John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 16

Breaking Out Is Hard to Do: KDP Select Free Events not What They Used to Be

“Free is dead.”

So goes the claim of most indie authors with regard to running free events through Amazon.com’s KDP Select program. Once, a successful free event meant solid sales for the next 30 days. It could create a breakout for a relatively unknown author.

Not so much anymore. At least, that’s the theory.

I decided to test that idea last month. I planned to release my new novel, Roses Are White, at the end of April. So at the beginning of the month, I ran a free event for State of Grace, the first book in the Wolf Dasher series (Roses Are White is Book 3). My goal was to raise the visibility of the series, getting people interested in Books 1 and 2 as well as the permafree short story, so that, when Book 3 hit, it would have some legs.

To accomplish this, I knew I would need to have strong numbers on my free event. Whether free was dead or not, I knew that the game had changed from a year ago when I gave “Sleeping Beauty: A Modern Fairy Tale” a fairly significant boost through a free event. I was going to need downloads approaching five figures to change my sales numbers in a meaningful way (based on anecdotal information I’d gotten from my writers’ support group). To do that would require advertising.

Ad Venues

The kingmaker in eBook sales right now is BookBub. I’ve applied to them in the past and met with no success. They have a high bar to entry. At the time, State of Grace had only nine reviews (it has 11 now), which is a pretty low number for BookBub to consider. However, I had a 4.6-star average and I had nothing to lose by applying, so I took a shot.

As expected, they turned me down. (More on the significance of that below.) I therefore turned my attention to the second-tier sites. I applied and was accepted by Kindle Books & Tips and Book Sends. I also advertised with BookGoodies and the new eBook Soda. I contemplated FreeBooksy, with whom I had had good luck in the past, but I’d already spent significantly with the other two sites and wasn’t sure I could afford Free Booksy’s $50 fee. I applied to eReader News Today as well, but they didn’t respond.

I had no idea what to expect. The game had changed, but I had listings with some of the bigger boys. I crossed my fingers and waited to see what would happen.

Results

My first day went pretty well. I got over 700 downloads — a solid day’s work. I had the KB&T ad on the first day, and while I had hoped to do better with them, I am certain I wouldn’t have breached the 700 mark without them. Book Sends was landing the next day, so I was hoping I’d pick up steam.

As the morning wore on, though, I was not getting very significant numbers. From the time I first checked in around 7:00am to about two in the afternoon, I had only secured about 250 downloads. Book Sends was not producing any significant numbers, and what momentum I had built was dissipating.

Curiously, I was charting very well in the Free Store on Amazon in the Thrillers>Espionage category. In fact, I’d made it into the Top Five. But I had not even sniffed the charts in Fantasy, and while State of Grace is a fantasy-thriller mash-up novel, I market it more as fantasy due to the presence of elves and magic. In fact, advertising with the discount book sites requires you choose a category for your book, and I always list it as fantasy. So it seemed strange I could do well in the category I didn’t list (and is generally more popular) but not in the one I was directly marketing to.

Then, in mid-afternoon, things changed. The ENT email hit my inbox. State of Grace was the last book they listed in the free category. But it was there.

Suddenly, the downloads shot into the sky. For the remainder of the day — all the way to midnight — I averaged 150-200 downloads an hour. On the first update after the ENT ad, I hit #1 in Thrillers>Espionage. Shortly thereafter, I finally made it onto the Fantasy chart. eReader News Today gave my beleaguered free event gas. With my ads with BookGoodies and eBook Soda landing on Wednesday morning, I was hopeful this event was going to have the momentum necessary to achieve my goals.

But that was the end of the excitement. By noon on Wednesday, the ENT fuel was exhausted. I vanished from the Fantasy chart as quickly as I’d appeared there. I went from 200 downloads an hour back to 200 a day. The ENT effect was powerful, game-changing, and short-lived.

Totals and their Effects

By the time it was said and done, this was indeed the best free event I’d ever run for State of Grace and the highest U.S. numbers I’d ever received for any book. (“Sleeping Beauty” had superior numbers when adding U.S. and U.K. downloads together.) I got over 3000 total downloads. Short of my hoped-for goal but respectable in the grand scheme of previous events I’d run.

Of course, the purpose of the event was to raise the profile of the Wolf Dasher series ahead of Roses Are White‘s release. Thus, I was looking for things other than how many free books I gave away. I wanted to see sales of Book 2: Red Dragon Five, post-free sales of State of Grace, new reviews of the book, and more subscriptions to my mailing list and likes to my Facebook page.

Virtually none of that happened. In the almost two months since the event, I’ve gotten two new reviews, sold less than five copies of each of the first two books in the series, acquired about five new likes to my Facebook page, and one new mailing list subscriber.

Worse, Roses Are White came out of the gate completely flat. By the time it hit, what little momentum there was completely gone. On the surface at least, free appeared to be dead.

Further Analysis

By way of contrast, a friend just ran a very successful free event. He got listed on BookBub (he has tons of positive reviews) and that led to a combined 65,000 downloads on two books, which have led to over 800 sales in just 10 days. His reviews, mailing list subscriptions, and Facebook likes have ballooned nicely.

That indicates to me (and he agrees) that free is not dead, but it’s only alive if you can get five-figure downloads. And as far as we can tell, the only way to do that is to get listed by BookBub.

There are a couple of other variables I need to explore. First, I think I am meeting price resistance by listing my books at $4.99. Last year, there was evidence this was an acceptable price for indie books, but it now appears that asking for more than $2.99 is a barrier to entry for indies. I need to reconsider my pricing structure — free is free, but if the other books are too high, they won’t get picked up subsequently.

I also think my marketing copy needs some work. I plan to take a little time with that as well.

But free didn’t work for me this time. I took the most successful free event I’ve ever run in the U.S. market and turned it into nothing. Last year at this time, the numbers I got would have led to strong sales post-event and a solid launch for the third book. Now the rules have changed.

Free is not dead. But it is extremely handicapped. Where it once was a license for 30 days of solid sales, it now is a tool that only works effectively for more established writers. The changes in Amazon’s algorithms have made, at least for the moment, BookBub the undisputed kingmaker in the Brave New World of digital publishing, with ENT a solid second. ENT’s standards are lower for free books (minimum of four reviews with a four-star average) but about the same for paid ones (minimum 10 reviews with a four-star average).

That means, at least for the moment, it’s much more difficult to break out and build a platform for indie authors. It’s certainly not impossible. There are a variety of long-slog ways to get there. But the ability to get up and established quickly that KDP Select free events once provided appears to be gone.

Breaking out is, once again, hard to do.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Roses Are White, Sleeping Beauty, State of Grace Tagged: Amazon.com, John Phythyon, KDP Select, Roses Are White, State of Grace

Breaking out is Hard to Do: KDP Select Free Events not What They Used to Be

“Free is dead.”

So goes the claim of most indie authors with regard to running free events through Amazon.com’s KDP Select program. Once, a successful free event meant solid sales for the next 30 days. It could create a breakout for a relatively unknown author.

Not so much anymore. At least, that’s the theory.

I decided to test that idea last month. I planned to release my new novel, Roses Are White, at the end of April. So at the beginning of the month, I ran a free event for State of Grace, the first book in the Wolf Dasher series (Roses Are White is Book 3). My goal was to raise the visibility of the series, getting people interested in Books 1 and 2 as well as the permafree short story, so that, when Book 3 hit, it would have some legs.

To accomplish this, I knew I would need to have strong numbers on my free event. Whether free was dead or not, I knew that the game had changed from a year ago when I gave “Sleeping Beauty: A Modern Fairy Tale” a fairly significant boost through a free event. I was going to need downloads approaching five figures to change my sales numbers in a meaningful way (based on anecdotal information I’d gotten from my writers’ support group). To do that would require advertising.

Ad Venues

The kingmaker in eBook sales right now is BookBub. I’ve applied to them in the past and met with no success. They have a high bar to entry. At the time, State of Grace had only nine reviews (it has 11 now), which is a pretty low number for BookBub to consider. However, I had a 4.6-star average and I had nothing to lose by applying, so I took a shot.

As expected, they turned me down. (More on the significance of that below.) I therefore turned my attention to the second-tier sites. I applied and was accepted by Kindle Books & Tips and Book Sends. I also advertised with BookGoodies and the new eBook Soda. I contemplated FreeBooksy, with whom I had had good luck in the past, but I’d already spent significantly with the other two sites and wasn’t sure I could afford Free Booksy’s $50 fee. I applied to eReader News Today as well, but they didn’t respond.

I had no idea what to expect. The game had changed, but I had listings with some of the bigger boys. I crossed my fingers and waited to see what would happen.

Results

My first day went pretty well. I got over 700 downloads — a solid day’s work. I had the KB&T ad on the first day, and while I had hoped to do better with them, I am certain I wouldn’t have breached the 700 mark without them. Book Sends was landing the next day, so I was hoping I’d pick up steam.

As the morning wore on, though, I was not getting very significant numbers. From the time I first checked in around 7:00am to about two in the afternoon, I had only secured about 250 downloads. Book Sends was not producing any significant numbers, and what momentum I had built was dissipating.

Curiously, I was charting very well in the Free Store on Amazon in the Thrillers>Espionage category. In fact, I’d made it into the Top Five. But I had not even sniffed the charts in Fantasy, and while State of Grace is a fantasy-thriller mash-up novel, I market it more as fantasy due to the presence of elves and magic. In fact, advertising with the discount book sites requires you choose a category for your book, and I always list it as fantasy. So it seemed strange I could do well in the category I didn’t list (and is generally more popular) but not in the one I was directly marketing to.

Then, in mid-afternoon, things changed. The ENT email hit my inbox. State of Grace was the last book they listed in the free category. But it was there.

Suddenly, the downloads shot into the sky. For the remainder of the day — all the way to midnight — I averaged 150-200 downloads an hour. On the first update after the ENT ad, I hit #1 in Thrillers>Espionage. Shortly thereafter, I finally made it onto the Fantasy chart. eReader News Today gave my beleaguered free event gas. With my ads with BookGoodies and eBook Soda landing on Wednesday morning, I was hopeful this event was going to have the momentum necessary to achieve my goals.

But that was the end of the excitement. By noon on Wednesday, the ENT fuel was exhausted. I vanished from the Fantasy chart as quickly as I’d appeared there. I went from 200 downloads an hour back to 200 a day. The ENT effect was powerful, game-changing, and short-lived.

Totals and their Effects

By the time it was said and done, this was indeed the best free event I’d ever run for State of Grace and the highest U.S. numbers I’d ever received for any book. (“Sleeping Beauty” had superior numbers when adding U.S. and U.K. downloads together.) I got over 3000 total downloads. Short of my hoped-for goal but respectable in the grand scheme of previous events I’d run.

Of course, the purpose of the event was to raise the profile of the Wolf Dasher series ahead of Roses Are White‘s release. Thus, I was looking for things other than how many free books I gave away. I wanted to see sales of Book 2: Red Dragon Five, post-free sales of State of Grace, new reviews of the book, and more subscriptions to my mailing list and likes to my Facebook page.

Virtually none of that happened. In the almost two months since the event, I’ve gotten two new reviews, sold less than five copies of each of the first two books in the series, acquired about five new likes to my Facebook page, and one new mailing list subscriber.

Worse, Roses Are White came out of the gate completely flat. By the time it hit, what little momentum there was completely gone. On the surface at least, free appeared to be dead.

Further Analysis

By way of contrast, a friend just ran a very successful free event. He got listed on BookBub (he has tons of positive reviews) and that led to a combined 65,000 downloads on two books, which have led to over 800 sales in just 10 days. His reviews, mailing list subscriptions, and Facebook likes have ballooned nicely.

That indicates to me (and he agrees) that free is not dead, but it’s only alive if you can get five-figure downloads. And as far as we can tell, the only way to do that is to get listed by BookBub.

There are a couple of other variables I need to explore. First, I think I am meeting price resistance by listing my books at $4.99. Last year, there was evidence this was an acceptable price for indie books, but it now appears that asking for more than $2.99 is a barrier to entry for indies. I need to reconsider my pricing structure — free is free, but if the other books are too high, they won’t get picked up subsequently.

I also think my marketing copy needs some work. I plan to take a little time with that as well.

But free didn’t work for me this time. I took the most successful free event I’ve ever run in the U.S. market and turned it into nothing. Last year at this time, the numbers I got would have led to strong sales post-event and a solid launch for the third book. Now the rules have changed.

Free is not dead. But it is extremely handicapped. Where it once was a license for 30 days of solid sales, it now is a tool that only works effectively for more established writers. The changes in Amazon’s algorithms have made, at least for the moment, BookBub the undisputed kingmaker in the Brave New World of digital publishing, with ENT a solid second. ENT’s standards are lower for free books (minimum of four reviews with a four-star average) but about the same for paid ones (minimum 10 reviews with a four-star average).

That means, at least for the moment, it’s much more difficult to break out and build a platform for indie authors. It’s certainly not impossible. There are a variety of long-slog ways to get there. But the ability to get up and established quickly that KDP Select free events once provided appears to be gone.

Breaking out is, once again, hard to do.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Roses Are White, Sleeping Beauty, State of Grace Tagged: Amazon.com, John Phythyon, KDP Select, Roses Are White, State of Grace

Carefully Taught: Racism is Learned, not Natural

You’ve got to be taught

To hate and fear.

You’ve got to be taught

From year to year.

It’s got to be drummed

In your dear, little ear .

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

–Oscar Hammerstein II, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught”

Life is serendipitous sometimes. I had been planning to write this blog today, quoting the Hammerstein song above. Then NPR’s “The Race Card Project” did a story on it on Monday. You can listen to it here.

It’s interesting that a 65-year-old song can still be so relevant. As I wrote a few weeks ago (and as the much more eloquent Leonard Pitts has written frequently), we do not yet live in a post-racist society, no matter how much we wish or believe it to be so.

And that prompts the question of where do racism and bigotry begin. It’s tempting to blame biology. Humans are a xenophobic species. We fear The Other. That’s millions of years of evolution for you.

But racism and bigotry are about more than xenophobia. They are also about holding onto power. The people who fight change the hardest are the ones who stand to lose something in the new order. That has an evolutionary origin too. Resources have to be protected so one’s tribe/community can survive. War began as a quest to take or protect resources.

But even that isn’t enough to really explain racism. Because whatever evolutionary urges may seed bigotry, there is something fundamentally advanced  about racism.

And that is hatred.

Racists do not just seek to just protect themselves from The Other. They hate them. Passionately. They desire their eradication — from their lives, from their neighborhoods, from their country, and even from the Earth. Hitler’s Final Solution was extreme, but it was born from the basic hatred of people different from him.

Hatred is not a natural emotion. It has to be learned.  That’s where Oscar Hammerstein got it right. Someone has to teach you whom to hate and why.

I explore this idea in my new novel, Roses Are White. Yes, it’s an action-adventure book. It’s not a treatise on racism or religion or nationalism or any other divisive force in the world today. It’s a page-turning thriller.

But villains need motives. All people do. And tragedy is wrought by hatred and stupidity.

One of the antagonists in the book is Gavric Hollygrove — a young, idealistic elf. He’s upset, because his sister is marrying a human. He believes, as many elves do, that humans are occupying their country and exploiting it for its resources.

But Gavric is becoming radicalized by a different force. As angry as he is about what his sister is doing, he is getting his ideas from another source. Mother Gladheart, a rogue priest, is inciting hatred and even violence against humans. It’s institutionalized racism.

In one passage, Gladheart sends a proclamation to be read by her spokesman at a rally:

“Good people of Alfar . . . Hear the words of your mother!

I have called you here today at the doorstep of the snavrek headquarters because it is time again to agitate for an end to their presence in Alfar.”

Cyrus swore a second time as the crowd cheered. Gladheart’s use of that hateful slur was not going to make anything better. For a woman of God, she certainly preached a lot of spite.

Gladheart goes on to blame all  the problems plaguing the nation on humans. Later in the book, we see the impact her ideas are having on Gavric:

How had this happened, [Gavric thought.] How had his homeland fallen so far from the ideals on which it was founded? . . . And how had his father and sister — the two people he admired most — lost sight of what was important, what Alfar meant? The two of them seemed determined to follow the president down her road of self-destruction, giving everything away to the [humans].

A few paragraphs later, wondering how his sister could be marrying a human, he refers to her intended as “her pet snavrek.“

Gavric has learned to hate humans, but it wasn’t his family or any direct experiences with them that taught him that. Seeing something wrong with his country, he seeks out an explanation — and he gets it from someone who wants him to hate. Mother Gladheart names a scapegoat (humans), labels them with an ugly word to make them lesser (snavrek), and then issues a call to action, which ends up inciting violence and more hatred.

That is the power of racism. It changes The Other — whoever they are — into The Enemy. Enemies are hated. They are treated as subhuman, as scourges that must be destroyed.

It’s easy enough to dismiss my argument because Roses Are White is a work of fiction. There are no elves in real life. They are not exploited for their magic.

But the process by which Gavric becomes radicalized is the same one we see at work in the real world. Islamic fundamentalists claim Western culture is sinful and organize jihads against the U.S. and its allies. The 9/11 attacks were an act of hatred perpetrated by anti-Western bigots.

Likewise, Westboro Baptist Church teaches hatred of homosexuals, blaming them and America’s tolerance of the so-called “gay agenda” for everything wrong with the country because in their view God is punishing us.

These children have been carefully taught to hate.

And the sinister thing about these ideas is that they are taught. Osama bin Laden didn’t fly a plane into the World Trade Center. He convinced someone else to do it, telling them they were fighting evil and that God would reward them in the afterlife. Fred Phelps taught his congregation his twisted interpretation of Leviticus, and they have instilled it in their kids. Among the most disturbing images of Westboro’s activities is seeing young children holding up signs that read, “God Hates Fags,” and other hateful slurs at military funerals.

Of course, those are extreme examples, but it’s a short step from hatred to extremism. Teaching that The Other is The Enemy is what led George Zimmerman to identify Trayvon Martin as a threat to the neighborhood because he was a black kid wearing a hoodie. Zimmerman acted on his suspicion born of hatred and ended up authoring an unintended tragedy.

There was a national outrage over Seattle Seahawks defensive back Richard Sherman shouting into the microphone that he’d proven he was the better player than San Francisco’s Michael Crabtree after Sherman deflected away a pass intended for Crabtree and sealed a trip to the Super Bowl for Seattle. Sherman was declared a thug. He responded by saying “thug” was the new code word for the n-word. Nationally, we scoffed.

But just over a year before, Michael Dunn, a white man, shot at three black kids, killing one of them for playing their music too loud at a gas station. “I hate that thug music,” he said of the rap/hip-hop they had on the radio.

Doesn’t that at least lend some credence to Sherman’s point? And was Sherman’s exuberant interview any different than Muhammed Ali declaring, “I am the greatest!” And wasn’t Ali hated for it, because he was a black man dominating a then-traditionally white sport?

To some, the black man is the enemy — The Other to be feared and hated. When he wins, those who hate him are not only threatened, they’re angry.

And this attitude, this belief in the danger of The Other, is taught. Someone in authority — a politician, a cleric, a parent — teaches that not all people are created equal. Some people are bad, and they are bad because they belong to a particular group. They believe in the wrong god, or they follow the wrong ideology, or their skin is the wrong color, or they have more or less than we do. So they are The Enemy. They are different from us, and their very nature — from belief system to skin color to sexual identity — is fundamentally wrong. It is evil. They are evil.

That is racism, and we come to it by education. We are carefully taught. I may have written a work of fantasy fiction, but I’m not writing about imaginary problems.

Put a couple of very young children together, and they will ask questions. Why is your skin like that? Why is your hair like that? Why don’t you look like me? Why do you do that?

It sounds wrong, and parents often freak when a seemingly impolitic question comes of our their child’s mouth. But the thing is children don’t ask those questions because they are racist. They ask because they are trying to figure out the world. When they meet someone different, they are curious.

Thus, the answers matter. What we tell children, what we allow them to learn, is what they come to believe.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate.

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

Filed under: Current Events, Roses Are White Tagged: hate, Racism, Roses Are White, Westboro Baptist Church

Road Trip to Buy a House More Stressful than Fun

I’m back!

I spent much of last week on the road, traveling to Columbus, Ohio, and back. This is my third road trip in four months. It’s starting to feel like I’m on tour.

I’m not, though. This was my second trip to Columbus this year, and if you follow me on Facebook (You do, don’t you?), you know it’s because I’m relocating. My wife and I drove out to Ohio State in February, so she could interview for a position, and since she got the job, we road tripped last week to find a house.

I am a fan of the road trip. If you read my recent blog on the subject, you know I believe they are internal journeys as well as physical ones. So it was with excitement and anticipation that I got in the car and pointed it east last Monday.

This trip, though, had a very different purpose than the last two. Driving Jill to Ohio for her to interview was open-ended. We didn’t know if she would get the job. It was largely an adventure with every possibility before us. Likewise, when I went to Wisconsin last month to give a reading at my alma mater, I had no idea whether it would be successful, but I had the excitement of seeing my old stomping grounds and reconnecting with some friends I hadn’t seen in a long time.

This trip, though, had a very specific mission: Find a house. It also had something else the other trips didn’t have — a clock.

A house is the largest purchase the average person ever makes. No matter how many times you go through it, it is an enormous undertaking that requires research, diligence, and just getting that feeling that this is the right place.

We had two days.

The mission was further complicated by the fact that we have three children and three pets, which sort of narrows the size and kind of house we could buy. It also necessitated us picking one in a good school district, further narrowing the list.

Again, we had two days. Two days to find the perfect house with all those requirements.

I’m a planner by nature — Hey! I’m an author! I’m all about carefully structured stories that turn out the way I want. — and Jill is a former journalist. Thus, a lot of research went into this trip. We had a realtor, we’d found houses online that looked nice and fit our needs. Before we left for Ohio, we sent him a list of 12 houses we wanted to see. Surely, a one-in-12 chance would be good enough to find the right place.

On our way to Columbus, we got a call from our agent, to set up a schedule. He informed us that two houses were in a school district we didn’t want, one was a short sale, and three had gone into contract over the weekend. Our list had been cut in half. Houses were vanishing before we could get to Columbus to see them.

We were both possessed by a nagging temptation to speed — a feeling that we couldn’t get to Ohio fast enough. We resisted it, but it was hard.

Tuesday was a busy day. We saw all six houses. The idea was to narrow the choices, see if anything else came up in the interim, and then do second looks the next day.

We eliminated Houses 1 and 2 pretty quickly. Houses 3 and 4 had strong possibilities. We left them feeling a little relieved. Neither was perfect, but both were acceptable. We felt as though we might be able to leave on Thursday with an offer on someone’s table.

House 5 was the worst of the lot. It was overpriced and not really what we were looking for. We made our way over to House 6 tired.

And that was The House. It had almost everything we were looking for. There were a few things to quibble about, and there was a carpet that needed replacing, but it was otherwise the right house.

We left our realtor and explored the community — awesome shopping district, refurbished downtown area, lots of culture and neat places to eat. We had a couple drinks at a local place and chatted up the bartender about the area. The review was good.

So the next day, we interviewed the middle school principal and a high school guidance counselor to find out if this was the right district for the kids. We left both schools feeling like we were home.

That afternoon, we viewed the house again. It definitely was what we wanted, where we wanted it. We cancelled the other second views and made an offer.

And then the real stress began. There was paperwork to sign Wednesday night. We gave the owners until 3pm Thursday to respond to the offer.

So we left Columbus Thursday morning with an offer on the table but no idea if it would be accepted. Remember the part about houses vanishing so fast we couldn’t even look at them? And the part about this house really being the only perfect one?

It was a long drive back to Kansas.

But around noon we got a call that the offer had been accepted in principle. They wanted to dicker over a few things. So we hung up, and Jill and I talked about how to counter. Then we called back and gave the realtor our proposal. He thought it sounded good. He said they were due to sign papers at 5pm, so if everything was fine, there would just be an addendum to the contract. That would be forwarded to us, we’d find a truck stop with wi-fi and electronically sign the paperwork.

Five o’clock came and went. No word.

An hour later we called. It went to voicemail. More pins and needles.

Eventually we got a call back and it turned out they’d handwritten the changes into the contract and signed it. We just had to initial the changes.

By that time, we were almost home, so we took care of it at our dining room table (ironic in a sense). The house was ours.

Neither Jill nor I had slept well at all on this excursion. Driving for 12 hours is exhausting. Then there was the stress. What if it didn’t turn out right? What then?

This latest trip to Ohio was not the big adventure we were looking for. It was an adventure, all right, but not the fun kind. It was filled with anxiety and insomnia. We did our best to enjoy ourselves, but the specter of about a hundred different things going wrong made it hard.

That said, we got what we came for. We found a nice house in a good neighborhood with excellent schools. We beat out a competing bid and inked a deal to buy it. We now have a place to live in Columbus, which means we can actually move. This is all very good.

But I want my next road trip to be more fun. Regardless of its success, this one wasn’t what I’m accustomed to.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: House Hunting, road trips

Get RED DRAGON FIVE for just 99 cents!

To celebrate last week’s release of my new novel, Roses Are White, I’m running a sale on the second book in the Wolf Dasher series, Red Dragon Five! For a limited time, you an get RD5 for just 99 cents! Check it out!

When the top-secret Red Dragon Project is sabotaged and one of its agents goes missing, only Wolf Dasher realizes who is really behind it: the sinister terrorist organization, the Sons of Frey. But when the trail leads across the border of Alfar and into Jifan, Wolf must leave behind his new love, May Honeyflower, and go undercover on a dangerous, unofficial mission with no backup. Deep inside the terrorists’ organization, Wolf searches for the missing agent, a woman who can transform into a giant, firebreathing dragon. When he disappears, May abandons her post as Captain of Alfar’s Elite Guard, forms an alliance with the zealous leader of an outlawed militia, and goes off on a desperate search for Wolf. Can she find him before the Sons of Frey discover his true identity, and can either of them prevent the terrorists from unleashing an apocalypse on Alfar?

A story of love and family set against a backdrop of betrayal, revenge, and terrorism, Red Dragon Five is a page-turner you won’t want to put down!

Praise for Red Dragon Five:

“Plots. Betrayal. International intrigue. Magical gadgets, and doom’s day in the waiting. Red Dragon Five has all the elements of a spy thriller and fantasy world thrown together . . .”

–J. Marchant, Amazon.com reviewer

“. . . murder, love, intrigue, mystery, suspense, magic and embedded in this mix are powerful emotions that kept me reading two evenings in a row, each time beyond midnight.”

–Johann David Renner, Amazon.com reviewer

Click here to pick up a copy of Red Dragon Five for just 99 cents!

And don’t forget to nab your copy of Roses Are White the brand new Wolf Dasher thriller!

Filed under: Red Dragon Five, Roses Are White Tagged: John Phyhyon, Kindle Countdown Deal, Red Dragon Five, Roses Are White, Wolf Dasher

Racism and the Discussion We Need to Have

When I decided I wanted to address the issue of racism in Roses Are White, the third Wolf Dasher novel, I knew the theme would not be dated by the time the book came out. The murder of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer, George Zimmerman, convinced me that, all protestations to the contrary, we were not living in a post-racism age. Indeed, that’s one of the things I wanted to touch on in the novel.

But I couldn’t have known that the very week I would release the book, racism would be front and center in the news again. This time, it was Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling telling his non-white girlfriend not to bring black people to his games. Never mind that most of his players — the guys attempting to bring him an NBA championship — are black.

The league stepped in and banned Sterling for life. Commissioner Adam Silver is trying to force Sterling to sell the team. Silver and the NBA were roundly praised for their actions.

But at the same time, we also heard a lot of criticism from other sources that, as righteous as Silver’s actions were, they were awfully late to the party. Sterling has been investigated in the past for bigotry and discrimination. Why was the NBA only now getting up in arms?

It’s a fair criticism, and it speaks to the larger discussion about racism we’re still not willing to have in the U.S. Slavery was abolished in the Civil War. School segregation was “officially” ended in the 1950′s. The Civil Rights Act was established in 1964. The battle against racism is allegedly over.

But it isn’t.

If it were, owners of sports teams that employ African-Americans wouldn’t be telling their girlfriends not to bring black people to the games. Cliven Bundy wouldn’t claim The Negro put himself in jail and was better off under slavery. George Zimmerman wouldn’t think an African-American kid in a hoodie walking through a nice neighborhood was suspicious.

Fifty years down the road, things are better than when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Things are better now than when the Ku Klux Klan operated openly in the South and quite literally got away with murder. We don’t have separate drinking fountains, lunch counters, and bathrooms anymore.

But the Cliven Bundys of the U.S. still hold their bigoted opinions. The Donald Sterlings still believe it’s okay for African-Americans to work for them but not associate with them socially. And sometimes this hatred explodes in real violence.

Like in 1998, when James Byrd, Jr. was dragged to death by white supremacists in Texas.

Or in 2012, when Michael Dunn shot at three black kids in a Dodge Durango, killing one of them, because they were playing what he called “thug music” too loud.

Or in 2013, when Joe Rickey Hundley, tired of listening to a 19-month-old toddler crying on a flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta, slapped the child after yelling at the mother, “Shut that [n-word] baby up!”

And of course, those are just recent anti-African-American incidents. They don’t include events like the 2006 murder of Matthew Shepard, who was effectively crucified for being gay, or the Palm Sunday shooting just a few weeks ago at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas City by Frazier Glenn Cross, a lifelong anti-Semite.

We are not living in a post-racism America. Bigotry, hatred, and xenophobia still infest the American Subconscious. They are often quieter now. They move like cockroaches through the walls of our society, hiding from the scrutiny of the majority of people, who detest them. But like those roaches, they occasionally wander out into the light, showing us their ugliness and spreading their pestilence.

We cannot pretend they are not there. We cannot suggest they are isolated in only a few rundown places that are not typical of our society.

We must hire an exterminator. And the only poison that kills this pest is exposure. We have to talk about this. We have to acknowledge racism still exists, still flourishes, and resolve to fight it.

So I’m not done talking/writing about this. Over the next few weeks, I plan to blog about the themes and events in Roses Are White, and how, despite them being fictional, they are grounded in the world in which we live. Since I published the first Wolf Dasher novel in 2011, Wolf has been living and working in a milieu that holds a mirror up to our own.

I would rather not write about something as ugly as racism. But unless we talk about these problems, they don’t go away. They fester.

It’s been 50 years. It’s time to stop riding on the laurels of the Civil Rights Act and not just acknowledge we still have work to do. It’s also time to roll up our sleeves and get to it.

Filed under: Current Events, Roses Are White Tagged: Cliven Bundy, Donald Sterling, Racism, Roses Are White, Trayvon Martin

ROSES ARE WHITE Available!

It’s finally here.  After months of toil — many of which occurred in the last three weeks — the third Wolf Dasher novel, Roses Are White, is officially on sale.

My sense of excitement is overshadowed only by my sense of relief.

It hasn’t been easy getting this book to market. It was originally scheduled to release in November of 2013. I was trying to publish one Wolf Dasher book a year the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, delays in the two books before it in 2013 — Beauty & the Beast: A Modern Fairy Tale and The Sword and the Sorcerer — meant I didn’t even start writing Roses Are White until October.

Consequently, I elected to participate in National Novel Writing Month for the first time. NaNoWriMo calls for a 50,000-word novel written in 30 days in November. I attempted to write a chapter a day, taking the weekends off. I hit a pretty good rhythm with Roses Are White in November, but it became obvious the book was going to be longer than the 23 chapters I could write on my schedule. So in the final week, I attempted to write two chapters a day.

And I worked myself so hard as a result I made myself sick, contracting three illnesses at once and laying myself out for the first two weeks of December. Those first days, I was so sick I could only drag myself out of bed to drive my children to school and pick them up again in the afternoon. I laid on the couch and watched the rest of the family decorate the Christmas tree.

I managed to finish the first draft before the end of the year and got the second draft off to my editor in a timely fashion, despite the fact that I published the Sword and the Sorcerer on Christmas Day while my family was in from out of town and then spent most of January promoting the daylights out of it.

When I set a publishing schedule for 2014, I planned Roses Are White for mid-April. But when my editor attempted to work on the third draft, her computer ate the manuscript (and all her edits). Twice.

That forced me to push the publication date back to April 29 (still April!) and to work at an accelerated pace throughout the end of March and the rest of April. Mindful of how I worked myself sick back in November but unwilling to blow the deadline I’d set, I read the third draft with edits and rewrote it in a week. Then my editor and I did our read aloud edit in another week. When the proof came back, I read the whole book again in another week. Reading the same book three times in a month isn’t really fun, no matter how good it is.

And Roses Are White is a good book, in my opinion. I’m pleased with how it turned out, and I think it has something important to say. I’ll blog more on that next week.

For now, I’m extremely pleased to have it out in the world. I’m also relieved. Roses Are White was a tremendous amount of stressful work. It’s good to finally get the pay off.

Click here to purchase the Kindle edition of Roses Are White.

Click here to purchase the print edition of Roses Are White.

Here’s the description:

Death is a white rose. . . .

Dexter Rose, the world’s greatest assassin, has come to Alfar.

His mission: Topple the coalition government.

His plan: Three perfect murders, culminating with President Spellbinder herself.

His method: Magic – to disguise himself as anyone and to petrify the victim before the kill.

Only one man has all the right skills to go head to head with the infamous killer and defeat him before he can complete his gruesome assignment. In a land of elves and magic, it will take a human Shadow to stop Dexter Rose before it’s too late.

But Wolf Dasher is recalled to Urland, and his true love, May Honeyflower, isn’t convinced his replacement can prevent Rose from accomplishing his grisly goals. She’ll have to find a way to keep Wolf in Alfar for one more mission . . . and by her side forever.

As the killer closes in on his final quarry, is even Wolf Dasher good enough to stop an assassin who’s never failed? And if he can’t, what will be the cost?

Roses Are White is the third book in the exciting Wolf Dasher series. Following the action of State of Grace and Red Dragon Five, this fantasy-thriller mash-up blends super-spy action with magic and elves in an electric brew that will keep you turning pages. Love and bigotry, loss and redemption, sacrifice and savagery all collide in a pulse-pounding tale you won’t want to put down. Read it as a standalone novel or as the third installment in a series both fresh and familiar.

Filed under: e-Publishing, NaNoWriMo, Roses Are White, Writing Tagged: indie publishing, John Phythyon, NaNoWriMo, Roses Are White

Going Home Again Part 3: A Road Trip is a Writer’s Best Friend

Today, I conclude my three-part series on going home again. As you’ll recall, I traveled back to my alma mater in Wisconsin last week to give a reading. Being a poor author on a budget, I didn’t have money for a plane ticket. That meant it was time to invoke those two magic words: road trip!

Going Up

The road novel/film is a time-honored tradition in American literature, and I felt I was living it as I wound my way from Kansas north to America’s Dairy Land. Somewhat spontaneously, I decided to document my journey. I took pictures that I posted to Facebook and I live-tweeted the journey.

(I should note here that I neither tweeted nor Facebooked while I was driving. I stopped each time I posted something — in fact, I posted things while I was stopped. That added to the length of time it took me to drive, but I put it down to this being a great adventure and didn’t worry about what kind of time I was making.)

Which one of these is a missile silo?

As the road stretched out before me, I found my mind opening. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the sights along the side of the highway drew my attention and fired creative ideas. I started looking for things to document. I would tweet what CD I was listening to. Cruising through Iowa’s farmland, I was reminded of how I joked in junior high that farm silos were missile silos, and I actively searched for a good one to photograph, so I could post it to Facebook and repeat the jest. When I made it to Wisconsin, I stopped on the side of the road, so I could take a picture of the state’s picturesque welcome sign to make my arrival.

I was effectively live-journaling — blogging, if you will — as I drove along. I wasn’t just taking in the sights; I was actively engaged with my environment.

Revisiting the Past

My trip to Green Bay provided a lot of opportunities for reflection. When I set out, I knew this would likely be the last time I would ever make this journey. I’m sure I’ll visit Wisconsin again in my lifetime, but given that I’m moving from Kansas to Ohio this summer, this was sure to be the last time I would drive through Missouri and Iowa to get there. I’d been on this route numerous times in the past and knew it well. This was the final time I would traverse it.

That led to a lot of thinking about what I saw on my drive. The rolling hills and quaint farms throughout Iowa and Southern Wisconsin filled me a sense of tranquility they hadn’t before. The change from rural farmland to industry as I reached the Fox River Valley delineated two Wisconsins very clearly. The variation in the quality of the roads between Missouri and Iowa — something I’d observed many times before — filled me with a sense of wistfulness.

I had made arrangements to stay with an old friend from college — Tom Harter — who was still in Green Bay. Tom’s one of the best guitar players I know, and we collaborated on an album while we were in school. In anticipation of seeing him, I alternated listening to the album we did together, solo projects by each of us, and popular music from our days in college (and in some cases high school). I sent my mind down a musical Memory Lane, and analyzed what we had done right and what we had done wrong from a creative point of view. Not only did my truck roll northward to Wisconsin, it traveled back in time to an era when Tom and I were less experienced, less accomplished, and completely ignorant of our own naivete.

Returning Home

The trip back to Kansas wasn’t as fun. Going home after a vacation never is. But I continued with my documenting the whole excursion. I photographed myself at Schultz’s Cheese Haus in Beaver Dam purchasing a seven-year-old cheddar. I logged my stops for lunch with my brother in Madison, in Dubuque by the Mississippi River, and in Des Moines as I bought my final tank of gas at the QuikTrip I’d been visiting on these treks for 23 years.

I also listened to a lot of Tom’s new music. I traded him copies of my novels for several of his most recent albums, and one in particular — Soteris — really inspired me. I listened to it three times on the drive back. And again, I rotated in music from the 1980′s I listened to in high school and college.

As I was driving home, I was already planning a blog about the whole experience, and I realized I could not contain it all in one entry. I would have to write several installments. There was just too much to say about this 72-hour trip, much of which was spent in the car.

I came to believe on that drive back to Kansas that a road trip is an essential piece of a creative person’s repertoire. The creative process, whether it is literary, musical, dramatic, or visual, requires solitude. No matter how extraverted or attention-seeking an artist is, he or she must have quiet, alone time to fire the imagination and create the work in question.

A road trip is an excellent means to accomplish that. Somehow, the physical experience of traveling, opens a mental journey that taps the wellsprings of creation. The longer I drove, the more the gears in my brain turned. I was exhausted when I pulled into my driveway, but I was also alive with possibility. I was ready to write . . . after a lot of sleep, that is.

The most interesting thing about this strange journey into my past, was that it refreshed me. All the stimuli I received from my travels ignited the kind of creativity I depend on for a living.

I’m not sure how I’ll manage this, but I intend to make road trips a regular thing for me. This summer, it’ll be easy. I’m moving cross-country. There will be road-tripping.

After that, I’m not sure. But I’ve already spoken to St. Norbert about guest-lecturing one afternoon in a creative writing class, and another of my college friends is a high school teacher who has asked the next time I come up to speak to his students. So there is impetus and opportunity for me to do this again.

I don’t know what it is about physical journeys inspiring mental/spiritual ones, but I am convinced that traveling forces the kind of reflection that is positive for the creative process. I intend to take advantage in the future.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: John Phythyon, road trips, St. Norbert College, writing

Going Home Again Part 2: The Dichotomy of Change

I continue today with my three-part series on going home again. As I wrote in Part 1, I returned to my alma mater to give a reading and presentation on the digital revolution in publishing. Along the way, I discovered quite a Heraclitean dichotomy.

A Lifetime Ago

I was 23 years old when I graduated from St. Norbert College in May of 1991. I’m 46 now. Thus, I’ve lived an entire second life since leaving SNC with a shiny new BA in English.

Back in ’91, I was filled with a young man’s anger and a certain resentment for how my education turned out, and I was eager to leave. I didn’t look too long in my rearview mirror as St. Norbert receded on my way to graduate school at the University of Kansas. While I did return to campus several times in the intervening years — notably for wedding receptions for my brother and me and for my brother’s graduation — I invested no energy in keeping up or catching up with life at the college’s ivy-covered walls.

Thus, while I was cognizant of the fact SNC was changing, growing, I hadn’t seen the campus for about seven or eight years when I returned for my reading.

To say it was different is an understatement. There was an entire outer ring of buildings I had to penetrate before I saw anything I recognized. Streets I used to take to find a place to park no longer existed or went somewhere different now or ended in new buildings or parking lots.

I wanted to find the bookstore, so I could buy presents for my children. When I asked where it was and for directions, I got walking instructions from a staff member that made no sense to me . . . until I realized she was talking about what used to be the library when I was a student.

(The irony of the library being converted into a bookstore amused me to no end.)

Statues were in completely different locations, and the one of Abbot Pennings that sat in front of the fine arts building named for him was completely gone! I felt as though I had wandered into an alien place — a foreign country that reminded me of somewhere else I’d been in the past.

And yet, when I got to Boyle Hall, where the reading was to be held, it looked exactly as I remembered it. The only differences were the color of the paint on the walls and the updated A/V equipment in the classrooms. It was as though someone had transplanted this place I knew intimately to a completely different location.

Further Out

I had the same feeling all over town. As I came up Highway 41 through the Fox Cities, there were so many sights I remembered from the numerous times I’d made this trip in the past. But I was also struck by how much more there was.  Bergstrom car dealership, which had been successful when I lived in Northeast Wisconsin, seemed now to have a monopoly on selling vehicles, with huge locations in several cities. From Appleton to Kaukana used to be nothing but farmland, but now it was filled with businesses of every variety. And the number of billboards from Oshkosh all the way to Green Bay seemed to have quadrupled.

When I arrived in Green Bay, it seemed like the entire city was under construction. There were orange barrels and cranes and pavers and construction workers everywhere. The exit for Highway 172 I needed to take was closed. I had to call the friend I was staying with and get his help to figure out how to get to him.

I drove through Green Bay knowing exactly where I was but unable to figure out how to get to where I knew to go. It was that same surreal feeling of everything looking familiar and completely different at the same time. I remembered how things fit together and what I could expect to find at any given location. But so much was different, it didn’t flow the same way it used to, and the construction made it harder to get around.

I drove by my old house and almost missed it, because it was painted a completely different color. The bridge that spanned the Fox River to take me to SNC had been moved 100 feet to the left. It now began where Hardee’s used to be. The Pizza Hut at which I worked when I was in college had moved to the other side of the river, and a completely different business was in its old location — the famous, red roof long since made over.

Yet once again, some things were constant. The Post Office was still the Post Office. The Exclusive Company, where I bought all my CD’s and cassette tapes, was still in its original location on Dousman Street. And the Starlit Motel was still out on Ashland Avenue, with the same outrageous sign that had been there since I first arrived in Green Bay in 1974.

You Can’t Go Home Again

One of my professors introduced me to the ancient philosopher, Heraclitus, when I was a student at SNC. Specifically, he taught me Heraclitus’s quote, “A man can never step into the same river twice; for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.”

As I drove through town and walked across the campus 23 years later, I marveled, enthralled both by how much was new and how much was the same. In this way, I truly came to understand the phrase, “You can’t go home again.”

You can’t go back home, because Heraclitus is right. Twenty-three years later, St. Norbert College is different. So is Green Bay.

And so am I.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” my former advisor said to me after the reading.

But I have. I am no longer a fiery 23-year-old just looking to get out and start life in a new place. I’m not so sure I know everything I need to. At the very least, I am now an experienced liver of life, who had a little wisdom to impart to those who follow in my footsteps a lifetime later.

St. Norbert and Green Bay look terribly familiar and completely foreign to me. I am still that kid from Northeast Wisconsin who left for Kansas 23 years ago. But I’m all grown up now. I am different and exactly the same all at once.

A living dichotomy — just as Heraclitus described.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Green Bay, John Phythyon, St. Norbert College

Going Home Again Part 1: Reading the Opportunities

“You can’t go home again,” goes the old saying. I put it to the test this past week with my first real trip to my hometown in many years. The occasion occurred because I managed to secure a reading and presentation at my alma mater, St. Norbert College. When I was a student, I was a member of Sigma Tau Delta — the international English honors society. My last year I was even the secretary/treasurer. So I reached out to STD to see whether they would be interested in an author/alumnus discussing the publishing business, and to my delight, they were.

Today, I will blog about my experience presenting to SNC students and what I did right and wrong. But I discovered so much more in my brief adventure in Wisconsin than do’s and don’t’s for giving a reading at your alma mater. Next week, I’ll also discuss finding your hometown very different than when you left it and how a lengthy road trip can be reflective and beneficial for a creative person.

Big (Old) Man on Campus

Perhaps the most intoxicating thing about the entire experience of returning to St. Norbert was being treated as though I had some knowledge worth having. Of course, that was the whole premise of my going, but when I left in 1991, I was accustomed to being the person who was receiving the knowledge not giving it. It was weird having people assume I had something to teach them instead of the other way around.

I was struck by the fact that, while the students who attended were just like college students I know elsewhere, none of them were alive when I was at SNC as an English major. They had no knowledge of or attachment to anything I had done when I was sitting in the seats they were now.

Likewise, the faculty advisor with whom I coordinated the entire event was about my age, possibly a little younger. Someone in my generation had an office that was only two doors down from my old advisor’s office (and he’s still there). That reinforced the idea that I actually had the experience to be there teaching instead of learning.

Because neither the professor nor the students had been around when I was a student they had no connection to my career there. They had no idea what my reputation was — good or bad. I was just this middle-aged guy, who had once gone to school there, who had some information that might be useful.

Indeed, the only person from the English Department who knew me was my advisor, who flattered me by coming to the reading. Afterwards, he told me I hadn’t changed. It was intended as a compliment, but it was inaccurate. If nothing else, I am not nearly as arrogant as I was at the age of 23. Getting old has some benefit to it, I guess.

Regardless, being treated as someone worth giving up a couple hours in the evening for was very gratifying. I was treated very well, and I appreciate it.

Talk Isn’t Cheap

In addition to my presentation/reading, the school scheduled a dinner for me with the students before the event. It was simple — sandwiches in the classroom — but the casual environment was very productive. We talked a lot about writing, graduate school, career paths in English, and my books. We also discussed a lot of off-topic subjects, one of which I will not relate here but which has forever changed how I view Target.

I enjoyed the pre-presentation discussion a lot. I spent some time asking the students about what their interests were, what they were planning to do after graduation (since most of them were seniors), what they were studying, and other things related to their academic careers. It was a nice opportunity for inter-generational exchange. From an educational point of view, they got to hear their professor and I talk about life after college. From a business point of view, I got to form relationships with the people in the room.

A Good Read

The actual event was not terribly well attended, although I had no real expectations, so it was easy to not be disappointed. I was hoping people would show up, like my stuff, and maybe buy some books.

All of those things came to pass. I put together a PowerPoint outlining the changes in the publishing industry and how they favor authors. Then I read from three of my books — The Sword and the Sorcerer, Beauty & the Beast: A Modern Fairy Tale, and State of Grace. Everyone listened attentively, and then I sold a couple copies at the end. It wasn’t nearly enough to offset the cost of the trip, but again, I had no expectations, and college students are not renowned for having a lot of money.

I had planned a question-and-answer session, but since most of the attendees had been around for the dinner discussion, most of the questions had already been answered.  Overall, it was a very positive experience.

Doing it Better

Hindsight being as near-perfect as it is, I have some thoughts on what I should have done differently.

I made a huge mistake in my setup. When we got down to the classroom, most of the students were already there. As a result, I completely forgot about setting up any sort of display and went straight into schmoozing mode. I spent time talking to the students while the professor called up the PowerPoint. I had intended to put together a display of the books and to set out a notepad for people to sign up for my mailing list.

I knew which room we were going to be in. We should have taken the materials there beforehand. I met with the professor 45 minutes before in her office, and I got caught up talking. Consequently, I didn’t watch the clock well enough.

Failing that, I could have set things up while she was getting my PowerPoint up on the computer. But I didn’t. I talked instead.

If I had the books out for people to touch and examine, it might have encouraged a few more sales. Or maybe not, but by not having the books out there, I took away that opportunity. Likewise, I might not have gotten any more sales, but I surely would have gotten some people to sign up for the mailing list, if I’d pointed out a notepad where they could do it.

I also did a poor job of promoting this event. I had it set up over a month in advance, but I didn’t send notice to my friends in my hometown until just a few days before I would be there. In part, that was because I have highly engaged with trying to get my next book out. I’ve been in editing and layout mode pretty deeply for the past three to four weeks. So things like promoting the reading slipped off my radar.

But that’s not a very good excuse. If I’d given more lead-time, I might have had more people attend. Friends could have come. They could have told others to come. They might have asked questions that caused someone to want to buy. And, of course, they might have bought something themselves.

So unfortunately, I prevented myself from fully capitalizing on the opportunity St. Norbert provided me by graciously having me speak. However, it at least taught me how to go about similar events in the future.

And there you have it. There I was, back at my alma mater, learning again. How appropriate that the event was held in a room where I had previously taken classes.

 

Filed under: Beauty & the Beast, e-Publishing, State of Grace, The Sword and the Sorcerer Tagged: book reading, indie author, John Phythyon, Sigma Tau Delta, St. Norbert College