About Cold Cases
This blog post is about my second book released, and first one written, Cold Cases.
So I'll start at the start with this one.
So my novel, Children of the Crescent Moon, was finished in June 2018 and to my surprise Penguin, who had previously promised to publish it back in 2006, were now no longer talking to me. It's one thing if they told me it stunk but I didn't even get to talk to anyone. I think I took a bit longer than they wanted me to take over it. Anyway so that led me to talk to Harper Collins, who told me that they thought I should prove that I am a good writer not with this novel but with other published works. They told me that it could be anything, self-published, short stories, or even anthologies, and they suggested an anthology. They said that they wanted 5 published works in 2 years.
So I didn't know if they were just messing with me or if this was legitimate but it made sense to me that it was a good idea to have 5 published works either way, even if Harper Collins weren't actually going to look at it. I was a bit unclear if it meant 5 stories or 5 publications but either way that was my magic number.
The first anthology I stumbled upon was called Realm of Mystery, which was put out by Rhet Askew and was advertised in a Facebook group called Writers Unite.
So I joined the group and tentatively agreed to submit a story to the anthology, not knowing for sure if it was going to be accepted. My plan was to submit one and only one, and then the other four would be with four other anthologies, maybe through them, or maybe through someone else. I thought it'd be more impressive to be with five different publishers.
The first one I went with was a thriller I had written sometime earlier about an impossible death, which I had originally titled "Ghosts of the Past" but then for the mystery I changed its name to "When The Spooks Were Spooked" and then even went through a third change to call it "The Impossible Death of Major Nelson". In Cold Cases it appears as "When The Spooks Were Spooked".
The basic story there is that an army major is found dead while cleaning his guns, but none of the weapons have discharged and that isn't what killed him - he was poisoned from the soup he was eating, which has spilled on the floor. But who poisoned it? Nobody was there, and video surveillance proved he had had no visitors for more than two weeks. So was it a suicide? Or what was going on? And then comes the fact that he could very well have been killed by a ghost, one who was manipulated as part of his work, where they take soldiers who have recently died and use an EMF machine to stop them from going to the afterlife, then torture their disembodied spirit, as a way to try to turn them into weapons of war, only it didn't work.
Now, I thought that this was a fun kind of science fiction/horror kind of story but with a thriller/mystery edge, the kind of thing I often write, and, for The Realm of Mystery, it was happily accepted, and I was told by the publisher that it was really good.
Then I found out that you could have up to 5 stories in a single anthology, but only one could be 5,000 words - the others had to be under 2,000 words.
So I was thinking that 5 was my magical Harper Collins number, so what if I could get all 5 published in the same book? Then I could get my novel published immediately.
So off I went planning the others, and I got to 2, 3, 4, 5 and even 6 - though they told me they couldn't accept the 6th.
I wanted them to pick the best 5 out of 6 but they told me it didn't work that way, so I just had the 5, and all was good.
The first one had already been accepted so I waited tentatively to see if any others would be. Second one - yes. Third one - yes. Fourth one - yes. Fifth one - yes! Wow! I was suddenly thinking wow as soon as this goes out I can go to Harper Collins and get my novel published and we're good.
Now, how good were the stories? I thought that they were pretty good, to be honest. They told me that they were good. Each one I went through my normal writing process with - I thought of what to write, had a sleep, dreamed of what to write, then woke up and wrote it all down, then edited it as needed.
I was very excited, almost jumping up and down excited. My book would finally be published! I was also excited that it'd be done quickly. Oh and yes, as an afterthought, the anthology would be published too. I was kind of excited about that too, but only what it meant as far as my novel was concerned.
I had to calm myself down, though. Just because they've said yes doesn't mean that they will make the final cut. Other stories might be submitted later that are better. I might only have 4 stories, or even 3, or maybe only 2. In theory it might be just 1. It was possible even that none would make the final cut.
I just had to wait, and to cross my fingers that they would make the final cut.
Then someone came in to the group asking for advice about whether to make a collection all in one go or spaced out over a period of time. I said that in my opinion collections are better written over a long period of time.
I didn't think that my opinion was controversial. Everyone else said the same thing. But for some reason the poster hated it, and went so far as to talk about reporting me for my post. An admin came in and calmed them down and gave me a warning for it, that, even though I didn't mean any harm, it came across as arrogant, as if I was a better writer than they were.
It turned out that that person was friends with the people at Rhet Askew, and when they found out that I was in an anthology, they said that they wanted me to be removed.
They were reluctant to do it, so then she made up some stuff about me, and, long story short, I was removed.
It was shocking to me and I asked why. I was told that, according to the contract I signed that I had to remain a member of Writers Unite in order to join the anthology, and that, by banning me from Writers Unite, it banned me from the anthology.
There was no rule that they couldn't ban me from the Facebook group because of someone else.
I tried to petition to be let back in, asking all of the admins, but most of them just blocked me without answering any questions. Finally, I got a response, and they told me, very clearly, that it was because I had autism.
Wow.
I mean, who knows if that was the real reason, but that was what they said. Their justification for abhorrent, unjustifiable, impossibly bad treatment, was that I had autism, and that made it okay.
Now, the Realm of Mystery was supposed to be released last October but it is now 6 months past its deadline and as far as I can tell it hasn't been released, so who knows what they are doing with it. My concern was that they might use my 6 stories and put someone else's name on it.
Before they banned me, I had happened to talk to someone who invited me to join a horror anthology called The Book of Solomon. I decided that I wasn't interested, and commented that I'd rather write about the most haunted place on earth, Karta: the island of the dead.
So then an anthology was created around Karta, which was called Abhorrence, created by Emily Piland, who promised to put me and my story on the front cover and all sorts of other promises that just sounded too good to be true - and also too good to ignore. So I signed a contract and agreed to do that one, and that one was meant to come out in December last year, but it was later pushed back to April this year and now it is October this year, and Emily gave control of it over to Hydra Productions, who then either cancelled it or kicked me out, I'm not sure, but either way they are not talking to me, and, since it was basically my anthology, I expect that it has been cancelled.
The reason to mention this is because, after I was kicked out of Realm of Mystery, I told Emily, and she told me that one of her friends, Angela Kay, was organising a mystery anthology called Cold Cases, and maybe my 6 stories, or at least some of them, could be included there.
Angela Kay's publishing company was called Stained Glass Publishing, and she wanted me to pay a "buy-in", which I had never done before, and have never done since. It was $15, which didn't seem too bad, and, since I was kind of desperate, I went along with it. The problem was that only 3 stories were allowed instead of 5, and they had to be cliffhangers. They also had to be as short as 1,000 words, while my stories were all either 2,000 or 5,000.
Cutting my stories down to size was difficult but not impossible but the harder thing was making them cliffhangers. Angela kept saying no to them.
Of my original 5, she only went past the title on 3, and then only looked at the synopsis of 2, and only accepted 1.
She accepted "The Iron Bar", one which was loosely based on a real case. I later was able to get "When The Spooks Were Spooked" to be considered, after it was heavily modified, but I needed one more.
I eventually wrote one just for her, and they went with that one, now seeing that my other stories were completely wasted.
So I had my 3 and I had paid $15 and I still needed 2 more to complete the 5 that Harper Collins wanted. Mind you, I wasn't sure that they meant 5 stories or 5 books, and if 3 stories in 1 book counted as 3 or 1.
Then I was invited to join Worlds Apart at the last moment, so, counting the 3 for Cold Cases and the 1 (Karta) for Abhorrence, I had my 5 so I was happy, but it was a lot more work than if I had just gone with the Realm of Mystery. Angela was a lot fussier than Rhet Askew too.
Then at the last minute Angela asked me to write 3 more. I didn't have to pay a second entry fee, as she just wanted more stories. So 3 of the ones she had rejected were submitted, and there we go, I had 6 with Cold Cases to go with my 1 for Worlds Apart.
My one for Worlds Apart was a better story than even my best one for Cold Cases, but I was happy to have so many in there, and also proud when the cover was released and it happened to show my name at the start.
Apparently this is a better book than Worlds Apart, and it seems to be selling better. My father bought both and he told me that Cold Cases was a lot better, but that my stories were worse, which aligns with what my opinion of it was, which is good.
So that's the story of Cold Cases.
If you buy it, even on Kindle Unlimited, please give it a review, good or bad, but most importantly honest. It still doesn't have a review yet, almost 3 months after it was initially released on 25 January 2019.
I am proud to have been involved in this and relieved that it came out.
So I'll start at the start with this one.
So my novel, Children of the Crescent Moon, was finished in June 2018 and to my surprise Penguin, who had previously promised to publish it back in 2006, were now no longer talking to me. It's one thing if they told me it stunk but I didn't even get to talk to anyone. I think I took a bit longer than they wanted me to take over it. Anyway so that led me to talk to Harper Collins, who told me that they thought I should prove that I am a good writer not with this novel but with other published works. They told me that it could be anything, self-published, short stories, or even anthologies, and they suggested an anthology. They said that they wanted 5 published works in 2 years.
So I didn't know if they were just messing with me or if this was legitimate but it made sense to me that it was a good idea to have 5 published works either way, even if Harper Collins weren't actually going to look at it. I was a bit unclear if it meant 5 stories or 5 publications but either way that was my magic number.
The first anthology I stumbled upon was called Realm of Mystery, which was put out by Rhet Askew and was advertised in a Facebook group called Writers Unite.
So I joined the group and tentatively agreed to submit a story to the anthology, not knowing for sure if it was going to be accepted. My plan was to submit one and only one, and then the other four would be with four other anthologies, maybe through them, or maybe through someone else. I thought it'd be more impressive to be with five different publishers.
The first one I went with was a thriller I had written sometime earlier about an impossible death, which I had originally titled "Ghosts of the Past" but then for the mystery I changed its name to "When The Spooks Were Spooked" and then even went through a third change to call it "The Impossible Death of Major Nelson". In Cold Cases it appears as "When The Spooks Were Spooked".
The basic story there is that an army major is found dead while cleaning his guns, but none of the weapons have discharged and that isn't what killed him - he was poisoned from the soup he was eating, which has spilled on the floor. But who poisoned it? Nobody was there, and video surveillance proved he had had no visitors for more than two weeks. So was it a suicide? Or what was going on? And then comes the fact that he could very well have been killed by a ghost, one who was manipulated as part of his work, where they take soldiers who have recently died and use an EMF machine to stop them from going to the afterlife, then torture their disembodied spirit, as a way to try to turn them into weapons of war, only it didn't work.
Now, I thought that this was a fun kind of science fiction/horror kind of story but with a thriller/mystery edge, the kind of thing I often write, and, for The Realm of Mystery, it was happily accepted, and I was told by the publisher that it was really good.
Then I found out that you could have up to 5 stories in a single anthology, but only one could be 5,000 words - the others had to be under 2,000 words.
So I was thinking that 5 was my magical Harper Collins number, so what if I could get all 5 published in the same book? Then I could get my novel published immediately.
So off I went planning the others, and I got to 2, 3, 4, 5 and even 6 - though they told me they couldn't accept the 6th.
I wanted them to pick the best 5 out of 6 but they told me it didn't work that way, so I just had the 5, and all was good.
The first one had already been accepted so I waited tentatively to see if any others would be. Second one - yes. Third one - yes. Fourth one - yes. Fifth one - yes! Wow! I was suddenly thinking wow as soon as this goes out I can go to Harper Collins and get my novel published and we're good.
Now, how good were the stories? I thought that they were pretty good, to be honest. They told me that they were good. Each one I went through my normal writing process with - I thought of what to write, had a sleep, dreamed of what to write, then woke up and wrote it all down, then edited it as needed.
I was very excited, almost jumping up and down excited. My book would finally be published! I was also excited that it'd be done quickly. Oh and yes, as an afterthought, the anthology would be published too. I was kind of excited about that too, but only what it meant as far as my novel was concerned.
I had to calm myself down, though. Just because they've said yes doesn't mean that they will make the final cut. Other stories might be submitted later that are better. I might only have 4 stories, or even 3, or maybe only 2. In theory it might be just 1. It was possible even that none would make the final cut.
I just had to wait, and to cross my fingers that they would make the final cut.
Then someone came in to the group asking for advice about whether to make a collection all in one go or spaced out over a period of time. I said that in my opinion collections are better written over a long period of time.
I didn't think that my opinion was controversial. Everyone else said the same thing. But for some reason the poster hated it, and went so far as to talk about reporting me for my post. An admin came in and calmed them down and gave me a warning for it, that, even though I didn't mean any harm, it came across as arrogant, as if I was a better writer than they were.
It turned out that that person was friends with the people at Rhet Askew, and when they found out that I was in an anthology, they said that they wanted me to be removed.
They were reluctant to do it, so then she made up some stuff about me, and, long story short, I was removed.
It was shocking to me and I asked why. I was told that, according to the contract I signed that I had to remain a member of Writers Unite in order to join the anthology, and that, by banning me from Writers Unite, it banned me from the anthology.
There was no rule that they couldn't ban me from the Facebook group because of someone else.
I tried to petition to be let back in, asking all of the admins, but most of them just blocked me without answering any questions. Finally, I got a response, and they told me, very clearly, that it was because I had autism.
Wow.
I mean, who knows if that was the real reason, but that was what they said. Their justification for abhorrent, unjustifiable, impossibly bad treatment, was that I had autism, and that made it okay.
Now, the Realm of Mystery was supposed to be released last October but it is now 6 months past its deadline and as far as I can tell it hasn't been released, so who knows what they are doing with it. My concern was that they might use my 6 stories and put someone else's name on it.
Before they banned me, I had happened to talk to someone who invited me to join a horror anthology called The Book of Solomon. I decided that I wasn't interested, and commented that I'd rather write about the most haunted place on earth, Karta: the island of the dead.
So then an anthology was created around Karta, which was called Abhorrence, created by Emily Piland, who promised to put me and my story on the front cover and all sorts of other promises that just sounded too good to be true - and also too good to ignore. So I signed a contract and agreed to do that one, and that one was meant to come out in December last year, but it was later pushed back to April this year and now it is October this year, and Emily gave control of it over to Hydra Productions, who then either cancelled it or kicked me out, I'm not sure, but either way they are not talking to me, and, since it was basically my anthology, I expect that it has been cancelled.
The reason to mention this is because, after I was kicked out of Realm of Mystery, I told Emily, and she told me that one of her friends, Angela Kay, was organising a mystery anthology called Cold Cases, and maybe my 6 stories, or at least some of them, could be included there.
Angela Kay's publishing company was called Stained Glass Publishing, and she wanted me to pay a "buy-in", which I had never done before, and have never done since. It was $15, which didn't seem too bad, and, since I was kind of desperate, I went along with it. The problem was that only 3 stories were allowed instead of 5, and they had to be cliffhangers. They also had to be as short as 1,000 words, while my stories were all either 2,000 or 5,000.
Cutting my stories down to size was difficult but not impossible but the harder thing was making them cliffhangers. Angela kept saying no to them.
Of my original 5, she only went past the title on 3, and then only looked at the synopsis of 2, and only accepted 1.
She accepted "The Iron Bar", one which was loosely based on a real case. I later was able to get "When The Spooks Were Spooked" to be considered, after it was heavily modified, but I needed one more.
I eventually wrote one just for her, and they went with that one, now seeing that my other stories were completely wasted.
So I had my 3 and I had paid $15 and I still needed 2 more to complete the 5 that Harper Collins wanted. Mind you, I wasn't sure that they meant 5 stories or 5 books, and if 3 stories in 1 book counted as 3 or 1.
Then I was invited to join Worlds Apart at the last moment, so, counting the 3 for Cold Cases and the 1 (Karta) for Abhorrence, I had my 5 so I was happy, but it was a lot more work than if I had just gone with the Realm of Mystery. Angela was a lot fussier than Rhet Askew too.
Then at the last minute Angela asked me to write 3 more. I didn't have to pay a second entry fee, as she just wanted more stories. So 3 of the ones she had rejected were submitted, and there we go, I had 6 with Cold Cases to go with my 1 for Worlds Apart.
My one for Worlds Apart was a better story than even my best one for Cold Cases, but I was happy to have so many in there, and also proud when the cover was released and it happened to show my name at the start.
Apparently this is a better book than Worlds Apart, and it seems to be selling better. My father bought both and he told me that Cold Cases was a lot better, but that my stories were worse, which aligns with what my opinion of it was, which is good.
So that's the story of Cold Cases.
If you buy it, even on Kindle Unlimited, please give it a review, good or bad, but most importantly honest. It still doesn't have a review yet, almost 3 months after it was initially released on 25 January 2019.
I am proud to have been involved in this and relieved that it came out.
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