Bear with me as I promote.

Asking again, dear readers of this blog, that you buy my new book.

https://www.amazon.com/Darkness-You-Fear-Ghosts-Bucket-ebook/dp/B01FW5FANE/

Not to guilt trip you--okay, I'm guilt tripping you, but I'd like to believe this blog serves some purpose beyond just blathering to myself.

I'd like to believe that if you been reading it, you have seen how important writing is to me. So, yeah, I'm asking.

Won't ask again, but as I've mentioned before, the first weeks sales in a book contain the seeds of the long-term trajectory on Amazon, where you're positioned in the rankings helps get the ball rolling.



Meanwhile, onto news. The release of the new book seems to have stirred activity in my other books, which is cool. It reinforces the notion that being a writer these days means putting out a steady stream of books.

When I researched it early on, I settled on a release every 5 months as being optimal, which the schedule I followed for the first 7 books or so (Vampire books released all on the same day, which was probably a mistake). When Ragnarok decided to make the leap to bookstore distribution (which might be a long-term good thing) they delayed Tuskers III by a year.

That book is now supposed to be published in October, so that starts the 5 month cycle again.

Unfortunately, when Tuskers III fell off the schedule last October, I didn't react quickly enough. I really should have released The Last Fedora, which is fully finished with cover and which I liked quite a lot. By the time I realized that too much time was passing, I had a different book ready, one I didn't think publishers would be interested in but which I liked a lot: Blood of the Succubus. So I put that out in February.

I will tell you all this: there is a dramatic difference in how books put out by publishers do and books I put out myself sell. At least part of that is that I'm considerably more aggressive promoting my books by publishers, because I feel an obligation to the publishers to do my best, since they took on the risk of taking me on.

Probably went unnoticed that after the first week, I barely mentioned Blood of the Succubus (until last week when I decided to change stuff...)

I don't think I've mentioned Cyber Flash at all, which was the first book I released. I've not talked about Burp the Burrow Wight (Linda's favorite) since the day I published it.

It's not something I really want to do, you know?

But here's the thing--it is absolutely necessary. Nothing happens without a little push. (Probably more happens with even more push, but I can't go there. I'm uncomfortably forward the first week, and then I can't sustain it, even for the publishers sake.)

Anyway, if I can't spam my friends about my books every 5 months or so, then are they really friends?

So bear with me, I'm only going to bug you about this for a few more days.