My novel, The Teddy Bear Conspiracy, which is going to be released in December, is available for free as a contest giveaway on Goodreads. To enter, go here.
Destiny, my science fiction/fantasy novel, which takes place mostly on the planet Reagul (which might be recognized from the upcoming series The Tales of Reagul, which will be released early next year as a three part epic), has been given a new cover and blurb. Here’s the blurb:
The mission was well-planned and intricately carried out. They were going to assassinate the Emperor of Earth. Everything went according to plan. Except one thing.
They failed.
Now on the run from the Empire’s elite guard, Eden System Commander Yeager finds himself on an escape trajectory with a young ensign in his care. Little does he know that this ensign, Laura Bontein, is the reason why Eden is at war with the Empire.
Laura may also be the most powerful being in the galaxy.
They escape to Reagul, a planet in its middle ages and somehow responsible for keeping the emperor alive. Here, Laura begins to discover that Reagul has been planning for her arrival for thousands of years.
Little by little, Laura begins to suspect that her own people, the lost outpost of the Zeus Colonies, may have ties to Reagul going back to the Roman Empire. As the rumors and legends begin to mirror the actions of Laura and Yeager, she begins to believe her arrival on Reagul may have more than a solitary purpose.
It may be her destiny.
Destiny can be found on Amazon (and also in paperback): Here.
During the late 1980s, going into the 1990s, I was in the U.S. Army, and all things considered, I probably had somewhat of a drinking problem. This was the latter part of the era of drinking before people started getting serious about the ramifications of the problem, meaning that we started enforcing drunk driving laws (unlike the past where we swept things under the rug) and Alcohol Anonymous was no longer just a light at the end of tunnels that no one would ever travel through. To understand my perspective on the whole situation, let’s visit the late 1980s and let me share a bit of a story with you.
You see, back then I drank a lot. Every night. It was almost a ritual of service at that time. Work hard during the day and then get plastered at night. Wake up the next day, run PT (most likely throwing up alongside the other soldiers who were all suffering hangovers) and then by the time evening came along, we’d go out and do it again. THAT was pretty much a part of the military lifestyle back then.
I think the apex of this whole situation occurred when a colleague and I decided to take a trip to the Canary Islands. On the plane, we both got plastered, and then when we got to the hotel, we got smashed. And then for the next week, well, I know I had a really good time because I have pictures of me and a lot of very beautiful women cavorting together, but to be honest, I have figments of memories of what actually happened during that week long trip. All I remember was being greeted at the airport on the way back by my fellow GIs, and they had brought beer with them, so we got obliterated on the trip home, too.
A couple of weeks later, I was driving my car back to post (in Germany), and I was extremely inebriated. Some friends were in the car behind me, and they drove up behind me, hitting my bumper and then trying to push my car forward with their own acceleration. I was at an intersection, and as they pushed me forward, or tried to do so as I held down on the brakes, I suddenly sobered up. I was probably still quite drunk, but right at that moment, it suddenly dawned on me that there were other people on this street, that if I just gave in to the fun, who knows what damage (or lives) could have been affected.
Driving home slowly (the other car rushed by me and continued on towards the post), something came over me that made me realize something was wrong. I just was too drunk to really figure out what it was.
The next day was Saturday, so I didn’t have to be at work for a few days, but instead of my usual routine, I decided to skip the club that night. Instead, I sat at home and read a book. My fellow party buddies thought something was wrong, but the next night, I skipped partying again and did something else (don’t remember what it was at the moment but I do know it didn’t involve drinking).
A few days later, I sat down at my computer (one of the early ones…this was the 1980s) and started writing my first novel. In case you’re wondering, it was Innocent Until Proven Guilty, and it was the first work I completed where there was absolutely no alcohol involved. Shortly after that, I began work on my second novel, Loser.
I was reading an article today in Salon, about how alcohol is targeted at women through intricate manipulation and advertising, but I’ll have to be honest that when I was drinking, it just seemed like the thing to be doing. There were no great football beer ads that i remember during this time. Sure, there was peer pressure, but I’ve never been all that susceptible to that sort of thing. For me, all there ever really was involved the “you have to be old enough to drink it” mindset so that when I hit that age, I started imbibing because it felt like a chronological ritual of growing up.
I’ll admit that when I quit partying, it wasn’t the end of alcohol for me; that would come years later, but it did change things for me because that pleasure I received of getting smashed no longer seemed to be of interest to me.
What used to fascinate me was how many of those tests in books I would take that indicated I was most definitely an alcoholic. Do you often drink to excess? I sure did. Do you wake up the next day and not remember moments of the night before? I woke up one morning and couldn’t remember much of what happened the entire week before. Do you ever blackout? When didn’t I? Do you often crave alcohol? And that’s kind of where it breaks off for me, because to be honest, I’ve never craved alcohol. Actually, kind of hate it the more I think about it. I liked the buzz I got, but to be honest, I wasn’t all that excited about the buzz either. I drank back then because it was something to do. I really didn’t like my life back then, and it seemed like a good crutch to fill in the gaps of what was going on and not going on. I’m one of those kinds of guys who never really has romantic relationships, even when I was in the middle of a romantic relationship (if that makes sense). So, drinking filled a void that I basically needed to fill with something.
Fortunately, writing kind of fills that void now. The “thrill” of drinking was the ability to turn off my mind and allow this other sense to overwhelm me. Believe it or not, I get that (and more) from writing. I take myself to another world, and I get to live in that world during the time that I’m writing. It helps me to forget that my current life kind of sucks. Sorry, but it does. I still don’t have romantic relationships, and that part of me has never changed. So, I spend a great deal of time trying to find some way of filling the gaps that basically never get filled.
When I got out of the service, I didn’t quit drinking completely, although I became more of a social drinker. My friend Kat would drink from time to time, so I would drink with her. When we parted ways, I basically just stopped drinking completely because like I said before, it never really gave me anything that I was lacking anywhere else.
And that’s been years for me now. A friend of mine visited me for a week a few weeks ago, and when we were at the store shopping for groceries, she asked me if I wanted any alcohol, and it never even crossed my mind that I might be interested. Alcohol has no value in my daily life, and it’s not something I seek out. At one time, I was going to start drinking red wine, but only because I heard that it had certain heart benefits. Never did get around to buying any though.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I suspect that alcohol serves a purpose for everyone that consumes it, and what’s important is finding if that purpose is strong enough and whether or not it can be replaced with something else. For me, writing served as my alternative. But then, I’ve never been addicted, even though I can’t even begin to tell you how many people over the years said I must have a problem because of how I answered some of those questions. One person I know who is an alcoholic thinks I have some kind of strength to stop as I did, but I never saw it that way. I have my own vices and my own things that need to be dealt with (we all do). Alcohol just doesn’t seem to be one of them. Others, unfortunately, can’t say the same thing.
From September 21 to September 25, The Ameriad is available free on Amazon Kindle. This will be the last time it goes free as I will be removing it from Kindle Select after this promotion (so I can sell it on the Nook and other e-readers).
If you like it, please leave an Amazon review. It would be greatly appreciated as reviews seem to be really hard to come by these days.
I’m sure my story isn’t that different from everyone else’s story. Most of us grew up with a best friend or two (over the years) and then life may or may not kept us together. If you watch a lot of the movies that get released starring the usual suspects of male friends, you get the impression that these friends stay close friends forever, basically until they reach middle age and go through their middle age crisis moments together.
Unfortunately for me, that didn’t happen. And strangely enough I kind of wish it did. Let me explain.
I’ve had two really close best friends over the years. One was my friend Roland, who I believe I met when we were both about two or three years old. We lived across the way from each other in a low-income apartment complex, and my first memory of Roland was a fight we had where both of us went home crying to our parents. Immediately after that, I remember his mom and my mom conducting some kind of UN conference where the two of us were forced to become friends again. We remained friends from that moment forward, proving that, yes, the UN sometimes DOES work.
Our friendship lasted most of our childhood. Both of us bought the same blue Schwinn bicycle and we rode miles and miles on those things together. It was not unusual for the two of us to race 26 miles down the beach to Redondo Beach, California and then back to Santa Monica. For us, the enjoyment was the journey of traveling down the bicycle trail together, back in the days when you could actually ride down those paths without running over a million girls on roller skates.
Some of my most memorable moments were with Roland, including when we would run into Dom Deluise at the local department stores and then at McDonalds shortly after. We explored the world together and learned about the world as a shared experience only friends can truly appreciate.
When I was a young teenager, my mom died after a horrible illness that slowly drained her of life. When she died in the hospital, I remember calling Roland because he was the only person I wanted to talk to. Shortly after, he showed up with his mom and dad to the hospital, making sure that I wasn’t alone on that horrible day.
Soon after, I moved in with my older sister and her husband, which forced me to move away from Santa Monica. Roland and I kept in touch by phone, and every now and then I’d figure out a way to take the bus for a few hour trip to visit him, and sometimes he’d do the same to come to me. But as we were further and further away, we sort of drifted apart until we stopped calling and then never saw each other again. It’s one of those things I regretted deeply over the years, but life takes you where life takes you.
In Moorpark, my new home, I made friends with the person who was to become my next best friend, Ken. While we didn’t have the history that Roland and I had, we quickly built a friendship and quickly made up for the lack of history by inventing all sorts of adventures together. One of my favorite moments in high school was when the two of us were taking a Spanish class, and we were the two students who had already finished alll the lower level Spanish stuff so we were kind of put into a corner by ourselves to study on our own because they didn’t have a high enough level class for us to take. Because we were always together, we made a lot of noise and had a lot of fun. So the teacher felt she had to separate us. Therefore, we did what any normal duo of friends would do: We invented a sign language that allowed us to communicate from across the room from each other. We learned it quickly and immediately really pissed off the teacher who decided she wasn’t going to win this battle, so she let us sit next to each other again and never tried to separate us again.
A few years later, after graduation, I joined the Army and Ken joined the Air Force. At one point, we were both in Germany at the same time, so I decided to hop into my Volkswagon Scirroco (sic), pick up Ken and drive the two of us to Paris, France. It was a wild, fun adventure that involved some young girl we found to help us find a hotel (because neither of us could speak French) who the hotel owner thought was a prostitute because she was negotiating the room for two American GIs (and then left with a smile right after she secured us the room, which caused the old woman working the hotel to suddenly realize she had played the wrong cards in her assumptions).
That was pretty much our last get together. Ken ended up being accepted to the Air Force Academy and is a colonel today, probably going to be a general one of these days. I wish him well, but I regret that our friendship faded and we really don’t talk any more.
Strangely enough, both Roland and Ken have connected with me through Facebook, so every now and then I see what’s going on in their lives, which when I think about it is actually kind of sad because at one time I was very close to both of them, and like that one hit wonder song “now they’re just somebody that I used to know”.
Weirdly enough, when I made contact with them on Facebook, I immediately had this feeling that I had found a long, lost friend and then things were going to be great again. And we rarely even communicate, which forces the “You Can’t Go Home Again” by Thomas Wolfe to play through in my head (which is funny because it’s probably one of the most often quoted titles of a book that people have never actually read themselves, so when they pretend to have read it, I always say “Stop Twampling!” just to see if there’s a reaction, which when there’s none I know they’re bullshitting me about having read it). Wolfe’s idea is somewhat true, and you never really understand it until the events play out that show you how true it really is. I read that book a decade or so ago, yet until I made contact with those two former friends, I never made the connection to what he was truly saying.
My novella, All Roads Lead to Pine Bush, will be free on Amazon for the next few days (until Friday). So visit Amazon and get the book free. The book goes free tomorrow morning and then on Saturday goes back to the regular price.
The book giveaway for my science fiction, time traveling novel Thompson’s Bounty is active on Goodreads. Sign up for it, and you can get a free paperback copy of the book.
I recently spent some time analyzing how many sales I’ve had through Amazon. Keep in mind, this doesn’t count sales through other services (just Amazon). But what I discovered was kind of fascinating, because if you haven’t been paying attention to it, the information kind of sneaks up on you and tries to stab you in the back. Or at least jumps out from the shadows and says “boo!”.
For the record, I’ve been selling books on Amazon as ebooks since 2008. Granted, hardly a single one sold back then, but I was trying to sell one book (Thompson’s Bounty) way back then. Shortly after, Innocent Until Proven Guilty came along, and then a few years later, everything else sort of exploded into print. What’s interesting is that if you look at the numbers (and yes, most people know I’m a number crunching kind of guy), you’ll discover that in 2008, combined with 2009, I sold 9 copies of Thompson’s Bounty. And that’s it. In 2010, I sold 7 books, mixed between the first two I mentioned earlier. And then 2011, well, just kind of went nuts. I sold 181 books, spread out over 8 different titles. 2012 was a little less successful with 135 books sold. Strangely enough, 2013, of which we are only in June, has had 110 sales. Not counted were 77 sales that occurred just last month, so you can see that 2013 has already surpassed both 2011 and 2012, and we’re not even halfway through the year.
As for money, that’s increasing as well, which makes sense when you follow the number of sales.
The quandary for me in publishing has always been trying to figure out how to sell to more readers, or at least how to get readers to at least know my books exist. I wish I could say I’ve found the answer to that, but I haven’t yet. But I’m still searching, experimenting and performing ritual sacrifices to The Shania in hopes of figuring that out.
Anyway, not much of a post about the usual stuff, but as I rarely discuss the business side of the craft, I thought I would share this with you all (which by “all”, I obviously mean my two stuffed animals who make up my readership).
Last night, the book giveaway for The Ameriad finished on Goodreads. I’d like to think it was successful as 669 people requested the book, and now I have to send out 10 copies of it to the winners chosen by Goodreads. At the same time, 264 people added the book to their “to read” lists, although some of those people may have already taken that option before the contest, and there’s no guarantee that any of those people are ever going to read the book, as they may have just added it as a part of the contest. The interesting thing so far is that no copies have sold as a result of the contest SO FAR, which leaves me wondering about the usefulness of this marketing opportunity.
My next novel to be given away is Thompson’s Bounty: A Ship Out of Time, and it is at the very beginning of its contest at 50 entries and 16 people wanting to read it. Little by little, I’m wondering if this whole thing is even worth it, as the market seems very sided against a writer trying to make a living.
One of the few joys of being a writer, especially a science fiction/fantasy writer, is being able to craft an entirely new world. When I first started writing, one of the mistakes I used to make was just to create a generic world that seemed like it could have been any place and then kind of hope that people would gravitate to it like Middle Earth or some brilliantly constructed world like the ones you might read in a series like the Wheel of Time. Unfortunately, it took me some time to realize that it doesn’t do your story a whole lot of good if the land you create is generic and unreal. Unfortunately, it took me numerous stories to start to realize that it needed more than just a generic compass heading.
So, fast-forward a few years later, and one of the worlds I have been constructing for over a decade now is one called Reagul, which for a history lesson is a land that was terra-formed by an alien race and survivors of the Roman Empire were transplanted onto the planet in some elaborate experiment of social species interactions. In this land, magic exists in the guise of advanced science, taught by the founders themselves, and the people who grow up on this planet have knowledge of Earth, but over time begin to talk about Earth as more of a legend than something real.
But to do this, I needed an actual land mass that might make sense. So, years ago, this was the first drawing I created that was supposed to represent the main continent:
It was originally a pencil drawing, and it served as the ground work for a novel I wrote called Destiny, which was a revisit to the land of Reagul 3000 years after the inhabitants founded the civilization there, which if you equate it to our time line, means that it takes place about one thousand years in our future.
Over the last decade, I’ve been wanting to write the story of that land that occupied that 3000 years that I hadn’t yet discussed. So I started with a time line, and slowly incorporated a rudimentary outline to explain what happened over time. This was the birth of Sarbonn, the first great wizard of Reagul (and not ironically, the name of this particular web site where my blog is hosted). Over the years, I’ve written numerous short stories about Sarbonn so that he has become my one great story that kept being told over and over with more and more flesh each time he was revisited.
But the story of Reagul still hadn’t been told. And thus, I created The Tales of Reagul, which was a 400 page novel that built the foundation for where the first three hundred years of history might take place. And then a few years ago, I realized that even that story was more of an outline, which has propelled me to begin writing the trilogy that will fill in the gaps that this first story so desperately needed. In the next few months, the first novel of this trilogy will be released, called A Season of Kings.
As part of this project, I went through and started to flesh out more map-oriented information:
My latest addition to the project is to hire a cartographer who I hope can turn my weak attempt at a map into something solid, something that gives Reagul the respect it so deserves. I will keep you informed on the progress of this, as it has to happen before the first novel is completed.
My novel, The Teddy Bear Conspiracy, which is going to be released in December, is available for free as a contest giveaway on Goodreads. To enter, go here.
Destiny, my science fiction/fantasy novel, which takes place mostly on the planet Reagul (which might be recognized from the upcoming series The Tales of Reagul, which will be released early next year as a three part epic), has been given a new cover and blurb. Here’s the blurb:
