CD Story Review #8: The Departing of Debbie

CD Issue #1

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman) & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed. As of Issue #71 (May. 2014), there are more than 530.

STORY: “The Departing of Debbie” 

AUTHOR: Anke M. Kriske
CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 8 of 12 



PLOT:
Jim Conant has just finished a clandestine evening with his mistress. It was some rough sex, and they both liked it. The problem is that she dies immediately afterward, presumably of a heart attack.

[He's later revealed to be in his early 40s, so while a little odd, it's not impossible.]

He surveys the situation- scratches on her back & his arms, bodily fluids on the car seat, ripped clothes, a missing earring- and he realizes he'd easily be pegged as her murderer. And even if an autopsy eventually proved otherwise, his wife probably wouldn't appreciate his innocence. He decides his only course of action is to hide the body.

Conant (as the author calls him) is also a high school science teacher, and they had been having their fun parked after hours in the school's vacant lot. He quickly determines his best option is inside the school itself. Thanks to his coaching position for the track team, he has a key.

Inside his classroom, he struggles her body into the aluminum sink and gets to work. Using rubber gloves, an apron, a collection of the little knives used for the classroom frog dissections, and twenty years' experience teaching anatomy, he begins to dismantle her body piece by gruesome piece.

He starts with the skin and muscles on her back and soon moves to her internal organs. As he works, he names the various parts, feeling like one of his own students for the first time in years. It takes several hours, but with the addition of a limited amount of hydrolic acid & the cafeteria's garbage disposal, he reduces Debbie to nothing more than bones.

THE AWESOME PIC THAT
COMES WITH KRISKE'S STORY

And then comes his "crowning achievement." Conant reasons that if the best place to hide a book is in a library, the best place to hide a skeleton (no, it's not the local cemetery... his is near a highway and practically next door to the police station) is in a science classroom. Taking another few hours to accomplish the task, he arduously strings together Debbie's bones. When done, he exchanges the classroom skeleton, Clyde- who is old & who he's been asking to replace for years- with his beloved Debbie.

[The story could pretty much end there, topping out around 1,800 words,

but Kriske give us so much more story in only 700 more words.]

Weeks and then months pass. Conant has gotten away with it. His students suspect nothing, his wife is none-the-wiser, and every morning he gets to have a brief chat with his old flame, often to his happy arousal.

Then, with only days before the end of the school year, tragedy hits. Another teacher presents him with a gift... a replacement skeleton for the one he's been asking to dispose of for years. The exchange, the teacher explains, has already been made. Old 'Clyde' is currently on his way to the incinerator.

Conant rushes to the boiler room just in time to prevent the janitor from destroying the collections of bones he has come to love. He screams at the mild-mannered man ("You are not to touch Debbie!") and pulls at the box containing her bones. His mind, however, is not quite entirely gone. He knows enough to let the janitor do his job and bring to an end the details of his own crime.

But the loss of Debbie pushes Jim Conant over the edge, and the story ends with him living in a mental ward. And he lives there with not one secret, but two. At the last possible moment, he stole a little part of her- a finger bone. But since the patients at the ward aren't allow to have pockets, he has kept her hidden inside his mouth.


REVIEW: 5 out of 5 stars.

CD BLURB ON AUTHOR ANKE M. KRISKE

Simply put, this story rocked. It has hereby set the bar for all future 5-star stories in this blog. As a reader I was entranced from the beginning. I was shocked to shivers several times along the way. And that ending... wow! Kriske has in one fell swoop reminded me what horror can be. The first thing I did when finishing was to look her up & see what other gems might await me since I decided immediately to read more of what she has to offer.

[The results, btw, showcased one of the problems doing this blog will bring. 

Many of the authors in the early issues will have only been published in magazines that are now out of print. While www.isfdb.org lists a total of 21 short pieces published under her name, 

only 3 are actually available for sale on Amazon]. 

Though the vocabulary is simple, "The Departing of Debbie" is far from a simple story. It begins with an affair gone wrong. We see the confusion, the fear, and the rationalization of the primary character. Next we are given the meticulous cleaning up of the body, a thing Kriske does with fantastic detail (the scene where Conant uses a coffee spoon- "the only appropriate instrument he had handy"- to scoop out Debbie's brain from her skull is particularly nasty & memorable). Here we are given detailed gore mixed nicely with the slow undercurrent of growing insanity... Conant doesn't just name the body parts as he removes & disposes of them, he is constantly impressed with his progress as he goes. Finally, we get the twist ending which not only takes the story further than we had expected, but also gives us that great and true feel of horror as we close the magazine. For me, the story was a 5-star going into the final paragraphs. The ending was a welcomed exclamation point.

I've read plenty of getting-away-with-murder stories before. They can be entertaining, but they also sometimes leave me wondering if the author is using fiction as an outlet for deeper problems. And even if they don't, the point of these storis is almost always to showcase the cleverness of a born killer. Creepy, yes, but also somewhat ho-hum. Kriske's story is light years better than these predictable pieces. Her protagonist isn't a killer; he's a (mere) cheater and liar, a thief of his wife's devotion. Moreover, he starts the story in perfect (albeit pig-headed) sanity and works towards insanity as the story progresses.

As a writer, I was struck mostly with the story's final 700 words. But I don't mean the power of the events themselves. I'm talking about the structure of the story. Think for a moment about the standard design of a piece of fiction. It goes something like this: Character A has Problem B which forces him/her to take Actions C, D, & E until Climax F solves the problem and leaves us with Resolution G. What Kriske has done is sneak in an additional part of the narrative plotline between F & G. Call it "Climax 2.0."

When we see Conant hang Debbie's skeleton in his classroom, he has solved his problem. We suspect the final paragraphs we have yet to read are the resolution- showing how he goes on with his life- and we also suspect something will go wrong (this is, after all, a horror story). Possibly he'll get caught. Possibly Debbie's bones will come alive and strangle him to death (for a supernatural twist). Possibly he'll eye that skeleton day after day, slowly working up the courage to commit a real murder just so he can dismantle another body. And at first it seems Kriske is giving us just that. Conant gets away with it and starts to develop an unhealthy connection to Debbie's skeleton. But then, just before we get the final results of his deeds... WHAM! That awesome twist. The other teacher brings in a new skeleton, Conant fully loses his mind, and we see him in a mental ward with her finger bone hidden in his mouth for... how long?... oh, I don't know, but years it feels. Years, certainly.

It's another, higher climax than we had been expecting, and it works simultaneously as a resolution. I love what Kriske has done here, and I am certain I'm going to find a way to buy old copies of magazines her work has appeared in, if nothing more than to see if its a common theme in her stories or if this one was unique in that regard.

What I've learned from reading this is that not all stories need to follow a prescribed format. Better still, having the courage to break the mold- a little anyway- can have very powerful results. In the future, I'm going to open my mind to other ways to lead my readers to the emotional state I want them.

CD Story Review #7: Rock of Ages

THE COVER OF ISSUE #1

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman) & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed. As of Issue #71 (May. 2014), there are more than 530.

 

 

STORY: “Rock of Ages” 

AUTHOR: John B. Rosenman
CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 7 of 12 



 

 

PLOT:  Steve Marsh is indulging in childhood nostalgia by visiting the county fair. He feels foolish for dishing out a buck fifty to visit the fun house [remember, the year is 1988], and his wife Bette is outside, waiting impatiently to 'carp' at him when he is done. But for now he is remembering when life was better.

The carnival barker pitched that Steve would see "the most frightening thing in the world" inside the fun house, and as he turns the doorknob & steps in he wonders absently what it would actually take to meet such high claims. He expects nothing more than paper mache monsters, sliding platforms, trick mirrors, and "air holes that goosed you from below".

What he sees, however, is a scene from his own past. A day from his teens when he & Bette made love for the first time. It had been outdoors. It had been hurried and clumsy. And it had been a set-up. Bette, three years his senior, had easily seduced him and told him a few days after that she'd gotten pregnant. Weeks later they were married and Steve's life of hell had begun. Except Bette hadn't been pregnant. She had lied, Steve realizes now that he is about to watch the single event that ruined his life.

In a (final?) release of all those pent-up years of frustration and hatred, Steve steps forward, flings his teenage self off of the teenage Bette, picks up a rock, and brains Bette in the face multiple times.

Moments later his visit to the past is over and he is back in the fun house. He steps outside and realizes that his wife is nowhere to be seen. Better still, a different woman, beautiful and kind-faced, seems to be smiling and waving at him. They walk towards each other, but she veers aside and greets another man. He suddenly realizes the rock is still in his hand. Then Bette makes her reappearance, changed only by the new horrific scar on her face and the ominous words: "Steve, you didn't think you had escaped me, did you?
 

REVIEW: 5 out of 5 stars.

As a reader, I appreciated how Rosenman shows us that just because a story is short (only 1,000 words) doesn't mean it's necessarily simple. "Rock of Ages" has so much packed into it. (Seriously, look how long my summary is. It's practically as long as the story itself!) In it we find good characterization, a great build-up to the ending, and (perhaps most importantly) actual horror. What is the scariest sight in the world? Answer: Having to re-live the worst moment of your life.

CD BLURB ON AUTHOR JOHN B. ROSENMAN

Not bad for a thousand words.

For a moment, let's go back to that ending. By showing the beautiful other woman, Rosenman gives us just the right touch of hope before reality comes crashing down. Twice. Even better (worse?) we are left dealing with a gruesome message too: if you're weak-minded or gullible, watch out. You're in for a world of hurt, and if you dare try to fix that world, it's only going to get worse.

The story has another advantage to which I must give an appreciative nod: Working time travel into any story that isn't primarily about time travel is just cool. I'm a big fan of that subgenre, and I've come to believe it's HARD to do it right in a short space.

I also love the title. "Rock of Ages". I see what you did there, Rosenman. You took a cliché & gave it an entirely new meaning, and a witty one at that.

As a writer, Rosenman's story reinforces that age-old rule in fiction that shorter is better. If this were a 3,000-word story, I'd give it 4 stars and explain that he dragged it on too long or over-described. But seeing the sheer depth of this piece not only warrants it's 5-star accolade, but also reminds this writer about the dangers of verbosity when brevity will do.
 

CD Story Review #2: "A Breathe of Fresh Air"

COVER OF CD ISSUE #1

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered some of the genre's most famous and successful author. Getting published in CD is one of the top five items on my bucket list. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed.

STORY: “A Breathe of Fresh Air”

AUTHOR: Edgar F. Tatro

CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (December 1988, Volume 1, Issue 1), story 2 of 12

PLOT (spoilers):

Benji Drummond is in jail in Smalltown, USA. (Not literally. I’m waxing poetic). He’s scheduled to get out in a few days but for weeks has been complaining about the smell and heat of the place. Sheriff Olsen knows it’s bad. He even requested an air quality report to pacify Benji’s constant whining (and hacking up black stuff all over the walls) that has been making everyone else miserable. When screams come from his cell the morning of his release, the sheriff finds his cellmate beaten near death, Benji gone, and the air vent ripped open like a piece of cardboard.

SO CUTE YET SO DEADLY (for flies)

A captain arrives and assumes Benji escaped out the open cell door when the sheriff attended to the wounded man. But the sheriff insists his back was never turned. Yet the mystery remains. The only other exit- the vent- is too small & high on the wall for Benji to have used. Later, the air quality report explain everything. It cites high levels of carbon dioxide, poor circulation, and the presence of bat feces. The sheriff reads from the report that is was specifically Desmodus Rufus, and dramatically reveals this is the scientific name for a vampire bat.

The story ends in a lone separate paragraph with “the former Benji Drummond” hanging upside down inside the ventilation shaft of a day care nursery. There is a pile of fresh feces underneath him.

CD AUTHOR BLURB ON TATRO

REVIEW: 3 of 5 stars. Ok, first thing’s first. A typo in the friggin title!? Are you kidding me?! I swear I thought the story would somehow answer why it’s spelled ‘breathe’ instead of ‘breath’, but guess what… no dice. It’s an actual typo. I know every author makes mistakes, and I know my own list of words-learned-wrong has its embarrassments, but Tatro is described in the author blurb as a “veteran high school English teacher”, and his list of publishing accomplishments suggests he’d been at the game for a while. Yet the fault should not lie on the author alone. Chizmar was the lone editor in this issue, and while I must remind myself that he was in his early twenties at this point and certainly subject to the fallacies of the young, one cannot help but ask if he or Tatro had access to a dictionary.

The story, however, was decent, if not a tad on the predictable side. Tatro drops the detail of the air quality report and Benji’s physical state early and often enough that we know something is up. And while we suspect it’ll be something like what it turns out to be, the ending paragraph pushing the story to a darker level was a nice touch.

But the misspelling & the predictability did not prevent this from earning 4 stars. There are 2 other significant flaws. Chief among them is how the pacing of the story is moving along a pleasant clip but slows to a crawl when the captain comes in. A full third of the story is spent on this unimportant character yammering to Sheriff Olsen about how and when Benji Drummond escaped. All the same content could have been just as easily shared through the unnamed officer who had already been in an earlier scene or in the least written in 2 or 3 paragraphs instead of a full page. It’s pretty clear Tatro was providing a source of superiority and a reason to doubt Sheriff Olsen’s competence, however this point is unrelated to the primary plot and serves no real purpose.

The other big flaw was that when the sheriff proclaims the sample had feces in it, the captain asks, “Feces? What’s feces?” at which Sheriff Olsen explains, “You’re captain, huh? Feces is crap, excrement, number two!” I get the fact that Tatro is showing us the captain is the incompetent one, but I can’t help shake the feeling that he inserted it not to develop a character but to define a word he was concerned his readers would not know. Perhaps he was right, and perhaps not. But the word is by no means outside of the standard lexicon of English, and I felt it was an unnecessary dumbing down of the readers’ intellect.

Author Fail

I DON'T WANNA!

I'm tired and I don't want to write. I just want to take the night off. But if I do... oh, if I do what struggles may come immediately. I've been down this road before, you see. Quitting is a runaway train, a bison on the loose, the opening of a diseased vein. And on the other side of even a single night of failure is a steep downward hill, a stampede, a bucket of blood.

I know some of you may think this is strange, or at least the timing of it is. Just a few days ago I shared not one but two bits of genuinely good news (my new novel is done & totally unrelated, I won a writing award). And here I am in the wallows of guilt again? I understand your confusion, but I believe there is a connection…

My last post discussed how exhausting (zombie-like) I feel each time I finish a book. I believe what you are reading now is another side of that exhaustion. There is the side of myself that feels proud of what I’ve recently accomplished. Then there is the other side that is not only exhausted but also feels like I’ve finally earned at least ONE day off.

DAM(N) IT!

But therein lies the problem. It will most certainly not end with one day. To cave to my selfishness now would be to break the seal or even open the floodgates. I MUST write tonight, if for no other reason than to say I did so even at a dark hour such as this.

When I began this blog in November, I did so with the intention of becoming more consistent with my writing. I stuttered to start, but there was definite improvement. Recently, I’ve employed the undertaking of writing EVERY day, if even only a little. I even joined a “Magic Spreadsheet” community that tracks daily writing success. (I’ll explain more about that in another post). And it’s been an overwhelming success. Today marks my 63^rd day in a row, and I honestly don’t feel even a little bit guilty these days.

YOU SHALL NOT PASS!

But what happens when I skip a day? What happens when I break my streak?  Answer: I fail.

I said I’ve done this before, and I have. I’ve made myself promises before (I’ve even used the Magic Spreadsheet community). And while each time I make that challenge I’ve also met with varying degrees of success, I always meet my failure for the same reason: I cheat, and by that I mean I cheat myself. I’m tired so I decide to skip a day. I tell myself I’ll be back at it tomorrow, and often that happens. But inevitably that is also the day that begins my downward spiral.

So this time, I’m not quitting. I’m keeping my nose to the grindstone and I’m finding SOMETHING to write about, even if it’s just this blog post that attempts to focus my own perspective on things.

;)

WHAT'S AT THE FAR END?

I Am The Walking Dead

I LOVE HALLOWEEN

Yes, that's me in my Halloween costume from a couple years ago. 

No, this post isn't about "The Walking Dead" TV. show (although, maybe I should do one of those... what fantastic writing!). It's about my current state after having finished another grueling 2-month writing blitz. You may have noticed it's been a while since my last post. Here's why...

"It is done."

MY NEW BOOK!!

Those are the words I think each time I finish a book. I've done it four times now, and let me assure you, it doesn't get any easier. Probably that's because I keep insisting that my writing gets better as I go. I can only hope that my readers will agree with me, but I'm here to say that I'm damned proud of the newest notch on my writing desk. It's called "Woman Scorned," and it's book 2 of my "Man Hunt" trilogy.

Each time I finish a book, I walk away feeling amazing, exhausted, and all the more prepared to do it better the next time. But mostly, I feel like a zombie. When I said 'exhausting', I really meant it. In the part two months I have written, revised, or edited an average of 4 hours at a rate of 2,000 words PER DAY. I know for professional writers that's basically the norm, but let us not forget I have a day job as an English teacher.

ME AFTER FINISHING A BOOK

One thing I'm proud of is that I haven't skipped a single day of writing in that time, including four days when I was quite sick with fever. One of those days I slept for ~21 hours... but I still put in 20 minutes of editing that night. I've also pulled 5 all-nighters and only went to bed before 1am three times (that week I was sick).

I've done all this before, however there's something different now. This time I feel no need for a long, celebratory hiatus. In fact, I'm looking very much forward to getting right back to it.

I do have a trilogy to finish, after all.

But I also have so many other ideas for short stories, things I claim I rarely have the time to work on but am always thinking about. (One such idea does involve zombies, by the way. Ahh, the power of suggestion). 

 

ALSO ME AFTER FINISHING A BOOK

So while I sit here feeling like that^ guy, I'm also kind of feeling quite a bit like 

<---  this guy

because for the first time in a long time this author doesn't feel even a little bit guilty. 

Also, I finally have the time to write blog posts again. 

If you liked this post, please let me know by LIKING, COMMENTING, +1ing (is that a word?) or otherwise giving me a quick "Atta Boy". Thanks. 

ps: Writing done since last time... uh, I wrote a whole damned book! Boom. 

Busy (Best-Selling!) Beaver, Part 7: A Better Way

Hello World, 

Advanced Apology: Okay, I know this is a long post, and I promise to get better in the future about writing shorter posts, but I'm nearing the end of my Busy Beaver series & I'd just rather squeeze what's left into 1 or 2 long posts than stretch it out. 

So then... this is part 7 of my ongoing series explaining my experiences going from a relatively unknown writing schmuck to an Amazon best-selling author. Today's post is about how I found a better way to network with other authors. (Please excuse the mousetrap pun in the pic... networking is not, IMHO, a trap. But how could I resist using that reference?!)

Anyway, you'd have to have read my posts on January 4th, 11th, and the 19th to understand how powerful and exasperating this "networking" concept has been for me. You'd also have to have read my Jan. 22nd post to see the shocking benefits it all amounts to. 

But I'll be nice and sum them up: 

1/4: LinkedIn had a great way to find new Facebook fans, but it looked like a lot of work. 

1/11: The LinkedIn thing was indeed a LOT of work, but it totally paid off.

1/19: As great as the results were, the LinkedIn experience left me bug-eyed and nearly dead. It was during these days when I was thinking there must be a "better way". 

1/22:  Shortly before I came up with my "better way", I hit paydirt. One of my LinkedIn connections gave me a hell of a tip which led (eventually) and directly to getting my book on Amazon's bestseller list. 

So what does a "better way" of networking look like? 

Short answer: go here, and be prepared to be wowed. 

Did you check it out? Have you been gone for a whole week? I know, I know. It's overwhelming, but amazing, isn't it? (Oh, and if you didn't check it out, you really should do that or you'll be confused from here on out. I'll wait...)

Ok, so now that everyone know what the better way looks like, here's the long answer...

The problems with LinkedIn (and other, similar events I have since experienced on Facebook and Twitter) is that despite everyone's good intentions, human nature quickly takes over and things go horribly wrong. The basic idea was to share author pages (initially just those on Facebook) and "LIKE" each other's pages, then perhaps also have some side conversations, make some friends, share books, and generally learn more about the writing world. However, people got greedy. People got frustrated. People got angry and bitter and childish. The reason were obvious enough. All of these platforms were built for other things, and the resulting long line of comments went on for pages and pages and pages which made it hard to navigate, plus some people just didn't play fair. In order to do it a better way, someone would have to make platform sharing more efficient and less prone to the dark side of humanity. 

This got me to thinking. What would be the most efficient? 

Instantly, a simple list of names & Facebook links popped into my head. It could be as simple as an Excel document. Ooo! An ONLINE excel doc! The school I teach at has forced teacher to start using Googledocs to more easily share plans, tests, & a variety of other things for their own efficiency needs, and suddenly I put 2 & 2 together and got the proverbial 4. 

(What happened to the proverbial snowball?) 

If I may be so bold as to say it, I think that moment was a flash of genius. This spreadsheet would have no comment threads. There would be no mess. No fuss. It was simple & it would work. Heck, it was so simple even I could set it up myself. 

So I did. 

It took me all of 20 minutes to create the prototype. 

Then, just as I was 'finishing' up, I realized some people were sharing their Twitter links with each other. I didn't have one myself, but it would be easy to make a column for Twitter links too. 

Oh yeah, and Amazon. Everyone wants to plug their Amazon page. 

Oh, and their website. 

And their blog. 

And their Goodreads page. 

And why not throw in LinkedIn and Google+ Smashwords and Youtube. 

Oh my God, I've created a monster. 

Nevertheless, this "mega" spreadsheet had only taken me about 2 hours in total to create (though in all honesty I did spend many MANY more hours in the following weeks tweaking & updating & maintaining it).

The next step was to get people on the thing. So on a whim I described it to "Chris", the author I wrote about in my Jan. 22nd post. He/She thought it sounded like a great idea, so I sent the link to Chris and a handful of other authors I had been in closer contact with in the previous couple of weeks. 

The response was incredible. At first only 3 or 4 people went onto the "Author Networking Megasheet" and entered their info, and of course we all already knew each other, so there wasn't much to gain other than learning their Twitter handles or Amazon pages. Then they shared it with other authors they knew and then these authors came on and shared it with other people THEY knew... 

In a week there were more than 30 authors filling up those pages and some were making comments on how to tweak things. "What about a place to leave comments?" I added a place. "What about a place to tell everyone what my genres are?" I added it. 

That first week I continued tweaking the Megasheet and invited more authors. In 2 weeks, there were over a hundred of us and my email account was lowing up. EVERYbody had more questions, suggestions, comments, and so much praise, praise, and more praise. 

As of today's date, the Megasheet has now been live for less than 2 months and if you've already clicked on one of the 5 links I've provided, you already know that there are 230 authors, editors, agents, and publishers bombarding it on a daily basis. In fact, it's getting a minimum of 50 visits from unique users every day. Sometimes there are more than a hundred. (Keep in mind, this thing is only 2 months old).

I now send out a weekly email to all who sign up for it with updates & suggestions as to how we can all network together. Each email I send creates a flurry of activity in that suggested mode. We all benefit. Wow. This thing is actually working. Yes, it's true that just like the LinkedIn feed, some people are clearly just dropping off their info then disappearing, hoping for an easy boost without putting in any real work of their own. And you know what? They'll get that boost. But they also won't annoy the rest of us by having people talk about it. There also aren't people who annoy the rest of us by trying to keep their link fresh at the most recent comment. People aren't bitching, in other words, they are praising.

So, how does all this fit into me being a Bestselling beaver? (That I've been busy is, I feel, ridiculously obvious).

Well, my own Facebook/ Amazon/ Twitter/ Goodreads/ etc. numbers have boomed, and I can personally confirm about 20 additional sales of my books thanks directly to this adventure. I'm assuming there are probably several more. In a world where 300 sales is all it takes to get onto the best-seller list, 20+ isn't chump change, plus, I've learned that consistent sales help keep your book higher on the list. My book is no longer on the bestseller list, but its rank is MUCH higher than the 3.5 million it had been before all of this started. 

Other authors have been reporting similar, if not a little smaller, numbers. (Not so surprising, I guess... I did create the thing & my name is at the top of the list. It kind of feels like I have a bit of celebrity status. Actually, a couple days ago I got invited to check it out from one of my long-ago LinkedIn connections. The guy had no idea I was the one who created it. Fun stuff.) 

So what has all this taught me? I think people really can be very nice, as long as you keep things positive and give them a product they genuinely like. The LinkedIn feed, for example, was a brilliant idea, but it was inherently flawed b/c of the nature of that platform. I didn't reinvent the wheel, you see, I just gave it a better groove. 

So does that mean my "Busy Beaver" line of posts is over? 

Not quite. I still have one or two more things to share. One of them is another online spreadsheet which is actually my favorite writing motivational tool of all time. Also, there's one final thing which... well, I think I'll save that teaser for next time. 

For now, I invite any & all writing related people (authors, agents, editors, audiobook narrators, publishers, advertisers, web designers, cover designers, trailer makers,  etc.) to visit the AUTHOR NETWORKING MEGASHEET and start networking. There's no doubt there are hours and hours of work there, but it organized, its easy, and I promise that you'll see more activity all around your writing world. Just remember, you'll get what you put into it. :)

Until next time,

-K. 

ps: Writing Done Since Last Time: Holy Moly I can't even explain how MUCH I've gotten done. It's literally been MORE than the past 2 months combined. Yes, in just the last week. How? Why? Well, that's where that amazing motivational tool I mentioned comes in. Tune in next time for a detailed answer. :)

Busy (Best-Selling!) Beaver, Part 6: The Advertising Dilemma

This is Part 6 in my ongoing series explaining my experiences going from a relatively unknown writing schmuck to an Amazon best-selling author. Today's post is about the place I did my advertising which led directly to making it onto that best-sellers list. To find out how I learned about it, scroll back to my Jan. 22nd post.

Ok, my loyal peeps. Let's end the torture. The place I advertised is called EReaderNewsToday.com, and
they have an interesting sales model. Rather than charge several hundred (or thousand!) dollars as most advertising agencies do, ERNT instead charges nothing up front but takes a portion of your profits... 25%, to be precise, which admittedly is a little higher than I was comfortable with.  Nevertheless, my friend "Chris" insisted I should use them. I acquiesced. But ERNT doesn't accept just anyone. There are rules.

First, they only advertise eBooks. Nothing in paper copies.
Yeah, I figured that. Keep going.

Next, they only advertise novels. No poetry or collections of short stories.
Ok. Disappointing since I also have 2 collections I could have advertised, but fair enough. What else?

Next, they only advertise books that have at least 10 reviews on Amazon, and average 4.0 stars or better.
Sounds legit. Only higher quality books that already have at least a small taste of success. I'm still listening. Where's the catch?

Finally, they only advertise your book if you sell it at $0.99 or give it away for free.
Oh. Ouch. Dammit.

And herein lied my dilemma. A buck!? Seriously? Or free!?! What about all my hard work for all those years? What about a reader's basic appreciation of an artistic work? What about my integrity!? It was a very hard pill to swallow, but in the end I decided to listen to my friend and give it a try, if for no other reason than to learn from the experience.

So here's what I learned:

1) ERNT led directly to 250+ sales of my novel, "Man Hunt," in only 3 days. I profited about $75.
That's certainly nothing to change one's life, but it was some nice pocket change and more than I had earned on my own without advertising. Besides, I reasoned, won't those people be impressed and write nice reviews and tell their friends? Certainly that's how this works. I was mostly right about that assumption. Mostly.

2) Even after the sale & advertising was over, "Man Hunt" has continued to sell. To date, it's been a full month since the price has been returned to a whopping $5, and I've sold an additional 70 copies, profiting about an additional $75.
This was a pleasant and unexpected surprise. I can attribute these sales to one of two notions: A) The Best-Seller status help garner even more visibility for my book, and B) my assumption was right and those initial 250 people read my book, liked it, and have been telling their friends about it.

3) Getting onto Amazon's Best-Sellers list was a complete surprise, as was their algorithm for what constitutes a best-selling book. But I'll talk more about that another time. ;)

4) My book also received a boost in Amazon reviews. Most of this is good mojo, but some of it is bad. More on that later as well.

5) Without being ready for the event, I had officially and accidentally reached one of my life-long goals... but this had also caused me to reevaluate (and re-write) my goals & realize I still had a hell of a lot of work to do. As you might guess, I'll save the details for another post.

I could comment more on the advertising dilemma, and perhaps some day I will, but I fear this post is already too long so I must end now. In the meantime, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this post about my advertising adventures is not in chronological order to the events as they took place. ERNT took a little over a week to get back to me once I submitted my book to their advertising campaign, and during that week I did something somewhat insightful, just a little bit crazy, and amazingly powerful. I'm convinced it was another, subtler, helpful push in my sales results. Unfortunately I'll never be able to prove it. But when I write about it in next week's post, perhaps you'll tell me your interpretation. What I can tell you is this: advertising and the great Amazon aren't the only way to get attention and exposure as an author.

Until next time,
-K

ps: Writing Results Since My Last Post: LOTS! I successfully revised another tough chunk of my current novel, made about a dozen new writing friends (several of which I actually met face-to-face), got invited to do a PAID (you read that right) speaking event about myself as an author at a local library, and experimented with another advertising platform. I wish I could contribute most of that to my Amazon Best-Selling status, but the truth is that I've continued to work my ass off and other life wins have resulted.

Busy (Best-Selling!) Beaver, Part 5: Luck of the Sun Gods

Hello World,

This is Part 5 in my ongoing series explaining my experiences going from a relatively unknown writing schmuck to an Amazon best-selling author. Today's post is about the little bit of luck that comes after I worked my ass off networking with other authors. To find out what that's all about, scroll back to my Jan. 3rd post and work your way forward.

I don't know where I heard/ read the phrase "Diligence is the mother of good luck," but I've come to respect it greatly. This past December, I came to believe in it.

After reaching out to some 500+ authors to make connections on Facebook, several dozen did more than just like my page in return... they started chatting with me as well. Those conversations were much like you might expect: Thanks were abundant, Questions were common, and the FeelGoods were constant.

It was at this point my proverbial snowball was officially rolling downhill. 

But it was slow. Just a few feet from the top.

It had yet to gain size or speed.

This went on for several weeks and, to be honest, continues now, more than a month later. As much as people are idiots (see previous post), people are also pretty cool, and I was digging the world of new writers I had immersed myself into.

Then one day I saw a book description on one of those pages and made a comment of appreciation to the author. Said author (I'll call him/her "Chris" to protect his/her identity), commented back in kind, and perhaps because we were kindred spirits in genres, we began to chat. I don't know what sun gods led me in Chris's direction, but I suspect it may have been the god of working one's ass off. ;)

Look. 

Do you see the snowball? 

It's really rolling now, and it's picking up speed.

Somewhere in that conversation we got to talking about sales of our book and it was abundantly clear Chris was out of my league. He/she was making hundreds of sales every day and had profited roughly $15,000 in the past 12 months. Not exactly quitting one's day job, but it was light years beyond the 3 grand I'd made over the past 4 years. I asked if there was some kind of secret, and to my surprise Chris more or less hinted that there was. He/She invited me to join a relatively small but closed (secret) writing group on Facebook and also shared a couple of good places to do some advertising.

Did you see the snowball gain in size just then? 

I certainly did. 

:)

There's much more to say about both, but in a nutshell, what Chris did was open the door to possibilities for me. I'd always known that to make money you need to spend money, but I'd always assumed it was more money than I would reasonably have.

I
was
wrong.

Tune in next time to find out where I advertised & how much I paid. In the meantime, why not strike up a conversation with a fellow like-minded human? There's a better-than-average chance they know something you don't, and vice versa.

Gratifying yours,
-K

ps: Writing Accomplished Since Last Post: No new words, but I did revise a particularly tough set of pages on my current book. I spent about 3 hours on the first five paragraphs alone. Yes, I really do work that slowly sometimes. But, yes, I really feel proud (NOT guilty!) of what I produce when I get the chance to do it.

Busy (Best-Selling!) Beaver, Part 4: The Last of LinkedIn

Hello World, 

This is Part 4 in my ongoing series explaining my experiences going from a relatively unknown writing schmuck to an Amazon best-selling author. Today's post is about the ugly, annoying, nasty side of LinkedIn. Also why people are idiots. This is the third (and final) post about my LinkedIn experience, so if you haven't yet read the first one, you should probably scroll down & start with the Jan. 4th blatherings.

I don't mean to bad-mouth LinkedIn, BTW. And I don't want you to think I've abandoned it. In fact, just the opposite is true. I've become more active on LinkedIn since my excursions began. 

And yet...

So there I was, at the very top of this crazy post that had 18 months of running commentary and over 3,700 comments... and I had just promised myself to scroll through them ALL and connect with all those authors. 

The first page wasn't so bad. People were saying it was a great idea & posting their Facebook links. Every once in a while someone would mention: 'Hey John" or "Hey Jennifer, your link is broken." Nice stuff, you understand? But LinkedIn doesn't have the tag feature that Facebook has, so many of these comments were clearly going unnoticed. 

By the third or fourth page, people were starting to have small conversations with each other. Things like how to get the link working or explanations that they'd already "liked" that person from some other venue. Again, still pretty nice. But it was kind of annoying because it took my computer a good 5 or 10 seconds to load the next 5 comments, and many of them weren't even links to people's Facebook pages. 

Then, I saw the first re-post. Someone got smart enough to realize that some people were working bottom-to-top instead of top-to-bottom and probably would never reach the top. So if they re-posted their link, it would be at the bottom (the most recent comment) and far more likely to get noticed. 

Talk about a snowball rolling downhill, it instantly became uber-popular. 

All of a sudden, every fifth link was a re-post. And it quickly became really annoying b/c my computer took another 5 or 10 seconds to load the relevant Facebook page... only to discover, yup, I already 'liked' that person. Thanks for wasting my time. 

Then it turned into every third link. Then two or three in a row started cropping up. It wasn't long before I'd scroll through whole pages and only see one or two genuinely new authors to connect with. I was starting to recognize their pictures, which helped in not bothering to re-click their links, but in addition the occasional conversations from earlier were also starting to take on a life of their own. I was going from annoyed to frustrated.

Suddenly these side conversations were turning from "Hey, here's how I can help you," into "Hey jerk, why do you need to be a screen-hog? Let the est of us play too, ok?!" (Alright, it wasn't quite that bad, but definite tones of anger and jealousy were evident). 

By the end of my first night scrolling through 18 months of comments, I had made it through 8 months and was nevertheless feeling pretty good. I'd already begun to see my Facebook numbers increase, and two or three people were even chatting with me in private messages. Very nice people, on the whole. Very interesting. But it had been an exhausting 6 or 7 hours, and I needed sleep. 

The next night I jumped in with gusto, intent on finishing the whole thing and getting "caught up!" as many people were frequently posting. I had only 10 to go. I could do that. 

No. I couldn't. You couldn't either.

As time went on, it seemed, each month collected more and more comments, most of them useless or re-posts. I did spend another 6 or 7 hours that night, but I only got through another FOUR months. And what was worse, I was starting to notice how many people had no idea what they were doing. (The idiots I've alluded to several times). 

These people could't get their links to work (just copy from the page's entry bar and paste it here... how hard is that?) 

These people couldn't find somebody's name on their list of likes so clearly they MUST be lying about actually clicking a little button so why not bitch about THAT for another 2 and half weeks? 

And when it was pointed out that a Facebook "like" coming from a page (ie: your author page) rather than your personal account (ie: your real name) for some reason doesn't contribute to Facebook's LIKE-COUNT, it got even MORE complicated. Some people apologized, but most just complained, whined, and argued. This wasn't what I had wanted to get into. I just wanted to network with other authors. 

Yada yada yada, you get the point. 

Day three... repeat of day two. 

Day four... repeat of day three. 

Except I still wasn't done because I was making more and more connections on Facebook and having more and more nice/fun/interesting private conversations (one of which was actually pretty awesome... more on that next time), which of course was taking more and more time away from my progress through the LinkedIn post. 

I think I finished on Day 6 in an eyes-blurred, balls-to-the-wall, 10-hour marathon that took me through the night and well into the weekend. 

Yay for me. I had done it, and my Facebook numbers, connections, and general status as an author was growing. 

It was a bit disappointing for yet another reason, though, because I'd probably only gotten a return of half the people I'd taken the time to 'like' and send a polite private message to. 

*humph* 

Oh well, perhaps they're busy this week. I'll probably hear from them in a few days. 

This turned out to be partially true. Many more did straggle in over the next week or two, and even today I'm still getting the occasional person (more than a month later, mind you) who is responding to the message I sent back in mid-December. But a solid third of the people I connected with have still unequivocally ignored me. 

*grrrrr*

I was tired. I was frustrated. And even worse, I was feeling pretty guilty that I hadn't done a bit of writing in a whole week... 

[Ever notice how that 'guilty' thing keeps coming up? It's almost like there's a theme here.]

... and all in favor of basic marketing. Ug. Is that what the life of the modern day author is going to be all about? 

Answer: Yes. Yes it is. You don't have to do it all at one time like I did, but unless your name is Rowling, Grisham, King, or Steele, you're going to be doing your own marketing as a writer. 

There's one more thing I want to tease...er, tell you about. By the time I got done with all this, I had gotten to thinking that there must be a better way to do it all.  And there is.  I know because I invented it.  

:D

But next time I think I'll tell you about that one awesome private conversation I had that ended up changing everything. Of all the hours and all the frustrations I'd done, I would do them all again if I gained only ONE connection, but it turned out to be as useful as this one.

Satisfyingly yours,

-K.

ps: Words written since last week: Astonishingly, yes, I actually wrote new words!! More than 1300, in fact. I've been revising my newest novel lately, and most of the time all I'm doing is deleting/ changing/ & moving. But yesterday I happened to come across a section that needed a new character. So I wrote new words! Go me! (He's nasty, too. Exactly the kind of guy who would troll LinkedIn feeds to annoy people. Actually, come to think of it, he's much worse than that). 

Busy (Best-Selling!) Beaver, Part 3: More LinkedIn

Hello World, 

This is Part 3 in my ongoing series explaining my experiences going from a relatively unknown writing schmuck to an Amazon best-selling author. Today's post is about more of my experiences on the social networking site, LinkedIn. This is the second post about LinkedIn, so if you haven't yet read the first one, you should probably scroll down & start with last week's blatherings.

...So when I saw all those comments (over 3,700 you'll recall), I was quickly discouraged. There was NO WAY I was going to go through all of those!  Instead, I did what most everybody else did: I posted my own comment with my own link to my own Facebook page, and closed my LinkedIn tab, hoping for the best. 

I was amazed at how quickly I gained more fans. Within two days I had gone from 422 to 450. By December 10th (only a week later) I had crossed 500... a number I had once thought was at least a year in the future. It was the biggest surge since I'd launched my author profile. This was great! 

My proverbial snowball was thus at a precarious position. 

It could easily sit there forever filled with potential, and sadly never move. 

....or...

The gentlest of winds could nudge it downhill.

The nudge in question came when I noticed I was getting some personal messages on facebook. These were all from authors saying they'd found my page through the LinkedIn thread, and would I mind liking their author page in return?  I'm always happy to support and encourage other artists, so even though most of them were not my style of writing I was more than happy to do so. Besides, I thought, It's only fair, right? And who knows, maybe some of them will share some other good writing and marketing ideas. 

I was right on both counts. But that 'other good ideas' part didn't come till later. 

In the meantime I realized that these people who sent me personal messages were getting a lot more exposure. Why? Because they took the time and effort to ask for it... in other words, they worked their ASSES off! It was then I made my decision. 

I was going to go through ALL of those old comments, dammit! I was going to connect with EVERY single author on that list, and every one of them would get my polite, personal message with a link to my page. 

And so it was that the snowball was not so much nudged but thrust down that proverbial hill. 

It took me 6 days and more than 50 website hours, but there was an explosion of activity on my Facebook page. People were liking my pictures, visiting my first couple of blog posts, and commenting about my books. I crossed 600 fans only 2 days later, and I remember joking with my wife that I might actually get to 750 by New Year's Day. Oh how wrong I was. On Christmas day my Facebook author page stood at 888. WHAT!? This was more than double the fans I had started with less than a month earlier. 

By the time the holidays were in full swing, I was exhausted, elated, and unfortunately frustrated. Frustrated? you ask. Good grief, why?  Well, there's one more post I'll need to write about that. For now, let's just say that my LinkedIn experience also had an ugly, annoying, nasty side to it too. 

As I mentioned once before, people are idiots. Still, it was worth the effort.

Appreciatively yours, 
-K.  

ps: Words written since last post: None on paper (or on screen), but I did do some serious thinking and I'm happy to report I had minor breakthrough about one of my major concerns for my "Man Hunt" sequel. I'm very happy about it & I'm looking forward to getting it into the story.