Keith Soares's Blog, page 2

Flash Fiction: “Dom Luis de Lagos”

“Who are you?” the man asked, absently picking at the dirt under one of his filthy fingernails. A moment passed and the man looked again at the dark-clothed stranger wearing a hat in front of him. “Well?”

With a vicious quickness, the stranger lashed out, severing the man’s life-giving blood vessels and tearing open his neck. The man fell, blood splattering and pooling around him. The pavement became wet where it approached the wall and the door. The man coughed, gurgled, coughed again. His d...

Creating a World

My new novel is called White Fire. It’s still a WIP (hipster author slang for Work In Progress), but it’s coming along quite nicely. If you’ve read my short story ‘Black Fire,’ you already know where this story begins and some of the people in it.

NowI’m at the point where I need to refer to something concrete to make sense of the geography ofwhere Huldrych and Corymna live. So I made a map.

I won’t say more, since I don’t want to spoil anything in the book, but here’s the Map of the Known Wo...

Anyone Could Have a Ghost Army

I’m not a big fan of Ellsworth Kelly.

Wait, I should rephrase that.

I’m not a big fan of the art of Ellsworth Kelly.

Hm. Maybe I should rephrase that, too.

I seriously dislikethe art of Ellsworth Kelly.

But I have a reason. Many years ago, my wife and I were in New York City and we stopped into the Guggenheim. We both love modern art, so this is not simply a matter of not “getting” his art. I get it. I just think it’s lame. My wife and I took the elevator up so we could stand at the top of th...

Judging a book by its cover

People always say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” and yet that exact thing happens probably billions of times each day. Whether it’s people inappropriately judging each other by appearances, or simply picking this or that novel based on how the cover looks. And, although there could be countless other issues, I feel this has happened with my new novel, too. So I’ve decided to change things.

I spoke to other authors doing well in the superhero category (thanks, Logan Rutherford!) and read T...

Begone with the Serial

I have made the decision to pull For I Could Lift My Finger and Black Out the Sun as a serial and only have the full-length novel (omnibus) version available. Why? There are a number of reason, all of which I chalk up to my own inexperience. First, as five distinct parts, each part feels short. I think they each have a finite arc, which I like, but I think the real value in reading is getting the whole thing as one. Second, I think that by releasing it as five parts, I have put up four barrie...

Why I’m a Little Afraid of Free

Full disclosure: I use permafree currently, and I’ve done free promotions for a number of my books. (Permafree is what authors call it when an ebook is always free to download.) I realize that free is an incredibly useful and probably necessary tool to get my name and my books in front of new readers. I will very likely continue to have a permafree book and use free promotions in the future. And in fact, I use two free books to promote my new releases newsletter. So I’m familiar with free.

I...

6 x 1 = Awesome!

Part 1 of For I Could Lift My Finger and Black Out the Sun was on a free promotion this weekend (still is, if you’re reading this hot off the presses), and has been doing well on the Amazon charts.

Okay, that’s a lie.

It’s been doing AMAZING on the Amazon charts… and in fact has racked up six #1 spots on genre charts, including coveted #1 rankings for Superhero Fantasy and YA Science Fiction.

So, to everyone who grabbed up a copy, thanks and I hope you enjoy getting to know John Black. For an...

Better Cow Sol

Tomorrow, the fifth and final installment of For I Could Lift My Finger and Black Out the Sun arrives. It’s do-or-die time for John Black and the guy who calls himself Sol.

So why is this so exciting for me? Because this time, it’s for real. When I wrote the first part of The Oasis of Filth, I was just testing the waters, even fooling around if you will. I didn’t expect many people would read it or care (I was off by a little – since the first book launched, the three parts of the series have...

White Fire: Making the 1-3/SF-F Transition

With my first John Black book complete (my second overall novel), I am finally making a rather large transition in style as I write novel number 3. My latest project is called White Fire and is a continuation of the story began in my short story ‘Black Fire’ from the collection called The Fingers of the Colossus.

My first novel, The Oasis of Filth, is told in first person, mostly by an unnamed protagonist. He’s a sixty-something ex-doctor who finds himself amid hordes of “zombies” (not really...

The Dawn of a New Age

My new novel, For I Could Lift My Finger and Black Out the Sun – Part 1: DAWN, has finally arrived. Not on pre-order. Not a cover reveal. A real book. That you can read. Now. Today.

This has been a long road. And honestly, now it suddenly feels real. Not this book in particular, but the whole ‘author’ thing in general. This is novel #2. And I also have a collection of short stories. Good gravy, I have a catalog!

And now it’s official that I have a completely zombie-free offering…

But more import...