Jeff Strand's Blog, page 89

Dead Clown Barbecue TOC

Hey, kids! (Kids: Don’t read this.) My second short story collection, Dead Clown Barbecue, goes up for pre-order Tuesday from Dark Regions Press! There’ll be a super-ultra-deluxe hardcover limited edition, a deluxe hardcover limited edition, a trade paperback not-all-that-limited edition, and a completely-unlimited e-book edition. But regardless of which version you choose, I would never ask you to make a purchase like this without knowing the table of contents, so here it is:

Introduction
Pett Semmuteary
Comeuppance
The Apocalypse Ain’t So Bad
The Bell…FROM HELL!!!
Work/Life Balance
Stop Stabbing Me
Eight-Legged Vengeance
The Drop
Here’s What Happened…
Pregnancy Test
Mr. Twitcher’s Miracle Baby-Chopping Machine
The Carver
Push the Button
Specimen 313
My Knife Collection
Drain Bamage
Gramma’s Corpse
Burden
Rough Draft
Fangboy and the Troll
Dead in the Water
Immunity
The Big Bite
We Believe
Poor Career Choice
True Hero
Chomp (A Cautionary Tale)
The Severed Nose
Dummy
Story Notes

Get your copy (Tuesday) at http://www.darkregions.com/books/dead-clown-barbecue-by-jeff-strand

Chat Tomorrow!

Tuesday, December 18, is the unbearably exciting day that my new short story collection, Dead Clown Barbecue, goes up for pre-order! To celebrate (i.e., attempt to convince you that this is a wise purchasing decision) I’ll be doing a chat in the Dark Regions Press Special Recreational Events Center.

It’s December 17 (2012) at 8:00 PST. Which means that in my time zone, it’s…aw, crap, 11:00 PM?!? I have to get up early the next morning! Son of a…..

Anyway, there’ll be free things won, so be there! If you go to the website now, you can set up a reminder, which means NO EXCUSES!!!

http://www.darkregions.com/events/

Welcome to Gleefully Macabre!

Welcome to my website! Whether you were brought here by interest in my work or a Google search gone terribly wrong, I encourage you to hang around and start clicking away!

My young adult comedy, A Bad Day For Voodoo, is now available at a bookstore near you, or online in e-book and paperback editions!

My suspense novella, Faint of Heart, is available in both e-book and paperback editions!

It’s been a seven-year wait, but I’ve finally written the fourth Andrew Mayhem novel, Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to “Shirley”). The print version will be out later this year, but you can get the digital edition for a scant $2.99 from Amazon or Smashwords.

And you can get slightly polished up digital versions of the first three Andrew Mayhem novels, too! Yes, you can get Amazon Kindle versions of Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary), Single White Psychopath Seeks Same, and Casket For Sale (Only Used Once!). Or you can get Graverobbers, Psychopath, and Casket in other e-book formats from Smashwords!

My werewolf novel Wolf Hunt is also available as a $2.99 e-book! It’s not a short story or a trunk novel; this baby is 75,000 words of bloody werewolf mayhem for three bucks. Get it from Amazon! Or order the trade paperback edition from Dark Regions Press!

And my zombie comedy novel The Sinister Mr. Corpse. Madness! Insanity! So while you’re buying the Andrew Mayhem series and Wolf Hunt, you can conveniently add a sixth book to your Amazon and/or Smashwords shopping cart.

And also my giant killer ants novel Mandibles. So while you’re adding the Andrew Mayhem series, Wolf Hunt and The Sinister Mr. Corpse, it’s simple to add another low-price e-book from Amazon and/or Smashwords! Seven novels for less than twenty-one bucks!

(P.S.: People who leave reviews on Amazon deserve great big hugs!)

Friend me on Facebook ! Follow me on Twitter !

I Have A Bad Feeling About This…

Here’s the cover to my new Young Adult comedy novel from Sourcebooks. It doesn’t come out until October 2013, so there’s really no need to start lining up at your local bookstore before, say, July.

PRESSURE and DWELLER Are Back!

They’re back! Maybe you didn’t know they were gone (what, you don’t actively follow news about the financial solvency of publishers?) but they were, briefly, and now Pressure and Dweller are back with shiny new e-book covers by Lynne Hansen…and now they’re only $2.99 each!

You can order Pressure from Amazon (Kindle edition) or Smashwords (all e-book editions).

And you can order Dweller from Amazon (Kindle edition) or Smashwords (all e-book editions).

If you prefer to order Nook editions from Barnes & Noble, iBooks editions from Apple, etc., those feed over from Smashwords, so they’ll be up soon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shadowland Magazine!

I’m in love with the digital revolution (especially now, since I’m reading a heavy hardcover novel with tiny print) but, hey, sometimes you still want a printed magazine, right?

Check out the latest issue (#6) of Shadowland magazine, which includes an interview with me, conducted by Dustin LaValley.

Truth in Advertising: The purpose of this post was not, in fact, to discuss the digital revolution and your possible enjoyment of the occasional print magazine, but rather to alert you to the interview with me.

Order your copy RIGHT HERE!

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Need An Editor? Here Are Two…

I’d like to tell you that every manuscript I write is flawless. The truth is, though I’ve been told many times that I write extremely clean manuscripts, mistakes still claw their way into my stories. Most of these, I catch when I do rewrites and proofreading, and as I write each book I keep a separate file of notes with things that I need to address. Some excerpts from my work-in-progress:

It’s not clear where the campfire is located.

What happened to the bird?

Henry wears glasses. (They’re described at the beginning and never mentioned again.)

Rodney’s facial hair is never set up. (SPOILER: Rodney’s facial hair becomes important in a later scene.)

By the time I’m done with my first draft, I’ve got about a page of notes that I need to address. So I go back, address all of those issues, and try to hunt down each typo and continuity error. It doesn’t matter how many times I go through a book, there will be something I screwed up.

So then I send the book to my trusty league of proofreaders. The lineup changes a bit from book to book, but Tod Clark, Jim Morey, Michael McBride, Rhonda Wilson, Greg Lamberson, and Rick Moschgat are usually involved. 

Two of my go-to proofers, Elizabeth A. White and Ashley Davis, have now gone professional. And they’re both awesome.

Elizabeth A. White is best known as a book reviewer, and her plot summaries are better than anything I’ve ever written for my own work! Go to her site, read any random review, and you can see that she knows what she’s talking about. She reads a lot, she’s VERY insightful, and whatever she says about my books–good or bad–I always feel like she nailed it. 

I’d recommend her for anything, but especially if you’re looking for an editor for mystery/crime/thriller fiction. For more information about her editing services, click right HERE. 

Ashley Davis e-mailed me about a year ago to offer to proofread any new manuscripts I might have, and I figured, sure, why not? And I’ve gotta say, I was stunned by how thorough she was. Because she’s able to work at a frightening pace, she offers a special Rush Service edit, where if you’re in a hurry, she can deliver an edit within 6-8 hours. Insanity! I highly recommend her services, and you can learn all about ‘em right HERE. 

Note that I’m not getting any kind of kickbacks from this, nor am I saying “Hey, every aspiring writer should pay a professional to look at their work!” But if you’re in the market for an editor–and in this age of self-publishing it may be a damn good idea–I give my seal of approval to both of these ladies.

Trust me, I wouldn’t post this if I thought you were going to come back and scream “Strand! You bastard!!! You led me astray!!!”  

FWA Talk Tomorrow!

Tomorrow I’ll be the guest speaker at the monthly meeting of the Florida Writers Association’s St. Petersburg branch. I’ll be babbling about “Stick With It! Sustaining Your Writing Passion in a Brutal Business.” Free (and worth nearly as much) and open to any miscreants who wish to show up.

The meeting is 5:30 – 7:30, and my stuff starts around 6:00. 

St. Petersburg Main Public Library. 3745 9th Avenue. St. Petersburg, Florida. 33713.

http://fwastpete.blogspot.com/

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloweeeeeeeen, everybody! I hope the Great Pumpkin brings you all of the candy you could ever want. In a cruel, cruel irony, I lost a filling today, which means that I really shouldn’t have any of the Sour Patch Kids that we’re giving out until it gets fixed. 

Expect a lot more updates as we roll into November, including some catch-up posts about the October fun!

Happy Halloween!

Yeah, yeah, it’s still two weeks away, but I like to start early.

Once again I will have to miss the Reel Terror Film Festival (making me 0-3 for this particular film festival) but it’s because I’ll be in Savannah, Georgia, hanging out with cool people including but not necessarily limited to James A. Moore, Richard Dansky, Melinda Thielbar, and Elizabeth A. White, so if I got all whiny about it I would deserve no sympathy.

The weekend after that is Spooky Empire. R.L. Stine, who we all know best from his work on Bananas magazine from 1975-1984, will be there. Also the cast and director of Cannibal Holocaust. You know you’re jealous. Unless you’re going. Then you’re probably not all that jealous.

And, of course, Rifftrax doing Birdemic! And the original Halloween in theaters!

What are your Halloween plans?