Yes Dear is free today and tomorrow...

Yes Dear is just about eight pages of pure dialogue. I challenged myself to try to write a short story with nothing outside of quotation marks. There are two characters, there's a beginning, middle, and end, and some twists you probably won't see coming. Check out this digital short thriller for free today and tomorrow. This is a second edition, with one minor correction and a new cover.

Synopsis:

"A man and woman arrive finally at the country house after journeying all day from London. She tells him to get the kettle on and stoke the fire; it’s cold and the snow is deep. She’s accustomed to bossing him. She’s used to his response to everything: “Yes, Dear.” But what destiny has pent up comes swiftly, without warning…and the works of a life produce consequence."

Marsburg is free today and tomorrow...

Book One in the Airel Saga Diary series, The Marsburg Diary, is free today and tomorrow. Tell your peeps.

Synopsis:

Harvey Marsburg, son of the late William Marsburg, is reading through his deceased father's long-lost diary. At first, Harv is annoyed at the peculiarities of his father, irritated that he has to uncover old wounds by reading this old book. But he finds to his amazement that his father might not actually have been mad. In fact it appears that William may have been nearly 150 years old when he died in 1977. Now his body lies decomposing in a Yorkshire mausoleum, but his legacy lives on. Harvey reads cryptic notes from the executor: "May your father rest in peace. He deserves it." Something watches him from the darknesses of his house as he reads the diary with growing interest. Plus, there are two other books in that old trunk that the foundation sent. One of them, he could swear it, is calling to him...

Simplifying

Life is a thing that complicates itself, I’ve noticed. It’s a constant battle we fight to gain and regain simplicity. You make a decision to take on something you think is inconsequential, then you turn around a while later to discover that one new thing has bred twenty new subsequent obligations that you never imagined or foresaw. 

One learns to be careful what one commits to.

Me and my family, we’re having to do this right now. We’re having to make decisions about some major stuff in our lives, and I think we’re heading in the right direction. We’re coming up on a major transition in our lives as I finally start to garner enough income from royalties and other earnings on my writing to be able to support us.

My oldest, for instance, is in the third grade now. We were able, through a lot of sacrifice and effort, to send him to a private school for years. But it’s proving to be too much strain, and believe it or not, it’s not mostly financial, though there is a monetary component to our decision to pull him out of school starting this fall. Mostly it’s the schedule that is influencing us, plus an honest desire to test drive home schooling.

But this is a great example of how decisions beget decisions. For instance, we used to have two vehicles; a car and an old truck. We sold the old truck in order to frugalize and simplify our lives a bit. And it’s true that our lives have changed since then, but it took a while to adapt to it. It makes the school run more of a major event, and I'm finding our lives sort of revolve around it a bit too much for my taste. It’s interesting for me to see how that decision has impacted my family. Overall it’s been positive, because I have had to take my bike on certain errands, or even walk. Having one car has forced us to simplify quite a lot. Once we got used to it we liked it. That’s not to say we won’t at some point have another vehicle. But for now, overall, it’s ideal to have just one, even with the school run issue.

Time will tell if our decision to home school my oldest will unnecessarily complicate our lives. I know there are pitfalls, but we’re going into it with our eyes open and we’re prepared. For now I’m hoping to turn more ordinary moments into educational possibilities. I’m wanting to head out to the desert for an evening with the telescope and stargaze; study astronomy. I’m wanting to transform camping trips into explorations in basic botany, geology, zoology. I’m wanting to recall scriptures as we gaze at mountains, go to the park and read poetry, apply multiplication tables to shopping trips, and so on. But I’m a naturally inquisitive person who enjoys sharing little insights with people, so perhaps I’m pre-wired to be more successful at home schooling my kids. I know this is not the case for everyone. And of course it’s also important to be in agreement with your spouse on stuff like this. That’s the most important consideration, actually.

Pulling back from the school-run schedule, the Monday through Friday slog of the rat race, I think will prove beneficial to me and my family. Now that I am bringing in enough money from my writing to support us, we don’t need to be tied to schedules and seasons as much. I see us taking more spontaneous trips. Vacations in September. Or February. Odd stuff like that. Mid-week camping trips. Family bike rides at 10 AM on a Tuesday just because we want to and we can. That kind of thing. I want to build a fort in the back yard for my boys and watch them play as I sit sipping lemonade on the back patio. I want to smoke a cigar over lunch. Ride my bike more. Read a book under the shade of a tree. Maybe even write one. I want to build a little dorm-style loft in my boys’ bedroom so they can have more space. If we put their mattresses up on the loft, the whole floor will be clear for them to play Legos, cars, watch the occasional movie on a rainy day, have more fun. And it will be easier to vacuum. See how that works? Genius.

Reflection

Yesterday I heard a man talk about how our society has disconnected with its life source. It's true. In ages past it was normative for people of all sorts to be unafraid of silence. Indeed, they would seek it out. I'm not saying life was a bed of roses, that they didn't work as hard as we do and then some. It could be effectively argued that we in this present moment enjoy more leisure time than at any point in human history. I'm just saying we use it differently than perhaps we ought.

Whatever "downtime " we may have is utterly filled up with some kind of noise, whether it's various media or entertainment sources or just plain useless busy-ness that produces no beneficial effect. Before the age of the smartphone, cable, internet, tablet, Hulu plus, Netflix, 3D HDTV, IMAX and so on, when people had done with their considerable labors at the end of the week, if they had any energy left, they might pick up a book. For some really raucous fun.

Or, and this is the point of this little article, they just might sit and be quiet and reflect. I think in America especially we have cast this art aside to our own great peril and potential demise. When was the last time you took a walk by yourself, just to mull things over? When was the last time you sat in an utterly quiet house and contemplated your life? Can you recall when you last decided enough was enough and turned off the silly boob tube and sat in a chair (or paced the floor) and reflected on your state of affairs? Maybe even talked to God about it all? And, craziest of all thoughts here, waited for Him to speak?

I'm just saying. I've never seen such a busy lot as we modern Americans. We're always going here or there, rushing as we go because we're late, and cursing everybody who dares to challenge our overpacked schedules. I'm just saying. Simplify. Quieten down a bit. Breathe. Step away from the media input for a while. Don't be afraid of the silence. It can be golden.

Free Book Promo #I'velosttrackofallofthem!

It's real simple, peeps: Airel is free today. Aaaaaaand tomorrow. So tell your friends. This is the big one. That is all.

Tyrants

Megalomaniacs are all the same. They all share certain vanities.

Hitler, for instance, never considered any views but his own. Everyone else’s opinion and analysis was invalid. Unfathomably and against all evidence, he regarded his Fascist ally Mussolini as a staunch and resolute warrior. But the Italian Duce proved to be a slimy opportunist, moving in on the French only after the Nazis had defeated them, attempting to grab a slice of the pie for Italy. And Hitler, among his many other faults, did not understand why Britain and America would never buy his lies and sue for peace with him, not ever, no matter what, no matter the cost, and no matter who tried to convince him otherwise. As a result, when the Third Reich was utterly annihilated by the Allies, the Fuhrer probably also failed to see clearly how ironic it was that his Nietzschean political philosophy (the survival of the fittest) if it were true, singled out Germany as utterly unfit in the end. How bitter a pill, to have wagered so much on a base lie, and to lose all in the end. How sad it must have been to have believed it and found it, finally at the depths, to be false.

It’s interesting, too, how the power-mad man lies in turn, and so smoothly. This interest becomes dark and perverse when one thinks about how those lies are taken at face value by so many. The Germans were no doubt shocked, for instance, when Goebbels’ propaganda machine was disrobed by the cold truth of British bombs falling over Berlin—over Berlin!—impossible!—in 1941. When this was going on, and Nazi diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia were beginning to sour as well, Hitler still insisted that he had only to tighten the noose around the pesky Brits; they were finished, that they only had to acknowledge the fact. Molotov, the Soviet ambassador to the Third Reich and in conference with the Fuhrer, was purported to have rejoined Hitler in this moment, “Then why do we sit in this bomb shelter, and whose bombs are these which shake the very ground?”

Dictators and tyrants are always ridiculously out of touch with reality. This is how we know them, and—one would hope to high heaven—root them out and defang them. This is how we might remove them from power. Hindsight is always quite bitter. I’m sure there were many Germans who wished in 1943 and 1944, when their cities were being firebombed by Allied sorties, that they would have resisted the Nazi warlord. After all, Hitler was just a man. Demoniacal yes, but still just a man. A man who should have and could have been resisted, had anyone had half a spine.

It is the same with murderous pirate plunderers like Obama, theocrats like Ahmadinejad. They speak words skillfully wrought by handlers, maybe even by themselves, with sweet tasting lies interwoven throughout. Obama talks about “fairness” for the middle class. Anyone with any sense knows that he is driving a wedge between the producers and those on the dole in this country, attempting to provoke anger, stoking hatred, cultivating division. He’s not bringing unity. Leftists like Obama always do the opposite of what they say they’re doing. He speaks of “reproductive rights” for women (a tortured and doltish line of newspeak logic to be sure), all while endorsing the killing of newborns. On this position he has never even attempted to double back. As for Ahmadinejad, he protests, a little too much to be really believable, that he seeks nuclear power only for peaceful purposes. Never mind that in the theocracy of which he is one of the horns of power women are debased, swept aside, muzzled, relegated to subhuman status. There is nothing to see here. “Peace, peace,” the warlord hisses like a prostitute, bloodlust trickling from the corner of his mouth as he plots and schemes. With guarantees and promises from men like this, one cannot help but be mindful of Chamberlain shaking hands with Hitler at Munich, smiling broadly at the Nazi warlord as the doom of Czechoslovakia was arbitrarily sealed, and by well-meaning backstabbing traitorous appeasers with no understanding of consequence.

After so many of Obama’s promises, for instance, to balance the budget (when none has yet been produced for three years), to provide “choice” in healthcare coverage (while actually destroying both choice and healthcare in America), to strengthen our position in the world (while playing the sniveling role of a coward and bowing to evil men across the globe), and to bring us “hope and change” (if that’s what we’re supposed to call the second Great Depression), why would anyone believe a single word he speaks? Still, fools persist in their folly, and propagandists use the tools that come scurrying to the sound of their music.

The same kinds of tools and fools reside at the top of the political world order right now; they staff the IMF, the UN, the IAEA, they trade and barter in the lobbies of Washington D.C., and they rub elbows with bigger and more selfish idiots like Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Vladimir Putin, that other totally discredited jackass global warmist from the University of East Anglia, and Jimmy Carter—and the scent of inevitable doom is becoming overpowering. These are the precise political conditions that led, if one studies history, to the worst cataclysms in the history of the world, those two Great Wars of the Twentieth Century. We’re told Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon. Really? When so very like Adolf Hitler in his published manifesto Mein Kampf, Ahmadinejad has already told us in his own words that his chief desire is to wipe Israel off the map, that he believes the Nazi-induced Jewish holocaust is a hoax, and also that, oh yeah, he only wants nuclear power for peaceful purposes? If you wish to believe that, go right ahead, fool. Our enemies have told us what they plan to do because they cannot help but megalomaniacally brag and boast; it’s who they are. But I am on my knees calling upon my God to intervene because He is all I have left. I’m surrounded by the naïve, the foolish, the simpleton, the party line voter, those do not know history, and my government no longer even cares to represent me; only to bribe me with backward redistributionist Keynesian centrally planned stupidity.

But really now, what do we have to fear from madmen? You may justifiably ask this question. I will entertain it: not much. Most of the damage a madman can do is limited to himself—that is, until he achieves real power, and that’s the wrinkle. It was the same with Hitler in the bierhall putsch of 1923 (his attempted violent overthrow of the Weimar republican government), which was an embarrassment even to his enemies for how badly it came off. But madmen too can learn from mistakes, provided their drive for power is strong enough. Hitler was not to be feared until he had weaseled his way into the Wilhelmstrasse and the Chancellery. Then he was fearsome for his people to behold, then a nightmare for the entire globe to look upon, as evidenced by history. I wonder at the madness of Ahmadinejad as well, at least right now. Would he really go so far as to undermine the very lifeblood of his power—vast amounts of first world wealth pumped into Iranian treasuries in trade for OPEC oil—by threatening nuclear war in the Middle East? Surely he doesn’t think he could bring the West to her knees with the one facecard (oil) he now holds—and surely he doesn’t think he will be allowed to acquire another (nuclear capability)—unless the keeper of the flame of liberty is herself snuffed by evil men on the inside like Obama. But that’s the thing about madmen. They’re absolutely insane. And they will do anything to quench their lusts.

These three men have other commonalities frightful to behold. They are always on the offensive in some way. Hitler was quick to strike first. That was one promise he continually made that could be counted on. So too Ahmadinejad wishes to provoke, to instigate, and he proves as much with his hateful mouth. Obama is not to be left out either, going on the offensive in ivory tower fashion, waging a carefully calculated war of executive order and caustic rhetoric on states’ rights, the US Constitution and most of its amendments, traditional American values and faith, our right to keep and bear arms, even on our children, both born and unborn. It was clear who he was and who he would be when he declared shortly after inauguration, “America is not a Christian nation.” I shudder even now. That is who he was, who he is, who he will remain to be. There is no hope for unrepentant men! What, you thought otherwise? This he does and more, all in the name of fairness too, in the name of equality, the dead-horse liberal punching bag of good intentions mixed in a witches’ brew with guilt aplenty. Not Obama’s, naturally—ours. Of course. This barnacle upon the hull of the ship of state will whine at us that he needs yet one more term to battle in the abatement of some trumped up crisis, you watch. But scrape him off, America, and discard him. It has been and will be a continuous crisis, one created by the very people who protest, again a little too loudly that no, they are the ones who are trying with all their might to lead us out of it, to peace. “Peace, peace,” the totalitarian whispers. And history replays itself, tiringly, yet again. Need I remind you that Congress has yet to pass a budget in three years? It’s telling, I say. I reached my fill of it years ago, and I have no more tolerance for totalitarian intolerance disguised, perversely, as tolerance, and loudly self-trumpeted, purportedly beneficent and allegedly magnanimous at that. Test the fruit of this man and tell me the label thereon affixed does match.

Authoritarians are all the same. Their traits are to be studied and identified so that these monsters can be exposed and rooted out. They cannot be changed. They can rarely even be stopped. Look at history. The two World Wars of the Twentieth Century, especially the first one, then known as The Great War for its utterly unprecedented scale and barbarity, were preventable. If not for the great weakness human civilization has had at times to place its most stupefyingly evil simpletons at the switchboard of society, the world might indeed be a better place. If only We the People would but realize our power. Wake up. Think. Reason. Wage war not against your brother who lives and works and dreams under the same storied colors. Wake up from your slumber, America, as your fathers did on December 7^th, 1941, to defend liberty. Wake up as you did in 1776. Awaken in the realm of thought, of the mind, to wage war where it really counts. Awaken to wrestle and contend with the evil now surrounding. Charge unafraid at the darkness with the light of righteousness in hand. Resolve to change the heart, the mind, and pray for the God of the universe to intervene for us. America, realize the enormity of your mistake in placing a megalomaniacal tyrant like Obama into office and turn from this wickedness. There’s no talking sense to utter fools like Obama, Hitler, and Ahmadinejad. Their lot is hopeless, evil, unrepentant. All that remains, having won the battle for reason, is to remove them before it’s too late. Rise up, America.

Rise. Up.

Social Media is Overhyped

Ever get the feeling you're being super dumb?  

Yeah, I said it. And I’ll raise the ante a little more: I don’t think indie authors really need social media. It’s not a career essential, in other words. This isn’t just my opinion, either. I have actual evidence to support my conclusions.

The funny thing about being an author these days, indie or not, is that technology is pretty much the master of your fate. There’s no getting around it. And tech is really fickle—almost anything can and will happen. To demonstrate this, let’s get round to the evidence.

Full disclosure: I have grown to despise social media. So temper my remarks with that. I’ve lately been heard saying, “If I could cut social media out of my life, I would. I’m only on it because of my writing.” I think there are more productive ways to spend about an hour a day, broken up into four segments of fifteen minutes each. You can trim your nose hairs, for instance. You can unload the dishwasher. Or load it. OR YOU COULD FREAKIN WRITE, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. Anyway enough with the disclosures.

Here’s fact #1. Over the weekend, I managed to move about 5,500 copies of The Marsburg Diary, and on Monday, I managed to move about 2,000 copies of K [phantasmagoria]. Both of these were free promotions designed to get my work in front of more people, not to make me fast money. But if I added up all my followers from all the social media sites on which I’m active, and if all those followers downloaded a copy of my book, that number would not approach the number of books people downloaded for free. So that’s food for thought.

Here’s fact #2. I’ve noticed that social media is like direct mail (only worse): you’re lucky to get about 1% or 2% positive response. The math is real easy for me on Google+, where I have right around 2000 people in my circles. When I post up something about one of my books, my blog, or even news about my weekend promo book going totally viral, out of those 2000 people I will get 1 or 2 “+1’s” (the same as a Facebook “like”). So if you’re really paying attention to these numbers, social media is a lot like direct mail, only it’s one tenth as effective (not 2% but one tenth of 2%). I know, I know, there’s no way to quantify who clicked on the link and downloaded the book. But if you think all those downloads came from my social media contacts you’re crazy.

Here’s fact #3. When I woke up on Saturday morning, the first day of the Marsburg promo, global downloads of my title had already started going viral. Downloads in the first few hours of the promotion already exceeded or at least tied other promotions I did with other books on previous days, and those numbers for those books were the culmination of two days and lots of time spent on social media. The numbers for Marsburg mushroomed and went ballistic in a matter of a few hours, not two days. About two hours after that, Marsburg was already approaching 1,000 downloads. It wasn’t even noon on day one yet, and I still hadn't done anything on social media yet.

Here’s fact #4. In the days before my promo blitz began, I went through Amazon’s pages and did some tagging. If you've done this, you know how powerful it is. Aaron Patterson is the guy who taught me on this score. I’ll just say it like this: One of the inspirations for The Marsburg Diary is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I love literary fiction, I love the Victorian era, and I love that Stoker wrote his novel entirely out of the diary entries of his characters. It’s genius. I wasn’t able to pull that off, but there’s enough of a similarity from Marsburg to his work that I tagged Marsburg with Dracula and Dracula with Marsburg. It makes sense, it’s one of those things that made the book go viral, and by the way…if you want to sell books in the UK, Germany, and so on, you’ve got to do your tagging on those sites as well. Just Google “Amazon UK” or "Amazon Germany" for example.

Here’s fact #5. I sent out an email to some author friends of mine in preparation for this weekend promo blast. I included the link to the book, gave them the dates, and asked them kindly to help me blast it on social media over the weekend. In exchange, I proposed in the email, they could please let me know how I could reciprocate for them. I thought it was a perfectly reasonable proposition, being a little ignorant about author promotions still. Now, let me be very clear here: I do not harbor feelings of resentment. I’m not whining about anything. I think most interpersonal drama is just root selfishness anyway. But it’s telling that none of my author friends did what I asked them to do. Well, one of them did…kinda. But I’m suspicious that they’ve already figured out what I’m blogging about here, and that’s this: you can’t sell books via social media. At least not your own. The fact is, I was conducting an experiment on the overall worth of my time spent on social media, and it failed spectacularly this weekend. Winner? Time spent on Amazon. Big time.

Here’s fact #6. Most of my social media “friends” are—guess what—friggin authors, like me. That means that 99% of them are broke like me, and they aren’t even remotely interested in buying or even reading my books because they’re too busy trying to sell their books to me. But I’m too busy trying to get them to buy my books. Talk about bad business practices. Authors, especially the indie kind, are too broke and overworked to read other indie authors’ crapola. And you know what, I don’t even read fiction that much. I prefer history and really old dictionaries. So I’m the last guy to whom you want to market indie scifi. Yet how much time to all my author friends (God love 'em) spend marketing their books to guys like me?

Here’s fact #7. Marsburg broke into 2,000 units in the US by 5 PM on day one. At that point it was ranked #2 in short stories and was in the top 100 in free books. That’s for the entire Amazon.com Web site. By the end of the day it had blasted through 3,000 and was #1 in short stories, which is where it would stay for the duration of the weekend. My UK numbers for this title alone very nearly matched what I achieved worldwide for some of my other free titles on those other promos. Think you can use social media to get that kind of exposure? You're crazy.

Here’s fact #8. I saw the ranking for Airel, in which there appears a vignette (at the end) that Marsburg is based on, jump up about 500 spots in the ranking this weekend. I can’t verify 100% that any of it is related to the Marsburg promo, but it’s plausible that some of it is.

Enough of the facts. Time for some analysis. I think there are four things at work here.

Thing #1 is tagging. My sales were dismal until I started tagging smartly. Wanna know more? Talk to Aaron Patterson, the Amazon tagging guru.

Thing #2 is association. I am fortunate to have been able to start my writing career by co-writing with an established bestselling author like Aaron Patterson. I will never deny that co-writing the Airel series with him is equal parts inspiration and strategy, and he knows that full well; occasionally coaching me on essentials. Of course, one has to be a self-starter, one must have talent, the fire in the belly, and on and on. But part of the success for this weekend’s viral blast was that Marsburg is a spinoff from Airel, and all that implies.

Thing #3 is Amazon's KDP Select program; specifically the free promo. Hello, indie authors, are you listening? It may sound counterintuitive, but if you want to sell more than 5 copies a month, you have to give away a whoooooole lotta them first. I'm not bummed that I lost 5500 potential sales this weekend. I'm stoked that 5500 people took a chance on me for free. Do you have any idea what that will do to my career, if only 1% of them write a positive review on that one book, and tell a few friends about it? And here's the other thing: I removed this book from the B&N Nook site just a few days before I enrolled it in KDP select and set it out on promo. Here's something to chew on: you can read a Kindle eBook on every mobile device, whether Apple or Android or Mac or PC or on an actual Kindle, except for the B&N Nook. Seeing as how I only managed to sell 2 copies for Nook through B&N in the course of 4 months, I think I made the right decision to pull it. Nook owners: a brand new Kindle is $79. Make a note of it. I know it sucks that a Betamax machine won't play VHS, but life is like that sometimes. In this case, you may have bought an HDDVD player when the world went BluRay. Don't blame guys like me.

Thing #4, and this is mentioned last because it's most important, is Revelation 3.7. I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up: Jesus Christ is the One who opens and no one shuts. What happened this weekend, and what continued to happen Monday for K [phantasmagoria], is nothing short of a miracle and I’m unafraid to say so. I’ll also say this: I pray all glory to God. Thanks readers and fellow authors. Thanks for going on the journey with me. This is just the beginning.

The Marsburg Diary can be yours for $2.99 by clicking here.
K [phantasmagoria] can be yours for $2.99 by clicking here.
The free book today and tomorrow is Strongbox. You can get it for free by clicking here.