Score of Silence on Kindle Scout

Hello, all!

Today, the Kindle Scout campaign for my debut murder mystery novel, Score of Silence, starts. I’ve tried a few Kindle Scout campaigns, and unfortunately, I’ve never gotten the nod. The editors there have passed on War of the Worlds: Retaliation, which John and I licensed to Severed Press. We’re talking to them about another War of the Worlds book, tentatively titled, War of the Worlds: Firestorm. Kindle Press also passed on Sixteen Sunsets. Here’s hoping that the third time’s the charm.

Originally, Score of Silence was supposed to be a sequel to my techno-thriller, Body Rentals. After about 25,000 words or so, I realized that no one had switched bodies! So, I rewrote it into a murder mystery. There are still a lot of elements that stayed in Score of Silence. Tupper Jones is obviously Colonel Lance Bishop. (There was even a play on words in the first or second chapter about Tupper calling an ambu-Lance, but when I changed the name to Tupper Jones, the joke had to go.) Caroline Collins is Teresa from Tyrant and Body Rentals. Kimberly Smythe is Kimberly Smith. (I know, I know, “How original.”) The characters from Score of Silence took on a life of their own during the rewrite, and I already have a 48k rough draft of a second novel.

Anyway, I’d appreciate it if you could support the campaign by nominating, and sharing the link to your various social media outlets. Here’s that link: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2EKMJBJRHGZ12

Here are the description and character bios for Score of Silence:

Retired FBI agent, Tupper Jones, has made a name for himself as a private eye. But today isn’t his day. His partner and right-hand woman, Caroline Collins, has woken up next to the dead body of the FBI’s star mob witness with no memory of what happened. Tupper and Caroline must solve the mystery of what happened before the FBI puts Caroline away for the murder.

Cover Reveal – War of the Worlds: Retaliation

Those of you who follow me on Twitter, or John on Facebook, have already seen this, but read the whole thing for more exciting news!

It’s should be old news to you, but John and I signed a contract with Severed Press for them to distribute the English eBook and paperback of War of the Worlds: Retaliation worldwide! They re-edited the story, and came up with a killer cover:

 
Pretty epic, huh?

I promised exciting news, so here it is: Severed Press is interested in another War of the Worlds sequel, and it just so happens that John and I have an outlines for two more books. We’re currently in negotiations for book number two!

Will Victorious Maiden be completed?

As I’m sure some of you are aware, artists tend to want to be around other artists. I’ve never really considered myself an artist. I can’t draw worth a [crap]. Other typically “artisty” things like sculpting elude me. But, I need to embrace the artist moniker because writing is art. My wife is more of what I’d consider an artist – specifically she loves drawing cartoons. Now, my eleven year old daughter, may just be the most artsy-fartsy person in my household. She loves to draw anime fantasy characters:

About two years ago, I took a stab at writing a young adult novel. It’s something I’ve never been able to do, and I like to challenge myself. When I finished what I like to call the “vomit draft,” (that’s where you just barf the words onto the page,) I put it away to percolate for a month or two. When I came back to it, I realized that I didn’t have a finished novel; I had the beginnings to three novels in a trilogy. After breaking out the individual storylines and seeing what I had, I realized that the one that was the most done only had about 18k words written. I shelved the project (that shelf is getting full!) and worked on other things.

War of the Worlds: Retaliation Audiobook and Kickstarter

A month and a week to go until January 3rd, 2017. The worldwide release of War of the Worlds: Retaliation is almost upon us. I can’t tell you all how excited I am. This is the sequel we’ve been waiting 119 years for. Our audiobook narrator, Mark Isham, sent me the prologue, so I listened to it, then immediately uploaded it to Soundcloud.

Let the world know that John and I are trying to raise $300.00 for the hardcover. We started a kickstarter campaign, and due to the accelerated timeline, there are only 16 days left in the timeline. Please share the following URL with your social medias and bloggersphere: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1012144245/war-of-the-worlds-retaliation-hardcover/

The project page is where it has always been: https://article94.wordpress.com/war-of-the-worlds-retaliation/

Moonrise covers

Hey, all, Now that Moonrise is half done with the web serial, I wanted to share with you some draft covers. Click on them to embiggen.

Here’s the “Anne” cover:

Followed by the “Bree” cover:

Here are the Sixteen Sunsets covers to compare with…

Fan Art, or “How I learned that it’s great to be an Author.”

I received this drawing from an eleven-year-old fan today. Damn, it feels good to be an author!

War of the Worlds: Retaliation now on Kindle Scout

Hey, everyone! Wednesdays have been all about Days Until Home for so long, and now that the web serial is finished, and the special edition paperback is out, it’s time to move on from the space disaster.

Wait a minute… We’re still in space… But instead of doing this and that in the near future, we’re in an alternate past. A past where the War of the Worlds happened, and after the Martians died, we humans reverse-engineered their tech to better all of humanity. Well, for the most part. We also have the looming threat of another invasion by those slimy squids from the fourth rock from the sun. We’ve got to take the fight to Mars. End the Martian threat once and for all. After all, it has been twenty-six years since the original attack from the red planet.

War of the Worlds: Retaliation is the vision of my co-author, John Rust. He completed the first draft way back in 2012, but it floated around waiting for the copyright of H.G Wells’ 1898 story to expire in the European Union. I think I harassed John for a number of months in early 2015 to get this story published. We wrapped up the latest revision in December 2015 and started submitting the story to the major and some specialty publishers.

The final attempt to wrangle a publishing contract is going to be through Kindle Press via a Kindle Scout campaign. The campaign started in the wee hours this morning and will run for thirty days. After that campaign, Kindle Press offers a fifteen-day decision period. Since the stipulations of the campaign dictate that only one author is considered, John has authorized me to act as the sole author for the purposes of the KS campaign. I’m a tiny bit uncomfortable with this since John has had the lion’s share of the writing, rewrites, and general writer angst, but apparently, I’m higher profile. (Go figure!)

Anyone with an Amazon account can nominate War of the Worlds: Retaliation for consideration by Kindle Press, and I hope that you will nominate our story. Also, since getting the word out is of major importance, please reblog, retweet, and do whatever it is that you do on Facebook. The more exposure we can get, the better chance we have of receiving a contract. As a bonus, if War of the Worlds: Retaliation is selected by Kindle Press, anyone who nominated it will receive a free digital copy when it releases. Hopefully that will be the first week of January 2017.

So, please spread the word and nominate War of the Worlds: Retaliation on Kindle Scout today:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1P15HGBUYJZLJ/