Excerpt From The Case of the Haunted Vampire

As promised last week, here's an excerpt from my first book. Just a tiny bit of background on the story so far. Paul (the vampire) and Dafydd (the warlock) have met and are working together to figure out how to get rid of a ghost that's been haunting Paul. They are off to the library to do research, and they need to get Paul from the Metro to the library, in the sun, without him bursting into flames. Dafydd has kind of an unusual plan.


Excerpt from The Case of the Haunted Vampire

I was yawning the next morning as I hung around the Dupont Circle exit. Brewing the potion had taken a lot longer than I had expected, and I hadn't gotten to bed until a few hours ago. I probably shouldn't have bothered trying to sleep, but I hoped I'd gotten enough down time to avoid falling asleep in the library stacks.

I was checking my watch for the fifth or sixth time--vampires are supposed to be evil, not late--when I felt a cool hand on my shoulder. I probably would have looked funny with my head through the roof, but I managed to keep my warlock cool. Just.

"You're late," I said as I turned around. Have you ever seen a vampire look harried? Hmm. Guess not since you probably haven't seen a vampire before. Suffice it to say he did.

"Sorry. The Red line was hung up. Track maintenance or something. I thought they only did that at night."

I guess he didn't travel much during the day. "Usually, but last winter was so bad they're still catching up."

He shrugged. "I'm here now. Guess we should get this potion thing over with." He looked as thrilled at that as I would be at getting a tooth pulled.

I glanced around for someplace relatively private. It didn't seem a good idea to have him drink the potion and shrink down right in the middle of the ticket area. Paul must have caught the direction of my thoughts. "Over here. There's a service tunnel. I use them all the time. They don't usually say anything if you don't hang out there too long."

We hurried down the tunnel, and I pulled out the potion bottle. "Quick. Drink it down."

He took it and glanced at it doubtfully. "You're sure about this?"

I nodded. "Yeah. It's one of my best. I even figured out how to more than halve your mass, so you'll definitely be light enough to drag."

The vampire frowned, his dark eyes troubled. Then he shrugged. "Well, it's been fun. Give my regards to Natalie if this kills me."

"You're already dead," I pointed out.

"Right. If this makes me deader." He lifted the bottle in a mock toast and gulped it down like a whiskey shot. And made a horrible face. That worried me. It couldn't be the taste. I'd added syrup to hide the less savory ingredients.

"Yuck! Hazelnut! I hate hazelnut."

Oh. I hadn't known. I blushed. "Sorry. I was trying to make it taste good."

He swallowed, hard. "Guess I should have said something. Next time, maybe mocha?"

"I can do that."

He glanced down at himself. "Shouldn't it be doing something?"

"Give it a minute."

Just as I finished speaking, he gave a loud "Oh!" and shrank down to about two feet tall. I grinned and refrained from pumping a triumphant fist in the air. I knew it would work!

"See, oh doubtful one."

His eyes were wide as he looked up at me. "Um. Wow. Everything looks so different down here."

I opened up the suitcase. "Quick. Inside."

He glanced warily inside. I had cushioned it with a couple of towels. "Great. Looks like the inside of a cat carrier."

"Don't argue. Just get in." I glanced over my shoulder. "That attendant is starting to look suspicious." I was blocking his view of Paul, but if he came over, the game would be up.

The vampire sighed. "Here goes." And he jumped into the suitcase. I quickly zipped it closed and left the station before the attendant could ask me what was going on.

What do you think? Was it fun? Want me to print more excerpts in the future?

A Changing Marketing Plan

Honestly, it's killing me to sit on a nearly finished book without releasing it, and sometimes I wonder if it feels like a tease to the readers of this blog. So I thought I'd talk about my original marketing plan and how and why it's changed over the last year. Which will explain why I continue to sit on my first book.

About a year ago I started reading an excellent blog on self-publishing, A Newbie's Guide To Publishing. Follow it. It's excellent, and I'm stealing most of what Konrath talks about as I make this journey.

Soon after I started reading the blog, the characters of Paul and Dafydd sort of dropped into my head and said, "Write us!" How could I refuse the request of two incredibly hot guys, one of whom was a vampire? I thought this through. The main keys to success in self-publishing seemed to be:

1. Have lots of books
2. Sell them cheaply
3. Have a great cover and description

I decided I could do that. But I didn't have a huge pile of unpublished novels sitting on my hard drive. I had two, both of which required as much work as writing new books. And I had these two guys bugging me to write their story.

So I figured I could cheat. Instead of writing full novels, I'd start by writing novellas of about 15K-25K words. I'd publish them for .99 each and try that. Over time, I figured I'd graduate to full novels. I'd even decided to rewrite one of the existing unpublished novels as a Paul and Dafydd story. I was going to trumpet it as "Paul and Dafydd's first full length novel!"

The Case of the Haunted Vampire cooperated nicely, coming in at about 18K words. I thought it would take me another six months to write two more like it and then I'd be ready to release.

Then Amazon added a new royalty structure. In addition to the 35% plan, they started offering a 70% plan. The kicker? The book had to be priced between $2.99 and $9.99. But how could I resist a doubled royalty?

Back the drawing board. I'd always planned to release the first book for free at Smashwords and for .99 at Amazon (indie authors can't offer books for free on Amazon). So, I decided, instead of releasing each novella alone, I'd bundle them at two or three per "book." That would justify the $2.99 price. I'd still release Haunted Vampire for free/.99 as the introduction to the series.

No problem. Write two (or maybe now three) more stories, and I could publish!

But The Case of the Lost Werewolf Puppy didn't get the memo. It's at almost 30K words now, and I think the story is about half done. And, as I was writing it, I realized I need to make some significant changes to Haunted Vampire, but I want to finish Lost Werewolf Puppy first and make all the changes at one time. That's the biggest advantage to holding the first book in a series until finishing the second. Dafydd has changed jobs from a part-time stage magician to a multi-level marketer (in addition to being a warlock). Now I can go back and make that change to both books. I'll probably also see if I can lengthen Haunted Vampire by about 5K-10K words. I suspect I can add a few scenes to make the book stronger.

Long story short. Plans change.

But to reward my loyal readers of this blog, next week I'm going to post an excerpt from Haunted Vampire. There was a scene that all my beta readers particularly liked, and I think it gets across the feel of the series very well. Look for "the incredible shrinking vampire" next week!

Sometimes You Just Have To Write Crap

Note that I said "write." I didn't say "publish." It's an important distinction.

Last week was brutal for working on The Case of the Lost Werewolf Puppy. I hit, not really a block, but a very hard section to write. Since I am writing about a warlock who does ritual magic, I thought it might be a good idea to actually write a ritual.

If I'd known what I was setting myself up for, I might have written a series about a vampire and, I don't know, a zombie, maybe.

I was trying for something realistic. Not that the ritual had to work, but I wanted it to sound like it could work. So I did a lot of research on ritual magic, materials, circles and the like. Research was easy. I found herbs and some chants that seemed to fit. I figured it would be easy to pull all that together into a cool-sounding ritual.

Was I ever wrong!

It turned out to be the hardest 1200 words I've ever written. The set-up was easy: getting the space ready, giving Dafydd a bath to purify him, locking up the ferrets so they couldn't get in the way. No problem.

But actually writing the steps to the ritual? Wow! It took me three days to write, and I'll be honest. It's horrible. No one will ever see that draft.

It's okay. I can go back later and rewrite and make it work. But to get to the rewrite stage, first I had to write it. And some authors never get that.

It's possible to psych yourself completely out of writing by worrying about the first draft. "Does it sound okay?" "Do I repeat words?" "Does it flow?"

None of that matters the first time around. Just get down a rough concept. I'm not even sure my tenses are straight in that scene. For some reason, I kept trying to write in present tense, and I'm not sure I caught all the times I slipped. I'll fix it in rewrite. By the time it's done, it'll be cool.

Which is the lesson today. Sometimes you just have to write crap that you can go back and rewrite into roses.

And now, thankfully, I'm back to writing good Paul/Dafydd action. No, not that kind of action, you dirty-minded reader. They're off in search of some dead bodies.

Anyone else want to share how you got past a tough scene (or scenes)?

I'm Back!!!

Okay, I admit, the end of last year sucked for me and writing. As in, I didn't write a word on my book from about mid-November on. So I've made some changes in how I keep myself accountable.

First, I've recommitted to writing as a regular activity. While I didn't write anything for the past month and a half, I did read a lot of blogs about self-publishing, and things are changing. Authors are starting to see success without having a huge back list. A ton of e-readers were sold for the holidays. If there ever was a time to be self-publishing e-books, it's now. Writing for vanity is one thing. That's easy to procrastinate. But writing to make real money? Hey, that's worth making a priority.

Okay, so all well and good to say I've made it a priority. That and $1.69 will get me a medium iced tea at Panera. What specifically have I done to make sure writing happens?

For 2011, I have three areas I am focusing on, for work. One of them is publishing. The other two are related to my coaching business. Each morning, I am dedicating time to planning my day. One of those three areas must be represented each day. And each evening, I look back on the day and write down (in my iPhone, of course), what I did that day to advance each goal. So far, I'm on track for the first two days I've used the system.

I'm also being more specific about my tasks. Instead of a recurring "Work on Werepuppy" task, which I mostly ignored, I'm creating specific tasks based on what I think I can accomplish that day. For the last two days, the task was "Re-read Werepuppy." It had been so long since I'd worked on it that I thought I needed a refresher.

Starting today, my goal is even more specific. Today the goal is "Write 2000" words. I think I can do that since I don't have any meetings scheduled, and I've burned through a lot of admin-type tasks that accumulated over the holidays. Other days, the goal will be smaller. Some days, I won't work on the book at all. That's okay. I'm looking at each day and setting realistic, specific tasks for the day.

I think it will work. I committed to my coach to work on getting these systems working by the end of the month. I'll report later on how it's working.

Enough about process, though. Tune in next week when we have some fun. I'm going to be interviewing my main character, Dafydd the warlock. If you have any questions you want to ask him, put them in the comments, and I'll include them next week.

Here's your chance to ask a fictional character anything you want. Don't miss out!

Review: Successfully Marketing Your Novel in the 21st Century

Successfully Marketing Your Novel in the 21st Century by Austin Camacho

I just finished this book, and I thought a review of it would be entirely appropriate for the blog. I met the author a few months ago through KindleKorner, a Yahoo group I'm a member of. Someone was recommending one of his books as being a good read set in DC. Since my series is set in DC, I decided to give it a try. Blood and Bone is an excellent hard-boiled detective novel. Austin and I met in person, and I've been following his newsletter. In a recent newsletter, he mentioned the book on marketing, and I immediately ordered it, even though it wasn't available as an e-book, and I read very few paper books these days. No regrets. It's good.

The book is primarily aimed at the small-press or self-published author, and he covers almost every element of  book marketing. He talks about the look of the book to make it look less like a self-published piece. He talks about using short stories based on your book as a marketing tools.

He has a lengthy section on ideas to get your book in front of people. If you've never done a reading, he has the template for what he uses at readings of Blood and Bone. I'll certainly be referring to his template when I do my first book reading!

I particularly liked his ideas for non-traditional outlets for your book. He discusses how to get your book in local coffee houses and how to sell them at craft fairs. I never would have thought of the craft fair, but I could see that being an excellent avenue!

Missing from his book were using social media and how to market e-books, not surprising since the book was last revised in 2008, before either of those had hit the big time. However, don't let that stop you from reading it. He's almost convinced me to release Warlock Case Files in Print on Demand versions, just so I can try out some of his ideas.

You can learn more about Austin Camacho at www.hannibaljonesmysteries.com. Oh, and my review of Blood and Bone is currently the featured review on the site. Cool!

November Didn't Quite Work Out as Planned

Remember my goal to write 50K words in November?

Yeah, that didn't happen. Lots of good things happened in November, business-wise. But little of it involved writing.

I saw an hilarious video yesterday about becoming a writer. In it, the aspiring writer quits his day job and has delusions of what his life as a published author will be like. Watch the video. It covers pretty much every misconception of being a writer.

I sure wish I could do the quit the day job thing. Well, not really. I love being a coach, but it does take time away from writing fiction. I know I can do both. Not that you'd know it from last month, but I'm not going to waste my time wishing I'd done more. I'm looking ahead. I've got time scheduled today for writing.

Dafydd has a lot of stories to tell. Time for me to sit down and write them down. I'm setting a much more realistic goal for December. How about 10K words? I think I can manage that.

E-Book Readers: Dedicated or Not?

Allow me to go off-topic a bit today and talk about e-book readers.

I've been reading e-books for almost a decade now, starting with a Handspring Visor running Palm OS and now on my iPhone. I've also used a dedicated e-book reader, so I've experienced e-books in many formats.

The big problem with the current generation of e-book readers is the format wars. Yes, it's Beta vs. VHS and HD vs. Blue Ray all over again.

There are three big contenders in the e-book reader world:

Amazon Kindle
Barnes and Noble Nook
Sony Reader

There are more books available in Kindle format than in .ePub, which is the format used by the other two. But library e-books, which are in .ePub or .pdf format, can't be read on Kindles.

So what is an e-book reader to do? Simple. Buy an iPhone or iPod Touch. These devices are now the most universal e-book readers. There is a Kindle app, a Nook app, Stanza for everything non-DRM, and iBooks, if you simply must buy from Apple.

And now there is BlueFire Reader, which plays nicely with Adobe DRM and allows reading library books. I downloaded and tested it this week, and it works well.

Except for a handful of Mobipocket DRM titles, which can be found in other formats, I can read anything on my iPhone.

Yes, all these also work on the iPad, and I expect BlueFire or a similar app will soon be available for Droid.

Why buy a dedicated reader when your smart phone can read anything? And before you say size does matter, remember that I started reading on a 160 by 160 pixel device. Modern smart phones are way beyond that. And most people have them with them all the time.

Any format. Any time. What's not to like?

Amazon is now selling more e-books than hardbacks. Some recent titles have sold more e-books than hardcovers, including sales from sources other than Amazon. It's a great time to be an author of e-books. What's stopping you from writing one?