You’re not going to believe this story. Maybe that’s for the best. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I really believe it myself anymore. Maybe it’s just a story I tell myself so that I won’t have to remember the Truth. But Terrence is dead; that much you can believe.
He should have been the one to write this, Terence I mean. He was always real good with this kind of thing. But now he’s gone, and it’s just me left to tell the tale. You probably won’t believe it, but for my sake, for Terrence’s sake, remember.
The Mulch Pile lives! If you’ve been following this blog for very long, you know that this is a project I’ve been working on for a while.
You could say it has its roots all the way back in my childhood when my dad dug into our garden mulch pile and told me to put my hand inside. I lowered my palm into that cavity and felt waves of heat coming off the rotting vegetables and grass clippings inside. It totally creeped me out.
Years later, in 2009 to be exact, while I was casting about for a concept for my National Novel Writing Month novel, the idea of a monster mulch pile sprang into my head, and I knew that was the story I was going to write.
I had to write it. Because no one else was going to.
But along the way it became so much more. I’m not much a fan of pantsing these days, but in the November of 2009 sitting in Walmart’s parking lot with my laptop, pounding away on this story when I should have been eating lunch, pantsing took me to a place I never dreamed of finding.
And instead of writing a simple story about a monster mulch pile, I uncovered layers of meaning about brotherhood, identity, and the dark side of love.
Consequently, this story is really two stories. One is the story you will read. The other is the story between the lines.
Confused? Think of it like this painting:
On the one hand you can see a normal bowl of vegetables. But hidden within those vegetables is a pattern of something far stranger.
Similarly The Mulch Pile has two sides. One side is about a monster mulch pile. The other side…well let’s not spoil that shall we?
The Mulch Pile is available for all your favourite electronic reading devices. Kindle, Nook, whatever. I’ve got you covered.
The going rate from all those websites is $2.99. But if you’ve got an ereader that can process .epub files, then I’ve got an extra special offer. The ebook is available directly from me for $1.99. Just click 
and save!
I’m really excited about this story, guys. It’s been a long time in the birthing, but I’m thrilled to be finally releasing it into the wild.
And, as always, if you enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoyed writing it, my work will have been worth it all.
The Unsanity Files 
Bought. Can’t wait to read it.
Thanks! Can’t wait to hear what you think.
Ok, now I’m really upset I don’t have an e-reader. I remember you updating us on the progress of this book and I WANT TO READ IT! Any way at all I can get an e-mail copy? I’ll totally put in my $2.99.
Nice anticipation-building post, Albert. Are you going to do NaNoWriMo again? I’m thinking of going full on this year. I like the image of you typing away in the parking lot. I do that in the mornings now, quick writing clips before work. I tried to do it on my lunch hour, but our wi-fi is too dang slow. So, if I don’t have mass work to catch up on, it’s my reading time lunch hour!
The “whatever” link in the post will take you to Smashwords, where the book is available in pretty much any format you could care to read it in. They’ve got pdf, txt, doc, epub, the whole nine yards. And the cool thing about Smashwords it that once you buy the book, you can download it in any format as often as you wish. If that isn’t an acceptable solution then, shoot me an email and we’ll work something out.
In answer to your question, absolutely I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year! You know, barring any unforeseen deterrents. I’ve got some ideas bumping around in my head, and I’m hoping to get Clockwork Hearts (that’s the tentative name for my and Ellie’s story BTW) edited so that I can start outlining for NaNoWriMo. So many projects! Good luck with your work. I’m looking forward to reading that graveyard story one of these days. 🙂
Awesome! I’ll be checking out smashwords for sure!
Yah, my poor graveyard story has been on hold. I’m using WWBC to try to map out some evos and then I’ll use NaNoWriMo to blitz through scene ideas and plot. That’s the plan, like you said, barring any unforeseen deterrents.
Bought. Will read tonight. 🙂
Yes! It’s out! CONGRATS on your 5th published work, Al.
And the longest so far! Though still slightly shy of 50,000 words.
🙂
I’m currently gearing up for my November novel with some prewriting, and I’m super-jazzed!
Hmm . . I clicked on my purchase of “The Mulch Pile,” and it was actually “The Beach Scene,” which I had purchased earlier. Don’t know if others are having this issue . . ?
Where did you download it from?
I clicked on the Kindle link in this post and downloaded it from Amazon.
Oooh! Sounds so good. I’m hooked already. 😀 I have an iPad. Don’t know if that handles epub files though.
Epub is pretty universal, but Smashwords has it in lots of other file formats.
The kindle edition is temporarily unavailable while they’re reprocessing the book with the correct file this time (So much facepalm). It should be up tommorrow, but if you’d like the kindle files today I can shoot you an email.
Congratulations on the publication! Very very cool :).