August has been a very exciting time for me as an independent author. I managed to produce over 25 new pieces of writing and sell over 3,400 copies of my works across all of my pen names. The number still blows my mind. Especially given that I spent the first two weeks of August on vacation (and I didn't write a lick during that time either).
What's even more exciting is that September is looking to perform even better. It seems this year's marketplace will center around tablets and e-readers, even more so than last year. This is great for self-publishers like me, because it means the pool of potential readers will continue to grow.
As far as my plans for the future go, the remainder of this year will still include shorter works of fiction, but I've finally started tackling a few longer stories that have been floating around in my head for the last ten years. It excites me that I have the opportunity to branch out into full-length novels, and I can't wait to see what the future holds.
Zombies are so much fun work with in a story. There's a tremendous amount of material to draw inspiration from, but because the monster is an embodiment of something so primal, the fear of death, it's pretty open as to what exactly the zombies can and can't do in a story.
In my latest story, I opted to have the vast majority be your stumbling walkers. These guys will bumble about randomly unless they hear or smell you. Once then, their drive to eat your flesh overrides any other function in their animated brains. I also decided to have a little fun and include a couple of other types. There's Crawlers, those who lost one or more of their legs during the apocalypse, and then there's the Runners. The Runners were very fun to add because they ensure that my characters couldn't simply run across the university courtyard and be done with it. Nope. If they tried such a feat, the Runners would take off with a speed and drive that couldn't be matched even by their living counterparts.
Runners also serve as a reflection of my protagonist's fears. He's the first character I've written about who has an external physical disability that has made certain tasks like stairs and sports difficult for him. So, of course, he must do plenty of both in this story. Zombies in my University is a story about pushing to the real edge of your abilities and not letting excuses and fears hold you back in life.
You can follow the story of Sam, a college kid trying to escape his dorm room after the Zombies have ravaged his university, on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Here's my cover:
August has been my best-selling month ever, with almost 70 published titles across Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and, most recently, Kobo. It's been an exciting experience watching my daily average of sales take off as I steadily write and publish.
It's truly an amazing time to be a writer. For the first time in history, I can sit down, write a story, and share it with the world in a matter of hours, using only my computer. Self publishing is a new industry and it's one that I hope will be here forever. It's just too convenient to ever go away unless some seriously disconnected legislation passes through in an effort to recover 'lost' tax revenues. That's a subject for another time. This post is a celebration.
I have crossed the first major goal I set for myself when I started back in November of 2011. It was an outlandish goal. One I never dreamed I could reach. But not only have I met my $200/day goal, I'm looking to obliterate it before the end of the month. Why $200/day? It was just some crazy number to grasp after.
Now that I've reached it, though...It just doesn't feel real. It's actually possible to make a living through the work I love. While I still plan on becoming a teacher, I'm never giving up my writing. It's too integral to my life...my thought process. Anyways, here's to the future.
After seeing such awesome results in July, I've been throwing everything I've got into writing and publishing new works for August. Last month was my largest month yet as far as book sales go, netting me over $5000, but I'm pushing myself to outperform July even though I was on vacation for a week of it.
To start with, I was able to publish my very first children's picture book, My Funny Pet Monster. It's done reasonably well so far and I plan on writing and illustrating more children's books in the future since this one was so fun to make.
My next focus has been releasing another set of scary stories for kids. Today, I was able to publish the last of the four scary stories as well as the bundle containing all of them. Writing scary stories reminds me of the times I would read Goosebumps as a kid and I've striven to capture the same creep factor in my stories.
Beyond that, I released my very first science fiction story for kids this week as well. It follows the story of a child who grows up in a human zoo created by the robots after they secure world domination. It's a fun read and I hope it spark some thought about the human condition.
That's it for this week so far. It's been rewarding to see my library of books continue to grow and even more rewarding still to watch as more and more people read my work. Next week I'll be posting my next story (one that I am very excited about).
Until then,
Trip
I just completed and published my first collection of scary stories. My aim was to start a series that will be enjoyable to read for a wide range of ages in the spirit of Alvin Schwartz and his amazing collection titled Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I loved reading his book when I should have been asleep and giving myself the creeps.
Since this is a collection of stories, I've compiled them together in a bundle you can view below. For those of you just wanting to check out one or two of them, I will be selling each of these scary stories separately for $0.99 (psss, but the bundle is a better deal).
Creepy cover?
When I woke up this morning, I was pleased to discover that Amazon had published latest short story, Throne of the Sea. I had a lot of fun with this one and plan on building on this series as time goes on.
When an enemy tribe steals the chief's daughter, Fallon, along with his best friend Reth, must leave their home behind and journey across their island to rescue her.
Unlike most fantasy books, Throne of the Sea takes place in a Polynesian-inspired fantasy world full of islands, tribes, and giant flying birds. I drew several influences from the Maori culture of New Zealand as well. Here is the cover:
I like to perform all sorts of tweaks and experiments to see what gets better results. My first cover for Fracture was made very quickly and I wasn't completely happy with how the ship stood out. It also didn't highlight the fact that there is a very awesome space battle in it as well. So, in an effort to make it as easy as possible for the reader to know what a story is about, the cover now looks like this:
Much better, don't you think? The colors are brighter, the ships are engaged in battle, and best of all, space debris! Let me know what you think by commenting below. The changes should update on Amazon within the next day or so.
July is here already and my 30-day 30-short stories experiment has ended. It'll probably take me a while to get around to publishing all of them since each cover takes anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours, depending on how long it takes me to be happy with it.
With that said, I've just published my next SF short story, called The Dreamer. Here's the description:
The inhabitants of Complex C live a placid life. No one was unhappy. No one had trouble sleeping. No one talked about the past or the future. Every day went by in pleasant conformity, set against the backdrop of the clean white building or the sunny yard with the thirty-foot stone wall over which all one could see was the sky. They ran laps. They played ball. They laid on their backs in the grass and found shapes in the clouds, and life was fine.
But then one day, one man began to dream...
As you can see, it's a bit different than the space/futuristic SF I've been writing recently, but I had fun with it and I think you will enjoy reading it. You can view the Amazon page by clicking here.
June was also my most successful month so far, moving over 35,000 free and paid copies of my written works across all of my pen names (30,000 were all thanks to one breakout hit that peaked at #3 in the free Kindle store before the campaign ended). It's a very exciting time right now and I have several new titles in the works. Look for more from me soon.
A few months ago I had a very bizarre dream involving space and two warring civilizations. When I woke up, I jumped over to my computer and typed out as much as I could remember before it faded away. Fracture is the result of that dream.
Fracture follows the story of a female scientist aboard one of earth's military vessels who has dedicated her life to studying a very odd anomaly in space - one that just so happens to fall within the territorial claims of the Krian, a humanoid race at war with the humans.
This short story is available on Amazon, and you can click here to be taken straight to the Amazon product page.
While I design the cover art for all of my stories, this was the first one that called for me to use my Wacom tablet. I know that I'm probably breaking all sorts of design rules, but it was fun to paint and I did my best to capture the mood of the story.
For those of you just tuning in, I've dedicated the better part of June to writing short stories, the majority of which are Science Fiction. Well, I've put together 4 of these stories in a single Science Fiction Short Stories collection that you can download for free right now for your kindle or any device that can run Amazon's kindle software.
Click Here to be transported to the Amazon page. Grab them while you can and, if you like them, feel free to write a review.