That’s what he always said before he came into her darkroom. She thought he knew better. Until she forgot to the lock the door before going to work.
She found him in the garage, car still running. She drove him to the loch, pushing the car off the bridge, a long walk home.
She slept well that night. Until her phone rang.
“Sammy, baby.”
You can find my collected horror stories in my second book, Capricorn. “Where can you buy Capricorn?” I hear you ask! Click on the links below to be taken to my Amazon pages.
Whoosh, another busy week has whizzed by! But check it out, we have new things!
Pewter Fear for Colour Collective
Fuen & Lucy on Threadless
Events, TellyTube & Socialization
Social Media for Creatives (free course)
Pewter Fear
Pewter was originally doodled for a post-apocalyptic story (3 books away in the future, ack!). All the characters are named after different metals. Alas, Pewter didn’t make the cut. But this week’s Colour Collectives is Pewter Blue. Can’t think of a more appropriate character to use. I do think she looks like H.R. Giger’s Alien. Oops!
Lucy & Fuen on Threadless
Lucy has joined the ranks on Threadless on a new art print. She’s the devilish creature who appeared in Terminal and Balcony, two stories in the Little Fears horror anthology, Capricorn.
Fuen makes another return. This is my all-time best-selling tee. Had to get the model mocks done and didn’t get everything perfect enough in time for the Threadless store relaunch last week.
Lucy’s art print prices start at $12 and Fuen is available in tee form from $12.95.
In the coming months, I shall be joining in NaNoWriMo, Inktober and reprising my daily moustached funnies for Movember. If I continue to post everything on my WordPress blog, I am going to swamp it with up to five posts a day. That’s too much, obviously. But it’s not too much for social media. My Twitter, Instagram, Ello, Tumblr and Medium will take most of it.
I am also approaching a starting point in the current Fears tales where a plotline develops. It will make no sense later on if some of the characters meet. So I have stopped posting the old tales on the blog. The blog will start running as one continuous story five days a week for the Hydra storyline with odd unrelated Capricorn horror tales twice a week. I will still put up odd January and Spiders videos on YouTube and slot them into playlists.
You can follow me on social media and YouTube by clicking a link below or the wee icons at the top and bottom of my website.
While talking about social media, a Skillshare find I thought I’d share. Social media for creatives by Chelsea Matthews. It’s about an hour and a half long and gives a pretty good overview of how to use the main platforms for marketing as a creative. It’s 100% free. If you want a few tips on social media, just sign up to Skillshare, skip anything that asks you to pay, and give this course a watch through. Linky: http://skl.sh/2fa2eyo
Her husband stood at the door with his Bernie the Bear stuffed toy in his hand.
“Really?” she grumbled. “Aren’t you too old for that?”
“Yeah,” replied Bernie.
You can find my collected horror stories in my second book, Capricorn. “Where can you buy Capricorn?” I hear you ask! Click on the links below to be taken to my Amazon pages.
Now here’s a thing. I don’ know if this is a unique issue for me, or if it effects everyone. I have found with every single book release I have done, I have tried offering digital editions to you, my subscribers and followers, for free. Inevitably the Amazon freebie hunters always end up with copies and always, usually on Good Reads, they leave me a negative review.
Capricorn got a bad review for being weird fiction, January got a bad review for being just groaners and Spiders got a DNF review from someone moaning it was just jokes. In each case, I have been left scratching my head asking, if they could read even half the book, why couldn’t they read the synopsis? Go figure. To quote a Huffpost article:
Don’t trash the book because it wasn’t what you expected. Unless the book was misrepresented, it’s your responsibility to understand what you’re buying before you buy it. Trout Fishing in America isn’t really about trout fishing, and Fear of Flying is not for nervous travelers.
Anywhos! For the book writers out there, this time I asked you, the subscribing rabble, to leave a review every time I posted about the free book offer. I got twelve reviews on Amazon. Currently at 4.8 stars. The one negative review I got was from a freebie book hunter, complaining about it all being puns. On Good Reads, there’s more freebie hunters and fewer people who know me. If it wasn’t for Jan’s review, I would have 2.5 stars. That’s the difference you guys have made. Thank you.
For those 11 reviews, I gave away around one hundred free ebooks on Kindle over five days. I don’t recognize more than half of the people on Good Reads who currently have me listed ‘as reading’. So I don’t know how many freebie book hunters got my book and how many subscribers got my book.
Sales wise, I have had one sale either paperback or digital every day since I stopped offering it for free up from one per week before Spiders release. Water could be muddied there as I didn’t do an ounce of promotion for the prior three months dealing with my home issues. Then I suddenly did five days of heavy promotion. There’s also a mix of books being sold. It seems January and Capricorn have had a wee bump in sales from Spiders release.That makes sense and I have heard from a lot of authors, you need at least three books on sale before you get regular and consistent sales. For something as specialized and super niche as the Little Fears presents books, I believe a sale a day is good. My books are expensive. I am not yet famous. I can’t offer novel value prices of $2 a book.
There’s something else to learn from one review. Richard Yates questions whether what I do is flash fiction or a cartoon. I don’t know myself, to be honest. For those that followed my stories before I created the Little Fears, I wrote stories on their own and drew completely unrelated doodles and posted them elsewhere. There never used to be any connection between them. I know flash fiction circles hate jokes being called flash fiction. Y’all know I’m not gonna listen to that crowd’s opinion though right?
Richard did make me think. Now both January and Capricorn are released from Kindle Select I am looking for expanded distribution for them both. Maybe I should be turning my attention to the digital comic distribution platforms instead of just book platforms. Good thinkin’ Richard!
Do you take anything from this?
I don’t know if any of that is either helpful or relevant to any of you. I do know I have a lot of people hoping to self-publish who read this blog though, so I figure any data or experiences are helpful aye?
If you want to read a few reviews, there’s a couple more below.
And if you have any questions, y’all know I try to help by email or comments. Ask me anything about my book writing and publishing process and I will try to answer.
“Hannah,” Cassie called. “Time to stop playing now, dinner is ready!”
She was legendary at hide and seek, Cassie often thought she could vanish into thin air.
“Hannah!” Cassie yelled into the master bedroom.
A giggle replied, her shoes just visible.
“Got you!” Cassie cried, grabbing her feet, pulling her bloody stumps out from under the bed.
Dinner got cold.
You can find my collected horror stories in my second book, Capricorn. “Where can you buy Capricorn?” I hear you ask! Click on the links below to be taken to my Amazon pages.
Little Fears 