Take this book... please.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 09:40PM 
Let's start with this: writers don't make shit. Well, except for those lucky few. (The actual number of the lucky is as dark a secret as the Facebook Algorithm and the real reason Dan Brown books sell... ok, no one knows that second one.)
Anyway, to repeat, most writers don't make shit. I'm one of them. So I decided to give a bunch of books away. Smart move.
You see, not only do I love to write, and I actually need to, but I love to be read. That is more important to me than selling a whackload of books and finally getting that vacation home in Florida. I don't even like Florida. (no offense, readers from Florida - I'm just making a point.)
I've been chasing that elusive book deal for more years than I care to mention. Along the way, I've had readers at all stages of my work. I get jazzed when someone reads a first draft and points out the glaring structural errors and character missteps. And when a manuscript is further along, I love when a reader copy edits, and suggests overall tightening of the language. And most of all, I love when something is finished and a reader responds. That's it, just responds, good or bad (not so much indifferent.)
I write to be read.
So when I finished Surf City Acid drop and decided that it would be the first book I put into actual paper, I had to figure out my marketing strategy. Insert: sigh.
One of the main reasons I wrote Surf City Acid Drop was to rediscover what I love about writing. Over the last 15 years, I've toiled on a lot of stories, a couple of novellas, and three full novels. And if you hang around this blog, you know how close I got to that elusive deal. But it was hard on me. Damn hard. Writing Surf City rekindled a lot of things for me. For one, I got to create Luke Fischer. A character, I believe, with legs. And I got to dip into a genre I had never fully inhabited (neo-noir-crime-fiction... with a splash of surf rock, and a lot of 1970s detective movies).
I have other projects in the works right now, and I could say they are more serious - but Luke is serious in a different way. Still, I have to remind myself as I work on the follow-up, that I am doing this to have fun. Any writer worth their salt knows the demanding task of putting 80,000 words on paper - so not fun, like as in a barell full of gin-soaked monkeys. But fun as in, hey, I love that this exists.
This was the spirit that led me to give away my first order of Surf City Acid Drop books to friends, family and colleagues. Eventually, I will get around to selling them (or Amazon will) - but for now,
take this book... please.
Oh, and when you're done - think about reviewing it.
Because, you know, marketing.
Reader Comments (3)
The link to Amazon lets me set up a giveaway for the book... is this maybe an author-only page?
That's very odd - which link do you mean? The one in the blog post, or one of the links on the sidebar, or the link to the Surf City section? Be glad to fix this - can you give me a bit more info?
Hmmm... well, I am not sure why that shows up on this link (the giveaway I mean). You still need to log in, so this link is not taking you to an author only page. If you are interested in buying the book, the needed clicks are up at the top (rather than below, where the giveaway link is). Ok, that probably didn't make a lot of sense. But let me know if you have any trouble, and I'll help you out.
Thanks for visiting.