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This is actually kind of fun. My review copies have been received by two reviewers, and one of several give-away contests is under way as well. First up, you can read my guest blog about how you can’t ignore the mundane world around when writing urban fantasy unless you ignore it absolutely…
That’s at: Sidhe Vicious Reviews Go read the article and be a part of the giveaway. Included are two copies of the trade paperback of Deep Blue, a limited edition of The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J. Diggs & The Currently Accepted Habits of Nature, and an ARC of Vintage Soul.
Review copy also showed up at SARAH’S URBAN FANTASY BLOG where they seem to be taken with the cover art. Thank you Alan Clark for the great artwork.
I have another interview coming…give me a chance to get through the questions and turn them in, and I’ll link to that as well.
Onward!
-DNW
 Every now and then I insert notes about this guy into my posts as an example of how writers find stories – or how stories find writers. I’ve often said I don’t “come up” with stories, I live them. In great part, this is true. When I sit down to write, a lot of myself, and my life go into the words. A lot of those around me get sucked in as well, and sometimes all it takes is an unsolved mystery (thank you Scooby Doo) to get the creative ball rolling.
Coleman is a strange case. We met him shortly after moving to Hertford. You can’t miss him. He’s well over six feet tall and has a BOOMING voice. All day he wanders up and down the streets, giving the reversed peace symbol to everyone. He always says the same few things. “She WOOoore MAH WIFE. They say I KIIiiilllled her. She wore MAHn” – variations on this. There are other things. Sometimes if you manage to walk behind him he goes on with more of a complete rendition of whatever this is.
As far as we’ve been able to find out, Coleman has always lived locally. He’s never been in the military, but dresses like he has – camouflage pants, olive green jacket, and always that read ballcap.
I started thinking one day…and I can tell you, though it’s not written yet, that I have an entire novella planned explaining the story, why he yells it, the whole thing, all dragged from the fictional history of Old Mill, NC. I’ll have to change Coleman to protect the innocent, but just trying to fill in the who-what-when in my head of his story gave me all kinds of ideas.
 The other part of this post is a quick announcement. My novel “Maelstrom” (see link at the top of the page under Novels for an excerpt) will no longer be coming out from the now defunct Full Moon Press. The good news is that it WILL come out from Bad Moon Books sometime in the future, and that it will probably retain the very cool Alex McVey cover. Also cool is this. There will be a limited signed HC edition – only printed in the number that are pre-ordered. Then, there will be a commercially available and affordable trade paperback with NO limitation…available until the cows come home. In other words…this will have an affordable reader’s edition. I’m jazzed about that…too many times my books have ended up in expensive signed editions and found limited readership. This time it has a fighting chance!
Ginger is off getting her “hair done” at the doggie salon. My daughter’s new computer is waiting at home to be configured and mailed off to her at college. It’s a busy time, and there’s bad weather coming in again…I expect that I will find time – in all of that – to write.
-DNW
Over at Flames Rising they do book reviews. A lot of these reviews, maybe all of them, are for products that have gone up for sale through their Drive-Thru Horror/Fantasy/RPG sites. I have been putting all of the Macabre Ink digital titles there. Recently This is My Blood became a featured selection…this is what happened:
Available at DriveThruHorror.com
Written by David Niall Wilson
I’ve only been a reviewer on da’ flames for about a scant 6 months now (my, how time does fly), but I’ve already read and reviewed some good books within that time. In one particular case however, I decided to read and review a book (Personal Effects- Dark Art) after reading a featured preview. As it turned out, this was a good book and was worth taking the leap and I told myself I would review more featured books in the future. And now I’ve recently read the featured preview of This is My Blood. This preview also grabbed me by the attention and I took another leap of faith. Was my faith rewarded?
Well before I answer this question, I feel a need to explain my review style. For those of you who’ve read my past reviews, I hope you’ve enjoyed them. If always been a philosophy and goal to make my reviews as enjoyable, including adding what I think are sometimes witty and/or silly bits of humor, sarcastic remarks, different points of view, where I am coming from on a given subject and so on. I feel that if I can’t keep you interested or entertained along the way, you probably won’t acquire the interest to look into the items that I’ve enjoyed nor think twice about looking into the items that I didn’t. Well, I’m scraping this method this time around for a more serious review.
So why am I traveling along a more serious route today? The answer ties into the first question when I asked “was my faith rewarded?” In a word I could say “absolutely” or even “completely, but I don’t feel that either of these words (or any group of words in general) will do this book justice. This is My Blood is nothing short of amazing, and I believe that no matter how hard I’d try, I won’t be able to give it the praise it deserves. So instead of my attempts at long winded goofy commentary in the hopes of encouraging you to sit down to this book, I’m simply going to implore you to read this extraordinary piece of literature. And to that end, I’m going to attempt to obtain your interest by stating the facts and I see them. So please follow along with me on this one, I wouldn’t just ask if I didn’t feel so strongly about this book.
++>>Read the entire review at Flames Rising…honestly the best review of this novel ever written by a reader who truly “got” it on every level. Exactly how I’d hoped readers would react.
Just another group of lolz to brighten your morning. If you spit coffee…it’s my fault. Srsly.
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Tonight I worked on Chapter Three of my novel. It wasn’t as problematic as Chapter Two, so it didn’t take eleven passes to get it to my liking. In fact, I may have been less than clear about Chapter Two. it was the last page or so that I rewrote endlessly. There is a particular setting that will recur in all of the DeChance novels, and may even become the focus of a future book. It didn’t feel right. I kept forcing it, or glossing it over, or making it different than I know it will seem later in the book. In the end, I sort of wrote it from scratch with the intention of spreading the changes to all the other places it’s mentioned.
There is a recurring setting in Chapter Three as well, but I think I’m just more comfortable with it. I added some touches that were suggested by readers during the great Nanowrimo blitz in November and early December that will help me to stabilize the problems I sensed in the book when the first draft came to its end.
The book will be longer, stronger, and richer. The characters will be deeper – descriptions more detailed. It’s just going to be a more mature novel than it might have been. I’m not sure what hit me – but something did. Epiphany, I suppose. I just couldn’t let it slide the way it was, and I’m very glad that – though it will take longer – that I’m doing all the work. Donovan needs to be around for many books to come, so the least I can do is flesh him out and give him a proper world to wander through.
Tomorrow I’ll look at Chapter Four, and who knows. I may be spinning my wheels again. In any case, forward progress has been made. Also working with my youngest son to get his homework, extra credit, and studying done. I’ve missed the chance to do that for too many years…
Onward!
-DNW
I’ve been digging around other people’s sites and taking in all the various opinions on the Macmillan / Amazon rumble. Amazon has – over the years – made a habit of applying predatory marketing techniques to most aspects of their business. I have to applaud Apple and Macmillan for breaking that stranglehold somewhat, but on the other hand I have to say – WTF?
The big-boy publishers apparently have a different sort of Kindle arrangement than those of us in the independent world. If Stephen King writes a book, Amazon pays a percentage (I’ve heard up to half) of the cover price of the print edition for the rights to publish a Kindle edition – then they price it no higher than $9.99. This probably means a loss on Amazon’s part, but there’s method to their madness. If they have the lowest price, people are going to buy from them. If people buy from the Kindle store, they will be using Kindles – in many cases – and if they buy from Amazon long enough, they will drive the competition into hiding, or worse. Sharks, in other words.
The problem with this entire mess is that neither the publisher nor Amazon needs to charge $14.99 or even $9.99 for an e-book. The book is already designed, formatted, and saved. The artist is paid, the author gets royalties based on sales…there is literally no financial lift left other than marketing to move e-books off of virtual shelves.
They can putter and shuffle all they want – the greed is deep green and ugly. I can see the desire on the part of publishers to protect their sales on print editions by not undercutting the price too far…but that’s the only viable reason I can see for inflated e-book prices. The profit margin is HUGE on a $14.99 e-book.
I’m not buying into it. As long as I have some say in it, I’m keeping my books priced lower. Original novels in e-book format I’ll price higher because they are new…and it’s the only format they are available in. Older books, reprints, stories? I’m going to be dropping my prices I think, and mine are already pretty low.
Authors Lee Goldberg and J. A. Konrath have put up some seriously eye-opening results on their blogs – showing off their Kindle store profits for the month of January. It’s hard to argue with success.
 On a different note, my novel “On the Third Day,” which you can buy in the Kindle store, or directly from the Macabre Ink Digital Site, or even over at The Horror Mall, has been entered into Amazon’s Breakout Novel Contest. It is eligible since I self-published it. I don’t know what kind of expectations to have – I don’t know the level of competition – but I am hoping to at least make a decent showing in the contest.
I’d love to hear opinions of the book if you purchase the electronic edition…
And wish me luck!
-DNW
Just thought I’d point out – in context – that the following three novels can be bought and read on your Kindle or almost any other device without paying the Amazon.com 9.99 or the MacMillan 14.99 apiece. They will work in multiple readers…
DAUGHTERS
by Steve & Melanie Tem
Four diverse characters collide in an ancient world of darkness and magic: the amazon Gwynn, the princess Evonna, the wizard Alden, and the beast Thet. Out of that collision comes an unforgettable novel of endings and reconciliations, the death of magic and the birth of technology, and the eternal struggle between darkness and light.
Highborn Evonna is unhappy with her constricted choices and troubled by her brother Alden’s dabblings in wizardry. In the great city that is her home, where nothing unplanned ever happens, something has gone terribly wrong. Everywhere are signs of chaos and creeping madness, rumors of plague, and intimations of worse to come. But what can Evonna or Alden do? The answer comes unexpectedly, with the terrifying visit of the subhuman Thet and the sudden appearance of the amazon Gwynn, who harbors a shocking secret. Together, the four unlikely companions bring unimagined change to the city… and are themselves changed in unimaginable ways.
Yet the chaos continues to spread. Desperate, our heroes leave their dying home and embark on a hellish journey to the far mountains. There they will come face-to-face with a malignant darkness determined to forever unbalance the world… a darkness as insane as it is evil.
Pick up your copy HERE!
On The Third Day
By David Niall Wilson
Father Darren Prescott is a seeker of truth. He works for The Vatican, but his real work is within his own mind and heart; Father Prescott hunts miracles. Father Thomas is a young priest with a quiet congregation that worships at San Marcos by the Sea, a small cathedral outside San Valencez, California. One Easter Father Thomas’ Mass is interrupted by something he cannot explain – something powerful that shakes his world, and that of his congregation.
Father Thomas experiences the Stigmata.
On The Third Day is the story of Father Thomas and his search for answers. He turns to the church, and his immediate superior, Bishop Michaels, for support and assistance and is shocked to find that not all priests seek miracles. Some are comfortable with the status quo and vicious in their defense of it. Bishop Michaels is battling his own demons, not the least of which is a barely controlled love of alcohol.
Despite the distaste it engenders, Bishop Michaels attends Easter Mass the year after the first “incident.” He comes armed with an attitude of furious disbelief, and a video camera. When Father Thomas not only repeats the previous year’s experience, but with much greater intensity, collapsing across the altar and causing a near riot, the Bishop escapes with his camera, and his sanity, and makes calls of his own. He still does not believe, but now he feels he needs a greater power than his own to prove his disbelief, even to himself.
At the request of Bishop Michaels’ superior, and his own mentor, Cardinal O’Brien, Father Prescott arrives and begins his investigation with a third Easter Mass looming. The Bishop is determined that Father Thomas be proven a charlatan and a fraud. Father Thomas is frightened for his life, and for his faith, and only wants answers. Father Prescott? He wants the miracle he’s waited his entire life to overcome, to make up for what he considers past failings of his own.
What all three men find is the powerful, thrilling conclusion to On The Third Day, an experience that draws them together and pushes them apart in ways they never could have imagined. The answers are there, but some answers are too difficult to bear. BUY IT HERE!
This is My Blood
by David Niall Wilson
First published in 1999, This is My Blood is David Niall Wilson’s first and most important novel. It is a retelling of the gospel from a very different perspective. When Jesus goes into the desert and is tempted by the devil, there is one temptation added. One of the fallen is raised as a woman to tempt him with the flesh. Instead, the woman, named Mary of Magdalene, falls in love with Jesus and his promise of returning her to Heaven.
Cursed to follow him and drink the blood of his followers, Mary walks a fine line between her desire to love and support the Christ, and her burning need to return to Heaven. This novel takes the world of faith, which was the world of men, and of the apostles, and shows it through the eyes of a fallen angel – one who has, in her own words, walked the roads of both Heaven, and Hell. She doesn’t believe there is a God…she knows.
Faithful to the storyline of the original gospels, only weaving in new things when there are gaps in the old, this is a novel of faith, redemption, and ultimate sacrifice.
From Publishers Weekly
Religious ecstasy and vampiric bloodlust blend to potent effect in this horror-oriented alternate history of early Christianity. Debut novelist Wilson casts Mary Magdelene as a spirit created by the Devil to tempt Christ. When Mary refuses the mission, Satan rebukes Jesus and curses her to become a vampire: “She will hunger for that which You fight to preserve. She will thirst for the blood of manAthe lives, the very souls You seek to save will be her bread.” Mary follows Christ, hoping for a miracle that will allow her to gain eternal salvation even as her vampiric nature forces her to kill to survive. Through her inhuman eyes, and through the writings of Judas’s own gospel, The Book of Judas, Wilson shows Christ and his disciples at work, lending a decidedly different perspective to miracles such as feeding the multitudes with a few loaves and fishes or raising Lazarus from the dead. Here, Judas is steady and loyal, while Peter, possessed by the Devil, betrays Christ to the soldiers at Gethsemane, forcing both Judas and Mary to sacrifice what they love most in order to ensure Christ’s resurrection and the Church’s future. Wilson’s prose is smooth and powerful, carrying its allegorical weight with grace. His first novel is one of the most unique vampire stories to appear in recent years, balancing themes of damnation and prophesy against those of faith and redemption.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
You can Order This is My Blood from the Macabre Ink Digital Store — and MUCH MUCH MORE.
Okay, as someone who has recently launched into the world of digital publishing, I have to run the WTF flag up the pole. There has long been a dynamic at work in publishing that heavily favored publishers. Amazon has – with their Kindle publishing system – added themselves on the favored side, but it’s still the author’s getting the short end of the stick.
Here’s the thing…how anyone can dispute this, I can’t imagine. If a retailer like Amazon buys a print book from a distributor or a publisher, they pay a certain percentage of the cover cost, bump it up, and extract their profit from the difference. The publisher pays part of their percentage (usually less than fifteen percent) back to the author. Most of the money stays with the publisher, but in this model there are print costs, shipping costs, etc. that drive the “argument” for the split.
E-Books are not like that. Once the publisher does the short-lift of formatting their title and submitting it to Amazon – they are basically done. They still pay for reviews, advertising, etc…but there are zero print costs, zero shipping costs – it’s win / win for both publisher and retailer. Of course, the smallest share still goes to the author in most cases.
Amazon does NOTHING to help you sell your book. They list it. They provide ways you can go in and blog and click and stomp your feet personally, but they put absolutely no effort into publicizing things unless you, or your publisher, pays them to do it. Your book is one of millions of items on Amazon, and unless people search your name, or happen on your title, you’re lost in the mix without…more money. The publisher has no real job after an e-book is formatted other than the usual catalogue listing, and gathering the cash…
So the real question isn’t whether or not MacMillan should be able to force Amazon.com to let them sell their freaking e-books for too much money – the real question is what are they doing in return for it, and how will they – or Amazon – work to shift the percentages so that they actually favor the person or persons without whom said e-book wouldn’t exist? Those two groups would be authors and readers.
What is happening now is that traditional publishers are trying to take their old racket, which is falling apart, and twist it so that they have a new racket that still favors them heavily…even though the actual heavy lifting has been removed from the process. They still have their brick and mortar sales, and they pay the same old low royalties on those…but now they want a big share of the e-book profits as well.
Visit The Macabre Ink Store for cheaper e-books. Go to THE HORROR MALL for horror on digital at reasonable prices. Don’t buy into the notion you have to pay huge prices for a product that should be discounted, not raised in price. Authors…talk to me. I can get your books into digital and provide you an outlet to sell them that’s about as useful as Amazons, and lot more profitable on a per-sale basis.
They really should start providing more than just a listing on the Internet for their 60 or so percent. (Amazon).
That’s what I think…
-DNW
February seems like a good time for lolz … not that there is any time that does NOT seem like a good time for lolz. I figured I would get things lolling…so to speak.
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 I started to set this up long ago, and somehow it fell by the wayside during the very eventful holiday season at my house, and with the writing of Heart of a Dragon and other projects. My novel Vintage Soul just came out in December. It came out from a publisher that does very little if anything to promote books in the retail environment, so it’s time I saddled up and headed out across the net to peddle fiction. I want to go on a “Virtual Book Tour”.
I am calling out to bloggers, friends, followers, readers – fans – anyone with an interest in urban fantasy, magic, vampires, my books, helping a guy out, etc. I’m open for interviews on any aspect of writing, the novel Vintage Soul, Nanowrimo, Stargate, whatever. I will do guest blog posts. I will provide review copies until I run out (and will provide electronic copies to reviewers as well). I need to start a reaction. I need to get this book on a wave and make some kind of splash to prove I didn’t waste all those hours in front of the computer and keyboard.
The response has been positive so far…but I need to get more readers. I need reviews, and places I can get the word out. If you have a blog or website, please mention the book. Link folks to Amazon and the B&N.com to buy it. They can buy from me too, but it’s more helpful to me if they buy from retail outlets and spur further orders.
Anyone who sends me a book, I will sign it and mail it back. Anyone who reviews the book (even if you hate it) I will link to and be grateful to.
I’m tired of seeing the Amazon sales rank hover around the 1,000,000 level…that sucks. Donovan DeChance is one of my favorites of all the characters I’ve created. Help me make him one of yours. Buy a copy of Vintage Soul…review it…invite me to your blog or your podcast or your website and I’ll be there…
End of authorly plea…
-DNW
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