Permuted Press Publishing Deal

For me, the difference between a writer and an author is that authors have traditional publishing deals. The ones with advances on novels and publishing contracts with commercial entities.

I've always been leery of calling myself and author, having self-published a novel and sold a multitude of short stories and edited an anthology for a publishing house.

Now, I feel I am an author.

I have been approached by Permuted Press with an offer to buy Tankbread and the unpublished sequel, Immortal.

This is why we write. We tell ourselves it is because we have stories to tell, it keeps the voices subdued, we don't do it for the money - yeah right. Billy Connolly once said that people say money can't buy you happiness, but that's bullshit. It's fucking great.

I'm in no position to quit my day job, but I feel I have been reimbursed for the time and effort and investment I have made in producing Tankbread.

Now I have a deadline to finish the sequel (September 2013) and working on that has made it clear that a 3rd book in the trilogy, which I am calling Deadland will have to follow.

After that, it could be anything. I have so many different post-apocalyptic tales to tell - some with zombies, some without. The future is bright (but also quite grim).

Tales From The Bell Club

Tales From The Bell Club, published by Knightwatch Press. Edited by Paul Mannering.

Including stories from some fantastic authors from New Zealand, Australia and around the world.

“Welcome to the Bell Club,” he said. 

“Commiserations on your membership.” 

~ Helen Stubbs, Sayuri’s Revenge

Table of Contents:

The Kiss - Jason Nahrung

The Adventure of the Laboratory - Kathleen Dale

The Quarantine Station - Lee Clark Zumpe

A Gentleman's Folly - Phil Hickes

The Widow Dotridge - Douglas J. Moore

Sayuri’s Revenge - Helen Stubbs

Divine Providence - Robert J. Santa

Tell Tom Tildrum - Edward M. Erdelac

Fluke - Lynne Jamneck

Spawn Of The Crocodile God - John McNee

Life and Limb - Andrew Freudenberg

The Girl In The Cabin - Richard Barnes

The Wager - Jeff C. Carter

The Shrieking Woman - Doug Manllen

Beer

I drank a lot of beer over the last few weeks. Firstly there was my 40th birthday to celebrate. But more importantly, before that I saw Tankbread go up on Amazon.

It has been a long term goal of mine to have a book for sale before my 40th. So I achieved that. Actually I achieved that twice.

Tankbread is also available through Smashwords, and now I have removed the reference to the Kindle edition it should go into their premium catalog which means it should be available through other sites - like Apple and Barnes and Noble some time in about a week.

I'm mildly bi-polar (it was the official diagnosis about 20 years ago) so I've crashed a bit after the birthday. It's why I haven't updated the blog in a while and why I haven't sealed the deal with putting Tankbread out in a print edition.

The ebook editions are selling, of both books. Marketing is not a full time job so I'm not retiring soon. I'm experimenting with price and the idea of imputed value. It will be interesting to see what the right price for both books are.

Of course I'm writing flat out. I have a new collection of short stories in the works the title story is 'The Tao of The Tattoo' which I am still writing.

I'm also editing an anthology for Knightwatch Press, working on various other novel ideas, managing Tankbread: The Audio Book Edition and producing another Audiobook called 'The Last Ringbearer' which is a story set in Middle Earth told from the POV of the orcs.

Not My Daisy

With Not My Daisy we return to the realms of insanity. It's a recurring theme in the collection and one that seems to have an inexhaustible wellspring of stories for me to write.

The idea of a man who is clearly insane from the get go allowed me to explore what fears a serial killer has. He isn't some all powerful destroyer and corrupter. He is a terrified and anxious individual who is doing what he can to keep his world safe and pure. Of course along the way a lot of innocent girls are going to suffer horrific deaths at his hands.

Loose Lips

A complete change of pace for the collection, 'Loose Lips' is a previously unpublished bizarro story. I've been a fan of all manner of insane writing for a long time. Jeremy C. Shipp is one of my favourite bizarro authors and his writing can be somewhat mild compared to others like Cameron Pierce. Lips is a change of pace for the collection, and the first of the non-horror stories therein. It is however still a strange tale and that's why it is included.

In The Weeds

The next story in 'The Man Who Could Not Climb Stairs and Other Strange Stories' was first published by Altair Books Australia in the 'Leaves of Blood' anthology this story was written around the idea of plant based horror. I immediately thought of biological warfare, and the sort of crazy things they might have come up with during the Vietnam War era. It was suggested at the time by the editor that the building in the story was an under-utilised horror element and I intend to revisit The Botanical Warfare Facility in a future story.

The Birth

First published by now defunct magazine 'The Willows,' this story was an homage to HP Lovecraft and the weird Universe he created. It's a pastiche but many great writers have done that, each one adding to the Cthulhu Mythos with their own macabre tales.
All the usual elements are there. An intellectual male, strident in his belief in science, finds himself in a situation that cannot be explained or perhaps survived.

I've always loved HP Lovecraft's stories. Mostly because they don't generally have happy endings. That in itself creates a sense of realism that is lacking in most fiction.

Too often there is the expectation that good will triumph over evil, that the good guys will win. But horror doesn't require that. One of the best elements of horror is when we realise that in fact, we can never be the same again. There can be no return to the safe ignorance of before. The reader, like the protagonist, is transformed by their experience.

The Man Who Could Not Climb Stairs and Other Strange Stories

I set myself a goal that before my 40th birthday I would have something substantial of my won published. I managed that by self-publishing (currently through Amazon) a short story collection of 21 tales of the weird and the strange and the horrific. 'The Man Who Could Not Climb Stairs and Other Strange Stories' is available as an ebook for Kindle (which means it's available through the Kindle device and all the free apps for reading the Amazon ebook format.

Where could you end up if the only way were down?
An alien invasion requires catering…
A school master has an answer to the problem of insolent boys…
Halloween in a town where it’s terror or treat…
A stowaway to the stars holds humanity’s future in his hands…
A pregnant man has an insane mid-wife…
In a distant future lumberjacks murder trees on the edge of space…
A doll collector who will do anything to keep his girls pure…
A coroner conducts an autopsy and opens a gateway to Hell…

The print version should be out by the end of October.

I'd rather be read than rich!

When Amazon's top sellers are the cheapest e-books even the main-stream publishers are taking notes.

Consider that with Amazon if you sell an e-book through them at $2.99 you get $2.00

At $0.99 you get 35 cents.

If a top seller sells 75,000 copies a month at $2.99 and 3780,000 copies at $0.99 he makes a comparable income of over $128,000 a month (less tax) the key difference is that at $2.99 he makes that by only selling 75,000 copies, and at $0.99 he sells over 370,000

All writers will tell you they would rather have readers than income. Most of my published work never earns me a dime - but a recent check on BrokenSea's Doctor Who series download stats shows we have over 2000 downloads a week. Not bad for minimal promotion on our part.

My self-published books this year are going to be sold for $0.99 cents. That's a couple years worth of work for each of them and I value it at a lot more - but I have a job. I don't need to sell books to eat or pay rent.

I'd rather be read than rich!

Amazon Reviews

It occurs to me, reading the Amazon reviews of books that I might buy - anything in the 4-5 star strata is automatically ignored. Those people have ignored the faults in the book.

The 3 star raters are apologising for not drinking the Koolaide and loving it.

But the 1-2 star reviewers. Those are the people who read critically.

The ones who hated you since Kindergarten - well they stand out and can be ignored. But this is the reviews you should be reading. They are the ones that note the faults, the flaws and the stupid editing you did.

I often click Yes this was helpful in the reviews - because it is from our critics that we learn. It's a kind of tough-love for a lot of writers.

The recent ROFL of the internet community over Big Al's review of The Greek Seaman is a classic example. The author should have read the review, and gone back and used it to critically edit her own work. Instead she got into a flame war that destroyed her credibility as a writer and invoked an enthusiastic popcorn-munching crowd of specators revelling in someone publically humiliating themselves, over and over again.