Doctor Who?

Fresh from writing a short story last night, I woke up early today to try to branch out and tackle another one. Woke up at close to nine in the morning. But as the morning charged on, my enthusiasm diminished. Blocked again. Always happens when I want to write a second day in a row. I overloaded myself, hyped myself up too much, had a whole pot of coffee with sugar and creamer and fashioned myself a nice hyper headache.

I know it seems silly, but writing six pages really took it out of me last night. I blame the coffee.

So from 9am to now, currently 1:39pm, I haven't written one fictional word. Instead, I decided to web browse some of my favorite authors and ones that I wish to read. I started with Clive Barker than took a glance at some Anne Rice. Inevitably, I always end at Stephen King. Somehow I was led to his Wikipedia page and stumbled on this article, one that made me do a double take. Maybe this has already been covered by other bloggers, but the news still disturbs me a little.

"On November 19, 2009, while on a promotional tour in Toronto, Canada for his latest novel Under the Dome , during a reading at the Canon Theater being moderated by the filmmaker David Cronenberg, Stephen King described to the audience an idea for a sequel novel to his 1977 novel The Shining . The story, King said, would follow a character from the original novel, Danny Torrance , now in his 40s, living in upstateNew York, where he works as an orderly at a hospice and helps terminally ill patients pass away with the aid of some extraordinary powers. ^[1]

While on the road, I mentioned two potential projects while I was on the road, one a new Mid-World book (not directly about Roland Deschain, but yes, he and his friend Cuthbert are in it, hunting a skin-man, which are what werewolves are called in that lost kingdom) and a sequel to The Shining called Doctor Sleep. Are you interested in reading either of these? If so, which one turns your dials more? [We] will be counting your votes (and of course it all means nothing if the muse doesn't speak).^[2]

On December 31, 2009, it was revealed that Doctor Sleep received 5,861 votes, while The Wind Through the Keyhole received 5,812."

A sequel to The Shining? Why?Is he writing too much? Tell me what you think.

The Power of eBooks

So far, I've come to realize that ebooks are way more popular than print books. Case in point: I've been selling way more ebooks than I have print copies.

Even today, with the job market, real estate market and consumer market flipped upside down, people are still hesitant to spend too much for one thing. I have done so in the past myself. I buy most my books now through goodwill. But if a book really stands out, I'll buy no matter how expensive it is.

Lately, I've been catering to people who just want a taste. To try before they buy, so to speak. So, I'm happy to announce that Mr. Dead Eyes and For What It's Worth are selling steadily on the Amazon Kindle. Their price? Only 99 cents, less than a pack of bubble gum. I also have Wearing Donnie Torr, my newest book, and the longest, at 336 pages, up there as well for just 99 cents.

On Smashwords, with all my titles, I've been giving them away as free downloads (Formats include: HTML, Javascript, .mobi, EPUB, PDF, RTF, LRF, PLAIN DOC and PLAIN TEXT) and have garnered over 800 downloads to date.

Also, I've just recently decided to widen my audience and make all my titles available on the Barnes and Noble Nook for the unshakable price of 99 cents. That's right, folks. Whether you're a kindle owner or a nook owner, you can still be able to get my books. So read some, tell your friends and send a review or two my way. In the meantime, as always, I will be writing. I'm working on the second short story collection and my next novel. We'll see where this leads. Thanks for being loyal readers of my work.

Shorties For Now

Novels, whether they be 200 or 400 pages, can be a big undertaking. So can short stories in some respect. I like to put just as much focus on short stories as I do novels. But, on occasion, there have always been a few ideas that are a wild spark that cannot be tamed. Something that needs to be written at that moment before the fire of it dies out. That's the drive that I love from writing short stories.

On one side I will have a story I need to spend some time on, even check out a couple of books from the library for research.

On another, I'll have stories that I have to challenge myself to write in one sitting or write it before the week is out. The majority of these stories have only one or two scenes and are purely dialogue -driven.

For novels I work at a slower pace. It took me six years to flesh out the plot and characters for Mr. Dead Eyes. For Wearing Donnie Torr it took me two years but also was a hundred pages longer than my first book.

For right now, I want to take the road of Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. I'm going to start selling my short stories to magazines. It's what you have to do for exposure. At the moment I have 35 to 40 short stories under my belt. By year's end, I hope to have 150. So who knows? Open up your favorite magazine, scan the table of contents and you just might find one of my short stories...