K. Edwin Fritz's Blog, page 2

CD Story Review #5: "Leg Man"

CD ISSUE #1Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman) & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed. As of Issue #70 (Sept. 2013), there are more than 500.


STORY: “Leg Man” AUTHOR: Chris B. LecherCD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 5 of 12 
PLOT:  A gruesome story told in 4 parts...1) Slash is a taking a break from his band's set in an alley. He meets a girl there. She is shirtless beneath her jacket. She seduces him easily. As he suckles her breasts, her breasts suddenly seize his tongue and slash the inside of his mouth "like a frenzied piranha".
YIKES LOOK AT THIS
GRUESOME PIC2) Izzy, another band member, comes out just in time to watch Slash flounder with his shredded mouth before bleeding to death. 3) Time has passed and Izzy is still having nightmares and the band is seeing hard times. Many of his dreams feature a "girl-thing" that Izzy knows isn't human but is responsible for Slash's death. Then another band-mate, Axl, comes in and tries to convince him to have a good time with the two girls he brought back. Izzy declines and almost falls back to sleep when one of the girls (who he hasn't yet even seen) whispers "Night, Izzy." 4) After successfully falling back to sleep, Izzy wakes to hear chewing sounds and Axl moaning. He thinks it's the sounds of sex and goes once again back to sleep. The next time when he wakes he hears what is clearly "hungry lapping sounds" and understands the girl-thing that killed Slash is now in his home and has already killed Axl. Izzy charges into the room and, after a brief fight, throws the girl-thing out the window. But she gets up from the bone-breaking two-story drop, and Izzy prepares for her return by stopping the kitchen sink, turning on the faucets, and plugging in one of his guitar amps. When she enters he tells her he's "Not much of a tit man," and then electrocutes her. After checking Axl's body, Izzy's girlfriend (who slept through the whole ordeal), comes out to see the carnage. She hugs him affectionately, but when her breasts graze Izzy's shirt, he swears he feels them move. 

REVIEW: 4 out of 5 stars. CD BLURB ON LECHERAs a reader I was grossed out by this one, nearly to the point of not enjoying it. Nearly. While Lacher's abilities as an author are solid, the unbridled gore of this piece is simply not to my liking. In my experience there are three kinds of horror... Supernatural, Psychological, and Blood & Gore. Naturally we all have our favorites & naturally many stories overlap & use 2 or all 3 of these. This story is almost entirely Blood & Gore and as a fan of the overall genre, I wish Lecher had explained more about the background of the creature he invented rather than just the actions she takes or her physical... uh... abilities. Since my personal preference is low for Blood & Gore, I'd actually give this just 3 stars. But to be fair I gave it 4 because Lecher tells his story well. It's smooth & to the point without overburdening the reader, which is a marked improvement over many of the other (earlier & yet-to-be-reviewed) stories in this early issue. I can't go as high as 5 stars, though, because the story is nevertheless simple and Lecher's characters (the human ones at least) are little more than stereotypes plus his sentence structure is, again, very basic. 
As a writer I am reminded that a single great image can be powerful to my readers. Despite my personal distaste for it, the vision of a woman's breasts having an open cavity and shark-like teeth is not one I am likely to forget soon. And the scene that describes her using that pseudo 'mouth' to pleasure her victim... let's just say there are some things you can't un-see. Which is exactly my point. Lecher nailed this element of the horror genre, and for that I applaud him. 
To sum up, I don't prefer Lecher's style but I respect his basic talent. If gore & grue is your thing, you'll love this one. If not, save yourself a few nightmares & pass. 

CD Story Review #5: "Leg Man"

CD ISSUE #1Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman) & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed. As of Issue #70 (Sept. 2013), there are more than 500.


STORY: “Leg Man” AUTHOR: Chris B. LecherCD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 5 of 12 
PLOT:  A gruesome story told in 4 parts...1) Slash is a taking a break from his band's set in an alley. He meets a girl there. She is shirtless beneath her jacket. She seduces him easily. As he suckles her breasts, her breasts suddenly seize his tongue and slash the inside of his mouth "like a frenzied piranha".
YIKES LOOK AT THIS
GRUESOME PIC2) Izzy, another band member, comes out just in time to watch Slash flounder with his shredded mouth before bleeding to death. 3) Time has passed and Izzy is still having nightmares and the band is seeing hard times. Many of his dreams feature a "girl-thing" that Izzy knows isn't human but is responsible for Slash's death. Then another band-mate, Axl, comes in and tries to convince him to have a good time with the two girls he brought back. Izzy declines and almost falls back to sleep when one of the girls (who he hasn't yet even seen) whispers "Night, Izzy." 4) After successfully falling back to sleep, Izzy wakes to hear chewing sounds and Axl moaning. He thinks it's the sounds of sex and goes once again back to sleep. The next time when he wakes he hears what is clearly "hungry lapping sounds" and understands the girl-thing that killed Slash is now in his home and has already killed Axl. Izzy charges into the room and, after a brief fight, throws the girl-thing out the window. But she gets up from the bone-breaking two-story drop, and Izzy prepares for her return by stopping the kitchen sink, turning on the faucets, and plugging in one of his guitar amps. When she enters he tells her he's "Not much of a tit man," and then electrocutes her. After checking Axl's body, Izzy's girlfriend (who slept through the whole ordeal), comes out to see the carnage. She hugs him affectionately, but when her breasts graze Izzy's shirt, he swears he feels them move. 

REVIEW: 4 out of 5 stars. CD BLURB ON LECHERAs a reader I was grossed out by this one, nearly to the point of not enjoying it. Nearly. While Lacher's abilities as an author are solid, the unbridled gore of this piece is simply not to my liking. In my experience there are three kinds of horror... Supernatural, Psychological, and Blood & Gore. Naturally we all have our favorites & naturally many stories overlap & use 2 or all 3 of these. This story is almost entirely Blood & Gore and as a fan of the overall genre, I wish Lecher had explained more about the background of the creature he invented rather than just the actions she takes or her physical... uh... abilities. Since my personal preference is low for Blood & Gore, I'd actually give this just 3 stars. But to be fair I gave it 4 because Lecher tells his story well. It's smooth & to the point without overburdening the reader, which is a marked improvement over many of the other (earlier & yet-to-be-reviewed) stories in this early issue. I can't go as high as 5 stars, though, because the story is nevertheless simple and Lecher's characters (the human ones at least) are little more than stereotypes plus his sentence structure is, again, very basic. 
As a writer I am reminded that a single great image can be powerful to my readers. Despite my personal distaste for it, the vision of a woman's breasts having an open cavity and shark-like teeth is not one I am likely to forget soon. And the scene that describes her using that pseudo 'mouth' to pleasure her victim... let's just say there are some things you can't un-see. Which is exactly my point. Lecher nailed this element of the horror genre, and for that I applaud him. 
To sum up, I don't prefer Lecher's style but I respect his basic talent. If gore & grue is your thing, you'll love this one. If not, save yourself a few nightmares & pass. 

CD Story Review #4: "Forever Angels"

PIC 1 FLANKS THE LEFT
 SIDE OF THE TITLERichard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman)  & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. Naturally, getting published in CD is one of the top items on my bucket list. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed.




STORY: “Forever Angels” AUTHOR: Ronald KellyCD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 4 of 12 
  PIC 2 FLANKS THE RIGHT SIDE.
BOTH ANGEL PICS ARE CREEPY.PLOT (spoilers!): Deanna Hudson is a second-grader who learns there is a whole section of a local cemetery for children. When the other kids show it to her, they tease her by claiming that on stormy nights the corpses of the dead children crawl out of their graves and head towards the nearest house, which is Deanna’s of course. Though she’s too smart to fall for their lies, she is nevertheless creeped out by the children’s cemetery. When some of the older boys hide in the bushes and rustle the branches just as it starts to rain, poor Deanna loses her nerve and runs home in tears.
In the next scene we get a flashback from several years before when Deanna’s grandfather had passed away. Upon getting lost among the many mourning rooms of the funeral home, she comes across a tiny coffin and inside it the body of an infant boy clutching a plastic rattle. With her back turned as she leaves the room, she thinks she hears the sound of a shaking rattle. Remembering that day now, Deanna has a nightmare where she looks out her bedroom window and sees hairless, childrens’ heads bobbing and moving through the field of tall grass between her own house and the cemetery next door.
Some time passes and Deanna is part of the community’s annual effort to clean up and maintain the cemetery. While trying to enjoy a small picnic with her parents and baby brother Timothy, a drunken, old Cherokee man named Redhawk arrives and rants about sacred lands and the community’s desecration of the ancient Indian burial mounds. Deanna’s parents ignore her pleas to leave. 
That night poor Deanna has another nightmare where Redhawk (now sober and respectable in his chief’s full headdress) leads his entire tribe in a ritual at the children’s section of the cemetery. But when an earthquake starts to rumble and split the ground apart, Deanna has to escape to a tree where she finds Timothy already looking down at her from the topmost branches. The dream-brother has an ashen face and reaches to her with “cold, little hands.” As Deanna falls from the tree, she wakes from her dream drenched in sweat. Attempting to calm herself with a midnight glass of water, she hears a sound coming from the back yard. She opens the door and finds a single pink bootie on her back stoop. When her mother finds her minutes later, Mrs. Hudson calms her daughter and prepares a bottle of milk for her infant son. However when they goes upstairs to feed him, baby Timothy is found dead in his crib.
In the days after, Deanna cried and screamed and begged for her parents not to bury Timothy in the children’s cemetery, but of course they do. In the story’s final scene, Deanna is a full-blown insomniac who lays awake every night with her back to the window where she believes her dead brother watches and coos at her as he pays his nightly visit. And every morning another toy is found missing from his crib.  
REVIEW: 4 of 5 Stars. This story is as complex as it is creepy. Deanna’s character goes through all five stages of grief and the subtle connection of the dead boy at the funeral home to Timothy (both infant boys/ both shown in those too-tiny baby blue caskets/ both clutching favored toys) is very nicely done. And despite a handful of minor errors ('century' instead of 'country', 'orthought' instead of 'or thought', 'her' instead of 'here', a double set of quotation marks to begin one piece of dialogue), there are a number of truly great similes, which never fail to impress me when they are done right. My favorites are: “Small, hairless heads bobbed through the tall grass and honeysuckle like dolphins cresting the waves of a stormy sea. The pale, hairless heads of a dozen lifeless babies," "A full moon was out, highlighting the tiny [tomb]stones, making them look like bleached teeth sprouting from earthen gums," and "The clouds boiled like the depths of a dark cauldron, lightning jabbing downward, gaunt fingers of blue fire upon the horizon." 
 CD BLURB ON RONALD KELLYAs a reader I really liked this one and I would have given it 5 stars if not for the errors and the slight bit of predictability in the ending. Otherwise it was a fine read. Kelly writes his sentences with good form and his plotline with a natural arc. From beginning to end I was entertained, and well after the fact I have found myself pondering those bobbing bald heads through the field of grass, the myriad of toys (instead of flowers) placed around the children's tombstones, and the final image of Deanna lying awake with her back turned to her pale-faced baby brother at the window. If I had to describe my emotional state, I’d use ‘Haunted’, and that’s just fine by me.
As a writer, I’m struck most of all by Kelly's use of figurative language. There are a dozen examples beyond the similes I already mentioned. My appreciation is not in how entertaining each phrase is, but in how each adds to the overall story. When I came across them I could not help think, “Wow, this guy really nailed that one,” or “Damn this guy is good,” and I think that’s the point. A couple of truly well-written sentences in just the right spots really can have the effect of making me see an author as a whole step better than those that came before him. I’m making a mental note to pay more attention to my own choice of words in the future. It's not that every paragraph has to have unforgettable turns of phrase, but I am coming to believe that a great story should have two or three real winners. These are the kinds of things that help a story stick in the minds of readers, and they're always worth the additional effort.

CD Story Review #3: "The Double"

COVER OF CD ISSUE #1Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered some of the genre's most famous and successful authors. Naturally, getting published in CD is one of the top items on my bucket list. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed.


STORY: “The Double”AUTHOR: Steve Rasnic TemCD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 3 of 12 
Plot (spoilers!): A mother and father appear to be playing with their son before bedtime, however the inclusion of the words "poking" and "slapping" make it clear their affections are actually abusive. They even pick him up and drop him on his head. They do this all while almost chanting the words, “Our son. Our only son.”
THE FULL-PAGE PIC
INCLUDED WITH
THIS STORY 
Meanwhile, the son observes their faces and reflects that this has all happened before.

When the mother and father leave, the son builds a crude doll from clothes, and takes the time to draw his own face on it and even constructs fingers, toes, and- wait for it- a penis out of peanuts left behind in a bowl. Looking at his finished product, he notices “with disinterest” that the face lacks a nose.

When the parents return, they see the doll, abuse it till it literally falls to pieces, and do a "merry dance" over the body while repeating their "our only son" mantra. The son, meanwhile, watches from afar and appreciates that these kicks and smashes don’t hurt.



Review: 4 of 5 stars. This story is very odd, very hard to explain, and very short (less than 300 words in total). Because of its inherent ambiguity I teetered on giving it only 3 stars. After all, when it comes to grading on a numerical scale, it’s easier for a story to have clear flaws and merits to justify my decision. However I also appreciate and respect gut instinct, and this story also has one other major descriptor: it’s creepy as shit. I believe Chizmar nailed the decision to publish this one. I now have the difficult task of trying to explain why.

Despite the haziness of what actually happens, Rasnic Tem’s story leaves us thinking, interpreting, and shivering as we go over and over this one after the reading is done. The primary questions one has are the following…
1)      How could the parents mistake a doll for their son? Is it really a doll? Has it always been a doll? Is the son even real? Are the parents even human?2)      Does the son make a new double every night? Is so, how long has this been going on? If not, how long has he been suffering alone?3)      Why did Rasnic Tem include the detail about the doll’s lack of a nose? What significance does a noseless face have to an abused child? In a piece this short, it certainly was not included on a whim. 4)      Why did Rasnic Tem specify that peanuts were used to construct the doll’s various appendages? Again, in a piece this short, it must mean something, right? 

One thing that is clear is that the son is the victim of abuse, and that one of the doll's appendages is a penis implies it's not just physical but sexual. What isn't clear is how he deals with it. Readers might assume it's a straightforward (realistic) piece about a kid making a double to stand in for his own abused self, but of course in a straightforward piece the parents wouldn't fall for that.


CD AUTHOR BLURB ON RASNIC TEM (click for close-up)This implies there is something else- perhaps even something supernatural- going on. Maybe the son died long ago & is now haunting the parents in their dreams. Maybe the parents are some kind of monsters that can't tell the difference between a real boy and a doll. Maybe the boy has a power that makes his doll look real to his parents. Rasnic Tem doesn't provide enough clues for us to know for sure what the answer is, but I don't think that's the point. The point, I think, is for the reader to fill in the rest on his/her own.

My own interpretation is that it is a straightforward story, only it's the son who is the one misinterpreting what's going on. As someone who has done LOTS of research on abuse and recovery for my novels, one thing I can tell you is that the human mind is capable of amazing things, and I think the doll is how this boy's damaged mind has found a way to deal with his situation. To be honest, I'm not even sure there is a doll (perhaps he only imagines making it), but if there is I'm pretty sure he's only projecting that his parents turn so quickly to abuse it instead of him.

As a reader, I'm thoroughly entertained yet slightly annoyed by this story. I love how it continues to stick with me, but I'm frustrated that Rasnic Tem didn't give me enough info to know the whole story. Despite my initial hesitation to give it as high as 4 stars, the truth is this ambiguity is the reason I can't give it 5.

As a writer, I am reminded about the power and importance of not saying too much. Readers like to use their own imagination, after all, so leaving a story with an open ending (though perhaps not quite as open as this one) can, of course, be very entertaining.

CD Story Review #2: "A Breathe of Fresh Air"

COVER OF CD ISSUE #1Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered some of the genre's most famous and successful author. Getting published in CD is one of the top five items on my bucket list. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed.


STORY: “A Breathe of Fresh Air”AUTHOR: Edgar F. TatroCD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (December 1988, Volume 1, Issue 1), story 2 of 12


PLOT (spoilers):Benji Drummond is in jail in Smalltown, USA. (Not literally. I’m waxing poetic). He’s scheduled to get out in a few days but for weeks has been complaining about the smell and heat of the place. Sheriff Olsen knows it’s bad. He even requested an air quality report to pacify Benji’s constant whining (and hacking up black stuff all over the walls) that has been making everyone else miserable. When screams come from his cell the morning of his release, the sheriff finds his cellmate beaten near death, Benji gone, and the air vent ripped open like a piece of cardboard.

SO CUTE YET SO DEADLY (for flies)A captain arrives and assumes Benji escaped out the open cell door when the sheriff attended to the wounded man. But the sheriff insists his back was never turned. Yet the mystery remains. The only other exit- the vent- is too small & high on the wall for Benji to have used. Later, the air quality report explain everything. It cites high levels of carbon dioxide, poor circulation, and the presence of bat feces. The sheriff reads from the report that is was specifically Desmodus Rufus, and dramatically reveals this is the scientific name for a vampire bat.
The story ends in a lone separate paragraph with “the former Benji Drummond” hanging upside down inside the ventilation shaft of a day care nursery. There is a pile of fresh feces underneath him.

CD AUTHOR BLURB ON TATROREVIEW: 3 of 5 stars. Ok, first thing’s first. A typo in the friggin title!? Are you kidding me?! I swear I thought the story would somehow answer why it’s spelled ‘breathe’ instead of ‘breath’, but guess what… no dice. It’s an actual typo. I know every author makes mistakes, and I know my own list of words-learned-wrong has its embarrassments, but Tatro is described in the author blurb as a “veteran high school English teacher”, and his list of publishing accomplishments suggests he’d been at the game for a while. Yet the fault should not lie on the author alone. Chizmar was the lone editor in this issue, and while I must remind myself that he was in his early twenties at this point and certainly subject to the fallacies of the young, one cannot help but ask if he or Tatro had access to a dictionary.

The story, however, was decent, if not a tad on the predictable side. Tatro drops the detail of the air quality report and Benji’s physical state early and often enough that we know something is up. And while we suspect it’ll be something like what it turns out to be, the ending paragraph pushing the story to a darker level was a nice touch.

But the misspelling & the predictability did not prevent this from earning 4 stars. There are 2 other significant flaws. Chief among them is how the pacing of the story is moving along a pleasant clip but slows to a crawl when the captain comes in. A full third of the story is spent on this unimportant character yammering to Sheriff Olsen about how and when Benji Drummond escaped. All the same content could have been just as easily shared through the unnamed officer who had already been in an earlier scene or in the least written in 2 or 3 paragraphs instead of a full page. It’s pretty clear Tatro was providing a source of superiority and a reason to doubt Sheriff Olsen’s competence, however this point is unrelated to the primary plot and serves no real purpose.

The other big flaw was that when the sheriff proclaims the sample had feces in it, the captain asks, “Feces? What’s feces?” at which Sheriff Olsen explains, “You’re captain, huh? Feces is crap, excrement, number two!” I get the fact that Tatro is showing us the captain is the incompetent one, but I can’t help shake the feeling that he inserted it not to develop a character but to define a word he was concerned his readers would not know. Perhaps he was right, and perhaps not. But the word is by no means outside of the standard lexicon of English, and I felt it was an unnecessary dumbing down of the readers’ intellect.

CD Story Review #1: "Body Perfect"

ISSUE #1 COVER ART
DONE BY CHIZMAR'S
COLLEGE ROOMMATERichard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It is still in production today & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered some of the genre's most famous and successful author. Getting published in CD is one of the top five items on my bucket list. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed.

STORY: "Body Perfect"
AUTHOR: William C. Rasmussen
CD ISSUE: #2 (December 1988, Volume 1, Issue 1), story 1 of 12

PLOT (spoilers!): Martin Murry is a college kid who comes across a poster featuring a stunningly beautiful blonde beach babe. He is so impressed with her that he not only buys the poster and eagerly hangs it above his dorm room bed, he also then spends the next few hours staring at it, seemingly mesmerized. He feels she is utterly perfect but for one detail... he only wishes she had blue eyes like his.

THE PIC C.D. INCLUDED
WITH THE STORY.
ISN'T SHE PRETTY?! It turns out the poster- or perhaps its the beach babe herself- has the ability to not just mesmerize young, lustful men, but entrap them. When Martin's roommate, Jim, comes home later that night, he finds Martin is not there, though there is a new poster of a gorgeous blonde beach babe draped across Martin's bed. When Jim looks closer, he sees she has beautiful blue eyes. He does not see that one of the young men in the poster's background bears a striking resemblance to Martin Murry.

REVIEW: 2 of 5 stars. This story is extremely simple and, even worse, predictable. In a word, it's lame. The collection of other young men in the poster's background and the implication that the beach babe took either Martin's secret suggestion to have blue eyes or- a creepier notion- took his own actual eyes- were both nice touches. The story itself is told relatively well.

However as a reader of lots of horror I honestly got very little entertainment out of this one, and as a writer I learned only that time have certainly changed concerning what constitutes good writing. In fact, my first impression upon finishing it was, "THIS is the premier story of the premier issue of Cemetery Dance?!"

HERE'S THE CD INTRO PARAGRAPH
ON RASMUSSEN. ONE ASSUMES
(HOPES) HIS OTHER STORIES ARE
BETTER THAN THIS ONE But then I remembered that back then CD was unknown. Mr. Chizmar would have had very few submissions and therefore very few choices for publication and, strictly speaking this one wasn't actually BAD, just... as I said before... lame by today's standards.

It did get me thinking, though, about how this journey through the pages of the hallowed Cemetery Dance will change and grow and evolve. I have no doubt there will be certain stories that will stand out as both memorable and truly influential to reader and editor alike... perhaps even to the genre itself. I look forward to coming across them.

As for Rasmussen's "Body Perfect", however, you can safely pass. You aren't missing much.

PS: I own all but two issues of CD magazine... #s 6 (Fall 1990, V.2 I.4) & 7 (Winter 1991, V.3 I.1). I am offering a cash reward to anyone who can help me find them & complete my collection. :)

Author Fail

I DON'T WANNA!I'm tired and I don't want to write. I just want to take the night off. But if I do... oh, if I do what struggles may come immediately. I've been down this road before, you see. Quitting is a runaway train, a bison on the loose, the opening of a diseased vein. And on the other side of even a single night of failure is a steep downward hill, a stampede, a bucket of blood.
I know some of you may think this is strange, or at least the timing of it is. Just a few days ago I shared not one but two bits of genuinely good news (my new novel is done & totally unrelated, I won a writing award). And here I am in the wallows of guilt again? I understand your confusion, but I believe there is a connection…
My last post discussed how exhausting (zombie-like) I feel each time I finish a book. I believe what you are reading now is another side of that exhaustion. There is the side of myself that feels proud of what I’ve recently accomplished. Then there is the other side that is not only exhausted but also feels like I’ve finally earned at least ONE day off.
DAM(N) IT!But therein lies the problem. It will most certainly not end with one day. To cave to my selfishness now would be to break the seal or even open the floodgates. I MUST write tonight, if for no other reason than to say I did so even at a dark hour such as this.
When I began this blog in November, I did so with the intention of becoming more consistent with my writing. I stuttered to start, but there was definite improvement. Recently, I’ve employed the undertaking of writing EVERY day, if even only a little. I even joined a “Magic Spreadsheet” community that tracks daily writing success. (I’ll explain more about that in another post). And it’s been an overwhelming success. Today marks my 63rd day in a row, and I honestly don’t feel even a little bit guilty these days. YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
But what happens when I skip a day? What happens when I break my streak?  Answer: I fail.
I said I’ve done this before, and I have. I’ve made myself promises before (I’ve even used the Magic Spreadsheet community). And while each time I make that challenge I’ve also met with varying degrees of success, I always meet my failure for the same reason: I cheat, and by that I mean I cheat myself. I’m tired so I decide to skip a day. I tell myself I’ll be back at it tomorrow, and often that happens. But inevitably that is also the day that begins my downward spiral.
So this time, I’m not quitting. I’m keeping my nose to the grindstone and I’m finding SOMETHING to write about, even if it’s just this blog post that attempts to focus my own perspective on things.

;)
WHAT'S AT THE FAR END?

I Am The Walking Dead

I LOVE HALLOWEENYes, that's me in my Halloween costume from a couple years ago. 
No, this post isn't about "The Walking Dead" TV. show (although, maybe I should do one of those... what fantastic writing!). It's about my current state after having finished another grueling 2-month writing blitz. You may have noticed it's been a while since my last post. Here's why...
"It is done."
MY NEW BOOK!!Those are the words I think each time I finish a book. I've done it four times now, and let me assure you, it doesn't get any easier. Probably that's because I keep insisting that my writing gets better as I go. I can only hope that my readers will agree with me, but I'm here to say that I'm damned proud of the newest notch on my writing desk. It's called "Woman Scorned," and it's book 2 of my "Man Hunt" trilogy.

Each time I finish a book, I walk away feeling amazing, exhausted, and all the more prepared to do it better the next time. But mostly, I feel like a zombie. When I said 'exhausting', I really meant it. In the part two months I have written, revised, or edited an average of 4 hours at a rate of 2,000 words PER DAY. I know for professional writers that's basically the norm, but let us not forget I have a day job as an English teacher.

ME AFTER FINISHING A BOOKOne thing I'm proud of is that I haven't skipped a single day of writing in that time, including four days when I was quite sick with fever. One of those days I slept for ~21 hours... but I still put in 20 minutes of editing that night. I've also pulled 5 all-nighters and only went to bed before 1am three times (that week I was sick).

I've done all this before, however there's something different now. This time I feel no need for a long, celebratory hiatus. In fact, I'm looking very much forward to getting right back to it.


I do have a trilogy to finish, after all.
But I also have so many other ideas for short stories, things I claim I rarely have the time to work on but am always thinking about. (One such idea does involve zombies, by the way. Ahh, the power of suggestion). 
 ALSO ME AFTER FINISHING A BOOKSo while I sit here feeling like that^ guy, I'm also kind of feeling quite a bit like 
<---  this guy
because for the first time in a long time this author doesn't feel even a little bit guilty. 
Also, I finally have the time to write blog posts again. 



If you liked this post, please let me know by LIKING, COMMENTING, +1ing (is that a word?) or otherwise giving me a quick "Atta Boy". Thanks. 
ps: Writing done since last time... uh, I wrote a whole damned book! Boom. 

Busy (Best-Selling!) Beaver, Part 7: A Better Way

Hello World, 
Advanced Apology: Okay, I know this is a long post, and I promise to get better in the future about writing shorter posts, but I'm nearing the end of my Busy Beaver series & I'd just rather squeeze what's left into 1 or 2 long posts than stretch it out. 
So then... this is part 7 of my ongoing series explaining my experiences going from a relatively unknown writing schmuck to an Amazon best-selling author. Today's post is about how I found a better way to network with other authors. (Please excuse the mousetrap pun in the pic... networking is not, IMHO, a trap. But how could I resist using that reference?!)
Anyway, you'd have to have read my posts on January 4th, 11th, and the 19th to understand how powerful and exasperating this "networking" concept has been for me. You'd also have to have read my Jan. 22nd post to see the shocking benefits it all amounts to. 
But I'll be nice and sum them up: 1/4: LinkedIn had a great way to find new Facebook fans, but it looked like a lot of work. 1/11: The LinkedIn thing was indeed a LOT of work, but it totally paid off.1/19: As great as the results were, the LinkedIn experience left me bug-eyed and nearly dead. It was during these days when I was thinking there must be a "better way". 1/22:  Shortly before I came up with my "better way", I hit paydirt. One of my LinkedIn connections gave me a hell of a tip which led (eventually) and directly to getting my book on Amazon's bestseller list. 
So what does a "better way" of networking look like? Short answer: go here, and be prepared to be wowed. 
Did you check it out? Have you been gone for a whole week? I know, I know. It's overwhelming, but amazing, isn't it? (Oh, and if you didn't check it out, you really should do that or you'll be confused from here on out. I'll wait...)
Ok, so now that everyone know what the better way looks like, here's the long answer...
The problems with LinkedIn (and other, similar events I have since experienced on Facebook and Twitter) is that despite everyone's good intentions, human nature quickly takes over and things go horribly wrong. The basic idea was to share author pages (initially just those on Facebook) and "LIKE" each other's pages, then perhaps also have some side conversations, make some friends, share books, and generally learn more about the writing world. However, people got greedy. People got frustrated. People got angry and bitter and childish. The reason were obvious enough. All of these platforms were built for other things, and the resulting long line of comments went on for pages and pages and pages which made it hard to navigate, plus some people just didn't play fair. In order to do it a better way, someone would have to make platform sharing more efficient and less prone to the dark side of humanity. 
This got me to thinking. What would be the most efficient? 
Instantly, a simple list of names & Facebook links popped into my head. It could be as simple as an Excel document. Ooo! An ONLINE excel doc! The school I teach at has forced teacher to start using Googledocs to more easily share plans, tests, & a variety of other things for their own efficiency needs, and suddenly I put 2 & 2 together and got the proverbial 4. 
(What happened to the proverbial snowball?) 
If I may be so bold as to say it, I think that moment was a flash of genius. This spreadsheet would have no comment threads. There would be no mess. No fuss. It was simple & it would work. Heck, it was so simple even I could set it up myself. 
So I did. 
It took me all of 20 minutes to create the prototype. 
Then, just as I was 'finishing' up, I realized some people were sharing their Twitter links with each other. I didn't have one myself, but it would be easy to make a column for Twitter links too. 
Oh yeah, and Amazon. Everyone wants to plug their Amazon page. 
Oh, and their website. And their blog. And their Goodreads page. And why not throw in LinkedIn and Google+ Smashwords and Youtube. 
Oh my God, I've created a monster. 
Nevertheless, this "mega" spreadsheet had only taken me about 2 hours in total to create (though in all honesty I did spend many MANY more hours in the following weeks tweaking & updating & maintaining it).
The next step was to get people on the thing. So on a whim I described it to "Chris", the author I wrote about in my Jan. 22nd post. He/She thought it sounded like a great idea, so I sent the link to Chris and a handful of other authors I had been in closer contact with in the previous couple of weeks. 
The response was incredible. At first only 3 or 4 people went onto the "Author Networking Megasheet" and entered their info, and of course we all already knew each other, so there wasn't much to gain other than learning their Twitter handles or Amazon pages. Then they shared it with other authors they knew and then these authors came on and shared it with other people THEY knew... 
In a week there were more than 30 authors filling up those pages and some were making comments on how to tweak things. "What about a place to leave comments?" I added a place. "What about a place to tell everyone what my genres are?" I added it. 
That first week I continued tweaking the Megasheet and invited more authors. In 2 weeks, there were over a hundred of us and my email account was lowing up. EVERYbody had more questions, suggestions, comments, and so much praise, praise, and more praise. 
As of today's date, the Megasheet has now been live for less than 2 months and if you've already clicked on one of the 5 links I've provided, you already know that there are 230 authors, editors, agents, and publishers bombarding it on a daily basis. In fact, it's getting a minimum of 50 visits from unique users every day. Sometimes there are more than a hundred. (Keep in mind, this thing is only 2 months old).
I now send out a weekly email to all who sign up for it with updates & suggestions as to how we can all network together. Each email I send creates a flurry of activity in that suggested mode. We all benefit. Wow. This thing is actually working. Yes, it's true that just like the LinkedIn feed, some people are clearly just dropping off their info then disappearing, hoping for an easy boost without putting in any real work of their own. And you know what? They'll get that boost. But they also won't annoy the rest of us by having people talk about it. There also aren't people who annoy the rest of us by trying to keep their link fresh at the most recent comment. People aren't bitching, in other words, they are praising.
So, how does all this fit into me being a Bestselling beaver? (That I've been busy is, I feel, ridiculously obvious).
Well, my own Facebook/ Amazon/ Twitter/ Goodreads/ etc. numbers have boomed, and I can personally confirm about 20 additional sales of my books thanks directly to this adventure. I'm assuming there are probably several more. In a world where 300 sales is all it takes to get onto the best-seller list, 20+ isn't chump change, plus, I've learned that consistent sales help keep your book higher on the list. My book is no longer on the bestseller list, but its rank is MUCH higher than the 3.5 million it had been before all of this started. 
Other authors have been reporting similar, if not a little smaller, numbers. (Not so surprising, I guess... I did create the thing & my name is at the top of the list. It kind of feels like I have a bit of celebrity status. Actually, a couple days ago I got invited to check it out from one of my long-ago LinkedIn connections. The guy had no idea I was the one who created it. Fun stuff.) 
So what has all this taught me? I think people really can be very nice, as long as you keep things positive and give them a product they genuinely like. The LinkedIn feed, for example, was a brilliant idea, but it was inherently flawed b/c of the nature of that platform. I didn't reinvent the wheel, you see, I just gave it a better groove. 
So does that mean my "Busy Beaver" line of posts is over? 
Not quite. I still have one or two more things to share. One of them is another online spreadsheet which is actually my favorite writing motivational tool of all time. Also, there's one final thing which... well, I think I'll save that teaser for next time. 
For now, I invite any & all writing related people (authors, agents, editors, audiobook narrators, publishers, advertisers, web designers, cover designers, trailer makers,  etc.) to visit the AUTHOR NETWORKING MEGASHEET and start networking. There's no doubt there are hours and hours of work there, but it organized, its easy, and I promise that you'll see more activity all around your writing world. Just remember, you'll get what you put into it. :)
Until next time,-K. 
ps: Writing Done Since Last Time: Holy Moly I can't even explain how MUCH I've gotten done. It's literally been MORE than the past 2 months combined. Yes, in just the last week. How? Why? Well, that's where that amazing motivational tool I mentioned comes in. Tune in next time for a detailed answer. :)

Busy (Best-Selling!) Beaver, Part 6: The Advertising Dilemma

This is Part 6 in my ongoing series explaining my experiences going from a relatively unknown writing schmuck to an Amazon best-selling author. Today's post is about the place I did my advertising which led directly to making it onto that best-sellers list. To find out how I learned about it, scroll back to my Jan. 22nd post.

Ok, my loyal peeps. Let's end the torture. The place I advertised is called EReaderNewsToday.com, and
they have an interesting sales model. Rather than charge several hundred (or thousand!) dollars as most advertising agencies do, ERNT instead charges nothing up front but takes a portion of your profits... 25%, to be precise, which admittedly is a little higher than I was comfortable with.  Nevertheless, my friend "Chris" insisted I should use them. I acquiesced. But ERNT doesn't accept just anyone. There are rules.

First, they only advertise eBooks. Nothing in paper copies.
Yeah, I figured that. Keep going.

Next, they only advertise novels. No poetry or collections of short stories.
Ok. Disappointing since I also have 2 collections I could have advertised, but fair enough. What else?

Next, they only advertise books that have at least 10 reviews on Amazon, and average 4.0 stars or better.
Sounds legit. Only higher quality books that already have at least a small taste of success. I'm still listening. Where's the catch?

Finally, they only advertise your book if you sell it at $0.99 or give it away for free.
Oh. Ouch. Dammit.

And herein lied my dilemma. A buck!? Seriously? Or free!?! What about all my hard work for all those years? What about a reader's basic appreciation of an artistic work? What about my integrity!? It was a very hard pill to swallow, but in the end I decided to listen to my friend and give it a try, if for no other reason than to learn from the experience.

So here's what I learned:

1) ERNT led directly to 250+ sales of my novel, "Man Hunt," in only 3 days. I profited about $75.
That's certainly nothing to change one's life, but it was some nice pocket change and more than I had earned on my own without advertising. Besides, I reasoned, won't those people be impressed and write nice reviews and tell their friends? Certainly that's how this works. I was mostly right about that assumption. Mostly.

2) Even after the sale & advertising was over, "Man Hunt" has continued to sell. To date, it's been a full month since the price has been returned to a whopping $5, and I've sold an additional 70 copies, profiting about an additional $75.
This was a pleasant and unexpected surprise. I can attribute these sales to one of two notions: A) The Best-Seller status help garner even more visibility for my book, and B) my assumption was right and those initial 250 people read my book, liked it, and have been telling their friends about it.

3) Getting onto Amazon's Best-Sellers list was a complete surprise, as was their algorithm for what constitutes a best-selling book. But I'll talk more about that another time. ;)

4) My book also received a boost in Amazon reviews. Most of this is good mojo, but some of it is bad. More on that later as well.

5) Without being ready for the event, I had officially and accidentally reached one of my life-long goals... but this had also caused me to reevaluate (and re-write) my goals & realize I still had a hell of a lot of work to do. As you might guess, I'll save the details for another post.

I could comment more on the advertising dilemma, and perhaps some day I will, but I fear this post is already too long so I must end now. In the meantime, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this post about my advertising adventures is not in chronological order to the events as they took place. ERNT took a little over a week to get back to me once I submitted my book to their advertising campaign, and during that week I did something somewhat insightful, just a little bit crazy, and amazingly powerful. I'm convinced it was another, subtler, helpful push in my sales results. Unfortunately I'll never be able to prove it. But when I write about it in next week's post, perhaps you'll tell me your interpretation. What I can tell you is this: advertising and the great Amazon aren't the only way to get attention and exposure as an author.

Until next time,
-K

ps: Writing Results Since My Last Post: LOTS! I successfully revised another tough chunk of my current novel, made about a dozen new writing friends (several of which I actually met face-to-face), got invited to do a PAID (you read that right) speaking event about myself as an author at a local library, and experimented with another advertising platform. I wish I could contribute most of that to my Amazon Best-Selling status, but the truth is that I've continued to work my ass off and other life wins have resulted.