'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.