Creative Spirit by Scott Nicholson U.S. ebook launch

"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.

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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.

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.

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Creative Spirit: Bonus Edition With Screenplay By Scott Nicholson

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.

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Kindle Lending Library and Amazon prime membership

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.

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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

(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

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Nora Percival: Self-Publishing at Age 97

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!
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German Covers and Life Ain't Too Shabby

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