As usual, here is your warning that this story has cursing, sex (not graphic), innuendo, and violence. It’s my Rated-R action adventure called Derailing Bedlam. This is the fourth outing (third official) for Cassidy and Lloyd, so feel free to click on one of the two covers to see how it started. Each one is 99 cents!
Cover by Jon Hunsinger
Cover Art by Jon Hunsinger
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Some great tips here.
This is a topic I have been thinking a lot about since I decided to venture into the Kindle Scout program. Since you are required to provide an opening to your book and try to entice them to vote for your book based on what they see in that brief extract, being able to obtain and hold their attention is extremely important.
With that being said, I thought I would gather some tips on how to grab your reader’s attention at the beginning of a book to help out others as you create your masterpieces.
Give a hint of what to expectIn your opening, you can tip off your reader on what will be coming. I have tried a few different style openings in my own books. Since they are usually murder mysteries, I have sometimes used a variation of what I call the “Columbo opening”.
If you remember…
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The Written Word Media (WWM) regularly posts great material examining the latest trends in publishing; trends of interest to every author – particularly Indie ones. Here is my summary of Ricci Wolman’s predictions for 2019, along wth my comments:
Amazon Advertising (formerly Amazon Marketing Service, aka AMS) 
Ads will become an essential part of the author’s toolkit in 2019. More and more authors are reporting rising costs on Facebook Ads. This, coupled with Amazon’s ambitions to grow its advertising business, will make paying to get visibility on Amazon a pillar of every author’s marketing strategy.
Personally, I have stopped advertising on other media, with the exception of running promos for any titles I may have on offer (on free days/Kindle Countdown Deals). To learn more on Amazon Advertising, consult the guides I wrote for SearchNurture.
In an…
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iZombie
Not many people try to write a story with a monster as the hero. Well, you see it for kids a lot. Paranormal romance enjoys this too, but it rarely happens when you get into the more action-oriented genres. You might be afraid that people won’t like that you’ve made your monsters into heroes instead of leaving them as destructive beasts. Well, there are some ways to go about doing this with minimal stress.
Hi SE Readers. Joan here today on this last week of January. The holidays are behind us. We’ve had time to make and break New Year’s resolutions. It’s time to get back to some serious writing. (Talking to myself with that last sentence.)
In the publishing world, you’ve probably heard there are two types of authors—plotters and pansters.
Plotters take time to delve deeply into their story before they write the first word. Many plan meticulous outlines. They know what will happen in chapter one as well as the final chapter. Some of them create detailed character sketches, conduct copious amounts of research, and develop the setting down to exact details.
Pansters, on the other hand, don’t plan at all. They may have a general idea such as, “I’m going to write a murder mystery that isn’t solved until twenty years after the fact.” A few character names and a…
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The day has finally arrived…RELEASE DAY IS UPON US!
So, before I get into my promo, I’d just like to give a little shout-out to the three authors who did not end up getting pics. I would share blurbs for their stories, but I don’t have two of them, and didn’t feel right in demanding those…but I also wouldn’t feel right about not promoting their work at all, either. Not only that, but I was actually published in Counterclockwise with all 3 of them.
And those 3 are:
Sarah Buhrman, whose urban fantasy series is just plain awesome (book 3 coming soon), and whose work has also been featured in A Twist Of Fate. Seriously, check her stuff out, she’s great.
Her story, “Super Powereds Anonymous”:
Mute is tired of the villain life and joins a support group for lesser super powereds.
When people start dying, will their…
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I’m reposting this from a few years ago. Back then, I didn’t have many readers so now, I wanted to share these pithy thoughts–including a few updates–with all my new efriends!
There are a lot of difficult parts to writing. I mean, besides the whole write-edit-revise-rewrite-market-start over thing. That cutting a vein and bleeding on the page can get touch-and-go at times. Channeling your muse often gets someone you’d prefer to avoid. And it’s well documented that trying to make a living as an author is pretty near impossible unless your last name rhymes with ‘Fancy’ or ‘Brawling’.
Despite all that, it’s a profession people flock to, spend thousands training to be, and wouldn’t give up for anything. Widely-accepted studies show 80% of us have a book we want to share–despite that industry stats show it takes five years to hone and deliver an acceptable novel.
It may–or may not–surprise…
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Herman Munster
I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this before to some extent, but I couldn’t find any posts on the topic. Regardless, I keep running into the same obstacle when talking to some people about War of Nytefall. They hear that the characters are vampires and respond as if Clyde and his friends are running around slaughtering everyone. Cassidy and Lloyd Tenay of Derailing Bedlam are actually more violent than the Dawn Fangs. Still, people here the word ‘monster’ or a monster species then jump to conclusions. It gets frustrating too when you’re bombarded by questions like:
It’s amazing to me that there is such a wall when it comes to using creatures such as vampires and werewolves as protagonists. It’s like people refuse to believe that these beings can be anything more than blood-thirsty beasts. You do have to maintain some of their grisly and monstrous habits, but it isn’t like they are that removed from humans. In most cases, vampires were once mortal or at least act as part of a society (either covert or overt) that mimics a mortal system. That’s why I find it so odd that people have trouble considering that you can have one who isn’t entirely monstrous. Not like vampiric heroes are anything new too since you have Forever Night, Morbius the Living Vampire, Angel, and some heroic incarnations of Dracula. Yet, I continue to receive messages asking about how I can have a story with no heroes or comments that assume the Dawn Fangs are brutal destroyers.
Part of this could come from how I describe them on the blog. I always maintain that they are not mortal and can be violent. Clyde gets this description a lot, but I can’t always go into that much more detail. I explain that he is still human with feelings, dreams, and some restraint. A big part of the overall series is him holding onto what little humanity he has left since, unlike the other Dawn Fangs, he’s on the edge of being a full-blown monster like people think he already is. I’ve had to forge a balance between his monster and human side with there never being a clear superior. He goes back and forth a lot, which is something you can really only see in teasers and the books themselves. On the blog, I mention he’s a vampire and that seems to seal the deal for some.
Is it really that hard to believe that monsters can be used for more than antagonists? As authors, we’re supposed to put our own twist on ideas. Yet, people are very protective of the idea that monsters are monsters. I remember running a D&D game and the group ran into a band of goblins crossing a bridge. They attacked right away and discovered afterwards that these were miners heading towards a nearby city to deliver bags of gemstones. Keep in mind that it’s really only the ‘ugly’ monsters that get this kind of treatment. Dragons, unicorns, griffins, pegasi, and other types that are seen as beautiful can be anything. Doesn’t matter if they tear somebody apart as quickly as a vampire who is known for fangs, blood, and scary faces. There’s a long history to go up against and I think I underestimated it when I wrote War of Nytefall.
I know is this is near the end, but I’m now going to say what I mean by humanoid monster. These are creatures that don’t so much as look human, but they have the emotions and thoughts that we typically associate with human characters. They might be monster on the outside, but they have depth to their soul. As odd as it sounds, Herman Munster is a great example even though he was made for comedy. He looks scary to some extent while being a loving father and husband. There are human characters that can’t even claim that because they’re monstrous on the inside. Funny how the opposite doesn’t seem to get the same amount of praise unless it’s a romance. Maybe more people should give humanoid monster protagonists a chance in the hopes of making them more accepted by the world. Just a thought. Not that I have a book series to sell. Okay, I do, but it’s my blog and I have to make pitches from time to time.
