What's Up With Me?

Whoa, where did the days go?  Sorry I totally missed Crime Fighter Friday. 

Anyway, it's been almost a month since Dying Embers was officially available for sale.  Hardly seems like a month has gone by. 

First off, thanks to everyone for making my debut launch special and for not leaving me hanging without any sales or reviews.  You guys are all awesome.  I'll do an actual wrap-up of numbers on Friday - when the real one-month anniversary hits. 

If I continue at this rate, book sales are not going to make me rich by any definition of the word, but it's better than the last ten years of nothing special.  Finally, it's all on me.  Come kudos or raspberries, I did this. 

Just so you know, I'm hard at work polishing up another book to send out into the world. This one is more mystery than suspense, but I think you'll still enjoy it. Right now, let's just say it's about a big-city detective who goes to a small town to comfort his recently-widowed sister, and discovers a dead woman outside the funeral home.  The more he looks into what they've ruled an accidental death, the more he finds the town has had a rash of 'accidental deaths', and being the man he is, he can't stop himself from investigating--even when the locals don't want him to. 

Again, thanks for your support of Dying Embers, and I hope to have something new for you soon.  (Hoping for 6-8 weeks from now.)

Wicked Wednesday - The Roermond Witch Trials

Yesterday afternoon, a friend of mine mentioned that she was distantly related to someone who was accused of being a witch at Salem.  I'm related to one of the jurors at one Salem witch trial, so we had a little fun there.  Later, as I was thinking of what to write about for Wicked Wednesday and scrolling through my bookmarks when I stumbled upon a bit of information I discovered years ago (researching another book) about the witch trials in a place called Roermond.

Roermond took place in what was the Spanish Netherlands with the first recorded trial in 1522.  They were big on the witch thing back then in that particular place, so that wasn't the last.  Several more took place between 1525 and 1611.  But the biggie was held in 1613. 

Not much is known about the trials.  Most of the information has been lost to time.  But, from what I can gather, 64 witches were arrested and accused of causing all manner of things they couldn't possibly have done.  (Like every other witch trial in every other place.)  Of course, it didn't help that at least one of the accused 'confessed'.  Yeah, I bet they did.  :eyeroll:

Over the course of a month, the good people of Roermond burned two witches a day until all 64 were dead.  There's nothing about how the awesome burgh of Roermond suddenly became free from strife afterwards, of course, but those things rarely make the news.

Funny.  You'd think that after supposedly killing around a thousand people and six thousand critters, someone would've noticed how much healthier everyone was.  Then again, if they were witch enough to kill, they should've had some magic to get them out of being killed themselves.  Strange how that works. 

Anyway, if that ain't wicked, I don't know what is. 

Have any of you ever been accused of something you didn't do? 

Marketing Monday

Since marketing seems to be the hardest hurdle for writers to leap, I thought I'd continue with the theme of the past Monday and talk a little about marketing again.  (And please note, I'm still too new at this to know if any of it will actually help me gain sales.  I've heard it can, but I have no data to back that up.)

First things first - making the book free.  Here's an excellent article from Elizabeth Spann Craig on the subject: The Impact of Free Promos.  Based on what I'd already read on the subject, I had planned on making Dying Embers free.  Hell, that was half the reason I signed the book up for Kindle Select - because the Select program let's you set the book for free for 5 days over the course of your 90 day period (in a row or one at a time or whatever).  I'd read that setting your book to free can help increase sales.  (I know, it sound anti-intuitive, but if other writers are selling books and doing this, what can it hurt to try.) 

To that end, Dying Embers is free for today only - 12:00am 3/2 thru 11:59 3/2 - so if you haven't got a copy of your very own yet, go get one.  Read it.  Review it if you're so inclined.

Which leads me to reviews.  Having them helps sales.  And as of this posting, I have 4 awesome reviews over Amazon and Goodreads.  I didn't solicit them - and I will never pay for them.  That's not cool. 

Which leads me to another marketing thing I have going on tomorrow - Kboards.  They have something like 80,000 subscribers and for a mere $15 they're running my book on what's called their 'Book Discovery Days' promo.  It'll be there along with other books, of course, but for that price, I couldn't pass it up.  That'll be up at 4pm Pacific tomorrow.  (After free day is over - unless Amazon screws something up and makes my 'day' longer.)

But don't let me forget what I have going on today!  A friend of mine messaged me the other day asking if I'd like to guest blog - pimp my book, etc.  I wrote a post and sent it over.  So today, I'm guest blogging at the homeplace of Laura Bickle - writer of awesomeness for adult and YA markets.  I've stalked... err, followed Laura ever since I read her urban fantasy Embers years ago.  And we became friends.  Now, I'm not advocating going out and making friends so that they'll pimp your books for you.  I am advocating going out and making friends the natural way, and one hopes that they'll like you enough to offer to pimp your books.  But I've been slowly making friends since I started this blogging thing in 2006 before I ever dreamed of being brave enough to self-publish, so your mileage may vary.

Anyway, like I said, I'm not sure how effective all this marketing will be, but as of this morning, around 40 people have a copy of my book.  That's 10 more people than yesterday and the day is early.  And if only a fraction of those people review it or chat it up or want a hardcopy of the book for their very own, it'll be worth it.  I think.  Maybe. 

Time will tell.  And I will share as much as I can along the way. 

Crime Fighter Friday - Sergeant Nomsa Masuku

While searching for a weekly criminal to offer up for Wicked Wednesday, I stumbled across an article about Sergeant Nomsa Masuku - a woman who makes it her business to hunt down rapists and bring them to justice. Most recently, she was the lead investigator who brought down a man who subsequently was convicted of 30 counts of rape and 42 counts of kidnapping. 

This gal rocks.  A 40-year old mother in South Africa with three kids and 15 years on the force, I imagine she doesn't take shit from anyone.

Putting her own safety on the line, she would dress in casual clothes and go bar-hopping with a male colleague (because the rapist liked to target couples), in an attempt to draw this asshole out.  She didn't get him then, but eventually - posing as an ex-girlfriend of his who wanted her child support - she got inside his home, got him to admit who he was, and then arrested his sick ass.

You go, girl.

One less asshole off the streets. 

The world needs more officers like her.

Wicked Wednesday - The Cleveland Strangler

I found today's Wicked Wednesday candidate when doing a search for serial rapists.  Sadly, it's harder to find info about serial rapists than serial murderers - not because there are fewer of them, but because not enough work is being done to track these sick bastards down.  But enough about that...

Today I'm going to talk about Anthony Sowell - a.k.a. The Cleveland Strangler.  Sowell was a serial rapist who turned to murder and other nastiness.  From 2007-2009, he terrorized an untold number of women and murdered at least 11 of them.  (Some of whom were found inside his home during the investigation.) 

In 2009, he was arrested and charged with 85 counts of murder, rape, and kidnapping.  He tried the old 'insanity plea' thing at first, but once he realized no one was buying it, he changed his plea to guilty.  In 2011, he was convicted and received the death penalty as his sentence.  (Whether he's languishing on death row, or his sentence was carried out yet, I don't know.)

Unfortunately, the justice system already had this guy behind bars once - for a rape in 1989 - but they released him after 15 years and he took advantage of his freedom to continuing raping and progress to killing. 

The authorities are still trying to link him to other rapes through DNA evidence - dating back to 2005 when he was released from his previous incarceration.

To borrow a family euphemism, they should've cut his ippy-pippy off.

Fun With Memes

I was playing around today to see if I could come up with some neat marketing memes for Dying Embers.  Here are the two I made:

What d'ya think?

Things I Didn't Know Beforehand

I like to think I'm pretty savvy about the writing business.  Lord knows, I've been at it long enough. And I didn't spent the last ten years sitting on my butt writing books in a vacuum.  Nope, I've been out there reading and researching and learning and studying and improving and... Well, you get the gist. 

Still, this first leap into self-publishing has been a learning experience.  I thought today I'd share with you a few things I didn't know beforehand that I know now.

1)  If a reader borrows a book through Kindle Unlimited, the author doesn't actually get credit for it until the reader reads at least 10% of the book. 

2)  Cover art can take what seems like forever.  (I kinda knew this a little, so I budgeted plenty of time, but still...)

3)  Scrivener has ways to convert a manuscript into various formats for different ereaders, so in theory, you don't have to do it by hand or pay someone else.

4)  Where I was using ellipses, 90% of the time I should've been using emdashes.

5)  You capitalize directional places when you're talking about them as a specific locale - like Northern Wisconsin or Eastern Colorado - but not in general (i.e. "They drove north and then east.)

6)  If you gift someone a book through Amazon, they don't have to actually get the book you gave them.  It's more like a mini-gift-certificate they can use for anything on the site. 

7)  You can return ebooks.  This one totally floors me every time I think about it.  I shudder to think about how the unethical could potentially screw authors.  Lucky there aren't that many unethical people in the reading world.  (Yes, I am Pollyanna. I like to think readers are a better breed of people. Don't harsh my happy place.)

8)  All these years hanging out and making friends with other writers was worth more than just hanging out and making friends, because while I am a debut author, I didn't send my book out into an unfeeling world where no one would ever know I was there - because my friends have been awesome about talking about my book to their friends. 

And in the interest of disclosure, as of this morning, I have 23 sales.  I'm not breaking any records, but I'm way ahead of some people I've seen haunting the KDP forums who didn't get any sales their first week.  Right now, I owe that to you - my friends and my followers, the ones who've been with me through a lot of this beforehand stuff.  Because no one else has had a chance to know me and love my writing but you.  This weekend, though, a person totally unknown to me said she was halfway through Dying Embers and was loving it.  Which is totally cool.

Thanks!