Ode to Truly Awful Books

A book is a lot of different things. On the basic level it's a form of communication ... but communication of what? To whom?

One of the ways the internet has changed the landscape for authors is by bringing all kinds of different audiences together in the same space. Great for the readers, who get to compare the recommendations of a variety of different groups before making a purchase, but seriously stressful for the writers. You have to be one royal pain in the ass not to feel pressure to make everyone happy.

The Freelancers is one of those books that I find difficult to defend. It's a bit campy, a bit unrealistic, a bit melodramatic, a bit ridiculous, a bit offensive-- a bit of everything it was intended to be, but I just can't find the energy to mount any "yes, but..." responses to the inevitable criticism. I can't think of a single good reason WHY these books are the way they are ... just that it amused me to write them that way.

With most of my books I've been able to face the threat of different audiences interpreting the same details different ways (and criticizing me for it) by focusing on some overarching message I really wanted to communicate. By keeping that in mind I was able to survive the editing process, the push back from my publishers to make the book more marketable or traditional. I knew what I wanted to say, so I knew what compromises would destroy that message and what ones wouldn't.

But not with The Freelancers.

There's really no point to these books, no theme, no philosophical undertone. I write them for fun, playing around with the campy, sexist, ridiculous stylistic elements of old-school spy movies. The Freelancers to me are like B-movie books. All your criticisms of them are valid.

And yet...

Shortly after I finished the first volume (The Freelancers: The Translator) I realized I just couldn't publish it. I couldn't go through that whole process because I didn't know how to defend it. The book was terrible ... but I still kind of loved it. And yet I couldn't really put my finger on WHAT exactly I liked about it, so how could I help improve it?

Publishing it would be a shit show, trying to turn a book that was never intended to be good into something good. I wasn't willing to go through that process. It seemed too disheartening and stressful.

But still ... I had written it. I wanted to put it in the hands of people who would enjoy it.

There used to be a clear line between published and unpublished. It used to be you could throw something up on the internet for free and people would cut you some slack on it. Free stuff on the internet wasn't published. There was no expectation that your work should represent you because there was no conceivable benefit to you when you gave it away for free.

That isn't the case anymore. So I had a bit of a dilemma. How do you distribute a book ... without publishing it?

Pirate Bay of course :)

Yes, that's right. As of today I am bootlegging my own books!

You can download the torrent for The Freelancers: The Translator HERE

And the torrent for The Freelancers: The Mercenary HERE

Each torrent contains versions of the book in doc, pdf, epub and mobi.

Read at your own risk ... but trust me when I say they are awful :D :D :D Delightfully so!