As my latest novel, IMAGINATION nears completion I am beginning to feel antsy to start a new project and my thoughts are edging toward what I should write next. In other words, who should I become for the next year? I’ve had a good time being the characters in IMAGINATION, but it’s time I put them to rest and create someone new. Should I become a psycho killer like in FROSTPROOF, DEGENERATES, and PULP? Or should I become a traveler of time and space, like in DREAM TRAVELER, AFTER, and SILENT…

I generally feel the urge to blog about every two or three days, but for the last several days I’ve been silent. There’s a reason. It started with my wife having sharp pains in her side. She, being a tough woman, tried to ignore it and refused to go to the doctor even at my urging. Finally, on Monday she went. To make a long story short, three hours later she was getting prepped for surgery for an emergency appendectomy and I was sitting in the critical care unit waiting room. It was late…

Well, here I am again at that crossroads where I need to do something to push me beyond the steady, but stagnant sales of the last month. It appears blogging and posting on free sites has worn thin and most of the people who I got interested in my books have already purchased them. So, what do I do next? I already invested $100 bucks into a KND book of the day sponsorship for DROP OUT in November, and I have two more sponsorships with Kindle Boards Book of the Day in December, one for AFTER…

Wow, I’ve surpassed the two-hundred followers mark on my blog! I want to thank all who follow me especially because I know you follow this blog because you want to. I didn’t go to any threads just to collect followers to have high numbers. I painstakingly wrote my articles and promoted my blog to writers and readers. Very few of you who follow me are my personal friends, although I’d like to think that everyone who reads my stuff is a friend. You all know what I mean, I didn’t solicit you. I…

No, mind my isn’t in the gutter right now, I’m talking about how hard it is to sell books. I’ve been writing since I learned how to hold a pencil, I’ve won contests, had a top NY agent, and have written and/or published a dozen novels. People ask me where my ideas come from and I can’t give them an answer. All I know is that ideas for stories DO come and the urge to capture them on paper is overwhelming. I’ve been known to jot down notes on whatever I can find, tiny pieces of scrap paper,…

Nook just unveiled its new tablet today. Watching the interview on CBS this morning with the president of the company he was asked if he thought traditional paperback books will disappear in thirty years. Although, he wouldn’t give a definitive answer (because Barnes and Noble still have over 600 bookstores nationwide) it was apparent that he thought so. Though Barnes and Noble have outlived most retail book outlets, I do believe those days are numbered. Getting into the ebook revolution by…

After almost eleven months of continuous, daily writing I finally wrote ‘The End” on IMAGINATION. Well, I don’t actually write those words since it’s not industry standard anymore, but I did write the final, conclusive last sentence of the novel. Ah, what a feeling! This being my eleventh book, it still never ceases to amaze me how a story can take on a life of its own. If I were to look at my original notes on the concept for the story from last year and compare it to what I actually…

Ebooks are forever. Think about this sentence for a moment. You write a novel, get it formatted, have a nice cover made up, get an ISBN, and then download it onto Kindle, or Smashwords, or any of the hundreds of ebook distributors, and poof, it’s available globally to anyone with an ereader. Not only that, it will be available until the end of time. That means fifty years from now if I want to show my great grandchild one of my books, all they’ll have to do is type in the title and, poof…

As I edge ever closer to completion of IMAGINATION, I’ve finally reached the climax weeks (yes I said climax weeks) of novel writing. The book is complete from first sentence to last, and all the plot details, settings, and characters have been worked out and are complete. Now is when I can fully enjoy the novel writing process. Because now, I get to paint all the mental pictures that in my opinion sets my writing apart from normal storytelling. You see, I started my writing life as a young…

It used to be that an aspiring author would write a novel and then painstakingly send out SASE’s (remember them) hoping to land an agent. If the author did land an agent, then the author would hope for a publishing contract. If by miracle of miracles the agent actually sells the book, then eighteen months later it comes out in the bookstore (remember those) and the author starts doing a grueling schedule of signings hoping to recoup more money in sales than the advance received.

The…

Although this review came out yesterday on 9/11, I didn’t want to promote it until today. Because the book deals with 9/11 and its aftermath and one man’s struggle to come to grips with his loss, I felt awkward and didn’t want anyone to think I’d take such a tragedy and use the anniversary to sell books. http://voices.yahoo.com/drop-out-novel-reaches-depths-soul-11743006.html?cat=38…

In my neck of the woods fall is just around the corner. That means crisp air, changing leaves, the first milky frost. Those of you who read my blog know that I’m a warm weather kind of a guy, but there definitely is an advantage to the coming winter weather. It gives me a chance to hole up inside my office and write freely without feeling the guilt of wasting a beautiful summer day inside. I don’t mind spending hours in front of the computer when the temperature outside is ten degrees. I get…

With a new month comes a new reset of sales figures. It always seems to hurt my ego just a little when I look at the KDP figures and they’re right back at zero (or were). I’ve sold a few dozen books so far this month. Still, for the last two weeks my heart twirled every time I brought up my sales page and saw all the numbers, the result of many, many hours of marketing and promotion. For the last four months every promotion I’ve done has been on free sites, word-of-mouth, and social…

I watched a funny Family Guy episode last night (actually, I think they’re all funny) about Brian the dog wondering if he should marry an older woman. He goes out to a bar and tries to pick up this really pretty cartoon girl. When all of his pick-up lines fail he finally says to her in desperation, “You know, I wrote a book.” And her response, “Let’s both go into the bathroom.” Haha! No, seriously. Why does someone write? If you ask a sixteen-year-old male musician why he wants to be a rock…

I recently read an article about a company that would give your book a review for a price. They claim that the reviews aren’t biased and the reviewer will be honest if they didn’t like the book. Now, I know hundreds if not thousands of these companies exist so I’m no dummy, but it seems to me that it would be bad business to give an author a bad paid review especially if the author has several books under his belt and may use the service again. This leads me to the conclusion that investing…

December 21st 2012

Will You Escape 2 Earth?

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There comes a point in every artist’s career where he must decide what his talent is worth. When I started publishing on KDP I was just starting out in the ebook revolution and like many writers, thought nothing would come of it. People would scoff and say that I’m not a ‘real’ writer because I never published traditionally. Well let me tell them something, I had an agent and wasted four years trying to make it as a ‘real’ writer. Four years waiting for some suit to decide my future, hoping…

I’ve been thinking about hiring Smith Publicity when I’m finished writing IMAGINATION and have spent the last few days researching them and all they do. If I do sign with them it would mean huge exposure by the ways of television and radio interviews. For some authors they have gotten over fifty interviews. The question is will the royalties made by more exposure offset the costs of a major publicity firm? I haven’t contacted them yet so I don’t know what they charge but I’m…

Nobody ever said it would be easy. Nobody ever said it was always going to be fun. Nobody promised me that after spending twenty-plus years holed up in my office writing novels that anyone would ever read them. Nobody promised me anything would ever come of my writing and yet I still do it. Day after day, year after year, I sit in front of this keyboard and tap out the characters and worlds inside my mind. To date, I think I have more than sixty unique, fully-fleshed characters in all twelve…

There is no greater personal satisfaction for me than watching the sales numbers for my books go up. It’s not even that I’m earning money from my art that excites me but that my books are actually being read by strangers. Lots of strangers. I know, I know, I’ve said that a thousand times, but it’s just so true. I’m still getting residual sales from the free promotion last week and that officially makes DROP OUT my biggest bestseller to date with well over a thousand paid sales. DEGENERATES…