FREE STUFF! (for which you can also pay, should you be so inclined)

Hey kids! It’s that time again! That’s right! Time for me to flog yet another literary product of my diseased mind.

Wow, that didn’t sound so good. Maybe let’s start over.

Who doesn’t love them some good ‘n crunchy flash fiction? I still remember the first day I stumbled onto the art form as presented by a little webzine called Flash Fiction Online. My first forays into the flash fiction arena were actually submissions to this magazine. I didn’t get them published. But they did get me rolling with a new way to tell stories.

Over the ensuing years I’ve cranked out quite a number of these things, and I flatter myself that I’ve gotten better at it with practice. But what to do with all those little less-than-a-thousand-words stories I’ve accumulated over the years?

How about this?

It’s ANTHOLOGY TIME!

Huh, that sounded way more epic in my head.

Anyway, the stories included in this anthology are stories you can already read on my website, edited and polished up from their original versions, and bundled together for your convenience.

“But Albert,” you say. “Aren’t you really just asking us to pay for stuff we can already get for free?”

Nope. Well, okay I am asking you to pay for it.

If you want to.

If you don’t want to, I’m making a PDF version of the same thing you can download from Amazon for 99 cents available for FREE right here, right now, for all you lovely visitors to my blog.

If after you read these stories you think to yourself, “Hey this Albert Berg has provided me with at least 99 cents worth of entertainment, and I am more than happy to show my support of this wonderful, physically attractive, and vastly under-appreciated author by purchasing his book from Amazon,” then hey, I wouldn’t say no to that.

Not sure if this compilation is for you? Here’s a short list of the stories included with a brief summary:

The Finger: in which a man vomits up a human finger and cannot remember how it got there.

Salt of the Earth: in which a man tells his daughter about the world before the Green.

Play Date: in which a woman living in a house filled with empty doll’s heads turns out to be something more than she appears.

The Life and Times of Casey Jones: in which an unsual resident of a prison cell witnesses the end of a human tragedy.

Morgellon’s Man: in which a man afflicted with a strange disease takes matters into his own hands.

The Ghosts of Houses: in which a man is haunted by a dead building.

Grey Area: in which a laundromat becomes a sinister battleground of the soul.

Living Dead: in which the zombie apocalypse cannot come soon enough.

All that Remains: in which the last human tries to find meaning in a chaotic universe.

How the Other Half Dies: in which you are killed by zombies.

The Stone Saucer: in which an alien artifact carries the memories of a dead world.

If these sound like your cup of tea, then head over to Amazon and get this puppy for your Kindle, or better still, stay right here and download it for free.

Remember, all you have to lose is your sanity.

The Happy Dance Manifesto

I’ve seen a lot of changes in the little circle of blogs I follow lately. My writing partner Ellie Soderstrom has recently branched out from the group blog she contributed to in order to start her own little venture. Freelance writer Austin Wulf has taken his blog in more of a freestyle direction. And last, and most dramatic of the three, Evelyn LaFont better known to us Twitterites as The Keyboard Hussy has anounced she’ll stop posting on her writing blog altogether.

A while back I posted about the whiplash our little blogging community has had to Kristen Lamb’s assertion that writers shouldn’t write exclusively about writing, and in a way I see some of these changes as a culmination of that discussion.

For myself, I’ve undergone something of a blogging transformation as well. I remember when I started writing in earnest at the beginning of the year after reading Kristen’s “Freshly Pressed” post about how all writers should have a blog.

When I started I had in mind that this blog would turn into something of a powerful sales platform, that I’d wield my mighty blogging power to move my readers toward buying my books and stories. But it hasn’t worked out that way. I didn’t sell piles of books because of this blog. I sold more than I probably would have without it, but still…no cash cow here.

So you might be wondering: why should I keep blogging? Why put time and effort into something that isn’t going to pay off?

Because over the months since I’ve started doing this, I’ve realized that hoping blogging will “pay off” is the wrong mindset. I’ve written lots of things that didn’t “pay off.” There are stories that simply weren’t good enough to get published, short fiction I’ve posted here for absolutely free, and you know what? I don’t regret one word of it.

Because maybe we’re looking at this whole thing the wrong way. Do you know what pays off in my life? My job.

I go in to work every day, punch the clock, and do what I’m supposed to do. And every two weeks I get a paycheck.

No one ever asks me to love it. No one ever asks me if that’s my life’s calling. They all know it isn’t.

But writing…writing is different. I’d like to paid for what I do some day, just like lots of other authors out there. But I’m fully aware that lots of other authors out there are either unpublished or making far less than they need to support themselves. And I still keep writing.

And you want to know why? Because I can. Because I want to.

Money is great. And every time I see that someone has gone on Amazon or Barnes and Noble’s website and bought one of my stories I do a little happy dance.

Yes that’s right, you too, can have your very own Happy Dance custom designed by me for the low low price of 99 cents! For the Deluxe Happy Dance option, buy What the Dog Saw for $2.99!

I guess what I’m trying to say is that writing, whether it be novels, short stories, or blogging, doesn’t have to have a payoff. Call it lowered expectations if you want. Maybe you’re right.

But no matter what you call it, I’m gonna keep on rolling.

***

Adendum: A lot of these thought are sorta kinda inspired by Ignore Everybody by Hugh Macleod which I’ve been rereading lately. If you’re a “creative type” and you haven’t read this book, you really really should. That is all.

The Beach Scene

Today I’m going to tell you the story of a story. I guess the first thing you should probably know is that I’m kind of weird. I have what some people would called “an active imagination” and what other people would call “severe mental problems.”

The other thing you should know is that I work at Wal-Mart. For a long time, Wal-Mart used to sell cheap knock-off paintings for around thirty buck a pop. Most of these paintings were terrible, but other than that they were mostly okay other than that. But there was one that gave me the creeps every time I walked past it. It wormed its way into my soul and sent chill bumps up and down my spine.

The painting looked like this:

No, I’m not kidding. This isn’t the exact painting of course, but it’s close enough to give you an idea of what terrified me. Just two wooden beach chairs sitting on an empty stretch of sand, facing the sunset.

But there was something….wrong with the painting, something in the perspective maybe, or the way the wash of pastels piled up together, or….something.

And since I’m a writer I started to think, “Hey maybe there’s a story in this.”

I got out my notebook and wrote down the words, “The Beach Scene” and a brief thought about a man driven mad by a seemingly innocuous painting.

But the story needed something more, something deeper. It wasn’t good enough that the painting be haunted, I had read too many stories in that vein already. But I thought back to my childhood and a story I had read called “Von Goom’s Gambit” in which a man discovers a series of chess moves that, when observed by his opponents , drives them utterly insane.

And from these humble pieces I crafted a story that I call, “The Beach Scene.” Like the painting that inspired it, the title is hardly evocative of terror, but if you look closer you’ll find that there is something more there, something utterly unnerving. It is a tale of madness and murder that will suck you into itself and change the way you think about insanity.

If that sounds like your cup of tea then I invite your to check it out in the Amazon Kindle store for the piddling price of 99 cents.

And while your there, don’t forget to check out my other short story Derelict, which has just passed four thousand downloads, and is still available for free.

As always, I hope that you will enjoy both of these stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.

The Long Run

You know what I like? Money.

Really I do. I think it’s likely that some of you do too. But it’s hard to come out and say it sometimes isn’t it? Because we want people to believe that our motives are pure, untarnished by such a vulgar thing as money.

So we beat around the bush. We say things like, “Money isn’t everything in life,” and “I would rather be happy than rich,” and while there isn’t anything wrong with these statements I think in some small way they’re really our way of saying, “I’m not rich, and so I’m going to justify my relative poverty through moral superiority.”

But let me tell you, I get kinda sick of shopping the discount bread rack at the grocery store, or doing the math in my head to see if I can afford to fill my gas tank all the way up. I’m not telling you this because I want you to feel sorry for me. I have a house, two cars, two televisions (that I’m currently trying to convince my wife we should really get rid of) and I eat well enough that I’ve started back into exercising to shed those extra pounds. I’m not hurting.

But I wouldn’t say no to more.

Which is why, when someone commented on this blog yesterday, asking how many self-published authors made a profit, it got me to thinking and thinking hard. Because while I can honestly say I write because I love it, and would continue to do it whether I got paid or not, you had better believe that one day, I’d like to make some money with this writing thing.

Here’s what I think about the prospects of making money as a self-published author: it can be done, but it won’t be fast (or easy).

I’ve been reading Bob Mayer’s blog on and off recently, and one of the things he loves to hate on is the fact that Amazon’s sales tracker lets self-published authors check their numbers in real time. In his eyes, this is symptomatic of a get-rich-quick, show-me-the-money-now kind of mentality that plagues the majority of the self-published authors out there in the world.

And while I mentioned yesterday, that I myself check my sales numbers far too often for Mr. Mayer’s taste, I agree with the general assertion he’s making about the industry.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Self-publishing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. I’ve been following several authors who have released self published books recently, hard working people who I admire as writers and who seem to be doing everything right.

But the numbers just aren’t there. The general pattern is: sales start pretty well at first, but as the author reaches the outer limits of his internet audience, those sales start to drop off pretty quickly. Because let’s be real, the odds of some stranger finding your work at random amidst the piles and piles of other self-published books out there and buying it are way lower than we’d like to think about.

Bummer right? Well, yes and no. Like I said, this isn’t a short term game. These lackluster numbers are coming from authors still working to establish a presence in this crazy world of digital publishing.  And that takes time. Amanda Hocking, the personified holy grail of self-publishing, wrote seventeen books before she started self-publishing them. That’s a lot of hours spent in front of a screen leading up to what seemed like an “overnight success.”

So here’s my advice to you authors hoping to someday may a profit. Don’t think about next week or next month, or even next year. Think about where you’ll be a decade from now. Are you willing to stick with it for that long? Are you willing to keep writing, and keep putting your work out there even when it seems like it’s going nowhere?

Because that’s what it’s going to take. I’m not saying you’ll get rich like Amanda Hocking, but if you stick with it for the long haul and give it your all, I believe it is possible to make this writing thing profitable. That’s my plan anyway, and I’m sticking with it.

In the Land of the Free

Something weird happened this weekend. And I’m not talking about my being attacked by an alien Elvis impersonator in a Gorilla suit. I’ll tell you kids that story some other time.

What happened was this: I was checking the sales numbers for my books in the Kindle store. (I know Bob Mayer says that doing this too often means you’re taking your eyes off the long road, but it’s all so shiny and new right now it’s hard to keep myself from checking at least once a day. And that’s okay because I’m pretty sure I’ll grow out of it, just like I grew out of compulsively checking my blog stats every fifteen minutes.) Anyway, the last time I checked I had sold exactly five of my new scifi/horror short story “Derelict.” But when I checked my numbers on Saturday night that number had shot up to twelve hundred.

I froke out.

I chicken danced right across the ceiling I was so excited. Unfortunately my feet got caught in the fan blades, and I thumped back down to reality. “Wait a moment,” I said to myself. “Did not a wise man once tell me that if something seems to good to be true it probably is? And further was not this wise man my father, who’s noble office I am preparing to celebrate on the morrow? Perhaps this warrants further investigation.”

And what do you know, good old dad was right. Because when I checked my Amazon page I saw that my ebook, which had been listed at the bargain-basement price of ninety-nine cents, had been marked down into the sub-basement of freebies.

At first I was angry. Because hey, this was my story and they were just giving it away? Without my permission?

And then I remembered another wise thing my dad once said: “Always read the fine print.” So I did. And lo and behold, I found out that Amazon has every right to take your story and mark it down to whatever price they feel like.

Gradually my anger faded and was replaced with a heaping dose of pragmatism. I learned two things that night, things that my fellow authors would do well to keep in mind especially if they plan to ever go the indie/guerilla/self/gorilla-publishing route.

1. Amazon is large and in charge.

Seriously people, the Kindle is it right now. I’m sure some of you out there love your Nooks, and for what it’s worth I don’t own either, but from my side of the equation I can tell you that I’m selling way more ebooks through Amazon than anywhere else.

Which means that Amazon can basically afford to do whatever they want to do and you’ve just got to sit there and take it. Sure you can go out and whine and moan about how big they are and how its not fair, but none of that really matters. You’re in the game, and these are the rules. Maybe they aren’t “fair” but that doesn’t give you the excuse to stop playing to win.

2. Free stuff is the best publicity ever.

I want to reiterate something I said at the beginning of the post. Before, my story was in the hands of a total of five people. At this point it’s in the hands of nearly two-thousand.

Now sure, some of those people only downloaded the story because it was free. Maybe they won’t ever even get around to reading it. But now I have two five-star reviews on that story, where before I had none. And the odds are good that if people like my writing, some of them will check out my other ebooks. And having my story move so many copies so fast has done wonders for it’s ranking.

So yeah, maybe I’m just being a Pollyanna here but I see some huge potential upsides to all of this in the long run. And it is a long run. So I’m gonna pace myself, and keep doing my best. Because, honest success doesn’t come overnight.

P.S. You really should go and check out Derelict if you haven’t done so already. You’ve got no excuses now, and I really think you’ll like it. If you do like it, maybe you would be inclined to write a review?

On Self-Publishing

Last week I put my book A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw out for Kindle on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. Since it has been an entire week since my book’s debut and since a number of people who are not my mom bought the book, this means that basically I’m an expert now.

Okay, so maybe that’s stretching things a bit, but you’d be surprised how your perspective on things can change in a week. With that in mind, I’m going to give you the top (whatever number I get to before I run out of material) things I have learned from and about being self-published.

1. People Are Awesome

You think you’ve gotten a sense of this through blogging and tweeting and such, but trust me when I say that nothing you’ve experiences will match the outpouring of support from people who desperately want to help you sell your book. They may not actually buy it, but they’ll jump off a cliff for the chance to retweet your announcements.

This is part of what I love about the writing community. Everyone wants to see everyone succeed. There’s no jealously, no sense of snobbery. If one of our friends puts out a book that we like even a little bit we’re gonna promote the crap out of that thing baby.

So even though I’ve said this before, I’m saying it again. Thank you. To all of you.

2. Being Self-Published is Hard Work

I should clarify here. The actual state of being self published does not require any effort on your part at all. You’re surely welcome to toss your book out into the cold dark digital world and hope that it maybe can get somewhere on it’s own merits. But if you want to have anything like a realistic chance of success you’ve got to promote that puppy.

Over the past seven days I’ve been on a number of different social media platforms, some of which you’ve probably never heard of getting the word out to all my online acquaintances and asking them to help me spread the word. I did my first blog interview. And then there’s all the questions to answer: the “is it out for the Nook yet?” people, and the “I don’t have a Kindle will you send me a PDF?” people. (And for the record, yes I totally will, just shoot me your email, and we’ll make that happen.)

I hope this doesn’t sound like whining, because it’s really been a blast, but all this promotion does take extra time out of your day.

3. Interviews are Awesome

I did my first interview ever with Cynthia Stewart, which should be going up on her website sometime later today, and let me tell you something, that was fun. Maybe it’s just my oversize ego talking here, but I really got into answering her questions and talking about the things that have shaped me as a writer. I really hope I get to do more of these in the future.

4. Self-Publishing is Not a Get Rich Quick Scheme

When I was growing up one of the things my dad told me over and over was this: “There are no honest get rich quick schemes.” And self-publishing has proved to be no exception to that maxim.

In spite of the fact that I’ve had some modest sales, the bottom line is that it isn’t easy to get people to click that “Buy This Book” button. I know this because I’ve been on the other end of that transaction with my wallet in hand thinking, “Do I really want to spend my three dollars on this?” And a lot of times even though I may like the premise and the author’s writing style the answer is still no.

Overall, taking into account the money I spent on the cover, I’m still in the red with this thing. I hope to change that in the coming week or so, but the bottom line is that I’m not gonna be quitting my job tommorow or the day after that.

So yeah, that’s the rundown. Sorry to end on a down note there, but I hope that something I’ve said has been useful to those of you who hope to tread this path someday soon.

Also, if you haven’t bought my book yet, you totally should.

Peace out ya’ll.

π out of e Doctors Agree

If you’ve been trolling for writing advice for any length of time, you’ve no doubt heard of the butt-in-chair approach to writing productivity. If you haven’t heard basically the advice runs thusly:

First you need a butt. Any size will do. Many human bodies come preequipped with butts for this very purpose. Consult your owners manual to determine if you are one of them. If you do not possess a butt, then strap a pillow to the back of your legs. That will work almost as well.

Second. Sit your but down in a chair. Any chair will do, but perhaps your butt has a special chair that it likes to sit in. This is fine provided the relationship does not go too far. My butt has become particularly friendly with a big red recliner that used to belong to my father.

Third. You write. I’m not sure what you write on since neither of the previous two steps said anything about getting any writing materials. Maybe you’re supposed to scratch the words into your skin with your fingernails. Personally I use a computer type device designed to sit on top of my lap. If you do not have a lap you may have to sit at a table or something.

So that’s the process. Basically it’s saying forget about inspiration and dive into your work. Those words ain’t gonna write themselves. I mean they might but that last time that happened…well I think it’s best not to talk about that.

COMPLETELY RANDOM PICTURE!!!

But you know what? Sometimes I kinda hate this process. I’m not talking about the persevering even though you don’t feel like writing part. I’m talking about the sitting down part.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can only take so many sedentary hours before I start to come down with the dreaded disease I like to call the Sittin’ Around Blues. The Sittin’ Around Blues start in your lower back and move up your spine toward your head. Once they reach the head you’ll start to feel morose and lackadaisical. And if you let them go on for long enough, depression sets in.

So what do you do?

Well when I start to feel the Sittin’ Around Blues creep up on me I get up and take a health dose of Doing Something Else for a Change. Doing Something Else for a Change comes in a variety of handy shapes and sizes. There’s the Get Up and Clean the House for an Hour pill, and the Take the Dog for a Walk lozenge, as well as the Go Outside and Pull Some Weeds in the Garden suppository.

“But Albert,” you say, “what if Doing Something Else for a Change causes my ideas to evaporate into the aether?”

Never fret dear reader, for the side effects for Doing Something Else for a Change, include increased creativity, greater energy and enhanced inspiration, so that when you come back to your story it will seem new and interesting again.

But don’t take my work for it. If the Butt in Chair method is giving you the Sittin’ Around Blues, then try Doing Something Else for a Change and see if it doesn’t work for you.

[This blog post sponsored by Action Corp. the makers of Do Something Else for a Change as well as many other fine products. Do Something Else for a Change is sold in fine stores everywhere. Also crappy stores in some places. They’re really not that selective about who sells it.]

****

A Prairie Home Apocalypse or What the Dog saw is still on sale for Kindle and is available for other devices from Smashwords (I suppose I should specify that it is available for other ereader devices. It is not yet available for your vaccuum. We’re still working on the formatting there.) And for those of you Nook people out there who have been hounding me about this, I swear its coming soon. Also the book has gotten some lovely reviews over at Amazon, and I want to thank those of you who took the time out of your day to say nice things about the book. You all mean the world to me.

A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw

So apparently…good things come to those who wait. And wait.

And.

Wait.

Good things also come to those who hit the refresh button over and over and freak out until they make themselves sick. I’ll let you guess which one I am.

Yes, that’s right A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw just went live on Amazon.

It’s possible that you may be wondering: “Is this book really for me?” If you are I have compiled a helpful reference for your edification. The following is a list of the types of people who may find my book interesting.

1. People who like dogs

Come on folks, give it up for man’s best friend. Not only are they kind and loyal, but they don’t look down on you like those uppity cat things.

Seriously. How can you say no to that?

2. People who like zombies

You know the ones. The walking dead, those lovable reanimated rotting corpses that just want to have a little nibble of your brains. They waltzed their way into the popular imagination with George A. Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead, and we haven’t looked back since (except of course to make sure none of them were following us home).

3. People who don’t like dogs

Because um…maybe things might not go very well for our lovable fury protagonist?

4. People who like me

Maybe you can’t stand zombies. Maybe just thinking about dogs makes you itch. Maybe you don’t want to read a groundbreaking work of literary fiction that reimagines the zombie horror genre in a different light. Maybe you just want to an awesome dude how much you like him. Or you can just show me, and I’ll make sure some sufficiently awesome dude hears about it later.

If you fall into any of these categories then I’d suggest that you check out my book. At this very moment it is available for Kindle only, but I’m working diligently to get it up on Smashwords for those of you who happen to have something other than a Kindle (I’m one of these people so I feel your pain).

Also, if you happen to like the book, please help me spread the word. Tell a friend, tweet about it, “Like” it on Facebook. If you do the blog thing, then I’d love to do an interview. Community is the only advertising strategy I can afford. But I’m betting it’s the best there is.

And again, to all of you who have already been so supportive of me and my project…thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Hiccups

So remember that book thingy that was supposed to go out today?

Who knew that Amazon takes up to 24 hours to process a new book published to the Kindle Direct Bookstore?

Apparently not this guy, that’s who.

Let this be a lesson to you. STAY FLEXIBLE.

I’m actually looking at this work as a bit of a test run for some stuff I plan to release later in the year, so I’m learning as I go.

If the 24 hour estimate is accurate the book will be live in the Amazon Kindle store at around ten o’clock tonight central time.

And to all of the people who have showed such support for this book, I want to send out both a huge Thank You and an enormous I’m Sorry. We will work through the kinks and get this thing out there.

Thank you for your patience.

Bizzaro Book Review: Persistent Illusions by Joseph Devon

I remember when I was a kid, I would go to the library and max out their borrowing limit. I would come home with a big bundle of books and read and read and read. Back then books sucked me in and didn’t let me go. Books like Aliens Ate My Homework, the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Frank Baum’s Oz books, I devoured them all in big starving gulps, rushing from one page to the next.

I haven’t been there with a book in a while. But Joseph Devon’s book Persistent Illusions took me right back to that to that place where the story took over my mind and wouldn’t let go.

I should start by telling you that Persistent Illusions is a sequel to another book called Probability Angels that I reviewed several months back. Probability Angels and Persistent Illusions take place in the world of the Testers, a group of human souls who have been chosen to stay on the earth and “push” living humans to live beyond their potential.

That’s the setup in the nutshell. But truly there’s more…so much more. The world of the testers is utterly fascinating to me. It is a place where mathematical equations can be conceptualized into objects like cameras and cell phones, a world where top of Mount Everest is covered with the sleeping souls of Testers, and oh yeah…I almost forgot, there’s zombies too. Sort of.

Beyond the magic of the world itself, Persistent Illusions shines out as a sequel. Many series of books I’ve read adhere to the mantra that “status quo is god” meaning that characters are largely the same from one book to another aside from a few superficial changes. Not so with Persistent Illusions.

The near-godlike Epp from the first book has been reduced to a brooding waste of a man, obsessed with what he once was and can no longer be. Conversely Kyo, the totally awesome Japanese Samurai deals with similar changes in a much more positive way. In a smaller sense, Matthew, Mary, and even the villain Hector have all obviously been moved and changed to some degree by the events of the first book. This kind of change in character give the book a striking feeling of authenticity. In the face of adversity the perfect is revealed to be imperfect, and the imperfect is strengthened, just as it is in real life.

I couldn’t write an honest review if I didn’t tell you that this is not a perfect book. I had a few issues with the opening section where the author used a kind of sliding perspective to introduce the major characters all at once without breaking scene, a sort of literary equivalent to opening a movie with a long steadycam shot. Theoretically I quite like the idea, but in practice I found it to be somewhat confusing each time the focus shifted to another character without warning. There are also a number of places where I felt that fairly clear dialogue was overexplained.

But it’s worth noting that these hiccups didn’t slow me down at all. Somewhere in the back of my mind Ethelberth the inner editor was whining, but I was too busy enjoying myself to notice much.

Bottom line? You need to buy this book. First, because it’s awesome and fun, and it sucked me in like no other book has in a while. But second, and possibly more importantly to my mind, you should buy this book because it stands for everything I love about indie publishing. It’s a fantastic story that doesn’t fit into any of the tiny little holes the publishing industry has created and called “genres”. To me, Joseph Devon is the apotheosis of the indepented author, a man with nothing more than his wits and a website, trying to prove that there is nothing more important to a book’s success than a great story.

I hope that you’ll join me in helping to prove him right.

Persistent Illusions is available for Kindle and as a physical book from Amazon.com. Other formats can be purchased from Smashwords. And if you truly can’t afford to buy it from those places (believe me I’ve been there) both Probability Angels and Persistent Illusions are available for free download from Joseph Devon’s website at josephdevon.com.

Seriously people, you’ve got no excuse not to check this out.