zombie where...well, just watch it).

I guess it's hard to keep fresh, and NotLD definitely borrowed from the The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price. Even the old-school, Haitian zombie movies like I Walked With a Zombie captured an atmosphere of dread., instead of the shock-horror that modern audiences expect. I hate to sound like a grumpy old geezer ("Quit playing on my lawn, you kids!") but I would love to see a revival of the slow zombie, where the experience was less that of a shoot-em-up video game and more like, "It doesn't matter what you do, we're gonna get ya."

But, heck, I guess I'd still take a bad zombie movie over a good romantic comedy any day. Got any suggestions for good Slow Zombie movies?

(Zombie Bits, my Z collection with bonus material from Jonathan Maberry, Joe McKinney, and Jack Konrath, is available at Amazon, BN, Apple, and Kobo. The Murdermouth comic is still in development as I seek ways to raise funds for it.)

Thanks for sharing your list!
###

Sean Platt: Yesterday's Gone serial ebook project

2011-10-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Sean and I have crossed paths here and there over the years, and when I found out about his serial ebook project, I had to know more. So here is Sean, in the digital flesh.

Hi Scott! Thanks for having me, it's great to be here.

1) Why a serialized fiction project?

Serialized fiction is something my writing partner David Wright and I have been interested in for a long time. In fact, we started our first serialized project more than two years ago at our website, Collective Inkwell. It was a horror novel called Available Darkness.

We published a new entry each Friday and developed a decent sized audience in a reasonably short time, but life nudged its way to the front and we both got busy with the immediate needs of life which forced us to pause the project. We resurrected it earlier this year and published it on Kindle and print this summer.

But our new project, Yesterday’s Gone, was an entirely different beast from day one!

By mid-summer, our small imprint had published five titles. Unfortunately, those five titles were in four different markets. We knew we really needed to fix this. It's difficult to hit critical mass on Kindle without multiple titles. But just because someone loves your book about vampires, doesn't mean they’re going to love your book about how to build an online writing business.

Yesterday's Gone was designed from day one to capitalize on the all-too-easy to click Kindle consumer phenomenon. This serial was a way for us to get six high quality titles to market that would keep readers at the edge of their seat, leave them wanting for more, and hopefully telling their friends about all the fun they had reading.

2) Did you choose a post-apocalyptic story because of the nature of the project, or was that always in the plans?

That's a great question!

Full credit for the premise goes to Dave. We were already discussing doing a serial, but to his way of thinking, it would be easier to get our first season to market if it was set in a world where we wouldn't end up drowning in research. With a post-apocalyptic setting, we essentially built ourselves a giant sandbox where we made all the rules.

Of course, there were still a ton of things to research and we had to make sure our dates and times all lined up, and that locations in our story matched locations on the map. This was especially difficult while doing some of the larger scenes in New York and Times Square, but was still significantly less work than it would have been if we were writing something set in the real world.

3) How does the collaboration work? Back and forth for each chapter, or write and rewrite?

Dave and I have been writing together for three years now. We met during what was the first few weeks for each of us online. Our collaboration is natural, organic, and wonderfully fluid. A project of this scope would've been impossible without it.

As far as Yesterdays Gone specifically, we started by writing the “pilot.” We decided there would be six characters and that each of us would handle the POV for three of them. Once finished, I sent my work to Dave and he pieced them all together.

For episodes 2-6, we each stuck with the characters we started with, following the same process, where I would write my three POV’s then send them to Dave for arrangement. I polished his copy and sent it back. Dave excels at structure, and I'm slightly better voice so that rhythm works really well for us.

4) How many episodes will you do, and what happens after they are finished?

There are six episodes in the first season, and right now we have at least three seasons planned, though if the audience is asking, we’ll definitely deliver more. We’re not sure six episodes is the perfect number for a season. Seems like there’s a lot to experiment with there. The next serial we have planned will have a different number of episodes and a slightly different page count for each one, almost for sure.

Dave's been getting the episodes to Kindle one at a time, but we’ve been fast-tracking the entire project since there isn't the big built-in audience that there will be for Season II. Once we’re in the second season, we’ll launch each episodes anywhere from a week to a month apart, depending on audience feedback.

5) Do you see other possibilities for invention and experimentation with form in the digital era?

Absolutely! I am thoroughly in love with where self-publishing is right now, and I think experimentation is everything. We have many, many plans, in multiple genres. And we can't wait to explore them all.

We hope you enjoy this trailer, and will share it on Facebook, Twitter and email. You can start with the pilot of Yesterday's Gone for just $.99 or get the entire season for $4.99, which is a super great deal!

If you’re a reader who likes the extra goodies (like exclusive chapters and sneak peeks), or an author who wants a behind-the-scenes look at the writing and marketing process for this project, sign up to be a “goner,” here.

Thanks for having me at the Haunted Computer, Scott.
###

Griffin Hayes: Malice and dreams

2011-10-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

Where do writer’s come up with their ideas? I’m often asked this question and almost exclusively by non-writers. They ask it as though I were an acrobat from the Cirque du Soleil and they wanted to know how I managed to balance thirty teapots on my head without dropping a single one. The rather mundane answer I normally give has the tendency of wiping that look of incredulous awe right off their faces. For me, story ideas rarely come nicely prepackaged with a tiny pink bow on top. It’s a sloppy, Darwinian process where crappy ideas (hopefully) get munched on by stronger, more elegant ideas. More often than not, a single novel is really a series of ideas, all meshed into one.

Predominately, the source of my inspiration comes from dreaming. These are snippets mostly. Tiny fragments which don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense on their own, but when connected to two or three other fragments, begin to take on the distinct shape of a story.

Another place I mine for novel ideas - because mining is exactly what we do - are what I call my ‘what ifs.’ It’s something I do everyday and some of the coolest books and movies out there were born from this process. What if you were the last man on earth in a world filled with vampires? (I am Legend). What if the devil opened a shop in a small town? (Needful things). The list could go on and on.

I’ve seen this play out in my own work countless times. My novel Malice is a revenge story about a witch, condemned and executed hundreds of years ago, who has returned to even the score. The dream part of the equation came to me one night when I dreamt that an old hag was crawling along the floor, trying to get me. I could see her dirty fingernails tearing at the carpet and in her wake was a long trail of gore and revolting slime. I woke up from that one thankful it was only a dream.

The ‘what if’ part of Malice came when the following question popped into my head one day: what if someone was being hunted for a crime from another life they had no memory of committing?

Now apart, those two pieces didn’t mean a whole hell of a lot. But together, that’s when something sinister began to take shape.

So in a way the process is about swinging an imaginary pick-axe, scooping up the loose chunks that gather at your feet and squeezing them together to see how they fit. 99.9% of the story ideas I’ve had are terrible and rightfully end up in a sort of mental dustbin, just where they belong. It’s that .01% that I keep my eye out for and when you find those rare gems, you just hope you’re wise enough to rub away at the edges and recognize that beneath that rough surface lies something worthwhile.

View Malice at Amazon for Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Malice-ebook/dp/B005QCC122

Link to Griffin's blog:

http://griffin-hayes.blogspot.com/

###

Christopher Nolan and the Rewind Factor

2011-10-11T06:25:00.000-07:00

I hated the movie Memento. I had to watch it, of course, because it was intelligentsia du jour back in those days. A movie should only require one viewing in order to "get it." To do otherwise is to cheat the viewer and is a sign of self-indulgent storytelling.

I merely disliked Inception, but of course couldn't confess it in a public forum because everybody either loves it or pretends to love it, because who wants to be that one dummy who doesn't "get it"? My take was, "Well, if it's a dream within a dream within a dream, why should I bother keeping track of which layer of dream we're in, because dreams aren't real?" It had cool visuals, but on a story level, I thought it was a real mess. For a mind-twisting story where reality itself was in doubt, I thought Shutter Island was far superior (Incidentally, Leonardo diCaprio is becoming one of my favorite actors, something I never dreamed I'd admit.)

When my Amazon editor contacted me about getting the rights to Liquid Fear, he said the plot had "a Christopher Nolan feel." I was horrified! In the novel, I had deliberately planted deception and unreliable narrators, and I knew it was risky. I knew I would immediately lose a certain slice of the book audience. But I wanted to do something challenging and reward those who like risks. DiCaprio is taking risks with his career, taking roles as an unpleasant and unlikable character (The Departed!) when he could have stayed the cuddly Titanic heartthrob--that's why I like him now. I would rather have taken risks than dole out disposable entertainment and sell lots of books.

I saw Nolan's first full-length film Following, a more stripped-down version of his twisting storytelling style, with a little of his signature nihilism. It's probably my favorite, although we watched The Dark Knight last night, and it only had a few "Huh, what's happening and/or whose side are they on?" moments.

The guy gives me a headache. But I keep coming back for more. And he's influencing a lot of storytellers. (I started Liquid Fear in 2006 so I am pretty sure Christopher Nolan didn't influence me. Yet.) I suppose there are worse things to be than the Christopher Nolan of psychological thrillers.

Time for me to revisit Memento and see if I'm any smarter these days.

###

14 Rules for Pretending To Be a Dad

2011-10-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

My 11-year-old daughter is hosting a couple of friends for the Ghost Train theme park, and I get to play chauffeur and chaperone. But I was also handed a list of rules on how to "pretend to be normal" so that I don't embarrass her, including not chauffeuring in my rusty Subaru or rustier truck.

1. Do not say howdy.
2. Do not wear sweatpants.
3. Drive Lexie's car.
4. Carry a cell phone at all times.
5. Do not say stupid stuff.
6. Act like a banker.
7. Do not make alien noises.
8. Do not fall asleep.
9. Do not wander around aimlessly.
10. Do not talk to my friends except saying stuff like "Did you have fun" or other 'normal' things to say.
11. Do not wear strange things from dumpsters.
12. Make small talk.
13. 'Organic' and 'natural' things are banned.
14. Only drive where we tell you to drive.

I can hardly wait!

P.S. She also gave me a script of what to say to the moms of the girls who called asking about the invitation.
###

Bad Blood: A vampire thriller by Scott Nicholson, J.R. Rain, and H.T. Night

2011-10-05T06:02:00.000-07:00

My first literary menage a trois is now out: BAD BLOOD, a collaboration with bestselling authors J.R. Rain and H.T. Night.We alternated chapters on this vampire thriller, editing each other's work, and I am pleased with the blend of darkness, humor, romance, and action. I also got to research Mystical Mount Shasta, California, the land of the Lemurians. We're planning to continue the Spider series next year, if you like it well enough! Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and coming soon to other markets.

I've also released The Vampire Shortstop as a standalone short story, which won the international Writers of the Future award waaaay back in 1999. It's free at Smashwords, BN.Com , and other markets, and I hope Amazon matches it, too. It's currently 99 cents at Amazon, so please help by clicking the link on the book's page that says "Tell us about a lower price." It's probably my best story, so I not only want people to read it and try my other books, I just want them to share the feeling. It's the only one of my stories that I like to re-read, and it makes me misty-eyed every time.

I'm considering releasing a few standalone short stories this month. It feels like 99 cents is too much for one story, since many of my story collections are 99 cents, but other writers accept it as a standard. I am putting out some other content, too, continuing the age of experimentation. How do you feel about 99 cent short stories? Too expensive, or a fair price?

I hope your Halloween season is off to great start! Let monsters and mayhem rule! And candy...don't forget the candy.
###

The Bitter End: Mark Chisnell

2011-10-04T05:57:00.000-07:00

The End. It’s a hell of a way to start anything – but the end is only secondary in importance to the beginning of a story. If the opening ‘hook’ is the thing that draws you in, and keeps you reading those early pages, then the end is the part that most readers are likely to remember.

Sometimes the story even starts with the end; Henning Mankell once commented that he’s occasionally begun with a final scene and then written towards it. If it’s good enough for the creator of Wallander, then it’s good enough for me. I began my first novel with the climax.

The rest of the process of writing The Defector - all eight drafts of it - was figuring out who those people were and how they got there. But the question I’m really interested in here is not whether anyone should start writing a book from the final scene, rather; it’s what do we, the reader, want from the end? The normal answer is that a good ending should make sense of all that went before, and in the words of the screenwriting guru William Froug; ‘It is that which nothing need follow.’

Endings tend to come in two parts, starting with the climax that any good book has been working towards. In the thriller or mystery genre that I work in, this is almost invariably some sort of action scene; the classic version being one where the hero battles the villain and wins (happy ending) or loses (sad ending).

The climax is followed by the denouement, where the plot is resolved and the loose ends are tied up – this is the bit where sense is made of all that went before. In a mystery novel we obviously need to know who did it, but many people will also want to know how they did it, and why they did it. And maybe we need to know why the girlfriend helped or betrayed them, or why the best friend or mother protected or abandoned them...

It’s a slippery slope and the classic storyteller’s error is too much denouement, particularly when it comes via ‘Basil Exposition’. This is the over-familiar scene where the police detective or private dick explains to a room (conveniently filled with everyone involved) all the various plot strands.

The upside of this sort of ending is that all the i's are dotted and all the t's are crossed. There’s no frustration, no looking for more explanation where there is none. Unfortunately, there’s no surer way to kill the emotional impact of a good climax than too much denouement, particularly if it comes with too much exposition. So for me the tricky part of Froug’s ‘that which nothing need follow’ is figuring out precisely where that point lies.

I’m of a minimalist tendency – I like to be left with a few things to ponder. If I’m still thinking about a book a couple of days after finishing it, then to me that’s the clearest indication that it was a good one. And that’s unlikely if everything has been tidied up into a neat pile, and then wrapped in silver paper with bows on it.

In both of my own thrillers I set the main character a moral dilemma, presenting them with a decision, one that threatens the people that they most love. The hero spends much of my first two books trying to dodge or wriggle out of making the critical choices, but ultimately (and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything for anyone here) there’s no escape.

And once that final decision was made, then as far as I was concerned you could stick a fork in it - the book was done. The denouements in both books are short and to the point. I felt that there was little more to say – the central character’s climactic choice said it all. Everything else flowed from there - but that’s just me and it’s not to everyone’s taste, including my original editor at Random House. Oh, the battles we fought over the end of The Defector...

So, cryptic, explicative or somewhere in between, how do you like your books to end?

Links:

http://www.markchisnell.com/

The Defector:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Defector-ebook/dp/B004NBZE76/

The Wrecking Crew

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wrecking-Crew-ebook/dp/B004NEVYVI/

Kindle Fire and Netflix: A Match Made In Electroheaven?

2011-10-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

As news of the Kindle Fire kicks around the Internet. I don't think I will be an early adopter, since I am not a touchscreen fan, but I am really interested in the Prime subscription, especially since Netflix has hit the skids. One of the rumors floating around is that Amazon will buy Netflix, at least the livestream half, which supposedly is one reason Netflix split into two divisions and separated its mail-order DVD service.

Here are a few Kindle books and news sites I've discovered recently:
Kindle 3
Kindle Dark on Facebook
Kindle Surprise on Twitter

I am going to experiment with putting out a few individual short stories for Kindle. I've put out entire collections for 99 cents, and even novels for 99 cents, but many authors believe 99 cents is a good price for one story. I like giving people a lot for their money, but a dollar is a dollar. I am also going to be raising my novel prices in line with what Amazon decides to price the Liquid Fear books at for Dec. 20 release. So if you like bargain prices, you better grab me now while I am "el cheapo."

There is debate about whether 99 cent products lead to a sense of entitlement among consumers, or that they expect a low-priced product to be crap. I have noticed my cheaper books and freebies tend to attract more one-star reviews, which kind of blows my mind. While the work should be judged on its merits, I would never dream of slamming something I got for free--I would just quietly move it to the side and forget all about it.

Others believe higher prices make the reader value the product more, because they feel good about it and assign more worth and quality to it. There may be a psychological impulse at work, but I don't understand it, because I value a book I check out from the library just as much as I do one I paid $25 for in hardcover. At any rate, the customer is always right, and you are my customer, so I trust you to tell when my prices are too high--hopefully BEFORE you stop buying them!

Anyway, Amazon and Netflix--here's the second leap on that rumor. If Amazon is moving to a subscription model for books (which I would bet a house on) and are becoming a publisher, what's to stop them from developing their own movie production company? Nothing.

###

Ebook subscription models? Book It

2011-09-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

Big news bubbling about Amazon's moves for Christmas, including the new Kindle Fire tablet and possible $99 Kindles, as well as a Touch Kindle. I'd never own a touch screen of any kind because I don't like greasy smears on my screen, but others like them. And I am not a techie by any means, I just want what works at a low price and doesn't give me headaches. IreaderReview is one of my favorite places to follow such Kindle developments.

But for readers and writers, the real issue is: What does this mean for ebooks? I've been predicting for about a year that Amazon will soon be bundling books into a "Netflix" model, where you get all the books you can eat for one monthly fee. Amazon already has the model in place, and they just announced new additions to its Prime offering. It's never really been a device war in the long term--iPad and Kindle never were direct competitors for the ereading audience. Just ask any author who has access to their sales numbers (and don't believe what you hear from publishing companies, who are still desperately trying to spin their Apple agency pricing as a win). People reading on iPads are using the Kindle or Nook apps. Apple maybe has 2 percent of the book market. Probably less.

The cheap Kindle will pretty much lock up Amazon's crown as the content king. At least for five years, which is eons in the technological era. Look how many different devices have come out in just the last three years. Yet Amazon continues to be the content king, with at least 70 percent of the ebook market. (Again, if you look at publisher data, publishers will claim BN has about 27 percent of the market, but their data is incredibly skewed--don't forget these two are joined at the hip through the physical bookstores.) And Amazon is rapidly expanding its world markets.

BN's problem is the weight of those physical bookstores. It's difficult to promote the Nook while still paying lip service to paper books and investing resources in managing the bookstores where books are an ever-lower percentage of their floor space. Kobo will be lucky to survive another year. Google is still freighted with its illegally scanned books, plus they don't really have a device out there. Sony will ride the Pottermore wave until those buyers realize they really don't have a very good bookstore selection after Harry Potter.

I don't know the pricing structure of the Prime books model. I only know it's coming. It's not only inevitable, I would be shocked if it didn't happen by next summer. Amazon has already been sending out feelers to publishers, and the Kindle library lending is a big step in mainstreaming ebooks. We still don't know how authors will be paid--presumably enough to keep writing, making less per book on a higher volume of sales. And Prime is a natural fit for rolling in advertising which means even lower prices for devices and ebooks.

Is it a win for everyone? It certainly is for Amazon. And I signed a book deal with Amazon, which is where I am putting my chips. What's funny is that BN was uniquely positioned to become a publisher a decade ago, and even put out a few books under its own imprint. And traditional publishers never built ebook stores where they could control their own catalog and peddle their own subscriptions. Probably it was the shortsightedness of having to show investors a nice return every three months.

Bottom line looks like: cheaper, faster, more. I don't know what the future holds, but I'm holding on for one hell of a wild ride!
###

Indie Publishing and the Bog of Eternal Stench

2011-09-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

Conventional wisdom is not wise at all, especially in writing.

Think of every success you know, and think of how many of them are conventional. Any? If they are conventional, I can assure you that any success they have is fleeting, because the success came in a crowd (how many superstar horror writers emerged from the 1980s horror boom? Not many. Most of the stars were the ones who started it, and who were widely imitated, and they survived into the 1990s. The crowd of imitators didn't).

I see the same thing happening in indie publishing. A lot of writers saw "indie publishing" as one thing, a fixed process, a system that a couple of people made look easy. Well, maybe it was easy for them. That doesn't mean it would be easy for others.

There's a lot of indie panic right now because Amazon changed algorithms, or Amazon opened to the libraries, or the Kindle store now has one million titles, or...or whatever. If you expected everything to stay the same, and if you believed there was a "convention," and if you followed what seemed like conventional wisdom in a series of rapidly changing eras that were never fixed long enough to develop a convention, you lose. Simple as that.

In any mass extinction, the ones following the herd are the last to the dwindling resources. I don't say that because I see writing as a competitive blood sport. I am just saddened to see disillusionment built on unrealistic expectations. Writers are getting distressed and angry because they felt entitled to the pie, when three years ago they didn't even know a pie could be baked, much less what ingredients were required.

While some gurus preach ever-expanding markets and untold wealth in indie publishing, the reality is those days are probably already over. The easy money has been made. And the historic lesson of gurus is that they tend to go off with their Cadillacs and groupies to their luxury deserted island while the followers end up broke and feeling stupid.

I started moving away from the indie thing when I realized that indie is not a tribe. I thought it was, in the early days. While running Indie Books Blog, I featured hundreds of new books and new authors because of the energetic and exciting groundswell, as if we all were suddenly changing the world with our fresh voices. But there was no tribe at all, just tens of thousands of writers doing the best they could, often shouting over one another instead of combining into one voice. The outside world didn't really notice that much--readers were reading, traditional publishers went about their business, and the indie era keep slipping away beneath our feet.

Even a year ago, I realized that there was no way 300,000 writers could all earn a living, much less a fortune. I saw people projecting income over five years based on last month's sales. Yeah, okay... And I say that fully believing writers are not in competition--I believe we each must build our own ladders out of dreamstuff, and no one can knock us off our ladder but ourselves. And more good books create more prolific readers. Big wins.

But I quickly realized indie publishing was not one set thing, that it was going to spiral rapidly into unrecognizable shapes and detours and pitfalls. Indie publishing is like the Bog of Eternal Stench in the 80s fantasy movie The Labyrinth. Bluto has to call up the rocks to walk across the bog. Every step requires a new rock. With luck, you pass into the mysterious wilds on the other side, where other challenges will await. But some are going to step in it.

Because I saw my "advice" was unconventional, I quit giving advice. Nobody wanted to hear that we wouldn't all be rich and that the Golden Era of Indie Publishing could already be over. And, heck, I wouldn't have listened to my own advice, anyway. It's actually easier to do it than explain it. Far easier, and far more fun. I peddle dreams, and you should celebrate and pursue your own dreams.

I do believe, and have always said, that just as many writers would make a living as before the Indie Boom. And I believe half of those writers will be "new." In other words, traditional publishing stars would lose half their slots as readers select new favorites. There's a lot of luck involved in success, and we each have different measures of it. For me, it's to earn enough to sit here and type, with the occasional visit to the garden. For others, it's a yacht, or a traditional deal, or a position as a guru.

If indie publishing has truly peaked, I'd still say "Wow, I am so grateful I got to be there. That was one hell of a wild ride!" And you know what? We have just as many blank pages before us as we had before, waiting for us to fill them. Just don't step in the stench on the way.

###

The Risks of Foreign Publishing

2011-09-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

Today's Be Nicholson's Agent giveaway is a $10 gift card for Facebook sharing Drummer Boy via Ereader News Today. No purchase necessary. Just go here and click the Share button on the Drummer Boy entry and you're in! Thank you. http://www.facebook.com/#!EreaderNewsToday

I've received a number of email inquiries from authors in the past, and a recent flurry of them, asking about foreign publishers who contact them about book rights. The tone of most authors is one of wariness--the traditional system is still so ingrained in the writing culture that anything outside the norm instantly seems suspicious. "What? A publisher WANTS me?" (what a sign about how the publishing field has changed, huh?)

I can't speak for anyone else's experience, and I don't want to be responsible for anyone else's decisions. Some people tolerate more risk than others. Some writers believe foreign rights are best dispensed through agents (yeah, good luck with that!) From where I am sitting, there are no rules or conventions, and if a publisher has a new proposal that may seem suspicious just because it's new, well, you might be paranoid, whereas I would be intrigued. Because this era demands newness.

Every agreement and partnership has a risk. The two deals I did with supposedly "legit" foreign publishers never earned me a dime. Other deals have been fine, even with tiny publishers. So there are no guarantees in this game, and there never have been.

But on any offer, there are really only two real risks, assuming you already realize the greatest risk is to do nothing.

1) The publisher wants to steal your work and basically pirate it for sale. To which I say, "Why in the world would someone bother contacting you if they were going to do that?" Digital files are easily downloaded for free in torrent streams all over the world. Anybody can steal your file at any time and do anything they want with it. Why would an unscrupulous person email you about your work when that's the most difficult way possible to steal your file? If they wanted to steal it, they would have already stolen it, and odds are you would never even know it was for sale.

2) You don't want anyone to have your financial information. This is a little more valid, but think of how many times a day you willingly give your financial information over to complete strangers: the check-out clerk, the waitress, the online business. If this concerns you, consider setting up a separate bank account just to receive publisher payments. If you are like most writers, it will never have any money in it to steal anyway.

I suppose you could say a third risk is you have your book tied up by a contract and if the "publisher" doesn't publish the book, then you won't be able to sell rights to another publisher in that market. But that's not a risk. Because if the publisher doesn't meet the contract, it's not a contract, is it?

That said, the real bottom-line question is, "What do you have to lose, and is what you have to lose more valuable than the possible gain?"

Don't ever do something because I would do it, or I did it once. Only do it if you would do it.

###

Fiction and Book Translators Wanted

2011-09-19T07:06:00.000-07:00

David Gaughran, author of Let's Get Digital, ran a post on my ideas for indie translators. I am actively seeking translators in any language, particularly Spanish, French, and German. Clearly ebooks are expanding across the globe and the former geographic limitations are meaningless, so I believe there's a great opening and opportunity for creative entrepreneurs.

Thanks to my wonderful German translator Christa Polkinhorn, we've spent more than a month in the German Top 100, and though some pricing problems caused Der Schadelring to be temporarily unpublished, I'm very pleased with the small but growing market. I can see that duplicated around the world--writers and translators earning a living from a number of small revenue streams instead of counting on the next big payday.

If you're interested in a 20 percent royalty for life, why not connect here in the comments section or email me at hauntedcomputerbooks AT yahoo.com? Happiness is a word in every language!

Also mentioned it in my Alchemy of Scrawl blogtalk segment with Coral Russell.

Gesucht deutsche ÜbersetzerInnen (mit deutscher Muttersprache) für unabhängige Veröffentlichungsprojekte in digitaler Literatur (eBücher). Honorar: 20 Prozent des Autorenhonorars. Bitte wenden Sie sich für nähere Informationen an hauntedcomputer AT yahoo.com.
###

The Scott Nicholson Thought Silo

2011-09-17T09:41:00.000-07:00

I read a cool post the other day (sorry, the link is long lost in the social media slipstream) that talked about "thought silos," and how the Internet has made it possible to find the people with whom you agree. The thrust of the post was that this also tended to isolate us from challenging or oppositional views. After all, it's natural that we find the tribes that welcome us and avoid the hostile ones.

Sure, there's a price to pay, because it makes us less likely to challenge or examine our own beliefs. We see it in politics with the Red and Blue states--those rarely shift because the climate reinforces the belief systems. I'm the kind of person who likes a passionate discussion--not an argument, but an exposure to conflicting ideas. This was one of the best experiences of my newspaper career, because I was forced to understand many, many viewpoints in my coverage.

An author once said something that made perfect sense to me: People on threads and message boards don't really want to change their minds. They'd rather be validated in their opinions than examine them. Therefore, they go where they can be validated instead of to the places where they are in the minority.

Not me. I don't go to any link or post or news story unless I think I can learn something (aside from purely brain-killing fluff like my NFL addiction). Now, I usually enter a thread with a caffeine-fueled sense of self-righteous indignation, like I know how things should roll and how anyone who doesn't believe me is an idiot. But it doesn't take me long to realize that I am the idiot. Because I see information and add it to my knowledge, and sometimes that's enough to change my mind.

An author emailed me this morning saying she agreed with one of my thread posts (in which I lambasted Polly Courtney for publicly ditching her publisher on the day of the book's launch in a melodramatic snit that may well have been a publicity stunt, but was incredibly crass and petty all the same). This author commented in the thread about her agreement, but later took it down because the other posters had "jumped on her." I replied, "I never go back and engage the enemy, I just drop the bomb and fly on." You can't win. And, ultimately, you're not likely to persuade anyone anyway, because they are shouting to be right. It's like talk radio that mutes any caller that doesn't agree.

Sure, I could have posted my opinion of the Courtney snit here, and probably had half a dozen people show up and agree with me because they like me. But there might have been one person who read that other thread without responding and thought, "Yeah, you kiss and smile at the altar and save your bitching for after the divorce." It's a simple matter of grace and good manners to me, as well as a commitment to professionalism.

I can understand those who are using the incident as a chance to defend the "authorial purity" of self-publishing--largely, self-publishers will hold this position even though almost all of them would turn gleeful backflips at an offer from a big publisher. Again, it's simply self-validation (which, indeed, is largely what self-publishing is all about, from one who has committed it himself). But I also wonder if this is a pervasive indie attitude that has now become inflated to "proof" that publishers don't understand books and authors.

Look at Barry Eisler and J.A. Konrath. They talk about legitimate mistakes they believe their publishers made, and how that has affected their subsequent decisions. But while the publishers were partnering with them, they went out and hustled the books. That's professionalism. I regret some of the choices I made in traditional publishing, but I understand why the publisher made certain choices. While they were publishing me, I loved them. Now I love them like an old high school flame who never put out.

In my thought silo, I say what I believe is right, without debating the political gain or the Klout capital. I owe it to myself to do that. I owe it to the world. True, I can strive for more benevolent language, and a more accommodating platform, but too many people demean their beliefs by adding "in my humble opinion." I know some authors who are like politicians, checking the crowd's mood before issuing even the blandest pronouncement. I am a huge fan of humility, but too much of it turns the world to oatmeal.

In the Scott Nicholson thought silo, you may be right, and you may be wrong. In the Scott Nicholson thought silo, someone like Polly Courtney shouldn't whine unless she is willing to give the money back (and this holds true for every author who complains about the movie version of their book, as well). In my silo, I'll entertain your notion that Courtney had a right to be unhappy with the book cover (which she surely saw months in advance). You do get heard. Sometimes you make me a smarter person. I already know what I think I know. It's the other stuff I'm most interested in.

And my comment section is never moderated...

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Writing the Dark Half

2011-09-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

Stephen King's fictional character Thad Beaumont in The Dark Half has a great description of what happens to a writer. So anytime you think you have writer's block (i.e., laziness), just remember all you have to do is start the mechanical act of writing and soon you will be lost in the fictional world. Of course, that entire book is an allegory not just of King's writing half, but the addictions he overcame:

"But he learned that, if he kept at it, if he simply kept pushing the words along the page, something else kicked in, something which was both wonderful and terrifying. The words as individual units began to disappear. Characters who were stilted and lifeless began to limber up, as if they had to loosen their muscles before they could begin their complicated dances. Something began to happen in his brain; he could almost feel the shape of the electrical waves there changing, losing their prissy goose-step discipline, turning into the soft, sloppy delta waves of dreaming sleep."

Another analogy I often call to mind is Hemingway's Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea, where the old man starts out rowing in the early dawn all stiff and miserable but knows he will soon row himself warm. Sometimes it really is as simple as dipping the next oar or planting the next word. Over and over.

Don't forget gift card and giveaways here for Be Nicholson's Agent:

Sat, Sept. 10: Insatiable Readers ...Nicholson's Ghost Stories

Sunday, Sept. 11: Fang-tastic Books ...Ethereal Messenger

Tuesday, Sept. 13: Motherlode ...These Things Happened

Tuesday, Sept. 13: My Reading Room ...The Skull Ring

Thursday, Sept. 15: Bookhounds

Thursday, Sept. 15: Rex Robot Reviews ...October Girls

Monday, Sept. 16: Castle Macabre...American Horror
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Be Nicholson's Agent: Book Blog Giveaways

2011-09-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the winners of the $200 "Like" giveaway. This week the giveaways are moving to the supporting book blogs, and many of these blogs have been helping me since the Digital Stone Ages of 2010. Since some of the posts are still being scheduled, be sure to drop back by here if you need a break from 9/11 commemorations, football, and the demands of little people with big eyes.

Fri, Sept. 9: Earth's Book Nook...Curtains
Sat, Sept. 10: Insatiable Readers ...Nicholson's Ghost Stories

Sunday, Sept. 11: Fang-tastic Books ...Ethereal Messenger

Tuesday, Sept. 13: Motherlode ...These Things Happened

Tuesday, Sept. 13: My Reading Room ...The Skull Ring

Thursday, Sept. 15: Bookhounds

Thursday, Sept. 15: Rex Robot Reviews ...October Girls

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Be Nicholson's Agent: $200 giveaway by Scott Nicholson

2011-09-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

Winners selected: $100, Betty; $50, Donna S; $10, Mary, Trace, Rita, Tammi, Leslie.

FIRST WEEK: LIKE ME FOR MONEY!

Okay, you might be as lazy as I am. I want to give you $200, and I don't want a lot of hassle. So here's all you have to do between Sept. 1 and Sept. 8. You can do this all at once or a little at a time, all of them or a few, but the more you share, the better your odds of winning:

Go to the list of my books at Amazon or in the sidebar to the right, and for each book, click the little "Like" button and then share on Facebook and Twitter (takes two clicks--one click on the "Like," and then a click on the "F" and then click on the "T"). This shows your friends my books.Count the number of books you share--this is your number of entries.

Go to my list of books at Barnes and Noble or in the sidebar on the right. Click the Facebook "Like" and "Google+" buttons for each book, which shares that book with your Facebook and Google+ friends. Please click only on books where I am listed as author--not anthologies or people using my name. Count the number of books you share--this is your number of entries.

Add your Amazon shares to your BN.com shares. Email benicholsonsagent@yahoo.com and put in the subject line "Shares: XX," with XX being the number of your total shares. That's all you have to do except sit back and pop the bubbly.

I will add up the shares on Sept. 9, then randomly select a $100 winner, a $50 winner, and five $10 winners, paid in your choice of Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift cards. I'm going to trust you, because who wants to waste time verifying, even though I could probably track you down on Facebook or Twitter? If I get lots of emails but don't ever see the books popping up on Facebook or Twitter, then I will never trust humans again...(oh, how many times have I said that?)

I think that's simple enough. No purchase necessary. If you have any problems, email me or comment below. Thanks for helping, and be sure to check out the Be Nicholson's Agent support blogs for other giveaways and events. The total giveaway goal is $1,000--if I sell about $6,500 worth of books. I usually sell more than that, so this is the giveaway that keeps on giving. I'd love to give away a truckload, with your help.

EVENT BLOGS

Kindle Obsessed ...Liquid Fear

Rex Robot Reviews ...October Girls

Wendy’s Minding Spot ...Speed Dating with the Dead

Bewitched Bookworms ...Disintegration

Fictitious Musings ...Crime Beat

My Reading Room ...The Skull Ring

What Book Is That? ...Burial to Follow

JoJo’s Book Corner ...Transparent Lovers

Vvb32 Reads ...Zombie Bits

Booked Up (UK) ...Creative Spirit

Candace’s Book Blog ...The Red Church

Curling Up By The Fire ...Ghost Box

Parajunkee's View ...The Harvest

Jenn’s Bookshelves ...Drummer Boy
Book Faery ...Flowers
Great Minds Think Aloud ...Gateway Drug
Fang-tastic Books ...Ethereal Messenger

Motherlode ...These Things Happened
I Smell Sheep ...Head Cases
Insatiable Readers ...Nicholson's Ghost Stories
Kindle on the Cheap...The First
The Top Shelf...Ashes

Castle Macabre...American Horror

Earths Book Nook...Curtains

Kindle in the Wind...As I Die Lying

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Gerard de Marigny: The Watchman of Ephraim

2011-08-31T14:03:00.000-07:00

(Gerard is a talented writer but also an innovative, hard-working guy who believes i his message--and is smart about it! I am proud to have influenced him a little, along with other writers. We are all in a learning process, and we all can improve, which is something I learn again every day. Here's Gerard...)

What I’ve learned from Dean Wesley Smith, John Locke, and Scott Nicholson

Here are three writers from whom I’ve learned so much – Dean Wesley Smith, John Locke, and Scott Nicholson. An eclectic bunch, no doubt.

Let me give you a breakdown of what I’ve learned from each, but first, I want to thank all three for their bodies of work and for their advice and support. They are each an inspiration to me as they should be inspirations to all new writers.

Dean Wesley Smith – Dean taught me first and taught me the most about self-publishing. He destroyed the myths I held about legacy publishing and showed me a step-by-step, cost effective way to self-publish. More than that, he drilled into my head that it takes more than one published work per year to become a successful writer.

I remember falling off my chair when I read an article by him where he stated that a fiction writer should write three to four novel-lengths per year. Another newbie writer left a sardonic comment saying, “That’s impossible Dean, have YOU ever written four per year?” To which he replied, “Actually, over the last 25 years, I’ve averaged over four per year.” That’s a man I’d follow over a hill!

When I finished my debut novel in January, I was so excited I wrote to Dean to tell him. His reply to me was, “That’s great, now write another!”

I love that man … and Dean, #2 will be out in September and #3 in December … thanks brutha!

John Locke – I only came across John fairly recently when I saw a few bloggers promoting his _How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!_. I bought it, read it, and decided that the man knows his stuff when it comes to marketing! I can tell you this; the day after I read John’s book and implemented his advice - I IMMEDIATELY saw my sales numbers more than double, and my sales revenue jumped by a factor of 5! I wrote him to thank him and he replied that he’s there for me anytime. That’s not special to me though. John Locke replies to every email written to him. I admire him a lot for that too!

Scott Nicholson – I saved Scott for last because – well – I wanted to thank him especially for giving me the opportunity to write this piece and have it appear on his site – thanks Scott! He doesn’t know this but I’ve learned a lot from him too. For one – I learned about how to launch a blog tour. Actually, I learned the particulars from another writer-friend of mine, Jeff Bennington, but Jeff learned it from Scott!

I followed Scott on his last blog tour and found that you can be a prolific writer but still maintain your zaniness (Scott’s got the BEST hat collection of any writer – I can tell just from published photos of him). The man also puts me to shame. He launched a 90-date blog tour while continuing to write at a frenetic pace. In comparison, my blog tour has 45 dates. I’m only halfway in as I write this and I’m already seeing dead people. Then again, I think seeing dead people may be a normal day at the office for Scott.

Scott befriended me in the kindest way. He emailed me some encouraging words about _The Watchman of Ephraim_ and allowed me to place a link to it in two of his novels – _Liquid Fear_ and _The Skull Ring_.

I’m especially inspired by Scott every day, when I track my Amazon rankings in two of my genres – thrillers and political thrillers and see his novels peppered throughout, starting at the top of each ranking.

As far as prose and personalities go, Dean, John, and Scott are quite different but they have each helped me and inspired me a great deal. What these three successful and prolific writers taught me the most can be boiled down to this …

To be a successful fiction writer you have to write well, write a lot … and let ‘em know you’ve written it!

Now rinse and repeat.

Author Bio

Gerard de Marigny is the author of the geopolitical thriller, _The Watchman of Ephraim_, Book 1 of THE Cris De Niro series. The sequel, _Signs of War_ is scheduled for release in September 2011.

Gerard de Marigny resides in the beautiful foothills of Las Vegas, NV with his wife Lisa and his four sons. When not bending an arm with friends at the local pub, he's putting to paper the stories and characters that are alive in his mind.

Author/Publisher Sites

Author's Website: www.GerarddeMarigny.com

Author's Blog: SelfPubber's Pub

Social Networking Sites

Facebook Page: www.Facebook.com/GerarddeM

Twitter: www.twitter.com/GerarddeMarigny

Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/gerard_demarigny

LinkedIn: www.LinkedIn.com/in/GerarddeMarigny

MySpace: www.MySpace.com/GerarddeMarigny

Buy Links

Amazon: Gerard de Marigny Books

Barnes & Noble: Gerard de Marigny Books

Smashwords (all eBook formats): _The Watchman of Ephraim_

Personalized, signed copies are available at the author's website: www.GerarddeMarigny.com (all transactions secure via PayPal)

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Amazon @author Beta Test for cool new Kindle feature

2011-08-30T18:16:00.000-07:00

I'm one of a handful of lucky guinea pigs (Ted Dekker, James Rollins, Susan Orlean, more) beta testing a new Amazon feature. Basically, Amazon is exploring ways to connect readers with writers and other readers, both on the Amazon author pages and in the Kindle itself. You can ask authors a question and readers can chime in on the conversation, too. I see tons of potential for this--essentially building a Goodreads-type playground right on the Kindle!

Amazon explains it better than I can: http://amazon.com/atauthor

You can also drop by my Amazon Author Central page and ask a question directly. I am right now brainstorming a way to use the new feature in my Be Nicholson's Agent event, with a neat giveaway there.

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Scott Nicholson's Be Nicholson's Agent giveaway

2011-08-27T05:16:00.000-07:00

It's almost September, and you know what that means...autumnal splendor, Labor Day, football, and Be Nicholson's Agent. In the old days, agents sold books to publishers and got 15 percent. Now readers sell books to other readers. I want you to be my agent and spread the word about my books. And I'm giving you 15 percent of my ebook earnings this month.

Here are the participating blogs and the books they are repping. The money will be given away as gift cards to Amazon or Barnes & Noble (winner's choice for each event). The best way to follow is to sign up for my newsletter scottsinnercircle-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. I will also make daily postings here, on Facebook, and on Twitter about each day's giveaway.

These blogs will also be hosting events and giveaways during the month (and they are cool blogs anyway, so why not follow them?)

Kindle Obsessed ...Liquid Fear

Rex Robot Reviews ...October Girls

Wendy’s Minding Spot ...Speed Dating with the Dead

Bewitched Bookworms ...Disintegration

Fictitious Musings ...Crime Beat

My Reading Room ...The Skull Ring

What Book Is That? ...Burial to Follow

JoJo’s Book Corner ...Transparent Lovers

Vvb32 Reads ...Zombie Bits

Booked Up (UK) ...Creative Spirit

Candace’s Book Blog ...The Red Church

Curling Up By The Fire ...Ghost Box

Parajunkee's View ...Forever Never Ends

Jenn’s Bookshelves ...Drummer Boy
Book Faery ...Flowers
Great Minds Think Aloud ...Gateway Drug
Fang-tastic Books ...Ethereal Messenger

Motherlode ...These Things Happened
I Smell Sheep ...Head Cases
Insatiable Readers ...Nicholson's Ghost Stories
Kindle on the Cheap...The First
The Top Shelf...Ashes
Castle Macabre...American Horror
Earths Book Nook...Curtains
Kindle in the Wind...As I Die Lying

The first giveaway will be on Sept. 1 to spread the word about the contest: $10 giveaways to tweet, $10 for Facebook post, $10 to a random newsletter subscriber. Help me kick it off big and help me give you more money!

If you want to be on Team Scott and get some "promotion internship" as well as a book listing in one of my books (for authors," email me at benicholsonsagent@yahoo.com. Let's rock.

E-book Covers: Anatomy of Changing My Mind

2011-08-24T07:50:00.000-07:00

(Note: Be sure to get on board with Be Nicholson's Agent to get some of my book revenues in September!)

My novel The Red Church, the first one I ever published and then self-published, was an easy one--it did well in paperback and has done well in ebook. The title was mine, and the publisher stuck with it, and I liked the title later, too. It was a title I could live with.

Last year, when I got back the rights to The Harvest, it was a title selected by the publisher that I didn't really like, although in retrospect I can appreciate the publisher's goal of trying to develop a brand. The title had been used for other books, was a bit ordinary and non-evocative for my tastes. In other words, the title by itself did not really declare genre, tone, or intended audience. However, I actually liked the original cover the best out of my six Kensington paperbacks, with the cool hillbilly vibe and the green glow.

However, being arrogant, I decided I could do better, so I re-imagined the book, going after a science fiction audience. Neil Jackson of Ghostwriter did the new cover and I went with my title "Forever Never Ends," which is one I'd used early on, along with "Metabolism." I thought it would expand my audience, but I think all it did was get lost in space. The cover is professional enough, but not really reflective of the story, and not a little grungy as many Scott products are.

When I went through a brief phase of creating new covers for some of my books, mostly because I recognized how small "book covers" are in the digital era, I played around with a more mysterious, feminine cover and even dabbled in changing to "Metabolism: Forever Never Ends." (In fact, this is the version currently out there in Smashwords, Kobo, Apple, and Sony).

Despite one or two surges over the past year, the book remains my poorest-selling novel. As a science-fiction, alien-infection B-movie zombie type of pulp thriller, it probably isn't as broadly appealing as my thriller and ghost stories, yet some weirdos like it best of all my work. I need to find more of those weirdos. So I went back to the original title and a new cover, shaping the new presentation with input from my peeps Vicki Tyley, Guido Henkel, Moses Siregar, Joseph Nassise, Shaun Jeffrey, and David H. Burton.

I will probably work on the author font a little more, but I like weighting the entire imagery to the left, creating a sense of unease with the look space. The Harvest may well stay a niche proposition, but I feel a little better about it now and it fits in with the others. The great thing about the digital age is that these changes are made rather easily, and most consumers are prevented from accidentally buying the book a second time. (I simply overwrote the Forever Never End pages at Amazon and BN and I don't even know if I will bother changing the Smashwords version). The downside is that Amazon now limits the number of keywords to seven, so the price of revision was losing a couple dozen keywords there. We'll see if the change offsets the costs.

It's the age of experimentation, now more than ever. Or maybe it was a case of reinventing a wheel that was already round and rolling pretty well. But when you have nothing to lose, why not experiment?

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The Harvest (under any title) is available for $2.99 at Amazon US, Amazon UK, BN.com, Kobo, and iTunes/iPad/iPhone

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Be Nicholson's Agent! Win 15 percent of my money

2011-08-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

I've announced this a little but it's time to get serious. In traditional publishing, an agent earns 15 percent for selling a book to a publisher. I think my readers who help sell my books to other readers also deserve 15 percent.

So, in September, I am giving away 15 percent of my ebook revenues in the form of gift cards to Amazon and BN.com, as well as prizes to supporting blogs. It's simple. Watch this blog for different ways you can enter, simply by spreading the word about my books.

Each one of my books also has a blog serving as its rep, with guest posts, events, and special giveaways at those blogs. There will be other ways to win gift cards, too. No complicated, seven-step keys to entry. Each giveaway will be for one specific action. And this is one to tell your friends about, because the bigger it gets, the more I give away. And in this economy, who doesn't like free money?

I am also looking for core volunteers to serve on Team Scott and help out with the promotion. In return, you get inside tips on marketing and, for authors, a 50-word listing of your book in one of my books for three months. Plus you're still eligible for all the giveaways. Email benicholsonsagent AT yahoo.com to volunteer for Team Scott.

The best way to stay clued in for giveaways is to follow this blog, sign up for my newsletter at scottsinnercircle-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, and follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Google+. Big, fun, and easy, just like me. Be Nicholson's Agent and we all win.

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Sugar & Spice - The Story Behind The Story

2011-08-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

It’s just over a year now since the Saffina Desforges Partnership began. And what a year!

It’s been a roller-coaster ride so improbable that if we used it as the plot for a novel it would be rejected as unbelievable.

An unknown name (actually two writers collaborating via email from different continents, that met for only the third time just this month) with a novel some of the UK’s top agents branded as “unsellable” and “the last taboo” (not to mention, at 120,000 words, too long).

This was the summer of 2010. Of course we’d heard of Konrath and Hocking and the way things were going across the pond in the States, but in the UK the Kindle-UK site had only just been launched, and seeing as no-one actually owned a Kindle in the UK it all seemed pretty pointless.

Besides, we’d been brought up on the dogma that self-publishing was vanity publishing. So we pitched to agents and followed the rules and guidelines, jumping through ridiculous hoops just to get the opening chapters read. Then jumping through more hoops on those few occasions where we got to the next stage.

And when the rejections started coming back we faced the big question all new novelists have to confront: How can professional agents be wrong? They’re the “experts” in this business, after all.

Sure, you can ignore the “thanks, but no thanks” slips. No writer can learn anything from a form rejection.

But if the top agents say it’s too long, it must be too long. If they there’s too many POVs, there must be too many POVs. If they say the storyline is “unsellable,” then at what stage does a writer face the truth? Maybe we are just deluded wannabes, and in reality can’t string a sentence together for toffee.

But I’d been a creative writing tutor for more years than I care to admit. I’d written for TV, radio and theater, and freelanced as a journalist and travel write. Whatever the requisite number of words is to have under your belt before you can supposedly write a good novel, I had long surpassed that number.

That said, writing a novel is a whole different ball game from writing for theater, or running off a short article about an exotic island in the sun. And I had taken what I believed were the best aspects of theater (dialogue driven) and TV (visual imagery without long descriptive prose; switching between short scenes rather than lengthy chapters; fast paced action interspersed with short breaks of relaxed writing).

On top of this we has Saffi herself, bringing to bear her own unique style. A raw, edgy writer still new enough at the game not to be over-burdened with pointless rules created by the gatekeepers.

The thing is, we knew Sugar & Spice was not the same as the other crime-thrillers out there. But as readers we wanted to read something different from the plodding police procedurals and stereotype serial killer novels that turned up time and time again in the book-stores. So we threw away the rule book and wrote something different.

What we hadn’t realized then was that the gatekeepers don’t want different. They want safe. What could be less safe than a novel exploring the innermost workings of the pedophile mind? It became clear the gatekeepers did not want it. And if the gatekeepers don’t want it, the readers don’t get the option. Therefore it doesn’t sell, proving the gatekeepers were right.

As 2010 drew to a close we watched, more curious than envious, as fellow Brit indie writers tested the Kindle waters. Not least Lexi Revellian, whose feel-good thriller Remix had already sold 10,000 by the time we joined the e-show. Remix was the first e-book I bought, and I was totally impressed by the professionalism that shone through. I’d been led to believe (as had we all) that e-books were just self-published rubbish (the “tsunami of crap” as Konrath so elegantly puts it), so Lexi’s book was a revelation.

Of course it was a totally different story from the dark and sinister insights into the mind of a child-killer that defines Sugar & Spice. The agents’ words about our novel being “the last taboo” and “unsellable” kept coming back to haunt us.

But in November 2010 we finally slipped in into the murky waters of the Kindle ocean, where it pretty much sank without trace. We were determined not to give it any artificial boost by getting friends and relatives to buy it and review it, so we told no-one it was there. And for three months we sold nothing apart from the two copies we bought ourselves to see how it looked.

Meanwhile Saffi and I beavered away at other scripts. But half-heartedly. Were we wasting our time? We were still querying agents while Sugar & Spice was on Kindle, but the rejections were still coming back. We had no idea what to work on next. Should we stick with crime thrillers, given Sugar & Spice was so unwanted? Was it the subject matter that was the problem? Or our writing style? Or our non-existent marketing? We had no idea.

Marketing was one option we could toy with, so we started new blogs and began some promotional efforts. Our promotion story, a fairy-tale on itself, can be found over on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

Somewhere along the line we started actually selling. Not many. Units became tens. Tens became the first hundred. Had a hundred people really bought our unsellable book? Were we about to get a hundred negative reviews saying they’d been robbed? Were the gatekeepers right?

At this same time another British agent came back positive saying they loved the sample. We sent the full script and a month later they came back saying their reader loved the full book. Would we give them exclusive consideration? We explained we had the e-book on Kindle and had actually sold a few, but they were welcome to exclusively consider the book. Why not? We were hardly expecting a big New York agent to come calling instead. We were fiction novelists, not total fantasists.

It took three months from first contact with that agent to them coming back with their decision. On reflection, despite the glowing review from their own reader, they didn’t think it was commercially viable. That's agent-talk for unsellable.

Well thanks, guys. Funny how your own reader thought otherwise. That was three months on exclusive, raising our hopes, stopping us querying other agents, wasted.

Were we disappointed? Well no, actually.

Because in the three months that agent played their agents’ games we had actually been selling. The unsellable story that had just, yet again, been rejected as commercially unviable, was now at #2 in the Kindle UK chart. The second best-selling e-book in the UK!

In the time that professional agent had our book under exclusive consideration, only to say it was unsellable, we had sold fifty thousand e-books. We hadn’t the heart to tell her.

And the next thing we knew we had one of the biggest agents in New York on the phone wanting to represent us.

Bizarrely, three months, on we still haven’t signed with that NY agent or any other. One thing we’ve learned is that there are good agents, bad agents and indifferent agents. And that the worst thing any writer could do would be to sign up with the first agency that comes along, just because they are “an agent.”

The publishing world of 2009-10 is a different planet from the publishing world of 2011, and a writer, if they still need an agent at all, needs one who is living on Planet Publishing 2011-12, not Planet Last Year.

Which brings us to where we are now.

The big “New York agent” (we can’t name names at this stage, but they are BIG!) who came knocking for Sugar & Spice bizarrely decided it was "too long", despite a then proven track record of 50,000 sales. They decided they liked our next book, then unfinished, but told us we should not e-publish. Let them have it exclusively for three months.

Yeah, right. Once bitten…

One of the true joys of being indie is sending rejection letters to agents.

That’s not to say we’re anti-agent – in fact we’re still talking to several. We’re under no illusions that a good agent, who understands the new publishing world, can help reach markets currently beyond us. But we engage with agents now on equal terms, not as starry-eyed wannabes signing on the dotted line.

Our debut novel, the unsellable story by the unknown writing duo that tackled the last taboo in crime fiction, has now sold close to 100,000 copies without an agent or publisher in sight. It’s hit #2 in the Kindle-UK chart on three separate occasions, with over 100 five-star reviews, and has just broken into the top twenty on the Waterstone’s e-chart (Waterstone’s is the UK’s equivalent of B&N).

As fiction writers we necessarily spend half our lives living in fantasy worlds. But when it comes to real life, you just couldn’t make it up.

This past week we launched the first of our new crime thriller series, Rose Red Book 1: Snow White. This time we e-publish first and go direct to the only gatekeepers that matter: our readers.

+ + + + +

Sugar & Spice is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.com/Sugar-Spice-controversial-psycho-sexual-ebook/dp/B004AYDK22/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313667909&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sugar-Spice-controversial-psycho-sexual-ebook/dp/B004AYDK22/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313668076&sr=1-2

Sugar & Spice US Edition (American English spellings. US locations. Same great story!) is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.com/Sugar-Spice-best-selling-thriller-ebook/dp/B004W0IJCU/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313667909&sr=1-3

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sugar-Spice-best-selling-thriller-ebook/dp/B004W0IJCU/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313668159&sr=1-3

Rose Red Book 1: Snow White is available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.com/Snow-White-crime-thriller-ebook/dp/B005H8HHYC/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313667909&sr=1-4

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snow-White-crime-thriller-ebook/dp/B005H8HHYC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313668076&sr=1-1

I'm Not A Musician, I Just Carry a Guitar

2011-08-18T05:01:00.000-07:00

I was killing time in a coffee shop waiting for my wife and struck up a conversation with a guy lurking above his guitar case. I assumed he might be playing there, and because I used to play in bands, I was curious what the modern music scene was like.

The guy was vaguely familiar and turned out to be the boyfriend of the daughter of a guy I used to work with...six degrees of greasy bacon. He was penciling out a set list with the idea of putting together a 30-minute performance and said he needed to practice in front of people to get over his stage hesitation (didn't seem to rise to the level of "fright.") I went outside with him to escape the din, figuring I'd finish reading my newspaper while listening to him so he wouldn't feel self-conscious.

He played one song and seemed to have it relatively right, singing with what I told him was a "Violent Femmes" flare--an interesting type of voice that would work with the right songs, and talked about developing the right body of work to both connect with an audience and be consistent with a theme or vision or available skill (Personally, I'd rather slash my wrists than drone out James Taylor songs in a coffee shop for loose change). And then he needed a smoke, and he had to get that important text message, and said he was currently homeless and broke, and then he played scraps of a Violent Femmes song , occasionally interrupted with "Wait, maybe it goes like this..." and then it was time for a cigarette and maybe that was his girlfriend texting....

I was going to give him $5 for the private concert, but he only made it through one song, and I figured he'd just buy cigarettes anyway. He kinda reminded me of myself at 20, a little unfocused, ambitious, artistically restless but having no idea how to channel it. At that age, I wanted to be the next Hemingway, which I thought was achieved by drinking and smoking and contemplating the coolness of suicide, but not suicide itself. I often wonder where I'd be if I had stuck with writing back then instead of veering into music for a decade.

But I was also reminded that it's not enough to simply carry a guitar. The guitar, like the keyboard, is the tool or the prop. Just fondling it does not make you a creator. You have to put in the work. You have to put in the time. There are no shortcuts, which a lot of indie authors are learning to their great dismay. The people who were writers Before will be writers After, and all the get-rich-quick, look-Ma-I'm published pretenders will be gone by the end of 2012, when times really get tough and there are 3 million ebooks published, the majority of them indies who thought it was easier now because they didn't have to be good enough to impress people.

That's advice I need to take for myself. I've sold a few books, but for the first time in my life I am working with an experienced professional editor, and all I can think of is the loss of time and growth and how much farther along in my craft I could be.

No, that's not all I think of...I can go back to the basics at any time, like a musician practices scales, over and over, automatically. This summer I am reading books on writing again, and I thought I'd read every such guide ever printed. I'm brushing up on The Elements of Style, and I'm flipping through the thesaurus when I need to find the best word instead of just settling for the vague, lazy word that gets the job done but doesn't aspire or challenge or imbue. I've always seen this as a lifelong dance, a commitment that ends only with death or senility, because you never say it all and you never say it as well as it should be said.

I don't know what's going to happen with the indie movement, digital books, the reader market, or the hunt for the next Stieg Larsson. All I can control is that next sentence. It's not enough to just have something to say. You better say it like you mean it.
###

Where I've Been

2011-08-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Bookie Brunch at one of my favorite blogs, vvb32 Reads

ImajinBooks announces release of the horror anthology What Fears Become (Piers Anthony, Lansdale, Graham Masterton, Ronald Malfi, Joe R. Lansdale, Ramsey Campbell, more)
Curiosity Quills interview by Lisa Guy
Post on "Modern Folk Myths" at Seeing Night Reviews
Finishing revision to Liquid Fear
drinking coffee
lazily loving bulleted lists

Meet thriller writer Robert McDermott, Deadly Straits

2011-08-11T07:28:00.000-07:00

Q: How did Deadly Straits come about?

Robert: I was working a job in Singapore when the towers came down. Prior to that, terrorism was just a vague threat to me. It was there, but off the radar, remote somehow. 9/11 changed that, and I began to think about the potential for a tanker-based terrorist attack and how that was most likely to play out. The story just grew out of those musings.

Q: Why did you decide to self-publish?

Robert: I think the deciding factor was the realization that even if I managed to land a publishing contract (a very big ‘if’), I would still be looking at a two-year wait before the book hit the stores. I didn’t think it should take longer to publish a completed book than it takes to design and build a ship. That just seemed wrong somehow.

Q: What was your biggest challenge in writing Deadly Straits?

Robert: Keeping it real. As a reader, I’m lousy at the ‘suspension of disbelief,’ thing. As a writer, I wanted to ensure my characters and their actions were believable. I hate books or movies where the hero gets smacked between the eyes with a bat and then jumps up and beats the hell out of twelve bad guys. Or books where the hero is a nuclear physicist, brain surgeon, or whatever, who gets in a bind and just happens to turn out to be a skilled helicopter pilot. To me that’s just not believable.

Q: What are you working on now?

Robert: Promoting Deadly Straits is taking a big chunk of time, but I’m also working on a sequel in which my hero Tom Dugan takes on the Somali pirates. I actually have some (very peripheral) insight into the pirate situation. The M/V Biscaglia, a ship on which I supervised repairs, was hijacked several months after she left the yard in Singapore. By that time, I was no longer involved, but having gotten to know the crew in the yard, I followed the situation closely. The ship and crew were finally released two months later when the owner paid the ransom. It really changes one’s perspective when the you know the hostages as individuals.

Q: Final thoughts?

Robert: Like all new authors, I really need exposure, so I’m making an offer to your readers. I’ll send the first fifty readers that contact me a free copy of Deadly Straits (ebook only). They can reach me though the contact page of my site at www.remcdermott.com/contact. They should include the words COPY REQUEST in the subject line of the message and indicate their preferred format in the body of the message.
***

Jeffrey Mariotte on The Writing Race

2011-08-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

The Tortoise and the Hare

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

Literarily speaking, I’m something of a late bloomer.

Though I won a literary award in college, for a short story I wrote there, I didn’t sell a short story to a professional market until I was 33 years old. Another eleven years passed before I sold a novel. In between, I sold some comic book scripts, but I was a long way from making a living as a writer in those days.

Once I got going, I did my best to make up for lost time. Between 1998 and now, I’ve had 46 novels published (some of which were collaborations with other writers). I’ve also written or contributed to six nonfiction books. I’ve had more than 130 comic books/graphic novels published. I’ve written trading cards. I wrote a DVD game. Maybe a couple dozen short stories. Probably other stuff I’ve long since forgotten. I’ve won some awards, hit some bestseller lists, and kept on plugging.

I’ve been a busy guy, you could say. I wouldn’t disagree.

In those days, I was the hare. During that time, I managed to make the break that most writers dream of. I quit the day job and supported myself and my family primarily on my writing income. That was my dream, anyway, and I was living it. I even gave lectures on it, mostly to audiences of impressionable young people.

Then things changed. Literally, between the time that I accepted a speaking gig at an art college and the time I arrived there for the event, the dream had run up against hard, cold reality. The economy broke, and it broke at the same time that publishing was finding itself faced with a new reality. Bookstores were fading away (not all of them—I’m delighted to report that Mysterious Galaxy, the indie genre bookstore of which I’m a co-owner, is about to open its second location—but a lot of them). Borders was on the ropes, and it was a big chunk of every publisher’s pie. Mostly, the e-book revolution was kicking in, and publishers had not figured out how to monetize it effectively. They still haven’t. The result of this double-whammy was that publishing lines were cut, editors were fired, houses became ever pickier about what they’d publish, and the advances they offered were lower than they had been.

So when I gave those speeches at that art college, I had to tell the students that it was possible to live the dream of supporting one’s self through one’s art, but that it was hard, damn hard, and there might come times that one had to take a day job to get through the rough patches.

As I had done.

I still have that day job. It’s been a year and a few months, now. I was hoping it would last six months, maximum. But publishing hasn’t turned around. If anything, it’s getting ever tougher.

Scott—our host, here—he’s always been a hare. He’s put out an impressive number of novels, and done other writing besides. Perhaps more germane to the current conversation: he realized early on the potential of e-books. He exploited that potential, and he’s making a living with his writing. He’s living that dream—my dream.

But I was a tortoise in that regard--or, to mix a metaphor painfully, a print dinosaur. A long-time bookseller, a bookstore owner, and someone who had toiled in the publishing business lo these many years, I was not ready to give up on print. I’m still not. I don’t believe digital will replace print, just like TV didn’t replace movies and paperbacks didn’t replace hardcovers. But I do believe that the business is changing, quickly and inexorably. I believe that digital has opened new avenues for stories to be told, and even though its rise has closed down some of the old avenues, the new ones outnumber the closed ones. The end result is that writers will have more places to tell stories, and readers will have more ways to enjoy them.

That is, believe me, a hard admission to make. But I believe it’s the truth.

I’m a digital tortoise, just now beginning to explore the world that pioneer hares discovered. My first original e-book effort was a paranormal YA adventure called Carnival Summer, that I didn’t really ever try to promote effectively. If you put it up, they will come, I hoped. They didn’t. But with e-books, it turns out, once you publish something, it remains available. What a concept! When Simon & Schuster puts out volume 1 of my paranormal YA series Dark Vengeance this fall, maybe those readers will be drawn to it. Carnival Summer, like my other ventures into digital, is available at both Amazon.com and Smashwords.

More recently, I have become ever more intrigued with e-publishing. My second release was a digital reprint of The Slab, a well reviewed horror epic that had originally appeared, in an expensive, illustrated edition, from a small press. My edition was neither illustrated nor expensive. Once again, it can be found at Amazon and Smashwords.

I followed that with an original thriller called The Devil’s Bait. It garnered a great blurb from e-book bestseller J. Carson Black, who—like Scott—recently signed a deal with Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint. J. Carson Black is another of the gurus I look up to when it comes to this e-book world—another hare in whose footprints I’m plodding. The Devil’s Bait is taut, suspenseful, and loaded with action, or so I like to think. Find it at Amazon or Smashwords.

My most recent release is a collection of short horror stories called Nine Frights. It’s my first short fiction collection, and it contains stories that have been previously published, in some reasonably prestigious places like the anthology Hellbound Hearts, as well as stories I never bothered trying to find a home for, because I was too busy writing novels and comics to shop around short stories. Amazon and Smashwords? You bet.

Can a tortoise morph into a hare?

We’ll see. I have to hope so. I have to hope that this new world of e-books is still welcoming to latecomers. I have to hope that a writer who’s been well reviewed, who’s received way too much generous praise from folks like David Morrell and Andrew Klavan and Christopher Golden and Don Winslow—and, yes, Scott Nicholson—and put out enough books to strain a shelf, can remake his career.

I haven’t given up on traditional publishing—my agent is out there right now with a new manuscript. But I have given up on the idea that traditional publishing is the only game in town. Or even the most important game.

Pass me one of those carrots, wouldya?

###

Bookstore guilt: Not Interested

2011-08-08T06:28:00.000-07:00

The closing of Borders led to a rash of articles like this one lamenting the loss of bookshelves, delivering the underlying message that now people will have fewer places to get books and caring people should all feel sad and depressed. Such nostalgia-driven sentiments are understandable, and you can't tell someone what they should feel nostalgia about (any more than you can tell them which faith to have or whom to fall in love with), but the arguments are logically flawed.

The reality is bookshelves are expanding at a more rapid rate than ever. The decline in new paper books is way more than offset by the avalanche of new digital titles. And it's not just the current crop of indie authors leading the charge. Small presses and digital publishers are staying fast and lean, moving rapidly to take advantage of the era's opportunities.

I don't celebrate the decline of bookstores, but I am not overly nostalgic about them, either. While I have done numerous signings in them and purchased books there, I get much of my reading material at thrift shops, yard sales, and the library. I am not a collector. Aside from a few core favorites, I read a book and then pass it on. I don't feel smarter standing in a bookstore, and even though I might discover titles by browsing, I see exponentially more titles on my computer every single day. And I don't think people are going to go out of their way to support inconvenient behaviors such as driving to the store unless they want the experience instead of the product.

My father-in-law was once CEO of a chain of 100 family-owned retail stores in the Midwest. They were expanding rapidly though the 1960s and 1970s. Then some Wal-Mart executives came to the family and showed the Sam Walton plan for market domination and made a reasonable offer to buy out the family chain, more as a courtesy than a cut-throat business move. After all, Wal-Mart planned to kill the chain one way or another and had little to gain with the offer.

My father-in-law said the family turned down the deal because Wal-Mart's plan was "impossible." The traditional retail business was built on a profit margin of 33 percent, while Wal-Mart was planning a 28 percent margin. It would never work, and even if it did, customers would remain loyal to the family chain where they'd been shopping for decades, even if they had to pay just a little bit more.

Wrong and wrong. The family chain collapsed within several years, and my father-in-law said the big shocking lesson was that people DID NOT CARE about nostalgia. They were going to go to the place that gave them the best deal at the most convenient location.

I was at a little bookstore in a small Kentucky town recently and I asked the owner if she could survive the digital revolution. She said, "People will always want books." I told her she had a great location, and she answered "This used to be the town bus station." She did not see the irony.

Just because bookstores die doesn't mean people will read any less. In fact, we are reading more, because it's cheaper, more convenient, and most of us have a device at our fingertips for reading. I am not going to feel guilty because "we didn't save the bookstores." The closing of a bookstore doesn't make us morally weaker, dumber, or less civilized. It's not a referendum on our ability to communicate or our intellectual curiosity. It's not any kind of harbinger at all except for the simple one that the bookstores are not serving our collective needs at enough volume to maintain a profit.

We aren't killing bookstores. We are birthing a new Golden Era of literature, by writing and reading and sharing ideas, and that's far, far more important.

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International bestsellerdom

2011-08-06T15:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the talents of Christa Polkinhorn, our translation of The Skull Ring (Der Schadelring) hit #48 in the German Kindle store. The little note beside it says it has spent 17 days in the Top 100. so it must have entered a couple of months ago for a while. Due to a pricing snafu related to the European value-added-tax (VAT), Amazon actually unpublished it because the price was lower elsewhere.

After I put it up and couldn't achieve the 70 percent royalty, I decided to go ahead and make it the lowest possible price. We'll earn less money but the volume should be higher until I can get the price set at $3.99 worldwide. The lesson here is, if you have a foreign edition, price it at least a dollar higher everywhere else besides your Amazon market. (Christa has a handy list of the book's various markets.)

The other interesting aspect is the German bestseller is clearly luck, an early entry into a developing market. I have done zero marketing, and I wouldn't even know where to begin if I wanted. The lower price also helps, although I was selling pretty well at around 3 euros, whereas now is 1 euro. I doubt if I will sell three times as many copies, but at least I will be able to gauge the size of the market (I'd guess the German market is about 1/2 to 1 percent the size of the US market).

I am currently developing French and Portuguese translations in addition to a deal I just signed in China. I will be developing a page to solicit translators, and there are a ton of opportunities for people with translating skills who are willing to work on a progressive, profit-sharing model. I have raised my royalty rate to 20 percent net for the translators, so even though it won't be a lot of money up front, over time it should really add up.

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Bestselling author Victorine Lieske of the Summer Book Club

2011-08-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

Victorine Lieske is the author featured this week on The Summer Book Club, one of last year's prominent breakthrough indie success stories. Here she is!

You know, it’s funny, I never set out to become an author. I thought it would be cool to be able to tell people that I wrote a novel. That was my whole motivation. It’s really kind of a silly thing, now that I think about it.

And of course, being a silly thought, I wasn’t very serious about it. I started a novel once, then about ten pages in I lost interest in it. Years later I started another one, but got busy and it never went anywhere.

Then, one day I was getting my daughter out of the car and my back seized up. I literally couldn’t move. I was put on bed rest to heal. Since I was stuck in bed with nothing to do, I decided to write that novel I always wanted to write. Easy, right? I set my laptop on my lap and just started typing. I wanted to write about a rich business man going incognito and meeting up with a woman on the run. I thought it would be fun to combine a light romance with a suspenseful mystery. I finished the first draft of Not What She Seems in one week. (I had no idea that was fast for a first draft. I knew nothing about writing.)

After finishing that first draft I thought I was done. I didn’t know writers edited. Funny, right? (Really, it was more scary than funny.) Luckily I decided to figure out if my book was any good. That’s when I found critiquecircle.com . I submitted my book, chapter by chapter, through the critique website. I learned that my first draft needed work. A lot of work! In fact, I threw out the last half of the novel and rewrote it. Then I submitted the book again. It took me four years to get the book into shape.

But I knew I had something interesting when I got comments from other authors telling me they couldn’t wait to read more of my book. They would ask me why my book wasn’t published already, and ask when the next chapter would come out. Honestly, this is why I kept going with it. I loved hearing the feedback from people who enjoyed reading my story.

Even though I’ve sold over 113,000 copies and made it on the NYT’s best seller list and signed with an agent, I can honestly say my favorite part of this whole journey is when I get an email from a fan. It makes it all worth it.

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Not What She Seems is 99 cents on Kindle and Nook.

Visit Summer Book Club Facebook page for a chat with Victorine at 2 pm EST Saturday, Aug. 6. Shewill be giving away a free signed paperback copy of Not What She Seems.

Nicholson signs book deal with Amazon

2011-08-03T14:46:00.000-07:00

The third-person caption is to help with those keyword searches...the media gurus tell me to do so.

As first announced through my newsletter, I have signed with Amazon to publish two books with their Thomas & Mercer thriller imprint. Liquid Fear and its sequel Chronic Fear will be released on Dec. 20. Liquid Fear will remain available in current form until then, but I am working with a developmental editor to make it and the sequel even better!

I will be blogging elsewhere about my reasons for doing this, since I don't want to dwell too much on writer talk here at the blog. The short answer is Amazon is the best publisher on Earth and knows more about selling books than any entity in history. Amazon, with its Kindle, already helped me fulfill my dream of writing full time as a career, and this relationship will open up plenty more opportunities and freedom in the years ahead.

So if you don't have Liquid Fear, I think it's still on sale for 99 cents in some places but the price is going up soon. And, of course, once Amazon publishes, the books will only be available through the Kindle and in select print outlets. Good times. Thanks much for your support, especially those who stuck with me when I was practically invisible in the literary world. What a difference a few years and some faith can make!

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P.S. I could be crass and say my guide The Indie Journey tells how I did it, but I believe more importantly it shows how YOU can do it! Also, check out Be Nicholson's Agent! for huge September giveaways--yes, I am giving away 15 percent of my income for the month...

V.K. Scott on writing influences

2011-07-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

(V.K. is author of the well-written inaugural release DEATH BEFORE SWINE).

How Mystery Found Me

By V.K. Scott

It all started with a song.

When I was sixteen years old, I stumbled onto the music of John Zorn. Commonly described as a jazz artist, Zorn’s compositions range from experimental to klezmer to classical string trios to... Well, you get the idea. The guy’s eclectic.

Looking to expand my musical horizons, I picked up an album titled Spillane at my local CD store (remember those?) with the money I’d earned working the summer at Fry’s. I took it home and put it in my stereo.

My ears were happy. Clocking in at 25 minutes, “Spillane” was a musical journey through seedy nightclubs and rain-slicked alleys. Saxophone riffs faded into the sound of echoed footsteps and thunder. A man’s deep voice narrated: “I feel like I just smoked a deck of cigarettes and forgot to blow out the smoke... There are only so many ways a woman can undress. I thought I’d seen them all.” It sounded like, well, the soundtrack to a fast-moving film noir.

Now, the music won’t be to everyone’s taste (probably not even most everyone). But that’s not the point. The point is this: I read the liner notes and discovered that “Spillane” was, in fact, an homage to writer Mickey Spillane.

Mickey who?

I dug more and found “I, the Jury,” at a used bookstore. After knocking through it in a few days, I was hooked for life.

Mystery had found me.

I do think the seeds of my mystery love had been planted earlier, in reading the Encyclopedia Brown books and watching Columbo with my father.

But “Spillane,” the composition, and Spillane, the writer, were what did me in. It wasn’t so much the whodunit, or even the “howdunit” either. It was the atmosphere, the feel of slithering through a world gone wrong. And maybe, if the protagonist was smart enough, and quick enough, he’d live to fix a small part of it… at least until the next book.

Fast forward another decade and a half. My first book, Death Before Swine, is now out. I’ll give you three guesses what the genre is. It certainly isn’t hardboiled like Spillane (I’ve come to like my mysteries a least a shade or two lighter than noir), but the influence is still there, lurking in the background.

When I think back on it all, the whole series of events serves as a reminder to follow life where it leads me. Whether it’s to new music, new books, or the decision to self-publish, I try to remember not to be afraid of change.

So that’s how I found my genre. How did you find yours? Was it as simple as picking up a book with a neat-looking cover, or was your path more twisted, like mine? If you’re not a writer, how did you find your favorite genre to read?

For updates on V.K. Scott and his writing, you can read his blog at http://vkscott.blogspot.com or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AuthorVKScott.

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Disintegration on the Summer Book Club

2011-07-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

As part of the Summer Book Club, I have a post on Disintegration live at http://jcarsonblack.com/2011/07/disintegration-by-scott-nicholson-summer-book-club-featured-book-of-the-week/ (the same post is duplicated at the blogs of Cheryl Shireman and Sibel Hodge.

One of the Summer Book Club members, J. Carson Black, just signed with Amazon for its thriller imprint. The Summer Book Club is 99 cents for Kindle, proceeds benefiting the Joplin MO library system. It's free at Smashwords, Feedbooks, and other outlets.

We'll have a chat at 3 pm EST on Saturday on our Facebook page for the group
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Stephen King Week & Book Giveaways

2011-07-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

(This week's giveaway: sign up for my monthly newsletter at scottsinnercircle-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and a new subscriber will be selected on Aug 1. to win a hardcover of From a Buick 8. A random subscriber will also be selected to win a hardcover of The Regulators, written as Richard Bachman. US/Canada shipping only, international winners receive a PDF of my graphic novel DIRT)

I was reading on some forum or other about Stephen King and the inevitable "He lost me at..." Like with many modern writers of dark, imaginative fiction, King was one of the main inspirations for my writing--not necessarily because he was the writer whose books I grew up on (I didn't start reading him until probably halfway through his career), but because he is a talented writer achieving success in a genre that every publishing insider says doesn't sell, doing it his way and succeeding.

I've always considered him a mutant talent--a combination of intense literary gifts combined with a storytelling genius, mixed in with a commitment to the craft, a love of words, and a desire to push the boundaries. Not the least of his talents is the ability to sit in his chair and crank out thousands and thousands of words, which is an admirable trait in itself. I can't say I've read everything King has written, and I'm a bit behind on the newer stuff, but that's okay, because he's writing about as fast I can read, anyway.

I read Stephen King, and I say, "I'll never be that good." But something about him inspires me to be okay with what I do, and, more importantly, to dare to do it the best I can.
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Austerity: Buying back your time

2011-07-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

I've been fortunate to make a decent living doing what I love. I've always enjoyed work, whether it was my years as a bass player/dishwasher, a construction worker/poet, or a journalist/novelist. I've dug ditches in the pouring rain while wading in raw sewer. I know what work is.

And I have a keen sense of worth and value, linked to the value of time. To me, money is literally time (I've written a short-story cycle using this concept). If you work for X amount, then you have bought yourself X amount of free time, or freedom to do what you want. Most of my practical life decisions are based on this idea.

That house? Sure, I have a 30-year mortgage, but I can pay it off it in twelve (it will actually turn out to be fewer than eight). And my quality of life didn't suffer at all. I have never deprived myself of anything I've needed, though God knows I could stand to have skipped a few meals. I drive rusty used cars and use them until they fall apart, taking enough care of them to fulfill their natural lifespans but adding no adornments like studly hubcaps or headers or Thrush mufflers. I just don't care. Gasoline muscle won't make me a man.

Clothes? When I went back to get my degree in 1994, when I was working as a carpenter and maintenance man building student apartments, I found a box of fresh, clean clothes in a dumpster, tossed by some vacating student. I still have many of those clothes. I doubt if I've spent more than $100 total on new clothes in my life (yeah, and I know it shows, but measure how much I care...yes, one year, the time of my life I have earned back by not spending $25,000 on clothes).

When I went to refinance my house a couple of years ago, my credit score was through the roof. The only flaw was I didn't owe enough! Something had to be wrong with me! But I drove in with a ratty car and a lower-middle-class income (you're not all that far above the poverty level if you're a newspaper reporter) and I walked out saving thousands of dollars over the life of the loan. And I did it not just to buy myself more time, but to keep from giving more of my time to the bank over the long haul.

I try to share my views with my family, but it's hard not to come across as a stinky old meanie who won't let anyone have any fun, because all the words for "thrifty" seem kind of small, mean, and petty--miser, frugal, austere, pinchpenny, cheapskate--and imply selfishness, when in most cases, the opposite is true. I am lucky to live in a rural community where we value self-reliance and nobody's trying to outflash the neighbors with the newest tech toy or biggest SUV. In fact, we think people who race to the top of their credit card limits are idiots.

And yet our entire nation is doing it, like we collectively drunk some Kool-Ade in the 1980s and then passed it on to our children. I know people who are about to lose their homes yet have children with $100 a month cell plans. And I am sad to see people lose jobs, but rarely do I see people adjust their standard of living until they are forced to do so. People whose jobs are at risk don't start cutting expenses immediately--they wait and then hope to coast on unemployment checks. It's taken me about three years to (gently, I hope) display to my wife that as long as you have debt, you have no true financial security.

Of course, security is an illusion anyway. I aim for paying off the house, figuring that will be a huge monthly burden removed. But security only comes from faith. So I slip on the rubber boots I used to wear while wading in sewer and walk down to the garden, where God and nature have consistently kept their end of the bargain and always given more than I take. I hope to give back a little of the time I have earned, because I feel like I owe a whole lot. It's just not money I happen to owe.

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2011-07-21T08:46:00.000-07:00

Today I talk about how I am not as good as I used to be over at Elizabeth White's All-Purpose Monkey blog: http://www.elizabethawhite.com/2011/07/21/the-indie-journey-by-scott-nicholson/

Also talking writing and indie publishing at the WG2E blog

And my regular Indie Reader Column this week is "The Words Are Still The Same": http://indiereader.com/2011/07/the-words-are-still-the-same/

Working on a couple of interesting deals, and I have a HUGE event coming in September--and it's going to put money and gift cards and free books in your pocket. The best way to keep up is to either follow this blog or sign up for my newsletter at scottsinnercircle-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

It's going to be so crazy even I don't believe it yet...but I am pretty sure it's never been done and is likely to fail spectacularly. Don't miss it!
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Sibel Hodge: Summer Book Club

2011-07-20T04:47:00.000-07:00

Sibel Hodge is the newest featured author of the Summer Book Club. Get SBC free at Smashwords!

About Sibel…

Sibel Hodge is the author of romantic comedies and chick lit mysteries. In her spare time she’s Wonder Woman!

Her first novel, Fourteen Days Later, was short-listed for the Harry Bowling Prize 2008 and received a highly commended by the Yeovil Literary Prize 2009. It is a romantic comedy with a unique infusion of British and Turkish Cypriot culture. Written in a similar style to Sophie Kinsella and Marian Keyes, Fourteen Days Later is My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Bridget Jones. My Perfect Wedding is the sequel to Fourteen Days Later, although it can be read as a standalone novel.

The Fashion Police was a runner up in the Chapter One Promotions Novel Competition 2010 and nominated Best Novel with Romantic Elements 2010 by The Romance Reviews. It is a screwball comedy-mystery, combining murder and mayhem with romance and chick-lit, and the first in a series featuring feisty, larger-than-life insurance investigator, Amber Fox. Written in a similar style to Janet Evanovich and Myron Bolitar, The Fashion Police is Stephanie Plum meets Harlan Coben. Be Careful What You Wish For is the second Amber Fox Mystery.

Tell us a bit about Be Careful What You Wish For…

Be Careful What You Wish For is the second Amber Fox murder mystery that follows on from The Fashion Police:

For fans of Janet Evanovich, Kate Johnson, and Gemma Halliday...

Armed with cool sarcasm and uncontrollable hair, feisty insurance investigator Amber Fox is back in a new mystery combining murder and mayhem with romance and chicklit…

Three deaths.
A safety deposit box robbery.
The boxing heavyweight champion of the world.

Somehow, they’re all related, and Amber has to solve a four year old crime to find out why.

As she stumbles across a trail of dead bodies and a web of lies spanning both sides of the social divide, it’s starting to get personal. Someone thinks Amber’s poking her nose in where it’s not wanted, sparking off a game of fox and mouse – only this time, Amber’s the mouse.

Amber’s forced to take refuge in the home of her ex-fiancé, Brad Beckett, and now it’s not just the case that’s hotting up. So is the bedroom…

All Levi Carter wanted to be was the boxing heavyweight champion of the world, but at what cost?

All Carl Thomas wanted was to be rich, but would his greed be his downfall?

All Brad Beckett wants is to get Amber back, but there’s a reason for the ex word.

Be careful what you wish for…you might just get it.

Amber Fox is a feisty, wise-cracking insurance investigator with wild hair. Is she anything like you at all?

Absolutely! She's got a lot of her in me but I'm not telling you exactly which bits for fear I might incriminate myself!

What was your favorite part of Be Careful What you Wish For?

Ooh, that's sooo hard! It's my baby so it's all my favourite. I love the fact that it's got a solid mystery combined with a lot of humor, wit, and romance. Probably typing The End is my favourite part - then you know that all the ideas in your head have finally come together.

Will we get to hear more from Amber Fox in the future?

Amber loves to talk so she'll definitely back to tell another story. Just try and shut her up!

How do you get the ideas for your books?

It's all the voices in my head that make me do it. I write so I won't have to be medicated!

Do you ever suffer from Writer's Block?

Sometimes. When that happens I usually drink a bottle of wine and throw ideas around with my husband. Well, that's my excuse for cracking the wine open anyway!

What's your favorite thing to snack on while writing?

Nuts (no jokes, please!).

Do you plot everything before you start writing or do you just see where the story takes you?

I’m definitely a fly-by-the-seat of my Wonder Woman knickers kind of girl! I think I’ve got Plotophobia. I make most of it up as I go a long - creative or crazy? I’m not sure which.

What are you working on now?

I'm working on some new ideas for my next chicklit novel which will be called The Hen Party. It's about a group of girls who go to Vegas for...yes, you've guessed it, a hen party. But they end up getting much more than they bargained for. I’m also hoping to start the next Amber Fox mystery at the end of summer.

Do you have any advice for aspiring indie authors?

First and foremost, you have to write a good book with a good blurb and cover if you want to succeed. But to do that, you need to learn your craft well. That’s the first hard bit over with! The second is marketing and promoting, and this is pretty hard, too. What works for someone else won’t always work for you, and it takes up a lot of time that you could spend on writing. But I’ve mingled with some inspiring and fantastic authors and met some great fans because of it. Would you get that if you were trad-pubbed with a marketing department? I don’t think so. Being on a personal level is so much more rewarding.

I think you can do anything you want to in life. You might have to go a different route to get there than you originally thought, but if you never try, you never know what might be. Go for it!

What do you do besides write?

Promotion takes up a lot of my time, but it's lovely to interact with other readers and authors. I swim, do yoga, walk, read. Oh yes...and the occasional bottle of wine!

More about Sibel…

Sibel talks to WG2E about how she went from 200 rejections to Amazon top 200! http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com/welcome-to-the-wg2e-sibel-hodge

Sibel’s interview on The Eerie Digest, the Online Mystery and Hollywood Insider Magazine. http://www.eeriedigest.com/wordpress/2011/07/interview-with-author-sibel-hodge/

Sibel talks about plotting her novels on Traci Hohenstein’s blog. http://msthriller.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/guest-blog-by-sibel-hodge/#comment-152

You can find out more about Sibel on her website: http://www.sibelhodge.com/

Be Careful What You Wish For is available from:

Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004VGWJYE/ref=s9_simh_gw_p351_d0_i4?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=04MN44YYE7YSJ8C0369G&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

Amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Careful-What-Amber-Mystery-ebook/dp/B004VGWJYE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1310631718&sr=8-3

Smashwords

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/51824

And Sibel will be doing a live Facebook chat at https://www.facebook.com/summerbookclub on Saturday night July 23rd at 6.30 pm UTC/GMT - which for the US is 11.30 Pacific, 12.30 Mountain, 1.30 Central, and 2.30 Eastern. She’ll be giving away an ebook copy of Be Careful What You Wish For to one lucky commenter!

For reviews and purchases of my latest novels: http://www.sibelhodge.com/Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sibelhodge