Steve Umstead -- with whom I did a podcast once upon a time -- kindly interviewed me about Man of Wax and The Inner Circle. And hey, chance to win free stuff! Speaking of Man of Wax, the book is still getting reviews nearly a year later, this time by the Parents' Little Black Book of Books. The reviewer calls the novel "one of the best 'scary' stories I have read this year" and "great job, I loved it." You can read the rest of the review here.
New Goodreads Giveaway
Five copies of The Inner Circle are up for grabs over at Goodreads, and you have until October 1st to enter. And wait -- three copies of Man of Wax are also up for grabs over at Goodreads, and you have until October 1st to enter that too.
So why not enter both giveaways???
In Which I Begin Reading From The Inner Circle
So in addition to playing around with podcasting, I thought it would a fun idea to start giving you a sneak peek of The Inner Circle, book two of the Man of Wax trilogy. Originally I’d planned to release the novel this month, but it’s much longer and more complex than Man of Wax, and while I could rush through it, I want to make sure it’s the very best it can be before it’s published. So it’s looking like it will be sometime this summer, probably June, July at the very latest. In the mean time, though, every Friday I plan to present a new chapter for your enjoyment until whenever the book is finally released. For those of you not familiar with Man of Wax, it’s probably best you do yourself a favor and buy the book. I may be biased, but I think it’s pretty good. For those of you who are familiar with Man of Wax and are eagerly looking forward to The Inner Circle, I want to thank you for your support. Also, if you haven’t already, I’d be grateful if you took a couple of minutes and helped spread the word, either by leaving a review at places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Goodreads, or just mentioning it on Facebook and Twitter (or, you know, both). If I’ve learned anything in the past year, it’s that reader word of mouth is the best way for other readers to find new books.
Now, regarding The Inner Circle, I don’t want to give too much away of the plot just yet, but I will tell you that the book opens two years after the events of Man of Wax. Ben has yet to find his family, and has in fact become convinced that he’ll never find them, and has therefore become a solider in Carver’s army against Caesar and the Inner Circle. What I’m going to read now is a sort of prologue and the first chapter. I hope you enjoy it.
P.S. Allergies attacked me out of nowhere today, so my voice may be more nasally than usual. I hope this changes for next week.
Free Free Free Blah Blah Blah
The other day Kevin Lucia did a blog post about the constant bombardment of the OH MY GOD MY EBOOK IS FREE TODAY AT AMAZON ORDER IT AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS!!! you see constantly on Facebook and Twitter. I don't really have much to add to that other than yes, it is troublesome. For newbie writers to grow an audience, how do they find readers? The 99-cent price point is a waste, in my opinion, so obviously the next step is free. But then if readers know you've made your book free once, they might assume you'll make your other books free, and won't buy your stuff. So ... what are you left with (besides, potentially, just being really annoying)?
Anyway, as I discussed recently, I enrolled some books into the Kindle Select Program to test it out. The deal, in case you aren't aware, is making your ebook available exclusively to Amazon for 90 days, in which Amazon Prime members can then "borrow" that book (members can borrow only one ebook a month, and Amazon kicks in a kitty of over $500,000 to the participating writers and averages out that amount to all the borrows at the end of said month). One of the perks, however, is being able to make your ebook free for up to five days. This can have a tremendous impact on your book. In fact, last month it helped my thrillers No Shelter and Man of Wax sell a ton of copies, and brought me even more readers. So I consider it a success.
My point? Well, I had three free days left on No Shelter, two free days left on Man of Wax, so yesterday I made No Shelter free, and today I made Man of Wax free to close out the month. The exclusivity is up at the end of March, and I plan to enter them back into the other stores and see how they do there (my NOOK sales have begun to pick up, and I wonder what having more titles available will do).
Anyway, so I made both ebooks free, and didn't realize until today that making both titles free at the same time might not be a good idea. After all, they had both sneaked into the Free Top 100 at different times, and on its first day No Shelter reached the Top 100, so maybe that would somehow keep Man of Wax out of the Top 100.
Nope. They're both there in the Free Top 100, where they will hopefully stay into tomorrow night when the promotion ends.
And before anyone asks -- no, I have no idea how they got so high up in the ranking. I really didn't do much except mention they were free on Facebook and Twitter, and even then their rankings were pretty high. Maybe they reached the Top 100 because they had been in the Top 100 before, but again, I have no idea how it happened. As with everything, the answer is luck.
However, wherever there is luck, there is also unluck (which I'm saying is a word). For some reason, Amazon is acting up and messing with reviews. I noticed it late last night how some reviews would disappear ... and then reappear a half hour later. I did some quick research and found this was indeed a bug in Amazon's system that they were trying to figure out. Which is all fine and good, but reviews are crucial, especially when a title gets all the way up into the Top 100 where it's most widely seen.
Case in point: before the free promotion today, Man of Wax had 19 reviews, 11 of which were five-star. Then, maybe a half hour ago, I checked the ranking and for some reason saw that Man of Wax now had only 5 reviews: 1 five-star, 1 four-star, and 3 one-star. Obviously I saw this as a problem in regards to finding potential readers. Then again, while the one-star reviews don't help with the algorithm, they do alert potential readers to the fact that the book is indeed dark and disturbing. This is good, because not every reader likes dark and disturbing, so if a reader is turned off by the book based on that one-star review, then that's probably for the best. At least they didn't try reading it and hate it enough to then leave their own one-star review. On the flip side, a one-star review that complains the book is dark and disturbing can actually motivate some readers to download the book, so there's that.
(And then there's the reader who says they loved No Shelter so they tried Man of Wax and thought Man of Wax was awful so they left a one-star review ... despite the fact they didn't leave any review for No Shelter. Say whaaaaat?)
But now I just looked again and all the reviews seem to be restored for Man of Wax, including two additional reviews, bringing it to 21 overall. So there's that. But no telling how long before some of those reviews disappear again.
So again, my point?
Well, that you have one more day to download No Shelter and Man of Wax while they're free. Go grab 'em!
Yes, Man Of Wax Is Disturbing
So I mentioned before how free e-books welcomed one-star reviews, right? Well, Man of Wax just got its first:
I was excited to begin this book as it sounded like it would be different sort of mystery. I prefer mysteries and do not need to tell you that many are very similar. With that said, I read about 15 percent and stopped abruptly when I came to a disturbingly gruesome part. I could not remove this book from my kindle fast enough!
I have to be honest -- I sort of love this review. Yes, Man of Wax is not for all readers. It's disturbing on many levels. In fact, right now it's probably my darkest book. However, the one-star review doesn't play well with Amazon's algorithm, so if you've read Man of Wax and enjoyed it, please considering reviewing it. And if you haven't picked it up yet, I advise you to do so quickly. Like, really quickly.