Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 95

Guest post for A.P. Fuchs

My next stop on the blog tour actually went live two days ago, and I'd planned to post yesterday. But then the guest post that Lincoln asked me to put up was already scheduled for that slot and I want to give this post and A.P.'s blog its own day of attention. So, here it is! Huzzah!

If you don't know A.P. Fuchs, he's a writer of a superhero novel series, Axiom-Man, as well as several horror stories and horror/action mash-ups. He's also the creative brains behind Coscom Entertainment, so his blog could make for interesting reading. Once you get done with my guest post, you might want to look back through the archives and see if anything he writes catches your fancy.

There is some oh-so-slight bad news about the tour: I won't have 20 articles in March. BUT, it's not that I won't have 20 articles to post, eventually. I just can't come up with 20 topics in one month. Even if I could, I still have to schedule another 5 slots with whichever bloggers I feel comfortable approaching. (And this assumes they write back as well. Already, two bloggers have met my query with silence.) I'll get there, but it's probably going to take until April for me to schedule and write the remaining posts.

Guest blog: Lincoln Crisler

Lincoln Crisler has a novella coming out from Damnation Books, and he has two short story collections available. Today, he talks about the influence of ebooks in the modern book market. So without further ado, here's Lincoln:

So… Zoe wanted me to talk to you fine people about my thoughts on electronic books, or 'e-books.' Before I get started, a quick disclaimer: my opinions aren't necessarily the same as Zoe's, and if I piss you off, I probably meant to.

E-books are the shit. Plain and simple. I can't think of any negative effects e-books are going to have. I'd even go so far as to say that they came about just in time, given other things that are happening in the publishing industry these days.

One of those things, in my humble opinion, is the rise of Print-on-Demand technology, or POD. Print on Demand, for the great unwashed among you, is a means by which books are printed when copies are ordered, not stored in a building in the hope that they'll be purchased. Had e-books become a big ticket item before POD came into its own, I don't know if e-books would have been as accepted by the publishing community, or by readers. I'm not an expert or anything, but I do know that many readers can't get past the idea of a paper book. That's cool; I wouldn't want paper books to go away. Authors need something to sign. Some things just need to take up physical space, because they matter that much. Because of POD, which prints books from the same files that are sold as e-books, 'real books' don't ever have to go away.

Another is the increasing importance of the small press. For longer than I've been involved in the genre, there have been people who claim 'horror is dead' every six months or so to get attention on message boards and whatnot. They're all out of their bloody minds. Mainstream publication of horror might be on life-support (at least until King and Koontz retire/expire and New York has to fill the void with new blood), I'll give them that. How long has it taken for a big publisher to give us something like The Passage? What with the main mass-market publisher of horror taking a steaming dump all over itself and wiping its ass on authors and staff alike, fans need other sources of the scary stuff. Be that as it may, none of the small presses I know are in a position to sell books at mass-market prices and still stay afloat. E-books level the playing field for them.

The most important thing is that the reader wins. He or she get a wide variety of offerings to choose from, oftentimes at a price that makes it easier on the pocketbook to take a chance on a new author. It's easier for the publisher to offer an author's backlist in electronic format, which is good for the reader and the author. The author should be receiving a higher royalty on electronic books, and that's another win, because when authors get paid, they don't have to quit writing in order to pay the bills. Publishers, readers and authors all win when reviewers accept electronic review copies of books. These are just the benefits that immediately come to mind. Feel free to share any others in the comments thread.

In fact, the only people that can lose with e-books are authors and publishers that don't want to get with the times. The readers will never have to do without paper books; any publisher that doesn't offer a POD option for at least the bulk of its catalog won't be in business long enough for anyone to notice them. Any author who flat-out refuses to be published electronically (and I know a couple that are leaning towards that; unfortunate, since they're friends and probably better writers than I am)? Their days are numbered. Any publisher that doesn't offer readers an electronic option (again, I know of one that is still working on getting its shit together)? Days are numbered.

What are your thoughts on the matter? I'd love to discuss it with you in the comments thread.

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Lincoln Crisler's debut novella, WILD, is due in March from Damnation Books. He has also authored a pair of short story collections, Magick & Misery (2009, Black Bed Sheet) and Despairs & Delights (2008, Arctic Wolf). A United States Army combat veteran and non-commissioned officer, Lincoln lives in Augusta, Georgia with his wife and two of his three children. You can visit his website at www.lincolncrisler.info .

Guest Post for Zoe Winters

My next stop in my blog tour takes me to the home of my ally in the Army of Zoes, paranormal romance and urban fantasy writer Zoe Winters. It's good timing that I'm just finishing up Save My Soul, Zoe's latest book with an incubus and a human as the romantic couple, and it is muy awesome, a solid 4, and very entertaining. (A review will be forthcoming soon!) So with this being Read an Ebook Week, you could do worse than to read one of Zoe's books. If you finish Save My Soul and want more, I recommend reading Kept next, and working your way through the first trilogy.

On Zoe's blog, I take the time to explain that Zoe and I are actually two different people, which you would think wouldn't be a problem. But it turns out, some people are getting us confused. So I try to set the record straight and explain a little bit about myself. Check it out, if you dare! (^_^)

Put me in my place, please…

Last week was not bad in terms of productivity. I finished another editing project, and I made progress writing guest blogs. I also scored two minor victories by getting articles accepted with writers who have much bigger audiences than me, which hopefully will mean reaching out to new readers. I still need to schedule another 5 or so slots on my tour to get up to my desired range of more than 20 articles. I've been thinking about who to contact, and not in terms of who I know, but rather who they know. The right writers have a larger audience of readers, and an informative or entertaining post with a link to my site at the bottom would really help me out…in theory.

I'm reading Zoe Winters' blog, and lately she's been making clarifications about the sex in her books, assuring people that the scenes aren't too out there. Now I've only read two, so I can't be a judge of how far she goes. She hasn't gone crazy with the visuals, but the romantic scenes I have seen pass the "thigh press" test. (Do I press my thighs together while reading the passage? It's a keeper.)

But that's not why I'm bringing her posts up. As I read these clarifications, I feel her concern that some people see her sex scenes as "too much." In which case, those same people would see my work as "over the top," or possibly even approaching "the work of Satan." So I'm hesitant to approach the romance market precisely because a lot of my stuff isn't meant to be read as romance. There are romantic angles in a lot of my stories, but I'm worried that the more graphic scenes would catch a lot of bad reviews from the delicate readers. It's fine if readers don't like my stuff, but if I market it to the wrong crowd, whose fault is it when the reviews all turn out scathing? It's certainly not the readers' fault. So I don't want to make a marketing fumble…again. No, I mean this…week. Um, let's move on.

I feel like approaching purebred paranormal romance writers is a bad idea. It's the wrong reader group for my fiction, since they like their creatures of the night a little lighter in tone. I would think this might be inviting a lot of bad reviews by promoting to the wrong crowd. But it was suggested to me that I could find a more receptive crowd in the grittier sections of Urban Fantasy. This does feel like a good fit for several of my dark fantasy stories, and once I've interested those folks with one "flavor" of my writing, maybe I can convince them to read the rest of my crap too.

Besides Urban Fantasy, I'm wondering if there's some other group I could market myself to. Fantasy fans seem to avoid me for the gore and sex (understandable), and romance people probably would for the same reason. Horror fans avoid me cause…actually, I'm still not sure why they're avoiding me. I get a lot of impressions from the horror crowds, but not many sales, clicks, or comments. Overall, it's a pretty tepid reaction so far, but we'll see what happens when I come out with the next Zombie Era story.

I don't think I've approached sci-fi fans for Wake Up With the Kimellians, or fans of comic books to find readers for the two Tales of City books. But those should be given separate book tours at later dates, and I'd like to focus my resources in picking up readers for my core genre. That's dark fantasy.

The problem is, dark fantasy is not really a recognized genre. It's more like an umbrella term these days, meant to cover just about everything that goes bump in the night. As such, it carries instant association with horror. So it sends off the straight romance reader, the sci-fi purist, and the fantasy fan. It also sends off the horror fans, which leaves me scratching my head and making "arroo?" noises cause I'm all confused about who to talk to.

What I'm looking for from the other genres are the fringe readers, the people who read from many genres. I need romance readers who also read horror. I need the fantasy fans who also like zombies and werewolves, or sci-fi followers who like their alien encounters to get bloody every now and then. I need to market to the fringes of the genre markets, I think.

For the most part, when I've found an interested reader, y'all seem to do okay with my stuff. Not all of it, I know. But don't worry, I don't expect people to buy everything I write. That's actually my plan in writing so much cross-genre stuff. I want to cover more tastes and interests than just my core group.

And this leads me to ask the question, what is my core group? Readers, if you've made it through one or three of my stories, I would like to know how you would categorize the books you've read. If you were looking for the book in a brick and mortar store, where would you think to look? Or, if you were online and searching by tags, how would you search for similar work to what you've read from me? Horror? Sci-fi? Fantasy, UF, or Dark Fantasy?

You don't have to explain your logic in the comments, unless you want to. But I would love to know what cliques you think I could approach to offer my wares to. So, how about it, readers? What box would you put me in?

Guest post for Michele Lee

Today, my guest blog tour stops off at the home of Michele Lee, author, reviewer, and an avid reader whose reviewing output puts mine to shame. I really wish I could read as fast as she does, because she was able to go through a lot more tiles than I did last year.

Today's post is a bit more serious, and I'm talking about hate hype, or the crowds of people who gather around an artists work to actively hate it. You can check out the post here.

Becka Sutton, AKA @shutsumon on Twitter, commented how this guest post was well timed, given the comments going on about Amanda Hocking over on Novelr. I hadn't been paying attention to this, but what's gone down is, some writers expressed sour grapes over the quality of Amanda's writing. I read part of Switched, and I admit, I wasn't impressed. I stopped reading, and I said, "This is not for me." And I moved on.

Well, apparently, a lot of readers feel Amanda Hocking IS for them, and she's doing VERY well lately. Like, she's selling so many books, even a mass market deal wouldn't be in her best interests to pursure. Damn. And, since she's an indie with no previous publishing credits, you can't "pull a Konrath" and claim her print reputation is helping her. To borrow a bodybuilding line: it's all her.

So now it's no longer possible to blame the publisher or the acquiring editor for lax quality standards. So no grumbling about editors doing favors, or the old boys network or whatnot. No, so instead, let's…blame the readers, for not being smart enough to appreciate real art.

Or…how about we don't?

As I said, I didn't dig the writing in Switched (the YA book from Amanda Hocking about trolls), but I admire the promotional skills of Miss Hocking. I wish I was able to promote my stuff as well as hers to the right readers and reach an audience like hers. But that is the limits of my professional envy for her, and once the readers decide they like her writing, I can't judge them. Really, I love Twilight, so what am I gonna say? "No, don't read that crap writing. Read this crap writing instead." Eh, I'll just let readers decide what they like and read what I like instead, m'kay?

I'm a hack who writes weird fiction. It's not highbrow stuff. I'm not about to turn around and suggest that people who read "that crap" are missing out on something special by not reading my crap instead. Really, it's very similar crap, but with different creatures.

So Amanda Hocking, you go on with your bad self, and congratulations on your enviable success. And you writers with the sour grapes, go back to picking on Dan Brown. At least then you can insult the publishers and avoid looking like complete douchebags for insulting the readers.

WebLit review: Starwalker by Melanie Edmonds

I've been reading Starwalker in short bursts and have completed the first story arc, the mystery of the first starstep, and why it failed so spectacularly. Starwalker begins as the rebooted ship AI is brought online in a shipyard for her second attempt.

Starwalker, or "Starry," is a personality coded into the ship, but right from the start, it's clear that something is wonky about Starwalker's code. She's got a sense of humor, for one thing, and she's showing moments of jealousy or other irrational emotions that a ship AI should not have.

Starwalker as a character is a strong voice with a great personality and a great sense of humor. The ship interacts with a number of crew members, and the story is told through her log files, or through the log files of the other characters. Most commonly, the engineer Elliot makes up the other voice, and he's a brash, foul-mouthed ego-maniac. Which makes him sound awful, but that really translates in the story as "great comic potential."

If there's any weak link in the story, it's the captain of the ship. He's so irritating to me that at times, that I wished the pirates had somehow managed to shoot him. It's not just his skepticism about his ship that bugs me. At several key points, he makes awful decisions that could almost get everyone enslaved, or worse, killed outright.

The captain is so confounding, and to me, it doesn't make sense that these are the actions of someone with a long service record. I tried to be fair and take grief into account for his poor judgment, but he never strikes me as grieving or even distracted. Mostly, he's just self-absorbed. But thankfully, he's almost a bit character compared to Elliot and Starry, so his brief moments on screen can be dealt with quickly to get back to the "good parts."

And there are a lot of good parts to like. The narrative voice is unique in a quirky and witty way, and the story packs in plenty of action and moments of dread to balance the humor and whimsy. I give Starwalker 4 stars and recommend it to all fans of space opera sci-fi.

Book review: Harbour by John A. Lindqvist

Harbour is the third novel I've read by Lindqvist, and I have mixed feeling about the blurb describing this as a story about a man named Anders. But the scope of this story expands far beyond Anders and his brief history. As the story itself assets, this is a story that, despite its massive size, could fit in a matchbox.

Anders and his wife Cecilia are childhood sweethearts who have one of those…problem children. But during a winter day trip to the lighthouse of Gavasten across the ice, Maja disappears, and Anders and Cecilia fall apart.

Two years later, Anders returns to his island home, on Domaro, to the place where his memories of his daughter have been replaced by bleary impressions dulled by two years of heavy drinking. Cecilia has left Anders over his alcoholism, and now he truly has nothing left to live for. But almost from the moment Anders arrives home, he can almost feel Maja's presence.

And then the story begins bouncing to follow the stories of Anders' grandparents, Simon and Anna-Greta, the magician and the smuggler's daughter. While I often had trouble connecting with Anders, Simon and Anna Greta were such fantastic characters that even when I was dying to know what was really going on, I LOVED the flashbacks with Anna-Greta and Simon. Anna-Greta has one bold smuggling story in her past so funny that I almost died laughing.

The arrival of the neighbor Elin in the story also brings other ghosts from the past, but even looking back on the pasts of Henrik and Bjorn, I'm still not sure what their motivations were in attacking Elin and Anders. Their attacks lead Anders to consult his grandfather Simon for advice, who it runs out has a little secret that may help. Simon has some real magic that he's been keeping a secret for over a decade, and his special powers allow him to piece together the strange occurrences taking place all around the island. (Among these occurrences, two possessed men have a chainsaw fight. Which may be the awesomest thing ever. No, ever.)

The story heads to a final conflict as Anders seeks to find Maja and pull her from the clutches of the sea, but the monster is…abstract. I think I understand what Lindqvist was aiming for, and the idea is indeed horrifying, perhaps so much so that I really cannot see it. And in the end, Anders seems pretty calm about his actions, though they led to a lot of people dying and the whole village being destroyed. Ultimately, the question is, "is one life worth so many?" Anders greedily answers yes, and I feel for him. But the aftermath of his actions are maybe just as horrific as the monster's.

But then this is a strength of Lindqvist, to make the human characters just as flawed and capable of harm as the monsters. I still feel like the roles of Henrik and Bjorn needed to be explained more clearly, but beyond that, this is a brilliant book that delighted and terrified me in equal measures. I give Harbour 4.5 stars and recommend it to all fans of literary horror and dark fantasy.

Guest post: You know how it goes…

My blog tour continues for a second day at the home of S.D. Hintz, horror author and one of many creative minds behind Skullvines Press and KHP books. I wanted to give him something good for my visit, so this time around I offer readers an article examining the differences between different zombie apocalypses, and how you can quickly identity which plague plagues you. (Or doesn't as the case may be.)

If y'all forgot, I also have an ebook coming out from Skullvines Press/KHP Books. S.D. was one of the kind folks who made up the judging staff on my first bizarro title NINJAWORLD, so I want to thank him both for taking my guest post and for giving my story a great home. (^_^)

Guest post: Couches

I have a guest post on Lincoln Crisler's blog today, a post about couches. Yes, couches. Lincoln was kind enough to indulge my rambling for this article explaining their important in my work, and my life. It a fun read if you've got a few minutes to waste, and then you might hang out and check out Lincoln's blog for a while. Like me, he's a writer and reviewer, so I'm sure you'll find something interesting in his bloggy missives.

Shattered Prophesies and a Zombie Lover cover…

As I said in my last post, I needed a bit more time for the Amazon link  for Shattered Prophesies to get up and working right, but here it is. I'm happy to report that there are already sales for the final tome in the Collin Family trilogy on both Amazon and Smashwords, so my thanks go out to you early buyers. However, given the hi-yuge word count, I think it may be a while before I see a review. Unless any of you are speed readers.

Even as I work in promoting this ebook release, I'm also applying the final touches to a release for March. Fans of Zombie Punter waited patiently, and here at last is my cover for the sequel, Confessions of a Zombie Lover:

 

Not too shabby, considering that's coming from me. If you compare it to my work on thew covers for Zombie Punter and Changeling, You can still see how I'm trying to develop a new style that relies less on hard outlines and more on blurred details. It's not realistic, but it is a clean style, in my opinion. Of course, this raises the bar for the final cover, when I'll have to depict Susan. Just for fun, I may hold a contest for the model for Susan. That might get some people interested in competing: "Let Zoe turn you into a zombie!" It even has a nice ring to it. =^) Then again, Susan was killed at 15, so it might not be such an idea for me to request photos from female readers in the 15-17 range. (>.>)

Anywho, many of you haven't checked out Zombie Punter on Amazon or Smashwords, and you really should. G is probably the coolest runty mad scientist you'll ever meet, and I promise you, the zombies of this world are just different enough to make the short trip through the first novella worth your time and money. And once you read G's first episode, I'm sure you'll be glad to know that the next episode is due out in only a few weeks!