In addition to the new story, check out the new Inspirational Media Page for a collection of Youtube clips that have entertained or inspired me over the years. I’ll be adding to that as time goes by.
As you all know, over Labor Day weekend I held a free giveaway of Hometown. It did well, at least by my standards, moving about 1,500 copies.
Then…it did better. I expected for it to sell a few copies after the “sale” ended, get a few extra page-reads on Kindle Unlimited…
(For those of you who aren’t familiar, The way Kindle Unlimited works is people buy a monthly subscription, then they’re able to read any books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited for free. All of the subscription fees go into one big pot, and the authors get paid based on how many pages get read from one of their books. All of my books are enrolled in it, because although I’ve only ever had a few dozen pages read a month and thus gotten pennies, more established authors say that it’s an even bigger earner than actually selling the books.)
And I have indeed had a few sales. A few more than I expected, but still only a few. But since my Labor Day Sale ended, I’ve had thousands of page-reads on Kindle Unlimited. I couldn’t understand it until I saw that little factoid above on Twitter. That’s when I understood: the Labor Day Sale is what brought me over the top: that was when I went from eighteen customer reviews to twenty-one. Who knew it could make such a difference? Not only am I getting more page-reads, my sales rank is skyrocketing in the Occult Fiction and Occult Horror categories, which of course helps boost visibility even more. There are several positive feedback loops going on here.
So what I am going to do is I am going to beg…I am going to beseech everyone who has read this book and who has enjoyed it to please…please put a review up on Amazon. The goal is to get those reviews up over fifty – hopefully well up over fifty – so that second level of visibility boost kicks in.
Please. If you’ve read it, if you liked it, post a review. It’s the single most important thing you can do to help me right now.
This next is a bit more troubling and thoughtful. I’ve often been deeply troubled by media, viral memes, and the like that glorify a “warrior class” as somehow wiser, more deserving (especially more deserving of rule), and generally superior to the rest of us. The “sheep and sheepdogs” meme that went around a few years ago, where the Warrior Class was literally a superior species was particularly disturbing. But I’ve never had an answer for it.
My dear friend Emily H. has posted what she hopes will be the first of a series of Youtube posts on food injustice. The first is about the disaster that is this year’s planting season in the Midwest and its connections to Climate Change.
Please check it out, like, subscribe, share, and – if Ko-Fi has corrected its issues – donate. Let’s help an independent documentarian get off the ground.
Fred Clark, the Slacktivist, whom I consider to be both a friend and teacher, has had an absolutely terrible June. His father passed away, and then…well, he experienced the string of events recounted at this linked post. Please help if you can, or share if you can’t.
Or even if you can. The farther this reaches, the better.
Hey all! AIDS Walk 2019 is coming up soon, and I am enrolled. I look forward to it every year – it’s a little bit of good that’s easy for me to do. If you want to contribute, go here. If you can’t donate, please share.
How could I forget to post this one for so long! The book trailer for Dreams of the Boardwalk is now up in the Book Trailers archive! But just in case you don’t want to go that far, here it is right here!
