Time to Terrify Your Tablet!

Happy Halloween, ghoulies!

I’m pleased to share that I’m taking part in the enormous free horror book giveaway going on today, Terrify Your Tablet! This is an event organized by the amazing folks at Horrorsmith Publishing where a bunch of authors and pubishers have made their horror and dark fantasy books free for a single day this Halloween!

As part of this, you can also grab a FREE copy of my book The Seeking! A science fiction horror with monsters set around Halloween, it’s a perfect read for this time of the year.

The Seeking

Beware the Gray People

Each Seeking, the magic that protects the town of Carra must be renewed, which means the children of the Exalted Family must go into hiding. Whether through disguise or bribe, through trusted friends or perfect hiding places, every child of the Priest family must avoid capture for the full day of The Seeking.

When things go wrong with the renewal, it’s up to seventeen-year-old Dahlia, the middle child of the Priest family, and her girlfriend, Bisa, to escape Carra and find the magical beings responsible for the protection. They must learn who would require such a cruel game every year and if the protection of the Gray People is really worth such a price.

What they will discover is far worse.

A Mid-Summer Sale

It’s been a busy summer so far, and it’s only July! I’ve got lots of new projects coming down the lines, including a whole slew of weird horror shorts.

NIGHTFEEDERS ii.iiSmashwords is running a sale for the month of July, I like to think of it as Christmas in July. Authors can opt-in to have deep discounts on their books. So for this month only you can get Night Feeders for FREE over on the Smashwords website, which means you can download it for whatever e-reader you prefer including Kindle, Nook, tablet – heck, you can even get it in PDF format.

All you have to do is go to the Smashwords listing and enter the Coupon Code on checkout: SW100. And if you’re interested in seeing what other books are on sale right now, check out the full July Summer/Winter Sale (you know, depending on what end of the globe you’re on).

And if you like it, I sure would appreciate a short comment or a quick rating on their site or elsewhere.

Fair warning though that this story has been known to give “stressmares” if read before bedtime…

Charlene has her own Ebook

Really it was excellent news to hear when I got back from vacation! To be fair, it looks like it got posted before we left, but I blame a whirlwind of activity (ie. work, last minute packing, boarding cats, etc.) for distracting me from the Ebook release of my short story, The Mysterious Disappearance of Charlene Kerringer. You can now pick it up exclusively on Kindle at $1.99. Just click on the big blue cover on the right.

If you’re more interested in anthologies than the single varieties, you can still pick up a copy of RealLies with all of its gorgeous cover artwork, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or even from Zharmae directly.

But the awesome news just keeps on coming.

On top of this, I found out that over at The A P Book Club, run by two friends who are total book lovers, they recently posted a review of RealLies. Ashley even went through and gave individual reviews for each short story, and had some kind words to say about Charlene’s tale.

While it starts out like your typical detective story, it soon takes a sudden turn in a completely unexpected direction. Things get weird, but I actually enjoyed where they ended up.
Ashley

If you would like to take a look at their full reviews, Ashley broke hers up into two parts. Paul also wrote a review, but didn’t include my story. It really is difficult to review every story in an anthology though. There are so many! Take a look at what they said, and also browse through their impressive review listing that stretches from My Little Pony and Transformers Prime to Two Boys Kissing and Skulk.

  • Ashley’s Review of RealLies Part 1: Curiosity
  • Ashley’s Review of RealLies Part 2: Control
  • Paul’s Review of RealLies

I guess it’s time to dive back into edits again. Doing some major changes on my Supernatural Western novel. Although I’m hoping to participate in NaNo in November, I’m thinking I might be stuck with edits instead of writing. Edits are supposed to be even more important than just producing though, right?

Night Feeders is Alive and Kicking

A western tale with a supernatural twist, Night Feeders is a difficult story to pin down. It resists staying put in a proper genre, and dances around somewhere between a horror and western, with bouts of humor taking hold along the way. Humor in my stories tends to veer along the lines of American Werewolf in London. One minute you’re horrified, then next you crack a smile because laughing after that scene just wouldn’t seem right in a way.

The story follows the sad decrepit town of Clarkville and the ominous secret Sheriff Ritters keeps hidden below. If you’re a fan of the supernatural, and enjoy a good western such as The Quick and the Dead, then this story ought to please.

Now available at Amazon, B&N, Smashwords.

By the way, I’m still trying to get Amazon to put Clawbinder up for free as well. If you have a moment, and want to help me get my free book up properly on the site, try the following:

  1. Scroll down to “Tell us about a lower price”
  2. Choose Website
  3. Give the link for Barnes and Noble or Smashwords (where it’s free).
  4. Set the price and shipping cost to 0.
  5. Click Submit Feedback.
  6. Thanks in advance! 🙂

The reason for this is kind of long-winded, but good to know in my opinion. I used to have this listed to be distributed via Smashwords since it allows for a free publication like this to be pushed around to multiple venues. However after a few weeks of waiting for the status to change from “Fixing conversion problems with Amazon” I discovered that this was not my fault. Apparently there are a bunch of authors who had to give up on Smashwords’ distribution to Amazon, and were then forced to upload directly instead.

To be honest, I’m not sure which company is to blame. All I know is that as an author, I’m missing out on potential readers because free eBooks are a challenge to post.

Article Dropoff

Found a few interesting articles today that I thought others might appreciate.

  • Changing the Subject: On Darkness — Sarah Porter From YA: Outside the Lines. I thought this was an interesting take from an author who’s published a darkly themed YA novel herself and the feedback she got on it. Considering the types of stories she describes kids of that age writing, it’s strange to think that that same content wouldn’t be considered for them to read. Personally I’d rather see it first in a book before I ever had to deal with themes like that in real life.
  • How to Donate an Ebook to a Library As someone who’s looking to buy an ebook reader in the next few months (holding out for a tax refund), I found this very interesting. There’s a large variety of books available for ebook checkout now from your local library, but as you can imagine, not as many as you’d like to see. The only drawback I see to doing this is that you have to purchase the license ability for the library to use, where normally you’d just drop the read book off. With library hours becoming thinner and due to our library’s very small book supply, having the option to checkout more eBooks is definitely a plus to me.