Can anyone out there remember what Will's last name is?

Because I seem to have forgotten. I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but I can't find it.

This is Why I Suck at Marketing

So, just read a story today by an author who has 'New York Times Bestselling Author and USA Today Bestselling Author' branded on all of their books. All of their books.

And they've only been writing since last year, and they don't really have that many reviews on most of their stuff. Now the story wasn't bad, really, it was just all action and not much plot and minor character development. We just go from action scene to action scene, and the book is probably about 55K words long, so it doesn't get to the point of actually being too much action.

But still, I'm looking at this going, 'how did this person make both of those lists?' Especially when they don't say which of their books made the list.

Well some internet searching and I found it. They got into this huge mega box set deal, and there were some good authors in the set (over twenty authors in the box set total). The entire set made the bestseller lists. So yeah, technically he's a bestselling author now.

I would never have thought to put something like that down.

It's like all of those authors who write their bios in third person like someone else is talking about them, or who go through their reviews on the page, pull out a few, and put them up in the 'editorial review' section. Hell, I've gotten reviews from third parties, completely unsolicited, and I've never put them in there.

I really do not understand marketing for ebooks, or just books in general, I guess.

Has Amazon been putting DRM on my books without my Permission?

I don't set DRM on my ebooks. Some people are claiming that Amazon is now applying DRM to all ebooks, even those where the author has requested it not be set. Are any of you seeing this with my ebooks?

So yes, that Harem story

I finished one, and will eventually (probably next month) be putting out a second one. They are under a different name however: Jan Stryvant. Why? Because while I actually enjoy harem fiction, (I think the E. William Brown stories are some of the best) it's not really what I normally write, and well 'Brand Recognition' I guess you would say. I don't mind people knowing that I wrote it, however I want people to understand that this is something different from what I normally write.
And yes, I'm sure there are people who are going to hate me for writing it. Again, different name, so they can just ignore it and not worry about stumbling on it by mistake.

Anyway, here's the link for it on Amazon: Shadow, by Jan Stryvant 

Let me know what you think, and if you like it, write a nice review and tell all your friends.

I may make a gmail address and possibly a blog page for that author name, so if people want to talk about it, they have a place to go. Without having to know my real name.

Politics and checking your six

Now I normally do not talk about politics in this blog, because I figure that none of you are coming here for that, and I don't blame you. I am actually an incredibly politically aware person, and once upon a time I was also extremely active in politics. For a number of reasons I have tried to back off from a lot of it (which I won't discuss here - though some of it has been mentioned elsewhere), but the sad truth is, you can no more get away from politics than you can get away from gravity. Because it's always there.

Right now we are seeing a lot of unrest in the country I live in (the USA). It's not the first time this has happened in my life (I was born in '59), I remember the riots and the terrorists we had in this country in the 60's and 70's. These people murdered others, blew up things, did all sorts of very heinous crimes, even if some of them are now 'celebrated' people, you must remember that they are murderers. They did in fact kill people, and it's only because of really bizarre political dealings that they are not now in jail. Though some of it I think is due to certain people wanting to 'forget' and 'put it all behind them.'

Well, I hate to say it, but the truth of the matter is that we are heading back to those times, and probably worse. The 'Battle of Berkley' wasn't an aberration, it was a sign of things to come. None of this has peaked yet, far from it. Now that those being preyed upon have woken up and started fighting back (and winning) you can expect the people leading the attacks to start bringing nastier weapons than the bricks, pipes, bottles, and clubs that they have been using since last summer.

In most of the state I live in, the government has already chosen a side in all of this, which is why when the violent types crash the rallies and the protests, the police disappear rather quickly, or just watch and don't get involved. People are noticing that, and they're not very happy about it either. After all, we pay the police to stop these things, not to encourage it.

I would tell all of you this summer to rethink any travel plans you may have. Especially for when the weather gets hotter and tempers get shorter. Go look up what months we had the worst riots in the 60's and 70's, and what kinds of places they were in. Look at where they are now as well. If you live in one of those kinds of places, you might want to think about moving. And if you're planning on visiting any of them, I would change those plans.

There are very dark clouds on the horizon. If you don't want to get sucked into this against your will and become a victim, now is the time to start thinking about it.

What I've been doing...

So, because a bunch of you all wrote me (or responded on Patreon) I took one of my old stories that I wrote for my own enjoyment years ago, and spent a week re-writing, editing, re-arranging, and generally just spending 14 hour days on.
I've now given it to a bunch of folks to read (and hopefully they'll get back to me soon) because I want their opinion on it. It's hard to step back from something you wrote a long time ago and be sure it's good enough to put out. And as this is long (it weighs in at almost 150K words) I suspect it will be a few days before I hear anything, (well one person finished it and said they loved it, so I'm hopeful).
And yeah, it's a harem type story. The story is about a guy who suffers something terrible as a child and develops super powers because of it. He then uses his powers to hunt down and punish those people and others like them. Until one day he starts to wonder about life, and the meaning of his, and decides maybe it's time to start over.
The prologue covers that, and is the set up for the rest of the story, as he decides to go learn about all of those things he's missed. Of course, because of who and what he is, it isn't going to be easy, and while he's not evil, he's not exactly good either. If you're a big fan of the 'super hero code' that the comic books use, you'll probably hate this story, because this guy isn't like that, and neither is his story.

If I get enough thumbs up from folks on it, I will publish it. It will be under a pen name, which I'll mention here. The reason for not putting it out under my name is that it isn't exactly the kind of thing I'm known for writing (and people these days don't like you straying all over the map), so using a pen name will signal everyone that it's something different and not to be shocked at the blatant sex and swearing and violence.

For now, I'm just waiting to hear what people say about it, while I go to work on another (and somewhat) different one. Then I'll go back to working on the stuff that I said I'd be doing. If the harem stuff does well, I'll do more of it. For now it's just a question of wait and see.

Serious Question on Future works (Harem?)

How many of you are into Harem type fiction?
I know the POI books are considered to be 'Harem' by some, and I can see that it sells really well.
So, how many of you would like to see me write some basic harem type stuff?

Just curious here.

I enjoyed this book. Quite a bit.

A friend of mine who also writes, wrote this recently, and it's a really good story:

Cartwright's Cavaliers

It's a futuristic sci-fi story where Earth's biggest economy is its Mercenary companies. It features Mechs, and some other aspects of futuristic warfare, as well as some space combat. Plus you have a very out of place kid who inherits his father's Mercenary company, who happens to be something of a brony and Anime fan.

It's a fun story. Check it out.

Short Stories, and why I don't write them anymore

I used to love writing short stories, and I used to write them fairly often. There were several reasons for this, the biggest being that those were what people where accepting for print. But also because they were low time investments: a few days work and you were done with it for good.

Writing short stories also teaches you a lot about writing. Pacing is more important, and in a short story anything that does not advance the story must go. Must. There are no exceptions.
Novellas of course are the bastard children of short stories and novels that result from drunken liaisons in dark alleys. Really! They are! Just ask one about their parents some day.

But lately, I haven't really been able to write one. And it's sad because there were two anthologies I probably could have gotten a short story sale in, but I just couldn't shift my mind into doing it. I suspect this is because I've been on a novel grind. Everything lately has been about the novels I've been working on, and want to get done this year. I've been so focused on trying to get that done, that when I'm writing, if it's not part of either the book I'm currently writing, or one of the ones on the roadmap for later this year, I'm just not interested in putting any of it down.

I'm not really even interested in thinking about it.

I guess I've just been very 'tunnel vision' about things for the last six months or so. Especially writing. I think some of that has gotten a little worse lately as I'm behind schedule on my plan for this year, I've barely started my second novel that was planned for release next month, and here it is the end of March already. It's hard to focus on something that isn't the 'primary job' when the primary job isn't going well. My mind keeps wanting to go back to the thing that's not going right so I can get it back on track. A lot of that has to do with the way I worked as a consultant. I always got my work done ahead of schedule, some times weeks or months ahead, and then I'd just sit on it while I waited for the other groups to catch up. This way last minute changes were easier to deal with.

Those kinds of things are easy in technical work, which often isn't very creative. But in an endeavor that is 100 percent creative, not so much. And it has been frustrating. I know my plan this year was to write six novels. One published every two months. But I've already realized that I'm probably not going to be able to do that, because you can't publishing anything within about 20 days of Christmas (a lesson I learned last December when I put out a book ten days before Christmas and its release got totally lost in the holiday sales).

The big thing right now is that I need to get POI #8 (Working title: Playing the Game) into heads down and writing mode. Then I need to do the last DOFP book. After that, probably more POI. Maybe I should just consider writing a POI book that is a series of shorts and novellas to fill in a bunch of the gaps and side quests that are part and parcel of Will's life? That would definitely let me flesh out a few things you normally don't see in the novels. Then again, I don't know if you'd all be interested or not.

But it all comes back to being on this runaway treadmill that really requires you to publish every sixty days or so, if you want to stay relevant on Amazon, and keep people seeing your works, and keep selling. I took too much time and money back in January to try and improve my Marketing and expand my fanbase / reading pool. It was, unfortunately, a very big waste of time and money. I even hired someone to help and sadly, that didn't work. It seems that most of you discovered me due to Amazon, not any other outside channel. So I should have been just writing the next novel, not wasting my efforts elsewhere.

I also spent too much time and mental energy trying to land a publishing deal. When they said they weren't interested in my current story lines but were impressed enough with my writing that they would take me on, if I came up with a new line just for them, I should have just turned them down. Instead I spent two months trying to come up with something for them. It takes me a very long time to come up with the idea for a series, or a world. A very long time. While I do have some ideas 'lying around' none of them are really in a final state to write about, or I already would be.

So, if the next POI book does well enough, and I can get both it and the DOFP book done in quick order, maybe I'll have enough breathing space to pick up on writing some short stories again. That or I'll have to find a 'real' job again. Or maybe switch over to writing uber-females in vampire military scifi engaging in galactic conquest :-p

To all of you pirating my books

How about at least nominating me for an award or something? Like the Dragon Awards, or something else that is free to vote on. I know that there are several thousand of you out there, and well if you're not going to pay, how about doing something (that's free) for me that will help me sell more to those who will?

Think about it.

Sometimes I just don't get it

I'm an engineer by training. And for me, one of the things that means is that if something works, you use it. And you stick with it. You don't go switching to something new unless there is a good reason, like more or better functionality, or the old one doesn't work anymore, or it's cheaper to use.

Stuff like that.

Now when it comes to instant messengers, I have all the old ones, AIM, Yahoo, a few others. Because that was what other people used, because they only used what came with their service. But now everyone I used to talk with over these things have moved onto a dozen new instant messengers, all brand new ones, with all sorts of things I hear them complaining about.

Why did they move?

Absolutely no reason at all. The services aren't any better, in many cases they're actually worse (in that they raid your private information and use it to try and get others to join - among other things). They just moved on like a flock of birds I guess. To the new 'better' thing. Hell, I don't even use skype anymore, it's pointless to me 99 percent of the time, I give people my phone number and tell them to call me. But amazingly enough, people still use Twitter, even though there are better services out there that don't censor a quarter of their users, and which don't inspect all posts for passing some kind of political litmus test.

Yeah, just don't get it. Must be getting old or something.

The ballad of fixing my Car(s)

So, it always seems that everything that can go wrong, does so right around the time I have to pay my taxes. This year was no different. I have two cars, and they both broke at the exact same time.

Now one of the cars I don't drive very often. It's a sports car I bought a few years ago for various reasons. Normally I only drive it on weekends, but working from home now, well it can go months without being driven. When I was working in Oregon a couple years back, it would also go months without being driven. So the battery went dead this week, for the third (and final) time. There was no recharging it; it would no longer hold a charge. And batteries here in California are pretty damn expensive. Maybe they're that way in the rest of the country, I don't know. I just know from other things (motorcycles) that the prices all have doubled in the last four years.

While that was all going on, my other car started to make the grinding noise of death from somewhere around the fan belts. I thought it was the alternator at first, so I had to start pulling off the belts (there are two - one for alternator and power steering, one for AC). Of course, as odds would have it, it wasn't the alternator.

So, I had to pull off the AC belt, which means pulling off the electric fans attached to the radiator. I get the belt off and check the idler pulley, and it's grindy. Very grindy. That's what I get for buying a cheap plastic one a few years ago when it died the last time. So off to Napa and $40 later I have a really nice heavy metal one with a lifetime guarantee. Yes, the car is a 2006 Forester XT. It's got 130K miles on it. Or, like the Subaru people like to say: It's just getting broken in.

So I put the new pulley in and promptly break the idler adjuster (damn! Didn't I do that last time I changed it? I did? Double Damn!) so I order that and have to wait a few days.

Now, a bit of an aside here. Last week, when I noticed the A/C wasn't working, I recharged it. And things got really noisy after I did. That was when I noticed that the high-pressure line was leaking, hence the noise. Turns out the o-ring went. So I replaced the o-ring and recharged the system and everything was fine.

Or so I thought.

So, get the new idler adjuster, put it on, fire it up. And the compressor is what's now making the noise. So, either the compressor is shot, -or-, hopefully, when the system bled down twice due to the bad o-ring, it lost a lot of oil. So I go buy some oil. It's not too expensive and the can says it contains an ounce. So I put it all in, and the compressor gets nice and quiet like it should be. So obviously it needed oil!

But! Now the system is over-pressured! So I bleed it down.

Now, no cooling, but lots of heat!

So, now what? I figure that maybe whatever propellant they put in the oil can isn't cooling, or maybe it's too much oil or something. I know the older systems took a lot of oil. Or maybe the compressor is shot.

So, I go buy a can of coolant (TEN dollar core charge on a CAN? WTF????? Thank you California!!). Bleed the system down to 0, then refill it with the can. This time the system hits a nice legal pressure, and even as I put the rest of the can in, barely climbs up at all. And best of all, it's blowing nice and cold now!

So. Hopefully it's fixed. It is possible that the compressor may have gotten damaged from the lack of oil, I'm hoping it didn't. At a new one is about $150, which I don't have right now. (That's putting it in myself, so add the cost of oil and R-134a to that). But at least it's all back together and seems to be running fine again. Both cars that is.

But I think the Forester may be up for a clutch soon....

And it still needs the headlight enclosures replaced....

So, if you have, say five or ten thousand friends out there who are looking for something to read, tell them to buy some of my books. So I can finish fixing the car!