Sean Cummings's Blog: POLTERBLOG!, page 7

Adventures in Self-Publishing: There’s Gonna Be A New Marshall Conrad Novel

It’s been in the back of my mind for a while now but since self-publishing MARSHALL CONRAD – A SUPERHERO TALE I’ve been fairly blown away by the fact that it’s been selling.

(Like I said back in August … I  have no idea why it’s selling. And it’s still selling!)

So far, it’s been in and out of the top 100 in superhero fiction since June and in the top 100 for Dark Fantasy at least once or twice a month. I’ve been getting emails from folks wanting a second book and I already started one four years ago but poor sales made me shelve it.

Here’s the cover for DARK BARGAINS – the second in the Marshall Conrad series.

He’s just saved Greenfield USA from all hell breaking loose during the summer solstice … you’d think a middle-aged superhero might get a well-earned rest. Something has been hunting Greenfield’s children and it’s not entirely human. It plans on killing them too unless Marshall Conrad carries out five dirty deeds that will guarantee he winds up on the hit list for superheroes all over America. 

Look for it in July 2015.

And here’s a small excerpt:

I grabbed Walter by the scruff of his flabby neck and ran like hell as he let out a wail in protest. “Stupid freaking cat,” I spat as I glanced over my left shoulder only to see the pair of smoldering red eyes cutting through the blackness of the pine forest. Walter wasn’t helping any as he dug his claws into my chest, making me curse the day I bought my overweight feline at a garage sale for ten dollars.

The psychic visual I’d received had led me to an abandoned cabin which was supposed to be where I’d find eight- year-old Victoria Jenkins, reported missing by her parents four days ago. The Greenfield Sheriff’s Department was treating her disappearance by following standard protocol, first issuing an Amber Alert within two hours of the time she was supposed to arrive at her after school program. Her mother issued a tearful plea for her safe return at a news conference the following morning and me? I’d spent two straight nights combing the streets from up on high, keeping a vigilant eye out for a red Chevrolet Venture minivan that she was reported to have climbed into by a substitute teacher who assumed it was one of Victoria’s parents picking her up from school.

The stinking migraine, like all the migraines that are a tell-tale sign of a Vanguard’s ability to foresee a crime before it is perpetrated hit me just as Marnie Brindle and I were settling down to watch a chick flick on DVD. (So sue me, I’m expanding my horizons.) It offered two clues: One was the abandoned cabin, and the other was that Victoria would be locked up inside an old refrigerator and left to suffocate. It didn’t tell me about a largely hairless monster with claws that could tear through the magical shield I’d invoked to protect Walter and me, and it sure as hell didn’t say the refrigerator inside the cabin would be empty, or that I’d be rescuing my cat instead of a little girl.

Walter hissed loudly as he dug his claws deeper into my chest; naturally, this only acted to piss off the pit-bull terrier demon thing that was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Instead of barking at my stupid cat as it chased us up a winding path, it belched a jet of corrosive dog vomit that nearly took my head off as I dove behind a fallen log.

Evil? You bet! Bent on tearing out my throat? Why not? Such is the life of Greenfield’s only resident meta-human and part-time destroyer supernatural beasties. Like demonic dogs, for example.

The creature crashed through the log, sending splinters of dried wood in every direction and throwing me about thirty feet in the air. Walter the Stupid Cat landed against the trunk of a giant blue spruce and skirted straight up out of harm’s way. Did I mention he’s a treacherous bugger?

“That thing is going to kill us you stupid cat!” I snarled as I landed flat on my back. “Why the hell aren’t my eyes glowing?”

The pit-bull thing gave its head a shake and bared its teeth as it readied to pounce. Shiny threads of saliva dribbled down from its three-inch fangs as a deep, throaty growl sliced through the relative silence of the woods and straight into my bowels. I scrambled behind a large boulder and spotted an opening in the forest canopy where I could take to the skies. The pit-bull let out a mind-numbing howl that I could feel in my fillings as it charged.

Of course I was going to cut and run; I might look like an idiot most days, but I have the good enough sense not to duke it out with giant, hairless K-9’s on their own turf. I’d have a better shot at taking the beast down from the sky.

The creature leaped into the air and snapped at my boot heels just as I pushed off the ground. “Not so tough now, huh, Fido?” I shouted as I floated to a safe distance.

It blinked a couple of times, and then it let out a loud sneeze. Its crimson eyes narrowed as it coiled back on a pair of rear legs that glistened in the moonlight. And that’s when the unexpected happened. The demon launched its body off the ground and straight at me. I pushed higher to avoid having one of my legs ripped off, and then gravity decided to play a trick on me. Instead of falling back to the earth, the creature continued its ascent. The damned thing could fly.

“Walter!” I shrieked, as the fat fur ball dove into my arms. I clenched my teeth and shot into the clear black sky like a rocket. I didn’t even bother to look behind me this time, you know, because I could hear the demon cutting through the wind current behind me. Oh, and it let fly with another corrosive hork of dog vomit.

I’m 47 – Holy @#$!

(Me & the Better 1/2 outside the Victoria & Albert Museum in London Last Year)

 

My thoughts on turning 47 yesterday:

My wife and son and I went for supper last night. Then we bought a cake. Then I put air in the better 1/2’s tire. And that’s how you do a 47th birthday.

I find, now that I’m nearing my 50’s that the little things don’t bother me as much as they used to. I also find that I tend to notice the passage of time now with a clarity that I surely didn’t when I was in my 20’s or even my 30’s. I can contextualize that, for all intents and purposes, I have now lived more years than I will continue to live and it’s a little bit hilarious while at the same time, a little bit terrifying. Because I can mark the passage of time now with the lines around my eyes, the white that appears in my beard when I haven’t shaved for a couple of days, that my son no longer looks like a kid anymore – that he too is aging. We are all growing older, and hopefully wiser.

There’s comedy in growing older. I make fun of myself a lot now in reference to aging. I often say “it ends badly for everyone” which of course, it does. So, I am continuing my journey. I have decided to complete a project for this year’s NaNoWriMo – it’s a coming of age story – big departure from the bubblegum that I usually write.

Onward.

Traditionally published authors, self-published authors and being yelly

Hiya – my name is Sean Cummings and I’m a traditionally published author who has, at times, said some unkind things about self-published books, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and basically that Amazon might possibly be SkyNet.

Hiya – my name is Sean Cummings and I’m a self-published author who has, at times, had really bad experiences with traditional publishing houses and who sometimes thinks that traditional publishing doesn’t have a freaking clue what the hell is going on.

There’s a lot of yelly stuff right now online when it comes to traditionally pubbed authors and those who are self-published. I think, probably, the number one self-publishing website on Planet Earth is The Passive Voice. Here’s where I got called out because of comments I’ve made on my website about self-published stuff.

And here’s where they featured a blog post of mine about my book MARSHALL CONRAD where I suggested that I had no idea why the damned book was, and still is, selling so well.

I’m thinking there’s still a lot of stigma out for self-published books. I think that a lot of people in traditional publishing look down their noses at self-pubbed stuff, and in many cases they are right do do it because metric tons of self-published stuff is crap with bad cover art and terrible editing.

And then there are some amazingly wonderful self-published books. There are authors who have hit paydirt doing it. There are established authors leaving traditional publishing behind to go it alone. There are people like me who are tinkering with self-publishing while still hoping to make it in traditional publishing.

And there’s still a lot of vitriol out there. From both sides.

I think it’s because maybe a lot of us on the traditional side of things thinks that self-published authors don’t deserve to have a book published with the click of a mouse, you know? They didn’t…

a) Earn their way to a traditional publishing deal

b) Experience years of rejection from agents and publishers

c) Experience piss-poor sales once their book got published

That and the market is flooded with self-published stuff which makes it harder and harder to get noticed.

On the other hand, self-published authors often feel that publishers are out to screw authors. That there is nothing a publishing house can do that a self-published author cannot do. That gatekeepers such as agents and editors are part of the problem and there are tons of traditionally published books that are crap with bad story lines and equally bad editing.

So there’s a lot of polarization here. I think it might be due to the fact that nobody has a clue what the hell publishing is going to look like five years from now. We are all experiencing seismic change. Christ, a well respected publisher can start up a young adult imprint and in less than three years shut it down due to poor sales!

The thing is … are we all a bunch of complete assholes? There is vitriol coming from both sides (I’ve actually participated in it, so my bad – that won’t be happening again) and at the heart of things is that whether your a Passive Voice Patriot or you’re “Self-Published Books aren’t Real Books”, you have to wonder if there is any middle ground?

I do a lot of writer’s workshops here in Saskatoon where I live. Every wannabe author I meet gets the same question from me, “why do you want to get published?”

Most of the time the response has to do with holding that book in your hands for the first time or seeing it on the shelf of a local book store. So, you know, maybe there’s some validation things going on there. Let’s face it, it’s good for your self esteem to actually be offered a publishing contract because the odds are so very heavily stacked against you ever getting published in the first place.

Self-publishing advocates see things differently in that technology has democratized the process of getting published. That authors can now be in control. That gatekeepers are no longer a factor.

Is there middle ground here? Why is everyone being so yelly? Why was I being yelly?

Well, I can tell you one reason .. I was a bit smug. There, I said it. I was smug because I had achieved something that most writers won’t. But the funny thing is, I self-pubbed my newest work in spite of the fact that I could have tried traditional. I still often have a knee-jerk reaction to seeing a self-published author doing extremely well when I am not. It’s weird … because I never experience that feeling when one of my traditionally published peers is kicking ass.

Maybe I’m an asshole. Maybe we’re all assholes … who knows?

All that I know is that books matter. Stories matter. Writing is a craft and it’s perhaps there where the smugness comes from. Perhaps those who look down on self-published authors believe that the very act of putting your book through the process of finding an agent, getting a publishing deal and then editing, editing, editing … all that is craft. All that craft is missing when you self-publish.

Beats me. All the yelly stuff is white noise to me at this point. It matters nothing to the book buying public because they really don’t give a shit whether the book was self pubbed or not. Consumers buy books based on a number of factors that are identical whether you are self pubbed or traditionally pubbed: how does the cover art look? What does it say on the back cover? Is the price right? Will I like this book?

I think that traditionally published books AND self-published books can answer those questions. And I think the books that answer the right way will sell. The other ones won’t.

And the market will decide.

Read the first 6 Chapters of THE NORTH!

Wondering what my book is about? Want to sample a smidge? Here you go – enjoy!

So I Self-Published THE NORTH – Release Day Thoughts

I have no idea whether this book is going to sell. I hope it does because its sales will determine whether I start writing the second in a planned trilogy.

I had offers on the table from a couple of small publishers but as mentioned in an earlier blog post, I didn’t see there was anything they could offer that I couldn’t already do myself.  I came very VERY close with a publisher I could only dream of being published by, but they felt the market was flooded with zombie books and would have difficulty getting sales in an over-crowded market.  And maybe they were right, who knows?

So, this is a brand new work and it’s 100% self-published. I did hire an editor to clean up the manuscript and it went through a series of reads via beta readers, so thank you beta readers. Will I self-publish again? Beats me … it’s a hell of a lot of work and I’d really rather be writing than formatting and dinking around with Adobe Illustrator for the cover art. I honestly don’t know where authors who have been successful at self-publishing find the damned time to write new stuff, there’s just so much to do. At any rate, here are some things I’ve learned since deciding to self-pub this project:

1) It’s a lot harder to get retweets promoting the book. Could be due to the fact that people don’t want to get spammed. I try to limit my promotional tweeting.

2) It’s been hard to get likes on Facebook – possibly the same reasons.

3) This one surprised me: it was really hard to give away e-arcs! I only managed to giveaway twenty-three of them in total!

4) There were a total of 8 pre-orders on Amazon.

5) It was up for pre-order over at Smashwords and I didn’t sell any. Actually, all of my books save for POLTERGEEKS and STUDENT BODIES are available at Smashwords and I have sold precisely none. All of my sales have come from Amazon – draw your own conclusions from that.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at right now. I shall give it the old college try and see if I can make something resembling a success out of this book. I’ve learned that outside of hiring a publicist or spending a boatload of money I don’t have, my marketing efforts will be limited to social media. This is nothing new for me – I didn’t have any real marketing support for my two Strange Chemistry Books titles so I got the word out the best I could. The sales were abysmal. I suspect the sales for all the Strange Chemistry Books authors were/are abysmal, hence the reason they shut their doors less than two years after opening.

I think that experience also had a lot to do with my decision to self-publish THE NORTH. I’ve had bad luck with two publishers in a row now – it tends to wear a person down.

Anyway, I do hope you buy my book. I think it’s a great read. It’s pretty bleak. It’s pretty dark. It’s pretty hard to find hope when the world burns … but hope can happen.

Enjoy THE NORTH! If I sell enough, I will write the second one. You can get it at Amazon in print and Kindle format and over at Smashwords for epub! (The ebook is on sale today only for $1,99 at Smash and Amazonistan!)

SC

Got Zombie? The North in Animated Gifs – BOOK GIVEAWAY

It’s done. It’s available now in print, and as an ebook. THE NORTH is a pretty damned dark book if I do say so myself. It’s got zombies, teenagers hanging by a thread and trying to stay alive while the world around them burns. It’s got non-stop action and a lot of twists and turns and a shock ending that you won’t see coming. So here’s some animated gifs that will help articulate what I’m talking about here….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interested yet? I hope so – it took more than two years and a lot of revision to get it done. This is a completely different kind of book for me – where POLTERGEEKS was light and airy and STUDENT BODIES was snarky and dark, THE NORTH is bleak & terrifying and cold because it’s a crew of teenage orphans and the story of their escape from the city to a place they hope is safe. But how can anyone be safe when dead walk and the living are just meat? I hope you read it and get a kick out of my attempt to write the Great Canadian Zombie Apocalypse novel.

Oh and hey … I’m giving away copies of THE NORTH. Five of ‘em! Want to win one?

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TODAY ONLY – Pre-order THE NORTH for just 99¢!

Want to get in on my forthcoming YA post-apocalyptic thriller for less than a cup of coffee? For the next 24 hours, you can pre-order THE NORTH for only 99¢ – how cool is that?

 

SAMPLE CHAPTER

“Mount up!” I shouted, as I waved my left arm overhead in a circular motion. The parade square was thick with the acrid stench of diesel and I coughed heavily as I raced to the main gate with Sid Toomey in tow. I could hear the loud clank of the hatches on the APC’s and I glanced over my shoulder to see the headlights blinking from both vehicles, confirming that everyone was accounted for and ready to go. We’d placed five shaped explosive charges on the door, designed to detonate outwards – we’d have sixty seconds from the time we pulled the ignitors until the charges would blow, one every ten seconds, so we’d have to haul ass back to the carrier.

I blinked a few times and drew in a deep breath as I pulled the small sliding hatch on the main door to the right and peered outside to see what we were in for once the charges detonated. To my front no more than ten feet from the peep-hole was a small gaggle of creeps. The one closest was shirtless. The dull grey skin on his torso was pulled tight – like the skin itself was receding back into the creature’s skeleton. A massive gash stretched from its left shoulder down to its right nipple exposing the rotting layers of tissue beneath and I could make out its ribs through the wound.

I was about to close the hatch door when the monster slowly looked up at the peep-hole. A thick, cloudy blue-grey film gave its eyes an unearthly appearance. It was like staring into the eyes of a statue; cold, empty and forever lifeless. The skin on its face was puffy and I noticed a thin stream of yellowish liquid dribbling out of a wound on its right cheek.

Even through the thick wooden door, the foul stench of decomposition filled my nostrils, threatening to cause my breakfast to wind up being spewed across the door. The monster lurched forward followed by a small gang of rotting husks, so I place the barrel of my carbine into the viewing port and fired off three quick rounds that tore the top of the creep’s head clean off. It dropped like a wet sandbag.

I closed the sliding hatch and then glanced back at my APC as I gave a thumbs-up – Doug Manybears, my driver, gave me one in return and pulled the driver’s hatch down over his head. The plan was that Doug would plow through what was left of the blasted doors as soon as I took my place in the crew commander’s hatch. Sid would climb into the turret and open up with the .50 caliber machine gun and the smaller GPMG. Both guns fired in tandem through an electronic solenoid, and the barrels were bore-sited to fire at whatever Doug saw through his visor-mounted scope.

I slipped my left index finger into the pull ring on the first ignitor, and then glanced back at Sid.

“You ready for this?”

“Are you done daydreaming? I thought I lost you there for a minute.” he said, nervously, as he dropped to a kneeling position and cocked his rifle.

“Yeah, I’m good. Here goes nothing,” I said, and pulled.

My nostrils filled with the pungent smell of burning powder as the safety fuse hissed and spat flaming embers and melted plastic onto the floor.  Quickly, I pulled the rings on the other four ignitors and ran like hell to the back of my carrier. Sid dove in after me and we pulled the doors shut, slipping the combat locks over the door handles. I crawled over the other three people in my carrier and grinned at Jo as I climbed into my crew commander’s hatch.

“Cover your ears!” I shouted as I glanced at my watch. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one …”

The vehicle pitched sharply as the first charge exploded, followed shortly by the other four. I peered through my periscope as I adjusted the microphone on my helmet, and saw a minivan-sized hole through a plume of smoke and burning wood. But that was nothing compared to what I saw next.

It was like we’d opened a door into hell. No sooner had the smoke from the explosive charges cleared when a huge swarm of the monsters poured through the opening like water through a spillway. Sid opened up with a series of controlled bursts from the turret guns, and the inside of the carrier quickly filled up with the smell of cordite and burning gun oil.

I grabbed the radio switch dangling from my helmet and pressed the push-to-talk button.

“Go! Go! Go!” I roared into the mouthpiece.

I felt the vibrations of the engine revving up behind the engine panel beside me and then our APC lurched into gear. I grabbed hold of my periscope handle and pushed my face into the rubber-coated visor as the ten-thousand-pound armored fighting machine barreled through the door, smashing through the monsters like a wrecking ball. We bounced heavily as the eight twenty-two-inch tires bounded over rotting bodies and debris. My carrier was clear of the building.

“Hard left!” I shouted, spotting a clearing between a pile-up of smashed cars. The carrier swung sharply and our bodies tilted to the right as Doug made the turn.

My radio hissed and squawked in my ears. “Ark One, this is Ark Two – we’re clear of the building and right on your tail, over!”

I pressed the push-to-talk button. “Ark One, roger. Keep a distance of twenty meters behind me. You’re weapons free in controlled bursts but only if we become surrounded. Stay within your prescribed arcs of fire left and right of my position. Over!”

“Ark Two, roger that!” the radio hissed.

Smashing out of the armory was the easy part. We still had to navigate through streets filled with monsters and the burned husks of automobiles as far as the eye could see. The carrier pushed on and I swung my periscope left and right to survey the war zone that had once been the very heart of the city. The office buildings stood like towering sentinels, lonely reminders of wealth and power from a time and place that was still fresh in our minds.

The explosion was attracting the attention of hundreds of creatures, shambling menacingly through the twisted metal. Their mouths hung open, dripping gore and offal onto the pavement. They could surround our fighting vehicle ten deep for all I cared. We were safe inside and there was nothing they could do to get at us. The powerful engine would push us through the sea of creatures as easily as a plow pushes through the snow after a blizzard.

I glanced at my map of the downtown core. We’d decided on a route that looked reasonably clear of obstacles back at the armory, but that was from my vantage point on the northwest tower. I hailed Sid Toomey on the intercom. “Sid! We gotta get to Third Avenue and it’ll be smooth sailing onto the bike paths. There’s a wall of creeps blocking our route out of here – at least a hundred of them. Can you spot another way out? I don’t want to burn out your gun barrels.”

“Roger – clogged up, Ark One. I’ll swing the turret around and see if we can … HOLY SHIT!”

I spun my periscope around to take a look at what Sid was seeing. Dozens of the monsters were hurling themselves from the office building in front of us. The carrier backed up a few feet as I watched monster after monster plummeting to earth from smashed windows more than ten storeys above us.

“Hard right now, Doug!” I shouted into the microphone. “Get us the hell away from this building – I don’t want one of those things landing on us!”

“Roger that!” Doug replied in my earpiece as my body pitched sharply to the left and I grabbed onto the engine panel for support. Within seconds we were barreling across a green space littered with decomposing bodies. Some moved but most didn’t, and the ones that did move – well, Doug Manybears took great pleasure in grinding them to pulp underneath the wheels of our APC. I caught a glimpse of Cruze’s carrier to my left. She was keeping the prescribed twenty meter distance from me, so I swung my periscope to the twelve o’clock position and gazed out in hopes of finding a clear path to the river. I was just about to swing the periscope right when everything went black. Doug hammered down on the brakes as a monster dressed in a tattered police uniform slid off the front of the carrier and onto the ground. Doug tromped on the gas pedal, crushing the zombie beneath us.

“Where the hell did that thing come from, Sid?” I shouted into the microphone.

The radio squawked loudly in my earpiece and then Sid made a grunting sound. “It probably crawled across the hull to the front of the carrier when we stopped a few blocks back. I must have missed it. Hey, I see a clear path to the river, Dave. Do you see it?”

“No – it’s pretty much obscured from where I’m at,” I shouted back. The vibration from the engine made my voice sound like I was a robot. “What have you got?”

Sid was silent for a moment. I could hear the electric motor of the turret engaging the driving gear behind me, so I knew Sid was spinning left and right to get a clearer view.

“If we keep going straight for another five hundred meters or so we’ll hit another green space that looks like it leads to the south side of the river. I can’t tell what’s past that – it’s all low ground, but I’m pretty sure there’s a railroad track down there. Does the map show anything in the low ground?”

I tapped Doug on the head and told him to stop as I switched on a lamp and stared down at the map. I ran a shaking finger ahead of where I thought our position was to the green space Sid was talking about. The railway line cut right through the low ground, just as Sid said, but it was an area thick with woods and undergrowth. Also, the railroad track was a big obstacle for an eight-wheeled vehicle – each rail had to protrude a good five inches above the wooden railway ties, and there would be a sharp embankment on either side of the track.  Our vehicles’ independent suspension might get wrecked if we hit the tracks too hard, and there was also the possibility that we’d wind up with a flat tire.

I peered through my periscope to get a real time view of the route ahead. Six months’ worth of uncut grass waved in the breeze and I could see countless pillars of smoke towering up into a blackened sky. Not a bird could be seen anywhere in the distance and I thought for a moment that if I popped open the hatch, the air itself would poison my lungs.

I grabbed the radio handset and clicked the toggle. “Ark Two … how’s your field of view?”

The radio hissed for a second and then I heard Cruze’s voice. “If you swing left, you’ll see the fourteenth street overpass. We can’t go through there – it’s filled with smashed-up cars.”

“We’re just in front of Millennium Park. Can you see if there’s a way to cross over Sixth Avenue? If we get past that, we’ll avoid the train tracks and we can cruise along the river bank until we hit the spot to ford the carriers across.”

“One sec,” she shouted back. The sound of the rumbling engine filled my ears and I glanced back over my shoulder to check on Jo. She was huddled in a corner against the back door with a poncho liner draped over her tiny frame, and she threw me a wide-eyed smile along with a big thumbs-up. I gave her one back, and then turned to look out my periscope again.

The radio squawked. “Dave, just swing left and you’ll be directly in line with Sixth Avenue. From what I can see, it’s a hell of a mess of smashed cars, but I think we can push through.”

Cruze’s view was better than mine. I tapped Doug Manybears on the shoulder and yelled into his ear. “Swing left and then straighten your wheels. Go slow as hell – we’re going to try to push through to Sixth Avenue. After that just follow my lead and we’ll be on the paths alongside the river.”

His helmet bobbed up and down and the vehicle lurched forward. The smell of diesel and engine oil clung to my nostrils as I slid the periscope left and right, all the while keeping a sharp eye for obstacles that wouldn’t be in Doug’s field of vision. In minutes, my APC was crossing Sixth Avenue with the riverbank no more than a two-minute ride away. I felt a .50 caliber shell casing hit the back of my neck as the twin guns in the turret opened fire in a short burst of loud pops that I could feel in my fillings.

“What are you shooting at, Sid?” I shouted into the headset.

“Just a trio of creeps in the bushes along the river, no probs.”

“Conserve your ammo! Three creeps aren’t a threat to this boat and we have to take the long view. You’re our eyes and ears – you’ve got a three-hundred-sixty degree traverse. Can you see Cruze?”

I heard the turret spinning and then Sid said, “About thirty meters behind us – they’re being chased by a mob of about two dozen.”

“That’s not a problem,” I said, eyeing the river bank. “The current is pretty damned fast and the rocks are slippery as hell. Once we ford the river, they’ll be swept downstream.”

“Roger that,” said Sid. “We going to head to the crossing we’d planned? There’s a few good spots I’m seeing about ten degrees to the northwest. The north bank of the crossing is just crab grass and dead brush.”

I glanced down at my map. We were about two kilometers short of our planned crossing site and the contour lines for the north bank showed a gradual slope that stretched west for about four clicks. We’d have little problem climbing the forward slope and then we could coast westward until we were out of the city, assuming there weren’t any major obstacles.

It looked too easy, and that gave me a slightly sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Still, it was a way out of the city core and it didn’t vary too much from our original plan. I tapped Doug Manybears on the shoulder. He glanced back at me and I signaled to drive another hundred meters. He gave me a thumbs-up and I pressed the PTT switch.

“Ark Two – we’re going to halt on the forward bank of the river – prep your section and seal up the back doors and firing portals with gun tape. The river should be shallow enough to cross without going into amphibious, so keep your props off and use your trim-vane only if necessary.”

“Roger, Ark Two,” Pam Cruze replied.

I removed my headset and climbed to the back of the APC. Jo was still hunkered down in the corner with her poncho liner pulled up over her chest.

“All eyes on me!” I shouted as the APC came to a squealing halt. “Seal up the doors and firing ports, we’re going to cross the river as soon as you’re done.”

Kate Dawson immediately went to work, pulling long strips of dark green tape off of a pair of rolls that had to weigh about five pounds each. She stretched each strip across anything that looked like it might let in water as Jo scrambled across a case of ammunition to get out of her way. I motioned for Jo to come up to the crew commander hatch, so that she’d be clear of Dawson, and then I crawled around the turret and sat down in my crew seat. Jo hopped onto my lap and threw her arms around me. “How are you holding up, kiddo? Do you remember what your job is for now?”

She nodded amiably and said, “I’m in charge of bullets for Sid an’ Kate. Oh – an’ I’m in charge of passing out water and food.”

“And what are you not supposed to do?”

“Leave the carrier or go anywhere by myself,” she said flatly. “Don’t worry too much cuz I know you have other stuff to take care of, but I do have a question.”

“What’s that?”

Her face turned beet red. “What if I have to pee?”

Well crap. How could I have forgotten something as simple as that? I hadn’t taken into account how long we’d be hatches down as we exited the city. It could be as long as a day or more until we’d be out in the open where we could actually get out of the vehicles and stretch our legs.

“Um – canteen cup, Jo,” I said, as my face reddened.

“But I can’t go if people are watching!” she protested loudly.

I smiled at her and nodded slowly. “Remember that poncho liner?”

“Yeah.”

“Just throw it over yourself so that nobody can see you. And don’t spill any on you, okay?”

She nodded. “What if it’s number two?”

“Do you have to go number two?” I asked, hoping like hell her answer was going to be no.

She shook her head. “I went before we left the army.”

“Armory,” I corrected. “Good then. And Jo, that was a really smart thing to ask me. I’m sorry I didn’t think about it before we left.”

She kissed me on my right cheek and gave me another hug. “That’s why you have me here – to help you think about stuff you never thought about. I’m going to go back to my spot now.”

I lifted her around the turret cage. “And don’t stick your hands outside the firing ports, Jo. I mean it!”

“Okay, David!” she shouted as she crawled back over the ammunition case and into her corner.

Doug Manybears emitted a loud grunt from his driver’s compartment. “That was real sweet, Dave. I’m getting all misty over here.”

I smacked him on the back of his helmet and peered into my periscope. “She’s eight,” I said, as I looked down on the river. “I can’t even conceive of how all this is registering in her … oh, my God. This can’t be real!”

I thought six months of battling the living dead had prepared me for anything but clearly I was wrong on that account. The river was full of bloated bodies. Some were decomposed beyond recognition, their bony limbs reaching skyward to a God that had forsaken them, while others were fresh kills. Their torn corpses reanimated, only to find themselves swept away by the rushing current.

And this was where we were going to cross the river.

Sid Toomey’s voice squawked in my headset. “I wonder where they’re all coming from.”

I pressed the talk button. “Somewhere … everywhere. The city, the outskirts … Cochrane and the foothills. Maybe they thought that creeps couldn’t swim and they used the river as an escape route.”

“Yeah well they didn’t make it, did they?” said Doug Manybears.

I clenched my jaw tightly as Ark Two’s nose appeared out of the corner of my eye. The trim vane, a six-foot-long sheet of armor, slid up from beneath the nose, so I reached over and pulled the switch for ours. I could hear the hydraulic pump inside the engine panel humming away as the trim vane popped up, blocking my view.

“Okay, Sid,” I shouted into my microphone. “You’re navigating – I can’t see past the trim. Please get us across in one piece!”

The turret spun to the twelve o’clock position. “I’m on it.  Doug! The forward slope is about forty degrees – take it down at crawl speed.”

The nose of the carrier pitched sharply. I held on tight and glanced back at the rest of the crew. Dawson peered out of her firing port as Jo dug her feet into the crew seat to keep herself from sliding forward. In seconds we’d leveled off, a sign we were in the cold water of the Bow River. At this point Dawson closed her firing port, choosing instead to sit quietly, her eyes staring blankly at the floor of the carrier. The look on her face speaking volumes, too. She’d seen what I’d seen only moments earlier.

“There’s so many of them,” she said. “They’re all dead – everybody is freaking dead!”

I looked back at Kate and gave her a slight nod. “Keep it together, Kate. Can you do that?”

“I’ll try,” she said, wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her combat shirt.

“Good,” I replied. “Take a look out the back and see where Ark Two is.”

She scrambled to the viewing ports on the rear doors and peered out to the rear of the carrier. “Cruze is in the water – about fifty feet behind us.”

“Right on!” I shouted. Just then, Sid Toomey’s voice flooded my headset.

“Hang tight – we’re going out of the water in about ten seconds and then we’re going to head up the river bank. Doug, lower your trim vane – my job is done.”

I spun my periscope back to the twelve o’clock position and pressed the talk button. “You’re not done yet, Sid. Have an eye for obstacles on the top of the river bank because you’ll be the first one to see them.”

“Roger that!” said Sid.

In seconds the nose of the carrier pitched up sharply and I held on to the front of Doug’s driving seat. The engine protested loudly as we crawled up the embankment, but only for a short moment before leveling off. We pushed on for about fifty more feet until I heard the radio hissing in my ear.

“Ark Two is clear,” said Sid. “Give me a minute while I do a three-sixty so I can get my bearings.”

“Take your time.”  I poked my head into my periscope. Waves of heat from the engine rose over the hull, giving everything a blurry appearance. The ground was carpeted with acres and acres of fallen poplar leaves, only they weren’t yellow and gold, they were black and brown, probably poisoned by the poor air quality or low level radiation. .

Sid gave the crew commander seat a small kick, so I turned around to see his head poking down below the turret. “There’s a pretty big gaggle of creeps bearing down on us,” he said grimly.

“How many?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” he replied. “There’s a ridge up ahead and I’d peg it at maybe fifty or so. Want me to open up on them?”

We had a good supply of ammunition, but I remembered Sgt. Green’s first rule of combat: don’t waste a single bullet. At the same time, I didn’t want the carrier to get bogged down with the monsters as we climbed to higher ground. Then an idea came to me. We knew that the creeps were attracted to sound, light and movement. We had five crates of smoke grenades and six grenade dischargers on the sides of each carrier. Rather than waste bullets, I decided to create a diversion. I pressed the PTT button. “Ark Two, fire three smoke grenades onto the riverbank. I have a hunch the creeps will be attracted to the smoke and it should clear them off the crest of the hill.”

“Will do,” Pam Cruze replied.

Sid spun the turret to his left. “Smoke’s on its way!” he said. “Good call, Dave. The creeps are following it.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Give me a boot as soon as the area is clear and we’ll move on.”

“Yup.”

I glanced back at Kate who was keeping close watch on our surroundings from the safety of her viewing port. Jo was hidden underneath her poncho liner but reappeared after a short moment with a canteen cup full of pee. She gave me a helpless look, so I crawled between the turret cage and the engine panel into the back of the carrier.

“I’ll take that,” I said as she happily handed me the canteen cup. I opened a firing port and carefully dumped the contents out of the carrier, then wiped out the cup with a rag.

“Thanks, David,” she said, her face beet red. “I didn’t want it to splash on me cuz it’s like a rollercoaster back here when we’re moving.”

“I know,” I said, as I tightened a bungee cord around the cases of small arms ammunition just above her head. “I want you to wear your helmet back here at all times, okay? It’s going to get even bumpier and stuff always falls onto people when you’re going cross-country in these things.”

She nodded as she placed the SPECTRA helmet on her head and I allowed myself a small chuckle when I saw that it came down past her nose.

“I can’t really see anything,” she said.

“Good,” I replied. “The less you see of what’s out there, the better, kiddo. Trust me.”

Jo put a dirt-smeared hand on my knee and exhaled heavily. “I’ve already seen lots of bad stuff. How come we’re stopped?”

“We’re just checking out our route and then we’re going to get moving,” I lied, not wanting to tell her about the wall of creeps on the ridge ahead.

She pushed the helmet up to her forehead and her eyes narrowed. “I know what’s outside, David,” she said fixing me with her gaze. “Sid was doing a lot of shooting and I know that you have to shoot them in the head. Did he get them all?”

My heart sank a little at her question. Jo was eight years old and thin as a twig. Her red hair hung limply onto her shoulders and her heavily freckled face was smeared with dirt and grease. She should be playing with freaking Barbie dolls and experimenting with makeup and costume jewelry, not sitting in the back of an armored personnel carrier surrounded by bullets and grenades. She shouldn’t have to live in a world that had been transformed into a living nightmare – none of us should.

“I want you to listen carefully to Kate, okay?”

Jo nodded, the helmet bobbing up and down on her forehead. “Don’t worry, I know the rules.”

“And what’s the number one rule?” I said with a note of warning in my voice.

“Don’t ever get out of the carrier by myself,” she said with a groan.

“What’s rule number two?”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t stick my arms out of the firing holes.”

“And rule number three?”

She blinked. “What’s rule number three?”

I leaned over and wrapped my arms around her bony shoulders. “Your brother is never going to leave you. Ever.” I whispered in her ear.

She hugged me back and said, “That’s what big brothers are for, aren’t they?”

Free Copies of my zombie thriller THE NORTH!

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Breakout. Escape the city. Stay alive.

Sixteen-year-old David Simmons is on a mission to save his eight-year-old sister. In a smoldering world infested with walking cadavers, the survivors of Simmons infantry reserve unit are going hatches down in a pair of armoured personnel carriers and everyone knows that it’s only a matter of time until their fuel runs dry.

There’s a weak short wave radio signal from a place called Sanctuary Base and it’s supposed to be zombie-free. But there’s more than a thousand miles to cover, a biting, unforgiving cold, armed survivalists, legions of the living dead and someone called SUNRAY.

They’re outgunned, outnumbered and out of time.

This tense thriller for teens offers a terrifying vision of survival in a post-apocalyptic world where the bonds of friendship and family are the only things left that are worth fighting for

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E-ARCS are about to be released! Want to get a review copy and start reading some seriously thrilling end-of-the-world action and suspense for teens? Just fill out the form below and specify whether you’ll need a Kindle copy or an EPUB version.

 

Breakout from the armoury. Escape the city. Stay alive.

Sixteen-year-old David Simmons is on a mission to save his eight-year-old sister. In a smoldering world infested with walking cadavers, the survivors of Simmons infantry reserve unit are going hatches down in a pair of armoured personnel carriers and everyone knows that it’s only a matter of time until their fuel runs dry.

There’s a weak short wave radio signal from a place called Sanctuary Base and it’s supposed to be zombie-free. But there’s more than a thousand miles to cover, a biting, unforgiving cold, armed survivalists, legions of the living dead and someone called SUNRAY.

They’re outgunned, outnumbered and out of time.

This tense thriller for teens offers a terrifying vision of survival in a post-apocalyptic world where the bonds of friendship and family are the only things left that are worth fighting for

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Traditional Publishing, Flooded Markets and What to Write Next

 

It’s September! Where did the summer go? Soon we’re going to be knee-deep in the arctic express here in Saskatchewan where I live. We have a long, miserably cold and dark winter here in the Great White North – I generally spend it writing. Actually my production increases during the winter months and so I’m going to start something new, I just have to decide what.

You know, we all keep hearing about the importance of original work from agents and editors on Twitter. How it’s important to write what matters to you,  to write a good story. An excellent story. The best story you could ever hope to produce. We are warned against writing for what the market wants yet  if you hit the hashtag #MSWL (Manuscript Wish List) you’re going to see a lot of editors and agents posting about what they’d like in their inboxes. I often scratch my head at that one because it flies in the face of what many other agents and editors suggest you should be doing – like writing original stuff.

We’ve seen a lot of trends come and go over the past few years. One such trend that apparently is on the outs is a genre that affects me and that’s urban fantasy. I’ve lost track of how many tweets I read from Book Expo of America or the London Book Fair – urban fantasy is dead! Zombies are dead! Dystopian is dead! Post-apocalyptic fiction is dead! What everyone wants now is YA contemporary! Send us your stories about sick and dying teens in love that tear at the heart and you might have a shot of grabbing someone’s attention!

There are days when I wonder if publishing knows what the hell it’s doing anymore. A lot of contradictory advice. A big herd mentality. A lot of rumors about what’s selling and what isn’t selling. A lot of this, that and the other thing.

Which makes you wonder when you’re thinking about starting a new project whether you should. Whether it will see the light of day via traditional publishing.

I often wonder whether traditional publishing takes into consideration the sales of self-published books or even if anyone can ascertain the true sales numbers. God knows traditional publishers are very guarded with their sales figures and Amazon sure as hell is. I think we tend to ball park it.

As you know, I self-published an urban fantasy/superhero story called MARSHALL CONRAD this summer. I can tell you that it has sold about fifteen to twenty copies a day since June 26th. Let’s be conservative and say fifteen copies. So fifteen times sixty five days equals 975. So I’ve sold nearly a thousand copies of a reprint that I self published in slightly over two months. Wow.

I repeat. Wow.

I’ve never sold that many books in two months before.

Does this mean that the experts at big publishing houses in their marketing departments are on crack when they say, for example, that urban fantasy is dead? Or is it just the urban fantasy coming out of the major publishing houses?

In short, a lot of unqualified pronouncements about this being “dead” or that “not selling” or the marketing being flooded with “this”.

I’m not sure what I’m going to write next. I’ve got a brand new work that is going to be available on October 6th in a genre that apparently is a hard sell right now – zombies and post apocalyptic.  I’ve got strong sales from Marshall Conrad so I’m wondering whether I should finish that second book. And I’m shopping an urban fantasy via traditional publishing that is quite frankly, the best thing I’ve ever written and all I’m hearing is “great voice, market flooded, no thanks.”

Decisions, decisions. Maybe I’ll self-publish that one as well.

Damned decisions. What do you think?