David B. Silva's The Presence

From David B. Silva:

My novel, The Presence, will be available for free for Kindle owners on Wednesday, May 2, 2012 and Thursday, May 3, 2012.

Description: Allie Turner’s husband Max has been missing for nine months now, and Allie is struggling to hold her family together. But things begin to fall apart when her son Sean, 12, is caught in a fire at the abandoned lumber mill. When Sean confesses to his brother, Darrell, that he saw their father at the mill, Darrell sets out to find the man. His quest leads him to Old Miner’s Creek, where he uncovers something strange and otherworldly has come to Kingston Mills. A curious, determined evil.

The Presence was originally published in hardcover and paperback [in the UK], but was never made available in the United States. This Kindle edition is the first time it’s been re-released in almost twenty years.

Grab it!

Next Saturday

Just a quick note that I'll be speaking at the East Brunswick Public Library next Saturday (April 14) at noon. While it's for the Garden State Horror Writers group, the event is open to the public, so you have no excuse not to be there! (Don't worry, I'll be sure to remind you next week.) Now, before I let you go to enjoy an early start to the weekend, I want to point out Lee Goldberg's recent blog post about his time at last month's Left Coast Crime conference:

It was surprising to me to hear some of the disinformation that publishers are spreading. One author told me that she'd heard from her editor that Barry Eisler's Amazon experience turned out out be a huge disaster, that he regretted not taking St. Martin's $500,000 two-book deal, and that authors who'd once "sipped the Amazon Kool-Aid" were rushing back to legacy publishers in droves. That, of course, couldn't be further from the truth but does illustrate just how terrified and desperate some editors in New York are now that they're realizing that they aren't the only game in town anymore...and that authors are becoming far more business savvy and many are flourishing without them. Publishers don't like seeing books that they rejected, or authors they dropped, or books they once published but fell out of print, now charging up the ebook bestseller lists.

That is all. Enjoy your weekend.

And The Needle Goes To ...

First, thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway for the latest issue of Needle. I picked a random name from the comments section of the post announcement, and the winner is ...

Andrew Stancek! 

Congratulations, Andrew. Shoot me an email at robert (at) robertswartwood (dot) com with your mailing address and I'll get your copy out to you as soon as possible.

Time Is Running Out

You have until midnight Saturday night to enter these two exciting giveaways. (They're not exciting? No? Well screw you then!)

• The first giveaway is a chance to win one of five copies of the paperback version of The Serial Killer's Wife via Goodreads.
• The second giveaway is a chance to win a copy of the new issue of Needle, which features my story "Mr. Mockingbird Drive." Details on how enter here.

Have a great weekend.

Buying Reviews & Harlan Coben Says

Two quick things: On Facebook today I saw Michael Kelly link to this ridiculousness. Now, this isn't surprising at all -- I've seen similar "services" offered elsewhere -- but every time I see something like this it makes me sick. I mean, I can't decide what's more pathetic -- the "reviewers" doing this work or the writers desperate enough to shill out a few bucks for a fake review. Yes, yes, reviews are important, but most semi-intelligent consumers can spot a fake review from a mile away. When ten people give your book all five-star ratings, and none of those people have ever reviewed anything before, it does raise some eyebrows, ya know?

Finally, Harlan Coben has a new thriller out called Stay Close, which I'm looking forward to reading at some point (my TBR pile, as I'm sure is the case with you, is out of control). The Wall Street Journal published an article on him a few days ago worth reading. A lot of writers bitch and moan about promotion, saying all they want to do is write, and while that would be nice, the truth is these days writing has become maybe half the writer's job. But as you can see from many of the major authors out there, they're heavily involved in their own marketing too, which makes sense, because they understand publishing is, first and foremost, a business, and the more readers (i.e., consumers), the better. Anyway, Harlan Coben has two great (and very true) quotes I want to share with you:

• "The most annoying and full- of- crap thing a writer says is, I write only for myself, I don't care if anyone reads it. A writer without a reader doesn't exist."
• "Only bad writers think they're good."

Now read the rest of the article.