Stay Tuned Sounds So Derivative, Doesn't It?

So, instead of saying "stay tuned" for some news, I'll just say that I'll be answering reader questions (of which I've received none) and addressing the long silence since my last post.

I promise this post will be soon, my intention being within the next 72 hours, though the impending holiday and seriously crummy weather may force a delay of up to another 72 hours.  With that in mind I can't make any guarantees.

So why post this saying I'm going to post soon with some news?  I haven't posted anything since my bout with and recovery from pneumonia earlier this year, that's why.  I'm still alive, and yes, I have been working when I've had time.  So, if you have any questions you want answered, drop me a line here or on Twitter and I'll do my best to answer without spoilers.

Thanks for reading!

Pneumonia Sucks.

Alright, so, I'm at week 4 of recovery from pneumonia.  So far, so good, but it took me a week of getting sick and three weeks of recovery to get to where I'm able to function mostly normally.

Still get out of breath easily, though, so it's going to be a while before I'm approaching 100% again.  How sick was I?

Last Monday was the first day I could sit at a computer for more than 5 minutes without needing to go lay down or passing out.  Yeah, I was bad.  I was on bed rest for a week and shotgunned almost the entire run of Burn Notice on my Roku.  Even if it does seem a little long in the tooth, plot-wise, at the 81st episode mark, (and perhaps a little repetitive at times) I recommend it.  For the record, Roku or Netflix needs to fix the applet on the Roku HD, but that's neither here nor there.

I'm picking up my laptop again and trying to get back to work, but it's been so long I've lost momentum as well as time -- but I refuse to give up even if I have been coughing up blood.

Thanks for reading!  I really hope to have something for you guys soon.

Status Update

I'm alive, healthy enough, and actually getting a little work done.  I've managed to advance Rogue past some of the sticking points I was stymied on for almost two years (yeah, that's a long time) and I've had some nice ideas to fill in some of the gaps that I'd been struggling with during that time.

To give an idea of the situation, I'm almost done with the first draft of the first chapter.  I refuse to give even a ballpark guess of when I'll be done because life seems to get in the way whenever I do.

Guild Files: Reagent Protocol is on hold for the moment.  I wrote myself into a corner and I don't see a way out of it without losing about 20% of the story.  I'm currently weighing options.  The good news, as it were, is that the pause in GF:RP is what allowed me to return to Rogue, and I know that's what nearly all of you reading this are most interested in.  However, I haven't given up and will probably be back to it soon.  Probably.  I do have another short story to write after the novella I've been banging away on for months is done.

The followup to The Grand Granger has been started and I'll peck away at it as I feel the need, unless I feel the project is too ambitious in which case I'll trash it and start on something else.  The Confederation, Empire, and Church aren't done with each other yet, I assure you.

I started a story a couple years ago I tentatively called Hellhounds.  I've been feeling the need to get back to it, though perhaps with a slightly different take on it.  Originally I'd intended it to have some serious religious and spiritual overtones that were central to the story, but that would have made it too heavy a read, so I'm going to tone those down and go in a slightly different direction.  More on that as it develops, but I will say it's about the ghost of a dead guy, will involve supernatural artifacts, angels, demons, zombie taxi drivers, and some really nasty bad guys.

I was intending this blog post to be done a month ago, but I'd also intended it to involve me answering questions from you guys and gals.  Since I received none, I couldn't answer any, so I'll save that for next time (which will be sooner than 3 months) if I get any by then.

Just to prime the pump -- pick one character from the book and tell me who you think would be best to act the role in a movie and why.  Leave a comment to that effect or hit me up on Twitter.  All suggestions, no matter the source, will be posted here.  I have my own ideas, of course, but the one I'll share is this:

Hypnotico, as portrayed by David Hyde Pierce, would be fantastic.  He's a talented actor whose native intelligence would be a boon to the role.  His build fits my description of the character very well, and his experience playing a psychiatrist on Frasier would be very helpful.

Oh, and if any of you are wondering, no, I haven't heard any more from the agency that contacted me back in November, and yes, I have given up almost all hope that I ever will.  Maybe if I can get more in the Guild Files series written I can get more attention.  A guy can dream, can't he?

Thanks for reading!  Be sure to tell your friends and family to pick up a copy!

Short, Sweet, and To the Point.

[For some reason the original contact me link didn't save.  This has been rectified.]

So, as promised, the "big" news.

On November 2 I received an email that had me stunned.  Someone working for ICM Partners asked me who holds the film and TV rights for Subject 12 and all following works in the series.  I was also asked if I had an agent.

Just to be absolutely clear on the matter for anyone reading this, the answers were then and are now "myself" and "no".

I replied (after doing some due diligence by vetting the individual as best I could with internet searches) within 24 hours.  My e-mail was brief but I passed along the requested information.  I had some time constraints preventing me from being more thorough in my reply.

A week later I sent another e-mail because I hadn't heard back yet.  This e-mail was a little more informative and friendly as I was far less occupied (I was watching the merchandise at a psychic fair during the night because the hotel had no way of locking the rooms to prevent intruders when I sent the first one) when I replied.  I felt it was better to reply promptly than take the time to butter the buns before serving, as it were, the first time.

So, now it's December 31, 9:40PM and I have heard bupkis from her, ICM Partners, or anyone else.  I don't know if this is because my e-mail replies bounced, were eaten by spam filters for some reason, I haven't been patient enough (almost 60 days so far), I didn't meet criteria for continued discussion (the lack of an agent), whoever thought of it lost interest in the idea, or whatever.  Suffice it to say, the fact that I haven't heard back from one of the largest entertainment firms in the world (look at any top-ten list of talent agencies in Hollywood and you'll see them in the top five or even the top two on virtually every one, and check out their website for both information and a telling lack of flourish) for an unknown reason after they approached me has been a bit disheartening.  Still, it hasn't stopped me from doing what I can to get more ready for you guys to read.

I'm not holding my breath to hear back from them.  I haven't yet and I won't.

So, as there has been interest in the past...  I am the exclusive copyright and rights holder to Subject 12, The Grand Granger, and all future works unless otherwise noted.  I currently have no agent.  I'm not looking for one but I'm also not against the idea of having one -- I just don't feel like jumping through a bunch of hoops again only to be ignored like I was the last several times I've tried.  As such, if anyone has any questions or whatever, feel free to contact me.

Thanks for reading and have a fantastic new year!

Well, I Survived

I survived the horrible storm that just passed. It dumped in excess of 10 inches in my driveway, which I had to shovel out over the course of 2 days. My back, my knees, and my left arm all hurt and don't want to work very well, but I did survive and I did get myself dug out so I at least I won't starve.

Despite the fact that it seems the snow plow driver on my road has a vendetta against me, I have to say that, all things considered, things could have been a lot worse and I am in okay shape.

It looks like I will be sharing thr information that I have been keeping secret since early November with you, but not until New Year's Eve. Unfortunately, at this point it is entirely too anticlimactic to be really worth mentioning. I'm just going to do it because I'm stubborn like that.

Work continues on  my projects, so with any luck I will have something good to announce shortly. Thank you for your patience!

Subject 12 is now a KDP Selects Exclusive.

Post title says it all, really.  Now that all the holdouts have finally released Subject 12 from their catalogs, Amazon is the exclusive place to buy a copy.  The good news is that if a Prime member wishes to borrow it I can now get paid for said borrow.  As this impacts ~.1% of my readers, I'm not going to make a big deal out of this.  Mostly just making a note of it.  Also, as said before, if you purchased a copy through any other outlet then you should still be able to get a copy if you change devices or experience some other hardware hiccup.

Cliffhangers, Novellas, and Google Plus.

It's come to my attention that the endings of both Subject 12 and The Grand Granger have left some readers, shall we say, unsatisfied.  I assure you that this was not intentional, and I'll attempt to explain why in this blog post.  I'll address The Grand Granger first as that one is easier to explain.  I apologize if I speak of issues I've spoken of regularly.  I don't want to sound like I'm complaining or repeating myself, but I also don't want a new reader to come across this blog and feel left out or obligated to dig through everything I've said so far just to be in the loop.

The Grand Granger is a novella.  Novellas are currently out of favor with the American public for some reason I cannot fathom as they fill a useful niche in the storyteller's ecosystem; longer than a short story yet shorter than a novel they allow more character and plot development while allowing for a faster pace than a traditional novel as well as the quick satisfaction and brevity of a short story.  Many of our greatest classics are novellas, especially in the realm of science fiction: War of the Worlds comes to mind, not that I'm trying to put my work in the same league as Verne's.  If you look at the Hammer's Slammers novels by David Drake (and I recommend you do as they're great reads if you like military sci-fi), they are collections of short stories and novellas.  Stephen King writes a lot of novellas.  I give you the following link for the list: http://www.stephenking.com/library/novella/

Novellas, like short stories, don't have much fluff.  As a result they pack a lot of punch in a small spaces.  Also like short stories, when they end, they end.  There isn't much more to say, so they don't usually say any more than they have to.  This is why The Grand Granger ends the way it does.  Some might find it abrupt, but that's where the story ended.  While I don't currently plan on giving Xii and Reg any more "screen time", that's not to say they won't appear again.  Their story, for the moment, is over.  That doesn't mean I won't be writing more in the Tal'Red universe, just that the characters you've seen so far may not be making another appearance.

Subject 12 ended on a cliffhanger of sorts.  This was, at the time, a matter of necessity.  While I find some people are capable of writing upwards of 10,000 words in a day, my output is much lower.  Part of that is physical, some of it psychological.

My arthritis causes my hands to hurt when I type too much, my back hurts because of my crappy office chair (there was $200 well spent, not), and I get chest pains from the bad angle I have to sit at in order to type on my PC for any length of time (again, office chair) -- and none of this can be helped with even OTC pain medication because I can't even take acetaminophen without experiencing gastric issues that can last for 24 hours.  I'm a rather large man and require a plus-rated office chair to sit in, so I can't just run to Office Max or Walmart and pick up the $69 special and expect it to last more than a few days.  I also spend upwards of eight hours a day in a chair, so it has to be durable.  As such, my research has lead me to the inexorable conclusion that I need a 24-hour chair rated at more than 300lbs as the one I currently have is rated at 300lbs (though I thought it was supposed to be 350 when I bought it, which I got to make sure I'd have a lot of reserve) and was showing signs of fatigue after two weeks of use.  As for the psychological reasons, I find writing to be a very intense and often emotional experience.  I agonize over things, and I'll spend hours researching minor points just to make sure I'm not making a mistake.  While this may lead to a superior product, it really cuts into my output some days.

I try to output at least 1,000 words per day when I'm writing regularly, but that's hard for me to do most days because of everything else I have going on, arthritis issues (some days I can't even hold a pen to write with, let alone type much), or just plain writer's block.  However, unlike these writers who slam out 10,000 words a day during NaNoWriMo (or as I call it, November), I find that I prune very little of what I write unless it's utter trash.  I sculpt and massage and shape and hammer on what I write until it's in the proper shape, or temper it until it's the right hardness, but I don't cut 30% of my writing from first draft to final.  Actually, I find I'm adding anywhere from 5-10% of the first draft's word count per revision (or the equivalent if not more in rewrites).  If I do find something that needs to be cut, be it a sentence or a few thousand words, I cut it because sometimes things just don't work, or the story's gone in a new direction.

What I'm trying (and failing) to say is that I just ran out of steam by the end of Subject 12, and I think it really showed in some of the errors that crept in despite a substantive and at times exhausting editing cycle.  At the time I simply couldn't write any more.  The story wasn't finished -- isn't finished, unless I die before I can get Rogue up for you guys -- but I couldn't write any more of it.  I had a choice; delay publication and try to get the story wrapped up in another chapter, which would be doing you, me, and the story itself a huge disservice, or finish it on a cliffhanger and write a whole novel as a sequel.  I chose the latter for two reasons.  First off, comic books (which Subject 12 is both an homage to and send-up of) are the epitome of cliffhangers.  Denying that would be pointless and flat out wrong.  I felt justified for this very reason.  Secondly, rather than trying to condense everything to ~20,000 words, by giving myself an entire novel to stretch in, I'm allowing myself to do justice to the story as it could, nay, should be.  I owe it to my readers as much as to myself to do it justice, so I will do my best to do so.

Speaking of Subject 12, I've finally gotten the feel I needed for the characters in the story I'm working on in Reagent Protocol, which will be an anthology of three stories (See, that pesky novella crops up again.) as I've mentioned.  They will tie into Subject 12 quite nicely.  Banshee you're already familiar with, and I've given you the outline for the story I'm working on now.  The third one is in preliminary planning stages.  I can't say as the whole thing will be worth the wait, but I hope it will be well-received.  I will keep you posted.

As the title of this post indicates, and as I've alluded to a few times, I've been giving thought to the concept of opening up a Google Plus page.  I've received a single piece of feedback on the matter, and it indicates that I might get more feedback if I open said page.  Well, I don't want people to think I'm hard to reach, or difficult to speak with once I've been reached, so I'm thinking it'll be a project for the new year.  I look forward to hearing from you, even if you just want to say "hi" or "you suck".  I actually already have a G+ account activated; I just haven't done anything with it yet.  I'll have some free time coming up soon, so hopefully I can look into it a bit more.  Everything I post here will be cross-posted there, so this blog may even become a bit pointless -- but I'm not giving up on it.

Anyway, it's time to wrap this up.  My traffic from Belgium is back so:  Bonjour, mes amis!  Comment allez-vous?

Thanks, everyone, for reading and Happy Holidays!


(Bonus paragraph!)

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I hoped to share some really big news with everyone.  Unfortunately, the whole idea seems to have died.  If I don't hear more by the end of the year I'll probably tell everyone about it in the new year, with details, just not e-mail addresses or names.

That was interesting...

I mentioned Belgium in my last post and suddenly I stop getting hits from Belgium.  That makes me curious.

I took Subject 12 off Smashwords yesterday afternoon and most retailers have removed the book from their catalog.  I do hope that I can get it back up soon, but only when I've cleaned up the typos and have final say over the output.  We'll see.

I've received zero feedback on the Google Plus idea, which is what I've basically expected.  For those in the know, I don't need to explain what the advantages of setting one up would be, but for those that don't...

Google Plus is similar to Facebook, but not as invasive, and with a few nice features Facebook just doesn't have.  It'd allow easier interaction, among other things.  Just an idea, but nothing I'll lose sleep over if nobody thinks it's a good idea.

Well, back to the grind!

Good Morning Belgium!

Since I'm no Robin Williams I can't make it sound like Good Morning Vietnam -- all I can do is type it.

I've noticed a major upswing in traffic from Belgium over the last month.  As in, something like 5-1 traffic from Belgium compared to the USA.  I have no idea what this means, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's a good thing and not just a bot.

So, HELLO BELGIUM!

On another note, I'm seriously considering moving the majority  of my posts to my Google+ (Google Plus) account.  I'm considering this move to encourage, streamline, and ease participation and feedback from you guys.  Considering how much life's been getting in the way lately (including my 24 year-old pump dying this weekend and it taking until yesterday to get a replacement pump installed and wired into my old system), I'd like to do something for my readers that won't take a few months to finish up.  So, with that in mind, what do you think?  Would G+ be better for you to contact me?  Let me know!  Thanks!

Banshee Typos and a Word Count Error

I started this post with good intentions:  I had misremembered how many words were in Banshee.  As such, I am not roughly a third of the way to where I want to be prior to publication in my current project.  I found this out by opening Banshee and going for a word count. However, when I opened  the file I saw a message saying the program had an update, so I installed it.  Lo and behold, it finally had a functional spellchecker.  This spellchecker pointed out that I had not corrected all of the misspellings that I thought I had found and killed.

As a result, you will find links to the corrected version of Banshee in formats suitable for all e-readers at the conclusion of this post.

I say I started this post good intentions.  What I mean by that is that I started this post to give this information and provide the links, but instead when I opened up the website to start typing I got distracted by Conan the Destroyer on the TV.  This movie is one of the few movies that falls under the heading of so horribly awful I cannot take my eyes off it whenever it happens to be on television.  As this is a an extremely rare occurrence, I do not have a problem with it...  Aside from the problem I have with the fact that the movie is actually on and I am suffering through it, of course.  Such a shame, too.  After all, the original is a truly excellent movie.  And no, I do not want to hear about the remake.  Ever.

I may be asking for reader feedback on something in the next little bit, so keep your eyes peeled.  Thanks for reading!

Guild Files: Banshee in MOBI format for Kindle

Guild Files: Banshee in EPUB for everything else

Re: Smashwords

I've given Smashwords, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Sony, etc, and their respective bookstores several months to show me improved sales figures.  They have, in a word, failed.  In fact, failure is too kind a word, but I'm not going to go into it as I've already expressed my feelings towards Smashwords in a previous blog post.

My plan is to pull the plug on December 1st. Since I'm already stuck waiting for their 1099-MISC next year (which this year they e-mailed me approximately two weeks after their legal deadline to have delivered it to me), this will hopefully prevent me from having another nightmare when it's time to pay the government for the privilege of living in this great nation.  The nightmare that was my tax experience this year finally ended earlier this week; hopefully never again.

I originally signed up for Smashwords with high hopes.  75% royalty rate for direct sales, distribution to virtually every e-book store at a fair royalty rate, and so on.  So far this year I've been paid $18.09 and am owed $13.41.  That's right, $31.50 for the first 10.5 months of the year, from virtually everywhere outside of Amazon.  For comparison, I've sold 133 copies of Subject 12 so far this month alone.  At ~$2.60 per copy, that works out to $345.80 for the month of November if I sell no other copies before the end of the month -- an occurrence I really hope doesn't happen.

In any case, thanks for the support and for putting up with my flaky update schedule from all my health issues and time constraints.  I'd hoped to have some bigger news to share by now, but it looks like what I'd hoped it would be has turned into disappointment.  If I ever know more for sure I'll fill you all in as soon as I can!

Progress Report

As the title implies, today/tonight's blog entry is a progress report of sorts.

First, progress on Guild Files: Rogue:  Stalled.  Chapter 1 is mostly done, though I'm not happy with some of it and will probably be going back with the editing mallet before I move on.

Unfortunately, with everything else I've had going on this year, progress is currently zero.  That doesn't mean I'm not planning and plotting, just that I'm not doing much, if any, actual writing in an average week.  As intense as writing Subject 12 was, I needed a long break to recoup.  That break is part of the reason for The Grand Granger, however, so it's not been a total loss.  Have no fear, Hammer, the Guild, and sundry will return -- it's just going to be a while longer.  I don't want to do you, the reader, a disservice in writing something sub-par, so I want to be really ready before I return to writing it.

Next, progress on editing Guild Files: Subject 12 in preparation for a possible print run:  Slow.  More on this following.

Finally, progress on the proposed anthology set in the Guild Files universe:  Moving along apace.

As Banshee will be part of the final production, I have to include the word count in my final tally, and I'm about halfway to my minimal goal for publication.  Best-case scenario will have it available on Amazon some time shortly after the first of the year, but as I've been having such a hard time meeting my self-imposed goals lately...  I won't put a timeline on it.  It's also very different from previous works, and I'm not 100% sure how it'll go over, so I'll be doing some testing before release.  I expect that will add about a week to the publication time, at least, barring any rewrites.

So, all that being said, I wish to apologize to you guys for failing to fulfill many of my promises.  This year has not been easy for me, but that's no real excuse.  I offer none, merely an explanation -- my health has been poor this year and my stress level has been through the roof.  Among my health issues, and I hesitate to share this because I don't want anyone thinking I'm digging for sympathy, was a medication reaction that was causing severe memory impairment:  I honestly don't remember much of September and the first half of October.  As this was when I was supposed to be working on the editing of Subject 12, I didn't get it finished and have had to put the project on hold temporarily.  I have since discontinued the medications that were causing the issue, and the replacement blood pressure medication not only has fewer side effects, it's much more effective.  Needless to say, having a foggy brain and little memory has not been helpful to my production.

I'm trying, though!  Thanks for sticking with me, I greatly appreciate it.  Feel free to ask any questions or post any comments you may have, I'll get back to you as soon as possible if I can!

Surprise! (Updated)

Well, the moment I'm assuming at least a couple of you have been waiting for...

The revelation of what I've been working on for the last, um, month...

Okay, I'll admit, that took longer than it should have.  Life kept getting in the way, then there was shipping lag, working with the systems to make it work, etc.  However, without further ado...

Okay, just a little more ado.  I have to fill the space up sometime and I'm a real bastard when it comes to dragging things out to make the moment last longer.

This also explains why so many versions of The Grand Granger should have appeared for you to download if you bought a copy.

The Grand Granger in print!

I'm working with CreateSpace for this due to their integration with Amazon and their relatively-simple formatting requirements.  Royalties are a little screwy and based on distribution channels, so the price listed is the best compromise I could come up with.  Expect to see it on Amazon here inside a week, hopefully linked directly to the e-book, but royalty rates are significantly higher on CreateSpace than they are on Amazon.  So, if you're going to order a copy, please consider ordering through CreateSpace if you can [EDIT: see below].  I'm going to do my best to get the linkup on Amazon done correctly, but this is a learning experience for me, and mistakes have and probably will continue to happen.  With luck, it'll slot into place directly linked to the e-book and offer both choices for ordering.

And yes, this whole thing was done with the main intent of learning what I needed to do to set things up for a future release...

How's that laugh go?  Oh yeah!  MwahahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Thanks for reading!

Everything below is an update:

The book is live on Amazon now.  Unsurprisingly it's eligible for Prime.  Considering the price to you, the reader, is the same for the book, ordering it through Amazon is cheaper.  How much cheaper?  CreateSpace charges shipping and for one item it's approximately $4 for standard shipping, so up to $4 cheaper.  With that in mind, while I'm not redacting my CreateSpace endorsement at the moment I cannot wholeheartedly point to it to buy from.

Surprises in the Works

I have a small surprise in the works.  It's nothing earth-shattering by a long shot, but I hope to have it finished by the end of the week at the latest.  We'll have to see.  I'm hoping it helps current readers, brings in new readers, and helps me with my bills.  For those of you wondering, yes, this directly relates to that mysterious package I got today.  Sorry, forgot to mention that earlier (which is why this is being edited).

Oh, and it portends something that I think might appeal to a wider audience.

On that note, I should be done with my edits to Subject 12 before the 2-year anniversary of its publication hits.  Hopefully inside a week, but things are crazy here lately.  Don't have enough time to do everything I need to do, let alone things that aren't immediately pressing.

Work on the next Guild Files story continues, if slowly.  Hopefully my voice-recognition software will arrive tomorrow so I can get back to work on the computer without having chest pains from leaning over the keyboard.

Comments or questions?  Feel free to post!  Thanks for reading.

Comments and Signins

As I'm feeling very under the weather at the moment I plan on this being very short.

I have received notification elsewhere that posting a comment here requires signing into something.  As I have the system set to accept comments from anonymous posters I don't see why that's the case, so if someone is still having issues with it, please let me know via comment here, a message on Twitter, or via my e-mail address which I listed in another post.  Thanks!

On another note, I've sold more copies of Subject 12 so far this month than I have any other month, and usually several months put together.  In fact, other than last month, you could take any two months' sales figures and add them together and you still wouldn't equal the number of copies I've sold this month!  Thanks!  This is great!  Makes me really want to write more and get it out there for you guys and gals, and make no mistake!  As soon as I'm feeling better I'm getting back to work, and that's a promise.

Reviews, Both Positive and Negative.

Thanks for the support, guys.  I really do appreciate it.

Over the last two years I've received a number of reviews for my works on several sites.  From Good Reads to Smashwords to Amazon, I've received a fair amount of secondhand feedback.  I refer to it as secondhand because the reviews are not meant, specifically, for me.  They're meant for other readers to help them make choises in what they want to read.  I want to make this distinction because I want all my readers (both literary and of this blog -- so hello, new reader, if you haven't read anything else of mine) to know that I understand the difference.

This brings me to the main thrust of this post; reviews and my response to them.  Positive reviews I treasure because, like any human being, I am in part ego-driven.  Tell me I did a good job and I'll want to do more for you.  Tell me I did a bad job and I'd like to know how so I can fix it and do better the next time.  Interestingly enough, as I was writing this post I got a new review for Subject 12.  That's exactly the kind of review I like to get.  It's not 5-stars and I'm still glad to get it.  It doesn't need to be a "perfect" review because the book isn't perfect as-is.  First off, there are some glaring editing mistakes in Chapter 7.  When I went back to read them the first time after publication I physically cringed at how bad some of them were.  I'm going to fix them and I plan on doing it in the upcoming month, hopefully in the next two weeks, but I'm not holding my breath.  Back on topic, that review clearly outlined his considered pros and cons, and pointed out how disconcerting it was for the love scene to end so PG (I'm going to kick it up a notch, bam) only to have the next scene open so much more graphically.  It also touched on the editing issues.  I hope I can win that star back with the corrections I'm going to make, but if I don't I'm not going to complain.  In fact, I'm not going to complain about any fully-negative reviews I get, including this one for The Grand Granger.

While I find that aforementioned review confusing in the sense that the blurb and sample should have been enough to tell him that he wasn't going to like the rest of the story, I'm not going to respond to it directly or indirectly any more than I have. There is nothing I can say or do that would reflect positively on me or my writing, and I honestly don't expect everything I write to be appealing to all readers.  Furthermore, I refuse to be another Anne Rice and attack people who don't like my books.  Aside from my lack of obsession with homosexuality, rape, and sadomasochistic sex in my writing (the lack of vampires, though that may change in the future, should further differentiate me from her), I'm just not a Mac user, that worried about people thinking my work sucks if it's substandard, or a giant in the literary field.  I freely admit to being a former fan of hers.  Unfortunately, I just could not get through Armand the Vampire -- and I suffered through more than one of her series in my attempts to support and enjoy her writing.  Interview With the Vampire will forever be one of my favorite books, so in that sense I'm still a fan.

Whew, sorry, I got up on my soapbox there just a bit.  I'll try not to let that happen again.

So, where does that leave me standing?  Someone didn't like one of my stories.  That's fine.  I don't think the reader handled things appropriately by either Amazon (A week is too damn long to allow returns of e-books, guys, seriously.) or the reader (bought, read, refunded, and complained) in question, but it's far from the end of th world or more than a minor annoyance.  I'm curious what you the reader feel about both The Grand Granger and the review in question, of course, but other than that I'm pretty much through with the matter.

Keep reading, keep telling friends and family, and keep reviewing!  The more word gets out about my writing the more readers I get and that encourages more writing!

Oh, and for all of you that read this far, I want to give you a peek into the story I'm working on right now.  I don't have a title for it yet, but I'm having some good ideas.  I'm also having some problems because the original story was supposed to be twice as long as Banshee and it's grown into something at least as long as The Grand Granger in what I have planned.  Probably longer, if I want to be honest.  Anyway, without further ado:

Alaska. A lonely Guildhall, more than an hour away from any civilization besides the small, surrounding village, whiles away the 22-hour summer days.  Things are quiet, like they always are.  Sedate.  Actually, downright boring.  Out of the blue, word comes that a new recruit is on the way; a Reagent Protocol recruit.  The last one didn't work out so well, considering he died from self-immolation shortly before he went through with his plan to murder a local family.  This new one, despite also being a former Confederation member, seems different.  Erudite.  Educated.  A fifth-level Shadow Mage and far too powerful to be stuck so far from anywhere his abilities might be useful, actually.  So why was he there and not somewhere his abilities could be of more use?  Could be be trusted?  What were his plans?

 Thanks again for reading!   Don't hesitate to drop me a line!  The spam protection on here requires me to authorize all posts, so I do read them, even if I don't respond.  Sometimes I'm just too busy and forget.

DMCA Takedown Letter

So, in order to combat the piracy of my book (and I haven't even looked for The Grand Granger yet, so I'm keeping that singular at the moment), I have to start filing DMCA Takedown Notices/Letters.  This isn't too bad, all things considered, except that I now have to start doing regular searches for my book to see who and what's pirating it.  Needless to say, this isn't something I'm looking forward to doing, and so far today I've dedicated at least an hour to this crap when I should be writing -- which I was doing until this e-mail I'm about to share and discuss arrived.

There's a catch to filing DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright ACT) Takedown Notificiations.  To show this as graphically as possible,  I'm going to copy/paste an e-mail I just received from a company I contacted (2Shared, for those who are wondering).  I'm going to edit out e-mail addresses and suchlike and add emphasis at key points, but substantially this will be the exact e-mail I received.

 Please write us back arranging your complaint into the correct copyright
report sample set by DMCA and we'll react on this matter asap.

According to DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) the notification must:
1. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed upon (i.e., describe the work that you own).
2. Identify the in-world item that you claim is infringing on your copyright, and provide information reasonably sufficient to locate the item in-world.
3. Provide a reasonably sufficient method of contacting you; phone number and email address would be preferred.
4. Provide information, if possible, sufficient to permit us to notify the user(s) who posted the content that allegedly contains infringing material. You may also provide screenshots or other materials that are helpful to identify the works in question. (This is for identification only, not to 'prove' substantive claims.)
5. Include the following statement: 'I have good faith belief that the use of the copyrighted materials described above and contained on the service is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or by protection of law.'
6. Include the following statement: 'I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.'

The DMCA provides that you may be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys fees) if you falsely claim that an in-world item is infringing your copyrights. We recommend contacting an attorney if you are unsure whether an in-world object is protected by copyright laws.

I'm going to focus on point 2 first.  What qualifies as in-world?  I believe websites do, but I'm not 100% sure.

Also, "liable for damages"?  So, basically, if they feel my registered copyright isn't sufficient to protect my rights to control distribution of my work they can sue me?  Also, they recommend contacting an attorney so I can verify that my registered copyright is sufficient to protect my work from their unauthorized distribution?  I can't afford either.  It's bad enough I have to take screenshots and send them to a company that isn't even registered with the US Copyright office like it should be.

So where does this put me?  Unfortunately, it puts me in the "I'll just have to wait and see if sales continue apace or if they start to slump again" category.  If sales drop again like they did in January I'll have no choice but to talk to a lawyer and possibly alienate my readers much like over the whole Napster/P2P crap.  I don't have the money, I don't have the income, and I don't have the time if I want to continue focusing on my writing instead of being distracted by all this.

Piracy -- I'm now a victim.

I found out why a lot of my blog traffic is coming from various malware-infected and piracy sites.  People have been posting copies of Subject 12 on the web for free download.  This is NOT approved by me in any way, shape, or form. While I have given away copies of The Grand Granger via Amazon's KDP system, Subject 12 has never been offered in such a manner.

I'm flattered that people think that my work is worth sharing and that other people feel it's worth downloading, but I have to point out that my total gross income from last year was under $2000 and that every download of my book that didn't result in a sale cost me at least $1.40.  So, if anyone out there reading this downloaded Subject 12 and enjoyed it but didn't buy it, I ask that you please head over to Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Sony, iTunes, etc, and purchase a copy.

I'm currently looking into what I'd need to do to get the download links for my book taken off of 2Shared, downloadprovider.me, and similar sites.  I'm also looking at what I'd need to do in contacting Google to remove the offending links from their search, but it's a bit overwhelming at the moment (I'm no lawyer) and it's taking away from my writing time.

So, please, support an author and buy my book instead of just downloading it.  It encourages me to continue writing by keeping me fed and not distracted by pesky things like legal disputes.  Thanks!

Quick Update

It's been almost a month and I haven't moved vis a vis Smashwords.  Why?  I've been too busy in my day-to-day life to even do the research I need to do in order to start transitioning.  Things are cooling off with me, so expect updates by the end of the month, including the possibility of new markets -- but don't hold your breath on that one.  Progress on my followup piece to Subject 12 has been slow, but progress is being made.  I've found that, once again, I've had to go back to writing things out longhand before I can type them up.  This is, obviously, very time consuming; but it has the benefit of creating a first draft before I even start typing.  This means editing time gets cut down slightly in compensation, and it means I can write without benefit of a laptop (of which I do not have a functional unit), or the distraction of having a laptop with internet connection while I'm out.

Also, I'm seeing that a lot of the traffic I'm getting here is potentially malware-related and coming up from the weirdest searches across the globe, including a lot from Russia -- of which a fair amount seems to be malware-related -- and a fair amount from Romania, Bulgaria, and other places that I never thought I'd sell books to.  I cannot stress enough to you guys that you have to be careful.  Run antivirus and anti-malware programs.  There are plenty of free and effective tools you should be running at least once a week to maintain your computer's functionality as well as protecting yourself financially and your privacy.  I'll be happy to make some suggestions if anyone would like to know more.

The good news is that Banshee seems to be a hit, judging by the number of page hits that blog entry still seems to be generating.  I'd like to hear more about it from my readers, hint hint.  (I don't want to dig up a picture of a wink here, or use the emoticon, so please assume I did.  Thanks!)

I'll be doing a better blog entry here in a day or so, so please keep your eyes peeled!  Thanks for the interest, thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing from any and all of you!

Smashwords No More

As I've noted before, I've had a less-than-positive experience with Smashwords.  Their draconian formatting requirements, their spotty sales, slow pay schedule, random updates to their sales figure, and their overall bad reputation among the buying public were not offset by the "ease" with which I was published on several major retailers.

Furthermore, I sell more copies of The Grand Granger in a month on Amazon than I give away copies of The Supernatural Cookbook in a quarter on Smashwords.  If I include all the retailers I sell through via Smashwords then this comparison falls down, but since I was giving TSC away to drive up exposure and sales of Subject 12 this is pointless to me, especially considering approximately half the reviews I get through the Nook store for TSC seem to indicate that people think it's supposed to be a serious piece.

I looked today to refresh my memory on all the steps I'd have to take to publish on Smashwords and my mind boggled even as my soul rebelled.  Yes, selling The Grand Granger through all the outlets Smashwords offered was appealing.  However, the 26+ step process to format the blasted file to Smashwords (but not mine) satisfaction was prohibitive to say the least.  For a $.99 ebook (yes, that I'd be get 74 cents per sale), it was insane.  It's not happening.  Ever.  Period.  Take that to the bank, it's safer than a Volvo parked in Fort Knox.  I don't have the time, inclination, or desire to rip my stuff apart to get it into something that resembles how I want it to look all while waiting hours upon hours to get a sneak peak at how it actually came out.

So what does this mean to you?  Not much.  First off, I've sold 14 copies of S12 through Smashwords and I believe around 20 copies though Smashwords' distribution network.  Maybe a few more, here or there, but less than 50.  These people should be able to refresh their copies as needed into the future without problem  If this includes you, don't worry -- I'm trying to get your back, Jack.  How will I do this?

Since I originally published via Smashwords Barnes and Noble instituted -- or at least publicized -- their program for independent authors and publishers.  So did Google Books (which I don't think existed when I signed up for Smashwords, but I digress), and several options for cross-platform distribution opened up or became public enough that I finally caught wind of them.  While payment per-copy may be lower at the same price, not having the Smashwords-taint or formatting requirements appeals to me.  I will be investigating them further to join in at the level I want -- but I will be publishing directly to Barnes and Noble without anyone else sticking their nose or fingers in.  As I own both a Nook and a Nook Color (the Nook Color is an Android tablet running a ROM directly form the SD card, but I do own one), Barnes and Noble has always been a market I wanted to break into directly -- current sales of S12 being nonexistent there or not.

Since I'm sure someone is curious what I mean by Smashwords-taint, I'll explain.  Smashwords attracts a lot of authors publishing low-grade erotica.  A shocking amount, and I'm someone who has spent a lot of time on the internet.  In addition, their formatting restrictions are painful and the end result is "pretty good", but not as good as a human-created file could, would, and should be.  In order to publish on Smashwords, one must create a .doc file in a very specific format.  As step 1 in the process is to "nuke" all the fancy formatting stuff an author may have put in (such as tabs, smart/curly quotes, etc.) and then replace them all with specific indents and various other chores, this is time-consuming, frustrating, and pointless.  Next, and perhaps the worst offense from my point of view, the instructions are all for Microsoft Word/Office 2000/2003/2007.  I don't use any of them, I see no point in paying for them when I can use Open/Libre Office, and the "style guide" reads like it's written for people who think that all caps and sixteen different fonts in a book make it more attractive.  Seeing the end result and proliferation of, let's face it, garbage on their site I have to admit that maybe it is.  It's a real shame that there are so many jewels awash in a sea of trash on the site, but there's nothing I can do about it -- and I find myself being considered guilty by association.

I'll admit that Subject 12, Banshee, and The Grand Granger aren't for everyone.  In fact, the Guild Files stories are actually targeted at a relatively-small audience, though I'm glad to see that people have embraced it from outside the group I targeted it at.  The Grand Granger, being a novella, hasn't been as well-recieved as I'd hoped due to its length.  However, I'm also sure that I can do better selling them -- and I will!  I will keep all files on Smashwords for a couple more weeks, most likely, but they will be down by the end of the month if at all possible (even if it means I won't ever see the $7.20 they're currently waiting for/holding for me since it takes $10/quarter worth of sales to get paid) and I'll have other options up and running as soon as posisble.

So, thank you for reading, thanks for your support!  If you know anyone who might like my books, don't hesitate to tell them about them.  If you have something to say, contact me, leave a comment, or hit me up on Twitter.  I look forward to hearing from you!