January 2008 Archives

I keep getting emails from readers of Cluck who can't say enough about how much they loved the book. This makes me feel great and is very encouraging - these are not family and friends but real honest-to-goodness fans. Wow, I have fans!

But as much as I love the emails, I'd prefer that they get translated into amazon reviews. I know, I sound like such an ungrateful prat who just wants to sell books ... I'm not really like that, honest! It's just that despite the common comparisons that are made between cluck and best-selling books by folks like Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, I haven't exactly broken the best-seller barrier myself. And I recently had a review directly compare me to Bruce Campbell's Army of Darkness and Bubba Ho-Tep, but again, nobody's looking to buy the movie rights.

So please: keep sending emails, but also consider a nice 5 star review at amazon. Or goodreads.com, or anywhere. Don't forget that even award winning authors don't make a lot of money, and we need to eat

Cluck was a deliberately fun exception from your typical zombie story. Well, I'm doing it again: while the next book wont be a comedy, it will involve zombies, and it will be a departure from the norm. There's no working title yet, but I may post some chapters on the future...

I live on a farm. That means I have animals. Animals need water. This isn't so bad in the summer, when outdoor plumbing works, but in the winter it means buckets. Lots of buckets. At least 5 buckets of water a day, carried from the kitchen sink either to: the donkeys, through a door, up a narrow set of stairs, through another door, across the barn, and through a stall door; the sheep, who get their water in a pasture that is accessed through the donkey stall, after hoisting the bucket up and over the electric fence (cautiously) or through another gate; the chickens, who live through the first door, out the back door of the barn, and across the yard to the coop.

We went away to Boston for the weekend. We had fun, but more importantly, we didn't carry a single bucket.

I sent an email to Bruce Campbell (yup, I found his email and address - it wasn't hard but I wont share it out of respect for The Chin). I respectfully asked him to take a look at my book, which I had shipped to his offices directly from Amazon. This is so cool:

I ... got ... an ... email ... back!

Sure, it was a standard rejection, but it was addressed to me, and signed "Bruce". Call me a fanboy, but I'm never going to wash my email client again. I sent a super-short reply back, telling Bruce that the book was already on its way, but that I'm honored to have it sit ignored in his office and/or get thrown in the trash. And I mean it, too. Bruce is ... well, he's Bruce. So what if I wont get a career-boosting endorsement? I'm now one degree away from Ash.

I've read books from another independent author, RW Ridley, and I was pleased as punch when he picked up a copy of Cluck and reviewed it! His verdict?

"... a genre buster ... When you can make a zombie chicken an unforgettable villain, you're doing something right. My prediction is that this is destined to be a cult classic."

~R.W. Ridley, author of The Oz Chronicles

The first review of Cluck is from the wonderful folks over at The Wire, a decidedly hip publication in the New Hampshire seacoast area. 

Among other nice things, they state that 

"[Cluck] introduces two new elements to the zombie mythos: 1) Zombie chickens. 2) A thoroughly developed premise and plot that combine humor with horror."

... or, an undead chicken book writer, at least. ANyway, here's how:

It sounds simple, but I'm confounded. The ads run, and they even work fairly well, but the keyword ratings are so far off that I'm just ... well ... perplexed

Example: go to a site specifically about a zombie chicken book. Look around that site, and see what kinds of keywords you're seeing. Words like "book" and "zombie" and "chicken" and "cluck" and "horror" and "novel" ... and hey, I'm not loading keywords or anything, it's just that I wrote a book about zombie chickens. And yet the following keywords are ranked as "poor" in Google adwords:

• book
  
• books
  
• horror
  
• chicken
  
• zombie
  
• horror book
  
• horror fiction
  
• ... you get the idea.
  

The real confusing part is that I used the keyword tool to extract valid keywords from the site... I just don't get it. I really don't.

Am I talking about terrorists? Nope. I'm talking electoral campaigns, not military ones. Presidential campaigns, to be precise. Our own.

I'm not a political activist, but it occurs to me that we are under attack — not by terrorists, or the insurance companies, or Lead Paint Barbie, but by our own presidential candidates. Consider the word "freedom." As you ponder what it means to be free, let your thoughts wander over to words like "privacy." We have laws to protect both of these highly subjective things, but there is one very important loophole that is currently being exploited, and it pisses me off. I'm talking about the national do-not-call list, which aims to protect our right to have dinner without being called by some jerk salesperson. It's a nice law that protect us from the frustration known as Dinus Interuptus, and it was put in place by our beloved politicians, because they love us and have our best interests held close to their hearts. Oh - except they're exempt, themselves. And this election season, they are abusing that exemption.

Thank the powers that I am not a registered independent: if I were, I would be receiving calls from both parties candidates. I'm currently only a one-party guy, and I'm getting (no shit) about 3 calls on average every single freaking night. I got one on New Years Eve, and that particular candidate is lucky that I was so drunk I hit "end" instead of "call" because I was fueled by alcohol into giving 'em a piece of my mind! (It was New Years, after all)

Ranting aside, how can we trust any candidate when they are all deliberately doing something that they know we disapprove of? If people wanted to be called at home, the Do Not Call registry would never have been created. If a candidate deliberately pokes us in the eye over and over again, how could they possible want to fight on my behalf in the context of [taxes, education, foreign policy, health care]? I mean, these people obviously live in a very different world than we do, or they'd leave us alone. And they obviously don't care.

... I wonder what real estate prices in New Zealand are like?