Edward M. Wolfe's Blog, page 2

Interview with Jim from In The End

Character Name:

Jim Ecklund

Book Name:

In The End

Tell me a little about yourself and the world you live in:

There’s not really much to say about me. I’m alive. A lot of people aren’t. And some who are, shouldn’t be. The world I’m living in may be the same as the one I’ve always lived in, or that might all be gone. We don’t know yet. We’re kind of stuck up here in themountains above Denver – which is definitely gone now.

Lets jump right in, what’s your most closely guarded secret?

I guess I don’t re...

CreateSpace and KDP for Beginners

This is a response to a question asked on LinkedIn.

To the question, “Should I use CreateSpace or Lulu?” I would recommend CreateSpace, which is an Amazon company. I’d also like to provide some clarity in response to other people’s comments.

Michael responded that you should use Amazon Kindle so you won’t have to spend money for self-publishing. Just to be abundantly clear, a Kindle is a device. For your ebook to be available to owners of Kindles, you publish in Amazon’s “Kindle Direct Publish...

I Didn't Kill Her!

The sound of a chainsaw yanked me from my slumber and when I opened my eyes, I saw a pretty, nude blonde lying next to me with a knife sticking out of her chest and blood running down her sides and pooling in the shallow depth of her abdomen.

Surely I had to still be dreaming. No one wakes up like this. I closed my eyes and squeezed them shut really hard, then I opened them again. She was still there. So was the blood, and the knife. What the fuck?

I scrambled up and looked around. Where the fuck was I? How did I get here? The house was empty and looked vacant. There was no furniture and nothing hanging from the walls. Just trash scattered around the carpet. Empty beer cans, snack food wrappers and cigarette butts that had been crushed into the carpet. The place smelled like bug spray and urine.

I looked down at myself and saw that I was still dressed, but my hands were stained with blood. That made no sense at all. I would never kill anyone. And if I did, it would be in self-defense. The girl lying on the floor did not look anything remotely like a threat to anyone. She was naked and unarmed. She looked far more like a victim of a crime than a perpetrator of one. Even though I had no memories of how I got here, and I did not recognize this girl from anywhere, I was certain that I didn’t kill her.

I tried to recall where I was last night but I couldn’t remember a thing. I had a better chance of remembering the weird dream I’d been having before I woke, and it was all but evaporated now. I needed to look at the girl, even though the thought of doing so filled me with fear and revulsion, but first, I had to get the blood off my hands. I imagined someone saying, “We caught him red-handed.” Great. My sense of humor was intact. Maybe I really was crazy. This was no time for joking around.

I went into the kitchen and turned on the faucet. Some rust-colored drops of water sputtered into the sink as the faucet gave a final exhalation. No water. Despite my foggy and rattled brain, I still had enough mental processing left to think of checking the toilet tank. I found the bathroom, and lifted the lid off the tank. I briskly scrubbed my hands in the brackish water, urgently trying to get the blood off of them. I got most of it. It had caked around my cuticles and under my fingernails, but that would have to do for now.

I went back to the living room for the task I dreaded. I needed to really look at this girl and see if I remembered her from anywhere at all. Sometime before last night, which seemed to have been erased from my mind somehow. When I walked in, it seemed as if her arm was in a different position than it was when I left. Could she possibly be alive? I bent down and started to reach two fingers toward her carotid artery, but stopped myself, wondering if fingerprints could be left on skin.

I know it looked like I was the one who killed her, but I was still certain that I hadn’t, despite having no memory of the night before. And if I didn’t kill her, I wasn’t going to provide evidence to the contrary – beyond that which already existed. I placed my hand in front of her nose instead of feeling for a pulse. While I waited to feel even the tiniest breath, I looked at her chest for any sign that she was breathing. It was the strangest thing to be looking at. On one hand, she had remarkable breasts, and on the other, there was a knife sticking out of one of them. She presented a horrible mixture of beauty and violence.

I felt nothing on my hand, and I saw no movement of her chest. I was pretty sure she was dead. Either someone was in here with me and moved her arm, or I just imagined that it was in a different position. Just to be sure, I decided I better check the rest of the house. The real killer could still be here. I started walking down the hall when I heard a car screech to a stop out in front.

Shit! That could be cops. What the fuck was I still doing here? I should’ve run away as soon as I woke up. What difference did it make if the house was empty or not? I had no reason to be here at all. Well, I guess I could have looked for clues about what had happened last night, but I don’t even know what I’d look for. I ran into the first bedroom on the right and went over to the window. I unlocked it and pushed it up. I kicked out the screen and crawled through. Now, where to? I didn’t even know where the fuck I was. So, first thing – get far away. Anywhere would do.

I ran across the backyard and hoisted myself up and over the brick wall and into the next backyard. There was a sliding glass door in front of a covered patio but the blinds were closed, as were the ones in front of a small kitchen window. I ran around to the side of the house and reached a wooden fence with a metal latch. I stopped and waited, listening. No one was pursuing me. I lifted the latch, opened the gate and walked alongside the driveway all casual as if I was just heading out for a stroll.

I had to think. How could I have ended up at that house? At the sidewalk, I turned right, still completely unaware of what part of town I was even in. I hoped to get a clue when I reached a corner with a street sign. What was the last thing I could recall? I remembered being at work yesterday. I left work, went home. Wait a second. Yesterday? How did I know if I only lost one day? Maybe today wasn’t even Saturday? I instantly patted my right, back pocket, knowing it would be empty. It was. Where the fuck was my cell phone?

Oh shit. What if it was in the house with the girl? The cops will surely think I was the killer – and a stupid one at that. My other pocket was empty too. No wallet. This was just getting better and better. No keys in my right, front pocket, and no cash or coins in the other front pocket. I realized my car could be parked right out in front of the vacant house; another thing to advertise that I’m the most likely suspect. Could my life be any more fucked?

***

I passed several street corners without learning where I was, but when I finally hit a boulevard intersection I got partially oriented. As far as I could tell, I was in North Hollywood somewhere. I went south on Lankershim until I came to the Metro. I could take it to within blocks of my apartment – if I had any money. I resigned myself to walking the seven miles to where I lived. I was hot, thirsty and hungry. My body was fatigued as if I’d already walked miles and my mind felt stunned, as if I’d been whacked in the head with a two-by-four.

I told myself to try to think rationally as I walked, blindly stepping into traffic at the next intersection.

“Yo! White boy! You fi’n ta get yo’sef keelt!”

I stepped backwards suddenly as a city bus whooshed by inches from my face. I tripped when I ran into the curb behind me and fell, landing on my ass. The old black man laughed as I added ass pain to my growing list of miseries.

“Yo mama nevah learnt you to look befo’ crossin da street? Dayum!” he said, hooting with laughter. When he regained his composure, he extended an old wrinkled brown hand to help me up.

“Thanks,” I said. “I was lost in thought.”

“Dey be yo’ last thoughts evah if’n you don’t watch yo’sef!”

“Thank you,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I certainly couldn’t explain my predicament.

I stood there numbly looking at the traffic willing the pain in my tailbone to subside. Walking was going to be a lot more painful now. Seven fucking miles of pain until I could take some aspirin, lie down, and try to figure out what was going on.

“Jeet today?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, turning to look at the man.

“Here, take dis,” he said, reaching into his inner jacket pocket and handing me a Twix.

At the sight of the candy bar, my stomach kicked into gear and growled ferociously. I didn’t know when I’d last eaten. I gladly took the candy from the stranger and tore into the wrapper with my teeth. It was warm and the chocolate clung to the inside of the wrapper. After eating the twin bars, I licked the chocolate off the paper, then walked over to the wire-basket trashcan next to the streetlight post.

“Now I knows you din’t eat today.”

“Thank you very much, sir. If I had any money, I’d pay you, but I—“

“You jis pay it fo’ward when you can,” he said, dismissing my explanation.

The light turned green and I thanked him for the fourth time in two minutes before complying with the sign that now said WALK. When I reached the other side, my mind went back on autopilot as far as navigating the obstacles on the sidewalk. I weaved in and around pedestrians, newspaper vending boxes, and the occasional street beggar partially blocking the way with their outstretched legs, sitting with their God Bless signs written on cardboard.

I put the sugar from the candy bar to work, forcing myself to think back to the last thing I recalled. I had left work and gone home. I checked my email, watched the news on TV for a while, and then when I got hungry, I decided to eat out somewhere. I drove to a nearby bar that makes great burgers. But I didn’t eat. Someone bought me a beer and I think we talked for a while. I remember that I didn’t want a beer, but I was being polite and trying to get out of the conversation with the overly friendly guy who seemed really intent on talking to me and buying me drinks. Not in a gay way – just an obliging, clueless way, like someone who wants a friend and doesn’t realize they’re imposing.

That’s the last thing I remember. How is that possible? I crossed another intersection and strained to recall more of what happened in the bar. The fact that there was nothing at all in my mind to be discovered made me wonder if the guy had spiked my drink. It made perfect sense. He was determined to talk to me despite my short answers and the fact that I kept returning my gaze to the menu rather than engage him in conversation. I could imagine him putting something in my beer, then when I got groggy, he could’ve walked me out as if he was helping a friend who was too drunk to drive. Then he could’ve driven me to the house in North Hollywood. Then what? He went out, found a girl, brought her back, stripped her and killed her, then laid her out on the floor next to me?

What the fuck sense did that make? Whoever the guy was, I had never seen him before. I’d never seen the girl before either. Maybe the guy just needed someone to be a patsy and I was dumb enough to sit there accepting his drinks instead of doing what I wanted to do, which was just eat, and see if any attractive females showed up while I was eating.

A horn honked, which is not unusual, so I ignored it. Then it honked again, right beside me from a car that was moving at the same rate of speed that I was walking. I looked over and saw the driver leaning over so he could see me through the passenger window.

“Need a lift?”

It was the guy from the bar! Considering what he’d apparently done to me, he was the last person I should be accepting a ride from.

“Sure,” I said, walking over to his car and getting in.

***

I know it seems stupid that I got in a car with the person who was most likely responsible for the hell I found myself in, but he was also the only person in the world who might be able to shed light on what was happening to my life, and why.

He pulled forward as soon as I had gotten in, before I’d even shut the door. The car behind us was honking its horn and the light in front of us was green. I blurted out everything on my mind without thinking of what I was going to say.

“Who are you? What did you do to me? Why did you kill that girl? Are you fucking insane? What the hell is going on?”

“Slow down, Tommy boy! One thing at a time. You sure woke up full of questions, didn’t you?”

“I woke up next to a dead girl! And the last thing I remember was drinking beer with you, so this is all your doing. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you doing this?”

“Listen, Tommy. If we’re—“

“Stop calling me Tommy!”

“Okay, Tom. Listen up. To have a conversation, you’re gonna have to slow down. First things first. What’s the first thing you’d like to know before you go to prison for murder?”

We stopped at a red light and I couldn’t decide if I should get out and run, reach over and strangle him, or try to engage in a conversation that might result in some answers. I also wanted to ask him where we were going, but that seemed like the least important matter at the time.

“I didn’t kill her!”

“Sure you didn’t. But you can save it for the judge. I already know what you’re guilty of. And I know you’re going to be punished. Justice is being served, as we speak.”

My head was spinning again. Nothing made sense. He agreed that I didn’t kill her, but he was certain that I’d go to prison for her murder.

“Why are you framing me for this? I don’t even know you!”

“You may not know me, Tommy boy–sorry, Tom, but you know of me.”

He got in the left hand turn lane and tapped the turn signal control down. The air conditioner was on, but I could clearly hear every tick as the left arrow blinked on the instrument panel.

“How do I know of you?” I managed to ask a sane question when I felt like I was losing my mind completely. As far as I knew, that Twix bar was the first thing I’d eaten in twenty-four hours and my blood-sugar was as fucked as my life seemed to be.

“Liza told you about me.”

“Liza? Who’s Lisz? Is that the girl at the house?”

“Yes, Liza is the girl you killed – for all intents and purposes.”

“I don’t know her. I never met her before in my life. You’ve got the wrong fucking guy.”

“Oh no. I have the right guy. I made sure of it. This is the culmination of years of planning, so you can be sure I didn’t go to all of that effort to setup the wrong guy.”

“Why? Why are you setting me up? I swear I don’t know you or Liza. You have to have the wrong guy.”

The signal presented a green arrow and he pulled through the intersection, staying in the left hand lane and once again getting into the turn lane. We were making a gradual U-turn, erasing the progress I’d made walking.

“I’m motivated by the oldest reason there is. Revenge.”

“But I didn’t do anything to you!”

“But you did, Tom. You ruined my life. You took away everything I cherished. And now, in keeping with the law of ‘an eye for an eye’ I’m ruining your life, and taking everything you love away from you.”

“I’ve told you that I don’t know either of you, so rather than repeating myself, how about you just tell me what you think I did?”

“Does the screen name moanaliza86 ring any bells?”

“No. I’ve never heard of it.”

“Yes, you have, Tom. You heard of it, saw it, and wrote a response to a request for advice that was posted by someone using it.”

“Okay, then. I don’t recall it.”

“I believe you. As I said, it’s been years, so that makes sense. Allow me to refresh your memory.”

“Please do.”

When we reached the street that I had walked down to get to Lankershim, he pulled over to the curb in front of a house. He was apparently taking me back to where I woke up a short time ago – but not yet.

“Liza posted to Yahoo Answers about her relationship in 2009. She complained about her boyfriend, saying she suspected he was insane, and possibly violent. She said she wanted to leave him, but literally scared for her life to do so. She said she was in a bind and didn’t know what to do. She asked for help. Are you starting to remember any of this?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Well, you should. It was your advice that she took.”

“What did I advise?”

“You said, and this is verbatim, ‘You are definitely with a classic psychopath. The sooner you leave the better. He will not change, you cannot appease him, and sooner or later, you won’t even think of asking for help. Your life will be over. Get out now, while you can. Tell everyone you know when you leave him, why you’re leaving him. The more you get the word out, the less he’ll be able to do anything to you. Be safe, and good luck!’ Does that refresh your memory?”

“No. Maybe, vaguely. I used to write a lot of responses on Yahoo Answers. I don’t remember all of them.”

“Yes, you did answer a lot, and your answers were frequently chosen as the best. You had a very high ranking. But I’m surprised you don’t remember advising Lisa, since it was such a serious departure from the standard idiotic questions that most people could’ve answered themselves by just using Google, or were we still using AltaVista then?”

“It may have been a serious issue for her – it was her life – but to me, it would’ve just been words on the screen for a few minutes. That’s not something I would’ve committed to memory. It was insignificant as far as my real life went.”

“That’s rich. The ruining of my life was insignificant to you.”

“You’re the guy she wanted to leave?”

“I’m the guy she did leave. Because of you.”

“How do you know it was because of me? I’m sure plenty of other people told her to do the same thing. It’s common sense. You think you’re living with a psycho, get the fuck out. How can you pin this solely on me?”

“You’re right. Seventeen other people also advised her to leave me. But she chose your reponse as the Best Answer, and she quoted you when she broke up with me. She said she’d been told that I was a classic psychopath, that I wouldn’t change, I couldn’t be appeased, etc. Later, I logged in to her account and saw the email from Yahoo with a link to her question. I read your advice, and I vowed that I’d get revenge. It’s been a long time coming, but now it’s here. Today is the day of retribution.”

“I was right. You are a psychopath. You’ll never get away with this. Especially now that you’ve just confessed to me that you killed her and framed me for it. The police will know that I don’t have any connection to her. But you certainly do. You have motive. I don’t. How do you think you’re going to convince the cops that I had any reason to kill someone that I don’t even know? Someone that I posted to on Yahoo years ago. The police aren’t that stupid, you know.”

He reached into his inner suit jacket pocket and pulled out something that looked like a wallet. He let it fall open, revealing his identification as a Los Angeles County police detective, and his badge.

***

I woke up in the backseat of his car, my hands and feet bound with zip-ties. The last thing I remembered was him reaching into his pocket to put his wallet away and then his hand came back out with a black thing with silver tips on the end. His hand flew toward my neck before I realized what was happening.

I struggled into a sitting position and looked out the window. We were back at the house with the dead girl. The guy got out of his car and walked over to some cops standing next to a cop car. Crime scene tape was strung from around the yard and driveway of the house. This was really happening. The driver’s side window was down about two inches. I leaned forward and turned my head to the side, straining to hear what he was telling the other cops.

“What brings you here, Detective Ladd?”

“Oh, I was just in the neighborhood.”

The three of them laughed briefly. I never understood how cops could make jokes at a crime scene. I guess they get used to dead people.

“Did they put you on this?”

“No. Actually, I was driving nearby when I spotted what looked like an attempted burglary. Guy was going from window to window at this house, so I came up behind him and asked what he thought he was doing.”

“You shoulda waited till he broke a window or somethin’. You probably can’t get him on Attempted B&E now.”

“I got better. Listen to this. First thing the guy says to me is he got high on Ketamine last night, killed a blonde girl, and now he’s just really thirsty. Says he’s just looking for water, not looking to steal anything.”

“Oh. Well if that’s all, you shoulda let him go.” Again, they all laughed as they broached the subject of murder on the lawn, with a fresh corpse inside the house.

“I’m thinking I’ll take him as a 5150, just in case he’s violent, bein’ that he’s talkin’ that way. And then I notice he’s got what could be blood around his fingernails. I made the connection with the homicide here just a few blocks away and thought you guys might wanna take him and check if that’s blood, and see if his prints match the ones on the knife used on the vic.”

“How’d you know she was knifed?”

“Uh.. I guess it was radio chatter. I don’t recall. But anyway, I got this guy in the backseat. If it turns out I just delivered a gift-wrapped perp, tell the FOC he owes me a case of Heineken.”

“Will do. Let’s see what you got.”

“One more thing. When I asked the guy what the story was with him killing someone, that’s when he lost his marbles and started saying he didn’t kill the girl, I did. And I was framing him, and some shit about Yahoo and the internet, and I just lost track. Definitely a 5150, whether or not he did the girl. When he went totally nutso, I had to Taze him.”

They came over to the car and let me out, but only to transfer me to the back of a squad car. I was burning with the desire to tell them what was really going on and how the detective was the real killer, but he’d already primed them to think I was crazy if I started talking about that, so I just kept it inside. I knew from watching cop shows that it doesn’t accomplish anything to protest your innocence to arresting officers anyway. They don’t care. And why should they? It’s not their job to determine guilt or innocence.

That’s left up to the judge and jury. So anything you say to the cops is a waste of time and breath. As it turns out, everything I said to anybody about this case was wasted effort. My court-appointed attorney couldn’t find any reference to any of the things I told him about. He couldn’t find Lisa’s question, or my answer. There was no record of a moanaliza86 anywhere online. And he couldn’t find anything in The Wayback Machine.

My prints were on the knife. Lisa’s blood was on and under my fingernails. My saliva was found on her left breast. And hair matching mine was on the carpet near her body. It was not only an open and shut case, but the prosecutor made me sound like the most vile of killers, suggesting that I had sucked on one of her breasts while stabbing the other. If I had been in the jury, I would’ve voted to hang me too.

I guess you could say I got lucky though. Since Ketamine was found in my system, along with alcohol, my public defender argued that I had blacked out and didn’t know what I had done, so he negotiated with the District Attorney and got me a deal for a reduced charge of 2nd Degree Murder, meaning I hadn’t pre-meditated the killing of the poor girl.

Now I’m doing fifteen to life for a crime I didn’t commit. My only crime was offering advice to a stranger on the internet. I posted a single paragraph to help a total stranger. And now my life is over.

My cellmate is petitioning for the inmates to get internet access like they have in some other states. Every prisoner in here is looking forward to the day they can get online.

I’m not.



###

I Didn’t Kill Her!

The sound of a chainsaw yanked me from my slumber and when I opened my eyes, I saw a pretty, nude blonde lying next to me with a knife sticking out of her chest and blood running down her sides and pooling in the shallow depth of her abdomen.

Surely I had to still be dreaming. No one wakes up like this. I closed my eyes and squeezed them shut really hard, then I opened them again. She was still there. So was the blood, and the knife. What the fuck?

I scrambled up and looked around. Where the fu...

Give it away, give it away now!

I have a post-apocalypse book that sells regularly and has never been promoted or part of a giveaway. I wrote a second book that is hard to categorize but it involves romance and life after death. It’s hard to come up with a description for it without giving away the plot. (Most reviewers have already done that though.) I’ve been told several times it’s my best work. Instead of putting it in KDP Select, I tried putting it on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, Smashwords, etc.

The book would not sell....

The CEO

The CEO
by Edward M Wolfe

The sirens had long since faded out and were never heard again. The only sound on the street came from the rustling of windblown debris, like the page from a newspaper that skittered to a stop against the CEO’s legs. He bent down and picked it up, reading the headline at the top of the page. It was about the plummeting stock market. Old news. He turned a little to the side and spread his fingers, letting the paper fly away. He turned further, looking behind him at the skyline in the distance. New York was his town. It was his playing field. He practically owned it. Dollars ruled, and he had billions. His money was securely stored in banks in multiple countries, but it couldn’t help him now.

Looking at the skyscraper he owned, his mind drifted to thoughts of his empire and the power he wielded. With just a few words, he could change lives – for better, or worse. And he did, depending on how he felt at any given moment. There were times when he fired a person just for the rush he got from knowing that he turned someone’s little world upside down – because he could. It served as a reminder of the power he had. Less frequently, when he was in a good mood, he would surprise someone by giving them a bonus.

He had never lost his taste for the finer things in life, and he enjoyed indulging in luxuries, but he had to admit, it got boring after a while. Being the boss and making decisions wasn’t really work. It was more of a game, with the employees as pawns. Other business owners he dealt with were players on his side, and some were competitors. Most of them were weaker, smaller players, and winning all the time was another thing that got boring. There was something to be said for having a challenge; having to expend some effort to achieve something worthwhile. He’d had everything handed to him his entire life and never had to literally work for anything.

Up ahead, he saw two men standing next to a metal barrel with flames flickering around the top of it. They were roasting something that smelled like some kind of meat he didn’t recognize. The men were filthy and wore shabby clothes that looked like they’d been withdrawn from a landfill. As he got closer, he saw that they were holding sticks over the fire inside the barrel. Definitely cooking something, using the trashcan like a barbecue. It was hard to believe the depths to which people could sink. Filthy and stinking and eating roasted garbage. The sight of it made him sick with disgust, and yet, the closer he got, the more his mouth watered at the smell of flame-broiled meat. What was it they were cooking?

They watched him approach and appraised his clothing. He wore a custom-tailored Armani suit, Italian loafers, and a Rolex worth more than their annual salaries combined. They smiled as he stepped up and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me, gentlemen. Could you possibly spare some food? I haven’t eaten for a few days. I have money.”

“Your money’s no good. You should know that. What have you got to trade?”

The CEO reached into the pockets of his grimy pants and pulled out his keyring with the Jaguar fob. He looked at his keys with sadness, then dropped them on the ground. They were useless. His homes and his cars were gone. He opened his tattered suit coat and reached into the breast pocket. He withdrew his lambskin wallet and thumbed through its contents. Black and platinum credit cards and several crisp hundred dollar bills. Worthless. He shook out the cards and money. The cards scattered around his feet. The wind snatched the bills and carried them down the street. He offered them the empty wallet. They shook their heads.

“I don’t have anything,” he cried out, on the verge of tears, his stomach aching for food.

“Is that watch made of real gold?

The CEO drew back his frayed sleeve, exposing his watch. He slipped it off with his other hand.

“Yes. Yes, it is!” he said, holding it out to them.

The man closest to him looked at the other man who nodded.

“Okay. One squirrel for the watch. And half a bottle of water.” He handed over the stick with the charred meat skewered on the end of it and reached down for something by his feet. He came up with a plastic bottle half-filled with cloudy water and handed it over.

The CEO took them both, grateful for the chance to eat and drink, but at the same time, he worried about where his next meal would come from now that he’d traded away the only thing of value that he still owned. He had no practical skills, or anything with which to bargain in this post-nuclear world.

Even though he ate slowly, his meal only lasted a moment. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then drank the last of the water. He was about to toss the empty bottle into the burning trash barrel, but one of the men held up his hand, signaling him to stop. He realized that the bottle was a resource, so he screwed the cap onto it and stuffed it into his coat pocket, smiling. He was learning.

“Do you want to help us look for squirrels? We’ll split whatever we find.”

“Yes. I do. Thank you!”

It was turning out to be a great day. He’d eaten, and acquired a bottle, and he had made two friends who could teach him things. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been so happy.

The Dregs – a dystopian short story

The Dregs

Edward M Wolfe

April 19th, 2042.

Acting on a credible, anonymous tip, the officers kicked in the door of the small cottage. A standard poodle barked and rushed them. Officer Karnes aimed and fired. The first shot missed and he fired again as the dog squatted to leap at him. The second shot sent the dog sailing backwards. It hit the ground and toppled over, coming to rest on its side, whining and panting as its blood pooled in the white carpet.

“Freeze!” yelled the other officer, pointing his gun at an old woman who emerged from a doorway, holding one hand over her heart.

“What are you doing? Why did you shoot my baby?”

“Put your hands against the wall,” he commanded.

“But I don’t—“

“Now!”

Both officers rushed into the hall. One of them slammed the lady against the wall, kicked her legs apart and frisked her, while the other checked the room she had come out of. It was a bathroom, and it was empty. He then moved down the short hall to another door. He put his ear against it and listened.

“This is the police. Come out with your hands up, or I’m coming in, shooting.” He took a few steps away from the door, placing his back against the hallway wall and aiming his gun at the door.

Karnes cuffed the lady then swept  one foot at the back of her calves while pushing her backwards with a hand on her chest. She landed on her back and cried out in pain.

“Shut it, scumbag. Don’t make me stomp on your face.” He pulled his gun out of its holster and pointed it at the door that Wilson was still aiming at. Karnes nodded and Wilson raised a foot and slammed it against the door next to the doorknob. The thin, hollow door crashed open and both officers rushed in.

A black cat lying on the bedcover hissed at them. Wilson shot it and rushed over to the master bath door. He stopped and slowly peeked his head around the doorjamb. It was empty.

“Clear!” he called out.

“I’m gonna check the kitchen. Drag the bitch into the living room and find out where she’s hiding it.” Karnes left the room and stepped around the woman who was breathing rapidly and stifling sobs, arching her back to keep from pressing down on her cuffed hands.

Her legs were sticking out into the hall and rather than step over them, Karnes kicked them out of his way. Wilson came out and grabbed the lady by her feet and dragged her down the hall into the living room. He let go of her when her face was adjacent to her dead dog.

“Where is it?”

“Oh, my dear Pooksie! What have they done to you?” The woman broke out in fresh sobs as she stared at the dead brown eyes of her beloved pet staring back at her.

“I’m not fucking around, scumbag. Where are you hiding it?”

“What are you talking about? I have no idea what’s going on. Why did you kill Pooksie?”

“We know you’re holding, so the sooner you cooperate, the better things will go for you in court. Don’t make it worse for yourself by acting stupid and playing innocent.”

He walked over to a shelf beside the couch and swept an array of collectible glass figurines to the floor. The small animals fell to the carpet with a series of thumps. It was less dramatic than he had hoped for so he pulled the shelf forward, causing everything to slide to the carpet and causing the shelf to crash into the coffee table, shattering the glass top. That was better.

“Where is it?!” he demanded to know.

The sound of crashing objects from the kitchen echoed into the living room. Wilson was ransacking the cabinets.

“Got it!” he yelled.

“You’re lucky. I was just starting to get pissed off. The D.A. will be informed of your failure to cooperate. You’re going down, bitch.”

Wilson entered the living room hefting a zip-lock baggie with a granular, dark brown substance. It was damp and left residue on the baggie as he shifted it around.

“Dregs. Probably half a pound. Recently used. She’s probably high on it right now.”

Karnes looked down at her in disgust and saw the guilt in her eyes as she looked away.

“I hope it was worth the rest of your life. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

***

Later, under questioning, the elderly perp talked. The cops offered her a good word with the D.A. and a reduced sentence for cooperation if she’d reveal her source. At 64, she didn’t want to spend her remaining time in prison and agreed to tell them where she’d got the dregs. What she revealed was better than they had expected. They usually had to work their way up a distribution chain until they reached a big dealer. But Phyllis was well-connected, getting her fix from a major dealer with whom she’d played Bridge for years.

The next morning found Karnes and Wilson participating in a multi-agency raid. It would’ve just been a D.E.A. team, but since the two Vice detectives provided the intel, the feds reluctantly permitted them to accompany the raid team. But they wouldn’t be first-in. The feds reserved the right to any action coming through the door.

The sun crept up over the horizon as men in black took up positions all around a beige two-story house. The loudest sound around came from birds in nearby trees. The suspect’s house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac. The other end of the street was blocked off with police sawhorses with crime scene tape strung between them. Two officers stood with their backs to the suspect’s house, watching for any neighbors who might emerge to see what was going on.

Four agents approached the front door carrying a battering ram. The lead agent spoke into his lapel mic.

“Snipers, sit rep?”

“Sniper One. All clear. In position.”

“Roger, One.”

“Sniper Two. Woman walking her dog past the end of the street… Okay, we’re clear. In position.”

“Roger, Two.” He glanced around at the agents he could see, then spoke into his mic again. “We’re a Go. On three. One… Two… Three”

The battering ram smashed through the front door. Glass shattered as other agents fired tear gas grenades through the front windows. One sniper peered through his scope at the upper level windows. The other perused the perimeter for anyone trying to escape.

The battering ram agents withdrew, trotting backwards, and other agents with gas masks rushed in, yelling, “D.E.A. Nobody move!” and “Freeze, motherfuckers!” Agents spread throughout the house. Within a minute, they declared the downstairs clear. The lead agent, Gelkins, pointed at two agents and motioned for them to follow him up the stairs.

A door near the second-floor landing creaked open and one of the agents fired past Gelkins.

“Hold your fire!” he yelled, running up the stairs and taking a position beside the partially opened door. The two agents on the stairs came a little further up and aimed their guns at the door.

“Come out with your hands up!” Gelkins ordered.

Adrenaline raced through the three men as the door creaked again and slowly began to open. An elderly man in a dark blue robe carefully edged the door back with one foot, holding his hands high above his head. His hair was sticking out in every direction and his eyes were wide with fear behind lenses that make them look much larger than they were.

“Face on the floor, asshole!” Gelkins screamed from three feet away. “Slowly!”

The man bent down to his knees, then lowered his hands to the carpet to lower himself in a reverse push-up. Gelkins gestured with his gun. The two agents on the stairs rushed up and secured the prisoner. One pressed the man’s head into the carpet while the other patted down his backside and then cuffed him.

Karnes and Wilson saw the perp coming down the stairs with the agents behind him.

“How did you know?” the old man asked.

“Your good friend Phyllis sang like a bird, shithead. Your career is over,” Karnes spat.

“You didn’t hurt her, did you?” he asked, wincing in fear of the tactics that might’ve been employed to compel his lifelong friend to turn him in.

“Only as much as necessary. Where’s your stash, you old puke?”

“In the basement. You’ll find everything in the basement.”

“Very smart! I guess you still have some brain cells left.” Turning to the nearest D.E.A. agents, Karnes ordered, as if he were in charge of the scene, “Get this piece of shit out of here.”

A voice came through one of the agents’ radios.

“Jackpot! He’s got a whole fucking java-lab down here, along with a nursery, grinders, antique percolators, and everything else.”

“I’ll never understand you fucking dregs,” Wilson said, watching as the man was escorted out his front door.

***

Walter Brown was booked on charges of cultivation, trafficking, and possession of over fifty pounds of coffee. Phyllis Kant was charged with possession with intent to distribute. Her attorney argued that half a pound was nowhere near sufficient to distribute. The average coffee drinker could easily drink that much in less than a month. In addition, she had cooperated and was promised leniency. They wouldn’t have gotten Brown if it wasn’t for her. The D.A. agreed to simple possession and a term a reduced sentence of six months in light of her assistance which led to the apprehension of a major trafficker.

Brown’s trial commenced a few days later. He and his attorney sat in his cell facing the wall screen. Two metal folding chairs were brought in for the proceedings. The wall lit up and the face of the bailiff appeared.

“Please rise. The Honorable Jacob Jackson presiding.”

Brown and his attorney stood.

“Defendant Walter Brown and attorney Sheldon Knight are visibly present, Your Honor.”

“Court is in session,” the judge intoned.

“You may be seated.” The bailiff stepped out of the camera view and re-positioned it to aim at the judge’s bench, then rattled off the formal list of charges against Brown.

“How do you plead?” the judge inquired, looking over his old-fashioned, half-framed glasses at the video monitor.

“Your Honor,” the attorney spoke up, remaining in his seat. “Sheldon Knight, representing. My client pleads Guilty with an Explanation.”

The judge sighed and turned to face another monitor. “Will the State hear an explanation and consider a sentence less than life in prison?”

A small picture appeared in the corner of the wall display, featuring the District Attorney Janet Callaway. “The State will hear the explanation.”

“You may proceed,” the judge said, looking into the camera perched above his desk display.

“Thank you, Your Honor.” Sheldon looked down at the papers in his lap, then back up at the camera. “My client is from an era when coffee was in common usage and sold in every establishment. He grew up in a household where coffee was served every morning with breakfast. It was—“

“Mr. Knight. The court is aware of what life was like before the Anti-Stimulant Act of 2039. Your client admits his guilt. If there are no extenuating circumstances beyond the accused’s childhood when the laws were different, then we can proceed with sentencing.”

“I understand, Your Honor, and I apologize. I just want to speak to my client’s motivations in breaking the law. To his way of seeing it, he wasn’t doing any harm, and there were no victims who suffered as a result of his actions.”

Janet Callaway interrupted. “Society is the victim here, Counselor. Mr. Brown cannot take it upon himself to decide which laws benefit the people. The people themselves have already decided that.”

“You’re correct, Ms. Callaway. I just want to point out that my client is 67 years old and has a clean record. His only crime, in all his life was to ingest a stimulant that he had ingested his entire life with no harm to any other being besides himself. I ask that the court consider my client’s intention – that being, to do that which he had always done without running afoul of the law. Granted, he failed to change his daily routine when the laws changed, and he continued—“

“Mr. Knight, your client did not only continue to drink coffee in blatant disregard for this nation’s laws, presumably for the last three years, but he also took it upon himself to enable others to do the same. He engendered a spirit of anarchy and rebellion, thumbing his nose at authority, and the People. The State is showing plenty of leniency already in only seeking a life sentence.”

“We appreciate that, Ms. Callaway, and don’t deny his guilt and his debt to society for what he’s done, and which, he’s prepared to pay. I thought it might help to show that my client was a law-abiding citizen his entire life. He, himself never changed in his nature or intentions, and unfortunately, neither did his habits and routines change. One day he was a pillar of the community, and then the next, he was an outlaw – but only because the laws changed and made coffee an illegal substance. My client is the same law-abiding citizen he was four years ago, but for the criminalization of coffee, coffee grounds, and caffeine.”

“Are you finished, Mr. Knight?” the D.A. asked, not at all impressed by the defense attorney’s proffer of an explanation for his client’s guilt.

“Yes, Ms. Callaway. My client asks the State and the Court for mercy in its wisdom in handing down his sentence.”

“Does the State have anything to add, Ms. Callaway?”

“The State rests and asks the Court to not be swayed by the defendant’s explanation. We still seek life imprisonment.” The picture within a picture at the corner of the screen winked out and the judge’s face filled the entire wall display, then zoomed out to show the United States flag hanging behind him.

“In the matter of the People versus Walter Brown, the Court accepts the guilty plea but does not feel the Explanation provides any mitigating circumstances or considerable reason to sentence the defendant to less than the minimum sentence that the State has leniently requested.

“All through this nation’s history substances have gone from legal to illegal, and vice versa. There was a time when families enjoyed beverages that included such vile substances as cocaine. And they did so in family restaurants and other places where respectable people gathered for meals – not in dark alleys and seedy motels, as they do today. People ingested morphine to ease their pain. Marijuana was grown and used in many ways in competition with the cotton industry, as well as ingested to alter one’s consciousness. The fact is, Mr. Brown, society decides what is okay to consume, and what is not. The people make the laws by way of their representatives and their votes. When the people have spoken, the people must also obey. To state that there are no victims to the crimes you’ve committed is to say that the voice of the nation as a whole is irrelevant to you. That you can decide what is right and wrong, despite what hundreds of millions of your countrymen have decreed to be wrong.

“Our society has determined that no substance shall be ingested that accelerates the natural functioning of the central nervous system. Stimulants are illegal in this country in all of their manifestations – regardless of how you were raised. The laws have been passed. And you’ve admitted your guilt in violating them. The Court hereby sentences you to remain in custody for the remainder of your natural life.”

The judge banged his gavel one time then set it down.

“Court is adjourned.”

The screen in Brown’s cell wall turned black. Knight grabbed his papers and put them in his briefcase, then stood and grabbed his folding chair with his free hand.

“I’m sorry, Walter. I did my best.” He looked at his client, chagrined. “If there’s anything I can do for you…”

“I appreciate it, Sheldon. I just don’t know how I’m going to make it in here. I’ve never been in jail before. I’m so stressed, I feel like I’m going to have a heart-attack.”

“I’ll ask the guard to bring you some heroin. It’ll help you relax, Walter.”

###

Q & A for the Newly Self-published Author

Q. How do I get honest reviews?

A. Reaching out to bloggers is a good idea, if you can find some that are not overwhelmed with prior commitments. Be sure to only query bloggers who review your genre. Many bloggers will also have specific guidelines on how to query them. Read these, and follow them with precision.

You can also give your book away to people who will review it. There are groups on Goodreads where you can list your book, and anyone who is interested in reading and reviewing it will reply. Then you email them the book in the format they choose from those you said you have available.

Authors Requesting Reviews

Another Goodreads group has a form of review exchanges, but you do non-reciprocal reviews, so it’s not a tit-for-tat, lacking credibility.

Review Group

You can also do a giveaway on Goodreads. This isn’t guaranteed to get you reviews, but it might. The more you give away, the better your chances, but be aware that this is an expensive route with no guarantees. It’s especially expensive if you make your giveaway eligible to foreign countries. The slowest shipping isn’t cheap, and you have to fill out a customs form.

Some people believe there is additional value in the exposure your book will receive when hundreds, if not thousands sign up for the giveaway. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of people who sign up barely glance at the book’s description, but rather, just hit the Enter Giveaway button and go on to what they were doing before they encountered the giveaway. Sure, it might really entice some people, but you have to put yourself on the other side of any marketing you’re thinking of doing. Have you ever entered a giveaway, failed to win, and then gone back to buy that book, or another book by that author?

It’s one thing to want something and learn that you have a chance to win it. It’s another thing to simply learn that something is being given away, so you enter just because you can, because – hey, free stuff.

I would not recommend paying for reviews. Not even Kirkus, or anyone else who sells reviews.  I also would not exchange reviews directly with another author. You might not like each other’s books, and yet still be obligated to give a review. Do you give a bad one because you want to maintain your personal integrity? What if they wrote you a good one, genuine or not? It’s just a messy situation that you probably don’t want to find yourself in.

A good way to promote your book is to have it included in a newsletter that is sent out to subscribers who actually want to know about new books. Websites that do this usually specialize in free books, but some also feature low cost books.  One such site that has been doing this is now going to try something new. that is like the “read for review” giveaway described above.

For a $20 fee, ChoosyBookworm.com will list your book as being available to readers who would like to read it and review it at no cost to them. This could be a win for all three parties. The intention is for you to get at least $20 reviews. Initially, the site owner said that he would keep listing your book until you got 20, but I think he’ll be revising that commitment after the first trial in September. I just signed up for the September listing so I can’t say yet how effective it is.

I said that I would not pay for reviews, but in this case, you’re paying for the chance to get reviews from people you don’t know, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll get good reviews, or really, any at all. But don’t let the possibility of bad reviews scare you off. Believe it or not, a book with nothing but good reviews is viewed by some people as suspicious. This really sucks if you write something really great and everyone loves it, but you can see where they’re coming from. It’s more realistic that not everyone is going to love a particular book. Some people just have to be unhappy with it.

My latest novel has this problem. Nine 5-stars and one 4-star. I can’t wait till somebody hates it. Or at least has something critical to say about it. Then my good reviews will gain credibility. Somewhat. Maybe.

Q. What’s the best approach to promoting on social media?

A. I think social media is over-rated when it comes to promoting books, but it’s probably something you can’t just ignore either. You want a presence, but don’t use the presence for the purpose of spamming. Read my blog post about The Art of Not Marketing on Social Media for more on this.

Q. What’s better – Amazon or Smashwords (and all the other retailers)?

A. Everyone I’ve ever talked to, or read about has said that they get between 60 and 90 percent of their sales from Amazon. And that’s not just U.S. authors. (Which reminds me, if you’re from another country and will be promoting your book to the U.S., it’s probably a good idea to have your book edited for U.S. English so you don’t confuse some readers. If you’re reading this, and you’re from England, imagine if I said I was going to spank your fanny. That’s an example of how  foreign slang can say the totally wrong thing to someone in another country.) My experience matches that of other authors, except in my case, I can say that 100% of my sales is from Amazon. I only gave the other retailers a one month chance to see what would happen, but in that one month I sold a couple hundred on Amazon, and nothing on iBooks, B&N, Smashwords, Kobo, and wherever else. After that, I promptly made my book exclusive to Amazon and instead of doing the free days from KDP Select, I chose Promotional Countdowns, which resulted in an increase in sales.

Q. Should I be exclusive to Amazon?

A. Considering that most people get the majority of their sales from Amazon, there’s not a huge downside to being exclusive. Granted, I only gave the other retailers a month to compare to Amazon, and that’s insufficient to declare empirical results. If you go exclusive though, that means you cannot even sell your book on your own website. It can’t be sold or given away anywhere else.

I’m leaning heavily toward Amazon exclusivity although my latest novel is currently on Smashwords and the list of retailers they distribute to. I’m trying to give it more than a month this time to see if it’s worth having it with the other retailers. The only problem is, it’s not even selling on Amazon, so it’s impossible to make a comparison this time.

If you’re still not sure which way to go, I’d say go with Amazon, and go exclusive. You can always opt out three months later. And you should also know that those who say they get 10% or more of their sales on iTunes – those people have been selling for years and have developed a fan base. I think it makes more sense to start on Amazon, and if you have a degree of success, then branch out to other retailers once you no longer need the promotional advantages of being exclusive with Amazon.

Q. Should I do paperbacks with CreateSpace or someone else?

A. I have only used CreateSpace after looking at several alternatives. Here’s the first major difference: You can have your book ready for print-on-demand via CS at zero cost. You can upload it today and sell it tomorrow. If your document is properly formatted, you shouldn’t have any problem. If you can follow the instructions for the cover, you might have some problems. But if you’re only a little bit off, CS will adjust it for you, and if you like the way it looks, then you approve it, and you’re book becomes available immediately.

CS has forums with helpful articles on how to do each step, and there are friendly people there who will usually help. If you’re good with Photoshop (or Gimp, which is free) you’ll be okay. If not, ask your graphic artist friend to help, or hire someone to make the cover-ready image for you. We’re talking about putting your front cover, back cover, and spine into a single, precisely measured template that is sized based on the number of pages in your book. It sounds more complicated than it is.

Q. What price should my book be so it’s not too low or too high?

A. I don’t know if a book can be priced too low. There is an opinion that a low-priced book is an under-valued book. As if you’re telling the world, “My book is only good enough to be worth 99 cents.”  I don’t think that holds a lot of water with readers. While it’s true that your book at 99 cents is a clear signal that you’re not a bestselling author, or even a mid-list author, the fact that you’re self-published already gives that away. Combine that with the fact that the reader who’s considering whether to buy your book or not has never heard of you. That’s a big clue that you’re not big and famous. Yet.

Also, flip it around. Have you ever been interested in buying a book that got your attention and curiosity and decided to skip it because the price was too low? That’s never happened, right? You were more likely to be happy that you got it at such a low cost. If it was true that low-priced books communicate lack of quality, then all free books would be considered total crap and no one would download them. But we all do. And we even love some of them. Then we go back and see what else that author wrote, because once we find a good thing, we want more of it. (Which is where the value of KDP Select free days is useful, but don’t assume that 1000 books downloaded means 1000 books read. And it’s also only useful when you have something for that return reader to buy. Only have one book? Publish your best (and longest) short story as an ebook that you give away so readers who come back might buy your novel.)

Pricing your book low doesn’t necessarily mean people will just pick it up and not read it. That’s far more likely to happen when your book is free.  I don’t think you can go too low. And if your book starts moving, then bump it up a little. If the sales continue, raise it again. If they stop, put it back down. Find the sweet spot for your book.

The biggest errors people make is over-pricing. I saw a book of poetry priced at $9.99 and it was about 30 pages. The book had no rank. That means no one had ever bought it. And no one will at that price for so few pages from an unknown author. When you’re starting out, don’t even think about money. I’m assuming that’s not why you’re doing this. Quitting your job to write full-time would be a dream come true for any true author, but you’re just starting out. The important thing right now is to get read. Period. You need people to read your book if you’re ever to have any level of success whatsoever. Price it low. Give it away. Hand it out in public. You need readers!

Some authors are concerned about whether they’ll get their full royalty from Amazon Unlimited. Unless you’re moving a significant number of books every month – who cares? Will it make a difference to you if you get $2.00 instead of $3.00 on the sale of 5 books? I sure hope not. That brings me back to another argument in favor of being exclusive to Amazon. Now you can get “sales” from people downloading your book for free. As long as they read at least 10% of it, you get paid. If they hate it, you don’t have that awful sight of seeing on your sales stats that you lost a sale because someone got a refund. If they hated it after 10%, you still get paid for the sale. Amazon Unlimited is another thing that is too good to be true and I expect Amazon to change the terms later.

If you have a good story in a popular genre, and a good-sized book, I’d start with $2.99 and see how it goes. Amazon has a beta program that will suggest a price to you. Notice when you get to that step in the publishing process that it’s recommending a price based on making the most money per unit. In the fainter line, you can see which price point resulted in the most sales. That’s the one you want. Forget the profit. You’d probably rather have more sales at a lower profit, (which is how Sam Walton built the WalMart empire) than high profit on few sales.

Q. Should I hire a marketing agency or PR firm?

A. I definitely do not recommend using a marketing agency – at least not the type that will promise to promote your book on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., and send out X number press releases. I don’t care how many followers they have. When is the last time you bought anything from a Facebook ad? How about the last time you bought a book from a Facebook ad? Tweet 100,000 people, and how many are sitting at their computers at the exact moment your tweet comes flying by? How often are you sitting at your computer reading all of the incoming tweets? I don’t know anyone who does that. We’re usually either tweeting, or reading a specific person’s tweets – not looking at the endless stream of incoming.

When did you last buy a book because you read a press release? I never have. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a press release about a new book coming out. Who does that? If you’re small, no one would read it, and no one will publish it. If you’re big – there will be plenty of buzz before the book hits the shelves, making a press release superfluous.

Q. Isn’t it amazing? I already received an offer from a publishing company!

A. If you received a letter in the mail, or an email from a publishing company telling you that they’re interested in your book – throw it away. If they call you, politely hang up. These are companies who will charge you a fee to publish your book for you. Tate Publishing for example will require a $4,000 investment from you to “co-pay your marketing expenses.” They of course will be paying the lion’s share, and you only need to pay this small percentage.

Such “publishers” are only publishers to the extent that they will help you put your book together, and then they’ll make it available on Amazon and possibly other retailers, and they’ll put it on CreateSpace, or maybe a different print-on-demand company, and then they’ll price your book way too high to sell, and they won’t do anything substantial to promote it.

Vanity e-publishers only accomplish a few things for those who can’t figure out how to do them, like making your Word document into an epub for Smashwords or Kobo. Uploading your document to Amazon for you. Formatting your document so it looks  like an actual book. These are good things to have done, but not at the cost of your rights to your own book, and a good percentage of your royalties – if you get any at the inflated price.

Once you’re in with these companies, you’re in for the duration unless you prevail in a lawsuit for breach of contract. You are far better off hiring out these tasks, or learning to do them yourself. There are books on how to publish on Kindle.

Here’s one that’s free. I think it’s the one I read before I published my first book.

There are very specific places where book promotion is welcome. Outside of those places, do not promote your book. In some places you shouldn’t even mention that you’re an author. Don’t be surprised if you encounter a mysteriously antagonistic attitude after mentioning that you’re an author. Wear your reader hat when you’re in a reader’s forum.  Be a living advertisement for your book. Let people who are interested in you find out that you’re an author. They’ve been through self-promotion hell there and some people view every new author to arrive as another likely annoyance and disruption to what was once their haven.

I hope these tips from my year of experience as a self-published author are helpful to some extent. Try not to get bogged down in any one thing. Don’t let your first negative review depress you. Consider what you can learn from it – but also, don’t go changing your book to please one person who criticized one thing. Remember that being an author is a marathon, not a sprint. You’re in this for the long haul. You’re also leaving something behind for your children and grandchildren, and so on – forever. How cool is that?

Q n A for the Newly Self-published Author

Q. How do I get honest reviews?

A. Reaching out to bloggers is a good idea, if you can find some that are not overwhelmed with prior commitments. Be sure to only query bloggers who review your genre. Many bloggers will also have specific guidelines on how to query them. Read these, and follow them with precision.

You can also give your book away to people who will review it. There are groups on Goodreads where you can list your book, and anyone who is interested in reading and reviewing it will reply. Then you email them the book in the format they choose from those you said you have available.
Authors Requesting Reviews

Another Goodreads group has a form of review exchanges, but you do non-reciprocal reviews, so it’s not a tit-for-tat, lacking credibility.
Review Group

You can also do a giveaway on Goodreads. This isn’t guaranteed to get you reviews, but it might. The more you give away, the better your chances, but be aware that this is an expensive route with no guarantees. It’s especially expensive if you make your giveaway eligible to foreign countries. The slowest shipping isn’t cheap, and you have to fill out a customs form.

Some people believe there is additional value in the exposure your book will receive when hundreds, if not thousands sign up for the giveaway. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of people who sign up barely glance at the book’s description, but rather, just hit the Enter Giveaway button and go on to what they were doing before they encountered the giveaway. Sure, it might really entice some people, but you have to put yourself on the other side of any marketing you’re thinking of doing. Have you ever entered a giveaway, failed to win, and then gone back to buy that book, or another book by that author?

It’s one thing to want something and learn that you have a chance to win it. It’s another thing to simply learn that something is being given away, so you enter just because you can, because – hey, free stuff.

I would not recommend paying for reviews. Not even Kirkus, or anyone else who sells reviews. I also would not exchange reviews directly with another author. You might not like each other’s books, and yet still be obligated to give a review. Do you give a bad one because you want to maintain your personal integrity? What if they wrote you a good one, genuine or not? It’s just a messy situation that you probably don’t want to find yourself in.

A good way to promote your book is to have it included in a newsletter that is sent out to subscribers who actually want to know about new books. Websites that do this usually specialize in free books, but some also feature low cost books. One such site that has been doing this is now going to try something new. that is like the “read for review” giveaway described above.

For a $20 fee, ChoosyBookworm.com will list your book as being available to readers who would like to read it and review it at no cost to them. This could be a win for all three parties. The intention is for you to get at least $20 reviews. Initially, the site owner said that he would keep listing your book until you got 20, but I think he’ll be revising that commitment after the first trial in September. I just signed up for the September listing so I can’t say yet how effective it is.

I said that I would not pay for reviews, but in this case, you’re paying for the chance to get reviews from people you don’t know, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll get good reviews, or really, any at all. But don’t let the possibility of bad reviews scare you off. Believe it or not, a book with nothing but good reviews is viewed by some people as suspicious. This really sucks if you write something really great and everyone loves it, but you can see where they’re coming from. It’s more realistic that not everyone is going to love a particular book. Some people just have to be unhappy with it.

My latest novel has this problem. Nine 5-stars and one 4-star. I can’t wait till somebody hates it. Or at least has something critical to say about it. Then my good reviews will gain credibility. Somewhat. Maybe.

Q. What’s the best approach to promoting on social media?

A. I think social media is over-rated when it comes to promoting books, but it’s probably something you can’t just ignore either. You want a presence, but don’t use the presence for the purpose of spamming. Read my blog post about The Art of Not Marketing on Social Media for more on this.

Q. What’s better – Amazon or Smashwords (and all the other retailers)?

A. Everyone I’ve ever talked to, or read about has said that they get between 60 and 90 percent of their sales from Amazon. And that’s not just U.S. authors. (Which reminds me, if you’re from another country and will be promoting your book to the U.S., it’s probably a good idea to have your book edited for U.S. English so you don’t confuse some readers. If you’re reading this, and you’re from England, imagine if I said I was going to spank your fanny. That’s an example of how foreign slang can say the totally wrong thing to someone in another country.) My experience matches that of other authors, except in my case, I can say that 100% of my sales is from Amazon. I only gave the other retailers a one month chance to see what would happen, but in that one month I sold a couple hundred on Amazon, and nothing on iBooks, B&N, Smashwords, Kobo, and wherever else. After that, I promptly made my book exclusive to Amazon and instead of doing the free days from KDP Select, I chose Promotional Countdowns, which resulted in an increase in sales.

Q. Should I be exclusive to Amazon?

A. Considering that most people get the majority of their sales from Amazon, there’s not a huge downside to being exclusive. Granted, I only gave the other retailers a month to compare to Amazon, and that’s insufficient to declare empirical results. If you go exclusive though, that means you cannot even sell your book on your own website. It can’t be sold or given away anywhere else.

I’m leaning heavily toward Amazon exclusivity although my latest novel is currently on Smashwords and the list of retailers they distribute to. I’m trying to give it more than a month this time to see if it’s worth having it with the other retailers. The only problem is, it’s not even selling on Amazon, so it’s impossible to make a comparison this time.

If you’re still not sure which way to go, I’d say go with Amazon, and go exclusive. You can always opt out three months later. And you should also know that those who say they get 10% or more of their sales on iTunes – those people have been selling for years and have developed a fan base. I think it makes more sense to start on Amazon, and if you have a degree of success, then branch out to other retailers once you no longer need the promotional advantages of being exclusive with Amazon.

Q. Should I do paperbacks with CreateSpace or someone else?

A. I have only used CreateSpace after looking at several alternatives. Here’s the first major difference: You can have your book ready for print-on-demand via CS at zero cost. You can upload it today and sell it tomorrow. If your document is properly formatted, you shouldn’t have any problem. If you can follow the instructions for the cover, you might have some problems. But if you’re only a little bit off, CS will adjust it for you, and if you like the way it looks, then you approve it, and you’re book becomes available immediately.

CS has forums with helpful articles on how to do each step, and there are friendly people there who will usually help. If you’re good with Photoshop (or Gimp, which is free) you’ll be okay. If not, ask your graphic artist friend to help, or hire someone to make the cover-ready image for you. We’re talking about putting your front cover, back cover, and spine into a single, precisely measured template that is sized based on the number of pages in your book. It sounds more complicated than it is.

Q. What price should my book be so it’s not too low or too high?

A. I don’t know if a book can be priced too low. There is an opinion that a low-priced book is an under-valued book. As if you’re telling the world, “My book is only good enough to be worth 99 cents.” I don’t think that holds a lot of water with readers. While it’s true that your book at 99 cents is a clear signal that you’re not a bestselling author, or even a mid-list author, the fact that you’re self-published already gives that away. Combine that with the fact that the reader who’s considering whether to buy your book or not has never heard of you. That’s a big clue that you’re not big and famous. Yet.

Also, flip it around. Have you ever been interested in buying a book that got your attention and curiosity and decided to skip it because the price was too low? That’s never happened, right? You were more likely to be happy that you got it at such a low cost. If it was true that low-priced books communicate lack of quality, then all free books would be considered total crap and no one would download them. But we all do. And we even love some of them. Then we go back and see what else that author wrote, because once we find a good thing, we want more of it. (Which is where the value of KDP Select free days is useful, but don’t assume that 1000 books downloaded means 1000 books read. And it’s also only useful when you have something for that return reader to buy. Only have one book? Publish your best (and longest) short story as an ebook that you give away so readers who come back might buy your novel.)

Pricing your book low doesn’t necessarily mean people will just pick it up and not read it. That’s far more likely to happen when your book is free. I don’t think you can go too low. And if your book starts moving, then bump it up a little. If the sales continue, raise it again. If they stop, put it back down. Find the sweet spot for your book.

The biggest errors people make is over-pricing. I saw a book of poetry priced at $9.99 and it was about 30 pages. The book had no rank. That means no one had ever bought it. And no one will at that price for so few pages from an unknown author. When you’re starting out, don’t even think about money. I’m assuming that’s not why you’re doing this. Quitting your job to write full-time would be a dream come true for any true author, but you’re just starting out. The important thing right now is to get read. Period. You need people to read your book if you’re ever to have any level of success whatsoever. Price it low. Give it away. Hand it out in public. You need readers!

Some authors are concerned about whether they’ll get their full royalty from Amazon Unlimited. Unless you’re moving a significant number of books every month – who cares? Will it make a difference to you if you get $2.00 instead of $3.00 on the sale of 5 books? I sure hope not. That brings me back to another argument in favor of being exclusive to Amazon. Now you can get “sales” from people downloading your book for free. As long as they read at least 10% of it, you get paid. If they hate it, you don’t have that awful sight of seeing on your sales stats that you lost a sale because someone got a refund. If they hated it after 10%, you still get paid for the sale. Amazon Unlimited is another thing that is too good to be true and I expect Amazon to change the terms later.

If you have a good story in a popular genre, and a good-sized book, I’d start with $2.99 and see how it goes. Amazon has a beta program that will suggest a price to you. Notice when you get to that step in the publishing process that it’s recommending a price based on making the most money per unit. In the fainter line, you can see which price point resulted in the most sales. That’s the one you want. Forget the profit. You’d probably rather have more sales at a lower profit, (which is how Sam Walton built the WalMart empire) than high profit on few sales.

Q. Should I hire a marketing agency or PR firm?

A. I definitely do not recommend using a marketing agency – at least not the type that will promise to promote your book on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., and send out X number press releases. I don’t care how many followers they have. When is the last time you bought anything from a Facebook ad? How about the last time you bought a book from a Facebook ad? Tweet 100,000 people, and how many are sitting at their computers at the exact moment your tweet comes flying by? How often are you sitting at your computer reading all of the incoming tweets? I don’t know anyone who does that. We’re usually either tweeting, or reading a specific person’s tweets – not looking at the endless stream of incoming.

When did you last buy a book because you read a press release? I never have. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a press release about a new book coming out. Who does that? If you’re small, no one would read it, and no one will publish it. If you’re big – there will be plenty of buzz before the book hits the shelves, making a press release superfluous.

Q. Isn’t it amazing? I already received an offer from a publishing company!

A. If you received a letter in the mail, or an email from a publishing company telling you that they’re interested in your book – throw it away. If they call you, politely hang up. These are companies who will charge you a fee to publish your book for you. Tate Publishing for example will require a $4,000 investment from you to “co-pay your marketing expenses.” They of course will be paying the lion’s share, and you only need to pay this small percentage.

Such “publishers” are only publishers to the extent that they will help you put your book together, and then they’ll make it available on Amazon and possibly other retailers, and they’ll put it on CreateSpace, or maybe a different print-on-demand company, and then they’ll price your book way too high to sell, and they won’t do anything substantial to promote it.

Vanity e-publishers only accomplish a few things for those who can’t figure out how to do them, like making your Word document into an epub for Smashwords or Kobo. Uploading your document to Amazon for you. Formatting your document so it looks like an actual book. These are good things to have done, but not at the cost of your rights to your own book, and a good percentage of your royalties – if you get any at the inflated price.

Once you’re in with these companies, you’re in for the duration unless you prevail in a lawsuit for breach of contract. You are far better off hiring out these tasks, or learning to do them yourself. There are books on how to publish on Kindle.

Here’s one that’s free. I think it’s the one I read before I published my first book.

Building Your Book for Kindle

There are very specific places where book promotion is welcome. Outside of those places, do not promote your book. In some places you shouldn't even mention that you’re an author. Don’t be surprised if you encounter a mysteriously antagonistic attitude after mentioning that you’re an author. Wear your reader hat when you’re in a reader’s forum. Be a living advertisement for your book. Let people who are interested in you find out that you’re an author. They've been through self-promotion hell there and some people view every new author to arrive as another likely annoyance and disruption to what was once their haven.

I hope these tips from my year of experience as a self-published author are helpful to some extent. Try not to get bogged down in any one thing. Don’t let your first negative review depress you. Consider what you can learn from it – but also, don’t go changing your book to please one person who criticized one thing. Remember that being an author is a marathon, not a sprint. You’re in this for the long haul. You’re also leaving something behind for your children and grandchildren, and so on – forever. How cool is that?

Post-Apocalypse – First Strike

I should mention my other novel  here, instead of only promoting the more recent, “Kendra’s Spirit.” Completely different genres, and there just might be some post-apocalypse fans viewing this page.

*In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel* has been described as unique in the genre, and a “breath of post-apocalypse fresh air.”

America is attacked in limited fashion in what might be a single terrorist event, or considering the location, it might’ve been a first strike intended to knock out at least some of our air defenses and prevent mutually assured destruction of the enemy.

The novel begins with a small group of college students who just arrived at the luxury condominium cabin they rented and seeing a mushroom cloud rising over the Denver skyline. Shortly thereafter, they hear gunshots, despite being among the first to come for the ski season which starts the following week.

Elsewhere on the mountain top are a few bikers – one of whom is delighted to see that Colorado has been nuked. To him, this means the end of law enforcement, and thus the end of restraining his sociopathic desires.

Everyone must fend for themselves as they face the end of the world as they know it. Some of them don’t do so well, and others are surprised to find their latent leadership abilities. 

This is the first in a trilogy and is sub-titled “a pre-apocalypse novel.” The second book, tentatively titled “In The End 2: American Apocalypse” will feature the actual apocalypse, and the third will be the post-apocalypse.

In The End: a pre-apocalypse novel