Showing posts with label Tiberius. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tiberius. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Creepy Days in the Garden (a FREE! book day!)
Eternal Life.
Then they remember the Serpent.
The Garden hadn't suffered the step of a human for millennia upon millennia...
...until Tib came.
It had become the place of the Undying.
Creepy days continue in the Garden, but don't follow Tiberius too closely.
You don't know what he might find.
Get "The Garden" today! For FREE!
Thursday, October 6, 2016
The Creepy Days of Tiberius (a FREE! book day!)
It means the days are shorter and the shadows are longer. The shadows can reach farther and seem to never go away.
That's fine for most people, because the shadows don't care about most people. Most.
But there are those, those few, whom the shadows want, and when the shadows grow long and the veil grows thin, the shadows can act.
Tib has always known the shadows were after him, but he didn't always know he could fight back...
Get Shadow Spinner: Tiberius (Collection 1: Parts 1-5) today for FREE!
Seriously, go get it now! It's only FREE! for a limited time, so don't miss your chance.
And watch out for the shadows...
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
The Weekly (Pat) Report #1
Well... Here we are! Another week in the saga of the Revenge of the Fake Reviews! You're probably all tired of hearing about it by now; I know I'm tired of talking about it. BUT, if you want things to be righted, you can't stop talking about it, because that's the same as saying, "What you did is okay, and I'm going to let you get away with it." Dilloway has already been implying that he wants me to stop talking about the things he's done and his patterns of behavior, and I will... just as soon as he has his sister take down all the fake reviews/ratings she has up for me. Which are also on goodreads, now, because Dilloway can't stop himself from escalating the situation even as he's talking about how I should stop talking about him.
So... Let's review the situation, shall we?
1. I wrote a review of a book not written by Pat Dilloway.
2. Pat Dilloway freaked out and had a hissy fit because the author of the book was a friend of his.
3. As a result of his hissy fit, he attacked my review in each place it was posted.
4. He also, in a attempt to "give me a taste of my own medicine," lowered the rating of a book of mine, "Tiberius," which he had previously reviewed and rated four stars, to one star.
5. Pat tried to extort me to change my review of the other book by offering to change his rating on "Tiberius" back to what he originally gave it. Not one to be extorted, I said no, but that whole exchange made me angry. This is not a "hey, I'll lie for you if you'll lie for me" kind of thing.
6. Then, he wrote a post on the IWM blog about what a horrible person I am and accused me of being someone who just goes around giving out 1-star ratings, basically, because I feel like it and because I like being mean to people.
7. At that point, I wrote a post explaining, again, my stance on honest reviews. This post had nothing in and of itself to do with Pat Dilloway, although he took exception to it just as he did the first time I stated my stance years ago. Also, Briane Pagel wrote a post about honesty in reviews which he posted on the IWM blog in no small part because Pat's view that reviews should be biased toward the author for indie books (although he does not practice his own stated stance and will freely give negative reviews to people he doesn't like or to whom he views as a threat or competition) is not a reflection of the views of IWM.
8. Pat expanded his attack on me to include Briane and 1-starred at least one of Briane's books in response to Briane's post about reviews.
9. I wrote a post about the childish behavior of Pat Dilloway with the idea that the way you deal with bullying behavior is to bring it to light. The bully wins if you keep it hidden, and it allows the bully to keep doing it and do it to other people.
10. Pat began harassing me and calling me names in the comments section on my blog (he had also been doing the same to me on goodreads).
11. I published a review of a book of his which I had previously withheld. I see, now, that withholding the review in the first place was a mistake but, at the time, I had not wanted to get into it with Dilloway, because I already knew how he reacted to bad reviews. The review was not revenge, as he seems to think, but was to make a point, again, about the types of reviews that I do, i.e. reviews with objective reasoning based on the product which have nothing to do with how I may feel about the author.
12. Dilloway, of course, attacked the review. Another reviewer pointed out some of the things that I was talking about in the review, things Dilloway said didn't exist, and Dilloway attacked him, too. The other reviewer posted his own review of Dilloway's book because his comments somehow mysteriously vanished from the comment thread on Amazon, and Dilloway attacked that review, too, though most of Dilloway's comments were removed by Amazon.
13. Dilloway began spamming my comment sections on my posts with hundreds of comments calling me names. Yes, I said hundreds. These comments I just ignored and stored, but Dilloway, then, went out of his way to also call various of my commenters names and, actually, called all of my commenters stupid.
14. Because of Dilloway's "I didn't do that, oh, I did do that but it's okay" attitude and his similarity to Vox Day along with his persistence in spamming my comments, I wrote the Sad Puppy post.
15. Dilloway asked for people to help teach me a lesson (on Facebook (I saw the post but don't remember the exact language he used)), and his sister went over to Amazon and began 1-starring all of my books. Later, his other sister also 1-starred the same books that Dilloway had 1-starred.
16. Dilloway wrote another post about what a horrible person I am and how I am just petty dictator for removing all of his comments which were full of nothing more than calling people names and insulting people. Sorry, it's my blog and, if insulting people is the best you have, I don't need that on my blog.
17. Amazon stepped in and removed all of the Dilloway siblings reviews/ratings on "Tiberius" and The House on the Corner. Dilloway re-posted his reviews, both with 3-star ratings, just to have Amazon remove them again. That happened several times (at least three), but Dilloway was persistent in re-posting the reviews every time Amazon removed them. They currently stand with 3-star ratings. Neither sister replaced their reviews on those books, but the first sister still has six 1-star ratings of my work on Amazon.
18. Dilloway began spreading around, in order to show how horrible I am, that I am currently in a feud with my church. That's a very interesting thing since, currently, I do not attend church nor have I in years. I'm assuming that Dilloway is referring to the series I've been doing about racism, and I am going to be generous and assume that his misunderstanding came from a lack of being able to read closely rather than that he is siding with the batch of racist assholes I was talking about in those posts.
Oh, wait, he could have just been purposefully lying about me so as to discredit me. Hmm... yeah, let's go with that option. Occam's Razor and all of that.
19. His sister expanded her rating attack to goodreads where she has currently given me more than 50 1-star ratings (because each piece of the Shadow Spinner serialization is still listed there).
This is the point at which I'm saying that I am not going to quit talking about Pat Dilloway and what he has done and is doing until he fixes it. Not just his reviews (he also went and downrated everything he'd rated of mine on goodreads), because he's changed those so that he can, I suppose, say, "Hey, look, I don't have any bad reviews of his works," but his sister's, too, since, ultimately, he is responsible for those being there. Also, if I see that he's doing this kind of thing to anyone else, I will do my best to let people know about that, too. Because, you know what? Bullies don't get to win.
And, now, for my favorite one!
20. Just this week, Dilloway has published a post saying how much he hates me and how, also, he's sure that everyone believes he's an asshole but, really, what he's doing is okay because he keeps it isolated to "out-of-the-way message boards and blogs." At least he's not putting it in a book that's for sale on, say, Amazon where thousands of people could see it.
The logic here is amazing to me. It's kind of like saying, "Hey, I know I hit you in the back of the head with this board, but at least I did it in this alley where no one could see instead of out on the street." Or, "I know I stole $100.00 from you, but at least I didn't steal $1000.00." It is not the magnitude of something that makes it wrong. The thing is wrong or it's not. Speeding is still against the law even if there are no cops around to catch you.
He also states in the that post that he has been involved in "many a flame war," which I also find interesting considering his stance that I am the problem. I suppose that this could be considered a flame war except that I have kept all of my talk (except for one stray comment) restricted to my blog and have also restricted my talk to only pointing out actual actions without resorting to calling names and insulting anyone's intelligence. At any rate, I think the person who has an issue with getting involved in flame wars should take a look at his behavior.
So that's the update. Next week's will be restricted to only new developments, but I wanted to get the sequence of events down here at the outset. I think I covered everything, at any rate.
If you would like to find out what you can do to help fight the bullies who attack and/or intimidate authors like this just because they can, please feel free to email me.
So... Let's review the situation, shall we?
1. I wrote a review of a book not written by Pat Dilloway.
2. Pat Dilloway freaked out and had a hissy fit because the author of the book was a friend of his.
3. As a result of his hissy fit, he attacked my review in each place it was posted.
4. He also, in a attempt to "give me a taste of my own medicine," lowered the rating of a book of mine, "Tiberius," which he had previously reviewed and rated four stars, to one star.
5. Pat tried to extort me to change my review of the other book by offering to change his rating on "Tiberius" back to what he originally gave it. Not one to be extorted, I said no, but that whole exchange made me angry. This is not a "hey, I'll lie for you if you'll lie for me" kind of thing.
6. Then, he wrote a post on the IWM blog about what a horrible person I am and accused me of being someone who just goes around giving out 1-star ratings, basically, because I feel like it and because I like being mean to people.
7. At that point, I wrote a post explaining, again, my stance on honest reviews. This post had nothing in and of itself to do with Pat Dilloway, although he took exception to it just as he did the first time I stated my stance years ago. Also, Briane Pagel wrote a post about honesty in reviews which he posted on the IWM blog in no small part because Pat's view that reviews should be biased toward the author for indie books (although he does not practice his own stated stance and will freely give negative reviews to people he doesn't like or to whom he views as a threat or competition) is not a reflection of the views of IWM.
8. Pat expanded his attack on me to include Briane and 1-starred at least one of Briane's books in response to Briane's post about reviews.
9. I wrote a post about the childish behavior of Pat Dilloway with the idea that the way you deal with bullying behavior is to bring it to light. The bully wins if you keep it hidden, and it allows the bully to keep doing it and do it to other people.
10. Pat began harassing me and calling me names in the comments section on my blog (he had also been doing the same to me on goodreads).
11. I published a review of a book of his which I had previously withheld. I see, now, that withholding the review in the first place was a mistake but, at the time, I had not wanted to get into it with Dilloway, because I already knew how he reacted to bad reviews. The review was not revenge, as he seems to think, but was to make a point, again, about the types of reviews that I do, i.e. reviews with objective reasoning based on the product which have nothing to do with how I may feel about the author.
12. Dilloway, of course, attacked the review. Another reviewer pointed out some of the things that I was talking about in the review, things Dilloway said didn't exist, and Dilloway attacked him, too. The other reviewer posted his own review of Dilloway's book because his comments somehow mysteriously vanished from the comment thread on Amazon, and Dilloway attacked that review, too, though most of Dilloway's comments were removed by Amazon.
13. Dilloway began spamming my comment sections on my posts with hundreds of comments calling me names. Yes, I said hundreds. These comments I just ignored and stored, but Dilloway, then, went out of his way to also call various of my commenters names and, actually, called all of my commenters stupid.
14. Because of Dilloway's "I didn't do that, oh, I did do that but it's okay" attitude and his similarity to Vox Day along with his persistence in spamming my comments, I wrote the Sad Puppy post.
15. Dilloway asked for people to help teach me a lesson (on Facebook (I saw the post but don't remember the exact language he used)), and his sister went over to Amazon and began 1-starring all of my books. Later, his other sister also 1-starred the same books that Dilloway had 1-starred.
16. Dilloway wrote another post about what a horrible person I am and how I am just petty dictator for removing all of his comments which were full of nothing more than calling people names and insulting people. Sorry, it's my blog and, if insulting people is the best you have, I don't need that on my blog.
17. Amazon stepped in and removed all of the Dilloway siblings reviews/ratings on "Tiberius" and The House on the Corner. Dilloway re-posted his reviews, both with 3-star ratings, just to have Amazon remove them again. That happened several times (at least three), but Dilloway was persistent in re-posting the reviews every time Amazon removed them. They currently stand with 3-star ratings. Neither sister replaced their reviews on those books, but the first sister still has six 1-star ratings of my work on Amazon.
18. Dilloway began spreading around, in order to show how horrible I am, that I am currently in a feud with my church. That's a very interesting thing since, currently, I do not attend church nor have I in years. I'm assuming that Dilloway is referring to the series I've been doing about racism, and I am going to be generous and assume that his misunderstanding came from a lack of being able to read closely rather than that he is siding with the batch of racist assholes I was talking about in those posts.
Oh, wait, he could have just been purposefully lying about me so as to discredit me. Hmm... yeah, let's go with that option. Occam's Razor and all of that.
19. His sister expanded her rating attack to goodreads where she has currently given me more than 50 1-star ratings (because each piece of the Shadow Spinner serialization is still listed there).
This is the point at which I'm saying that I am not going to quit talking about Pat Dilloway and what he has done and is doing until he fixes it. Not just his reviews (he also went and downrated everything he'd rated of mine on goodreads), because he's changed those so that he can, I suppose, say, "Hey, look, I don't have any bad reviews of his works," but his sister's, too, since, ultimately, he is responsible for those being there. Also, if I see that he's doing this kind of thing to anyone else, I will do my best to let people know about that, too. Because, you know what? Bullies don't get to win.
And, now, for my favorite one!
20. Just this week, Dilloway has published a post saying how much he hates me and how, also, he's sure that everyone believes he's an asshole but, really, what he's doing is okay because he keeps it isolated to "out-of-the-way message boards and blogs." At least he's not putting it in a book that's for sale on, say, Amazon where thousands of people could see it.
The logic here is amazing to me. It's kind of like saying, "Hey, I know I hit you in the back of the head with this board, but at least I did it in this alley where no one could see instead of out on the street." Or, "I know I stole $100.00 from you, but at least I didn't steal $1000.00." It is not the magnitude of something that makes it wrong. The thing is wrong or it's not. Speeding is still against the law even if there are no cops around to catch you.
He also states in the that post that he has been involved in "many a flame war," which I also find interesting considering his stance that I am the problem. I suppose that this could be considered a flame war except that I have kept all of my talk (except for one stray comment) restricted to my blog and have also restricted my talk to only pointing out actual actions without resorting to calling names and insulting anyone's intelligence. At any rate, I think the person who has an issue with getting involved in flame wars should take a look at his behavior.
So that's the update. Next week's will be restricted to only new developments, but I wanted to get the sequence of events down here at the outset. I think I covered everything, at any rate.
If you would like to find out what you can do to help fight the bullies who attack and/or intimidate authors like this just because they can, please feel free to email me.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
It's Time For You To Grow Up (part 2)
Truth is the greatest enemy of the small minded. --me
Back in January, I wrote this post about... Well, you should probably just go read it, but the short of it is about being more offensive, in both connotations of the word:
1. tackling subjects that tend to upset people (hence my current series on racism)
2. not backing down from a fight or, in other words, going on the attack
I think this post will do both of those things.
I get that authors reviewing other authors is loaded topic. Honestly, I'm tired of talking about it. I believe what I believe about it, views which you can find scattered through numerous posts on here, and it's not likely that you're going to change my mind about it. I'm going to add one further thought, though, that I don't think I've stated before:
Authors reviewing authors is a longstanding practice. What do you think it is when a publisher solicits blurbs from authors for book covers? Those are encapsulated reviews meant to support, usually, a newer author and help sell books. And, sure, they pick the good ones, because they want people to buy the book. It doesn't change the fact that "negative" reviews are just as valid.
Go back and read part one of this (if you weren't here last week) if you want my full take on the subject.
All of that said (including the stuff in the older posts), and no matter what your opinion is on reviewing, here is a thing that is never okay: It is never okay to threaten someone with a negative rating/review in order to elicit a positive one in return.
So here's what happened:
I recently reviewed Lyon's Legacy by Sandra Almazan. Now, Sandra is someone I "worked with" on the mostly abandoned Indie Writers Monthly project. [I say "worked with" in that I never actually worked with her other than that we both contributed to the same blog. It's only "working with" in the very loosest of ways since we all contributed individually and never really worked on any joint projects other than the magazine, which Briane coordinated, so I only worked with Briane on that.] However, what I think of a book I read has nothing to do with whether I know the person or not. I'm reading a book then reviewing the book I read, and none of that part of the process has anything to do with whether I know you. [The only part where knowing you comes into the equation is that I am much more likely to read your indie book if I do know you. Once I've picked the book up, though, none of that continues to matter. It's all about the book at that point. (As it should be.)] I happened to not like this particular book (but you can go back and read the review).
As it happened, Pat Dilloway (also part of the IWM group) had posted a review of "Tiberius" (one of mine) about a week before I posted my review of Lyon's, or, at least, that's when I noticed it. It was a review he just slid in there without ever mentioning it to me. It was a short, respectable review with a 4-star rating.
However, as soon as my review for Lyon's posted, Pat attacked it and changed the rating he'd given "Tiberius" to 1 star. To be honest, that pissed me off. Especially when he told me that he would change it back if I would either pull down my review of Lyon's or change it to be favorable. In short, he tried to extort a positive review from me by preying on what he assumed would be my fear of having a negative review on one of my books. That pissed me off some more. That's playground bully behavior.
Needless to say, I didn't change the review.
Now, I understand that some of you feel that negative reviews are... inappropriate, but, again, I'm going to say to go back and read part one of this to get my full thoughts on that.
At this point, the thing that actually makes me mad is the hypocrisy of Pat Dilloway and his supposed belief that indie writers should only give other indie writers positive reviews because "selling books is fucking hard." And, you know, he's right; it is hard. But lying in book reviews/ratings for what can, at best, only be a short term gain (and usually isn't even that) hurts everyone in the long term. There's no better way to convince readers to stay away from indie books than for indie writers to lie in their reviews/ratings just to get the same favor back. Which is Pat's goal, as he fully admits:
"I do it because I'd want them to help me should I ask for it."
Just to say it, I don't help people for the goal of getting them to help me in return. That's not called "helping;" that's called "quid pro quo." If I'm going to help someone, I'm doing it either because it's the right thing to do or because I just want to help the person, not because I'm trying generate future favors. But I digress...
We're supposed to be talking about hypocrisy.
Dilloway's stance about only giving positive reviews to other indie authors goes back years. At least as far back as when I first declared my policy about honest reviews. Since then, however, he has been in at least one feud with an indie author he said he considered a friend and to whom he gave a 1-star review. I suppose it must be one of those things where it's okay for him to do it but it's not okay for anyone else.
I've seen him give 1-star ratings to indie authors where he admitted to not reading the books. I think those were all "revenge ratings," though, so I suppose that makes it okay. Which would apply to what he did to me.
He gave a 1-star rating to a recent ABNA winner, an indie author, but I suppose the fact that the guy won a contest and got a pocket full of money from it then got an Amazon publishing deal made that one okay. Here's what he had to say about:
Oh, and he also gave Alex Cavanaugh a 1-star rating on his book Cassastar for the sole purpose of not liking Alex.
All of that to say that Dilloway actually has no standards about whom and how he reviews and rates; he throws them out based upon his mood. You just better hope to never end up on the wrong side of him, because he may just go toss a bunch of 1-star ratings at you for not liking you. Kind of like this guy:
The best part, though, was that Dilloway presented what he did like this: "...I changed an overly generous 5-star review of his book to 1-star to let him have a taste of his own medicine." I love the phrase "his own medicine." If he paid attention at all to anything that I do or say, he would understand that my medicine is to read a book and offer a rating and review based upon my experience of the product. My medicine is never to go over and give someone a bad review because I'm mad at him. A more accurate way of putting that would be for Dilloway to just admit that he was giving me his medicine. Or, more accurately, his brand of poison.
On the other side of all of this is a post that Briane Pagel posted. I strongly recommend that you go read his post. Yes, it's long, but it has a very interesting take on the two sides of this controversy. Not the controversy between me and Dilloway but the controversy about reviews in general and whether we should just give out positive reviews to fellow indie authors. In that post, he excerpts from several reviews I've given his stuff. Um... He excerpts negative things I've said about his various books (and I like Briane's stuff!). More interestingly, he talks about how me pointing out the negatives in his writing helped him to grow as a writer. You should just go read the post.
I suppose the question, the real question, is "How do you deal with people like this?" The first way is what I'm doing here: You shine a light on the bad behavior. Of course, he has a belief that I behaved badly by giving Lyon's a negative review, and it's his right to say that he doesn't believe indie authors should be truthful in their reviews of other indie authors as long as it's "supporting" the author in question, but that's a far different thing than going around downgrading ratings of authors' works because you don't like them or because you're mad at them. Basically, you should let people know of whom they should be aware, so I'm letting you know.
The second way is to not let these kinds of people bully you. You don't adjust what you're doing to accommodate them, because, once you start doing that, you can never stop. It's like negotiating with terrorists. There's a reason we don't do that.
The third way is to show support for each other when someone is faced with dealing with a down-rating bully. So, you know, if you want to help out, go pick up one of my things (specifically "Tiberius" in this case), read it, and leave an honest review/rating. Seriously, I'd much rather have an honest 1-star rating than someone just giving me a 4 or 5 to be "nice" or to, hopefully, garner my favor for the future.
[Next week, I will actually have a review of one of Dilloway's works, something I read way back and never reviewed because I didn't, at the time, want to get into it with him, knowing how he is. But, then, I suppose that was a bit like trying to slide by the notice of the playground bully, and no one can do that indefinitely, because you can't ever tell what will set one of them off.]
1. tackling subjects that tend to upset people (hence my current series on racism)
2. not backing down from a fight or, in other words, going on the attack
I think this post will do both of those things.
I get that authors reviewing other authors is loaded topic. Honestly, I'm tired of talking about it. I believe what I believe about it, views which you can find scattered through numerous posts on here, and it's not likely that you're going to change my mind about it. I'm going to add one further thought, though, that I don't think I've stated before:
Authors reviewing authors is a longstanding practice. What do you think it is when a publisher solicits blurbs from authors for book covers? Those are encapsulated reviews meant to support, usually, a newer author and help sell books. And, sure, they pick the good ones, because they want people to buy the book. It doesn't change the fact that "negative" reviews are just as valid.
Go back and read part one of this (if you weren't here last week) if you want my full take on the subject.
All of that said (including the stuff in the older posts), and no matter what your opinion is on reviewing, here is a thing that is never okay: It is never okay to threaten someone with a negative rating/review in order to elicit a positive one in return.
So here's what happened:
I recently reviewed Lyon's Legacy by Sandra Almazan. Now, Sandra is someone I "worked with" on the mostly abandoned Indie Writers Monthly project. [I say "worked with" in that I never actually worked with her other than that we both contributed to the same blog. It's only "working with" in the very loosest of ways since we all contributed individually and never really worked on any joint projects other than the magazine, which Briane coordinated, so I only worked with Briane on that.] However, what I think of a book I read has nothing to do with whether I know the person or not. I'm reading a book then reviewing the book I read, and none of that part of the process has anything to do with whether I know you. [The only part where knowing you comes into the equation is that I am much more likely to read your indie book if I do know you. Once I've picked the book up, though, none of that continues to matter. It's all about the book at that point. (As it should be.)] I happened to not like this particular book (but you can go back and read the review).
As it happened, Pat Dilloway (also part of the IWM group) had posted a review of "Tiberius" (one of mine) about a week before I posted my review of Lyon's, or, at least, that's when I noticed it. It was a review he just slid in there without ever mentioning it to me. It was a short, respectable review with a 4-star rating.
However, as soon as my review for Lyon's posted, Pat attacked it and changed the rating he'd given "Tiberius" to 1 star. To be honest, that pissed me off. Especially when he told me that he would change it back if I would either pull down my review of Lyon's or change it to be favorable. In short, he tried to extort a positive review from me by preying on what he assumed would be my fear of having a negative review on one of my books. That pissed me off some more. That's playground bully behavior.
Needless to say, I didn't change the review.
Now, I understand that some of you feel that negative reviews are... inappropriate, but, again, I'm going to say to go back and read part one of this to get my full thoughts on that.
At this point, the thing that actually makes me mad is the hypocrisy of Pat Dilloway and his supposed belief that indie writers should only give other indie writers positive reviews because "selling books is fucking hard." And, you know, he's right; it is hard. But lying in book reviews/ratings for what can, at best, only be a short term gain (and usually isn't even that) hurts everyone in the long term. There's no better way to convince readers to stay away from indie books than for indie writers to lie in their reviews/ratings just to get the same favor back. Which is Pat's goal, as he fully admits:
"I do it because I'd want them to help me should I ask for it."
Just to say it, I don't help people for the goal of getting them to help me in return. That's not called "helping;" that's called "quid pro quo." If I'm going to help someone, I'm doing it either because it's the right thing to do or because I just want to help the person, not because I'm trying generate future favors. But I digress...
We're supposed to be talking about hypocrisy.
Dilloway's stance about only giving positive reviews to other indie authors goes back years. At least as far back as when I first declared my policy about honest reviews. Since then, however, he has been in at least one feud with an indie author he said he considered a friend and to whom he gave a 1-star review. I suppose it must be one of those things where it's okay for him to do it but it's not okay for anyone else.
I've seen him give 1-star ratings to indie authors where he admitted to not reading the books. I think those were all "revenge ratings," though, so I suppose that makes it okay. Which would apply to what he did to me.
He gave a 1-star rating to a recent ABNA winner, an indie author, but I suppose the fact that the guy won a contest and got a pocket full of money from it then got an Amazon publishing deal made that one okay. Here's what he had to say about:
Just last week I gave 1-star to a book being published by Amazon. And you know what, it won't fucking matter! That book has hundreds of reviews already; mine is just crying out in the wilderness. There's no harm to it.
Oh, and he also gave Alex Cavanaugh a 1-star rating on his book Cassastar for the sole purpose of not liking Alex.
All of that to say that Dilloway actually has no standards about whom and how he reviews and rates; he throws them out based upon his mood. You just better hope to never end up on the wrong side of him, because he may just go toss a bunch of 1-star ratings at you for not liking you. Kind of like this guy:
On the other side of all of this is a post that Briane Pagel posted. I strongly recommend that you go read his post. Yes, it's long, but it has a very interesting take on the two sides of this controversy. Not the controversy between me and Dilloway but the controversy about reviews in general and whether we should just give out positive reviews to fellow indie authors. In that post, he excerpts from several reviews I've given his stuff. Um... He excerpts negative things I've said about his various books (and I like Briane's stuff!). More interestingly, he talks about how me pointing out the negatives in his writing helped him to grow as a writer. You should just go read the post.
I suppose the question, the real question, is "How do you deal with people like this?" The first way is what I'm doing here: You shine a light on the bad behavior. Of course, he has a belief that I behaved badly by giving Lyon's a negative review, and it's his right to say that he doesn't believe indie authors should be truthful in their reviews of other indie authors as long as it's "supporting" the author in question, but that's a far different thing than going around downgrading ratings of authors' works because you don't like them or because you're mad at them. Basically, you should let people know of whom they should be aware, so I'm letting you know.
The second way is to not let these kinds of people bully you. You don't adjust what you're doing to accommodate them, because, once you start doing that, you can never stop. It's like negotiating with terrorists. There's a reason we don't do that.
The third way is to show support for each other when someone is faced with dealing with a down-rating bully. So, you know, if you want to help out, go pick up one of my things (specifically "Tiberius" in this case), read it, and leave an honest review/rating. Seriously, I'd much rather have an honest 1-star rating than someone just giving me a 4 or 5 to be "nice" or to, hopefully, garner my favor for the future.
[Next week, I will actually have a review of one of Dilloway's works, something I read way back and never reviewed because I didn't, at the time, want to get into it with him, knowing how he is. But, then, I suppose that was a bit like trying to slide by the notice of the playground bully, and no one can do that indefinitely, because you can't ever tell what will set one of them off.]
Sunday, February 16, 2014
The Life of the Writer's Son (a local color post?)
Well hello there, readers of Andrew’s blog.
If you didn’t look at the title, this isn’t actually the man himself, Da- Andrew. This is his son. The writer’s son.
Or, perhaps, the writer? Who is the son of a person who also happens to be a writer?
Or maybe I’m the person who happens to be the writer as well. Perhaps because my father is a writer? I honestly got no idea. (Bad grammar... and I thought I was good at writing...)
So, dad assigned me to write this post. Why? I’m not sure. He felt like it. He likes to torture me.
But I do know that I wasn’t assigned to write this to beat down dad’s feelings with hurtful words about how mean he is to me. No, that would only get me grounded...
I was assigned to write about writing. Woah. Write-ception.
Um, anyway, so. The writing. The subject of this mess. Let’s get on with it.
While I’m doing the writing, it’s not the best thing in the world. It seems really boring, like a waste of my time. I would much rather be doing other things. Sometimes, only sometimes, I actually get writing really quickly and I like it a little. It’s sort of fun then, but when I’m stuck and going slowly it’s not so great.
And I do get stuck. I actually get stuck quite a bit. I am currently working on three different stories and I don’t know where to go with them. I say to myself, “How do I get this character out of this situation? I’ll solve that today,” and then when I try I fail. That’s not a nice feeling, not nice at all.
The nice feelings happen when I complete a story. A good story. Seeing a story all finished and fancy gets my hopes up; I feel like I’ve accomplished something. Have I really? I’ve got no idea, but it sure does feel like it. Although, when my stories go into collections or when I earn money off of them, I’ve probably done at least a tiny morsel of good.
Hmm, the collections. Every year, dad makes a collection of stories out of the good ones that he gets from the elective he teaches at my school (this year he actually has his own entire class period on Friday afternoons) called Charter Shorts. It’s nice to have a story or two in there, and I’ve had at least one every year. My favorite is actually the first one I ever wrote, one that combines the House on the Corner -- the book that my dad wrote -- and Star Wars. I know you know what the latter is. If you don’t, may I hang you on a ladder?
Okay, I’m honestly sorry for that pun. It wasn’t any good. Please forgive me. Don’t eat me alive.
Okay, um... well, I don’t have anything else to say. Is this the most awkward exit ever? Quite possibly. Uh... bye bye. Go away now.
No, really. If you’re still reading this, then there’s something wrong with you. Leave. Leave before I drive you insane. Maybe I should just write this entire thing out again. Which would turn it into an endless loop of itself, since this is at the end of it. Okay, fine. Let’s do that.
Well hello there, readers of Andrew’s blog...***
Actually, don't leave yet!
There's a reason I wanted my son to write a post for me about writing, so let me get to that. Just ignore him telling you to go away. And, by the way, for those of you out there that write, did any of those problems sound familiar?
My son mentioned his first story, so let's talk about that. He won a prize for that first story which he is still proud of even though he tries, sometimes, to play it off as no big deal. [He was only 10 when he wrote it, by the way It's impressive talent for a 10-year-old.] Because it fits the parameters of what I wanted as backup stories in the Shadow Spinner collections, I thought I'd share it. So, today, the fourth (and final!) collection of Spinner chapters is available! WooHoo!
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But wait! There's more!
My son has this other story he wrote, "The Language of Nythos," that I absolutely love. It is my favorite thing by him (at least until I get to the stuff he's working on for this year's Charter Shorts). But there are a couple of problems:
1. Although it works fine as its own story, he actually wrote it as the introduction to a longer story.
2. He refuses to write more! He says he decided he doesn't like his idea and just will not continue it, no matter how much cajoling I do.
3. Briane Pagel has published the story over on his site lit, so you should go over and read it.
4. Leave him an encouraging message (if you like it) so that, maybe, just maybe, he will be inspired to write some more of it!
Hmm... Okay, so that was more than a couple. Just go read the story and leave him a note. And don't forget to pick up "The Undying"!
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Independent Day
Those of you that have been around here for any length of time will know that I don't promote books I haven't actually read. Ever. I don't do cover reveals or blog tours or any of that stuff, because I'm not going to back a book that I wouldn't actually recommend to someone to read. It's just not the way I work.
However, I do want to support other independent authors as much as possible. That's why I do reviews, and that's why I'm including stories by other writers in my books. And that's why, today, in the Spirit of Christmas (or something like that), I'm going to highlight some indie work that's come out in the past year or so. Many of these books are on my list of things to read (but I've been really behind on reading, lately, so I haven't gotten to them) and will get reviewed at some point. Others are books I know of, but I haven't made the decision to actually read, yet. They are all, however, independently published by people whose blogs I follow.
So, while I'm not actually recommending them in the sense of, "Hey! I read this and it was great," I am saying, "Give some indies some love and check these out." And, really, they are in no particular order.
1. White Walls by Australian author Hayley M Clearihan
2. Butterman (Time) Travel, Inc. by Pk Hrezo
3. CassaStorm by Alex Cavanaugh
4. Green Eggs & Weezie by Cathy Olliffe-Webster
5. A Hero's Journey and other things by PT Dilloway (seriously, he has so many books out, I can't list them all, but the Scarlet Knight stuff is from this year)
6. The Faerie Guardian by Rachel Morgan
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7. A Flock of Ill Omens (part 1 of her serialization of A Shot in the Light) by Hart Johnson
8. Moonless by Crystal Collier
And this one I have read and get to include because, well, it's my blog and it's good:
9. Shadow Spinner -- this link is for the physical book
Oh... and, after you read, leave a review!
However, I do want to support other independent authors as much as possible. That's why I do reviews, and that's why I'm including stories by other writers in my books. And that's why, today, in the Spirit of Christmas (or something like that), I'm going to highlight some indie work that's come out in the past year or so. Many of these books are on my list of things to read (but I've been really behind on reading, lately, so I haven't gotten to them) and will get reviewed at some point. Others are books I know of, but I haven't made the decision to actually read, yet. They are all, however, independently published by people whose blogs I follow.
So, while I'm not actually recommending them in the sense of, "Hey! I read this and it was great," I am saying, "Give some indies some love and check these out." And, really, they are in no particular order.
1. White Walls by Australian author Hayley M Clearihan
2. Butterman (Time) Travel, Inc. by Pk Hrezo
3. CassaStorm by Alex Cavanaugh
4. Green Eggs & Weezie by Cathy Olliffe-Webster
5. A Hero's Journey and other things by PT Dilloway (seriously, he has so many books out, I can't list them all, but the Scarlet Knight stuff is from this year)
6. The Faerie Guardian by Rachel Morgan
7. A Flock of Ill Omens (part 1 of her serialization of A Shot in the Light) by Hart Johnson
8. Moonless by Crystal Collier
And this one I have read and get to include because, well, it's my blog and it's good:
9. Shadow Spinner -- this link is for the physical book
- "Collection 1: Tiberius"
- "Collection 2: The Man with No Eyes"
- "Collection 3: The Garden"
- "Collection 4: The Undying" -- coming soon
Oh... and, after you read, leave a review!
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Another Post of Thanks
If I'm going to be honest, I suppose I have to admit to not being a very "thankful" person. Which is not to say that I'm not thankful for things, but I'm not quite behind the expectation of thanks that we currently have culturally. Actually, I sort of think that's been, to some extent, driven by the greeting card market and the "necessity" of sending out thank you cards. It has created an expectation of thanks for things we shouldn't expect thanks for. In fact, doing things in expectation of thanks is, well, kind of wrong. At least in my mind.
And, I have to say, if you do something for me or give me something or whatever, and I tell you "thanks," there's very little chance I'm going to also send you a card telling you what I already said. Especially when what you're going to do with the card (that probably cost $4 (which would have bought a whole paperback book when I was a teenager)) is say "oh, isn't that nice" as you're dropping it into the trashcan. And, then, of course, you have to remember to tell me "thanks for the card" next time you see me. Or, I've heard, send me a card thanking me for the card. What the heck is up with that trend? Sorry, I'm just breaking that cycle and saving my $4. If the "thank you" that came out of my mouth wasn't good enough... well, I don't know what to say if it wasn't, but please don't send me a thank you card for anything I might do for you, because I don't want it, and I will drop it in the recycling bag. Just keep your $4.
Anyway...
This is not a ranty post, or, it's not supposed to be, anyway. This is a post to say thank you to some people that have, in the last year or so, gone above and beyond without asking or even expecting thanks when they've done those things, things that I'm thankful for, so I want to call attention to some people mostly in no special order. However, I have to start with
Briane Pagel: I don't even know where to begin when it comes to Briane. Briane is, bar none, the most supportive person of independent authors that I know of. First, he will read your book(s), but, not just that, he will also review them. And he'll do that without being asked to do it, which, you know, is just awesome, because it just gets tiring to always be begging people for reviews (especially when they take the time to email you to say "hey, I really liked this" but don't seem to have time to do that on Amazon). But not only that! He will also spontaneously put links to your stuff into his posts, his completely unrelated posts. Just as an afterthought, he will throw in, "Oh, and you should read 'Shadow Spinner: Collection 2: The Man with No Eyes (Parts 6 - 12)' because it was really good!" And you should totally read that, because Briane has a story in it, "Augurs of Distant Shadow," that is really quite excellent and something else I need to give him more thanks for. That he wrote it for me, that is. And, just by the way, Briane is so supportive of indie authors, he's willing to pay you to let him post your short stories on his site. That's a total win/win for you! So, Briane, thank you for everything over the past year.
Okay, so I lied, because this next one, also, gets special considerations above everyone else:
Rusty Webb: Theoretically, Rusty and I have a symbiotic relationship. He does covers for me, and I do editing for him. However, I always feel like I'm getting way more out of the relationship than he is. And, really, all you have to do is look at the work he's done for me to see why I feel that way.
And, aside from the artwork, he also leaves reviews for things without being asked, which is just gold. All of that, and there will be a story by Rusty in "Shadow Spinner: Collection 3: The Garden (Parts 13 - 21);" you should make sure to check that one out, too, once it's available.
And, since we're on the theme of reviews and bonus stories, there's also
Bryan Pedas: Bryan (and Brandon) have been very supportive for a while, but it's Bryan who gets out there and leaves most of the reviews, and Bryan who has a story in "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1 - 5)." There just aren't enough ways to say thank you to people who both leave reviews! and write stories for you. So, just to give Bryan a plug, his book, Demetri and the Banana Flavored Rocketship, was the best book I read in 2012.
Okay, and now for some others which will pretty much just be going down the list:
Konstanz Silverbow: Thank you to Konstanz at No Thought 2 Small for the interview and supporting Shadow Spinner!
Crystal Collier for having me on her "Truth or Lie" thing, plugging Shadow Spinner, and talking to me about cheese. Although I think it might be more exceptional if she talked about something that's not cheese.
Shannon Lawrence for spontaneously posting links to things (book releases, promotions, blogfests) without being asked. There is a certain amount of joy that happens when I visit her blog and she's promoting something I'm doing when I've never mentioned it, and that's a cool thing. Not the joy, that she does that.
The women over at The Indelibles for Indie Life.
And Alex Cavanaugh for posting more links than anyone has a right to and for all of his work on the IWSG.
I think that will do me for this year. I'm sure there are probably more people I ought to thank, but, as I mentioned in my last post, my Brain refuses to remember whether I've locked the front door when I'm leaving the house, so trying to remember everyone from the last year is a bit beyond my capacity. The one other thank you I do need to give is to everyone who has read any of my stuff over the last year and doubly thank anyone else who has left a review and/or a rating anywhere. I do realize that there are a few more of you out there that have left reviews, and I really do appreciate that. This year, if I'm smart, I will make a list as things happen and I won't leave anyone out next year.
Tomorrow, I will be eating way too much, so, if you never hear from me again, there is a good chance I ate myself to death; however, that has never happened in the past, so I'm hoping it won't happen this year.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Oh! And in case you missed it, yesterday, drop by Out of Print and read my new short story, "The Tea Kettle."
And, I have to say, if you do something for me or give me something or whatever, and I tell you "thanks," there's very little chance I'm going to also send you a card telling you what I already said. Especially when what you're going to do with the card (that probably cost $4 (which would have bought a whole paperback book when I was a teenager)) is say "oh, isn't that nice" as you're dropping it into the trashcan. And, then, of course, you have to remember to tell me "thanks for the card" next time you see me. Or, I've heard, send me a card thanking me for the card. What the heck is up with that trend? Sorry, I'm just breaking that cycle and saving my $4. If the "thank you" that came out of my mouth wasn't good enough... well, I don't know what to say if it wasn't, but please don't send me a thank you card for anything I might do for you, because I don't want it, and I will drop it in the recycling bag. Just keep your $4.
Anyway...
This is not a ranty post, or, it's not supposed to be, anyway. This is a post to say thank you to some people that have, in the last year or so, gone above and beyond without asking or even expecting thanks when they've done those things, things that I'm thankful for, so I want to call attention to some people mostly in no special order. However, I have to start with
Briane Pagel: I don't even know where to begin when it comes to Briane. Briane is, bar none, the most supportive person of independent authors that I know of. First, he will read your book(s), but, not just that, he will also review them. And he'll do that without being asked to do it, which, you know, is just awesome, because it just gets tiring to always be begging people for reviews (especially when they take the time to email you to say "hey, I really liked this" but don't seem to have time to do that on Amazon). But not only that! He will also spontaneously put links to your stuff into his posts, his completely unrelated posts. Just as an afterthought, he will throw in, "Oh, and you should read 'Shadow Spinner: Collection 2: The Man with No Eyes (Parts 6 - 12)' because it was really good!" And you should totally read that, because Briane has a story in it, "Augurs of Distant Shadow," that is really quite excellent and something else I need to give him more thanks for. That he wrote it for me, that is. And, just by the way, Briane is so supportive of indie authors, he's willing to pay you to let him post your short stories on his site. That's a total win/win for you! So, Briane, thank you for everything over the past year.
Okay, so I lied, because this next one, also, gets special considerations above everyone else:
Rusty Webb: Theoretically, Rusty and I have a symbiotic relationship. He does covers for me, and I do editing for him. However, I always feel like I'm getting way more out of the relationship than he is. And, really, all you have to do is look at the work he's done for me to see why I feel that way.
And, since we're on the theme of reviews and bonus stories, there's also
Bryan Pedas: Bryan (and Brandon) have been very supportive for a while, but it's Bryan who gets out there and leaves most of the reviews, and Bryan who has a story in "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1 - 5)." There just aren't enough ways to say thank you to people who both leave reviews! and write stories for you. So, just to give Bryan a plug, his book, Demetri and the Banana Flavored Rocketship, was the best book I read in 2012.
Okay, and now for some others which will pretty much just be going down the list:
Konstanz Silverbow: Thank you to Konstanz at No Thought 2 Small for the interview and supporting Shadow Spinner!
Crystal Collier for having me on her "Truth or Lie" thing, plugging Shadow Spinner, and talking to me about cheese. Although I think it might be more exceptional if she talked about something that's not cheese.
Shannon Lawrence for spontaneously posting links to things (book releases, promotions, blogfests) without being asked. There is a certain amount of joy that happens when I visit her blog and she's promoting something I'm doing when I've never mentioned it, and that's a cool thing. Not the joy, that she does that.
The women over at The Indelibles for Indie Life.
And Alex Cavanaugh for posting more links than anyone has a right to and for all of his work on the IWSG.
I think that will do me for this year. I'm sure there are probably more people I ought to thank, but, as I mentioned in my last post, my Brain refuses to remember whether I've locked the front door when I'm leaving the house, so trying to remember everyone from the last year is a bit beyond my capacity. The one other thank you I do need to give is to everyone who has read any of my stuff over the last year and doubly thank anyone else who has left a review and/or a rating anywhere. I do realize that there are a few more of you out there that have left reviews, and I really do appreciate that. This year, if I'm smart, I will make a list as things happen and I won't leave anyone out next year.
Tomorrow, I will be eating way too much, so, if you never hear from me again, there is a good chance I ate myself to death; however, that has never happened in the past, so I'm hoping it won't happen this year.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Oh! And in case you missed it, yesterday, drop by Out of Print and read my new short story, "The Tea Kettle."
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Vampires: Day 1 -- "Augurs of Distant Shadow"
Sometimes things take longer than we think they will. In my life these days, everything takes longer than I think it will. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that I'm also not very good at judging how long something should take to do. Except that's not exactly true. I'm pretty good at knowing how long it will take me to do something; I'm just not very good at judging how often and for how long I'm going to get distracted by the time vampires that live in my house. Yes, time vampires. That's what they are. Okay, that needs to be a new story...
Anyway...
It's finally here! "Shadow Spinner: Collection 2: The Man with No Eyes (Parts 6 - 12)"!
Yes, that's still a lot of colons.
The individual parts all the way through part 12 have been pulled down and are no longer for sale, but that should be okay, because, now, instead of $11. 88 for parts 1-12, you can get them for $3.98! AND! And there are two novelettes by two excellent writers that you get to pick up along with the collections when you buy them!
In "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1 - 5)," you get "Like An Axe Through Bone" by Bryan Pedas. It's a story you should read.
In this one, "Collection 2," You get... vampires! A bit of background:
Way back in the way back, I had this contest for people to write short stories based on the world from The House on the Corner. Briane Pagel is one of the ones that wrote a story for that contest, and, although his story started with House, it quickly departed from that entirely. But I wanted a story for him for this idea I have of putting stories by other authors into my books (I have a post on that somewhere, but I'm not finding it at the moment); I just didn't want that story. I wanted it to be more House-centric. So, yeah, I actually asked him to write a different one for me. And I am so glad I did!
But, before I was glad, I was trepidatious. See, after I asked Briane about writing a new story, he came back to me with a request to do one about vampires. As I said last week, I'm no fan of vamps. But I like Briane's writing, so I sort of held my breath and said, "Go ahead." I am so glad I did!
"Augurs of Distant Shadow" is easily my favorite thing that Mr. Pagel has written yet, which is saying a lot. It's not to say, though, that I've read everything he's written, because he's written a lot, and I'm still working my way through it, but I have read a lot of it, and Augurs stands head and shoulders above everything else. I don't think this is bias because his story is set in my House world, either, because, well, I did ask him to write a new House-based story after his last one.
It's always interesting to see what people will do with the same idea when you give them the chance. Pedas took House and set in today and wrote Axe from the point-of-view of a completely new character. Pagel has take that same idea and written a story set in the future with my characters; Tom, Sam, and Ruth; all grown up, but not just grown up, grown old. And there are vampires.
It's not stated explicitly, but I'm guessing the year is around 2030, and the world is not the same place it is now and not in a good way. We alternate between the future story and one in the past telling how the vampires came to be. The atmosphere of the story is perfect. Not quite brooding but heavy. And Pagel does a great job of taking the characters forward in time and dealing with them in a way that is both true to House and a departure at the same time. The story kind of mesmerized me, and I say that about a lot of stuff I read.
Honestly, I was scared the entire time I was reading it. Scared that he would take this brilliantly paced horrific story and, somehow, ruin it at the end, because it's so easy to allow things to fall apart at the end. But he didn't. He carried it through and gave it an ending that was as brilliant as the rest of the story. I strongly recommend "Augurs of Distant Shadow," especially to those of you who haven't read any of Pagel's work. Fortunately, for me, you have to buy my book to get it, so it's like a double bonus.
[But I'm not saying any of this to get you to buy my Spinner Collection; it's just the truth. This story is one of the best things I've read all year.]
Now, for the fun part! To go along with the release of the second collection, I'm setting as many of the other parts of Shadow Spinner for FREE! as I can! Here's the complete list:
"Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1 - 5)" -- $1.99
"Shadow Spinner: Collection 2: The Man with No Eyes (Parts 6 - 12)" -- $1.99
"Part Thirteen: The Clearing" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Fourteen: Anger and Laughter" -- $0.99
"Part Fifteen: Food of the Garden" -- $0.99
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree" -- $0.99
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Eighteen: The Angel" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Nineteen: Lost in the Garden" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Twenty: The Sword of Fire" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Twenty-one: The Chase" -- $0.99
"Part Twenty-two: The Undying" -- $0.99
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot" -- FREE! (Monday only)
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Twenty-five: The Light of Knowledge" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Twenty-six: The Bitter Fruit" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Twenty-seven: Leaving" -- $0.99
"Part Twenty-eight: The Shadow Place" -- $0.99
"Part Twenty-nine: Loss" -- $0.99
"Part Thirty: Called in Judgement" -- $0.99
"Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes" -- $0.99
"Part Thirty-two: The Gate" -- FREE! (Monday only)
"Part Thirty-three: Justice" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Thirty-four: Uri'el" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
So that's a dozen freebies out of 22 possible, which isn't bad, I don't think. Most of them are even FREE! for two days. And because I'm such a nice guy, I'm also going to throw in
"The Evil That Men Do" for FREE! as well (Monday and Tuesday)! For those of you that don't know, it's sort of a prequel to Shadow Spinner, but it stands alone as its own story. In fact, it was written as its own story way before Spinner was anywhere near being in my head.
As always, any reviews are more than welcome. I don't really like mentioning reviews any more because the response to getting people to leave reviews is always... underwhelming, but there's this new site, The Fussy Librarian, that is taking book submissions, and they require a minimum of ten reviews to submit. Not only have I not gotten back up to the number of reviews I had on "The Tunnel," I haven't gotten to 10, so reviews would be good. Aside from that, though, go check out the The Fussy Librarian and sign up. I don't think there are any vampires. Except in the books, of course.
Anyway...
It's finally here! "Shadow Spinner: Collection 2: The Man with No Eyes (Parts 6 - 12)"!
The individual parts all the way through part 12 have been pulled down and are no longer for sale, but that should be okay, because, now, instead of $11. 88 for parts 1-12, you can get them for $3.98! AND! And there are two novelettes by two excellent writers that you get to pick up along with the collections when you buy them!
In "Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1 - 5)," you get "Like An Axe Through Bone" by Bryan Pedas. It's a story you should read.
In this one, "Collection 2," You get... vampires! A bit of background:
Way back in the way back, I had this contest for people to write short stories based on the world from The House on the Corner. Briane Pagel is one of the ones that wrote a story for that contest, and, although his story started with House, it quickly departed from that entirely. But I wanted a story for him for this idea I have of putting stories by other authors into my books (I have a post on that somewhere, but I'm not finding it at the moment); I just didn't want that story. I wanted it to be more House-centric. So, yeah, I actually asked him to write a different one for me. And I am so glad I did!
But, before I was glad, I was trepidatious. See, after I asked Briane about writing a new story, he came back to me with a request to do one about vampires. As I said last week, I'm no fan of vamps. But I like Briane's writing, so I sort of held my breath and said, "Go ahead." I am so glad I did!
"Augurs of Distant Shadow" is easily my favorite thing that Mr. Pagel has written yet, which is saying a lot. It's not to say, though, that I've read everything he's written, because he's written a lot, and I'm still working my way through it, but I have read a lot of it, and Augurs stands head and shoulders above everything else. I don't think this is bias because his story is set in my House world, either, because, well, I did ask him to write a new House-based story after his last one.
It's always interesting to see what people will do with the same idea when you give them the chance. Pedas took House and set in today and wrote Axe from the point-of-view of a completely new character. Pagel has take that same idea and written a story set in the future with my characters; Tom, Sam, and Ruth; all grown up, but not just grown up, grown old. And there are vampires.
It's not stated explicitly, but I'm guessing the year is around 2030, and the world is not the same place it is now and not in a good way. We alternate between the future story and one in the past telling how the vampires came to be. The atmosphere of the story is perfect. Not quite brooding but heavy. And Pagel does a great job of taking the characters forward in time and dealing with them in a way that is both true to House and a departure at the same time. The story kind of mesmerized me, and I say that about a lot of stuff I read.
Honestly, I was scared the entire time I was reading it. Scared that he would take this brilliantly paced horrific story and, somehow, ruin it at the end, because it's so easy to allow things to fall apart at the end. But he didn't. He carried it through and gave it an ending that was as brilliant as the rest of the story. I strongly recommend "Augurs of Distant Shadow," especially to those of you who haven't read any of Pagel's work. Fortunately, for me, you have to buy my book to get it, so it's like a double bonus.
[But I'm not saying any of this to get you to buy my Spinner Collection; it's just the truth. This story is one of the best things I've read all year.]
Now, for the fun part! To go along with the release of the second collection, I'm setting as many of the other parts of Shadow Spinner for FREE! as I can! Here's the complete list:
"Shadow Spinner: Collection 1: Tiberius (Parts 1 - 5)" -- $1.99
"Shadow Spinner: Collection 2: The Man with No Eyes (Parts 6 - 12)" -- $1.99
"Part Thirteen: The Clearing" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Fourteen: Anger and Laughter" -- $0.99
"Part Fifteen: Food of the Garden" -- $0.99
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree" -- $0.99
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Eighteen: The Angel" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Nineteen: Lost in the Garden" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Twenty: The Sword of Fire" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Twenty-one: The Chase" -- $0.99
"Part Twenty-two: The Undying" -- $0.99
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot" -- FREE! (Monday only)
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Twenty-five: The Light of Knowledge" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Twenty-six: The Bitter Fruit" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Twenty-seven: Leaving" -- $0.99
"Part Twenty-eight: The Shadow Place" -- $0.99
"Part Twenty-nine: Loss" -- $0.99
"Part Thirty: Called in Judgement" -- $0.99
"Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes" -- $0.99
"Part Thirty-two: The Gate" -- FREE! (Monday only)
"Part Thirty-three: Justice" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
"Part Thirty-four: Uri'el" -- FREE! (Monday and Tuesday)
So that's a dozen freebies out of 22 possible, which isn't bad, I don't think. Most of them are even FREE! for two days. And because I'm such a nice guy, I'm also going to throw in
"The Evil That Men Do" for FREE! as well (Monday and Tuesday)! For those of you that don't know, it's sort of a prequel to Shadow Spinner, but it stands alone as its own story. In fact, it was written as its own story way before Spinner was anywhere near being in my head.
As always, any reviews are more than welcome. I don't really like mentioning reviews any more because the response to getting people to leave reviews is always... underwhelming, but there's this new site, The Fussy Librarian, that is taking book submissions, and they require a minimum of ten reviews to submit. Not only have I not gotten back up to the number of reviews I had on "The Tunnel," I haven't gotten to 10, so reviews would be good. Aside from that, though, go check out the The Fussy Librarian and sign up. I don't think there are any vampires. Except in the books, of course.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
The Serial Bowl Is Empty
Well... here we are at the bottom of the bowl. One bite left and some milk to sip from the bottom.
This whole thing has kind of reminded me of when I was a kid. Every once in a while, we would just have cereal for dinner. It wasn't one of those kinds of things where my mom would just decide not to cook and we just ate whatever we wanted; it was an actual, declared cereal night. Yeah, it seems kind of weird to me, now, too, so I can only imagine those happened because my mom or, possibly, my dad wanted the cereal. Specifically. Like, "I want cereal tonight." Anyway...
When we had cereal nights, my dad always used one of the great, giant salad bowls to have his cereal in. All the rest of us would be using normal bowls, but there would be my dad with this huge bowl that was bigger than all of the other bowls combined. He'd pour in, like, half a box of cereal and something like a quart of milk. Maybe, it was closer to half a gallon? I don't really know. I think I'd probably have to experiment by making a bowl that big, but I'm quite sure I wouldn't be able to eat all of it.
And I could never believe that my dad could eat that much either. It was so much cereal! But he did always eat all of it. Amazingly. It was rather... impressive. At least it was to me when I was eight.
At any rate, the Shadow Spinner serialization has been more than a bit like one of those giant bowls of cereal, and being here at the last chapter is somewhat reminiscent of watching my dad take that last bite and, then, tilting the bowl back and drinking the last of the milk with whatever crumbs were left behind.
I can't believe it's over... but, here we are at the end.
Not that I haven't given my thoughts previously on the whole serial experience, I figured, now that it's actually over, I should probably sum it up or give final thoughts or... something, so here are some final thoughts (but, really, if you want it all broken out by points and stuff, go back and read that other post):
I think one of the things we're going to be seeing as we transition away from traditional publishing (and, yes, we are transitioning away from it, at least as it is in its current iteration) is more shorter works and more frequent publications. Rather than indie authors writing full-blown novels, we'll see series of novelettes and novellas. Sure, there will still be the occasional epic fantasy piece, and long, literary pieces will probably continue as they are for quite a while (they are the most resistant to change), but I think we're moving toward things that people can sit down and finish in a sitting or two. People just like that.
And, no, I have no data to back that up. It's just my feeling of how things are going. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. This will continue our move, culturally, away from physical books, because the expense of printing tiny 20-30,000 word pre-novels will just be too high.
Personally, I've been pretty happy with the experience. It's a lot of work releasing a book chapter by chapter, especially when if you devote a significant amount of time to author's notes the way I do, but I think it was worth it. I know that I brought in a lot of readers and made many connections that I never would have if I had only released Spinner as a single book.
Yes, I have another serialization some time in the future. But that's the future...
For now, here's the last part of Shadow Spinner along with the list of all of today's FREE! offerings.
"Part Thirty-four: Uri'el" (also FREE! tomorrow, Tuesday, October 1)
"Part Thirty-three: Justice"
"Part Thirty-two: The Gate"
"Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes"
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent"
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"
"Part Eighteen: The Angel"
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"
And that's that. Nine FREE! parts today, which, granted, is not as many as on some days, but, well, I've used up all of my free days for a while. Still... Look for something special coming up round about Halloween. No, I mean it. Something special and not just from me. But that's all you're getting out of me for the moment about that.
For those of you that have been following along with Tib's adventures, I hope this brings this (first) story to a satisfactory conclusion. I'm not saying there will be another story about Tiberius, but there could be. One day. Maybe. Mostly, I'm toying with the idea of the origins of Michael and Edward; I'm just not sure I'll have time to get them down on "paper."
This whole thing has kind of reminded me of when I was a kid. Every once in a while, we would just have cereal for dinner. It wasn't one of those kinds of things where my mom would just decide not to cook and we just ate whatever we wanted; it was an actual, declared cereal night. Yeah, it seems kind of weird to me, now, too, so I can only imagine those happened because my mom or, possibly, my dad wanted the cereal. Specifically. Like, "I want cereal tonight." Anyway...
When we had cereal nights, my dad always used one of the great, giant salad bowls to have his cereal in. All the rest of us would be using normal bowls, but there would be my dad with this huge bowl that was bigger than all of the other bowls combined. He'd pour in, like, half a box of cereal and something like a quart of milk. Maybe, it was closer to half a gallon? I don't really know. I think I'd probably have to experiment by making a bowl that big, but I'm quite sure I wouldn't be able to eat all of it.
And I could never believe that my dad could eat that much either. It was so much cereal! But he did always eat all of it. Amazingly. It was rather... impressive. At least it was to me when I was eight.
At any rate, the Shadow Spinner serialization has been more than a bit like one of those giant bowls of cereal, and being here at the last chapter is somewhat reminiscent of watching my dad take that last bite and, then, tilting the bowl back and drinking the last of the milk with whatever crumbs were left behind.
I can't believe it's over... but, here we are at the end.
Not that I haven't given my thoughts previously on the whole serial experience, I figured, now that it's actually over, I should probably sum it up or give final thoughts or... something, so here are some final thoughts (but, really, if you want it all broken out by points and stuff, go back and read that other post):
I think one of the things we're going to be seeing as we transition away from traditional publishing (and, yes, we are transitioning away from it, at least as it is in its current iteration) is more shorter works and more frequent publications. Rather than indie authors writing full-blown novels, we'll see series of novelettes and novellas. Sure, there will still be the occasional epic fantasy piece, and long, literary pieces will probably continue as they are for quite a while (they are the most resistant to change), but I think we're moving toward things that people can sit down and finish in a sitting or two. People just like that.
And, no, I have no data to back that up. It's just my feeling of how things are going. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. This will continue our move, culturally, away from physical books, because the expense of printing tiny 20-30,000 word pre-novels will just be too high.
Personally, I've been pretty happy with the experience. It's a lot of work releasing a book chapter by chapter, especially when if you devote a significant amount of time to author's notes the way I do, but I think it was worth it. I know that I brought in a lot of readers and made many connections that I never would have if I had only released Spinner as a single book.
Yes, I have another serialization some time in the future. But that's the future...
For now, here's the last part of Shadow Spinner along with the list of all of today's FREE! offerings.
"Part Thirty-four: Uri'el" (also FREE! tomorrow, Tuesday, October 1)
"Part Thirty-three: Justice"
"Part Thirty-two: The Gate"
"Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes"
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent"
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"
"Part Eighteen: The Angel"
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"
And that's that. Nine FREE! parts today, which, granted, is not as many as on some days, but, well, I've used up all of my free days for a while. Still... Look for something special coming up round about Halloween. No, I mean it. Something special and not just from me. But that's all you're getting out of me for the moment about that.
For those of you that have been following along with Tib's adventures, I hope this brings this (first) story to a satisfactory conclusion. I'm not saying there will be another story about Tiberius, but there could be. One day. Maybe. Mostly, I'm toying with the idea of the origins of Michael and Edward; I'm just not sure I'll have time to get them down on "paper."
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
No Thoughts Interview
Hmm... maybe that title doesn't sound so good? I mean, that sounds like I have no thoughts... wait a minute, that might be right?
Okay, just ignore me and pop over to No Thoughts 2 Small to see me answer a few questions about Shadow Spinner including what the theme song would be. You can tell me what you think of my choice. That is, if you've read it, you can tell me what you think.
Also, don't forget, "Part Thirty-three: Justice," the penultimate chapter of Spinner is FREE! today!
Okay, just ignore me and pop over to No Thoughts 2 Small to see me answer a few questions about Shadow Spinner including what the theme song would be. You can tell me what you think of my choice. That is, if you've read it, you can tell me what you think.
Also, don't forget, "Part Thirty-three: Justice," the penultimate chapter of Spinner is FREE! today!
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Lego "Justice" (a Fair post)
So, okay, you got me. There's really nothing to do with justice and Lego (by the way, did you know that "Lego" is the plural of "Lego"? (I think I mentioned this before, but I don't feel like checking)) in this post. At least not together. I suppose if this was a Lego Batman post, we could talk about Lego and justice together, but it's not. No, this is about the Lego exhibit they have every year at the Fair. (We'll get to the justice part in a bit.)
The arts and crafts stuff at the Fair always includes a fairly large Lego exhibit which is something we spend a lot of time at. At least, we spend a lot of time at it in comparison to the other arts and crafts. Mostly, this is the fault of the boys. Actually, my wife and my daughter usually just glance at them and go do something else while I hang out with the boys while they examine every piece. Okay, not every piece, because my younger son has incredible disdain for kids who send in their boxed kits as their entries.
And I get it. It's supposed to be original creations. But, you know, how do you tell that to a six-year-old? Or to his parents that don't really know the difference. Or the judges who are almost certainly old(er) people that barely know what a Lego is. Yeah, I know I'm generalizing and stereotyping, but, since the contest is supposed to be about original creations and (at least) half of the entries (including some that win prizes) are just kits you can buy at the store, I have to assume that these people don't have any working knowledge of Lego.
Anyway... there have been some really incredible builds the last few years. Some guy made a huge model of a scorpion (and, when I say huge, I mean somewhere in the 3-4' long range not counting the tail) from the technic type pieces and, I'm assuming the same guy, some other similar type bug thing another year. I wanted to share pictures of those, because there was nothing quite so impressive this year, but... well, I can't seem to find those pictures. [They got put into storage (off my computer) at some point, and I don't know where they are (probably because we moved since I did that). And I did, actually, spend several hours looking for those discs to no avail.] All of that to say, you'll just have to be satisfied with the pictures of this years' creations (and hope that I find those other pictures at some point in the future).
The arts and crafts stuff at the Fair always includes a fairly large Lego exhibit which is something we spend a lot of time at. At least, we spend a lot of time at it in comparison to the other arts and crafts. Mostly, this is the fault of the boys. Actually, my wife and my daughter usually just glance at them and go do something else while I hang out with the boys while they examine every piece. Okay, not every piece, because my younger son has incredible disdain for kids who send in their boxed kits as their entries.
And I get it. It's supposed to be original creations. But, you know, how do you tell that to a six-year-old? Or to his parents that don't really know the difference. Or the judges who are almost certainly old(er) people that barely know what a Lego is. Yeah, I know I'm generalizing and stereotyping, but, since the contest is supposed to be about original creations and (at least) half of the entries (including some that win prizes) are just kits you can buy at the store, I have to assume that these people don't have any working knowledge of Lego.
Anyway... there have been some really incredible builds the last few years. Some guy made a huge model of a scorpion (and, when I say huge, I mean somewhere in the 3-4' long range not counting the tail) from the technic type pieces and, I'm assuming the same guy, some other similar type bug thing another year. I wanted to share pictures of those, because there was nothing quite so impressive this year, but... well, I can't seem to find those pictures. [They got put into storage (off my computer) at some point, and I don't know where they are (probably because we moved since I did that). And I did, actually, spend several hours looking for those discs to no avail.] All of that to say, you'll just have to be satisfied with the pictures of this years' creations (and hope that I find those other pictures at some point in the future).
My son assures me that these are not from kits (and I don't know of any kits of these, but they are so well done, I thought, maybe, there was some older line of military vehicles or something that I didn't know about). As you can see, they won first place in their category.
Yes, someone touched the plane on the left. My son really wanted to fix it, so I had to remind him about his feelings on the subject and whether he'd want someone he didn't know fixing it if it was his creation.
(I wanted to fix it, too.)
And, now, for the most impressive thing this year
(which is nowhere near as impressive as the things from the last couple of years).
That's the Lego show from this year.
My son always wants to enter something, but, when presented with the knowledge that he would have to submit the piece for judging at some point before the Fair starts and that it would be on display for weeks (where other people could touch it and potentially break it), meaning that he could be without his Lego for more than a month, he always decides he'd rather not. Then, he walks around grumbling about how his thing was better than this-or-that thing. Except he never said that about those Lego creatures. That just made him want more Lego so that he could build something that big. I told him when I sell a million books that we'll talk about it.
Speaking of books!
Today is the penultimate release of the Shadow Spinner serialization! Yes, the end is almost here! Want to find out what happens to Tib, Michael, and the Man with No Eyes? Well, this is your chance to do it. Not to mention the Serpent and... the Angel, Uri'el! This is one climax you don't want to miss! Grab "Justice" today!
Here's your list of today's FREE! offerings:
"Part Thirty-three: Justice" (FREE! Monday, September 23 and Tuesday, September 24)
"Part Thirty-two: The Gate"
"Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes"
"Part Thirty: Called in Judgement"
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent"
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"
"Part Twenty-two: The Undying"
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"
That's only nine parts this week, but, hey, running these things for FREE! every week uses up the free days pretty quickly. Next week: "Part Thirty-four: Uri'el" and, maybe, something else new!
Today is the penultimate release of the Shadow Spinner serialization! Yes, the end is almost here! Want to find out what happens to Tib, Michael, and the Man with No Eyes? Well, this is your chance to do it. Not to mention the Serpent and... the Angel, Uri'el! This is one climax you don't want to miss! Grab "Justice" today!
Here's your list of today's FREE! offerings:
"Part Thirty-three: Justice" (FREE! Monday, September 23 and Tuesday, September 24)
"Part Thirty-two: The Gate"
"Part Thirty-one: The Serpent Strikes"
"Part Thirty: Called in Judgement"
"Part Twenty-four: The Serpent"
"Part Twenty-three: The Harlot"
"Part Twenty-two: The Undying"
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"
"Part Sixteen: The Dark Tree"
That's only nine parts this week, but, hey, running these things for FREE! every week uses up the free days pretty quickly. Next week: "Part Thirty-four: Uri'el" and, maybe, something else new!
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Temporary Anne and "The Gate"
Briane Pagel is here today pimping his new book Temporary Anne.
I'll have a review of it later in the week (possibly tomorrow?). As I'm writing this, I haven't, yet, finished reading the book, but I fully expect to have finished it by the time this posts. So far, I have nothing but good things that I could say about it, but I have to leave open the possibility that the author could spoil it at the end since I've read more than one book that went along swimmingly (ask Anne) right up until the end, when the book suddenly drowned. Of course, in Anne's case, the swimming happened first, but I'm getting ahead of the story, I think.
Before I hand things over to Briane, I should add that Briane has taken my idea of including stories from other authors and run off with it. In fact, he ran off with one of my stories, a story that I had planned to release all on its own for the same price as Briane's book, so, hey, it's like two stories for the price of one. AND I'm not the only one with a short at the back of Anne. You can also find stories by PT Dilloway, Rusty Carl and Nigel Mitchell. So, actually, that's FIVE stories for the price of ONE! What a deal. So go pick up Temporary Anne for the low, low price of absolutely nothing (because today it is FREE!) and read "The Magic Cookies." I guarantee you that it's not the kind of story you've come to expect from me.
All of that said, here's Briane!
WELCOME!
I'll have a review of it later in the week (possibly tomorrow?). As I'm writing this, I haven't, yet, finished reading the book, but I fully expect to have finished it by the time this posts. So far, I have nothing but good things that I could say about it, but I have to leave open the possibility that the author could spoil it at the end since I've read more than one book that went along swimmingly (ask Anne) right up until the end, when the book suddenly drowned. Of course, in Anne's case, the swimming happened first, but I'm getting ahead of the story, I think.
Before I hand things over to Briane, I should add that Briane has taken my idea of including stories from other authors and run off with it. In fact, he ran off with one of my stories, a story that I had planned to release all on its own for the same price as Briane's book, so, hey, it's like two stories for the price of one. AND I'm not the only one with a short at the back of Anne. You can also find stories by PT Dilloway, Rusty Carl and Nigel Mitchell. So, actually, that's FIVE stories for the price of ONE! What a deal. So go pick up Temporary Anne for the low, low price of absolutely nothing (because today it is FREE!) and read "The Magic Cookies." I guarantee you that it's not the kind of story you've come to expect from me.
All of that said, here's Briane!
WELCOME!
This is DAY TWO of the release tour for my newest book, Temporary Anne.
Temporary Anne is a horror story about a woman so desperate to avoid Hell -- the fate for the evil she's done during her life -- that she makes things infinitely worse after her death.
To celebrate the release, I'm doing a blog tour in which I'm writing a short story, LIVE, with your help! At each stop, I'll do an installment of the story and you can suggest where it goes next!
Below is PART TWO of the story. PART ONE appeared on Tina Downey's Life Is Good, and if you didn't catch it, 
click here to read that first before going on, maybe, so the story makes more sense to you!
click here to read that first before going on, maybe, so the story makes more sense to you!
But it was no good, as before I could speak, Stephen King -- the man himself! The legendary author! The guy who once had threatened to punch my lights out in an alleyway, or so I told people back home! -- suddenly shot up out of his seat.
You would be forgiven if you thought I, as a writer, was merely using descriptive language to demonstrate how Stephen King stood up suddenly, perhaps to storm onto stage and announce that he would let me finish but really Dean Koontz should've won this award, but I assure you, I am in no way exaggerating.
As I said "I", Stephen King rose several feet above his seat, lifted in the air and his legs flailing and arms grappling towards his throat but not reaching it, Stephen King levitating above the assembled, dignified-but-suddenly-shocked crowd, a crowd which had figured on simply sitting through boring speeches before cocktails but which now suddenly was treated to a spectacle!
They seemed to enjoy it, for the few seconds that Stephen King was merely writhing above their heads apparently pantomiming being strangled by a being much larger (and meaner! and more claw-ish and fang-having than they were, although they did not know that!) than he, but their enjoyment quickly faded when first Stephen King's left, and then Stephen King's right, eyeball was pulled from his head as if by a vacuum cleaner.
Can you imagine? I, and the Vice President of the United States, and the assembled dignitaries, need not imagine what it looks like, but you may not have read all of the news accounts, many of which were not so graphic, so I'll describe it:
Stephen King's eye -- the left one, first, remember-- begins to bulge out. As though he were a cartoon wolf, looking at a sexy cartoon sheep! It bulges, rounder and rounder and then, if you were looking closely at it, you'd see the lens about to tear off but the optic nerve must break first, and the eyeball -- still whole! Still whole! -- POPS! from the socket, the squishy rip of the nerve pulling off being overshadowed by the sucking sound the orb makes as it disappears into the invisible maw of the beast only I can see.
I can see all of them.
I saw the beast as it walked through the aisle, not betraying its presence by touching anything until it reached the third row. I saw its slimy tentacles stretch above Stephen King, nearly brushing the Vice President's ear, and I saw it lift him up.
"Um..." I said, and covered my surprise with a sip of water from the glass on the podium, putting the glass down as pandemonium broke loose upon Stephen King's unfortunate (for him!) demise.
After the eyes, the head appears to collapse inwards on itself-- only I know that it is one of the three arms of the Beast that has used its claws to puncture the ears on each side before crushing the skull. Only I can see the tentacle then fling Stephen King's lifeless, nearly-headless body, at the now-screaming seats of dignitaries, dignified no longer as they scramble for exits, avoiding the security guards who have rushed in to -- too late!-- to protect Mr. King.
Only I need not fear this Beast, as it turns upon the security guards.
One!
Two!
ThreeFourFiveSixSeven!
Tentacles grasp and pull, guards' guns stop firing, guards hearts burst from the squeezing pressure.
One!
Two!
ThreeFourFiveSixSeven!
From its seven mouths come seven tongues, tongues that are lined with needles, like a cactus, but only if that cactus had been grown in Lucifer's own garden plot, and even then only by a particularly malicious gardener!
Three arms waving, five legs stomping, seven tentacles grabbing, too-many-heads-having, the Beast dispatches the guards. Only a few of the audience have been crushed by it, although some probably will die from having been lit on fire by its breath.
In the melee, I close my eyes, but even then, I can still see the Beast.
It is looking at me.
"YOU!" a voice says.
It is not the voice of the Beast.
______________________________________________________
YOU get to help Andrew pick what happens next! I'll leave it wide open and see what you, and Andrew, come up with.
Remember: click this link to GET TEMPORARY ANNE FREE! I promise nobody will suck out your eyeballs*!
click this link to GET TEMPORARY ANNE FREE! I promise nobody will suck out your eyeballs*!
*Promise not valid in the 6th, 14th, and 17th dimensions.
--Briane Pagel
"That's a lot of infinity!": http://www.nonsportsmanlikeconduct.com
http://www.nonsportsmanlikeconduct.com
"I sometimes call him Pumpkin Pie.": http://www.thinkingthelions.com
http://www.thinkingthelions.com
"In my defense, I didn't know what whores were" : http://www.troublewithroy.com
http://www.troublewithroy.com
This has been a production of the Vince Lombardi fanfic group: http://www.nonsportsman.com
http://www.nonsportsman.com
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
So you heard the man. Leave suggestions in the comment section about where the story goes from here. I'll pick what I like best and pass it on to Briane. Part 3 of his story on the run will appear on Laws of Gravity on September 18. Make sure you check it out!
To continue on with the FREE! stuff, today is also the release of "Part Thirty-two: The Gate"! Oh, we're so close to the end, now; can't you taste it? Okay, please don't do that. Seriously, get your tongue off of your monitor. Do you know how dirty that thing is? Yeah, I see that those dried coffee spots where you sloshed your coffee two weeks ago and didn't bother to clean it off. And that other thing... oh, man, I don't even know what that is! Don't you ever clean your monitor? It's not a science experiment!
Anyway...
Here is the list of today's FREE! Shadow Spinner offerings:
"Part Thirty-two: The Gate" (also FREE! tomorrow, Tuesday, September 17)
There you go, twelve FREE! parts, today. And don't forget to grab Anne while you can!
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