Randy Attwood's Blog, page 25

Events Trending Too Quickly Towards My Future History Dystopia I call "Rabbletown"

Dear Readers,

I fear the real world is starting to resemble the terrible beginning of Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America, which has this introduction:


The Sacred Exchange
When the Mossad obtained incontrovertible evidence that the Grand Ayatollah of Iran not only had a nuclear bomb, but it was installed ready to launch on a missile in a silo disguised to look like a mosque, Israel pushed the button on its own secret missile and Tehran was obliterated. Although Iran had only one nuclear tipped missile, it had distributed nuclear knapsacks to hundreds of willing suicide bombers who entered Israel and detonated the small devices in as many Jewish settlements as they could, thus helping the Palestinians to gain their own long-sought-for, if now-irradiated nation. Al Qaeda, not content with that great victory over the Zionists, unleashed its own nuker-knapsackers on the Satanist capitals of Europe and the costal cities of America. The newly-elected American Christian Pastor President and his Christian Pastor Vice President were evacuated before a nuker-knapsacker leveled a two-mile radius around the White House. Retaliation was ordered. No backpacks from America. Missiles. To Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Kabul, Jeddah, Mecca. Sometimes their arrival nearly coincided with missiles from France and Great Britain. Mecca got a triple whammy. North Korea used its one missile to kill millions in Tokyo. China solved its Taiwan problem; there was no more Taiwan. India and Pakistan nuked each other to their hate's content. For some reason, cooler heads prevailed in Russia. They decided to sit and watch and wait.
The world entered another Dark Age. Religion ruled again.


http://www.amazon.com/Rabbletown-United-Christian-America-ebook/dp/B005DLZZTM/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311343282&sr=1-3

One More Victim Keeps Getting Downloaded

My work most currently downloaded is One More Victim. I don't understand how readers find or choose one work over another. One More Victim has a Jewish and Holocaust tag because those elements are essential to the plot. It's a story I started writing in the mid 1970s when I looked outside the window of our back door and saw crows pecking their way into our garbage. That started a poem in my head. And a story. The story got written, but the last lines of the poem that ends the story didn't come to me until some 30 years later. Victim is getting some good reviews. Like this one:

WOW! What a wonderful short story. This book starts out in 1958 but ends up in 1994. This book has so much in the few pages that I am amazed at how well the author was able to created such a wonderful story. Please be aware that this review may contain spoilers.

This book starts out with Greg being a 5 year old child woke up by a strong thunderstorm. He walks in the living room of his home and sees his father holding a flashlight looking out into the night sky. 

Greg has a father and a step-mother but his real mother died a couple of years ago during a different thunderstorm that had a tornado with the storm. Greg talks about the storm to others but not his father. Greg remembers the storm but is sad that he does not remember the mother who died in the storm. 

Greg is a little bit of a weird child. He goes through people's trash for treasures. Greg find some amazing stuff. After the storm Greg builds a hut so help hide some of his treasures. While there one day Greg has an unexpected visitor, Kathy. 

Greg shares some of his treasures with Kathy and that starts everything in motion. 

This book covers so much in the few pages that it is just a great read. This book can be read in less than an hour but it is an hour well spent. I have not read anything by this author before but I look forward to some of his additional work in the future.


http://www.amazon.com/One-More-Victim-ebook/product-reviews/B006J0C6T8/ref=tsm_1_tp_un_cr_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0#R2EHTCAFIX9Z6S


I used a wonderful image from the penetrating Kansas photographer Jared Wingate for the cover.

Nice review for Then and Now

I wanted to acknowledge a nice review for Then and Now: the Harmony of the Instantaneous All by blogger and twitterer Hales, who uses the same design template for her blog as I do. If you lived through that turbulent spring of 1970 or are curious about the 1960s, I think you'd enjoy Then and Now. The occupy movement reminds me much of those times.

http://myloveofreading.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-then-and-now-harmony-of.html

Book itself is on Amazon and Smashwords and at B&N

http://www.amazon.com/Then-Now-Harmony-Instantaneous-ebook/dp/B005QUEQSQ/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322880632&sr=1-8

Time to Tease About "A Heart to Understand"

Dear Readers,
A writer is in his heaven when he has found an editor he trusts doing a final run through on a manuscript and makes good suggestions and catches stupid typos. It just gets better when he has found a beta reader knowledgeable about the subject matter in the book and finds errors easily correctable. And to have a cover designer at work as well!
A Heart to Understand--finally a book of mine that easily fits into a genre, this one thriller/suspense--is getting close to publication. The book features a half Navajo, half white young man who believes he is a witch and knows how to open the gates to the Holy People so he can trick Changing Woman into giving him new gifts so the White Man can be defeated.
The beta reader has 25 years experience in New Mexico and a deep understanding and appreciate of the Navajo culture and their fascinating creation stories. And those stories figure prominently in A Heart to Understand.
I have learned how to work with editors and respect their suggestions. I look at each one and if I don't have a good reason why I have written a sentence the way I have written, then I follow the advice to make a change.
Cover design is so important and I'm delighted Michael Irvin has agreed to read the book and work on a cover design. All books about the Navajo are instantly compared to Tony Hillerman, but this is not a Hillerman-like book (and I respect his work) and I don't want a Hillerman-like cover.
Can't wait to get my hands back on that manuscript and start the process that will lead to the final product.
To give you a taste: here's the prologue:
In the beginning was the wind. And when the earth came, the wind cared for it. And when the darkness came, the wind breezed across it beautifully. And when the dawn came and laid its lightness over the darkness, We, the People, were created. And the wind kissed our faces.

Donating to Suicide Prevention Hotline

Donating $1 of every "Crazy About You" sale to Headquarters Counseling Center in Lawrence, KS, which is the area group that works the suicide prevention hotline. Just sent them my first $10 donation for ten sales: http://www.rabmad.com/authors/randy-a...

413 downloads for SPILL and so far one nice review

Nice review for Spill from one of those 413 free downloaders:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2R20UU3MMGOHU/ref=cm_cr_dp_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview

SPILL is free for five days at Amazon

I've enrolled SPILL in the Kindle direct program and it is free for download Until midnight Jan. 25. This meant I unpublished from Smashwords because one has to give Kindle exclusivity. But my experience with One More Victim was positive enough for me to try it now with SPILL, which is a novel that should have far wider appeal than the literary audience for One More Victim. Kindle Direct is finding out that many people who will borrow a book in that program will return then to purchase it. They added additional money to the pot to redistribute to its participating authors and my cut will be $1.70 per borrow. But I have had more sales than borrows and I have no way of knowing if a borrow turned into a sale. This whole ebook sales business is a murky murky area.

http://www.amazon.com/SPILL-ebook/dp/B005MRA588/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316031857&sr=1-7

Time to Summarize 11 Available Works

The Drug of Free Download and One More Victim; 815 Hits, Each One a Rush

I enrolled "One More Victim" into the Kindle Select program. This puts it on the list that Kindle subscribers, who pay a certain fee, can then download for free and the authors get a percentage from a pot based on how many times their work was downloaded. Kindle promised promotions and all that. "One More Victim," which has a little bit of Holocaust in it and a lot of growing up going on, is an odd book and, like most of my stuff, doesn't fit easily into any genre, so, I thought, why not.
The book is still available for regular sale (at $2.99), but an author can do a five-day free promotion. I plunged. Wow. First night 40 downloads labeled up as "sales." "Victim" starts flying out the window, ranking by sales climbs impressively.
Who are these people? Nothing sells better than free, I know. And then you start to think, well, if they read it and like it, they might come back for more of my works and pay for them. We'll see. One encouraging sign: a downloader sent me a wonderful email and wrote a very nice review http://bunnysreview.blogspot.com/2011/12/one-more-victim-by-randy-attwood.html
Maybe more will come.
I have no evidence as of this posting that any downloader has then purchased any other book of mine. But I'm sure there is a lot of "download now and read later" going on. So, we shall see.
Checking back on download stats and seeing them increase is quite a high. Probably a dangerous drug. It's right now at 606 downloads. One day to go.
The great marketing question is: How do you reach all these new ereaders who have just both their Kindles and Nooks and tablets? How do you reach the ones willing to pay?

Because the Holocaust is a critical element of the story, I added a "Jewish" tag and it was downloaded enough times to make it the number two ranked downloaded books among free ebooks with a Jewish theme. Go figure.

Last update: 850 downloads; each one for me a separate "high." No additional reviews. Two downloads on other books, but who knows if they are related. I think Amazon holds all the keys to the information kingdom.

Time to move on now and market other works. If by chance you are a downloader and see this blog entry, would love to see your comments on the whole experience.

The Drug of Free Download and One More Victim

I enrolled "One More Victim" into the Kindle Select program. This puts it on the list that Kindle subscribers, who pay a certain fee, can then download for free and the authors get a percentage from a pot based on how many times their work was downloaded. Kindle promised promotions and all that. "One More Victim," which has a little bit of Holocaust in it and a lot of growing up going on, is an odd book and, like most of my stuff, doesn't fit easily into any genre, so, I thought, why not.
The book is still available for regular sale (at $2.99), but an author can do a five-day free promotion. I plunged. Wow. First night 40 downloads labeled up as "sales." "Victim" starts flying out the window, ranking by sales climbs impressively.
Who are these people? Nothing sells better than free, I know. And then you start to think, well, if they read it and like it, they might come back for more of my works and pay for them. We'll see. One encouraging sign: a downloader sent me a wonderful email and wrote a very nice review http://bunnysreview.blogspot.com/2011/12/one-more-victim-by-randy-attwood.html
Maybe more will come.
I have no evidence as of this posting that any downloader has then purchased any other book of mine. But I'm sure there is a lot of "download now and read later" going on. So, we shall see.
Checking back on download stats and seeing them increase is quite a high. Probably a dangerous drug. It's right now at 606 downloads. One day to go.
The great marketing question is: How do you reach all these new ereaders who have just both their Kindles and Nooks and tablets? How do you reach the ones willing to pay?
Bottom line here is that if you want that free download you have until Dec. 29, which isn't far away: http://www.amazon.com/One-More-Victim-ebook/dp/B006J0C6T8/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323313928&sr=1-10