Five stars

Check in today with a new five star review of Immortal from The To-Be-Read Pile.  The review can be found here.

New purchase option

I’m actually a little late on this announcement– I’ve been traveling, as you know– but Hellenic Immortal is indeed now available for purchase on the Nook, alongside Immortal.  You can purchase it here.

A new addition to my TV reel

I appeared with publisher Amanda Hayward yesterday afternoon for a spot on KCAL channel 9, CBS Los Angeles.  The subject was the rise of erotica and the e-book, so Immortal, while appearing in my hand, was not discussed.  BTW, there was simply no way to not slouch in those chairs.

CBS Los Angeles appearance

On vampires and immortality

I have a guest blog entry up today at Lytherus.com concerning the modern vampire and immortality.  It’s worth a minute of your time, to hop on over there and give it a read, and maybe a comment or two…

Guest blog at Lytherus

This was only my second time in New York City– and when I say that I mean midtown– as an adult, and the first time I didn’t stray from 34th and 8th the entire time.  A few stray thoughts.

• I stayed at the Hotel LOLA on 29th.  Before I saw the place I was told, “there’s a great bar in the lobby there, you have to check it out.”  Well the lobby IS a bar.  It’s like a small night club, complete with the dim lighting and the retro-Euro soundtrack.  And the room, which was an incredible example of space efficiency, made me feel like I was in a men’s razor blade commercial.
• Pretty much everywhere I turned, when I looked up I saw a building I’d seen destroyed by aliens in a movie.
• I did not know until now that when people describe areas of the city as “upper East side” and “lower West side” and so on, that the streets are actually numbered and labeled this way.  Forgive me for not knowing this, but I’m from Boston, where the streets aren’t straight for more than 20 feet, and the biggest roads don’t run parallel to one another; they converge.
• It is entirely possible to walk right past a major tourist attraction and not even know it.  I did this twice, with the Empire State Building and the Flatiron Building.
• Directions in New York were all of this variety: Walk two blocks; turn left; walk… until you get there.  Very convenient.

#1: I was walking back from the TV studio to the hotel on Friday morning, standing at a corner and waiting for a walk signal, when a woman to my right took two steps back and held up a camera.  She was getting a shot of the people she was with, who were between me and her lens.  Realizing I was in the shot, I stepped back two paces.

“I liked it better with you in the shot!” she said, after getting the picture.  ”I was going to be like, ‘look at the cute guy we picked up while we were in New York!’”

Thank you, random lady.  I had been coming from a TV interview that had gone very well, my book sales were taking off as we spoke, and this might have been the highlight of my morning.

#2: I climbed into the elevator with a woman who’d already hit the 10 button.  She asked me which floor, and I said, “seven, I think.”

I pulled out my room key and looked on the back.  ”Yep, seven.”

“Oh good,” she said, “you have a room here.”

This would have been a much more awkward conversation if my room had also been on the tenth floor.

TV appearance

Below is a link to the video of my appearance this morning with Amanda Hayward as we discuss Immortal, Hellenic Immortal, and some other book TWCS used to publish.  If you’re curious, yes, my right hand IS stapled to my thigh.

Good Day NY

A big splash

This afternoon the book reviewer at Lytherus.com checks into the tour twice, with a review of Immortal and a nice long interview with me.  Take some time and enjoy both…

A nice new review

Today’s blog tour stop– and you may have noticed this is going on longer than the date on the banner, and I’m totally cool with that– is from Zee Monodee, who checks in with a great review of Hellenic Immortal.  You can read it here.

New review

Today, Game Vortex, last seen producing a very positive review of Immortal, jumps right back into the fray with an excellent review of Hellenic Immortal.  Read the whole review here.

New interview

Adam took the time to answer some questions from Sue London… sometime in the past two weeks.  I think she went directly to him with these, since I’m pretty sure I wasn’t involved.  Enjoy the latest Q & A here.

Some nice words

More praise for Hellenic Immortal from The Virtual Wordsmith in today’s blog tour stop.  Check out the review here.

Immortal review

Here’s a new quick review from This Real Mommy, who is also offering a free copy of Immortal for anyone who wants to offer comment on what they’d do if they were immortal themselves…

Read it here!

Good Morning Texas

The Writer’s Coffee Shop is on the road and promoting, even when I’m sitting here talking to you folks.  Below is a link to a clip from Good Morning Texas featuring an interview with Amanda Hayward and Jenny Pedroza from TWCS.  (I tried embedding footage, but it doesn’t seem to want to give me a clean URL for it.)  Hellenic gets some great attention toward the end of the piece.

TWCS Interview, Texas

New Immortal review

To kick off the second week of the blog tour we have an exceptional review from the folks over at Game Vortex, reading the books in order and talking about them in order.  And given the praise for Immortal I can hardly wait to see what they think of Hellenic Immortal.  Pop over there for a read.

New interview

Meanwhile, at Workaday Reads the morning feature is an interview with me that you’ll want to read.  Because, why wouldn’t you?  Check it out here.

Well folks, it looks like I’m going to be in New York City on Thursday and Friday this week.  (That’s May 10th and 11th, for those of you reading this from the future.)  The hotel room is booked, the hair is cut, the wardrobe is… well, it is what it is.

And I’m NOT AT ALL NERVOUS.

Why are you not nervous?

I am NOT AT ALL NERVOUS to be appearing on Good Day New York on Friday morning with the publisher (TWCS) to discuss Hellenic Immortal in front of, I’m sure, an extremely modest crowd consisting entirely of friends, family, and the entire East Coast and Canada.

Nope.  Not nervous at all.

New interview with Adam

For today’s blog tour stop we have Adam answering some questions over at Ja Citam, a ti?, a site which featured a review earlier in the week.  Adam was as talkative as ever.  Stop by and say hello.

Question: Is Hellenic Immortal on sale in a print edition from Amazon?

Answer: It is available through Amazon here.  The semantic distinction has to do with the fact that TWCS is using a consignment approach to print book sales with Amazon right now.  In my opinion you’d be better served ordering it directly from the publisher, here.

Question: is Hellenic Immortal available on the Nook?

Answer: Not yet, but it will be in the next day or two.  Immortal is available on the Nook right now, though, here.  Also note Barnes & Noble is discounting it right now.

Question: I saw your name attached to an ebook called The Other Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, but when I bought it I found it had nothing to do with you.  What’s that about?

Answer: Nobody actually asked me that, but it seemed like a good time to bring this up.  A company I am unassociated with put up a $3.99 version of my legitimate book The Other Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: A Parody in ebook format.  The contents are… well, who knows what they are, but they aren’t mine.  I’ve had the bogus listing pulled from Amazon, but it’s still up on iBooks and Nook.  DON’T BUY IT.  There IS a legitimate ebook version of this parody.  You can find it here.  It says “anniversary edition” and it’s only on sale at Amazon at this time.

New Hellenic Immortal review

My new best friend Tracy James Jones, who checked in earlier with a review of Immortal apparently speed-read Hellenic in time to get a review up.  You can read it here.

Blog tour: Books on the Verge

If you can pull yourself away from the fact that Hellenic Immortal is available right now, take a minute to stop by Dorothy Distefano’s Books on the Verge for an interview with me and Adam.  Or of Adam interviewing me.  And say hi to Dorothy.  She was one of my beta readers, so be good to her.

Happy release day!

Today’s the day so stop what you’re doing and run!! to your local online merchant and pick up your copy of Hellenic Immortal!

Or, you know, click on one of these links and see how that works.  No running required.

Hellenic Immortal direct from TWCS

Hellenic Immortal ebook on Amazon

Review and short interview

Today the tour stops in with Astrid Paramita, who not only has some nice words about Hellenic Immortal, but thinks it might just be a better novel than Immortal is.  Do I love hearing that?  Yes, yes I do.

Astrid’s review

Wired.com’s GeekDad

Today’s stop on the blog tour is a big one.  Check out the feature in GeekDad from Wired.com, enjoy my interview with Adam, click on all the exciting links, and get ready!  Hellenic Immortal is only two days away!

GeekDad interview

New review

Today’s blog tour stop is a review from author Raymond Masters for Hellenic Immortal.  Stop by, say hello to Ray, and be sure to check in tomorrow when Ray will feature an interview between me and Adam on Wired.com’s GeekDad site!

Hellenic Immortal review

The official release of Hellenic Immortal is on May 3rd, which is somewhere between forever and minutes from now, depending on my mood.  To kick off the event we will be having a good old fashioned big-ass blog tour!  Herewith, the badge for said big-ass blog tour!

To start things off we have a few reviews.

Over at Great Minds Think Aloud comes a great review of Immortal by Tracy, who appears to have liked the book quite a lot.  (Why a review of Immortal for a blog tour promoting Hellenic Immortal?  Because we’re promoting both books this week.)

At Cafe Art Space you’ll find a nice review of Hellenic Immortal waiting for you there.

And finally, at Ja Citam, A Ti? you will find a review of Immortal waiting for you there.  Mercifully, in English.

Blogs will be updating more than once a day all week, and I will do my best to keep you all updated.

IBooks

You would think given that I read books on my iPad all the time, and that I use the iTunes bookstore, iBooks for all my iReading, that I would do something any normal writer would be expected to do, like, say, obsessively check for my own book in their store.

I did not do this, which is why today while I am announcing the great news that iBooks is carrying Immortal, I cannot sincerely tell you how long this has been true.  I am just very happy that it is true.

Immortal on iBooks

But look at me burying the lede!  The BIG news is that you can pre-order Hellenic Immortal from iBooks right now!

Let me say that louder.

YOU CAN PRE-ORDER THE EBOOK FOR HELLENIC IMMORTAL ON IBOOKS RIGHT NOW!

I can’t build a link to it, but if you open up iBooks and do a search for my name, you’ll find it.

(You will also find a bogus listing for The Other Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook there.  The contents are a Joseph Conrad novel.  Apple, you’re the best.)

Today I’m pleased to see the first official review of Hellenic Immortal has made its way online.

“I’m happy to report that Hellenic Immortal has everything that I loved about Immortal – voice, pacing, mystery, cleverness, philosophy, and atmosphere…”

–Sue London

Check out the entire review here.

Included: eleven copies of the new edition of Immortal and bookmarks and promotional Moo cards for Immortal AND Hellenic Immortal.

So it’s been a good day.

You can now preorder your very own print copy of the much anticipated Hellenic Immortal!  How?  Just follow this link to TWCS and they’ll take it from there.

And to celebrate

To commemorate this moment, and perhaps to make you a bit more eager to go place that preorder, I’m making the first chapter available to you right now!  For free!  Cuz that’s just how I roll.

Hellenic Immortal Chapter One

A free giveaway has just opened up for two signed ARC’s (advance review copies) of Hellenic Immortal.  Follow the link below to sign up for it.  You do have to be a part of GoodReads already, but the entry is free.  Be sure to add the book to your “to-read” list.

HELLENIC IMMORTAL GIVEAWAY

Just a quick note to let everyone know the second edition of Immortal is now up on the Amazon site for the Kindle.  The print edition is not yet listed there, and for some reason the reviews of the prior edition have not rolled over to the new edition, but we’re getting there.

IMMORTAL on Amazon Kindle

Yes, readers, Immortal is back on the marketplace!  You can buy it right now from The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House in either e-book or print format by clicking this link right here.  Listings on Amazon and ebook purveyors such as Apple are still pending (Amazon is being a pain as I type this, but when is Amazon not a pain?) but why deal with a middle-man when you can get it directly from the publisher?

A guest blog and a giveaway

To celebrate today’s release, I’d like to direct you to TNBBC’s The Next Best Book Blog, hosted by Lori Hettler (@TNBBC, whom you should all be following) for a guest blog penned by yours truly and an ebook giveaway.

Click here to stop by, and be sure to comment to enter to win your own copy.

Press release

Also, please follow the link below, read and share the press release!

IMMORTAL PRESS RELEASE

I urge all of you who are hearing about Immortal for the first time to avail yourselves of Google or Bing or whatever your search engine of choice is to look up reviews for the novel over the past year.  There are quite a few, and since none of them are bad or negative, I feel confident you’ll like what you hear.

Today, I’m going to point you to the review of Bryan Camp, who originally wrote about Immortal for a now-defunct site called The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog.  It is now carried by Litstack, and the team there was kind enough to bring it out to the front page with a new preamble in anticipation of tomorrow’s second edition rollout.

Immortal review at Litstack

As you all know, Immortal initially debuted in October of 2010, with rollouts (ebook etc.) taking place over the subsequent month or two.  By this time last year the book sales were in full swing and I was setting up an April blog tour to promote it.

And then I changed publishers in preparation for the debut of the second book, Hellenic Immortal.  This meant pulling the book out of circulation first.  Immortal has not been for sale since January.

A small promotional rollout

I’m happy to say Immortal is again going to be for sale with a new cover and a new publisher, as of March 8th.  To celebrate, we’re having a mini-tour, consisting of a few stops with a couple of interviews and a reprint of one of my favorite reviews.  Today, I’m stopping over at Sue London’s blog for a chat about Immortal and Hellenic Immortal and what’s coming next.  Stop by Sue’s blog and say hello.  And if you can’t wait until Thursday for the book you can always preorder it!

As of today, you can preorder your copy of the new edition of Immortal, which is set for a release date of March 8, 2012.  This is to pre-order it directly from the publisher, which as we all know is the most awesome way possible to buy something.

Should I buy this…

…if I already own a copy of Immortal?

Yes!

1. It will have a cool new cover that you can’t resist having
2. It will include On Gods and Succubi, which will NOT be included in Hellenic Immortal
3. It went through a new edit, so if you want a version of the text where the word “really” doesn’t appear as often and there are fewer commas, it’s a MUST

…if I don’t already own a copy of Immortal?

Yes!

1. What the hell is wrong with you?

Preorder your copy here!

The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House author page

As of today you can find me listed at the Writer’s Club Coffee Shop Publishing House’s author page.

Also as of today I will be calling them TWCS_PH so as to avoid carpal-tunnel.

My author page

Book pages

Also up today are the book pages for both Immortal and Hellenic Immortal.  You will find there the publication dates, the pre-order dates, the new covers, and the book summaries.

Immortal Page

Hellenic Immortal Page

I have expanded the places in which you can find my random mutterings, musings and meanderings.  I had no solid reason for doing this aside from the boredom that comes with waiting for a book release and a dearth of new things to write.  (I am researching for the third Immortal book right now. Nobody panic.)  (Okay, panic a little. I have no idea what the plot for it is yet.)

If you’re a long-time follower of this blog you already know you can find me on Twitter and Facebook and GoodReads.  This is all still true, and coming soon there will be an author page on Facebook and a bio page on the publisher’s page.

And now there is Tumblr

I cannot explain to you in any adequate way what Tumblr is, because for whatever reason when one tries to do so one ends up with an explanation that makes it sound like a stupid thing.  It is not a stupid thing.  it just defies explanation.

Here’s a try: take a hosted blogging site like this one (i.e., WordPress), throw in the streaming immediacy of Twitter, add gifs and photos (and porn) and… well, almost.

Anyway.  I exist as a Tumblr blogger in three places:

The Incredibly Unnecessary Gene Doucette Tumblr

The Urban Cyclist

Very Fake Headlines

Additionally, Adam the immortal has his own Tumblr.  It’s not much in use right now– it will be used for quotations and words of wisdom– but will pick up once we’re closer to the publishing dates of his two books.

Words of Wisdom from Adam the Immortal

Feel free to read or not, share or not share, follow or not follow.  Tumblr doesn’t actually record page hits– popularity is measured by “likes” and “reblogging”– so I won’t know unless you also feel like joining Tumblr.  Which I recommend.  Especially if you have a lot of free time you’re looking to get rid of.

Unlike the last cover I showed you (for Immortal) the cover for Hellenic Immortal is likely to be something you’re not going to fully “get” right away, in the sense that it’s depicting something from the contents of the book.  Thematically, the new cover is linked to the previous cover in obvious ways and still retains the “ancient man in modern world” motif.  I hope you find it interesting.

This is a draft, but it’s pretty close to what the new cover of Immortal is going to look like.  More language might be added to the front (“New edition” and/or “Bonus short story: On Gods and Succubi”, or not) and the back cover language and layout hasn’t been dealt with yet. But the hard work is done.  And now, on to Hellenic Immortal.

As I previously announced, Immortal is switching publishers in 2011.  This is almost all entirely good news, especially since it means Hellenic Immortal will be arriving shortly.

But in order to list the new edition of Immortal the old edition has to go away first.  In a perfect world not ruled by computers and automation and people who steal copyrights, it would be possible for the current edition to continue to exist up until the day the new one is up for sale.  Since we don’t live in that world, as of right now Immortal is listed on Amazon as “currently unavailable”.  In the next week or two it will also be disappearing from the Nook and Apple, and everywhere else.

But it’s only for a month.

About that

Actually more like two.  The previously announced release dates have been bumped by a month each.  Immortal is now going to be re-released on March 8, 2012, and Hellenic Immortal is now scheduled for May 3, 2012.

The reason for this is simple: there isn’t enough time to promote the books properly.  And now that the book is disappearing from the Internet for a solid two months, this is even more important.

In other news

Copies of the ARC for Immortal will be going out to reviewers in the next week, and in a few days I should have a draft of the new cover to show you.  And the final edit is pending for Hellenic Immortal.  And in the next couple of weeks the cover for Hellenic will be all set the ARC for it shortly after THAT, and then we’re really rolling.  Stick around.

As you all know, Hellenic Immortal, the second book in the Immortal series, is going to be released on April 5th, 2012.  I’ve already shared some choice words of wisdom from Adam from the first book.  Below are a few from the new novel.  Enjoy!

…One of the kicks I get out of cards and dice is that both were once used for telling the future, so the idea of employing them in games of chance just cracks me up.  Every time I crap out at the table I’m thinking not only did I lose my money, I also just foretold a drought for my village.

I am probably not the best source when it comes to who invented what.  For a long time I thought I invented the wheel.

We spotted the Parthenon in the distance… [which] made me feel better until the moonlight broke from the clouds and I saw how crumbled it was.  I had outlasted stone, and if that’s not a humbling discovery I don’t know what is.

It’s easy to see how the werewolf mythos ended up conflated with the supposed power of moonlight…  I always thought it was terribly inconvenient.  I mean, if you’re going to be a monster, wouldn’t you rather be one during the new moon?

Pretending to be a god is almost always a really bad idea, and I absolutely do not recommend it.

It took me a few minutes longer than it should have to get back into the room thanks to the electronic key card, which I’m adding to the long list of modern improvements I don’t care for.  I just can’t get the hang of them.  And by the time I do the world will probably have moved on to something even more annoying.  On the positive side we seem to be getting closer to “open sesame” actually working, so I have that to look forward to.

Very occasionally, I will pop up in the historical record.  Most of the time I’m not at all easy to spot, because most of the time I’m just a guy who does a thing and then disappears again into the background behind someone-or-other who’s busy doing something much more important.  But there are a couple of rare occasions when I get a starring role.

When you find out the government of a particular nation is actively searching for you, it’s almost always in your best interest to get out of that nation as quickly as possible.

I realized how very much I missed being able to sit down opposite another human and compare experiences.  Long periods of isolation from the tribe of Man always got me feeling this way eventually, to the extent that even the most mundane of long-ago conversations began to take on a certain romantic quality in hindsight.  And when you’re looking back longingly at a centuries-old discussion on the subject of who farted, it’s time to go find someone to talk to.

The first time I saw an automobile it nearly ran me over, and that’s pretty much colored how I’ve felt about them since.

I do not, as a rule, get involved in family politics.  It’s almost always messy, generally revolves around distant slights I don’t have a hope of understanding, and all parties tend to be ridiculously unreasonable.  Plus, depending on the family, it can get you killed.

The Athenians defeated the Trojans, the Persians defeated the Athenians, the Persians defeated Spartans, the Athenians and the Spartans defeated the Persians, the Spartans defeated the Athenians, the Thebans defeated the Spartans, and the Macedonians defeated everybody.  So you can understand why I didn’t go out of my way to establish a firm residence anywhere in the Greek sphere; sometimes I was afraid to even sit down.

As I explained here, Immortal is changing publishing houses, and Hellenic Immortal is on board with the same publisher.  That publisher?  The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House, henceforth known as TWCS because that’s a mouthful of a name.

I met some folks from TWCS at the Indie Book Event over the summer, and honestly I think the only reason it took this long to inquire about working with them was that I thought they only handled romance.

You will find that TWCS has a website!  And marketing!  And promotions!  And you will likely find that the least expensive place to buy their books is directly from their website, so keep that link on-hand.

Publishing dates

The new edition of Immortal will be available February 9, 2012.  This edition will have a new cover design (about which you will hear more about just as soon as we figure out what the hell the new cover should look like) and it will be marketed as having a bonus chapter/teaser for Hellenic Immortal.  I would LOVE it if you, a fan who has already read Immortal, picked up a new copy of the book.  But I’m going to be honest with you: the bonus chapter is the same thing I shared with you at the beginning of the summer.  You can read it for free right now here.

The publishing date for Hellenic Immortal is April 5, 2012.

Keep in mind these dates are written in very dark pencil, not ink.  Ahead still is: editing; cover design for both books; navigating the mayhem likely to ensue when attempting to issue a new edition of a book from a different publisher than the one who published the old edition, which is going to wreak havoc with online retailers.

Now then: anyone want to pitch a cover idea to me? I’m open to anything.

I don’t think I will ever get used to the delay.  I’ve been an Internet writer/blogger/columnist/tweeter/whateverthefuckwecallitnow for most of my adult life, and the great thing about being… that… is the immediate gratification that derives from trotting something out to readers immediately.

Novel writing, on the other hand, means accepting that a finished book won’t be seen by readers that are not in my immediate family for years.

Fixer

Today’s example of this is Fixer.  I wrote this book between Immortal and Hellenic Immortal, which means it has been lying around in some completed form for at least five years.  It needed an edit though, badly, and so I left it alone while busying myself with various screenwriting endeavors and all matters concerning Adam the immortal.  I finally got a chance to re-finish Fixer only recently, and that editing concluded a few days ago.

And there is a very good chance this book won’t debut until 2013.  Because that’s just the way this has to work.

Sample chapter

But since I went through all the trouble to rewrite it, I’d really like you to read it, so to accommodate my need for interest and feedback and your (hopefully) need for new material from me, I’m going to introduce you to the main character by bringing out chapter one of Fixer.  If you read it and hate me for not posting the remaining 98,000 words of the novel immediately, I understand.  Not that that wouldn’t be a really excellent reaction.

Fixer sample chapter

I’ve been getting a lot of very specific feedback from my Immortal readers along the lines of, “when is the sequel coming out?” and “that sequel, it’ll be coming out soon, right?” and the occasional, “where the fuck is the sequel?”

To which my answer has been: it’s finished.  And I don’t know when it’s coming out.

Oddly, this hasn’t placated anybody.

Hellenic Immortal

It is true that I finished the final rewrite of Hellenic Immortal back in May, and it is also true that it has not been published since that time (aside from this sample chapter.)  It is also true that it’s almost always a good idea to roll out a new book within a year of the prior book’s rollout or risk losing readers.

Now here is what I couldn’t explain before now.  I had an agreement in place with the publisher of Immortal to publish the second book as well.  But for a number of reasons I can’t go into here, I didn’t want them to publish it.  Which meant finding a new publisher, one that would be willing to take on the second book of a series without owning– and thereby reaping the benefits of the sales of– the first book.  (And the addendum to “publish your next book within a year of the last one” is, “the next book will help sell the last book”.)

Contract pending

As I write this, a contract for Hellenic Immortal is en route and ready to be signed.  I don’t have a release date yet for it, but it should be in the first quarter of 2012.  Between then and now the cover will need to be designed and prepublication blurbs will have to be obtained and so on.  I’m hoping that all of you who have patiently awaited this release can patiently wait a little longer.

Interestingly, one of the things that may hold up the release of Hellenic Immortal is the re-release of Immortal.

Second edition

And that’s the other big news of the day here.  Barring any significant reversals, the same publisher will be obtaining the rights to Immortal as well. This will mean a new edition with new cover art, new distribution channels, additional promotional opportunities and so on.  I am very excited about this, because as well as the book did in the past year (and it did very well) there is still much more that can be done to make people out there aware of it.

And finally

What this means for the future: as those of you who follow my Twitter feed know, I just finished work on a novel called Fixer.  This is a standalone novel about a man who can see a rolling five seconds into the future trying to stop a killer only he can see.  It’s (of course, because it’s me) a blend of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and humor– much heavier on the horror and lighter on the humor than Immortal– that I’m nearly positive you’ll love.  (If there is enough demand, I may put up a sample chapter for you…)

If nothing else were on tap this book would be (possibly self-) published in the first quarter of 2012.  But with Hellenic on its way I’m afraid you may have to wait a little longer for it.

Meanwhile, I have to start work on the third Immortal book.  Believe it or not, it will be the first novel I’ve started from scratch in six years.  Wish me luck.

Wife Deb likes to leave music playing for the pets during the day.  She uses the Comcast music channels, and tries to mix it up.  This morning she selected Christian Rock, of all things.

Over lunch at Bisuteki:

Deb: So did you change the channel right away?

I gets up Sunday, m'kay?

Me: No, I left it.  I wasn’t really listening anyway.

Deb: So when you go home you’ll find the pets are uplifted and content!

Me: Or one of them will be crucified.

Deb: (Chokes on fried rice)

Me: Hey, if it’s Zeke, we won’t have to worry about giving him his medicine for the next three days.

In the event that you, area car driver, happen to be dropping off a passenger, please execute the following maneuvers:

1: signal and get to the side of the road;

2: leave the turn signal on while you’re stopped.

As you can see, these are two steps.  Two very easy steps.  These two very easy steps are intended to replace the following alternative method of dropping off passengers:

–just letting out the passenger when already stopped at the light, without putting on a turn signal or moving out of the lane in any significant way, or checking the right side of the car first for passing bicyclists.

Why?

Here’s the thing, area car driver.  Your passenger has not been looking at the road.  He or she does not habitually look in the rear view mirror before opening his or her door, especially when getting out of the back seat.

Drivers such as yourself are well-trained in looking down the street for bikes, and those of us on bikes thank you for it.  You are also aware when there is a bike near your car, because you’re the driver and that’s your job.  But your clueless passenger is not aware and hasn’t had to be for the entire ride, and the curb is right there.  They are not thinking of the possibility that a bike is attempting to navigate the space between the car and the curb at the same moment in which they are opening the door.

Likewise, the biker is not aware someone is about to get out of the car because the biker does not know you have stopped to let someone out, because you have not stopped to let someone out.  You have stopped at the light.  There is no way to tell the difference between stopping for a light and stopping to drop someone off without using psychic powers.

Bicyclists do not have psychic powers.  In case you were not sure about that.

And finally

In the event you have neglected to pull over adequately or used a turn signal, and it is raining, and your passenger has opened the rear right door cutting off the cyclist that was at that very moment navigating that same space between the car and the curb, it would be in your best interest not to yell at the biker who had to use the side of your car to stop before he hit your car door.  Suggesting that the bike had plenty of time to stop just proves both of you knew the bike was there and decided to open the door anyway, which makes you look like massive assholes.

Addendum

When bike brakes get wet they don’t work as well.  Just like car brakes, actually.  If you, area car driver, ever find yourself saying, “the bike will have enough time to stop” you should re-evaluate your decision-making capabilities.

Especially when it’s raining.

Is Adam an asshole?

The winter brought more readers and more reviews, and lots of more interesting questions.  Two question in particular resulted in my favorite blog post title, by far: Mary Sues and assholes.  Author Spencer Seidel also checked in with a nice review, as did Associated Content and Night Owl Paranormal.

Christmas also brought a celebration of the new year and an opportunity for readers to order their own signed copies.  (An offer that is still valid.)

An interesting series of discussions

In January, writer Jacqueline Lichtenberg weighed in with one of the more interesting discourses on Immortal.  Jacqueline had gotten a review copy of the book prior to publication in anticipation of a possible blurb.  What she saw when she read it was an opportunity to use the narrative approach I took– I broke some rules, let’s just say– as a teaching exercise.  

The results (mind you, she liked the book) began here, continued a week later when my response was posted here and picked up again three months later in response to some of the criticisms posted in the comments section of the first two posts, here.

Adam’s first interview

While all of that was happening my main character, Adam, who may or may not be an asshole, gave his first interview.  It was a great chance for him to be sober, which became important in April when we went on our first Blog Tour.

Next: A Blog Tour!!!!

…you know not to take a sharp turn across a manhole cover in the rain

…you can’t name most of the streets you travel on but you can describe the light cycle patterns of every intersection in great detail

…you’d consider a horror movie that began with the driver’s side door of a parked car flying open the absolute scariest way to start a movie

…you can name every part on your bike that has ever stopped working

…another bike passes you while you’re stopped for a pedestrian and you make it your life’s work to hunt down and pass that biker

…you’ve learned the hard way that the only way to cross embedded trolley tracks is at a ninety degree angle or not at all

…you’ve biked more than three miles while bleeding

…you know at least a quarter of the street lights in the city only turn green if a car is waiting for them

…you have ever ridden straight to the bike repair shop with something sharp in your tire, knowing it won’t go flat until you pull the sharp thing out

…you’re more concerned with the puddle in front of you than with the car on your left

…you’ve ever said, “yes I went over the handlebars but it was no big deal” and meant it

…a part of you really wants to see that guy on the bike going the wrong way without a helmet get hit by a car

…you stopped caring how you look in really tight clothing a very long time ago

…you don’t mind being passed by another bike as long as they look like they race professionally.  Otherwise, it’s on

…you know that the most important part of the weather report is the wind speed

…you know exactly what a chamois is

…there are very few things you find more satisfying than passing the car that gunned its engine to get by you a few blocks earlier

…you’re seriously considering breaking the rear window of the next Mini Cooper that tries to use your bike lane as a driving lane

And finally…

…you love listening to other people complain about how long they were stuck in traffic.

I’m not proud

Immortal was scheduled to debut on 10-1-10, and I’d love to say things went smoothly, and everything worked out okay, and I was cool about it all.

But…

There was Amazon.  The publisher’s initial plan was to use Amazon’s “fulfillment” plan which resulted in this spectacular blog entry in which I attempted to convince my readers to wish-list the book due to the impossibility of pre-purchasing anything in the fulfillment program.

I then convinced the publisher to use Amazon Advantage instead so the book looked like every other book on the retailer site.  (The fulfillment listing looked like it might if one were buying a used pair of off-brand shoes from a “retailer” that lives in an “apartment.”)  But switching didn’t exactly happen immediately, resulting in this panicked blog entry wherein I tried to cover for the possibility that the book would not actually be available on the much-publicized release date.

And then came the release date… and the book was available.

These are not, needless to say, exemplars of posterity.

And that was only for the print version

After a nice launch party (for which I neglected to take any pictures, because I’m smart like that) and a press release it was time to sit back and watch the sales figures go up…

…and answer awkward questions about where the ebook version was.

OK, I know this was only a year ago, but I’m not that bright.  I didn’t realize how important ebooks were to the current publishing model, and neither did my “this is only our second book” publisher.

It took another writer (the very nice Lorna Suzuki) to ask, “Gene, why don’t you just use Smashwords?”, which prompted me to ask my publisher, “Why don’t we just use Smashwords?” and then there I was formatting an ebook myself.  This was a process that required multiple revisitations, considerable anguish, and not an inconsiderable amount of weeping.  But it got done.  And thanks to Smashwords, it’s available not just on the Kindle, but in all the other formats you can name, and a few you’ve never heard of: Nook, iBooks, Sony, Kobo, Diesel.

Next week: More reviews roll in, we discuss whether Adam is an asshole, whether the book is structurally sound, and whether you’ve bought your copy yet.

We’re looking back at the first year in the life of the indie published book Immortal.  Join us, as we reminisce and speak in first person plural for no reason.

Before the beginning

The official publication date for Immortal was 10-1-10, which was a perfect binary day despite actually being a Friday and thus a very bad day to release a book.  But so many things had to happen before we even got to that day.

ARC’s and Blurbs

Books need blurbs!  Collecting nice words and pre-publication reviews with quotable parts was a major concern, especially since I didn’t really have many industry contacts, I knew no reviewers or how to contact them, and I was barely competent when it came to social networking.

I had a few long shots.  Back in 2006 when an earlier iteration of Immortal was in my agent’s hands and we were trying to line up some names for it, I went nuts looking up authors and sending them emails to ask if they would be interested in reading an advance copy.  The two most notable positive responses I got were Christopher Moore and Eric Garcia.  Unfortunately between 2006 and 2010 Moore hired a publicist I couldn’t get past, but Eric was still around, still remembered me, and was still happy to help.

In creating the ageless Adam, Gene Doucette has conjured up a character as witty as he is old, and as charming as he is depraved. IMMORTAL is by turns thrilling, moving, and deeply, darkly funny.

–Eric Garcia

Twitter, Goodreads

I did have some success meeting reviewers and other authors on both Goodreads and Twitter.  One of my first reviews came from Lori Hettler of The Next Best Book blog who I met through Goodreads.  I met Lori in person at the 2011 Indie Book Event where I also had a chance to hear her describe the things authors do online, when talking to reviewers, that she hates.  She then described half a dozen things I’d done myself.

Part science fiction fantasy, part action adventure and thriller, Gene Doucette creates the perfect balance of humor and edge-of-your-seat anticipation in this genre-defying story of an immortal man named Adam, who finds himself battling demons and bounty hunters in his eternal search for Eve, the red haired mystery woman of his dreams. Witty and wonderful, with a bite of sarcasm, Immortal is a five star read for any fiction lover… 

–Lori Hettler

Other great early blurbs came from blogger Sue London, author Vincent Zandri, WritersNewsWeekly, author Jonathan Vos Post and The Pigeon Post.

And then came 10-1-10

Wednesday: stumbling toward the publication date, and the importance of having an e-book version ready to go.

Today I’m happily participating in the blog tour of my friend Bryan Thomas Schmidt, whose novel The Worker Prince debuted this month.  Below is an interview with Bryan.

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

I have been creating stories since I was very young. My mother says I never played with a  toy the same way twice, and I used to organize my friends on the playground at school into these elaborate scenarios as firefighters, paramedics, and various other heroes. I discovered a gift for words in school, and, with the encouragement of teachers and others, got quickly hooked. I loved how I could move people emotionally.

Did you start with novels?

No, I came to novels and fiction in general late, after writing plays, screenplays, and even non-fiction to varied success. Sometimes on my screenplays I’d been given the “criticism” that I should be a novelist because of my penchant for excessive description (for that medium, at least). But in 2007, I finally began to try in earnest, when I found this story I really wanted to explore. It was in a different genre, and the novel came up short and undeveloped and badly crafted. So I quit for a year and studied craft, thinking I might have found yet another medium of writing to fail in.

When did The Worker Prince start to generate publisher interest?

Well, I queried three dozen agents and only had a couple bites which later passed so I finally saw some open calls from publishers and sent it to them. Three small presses were really interested but Diminished, for whom I had already been writing a space opera serial, The North Star Serial, for their ezine Digital Dragon Magazine, was just over the top enthusiastic from the start.

Did it bother you that they’d never published novels before?

Not really. It’s kind of an honor to be the first, and there is the advantage of extra enthusiasm to get it right and launch themselves well, which benefits my book. But above and beyond that, they shared much of the enthusiasm as I got from beta readers and friends who read the book and felt it captured the magic of the original Star Wars and just had to be read. That’s a good feeling and the kind of passion every writer would want for their book from a publisher.

Tell us a little about the story. You said it’s based on the story of Moses?

Well, the setup is pure Moses: a hotshot young prince discovers he was secretly adopted from the people enslaved by his own. When he discovers how hard life is for them and it conflicts with his sense of justice, he comes into conflict with the ruler, his uncle, and others amongst his family and friends. Then he winds up wanted and on the run and things just evolve. I depart from it a bit because the overall arc of that Moses story is spread out over three books. The exodus, for example, won’t come until the second book, and plays out in the third. So, beyond that, I did a lot of improvising. I wanted a story with great action scenes, cool vehicles, aliens and characters and good humor and romance mixed in. So there’s a love story subplot, good comrades and rivals for the protagonist, a larger than life villain, but one who has three dimensions. Unlike Darth Vader in his first appearance, Xalivar does have some nice qualities at first. Additionally, the slaves rebel and fight for freedom, and that goes differently than the biblical story in many ways as well.

There are obvious influences on a few set pieces from various past Science Fiction and Fantasy films or books you enjoyed.

Yes, and I allowed those parallels to be obvious because they’re fun if done well, I think. I don’t mind seeing stuff that I know the inspiration for as long as it’s handled well, and I am hoping many readers won’t either. It’s also true that some familiar tropes are repeated because they just work so well, and I’ve been told that’s the case here as well. There’s an awful lot of originality mixed in, so I’m proud to also get to pay tribute to those who inspired me from time to time.

Whose your intended audience with the book?

I wrote it for people who love Star Wars type space fantasy. My hope is that parents will read it with their kids and discuss it and teens will discover the joy in science fiction through it as I did with those films and their novel tie-ins. But I think it will appeal to a broad spectrum.

For more information about The Worker Prince, click here!

It’s embarrassing to admit this, but we’ve gone one calendar year– and some change– since the official publication date of Immortal and I didn’t even realize it until a few days ago.  

And it’s been a hell of a year, the kind of year that cries out for a recap of some kind, and by God that calls for a blog post!

But there is too much

This was supposed to be that recap, but as I looked back on the last twelve months I realized nothing shorter than 2,500 words would do the job, and that’s much too long.  So to cover the reviews, the blog tour, the advertisements, the book events, the quotes and excerpts and everything else, I’m going to hold a Week of Immortal beginning on Monday (10/17) and possibly even lasting the entire week.

Why wait until next week?  I, um, haven’t written anything for it yet.  Also, tomorrow’s blog entry will have a guest promoting a book that isn’t Immortal, and that would just be weird.

For the past few weeks I have been working on a rewrite – slash – edit – slash – reworking of a novel of mine called Fixer, about which you have likely heard almost nothing because I haven’t discussed it except in passing before now.

At the moment, I am hating every single thing about the book, because at the moment I’m supposed to.

I hate editing.  Every writer says that and every writer is telling the truth when they say that, so it’s no huge shock, but really: I hate editing.  It’s the most important part of writing that feels the least like actual writing or creating.  Honestly, the last time I felt like a writer was when I finished Hellenic Immortal, and that was about four months ago.

Why writers hate editing

I’ve never had a true content editor for my own writing.  Just my saying that has caused a half dozen professional editors to choke on their tongues and half a dozen potential buyers of Immortal to quietly move along to another book before I see them leaving.  But while I would absolutely tell you, random person asking for advice, to hire one immediately, I haven’t needed one yet myself.

One big reason writers both hate editing their own work and often turn out to be less than effective at it is that we don’t see problems for which we can’t think of a solution.  I can, for instance, read a section and say to myself, “this doesn’t work,” but if I can’t think of why and how to fix it, I might just say “this is good enough” and move on.

I know I do this.  And it’s why I’m hating editing so very much right now.

About Fixer

I ended up with Fixer after pondering the question, “how could I create the idea of a guardian angel without involving anything religious?”  The final product ended up far from that initial germ of an idea (which actually originated in an anecdote told to me by a coworker whose wife was saved by someone who promptly “vanished”) and is now mainly about a man who can see a rolling five seconds of the future trying to stop something only he can see from killing people.

Anyway.

The book is written in third person.  If you’re familiar with Immortal you know I’m not used to that.  And some of the things that need fixing (hah) revolve around my own unfamiliarity with the third person voice.  (And yes, considering how hard first-person is to write in, you are allowed to find that ironic.)  But there are also pacing problems resulting in my not knowing some characters as well as I should, entire chapters that should exist and entire chapters that should not.  I have parts of story from across a timeline of 40 years that I don’t know how to sort, and a relentless ending that’s too relentless and ends too suddenly.

And I know all of this.  And I only have a dim idea of how to fix it.  And until I figure that out, I’m going to be angry with myself for not being able to.  And when I do I’m not even sure what I’m doing with the newly finished product yet.

Yes, folks the life of a writer is just full of glamor.

A great review

You might recall my talking about Girl_Who_Reads in my first blog about the Indie Book Event because she had one of the best stories about her website name I’ve ever heard, and because I did all I could to convince her to read Immortal.

Well, she read it.  Here’s a little of what she had to say:

…the writing was superb. I know a lot of people are hesitant to pick up indie published books because of quality concerns. I would say that it even has some literary merit. Immortal is one of the best written books I’ve read.

Here’s her full review.  Take a look, make a comment, throw confetti.

As many of you know, I’ve been biking a lot this summer.  Since my office moved in March and turned my daily bike commute from 8 miles into 35, I have logged over 3,000 miles.  At the beginning my breakfast was a piece of toast and coffee, my clothes were shorts and a shirt, and my shoes were regular running sneakers.  Now I’m wearing bib shorts, breathable underwear (!), sports glasses, and shoes that clip into my pedals.  In the heat of the summer I broke down and shaved my body hair in an effort to stay cool.  And my breakfast for most of the summer consisted of (in order):

• one OxyElite Pro fat burner pill
• one Allegra
• whole grain toast and coffee
• two multivitamins
• one fish oil pill
• one scoop of Accelerade in 12-14 ounces of water
• (post ride) one and a half scoops of Amplified Wheybolic Extreme 60 in 12-14 ounces of water.

From the start of the riding to right now, I’ve lost 14 pounds and gained muscles in places I didn’t know existed outside of the G.I. Joe dolls I used to play with when I was five.  

So, having looked back at all of this and considered what I’d accomplished and what I still have left to do (I’m still unhappy with my stomach, thank you) it occurred to me that this might be a good time to quit smoking.

Because I’m crazy

Okay, here’s the thing.  I like smoking.  A lot of people do.  You might be one of them, but you’re probably not.  You’re probably one of those people who has never tried cigarettes for long enough to understand the appeal, and bravo for you.  But I will always enjoy smoking whether I continue to smoke or not.  And I do plan to stop.  Right now, actually.

I’ve been smoking for 25 years.  I never got up to more than 18 a day, and I’ve gotten down as low as two a day.  For this summer I averaged about six a day.  During the week I would have one shortly after getting to work, a second one about 90 minutes later, and one after lunch, and then a fourth after I’d biked home.  Those two cigarettes I had right after the bike rides were the best moments of my day.

I’m serious.

But then I’d end up having fifth and sometimes a sixth one later in the evening, and I’d wake up with ashtray aftertaste the next morning, and do the whole thing all over again.  And I’d keep doing it, partly because I really didn’t want to not do it, and partly because some little piece of me thinks I can do it all.  I can bike 175 miles a week while also going through two packs a week.  It can be done, and I’ll prove it.

So I proved it

I’m not even sure who I was proving it to.  But I did it.  However, it’s undeniably true that I have also reached the upper limit of what I can do while still smoking.  Certain hills on my route are as easy as they’re ever going to be, my speed is never going to improve beyond what it is, and– having taken up jogging on weekends– I’ll never run beyond a certain number of miles.

So now I’m quitting.  Not because I don’t want to smoke any more; that’s never going to go away.  I’m quitting because I have no idea how much faster I can bike or farther I can run, or better I can feel until I take that step.  In other words, I’m counting on my own vanity to keep me away from the smokes.

Step away, slowly

I’m writing this at the time I would be having my post-lunch cigarette.  And my last smoke was a couple of hours ago, so I’m not really in withdrawal yet.  In the event I happen to interact with you in the next couple of days and I act like Angelus, I apologize preemptively.

The intersection of Franklin Street and North Harvard Ave in Allston is busy.  Franklin is a little side street that happens to lead to a ramped footbridge that goes over the Mass Turnpike, which makes it an incredibly useful road for bikes, because on the other side of the bridge is the end of Harvard Street in Allston/Brighton.  It is probably the easiest way to get into Boston proper from North Cambridge.

So lots of bikes go along this little road, and more will be taking it in the future now that there’s a stand for the city’s new Bike Share Program a block away on Western Ave.

And it’s not a terribly safe intersection.  It had a blinking yellow light for years, so bikes and cars coming off of Franklin had to look for gaps in traffic along North Harvard in order to make it through.  So when the city elected to put a stoplight there instead, it made a whole lot of sense.

Here’s the problem: the light never changes for bikes.  It’s linked to a pad below the street so only something as heavy as a car will trigger the green.

Just to review

I have waited at that intersection many times.  I am usually there with another bike, and only occasionally with another car.  That’s because cars have little reason to come down the street.  Cars can’t use the footbridge at the end; most of the people driving down the street are coming from their homes, and there’s almost no through traffic.  But now, if I want to get onto North Harvard within the official laws of the road, I need to wait until a car comes up behind me and triggers the light.

And if a car doesn’t come along?  Well, I’ll have to run the light.  Clearly the city doesn’t care either way.

Other reading: Bikes and Red Lights

There is a new interview with me available right now at the Lor Mandela blog run by author L. Carroll, as part of a month-long cross-promotional blog tour daringly entitled Authorpalooza.  Read about me discussing Immortal and why I can’t pick a favorite all-time movie, and a bunch of other things.  It’s a fun read.  Check it out here.  

There is also a giveaway: pick up a free signed copy of Immortal!  All you have to do is comment on the blog for a chance to win.

At the beach, dammit

That extended silence you heard

My apologies for the long delay between blog entries.  August = vacation + kids going back to college + my vain attempts to get some work in on Fixer, the novel you are bound to hear much more about in the coming months.  Apologies if you were sending out search parties.

More musings

I’m still talking about the Indie Book Event, held last Saturday in New York City.  In all likelihood I will not need for there to be a part three, but who knows?  As I continue therapy, more things may come back to me.

Check out part one here

Like a second grader

Here are the times I have been in New York before:

• when I was ten, with my mother and my sister, in which I correctly identified a hooker, loudly, and hailed my first cab;
• when I was twenty with a college friend in which we never left the pier (what pier? A pier; I don’t know which one) which was memorable for being the first night I have ever drunk enough that I cannot recall how I got back, nor how my friend got out of a ticket when he decided he no longer believed in red lights– while driving with an expired license– with a cop behind us;
• when I was twenty-three and passing through the train station on the way to the Poconos.

So my total understanding of New York before Friday afternoon was: hookers and cabs, docks and alcohol, and the inside of Penn Station.  Everything else I got from movies.  (Incidentally, I describe New York City in Immortal in enough detail that one reviewer praised the section with “he’s obviously spent a lot of time there.”  This still cracks me up.)

The view from the hotel front door. I thought MSG got blown up after Godzilla nested there.

I’m telling you all of this so you can understand the tweets I sent out on Friday as the bus drove through town.  One of my followers said I sounded like a kid on a second grade school trip, and I probably did, but you must appreciate I was looking out the window at things I’d only ever seen on TV and in the movies, so being there was a lot like being on a life-sized movie set.

And when you drive past Central Park, the Met, the New York Public Library, 30 Rockefeller Center and Grand Central all within a half an hour it’s like all of the movies and shows that featured them get collapsed into one giant movie in your head.

But again, I was dehydrated and lacking caffeine at the time.

I don’t sleep in hotel rooms

The whole idea of getting to New York a day early was so I could roll downstairs before 8 AM to participate in all eleven hours of the Event, but of course this plan was predicated on my being well-rested after a night in a bed that isn’t my own.

actual size

This never really works out.  I’m not sure why.  I’m not saying The New Yorker Hotel isn’t a nice place.  It is, although I have to say I slept in the smallest hotel room I’ve seen in my entire life.  (Definitely a New York hotel.  The closet was larger than the bathroom.)

My only issue with the room was the air conditioning.  At home I sleep with a fan going all the time because I’m used to the white noise, and happily the air conditioner in the hotel room was just about loud enough for me.  Except it shut off periodically, and every time it did I woke up thinking, “Oh no, they shut off the power!  I forgot to pay the electric bill again!”

I expect next year I’ll be taking two nights instead of just one.  Not because then I can get some sleep, but because I missed out on a night on the town with everyone from the convention.

I’ve heard stories.

Oh bother

This is the second story I didn’t want to tell.

I was not a scheduled presenter, and I was fairly glad of that fact because by lunchtime I was in full-on zombie mode.  I was also, apparently, judgmentally impaired.

What happened next was entirely Melissa’s fault.  Melissa is, as I mentioned yesterday, the event organizer, and because of the position of my table– near the back of the room– I had an uninterrupted view of her pacing and looking anxious for the better part of the day.  On a few occasions she sat down in the chair next to me to watch the presentations, and it was during one of those moments I heard whoever was speaking at the time (forgive me; I can’t remember who it was) say something about when writers choose to publish as an indie.  (Translation: going with an independent publisher instead of a big house traditional publisher.)

Don’t be silly, I thought, nobody chooses that.  Except when I thought this I also said it out loud.  (Or, Melissa can read my thoughts, which is not outside the realm of the possible.)

“You should say that,” she said.

“What, now?” I asked.  Because standing up and heckling one of the presenters didn’t sound like something the event organizer should really be recommending.

“We have an open slot this afternoon,” she said.  ”You can talk about things from your perspective.”

“No, I’m much too tired and completely unprepared,” I didn’t say.  What I said was, “eh, okay.”

Four hours passed in which I didn’t spend any time taking notes or rehearsing or, say, taking a nap, and then I was up on the stage.

Now.  What I wanted to say was something along the lines of, “every writer believes in his or her book and wants to get it the widest readership possible while making as much money as possible.  And the best path to that is still through the Big Six publishers.  But since the Big Six are looking for an ever-narrowing band of proven money-making products, many of us just aren’t going to fit that mold.  Independent publishers are here for the quality books that slip through the cracks, and that’s great, but starting with an Indie without first trying your work on the Big Six doesn’t make much sense.”

Instead, when I sat down I realized I’d left my brain at my table and it was too late to go back  and get it.  So I opened up with something like, “I can’t believe I had to go with an Indie to publish Immortal, this sucks, please kill me.”  Only maybe I went on a bit longer than that.

Oh, and in a monotone.  I don’t know where the monotone came from, but it’s possible I was so exhausted I’d lost the capacity to modulate my speech.  (It wasn’t nerves; I’ve spoken in front of people plenty of times, only occasionally in a monotone.)

I also paused regularly.  This is something I learned when I did radio, i.e., don’t say “um” or “uh” or use other space-fillers while you’re thinking of what to say next.  My pauses were to collect my thoughts, which would have been great if I’d had any thoughts to collect.  During one particularly lengthy pause I happened to notice Melissa in the back of the room, looking considerably more panicked than I’d seen her at any other part of the day and giving me a look that I believe translated as, “OMIGOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING? SAY SOMETHING!!”

When I got to the end of what I wanted to say– or whatever I said that was supposed to be what I wanted to say but probably wasn’t anywhere close– I realized I’d been speaking for only a minute or two.  I was supposed to be filling up a half an hour.

“Any questions?” I asked.  ”Or does anyone want to… bail me out?”

Thankfully, one of the authors, Nina Perez, happened to be sitting in the back of the room and thinking (I’m sure) that she could do more with this time than I was.  She raised her hand and offered to come up and talk about her experiences as a self-published author.

Well of course I said yes to that.

And then we had a panel.  And an actual discussion about independent publishing.  And I believe at one point I admitted that if a Big Six publisher showed up with a contract for me, I’d sign it in a heartbeat (I mean, come on, of course I would) and this caused much conversation to be inflicted upon the room.

When it was over, and the host (Girl_Who_Reads was a great host, despite her debilitating Southern accent) asked if we had anything we wanted to add before the next panel, and then stared at me.  We had another uncomfortable pause before I replied, “um… Noooooooo.”

Thanks to this performance, I am now known in certain elite circles of the independent publishing market as Eeyore.

Many thanks

Run, lady!

If I can be serious for just a second or two, the Indie Book Event was not only a great deal of fun but a worthwhile destination for any writer trying to navigate today’s marketplace, which is getting exponentially confusing.  Sure, I went mainly sell books and meet some people face-to-face (like Lori Hettler of TNBBC who gave me one of my first reviews and who I can’t believe I didn’t mention until now) for the first time, but the presentations– on marketing, editing, promoting, blogging, tax laws (!) and how to talk about your book in a low monotone– were almost disturbingly informative.  I would list all of the people responsible for this barrage of expertise but,

1: I would forget someone, which would piss both them and me off;

2: the list would be HUGE.

So instead, I’ll let them introduce themselves in comments if they wish and tell you, the reader, to put next year’s Indie Book Event on your calendar.  Um, as soon as the dates are set.

I’m doing the same right now.  And I’m booking two nights.  Look out, New York.

As you are (perhaps) aware, I spent this past Saturday in New York City attending the Indie Book Event.  It was tremendous fun, I’d met some people I had only chanced upon previously when online, there was press coverage, and I got very little sleep.  It’s this last thing that makes writing a straight-through narrative of the weekend essentially impossible, or worse, possible-but-dull-for-all-concerned.  Instead, I offer some random musings.

*Note: random musings can go on for some time. I’ve split this up into two blog posts.  Read part two here

Always take water

I had shopped around for cheap options to get to New York.  Option one in my mind was the train, which turned out to be very inexpensive if you were willing to throw in your kidney, but otherwise unreasonably costly.  Car was an option, except I’d have to valet park it at $35 a day, which would have brought the cost up to about what the train was, with the only real advantage being I could leave whenever I wanted to.

Bus was the last-resort option.  I’d heard nice things about the Bolt bus to NYC, and the prices were very reasonable (round trip was under $40) and it was supposed to be air conditioned, with roomy seats and plugs for laptops in every row, and nubile women serving frozen grapes, and it took as long as the (non-Acela) train, non-stop.

Except it didn’t, because buses travel on roads and other people travel on those roads too and if one leaves Boston at Noon one hits rush hour traffic in New York at 4:30.  And the bus was a Yankee bus instead of a Bolt bus, for reasons I am not clear on.  So no frozen grapes.

Or water.  I didn’t consider this until it was too late, but getting on the bus without water, coffee or food was a tremendously bad idea.  By 4 PM– and the bus didn’t arrive until 5:30 PM– I was tweeting that drinking the blood of the guy next to me was under serious consideration.  And I wasn’t entirely kidding.

Question of the day

For the event I had a table set up with about 30 copies of Immortal laid out in an attractive fashion, plus a powerpoint presentation on a loop that showed a description of the book, quotes from Adam, and review excerpts.  And I sat behind the table for the better part of the day, trying to look friendly and approachable and non-rabid.

I’m fairly certain I succeeded, as I sold books.

My blurry table

I also got a couple of deeply fucked up questions.  Here are the two worst:

Runner-Up:

“Are you a publisher or an author?”

‘I’m an author.  Here’s my book.”

“Okay, I’m looking for a publisher.” (walks to next table)

Winner:

(while holding a copy of Immortal) ”Is it for sale at Borders?”

“Not right now! Just Amazon and as an ebook.”

(puts book down) “Okay, cuz Borders is having that going-out-of-business sale down the street.”

The Indie Book Event got some local coverage on Channel One yesterday.  I’m at the table in the back of the room.

What’s funny is they showed up to get the background footage during one of the presentations, so there wasn’t anyone visiting the tables.  The person I’m talking to is the event organizer/founder/matriarch, and the conversation we’re having went like this:

Me: They just turned the camera this way.

Melissa: No! Did they? No, don’t look! Tell me about your book!

Me: You should read it.

Melissa: I did.

Me: It’s really funny. Stop that you’re freaking out.

Melissa: omigodomigod are they still filming?

Channel One footage

On the road to NYC

I am packed. I am ready. I am terrified.

I am on my way to NYC shortly (by bus) and will be spending all day Saturday at The New Yorker Hotel to attend the Indie Book Event as part of my continuing effort to convince all of you to read Immortal.

I am hoping to tweet periodically and/or post updates to Facebook, so if you follow me in either of those places you can keep up-to-date.  Here’s hoping I can be charming for the next 36 hours…

Here is a second Internet advertisement for Immortal for your viewing and sharing pleasure.

and in case you missed it, here’s the first ad:

If you ask a biker– any city biker– about bicycle safety and traffic laws, they will all start with the same line: “of course I stop for red lights, but…”  What will usually follow is a complaint about the many cyclists they’ve seen that were acting stupid, or reckless.  And if you ask me I’ll probably tell you the same thing.

But here’s the truth: We all run red lights.  All the time.  Just not all of them.

On my way home last night– a 17.5 mile trip that takes about 90 minutes– I counted the number of times I technically violated a traffic law by traveling past a red light or through a stop sign, and lost count after fifteen.

And I’m a safe biker.

One more time

Now, when you tell someone “Oh, I ran a red light” what the person you’re talking to is thinking of is probably a busy X intersection where running a light means careening through two-way traffic.  To bike through that kind of light one would have to force cars to stop for you, which is dangerous and stupid.  But those aren’t the kind of intersections I’m talking about when I say “I run red lights.”  These are:

• a T junction, where I’m going straight across the top of the T
• during a walk signal, when there are no pedestrians in the street
• a delayed green, where the opposite side has a left turn signal but there are no cars there to turn left
• a light that will not turn green unless something as heavy as a car rolls over a pad under the street
• A stop sign leading to a one-way street with no cars or pedestrians on either street
• a light where I’m turning right without crossing the path (or the potential path) of any cars

I slow down at each of these intersections, and stop if I need to in order to assess the traffic flow.  And then I go if the way is clear, whether the light is red or not.

And any biker that tells you they don’t do this is either lying to you or hasn’t been biking long enough to figure this out.

But there are laws!

I have heard much hue and modest amounts of cry lately over bikes in the city, with the most heinous being this Boston.com piece. (*See footnote)  One thing most everyone seems to agree on is bikers should be forced to follow traffic laws.

Well, this is a stupid point.  Here are plenty of reasons it’s stupid:

1. A reckless biker can get himself killed, but a reckless car driver can get himself and a shitload of other people killed.  This is why police are always going to care more about cars breaking traffic laws than bikes.
2. As we all learned from the end of E.T., even if a cop wanted to stop a bike, doing so while in a car is extremely difficult.
3. The vast majority of the time, a biker violating the law is getting out of the way of your car.  Do you want me to stop and take up space in front of your fender while waiting for the light when I don’t have to? According to the state of Massachusetts, bikes have equal claim on the road– the entire road– if needed.  If you want me to act like a car, you’re going to have to live with the fact that I’m not getting out of your way and I’m not going to be going much faster than 25 MPH.
4. Have you, as a pedestrian, ever walked across the street on a Don’t Walk signal?  Or stepped out where there was no crosswalk?  There are a lot more pedestrians than there are bikes; should we give all of them tickets too?
5. For that matter, as a driver, did you ever take a right on red even when a sign told you not to?  Ever rolled past a stop line to see up the street?  Turned without signaling?  Gone through an intersection just as the light has gone from yellow to red?  Done a rolling stop at a stop sign?  Put down those stones.

Bikes terrify people

Most of the time I am harassed when I’m riding, it’s while I have right of way and am not doing anything illegal whatsoever.  Last week I had a driver turning left in front of me lean on her horn and scream because I zoomed past her and she had to stop.  But I was going through a green light at the time, it’s just there were no cars going through it with me.

A few weeks before that I got stuck behind a car that was trying to get around a parked city bus.  The guy went extra-super-slow because he thought he was going to get clipped by the people speeding past him (in cars) on his left, so he took forever to get past the corner of the bus.  Once we both got past the bus the car behind us leaned on his horn and started pointing fingers at me.  Why?  I don’t know; he apparently didn’t like being behind me, even though it was the car in front of both of us that caused the slowdown.

And just last night, I “cut off” a car turning right.  Except I didn’t do anything of the sort.  He was going straight and decided to turn right without bothering to use his turn signal or checking his mirror to see if I was there.  I sped up to get past him before he completed the turn– my other option was to skid, which is what happens when you try to go from 20 MPH to 0 MPH immediately on a bike–forcing him to slam on his brakes and honk.  This was not my fault.

I have hit intersections just as lights turned green and gotten honked at by the cars at the head of the traffic who were startled when I went past them.  I have had people stop their cars dead when turning left after discovering I was on their right and turning left with them.  I have had cars wait until the traffic was clear on the other side of the street so they could give me a six foot berth before passing.

This is the real reason people consider bikes a menace: it’s not because all of the bikers in the city are reckless– although some certainly are– but because most of the drivers in the city aren’t expecting someone on a bike.  

I too drive

I am a driver too, and I grant that it’s startling to have a bike suddenly fly past the right (or left) side of the car when I didn’t know they were there.  But that isn’t the biker’s fault.  It’s mine, for not expecting them or looking for them.

Yes, I agree there are more bikes than there used to be, and I have lost chances to turn and missed green lights because they were in front of me.  But as a wise bumper sticker maker once wrote “Bikes aren’t causing traffic.  Bikes ARE traffic.”

*   *   *

*Footnote: it’s possible the writer of this piece was shooting for some sort of Swiftian satire, which would mean we don’t have to take anything he wrote seriously.  But to be Swiftian it would have had to have actually been in favor of bikes in the city, and it is clearly not.  Also, this writer isn’t nearly as talented .  He may not believe what he wrote, but he knew fully well it would resonate with some portion of The Common Man, because if history has taught us nothing else, it is that, by and large, The Common Man is a fucking idiot.

First off, if you have not picked up a copy of Immortal as an ebook, now is a good time to do it, because it’s available at Smashwords for 25% off until the end of July.  Smashwords, if you are unfamiliar with the site, offers ebooks in ANY format.  So don’t worry, it’ll work on your device.  Order a copy here.

Second, a new review has popped up here.  Nice words, nice company.

Third, we tweaked the Immortal advertisement overnight, which resulted in a new URL for both the Vimeo and Youtube versions of it.  Follow the links to the new URL’s if you’re sharing, and please share.

And here is the Youtube version. It looks like the problems we had yesterday have been resolved.

A couple of weeks ago I was asked about the possibility of a short film/advertisement for Immortal.  The person doing the asking was the same person who happens to be running the Indie Book Event and the reason she was asking is that I will be at the I+B+E in a few weeks.

The idea of doing a short internet spot has occurred to me in the past, but the problem has always been A: I don’t own a camera, B: If I did I wouldn’t know how to edit something properly, C: How the Christ do you advertise a BOOK, anyway?  I mean, reading is a distinctly separate entertainment experience, and nobody watches a video expecting to read a lot of text.  More to the point, I’ve yet to see an advertisement for a book that really worked.

I figured the best I could hope for was to drive interested people toward the info page and hope they read about Immortal there.

As for the rest of it, I know some creative people, and many of them own cameras.

So here’s my first thirty second spot.  Let me know what you think of it, and if you like it, please share it.

(Note: the video is also on Youtube, but we had issues with which thumbnail image was being displayed.  However, if you’d like to share it from Youtube instead of Vimeo, you can find it here.)

Convention

Are you in New York City?  Would you like to be in New York City?  Have you heard of New York City?

Well I will be there.  Next month, on July 30th, at the Indie Book Event at the New Yorker Hotel, I will be there at a table with copies of Immortal, a smile, a handshake, and a pen.  And maybe some small giveaways.

More on the event as the month goes on, but check out the flyer!  It has my name on it and everything!

A funny thing happened to me after I finished writing Hellenic Immortal: my brain stopped working.

Oh, it’s not like it’s actually fully non-functional, but it’s tired.  Really, very deeply tired.  In fairness, it’s been running non-stop between the promoting of Immortal, the rewrites, and some screenwriting stuff I can’t talk too much about right now.  It can use a break.

Much to do

I’m currently trying not to feel guilty about this lack of activity.  I have a ton of stuff to take care, including:

• prepping for a convention at the end of July
• rewriting Fixer, a novel you currently know nothing about but which has a deal pending
• figuring out how the hell to sell my award-winning feature screenplay Charlatan, possibly by…
• getting an agent
• editing, and then either self-publishing or submitting Sapphire Blue, an erotic novella I wrote a year or two ago which I may or may not put out under a pseudonym
• starting work on the terribly self-indulgent new novel bouncing around in my head
• continuing the research for the third Immortal book
• creating an author page for myself on Facebook

I have a mental list of things I will never wear when biking, but that list is getting smaller each week.  The problem is that on a long bike ride there are certain things one might not otherwise ever consider.  Like that loose shorts chafe after a while.  Or that crotch sweat is an active concern.  Or that the spot where the bike seat meets my ass can actually become painfully swollen after a couple of consecutive rides.

There is clothing that resolves many of these valid concerns, but that clothing is… well, it’s really, really gay.  I say that without meaning to disparage anybody; it’s just the best description I can think of.

How I got to this point

I was fine wearing shorts and some basic wicking workout shirts to and from work when the ride was shorter, but once it grew to the current 17.5 I realized I was going to have to do something about my butt.

Now, there is such a thing as padded shorts, clothing I once mockingly referred to as “poopy pants” because, well, that’s where the padding is.  Plus the shorts themselves are the tight ones you see bikers wearing and can’t unsee even if you really desperately want to.

It was clear almost immediately that I had to get a pair of these.

Bike shorts shopping

[Warning: this section will be using various euphemisms for "testicles".]

A couple of weekends ago we went to REI and I picked up a couple of pairs of off-brand padded bike shorts, which I did not try on.

It turns out it’s actually possible for bike shorts to be too large.  I didn’t learn this until putting on one of the pairs and biking to work and back, where I discovered that while they were tight enough around the thighs, my Bojangles were bouncing around just enough to be seriously uncomfortable.  The shorts also didn’t breathe.  And let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like trying to pedal home with loose, sweaty Kiwis flopping around.

So I returned them the following weekend, meaning to trade the two for at least one pair of higher-quality shorts that were A: ventilated better, and B: fit.

I got something infinitely better and worse at the same time.

Bib shorts

Bib shorts are like regular bike shorts except they come with a sleeveless elastic top that leaves the chest area open.  They are impossibly comfortable, partly because the top half helps support the bottom half so the waist doesn’t need to be as tight.

The problem is, when I wear them– and I will not be providing a photo of me wearing them as long as I’m alive– I look like the gimp on summer vacation.  They are, yes, really, really gay.

Naturally, I am wearing a shirt over the top half, and I expect to always be wearing a shirt over the top half.

Unless it gets really hot.  And I lose another ten pounds.  Then we’ll see.

I rode to work yesterday on a new rear wheel.  The old wheel had a problem whereby the tire attached to the wheel kept exploding at inopportune moments, like when I needed it to not explode.  The first time this happened was because the wheel’s rim had worn out.  The second time was on the new rim, which wasn’t wide enough for the tire.

Anyway.  New wheel.  I got it last Friday and yesterday was my first commute on it.  I discovered almost immediately that while the wheel did not have any exploding tendencies, the brakes were squeaking loudly.

And I use the brakes a lot

The brakes are kind of important to me, especially when I’m descending the 1,000 foot hill on my route home.  So I called the bike shop and asked them about it.  They suggested I come in and have the brakes adjusted.

An unorthodox solution

Biking with noisy brakes is an irritating thing.  If I applied the brakes gently they didn’t squeak, so I tried to get away with that for a while, but the consequence is I ended up going a bit faster than I might have ordinarily been going with non-squeaky brakes.

I think this was the reason I ended up going over my handlebars, but the truth is I can’t recall exactly what I was doing or why when it happened.  What I do know– because I have bruises to remind me– is that I caught a car’s mirror with my left hand.

I was crossing the bridge leading to JFK Street in Harvard Square at the time, going through two lanes of traffic that were stopped for the light.  I was trying to get to the front of the line because in another ten seconds the walk signal was going to go, which would give me the chance to cut through a dangerous intersection and to a bike path off the left side of the corner.

Unfortunately, at the time my left hand caught the mirror it was holding onto the handlbars, so the front of the bike turned 90 degrees and over I went.

I’m fine

I’ve done this a few times, and it’s not so bad.  I rolled onto my right shoulder and ended up with a couple of scrapes and bruises.  My left middle finger might be sprained, but that’s the worst of it.

The bike had issues though.  I had to straighten one of the horns on the handlebars, and the front wheel came partly out and was stuck on the brake, so I had to lock it back into place.

And then I waited for the next walk signal and continued on my way to the bike shop.

But here’s the weird part: the brakes stopped squeaking.

Apparently, smashing your bike down on the street is the way to fix squeaky brakes.  I’m thinking this is not something that shows up in most repair manuals.

In my continuing effort to see the weight reading on the scale descend consistently, I have committed to a fairly stupid commute by bicycle, a journey of 17.5 miles.  Each way.  Five days a week.

I have not yet done five days, but I have done four in a row, and am getting there.

A few observations:

World’s worst crossing guard

At an X intersection in Roslindale I saw a crossing guard help a fourth grade child across the street by the employing the following technique: standing on the sidewalk and shouting, “COME ON, HURRY UP!”  The target of this advice was at the opposite corner on the diagonal, meaning she would have had to cross– alone– through the only part of the intersection without a crosswalk.  And the light for the main street (Washington Street) had just turned green.

Leapfrog with city buses

Buses and bikes probably shouldn’t share a common street.  They basically travel the same average speed because while the bus can drive faster, it has to stop every two or three blocks.  This means I sometimes go three or four miles playing leapfrog, where I pass the bus at a stop, it passes me a block down the road giving me time to catch up and pass it again.

An unfortunate variable is the double bus.  Some maniac in the mass transit system got the genius idea to take the front off one bus and shove it into the back of another bus.  It’s impossible to tell if you’re being passed by one of these until the second half goes by you.  Since biking in the city is all about timing and anticipating the motion of the much larger vehicles around you, not knowing you’re dealing with a bus that looks like it came out of the movie Inception can be problematic.

Turkeys would make excellent crossing guards

At the same intersection in Dedham on two different mornings I saw traffic stopped by a wild turkey that stood in front of the lead car and stared at the grille for the entire light cycle before eventually wandering off to the side of the road.

Hell is other bikers

The Boston area is introducing a bike share program in the next year, and if you’re a driver in Boston and find this notion terrifying, well, it’s just as terrifying for those of us already on bikes.  Last week I saw a woman on a touring bike with one hand on the handlebars and the other holding the cell phone up to her ear as she had an animated conversation about something that was clearly more important than her impending demise, which nearly happened twice in four city blocks.

At one intersection I came to a stop at a red light, in the crosswalk.  (I was on the right side of a four lane road.  I stopped there so cars turning right could still do so behind me.)  She reached the intersection and stopped, reluctantly, a full bike length past me.  Oncoming traffic– a large bus– had to honk at her to get her to back the hell up so they could go.

Imagine this girl (who is probably dead now) multiplied by 1,000.  And imagine half of them doing the other deeply annoying thing I’ve seen from my fellow bikers: going along the wrong side of the road.

I’m so not looking forward to this.

There are also, interestingly, problems that are once removed from Adam’s ageless existence. Because he is a wanderer who outlives anyone he meets, he is lonely. But because he’s lonely, he also drinks far too much, sometimes spending entire decades in a booze-filled haze. This problem is particular to the way Adam handles his loneliness, another character might fall into sexual depravity, or ascetic withdrawal from the world, or just about anything else. All of these qualities together make Doucette’s Adam a man who is impossibly old, but still obviously and deliberately a man.

A new review for Immortal is out today, and it’s exceptional.  Pop on over to The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog and read it: Immortal review.

A few days ago I asked my readers for advice and/or help solving a strange problem.  I had just bought a new Panasonic Blu-Ray, and couldn’t access Netflix from it, even though it had a nice little Netflix menu, and even though I could get every other Internet-based subscription service through the machine.

The results

1: Netflix couldn’t find anything wrong with the account and suggested I call my ISP.

2: Comcast checked the modem remotely and found out the “uplink” was slow.  The person I spoke to couldn’t explain why the uplink was slow, how it became slow, or how we can prevent it from becoming slow again in the future.  Or, for that matter, what the fuck the uplink is.  But she knew how to fix it.  She urged me to wait fifteen minutes after the modem was reset and try again.

After fifteen minutes, it still didn’t work.

3: Netflix checked again and still couldn’t find anything wrong.  This time they sent a new show to my queue and asked me to try it, in case the problem was with our pre-existing queue.  It still didn’t work, although this may be because the Blu-Ray has even less interest in seeing the pilot episode of Heroes than I do.

4: I put “Panasonic Blu-Ray problems with Netflix” into Google and got this.

5: I called the Panasonic support line and spoke to a nice Indian fellow for a half an hour.  I told him the device had been reset, the modem and router had been reset, and I’d already spoken with both my ISP and Netflix, AND I had found a review online indicating that this was a common problem with this model.  He still made me reset the device, router and modem.  Then he escalated the problem to “level two” which is supposed to mean I get a call in 48-72 hours.  I do not expect to get this call.

6: I called Paul’s TV, where I bought the device, and with whom I had already traded my first Panasonic Blu-Ray because of this issue.  I couldn’t get the salesman who helped me (he wasn’t in, or he was hiding) but I did get another salesman who had the nerve to say “sometimes you just can’t get a signal and have to run an ethernet cable.”  It didn’t appear to matter how often I reiterated that A: we had bought this specifically to access Netflix wirelessly, B: our Nintendo Wii could get Netflix from the same spot, or C: another application deemed our WiFi signal robust enough to stream in full HD.  No, “you know this happened to me and in the end I just used an ethernet cable.”

It’s a good thing this was a phone call, because I’d probably be in prison right now otherwise.

Enter Samsung

I called Paul’s TV again the following day and reached the salesman who’d gotten us into this mess in the first place, and soon I was driving back out there and handing over the Panasonic for the equivalent Samsung device.

Netflix came through without any problems whatsoever on the Samsung.

The moral of this story

Sometimes companies make products that just don’t work.  Telling the people who make that product or the people who sell that product that the product doesn’t work is utterly futile, and may result in concussions for one or more parties.

Also: buy Samsung.

Since I usually spend my time in this space urging you to buy Immortal (which you should) or complaining about various technical problems around my house, you probably think I spend all of my time either writing/selling novels or futzing with electronics.  Not true!  I also write the occasional film script.

One such film script became a short film called Parting which was put together a few years back by 386Films.  It recently became available online for any and all to see and enjoy.

Do you have seventeen minutes to spare?  Of course you do.  Pop some popcorn and enjoy.

Watch Parting here

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we picked up a new HD television and a Blu-Ray player.  The reason for the Blu-Ray, other than that it plays HD movies, is that the television doesn’t have a wireless hookup and the Blu-Ray player does.  And the reason we wanted a wireless hookup is because this way we can watch things streaming from the Internet.  Specifically, Netflix.

So far, this isn’t working out

But I can’t seem to get it to work.  Yesterday we changed out the player to see if this was the problem.  It wasn’t.

We’re getting the Internet.  We’re getting the Netflix portal.  We’re getting the menu.  But as soon as we select something to watch, the application attempts to load it and then announces that it’s “having some trouble loading this title.  Please try again later.”  It does this for every title.

It could be the WiFi connection, except the Nintendo Wii always pulled off this request from the same location and I have trouble believing it’s got a better WiFi connection than my new Blu-Ray player.

I am at a loss

The possibilities at this point are:

–contact Comcast and see if I need to upgrade the connection to the house

–contact Netflix and ask them if they have any idea what’s wrong

–upgrade or otherwise boost the house’s WiFi signal.

What I’m doing first is crowdsourcing the question.  So, Internet-at-large.  Any ideas?

“I don’t want everything.  Where would I put it?”

–Stephen Wright

As today is my birthday, I have decided to be obnoxious, which I admit is not a large step for me but here it goes.

Read Immortal

That’s what I want from you, on this, the occasion of my forty-third birthday.  I would like for you to go out and find my novel Immortal through whatever means you have at your disposal, and read it, and enjoy it, and then tell people about it.

“My god,” you’re thinking, “He wasn’t kidding.  That’s obnoxious!”  I agree!  But I get to be obnoxious on my birthday.

But really?

Yes, really!  Look, it’s a great book.  It’s been out for nearly eight months now and has collected exactly zero negative reviews.  Look here, at the blog tour page, and read for yourself.  See?  And it’s not like these are all coming from friends and family, because my family isn’t that large and I don’t have that many friends.

If that doesn’t work for you, look at the Goodreads page.  That’s thirty-five ratings for a 4.43 average out of a possible 5.  Or look at the seven five-star Amazon reviews.

Still not enough?  Read the sample chapter first.  Or if you want, read the teaser for the second book.

Dude, really, this is annoying

I don’t care!  And I’m still going!

The book costs $14.95 in print (at Amazon) or $9.99 as an e-book (everywhere e-books are sold) and it’s absolutely worth it.

Ask anyone who’s already read it!  In fact, if you are one of those people who has already read it, go ahead and say so in the comments.

As of this moment I have 1,187 followers on Twitter and 672 friends on Facebook.  If half of those numbers bought Immortal today it would jump to the top 100 in best sellers on every online retailer, and by this time next month I might be negotiating a wider distribution deal, which is what I really want for my birthday.

You don’t really think this will work, do you?

Shut up, imaginary inquisitor!  It’s my birthday!

Also?  I want a pony.

At the end of the spectacularly fun Immortal blog tour Adam and I gave an interview to GeekDad at Wired.com.  Paired with the interview was a contest.  Entrants were invited to put together their own reverse bucket list (as it were) of things they would have done had they lived as long as Adam has.

Today the winner was announced in a follow-up blog, and Adam stopped by to talk about it himself.  Read it here.

And as always, you can read more about Immortal here.

Not so long ago– all right, very long ago– I had a summer job in an ice cream shop called Friendly’s.  One early weekday afternoon a call came in from a local day care.

“Hi, I just wanted to give you a heads-up,” said day care lady #1.  ”We’re going to be at your window in about ten minutes with thirty preschoolers for kid cones.”

I thanked her for calling and then made a suggestion: could she find out what flavors the children want before getting to the window?  She agreed that this was an excellent idea, and hung up.

Two minutes later the phone rang again, and I spoke to day care lady #2.

“Are we going to get a discount for the cones?  Since we’re doing your job for you?”

Different kinds of people

I find I can learn a lot about a person by their response to this story, which is either:

A: as an employee of an ice cream shop part of my job is to take customer orders, so of course someone else doing this should be incentivized in some way, and expecting a discount is perfectly reasonable

or

B: the benefit for both parties is obvious.  The ice cream is delivered more quickly– and all at once– to all thirty children, simplifying the lives of every adult involved.  This is a problem resolution unrelated to pure financial concerns.

Not incidentally, my answer was B.  I told day care lady #2 that if she wanted to walk up each of the thirty children to the window one at a time, have them request a flavor, and wait for us to scoop it for them, that was entirely up to her.

After all, I had nowhere to be and it wasn’t going to be my problem if kid #1 was done before kid #30 got his ice cream and then decided to play in traffic because he was bored.

But answer A isn’t necessarily wrong.  It’s just a different way of looking at things.

The cost of fairness

Day care lady #2′s question can be rephrased as follows: “it’s not fair that I have to do a job you are being paid to do, for free.”

A lot of people in this country– and I imagine everywhere else too– worry about what is and isn’t fair, and sometimes that leads to bad decisions.  In the above example the bad decision was to not get a list of flavors ready beforehand and then spending a half an hour in an ice cream parking lot with difficult-to-control preschoolers.  Sure, it might have been a “more fair” decision, but it certainly wasn’t the “right” decision.

Or take a more complex example: long-term homelessness.  Between emergency room, outpatient care and rehabilitation expenses, it would cost taxpayers less if the sickest long-term homeless in our cities were simply given apartments to live in.

But that would never happen, because it wouldn’t be “fair”.  How do you tell a taxpayer that the guy living down the street is living there at the expense of his tax money?  ”I’m working to pay my rent, and he isn’t doing anything but getting a handout.”

Would they be right to say that?  Sure, if they’re measuring “fair” that way.  One could try and argue that it’s also not “fair” to see twice as much of one’s tax money go to the same guy for five visits a year to the emergency room.  But that won’t work because nobody envies an emergency room visit, whereas a free apartment is something anyone could use.  And since the third option is to shoot the homeless, we’re stuck with the plan that costs the most but makes the least fiscal sense.  Because it’s more “fair”.

Voting for fairness

Preying on the idea of perceived fairness is almost always a political win.  If you’re a politician who wants to defund a welfare plan, you’re going to get a lot of votes by drumming up examples of welfare cheats.  ”It’s not fair, you have to work so hard and this is where your tax money is going.”  The argument that the cheats are a significant minority doesn’t mean much, because for someone in a fairness mindset, all it takes is one cheat to prove the system is unfair.

Unfairness is something everyone can agree is bad, even when it isn’t.  I personally believe the wealthiest people in the country should also pay the largest percentage of their income in taxes, but graduated tax rates are inherently unfair in the sense that not everyone is being treated equally.  Yet it makes the most sense for the economy as a whole.  It’s also pretty easy to argue that Affirmative Action is a deliberate, legislated unfairness, as long as you’re prepared to ignore the unlegislated unfairness it’s there to correct.

Really, a surprising number of political issues can be boiled down to “They have something you don’t and that’s unfair.”

We’re all in this together

That’s what I wish my teenage self had said to day care lady #2.  ”We’re all in this together.”  We all pay taxes, and some of those taxes go to educate our children, keep our roads paved, pay for our firehouses and police, and keep our drinking water clean.  Some of the taxes also go toward caring for the least fortunate people in our society, and that’s a burden every society does and should carry.

And sometimes the fastest way to feed thirty kids ice cream is the best plan.  Whether it’s fair or not.

The weekend before last, we bought a big screen HD television because of the Walk For Hunger.

Every year at (apparently) around this time a large number of people in the Boston area participate in a fund-raising event called the Walk For Hunger.  What happens is a shit-ton of people start someplace and walk to some other place and people pledge money for each mile they complete.  It’s a good charity and a nice idea, but it shuts down random portions of the city for the better part of the day.

So here’s what happened.  Wife Deb and I decided to go into Boston to the Boston Flower Exchange because my wife secretly hates me and wants me dead.

I’m sort of not entirely kidding

I am allergic to nature.  Mostly, tree pollen but flowers and mold will do it too.  And every year at around the same time people are walking all over the city to feed hungry people I’m just basically trying to make it through the day without scratching out my eyes.  Once the trees in the area calm down and stop acting like a roomful of eighteen-year-olds on Viagra I can enjoy nature again, but until that happens the second worst place for me to be is around a large collection of flowers.  (The worst is an arboretum.)  

But: we needed to pick up plants to decorate the exterior of our house for reasons I’m unclear on, and so we drove to the Boston Flower Exchange, bought some flowers, and put them in the car.  (Because that’s the only place I was safe from pollen: the car.)

Our second destination was Best Buy so that we could buy a wet-vac in our latest desperate attempt to salvage what the pets have been doing to the rugs for the past four years.  The Best Buy we wanted to go to was in Watertown, and we, being savvy Bostonians, were pretty sure the Walk For Hunger stood between us and Watertown.

Not so savvy

Smartly (we thought) I hopped on the Mass Turnpike.  This is a large highway that doesn’t close for any reason and which cuts right through (mostly under) the city, and which has a Watertown exit that puts us a few miles away from our destination.

Did you know the Walk For Hunger goes through Watertown?  We did not, and it does.  It also shuts down the Turnpike exit to Watertown completely and presumably the road that leads from the Turnpike exit to Best Buy.

“Well, we’re facing Natick,” my wife pointed out.  ”We could go there.  Do you want to go look at TVs?”

And I really, really did

You may not know this because you’re reading a fairly new blog site, but on my prior blog an annual rite of Spring was the “this year I’m buying an HDTV” post, in which I declared that this is definitely the year.  And it never was.  I always found a reason not to, from “you know, they’re still really expensive” and “I hear the regular channels look incredibly shitty on an HD” to “oh, um, we needed that money to pay bills.”

Also challenging was convincing my wife that a new television was needed.  Our television was perpetually threatening to die on us partly because the heavy magnet in the bass of our sound system (stored directly beneath the TV) routinely caused the picture to wash out.  But it wouldn’t die.  More importantly, for the longest time Deb insisted she couldn’t see a difference between our current picture and the HD picture.

But then we bought Deb some glasses.

Paul’s TV

The place we went was Paul’s TV, which is a chain that has set up shop in Jordan’s Furniture, a large furniture chain out here.  I needed a place where I could walk in and speak to someone who actually knew what they were selling, because I don’t know what I’m buying.  And the technical knowledge of your average Best Buy/Target/Wal-Mart employee frankly doesn’t go much past “I think this part plugs into the wall.”  

And it was a good choice.  We walked out with a 42 inch Panasonic plasma and a Blu-Ray player that has Wi-Fi for Internet streaming, and we spent… well I don’t want to say.  But there were fewer than four numbers to the left of the decimal point.

Installation

Actually we did not technically walk out with either the television or the Blu-Ray, as they didn’t have any televisions on-site and would be delivering it.  They would also be hooking it up for us, because there’s an outside chance I don’t know which part plugs into the wall.

The set was delivered a couple of days ago.  The same evening, son Tim came home from college for the summer.  So on Saturday night, taking the new TV out for a test run through the HD channels, I happened upon Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  If you ever want to test drive a new television, I highly recommend this film.  We’d seen it already, but there we were, standing in our basement rec room and just staring at the picture.  We had to leave to pick up Tim’s stuff from his dorm, but none of us could move.

So if you’re looking for me

If you can’t find me anywhere it’s probably because I’m staring at my new screen.  Either that or remodeling our basement.  Because while the new television is fantastic, we’re now thinking our room needs to be upgraded to look good with the TV.

Or, I’m steam cleaning one of our rugs.

There is a new review of Immortal in the world today, over at Tracey Baptiste‘s site, Knitting With Pencils.  Tracey loved the book and seems to be throwing her hat into the cover art ring as well.

A contest winner

I am also remiss in joining in the applause for winner Reginald Golding over at Angela Perry’s website.  Reginald won himself a copy of Immortal, which I should probably get mailed out to him fairly soon. (!)

An open contest

Finally, as you can imagine this site caught a lot of positive attention when it was featured last Friday on Wired.com’s GeekDad site.  So it feels a little odd to be sending people there instead of watching them flock here, but if you take a look at the interview, at the bottom of it is a contest for a signed copy of Immortal.  This contest is open until Midnight of May 15, so if you’d like to win a signed copy, jump in!

All right, so following up on the cover proof posted earlier today, here are some thoughts:

– the original cover IS lovely.  But it doesn’t “pop.”  What that means, according to @DavidRozansky (who you should all follow): “Try brighter colors, commuters in motion, speeding train coming towards viewer, vivid title font.  ’Popping’ means that the cover stands out from other covers. More about design and color than artwork’s content.”

–so we could go back to the original artist and ask him to make the cover “pop”.  But here’s another problem: the book is funny.

I’ll be honest; I never gave much thought to Immortal‘s humor.  Since I started writing things down the things I’ve written down have been funny, and I have far less control over this than you might think.  I did not, in other words, set down to write something people would start comparing to Douglas Adams.  I really didn’t.  Adam just happens to be funny.

But the existing cover doesn’t signal “funny”.  So I do think it needs to be changed to more accurately reflect the nature of the book’s contents.

–The proof is intended to show Adam, drawn as a piece of cave art (the figure to the left is cribbed from the cave paintings at Lascaux) standing with three dimensional persons in a modern setting.  But then it became difficult to get the contrast between him and the other figures right.  The lighting became an issues as well.  The bus stop went from a daytime thing to a night time thing, and then there were problems showing the figures that weren’t Adam well.  A draft was put together showing a crowd of people with a red-haired woman in them, but then the hair was a problem.

Another version of the cover shows the bus stop and Adam drawn on a cave wall, but that didn’t have the necessary pop either, because cave paintings are surprisingly colorless, all told.

– the reactions to the existing proof are mixed.  Some see what we were shooting for, but others just don’t see it, and any time you have to explain what a cover means, there’s a problem with that cover.  A suggestion was floated that the kind of cover we should be shooting for is along the lines of the Hitchhiker’s Guide covers, but that’s a bit too whimsical.

So to summarize

I don’t know where to go from here yet.  The cover needs to be something whimsical, iconic, basic, not depicting Adam realistically (if he is depicted at all) and has to “pop”.  And unfortunately all of the “lightning bolt” ideas I’ve had to this point– the bus stop with the cave art guy was my first cover idea, before the current one– have proven much more difficult to do than they are to describe.

So, back to you, people-who-have-read-the-book: any thoughts?  Please add to the comments below.

A new cover of Immortal is in the works!  Why?  Because for whatever reason, interested persons– meaning distributors– have said the existing cover doesn’t “pop”.  What does this mean?  I have no idea.  But now we’re looking into a design that will be more eye-catching, and we need your help.

Below is a draft of the new cover.  It may work, it may not. It could require tweaking, or it may have to be scrapped entirely.  I don’t know.  And neither does the designer.  We’ve been going back and forth on it for a couple of weeks now and we’re both entirely too biased to see it with fresh eyes.

But you have fresh eyes, don’t you?  You do; I can see them from here.  So: keeping in mind this is a draft, which means the final may look glossier, may have more articulated details, and so on, please offer your opinion on it in the comments below.  Ideas for improvements are also greatly appreciated.

As promised, today I’m offering a short preview of Hellenic Immortal, the sequel to Immortal.  What you’re about to read is either the prologue or an interlude to the main story… I haven’t actually decided yet.

(The problem is the book already has a prologue, and while “On Gods and Succubi” is most certainly prologue-worthy, I don’t think having two prologues make a tremendous amount of sense.)

The attached piece stands on its own, so you can still enjoy it having never read Immortal.  That said, why haven’t you read Immortal?  Seriously; you’re embarrassing me.

I need to warn you that “On Gods and Succubi” is slightly NSFW.  You might also not want your mother reading it.

On Gods and Succubi

As I am known to do from time to time, in early March I was hanging out on Twitter and lamenting the difficulties I was having in promoting Immortal.  It’s not a simple thing, this self-promotion stuff.  Simple example: perhaps more than any other social network, Twitter is the place you go to find people who do what you do too.  (As opposed to Facebook, which is more about finding people who used to know you once.)  

As a writer, I am connected with a very large collection of other writers, which extremely fantastic when one wants to talk about having gotten a particular sentence right on the third draft, finally, after only two years.  But it’s might not be the best collection to have if you’re trying to move copies of a published novel.  Why?  Because that’s what most of your writer friends are trying to do too.  And while another writer will love to commiserate at length on the angst that comes with getting a sentence perfect, bemoaning sales numbers for your novel, when it’s already done better than their novel, is not a good thing.  It is, sometimes, even a rude thing.

Helping each other

So as I was lamenting my sales difficulties, it was suggested by two Twitter friends (@BryanThomasS and @TheNewAuthor, whom you should all stop everything for right now and follow) that I try a blog tour.

“How do those work?” was my second question.  (My first was “a what again?”)  I had never run one, participated in one, or followed one before.  But I couldn’t deny the genius behind the concept.  Here I was with a very large collection of fellow writers, all with blogs and many with review pages, and I could offer them traffic.

Well, and a free copy of Immortal if they needed one.

I would like to thank…

The people who participated in this blog tour are all generous and worthy of your time and attention, and I strongly suggest you find them, read them and follow them.  Many of these writer/reviewers jumped in on this tour not knowing ahead of time if the book sucked; they took a chance that it did not.

Visit the tour page to see everyone’s contribution.  Every interview is different, none of the excerpts are the same, and the reviews all agree that Immortal did not, in fact, suck.

What happens next

I will be appearing in late July at the Indie Book Event in New York City with copies of Immortal, a table all my own, and plenty of free time.  Many more details will come regarding this trip in the coming weeks.

The writing contest sponsored by Angela Perry for a signed copy of Immortal has concluded, and the winner will be announced soon.

The reverse bucket list contest that is at the end of the GeekDad article is still open.  A follow-up article is expected on or around the 15th of May.  There is still time to go there and be clever.

And finally

Coming tomorrow, I will be posting a special preview chapter of Hellenic Immortal.  Keep your eyes peeled to this site; it should show up sometime around 9 AM EST, provided the auto-scheduler does its job.

Some sort of madness struck me when putting together this blog tour.  I offered all of the participants plenty of different angles to explore, including: interviewing me; interviewing Adam; interviewing me AND Adam; me interviewing Adam; Adam interviewing me.  Only one person took up the offer for Adam interviewing me, and thank Zeus because I didn’t know if I could pull that off.  And then the requester, writer Raymond Masters, went and posted the interview on Wired.com’s GeekDad, which gets… well, it gets some traffic, let’s say.

Read the interview here  

You will also find a new contest at GeekDad.  And I would be remiss if I didn’t remind all of you to get your entry in for the contest being run by Angela Perry.  And of course, don’t forget to check out the entire tour right here.

For today’s tour writer Sue London checks in again.  Or rather, one of her characters do.  Read a vampire hunter’s thoughts on Immortal here.

Adam is becoming more popular than I am, which is fine with me; I don’t have to do anything when he’s giving interviews instead of me.  Today’s interview is with Zee Monodee, who reviewed the book last week.  Read the interview here.

Today’s tour stop is with Angela Perry, who is running a CONTEST.  Read about a chance to win a signed copy of Immortal right here.

Today’s treat is a new interview with me over at the website of writer Madison Woods.  Take a look at Eleven Questions here.

We begin our final leg (!) of the Immortal blog tour with a new interview with Adam from Dorothy Distefano, one of my favorite people and someone you might know from Twitter as @WotV (or @WotV_)  Take a look at the interview at her new site, Books on the Verge.

Today’s tour entry is a new interview with Adam the immortal over at author Erika Knudsen’s blog.  Check it out!

You, sir, are a moron.

No, I’m sorry, you are not A moron.  You are THE moron.  You are what happens when God looks down upon the Earth and says to Him/Herself, “I have created many, many morons, but I feel that I have not yet created the ne plus ultra, the ultimate moron to which all other morons would be compared.”  And so God reached down and blessed this world with you, THE moron.

A moron might attempt to cross when he does not have the light and nearly get run over by an SUV turning with the light.  A moron might see a bike stop at a red light and decide that this was the moment to berate the bicyclist for running the red light he did not run as if he represented all bikers, everywhere, ever.

But it takes THE moron to combine these two inestimably moronic acts and perform them successively in a matter of seconds without the slightest hesitation or, one presumes, a working brain containing the definitions of hypocrisy and irony.

Thank you for your time.  You may continue with your moronic day.

Sincerely,

The Cyclist

Over at The Unforgiving Muse today you’ll find a new interview with me and some nice words about Immortal.  Check it out here.

Today’s tour stops at the website of Zee Monodee, who checks in with a fantastic new review all the way from Mauritius.  Stop by and read it, and send love.

Today’s blog tour stopover is a new interview with yours truly.  It’s a fun one, over at Thrillers R Us with author Douglas Dorow.

Today’s blog tour entry brings us back to The New Author for a new exclusive excerpt from Immortal.  Enjoy!

Today’s blog tour entrant checks in with a new interview with me!  Stop by Writing In The Woods!

Welcome to the third leg of the Immortal blog tour!  We’re kicking it off in style with a new review over at Here’s What I Think.  Give it a look here.

Today’s blog tour entrant checks in with an excerpt from Immortal and some kind words about the book.  It’s all at Raymond Masters’ site Nothing To See Here.  Except there is!  Something to see there, I mean.

For today’s blog tour Sue London checks back in with an essay on why she considers Immortal her favorite book of 2010 and perhaps of the entire decade.  Wow, Sue!  Take a look at what she has to say here.

There I was in the middle of the blog tour when my name popped up in a tweet from an unexpected place: the Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society.  Who his the Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society?  You’ll have to follow the link to see, but they enjoyed Immortal quite a lot.

Read their review here.

(Warning: this review contains spoilers, moreso than most.)

The new destination of the April blog tour is the site of friend and fellow writer Spencer Seidel. He checks in today with an interview with me.  Read about it here!

Today’s tour stop is at the blog of author J.P. McNeill for an exclusive excerpt from Immortal.  Check it out here!