writing: 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 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.