Chris Fox's Blog, page 30

Vampires Don’t Sparkle cover art reveal

Nikolai has just submitted a draft for Deathless Book 3: Vampires Don’t Sparkle. What do you guys think?

Nikolai Ostertag: The Man Behind the Artwork

The Deathless series has done far better than I ever could have dreamed, to the tune of 10,000 books in the first seven months. That still makes me go =O

There are a lot of reasons I feel the books are selling well, but I suspect the biggest is the covers. I get compliments on them daily, and that’s not surprising. The artwork is phenomenal, and the typography is top notch.

Today I’d like to introduce you to the man who created, and continues to create, that phenomenal art. His name is Nikolai Ostertag, and he hails from Germany. He is also a god-damned GOD. Above is the very first piece of artwork I requested, the hauntingly foreboding cover to No Such Thing As Werewolves.

To the left you’ll find the next piece, the cover of The First Ark. It brings to life my favorite character, Isis- also known as The Mother. Nikolai captured her perfectly, and this image also displays the Primary Access Key. That’s huge, because until the moment I saw this piece both Isis and the key were simply artifacts that lived in my imagination. Now everyone can enjoy them.

Last month I released No Mere Zombie, the second book in the Deathless Saga. Once again Nikolai outdid himself, this time creating a piece that holds a very special significance. The zombified guy on the cover? He’s also my real life best friend, and thanks to Nikolai he’s been captured perfectly. That won me a 20 year bet, by the way.

The timing of this post isn’t accidental. Many of you know that I’m hard at work on Deathless Book 3- Vampires Don’t Sparkle. Nikolai just sent me the first draft of the cover art the other day, and I can confidently say it is his finest work (not that I am totally biased or anything). I can’t wait to get the final draft, and the second I do you’ll see it posted here.

In the meantime do me a favor and spend a few minutes checking out Nikolai’s Deviant Art page. The man is just amazing, and the artwork he’s done for me is only a small fraction of his portfolio,

If you’re a writer consider commissioning some work. His rates are reasonable, and the finished products speak for themselves.

How Gamification Will Dramatically Increase Your Word Count.

Odds are good you use Facebook, Twitter or at the very least email, right? If so you’re familiar with the little red badges that signify notifications. If you’re like me your response is oooh, there’s something new to check!

This happens most often on my smartphone, while standing in line at the grocery store, waiting for my soup in the microwave, or of course in the bathroom. I am compelled to check my phone all the damn time. Why is this?

Each time you experience pleasure your brain places a marker which measures the circumstances leading up to that moment. If it detects these circumstances again it realizes ‘Hey, this felt good last time. It will probably feel good this time too’. It responds by flooding you with a chemical called dopamine.

Dopamine doesn’t necessarily give you pleasure, but instead prompts you to engage in the behavior that led up to pleasure last time. In practical terms it works like this. You received an email from a girl or guy you were crushing hard on. That email told you they felt the same way, and in that moment you were on top of the world.

Now whenever you think about email your brain fires off that dopamine and you’re compelled to check it. This is why you’ll constantly open your phone to see if there’s anything new on Facebook, Twitter or your social media drug of choice.

Something good might happen, so here comes the dopamine.

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Why Games Are Addictive

Large game companies figured out how to trigger dopamine rushes and used these principles to create mass-multiplayer games like World of Warcraft. Players will spend 8-12 hours a day clicking away in a virtual world, because the game has been engineered to trigger dopamine rushes.

At first your character gains levels frequently, which is a pleasurable experience. As time goes on it takes longer and longer to gain a level, but players keep grinding away because their brains continue to release dopamine in a vain effort to recapture the pleasure they experienced.

This is why MMOs are so addictive, and they’re not the only type of games to harness this technique. Are you familiar with Candy Crush? 2048? Angry birds? Every last one is using dopamine to keep you playing.

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How does knowing this help you?

Dopamine releases can be attached to positive behaviors. We’re now seeing apps like Fitbit gamify fitness, and they do it in two ways. First, they provide achievements for reaching milestones. Instead of getting that shiny new epic sword in World of Warcraft you get a badge for walking 10,000 steps in a single day.

You get similar badges for losing weight or for climbing a certain amount of stairs, and before you know it your brain is rewarding you for positive behaviors. It certainly works on me. I haven’t played an MMO in years, but I log in to Fitbit every day to obsessively check my stats.

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Social Proof and Competition

Game and social media companies figured out another huge behavioral marker in humans. We’re inherently tribal, and are driven by a subconscious need to be significant in our tribe. In MMOs this meant being really good at raiding or killing other players in arenas. It meant having the best epic loot, or the coolest new mount.

You gain significance by excelling in whatever way is measured by the shared activity. In social media it can mean getting the most likes or comments on your posts. In Fitbit this means dominating the leaderboard among your friends or your local area.

This competitive principle will often get people to do things they’d never even consider, like sitting in front of a computer for twenty straight hours to be the first to unlock some cool new gear. Nuts, right?

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What does all this have to do with writing?

Using apps like Fitbit to encourage positive behavior made a lightbulb go on in my head. If it works for fitness, why wouldn’t it work for writing? Every writer I know wants to crank out more words daily. Most of us are highly competitive.

What if you had an app that rewarded you for writing? What if hitting word goals or having a seven-day writing streak triggered the same rush of dopamine that checking Facebook does? I took a quick look around and found that no one had tapped into this.

So I did it myself. That’s how I wrote the 5,000 Words Per Hour book, and why I developed the companion 5KWPH app.

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The Book- 5,000 Words Per Hour

The 5,000 Words Per Hour book shows you how to conduct writing sprints. In essence it teaches you to eliminate distractions, so you can sit down and crank out massive word counts. It further explains gamification, flow and the neuroscience behind both.

It’s designed to be a short read, a mere 15k words (about 120 pages). I took out all the fluff, all the personal anecdotes all the crap you often find in nonfiction books that’s either there for padding or to fluff the offers ego.

What’s left is an actionable set of steps you can take to increase your daily and hourly word counts.

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The iPhone / iPad App- 5KWPH

The app uses the principles taught by the book. It conducts these writing sprints, awards you achievements just like Fitbit or WOW, and allows you to post your progress to social media. In 5KWPS you have a tool to measure and track your progress, and it uses dopamine to motivate you to write like a machine.

I wrote the book for you, but the app was created for me. I’ve been using it for some time and have cranked out three novels in the last nine months. I also wrote the 5,000 Words Per Hour book using the app.

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Uh-Oh here comes the sales pitch

So this is the part where I ask you for money, right? Nah. Not yet anyway. The book doesn’t come out for another month. When it does I’d be happy to take your $2.99 to subsidize my daily coffee habit.

The app is available to beta test right now. All you have to do is email me with your name and the email address you want the app sent to. You’ll get to download the app for free, and help me make it do all the things I promised in this article.

Then, in a month or so when I charge for it, you can decide whether or not to give me a few bucks for it. Either way I hope you use it to transform your writing and up your word count.

-Chris

Deathless has come to iTunes

After a lot of thinking I ended my exclusivity with Amazon and have brought all my books to iTunes. In exchange, Apple has already featured me (something Amazon would never, ever do).  I won’t find out how the book is doing until tomorrow, but I’m hoping that quite a few new readers discover the series =D

Winning a 20 year bet

I made a bet with my best friend in 1995 that I was going to make him famous. It was made after an epic session of Dungeons & Dragons, the kind of idle boast you know will never come true. Only this one did.

Back then I was an aspiring novelist, and I joked that I was going to make Trevor my protagonist. He told me that it was impossible, and I bet him a quarter I could do it. Honestly, I can’t even remember why that made us giggle so much, but we spent many inebriated hours laughing about how cool it would be.

This morning No Mere Zombie went live. See that guy on the cover? Does he look at all familiar?

Meet Trevor ladies and gentlemen. Trevor and I have gamed together for two decades, from Dungeons & Dragons to Shadowun to Starcraft and everything in between. We camped in line together for the first Star Wars prequel and spent entire weekends playing Magic The Gathering.

So this post goes out to my best friend. It took two decades, Trevor. Check mate. You owe me 25 cents.

Finally! No Mere Zombie is live

No Mere Zombie is live on Amazon! You can purchase the paperback right now, and the eBook is available at midnight. I put it on sale until Sunday to reward the people who’ve been waiting. Hope you guys enjoy!

The eBook is also coming to iTunes and will be live there on Sunday!

Celebratory Sale

No Mere Zombie comes out on Friday. Holy. Crap. My second novel is about to go live.

I’ve decided to put the ebook version of No Such Thing As Werewolves on sale for 99 cents to celebrate, and when I say celebrate what I really mean is to goose the Amazon algorithms to raise the book rank so more people see the sequel.

If you know someone who hasn’t read it (or haven’t read it yourself) please take a peek! It’s a 450 page novel on sale for a buck =)

Flashback Friday

Fellow author Raven Oak invited me to write a Flashback Friday article about one of my all time favorite novels. You can read more about that here.

If you’re not familiar with the Dragonlance series I highly recommend giving it a look. It’s got that 80s pulpy D&D feel, and was some wonderfully memorable characters.

If you don’t laugh at this you have no soul

I’ve attached a link to Ryan’s ‘audition’ for No Mere Zombie. I put audition in quotes, because all narrators are forced to audition even though we all know Ryan’s got the job. He’ll be doing all my books, because he’s awesome and we all know it!

Anyway, the first section of the audition is a tongue in cheek ‘previously on deathless’ section I put in to remind people what happened in the last book. I figured that would be handy for those of you who haven’t read book 1 in a while. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

https://chrisfoxwrites.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/ryan-burke-audition.mp3

No Mere Zombie is coming to audio!

I just listed the book on ACX and Ryan will begin recording this evening. That means in just a few short weeks it will be live on Audible!