Sample scene of new novel AFTER

Here's the opening of the new novel, AFTER, which should be out in the fall. I will be posting bits and pieces, cover art, etc., on the blog and will need help shaping the story and deciding if it will be a series, so check back from time to time and help me get this done!

Kindle freebies:

 July 26-27: The Red Church Amazon US Amazon UK
July 30-31: Speed Dating with the Dead Amazon US Amazon UK

AFTER

By Scott Nicholson

CHAPTER ONE

There were three of them.

She’d stopped naming them a week ago. It had been an amusing distraction for a while—and the Good Lord only knew, she needed distractions—but then they’d all started blending together, the Black-Eyed Susans and the Raisinheads and the Meat Throats.

But now Rachel couldn’t resist, looking out the grimy drugstore window as she waited, crouched there in the litter of baby powder and cellophane.

Stumpy.

The one on the right, sitting on the sidewalk bench surrounded by a mountain of bulging plastic bags, was missing his left arm just below the elbow. The wound was swathed in a filthy towel, strapped in place with duct tape, stained dark brown at its blunt end.

Stumpy was waiting for a bus that would never come. Rachel couldn’t tell if he was a Zaphead. He might just be another of the schizophrenic homeless, the underclass that hadn’t even noticed the world had ended. Although gaunt, he didn’t appear particularly motivated to kill, obsessed instead with swatting away the flies that swirled around his stump.

He was fifty feet away, and she could outrun him easy. All she had to do was run as if her life depended on it. Which wouldn’t be a challenge.

The Beard, the guy staggering back and forth a hundred yards down the street, was almost certainly a Zaphead. His expression was hidden by the unkempt hair, but he was hunched and his fists were clenched, rage curling around whatever strange energy burned inside.

Okay, Beard, you’ve solved my little dilemma of whether I should head east or head west.

The mountains were her destination, and they lay to the west, but she wasn’t willing to risk The Beard.

The word “destination” sounded odd in her thoughts, because of the root “destiny.” Such abstractions were laughable now, but laughter was the only weapon against the fear that sapped the strength from her legs. And she needed her legs. Oh, yes, give her stumps for hands, but don’t mess with her legs.

In this scared new world, in this After, you had to run.

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Overview of eBook Publishing class (Boone NC area)

I'm teaching a community college class if you are in the Boone NC area of the northwest corner of North Carolina. (Yes, I know, this class should be an online seminar instead, but this is what it is! In person...)

Overview of eBook Publishing

July 30-Sept. 24, every Monday night, 6-8 p.m. at the Ashe County campus of Wilkes Community College (beside the Ashe High School.) $65. To preregister, call Celia Robinson at (336) 846-3900.

Digital publishing is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. Local author and digital publisher Scott Nicholson will teach the basics of digital publishing for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Kobo, and other devices during a participatory class that covers product development, formatting, design, and marketing. If you can write an email, you can publish a book. You will be able to publish an ebook yourself by the end of the class series, regardless of your level of technical skill.

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Paper books as artifacts in the digital age

I was on an ebook panel at the local library yesterday, speaking with a writing group, and the inevitable defense of bookstores arose. I've come to believe this is an emotional issue, not an issue of logic, data, or even the reality that is occurring all around us--bookstores are closing, and rapidly. I'm not here to gleefully dance on graves, since I like bookstores and they have helped sell my books in the past. But the idea that "Paper books CAN'T die out because I like them" is not going to stop paper books from their rapid decline. They are nice artifacts that give many of us comfort, but the incredible drain of resources to get a book from Point A to Point B will forevermore put it at a competive disadvantage.

(Disclaimer--worldwide nuclear war would restore paper books to dominance because many of them would outlast all the digital information erased by the electromagnetic pulse. But I can safely predict overall readership would still decline.)

Paper books are already clear artifacts to me, comfort items for the shelf. Oddly, I have been reading paper books more than my Kindle lately--but this doesn't mean I've "decided that paper is better." No, I am clinging to the last bits of nostalgia and indulging in some works that might never be available in digital form.

I took my wife to an antique store a couple of weeks ago--proof of the depths of my love and sacrifice, if you know how much I abhor any form of shopping--and I was startled how much of the store was occupied by books. Yes, books are already antiques, even while the major publishers churn out tens of thousands of copies of the latest trendy fiction and celebrity bios. You could look at those huge bestsellers as signs of publishing health, but they actually reflect the disease--publishing is only practical on a blockbuster level: Many sales each of a few titles, not a few sales each of a few million niche titles.

In the store, I found a stack of Dean Koontz books and thumbed through them, mostly out of curiosity, since I have enough Koontz paperbacks to last a lifetime. But I found a tattered 1977 copy of Demon Seed, the movie tie-in edition of the 1973 novel. On top of it was the newer, re-released and thicker version. For those who don;t know, Koontz revised most of his books as he got the rights back and re-released them. In the new version, I read the afterward where Koontz explains how he cleaned up the book and honed it. Of course, I was far more interested in the old version, the rawer, less polished, version. Koontz often works too hard to remove any provocative edge in his books, and my only complaint with him is that his protagonists are always too relentlessly and predictably noble, cheerful, and idealistic. To see how Koontz changed in the quarter-century between the two versions, simply read the Wikipedia entry on the book and what you find is an unfortunate case of revisionist history.

The other reason I chose the older version is because I am pretty sure it will never be available as an ebook. No way would Koontz allow its release. The new version is $7.99 in ebook, while you can buy used versions of the new paperback for a penny plus shipping. I paid $1.99 in the antique store, far more than I'd normally pay for a paperback (well, I also paid gas to drive to the store, but you could argue I'd be there anyway). Versions of the older version are on eBay from $3.50 to $30 plus shipping. They will always be "worth" more than the revised, supposedly improved editions in similar condition.

The moral of the story is that there is no morality in the paper/digital war. Times change, no one is wrong, neither is inherently "better." For this reader and writer, I know when I am buying an artifact and not just a story. I often delete digital books after I finish them. I often give away paperbacks after I've finished them. Maybe I'll keep Demon Seed awhile. Maybe not. It's fun to read precisely because I can see the anti-Koontz in it, the smirky little twenty-something writer who delighted in being a bit naughty and edgy. What you could call "the artifact Koontz."

Bookstores are turning into antique stores. But that's okay, because we cherish our artifacts. And perhaps we will even value these artifacts more when they are no longer widely available. Do you cling to any similar artifacts you know are artifacts? Cassette tapes that mark a time in your life? Videocassettes? Old paper books? 
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Summer Sizzler Sale: 99 cent ebooks

The Konrath Crouch Nicholson $ummer $izzler $ale
Most major ebook titles are on sale for 99 cents though Monday, July 9, for Kindle and Nook:

J.A. Konrath

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/J.-A.-Konrath/e/B000BCH4EM/

BN: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/J.A.+Konrath

Blake Crouch

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Blake-Crouch/e/B001H6U8X0

BN: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/Blake+Crouch

Scott Nicholson

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Scott-Nicholson/e/B001HCX30O

BN: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/Scott+Nicholson

Please tell your friends! Thanks.

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The Red Church - Ten Years After

Ten years after.

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the release of THE RED CHURCH, my first novel. And although I had some short story sales before then, I generally consider THE RED CHURCH the start of my professional writing career as well. Ten years. A lot of books. I'm torn between feeling like a worn-out geezer and a guy finally figuring out what he wants to do with his life, but the reality is I am probably in the "middle age" of my writing career.

Today, with the whirlwind of digital books, foreign translations, eBookSwag.com, and basically running a tiny enterprise as a mad-emperor/demi-god, I have a hard time remembering the freshness of that feeling of accomplishment. I can still remember receiving the phone call from the year before, when the editor told me he wanted to publish the book, and the subsequent search for an agent. I remember the careful planning I put into preparing for the book's release (which I outlined in a monthly series leading up to the book's publication--boy, how times have changed!) I can't remember much about my life at the time, although it was fraught with self-inflected personal troubles.

But the thing that stands out clearly is that feeling of writing the book, the way I entered that fantasy land and followed the story from beginning to end, walked in Ronnie Day's shoes (and ran, in some cases), meeting the peculiar folk of Whispering Pines. The book felt fresh when I typed it, felt fresh when it was published, and still feels fresh today. Perhaps that is why it is still my bestselling and most popular book, even after 10 years.

I'm not even sure how many copies have sold, but it's probably around 80,000 now--not a knockout bestseller but the Little Engine That Could (well,  it was out of print and not on sale for half of its life...but that's another blog post for another day). It was a Stoker Award finalist (lost out to The Lovely Bones!), and an alternate selection of the Mystery Guild and in the Doubleday Book Clubs back when mail-order was a force more powerful than Amazon. It's been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Polish, and soon Portuguese and German. It's been around the block. It's been equally slammed for being a Christian novel disguised as a horror novel and a horror novel disguised as a Christian novel. It's inspired theological essays and critical analysis and a Bentley Little blurb, and the heady but rather commonplace Stephen King comparisons. Perhaps its greatest feat was impressing my daughter when she saw THE RED CHURCH on the Kindle charts ahead of Stephen King and C.S. Lewis...

THE RED CHURCH. Ten years, and I can still smell the dusty hay when I open that creaking church door...

I still feel the chill of the river fog laying low over the Appalalachian valley...

I still hear the rustle and slither of that shadow in the belfry...

Ten years after, I still live in THE RED CHURCH, and I always will.

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DIALOGUE Blogtalk interview: Audio Archive, June 28

Free Scott Nicholson books on Kindle:

June 28-30: Creative Spirit (UK edition only)

June 29-30: Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 5 (Amazon UK only)

June 29-30, July 1: Mad Stacks (Amazon US Amazon UK)

Free Kindle Books& Free Kindle UK books by Scott Nicholson

Here's my next round of free Kindle books and free Kindle UK books. Some of this will be free for the last time, so please tell a friend! (Kindle UK readers, just put "co.uk" in place of "com" to get the Amazon UK link).

June 11-12

Cursed (Scott Nicholson, J.R. Rain)

http://www.amazon.com/Cursed-ebook/dp/B004CYEV1O

Kiss Me or Die (formerly called As I Die Lying)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0041D88TW/

June 13-15

Ghost Fire (Eve Paludan, Scott Nicholson, J.R. Rain)

http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Fire-The-Files-ebook/dp/B0083CMIUC

The Skull Ring

http://www.amazon.com/Skull-Ring-Julia-Stone-ebook/dp/B003980ELA

June 16-17

The Harvest

http://www.amazon.com/The-Harvest-ebook/dp/B0041G6LRK

June 18-20

Ghost College (Scott Nicholson, J.R. Rain)

http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-College-The-Files-ebook/dp/B004PLNQ92

Disintegration

http://www.amazon.com/Disintegration-A-Mystery-Thriller-ebook/dp/B0048EL5M6

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Kiss Me or Die: Reconstructing a failed ebook

The digital age is one of great experimentation. And I've experimented wildly. I've re-edited texts, added alternate endings, changed cover art multiple times, and even changed titles, all while the book remains on sale!

My rule of thumb is, if something isn't working for readers, it's either because (a) the work sucks, which is probably the right answer but not the one I can do much about, or (b) the presentation is off. And I can do something about (b).

Sometimes the changes work, such as with The Harvest, originally published in paperback and given its title by the publisher in 2003. I never cared much for the title, which I thought was generic, so when I re-released it as an ebook, I called it Forever Never Ends, one of my original working titles for the manuscript, which was based on a song I'd written in a previous life. But the title and cover art veered from the book's real personality--which is a sci-fi/horror B-movie in text. When I finally went back to the publisher's title and gave it B-movie art, it found its audience (hit #1 in horror in the UK) and has gone on to fairly steady sales.

I changed covers for Disintegration, even though it was a Top 30 Kindle bestseller, and I even added a new ending (leaving the original as an alternate ending if people wanted to read it.) The new ending isn't a betrayal of the narrative, but rather a slightly less cynical view which better allows the readers to get what they want out of it. The book saved my sanity while I wrote it and was the bestseller that allowed me to make the move to full-time writing, so I am grateful. But I still changed the cover!

My latest re-imagining of failure is Kiss Me or Die. That is the original title of the first novel I ever wrote (not counting a Vonnegut knockoff in high school). But when I published it, I tried to get clever and call it As I Die Lying, punning on the Faulkner title. But people confused my book with the Faulkner book (I've never written anything remotely close to a Faulkner sentence--the only thing we have in common as writers is English, and that only barely), and I was too clever by half. Even my cheesy cover with the scantily clad woman (a sad ploy to cash in on the John Locke era) didn't work, nor the previous freaky cover that employed fractals and eyeballs. I was overreaching. What I was probably trying to do was scare readers away--"This book is too tricky for you."

But a book without readers is no book at all. It was so much my first love that I couldn't admit to the ugly. So I gave it a more conventional thriller cover, retitled it, and banged it back out there. As of this writing, it is still grinding through the Amazon KDP platform, so everything isn't matched up--but since the file is overwriting the existing one, no buyers or readers will be able to get it under the new title if they already own it--so I won't be inadvertently tricking anyone (the product description also notes the original title).

Changing titles is a last resort, something I only do if a project is headed for oblivion before its natural time. I don't know if Kiss Me or Die works (I used the art for a German short story, too), but with nothing to lose, I am spinning the roulette wheel. The digital age is ever moving, and ebooks are living things. And to those who liked an earlier cover better, all I can say is, "You had your chance to tell 10,000 friends to buy it!"

Of course, if this incarnation fails, this conversation never happened. If you don't love me, you die. Not much gray area there.

Free for Kindle, June 11-12 in Amazon US and Amazon UK.
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