2012

2012 has been a strange year for me. Through the end of 2011 and most of the way through this year I was in a deep depression with only occasional moments of normality. During this year my writing income doubled from the previous year, yet in the last month I've seen what I think is a serious long-term decline in my sales. I hope I'm wrong.

I finished Monster yet after I was done I realized the book wasn't at all what I wanted it to be. It needs a lot of work to be a true sequel to Beautiful and I want to do that work and get the book out. The problem is that I wrote almost all of it during that depression, and reading over it puts me back in the mindset I worked so hard to get out of. I don't know if your own emotional problems can create PTSD, but it feels that way. Monster is shelved indefinitely as I work on other things.

I'm at a strange crossroads as a writer. I have a huge amount of material I want to crank out, good ideas that need barely any work to be fully-fleshed out as stories. I've spent long nights working at the nursing home thinking about them on my rounds. Most of them only need the one thing I've had in short supply: time.

Time is the worst part. Yeah, I have it when I get home in the morning, but that's when I'm exhausted in every way. I've written that way before, and in fact I write Living With the Dead that way almost every day. LWtD takes up most of my mental energies any given morning. More writing on top of that is counter-productive.

I started Write The Future in an effort to spend all next year just working on my writing. The campaign is over at midnight tonight and the total contributions stand at just over $1,000. That's no mean feat for a guy sitting on his couch writing about zombies, but it's only about five percent of my goal. That's okay; I honestly didn't think I'd get that far. The project looks like it'll fail in about twelve hours, all the backers will get their money back in the next few weeks.

I'll keep on working and tucking away money here and there. I'll try to save my writing income as much as possible so that someday I'll have a nest egg that will allow me to risk not working. All I need is time to write those books and a bit of luck, and I'll live my dream. Eventually I'll be writing full-time and the stress of this year will be something I can look back on as a learning experience.

Complaining seems pretty dickish at this point. I've had more success than I expected by any measure. Over this year I've reached more readers than I thought possible. I've made new friends and learned a tremendous amount about the art of writing, and it continues. Work is hard and it sucks, but that's how it is all around, right? I've got a roof over my head, the best wife and family anyone could hope for, fuzzy companions at home who are always happy to see me (yes, Jess and I keep Hobbits in the house) and the future has yet to be written.

My readers are the best. You are the best. You've been the most supportive group of people, and I know that while it may take a while, I'll get there eventually. Because of you! That's the truth. I could be sitting here writing the next great classic (I'm totally not) but it wouldn't mean a thing without you guys. I'm thrilled every time I get messages from you, or words of support, or anything really. You all keep me motivated and in total honesty interacting with you on a daily basis has helped calm the emotions that wrecked my productivity so much of this year.

Thank you for all of that. Whether you're a close family member or someone I met on the internet (and there are more of you than I can easily count now, many of you now dear friends), you mean the world to me. Even if I had to give up writing (tragic wheat thresher accident? Choose your own adventure) tomorrow I would still treasure each moment, past and future.

I'm not giving up. I will write and write until my fingers bleed, and I will achieve my dream. I don't make resolutions, but 2013 is going to be my year one way or another. I promise that.

"Next" and a review of "Cold Days" by Jim Butcher

My initial plan was to begin work on Saint for NaNoWriMo this month, but a few false starts later and an obsessive infatuation with another planned book, Next, pushed me in a different direction. Next is sitting at almost eight thousand words as of this moment, and I'm planning to put it over the 10k mark tonight.

As for Monster, well, the raw first draft is sitting on my hard drive. I'll be honest: I wrote the book during more than a year of depression, personal turmoil, and continuing physical and mental stress. I want to get the book done and published, but every time I sit to edit and revise I start to remember every bad moment and I just can't do it. I may need to let Monster sit for a while as I work on other things and revisit it later. I want it to be a good book. Right now it isn't what I'd like it to be.

And now, a review of Cold Days by Jim Butcher, which I just finished reading a few hours ago.

A warning: SPOILERS. OMG SO MANY SPOILERS. Don't read past here if you haven't read the book or care at all about knowing major plot elements ahead of time. Seriously.

In fact, let me just add a jump right here.

Saint: A First Look

Many of you know I'm running a campaign on IndieGoGo to fund my writing for next year. That link will take you to it. The goal seems like a bit much, I know, but it really isn't. It's less than I make at my full-time job, but even if you don't use that metric it really isn't an outrageous number. I've seen people run campaigns for $15,000 for a single book. I'm reaching for 20k to complete six additional novels on top of my work on Living With the Dead. When you break it down I'm shooting for about $3,400 per book. That's about par for writing campaigns on IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, and the other crowdfunding platforms.

I should also mention here that I'm planning on adding more perks to the campaign that include print editions of each book. Signed by me! Awww, yeah!

With Monster in the edit/revision stage, I figured it would be a good time to give you some background on my next planned novel, which I'm going to write regardless of my campaign's success. It's called Saint, and it's something I haven't done before: a crime drama.

Without giving too much away, the story centers around a man called Saint O'Brien. Though his first name is Eric, few people call him that due to a personality quirk: the Saint always gives a second chance. But after that he's as ruthless and without mercy as a hurricane.

Saint is a character inspired by several of my favorite bad guys in movies and comics. He's a little Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad, a little Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction. It's safe to say that Agent Graves from 100 Bullets (one of my all-time favorite characters in comics) exists in the Saint in some form, as do the minutemen he lead in the comic.

He's a cleaner, a fixer. He's the one who gets called in to troubleshoot and solve problems when lesser criminals can't manage on their own. The Saint has little to lose and few morals to hold him back. He's a murderer with ice in his blood.

And the idea of the story was to put him in a situation where he is forced to face those remaining moral lines up close and face choices that might make him cross them. Saint is going to be faced-paced and full of thrills, but in building the central character and plot, I began to ask myself just who Eric O'Brien is and how he grew into that man. Originally this novel was going to be a straight thriller, but over the last few months O'Brien has evolved into something much more complex and interesting than a simple anti-hero.

I'm excited to finish Monster and get to work on Saint. This is a new direction for me. I usually write in the realms of science fiction and fantasy. I've got most of this book mapped out in my head, and if the campaign is successful I'll be able to get it written pretty quickly. So if you haven't contributed yet, you should think about doing so. If you haven's shared the link, here it is again. I hope you do that.

Because this guy wants his day in the sun, and I want to give it to him.

Six Books For $10

Just going to keep this short and to the point: what the post title says is correct. I'm running an IndieGoGo campaign from now until December 31st at 11:59 PM, and the lowest level of backing will net you all six of the new books I'll write in 2013 for less than the cost of two lattes from Starbucks.

I'm trying to reach $20,000. If I hit that goal, the campaign will be successful and I'll spend 2013 at home working on books and nothing else. No full-time job. If we don't reach that goal, everyone's money is automatically refunded and I don't get a dime. But, then, I won't have the freedom to write all six of those books. I'll still work on them as much as I can, but I can't guarantee I'll be able to do any of them, much less all six.

There are other perks that cost more on the campaign, which can be found right HERE, but the one I think would appeal to most people is the cheapest one. Six books--eBooks--for ten dollars. If that sounds like a great deal to you, and it should, then head over and help support my work. If you can't afford to, then please share and encourage any friends you have that might enjoy.

Thanks,
Josh

Telling Stories: Cancer, Comedy, And Going There

I'm not just a writer, I'm also a comedy nerd. I love language and telling stories as things alone, but to me comedy is a perfect example of blending language and storytelling into an experience that creates a reaction. What I try to do with words on a page, comedians do with their tone of voice, body language, and a dozen other little things.

I've been trying to work all afternoon and evening and have little to show for it. A little while ago I took a break to listen to a stand-up routine I bought from my favorite comedian of all time, Louis CK. It isn't his performance. It's an audio track by a friend of his, fellow comedian Tig Notaro.

Louis posted this tweet not long after watching Tig's set:

in 27 years doing this, I've seen a handful of truly great, masterful standup sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo.

Sixty seconds before the set, Tig told Louis that she had cancer, was probably going to die, and had lost her mother not long before. "I'm going to go up there and talk about it," she said. "It's probably going to be a mess."

I listened. It wasn't.

She took to the stage and did something really unique. By bluntly confronting the tragedy in her life, not complaining but seeking an honesty with her audience I've never heard of much less seen, Tig Notaro gave what was probably the performance of her life. Louis called it masterful, and it was. She made me laugh when I didn't want to even through tears.

She walked up to the curtain between life and death, threw it open for those of us who have never really faced that kind of tragedy, and taught us something about grace and humor in the worst possible situation.

Her ability to keep the audience with her through the whole thing was nothing short of miraculous. The talent Tig displayed in taking something like cancer, the death of a loved one, and other awful experiences (all true, at that) and making us laugh at it--amazing. Really, truly amazing.

I'm fascinated in the mechanics of comedy. That's part of why I love Louis so much; he's a comedian's comedian. He understands the deeper currents of confronting people's fears and doubts and pointing out the absurdity in our own shame. Comedy is about dealing with fear and anxiety. The best comedians can make you look hard at yourself by using themselves as a mirror.

The trick is making us laugh at what we see. Louis does this well. Tig Notaro did it in her set better than anyone. Period.

She did it with humility and raw emotion, and I want more than anything to give her a hug. To tell her how much I hope she does well. To thank her for an experience I can't get out of my head.

But I can't. So I wrote this. It's a sad imitation and she'll probably never read it, but if I can convince even one person out there to buy the special and hear what I heard, felt what I felt, I'll have done at least some small good.

The link is here. I can't be clear enough that you should click on it.

The Author I Am (Advice and Evidence for Indie Writers)

For a good while now I've been trying to steer clear of writing too much about writing. It's a little self-centered and frankly I don't know that many people are interested in hearing about my job. I don't expect you to come home from the factory or the nursing home (I work at one of those for my day job) and write a long series of posts about it. I don't think I should either.

Occasionally, though, I get the itch to update anyone who is interested on what's happening with me and my career and to share my experiences. The things that work and don't might be useful to you if you're an indie writer or are thinking of becoming one. Maybe not, but this is my disclaimer: nothing I say is presented as gospel. Also, nothing I say is intended to be bragging on my part. I'm just as surprised as anyone that I've sold book one.

But first, a little about who I am.

I am not a structured image. I don't do PR and have gimmicks and stuff like that. This is the only joshuaguess.com you'll find; infrequently updated and just a sort of informal blog. Not that I don't intend to build a "real" website at some point, but that's just not a priority for me. I like interacting with my fans who so often become my friends via social media. A professional website might be pretty and all that jazz, but I much prefer joking around with readers on Facebook and Twitter. It's more personal, faster, and much easier.

There are a lot of paths for authors to take. I suggest trying out whatever methods suit you. I don't have the resources to quit my job and take up writing full-time, so there's no media blitz from me. I don't have a lot of time to write as it is. I'm not spending any of it trying to write regular stuff on my blog solely to appear cute or to gain attention.

You might be able to do that. The Bloggess is a great example of that kind of writer. She's as honest and straightforward as it's possible for a human to be. She's a brilliant writer that used her platform and considerable talent to make a name for herself. Then she wrote a book that sold like hotcakes. Which is a lot, because hotcakes are fucking delicious. Jenny (that's her real name) does one or two regular features on her blog and they work well. I think that's because she developed them organically over time.

She does her own PR, and it's as darkly funny and brutally filthy as the rest of her work. I love it. She comes across as genuine in every way, and that's a huge part of why people love her.

That's not easy to do. Some authors tend toward self-aggrandizement, talking about their work incessantly. Those are the ones who have photo shoots with lots of, uh, cleverly posed pictures. They're the ones who have silly gimmicks on their web pages that are written in a way or from a perspective specifically designed to create an impression about what kind of person they are. Maybe it's a "rant" section to create the idea the writer is a tough customer that tells it like it is. It might be the author writing a blog post or review from the perspective of a fictional character once a week. There are a lot of them. And for those people that may work.

As a reader, that turns me off. So I don't use them as a writer. But, hey, whatever tickles your pickle.

To me, being genuine is the most important thing. I may tone down what I say and not get into details of my points of view, but by and large what you see is what you get. I think authenticity is vital to the reader. You might read something I've written and think I'm a huge dick afterward, but you'll know for sure that you come to that opinion honestly. I don't put on a show to try and lure you in.

What does all this mean? Nothing, except that your image is a part of how your reader perceives you. It isn't just your writing. I only want you to think about that going forward.

That's the advice part. Now for the evidence.

Totally separate from all of the above is the pure numbers of how I'm doing at this point in my writing career. Some people are appalled at anyone divulging the amount of money they make. I told you all months ago that in 2011 I made just over $6000 in royalties, all from my eBooks. A lot of my fans, friends, and family were stunned by that number. Put it in one lump sum like that and it seems like a lot of money to make for someone typing on his couch while watching Hoarders.

And you know what? That's exactly the right reaction. I still don't quite believe it myself. I chalk it up to a ludicrously supportive fan base, some dedication on my part, and metric tons of sheer luck.

Which makes the next bit a little strange: At the end of November, I will get a check from Amazon that will bring my total income for 2012 to just shy of $11,000. I have no idea what October will bring in sales, and as I'll be getting paid the October royalties at the end of December I'm not even going to guess.

For a bit of clarity I beat last year's royalties by the end of June. Halfway through the year and I'd made as much as the entire previous year. I attribute this, again, to my (growing) fan base, my dedication, GIGATONS of luck, and the addition of Kindle Select into the mix.

There's a lot of back and forth about Select and I'm not rehashing it here. Google arguments about the program if you're interested. As for me, my audience has grown tremendously over the last ten and a half months of being in the program. I've given away somewhere near twenty thousand books in that time. I've had higher sales each month in comparison to 2011. I've grown my fanbase organically--that is, by word of mouth and through getting books out there to eReaders--instead of through ads or blog posts or reviews or guest spots on so-and-so's website. I'm not nay-saying those things, by all means do them if you feel the need. But they take up time I just don't have.

I am absolutely floored by the growth in my income this year. Most of it has been eaten by medical bills from when I had my appendix removed as well as a dozen other nibbling costs over that time. But the point is, I had the money to cover them. Select had a lot to do with the jump in my income. Every bit of analysis I can do on my numbers supports that. Might not work for you, but it's worth keeping tabs on.

In short, the things that work for me: engaging my fans directly, which I can fortunately still do as I'm not some big name with millions of fans. I tend to just be myself, which does turn some people off but creates surprisingly fierce loyalty among the remainder. I've made some good friends that way, and people see me as more than a carefully-crafted image or just some faceless neutral voice saying, "I wrote this book. Reading it would not be unpleasant for you, fellow human."

I'm a person to them, which is good given I actually am a person. I'm certainly not a complex computer program sent from the future to slowly gain your love and trust as a public figure only to make the inevitable slide into a cyborg apocalypse that much easier. Perish the thought. I don't know what you're talking about. Who said cyborgs? Not this infiltration unit, that's for sure.

And I think I'll end here. Like my grandma always says, "Leave them asking for more...information on whether or not you're an agent of Skynet."

Lots of Free Books (and the release of Book Five!)

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the newest addition to the Living With the Dead family:

This New Disease, book five.

As I'm sure some of my regular readers have guessed, I'm doing another big giveaway to celebrate the release of my new book. While This New Disease will still cost $3.99, you can get the first four books absolutely free starting on the morning of Sunday, September 9th. That's right! Starting tomorrow and through Thursday you can get all four individual volumes of LWtD free on the Kindle store, as well as Year One, which collects books one and two and contains a lot of bonus material.

So, please, share this post and let your friends know. Take the free books, buy the fifth one if you like, and enjoy!

Links!

With Spring Comes The Fall, book one.

The Bitter Seasons, book two.

Year One, which collects book one and two, plus has a TON of bonus material, including five short stories, a behind the scenes look at LWtD, and a whole novella set in the LWtD universe. It's a deal. Especially because it's free.

The Hungry Land, book three.

The Wild Country,  book four.

The LendInk Disaster [Updated]

[Updated for clarity on a small but important point. Important to me, anyway]

I usually avoid much topical discussion here, but since the recent events involving eBook lending site LendInk involve many self-published authors like me, I want to weigh in with my two pennies.

For those of you who don't know, LendInk was (the site is still down as of right now, so we'll stick with the past tense) a site where Kindle and Nook users could search through every book on both those platforms and try to find a person to let them borrow it using the 'lending' feature. For the record, this is completely in accordance with the rules set by Amazon and Barnes & Noble, so LendInk wasn't doing anything wrong.

The basics of the story are this: a bunch of authors found LendInk's website and were like "Ruh-Roh, this isn't Amazon/Barnes & Noble, yet my book is listed here!"

Apparently not a lot of investigation went on. Instead, Twitter happened.

If those initial authors had done a tiny bit of digging, they'd have discovered that LendInk was not, as they simply assumed, pirating every eBook in existence. Instead it was just a meeting place for people who wanted to borrow books from each other, much like a book club.

So a ton of authors assumed that all the pretty pictures of book covers meant PIRACY OH NOES and decided to send out tons of DMCA notifications and various other means of getting the site shut down. A few of them even threatened the page admin for LendInk--from what I understand, a disabled veteran--and I firmly hope the jackasses who did that get in all the legal trouble they deserve.

The real gist of this post, other than to decry the thoughtless actions of people that were too lazy and angry to bother taking ten minutes to figure out if they were actually being pirated, is that even if LendInk were pirating their work, I don't think it would be that bad.

Let me explain.

An author friend of mine actually sent me an email about LendInk as all this was happening. As someone who pays some bills with his writing income, my first reaction was to be upset. Not because I have any reason to, but just a gut instinct. After a few minutes I remembered that the whole reason I started Living With the Dead in the first place was because J.A. Konrath convinced me that piracy could actually be a good thing. [Update/Edit: I want to make it very clear that the friend who sent me the email in question was NOT one of those spazzy people who freaked out. Her publisher was even concerned about copyright issues, but instead of going on a rampage, she acted responsibly and did her homework. Less than an hour later she sent a second email with the right information. She didn't call for anyone's head or try to join the Twitter jihad. I meant to put this in the original post but the words kind of got away from me. I feel the need to correct now because I worry she thinks I was lumping her in with the others. I'm not. She's full of win, and I'll fight any man that says different.]

See, Konrath is one of the pioneers of digital self-publishing. Early on, he gave away his books as DRM-free files. As the free copies multiplied across the interwebs, his sales generally went up. I know, that seems to fly in the face of what the movie and music industries have been saying about piracy, but it was enough to convince me. That's why I started the blog and gave it away for free online. People like free. Sometimes a whole lot of them.

My guess is that the people who most viciously attacked LendInk were probably the ones who needed it most. Reasonable professionals (or at least semi-professional) will take the time and effort to make sure they're being infringed before invoking the deadly forces of internet censorship. Those folks tend to be the ones who make money writing. I won't swear to it, since I haven't researched the people who did this to a legally operating site, but I'd bet money that most of them are indies who really need the sales. Self-publishing is hard and often thankless. I can see someone struggling to make a name and some money getting royally pissed that a website was stealing their stuff.

Except they weren't. And if they'd taken a minute to think about it, they would have realized how wrong they were. I mean, if freely available versions of our work were a bad thing, then why the hell would anyone do free promotions? I do them on Amazon regularly, and they boost my sales. Piracy is essentially the same thing; giving it away for free. Sure, true piracy is out of your control, but there are seven billion people on this planet. If a few hundred thousand of them pirate my books, and that means a few thousand actually pay for them as a result of their popularity, then I'm a happy camper.

Granted, that scenario hasn't happened for me, but it's preferable to committing career seppuku. That's what is happening to the authors who took part in this. Their short-sighted behavior and terrible attitudes, on the internet for all to see forever and ever, are tantamount to giving up writing. There's already a backlash against many of them on Amazon as people deliberately sabotage their pages with one-star reviews. I don't think that's right, but as an author I'm biased.

All told, it's a bad situation. Maybe LendInk could have avoided this by putting a huge disclaimer on their homepage stating that they were affiliated with Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but the fault isn't theirs. The blame has to put squarely where it belongs: on my peers. As independent authors, we are business owners. It's our responsibility to know exactly what the particulars of our agreements with Amazon and other platforms entail. We have to be careful not to give in to instant rage and righteous indignation. We have to make sure that when we make a stand, it's based on fact.

To do otherwise makes us look like ignorant amateurs. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've put in too much time and love into my work to let that happen.

Just a thought.

The End

The title of this post says it all. I've been thinking about it for a while now, and I've come to the decision to give up writing. It's been a hard time, but I think this will be the best thing for me and my family.

...

Nah, just screwing with you. Things are actually going really well! In fact I'm working on a lot of stuff at the moment, and as I promised the other day I want to share some news with you. Awesome news!!! <---see, three exclamation points worth of awesome.

Four or five years ago I started working on a concept for a story, a comic book. I'm a comic nerd from way back, and I've always wanted to try my hand at one. With some excellent feedback and a few very clever ideas from some close friends, I came up with a conceptually finished product. A story. More, a storyline planned out for at least a hundred issues. I even worked with an artist friend of mine to create a fully finished comic, but he was unable to complete more than the first stages. You know how that goes; family duties, full-time work, etc.

I thought the comic was dead for about two years, but recently reconnected with another old friend who was aching to do some comic book art. After some discussion he agreed to take it on, and he has been working on the blue lines and finalizing character designs for more than a week now.

Once the comic is penciled we'll start looking for someone to digitally ink and color it, and after that we'll print up physical copies for submission to some comic companies. If that doesn't work out we have other plans, but I'm hopeful. Not expecting miracles, but hopeful anyway.

As for the title of this post, it's the name of the comic. The End.

It's a story that grew from my love of villains, good villains, complex and damaged people with reasons and layers for the terrible things they do. I don't want to give it all away, but my hope is that once we've got some finished product I can convince my artist to do a few pages for an ashcan book, a sort of sneak peek at the story. I want to share it with you. I want to capture your imagination. I want you to fall in love with the characters as readers just as much as I have as a writer.

Worst case scenario, I don't get a publisher. That's pretty likely given how many submissions Image, Dark Horse, and the others who accept them receive. Don't worry: one way or another, you'll get to read The End, no matter what else happens. It's very near and dear to me. Work on the first issue is at very early stages, as I said, but I'm hoping to go farther with this. Cross your fingers, wish upon a star, and all that jazz.

Josh

My Heart In Aurora

As I was at work this morning, at exactly 5:47--I had just looked at the clock--my boss comes up to me and tells me about a shooting at a midnight showing of Dark Knight Rises. She told me about it mainly because I've been incessantly talking about the movie for the last two days at work, prattling on about how excited I am to see it. 

Since then I've felt this awful sadness whenever I think about seeing the movie. I'll be going out with my wife and best friend on Sunday morning. It isn't often I get truly emotional about things like this. When Virginia Tech happened, I felt bad for the victims but it didn't hit home for me. Maybe because I've been thinking about going to see the final Chris Nolan Batman film, putting myself in that chair mentally for weeks now. Maybe that's why I feel such serious disquiet about the shooting. 

Not that twelve people's deaths isn't enough. You hear about these kinds of things on the news and your brain transforms it into a sense that it won't happen to you. My brain is telling me that it could. That could have been me, my wife, my best friend Patrick. We live in Kentucky, of course, but the idea is the same. One minute we might be enjoying the film, the next just gone. 

The randomness of it staggers me. So senseless and terrible. I write a lot of deaths into my work, some of them gruesome and truly awful. I talk about the waste of it and the loss of human potential and love and wonder that happens when a person passes away. 

And I feel that so much right now. As if those folks were my friends. 

I posted a tweet about the shooting when I got home this morning, expressing love for all the victims. Shockingly, one of my fans on my author page on facebook responded to that tweet when it was posted there. She says here that she and her husband were in the theater when the shooting started. They ran like hell to get away. 

That struck me hard. We live in this huge world, but the connections between us are so startlingly close. Here I am, a guy trying to entertain with his words on his couch in central Kentucky, and I almost lost someone that supported me. Someone I didn't know but was there as a part of my life anyway. It's weird and wonderful and terrifying all at the same time. One single degree of separation from this tragedy. 

I found myself feeling genuine relief that the lady in question and her husband made it out okay. She's a reader--describing herself as a 'loyal reader'--but before today she was a profile on a page. A number in my 'like' column. Now she's someone that I know, a person whose potential and impact on the people around her, including myself, could have been gone in a blink. 

Is there a point to this? I don't know. I'm feeling more grief for an event outside my own personal sphere of experience than I have at any point since 9/11. I want to do something for those people, and for Jaqueline Lader, the fan herself. I wish I could help. Even if just to give comfort to the injured, to the families of the slain. Maybe it's selfish because I think it would make me feel better, but I also deeply want every one of them to know that I care. We care. 

Human beings let unimportant things get between us too often. I'm as guilty of it as anyone. In the wake of tragedy it's vital that we remember that we're all human. I don't know what drove the killer to act as he did, and I'm sure the media will have theory after theory and people all over will place blame on whatever issue is their pet peeve. 

I don't want to do that. I don't care what made him do it, and I don't care what happens to him now other than hoping justice is served. I care that all too often we see awful things happen and get sucked into argument and finger-pointing. We forget the real human impact of the event itself. My hope is to avoid that. It may be a silly dream, but I want to see sympathy and love for all those affected to a degree that no one can imagine. 

Surely, if one man can cause so much pain, ten thousand--ten million--of us can at least begin to heal it. 

Excellent Authors and Friends

I promised I'd post this today, and I feel pretty good that I'm doing it. I've been meaning to mention some of my author friends again, as it's been a long time since I've done that. So while you're waiting for Monster to come out, please check out each of these links.

Annetta Ribken can be found at Wordwebbing, which is her website and blog. Normally I'd link to all the stuff Netta has written, but the list is pretty long. Instead allow me to point you to her Amazon author page, where you can peruse her works.

Netta and I became friends after she read the first installment of Living With the Dead and contacted me on facebook. She has been a font of great advice, wisdom, and deeply inappropriate humor for me. She's awesome and talented as all hell, one of the few authors I know that excels equally as an editor and writer. If you're having a hard time picking one of her works to read, let me suggest her novel, Athena's Promise. I've read several of her collections of flash fiction, but this novel has a special place in my heart, as she allowed me to beta read it. It's fun and funny, with moments of beauty and darkness. You won't be disappointed.

Lori Whitwam theoretically writes romance, but I'll be damned if she can't bend genres better than almost anyone I've read. Her debut novel, Make or Break is damn good. But it's the novella she wrote for my Year One collection of Living With the Dead--Monsters Unmasked--that really and truly blew me away with her talent. Maybe because I read it before her novel. Monsters is a sort of romance set in a world overrun by the living dead (my world, in fact) that manages to convey the most vile deeds a human being can do, yet show the strength and power one woman has to overcome them.

Lori is, much like Netta, snarky and hilarious. She has been a sounding board, and our mutual love of dogs and being as smart-assed as possible has been sort of a bonding experience. I've been promised that when she and Netta take over the world, I'll be spared. Even if I have to work as an oiled-up manservant.

If you already have Year One and don't want to spent the money to buy Monsters because it's in that collection, then consider buying Make or Break. Or if you're feeling generous and want to support a talented lady, go ahead and buy both.

Joseph Paul Haines  is the third person (counting the above ladies as the first two) who just wrecks my brain with how good he is. Joe wrote Marooned under the name P.J. Druce, a young adult novel that I also beta read. When Joe and I first became friends it was through Lori and Netta, and the ladies suggested I buy Joe's short story collection Ten With A Flag. I did. Then I bought the collection Brave New Worlds just because he has a story in it.

Joe is awesome. I mean that on a lot of levels. He's supremely capable of creating darkness and making you enjoy it, and I couldn't have been happier with Marooned. That book is a lot like Joe himself--complex, honest, and layered in ways that keep you interested.

It's hard to put into words how much I want you to support these folks. As writers they're awesome, but as people they're even better. I can't explain how funny and fun they are, because that's like trying to map out why your best friend is your best friend with dry words and no context.

It helps that their personalities come out in their work. You get to see pieces of them in their characters: Lori, snarky romantic, Netta as the take-no-shit badass with a heart full of hope and love, and Joe studying the things moving around in the shadows but laughing at them instead of cringing away.

I support them. If I won the lottery I'd fulfill a dream of mine and start a publishing house just for indies. I know that seems like a contradiction, but it isn't. I wish I could give them advances and pay them to do the thing they love full-time, do a lot of the work for them, promote and advertise. Because they're worth it as authors and people.

But I can't do that. Not yet, anyway. Maybe when I'm making Stephen King money someday. For now, all I can do is urge you to take a chance, spend on their books what you would spend on a cup of overpriced coffee, and let them take you away for a while.

You'll enjoy the trip.

'Monster' and Real Life Things

I've been meaning to write this post for a while. I've been working on Monster, the sequel to Beautiful, for almost a year. In fact, it will be a year in a few weeks. I want to let you all know the status of the book and why it isn't done, and you can throw metaphorical rotten fruit at me in the comments if you like.

First, please understand that I am extremely busy. I write two Living With the Dead books a year, each of them the length of a novel if not in the same format. That's more than a lot of full-time writers manage. And I'm not full-time at this. I work a regular job as a nurse aide, and that figures in to the problem.

About this time last year the way our schedules are set at work changed. Now, being a CNA is a hard, physical job. It's also pretty emotionally draining. Ever had a loved one pass away or deal with a long-term, serious illness? That's rough for a lot of people. Imagine doing it every day.

Right now I work four days and am off two, rinse and repeat. That means that I get two days off with my wife out of every six weeks since my days off change with each cycle. So not only have I been exhausted by work, but I've been trying to spend the time I have at home with Jess, between writing LWtD and trying to work on Monster.

I'll be honest: for the last year I've been struggling to even move at times, because I'm physically and mentally worn out. I changed the schedule for LWtD so I had a free day every four in which I could research, because I just didn't have the focus to write and research, much less the time.

And the big one, the one that will probably have my mom calling or messaging me shortly after I post this because she's my mom and she worries...

I've been depressed. Not depths-of-my-soul despair, the kind that keeps people in bed, but it has been there. It has been a struggle for me to get out of the low points that the depression has been trying (and occasionally succeeding) to put me in. Don't worry about me, please; I'm okay. I'm dealing with it and over the last few weeks I've been able to get to a much better place.

But these are the reasons that Monster isn't done. I'm stretched thin and trying my best, but on top of everything else this book has become something much different than what I originally planned. It's darker, more focused on the consequences of the main character's choices, and it's hard for me to write it for that reason as well as all of the above. The book won't be out this month or next, I can be pretty certain of that. All I can ask is for your patience and maybe a little understanding.

I've also been meaning to post some links to some other Indie authors you might enjoy, but I'm saving that for my next post. I want to give them all a place to shine without my emo inner child overshadowing them. I'm going to post that tomorrow for sure, so you'll at least have some damn good fiction to read while I work on this book.

I'll also be doing a post about Monster itself within the next week, what you can expect and why it's a very different book than Beautiful.

Back to work.

Josh

My Entire Zombie Series For FREE

Hello! For those of you who have never been here before, my name is Joshua Guess. I write things.

Primarily, I write a blog called Living With the Dead. It's a fictional blog told in real time and set in the zombie apocalypse. Since March of 2010, I've been writing an alternate reality there based on my life. Basically, I write a story and give it away for free.

But I also sell them on the Kindle store, where I am currently exclusive. Why would people pay for what they can get for free? Several reasons. Some folks enjoy LWtD and want to support me as an artist. Some people enjoy the convenience of having easy-to-read versions on their Kindle, smartphone, or Kindle program for PC. A few enjoy the bonus material I've included in a couple of the books.

Starting Saturday morning (June 9), and running through the 13th, you don't have to make the choice. Because for those five days, every LWtD book is free on the Kindle store. Yep, the entire series so far. Now you can read through the blog in six month increments at your convenience. The links are:

Living With the Dead: With Spring Comes The Fall (Book 1, covers the first six months)

Living With the Dead: The Bitter Seasons (Book 2, covers the second six months)

Living With the Dead: Year One (Combines Books 1 and 2, has five short stories, a lovely novella, and some behind-the scenes stuff from me)

Living With the Dead: The Hungry Land ( Book 3, covers the first six months of year two)

Living With the Dead: The Wild Country ( Book 4, covers the second six months of year two)

I'd love for all of you to grab all five. If you decide to get year one, it won't hurt a thing to also get books one and two as well. They aren't huge, and every download can help me in the rankings.

PLEASE BE AWARE: these collections are largely unedited. That's intentional, as I wanted to convey a sense of realism and urgency. The fictional me in the story doesn't have time to worry about making sure every single thing is perfect. That being said, sometime down the road I'll be paying an editor to do some cleanup. Because while people understand my reasoning, it still bugs them. Hell, it bugs me.

Also, I'm planning on releasing a "Year Two" compilation with the release of book 5 in the fall, and I've got a contest going--The Write Away Contest--that you may be interested in. If so, click on the link and check it out.

Thanks to each and every one of you. Please share and tell your friends.

Oh--and welcome to my world.

Muahahaha!

The Official "Write Away!" Contest Post

In my last post I gave you a quick and dirty explanation of a contest I'm currently running. Since these things are apparently supposed to have names, I'm calling this contest the "Write Away!" contest. Here's the official skinny:

Overview:

Six submitted stories will be chosen by me and my trusty beta readers to be included in my "Year Two" collection of Living With the Dead. Each of those six people will receive fifty dollars via paypal and promotion within the book itself as well as on this blog, the Living With the Dead blog, Facebook, and wherever else I can fit them. Submissions are open until August the 15th, and may be sent to me joshguess22@gmail.com with the subject line, "Write Away Contest". 

Requirements:

There is no word limit, and thematically all I ask is that each submission be somehow related to zombies. They can be funny, scary, fantastic, all or none of the above. I want every person to feel free to write whatever strikes their fancy. 

However, there are some very basic restrictions that I don't think will be a problem but need to be stated for the record. Amazon does not allow necrophilia, rape, beastiality, or incest for the purposes of sexual arousal. In short, that means if you're going to write and submit erotica for this contest (which is totally cool with me) then please avoid using those topics as a part of any erotic scenes. If you send me something that violates this rule, I have to nix it. Sorry. 

Rights:

I am NOT buying the sum publishing rights to your story. There are many shady authors and publishers out there that will try to do this to you, and I'm not one of you. The only thing submitting your work to me does is give me the right to include it in the "Year Two" collection of Living With the Dead forever and ever. 

What this means is that you retain all other rights. If you want to include your short fiction in your own collection that happens to publish the very same day as "Year Two", that's okay. You can do whatever you want with it. All you're allowing me is the right to use it in this book for as long as I want to. 

Additional Info:

If you're an author of any stripe, published, indie, or just starting to get into writing, and you're willing to forgo the fifty bucks to get your name out there, I'm willing to include your story if it meets the approval of my beta readers (and my own, of course.) Each author who has their work added in to "Year Two"--whether they're recipients of money or not--will have their website links and whatnot added in the front of the book. 

If you don't care about the money and just want a shot to get in the collection, say so in your submission email. 

Any questions, comments, or concerns can be emailed to me or written as comments on this post. I'll do my best to check it as often as I can. Which might not be every day, just fair warning. 

So Here's the Thing

A lot of you have been asking me about a "Year Two" version of Living With the Dead. I released "Year One" at the same time as book 2 last year, and it killed sales of book two. So this year, when I released book 4, many people wondered why books 3 and 4 weren't bundled in a "Year Two" package. Now you know.

However:

When book 5 of Living With the Dead comes out in early September, I *will* be putting out "Living With the Dead: Year Two". I know, you're super excited. I'll be writing some short fiction as bonus material, but I also want to put out the call for other writers to do the same.

Here's the spiel.

I'm looking for six pieces of fiction from other writers to add to this book. "Year Two" itself will be about 200,000 words, or the length of two books (which makes sense, as it actually is two books). I'm doing at least two short stories, and I want YOU to submit something as well. So from now until August 15th, I'm accepting submissions from anyone and everyone who wants to give.

Requirements:
Zombie-related.

That's it. Your story can be dramatic, funny, silly, whatever you like. The six people I'll be selecting for this will each receive $50 for their submission. Unlike some people out there that put together collections of stuff, I'm not asking you to give up the rights to your work. By submitting, all you're doing is giving me permission to publish your piece in the "Year Two" collection forever and ever. You can do whatever you like with your work, even if you want to publish it yourself the same day. All I'm buying with your $50 is the right to borrow it for this collection ONLY.

Of course, if you don't care about money and want to submit something, I'm happy to add more than six to the collection. Right now I'm budgeted for $300 split between six people. If you want your name our there in this collection and don't care about getting paid, let me know.

I'll be doing another post in the next few days to make this a bit more formal, but that's the gist of it. Send all submissions to me at joshguess22@gmail.com.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Allow Me To Review The Shit Out of "The Avengers"

I saw The Avengers today. I have some things that need to be said.

First, to the critics:

I've read a few of your reviews, and they seem to trend negative not because of the movie itself, but because of the genre, though I'm not sure if you mean action movies or comic book movies. Either way, most of you who've given negative marks have done so using the most verbose and flowery language possible, pointing to the cavernous emptiness and blah blah blah.

My response to you: climb out of the ivory tower, put down the Jonathan Franzen novel, and pick up a goddamn comic book. You're not doing anyone favors by being as out of touch with modern culture as, say, Mitt Romney.

Now, on to my own thoughts.

Is The Avengers perfect? No. There was only one perfect film, and it died for our sins so other films could know the joy of record-breaking opening weekends.

That being said, there was very little to dislike about the movie. I didn't have any issues with it at all, and generally I'm a very picky moviegoer. One small complaint might be a few moments when Scarlett Johansson didn't quite hit her mark as an actor, but those were small things. Easy to ignore.

The script played out beautifully, dialog working seamlessly with the acting and direction. As a comic book fan, I can't express to you how utterly perfect each of the main characters felt in their roles. That goes all the way around--dialog and personalities were spot-on, but the action itself was stylized and tailored to each character. Take Captain America as he bounces around the battlefield, fighting with acrobatic grace one moment and rescuing civilians the next. There were many small scenes taken directly from my mind, images so iconic that you can't help associating them with the characters moving in front of you. Cap, again, as he jumps and pulls himself into a ball behind his shield to escape an explosion. Brilliant and logical.

At two and a half hours long, the movie should have dragged at some point. It didn't. The progression was smooth and always interesting, but the truly surprising element was how much comedy fit in to the story. Joss Whedon's touch was evident there, the hilarious moments between characters giving the film a sense of reality. I believed Tony Stark was a real guy, that Steve Rodgers could walk off the screen at any moment.

It's an action movie, but one with heart. Seeing the struggle Mark Ruffalo goes through (probably the best performance in the film) as Bruce Banner trying to contain the Hulk, actually made me feel bad for the guy. I could see Tony Stark being budged from his self-centered mindset by seeing the suffering around him. I felt the shift in his character.

It might not be a perfect movie, but it is a perfect example of what superheroes should be. At their core, the characters are human (mostly) or at least have a basic humanity. They represent the modern equivalent of Hercules as flawed people with great power. They screw up, they fight, but ultimately they use that power to protect those who can't protect themselves.

I don't know what some critics expected or hoped for from The Avengers but it's clear to me they have no concept of the genre. In reading those negative reviews, I got a sense of disdain for it simply because of what the movie was and not for what the movie says.

Not every film has to be an art house classic, people. It's okay to produce action films, superhero films, and it's just as fine to enjoy them. Bad ones are bereft of meaning in the name of making money, decent ones tell a story but never truly captivate. Great ones capture the spirit of the characters and make your heart move.

This is one of the greats. Hands down. I've never laughed so much during a comic book or action movie, nor felt tears come to my eyes as often. I rooted out loud at times, cheered loudly when bad guys got their comeuppance, and geeked out at every single nod to the source material.

If your opinion is that The Avengers could somehow have been better, then I'm going to tell you something I generally never say about opinions: You are wrong. This movie couldn't have been a better translation of the story. Period.

Now, if you haven't seen it, go do that. Seriously, stop reading and go.

Use the System: An Indie Author's Method

I promised in my last post, the one where I told everyone about my record-shattering sales in March, that my next piece would be about the methods I used to do it. I'm gonna throw in my disclaimer here so no one gives me shit or gets offended. 

DISCLAIMER: I am not better than you. I am not bragging. Every time I write anything about my book sales or try to give advice based on my own experience, I get at least one email blasting me as a small-timer with a big ego. As always, I'm just telling you what I've done and what works for me. Your methods might be better and more effective for you, and if so I think that's nifty. There are a lot of writers out there struggling just as I am, and I take a lot of advice from them. And from bigger-named writers than me (which is most of them), so relax. I'm telling you this because you might be irritated with your current sales, and maybe trying something different will help. 

Okay, we're on the same page now. 

April has been another good month for me. I thought at the beginning of it that I'd be lucky to make $800 or $900 in royalties, but I underestimated the aftereffects of my last promotion. You may remember me giving away most of my books last month for five days, all at once. During that time the four books I was giving away were downloaded about 4,000 times. That's an average of 1k each, obviously. Not bad, because one of the things I focus on is getting my name out there. Putting books in front of people. 

The advantage in selling eBooks is that the vitally important 'word of mouth' works electronically and automatically as well as between real, living people. Folks who like my books tell friends, and sometimes the friends buy them. But the reason I'm happy to give away thousands of copies is because doing so on Amazon (where I'm currently exclusive) means the metadata for those books gets a nice boost. 

If you're a writer who self-publishes, you need to know this stuff. You may not need all the technical jargon, but an understanding of how the system works means more aptly utilizing it. 

Go to any Amazon page for a kindle book and you'll see several places where suggested books appear. Metadata affects that. If you've just published a book and sold five copies, that field is going to be bare. Which means that your book isn't going to appear on many (if any) pages of similar titles. The best way I've found to populate those areas is giving away books. Don't think of the time your book is free as lost profit, but rather as a long-term investment in building a wide base of pages on which your book may appear. 

It all seems complex and abstract. That's because it is. Watching book trends, researching suggested sales, trying to grasp the hugely complicated system of sales interactions on Amazon is hard. It makes my brain hurt a lot and I've been studying it and learning it for more than two years. 

So that's the big one: give away your work. You can do this on your own if you don't want to get into the Select program on Amazon by simply giving it away on your website or blog. This may be helpful or not--I do it through Amazon because that method builds my potential audience on that platform. Doing it on your own can only indirectly affect your sales. For my money doing it through Amazon is faster, easier, and way more effective. 

The other things I do, let's see...

I watch my sales. A lot of other authors don't recommend doing this because it can make you anxious and maybe a little down. I know I get that way when my sales start to decline sometimes. I still check them often, because I want to get an idea when my best sales times are, know what days tend to be my strongest, and to observe long and short-term trends. This is another of those things you may not want to do, but it works for me. When I first got into the Select program, I used two of my free promotion days to give away a book during my two best sales days--Tuesday and Wednesday at the time--and saw immediate results. Sales of that book had been flat for months. I was selling maybe twenty or thirty copies. After those two days were up (600 free copies downloaded) I sold another twenty in about two days. Not a ton of money, but I doubled my income for the month. 

Paying attention to the prices of hot books is important as well. Ebook platforms had their flirtation with the 99 cent eBook craze, but for the most part the luster has worn off that fad. I've never had a lot of luck pricing my books that low, and instead of making up the income difference through volume, I just lost money compared to the prices I'd had them at before. Really, even the $2.99 pricepoint, once a standard on Amazon as it was the lowest price authors could make the 70% royalty rate at--is beginning to wear thin. A few months ago J.A. Konrath had a guest blogger on his site, and she gave very good reasons to price your books higher. Her name (which is the most awesome name EVER) is Elle Lothlorien, and she makes an excellent case for higher eBook prices in this post riiiiiight here.

That's pretty much how I operate. I'm obsessive about finding trends in my sales, understanding the machinery of how the rank system, suggested sales, and assorted pieces of the Amazon pie work, and I give away my stuff. Now, a few caveats. 

I read obsessively. J.A. Konrath's blog is a damn fine resource for writers trying to make a living through self-publishing. Most of what I've learned has been from him, and he's the best kind of teacher: one who experiments constantly himself, gives other authors a platform to share what works for them, and understands that what works for one may not work for another. 

I gave away my novel Beautiful for five days recently. Almost 900 downloads while it was free, but virtually no sales since then. Which is strange, because the last time I gave it away sales jumped up pretty fast and high. Nothing is guaranteed in this business, we all know that. We work our asses off to succeed, but the truth is that we have to keep at it, keep innovating where we can. Slackers need not apply. 

I think a major factor in the sales bump I've had since my last giveaway has to do with the fact that all the books I gave away were in a series. All of them were close to each other in rank on the various top 100 lists on the kindle store, and that stands out to people. The covers are all similarly themed. I have to imagine that a lot of people saw books one, two, and three and said to themselves, "Hey, all three of these are in the top 15 on the free Contemporary Fantasy top 100 list. Maybe there's something good here."

Having a series helps a lot from what I've gathered through observation. It may be different for you. 

I can't give much more advice than that. Write well, get a good cover, and always learn everything you can. Konrath isn't the only indi author out there who has great insight and experience. Find other authors, get their take on the process as well as the nuts and bolts of how it all works. It may not help your sales to change things up (through giveaways or whatever) but I'm damn sure it won't hurt. 

Don't hold me to that, though. I don't want to get mobbed if I'm totally wrong there. 

Record-Breaking

As of February of this year, my best month on record for sales was March of 2011. In that month I released book 2 of Living With the Dead (The Bitter Seasons) as well as the Year One compilation, which contained the first two books as well as five short stories, a novella, and some behind-the-scenes notes from me on the origin of the story.

That month I made just over $1,100 dollars in royalties. My mom hates the idea that I'm sharing income like this, but we live in a different world than the one she started out in professionally. Google can give us the income numbers for a lot of professions, but writing is very much one of the last closed doors for income reports. I'm going to tell you not because I want to brag, though I am proud of what I've accomplished, but to give some perspective and maybe some hope to other writers out there.

I'm not special. I don't have a lot of name recognition. Like a many of you, I write because I love it, I put in my hours on social networks trying to expand my fan base. I work a full-time job. I've put in hard work and love, and I've made a habit of watching sales trends and working out ways to utilize them to my advantage.

Also, I got lucky. Plain and simple.

In March of this year, I broke my personal record for royalties. If the exchange rate with the British Pound remains around where it is right now, I'll have made right around $2,150. That's not overall sales, that's the royalty amount I'll get in my checking account at the end of May.

Let me say: WOOHOO!

This is great! I'm not saying that only because it's proof of concept that a person with no fan base (most of us Indie writers when we start out) can build a small and loyal one and make some real money. I'm excited because while I'm aware that this level of sales isn't yet sustainable for me, that's a nice big chunk of change I can use for things like fixing my roof and putting money away for retirement.

I'm not going to go into detail as to how I leveraged the Select Program to manage this (that's my next post) because I know many of you other writers out there have done the same. Some of you have had vastly superior results, and I'm happy for you. Some of you haven't had as much luck, which is why I'm writing this post to begin with.

Do. Not. Give. Up.

I've written before that I've come across some rough times with sales, bad reviews, and all the pitfalls that come with putting your work out there for anyone to critique. I fully expect to see a drop off in sales over the next several months, because I'm using 2011 as a model for my expectations. You and I both know how rough and disappointing this job can be, but because so many of you as fellow writers, fans, friends, and family stuck by me when I whined and supported me, I had a record-breaking month.

If you're an author that hasn't had as much success as you'd like (and I think all of us are secretly hoping for Stephen King money in the parts of our brains we don't talk about in public) then take this post as a reason to keep on trying. Not to keep writing--I doubt most of you would stop doing that, as we're all addicts and slaves to the words--but trying new things. I was skeptical of the Select program at first, but it's turned out to be a godsend. Maybe you've tried it and haven't had any luck. That's okay. There are other options, a ton of them for us.

This is a hugely exciting time for authors. I imagine when sales start to slump and I'm between book releases I'll probably start to get cranky again. I hope that when or if that happens, I look back and read this post and decide to try some new promotion or idea.

It's hard to stay dedicated sometimes, but here's your proof of concept. Regular guy like me did it, at least for that one month. Lots of other authors have done a lot more. Konrath and others are telling the truth: writing is a marathon, not a sprint. Let this post be the glass of water that refreshes you a bit as you trot along.

Guts

So, I intended to make my next post about the results I had from my big book giveaway last month. I'm still going to do that when I get my sales report on the fifteenth, but a very interesting experience came my way a few days ago, and I want to talk about it.

My appendix decided to part ways with me. It was not an amicable split.

I'd been feeling crappy for about a week before Saturday morning. I called into work during that time, which I very rarely do--that was the previous Sunday, I think. When I woke up Friday night I felt a little off. By the morning I knew something was very wrong. My wife and I went to the hospital around noon.

Following some bloodwork, a battery of tests on my urine, and a deeply personal physical examination, I got my first CAT scan. If you've never had the pleasure, let me assure you it's an...interesting experience. The scan plus the contrast material they injected into me made my body heat up by about twenty degrees for a few seconds. I was told that's a normal thing.

Not for me.

My appendix, the scan showed, was so inflamed that it actually started to curl around on itself. I'm not a doctor, but that sounds pretty terrible. So, off to surgery I went. The delay between being told I was going to surgery and it actually happening was less than half an hour. The people at my local hospital were on the ball, not wanting my useless little appendix to rupture and cause all manner of problems.

I didn't really have time to get worried or scared before the Nurse Anesthetist said, "You're going to sleep now," and I did. Not before throwing my eyes open in defiance of that statement, to which he commented that I was "a funny kid." Then, darkness.

Lemme tell ya, waking up from that surgery sucked worse than anything in my life. I felt god-freaking-awful. When the nurse asked if I was in any pain, I mumbled yes, and she said the best five words in the English language: Let's get you some medicine.

Honestly, I didn't have much of an opinion about the surgery. Once the necessity of the thing became clear I just went with the flow. It was afterward, when I was admitted to the hospital and knew I would have to stay there alone, that I began to feel off. My wife Jess and my best friend Patrick were there when I got out of recovery, but I told them to go home and get some rest when I realized how deeply I was about to sleep.

Next morning, I found out my second round of labs were still bad and I had to stay another day to get my white count up. The infection in my appendix had been pretty hardy, and probably had spread. Jess was there by the time I heard that news, and she spent the morning with me. She had to leave to get sleep for work around noon, and I was left alone.

Except for you guys.

Many fans and friends (and some of you are both) sent me messages and well-wishes on Facebook. I spent several hours chatting and commenting back and forth with people, and it was really awesome. I mean that word in its original sense. You filled me with awe. As an adult, I've only had oral surgery before, nothing this big. I've never been in a situation where I had no control. I was in that room, private and nice as it was, and I was poked with needles, trailing an IV, feeling so out of my element that I was sort of lost.

Which is ironic, since full-time job is working in a nursing home. Other side of the coin and all that.

Patrick ended up coming to the hospital that afternoon and hanging out with me, but during the early hours of the morning and in the empty spaces between, I realized how lucky I am to have you. My family, my friends, my digital companions on various social networks, and my fans (who exist among all those groups). You kept me from thinking about the pain in my stomach, the worries over how much all this is going to cost me, and how bad the complications could be if something went wrong.

I don't know if I'm coming across as overly emotional here, but it was really a humbling experience for me. I'm so glad to be home, and I'll be off work for at least another week, so I'll be writing in that time. As thanks for everyone's support, I'm going to do a piece or two of short fiction while I'm off and give it away on this blog. It's not much, but I hope you enjoy it. You all did what you could to keep me sane while I was in the hospital, the least I can do in return is try to entertain you for a while.

It may not seem to you that you did much, but believe me, you did. I'm a creature of habit. When I'm thrown out of my routine I go crazy. I get stressed out, my blood pressure goes up, I can't sleep or relax. It's a serious problem for me. Imagine my surprise that while I read your messages and made snarky comments with many of you, I felt better. And not just felt it--I was measurably better. My blood pressure, along with my anxiety, dropped significantly while I chatted with all of you. I felt at ease during a time that should have nearly driven me insane.

So, I guess what I'm saying is thanks. Thank you for being a friend.

Yeah, I just quoted the Golden Girls theme song at you. You're gonna have to deal with that.

Free Books! (And a Book Release!)

Okay, so here's the deal: Today I released the fourth book of Living With the Dead. I'm ludicrously happy with this volume, and I want people to read it.

The Wild Country, Living With the Dead book four. But read on. There's a test later.

Fourth in a series, you say. Yes, that would normally mean buying three other books to get there. Logic, that inescapable bastard.

AHA! I have a solution! How about I just GIVE AWAY the first three (well, sort of three) books in the series, so you get the best possible deal? Yeah. Let's do that.

So, starting Saturday morning and running through Wednesday, every Living With the Dead book (except the new one) will be free on the Kindle store. That includes:

With Spring Comes The Fall, book one.

The Bitter Seasons, book two.

Year One, which collects book one and two, plus has a TON of bonus material, including five short stories, a behind the scenes look at LWtD, and a whole novella set in the LWtD universe. It's a deal. Especially because it's free.

And The Hungry Land, book three.

Yes, Year One duplicates the material of the first two books. But hey, it's not like your kindle is gonna get full off that. It has all that juicy bonus material in it. So why not just download every freaking one of them?!

No good reason not to. Unless you already own them, in which case you should pat yourself on the back.

Then you can buy The Wild Country, book 4. I'm not telling you to by any means. But hey, it's four bucks. You get all those other books for free, so really if you bought this one you'd be averaging a dollar a book. I'm not telling you to buy it, but I *do* need a new pair of shoes.

I'm just sayin'. You don't want me to write with cold, unsupported arches, do you? That makes for terrible prose.

And hey, if you decide you want free stuff and don't want to buy the fourth book, that's okay too. I'm sure no kittens will suffer terrible mishaps because of it. No baby otters will be orphaned. You'll just be three books richer, and that makes me a happy camper.

Confession: I'm secretly a woman

Not in the "I have a vagina and am capable of gestating a fetus inside me" kind of way. I'm a male in all the important ways, but there is a part of me that's actually female. She's a pen name. And no, I'm absolutely not going to tell you what it is.

Let me explain.

I've wanted to branch out and write some short fiction for a while now, mostly in the erotica category. I'm not ashamed of that fact, but I decided to create a female identity for myself for what were initially very practical reasons.

One: people seem to read female erotica authors way more than men.

Two: Given that erotica is definitely *not* my genre, if they got negative attention my main works and reputation wouldn't suffer because of it.

Three: I figured it would be a nice stream of extra income.

Now, those three things remain true, but I've come to see the whole thing as a kind of experiment. Living With the Dead has a small but dedicated fan base, and that's awesome. I've got this blog as well, and facebook, and twitter, and many outlets to expand my readership. Again, good stuff. But with this new identity, I have a chance to see how I can do without all of that. No web pages, no author profile, not a damn thing except my work and Amazon.

So far, it's not bad. The first short story I wrote is on the Kindle Lending Library, and I gave it away for all five of my free days. Almost a thousand downloads of it, and since the promotion ended I've sold ten copies. That's three dollars and fifty cents in royalties. Not much, true, but that's with zero marketing or promotions in any way except making it free for five days.

I expect that once I have a few more stories out there I'll do even better. Many, many authors put their book or story out on the Kindle and get a few sales a month. I'm happy with ten in five days. I'm always trying to figure out ways to boost sales (and thus my income) but the truth is that J.A. Konrath is right--writing and indie publishing on the Kindle is a marathon, not a sprint. Building a catalog of quality work is much more likely to make you money in the long term.

Which is what I've been trying to do. Now I'm just doing it as an imaginary woman also. It's tons of fun.

I'll update off and on down the road as this experiment unfolds. I don't have any illusions that I'll get rich selling short stories at ninety-nine cents, but the potential for a nice stream of extra income is there. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Which is the best kind of optimistic to be, really.

Thoughts?

How to be a successful writer in a few easy steps

I did my taxes yesterday, and in so doing I saw on paper (well, on laptop) how much I made in royalties from sales of my eBooks in 2011. It was slightly more than the amount my wife made from the part-time job she took on for the first half of the year, and a thought struck me pretty hard right then. 

I need to track my income more closely. I'm a lazy bastard. 

Another thought hit me along with that: I'm a professional author. Not full-time and certainly not an expert, but I made a pretty nice chunk of change from putting words on paper (again with the laptop) and selling them to people. It's a little strange for me. Being an author always seemed like a dream I could never quite make into a reality, yet here I am with a moderate level of success. 

I've learned many things since I've been self-publishing, the most important of which is that no success of any size happens alone. I've been very lucky to have a close group of friends online who are also writers--Annetta Ribken, Lori Whitwam, Joseph Paul Haines, and others--who have given me the benefits of their experience. I can say for certain that without them, my work would be of much lower quality. They have been a treasure trove of knowledge, support, and encouragement every bit as much as my family and friends in the offline world. 

I make no claims to greatness, please understand. I'm not saying my work is amazing and world-changing, but it's better now than it was a few months ago, and it will be better still a short way down the road. There are a lot of authors out there who will tell you what they've done to get their books into the hands of readers, and I've been one of them. There are some big-name folks like J.A. Konrath who will tell you the general steps on how to better your chances at selling copies by self-pubbing. I've done that too. 

Not right now, though. I just want to list out some things I've learned about writing over the last few years, as much to help me remember and focus on them as it is to maybe make someone out there who's writing their first novel taking a crack at a short story think as they tap away at their keyboard. 

1) Always remember to learn. 

This one is hard for me. I've spent a lot of time doing revisions, going over the structure of sentences and usage of words, trying to make everything flow well. There are people who will tell you to write with passion, and you should definitely do that. But writing isn't all love letters and pain, it's a structured art that has infinite variations. I've learned the hard way that spewing out words because you feel them is a good way to do revisions for longer than it took to write the work. Learning what works for you structurally and working with that in mind, always revising in your head as you write, is absolutely key to improving the quality of your writing. It's very hard for me to do this, and it's an ongoing process. 

2) Don't just write yourself. 

This is one I'm bad at. I tend to write lead male characters that are about my age and similar to me in personality. I've experimented a lot with writing very different characters, and those tend to be reader favorites. Writing what you know is a good thing, and should always be a starting point. It is for me (and hey, if Stephen King can write thirty books set in Maine, then we're all okay!) and is probably where most people begin a story from. I guess the key for me to this one is to research and expand my knowledge so I can write what I know and still have it be something new. There's a lot to be said for experimentation in your work. Personal experience, good old trial and error, shows me that sometimes it works and sometimes it fails like Rick Perry trying to count to three. But taking yourself in new directions stretches your mental muscles and makes you grow. 

3) DO NOT STRESS OVER PLOT.

While it's very important to me to write in a way that has structure on a small scale, I've had a hard time keeping my focus when I'm worried about the overall plot of my story. On a strictly personal level, I think it's kind of a bum deal that so-called "Literary Fiction" gets a pass on plot because it focuses so heavily on prose and character. There's a lot of popular genre fiction out there that does a fantastic job of both, but gets panned because the plot is "weak". That's in quotations because I'm a firm believer that you should keep a general idea of where the story is going, but to write it a section at a time. Worrying over whether or not you'll get to the main villain's big reveal on page two fifty is a great way to end up counting the number of squirrels trying to steal your mustache collection. It'll drive you nuts. 

My method is to keep a looses timeline in my head as I write, but to find as much joy in telling the actual story as I can. Plot holes and inconsistencies pale in importance when you've written twenty pages of rushed story trying to get to a certain point. I've dropped work on three whole novels for this very reason. 

4) When you revise, STRESS OVER EVERYTHING

Don't beat yourself over the head or anything, but for me the two parts of the job are starkly different. I write fast when I'm not being lazy, and I've developed a decent level of ability to get out the story I want to tell while having fun doing it. Revising, however, is the beast that cannot be slain. When the fun part is over and I've got a rough draft, I obsess over every word. Then every sentence. Then every section, chapter, and so on. I might read through my work two or three times when I'm actively working on it, but during the revision process I read it at least six or seven. *That* is when I worry about holes in the story, logical inconsistencies, and of course the more boring stuff like typos and misspellings. 

5) Know when to stop. 

This one is simple. For example, last night the SuperBowl happened. I worked the night before, and stayed up all day so I'd be sure not to sleep through the game. I tried to get some work done on the sequel to my last novel, but the words were shit. I couldn't make it flow, and it was an effort to get anything typed at all. So, after a few hundred words, I stopped. Better to lose some word count than write trash that I'd have to heavily edit or outright delete (or both). I do this because I'm OCD about a lot of things. I would have had a hard time sleeping if I'd have had to lay there knowing those badly written paragraphs or pages needed my attention. Almost as if my laptop were silently judging me for storing such things upon its sacred hard drive. 

Also, know when your story is done. The reason my last novel, Beautiful, is the first book in a trilogy is due to the huge amount of canon and the dozen or so plot lines I worked out for it. It was going to be a one-off until I realized just how huge an effort it would be. The thing would have been somewhere around four hundred thousand words (about a thousand pages long) and that was the condensed version. I'm happier knowing that I ended the first book at a natural stopping point, and that I can write the subsequent five sequels at a length that gives the story room to grow. Call it 100,000 words for each book. 

Again, I know the internet is vast and populated by people who (no pun intended) read into things too deeply. This isn't meant to make me sound like I'm better than you. You might be the next Steinbeck, with a natural talent that beats me by a country mile. I don't think writing is a competition. What writing actually is? An art and a science all at once. Which makes it very hard to do. Managing to follow the important rules that go along with writing while trying to make something that's all at once original, interesting, emotionally satisfying, and marketable, is like trying to balance a dozen spinning plates while hopping. 

My aim here is only to give you tips to help keep your balance. You may not need it, and that's great. You might glean something helpful from this post, and I hope if you do need it that I've done a small good. I'm convinced now that I'll never stop learning about this craft, and I don't just mean improving my skills. Writing is so hugely complex that I could (and hopefully will) spend the rest of my life doing it and never grasp all the intricacies. 

Please feel free to comment, question, or add anything to this list in the comments section below. I'm always thrilled to hear what other people have to say about my (someday full-time) dream job. Any thoughts that might help me or others are welcome. Go nuts!

Kindle Select Program (an update)

You may remember that last month I decided to join the Kindle Select program. If you're fuzzy on what that is, I'll give you the quick tour: I have the option to add any or all of my books to the Kindle Lending Library, where they can be borrowed by people with Amazon Prime memberships. Each borrow gives me a certain amount of money from a fund set aside for this purpose. In December, I had 73 total borrows, making me an extra $124.10 in income. Not a ton considering the fund was set at $500,000 but it's a nice bit of extra income. The fund is evenly divided among all borrows in the lending library. This month looks to be better than last. Mainly because my borrows are on track to do better than last month, and because Amazon kicked in an extra 200k into the fund.

The downside is that each title I put in the library has to be exclusive to the Kindle while it's in the program. That's okay with me, because I make the overwhelming majority of my writing income from Amazon. The best part of the program is the ability to give away my books for five days for each ninety-day period of enrollment in the Select Program.

I've seen some bumps in sales with the Living With the Dead books by doing this, but the interesting thing I've seen recently is what's going on with my urban fantasy novel, Beautiful. I put it up for free, all five days in a row, and it was downloaded more than 1800 times. Again, that may not seem like much to some people. For me, that's a hell of a lot of copies out there on people's devices. That's a lot of people who know my name that didn't a week ago.

What those 1800 downloads translate to is why I'm writing this. Before I put Beautiful up for free, I'd sold exactly one copy in the first nine days of this month. Since it went back to being $4.99 yesterday, I've sold eight more. So far I've got just one borrow of Beautiful, but a snafu in the Lending Library led to it not being available to borrow until yesterday morning. I'm hoping to see that number go up.

Beautiful now has a TON of metadata to go with it. Those 1800 downloads helped populate the "Customers who bought this item also bought..." section of Beautiful's Amazon page. In real terms, that means that my novel is now being suggested on the pages of dozens of other books, leading to sales. This is exactly what I was hoping for. No, it isn't a tsunami of sales and a vault of money for me to swim in, but it's progress. I'm happy about that.

I included links to my facebook pages in this novel, and I've been seeing a small but steady increase in new Likes of my fan page. I've got links in there to the blogs of several of my friends who are also writers, and I sincerely hope that I'm driving some sales their way. I've wanted for a long time to establish a network of support between all of our works, but we're all so busy with writing, working, and dealing with our daily lives that it's been difficult to coordinate anything. Maybe down the road, if I make that Amanda Hocking money...

Basically I just wanted to report that I'm happy with Select. I don't see Amazon as a place full of happy little bunnies by any stretch, and I know that the Select program is an attempt on their part to pressure the competition, but it also works for authors. At least, it works for me. I know a lot of other folks with way more name recognition have had amazing luck with it. That's about it.

Oh, one more thing. Tomorrow morning I'll be setting up a mailing list. I'll have links to it on this blog, on Living With the Dead, and I'll post them on facebook for anyone who wants to sign up. I won't spam your inbox (that sounds really dirty, doesn't it) but being on the mailing list will give you the heads-up on my new projects, release dates, and many other tidbits you may find interesting. I'll only send out mail when I have something important to say, so no worries that you'll get an email a day from me. I'm wayyyyyyy to lazy for that.

I'm feeling positive right now. You guys are the best fans anyone could have. Thanks for your support!

Lessons from 2011

It's the second of January, the year 2012. I've had time to reflect on the last year of my life and now that my liver has recovered from the truly horrendous amount of rum it had to deal with on new year's eve, I want to share those thoughts.

I learned a lot over this last year. In no particular order, I'll toss them at you.

I learned how to be a better writer. I'm not talking about simply honing my basic skills here, but actually realizing that every moment of my day can teach me something about the craft. It's as if I've learned a new way to think. Every time I read anything now, I look at the structure of it, see the parts as well as the whole for what they are: examples I can learn from.

I've learned not to expect too much from my writing. Late in 2010 and into early 2011, I was having a lot of success very quickly on the Kindle store. For the first few months I was selling my books, I was making more money in each of them than the month previous. It gave me a heady, solid sense of satisfaction, but then came April. That was when sales began to slump, and I saw my income dwindle accordingly. That's how the market works, unfortunately--there are variations and no book is fresh and popular forever.

I got a very good piece of understanding from that situation. If my sales had continued picking up, I might have grown overconfident. I might have quit my job, or been less humble when writing. When the eventual slump did happen, I'd have been utterly destroyed. So I'm happy it came early. Now I know never to count my chickens, and to always strive to make everything I write the best thing I've ever written.

I've learned not to take on too much at once. At the height of my efforts this year, there were weeks where I was managing five or six thousand words a day. I wrote the majority of Beautiful during this time, as well as continuing work on Living With the Dead. I took two days off after I finished the final edit of Beautiful, and went on to start on the sequel.

The blunt truth is that I wrote thirty thousand words on the sequel while dealing with numerous personal issues and trying to make Living With the Dead as good as possible. That's not mentioning promoting my work and managing all the other aspects of my budding career that go on in the background. I wasn't just burning the candle at both ends, I was also putting a blowtorch to the middle.

I've learned that sometimes you have to relax. I originally planned to release Monster, the sequel to Beautiful, in early December. That would have meant in four months, I would have had to write 100,000 words that continued the story in a logical and interesting way, done a rough edit, sent it to the betas, gotten it back, done 1-2 more serious revisions, and a final meticulous edit. That, along with all my other projects and getting the cover and associated other parts of releasing a book done was just too much.

So, Monster isn't coming out soon. The first book is well-loved by the people that read it for the most part, but it isn't a big seller. I've finally reached a place where I feel as though I can work on the sequel and make it into the story I want to tell, but it's been a long way getting here. I estimate at least four months until I can put out the second book. Maybe as many as six. I'll endeavor to get it done.

I've learned not to ignore my own ideas because I feel like I can't work on anything other than what's on my plate. If I didn't have to work a full-time job, I would be able to put out six to eight books a year. That's no joke, though it seems like an insane number. If I worked eight hours a day, I would split it into three sections of writing for three different books. I write fast. It would be easy with all that extra time and energy. But where I used to focus like a laser on my current projects, now I make time to shake things up a little and work on fresh ideas. One of those has blossomed into an idea for a series that I'm really excited about. Don't know that I'll have time to work on it in the near future, but I can't help tinkering.

More than anything over the last 365 days, I've learned to trust my fans. Not just my friends and family, who are always very honest with their criticisms and supportive of my work, but all of you. I don't quite have legions yet, but your support through all the lean months has been crucially important to me. I've had great interactions with many of you on Facebook, in comments on book reviews, and in threads on forums. I put out the latest Living With the Dead book a few months ago, and sales have been good. It made my heart sing to know that so many of you were waiting to get the new book even though most of you read the blog already.

If I ever doubted you, my deepest apologies. You all have, again, my deepest thanks.

2011 was really the first year of my writing career. Though much of my work began in 2010, most of the actual movement in my career started after. I feel like a different person now, someone who has had to deal with some hard realities, but I think I'm better for it.