Tell 'em I sent ya!

This is a cool time. Well...not actually COOL because I'm sweating into my Count Chokula (Chocula?? The cereal vampire and friend to Frankenberry. You know!) t-shirt as I'm writing this. By "cool" I mean great because it's finally time to see the fruits of a few labors. First of all, I got my first ebook out there as promised and have already begun working on others. Second, do you remember me talking about another website hosted by me and two other authors? Well, even if you don't remember that, the website is up and running!

It's called The Adventure Factory and it specializes in high-octane action and...yes...adventure! Cool stuff like westerns, steampunk, science fiction and thrillers will be shown there, most of which will be ebook originals. All three of us will be blogging there, so stop by and take a look at what we have to offer. As time goes on, keep checking in because a bunch of new books will be spotlighted. (spotlit?? No that doesn't sound right. Good thing I don't work with words). Anyway...click here to check it out!

This blog isn't going anywhere, so don't worry. I'll still be here griping about the regular bunch of nonsense. At least over at AF, you can read someone else's gripes for a change. And before some of you comment, yes I do know there are already other sites out there called Adventure Factory. But do those sites have pics of me in sweaty t-shirts glorifying old cereal mascots? DIDN'T THINK SO!!!!

More wisdom from Dr. Jones

First of all, the good news. After a little bit of a delay, Paris is Melting is now available for the Nook! Here's a link to pick it up at Barnes & Noble.com. While you're there, if you need to get your ebook copy of any of the Skinners books, those are still on sale. They make a great gift for Dad or anyone else. See, this is what I'm really bad at. I'm not much of a salesman. Unfortunately, writers need to sell themselves big time even if they're published through the big New York houses. That is, of course, unless you qualify for the ever-present asterisk when talking about the downside to being a professional writer. For example....Most professional writers don't get huge ad campaigns to sell their books*. Most of us can't retire after seeing our babies on the shelves*. And...most of us still need the occasional day job*  (* = unless you're the author of whatever young adult series happens to be hot at the time...or Stephen King.) That asterisk is kind of like the fortune cookie game where you tack on "in bed" to everything. Only the asterisk occasionally makes me want to shoot myself in the face. Heh. Wah-wahhhhhh.

Anyway, now that Paris is Melting is out, I am able to check my sales (or lack thereof) anytime I want. Is this a nifty gadget? Yes. Should I do it very often? No*. See, I knew my sales wouldn't be astronomical right away. It's a new book and I haven't started promoting it yet. Still, even though I'm just glad to see it out there, I keep checking! This is where Indy's sage advice comes in. "Don't look at it, Marcus! No matter what happens, just keep your eyes SHUT!" Ok, so in my mind he says Marcus instead of Marion. Is that weird? NO! Some people get angels talking to them or media advisers. Some of us don't get people in fancy offices looking out for our best interests*! So let me have Indy!!

Even though I don't expect the numbers to be huge yet and I know it will be a waste of time to look since, whether I see them or not, the numbers will be the same, I still look. I can't help it. Part of the fun? A little. It's just cool that Paris is Melting is out there. It's a series I am looking forward to continuing and it just makes me smile. I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys think of it so download a copy and let me know!

And speaking of ebooks.......

It’s here!

It’s been a long time coming, but my first direct-to-ebook original is finally here!!

These last several months have been tough for me for a great many reasons. Output has been slow and distractions have been at an all-time high. Because of that, this book has taken me a lot longer than I thought it would. And the longer it took, the longer it seemed it was going to take before it was finally done. I was going to update the blog more, but there’s already been too many “it’s almost here” sort of posts and I know you guys were sick of hearing it. At least, I was sick of writing it. Well…no more!

The book is called Paris is Melting, first in a series called The Gillis Ledgers. Here’s the rundown…

1935

The Great War has been over for eight years, but shockwaves from that global conflict can still be felt. Airships roar in the skies. Converted DeSotos glide on elevated bi-rails. Cities are filled with suspicious characters like mad scientists and robots controlled by shady foreign spies.

Doesn’t sound like the 1935 you’ve heard of?

Welcome to the world of Jake Gillis.

Jake was a Marine in The Great War when things took a turn for the weird. Mines clattered to life and burrowed underground. Tanks began to hover. Robotic infantrymen charged into gunfire without twitching. After being reassigned to the Navy’s Special Sciences Division, Jake got a front row seat as the world was introduced to a dimensional gateway known as the Altersphere. Once the Altersphere was breached, things from alien worlds and futuristic societies found their way to Earth. Scientists rolled up their sleeves and figured out how to use what they could, dismantling the rest to give birth to a new reality.

Now, Jake works as a private contractor in the burg of Cincinnati where his skills are still in high demand. An especially nasty trinket from the Altersphere has burnt a trail across Europe. Special Sciences is working off the books on this one. They need someone to follow the path of destruction back to its source. While Jake is always a sucker for serving his country, the big-time payday offered by the G-Men cinches the deal and he answers the call to duty.

….Sounds cool, right? I’ve been working on this project in some form or another for the better part of a year. Basically, I took an idea for an alternate reality, set it in one of my favorite time periods so I could include gangsters, G-men, spies and private eyes and mixed it with a dash of Indiana Jones for flavor. Pretty much a pulp adventure goulash of my favorite things. I won’t go into my whole ebook plan again, but I will stress that it is something I’m very committed to and will be using that format to publish many more projects. Including Skinners, naturally! When will the next Skinners be coming out? I’ll start working on it very soon.

Part of my plan is a new website which will be launching within the week. It’s a gathering spot for me and a couple other like-minded authors who are leaping into the ebook ocean. I’ll be maintaining this blog of course, but will also give a link to the new site when it’s ready. It won’t be long, I promise.

           

It feels like I’ve been ranting about striking out on my own for a while and now that it’s here, it feels really good. When I put this book onto Amazon.com, I thought, “Wow, that was easy.” Then I remembered all the writing, editing, fixing, thinking, revising, and other stuff that’s been keeping me up at night for so long. In the words of Han Solo… “Easy? You call that easy?”

I truly hope you guys take Paris is Melting out for a spin. It’s funny, retro science fiction chock full of thrills, spills and shootouts. All the stuff that made me want to be a writer in the first place. It may have been tough getting this far, but this book was a joy to write. I did my best to make sure that joy shines through in every page. For now, it’s out on Kindle and Nook. Here are the links. If you don’t have an ebook reader, there are free apps for tablet computers, smart phones, desktops, laptops, and robotic personal assistants. Ok, so they don’t have the robot butlers yet but they SHOULD! If you like the book, tell a friend. And if you don’t like it….maybe lie to a lesser-liked acquaintance so they’ll buy a copy. Click here to check it out on Amazon. (B&N link coming soon) It’s only $2.99, for cripe’s sake!

Enjoy!!!!

Great for Dads!!

Here's a nice surprise over at Barnes & Noble's website!

There's a great promotion for all the Skinners ebooks! $0.99 for Blood Blade, $1.99 for Howling Legion and $4.99 for all the others.

Pretty cool. Thanks to Paul over at B&N.com. Much appreciated. If you'd like to pick up some flippin' AWESOME Nook books, just CLICK HERE.

Retro Double-Dip

So the other day, I get a hankerin' to play some Rastan. Anyone remember that arcade game from back in the '80's? It's pretty much a Conan sort of thing and I've always liked Conan. Back in high school, my friend and I used to hang out at the local convenience store, sip on Slurpees or whatever and play Rastan before going to class. Awesome game. Only problem is that my copy of Rastan is on a compilation disk for the old Xbox.

Undeterred, I dig out the old black beauty itself and the Xbox works great. Better than the Xbox 360, but I digress. When I turn it on, the Xbox's default date and time is set to 12:00am June 3, 2001. As I'm spinning those years forward, I can't help but imagine my Xbox asking, "What day is it? Where have I been?"
"You've been out of it a long time, Xbox. Brace yourself. It's 2012!!"
Cue the opening music from Buck Rogers.....dates flying past....Xbox spinning and toppling through news clippings of big events....then snazzy vehicles from the current futuristic paradise zip by!! Yeah!!!

Wow, this is loopy. What do you expect? I was up until 5am playing freakin' Rastan!!

Almost here!!!!

I know you guys have heard me go on about ebooks for a while now. Sounds like a cool idea, right? I hope so because my first book is so close to being released that I can taste it! Since I'm responsible for putting it all together, I've been taking my time to make sure it's all ready before putting it out there. Editing is almost done, the cover is coming together and I seriously think it should be ready to be unleashed onto the ebook market by mid-May.

I also know I've been saying the next Skinners book will be coming out in ebook format. The mid-May release is not Skinners, though. There's lots of reasons for this and NONE of them involve me turning my back on that series. Honestly, it took a lot out of me to write the last three and I pretty much did them back-to-back. Rather than try to get the next one out right away before it feels like the proper time, I thought I'd let it all gestate for a while. Also, Skinners is my baby and I'd rather get comfortable with the ebook process before throwing my baby out there.

That being said, the book that's almost ready to roll isn't just something I slapped together to test the waters. It's EXACTLY the sort of thing that made me want to publish in this format for such a loooong time. I've been describing it as Indiana Jones mixed with Flash Gordon and a dash of The Untouchables thrown in for flavor. It's retro sci-fi set in an alternate version of 1935 where a hard boiled PI deals with gangsters, feds, mad scientists and inter-dimensional vortexes. The more I read through this, the more I love it. Even if it would be given a chance in traditional publishing, I like the thought of handling it myself. It's first in a series and a hell of a lot of fun. I REALLY hope you guys enjoy it.

Next on my agenda is Skinners! For those of you who read Book 6, you know the Skinners world got turned on its ear. The next steps taken from there are important and the last thing I wanted to do was rush them. I've been pondering it a lot, coming up with tons of cool stuff and am PUMPED to move on with the monsters and bad-ass hunters I love so much. The next story arcs will take place some time after Book 6. They'll be a little shorter, action packed, and will branch out in several different directions. Also, I can move forward on some other Skinner stuff I've been meaning to do. For example, I've wanted to write an anthology or perhaps shorter fiction released separately (for cheaper) focusing on pivotal moments in the history of our favorite monster hunters. This series is tentatively called Skinners: Legends  and would be set in different time periods including tales of the early hunts of Jonah Lancroft, the exploits of different Full Bloods from centuries past, and accounts of Skinner pioneers like the one responsible for their shapeshifting weapons. Stuff like that. I told ya! I'm NOT leaving Skinners behind.

So that's the big update. I cannot express how grateful I am that you have stuck around. There's still a ways to go and every time I hear from a reader about how they're looking forward to something new from me, it puts wind in my sails. Thank you so much for that. I'll let you know when the first book in that new series is out and of course I'll keep you updated on any and all things Skinners. Oh, and I'm also working on another website with two other like-minded authors venturing into ebook territory for the sole purpose of writing the cool stuff we love. It's been a long time coming, but things are about to get REAL interesting!

It's NOT the same!

Wednesday is new comic book day. Way back when I was in college, it used to be Thursday but it's been Wednesday for a while now. Anyway, New Comic Day is great. Like any comic book fan, I love seeing the new books on the racks. I love gathering them into a stack and then taking them home. It's just nerdy bliss. So this last Wednesday, I was talking to the owner of my local comic store. He's not anything close to the chubby weird dude from The Simpsons. He's actually got more of a "cranky old neighbor" vibe going on. Instead of screaming for me to get off of his lawn, he hands me stuff from my reserve list. Big difference. We talk about a great many things. This week, it was digital comics.

Now, I'm the last person to speak against digital publishing. It took me a while to wrap my head around ebooks, but once I got a Kindle and started diving in to all the great stuff out there I was hooked. Sure I miss the actual books sometimes, but there are plenty of offerings in the digital arena that simply can't be found on shelves. And with publishers floundering along with every other industry lately, ebooks make plenty of sense. You see quirky titles that would never get a shot otherwise and in the end, the written word still shines through. So...I get digital publishing. For COMIC BOOKS??? Nuh-uh.

 

I have a Kindle Fire and I do purchase some digital comics. Yes, they look sharp and clear. Yes it is pretty cool to have them electronically delivered. But my insider source (comic book store owner dude) pointed out that the big companies are aching to go digital all the way. That's easy to see with their apps and their general push in that direction. The way things are headed, comic stores will start drying up completely in less than a decade. Is this just speculation? I hope so. Unfortunately, I could easily see this happening.

I still read plenty of comics and the experience is significantly better (and different) between digital versus print. With regular books, that difference boils down to a format thing. The words are still there and I still enjoy reading them. For comics, the difference is in art. There's something vastly different in seeing the picture on the screen as opposed to having it there in your hands. There's also the ads. What's that, you say? Ads?? Yes. When I dig deep into my collection and read an issue from the early 1980's, I see ads for Atari 2600 games and candy that doesn't exist anymore. I see membership forms for dopey fan clubs whose  cards used to take up space in my cheap little plastic wallets when I was nine and DON'T exist now. That stuff really takes you back and it has nothing to do with a story that could be reprinted in digital format. Even ads now are specifically targeted to a comic book audience and are stuff I really want to see. Well...mostly. This is a general thing. I'm not in love with ads. You get where I'm going with this.

The thought of comics being exclusively makes me sad. It will probably take a long time for print comics to be phased out all the way, but they WILL become harder to find. There simply aren't as many comic stores now as there were years ago. I've seen entire chains in cities where I've lived dry up and blow away. Could it just be a dip because of the recession? Is it a shift in times and people like me will just have to deal with it? Probably some from both columns.

Right now, I read some comics on my Kindle. I even tried reading some on an app for my phone (which wasn't bad during prolonged bathroom visits). Those are ok. When it comes to my favorite books, though, I want the print version. I've come to terms with ebooks. If comics start going purely digital, I can honestly say I'd rather trim down my purchases to a fraction of what they are now and get my fix with back issues.

Bah! Freaking technology. GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!!!