August Convention Appearances
It’s going to be a very busy August, with a quiet lull, followed by a busy October, but we’ll talk about October later. For now, let’s cover August.
Aug 2-4: SCARES THAT CARE. If you’ve never gone and find yourself either local or “local enough” (which is code for, “I could make that a day trip”) you should definitely check it out. Actors, authors, vendors, movie screenings, costume contest, kid friendly activities, a silent auction, and even a 5k—this convention has everything. And the best part? It’s for a charity. An awesome charity.
Rather than giving to “fill in the blank” national charity or specific disease charity where the funds could go toward administration, or postage, or literally anything, STC does one thing with the money they raise—they give it to a specific patient, with a name and a face. Each year they pick three (3) recipients: a sick child, a burn patient, and a woman fighting breast cancer. STC fights these real problems, real monsters, with your help. Plus, it’s a con, so you get to have fun while doing it!! #winwin
Aug 16-18: KILLER CON. 
No, we don’t collect a bunch of killers. We enjoy extreme horror in all it’s glory. The beauty of this convention is the intimacy. Capped at only 250 attendees, there’s plenty of options to chat with your favorite author.
With readings, panels, signings, books and merchandise galore, oh and a hot wing challenge and gross-out contest which both offer plenty of giggles, you won’t be bored. Free that weekend? Come see us!
Aug 30-Sep 1: CREATURE FEATURE WEEKEND. 
In its debut year, this con offers the celebrities and authors and vendors, as usual, but also boasts an independent film festival and not just food, but food trucks.
And because of it’s location in haunted Gettysburg, you will also find nightly ghost tours. I’ve heard rumors of ouija boards and seances and other “I saw this movie” events taking place after hours…
Yes, I will have books and swag on my table, including the new release PASSAGES. But I now have nineteen (19) things to offer, and there’s no way to put them all on a table. So only the newest will be coming along. As usual, if there’s something specific you’re looking for, contact me. If I have one, I’ll bring it along with your name on it.
Did you catch those dates? Yes, I’ll be at a convention literally every other weekend this August. How many of them will I see you at?
Women in Horror Month… the hangover
So February was Women in Horror Month. Did you promote scary creepy horror creating women? Did you read them? Watch them? Offer them sacrifices?
Here’s a brief summary of the places and ways I participated in the yearly event… and I’m posting it now, in March, because it shouldn’t be on your mind during February only. You should always be aware of us… and maybe a little afraid.
— Promote Horror did a lovely quick little interview with many of us, here are my answers to those questions.
— I popped on over to Stephen Kozeniewski’s page (Manuscripts Burn) for a quick and dirty Q&A, here are my answers to those questions.
— And there was an essay… It didn’t get printed. It was voted “a bit harsh.” Part of me is a little proud of that. The other part of me wants to say, “Oh yeah? Here, hold my beer…” On the upside, it sounds like it may have found a home and will be seen outside of the constraints of February and Women in Horror Month. It might be June, just because. I’ll let you know.
Meanwhile, check out the two above. For those interested, most of my interviews and other external adventures have been posted on the Press page. Enjoy!
Proper Care and Feeding of Your Book Reviews
Reviews Blog part 2: for the Writer
For the first part of this, I asked readers to leave a single sentence and a couple stars and call it a review. But then it occurred to me—getting people to leave their opinions is not the only struggle in the big bad game we call book reviews. What happens after you get them? And thus we have blog number two: for the writers.
So you’ve got some reviews on Amazon. Excellent. Congrats. 90% of the reading population gets their fiction fix from Amazon at this point. Unfortunately, less than 1% of them will leave a review. Oh they may have liked it. Maybe even really liked it. They may have even told their friends, or even you. But they’re probably (even after reading the first part of this) not going to leave a review. Because why? I have no idea. If you figure that out, let me know.
So let’s, for this portion of the show, think outside the box, beyond the storefront, to review sites and journals and other places. To this I say, have a hit list. Where do you want to be reviewed? (Again, I’m not talking about Amazon anymore) Who do you trust because they’re thorough and honest and if it’s not good, they won’t fluff it with Atta’boys. Where are your heroes reviewed? Your peers? Make a list.
Now contact them all.
Yes, all. Because a.) they won’t all be able to get you on the TBR schedule, and b.) many of them don’t have the same audience—grow your audience by spreading your reviews out.
What to say? Easy. Short and sweet and “hey, I have a book, would you like a review copy?” Because yes, you’re going to give away copies of your book. Whether they prefer printed review copies or are kind enough to take arcs, ebooks, and/or pdfs, you are going to give away your book. With a smile. And a prayer.
So now you have a list. You’ve sent the book. (Jump forward in time…) And they’ve reviewed you! Now what? Because this is the spot where my thought occurred the other day. So now that we’re all up to speed and have these reviews, those not on the storefront, what do we do?
Sure, we post them on our blogs, our websites, our twitter feeds, and our facebook pages. We point and smile and say, “look what I did!” It might get liked, it might get shared, and you get that warm fuzzy feeling.
But then, like everything we post, it get swallowed by the neverending feed monster and disappears into the depths of posts forgotten. The archives. The annals. The things forgotten beyond the “load more” button.
Then someone wants to buy the book and they wonder what others thought of it, so they look at the reviews on Amazon or B&N or where ever. And they see “didn’t finish it, it sucked.” Or they see positive reviews in the form of single sentences and a smattering of stars because those readers read the first part of this two-part blog. But what if they were looking for that in depth review. What if they were wondering whether or not Cemetery Dance or Rue Morgue or Gingernuts read it and what their thoughts were? They would have to dig to find those buried in the feed monster. But they won’t dig. They won’t hunt. If you don’t provide it, they won’t ever see it once it’s been swallowed.
So to combat this, I’ve done the following, and gladly welcome others to do the same.
First, I’ve taken the juicy bits of the reviews, and put them on the product page of Amazon or B&N in the “reviews” portion between the back cover copy and the readers reviews. You can get to this section through Author Central (amazon), or in your book details on B&N, or by having your manager and/or agent take care of this for you. (I also use these little blips, blurbs and highlights in ads, tweets, gentle reminder posts, etc)
Then, I took those same juicy bits and put them on the individual book pages of my website, with links to the full review. And just like that, those pretty words they said are no longer lost to the ever scrolling feed demon. Now if that reader finds you because of a different book and goes looking through your catalog, they’ll be able to click and read those journal reviews. You’ve saved them. Shared them and kept them safe for future sharing.
And that’s it. Get the reviews. Share the reviews. Post them in a place they won’t disappear forever… and then get to writing the next thing. Because no matter how good this book is received or reviewed, the question on everyone’s tongue will be: What’s next?
pssst Leave a Review
Reviews Blog part 1: for the Reader
Reviews are something every writer fears, loves, needs, wants, and often begs for. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to reviews lately, and two separate ideas started formulating, so I’m going to do two separate blogs. One for the readers, and one for the writers. This one is for the readers…
It started when I was looking around google and did some quick math. Scary math. Terrifying math that made me want to curl up in a corner and rock for a bit.
According to Statista—about 50,498 new fiction books were published in 2013.
That’s 138 books a day.
So the day a new book comes out, it is immediately competing with 137 other books.
137.
And that’s just the day it came out.
The next day, it’s now competing with 274 new books (previous day, plus new day—because *new release* is longer than a twenty-four hour period). And then on the third day, it’s competing with 411… and by the end of the first week alone it is competing with 959 other *new releases*.
959.
Absorb that.
Not to mention the 4,000 books that came out the previous month, but the readers hadn’t had a chance to grab them yet. So now do they buy one of those 4,000 they were thinking about, or one of the new 959, or yours?
Keep in mind, that data is from 2013, because the consensus among the pollsters, librarians, and other book nerds since then is that there is no longer any way to come up with a true number due to the sheer amount of self-published books which have no ISBN or other way to track them.
Which means the number is actually higher than 959 at the end of one week. 1,000 maybe? Probably more?
And this is why the authors you know, love, follow, stalk, read, etc. literally beg for reviews. Because we need to somehow hold our book a little higher than the other 959 that week… and those reviews help more than you can imagine.
But what is a review? First of all, for the purpose of this blog, I’m talking about them as if they were a product review for that new toaster you got—whether it was on Amazon, B&N, etc. Secondly, we’re not looking for in depth literary reviews. We’re not looking for a book report. We’re not even looking for a breakdown of what did and didn’t work. David Wilson actually just brought this up on facebook recently.
Sometimes I wonder if readers don’t leave book reviews because they think they need to write something like you would read on a review site, or in a magazine. Reader reviews on Amazon are more likely to be considered useful by sites like Bookbub if they are short, just say something like “great story line, loved the xxxx character…” Or mention very briefly a theme. If it looks like someone sat down to write a formal review, it also looks either paid, or like it came from a friend trying to outdo themselves.
If you’re interested in the comments and conversation spurred off that post, check out the thread.
Regarding the reviews themselves—he hit the nail on the head (hehe, there’s a pun in there if you know him). We are literally looking for, hoping for, asking and begging for, nothing more than a number of stars (as you see fit), and a single sentence.
A single sentence.
What did you actually like? Was it the characters? Was it the storyline? Or perhaps the twist at the end? Without giving anything away, say something short, sweet, concise, and toss some stars at it like shiny yellow punctuation.
That’s it.
Why? Because yes, we want to know if you liked it or not—especially if we’re debating a sequel or using a character elsewhere. But we also want to somehow hold that book a little bit higher than the other 959 people who released their books that week… and your single sentence and smattering of stars can actually help us to do that.
So please, care for your favorite author enough to give their work a (brief, one-sentence) review.
I recently changed the information on my Amazon account so that I, too, can leave reviews when I finish reading. Because I read a lot of books, and it’s horrible to ask for reviews but not leave them. So if you’re worried about someone knowing it was you, change your info. Remove your last name. Use only initials. Do whatever you need to do to feel comfortable enough to share your opinion.
I’m leaving reviews. Are you? Have you read something of mine? Did you put a sentence and some stars on Amazon? Could you? How about that other author you just read? They could use a little one-sentence love, too…
Author Picks
Pimp my friends… the holiday edition!
Did you get gift cards for Christmas? Cash in your stocking? Bookstore vouchers? Wondering how to spend those? I got your back!
During December, I ran around social media asking all my author friends and followers this question:
“Which one of your books should someone experience? Not what’s new. Not what’s on sale. But if they could only have one of your books, which would you tell them was essential to their library?”
The following is their answers, aka, a lovely little shopping list for you!!
Paul Michael Anderson’s Bones are Made to be Broken
Michael Bailey’s Pheonix Rose
Scott Baker’s Rotter World
John Bender’s Chainsaw
Maurice Broaddus’ The Voices of Martyrs
Kealan Patrick Burke’s Sour Candy
William Carl’s Bestial
Tommy Clark’s A Book of Light and Shadow
Lincoln Crisler’s Queen
Frank Edler’s Brats in Hell
Thom Erb’s The Last in Line
Patrick Freivald’s Twice Shy
Christopher Golden’s Snowblind
Michael Huyck’s (newest one that’s not finished, so have this while you’re waiting) Of Dark and Yesterday
Jeremy Robert Johnson’s In The River
Brian Keene’s The Girl on the Glider
Brian Knight’s Sex, Death & Honey
Tim Lebbon’s The Silence
Michael Knost’s Return of the Mothman
Stephen Kozeniewski’s The Ghoul Archipelago
Kevin Lucia’s Through a Mirror, Darkly
Bracken MacLeod’s Come to Dust
Ronald Malfi’s Bone White
Nick Mamatas’s The People’s Republic of Everything
John McIlveen’s Hannahwhere
Mark McLaughlin’s Shoggoth Apocalypse & More Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
James Moore’s Seven Forges
Michael Allen Rose’s Indifference of Heaven
Mary SanGiovanni’s Thrall
Chris Sorensen’s The Nightmare Room
Wesley Southard’s Closing Costs
Jeff Strand’s Blister
John Urbancik’s Tales of the Fantastic and the Phantasmagoric
Bev Vincent’s When the Night Comes Down
Wrath James White’s 400 Days of Oppression
Chet Williamson’s Second Chance
David Wilson’s Deep Blue
Rio Youers’ Westlake Soul
Among the Stacks
As part of The Gal in the Blue Mask’s Halloween Extravaganza, there was an interview.
I talked about my quirks, my fears, all kinds of random crazy things… Check it out to learn things about me you maybe didn’t know.
…and when you’re done, check out the rest of them. There are over 70 interviews just for the Halloween theme, then there are many many more. Bookmark it. It’s a good place to have handy on those lunch breaks!
My playlists:
Shut Up & Write
The Neighborhood
Floaters
Live Specimens