Short Lived Triumphs

As soon as the short story went off of the free promotion, interest seems to have vanished. It was quite fun while it lasted though.

Anyway, I have been making great progress lately with the sequel to CSS Appomattox. I should be able to have the first draft completed by month's end.

The Home - First few days

I put the short story on a free deal almost as soon as it went up. The results have been pretty good. I only advertised on my Twitter account and here on the blog. The results have been great.

I went on-line this morning and here is where it was sitting:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,512 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > 45 minutes (22-32 pages) > Science Fiction & Fantasy
#23 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > 45 minutes (22-32 pages) > Literature & Fiction

The book reached the top 4,000 of all free books in the Kindle store and reached #2 in one of the categories. This may be a fluke but I have to say that I am quite pleased.

If you have had a chance to read it, please let me know what you think. I would love to hear back from you. Should I write more of these, stick with the longer novels or do something else?

Thanks.

The Home: A Zombie Survival Short Story Published

Well I went ahead and hit submit on the short story. It went live at 4am this morning. I got some early feedback and ran it through both Hemingway and Ginger editors. I fooled around with a cover and came up with something that I liked.

Anyway, I am running a free book promotion on it tomorrow. I don't want to charge the default $0.99 for it since it is a 7k word short story, but I can't figure out how to convince Amazon to lower the price under Kindle Select.

Also, I have finished all of the edits for CSS Appomattox. The 2.0 version is now up on Kindle as of yesterday. Very happy with the edits that Allison did. She did a great job. Hopefully, if you have the previous version(s), the 2.0 update will be pushed out by Amazon.

Anyway, happy reading.

You Ever Get Distracted?

July was a very productive month for my second novel. I am 3/4th of the way done with the final draft (22,482 words added for July). I was making great progress, then an idea grabbed me.

In Camp Nanowrimo, I was going through some personal issues. My mother had to be moved to a memory care facility as she was no longer able to care for herself. Through the support of friends and family, it has been much easier than I thought possible. As it is written, "A merry heart does good like a medicine," humor came out of the pain.

One of my friends writes zombie stories. In our discussion an idea for a story came out. It hit a point this week where I could not work on anything else. I stopped everything and the story started to come out. In a burst of effort, a 7,000 word short story came out of a five minute conversation.

Now, the question is, what do I do with it?

CSS Appomattox Sale

Well since I have now Broken 1000 total sales on Amazon, I have decided to run a Kindle Countdown deal from July 26th to August 2nd. I have not figured out how to do this for the other Amazon stores yet. Sorry about that. The countdown deal will take the price down to $0.99 at first then gradually go up to the regular price.

I have done some updates to the book including having the first 16 chapters edited. Still need to get the rest done but my editor is still working on those. I have cleaned up the scene changes to make them clearer. And fixed numerous spelling errors and some continuity problems that readers have pointed out.

But what about the sequel? Well that is actually coming along quite well. At this point, I am some 41,000 words into the project. I suspect that the final work will weigh in at 80 to 85,000 words when it is all said and done. I am feeling confident that by the end of August I will be looking for some Beta Readers.

Still, what are your thoughts? Is the title 'Last Airship from Khartoum' a workable title?

Summer Camp: Camp Nanowrimo

Its July. When I was a child, that meant summer camp. I spent at least 5 or more weeks at different camps every summer. As an adult, I volunteer at a summer camp every year as the Rec Director. It is great fun but its not quite the same thing.

A friend of mine, Phil, sent me an invitation to Camp Nanowrimo. Its an interesting writing challenge. It is to help you get more done on your current projects. I have to say, it is paying off. I have doubled the work that I have done on the sequel to CSS Appomattox. Honestly, it has been fun. The other folks in my cabin have been encouraging and I have made more progress this month than the six months previous.

Anyway, go to camp, have some summer fun.

Need Help with a Title

I am working on the Sequel to the CSS Appomattox. Here is the basic premise of the book.

In this book, Thomas Devareaux is now an airship squadron commander and in direct command of the CSS Greenville. He has been assigned on a goodwill mission to support the British in North Africa.

It just so happens that there is trouble brewing in North Africa among the locals. Devareaux must deal with the British Colonial office who don't want him, crewmen who are rebelling, the Dervish armies of the Mahdi and a mysterious stranger from a hostile European power.

It is set shortly before the fall of Khartoum in 1885 and the subsequent death of General Gordon. I am having difficulty coming up with a working title. What I have so far is "Last Airship from Khartoum: A Thomas Devareaux Alternative History Military Adventure."

The last part is the subtitle which is purely there to contain keywords to drive Amazon search traffic. I think it is cheesy but unfortunately it actually works. So the terrible subtitle will probably stay. But what about "Last Airship from Khartoum?" Does that work?