Stuff

 We've been busy lately. Carole retired from her job and is only working part time (she'll take full retirement in less than two years). We continue to visit state, national, county, and forest parks with our travel trailer serving as our base of operations. We're planning two big trips to round out the year, but have found we have to make a list and never get our first choice of destination due to campgrounds being full. From what we read the reason for full campgrounds everywhere is because people went stir crazy during the lockdown and vast numbers of those people have purchased tents and travel trailers and are hitting the roads to travel in record numbers. I believe it.

For years we've talked about taking the Casita trailer to Pennsylvania. That's where we'll likely end up going next. And we want to take a decent Autumn vacation somewhere to view the Fall colors, which we tend to do around Halloween every year. We'd like to continue that tradition as long as we can find a place where we can park the trailer for a few days. We'll likely avoid the Great Smoky Mountains National Park considering the nightmarish traffic we encountered there in 2019.

On the personal front I went to see an insurance planner referred to us by my wife's financial adviser. I switch to Medicare in twelve months and needed advice on supplemental plans to cover the things Medicare does not. She helped me pencil in the basic path I'll follow in one more year. (Nine months, actually, since you receive your Medicare card three months prior to your birthday and have to act at that time.) I remain pretty healthy for a man of 64 and want to stay strong enough to hike, kayak, and backpack for at least another decade. We'll see. I've already lived longer than my dad did, so there's that.

My second WORKING CLASS HERO novel inches closer to completion and the third book is completely plotted. After that I have a new writing project on which I have been tinkering for years. It's something that I very much want to see finished and which I wish to be able to market to a traditional press. Going the traditional route is getting to be tougher--it's almost as bad as trying to crack the professional circle-jerk comic book industry of the 1980s. I wonder if there will even be an independent traditional publishing industry in a few more years, or if we'll see Amazon as a privately held publishing monopoly.

Well, on that happy note I'll take off till next time. We have a kayak trip down the New River planned for this coming week. That's always a pleasure. The extended weather forecast looks promising.

This video is from a family trip we took last week to Damascus, VA to bike the Virginia Creeper Trail. Andy had never done that so we all headed up early last Saturday to rent bike and take the shuttle van to Whitetop Station for the ride down the mountain back to Damascus. We had a blast! However, this video is only of Beaverdam Creek at the nearby Backbone Rock Recreation Area which we visited after the bike ride. My old video editing software won't work on the new desktop computer I bought this week, so I have to use a new program. This video of the creek is my first experiment with that software.

 

Working Class Writer.

I'm getting closer to completing the second of the Working Class Hero superhero novels. I was well into the book when the previous publisher refused to promote the first one and wouldn't commit to the second book. I also, at the time, couldn't get him to relinquish the rights to the first book so I essentially stopped working on the sequel. Then, unexpectedly last year, the publisher returned to me the rights to all of my books and I could proceed.

My  Working Class Hero novel has been selling consistently well for several months. Learning how to advertise on my own has been a learning process, but I've gotten the hang of it.

When the publishing rights were returned to me, I reworked the second book and moved it in an altered direction from where it had been headed. I'm getting a kick out of creating new characters, and adding additional backstory to many of the heroes, villains, and assorted folk from the first novel. My idea all along for Billy B and his cohorts was to emulate the periodical comics of the Silver Age. I want to deliver continuing tales, sometimes with cliffhangers, sometimes wrapping the narrative neatly with a satisfying conclusion.

I've set myself a deadline for BILLY B VERSUS THE TROUBLE BOYS (WORKING CLASS HERO #2), and hope to announce a publication date in the near future. The third book (tentatively titled WORKING CLASS HERO: A BAKER'S DOZEN) is already plotted and outlined. I hope to get both books published in 2021.

 

WORKING CLASS HERO: The Autobiography of a Superhuman.

Interview, and a sneak preview.

Recently the nice folk at the very excellent House of Mystery Radio interviewed me. The interview is still up and can be streamed online HERE.

I'm hoping to have the second WORKING CLASS HERO ready for publication very soon. In just a few weeks (knock on adamantium). So I'm posting a sneak preview here. The working title for it is: BILLY B VERSUS THE TROUBLE BOYS. As with the first book, I'm having a blast writing it. Superhero comics plus pulp fiction...a match made in Heaven.

BILLY B VERSUS THE TROUBLE BOYS (sneak preview)

By James Robert Smith

It was roughly ten in the morning. The sun was out. The air was cold and a wind was blowing. That wind was especially rough where I was standing on the roof of the Drake Building in midtown, thirty stories above the street. I had managed to scramble to the top without entering the building at all, having made my way from a seventh-floor parking deck to a section of wall that was uniquely suited for a man with super-strength to make his way up, floor by floor, leaping like an impossible red ape along the rough concrete exterior.

I’m sure some people must have seen me, but if they had I was such a boring sight these days that no one had appeared on the roof to bother me or to ask for an autograph or to take my photo or to ask me not to freaking do that anymore.

And so, of course, idling away the minutes and just standing up there watching the flow of traffic below, I was actually surprised enough to flinch when my best hyper-friend Shylock Holmes spoke up from behind me.

Have I mentioned that he has perhaps the most gratingly annoying voice known to humankind? Well, he does. It’s like a staccato assault of gravel fired from a machine gun directly into the ear canal. Keep in mind that I hear about fifty times better than the most gifted of people.

“Figured I’d find you on a mountaintop,” he said, voice like a teenaged girl’s fingernails across dry slate.

“Goddamn it, Shylock,” I said, turning to face him. I stuck a gloved finger roughly where my ear would be if I hadn’t been wearing that helmet with its space-age amazing perforated fabric allowing egress to all sounds, especially his monstrous voice.

Whenever he did that I always expected him to apologize, but he never did. I think he likes doing it; scaring arguably the toughest hyper between Atlanta and the Big Apple. But, old Shylock didn’t decide to gift me or surprise me with the apology then, either.

He was baiting me, so I waited before asking him why he’d appeared once more in such a way as to get the maximum rise out of my hyped-up sneakers. A few seconds passed. The wind blew. I wondered if I’d grab a sandwich later. I blinked.

“Okay. You must have some nugget of wisdom to impart, or else you wouldn’t have come up here to startle me.”

He drew in an audible gasp of pure sarcasm. “Oh! Did I startle you? Heavens! It was not my intention.”

For a guy with borderline Asperger’s Syndrome, he had a pretty good grasp of cynicism and humor. I waved him off.

I knew he was smiling beneath that ridiculous mask of his. “I just figured you’d like to know that they’re bringing in some new talent,” he said.

We had all wondered about that. We figured that they would. Gila had been killed. Amber Ember was in Denver gestating a baby courtesy of me in an episode of bad judgment by way of (apparently) an honest-to-Jovian god’s asshole assistant. Flitter had pretty much filled the empty peg left by Amber, but the folk who paid us would also want us to have someone to serve in place of poor, departed Gila.

“So…what are you hearing?” I asked him. The thing about having Shylock for a pal was that there wasn’t much that got past him. Because of the nature of his hyper abilities, he was a pure conduit for the answers to mysteries that hadn’t crossed our minds yet. And if someone was hiding something, they’d better hide it pretty damned well or he would show up with the solution in his pocket.

“What I’m hearing is Fido and Timmy,” he said.

“Fuck me,” I replied.

“Well, when you figure…we had a guy like Gila…they’re going to give us something similar.” He began to sing that old Sesame Street tune. “One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn’t…”

“Enough!” I held my left hand palm out. He thankfully shut the fuck up.

“Look at this way, Billy. Gila was a nine-foot tall beaded reptile in roughly human form who had to be kept inside most of the time because he was just too damned scary-looking for the hoi-polloi. The Agency has a number of hyper-folk around who are similar to our old pal, and they need a place to store them.

“We had one that we were taking care of for them. And now we don’t have one. So…” He left it hanging.

“We get two for the price of one.”  I sighed in resignation. Because I was the one who would have to deal with them whenever there was some action. Also, I had always been the man to talk with Gila, to do my best to make him feel better about his situation. Because they need a man with Level Seven strength, speed, and durability to serve as a sounding board for a half-ton lizard with armored skin who can lift an Abrams tank and toss it across a parking lot. I was their lion tamer.

“Fido and Timmy are…different,” Holmes said.

I looked down at him. He was now sitting on the edge of the cover to an air vent. It was pretty much the right height to be a chair for him. “I met them once. About two and a half years back. Right before you came to head the team here,” he reminded me. “They work so closely together that it’s hard to figure out where one of them stops and the other starts.”

“I don’t dig you,” I admitted. I shifted and little rocks crunched under my feet. A 737 roared overhead on its way out of Douglas International toward some point west.

“Well, there’s a mental connection going on with them. I mean…one of them is like a bull mastiff that stands ten feet at the shoulder, and the other one is a little kid who looks like a real-life version of Dennis the Menace.” He paused. “He even has a slingshot in his back pocket. Did you know that?”

I shook my head from side to side.

“I saw him use it once. Knocked that chick…” he snapped his fingers a few times, reaching for a name. “Bella Bella, that was her. He cocked back with that crazy slingshot and bounced a rock off her skull at fifty meters. Knocked her out. Cold. Game over.” He was grinning under that plastic mask.

“Okay. What was your original train of thought?”

“The kid. Timmy. Overalls. Sneakers. Slingshot. Blonde hair. Freckles. Ten years old, maybe.”

I motioned with my hands, drawing for more information and a little faster, please.

“Those two are bound, Billy. I mean, they are so tight that I can’t really read either of them. I probe at their minds and they’re almost merged completely. Not exactly. One of them is thinking and making plans and formulating tactics. And the other one is mainly just some basic emotions and wants and desires without much in the way of complications.” He seemed to be finished.

“Okay. One’s a giant dog and one’s a kid. So?”

“So I can’t read either of them the way that I should because they’re telepathically communicating with one another so well that I can’t really get inside. I’m stuck talking to the kid the way I would if I were anyone else.” Meaning, of course, if he couldn’t read minds and influence enemies where those two were concerned.

“I’ve never met them,” I said. “But I’ve watched video. Fido is just fucking scary. Looks like he could bite through concrete.”

“He can.”

I nodded, believing. “And the kid…Timmy. It’s like you said. He looks like Hank Ketcham drew him or something.”

“He never ages, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. He’s been around now…what? Twelve years? He was a ten-year-old kid when they found him, and he’s still ten years old.” I shivered.

“They’re not sure Fido ages, either,” Shylock said. “He carries a few scars, but pretty much seems the same elephant-sized canine who walked up being led on a rope leash in Timmy’s hand over a decade back. “He gets testy when they get too close to him with probes and needles,” Shylock added. “So they’ve been willing to let him ride.”

There had been other animals that had been victim to AOHD. Of course with animals they called it Adult Onset Mammalian Hyper-Development Disorder. They settled on AOMD for the sake of simplicity, having chosen not to want to add too many letters to the anagram. But there had been only a few examples of it and most of those creatures had either been captured and penned up, or had died quickly because they burned themselves out, or had been killed by The Agency or the military.

“The AOMD…do you think it effects anything besides mammals?” I was curious what my all-seeing friend thought. “You ever see anything that made you wonder?”

“Billy…since the first of us appeared some time back, the whole world wonders. I know you think I’m an extra smart guy, but I’m here to let you know that I’m not as sharp as all that in matters animal, vegetable, and mineral. Yeah, I know some basic chemistry and can crunch numbers better than some, and you know I love history. But genetics….who the hell knows? We have seen some strange shit.”

“Yeah…look at poor old Gila. He was about one quarter human and three fourths reptile.”

“And Gorilla Jack,” Shylock reminded me. “You went toe to toe with that guy. Looks more ape than human. And yet…human he is.” He slapped his hands on his knees and stood, his deerstalker cape rolling with the motion. “You never know. It gave us some false human/animal hybrids, and a mutated dog. Maybe there are hyper-birds up there.” He pointed into the clear, cold, February sky. I looked up. “And the ocean is a mighty deep place, too. It may be that there’s stuff swimming around in it that has been affected. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“So. Tell me,” I said. “When are our two new playmates supposed to arrive?”

Down on the streets far below, something was going on. I could hear horns blaring and even from almost thirty stories the voices were coming to us loud and clear as men yelled and women screamed.

“Right about now, I’d say,” Shylock told me. By then my back was to him and I was standing on the edge of the roof looking down.

The street was now home to a monstrous dog roughly the size of an Indian elephant who was strolling down the right hand sidewalk and clearing a path through the intimidation of sheer, hairy mass. In front of the beast, holding a length of what I knew was a flimsy hemp rope was a kid, maybe ten years old, maybe seventy pounds, leading that monster canine. Some people were cowering aside, cars were honking their horns, other people were running from the scene, and, I knew, a lot of Charlotte folk were soiling themselves.

“Time for me to do my thing and maintain order,” I told Shylock as I turned to address him.

But of course the asshole was gone.

 

Until the new volume is published, you can get your WORKING CLASS HERO fix at Amazon. Available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook. Just click HERE.

WORKING CLASS HERO: The Autobiography of a Superhman.

Messages Both Intended and Subconscious.

I was thinking of my writing output recently and what it's about. I recall a couple of writers I spoke to over the years mentioning that even if you don't actively want to engage in delivering a message, you still often do. That is, even if what you intend is to deliver pure pulp fiction, or just an entertaining yarn with no undercurrent of philosophical or political content, your subconscious dictates that you will do exactly the opposite.

What struck me in thinking specifically of my novels and stories was of how many of them deal with racism. Sometimes with intent, but often just a product of ideas percolating out of the subconscious and ending up on the pages.

The only time I actively wrote a book with an intentional undercurrent of commentary on racism in the USA is my book THE EMISSARY. I wanted to write about the subject in a way that I could treat with it over the course of a story in a horror novel. What I wanted to do was actively write a book with an overt delivery of the problem of racism in the US.

But many of my other books have dealt with some aspect of racism, which I think is far and away the most awful part of our national history. It's always there, and won't go away, existing persistently decade after decade since the times before our nation even existed.

Years ago I was writing zombie novels. And while on the Internet to promote one of those novels I went from bulletin board to bulletin board to make connections and see how I should go about promoting my books there. What I thought I would find I did not, and what I did discover horrified me. Pretty much every public bulletin board devoted to zombie fiction onto which I logged was weighted heavily with racists, many of them neo-Nazis. These guys would post links and you'd find yourself looking at boards promoting hatred and white-race "superiority". I saw vile imagery and threats of violence and extermination spelled out in plain terms.

Frankly, after that, I didn't want to write anymore zombie novels and decided not to engage in promotions of my work on any of those boards. When one of my publishers asked me to write them another one I at first refused. But then I recalled a short story that I'd written that had later been produced as a comic story. The idea of turning it into a novel had occurred to me for years but I had never followed through. I agreed to an advance and set about writing it.

Thus was born the expansion into novel of my short story THE NEW ECOLOGY DEATH. I thought about what I wanted to do with it. I never once mentioned racism or anything directly related to it. I set about burying any mention of anything attached to the subject in an atmosphere both cold and hopeful, and also cautionary.

But two things that I actively did was make all of the principle characters Jews. And I took guns and gun-play totally out of the picture so that I would rob the reader of what I have come to think of as gun-porn. There is the reference to distant gunfire once in the book, and an actual scene with a firearm is played out near the very end with unintended consequences. I specifically set out to create a zombie novel with almost none of the plot elements that most racists lust for in their zombie novels. I made it so that the tables are turned and the setting is one in which zombies are all but defeated and are only a marginal and fading threat. The main characters are a Jewish family. There are almost no guns, and none of the jargon that gives gun-loving racists a specific thrill (which I am convinced is sexual).

It was the worst-selling book I ever wrote. I don't know how many copies it sold, but not many. It never came anywhere near to earning back its advance. The only feedback I ever got on it was from a couple of racists raging about how there were no guns in the book.

Someday I'd like to get it back into print. Of all of the books I've written, I can think of nothing in it that I'd want to rewrite. It was pretty much everything I wanted it to be and which I set out to do. So getting it back into print would be easy on a technical basis (no rewrites). I'd just need to figure out how to get it into the hands of the right audience.

We'll see.

THE EMISSARY. A horror novel wherein racial and sexual hatred manifests itself as lycanthropy.

DEADLOCKED, a novel with major elements of race, philosophy, struggle, and hope.

My out-of-print THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH. Returning to print one of these days. Maybe this year. (But maybe not.)

Advertising.

I talk with a lot of other writers. We always ask one another about advertising and various methods of promotion. Some of the authors I converse with over this topic claim that they do well with advertising on Amazon.com. It makes some amount of logic, as Amazon is very close to becoming a publishing monopoly. They do seem to control access to the marketplace in all other ways, so why not advertising, also?

However, after years of trying out various advertising campaigns at Amazon I have never encountered a situation wherein I profited from putting my money there. That is, no ad campaign returned to me even as much money as I put into it. The opposite was almost always true. If, say, I put $400 into an ad campaign I might get $150 or $200 in cumulative sales over the course of the campaign. Only once did I squeak out a tiny bit of profit from an Amazon ad push, and only by a few dollars.

So, for me, advertising on Amazon is a complete waste of my money, my effort, and my time. My last bit of money spent there advertising my work was, in fact, the last money I will ever spend there for that purpose.

That is all.

I'm not sure why, but my COALITION: Zombie Trilogy is the best selling of all of my books since I republished a number of my titles after regaining publishing rights from a former imprint. It has done well in ebook format, but dollar-wise is doing even better in audio book sales. WORKING CLASS HERO has the edge in total ebook numbers, but the audio of that book isn't nearly as high in sales.

Sales.

As I figure out the details of promoting books online I find that I have learned a few tricks that push my sales up a bit. One line of advice that I got from another writer was to use a service that adapts your books to audio without having to spend any money for production. All you do is audition voice talent, pick the person best suited for the job (there is an amazing amount of voice talent in the pools) and the production is out of your hands other than delivering the manuscript and approving the audio versions. After that, the audio is passed through another round of professional editors who clear it for audio publication.

I have been surprised at the sales of the audiobooks. All I have to do is promote my novels as I normally do, and the audiobooks tag along, sometimes outstripping the ebooks in dollar sales, if not actual numbers (since audiobooks are more expensive than ebooks).

It's part of the massive learning curve of having to promote my fiction rather than leaving it up to a traditional publisher who might be incompetent at the task, or who doesn't care (sometimes both). I may not be great at promotions at this point, but I'm better than I was at it, I'm still learning, and I definitely do care.

****

Here's a question and answer bit I did at a website concerning my superhero novel, WORKING CLASS HERO. I'll be adding the second book to that series very soon, and have plotted a third book. If sales and/or my desire to continue warrant, I'll be doing more in that series. I like the characters and I enjoy the act of creating new stories in that world.

Q&A for my novel WORKING CLASS HERO.

Yeah, baby.

STORY BUNDLE!

Best selling author and publisher Kevin J Anderson, and founder and tech writer Jason Chen have been putting together book bundles to sell as a way to create author promotions and charity donations. I was happy to have my first WORKING CLASS HERO: The Autobiography of a Superhuman as part of his Superhero book bundle. I get to be a part of an effort to aid a good educational charity, and to join with a group of other fine authors all spinning yarns about super-powered people.

So, if you want a way to land a whole lot of excellent reading, plus help out a good cause, all at a super-bargain price, grab one (or all) of these book bundles!

Explanation and link below.

THE UP, UP AND AWAY SUPERHEROES BUNDLE

The Up, Up and Away Superheroes Bundle - Curated by Kevin J. Anderson

If reading is your kryptonite, I've put together a superpoweredStoryBundle—thirteen books with marvelous heroes, supervillains, secret identities, mutant powers, and extraordinary gentlemen (and ladies).

In curating this batch, I included my novel Captain Nemo—one of my favorites—the life story of Jules Verne's fictional friend, who fights pirates at sea, is marooned on a mysterious island, finds a passage to the center of the Earth, crosses Africa in a balloon, and builds the extraordinary sub-marine boat, the Nautilus.

Dean Wesley Smith presents a brand new book featuring his popular and unnaturally talented character Poker Boy. Heroes comes in all shapes, sizes, and personas.What makes a hero super? Mark Leslie's collection Nobody's Hero contains seven stories that explore what makes a hero.

A power she doesn't want. But everyone else does.In Robin Brande's Dove Season Marnie has a secret she's been able to hide from the world for years. But now she's been exposed, and her worst fears are coming true.What does the government want from her? To use her as a spy? A weapon? A warrior? She's not made for any of those.But Marnie can't resist the forces who are after her, any more than she can resist using her power.

Matt Forbeck's Brave New World: Revolution: In a world in which supers either work for the government or are thrown into prison, the legend known as Patriot is finally caught and will soon be executed for his crimes — unless his friends in the rebellious Defiance can break him out!

In Jon Mollison's Overlook, nothing's more dangerous than an invisible man… Matt Ward's Cynetic Wolf: An immortal government, half-human oppressed masses, and a young hybrid whose existence threatens everything the cyborg overlords built since the world ended.

In Lucas Flint's The Superhero's Test, seventeen-year-old Kevin 'Bolt' Jason must learn how to control his newly discovered superpowers to protect his family from asupervillain who seeks to destroy him.

What happens when you find out that you suddenly have super-powers is that Uncle Sam makes you an offer you can't refuse. That's Working Class Hero by James Robert Smith. In Fid's Crusade by David Reiss, we see that in the end, it may take a villain to save the world from those entrusted with the world's protection.

The Enlivening by Ashlyn Frost—She's his Frankenstein and now it's time to pay. Tina Glasneck's Hellbent features a hammerless Thor, a devious plan, and a destiny to thwart. And in Jeremy Flagg's Morning Sun: Before joining the Nighthawks, thirteen outcasts fought alone. Their paths should never have crossed. As the Children of Nostradamus come into their own, they have to ask: does having superpowers make them heroes?

You'll read these faster than a speeding bullet. (Sorry, the groaners just write themselves!) – Kevin J. Anderson

* * *

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you're feeling generous), you'll get the basic bundle of five books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

•             Captain Nemo - The Fantastic Adventures of a Dark Genius by Kevin J. Anderson

•             Cynetic Wolf by Matt Ward

•             Working Class Hero by James Robert Smith

•             Dove Season by Robin Brande

•             The Superhero's Test by Lucas Flint

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all five of the regular books, plus eight more more books, for a total of thirteen!

•             Playing a Hunch by Dean Wesley Smith

•             Fid's Crusade by David Reiss

•             The Enlivening by Ashlyn Frost

•             Nobody's Hero by Mark Leslie

•             Morning Sun by Jeremy Flagg

•             Overlook by Jon Mollison

•             Hellbent by Tina Glasneck

•             Brave New World Revolution by Matt Forbeck

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub, .mobi) for all books!

It's also super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.

Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.

•             Get quality reads: We've chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.

•             Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth. If you can only spare a little, that's fine! You'll still get access to a batch of exceptional titles.

•             Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their catalog. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there's nothing wrong with ditching DRM.

•             Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to the Challenger Center for Space Education!

•             Receive extra books: If you beat the bonus price, you'll get the bonus books!

StoryBundle was created to give a platform for independent authors to showcase their work, and a source of quality titles for thirsty readers. StoryBundle works with authors to create bundles of ebooks that can be purchased by readers at their desired price. Before starting StoryBundle, Founder Jason Chen covered technology and software as an editor for Gizmodo.com and Lifehacker.com.

For more information, visit our website at storybundle.com, tweet us at @storybundle and like us on Facebook.

Thirteen great superhero novels!