Vincent Zandri's Blog - Posts Tagged "hard-boiled"

Ok, it's time for the Vincent Zandri totally unoriginal New Years Resolution blog. I actually just wrote like 1,000 words and my Firefox crashed and I lost the whole freaking blog. So here it all is again, in a nutshell, and yah, I'm entirely pissed off right now:

-I have two new books coming out this year that are traditionally contracted with StoneGate Ink: Godchild and The Concrete Pearl. I'd like to add at least two more books to this starting with plans for Aaron Patterson and I to combine our bestsellers, The Remains and Sweet Dreams in a E-Book only special edition. The Innocent and Godchild will also be combined in a special "Jack Marconi" series edition.

Get the rest at The Vincent Zandri Vox:
http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...

The Innocent

The Remains

Moonlight Falls

The following blog first appeared at the unbelievably popular Vincent Zandri Vox:
http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...

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Oh man, you'd think those crazy asses who predicted the world would end on May 21 actually only got the date wrong by a little over a week. This past weekend when Amazon decided to pull their tags on E-Books (you know, those descriptive words you add to a title so that browsers can find them more easily when shopping), a whole bunch of my colleagues and cohorts immediately saw the four horsemen riders of the Apocalypse shoot down from the heavens and along with it, the end to what seemed like a very profitable run in Kindle E-Book heaven.

Add to that some unexplained lackluster sales across the board, and you have legions of indie authors contemplating their final meal: Will it be meatloaf or fried chicken?

I'm of the opinion that yes, tags are important. But I'm not of the opinion that tags alone create monumental sales. What creates great sales are the tried and true 4 rules of the indie games, or any variety of publishing game for that matter:

1. Great Cover
2. Great Product Description
3. Great Price
4. Great Book

After that you add in social media marketing, a virtual tour, a trailer, and just plain writing more great books, and you have yourself a career that should earn you steady sales that will increase with time, according to how fast your tribe of loyal readers grows.

Tags are cool because I can tag another bestselling hard-boiled mystery author and she can tag mine, and when John Q. Public goes to my Amazon page for THE INNOCENT or THE REMAINS for instance, they also see her name and then perhaps we both get a sale. But there are other ways to tag on other social media sites like Crime Space and Edgey Christian Fiction and even still on Amazon, so long as there is a paper version of the novel available.

Some people believe that the loss of tags is really the result of a conspiracy between the Big 6 publishers and the chiefs at Amazon to do away with the popular indie titles. I don't believe this is the case, because one, it would probably constitute something illegal like a payoff or payola, and two, why would Amazon shoot their hugely successful indie publishing program in both its feet just to give in to a dying white elephant?

Others believe the tags will re-appear one day soon since it must be a glitch that destroyed them in the first place (such as a Lady CaCa, excuse me, GaGa, download). This is possible I guess. Some have even been reporting that sales numbers aren't showing up and that rankings are dipping on a disproportionate scale with actual sales. Now there's a fantasy I really want to believe since I too have dipped somewhat in the ranks this week.

But you know what? Sorry Charlie, that's freakin' life.
And you know what else? Don't put all your eggs in one fragile basket. Amazon is cool, but it's only one store. Chime in on some NOOK fan sites, or sell more books off your website or your publishers website. Give some E-Books away for God's sake. The point is not to be caught with your pants down in this business. A lot of people have been asking me why I'm still writing journalism, and this tag business is precisely why.

Ok, so answers...we all want answers.
Well, I don't have any, but here's what I have to offer:
My gut reaction is that the tags will never return. And that the reason Amazon has limited product descriptions for indie novels from 7 to 2 is because the indie books are proving more popular than the company would ever have believed them to be. That said, I believe they are trying to level the playing field a little to give the higher priced novels produced by the NYC legacy publishers more of a fighting chance. The biggy novels make up a huge portion of Amazon's sales, and like Obama's stimulus packages, they're trying to light a fire under some of the same old, same old mega authors . That's what I believe anyway.

But here's what else I believe:
That tags or no tags, the most popular indie authors (and my publishing house has at least three of these authors...) will realize a 20% to 30% decline in sales this month, but that decline will be short-lived as other ways to tag and to market will inevitably put these players back on top. If nothing else, these top players will once more reach the top by simply following the aforementioned golden rules. They will also write new material, unaffected by one store's attempt at leveling a playing field that truly isn't meant to stay level.
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Yo, grab up the new Concrete Pearl, the first in a new series starring the sexy and brassy Spike Harrison: http://www.amazon.com/Concrete-Pearl-...

Concrete Pearl

The following blog is now appearing in slightly different form at The Vincent Zandri Vox: http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...

A friends of mine who is a published author and great writer just emailed me about what it takes to sell a lot of books. E-Books in particular or so I'm assuming. At first I was ready to dig in with a two page email about marketing and social media and how important it is to maintain a constant presence on these digital mediums. I was also ready to discuss the importance of blogging two or three times a week on topics ranging from how to write a great noir novel to what I did on my summer vacation. Then there's Kindleboards, Goodreads, Crimespace, yadda...

But then it occurred to me that no matter how much I talk about these issues, none of them are really responsible for selling books, so much as they simply spread the word about your books being available for sale on the free market. Social media can definitely help you sell books but it can also hurt sales when you abuse and over-use it. After all, you shouldn't be directly selling your books in a social media setting. You should be selling you the human being.

So then, how was it I've been able to sell hundreds of thousands of e-books so far this year?

Jeeze, I'm not entirely sure how I did it.

But I do know this. If you want sell a lot of units (as they are lovingly called in the trade), you need to write great books (luckily my friend has this going for him already). You need a great cover (like me he's traditionally published so he has to rely on his team to produce this for him), a great product description and a very good if not "cheap" yup "cheap" price. As for the rest of the equation, you have to rely on a little luck here.

But then, how can you improve your luck as an author who wants to sell lots of books? The best possible way is simply to write more books. Authors like Scott Nicholson and JA Konrath are making thousands of dollars every month not on just one title, but upwards of 40 titles. These guys are sitting on a novel and rewriting it over and over again for two or three years. They are writing them in a matter of two or three months (please don't take this as gospel, I'm merely trying to make a point).

But Vin, you say, how is it possible to write a great novel in two or three months?

My answer is this: can you produce five good pages per day, five days a week? Or are you worried about writers block? If you believe in writers block, you must learn to change your beliefs. Writers block doesn't exist. If you're a writer your job is to show up at work everyday and write. Granted, there will be days when Mr. Plot and Mr. Story and Mrs. Brilliance don't show up for work, but that's just the nature of any business. You go with the flow and you keep plugging away anyhow. You take up the slack and plow through the day.

Or here's an idea that might help.

Whenever you feel like it will be impossible to write yet another book, think about your dad or mom. What did they do for a living while they were raising you trying to put clothes on your back, Hamburger Helper on your dinner plate and video games in the Play Station? If your dad was a lawyer, did he ever get lawyer's block? If your mom was a nurse, did you ever hear her complain "I've had absolutely nothing to nurse about for the past six months"? Of course not. Your parents showed up for work five days a week because that was their job. Sometimes it went well, and on occasion, when the proper support staff didn't always show up, things were hard. But by the year's end, they produced a body of work for which they were paid a significant sum.

Back to my point about selling books.

There is no tried or true answer to selling books. Sales flow in cycles. I seem to experience a few weeks of stellar bestselling sales every three or four months or so, probably due to Amazon marketing campaigns. My last great months was in July. I'm not due for another Top 100 Kindle Bestseller months until October or November. But then, this is just a guestimate. I have no control over Amazon marketing, other than signing on with their publisher, Thomas and Mercer, which I'm about to do.

So, in the final analysis, there is only one tried and true method of increasing your chances of selling books. That tried and true method is to show up for work everyday, and write more of them.


Scream Catcher

The following Press Release has been issues by Down & Out Books: http://downandoutbooks.com/2014/09/01...


Down & Out Books is publishing New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Vincent Zandri’s latest fast-paced, grizzly thriller in the Dick Moonlight series, offering readers plenty of wry humor, bullets, car chases, and Scarface references.

Dick Moonlight can’t help himself. Moonlight, the private detective known as the head case with a bullet lodged in his brain, should be grateful for his current job. But when it becomes clear the cash-starved brain surgeon he’s been hired to drive around is protecting his son from a rape conviction, Moonlight is disgusted.

Worse, when the charges turn into a case of “reckless murder,” Moonlight’s the only one trying to keep the kid from the electric chair though the girl—a state senator’s daughter—clearly committed suicide.

Then Moonlight and his unwilling assistant, a fat Elvis impersonator owing him money, stumble into a much bigger plot and are soon dodging Hollywood obsessed drug-running Russian thugs, corrupt government officials, and the specter of Moonlight’s recently diseased girlfriend.

Praise for Zandri’s previous Moonlight books
has been overwhelming positive.

“Sensational…Masterful…Brilliant.”—New York Post

“Gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting.”—Harlan Coben, bestselling author of Six Years

“Tough, stylish, heartbreaking.”—Don Winslow, bestselling author of Savages

“Vincent Zandri nails reader’s attention.”—Boston Herald

“Well worth every minute…”—Suspense Magazine

Moonlight Weeps is available in trade paperback and ebook formats.

Kindle | Nook

Amazon TP | BN TP | IndieBound TP

Moonlight Weeps

The following essay is now appearing at The Vincent Zandri Vox:


It's being reported that eight or more aid workers and journalists have been brutally killed inside what's described as a remote village in Guinea, West Africa. The deaths are apparently the result of a toxic distrust amongst locals for the foreign presence in their land. The distrust seems to be spreading as fast if not faster than the Ebola virus itself. However tragic and disturbing, this comes as no surprise.

A few years ago I traveled to West Africa to report for RT on the work of a Christian hospital ship that was docked in the Port of Cotonou in Benin beside civil-war torn Nigeria. What struck me as strange was the way the indigenous people refused and even ran from the methods by which the ship's medical crew attempted to educate them in the ways of western hygiene. Fliers were distributed with simple illustrations showing a human being defecating into a toilet. The next illustration would show a pair of hands being washed with soap and water. Said drawings would then be circled in bold green as if to indicate, "Good."

Below those drawings might be the same drawing of the person defecating, only this time he or she would be doing it in a field. A red circle would surround that drawing as if to indicate bad. But to a native living in West Africa, crapping on a toilet that other people use is the most disgusting and unsanitary concept ever thought up. Better to go find your own "clean" spot of grass and do your business there. Never mind that the waste then filters into the water system. Such are the challenges of culture and geography.

One such challenge is distrust. The coast of West Africa used to be known as the Slave Coast. It's where most of the slaves who were shipped to the Americas and to points south came from. Out of this practice grew the belief in Voodoo which is still extremely prevalent in West African nations like Guinea and Liberia where Ebola is spreading fast. Many natives will practice Christianity or Islam during the daytime hours, but at night, revert back to voodoo beliefs. If something terrible like a bad debt or lack of food, or a sickness like Ebola strikes these people, chances are the effected person will believe that he has not become the victim of bad luck or a deadly virus, he will believe instead that he has become the target of bad voodoo. When foreign aid workers come to help, many natives are so frightened of them they feel they have no choice but to lash out, and even destroy the very people who are trying to cure their disease. To some locals, the foreign aid workers are doing the work of bad voodoo.

It's difficult to change what amounts to an ancient culture in just a few days in the interest of stopping the spread of what is now a serious epidemic. But if you ever have the chance to drive a 4x4 through the bush country of West Africa, do not be surprised when you come upon an old abandoned town that might have been constructed by the French many decades ago. Or don't be surprised when you see the shell of a modern skyscraper that might have been under construction two or three years ago, but that's been abandoned while the money for the project is now lining some corrupt official's pockets. Don't be surprised if you see the natives giving you a strange look because you're stepping inside a porta-potty to relieve yourself. To them, nothing is more disgusting and distrustful.


The Remains
Vincent Zandri
WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

The following essay is now appearing at The Vincent Zandri Vox: http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...

I was just about fed up with the spanking debate that's tackled NFL football, in particular Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings who, in the wake of the Ray Rice-left-hook-to-finacee's-jaw debacle, was sidelined after it was learned he spanked his four-year old with a switch. Apparently spanking with a switch was enough to cause the child some bruising, which in and of itself is a little disturbing, especially now that so many football players have come to his defense stating that they too were spanked as kids with switches. Ouch!

I was spanked as a kid. But not with a switch. I wasn't beaten or punched or tossed out the door of a moving vehicle. But I was spanked. It seemed normal at the time because I can remember doing some really stupid things like ignoring my math homework for a couple of months which I most definitely did not do a second time after my dad learned about it and spanked me as a punishment (he took away my bedroom TV too which hurt a lot more). Lesson learned. And like my grandmother used to say, If God didn't want us to spank our children, he wouldn't have given them soft little bums.

Howard Kurtz at Fox News is reporting today that Chris Cuomo of CNN confessed to spanking his little boy. In fact, Cuomo goes a step further by saying he might have gotten too physical with the child on occasion and for this he is deeply apologetic and regretful. I would imagine that Chris, having grown up in an Italian American family, albeit a politically famous one, was also spanked. I can make that assumption since I too grew up in a mostly Italian American family. Italian dads, especially when overworked, can be real hotheads, myself included. It's also interesting to note that Cuomo and I attended the same private high school, The Albany Academy, where on more than one occasion I witnessed a teacher whalloping an out-of-line student. Prior to that, I attended a Roman Catholic grade school where I saw a blue habit-wearing nun literally punch the shit out of a bad kid. I remember the kid's name was David and I also remember that he was bully who tossed his weight around. That nun had a left hook that would have made Mike Tyson proud.

Later on, as I grew into adulthood, I was surprised to find that spanking would still play an important role in my life. Only this time, it wasn't as a punishment. It became a kind of fun thing to do behind closed doors with the girlfriend. A little spanking here and there could liven things up. Some of the spanks were far harder than they were when I was being punished but somehow, they felt way better.
Spanking added some real spice to an otherwise bland, foreplay-missionary sex-grab-me-a-beer-honey-while-your-up evening. And to be further honest, we'd inevitably have a good laugh over something that hurt so good.

For anyone who doesn't believe spanking should have a place in our adult lives think again. Check out these little online tidbit:
How to spank: Sensual spanking tips and tricks

Did you know that spanking a child is illegal in Germany, but spanking your girlfriend (or she spanking you), is entirely encouraged. I'm all for outlawing spanking with a switch. It seems a barbaric practice to me. But why then does a little light spanking with a leather whip between my sig other and myself seems so enticing?

Chris Cuomo shouldn't be so hard on himself. He should learn from his mistakes and embrace the other side of spanking. Adrian Peterson might do the same. Certainly, Ray Rice needs to learn that punching your fiancee out in an elevator is an act that deserves a spanking, but not the good kind.

Cracked.com reports that even famous geniuses like TE Lawrence of Arabia liked to be spanked. So did Percy Grainger, and so did Declaration of Independence inspiration, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Can you just picture the scene: "That spanking was positively Rousseauvian in delivery, darling!"

The famous actors Jack Nicholson and Sharon Stone like to be spanked. Okay, I'm making that up, but they seem like the type, don't they? I know that, given the opportunity, I'd spank Sharon Stone. Wouldn't you? Even my serial PI-with-a-piece-of-bullet-in-his-brain, Dick Moonlight, likes a good spanking now and then. But then when it comes to sex, he's most definitely a player.

I guess in the end, what it all comes down to is this: The world is filled with too much spanking, and not enough spanking.

Get the spankin' new Vincent Zandri release from Down & Out Books, MOONLIGHT WEEPS!

Moonlight Weeps


WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

The following essay is now appearing at The Vincent Zandri Vox in slightly different form: http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...


This time of year is a bit strange for me in several ways, not the least of which is the anniversary of my split with my second wife. This happened 9 years ago, almost to the day. It was a rough time for me, for her, for our infant daughter, for my two sons from my first marriage.

I was in rough shape. After having had a successful run as a freelance journalist, having earned my MFA in Writing, having nailed my first quarter million dollar contract with a big NYC publisher, all within a period of 7 or 8 years, I found myself without any kind of writing job whatsoever, my hope of nailing a second book contract a pipe dream, and now, my second marriage to a woman I loved, most definitely on the rocks.

For years I blamed the publishing system. You know, if it hadn't been for their silly consolidations my editors wouldn't have been fired and I, along with a bunch of other writers, wouldn't have been shown the door, our only hope to start all over again. If they hadn't given me that big two book contract in the first place, I wouldn't have quit freelancing as a journalist and severed ties with my bosses. The hole I had dug all by myself, for myself...somehow it was all somebody else's fault when in fact it was my fault for not seeing the writing on the wall in the first place and for storing all my golden eggs in one basket that was riddled with holes.

You see, once you've been to the big time and enjoyed the accolades and the parties and the back pats, it's pretty damned hard to pick yourself up again from out of the gutter, and start all over. All you want to do instead is run and hide. You fear everything. The phone ringing, a knock on the door, dinner with friends. You know, friends who will ask you if you are "still writing."

You fear the bills coming in. You fear the hollowness in your wallet and in your heart. You fear that look on your wife's face that says, "We're broke. Why don't you pick up some kind of work?" You fear having to get a job. A real job. You fear having to become a nobody again, and you fear having to write your way out of a hole because you worked so damned hard at it the first time around, you're not sure you have the energy to do it all over again even if you haven't yet hit forty.

Mostly what you fear is yourself.

My wife didn't want to have to ask me to leave, but she had no choice. As I stood inside my new small apartment, alone, feeling devastated, I knew I had no choice but to confront my worst fear. I sat down in front of my laptop, and I pushed all resistance aside, and I went to work writing the novel that would become Moonlight Falls. For better or for worse.

Nine years ago this week, I faced my worst fear, and it has made all the difference.

The newly released 8th Episode in the Dick Moonlight PI Noir series: MOONLIGHT WEEPS
Moonlight Weeps
Vincent Zandri

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

The following essay is now appearing in slightly different form at The Vincent Zandri Vox: http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...

Ferguson is burning.

Heads belonging to Western journalists are being cut off by the evil ISIS half a world away.

President Barack Hussein Obama is releasing Islamic Radical detainees from Gitmo because he feels politically obligated to do so.

Illegal aliens are pouring into the US while millions have been legalized at the stroke of a pen, not because its in the best interest of the country, but because politics rule the day.


Antisemitism is on the rise globally.

Race relations in the US have eroded and rotted over the past decade.

School shootings are so commonplace we are unaffected by them.

Overpopulation threatens the world food bank.

Ebola ravages West Africa.

Political correctness has moved in, and kicked the truth out on its ass.

Russia is on the move.

Iran will soon have the Bomb...

Zandri pens his novels and stories, and worries that the world he creates is entirely separate from a physical world that is growing and morphing faster than a weed on steroids. In a word, he retreats, looks away from the ugly picture. He is not writing anything that describes the world to itself. Years ago the novelist was considered a sage. The words he and she wrote, although fiction, bore a certain truth that were a direct reflection of the time they lived in. The novelist/philosopher did not retreat from the world then, but instead, challenged it.

Steinbeck, making sense of his world
Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath and spoke for millions of impoverished workers suffering amidst the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.

Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises and a new generation of young men learned to say what they mean and mean what they say. But for the first time, men realized the power women truly have over them, and that all love must end tragically.

Later on, Mailer would write Why Are We in Vietnam?, a frantic Alaskan hunting novel that spoke as loud and powerfully as the shots that would soon be fired by the rifles on the Ohio State Campus. Mailer, the genius of metaphor.

In the 1980s we had Jay McInerny writing about the Bolivian Marching Powder in Bright Lights, Big City and suddenly, a generation strung out on Brooks Brothers, Manhattan apartments they couldn't afford, and cocaine, were now the modern romantic equivalent of Fitzgerald's Jazz Age decadence.

Zandri realizes how simplistic and even vague his examples are. In fact, he might even be lacking in a certain degree of accuracy. But the point, he feels, is transparent enough. Who are the sages of his generation? The novelists who fictionalize but who also tell the truth, or a version of the truth anyway, that puts things into some kind of order, or framework that can be better understood?

Fitz, doing what he loved even more than booze

Perhaps Zandri is doing that himself, without consciously doing it. Maybe he isn't retreating after all. Maybe in writing about a failed script writer obsessed with the blonde, blue-eyed woman who just moved in next door and who will manipulate him into killing her cop husband, he is expressing a deep-seated loneliness and isolation that isn't yet entirely realized. The loneliness is surly evident in the smartphones that occupy the two bed-stands in his master bedroom. Smartphones that, upon waking, will be the first thing touched, fondled, eyed, paid attention to, loved, lusted after ...

Add, human beings are becoming robots to the above-stated list...

Zandri is reaching for something here, but he's not quite sure what exactly. For certain, the ambiguity is evident in the writing of this essay. News Flash! Lennon comes to mind suddenly. John Lennon wrote and sang about the world so eloquently and alarmingly in his 1970 classic, Isolation. "We're afraid to be alone..."

Not to flirt with cliche here, but the world has been spinning out of control ever since the serpent sweet talked Eve and she, in turn, got Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. Our own demise is upon us. So Zandri chooses the only sensible option. He retreats into a world entirely his own, and he writes about it. He chooses isolation as the only sane option. But then, that isolation is a direct reflection of the times we live and die in. Therein lies the irony.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

The Remains