Gerald Dean Rice's Blog, page 73

Why Self-Promo Threads Don’t Work

Every author wants free promotion. But indie authors crave it. Promotion could make or break the success of a new release (also factoring in how high the author sets the bar), but there is promotion and spinning your wheels in a fashion made to look like promotion.

We all go the route of combing the internet for reviewers, posting on every site we can find, maybe giving away a gift card, but there are certain things that just don’t work for obvious reasons. Like those threads on websites that advertise ‘Authors Promote Here’ like this one. Why? Because I don’t read them. That’s not to say that I’m the be-all, end-all of what will and won’t work. But I am a reader. And on the way to picking my next book, whatever that’s going to be, I don’t look at threads that have post upon post of authors schlepping their next work. It could be a great piece of fiction that I would become my very favorite book, but I’ll never learn about it that way.

The top ways I learn about new books to read are through recommendations and cool-looking covers. I don’t know about anyone else, but that’s how to reach me.

So why do these threads exist at all?

It’s for the same reason that crosswalks sometimes have that button you push when you’re facing a ‘don’t cross’ signal. It gives the authors the impression they’re actually doing something. It’s meant to placate us.

There are things that actually do work. Joining groups that allow you to post messages aimed directly at people who like your genre. I’m in several Yahoo and Facebook groups and have generated sales from both. You can even track traffic by creating links through bit.ly and posting those links. Of course, there’s a ton more that could be done—that’s more of a ‘hey, this is stuff that actually does something’ thing.

But don’t waste your time with author promo threads. Serious.

Happy hunting.

Review of 11/22/63

Horror is a monster. But I used to think of them as foreign things, beyond human understanding, coming to kill, consume, or destroy indiscriminately, overturning an at least tolerable, if not happy, way of life.

11/22/63 and Mr. King have taught me better than that.

Horror is a monster. Unfortunately, the best ones—or worst ones, depending on your point of view—are people. And not just people, but people we know—love even, which is where the most horrific part comes in to play.

Oswald is a minor part of 11/22/63, in fact, he’s a bit player, a backdrop. Without checking, I guess he probably appears on twenty pages or fewer of the 849 page novel. Jake Epping or George Zimmerman, depending on which side of the timeline your seat is, has Oswald firmly in mind when he crosses through fifty years to 1958 on a mission to save the 35th President of the United States. So how does King fill a nearly 1,000 page beast of a read when the hero’s only goal is to kill a character who’s barely even in it?

Monsters.

No, not the kind that come from space or travel through time (although time travel, obviously, is a huge plot device). They don’t even bother dragging themselves out of dark, cavernous basements or creak down long unending hallways. The monsters are right there in the open to be read in broad daylight. From the would-be family murdering Frank Dunning, the Cuban bookie Jake meets in Florida, or John Clayton, the monsters either don’t, or barely hide. Including the biggest monster of all; Epping himself.

Oh no, you won’t get it out of me how the man—and his predecessor, Al Templeton—is the worst of all these monsters, but I think they all have a single motivation: selfishness. Something has been taken from each of these men and they would have it or an item of equal value back. Money, reputation, respect, life. Yes, when you find out how exactly the rabbit hole works, you’ll understand more. You’ll understand why the Yellow Card Man is probably one of the saddest heroes in modern-day literature (maybe that’s an over-exaggeration; I won’t qualify it, though). You’ll understand why every paragraph you read detailing what Jake Epping does in the mid-twentieth century is wrong.

But 11/22/63 should remind a sane and reasonable person how selfish human beings naturally are. How we want what we want regardless of consequences, how so like infants we continue to be even into adulthood. And how it takes near supernatural forces sometimes to sway us from our lone paths. It is a lonely path for Epping. It takes five years and two minutes at the same time and he passes by paradoxes and steps over quandaries in single pursuit of a selfish goal that he is constantly nudged away from from the moment he steps out of 2011 and into 1958.

Oswald is only the monster you expect; he is not the only one you see. Killing him seems the noble, reasonable thing to do if anyone were given a time machine to go back and do it. But would you listen if the universe whispered ‘no’?

Pen to Paper

Today I present guest blogger, Jay Wilburn.  If you enjoy him, please check out his new novel Loose Ends.

In addition to doggedly pursuing a dream of being a professional writer, I am a public school teacher. I have the rare distinction of having Language, Math, Science, and Social Studies on my middle school certificate. This means I can teach any of the four academic subjects in any grade in my school building. This has placed me in the unique role of utility player. I tend to move subjects and grade levels each year depending on what is open and who the administration is able to hire. It is my role in the big picture. If anyone would like to buy a hundred thousand copies of my novel, I’ll consider other options.

Each of these subjects has traits in common with the others. I won’t list them all, but one is that to get grades eventually a student has to take the pencil, put the pointy end against the paper, and write a combination of letters, numbers, or symbols that communicate complete ideas to me, the teacher and reader.

I often pantomime this action from across the room to a daydreaming student using one hand for paper and the other gripping an imaginary pen. The students are clear on my meaning. They shake themselves out of their alternate universe and at least pretend to write for a time using their real pencils.

The primary cause of low grades in our current, hyper-easy, public school curriculums is not turning in work. The zero in the grade book separates the sheep from the goats or the passing from the failing. The primary cause of zeros is not putting pen to paper. The secondary cause is stuffing completed or semi-completed work in a notebook or leaving it cast upon the floor as they flee the room at the end of the hour.

Here’s where I insultingly compare my fellow writers to a bunch of insecure, day dreaming, junior high students that constructed an alternate universe, but failed to deliver it to the reader. If it helps, I offer the caveat, no offense. If not, know that I am usually trying to offend even when I don’t hold a strong opinion on the topic at hand. It is my default setting. It is a character flaw. Life bores me sometimes because I am living it wrong. This is all beside the point.

We don’t all use pen and paper often beyond possibly the outlining phase, but the message is the same. Whether writer’s block really exists or not, the words must be created to continue their journey to the reader. This year the pantomime from across the room for me was NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month initiative. I don’t have anyone holding me accountable except my friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter between political rants and semi-clever memes. They probably wouldn’t chide me much if I fell from grace and stuffed the half finished novel back into my electronic notebook. It happens all the time among our kind after all. There is no report card to our mothers at the end of term.

When we die, the unfinished novel can die with us. We tell ourselves it wasn’t going anywhere or that it wasn’t good enough. All of that is possible. It may even be likely. We do have a responsibility to put our best work before readers. Poorly composed work published for the public hurts us all in some indirect, abstract way. There is a lot out there and more each day in heavy volume. Adding to the wall and turning off readers with weak performance can’t be good. It’s still not as sad as a writer that doesn’t write.

There is a point where fear has to be defeated. There is a step in the process that involves creating the raw words. The writer has to type them one after another all in a row … line after line … until they form chapters or sections … and a full story of the intended size and subject. Self-editing as one creates is not a death nail by itself. Editing out all the words before they are typed is a problem. Perhaps this should be called Writer Total Pre-edit Syndrome or Edits of Mass Preemption. I call dibs on both of these terms, but give you full permission to steal them, Nonexclusive World Rights with “for the love” payment.

Son, I see you daydreaming in your desk. In this class, that is highly encouraged. It’s time to put pen to paper. The audience can’t grade your work until you write it. I don’t care if you are not sure. Do your best. We’re not counting off for spelling in this draft. Just produce the assignment first. We’ll do the later steps in the process after we finish the first step. How long is the assignment? Novels usually break a 50,000 word minimum. Stop complaining or I’ll take your recess. Now get to work or I’m calling your mother and ruin your weekend. Oh. I’ll do it. I’m not putting up with this attitude from you any longer. If you want me to leave you alone, put the pointy end on the paper and make the magic happen.

The Walking Dead – The Meaning of Rick’s ‘Journey’

Upon first viewing, the events following Rick snapping don’t make sense. But this was one of those occasions when the writers are allowed to be a little ‘artsy’.

Lori has been a sore spot for Rick and the fans of The Walking Dead all season long since the events of the last few episodes of season 2. With Shane sacrificing himself for the good of the group, he insured its immediate survival by forging Rick into the leader he needed to be. But Shane’s death was also punishment for the betrayal of his best friend by sleeping with his wife.

It was nothing but odd that Lori and Shane started an affair a few weeks after they thought Rick had died. Maybe even while they thought he was only in a coma.

So with Shane dead, Lori’s punishment had to be coming. Rick finally got angry, but he turned completely cold to her. With factors stacking up against her by being pregnant and having only a cesarean as an option to give birth, there was little chance of her survival from a fan’s perspective.

So after the moment came, Rick lost his mind, apparently. But this is actually the writers’ method of forgiving her and giving birth to the anger he never voiced to Lori.

Rick hacks his way through zombies until he finds the room where she died. Noe the first thing you should ask is, how would he know that was her blood? There’s no body.

Because the writers guided him there.

And why is there no body at all? When T-dog was eaten by several zombies, there was still a significant amount of carcass left. But apparently, one zombie was able to eat her entire body.

And what does that zombie look like, sitting on the floor, filled with Lori-meat? A pregnant woman.

Except that’s a boy-zombie.

But this is intentional too. That zombie represents Rick and his bloated belly represents- well, it represents that it’s bloated with Lori, but also that it is pregnant with the anger that Rick could never express to Lori and how he spent the last few months of her life not showing her how much he still cared for her.

Remember, at the start of his journey, he knew she was dead. When he leaned over that zombie and put the gun in its mouth, he knew he wasn’t rescuing her, and when he stabbed it, he had no intention of recuperating her remains.

This was also Rick giving birth to his grief.

Every emotion he denied himself broke through the dam of flesh between him and his dead wife.

Expect Rick to claim her child and defend it with the vigorous authority he’s been exhibiting as of late. I see him holding the baby in one arm and shooting someone in the face with the other hand at some point this season.

Journey Into the Unknown

Reblogged from Carol Carroll, Author:

Although I’ve been writing for many years, I’ve only recently become serious about having my work published. Oh, a long time ago I had the dream of being a published author. This was before I had a computer. I wrote my first novel by hand and had a friend type it up for me. She had the dubious job of deciphering all my changes by following the arrows to where the paragraphs should go, getting past all the scratched out words and sentences and making out the sloppy handwriting of a writer obsessed!

Read more… 478 more words

30 Minute Plan

For those of you who have only recently discovered me or this site, I havFor those of you who have only recently discovered me or this site, I have a free title you can check out, 30 Minute Plan. I wrote it on a whim back in 2010 and it was my first self-pubbed title. It’s free on Amazon and Smashwords and it’s chocked full of excerpts from Fleshbags, The Zombie Show, and now The Zombie Archives. Give this one a go sometime, see if you like it.

http://amzn.to/zhXzfi

Happy Birthday Bram Stoker

He would have been 165 today if booze and sunlight hadn’t taken him down.

Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. Wikipedia

Born: November 8, 1847, Clontarf, Dublin

Died: April 20, 1912, London

Spouse: Florence Balcombe (m. 1878–1912)

Movies: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu, Dracula, Dracula, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Dracula 3D, Lair of the White Worm, Count Dracula, The Batman vs. Dracula, Love At First Bite, Dracula, Scars of Dracula, Dracula’s Daughter, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Dracula, Shadow Builder, Legend of the Mummy, The Last Voyage of Demeter, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, Drakula İstanbul’da, The Death of Dracula, Dracula, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s CurseMore

Nationality: Irish, British

I Tried, But Couldn’t Resist

I’m an animal lover, but I tend not to gush over them. That being said, OHMIGOSH, IS THIS CAT SO CUTE!

Hotel Transylvania

There’s not a lot to like about this movie. Hotel Transylvania reads like a movie that is supposed to appeal to adults while also entertaining children, but it fails to deliver at its core: jokes.

Dracula is the proprietor of a hotel that serves as a getaway for monsters who are tired of beign pursued by mobs of humans. Funny idea, but it’s confusing at the start. If the monsters are tired of being chased, where are they when they aren’t at Hotel Transylvania? Why didn’t Dracula just build a place where they could live forever? But setting that minor loophole aside, Dracula is supposed to be this misunderstood creature that only wanted to be left alone with his wife and child when a mob took his wife in a fire. He’s only a concerned father now, trying to protect his 100-something years young daughter from the menace that is humanity. What he winds up being is a completely ball-less ‘master’ vampire who never bites anyone and is reduced to roaring at people when he gets upset.

But it’s a children’s movie, you say, of course Dracula didn’t bite anyone. That’s not my fault. Sony Pictures chose to make a movie about a monster that couldn’t do anything monstrous. I mean, if Lionsgate chose to make a children’s movie starring Leatherface, you’d be a little off-put if he didn’t chainsaw anybody, even though you knew it probably wouldn’t happen. So I’m saying a children’s movie about classic horror monsters is a mistake in and of itself.

But since they insisted, well, what did work? Adam Sandler’s accent? No, it made him cartoony to the point of silliness (again, I know it was a children’s movie, but the accent just didn’t work for me). Jonathan was completely obnoxious throughout as was Mavis. I was about to go through the list of characters, but it would just annoy me all over again. I kind of liked Wayne the werewolf and Griffin the invisible man. I enjoyed the zombies whenever they were on screen. But I absolutely HATED the shrunken heads.

And the jokes themselves seemed put in as an afterthought. The poorer children’s movies have a tell that reveals them as the weak movies they are- senseless violence. Remember how the minions in Despicable Me would punch each other for no reason and remember how nothing like that ever happened to Toy Story (you should get that I didn’t think DM was any good)? Hotel Transylvania’s tell was Dracula roaring at everyone. It wasn’t really funny, they went to it too often, and it didn’t make sense why anybody was afraid after he’d done that.

What did make me laugh, but struck me as undeservedly funny after I left the theater was near the end when Dracula saw part of a movie that was obviously a dig at Twilight with sparkly, shirtless vampire brooding in a forest. Dracula makes a comment I can’t remember about this being what people think of his kind even though Twilight’s vampires actually eat people whereas Dracula doesn’t seem to eat anything with a pulse in Hotel Transylvania. It reminded me of what Roger Ebert said about Fun with Dick and Jane and the movie’s lampooning of the failures of Wallstreet. The movie just didn’t deserve to make the joke because it hadn’t earned it.

I would give this movie 2 out of 5 stars and that’s only because my 5 year old enjoyed it.

e this movie 2 out of 5 stars and that’s only because my 5 year old enjoyed it.

Win a $25 Gift Card

The Zombie Archives is out and you can win a $25 gift card just by reviewing this $0.99 story.  Just buy a copy at http://amzn.to/Q8Ayqk, read it, post your review and send an email to razorlinepress@att.net, including your first and last name and an email address with a link to your review.  It’s as simple as that.  I’ll assign a number to everyone I get a review from and use random.org to pick the winner.  But hurry, the contest expires at 11:59 PM EST on November 30.