The Ghost Toucher

Every author wants free promotion. But indie authors crave it. Promotion could make or break the success of a new release (also factoring in how high the author sets the bar), but there is promotion and spinning your wheels in a fashion made to look like promotion.

We all go the route of combing the internet for reviewers, posting on every site we can find, maybe giving away a gift card, but there are certain things that just don’t work for obvious reasons. Like those threads on websites that advertise ‘Authors Promote Here’ like this one. Why? Because I don’t read them. That’s not to say that I’m the be-all, end-all of what will and won’t work. But I am a reader. And on the way to picking my next book, whatever that’s going to be, I don’t look at threads that have post upon post of authors schlepping their next work. It could be a great piece of fiction that I would become my very favorite book, but I’ll never learn about it that way.

The top ways I learn about new books to read are through recommendations and cool-looking covers. I don’t know about anyone else, but that’s how to reach me.

So why do these threads exist at all?

It’s for the same reason that crosswalks sometimes have that button you push when you’re facing a ‘don’t cross’ signal. It gives the authors the impression they’re actually doing something. It’s meant to placate us.

There are things that actually do work. Joining groups that allow you to post messages aimed directly at people who like your genre. I’m in several Yahoo and Facebook groups and have generated sales from both. You can even track traffic by creating links through bit.ly and posting those links. Of course, there’s a ton more that could be done—that’s more of a ‘hey, this is stuff that actually does something’ thing.

But don’t waste your time with author promo threads. Serious.

Happy hunting.

I didn't have time to write a new entry for Dead Right this week, so I have something else instead.  It's something new, still fleshing it out in my head.  Hope you enjoy.

Joe wanted Out.  He knew it would be soon, when they meat started coming down here they took him and some of the others out.  He might get to have the Other too.  Joe wanted out now.

He grabbed the mesh of the cage and growled.  Maybe if the meat saw him, saw It, she would give him the Other.  But she kept not looking at Joe.

"Step back."  Joe pulled away from the caging at the new voice.  Another meat stared at him.  This one was not like the first.  This meat smelled different and Joe remembered from others he'd eaten that ones like it had harder flesh. 

Joe did not want the Other with this meat.

"I said step back," the meat said again.  It stared at Joe in the eyes and Joe quickly looked away.  When meat stared Joe in the eyes it agitated him.  And when Joe was agitated he CLAWSCRATCHBIT.  When he CLAWSCRATCHBIT meat ran away and the bangstings came.  Joe did not like the stings.

"I said step back, motherfucker."  Joe did not like that last word.  He didn't understand most of them, but this one upset him.  Joe did step back, his hand fingering below his collar.  He used to wear something there that had been important.  People wouldn't speak to him like that back then.

Joe shook his head.  He did not like remembering.  The thoughts confused him and he saw people who weren't there.  They weren't meat like the ones he saw now.  They weren't real at all.  They were--

"Memories," Joe said, his finger still at his collar.  Something hit the floor at his feet.  Joe bent to pick it up--that was the other thing he was still good at, most of the others could barely use their hands--and puzzled at it between his thumb and index.  It was small and round at one end and smaller and flat on the other.  It looked like it belonged in the collar and he tried shoving it back in a hole he found in the collar, but his hands weren't that good.  He stood and walked back to the mesh to show the meat in the pen next to his.  The other that had been there had CLAWSCRATCHBIT and the meats had hit it with the bangstings until it stopped moving.

He waved it around, trying to catch the meat's eye, but the meat was dragging water around on the floor with a stick.  Joe moaned to get the meat's attention.

"Joe, what the hell?" the meat said.  He banged his stick against Joe's pen and water sloshed off the bottom on his feet.  Joe looked at the meat, holding the small thing in his hand.  The meat stared him in the face and Joe looked away again.  He dropped the small thing, wanting to CLAWSCRATCHBITE, but knew he couldn't do that.  Joe made fists, but the feeling was already out.  He dug his fingers into the collar and yanked at it, moaning again.  He yanked and yanked until something snapped.

Joe's collar came open.  His first thought was to try to show the meat again, but meat never paid attention.  This wouldn't help him now, he was still in a pen.  Joe closed the collar and opened it again.  Closed.  Opened.  He could do it anytime he wanted.

Joe sat down and did something he remembered doing from the time before.

He smiled.

I took my biography on my author's page at Amazon and used Google Translate to translate it into French.  I don't speak it, but it looks like spriggin ze Deutsche to me!  Read below if you dare...

Bon, ma biographie dernière a été à looooooong et ennuyeux. Je ne savais pas combien il était triste jusqu'à ce que je fait essayé de revenir en arrière et de le lire. Bla-bla-bla. Quoi qu'il en soit.

Je suis doyen Gerald Rice. Utilisé à Gerald Rice- Je suppose que je le suis encore, mais tous les travaux futurs doivent inclure mon deuxième prénom. C'est une chose de rebranding.

J'ai toujours été dans l'horreur. Quand j'étais à la maternelle, ma mère m'a pris dès l'école pour voir Creepshow. J'ai vu une tonne de choses que je n'aurais pas quand j'étais gamin.

J'ai eu un livre d'histoires de fantômes quand j'avais 11 ans pour Noël. Ce furent les jours avant YA romans, moins vous avez ramassé un de ces livres gnangnan Andrews VC. Bon, zéro qui, je n'ai jamais lu un livre VC Andrews.

Mais plus je lisais et plus je vieillis plus je eu l'envie d'écrire mes propres histoires. J'ai essayé ma main à écrire des histoires de bandes dessinées avec mon meilleur ami au lycée, mais nous n'avions aucune idée de comment percer dans la BD. J'ai soumis ma première histoire d'Cemetery Dance en 2000. Il a fallu quelque part autour de 7 mois pour les répondre.

J'étais si fier, même si ils me rejeter. La vérité de celui-ci a été ce n'était pas une histoire très originale et il était très simple. Il y avait tout un tas, je ne savais pas sur l'écriture à l'époque. Mais j'ai appris assez rapidement et ont depuis eu des histoires publiées sous forme imprimée et en ligne.

Mon premier roman, "The Ghost Toucher", est paru en 2010. Elle est née de plusieurs échoué écriture romanesque tente et je suis immensément fier de ce que j'ai créé. Depuis, j'ai mis un peu de collections de quelques moi-même et un short zombie quelques-uns.

Mon plus récent projet, "Fleshbags" doit être libérée dans quelques semaines. J'ai eu une sorte de "In Treatment" chose dans ma tête comme lorsque les patients de Paul ont un aspect d'eux reflète dans sa vie personnelle. J'ai mélangé mes personnages de cette façon (difficile à expliquer ce que je veux dire). Mais c'est certainement quelque chose de différent que ce que vous avez déjà lu et je vous suggère de lui donner un essai.

Got another cool idea today while trying to think up something for an anthology.  Much too involved for what they're looking for (sorry, Matt) and I'll just have to go it alone.  But it's much too hot an idea--at least to me--for me to idle on it.  I have to get it down now before it cools.  Any writer worth his salt will tell you a cooled idea is as good as dead.  Can't tell you too much, but it's call It's Dead and it approaches zombies in a very unique way.

“Toddy!” Dell said with as wide a smile as he could manage, looking at his nephew through the window of the door. The little boy was standing in the office in front of a secretary’s desk. He wasn’t doing anything, really, just peeking over with his thumbs hooked under the straps of his book bag. He turned slowly and regarded his uncle with semi-present eyes.

Dell opened the door to the office and took two big steps over and hugged him.

“You ready to go, champ?” Todd shrugged and walked to the door. “Sorry I was late. Got busy with work and I was wayyyy on the other side of town.” That was true, he supposed, but he felt guilty just the same.

“It’s okay,” Todd said. “It’s not the first time.” Dell felt a slight burn of anger at his brother.

Before he could usher Todd out the door a heavyset lady with a short haircuit and too-red lipstick charged back into the room. “Excuse me, sir,” she said. “You are?”

“Windel White. I’m Todd’s uncle.” He flashed a smile and she half glared at him, picking up a clipboard.

“You have some ID?”

“Sure.” He dug his wallet out and flashed his driver’s license.

“Okay, you are on the list to pick him up, but you do know there is a twenty-five dollar late charge?”

“Oh, there is? I’m sorry. I’m just filling in for my brother for a couple of days. He’s out of town on business. I work at the mayor’s office.” He offered that last part to see if he could wedge a little leeway on the fee. The woman’s eyes told him she was unimpressed. Dell gave a slight shrug and whipped out his wallet. There were several bills inside, he hadn’t bothered checking how much money he had this morning and lunch he’d bought at the hospital cafeteria with his debit card.

“Uh, how much?” The woman made another face at him. As if he were doing something wrong that he should have known better.

“I can’t accept cash.” She shook her head. She sighed for what felt to Dell like the millionth time. “If you don’t have a check I’ll just have to make a have the secretary add it to the account.”

“You’re not the secretary?” Dell had looked down at the nameplate at the desk the woman was standing in front of. Willa Peel. Not-Willa Peel breathed in deep, then out. “If you could leave that note…” Dell said, making a slow retreat to the door. “That would be hugely appreciated. Thanks and… sorry.”

He put his hand on the doorknob and bounced off the door before he managed it open.

“Last thing I need,” he mumbled to himself, thinking of the growing list of people who would look favorably upon his death. Dell raced up to his nephew, slapping Todd on the back and bringing the boy in close. He hoped Toddy didn’t have such an opinion, but turning his eyes down to him he didn’t see anything on the boy’s face at all. It was as if Toddy didn’t have any emotion at all about nearly being forgotten.

“Hey, kid, I’m sorry, okay?”

Todd looked up at him as if he didn’t understand what Dell was talking about. He thought things would have been okay, but he was increasingly finding they weren’t. He was going to have to take a better look at Wenton, see if things really had took with him.

When they were outside, his nephew turned to him.

“Wanna see something?”

“What, Toddy?”

“It’s over here.” He tugged Dell along by his coat, leading him across the wide lawn of the school, over to the fenced-in schoolyard. The black-grey concrete was cracked and lumpy, faded white outlines of a basketball court to their right in between two sagged and leaning netless basketball rims with scuffed-up backboards. There was an open play space just ahead then another court that was just as in disrepair as the first and then another open space followed by another court on the other end of the schoolyard just before the fence.

Todd led him there and they stood at the fence. There was a tree that upon closer inspection looked to be a weed that had grown unchecked and twisted its branched into the fence, twisting it off the supporting pole in one place. Half-hidden by the weed-tree was an old copper-colored brick house with an overgrown lawn and sections missing from its cracked walkway.

“What are we looking at, Toddy?”

“Sh,” the boy said. “Wait a second.” There was patience in that voice that spoke volumes. Todd had grown used to waiting. Had grown used to a great many things a boy his age shouldn’t be used to, by Dell estimation. It made him seem more like an old man than a what—three or four year old? He opened his mouth to ask, but Todd reached up and latched onto his ring finger.

Something stirred on the other side of the gate. Dell instinctually took a step back, but Todd held firm. A moment later a figure shook out of the low branches of the weed-tree.

There was a street light not more than thirty feet away, but it was as if the light wasn’t able to penetrate over here beyond a trickle. Had Dell been an actual parent, he might have instinctually pulled the boy away. But the part of him that preferred to bring out the adult in Todd, the part that didn’t want to take care of a child, let him stay and he stayed too, trusting his nephew’s judgment.

Tiny fingers wrapped around the links of the fence. A pair of eyes Dell recognized all too well caught the trickle of light and reflected it. A veman, but he’d never see one this short. Dell at first thought a dwarf must have had one commissioned when it struck him. He grabbed for his smart phone and thumbed the flashlight app. It clicked on and he turned the camera flash onto the figure on the other side of the fence.

It was a child. A veman child.

But he’d never seen or heard such a thing. Veman organs were only intended for adults. No tests had ever been conducted on children. Who could have—

And then Dell’s mind made another leap. Nobody had commissioned this child. It had been born.

He scanned left and right, looking for what he knew had to be nearby. It’s parent. And like it had been summoned, an adult veman scurried up behind the child. It was low to the ground and from the look of its eyes—locked onto Dell and his nephew—hostile. He’d never seen that look on a veman before. Well, before today. But the incident across the street from the mayor’s office had been different. That one had been programmed to do that. Dell knew a thing or two about programming vemans, but this one seemed to be running on a kind of instinct.

Dell turned the flashlight off.

“Toddy, let’s go,” he said low.

“I never saw the big one before,” the boy said. “Can we stay?”

The bigger one growled and slapped at the fence, warning them off.

“No, Toddy. We have to leave. Now.”

“No!” Todd shouted. “I don’t wanna go!”

Dell didn’t waste any more time on the argument. He scooped his nephew up and began to run back the way they’d come. He didn’t know it, but one thing for certain was that vemans rarely were found alone and he didn’t want to find out that this particular one wasn’t an exception to the rule. The thing had appeared violent and he knew there was no way to stop a pack of them bare handed, especially with a toddler in tow.

My wife had the good idea that I should be calendaring everything I intend to do this year.  I want to have my first YA novel released in time for the Christmas season, but I really want The Golden Ones cranked out before that.  There needs to be a little space between the two titles so TGO needs to be ready for release sometime in August.  So August.  Tales from an Apartment will be released March 20th and I'm around the corner from being done with that.  More info soon.  Oh, and new Dead Right tonight!

I must confess, I'm a little disappointed in myself.  Ever since reading F. Paul Wilson's Legacies, the second book in the Repairman Jack series, I've devoured these books.  Good thing Legacies was a perfect stand-alone so I wasn't completely lost and once I'd read The Tomb all the blanks were filled in.  But after that (I had had The Tomb on my shelf for a few years before buying and reading the second one).  Then I bought Conspiracies and All the Rage in paperback at a pharmacy and I waited for the rest of the paperbacks to come out.

Every year one came out and I bought and read it within 2 weeks.

I haven't even cracked open The Dark at the End.  I guess I know why.  It's the last in a long series and I'm a little sad to see it go.  Well, it isn't exactly going.  Dr. Wilson signed I think a 3 book deal to write Jack's story as to how he came to be who he came to be and I think later this year the revised Nightworld comes out with a much expanded role for Jack.

But I'll get it read.  It'll be slower, maybe my usual pace (I'm actually a very slow reader, but fast when it comes to RJ).  I'm even starting my own Youtube channel where I'll review it (more on that later).

“I don’t understand,” Wenton said. “What does any of this have to do with Cara?”

She—Wenton had finally decided to refer to the thing with a more human pronoun, it made things a tad easier—had spent a half hour longer on Dwight’s computer, more than a half dozen internet windows open at once as she combed information from various websites. Wenton had noted two bank accounts, what looked like some sort of conspiracy-theory forum, and several all-text websites he didn’t know what to make of. Once she’d finished, she’d double-clicked on some .exe program he guessed was some sort of scrubber so there was no evidence of the questionable sites she’d been on.

They’d found a branch of his bank with an ATM as they migrated west on Seven Mile toward Woodward. The idea was to catch a cab—she’d said it was too risky to call one from Dwight’s apartment—and head somewhere. Wenton was in full follow-mode and hadn’t thought to ask, merely handing over the entire sum of cash he’d withdrawn from the machine.

“I knew her,” she said. “We were both… working on something together.” Wenton looked at her and shook his head.

“I don’t even know who you are.” He thought a second and corrected himself for effect. “Who you were. Why did my dead wife have any business with a dead woman.”

She stopped her brisk walking and turned to Wenton. It had been work to keep pace. She was just as tall as him; they built vemans big for some reason.

“You’re looking for answers. I get that. But you have to take my word for it, there’s something a lot bigger than the death of a worker bee’s wife.”

“What does that even mean?” He seized her by the arms, a mistake not only because of the people passing by, but also she was a lot stronger than him. She didn’t shrug him off, but gave a quarter smile with the corner of her mouth.

She took a deep breath, shook her head. “I’ve never worked well with other people. Guess I don’t have a choice anymore. I was a reporter for a paper out of Washington. I got a tip from someone about a clandestine group that had begun manufacturing vemans again. I’ve got a few contacts at the federal level and after a few calls I finally got something other than a roadblock. I was told in no uncertain terms to back off. To just drop it.” Wenton had let her go by now and she’d begun pacing. She shook her head again. “If you’d read any of my stuff you’d know I’m not that type of girl. I went back to that original phone call—the one that started me on this trip—to see what I’d passed up on. First thing was the area code. After that it was simple to research all the facilities in Detroit that had ‘formerly’—” she made wiggly quotation marks with her fingers—“manufactured vemans. I didn’t think anyone would be dumb enough to open shop in a facility that had formerly made them so I checked the Big Seven. Meaning, I came up to Detroit, smashed in a window and took a stroll around. The first thing I noticed was the huge blank spots where it was obvious a machine of some sort had been, but was now missing. I visited the city’s building department to see if they had any information on equipment moves. All of their records for all seven addresses had been confiscated by the State. I submitted about three dozen FOIA requests and what little I got back had been heavily redacted.

“During this time, I was informed by my editor to get back on a plan to Washington. That there wasn’t enough story to justify what the paper was paying in hotel and per diem costs. This was just another red flag something more was going on. I mean, subscriptions are in decline, but it was only a few years ago when I was imbedded with a troop in Afghanistan. I told him I’d pay for my own expenses and then when he demanded I return or it might mean my job I hung up. I never heard that tone in his voice. He was frightened.

“I started non-traditional searches. If they were going to stop me one way, I was going to find another. I started interviewing people who lived in the neighborhoods where these facilities were and some remember black and green trucks. I searched the web for black and green trucks and found nothing, but someone found me. People began showing up at every café, I could tell it was the eponymous them by everything about them. The way they looked, the way the dressed, how their very movements seemed to be in unison as they scanned the café, looking… looking for me, but not knowing who I was yet.

“You would have thought I would have been afraid by then, but not me. My mother always said I was too hard-headed for my own good and she was right. No, I pulled up some innocuous site and almost dared them to prove it was me they were looking for.

“But someone else connected with the black and green trucks found me. I found a contact inside. He gave me all kinds of information. About the process that made me into this—” she gestured to herself with her eyes, but didn’t miss a beat—“He didn’t know what they were up to, but it made him uncomfortable.” She took a deep breath and looked off into the distance. Probably at the cab coming that was a block away, but Wenton guessed it was something more. “We were supposed to meet. That day is a blur, probably to do with the transfer process, but I can’t really say.”

The cab pulled to a stop at the curb and they climbed inside. “If you’re wondering where we’re heading next, it’s to him, my contact. I have to know if he’s the one who betrayed me or if something else happened.”

The good news is also the meh news.  Each subsequent episode of Dead Right will be longer than the others preceding them.  The meh news is the entries will only probably be once a week.  This next one will be a page-and-a-half.  As I get revved up, the next will probably be longer.  I was able to do a page a day at some point (just a tad busier now).

I've read all of the Dark Tower series save for the last 2 books. My 4 year old got me a Marvel comic of the Dark Tower series. I confess, I don't really know much about these. Are they cannon to the books? Do they retell the story just with pics? What am I getting into here?