Teel McClanahan's Blog

This is me getting a little ahead of myself, but I want to start looking for Beta Readers for my new books. I've only received feedback from about 1/4 of my First Readers, and I haven't begun working on the rewriting, yet, but the time for Beta Reading is coming up soon: I'll want people who can make time to read two short books (about 130k words total) in the second half of March, 2012 (or the first half of April at the latest), with an eye toward finding all the small errors. Typos. Incorrect word use. Confusing sentence structure. I'll be doing my best to catch errors before sending the texts out to Beta Readers, but there are always more errors to locate. If you would be willing to help, please contact me.

In addition, I'm looking for people willing to review the books. Beta Readers are included. The Beta version of the book will be 99% of the way to the published edition, and suitable for reviewing. I'll be able to deliver the eBook to reviewers in/after the same time period (mid-March to mid-April), with expected publication in May, 2012. Realistically, I'm aiming for a May Day (5/1/2012) publication date. (That's when I figured I'd need to have the book ready to send to my printer to have the hard copies at hand in time for Phoenix Comicon.) I'll encourage all my Beta Readers to write reviews, too, but the more reviews the better. If you would be willing to review the books, please contact me.

What are the books about? Here are the blurbs and covers I've got, so far:

At age 7, Sophia was struck down with a life-threatening disease. Faced with a choice between an unending life in the body of a child and her otherwise certain death, Sophia's parents had her turned into a vampire.

Now, after 10 years of Christian home-schooling and near-total isolation, Sophia secretly plans on moving out the very night she turns 18. All her research, her online classes, and her natural curiosity have prepared Sophia mentally for the world she's about to dive head-first into, but no amount of research could prepare her heart for falling in love with Joshua, the first young man she sees after donating her corneas the next day.

Her faith in God and her desire to heal the sick gives Sophia the strength to persevere through the pain of donation after donation, and her vampirism gives her the ability to grow her organs back again and again, but Sophia finds herself unequipped to face her suddenly-awakened lusts of the flesh and the ache in her heart for a deep, reciprocated love. After a shocking and painful first date with Joshua, it doesn't take Sophia long to learn just how difficult the search for love can be, especially for a teenage vampire with a child's body and a strong desire to avoid falling into sin. (Cover image adapted from a photograph by Danila Panfilov.)

Before she met Nicholas, all Emily cared about was shopping, and she believed her teachers when they told her the vampires had made the world a better place. After falling in love at first sight, Emily's mind was opened to the harsh realities brought about by the worldwide alliances between vampires and humanity at every level of society. Nicholas was leading the charge in the fight against injustice, cruelty, slavery, and tyranny by the elder vampires, and Emily found herself suddenly caught up in a movement that stood for the rights of both humanity and a new generation of vampires who'd been tricked into giving up their natural rights.

Doing everything she can for the cause comes second only to following her heart as Emily tries to win the affections of a young man whose first priority is saving the world. She follows Nicholas back and forth across the country, into the heart of the nation's vampire-run Capitol, and beyond. She risks her health, sticks out her neck, sacrifices friendship, and puts her life on the line in the name of love. Will her efforts be enough? Will she win Nicholas' heart? Can they save the world? Or will the schemes of the elder vampires put a stop to it all? (Cover image adapted from a photograph by Jesse Millan.)

Sound interesting? If you want to be a Beta Reader or reviewer, please contact me. Comment, email, call, text, tweet, facebook, G+, USMail, whatever you prefer. Only digital copies will be available for this pass, but I can make the books available in most eBook formats (ePub, mobi/kindle, PDF, etc). I look forward to hearing from you.

Effective today, 7/1/2011, I've dropped the prices on most of my eBooks by several dollars each. They're now priced in the currently-fashionable range of $2.99 to $5.99 per title in all the major eBook stores, including GoodReads.

Exclusively to GoodReads, you can even get the entire first book of my six-book SciFi series Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction - Recollections of an Alternate Past for free. With journeys into erotic dreams and beyond the boundaries of the mind, into Heaven and Hell, escaping Earth to space, diving into the depths of a black hole, and continuing past the end of the universe as we know it, this strange series recognizes no reasonable limits.

My other books range from hard science fiction short stories (Time emiT and Time Again) to YA fantasy (Dragons' Truth) and a short zombie novel (Cheating Death), plus the cross-genre books of my Lost and Not Found series and my 'Worth 1k' poetry books. Hopefully at least one of them interests you enough to give my books a try; and I'd love to hear from you if you do, right here on GoodReads; I appreciate all your comments and reviews, even if you find you don't appreciate my books, after all. Thank you.

I've just added my new book, Cheating, Death to Goodreads and added a book giveaway for it as well. I wrote this book as a direct response to feedback on my last book, Forget What You Can't Remember, which was a book that had zombies in it but which is not a zombie book - people wanted it to be a zombie book. So: I wrote a zombie book.

In fact, this book details the zombie outbreak that Forget What You Can't Remember only walked by/through & reacted to. From the start of the outbreak, with the Sergeant's cross-country shipment of zombies getting in a traffic accident, to people gathering at Invesco Field at Mile High (as though getting a lot of people in a small space was a good idea for avoiding zombies!), and ending with a glimpse of the Sergeant's people setting up camp at Denver's Civic Center Park - instead of just hearing people talk about the zombie outbreak in Denver, you get to read about someone actually going through it all, in gruesome detail.

Centered around the experiences of Melvin Spall (who you probably didn't even notice in Forget What You Can't Remember) as he goes from one horrible encounter to another (and not all of them involving zombies; the living are just as dangerous as the undead), Cheating, Death is also filled with vignettes that give glimpses into all the different ways things went wrong in Denver for other people. I tried to have zombies/mayhem in every chapter of the book, and to put plenty of gruesome images in your mind without having to spell out every gory detail.

Cheating, Death is available immediately as an eBook via Smashwords.com, and will be available October 31st in paperback. (Pre-order through modernevil.com and get a signed copy directly from me - the author.)

"What's the book about?" - It's the question everyone asks, and they want a quick and easy answer. People who think like marketers want it in the form of an "elevator pitch" and people who browse in book stores want my book covers to fit neatly into the patterns they expect - but everyone wants a fast, easy way to make a snap decision about the book.

The problem I have with this is that if I could have expressed what I wanted to express in a hundred words or less, it wouldn't have been a book, it would have been a business card!

So, I'm having a contest:
Tell me what my book is about, and you could win a prize. As Forget What You Can't Remember draws near to its final podcast episode and people all over the world hear its convoluted conclusion, I thought the time was right to ask readers and listeners this oft-repeated and oh-so-important question. But what are the prizes?

One (1) First Prize: I'll name a character after you in my next novel & let you decide whether that character lives or dies, plus send you a signed paperback copy of one of my books (your choice).

Two (2) Second Prizes: I'll send you a signed paperback copy of one of my books (your choice).

How to enter:
Email your answer to the question "What is Forget What You Can't Remember about?" to teel@modernevil.com. The deadline for entry is May 1st, 2009, two weeks after the final chapter goes live at Podiobooks.com.

Fine Print:
Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary: You can read the eBook or listen to the podcast for free. Officially open to US Residents only - but only because I don't want to deal with shipping books internationally. You can still enter from anywhere & if you win I'll still name a character after you... and... I don't know, maybe look up international shipping rates & customs paperwork? Winners will be selected by whatever method I want - probably I'll just pick the answers I think are best, but I'm not ruling out asking people on Twitter or some such. By submitting an entry you are granting me an unlimited, nonexclusive right to use your entry and any derivations thereof for any purpose, including commercial - ie: the point of having a better answer to this question is to be able to get more people to read and/or buy my book, so I need the right to use the best answers to that end. I will be running a very similar contest for both Lost and Not Found and Dragons' Truth in May, in case you want to go read and/or listen to those books & prepare your answer in advance.

I will readily admit that I do not read horror books or thrillers, and that I have no intention at this time to write such a book. I have never read a 'zombie book' and I'm not 100% certain what it is about this recent rash of zombie books that its devout readers are after. I have seen perhaps hundreds of zombie movies, and am well aware of the cultural, historical, and philosophical ideas that zombies have traditionally been used to address. Ideas that seem to be increasingly distant in modern zombie movies -and from what I've heard- in zombie books, as well. So, when I noted in large letters on the back cover of Forget What You Can't Remember that it contained 'Zombies!' -which, in fact, it does- I thought I was merely stating a single element, and continued to put a description of the book after that word.

As more and more reviews come in for this book, here, on Amazon, and via Twitter and email, I am discovering that this book is apparently not for people who like 'zombie books'. They don't understand it. They don't like that it isn't horror. They don't like that it requires thought to understand. They're upset that the rest of what was described on the back of the book is actually contained within, and that it can't really be summed up in the single word 'Zombies!'...

And generally, I'm okay with that. I didn't write the book to appeal to the readers of 'zombie fiction'. I didn't write the book to fit into the horror genre (or any other, for that matter). Perhaps I need to re-write the copy, so it can find the right readers. But the book is what I wanted it to be.

Which just happens not to be what 'zombie lovers' are looking for, apparently...

For anyone who either a) can't afford, or b) want to give my books a try without risking anything but their time - you can read eBook versions of any of my novels for free! Simply visit modernevil.com, select a book, and click 'eBook'.

If you've never tried any of my books before, there are plenty to choose from. My current favorite is -as you might expect- my latest novel, Forget What You Can't Remember. It has zombies, doomsday, a flying city, and a unique storytelling style. It's a stand-alone novel, but it also takes place in the same universe as two of my other books, Lost and Not Found and More Lost Memories, so if you like it, you should try them, too.

For young readers, I recommend Dragons' Truth, which is the story of a boy who meets a dragon and through a series of events that spiral out of control, ends up saving the world.

For more mature readers, I recommend a series I've started called Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction - Recollections of an Alternate Past. There are three books available in this series, so far, with several more planned for the future. The series covers so many subjects that you're better off reading the full description, here. The books in this series are intended to be quick reads, and regular readers should be able to get through each one in a matter of hours or days.