Cody C. Engdahl's Blog, page 4

Book Review: Charge to Battle, by Nick Ryan

This was exactly what I was looking for.

I’m normally a historical fiction reader and I write 19th-century military novels. I decided to reward myself after finishing a Franco-Prussian War book by reading something contemporary. 

I’ve recently become fascinated with modern mechanized warfare, especially how it compares and contrasts with the mounted warriors of the 1800s I write about. I was particularly interested in Stryker and Bradley armored personnel carriers. I found this book after some searching, and boy was I happy I did! 

Charge to Battle is an absolute action-packed romp through the opening scenes of a speculative World War III. Nick Ryan certainly knows his stuff and if you read the acknowledgments at the end, you’ll see he had a lot of help from those on the inside.

The setup feels quite familiar although this book was written before the Russo-Ukrainian War. In Charge to Battle, the Russians have begun the reconquest of their lost empire. They quickly roll through the Baltic States and are now driving toward Warsaw to take back Poland. 

NATO has been caught with their pants down. They scramble to meet the challenge,  rallying their thinly spread troops to protect the Polish capital. A small force of American Strikers and Polish militia sally forward to harry the Russian advance in a desperate attempt to buy the allies time. 

It all comes down to a bridge that the Stryker force must cross without air support, as all air assets are concentrated at Warsaw. The Russians are dug in deep and ready to contest every inch of the crossing. 

Sergeant First Class Tom Edge leads his mechanized cavalry platoon of four Strykers to recon the bridge. With him are a company of green Polish troops mounted in KTO Rosomaks, which are their version of the American Stryker. However, Sergeant Edge and his soldiers find themselves in the heart of a desperate, bloody battle as the Russians defend the bridge to the death.

As I said before, this is an action-packed novel which spends most of the time in detailed battle scenes. Nick Ryan is a master of this. He’s also good at explaining how the weapons and vehicles work and the tactics using them. Still, I found myself looking things up, mostly because I was fascinated and wanted to see what they looked like.

If you want to see how a modern conventional battle would play out between equally advanced adversaries, this is a great book and it is only one out of eleven in a series.

The series is called Nick Ryan’s World War 3 Military Fiction Technothrillers. The novels are about 50,000 words and take place in this imagined but very realistic war. The books are not sequential, so you can start with any one. They each feature a different window into the war and different technologies. One book is about submarines, another is about fighter jets, and so forth. 

Honestly, I was just going to read the one about Stryker armored personnel carriers but I might have to read more now that I’m hooked.  They’re all rather short so it’s easy to burn through one in less than a week.

If you want a realistic look into what a modern conventional war might look like among highly advanced equals, I think any of these books would give you a good taste. Great job, Mr. Ryan. I look forward to reading more.

Check out Charge to Battle here:

Check out my latest novel here:

…and get the pre-order Kindle special for only 99¢/99p or your local equivalent of my newest novel. It’ll $4.99 when it comes out April 16, 2025.

Book Review: Falkenhorst, by Mark Rascovich

The book is about two young aristocrats forced into an arranged marriage that neither wants. They’re both bullheaded, set in their ways, and selfish but still likable. The wedding takes place on the eve of the Franco-Prussian war, which will test them dearly.

Gustav immediately harkens to the call of duty, leaving his bride behind on their wedding night so that he can find his glory on the battlefield. Theresa is sent to his family’s ruined estate on the Prussian/Polish frontier. But instead of despairing, she grows in her independence as she strives to build it into a viable farm in his absence. 

There are plenty of action and battle scenes as Gustav and his brother, Albrecht, a civil railroad inspector, have their adventures in the war. The boys couldn’t be more different. Gustav is militant and exacting. Albrecht is sensitive and intellectual. The two will eventually become romantic rivals as the story thickens.

There are compelling human characters full of contrast and depth. Two of my favorites are the obese deposed prince of Hanover, who others call “the Royal Pudding,” but turns out to be courageous and noble, and the effeminate and diminutive French lieutenant others call “l’enfant terrible” because of his ferociousness and bravery.

The depictions of battles are vivid, with a deep understanding of Prussian military and aristocracy. I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would. Sadly, the author, Mark Rascovich, died the same year this was published. I think he should be proud of leaving behind such an engrossing swan song.

There is no Kindle version of this novel that I’m aware of but here’s a link to where you can find a print copy: Falkenhorst

Here’s a preview of my latest novel:

Book Review: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

I got invited to play fiddle for the Jane Austen Society of Middle Tennessee, so I thought I should read one of her books first.

I really enjoyed it! And this is coming from a guy who reads and writes swashbuckling adventures. You definitely have to read it in the context of the time it was written. There’s lots of verbose dialogue and compound sentences filled with multiple clauses, subtle tones, and implications that you have to stay on your toes.

I also noticed that much of the action happens off camera, which the characters then react to in dialogues set in parlors and countryside walks. In other words, there’s a lot of “tell don’t show” going on. I guess it’s because, unlike the modern reader, Jane Austen has never seen a blockbuster movie, she has only seen plays where the story unfolds this way because of the limits of the stage. The sitcoms of the 1970s and 1980s worked this way too.

The Wikipedia article about this novel said she originally wrote in epistolatory form, as in letters sent back and forth between the characters. This was a popular form for novels at the time. I think this also explains some narrative distance from the events and action. The characters often convey them in conversation to others like they would in a letter instead of Austen fleshing them out in real time.

As I said, you have to read this in the context and style of 1811, when she published it. For me, I found it to be an interesting window into a time that only one who had lived in, could convey. Bravo, Ms. Austen. Thank you for leaving this for us.

Check out Jane Ausen’s Sense and Sensibility here:

Check out my latest novel here:

There Are No Stars Today, Just Ghosts of Our Past

I promise this article has a happy ending that is excited about the possibilities we have today and in the future. So stick with me!

I got really excited about seeing Mike Tyson fight again. He was unbeatable when I was a teen and an early adult. Some of my favorite memories were going to parties and watching the fights on pay-per-view. 

So I was filled with nostalgia at this chance to see Iron Mike Tyson put on his gloves one last time and take down some loud-mouth social media influencer. Laura and I made drinks and cooked dinner while the undercard matches streamed on my laptop set on the kitchen counter. 

Poor Laura never made it to the women’s bout, which may have been the best that night. I lay in bed next to her with my headphones on, trying to stay awake long enough to see Tyson fight. 

As I said back in the 90s, Tyson has to knock you out in the first three rounds, or he’s in trouble. By the third round, he was in trouble. Still, the old champion went the full eight, two-minute rounds with the young upstart who was thirty-one years his junior.

To his credit, in the last seconds, Jake Paul brought his hands together and bowed to the legend before him, a gesture of great respect. They hugged and said encouraging things to each other as everyone filed into the ring. I didn’t need to wait to see the decision but did so anyway. Paul won by unanimous decision, beating one of the greatest athletes of all time.

I went to bed with a bad feeling in my stomach. It felt like vandalism. It was like one of those protestors throwing tomato soup on a famous painting at the Louvre just to get attention.

In Paul’s defense, he is a showman who has built his fame on the internet with spectacle. Getting an aging heavyweight champion to come out of retirement to fight him was a feat in itself. It’s my understanding that Paul was behind organizing the whole event, which was so successful that Netflix had outages due to the sheer number of watchers worldwide streaming the event live at the same time.

But why was it successful? 

Jake Paul is a known name for sure, but certainly could never pull such numbers. He needed a legend like Mike Tyson to bring hundreds of millions of eyeballs to this event. There simply isn’t any young contemporary boxer who could have instead. Personally, I couldn’t even tell you who the current heavyweight champion is without googling it.

This made me think about all the derivative reboots, remakes, and sequels Hollywood spits out year after year. Most of them fail because they’re never the same as the originals for those of us who were fans, and the younger generations don’t care about what was popular in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. 

It’s only when you bring out an aging legendary movie star like Tom Cruise that you get a banger like Tom Gun: Maverick. 

But even that couldn’t save a movie like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, where we got to see an octogenarian Harrison Ford be lectured about his white male privilege for two hours by some millennial or something… I don’t know, I didn’t see it. It looked too sad to watch for me.

But the reason they dragged Ford out to reprise one of his iconic roles again, was because it was the only chance such an expensive movie could recoup its cost. They certainly weren’t going to fill the seats with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, just as Jake Paul couldn’t fill AT&T stadium himself. They needed the old legends to do that.

But who are the stars who will take their place? Who in twenty or thirty years will have to come out of retirement to prop up some young upstart? Anybody…? 

There aren’t any, and that’s okay.

In the early days of mass media, it was far easier to stand out. There was radio for music, TV for short-form narratives, and movie theaters for big-budget films. Video games were poor representations of what was popular back then. Just ask anyone who’s ever played Atari’s E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial video game.  

In these narrow lanes of entertainment, a singer, athlete, or actor could make a name for themselves. But entertainment has splintered into thousands of rivulets of interest. The Beatles were big because rock n’ roll was one big conduit of popular music. 

Now, it is scattered into an endless tree of sub-genres within sub-genres. Just look at how many styles of heavy metal there are today: death metal, doom metal, nu metal, baby metal…

Technology and social media have driven this bifurcation. No longer do you have to settle for what everybody else likes. You can go down rabbit holes and find exactly what you like in music, novels, video games, movies, shows, or whatever else you like to delve into for escapism. 

Not only that, but you can now create your own content and compete with big corporate entertainment companies. Jake Paul himself was just a regular guy who posted his antics on YouTube and became famous enough to challenge Mike Tyson to a fight. There are independent YouTubers who get more viewers by complaining about streaming shows than the shows themselves. How? Because they’re able to find their audiences and cater to them without spending the money the Hollywood studios have to put out.

The truth is that big corporate media can barely compete with us independents. Their overhead is so high that they have to hit absolute home runs with mass global appeal or lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

If you didn’t know, I’m an independent historical novelist. I always say that if you want to be published by one of the big publishing houses, you better write about Romans, Vikings, or Nazis because those sub-genres of historical fiction are the biggest sellers. To pay for their staffs and for office buildings, they have to make millions before they can pay their authors thousands.

But as an independent, I can write nineteenth-century historical military novels that serve a niche audience and still have success because it’s just me I have to pay for. 

The independents can be nimble and take risks that the cumbersome media giants can’t afford. This is why they continue to spit out reboots, remakes, and sequels, because they think those are sure bets. But there’s a risk in not taking risks: stagnation and audience apathy, which eventually drives them into the arms of independents like me!

Check out my latest novel about the Austro-Prussian War! I guarantee you won’t find anything like it from the big corporate publishers!

Book Review: Spiral, by Koji Suzuki

A Creepy Combining of Medical Horror and Paranormal Thriller 

Even though this is the sequel to the Ring novel, which spawned Japanese and American film adaptations, this is a completely different story and direction from the cinematic sequels. 

Spiral picks up immediately after Ring. It introduces a new character, Ando Mitsuo, who’s a medical examiner intent on deciphering his friend’s mysterious death, only to discover a horrifying pattern that threatens all of humanity. 

The plot is a slow burn that prods along like a crime procedural. Ando and his friend Miyashita investigate a curse that works much like a virus, killing its host seven days after the victim watches a mysterious videotape. But as Ando and Miyashita draw nearer to the truth, the virus is changing, mutating into something more sinister.

This book definitely had some creepy moments and a surprise ending that I was only able to see coming in the last fifteen percent of the book. 

Spiral is full of some heady stuff and, at times, goes deep into medical and code-breaking segments that were a bit laborious for me but still very interesting. 

The ending was satisfying while leaving room for more. Pay attention to details along the way because nothing is wasted or forgotten. I originally only meant to read the first book but was compelled to read this one immediately after. 

I look forward to continuing the saga with the next book, Loop.  I guess he’s got me trapped now.

Check out Suzuki’s Spiral here:

Check out my latest here:

After Action Report: “Morgan Returns” Civil War Reenactment

The inaugural “Morgan Returns” event was a success! 

This man gave me all the affirmation I need. He already had my first three books on Kindle. I assume he got them from Amazon. He came out and got print copies of my latest two in person.  I’ve never been happier or prouder to sign a book.



“Morgan Returns” had its inaugural American Civil War reenactment last weekend, November 1-3, 2024. Gary Lima, the coordinator, invited me to come play my fiddle and sign books. By the way, can you guess which car is mine? I’ll give you a hint. I’m the starving artist.



I’ll have the answer at the end.

So here’s the report: I sold 24 books and got 9 new signups for my email list. If you are one of them, thank you, and welcome to Engdahl House.Here are some pictures I took with my new readers, three of which bought the whole series! Check it out!



I also got recruited into the battle reenactment. Here in the South, there are never enough Yankees to shoot, so since I was in uniform, I made a perfect target!



Ethan was kind enough to find me a gun and some cartridges to fire for the battle. He normally dresses in Confederate Gray, but on the first day, he took one for the team and wore his Yankee Blue.



Private Prius and I will be back next year. We’ll also be at “Morgan on the Rim” in Ridgetop the weekend before. Here are some more upcoming events where I’ll be. Not all of them are book signings but I always have plenty in my trunk if you come out and want one.

Nov. 30: Battle of Franklin Memorial at the Lotz House Museum
Dec. 7:  Yulefest at Historic Mansker’s Station
Dec. 14: Mr. & Mrs Claus Christmas in Smithville, TN
Dec: 16 Battle of Nashville Memorial
Mar. 7-8: Mid-South Military History and Civil War Show in New Haven, MS
May 2-3: Farm to Plate Dinner at the Head Farm
Jun. 5: Evening at Elmwood
Oct. 24-26: Morgan on the Rim
Oct. 31-Nov. 2: Morgan Returns



We’re planning on having The French Fiasco out early next year. I’ll let you know when the pre-order for the digital version begins. It’ll be 99¢ during that period and then $4.99 once it comes out. I don’t know how much the print or audio copies will be. 

After that, I plan on writing a novella that will be free and exclusive to members of my email list. Click the link to join!

That should be out next year as well. The working title is The Underground Railroad Ball. It’ll take place the night before Rampage on the River begins and will feature Deputy Chester E. Newman. You may recall him from the first three books. Here’s some concept art:

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After that, I’ll begin writing Black James. That will be an epic character novel that will span generations starting in Africa in the late 1700s. It features James, who is mentioned in my first three books and makes a dramatic appearance in Mexico, My Love. Here’s some concept art of James.


I hope you stick with me. I have a lot more planned.

Much love,

Cody,
Your friend.

Check out my latest here:

Book Review of The Ring, by Koji Suzuki

A paranormal thriller as thoroughly Japanese as an ancient Kami Demon.

Like most readers today, I saw the American horror movie The Ring, before I knew about this book. I had even seen the Japanese film, although I don’t remember much of it other than the feel was different from the Hollywood version. I believe the American movie is a remake of the Japanese film and not a direct adaptation of the novel. I’d like to watch both films again now that I’ve read the original source material. I’m interested in seeing how they differ. 

Although the American film is now a horror classic in itself, I’d say the book is more of a  paranormal and even perhaps a psychological thriller than a horror novel. It almost reads like a crime procedural rather than a ghost story. 

Asakawa is an investigative reporter looking into the mysterious death of four teenagers who died of sudden heart failure at the exact same time in different places, but all with the same horrified look on their faces. In the course of his investigations, he too becomes infected with the curse that seems to kill its victims, exactly one week after they watch a mysterious videotape. He enlists his eccentric friend Ryuji in a race against time to solve the mystery behind the tape before this horrific death comes for them, too.

The book has many of the main beats of the American movie but is different enough to be surprising and engaging all the way through. The back story of the tape and the mysterious girl is thoroughly Japanese and far more interesting than the movie. I enjoyed seeing it unfold as the two heroes work their way through the clues.

The character Ryuji is quirky and a lot of fun, even funny at times. He plays off of Asakawa’s straight-man demeanor very well. I have to say, there is a disturbing bit about Ryuji’s back story that might be alarming to modern-day Western readers. To this, I say: this is a Japanese novel written in 1991. It’s from a different culture and era. Also, do not let this deter you. Stick with it because as with all good storytelling, nothing is thrown away. There are reasons that things that seemingly have little to do with the plot are there. Suzuki knew what he was doing when he wrote this. Trust him.

The end sets up the sequel, Spiral, which I’m compelled to read immediately. That wasn’t my plan, but now I have to know what happens next. Keep in mind that Spiral is the sequel to the novel. I believe the American movie, Ring II  is a sequel to the first movie and not an adaptation of the second novel.

I recommend jumping in with me into this six-part series of novels. If the rest are as good as the first, I’m sure we’re in for a ride.

Check out Suzuki’s The Ring Here:

Check out my latest novel here:

Book Review of Assignment Paris, by Robert Brightwell

Assignment Paris is a lively, well-researched adventure with a great character that’s fun to read while giving you a good sense of the real history of the Franco-Prussian war.

Ne’re do-well Thomas Harrison is given a job as a war correspondent at his uncle’s paper. He’s sent to Paris and witnesses much of the war from the saber-rattling early days through many of the battles, including Sedan, the Siege of Paris, and finally, the “Bloody Week” with the destruction of the Paris Commune. There’s also a love story with great foreshadowing that’ll keep you reading to the end.

Thomas Harrison is fictional but is written as a counterpart to the real journalist Archibald Forbes.  Many of the main character’s adventures and mishaps are taken from real experiences of other journalists as well. Even his love interest is based on a legendary and somewhat mystical heroine of the Commune.

The main character’s first-person narrative acts as a tour guide of the real history. Author Robert Brightwell weaves the important historical aspects seamlessly into the story through dialog and the character’s journalistic pursuits. The result is a very readable and entertaining romp that will leave you with a good sense of what happened during the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune that followed.

Check out the free preview here:

Once you’ve read that, check out my novel about the Austro-Prussian War:

How Should I Organize and Market My Series?

Seriously, I’m asking. 

Why I’m Asking You:

If you follow my blog posts or livestreams, you know I don’t consider myself an expert in writing, publishing, or marketing. I’m merely a guy on the path, learning, and sharing my experiences. But I’d like to learn from your experiences, too. I’d like to know what you think, whether you’re a reader, an author, or both like me. In other words, I’d like some advice, please.

The Situation:

I currently have five novels out in my Long Century series. I’m writing the sixth one now. It’s called The French Fiasco. Ittakes place four years after The Prussian Princeand is a direct sequel. It’s also a continuation of what I unofficially call “the Carliad,” which is named after Carl, the main character of the series, except for book four, Mexico, My Love, which is a prequel to the first three books. There, he’s only a baby and a side character at best. Confusing? Yes, I agree. I’ll explain more about that later.

I’m going to write Black James nextafter I finish The French Fiasco. James is mentioned in the original trilogy and then makes an appearance in the fourth book, Mexico, My Love. Black James will be a character novel that starts before the War of 1812. It’ll be connected to the series but outside of the main sequence. After Black James is out, I plan to return to the main story, with novels taking place after the French Fiasco. I currently have four planned, including a definitive series ender. Those books should all run in chronological order. 

I have books planned after that, but they won’t be part of the Carliad. I don’t know if I’ll write them as stand-alone or somehow incorporate them into the series. I have some other ideas for new series, too, but that’s a ways off from here, and anything can happen between now and then.

The History, Evolution, and Development of The Long Century series:

My initial idea was to create a character like Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe or C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower, then write a series of novels following his adventures. Since I’m an American, I thought I would stay in my lane, put my series in the American Civil War, and still have all the swashbuckling Romanticism of an Alexandre Dumas novel or an Errol Flynn film. 

I decided to go with what I know, so I created a character from Detroit who joins the army and ends up in Tennessee. I picked the 2nd Michigan Cavalry to be his regiment since many of them mustered in Detroit and ultimately fought in the Battle of Nashville toward the end of the war. I also chose cavalry because the other military arms tend to stay in camp, march, or fight battles. Cavalry provides my character more opportunities to have out-of-camp adventures because they go out on patrol, scouting missions, and raids.

I also liked the 2nd Michigan because they fought in some interesting battles that few have covered. I studied their career in the war and then broke it into three novels, each one ending with a marquee battle much like Cornwell’s Sharpe series. I think that might have been the first departure from my original plan of placing the whole series in the American Civil War. 

You can tell that I already had a Mexican War prequel planned when I wrote book one, Rampage on the River: The Battle for Island No. 10  because I was clearly setting it up in Chapter One. I’m quite sure I also had an idea about doing a Franco-Prussian novel very early on. I’m writing that one now. What I didn’t know was that I would end up squeezing in an Austro-Prussian War novel, The Prussian Prince, because it solved a timing issue I had with my character and his story.

Regardless of these plans, I called my series The 2nd Michigan Cavalry Chroniclesin the beginning. I think that title was a holdover from when I thought I would crank out a bunch of Civil War novels as Cornwell did with his Sharpe series and the Napoleonic Wars. He later added some prequels that take place in India and an adventure in Chile after the war, but the series is predominantly Napoleonic. The covers of my first three books still have The 2nd Michigan Cavalry Chronicleswritten on them, even though the series name has changed twice since.

Mexico, My Love is a prequel to The 2nd Michigan Cavalry Chronicles. I initially set it up as such in the Amazon metadata but ran into problems. As a prequel, it wasn’t showing up on the landing pages of the other three books. It was also set to the side on the landing page for the series where it wasn’t listed with the others. I can’t say these were the causes, but Mexico, My Love did not perform as well as the others when I first published it. 

I concluded that because it wasn’t shown with the others, people weren’t buying it. It didn’t seem to be part of the series. However, even though I say that you can read any of my books out of order, Mexico, My Lovewas written to fit between Blood for Blood at Nashvilleand The Prussian Prince. It picks up with Claudette during the time of Blood for Blood at Nashville, then flashes back to when she was a girl in France. From there it tells the story of how she met Carl’s father, ran away with him, got tangled up in the Mexican-American War, and ended up in Detroit where we find her at the beginning of Rampage on the River.

It may have been my best book yet, but nobody was reading it. So I changed it from being a sequel outside of the main sequence, to book four of the series. This really made sense because books five and six reference it and even have some characters and consequences from Mexico, My Love. So it’s definitely part of the main story. 

But then it didn’t make sense to call the series The 2nd Michigan Cavalry Chronicles. The 2nd Michigan didn’t exist during the Mexican-American War. So I had to change the name of the series. I decided to call it The Cavalry Chronicles since that retained some similarity to the original title and Claudette’s lover is a cavalryman. This also helped fix Blood for Blood at Nashville, which really didn’t have enough 2nd Michigan Cavalry to have that series name. I did, however, leave the original series title on the covers to differentiate the Civil War Trilogy as an entity onto itself.

A quick sidebar here about Mexico, My Love: It also can work as an entry point into the series. I have a friend who just picked it up because he decided to read the series in chronological order. I think this is an interesting experiment. I hope he gives me feedback about experiencing it that way. The only problem is there is a, shall we say, “Empire-Strikes-Back-level” reveal in The Perils of Perryvillethat will be spoiled if you read Mexico, My Lovefirst. It would be like watching the Star Wars prequel trilogy of the early 2000s before watching the original trilogy that started in 1977. However, I’m sure a lot of young people experienced Star Wars that way and were none the worse for it.

Anyway, once I started writing The Prussian Prince, Irealized that even the series name The Cavalry Chronicleshad problems. Keeping it would force me to make every book about cavalry. I was already stretching it with Mexico, My Love, and forcing cavalry into The Prussian Princewould be contrived and limiting. So I had to change the name again. 

This time I needed to pick something that would make sense for all the books so far and not tie my hands for future books. I can’t keep changing the name of the series every time I write a new novel.

I went with The Long Century Series. It’s named after the Long Nineteenth Century. It’s a concept in historical study that frames the era from the French Revolution of 1789 to the onset of World War I in 1914. The idea is that the seeds of WWI were planted in the French Revolution. 

I like this idea. I even say the Long Nineteenth Century ends with the end of World War II since War World I was the culmination of all the political threads that ran back to the Revolution and that WWII was nothing more than continuation of the First World War. I also think WWII was the true end of Romanticism and that nineteenth-century notion of honor among enemies that I like to write to. 

Since I plan to end the series in WWI, I think The Long Century is a good title. It also affords me room to move backward and start Black James before the War of 1812, which was really an extension of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Question:

So, should Black James be Book Seven, should it be a side story outside of the main sequence, or perhaps should I make it its own series? 

When you think of it, The Long Century Series is, or will be, an American Civil War trilogy, then a Mexican-American War prequel, then a two-book Prussian saga, then a stand-alone character-driven story, followed by four more main sequence novels, yet, they’re all connected. How would you organize it? How would you present it to the readers? How would you market it? I look forward to hearing what you’ve got to say.

Thanks! 

Hey check out the preview of my latest novel:

Please, Join My Email List!

Here’s the link: https://subscribepage.io/EngdahlHouse

I promise not to spam you. My email list is to update friends like you on my discounts, appearances, and upcoming novels. 

I am really enjoying this journey. I hope you are, too. I’m excited to have you along. 

Being an independent author is a struggle, but it’s the struggle that excites me. I’ve learned so much along the way, not only about history, storytelling, and writing but also about digital marketing. 

I suppose one of the advantages of being a commercially published author is that someone else does the marketing for you. I can see the allure of that. You just write the books, and they do the rest. Heck, I hear much of the editing is handed off to a professional staff so you can start cranking out your next book. So, I’m not knocking it, and please tell me if I’m wrong in my assumptions about how things work with the big publishers.

I like to think of myself as an independent author and an entrepreneur, or solopreneur, as the cool kids say. I like the marketing part of the business. I worked in advertising for years. I also enjoy interacting with my friends the readers on social media and learning from other authors there. I’ve joined several of their email lists, first to keep up with their new releases and also to learn how they do their email marketing. 

Every social media guru seems to say you need to have an email list. You may have a big following on X, Facebook, YouTube, or wherever. But that is borrowed ground, controlled by algorithms and community managers who stifle organic marketing. You own your email list, and nobody can take it away from you even though your members can unsubscribe. So always treat them with respect and give them what they want.

The best part is that after you pay the startup cost of buying a domain name and paying for an email server, it’s free advertising.

Trust me, I spend a lot of money to run ads on Amazon and Facebook. That’s usually to tell people that one of my books is 99¢ or 99p. There’s not a lot of return on investment there, even when they do buy.  The hope is that they’ll like that book so much that they’ll buy the others and become a lifelong reader.

With my list, I can fire off an email anytime I want to tell you that one of my books is on sale, and it doesn’t cost me a thing.

Admittedly, I was reluctant to get started. There were upfront costs and certainly a lot of technical effort to get the thing running. I read Bryan Cohen’s Self-Publishing and Email Marketing book and followed most of it. 

Unfortunately, there is no click-by-click guide for the technical part. I don’t think there could be because technology is constantly changing. As soon as you know how to do something on Facebook, for instance, they change it. However, I was able to use technical support on both the domain name seller and the email server side to finally marry the two after days of hair loss and tears.

There’s still a lot I need to do from Cohen’s book, including writing an exclusive free short story for people who sign up. Don’t worry, if you sign up now, or have already signed up, I’ll make sure you get it too. But that’s a long way off from here. 

Still, I’d like to know if you’d be interested in that. It would have to be connected to my series and add some insight, but not be necessary to read to understand everything else. I think it should probably take place before the narrative of Book One: Rampage on the River. I have an idea, but I’d like to hear what you think. What story would you like? What or whom would you like to know more about? 

Please leave a comment or reach out to me, any way you like, and once again, please join my email list: https://subscribepage.io/EngdahlHouse.

Here’s a preview of Cohen’s book on email marketing:

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