March 12th, 2010
Belfire Press has posted 2 announcemtns today, both that include updates about me. In one announcement is news of an upcoming publication date for my sci-fi novella Adopting a Sex Doll. I knew about this for a few weeks now, but I wanted to hold off on saying anything until the deal was official. So now, it's official: I'm going to be published! YEAH!
The other announcement is just as good: I will be joining the Belfire Press staff as a copy editor along with the lovely and uber talented Tracy DeVore. We'll both be filling in for Brandon Layng, who is stepping down to work on other projects that will be keeping him too busy to give the Belfire line his full atention.
Both of these announcments are fantastic news, and I hope to have more good news later in the year from my own imprint, Aphotic Thought Press. So stay tuned, and as always, thanks for reading!
October 23rd, 2009
Ready to start up a new serial adventure? Great, because today I'm kicking off the musical criminal misadventures of shapeshifter Jenny/Marcus Wrigley in my next bawdy tale, Changeling: An Urban Musical Crime Fantasy. Check out chapter 1, and find out who really is the dominant personality for the young shapeshifter.
In other news, I've made a slight change in the story archive to add links to reviews. I'm actually starting to get reviews on the free stories, and I wnt to point out these reviews to new readers so they casn get an idea of what other people thought. It's free publicity for the reviewers blog, and it's an objective opinion about my work, good or bad.
So, that's it for now. Hope you enjoy the new serial, and thanks for stopping by to check the news. ^_^
October 13th, 2009
As the front page summed up, I've moved my wordpress blog to my site, and I've customized the default theme to be more in line with the site design. For now, I intend to continue to mirror content on the worpress.com version of my blog, with some notable exceptions. My blog on this site will have a short blurb for serial fiction posts, and a link to the proper file in my stories archive. There's really no point in posting a story twice on my site and using up extra space and bandwidth. Also, the wordpress text formatting is not really suited to fiction, in my opinion, and I feel that the indented and justified style I'm using here on the site is more fiction friendly.
The main reason for the swap is that the dark themes from WordPress.com are catching complaints from folks about being hard to read. I didn't notice myself at first, but after editing articles there, I've had more vision problems while using the blog's default scheme of grey text on a black background.
Some people may still prefer that kind of design, but eventually, I intend to drop the WP.com site and move everything here. That's been my main goal from the beginning: to integrate all of my content into one portal.
In the meantime, the WP.com version of my site will continue to feature mirrored copies of my serial stories. This will continue until people are more used to checking the blog here.
All the old posts will remain in place, so those of you who linked to article don't need to worry. Nothing is changing that will break old bookmarks. But if you plan on linking to fiction, I ask that you link to the stories archives, and if you link to a blog post, please direct new readers to the blog on this site.
In other news, I've been having a new problem with Amazon regarding international pricing in Kindle e-books. I have already removed links to the Kindle and Mobipocket e-books from my site (Mobipocket is also an Amazon company) and if the pricing policy does not change within the next week, I will be removing all of my e-books from their markets. I cannot remove my print books from their site due to their policies, and I debated removing the Amazon links for the print copies of the Campaign trilogy. But the only other market that the first two books are in is the Lulu storefront, and I hate their international shipping polices worse than I hate Amazon's. (And people hate the Lulu store with a smoldering rage.)
I've made nothing on print sales in the last year, so it's not like exposure in the market helps me or them. People don't buy my print stories, but that's cool. I'll still make them available as an option for some books, like the upcoming A Perfectly Empty Vessel. (Which is with my editor at the time of this writing.)
Kindle owners, if you want an e-book copy in your format, please go to Smashwords. I have Kindle versions as well as five other formats. The free e-books are set at "name your own price," so you can pay whatever you feel is fair. You can even take the book for free and read the whole thing before you decide if you want to pay for the experience or not. This is a lot more fair than Amazon making an arbitrary decision that "dang foreigners" need to pay more for the same e-book.
Okay, that's it for now. Thanks for reading the news, and I hope you like the new blog format. Feel free to send me comments on what you think of the new design.
September 4th, 2009
The first rattle out of the outbox after my return from vacation is an update to the web site. I've updated the interface with new graphics and provided a direct link to my blog at the top of the menu for easier access.
I've also added new photos to the photo album and fixed up some link problems in the videos.
In the stories, I've added slightly more cell padding, and I've introduced a basic navigation menu at the top and bottom of each story section. So now you can just move through the story that way instead of going back the the archive index every time. I also did some editing while I was converting some of the older stories: Eddie's First Circus, the Dead End trilogy, Wake Up With the Kimellians and Dating in the Post-Zombie World. I used the chance of updating the site to get rid of more typos and fix my punctuation problems.
I also added a slogan to the main page. This does nothing useful, but it will change with each update. I did it to give people a reason to look at the main page. Sometimes it will be something new, and sometimes it will be a rerun. You never know.
Let's see...what else? Oh, yeah, I've added a page, Support the site. This is a one page explanation for why I would appreciate your help in maintaining the site, or in getting more traffic.
The other changes were made to improve people's reading experiences here. I've gone with a larger font, so I hope this will help make the fiction archives easier on the eyes.
I've made these changes for you, my dear readers, so if you find something that doesn't work, or doesn't work for you design-wise, feel free to contact me and say, "Hey, that ain't right, bitch." =^P
I hope you like the new design. And hey, if you find any web fiction sites holding a competetition for the best site design, maybe you could help me out with a nomination?
July 23rd, 2009
Blind Rage comes to a close, and with it, the publishing year ends for me. I'll be going on vacation, heading once again to Amsterdam for the Pride weekend. I'll take some extra time off after getting back to finish polishing some projects, and then I can start posting up new stories. You don't need to worry about running out of freebies, since I have several stories stacked in the queue. I'll be offering vampires, ghosts and shapeshifters, among other things. So if you've been enjoying the stories so far, stick around next year. The site is only going to get better as time goes by.
I want to take a moment to say thank you to the people who posted reviews on my free stories, and to those of you who sent in tips through Paypal. The reviews have helped to generate tons of new traffic, leading to both Little Monsters and Blood Relations gaining over 2,000 downloads each. These are amazing numbers, and I really could not have done it without the postive reviews. So I offer you my deepest thanks, and I hope my future stories will be a fitting reward for your noble and kind efforts. And, may I say, your butt tastes particulalry minty today. =^P
Okay, I'll see you in few weeks with the first part of A Phone Man Visits the Vampires.
July 2nd, 2009
I have a story published! The editors of The New Bedlam Project chose my story, The Night Shift in New Bedlam, to appear in ths second issue of the zine. It's a creepy short story that I hope you'll check out, as well as the rest of this month's selections. Oddly enough, Jeff Parish's story this issue is called Little Monsters. You really should read that too, and prepare yoursefl for a shiver at the ending.
In other news, Smashwords is having a sale on all participating e-books this month, and that means you can find the Campign trilogy for even cheaper than the 0.99 price. Just use code SSW25.
Also, I've added Blind Rage to The Web Fiction Guide, and I could really use some ratings to help my score. The same is true with Zombie Punter, which still only has 4 votes. Please, peoples, I just need a little of your time on this, and I'd like to know how you feel with an honest rating or review. To prove that I mean that, look at Blind Rage. It has received a 1 star rating and a poor review. I have not blown up at the reviewer, nor will I. They don't like the story. Okay.
So, if you're reading Zombie Punter or Blind Rage, please consider going to The Web Fiction Guide and leave feedback. Thank you, this concludes another episode of Begs and Pleas of the Bitch Who's Shameless.
June 4th, 2009
A new story begins! Blind Rage is a direct sequel to the Campaign trilogy, and to Erick's Journey. To get a more detailed description, you can check out my blog entry.
I'm really excited to be moving ahead, finally getting into some real dark fantasy stuff. Out of all the mystical creatures, I love weres, who in my world will be known collectively as werekin. The werekin got to show off some of their aggressiveness in Erick's Journey, but their pack mentality was never shown. Plus, the cursed druids of Lissand have given themselves over to their animal natures. So you don't really have a sense of what it's like for a human to undergo a slow transformation into a werekin
Blind Rage will chronicle the formation of the first werekin pack on Earth. And, like all of my creatures in this big bright world, I've got big plans for the "furballs" as Jobe calls them. I hope you like this next story arc as much as I enjoyed writing it, and remember, reviews and ratings are always appreciated. You can jump into the story here, or head to the stories page. It will updated every 3 or 4 days, as the chapters are around 7-9 pages.
In other news, Zombie Punter is now on sale at Mobipocket and the Amazon Kindle store. These are only 0.49 cents, but you should only buy them if you liked the story and feel like tipping me. I know, I sound like a broken record, but I'm told this is how advertising works, by way of repetition.
May 22nd, 2009
I've made some changes to the books page, and some improvements to the design of the book detail pages. First, the books page now has links to some of my e-books. The selections will grow over time, but will only include the e-books that have a cover. Everything else will be offered in stories.
There are buttons for the free file formats, and a list of links to buy copies if you're in the mood to tip me. If not, don't feel bad for grabbing a free copy. Times are tough, and I'm offering freebies to keep you coming back to the site.
The other change is on the book details pages. Now when you click on the thumbnail covers, you'll get a larger image for the covers.
I wanted to mention that Blood Relations was extremely successful for an indie release. The awesome cover made by Karen Koehler and her help with ballyhooing both led to the e-book racking up 1,000 downloads in the first month. So if nothing else, my vampires seem to have potential for carrying a sizeable audience.
I want to continue building on that success with the release of Little Monsters, and with of Zombie Punter. So to help bring in some new readers, I've submitted Zombie Punter to the Web Fiction Guide. To get the story accepted, I had to add links to the bottom of each page. I won't be adding links to the other stories unless I decide to submit them too. It depends on how much traffic their promotion brings in.
Additionally, I'm trying to get the help of a few more well known writers in promoting Zombie Punter. Already Jodi Lee, editor of LBF Books, seems to like it. She's been leaving positive comments on each chapter as I've posted them to my blog, and she's been kind enough to blog about both Zombie Punter and Adopting a Sex Doll.
This has been helpful in moving new traffic in, and the stats are steadily higher. But I could use a LOT more help in this area. So, if you like my stuff, please consider adding a link to my site, or writing a review for any of my stories.
How about it people? Can you help me out, or are you not entertained yet?
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