Table of Contents Announced for New Heroes Anthology

Hey everyone,

I’m really excited! The New Hero anthology Table of Contents has been announced and I’m in it!. You may recall me posting about my short story and Stone Skin Press a while back where I talked about “Fangs and Formaldehyde,” about an iconic vampire. One of the inspirations for this particular story was Twilight. No seriously, it really was. To me, many modern-day vampires have had their fangs removed. Even though they prey on humans to survive and have traditionally been monstrous creatures, they’ve been de-fanged for romantic plot purposes. Mind you, I have absolutely no problem with romance authors or readers. Romance is a popular genre and it does have its place in our wide, wide world of fiction. These authors work just as hard as anyone else does to tell a good story.

When I was working on my story, I wanted my modern vampires needed to have a legitimate reason why they weren’t monstrous creatures that wasn’t just: “Because otherwise people will hunt us.” This was a lot of fun to worldbuild because it was a challenge. Was I able to do something unique? Well, you can be the judge of that.

Standing alongside me are several other fine authors including Rich Dansky, Kyla Ward. Ed Greenwood and my friend Maurice Broaddus. After you check it out, be sure to read Diagramming the New Hero where the editor, Robin Laws, explains how he put the order together.

Table of Contents for New Heroes

    Ezekiel Saw the Wheel, Julia Bond Ellingboe

    Better Off Not Knowing, Jeff Tidball

    Warrior of the Sunrise, Maurice Broaddus

    The Midnight Knight, Ed Greenwood

    The Thirty-Ninth Labor of Reb Palache, Richard Dansky

    On Her Majesty’s Deep Space Service, Jonny Nexus

    Cursebreaker: The Jikininki and the Japanese Jurist, Kyla Ward

    Against the Air Pirates, Graeme Davis

    Fangs and Formaldehyde, Monica Valentinelli

    Bad Beat for Aaron Burr, Kenneth Hite

    Charcuterie, Chuck Wendig

    Sundown in Sorrow’s Hollow, Monte Cook

    A Man of Vice, Peter Freeman

    The Captain, Adam Marek

I hope you visit Stone Skin Press or watch my blog for more updates. This’ll be a fun anthology to read.

February 23, 2011
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Got a Brain? Pre-Order The Zombie Feed Vol 1

The Zombie Feed Volume 1Earlier I posted the Table of Contents for The Zombie Feed, Volume 1. My short story is entitled “Tomorrow’s Precious Lambs.”

If you follow my work, this particular short story will be unusual for you to read because it’s a lot darker and grittier than my other stories. When I was figuring out an angle for this tale, I built a world where the zombie invasion wasn’t completely devastating. Then, I gave my zombies some unique attributes that supported the main character’s story. Told from a cop’s perspective, you’ll find out why he lives day to day, hanging on to whatever hope he can find.

I hope you consider picking up a copy of The Zombie Feed Vol. 1. Not only will you find out why my story is entitled “Tomorrow’s Precious Lambs,” but you’ll also read other sinister tales by acclaimed authors including Lucien Soulban and B.J. Burrow.

To get your hands on a copy just click on the book cover or pre-order The Zombie Feed Vol. 1 and feed your head! The editor will be signing your copy; several of these writers, including myself, will be happy to sign our stories as well.

February 22, 2011
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Will Hindmarch, an Author’s Hidden Enemy and the Solution

If you’re an author, you know that there’s a lot of things we have to deal with that fall outside of our craft. One of those things is our hidden enemy: bitterness.

The BonesYesterday, I was replying to Will Hindmarch on Twitter about the topic. If you don’t know Will, he worked for White Wolf as the developer for Vampire: the Requiem. In fact, it was his design of Scenes of Frenzy that served as the template for my newly-released Scenes of the Embrace.

Besides being a talented developer, he’s also an author, a graphic designer and one of the owners of GamePlayWright. Will and I worked together on The Bones which is pictured at left; his style of editing taught me an important lesson. Track your research thoroughly whenever possible, just in case a need for citation comes up, even if it’s for a specific word. Otherwise, you’ll be scratching your head. A lot.

Anyway, now you know who Will Hindmarch is. So back to the quote at hand. Here’s what I said to him.

A writer’s worst enemy is being consumed from bitterness not by what we haven’t done, but what someone else has.

Can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into this. The first experience I had with interacting with other authors online was on a message board. Can’t remember the author’s name, but I do remember his piss poor attitude. At the time, he published a series of books over twenty years ago. Hadn’t published anything since. He was so negative and pervasive in his attitude toward other people, telling them they would never be successful. The guy had more experience than we did, yet he was focused on telling us what we didn’t have and why we’d never make, because he never did.

Mind you, I’ve learned there will always be someone more experienced than you and more successful than you are. The reverse is also true. I’ve had people tell me I’m not a real author because I haven’t been published by one of the big guys; I’ve also had authors say they wish they had my background.

Hand of PublishingSo what do you do when you feel bitterness seeping into your bones? You write more, dammit. No seriously. You drop what you’re doing and you work your ass off. You’re never going to get anywhere unless you put your fingers on your keyboard and write another story. Then you submit it. Then you work on the next one. And so on.

That’s it, people. ‘Cause there is no hand of publishing that will magically reach out of the sky and deem you worthy. If one story isn’t successful, you gotta suck it up and work on another one. In this business, success is relative and it’s not a guarantee. Am I saying that to sound negative? Nope. That’s the reality of publishing.

If you’re still stuck, read The Cult of Done Manifesto and then…

Get your butt back to work!!!

February 8, 2011
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Why “Hits” Don’t Matter. More on my Guest Post at Howtowriteshop.com

Web analytics is a lot of fun for me. I really enjoy digging in and helping people either set up the programs or digging in and finding answers to basic questions. Some systems are easier to understand than others; Omniture is by far the most complex I’ve ever worked on. Google Analytics, although it’s changed quite a bit over the years, has some great customizable features. For example, you can set up a query parameter for your in-site search to see what people are looking for when they come to your site. If you own a business, that’s a pretty powerful tool that will allow you to see what people want to buy or look for. For more information about that, read How do I set up Site Search in Google Analytics?.

Like all things, web analytics can be very frustrating, too. This is especially true if the web analytics package is not set up properly. With some packages, there’s a lot that can go wrong before your data hits the dashboard. Sometimes, there could be nothing wrong with your traffic, even though the data shows something very different.

To avoid unnecessary confusion, I often encourage people not to look at “hits” as a standalone metric. For more on the topic, I wrote about “hits” for the How To Write Shop.

I cannot tell you how many people I’ve talked to who focus solely on “hits” to their website. The challenge with looking at “hits,” is that a single hit can mean a lot of different things. Are they page views? If so, do they include non-human occurrences like search engine bots or spammers? If they’re visits, how are they being measured?

Some packages allow the end user to customize what a visit means. So, a “hit” on your site may not mean the same thing as a “hit” on someone else’s. –SOURCE: Web Analytics 101. Or Why “Hits” Don’t Matter at HowToWriteShop.com

In this post, I talk about how important it is to figure out what questions you want to answer and why it’s a good idea to look at trends rather than individual metrics. I also offer some sample questions, too.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy my article! Read Web Analytics 101. Or Why Hits Don’t Matter at the How To Write Shop.

February 2, 2011
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[My Guest Post] Are You Owning, Renting or Leasing Your Writing?

This month at the How To Write Shop I was inspired to talk about content ownership. As in: your content ownership.

Although the internet is filled with tools to publish and produce stories, blog posts, images, etc. not every tool is creator-friendly. In this case, I’m not talking about copyright. Instead, I’m talking about something much, much more frightening. Many places that you post your words online–including Facebook–spell out the fact that you do not own your own content. What’s worse, in some cases you rescind your rights even after you delete your content.

Why does this matter? Writers, artists, photographers, illustrators, musicians, etc. make a living not only by the creation of original content, but by its distribution. For people like us, our words are valuable because it’s what we get paid to do. In other words–your content is your greatest treasure. –SOURCE: Do You Own, Rent or Lease Your Content?

In the article, I also offer five tips on how you can ensure that your content is exactly where you want it to be. To read them, visit Do You Own, Rent or Lease Your Content? at the How to Write Shop.

January 14, 2011
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