Sean Cummings's Blog: POLTERBLOG!, page 3

It isn’t that Trump won that has me worried

I can’t believe I just uploaded this picture. I can’t believe the words “President Elect Donald J. Trump” actually exist.

On Tuesday night, election night in the USA, I was headed back to Canada after a week-long conference in Orlando. It was a long day of travelling as my wife and I left our hotel at 6:30 AM to arrive for our flight three hours early as Delta had suggested. It gave us a lot of time to begin watching the pre-vote analysis. We flew to Atlanta and then to Minneapolis. By the time I hopped on a plane at 7:30 PM for the final flight back to Saskatoon, the returns were coming in. And for the next 2.5 hours, I watched the drama unfold 32,000 feet below me. I just kept reloading the #electionnight hashtag on Twitter, stunned by the fact that Donald Trump was actually winning.

People were losing their minds with each announcement that Trump had carried a state. Gnashing of teeth, social media style. It was, in a word, surreal. It still is, actually.

And look, you know what you get with Trump. He’s going to do what he’s going to do until he changes his mind five minutes from now and does something opposite. He’s unpredictable. He’s a reality TV star who suddenly became the President of the United States after running probably the most disastrous, racist, misogynistic, gaffe-filled campaign I’ve ever seen in my life.

But it isn’t the fact he won that has me worried. No, it’s the fact that people voted for someone who was facing a civil trial after being accused of raping 13 year old girl back in 1994.  (She just dropped her case, BTW.) And everybody knew this when they voted for him. It’s the fact that his boorish, bullying behavior; a nightly feature on the evening news, didn’t stop people from voting for him. Or the fact that he’s totally cool with grabbing women by the genitalia the way that we grab avocados in the grocery produce department. Or the fact that he flippantly suggests that nuclear weapons are always an option. I could go on … everybody knows that Trump is, frankly, a rich white douchebag who doesn’t pay his taxes.

But he won. He defeated Hillary Clinton against all the predictions of pollsters and pundits.

And what worries me is that when people elect someone who they know is dangerous. When they throw their support behind someone who was accused of raping a 13 year old girl and who thinks grabbing women by the pussy is fine and dandy, it tells me that folks are desperate for change.

Desperate people do desperate things. They did it in Germany in 1933. Hitler seized power after he was democratically elected. Trump could, conceivably, do the same. Republicans now control the House and the Senate. As a political junkie, it’s frightening to think that Trump now has the power to push through laws that could increase his hold over America if he chooses to.

I think it’s important to point out that folks who voted for Trump are not imbeciles who fell head first out of the back of a turnip truck. These are men and women who were fed up and wanted change. These are people who, for a multitude of reasons, the political process in the United States has failed. Yep, they are white. Yep, they feel disenfranchised … but they got out the vote.

(And by the way, up here in Canada, our political system ain’t exactly working out for everyone. People here are also fed up. We just chose to elect a hipster who likes to hug people and photobomb weddings as our Prime Minister.)

A couple of things stand out about election day in the USA. First is a conversation between two African-American women I overheard while in Orlando. One of the women said, “Either way we are screwed. With Hillary we’re going to get The Hunger Games and with Trump it’s going to be The Purge.”

The second thing is the American man standing in line at Canada customs in Saskatoon who was literally beaming with the news that Trump had won. His industry had shut down. He was facing job loss. Many of his friends had lost their jobs. He said, “Now that Trump is in, we’re going to get to keep our jobs. It never would have happened with Hillary.” I just politely smiled and nodded my head.

It shouldn’t have come to this, but it did. It’s a lesson for everyone who loves democracy and it is a lesson for people in government all over the world today: the democracy can come back to bite you in the ass.

So where do we go from here?

Nowhere for the time being. He’ll be sworn in as President in January.

What has me worried is that every great civilization throughout history reaches its pinnacle and then crumbles to dust either through internal rot or by being conquered. The internal rot can be anything: a broken political system, vice and debauchery, you name it.

I have had a niggling fear as I watched the phenomenon on Donald Trump unfold in 2016 that America might be facing that moment where it too will begin to crumble into dust. Rome has fallen … again.

I’m going to continue writing my detective novel for my agent. I’m going to shore myself up against the madness that’s about to be unleashed on the world with a healthy dose of daily creativity. Marijuana is going to be legalized in Canada next year.

Bring it. Bring all of it. We’re going to need it for the next four years. Hopefully Trump won’t blow us up between now and the next US election.

Self-Publishing Confession: I have no idea why this book is selling – 2016 edition

My dark fantasy thriller IMMORTAL REMAINS – A TIM REAPER NOVEL went on sale back in July and it’s been selling very well. I’m a bit perplexed as to why because, again, I’m not really doing anything spectacular in the way of book promotion. It’s published exclusively for Kindle – I decided against EPUB as the cumulative total of all my other books sold in EPUB numbers under 100 so I didn’t think I’d be losing anything by sticking with Amazon.

It’s now the last day of September, and here are my stats from good ol’ Kindle Direct Publishing for the month.

The book has been sitting in the top-100 for Dark Fantasy now for about four weeks. It dipped out a couple of times but it always seems to climb right back up in there. I think the highest it has gone is to #19 in that category. At any rate, I’m really quite pleased with these numbers and thanks so much to whoever out there is buying my book! I’m even getting enthusiastic emails from folks wanting the second book which has a teaser at the end of this one.

Book promotion is a mystery to me. The only thing I’ve done differently from when I self-published Marshall Conrad back in 2014 is I did a Fussy Librarian promotion and one Book Sends promo just to see what happened. There was an uptick on both days that Immortal Remains was featured but nothing major – maybe 30 books each time. I’m thinking of throwing caution to the wind and trying to get a Book Bub but I understand it’s pretty hard to get your foot in the door. Oh, and I’ve also added the buying links to my other books in this one as well as a subscribe link for my newsletter. (And people are actually subscribing!)

The reviews for Immortal Remains have been the best I’ve ever received as a published author, mostly four and five stars. I think the cover art is quite good and might be helping – I did it using Canva who, I think might put all the people doing cover art on Fiverr out of business. The templates are easy, fast, stylish. I’ve had a lot of compliments on this cover. I’ve kept it at 99¢ which is likely the primary reason people are taking a chance on it, though the original price is $2.99, a bargain for an ebook IMHO. I’m a little bit afraid of bringing the price back up to $2.99 as I don’t want to lose out on any bargain shoppers who like the cover and the description enough to buy.

So, once again, I have no idea why this book keeps selling but I’m not going to complain. With a little luck these numbers will remain consistent well into October.

Anyway, if you’ve bought the book, thanks again for your support!

 

 

Turning Back the Clock in Saskatoon

Brad Trost, thank Odin, is not my member of parliament.  But he’s an MP in my city and even though he doesn’t have a ghost of a chance of ever becoming the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, he’s tossed his divisive, anti-choice, anti-same sex marriage hat in the ring. And, naturally, rather than talk about what qualifies him to lead the Conservatives and possibly Canada for that matter, his approach is to talk about issues that most people whose knuckles don’t scrape the asphalt have long since moved on from, namely, his opposition to same sex marriage which, the last time I looked, has been the law in this country near about a decade.

Normally I don’t use this space to get all political but I am today. Full disclosure: I swing Conservative on most things. I’d probably describe myself as a Red Tory or someone from the old Progressive Conservative base. I’m not socially conservative – I loathe the term, actually. Because social conservatism is all about turning back the clock on things like same sex marriage and abortion. (We have solved the politics of abortion here in Canada, folks. We simply have no law so it isn’t illegal. It’s a uniquely Canadian way of dealing with a political no-win; just move onto other things.) Full disclosure again: I voted for Justin Trudeau last year in our federal election. Why? Because I got tired of the mean-spirited nature of Stephen Harper’s government in its later years. I didn’t like how they treated veterans. (I am a veteran.) I was just … tired.

But I will give credit where credit is due: one of the things Stephen Harper did exceptionally well was to purge the knuckle draggers from his party, by and large. I suspect it’s one of the reasons he was such a control freak: there has always been a strong knuckle dragger contingent in mainstream conservatism. It bugs me, but there’s nowhere for those folks to park their vote. They could start a Knuckle Dragger Party of Canada but that would only split the vote among conservatives and hand the keys of perpetual governance to the Liberal Party of Canada.

But back to Brad Trost.

He’s been getting a bit of press lately. Notably by claiming that opponents of same sex marriage are discriminated against in Canada. So there’s that. He’s also said that were he to win the Conservative leadership race that he wouldn’t repeal same sex marriage. Naturally this makes no sense to me because if he wouldn’t repeal it, why discuss it at all? Oh, right … it placates the knuckle dragger base in Canadian conservatism.

I’m not sure what bothers me more, the fact that Trost is even running to replace Stephen Harper or that the few candidates who have already declared aren’t coming after Trost for his knuckle-dragging views.

He’s an annoyance. I don’t entirely understand how he keeps getting re-elected because his two key issues (same sex marriage and abortion) have long ago been settled as national issues. I am mindful that Canada is a free country and he’s perfectly within his rights to spew forth and multiply, but it makes me uneasy that this guy is getting any kind of media traction at all. This could be symptomatic of a yawner of a Conservative leadership race, it’s too early to tell.

What I will say is that I am tired of hearing about opposition to same sex marriage. That allowing lesbians and gays to marry somehow threatens traditional marriage. (Even though heterosexual folks account for a divorce rate of around 45%. It would seem to me that straight people are the real threat to traditional marriage – they seem to be screwing it up nicely all on their own, thank you very much. God knows I did.)

Move on from this guy Saskatoon. Move on from social conservative knuckle-draggers. As our freshly squeezed, sexy, shirtless and huggy new Prime Minister would say … “because its 2016”. (Actually he said “because its 2015 but I am taking liberties here.)

Who do I want to win the leadership of the Conservatives? This lady here. Now if only she would run.

Want a FREE copy of POLTERGEEKS? Read on!

This was published in 2012 by Angry Robot Books now defunct YA imprint, Strange Chemistry Books. The cover looked like this way back when:

I love the hell out of that cover. But time has passed and the rights to the book have reverted back to me, so I’ve given it a new cover that’s just as dramatic. (I think.)

 

 

And of course, I’m giving away FREE copies for your Kindle or Kobo or Nook or even a dusty old Sony, but I need you to one thing for me:

Sign up for my newsletter and post  the folowing link to my NEW urban fantasy thrill ride in your FACEBOOK or TWITTER feed:

IMMORTAL REMAINS – A TIM REAPER NOVEL ONLY 99¢ TODAY ONLY! http://tinyurl.com/gpv7x9j

Oh, and feel free to comment if you like! Once I’ve got you signed up for my newsletter, I will fire off a copy of POLTERGEEKS for you.

See? And who said the last Friday of August could possibly be boring!

 

Why I’m going full Kindle Unlimited for my Self-Published work

Because this:

I’ve sold less than 100 books on all Smashwords-fed book selling sites in two years of self-publishing. It’s not Smashwords fault, mind you. It’s just that Planet Earth basically owns Kindles far more than it does Kobos (I have one) or Nooks or Sony Readers. I haven’t bothered posting any Kindle sales numbers in the two years since I started self-publishing my back list, but what I can tell you is that my sales have been in the hundreds most months. I can tell you that I’ve received royalty cheques from Amazon each month that have been enough to do a car payment and I can tell you that as soon as I put my book IMMORTAL REMAINS onto Kindle Unlimited, it got a big bump.

Don’t get me wrong: I love EPUB format as much as an individual can love a digital book format, but the fact is that for me at least, my sales overwhelmingly have been over on Amazon and I don’t see any value in keeping my books in EPUB if so few people use it. It’s nothing personal Smashwords … it’s just business. Perhaps if I am fortunate enough to have a runaway bestseller and people might have heard about my books as a result, then I might migrate back to EPUB, but for the foreseeable future, I’m going to be going exclusively Kindle. If you have a Kobo or a Nook and are desperate to read my books, I will sell EPUB versions directly from this here website.

To be honest, when I did the comparison between Smashwords and Kindle numbers it really hammered home just how massive Amazon has become and just how much it really gets to dictate the future of the publishing business because it truly is a planetary-scale bookstore. I mean, I’ve done months with ZERO book promotion and I was still selling more than a hundred copies a month of a given title on Amazon. (And a big fat goose egg over at Smashwords).

So, there you have it. You win Amazon. I surrender to your infinite bigness. You are the book market. Period. Full stop. Just make sure you don’t screw me on those Kindle Normalized Pages please and thank you.

A Tim Reaper Backgrounder

 

 

1) Who is Tim Reaper?

He’s a defrocked grim reaper who got kicked out of his order for doing something very bad about 100 years ago. He lives in the human world by driving his essence into the recently deceased and ‘occupying’ that body until it becomes too damaged or diseased to continue. Then he just finds another body and continues on …  so he’s kind of a living zombie. Or a necromancer. Or a body snatcher. He’s really a tough guy to figure out.

2) Is Immortal Remains a spin-off? 

Yes. Tim Reaper first appeared in my book Funeral Pallor, albeit, a very rough around the edges version of the guy in my new book. He helped Valerie Stevens prevent a mini zombie apocalypse and was quite popular with the readers of the book so I decided to write his own novel.  Here’s his very first appearance from the aforementioned book:

Bain’s Eatery is what the Department of Health would call a rat-infested shit hole. Conveniently situated on the bottom floor of the Hotel Cedric, a flophouse whose clientele range from twenty-dollar hookers to paroled derelicts, Bain’s is a seedy little place where anyone can go to drown themselves in drink, drugs or a combination of both. To say that it’s a rough establishment would be an understatement, because fist fights are considered a courtesy to its patrons, and stabbings are what you do if you don’t feel like leaving a tip.

Caroline had changed into her combat fatigues before we left her flat and actually dragged out a matching pair of brass knuckle-dusters, which she stuffed in her pockets for quick access, because in all likelihood, we’d probably wind up in some kind of a scrap before our meeting with Tim Reaper was over.

I didn’t have any problem finding a parking place, since the Hotel Cedric’s clients are generally of the walk-in, stay-two-hours and leave variety. For good measure (and because I didn’t want anybody messing with my stuff) I cast a shroud over the Maxima, just to be on the safe side. The front foyer of Bain’s reeked of urine, and we were met by a large man dressed in a torn bomber jacket, who was relieving himself against the front window. Caroline made a disgusted grunt and literally flung the wino through the font door. He slowly got back to his feet, staggered a few times, only to do a face plant into an old juke box that was pumping out Loretta Lynn’s Coal Miner’s Daughter.

Under normal circumstances, an entrance like that would attract the attention of everyone in a restaurant or drinking establishment, but not at Bain’s. The patrons didn’t even lift their heads from their highballs and speedballs as we sauntered across the grease stained tile floor to a booth with a view of the entire restaurant. Tim Reaper lifted his eyes from a steaming bowl of Won Ton soup as we approached and then went back to his meal.

“You’re late,” he said, in a raspy, low-pitched voice. “Oh, and your entrance doesn’t even warrant a two on the bad ass scale.”

“Thanks for sharing, asshole,” I said, sliding onto the green vinyl seat across the table.

He was dressed in a black cotton duck trench coat, and I caught a glimpse of a shoulder holster containing a .357 Magnum nestled snugly against a neatl- pressed dress shirt that looked like it had just come back from the dry cleaners. He wore a black fedora pulled down to just above his brow, and he was sporting a neatly-manicured five o’clock shadow that framed his chiselled features and strong square jaw in such a way that I thought he was the living manifestation of a Jack Kirby drawing of Nick Fury.

Caroline slid next to me and said, “Let’s get down to business. You called Valerie, and you specifically asked that I attend. What do you want?”

He rolled his unnaturally blue eyes up from his soup as he blew at the steaming bowl. “The same thing you want… Harold Newby.”

Well, I didn’t see that coming.

If someone had hired Tim Reaper to find Harold Newby, my instincts told me it was probably the Conclave. Tim glanced up at my staff as he brought a spoonful of broth to his lips.

“Harold Newby?” I asked in a cold voice, as I tightened my grip on my staff.

“Always ready for anything, aren’t you, Stevens?” he asked, as if amused. “You can relax – I’m not working for the bad guys.”

I leaned across the table until my face was about three inches away from his. “You’re a bounty hunter, Reaper – you’ll work for anyone, as long as they can pay you.”

He swallowed his soup. “You’re right – but you can chill out, sweetie. That Rajwani guy should have sent you an e-mail explaining why you’re working with me for the time being.”

“Vishesh hired you?” I nearly choked on the words.

He nodded. “Yep… it seems with that your boss believes you might be getting in over your head, so they hired me. Anyway, don’t lose sleep over it, because where we’re going you’re going to need all the firepower you can get.”

If I was disgruntled about being in the presence of Tim Reaper before, it was nothing compared to how I was feeling now. I do my job to the best of my ability, and while I don’t always work alone, I choose who I’m going to work a case with, and up until now, I thought my employers understood this. I felt like someone had kicked the legs out from under me, and more importantly, I felt like my ten years of solid work on behalf of the government, work in which I’d squared off with everyone from New Coven witches to a vampire clan that was trying to set up shop in Northeast Calgary, had firmly established my competence. Now I was being told I had to work with a known scumbag, and worse, that my employer, who I’d busted my but to please for a decade, had decided to hire him!

I pushed the fact that Vishesh had arbitrarily hired a dirtbag to assist me out of my mind, because even though Government Services and Infrastructure Canada might have thought I was in over my head, I wasn’t going to show any signs of weakness in front of an asshole like Tim Reaper.

“So you know we have to go into Pitfall’s Province to find him, right?” I asked, not even blinking.

He nodded. “Yep. It ain’t a place for chicks – unless they’re dead. The zombie shouldn’t have any problem, though.”

Caroline pushed the table into Tim’s midsection so hard that he let out a foul-smelling breath. “I’m no feminist, but the last time I looked, you aren’t exactly the kind of guy who gives a shit about women… or children, for that matter!”

He placed two enormous hands on the edge of the table and pushed back hard. “I don’t normally give a rat’s ass about anything more than getting paid, meat bag. In this matter, however, I think there’s a lot more going on than you’re taking into account, and if you don’t widen your collective gaze, you’re going to be up to your armpits in the living dead.”

He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. Thirty zombies is a big ass nest by anyone’s standards, and it was clear there was a conspiracy afoot, but I didn’t have a clue what the end game was going to be. I decided that since I was still very much in the dark, I’d pick Tim’s brain to see if he could shed a little light.

“I dealt with thirty of them a couple of days ago,” I said, trying to match his serious tone. “I found out the undertaker’s association has been dealing for months with bodies suddenly disappearing from funeral homes all over town. We talked to a local funeral director in Balzac when we took out one of the creatures in his mortuary. He’s the guy who blew the whistle on it.”

Tim blinked at me for a moment. His lips curled back into something resembling a smirk, and he chuckled softly to himself.

“You haven’t investigated the undertaker’s association?” he asked, still chuckling. “Hadn’t it occurred to you that if bodies are going missing, this might be an inside job?”

I started grinding my teeth together, because it was one thing to know that Vishesh had hired the guy without even consulting me, but it was another thing entirely to assert that I didn’t know how to do my job. I reached across the table and grabbed him by the shirt collar. He made a slight choking sound as his bowl of Won Ton soup topped over the edge and slipped onto the floor.

“Listen, asshole, I don’t need you or anyone else to tell me how to do my freaking job! If Vishesh thinks you can solve this little zombie conspiracy, then you’re welcome to it! I have more important things to do than to butt heads with a failed spirit who got kicked out of his order because he was bored!”

I released my grip and slumped back in my seat. Tim cocked a wary eyebrow as his eyes darted back and forth between Caroline and me.

He straightened his overcoat and chuckled dryly. “Zombie conspiracy? Sounds like the title of the world’s worst b-movie.”

I bristled at his tone. “Yeah – a zombie conspiracy. People are being infected with a spell of some kind that drains their skin of any colour, so they look like a living corpse. Once they’ve died, they immediately turn into a revenant.”

He chewed his lip for a moment and said, “Interesting. If anyone knows what death looks like, it’s going to be me. I’ve been putting people down since before human civilization took hold, and I’ve never seen anything like that. How’d you find out about it?”

“We met a spirit who was a victim,” said Caroline. “Julia Newby – Harold’s late wife.”

“So you’re taking the word of a ghost… seems plausible, save for one thing.”

“What?” Caroline and I said in unison.

He shook his head slowly, like he was purposely trying to make me feel like a rank amateur. “You’ve got no evidence. Those thirty creatures you destroyed might just have been raised from the dead using a regular dark spell. You’re talking about people’s skin turning white as chalk before they die, but have you actually seen someone dying from this thing?”

“Nope,” I said, finally snapping at him. “But I’m going to stick with the law of probability on this one, asshole. That ghost still lingers on with her sons, and for more than two decades, they’ve been single-handedly killing zombies in this city. In life, she was Harold Newby’s wife, and she says she was a victim of the spell. Her own sons had to put her down when she was resurrected. That sounds like a conspiracy to me, and while I don’t have physical evidence, I’ve got the word of a funeral director, a demonic minion that we destroyed at his funeral home, not to mention a twelve-year-old revenant that was killed by the Newby brothers. Combine all of that with the nest of thirty creatures I destroyed two days ago, and I’d say something big is about to hit this city.”

The bounty hunter said nothing for a few moments as he chewed on the circumstantial evidence. His milky blue eyes kept darting between me and the main entrance of Bain’s like he was expecting someone to come barging in with guns blazing. I drew on my magic, and my staff charged with supernatural energy as I cocked my head over my left shoulder to see what Tim was looking at.

And that’s when he made his move.

In a flash of motion that I caught out of the corner of my right eye, Tim Reaper drove his enormous right hand into his overcoat and he pulled out the gleaming, gunmetal blue .357 Magnum. Time became a slow motion vignette as I spun around to see Reaper rise from his seat and push the gun right against Caroline’s skull. I watched in horror as his right index finger slowly squeezed the trigger, so I did the only thing I could do at that precise moment, and it was ugly enough to send the patrons of Bain’s eatery diving behind their chairs for cover.

As easy as flipping a light switch, I channeled my magic into a fiery explosion of rage and called on my shadow-self, that part of me that clings to my primal nature like a toxic film of hatred and menace. It flew out of my body and inflated my shadow into a ten foot tall monster comprised of blackness and bile. It threw itself across the table and dug its talon-like claws into Tim Reaper’s neck, lifting him over the table. The gun went off, sending a slug into the ceiling as my shadow-self grabbed Tim Reaper by the crotch and body slammed him down hard onto the filthy tile floor.

The creature wasn’t done yet.

It stepped on Tim Reaper’s wrist like it was squashing an insect and snatched the gun out of his hand. Tim Reaper’s face grimaced in a strange combination of pain and genuine surprise as the monster bent the long barrel as easily as if it were bending a length of soldering wire and tossed it back into the booth. Caroline emitted a strange squeak as it turned its attention to the other patrons of Bain’s, and it was at this point that she began shaking my and screaming into my ear.

“Val!” she shrieked. “Val, snap out of it! Stop whatever it is that you’re doing, for Christ’s sake, Val!”

I gulped at the stale air inside the eatery and blinked a few times as the monster began to dissolve. My eyes focused on the green vinyl seat where Tim Reaper had been sitting only seconds ago, and I could feel my murderous nature begin to recede. In seconds it was over, and I was drawn to the image of Caroline pummelling Tim Reaper’s face with a set of brass knuckle dusters.

 “You were going to blow my head off, you son of a bitch!” she roared, as a bony grey fist mashed Tim’s face into a bloody, pulpy goo. “You tried to kill me!”

I dove out of my seat and tackled Caroline. We rolled across the greasy floor, and I held her down as Tim Reaper struggled back to the table.

“Shhhhh… Caroline, stop it.” I whispered as I cradled her bony frame in my arms. “It’s safe now… it’s over.”

Her dead eyes rolled up to my face, and if she could produce tears, Caroline would have cried like a terrified child.

“I-I don’t want to go back to the dark place, Val. I can’t go back there.”

“I know, Caroline,” I said, rocking her in my arms. “Nobody will send you there as long as there’s a breath in my body.”

Just then, a small Chinese man raced out of the kitchen with a broom in hand. He swung it at Tim Reaper, who ducked, and it connected with a customer in the booth behind him.

“You go now!” he bellowed, in a tinny, accented voice. “You all get out of here now!”

I helped Caroline back to her feet and then grabbed my staff from the booth. I fired a venomous glance at Tim Reaper as I reached for a tiny wisp of magic and directed into the diamond willow shaft. It glowed brightly for half a second as I grabbed him by the cuff of his jacket and yanked him to his feet.

“You’re coming with me, asshole,” I hissed.

3) Is Reaper a detective?

Basically yes. But no. But yes. But maybe. He’s been a bounty hunter, a hit man, a fixer. He does odd jobs for money and he has a habit of shooting serial killers because being an elemental, he knows they don’t actually possess a soul so according to his book, they don’t get to live. He’s really a lousy detective and that’s why he relies on Carol Sparks.

4) Who is Carol Sparks?

She’s a Halifax Police Service homicide detective and yes, I was heavy under the influence of Jim Butcher’s Murphy when I created her. She’s African-Canadian. She’s tall where as Murphy is short. She’s tough as nails and kicks Reaper’s ass all over the place. Her back story is that she made the mistake of actually having physical contact with the defrocked death dealer when she arrested him and she witnessed her own death at the hands of a robber who was trying to rip off a convenience store in eight years’ time. Naturally that has messed with her head and she’s having a great deal of difficulty accepting that Reaper is what he claims to be. By the end of Immortal Remains, she realizes that God and the Devil are real. That terrifying things exist out there in the supernatural realm and it’s her job to shoot them in the face with her Glock every chance she gets.

5) Who is the bad guy?

Can’t tell you. I will say, however, that angels and demons all have an agenda of their own and can’t ever be trusted.

6) What’s so great about Tim Reaper, anyway?

He’s part gumshoe, part mob enforcer. He is immortal and amoral. He wants very much to be human but won’t ever admit it. He drinks and smokes far too much for anyone’s good. He’s a sexist. He’s often a misogynist until Carol Sparks cracks him in the head with a brick. He’s a bad guy trying to be good. He’s tough as nails. He switches bodies in the book. He’s a bit like Doctor Who in that he literally gets a new face and body when the one he is in gets wrecked. With that in mind, I can make Tim Reaper into anyone. Right now he is a white guy. Next book he might be Asian or a woman or an Asian woman or Latino or Pakistani. I’d like to explore different cultural experiences for my protagonist as he discovers his humanity.

7) Is there a romantic arc?

Yes. But not between Reaper and Carol Sparks.  Also, Reaper doesn’t understand love. In this book be begins to learn that it’s a five alarm fire that can rip your heart in two if you’re not careful.

8) Are there world-ending things afoot in Immortal Remains?

Oh hell yes. Plus you get to see an angel fall.

9) How long will Immortal Remains be available at the sweet price of 99¢ for Kindle?

Not long. Better order it now!

10) Should I buy it?

Um … yes. Oh … and don’t forget the contest! You can win a signed copy of IMMORTAL REMAINS and my bestselling THE NORTH!

A sequel to my bestselling THE NORTH

A quick bit of backstory on this book.

I wrote the first draft of THE NORTH during NaNoWriMo in 2012. I wanted to see if I could write a zombie novel that had a uniquely Canadian flavor. At the time I’d been reading zombie books by masters of the craft like David Moody and I was particularly inspired by Irish ZOMPOC author Wayne Simmons. He wrote the bestselling FLU which is such a damned good book because it has regional flavor to it. I mean, who knew, right? A zombie book could take place in Belfast so why can’t it take place in my hometown of Calgary Alberta Canada? (World famous for its hockey team that once won a Stanley Cup when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and also host to ten days of western-themed madness each July, the Calgary Stampede.)

My then agent and I worked on the book. Revised the hell out of it, but two years later she and I parted company just as my YA publisher Strange Chemistry Books imploded and I just wanted to get the project out there to see if it would sell. I didn’t know the market for ZOMPOC books but I did know that readers of the genre can’t get enough of it so I thought the book might have a chance if I self-pubbed it. So, I did just that … and for a year it sold quite well. Unfortunately the sales slid off and THE NORTH languished for a year before I contacted Severed Press who offered to publish it at the same time I decided to self-publish and they agreed to do a reprint of it.

It was a smart move on my part because THE NORTH has been selling really well since its re-release in May of this year. The book is rarely below 10K in the Amazon rankings. It pops in and out of the Top-100 for post-apocalypse books and I am getting emails from folks wanting to know when the sequel will be out.

So, I guess I’d best answer that question.

Q: WHEN IS THE SEQUEL TO THE NORTH COMING OUT?

A: ONCE I WRITE IT AND GET IT TO SEVERED PRESS AND WE EDIT, REVISE, FORMAT, ETC.

Q: OK, SO WHEN IS THAT?

A: I WILL KNOW BETTER ONCE I TALK WITH THE PUBLISHER SO I CAN’T COMMIT TO A DATE YET.

Q: WELL HOW MUCH DOES THAT SUCK?

A: A LOT. I KNOW. I SUCK TOO.

The good news is that I am writing it. I even have a title: THE PARTISAN. And here’s a snippet:

 

Journal Entry: 16 November 0310 HRS ZULU

Sunray has my sister.

He took Jo and will kill her if I don’t find some bullshit resistance base that he wants to wipe off the fucking map. Talk about going full Darth Vader.

The end of the world was six months ago. Everywhere you turn there are creeps. Masses of shambling, rotting husks that will rip into your flesh and eat you alive. We don’t know what caused Day Zero and it doesn’t matter at this point because the old world; the one with smart phones and text messaging and not finding your ass swarmed by throngs of walking cadavers is gone forever. The new world is one where you live by your wits and where the only thing that matters is getting through each day in one piece.

I know the name of the name of the place Sunray wants me to find: Carlsbad Farms. I learned of it after my fighting patrol raided a coulee that was defended by some of his assets in an attempt to save a handful of locals the crazy fucker had caged up in a pen with the creeps. Only they were all infected. Those poor people were truly the living dead: still alive. Still aware that when they breathed their last, each and every one of them would turn into a creep. There are moments when I have to wonder if it is an inevitability for all of us: to die and then come back. To wander the snow covered countryside as part of a mindless procession whose sole purpose is to fucking eat those few of us breathers still breathing.

I killed those people in a post-apocalyptic version of euthanasia. They asked me to shoot each of them in the head so they wouldn’t become the stuff of nightmares. I had no choice and now that grisly scene of mass mercy killing is burned into my subconscious with the intensity of a branding iron.

My name is David Simmons. My eight-year-old sister has been taken and I’ve got to make this work, but for the life of me, I don’t have a fucking clue how. I’m just a sixteen-year-old kid, but Sergeant Green left me in charge of the last living remnants of the King’s Own. We busted out of our armoury and headed for some place called Sanctuary Base after hearing a weak broadcast on UHF. It’s supposed to be zombie-free but I have my doubts. And getting there is now a secondary matter because Sunray, a Major J.T. Martins from the battle school in Wainwright has seized a huge swath of land and named it Eden. It’s martial law and he’s got roving patrols, armoured equipment, probably a shit pile of diesel to power everything from Coyote LAVs to fucking Leopard II battle tanks.

And the guy is bat shit crazy, so there’s that.

There were eight of us when we escaped the city. Now Dawson is dead, Kenny was killed trying to save Jo, and Pam Cruze has a fucking hole in a leg that she’s bound to lose if I can’t find wherever the hell this Carlsbad Farms place is.

Sunray has provided me with G-Wagon a trailer full of Jerry cans of diesel. Melanie Dixon, Doug Manybears and Sid Toomey are going on a long range patrol to see if they can find where the shit this Sunray bastard hangs his hat. And me? I’m going to link up with this resistance if it kills me and costs Pam her leg because we need to save Jo and wipe Sunray out. Period. Full stop. He won’t give me back Jo and I know that the moment I meet up with his forward element to inform them of the location of Carlsbad Farms, they’ll put a bullet in my brain and either kill Jo or do something altogether fucking vile with her. So we’re leaving in five. We’re going to head east. We’ve got a radio and we’re going to scan the frequencies to listen for anyone with a pulse putting out a broadcast. Sunray will be listening too and I know that he’s got his own recce elements tailing me. If we do link up with the resistance, it’s a crap shoot as to whether they line me and Cruze up against a wall and shoot us each in the head because they might be as crazy as Sunray.

I hope that won’t happen. I hope they’ve got a few tricks up their sleeve because we aren’t going to make it to the fabled Sanctuary Base; the place that is supposed to be zombie-free and the reason we busted out of the safety of the armoury and escaped the city in the first place only ten short days ago.

We’ve lost friends and family.

The creeps might fucking get us.

Survivalist nut jobs might try to take us down.

Sunray will kill my sister if I fail.

I have to make this work. I just have to. Somehow.

IMMORTAL REMAINS COMPETITION!

IMMORTAL REMAINS is officially for sale (at 99¢ for a LIMITED TIME) on Amazon, and in paperback. To celebrate I’m giving away FREE STUFF! (Because who doesn’t love FREE STUFF?)

Here’s your chance to WIN a signed paperback of IMMORTAL REMAINS, a $25 Amazon gift card, and a signed paperback of my bestselling YA post-apocalyptic thriller THE NORTH. (Seriously, it will scare the @$%* out of you.)

Up for grabs:

x1 Signed copy of IMMORTAL REMAINS – A TIM REAPER NOVEL

x1 Signed copy of THE NORTH


x1 $25 Amazon Gift Card.

I’m picking TWO winners so you might just luck out. To enter, comment below (when commenting, please leave your email address) and/or visit the post on Facebook – click here.

You can also enter by emailing me directly and asking to be added to the draw.

Closes August 8, 2016. Winners will be picked at random & notified the same day. If you do not claim your prize in 48 hours another winner will be picked. International entries accepted. Not affiliated with Facebook or Amazon. No purchase necessary.

#BOOKINYOURFACE: Here’s me reading the first chapter of IMMORTAL REMAINS

A bunch of authors are reading the first chapter of their newest books on Facebook. Here’s my contribution avec groovy background! Enjoy!

Hey look … I’m cross promoting another author’s Self-Published book!

I had written about the need for authors to pay it forward by cross promoting other author’s books in the back of their own forthcoming books, and I’ve done it with my newly released IMMORTAL REMAINS.

 

The author is Matt Darst. The book is FREAKS ANON. That first chapter reads quite nicely and here are some pics of Matt’s cover art, first chapter, social media links along with the free first chapter of the sequel to IMMORTAL REMAINS.

I hope this idea catches on with authors. Discoverability is crazy hard in this era of Kindle Direct Publishing and Create Space.

Do Matt a favor and buy his book. Oh … and if you’ve got some spare change buy mine, won’t you? It’s only 99¢ right now for your Kindle.