Nathan Walpow's Blog, page 5

“Push” Is Out

As promised a couple of weeks ago, “Push” is now out. It’s the 25,000 word novella version of a 4,000 word short story I wrote 15 or so years ago, which was reprinted in the Best American Mystery Stories 2001. It’s from Paul Bishop‘s Fight Card Books, which has been putting out excellent pulpish boxing stories for a couple of years and is now branching out into mixed martial arts, luchadores, and now, with “Push,” U.S.-style professional wrestling.

At the moment, “Push” is only available as an Amazon e-book, which shouldn’t stop anybody from buying it (hell, it’s only $2.99), because Amazon has free e-reader apps for just about any computer or mobile device you’re likely to have. If you’ve subscribed to the new Kindle Unlimited program, you can read it for free. The credited author is Jack Tunney, as is the case with all Fight Card titles.

The “Push” page on this site is here.

“Push” should eventually be available at other e-outlets, and before too long there’ll be a paper version with my name on it. Here’s the blurb that would be on the back cover if e-books had back covers:

You’re a jobber. You make your living by losing in the wrestling ring. You’re a good wrestler, but promoters don&Ssquo;t think you have what it takes to become a superstar. Then Thumper shows up. Big and strong, with a bunny-rabbit gimmick and fans eating out of his hand. His finishing move is called The Thump, and most guys don’t get up from it on their own.

One night, Thumper puts his opponent in the hospital. Not a big deal. Sure, the outcome of a wrestling match is fake. But the bumps in the ring can be all too real. Sometimes you get hurt. Part of the territory.

Then it happens again. Only this time, the guy who got Thumped is tossed into a car like a sack of potatoes. Lou Boone, the promoter who runs Central States Wrestling with an iron fist, knows you saw something and offers you a push if you keep your mouth shut.

A push. Every jobber’s dream. To get to win some matches, to get to be on the big cards in the big arenas. You want it more than anything. You begin thinking you imagined the sack-of-potatoes guy—until it happens again.

Now, you have to choose between wrestling fame and doing the right thing. Before this is over, someone else will be dead. And you don’t want it to be you …

Based on the short story “Push Comes to Shove,” selected by Lawrence Block for the Best American Mystery Stories series.

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One, Two, Three … Push

About 15 years ago I wrote a story about professional wrestling called "Push Comes to Shove." It was published in an anthology from the Los Angeles Sisters in Crime chapter. Somehow it came to the notice of those who put together the Best American Mystery Stories series. Somehow it was chosen for inclusion. Yay, me!

Last December I ran into author (and longtime LAPD officer) Paul Bishop, who it turned out was running a new venture called Fight Card. It features novella-length fiction, mostly stories about boxing, but about to branch into MMA and luchadores. I got the brilliant idea of expanding "Push Comes to Shove" from 4,000 to roughly 25,000 words. Paul said okay.

Now my brilliant idea has come to fruition. "Push" will come out August 8. Initially as an Amazon e-book, credited to Jack Tunney, as are all Fight Card tales. There’ll be a paper version before too long, and that’ll have my name on it.

More when it’s out …

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Free Joe Portugal!

This morning I started a giveaway over on Goodreads. Enter to win one of three signed copies of One Last Hit, Joe Portugal number three, fresh out of a box in my garage.

The giveaway ends next Tuesday, May 6. Enter today, and you can soon have a copy of the book about which Lee Child said:

I thought it was extraordinary—just fabulous. Quite apart from the plot and characters it had a terrific emotional quotient which all of us boomers should be eating up. Required reading for the Reacher Creatures.

Enter here, or use the widget over to the right.

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Adventures in Bookmaking

I recently added a promotion to this site, wherein if you sign up for my newsletter mailing list you get a free copy of my short story “Daughters.” (See signup box to the right.) Which meant I had to actually have the story in electronic form for people to download. Which led to a bumpy trip through the Wild West of e-book formatting.

First of all, you should know that I’ve been making my living with computers for the past (mumble) years, and as a web designer for the last ten or so. This comes in very handy when putting e-books together, because it turns out that they are composed of HTML and CSS, two languages used for web design, both of which I am adept at.

The process reminded me of the early days of the World Wide Web, when the browser market was divided between Netscape and Internet Explorer, and each had dozens of quirks the designer had to deal with. (Eventually Netscape died off and IE became an object of ridicule; modern browsers follow the rules, more or less.) In a vaguely similar way, the e-book world is divided between two main formats, and to put together an e-book you have to deal with both.

Most readers use a format called EPUB. This includes Nook, Kobo, Google Books, and Apple World. Amazon Kindle, however, uses another format called MOBI. (Yes, you gurus out there, I know I’m simplifying, but it works for the purposes of this post.) Though Kindle is the only one that uses MOBI, they have the lion’s share of the market, so, like I said, you have to deal with both.

People usually make their EPUB first. There are a bunch of tools to do this with, both desktip and online. When you’re happy with your EPUB, you make your MOBI out of it, using another bunch of tools (some of which are the same as the ones in the first bunch). One of these latter tools is called KindleGen, and, God help me, it uses the DOS command line we thought we got rid of years ago.

So I made my EPUB and I made my MOBI, and I checked them, using the Web version of Google Books for the EPUB and Kindle Reader for Windows for the MOBI. Everything looked great. I uploaded the files, added a PDF version for those who haven’t yet moved into electronic reading, and went on to my next exciting task.

A couple of days later I was sitting in Chipotle, and I took out my phone to do some reading. And I thought, hey, why don’t I look at “Daughters”? So I pulled the two versions down and looked at them. The Kindle one, in the Kindle app for Android, was perfect. The EPUB one, in the Google Books Android app, was not. A section I’d cleverly inserted at the end, with a bunch of links to other stuff I’ve got available electronically, ran right up against the end of the story, instead of starting a new page like it was supposed to. It had not done this on the Web version of Google Books.

I checked my code. I’d done what I was supposed to, setting it up so that every time it came to the code that represented a new chapter or section, it encountered a bit of CSS that says page-break-before: always. It worked in MOBI. It worked sometimes in EPUB.

Back to the Interwebs for research. It didn’t take long to figure out what was going on. It turns out that a lot of e-readers totally ignore page-break-before: always. You can’t count on it working. Then, for criminy’s sake, why bother having it? (This was the part that reminded me of the Netscape-IE browser wars.) The solution is to put each chapter or section in a separate HTML file, which absolutely forces each and every reading device to start them on a new page.

As it turns out, this wasn’t a difficult change for this story. There were only two parts I wanted to start on fresh pages: the story istelf and the marketing at the end. (Tech geek bonus: I also had to break out the CSS so both parts would be able to use it.) Anyway, I made the change, and posted the new version, and all is well. And if you subscribe to my newsletter, you will get a link to download a nice pretty copy of “Daughters” in any old format you like.

So, in the end, no big deal. Except that today I decided to put up a few copies of One Last Hit as a giveaway on Goodreads (it should start next Tuesday, April 29). I discovered that I could put up a piece of the book to entice entrants. In EPUB. A few months ago I put One Last Hit and The Manipulated up on Amazon, and I submitted one honkin’ big HTML file, and everything was fine and dandy. But that was MOBI, not EPUB. So I had to make tiny stinkin’ little individual files for each chapter in the sample, so that they didn’t all run together and look like crap. Which took time I could have used for writing.

The point of all this? Hell, I don’t know. I guess I’m peeved that I spent all this time farting around with something that, were I not conversant with the language e-books are made of, and were I not so anal about my code, I probably could have done with something like calibre. The result would have looked ungainly under the skin, but would have done the job just fine.

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Join a List, Get a Story

That’s right! Join the list to receive my not-too-frequent newsletter, highlighting upcoming releases, freebies, and more, and receive a free e-book of “Daughters,” a story that originally came out in Crimespree Magazine a couple of years ago. The protagonist’s not Logan, the hero of my new e-novella series, but he’s got enough similarities to show I was thinking about that type of character well before Logan came to life.

You can subscribe to the list over there on the right, or just below.

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Logan Is Everywhere

You now have no excuse not to buy Logan’s Young Guns, my new e-novella from Stark Raving Group. Because now you can get it anywhere e-books are sold. Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and more. So pick up a copy today and get in on the ground floor.

Here’s where you can get Logan’s Young Guns, for a mere $2.99:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
iBooks
eBooks.com
… and still available at Bookxy.

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Fellow Stark Raver Plugs Logan

No, not plugs as in shoots (You plugged my brother, see?) Plugs as in promotes.

Mike Monson, who also writes novellas for Bookxy / Stark Raving Group, talks up Logan’s Young Guns and a couple of other new releases. Thanks, Mike.

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Open the Podcast Bay Doors, HAL

Fellow Stark Raving author Bobby Nash (whose new novella, Snow Falls, I wrote about in my last post) is one of the principals over at Earth Station One, a website dedicated to everything geeky. Science fiction and fantasy on the page, tube, and screen, comic books, professional wrestling … anyway, they do a podcast once a week, and the most recent features me. Thrill as I recount the story of how I became a writer! Learn what I think about electronic publishing! Watch me squirm on The Geek Seat!

Here’s the podcast. I show up about 26 minutes in …

http://www.walpow.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/earth-station-one-202.mp3

… or listen to it on the Earth Station One site.

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Snow Falls on Stark Raving Books

Another Bookxy e-novella, this one by Bobby Nash, hits the electronic shelves:

Abraham Snow is a deep cover government operative on assignment in South America. When his cover is blown, Agent Snow is shot and left for dead. Half an inch over and he would have been dead. After a long, painful recovery, Snow retires from service and takes his grandfather up on an offer to stay with him while he recuperates. He has not seen his family in over a decade.

Archer Snow has an ulterior motive. He wants his grandson to join the family business, Snow Security Consulting. Snow is skeptical. The company is owned by his grandfather, but is run by a man who doesn’t like him all that much, his father.

Persuaded to an international diplomatic conference as an excuse to see his sister, a diplomatic mediator, and brother, part of the family business, Snow becomes embroiled in an assassination plot against a visiting dignitary that puts his family in the crosshairs.

Using the special skills he learned in his former career, Snow, with a little help from a couple of friends: a FBI Agent and a former car thief, thwarts the assassin’s plans. Snow declines his grandfather’s invitation to join the family business, but offers to help out if they need it.

As with all Stark Raving titles (including, ahem, my own), it’s available at Bookxy.

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Baseball-Based Badness at Bookxy

Fellow Stark Raving Group author Travis Richardson has a new e-novella out:

Keeping The Record is a tale about a disgraced former home run king whose rampant steroid use has modified the former All-Star into a testicle shrinking, soprano speaking, bra wearing recluse. Hiding from creditors, he discovers that his single season home run record—the only thing he has left, asterisk be damned—is about to be broken by a second baseman. Determined not to let that happen, he sets off for St. Louis from the East Bay, leaving a trail of destruction and bodies in his wake.

As with all Stark Raving titles (including, ahem, my own), it’s available at Bookxy.

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