Neil Ostroff's Blog – August 2011 Archive (12)

And so the waiting begins. The hurricane is coming. It’s always strange the denial people feel before a disaster hits, especially a day like today. Here in Pennsylvania, it’s a sunny, beautiful day. But I’m not fooled. I’ve been watching the weather channel and I know it’s coming. I know in 36 hours my life will be significantly changed if the storm gives us a direct hit. I’m not saying I’m going to lose my house or anything like that, though we may get some pretty serious storm damage, I’m…

     By now most people are aware that a hurricane is coming our way here on the east coast. I’m pretty safe in Pennsylvania, but I sympathize with those along the shore. I know it’s going to be a rough ride.

     Besides the wind, rain, hail, and destruction, there is something fascinating about watching Mother Nature unleash her wrath. It makes you think that with all our technology we’re still vulnerable when it comes to our environment. Perhaps, one day we will be able to…

     Finished my newest middle grade sci/fi novel, INSECTLAND yesterday and now it’s off to get its cover. I am using my usual ebook cover person, Judy Bullard. This is a book I started in January of 1997 and have been tweaking ever since. It’s funny how some novels can be written in a few months while others, like this one, can take years.

     Actually, I think I need to clarify something here. It didn’t take me this long to write the book, I actually wrote the book in four months…

Here is an excerpt from one of my novels.

PULP

By

N. D. Ostroff

CHAPTER 1

How it all began

I knew I shouldn’t…

My wife and I live near a lake and every morning we take a long walk. Well, this morning my wife turns to me and says out of the blue; “You need to make 1.4 million dollars.”

“Done,” I replied.

“No really,” she pressed. “We need 1.4 million dollars.”

“Why that amount?” I asked.

She gave me this answer. 1.4 million dollars is the number she came up with that will allow us to retire; which sounded good to me since we’re both in our early forties. She came…

     For years and years, I dreamed of hitting it big as a writer. That dream kept me going through twelve hour days slaving in a corporate kitchen, through hard financial times, and even through bad relationships. The dream got closer when I signed with a top NY agency and even closer when editors of big publishing houses were requesting my stuff. But alas, the big viral hit still hasn’t happened. The books are written and being written, and quite a few are available for purchase and have…

     I’ve been publishing about a book every three months for the last two years. But it’s only in the last six months that I’ve published my stuff electronically on Kindle and Smashwords, and started heavy marketing and promotion on the internet. Now, you’ve got to understand, these are books that I’ve written over the course of twenty years. They have been through countless edits and critiques by friends and professionals. All have been through the ringer with good agents and…

     It used to be that to become a published author (besides just writing a really good book) you had to also spend countless hours writing and addressing query letters, waiting patiently for agent’s responses (months), and then miracle upon miracles, you get signed to a LEGITIMATE agency. That’s only the beginning. Now, it’s up to the agent to make that one-in-a-hundred sale as opposed to the one-in-a-million chance an un-agented author had. And again, miracle upon miracles, it…

Today is the day I started my promo/marketing for DROP OUT. Already logged up 4 sales (woo hoo). I discovered a great link on Goodreads that takes you to people who are looking for book recommendations. Some people just tell you what books they've read and that they're looking for something similiar, and some people actually describe the type of book they want to read. This is awesome because I have six different books that I can suggest. And the best part, there are at least 30,000 of these…

My newest novel, DROP OUT goes live tomorrow, yeah!!! But what is almost as rewarding as publishing a new novel is what happened to me the other day. But first, let me tell you a story about Neil at 17 years old. Here I was, a geeky high school student with a crush on one of the school's cheerleaders. Now, I knew she was out of my league from the start, but I was young and bold, and figured what the hey. So I let it be known that I liked her. (back then there were no cell phones, or…

Well, my mom finally read my book DEGENERATES http://www.amazon.com/Degenerates-N-D-Ostroff/dp/1440173028/ref%3Dsr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1299436405&sr=8-3…