Check out the sweet cover art by Jessica Lucero!

This post is simply an infographic from Forensicscience.org brought to my attention by Cheryl Godden (thanks, Cheryl!). It delves into the importance of forensic science and how it is able to exonerate those wrongfully convicted of heinous crimes. Without the addition of these forensic sciences, such as DNA testing, a number of these individuals, innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted, would still be in prison. Or in the ground in the case of those on Death Row.

Here’s a link to the graphic (I couldn’t get it to embed… apparently I’m a quarter Luddite) .http://www.forensicscience.org/not-guilty/

The Late Seventies and the Early Eighties

My mother taught me to read long before I ever set foot in a school. She read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to me when I was barely able to walk. She instilled a love of stories that has lasted my entire life and for which I will always be grateful. She read everything that she could and I followed suit. I would find paperbacks that she’d finished and I always gravitated toward the odd, the mysterious, the macabre and the fun. I read Agatha Christie and Doyle, H.G. Wells and Jack London as well as countless others.

I discovered Stephen King and Dean Koontz shortly thereafter, and I’ve never been the same since. I mean that in the best way possible. I devoured everything I could find, and my mother even talked with the local librarians so they would allow me to check out books from the “grown up” section of the library. I would stay up late into the night reading. When other kids were wondering what strange new things they could do with their hair and to their jeans, I was wondering what was happening in Snowfield and in Derry.

(Ok, I also did some weird things with my hair, but that’s not the point. The point is that I was hooked on imaginary places, addicted to stories.)

Fast Forward to the Late Nineties

I’d moved all the way from New York to California with a brief stop in Chicago. I was married and had a child. I was just out of the military and I really had no direction in life. Finding work was hard and I escaped to fiction. I would also call my mother and talk with her, although I never really let on about how poor I was.

I still read all the time, and I’d even started writing my own stories in the hopes of publishing them. I’d always written, but I didn’t know what to do with the stories. Now that I had the time, I figured I would give it a shot.

I ended up selling quite a few to the small press “zines” of the day as well as to an anthology or three. If you’ve been around a while, you might remember those old zines, labors of love for the editors, often photocopied and stapled together. Some had cardstock covers but most didn’t even have that. They weren’t attractive magazines by any standard, but they had some good stories in them. I was proud to be in them.

Now, when I say I sold to the magazines, it wasn’t as though I was making much money. The term “sell” rarely meant anything more than a contributor’s copy and maybe $5 or $10 in those days. I wasn’t getting rich, that’s for damned sure. The most I’d made on a sale at that time was around $100 for a 900-word story, sold to a computer magazine of all places. They had a slot in each issue for a fiction piece, and I got lucky… or the editor was drinking and then decided to buy the story. I say that because the story was embarrassingly bad. I didn’t know that at the time of course. And that extra money sure helped that month. Kids grow out of clothes damned quick.

Now, you might be wondering where Dean Koontz plays into all of this. Well, I’m getting there.

When Koontz was doing a tour for Seize the Night, shortly after Fear Nothing came out in paperback and one of his stops was at a Barnes & Noble just north of San Diego. My neighbor, who was also a big reader, told me about the signing. She, my wife and I decided that we would go up, pick up copies of Seize the Night and get them signed.

We got to the bookstore and I couldn’t believe the line that I saw. It stretched outside the store, and after we got in the line, it doubled. Dean Koontz was a rock star.

As I got closer to the table where he was signing, I started getting nervous. That’s not something that normally happens to me, but there I was, nerves getting worse as I got closer to the table. I mean, this is the guy who wrote Phantoms and Darkfall. He frigging wrote Watchers. The guy knows suspense and can make you sweat with just words on a page. I was only feet away from getting my book signed by the man whose writing caused me stay up into the wee hours of morning, sleep be damned.

I make it to the front and I’m surprised that the case of nerves had vanished. Koontz looks up and smiles. He asks my name. I tell him, and I’m shocked that I don’t stutter. Something about him seemed calming and soothing, silly as that sounds.

He asks how I am, and I tell him that I’m fine and that I’m excited to meet him because I’m a writer too. (Now, I know he must’ve heard that a million times, but I didn’t know any better at the time). He smiles again and asks me what I write. I tell him that I write horror and fantasy, and that I would like to write mystery and crime. I tell him that he’s been a huge influence on me. I tell him that I’ve been in some magazines.

He smiles again, and it looks genuine. And then he starts talking to me about writing. I’m trying to listen, but my brain keeps shouting at me “Holy crap, Dean Koontz is talking to me about writing.” I listen as he talks about telling stories and about how he started, and then the woman at the table helping him (who I believe was his wife), nudges him gently and reminds him that he has an entire line of people still waiting for autographs. As I start to excuse myself, he tells me something else. He says, “Keep writing. You can succeed if you don’t give up.” I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember the exact words, but that was the gist of it. And I knew I’d heard someone tell me those words before, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d heard them.

Now, you might think that those words stuck with me and that I kept writing and selling more. Of course, life got in the way. By life, I mean a divorce after the birth of my second child, a job that drained the creativity from me and an overall loss of direction. Some people can write through all of that, and more power to them. I couldn’t. I barely even read during that time.

But I had stories to tell, and I couldn’t stay away from writing forever. Writing, I discovered, was a basic human need for me. I wasn’t happy unless I was telling tales and creating worlds that don’t really exist. I slowly got back into the groove of life and I heeded those words. “Keep writing. You can succeed if you don’t give up.”

So, I kept at it. I made more sales over the past few years. I’ve had my first book published through Black Bed Sheet Books, and I’ve even started publishing some of my own work to see what the indie world is like. I’m not rich, but with freelancing and fiction, I do write for a living now. So far, it’s good.

The Present

Not everything in life is going to be good.

My mom died in February of this year, and I didn’t know how to handle the news. She’d moved to Southern California years ago, but I wasn’t with her when she passed away. It happened faster than I thought it could. I was going to visit her in the hospital and I found out the next morning that she’d passed away the night before. I wasn’t with her enough in those last few years, and that’s something that I have to carry with me.

In my mind, I didn’t want to accept that she would or could die. As much as I write about death, I don’t know how to properly grieve and go through those issues like a normal human. I know the stages of grief, I know how they work, and I think I can write it convincingly. My brain just wasn’t having it.

I wasn’t a bad son, I don’t think. But my brother was far better at dealing with this issue than I was. When he was growing up, we called him “Tenderheart” for a reason. He was there for her more often than I was, and so was John, her boyfriend who happened to be the best thing that had ever happened to her. I am very thankful that they were there when I was too weak/stupid/afraid to be. She knows I loved her though. I always told her that.

I was reflecting on this the other night, and when I couldn’t bear to think about it any longer, I suddenly had an itch to read some Koontz. It seems like a strange leap, right?

My hardcover and paperback books had gone missing in a move years ago, so I opened my Kindle and downloaded Phantoms, one of my favorites. I was digging into the story for what would be my umpteenth read through, and I heard those words in my head again. “Keep writing….” And then I suddenly remembered where I’d heard them other than from Mr. Koontz.

My mother had said them to me when she found out I was writing all those years ago. She had been proud of me, even when I was only making those $5 sales and contributor copies. She’d always believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself.

How could I have forgotten that? I sometimes think that we don’t always appreciate the ones who are closest to us when they are here. In fact, I know that’s true. There’s always tomorrow, you think. Here’s the rub. Tomorrow is not promised. Live for today, tell the ones you love just how much you care for them.

Oh, and if you are a writer, keep writing.

The story is flash fiction based on the photo in the post at their site – just click the link and you’ll go right to the story and see the photo. Trouble is afoot for the folks in the picture… lurching, hungry trouble.

While you are at bookPumper.com, check out some of the other photo flash fiction that’s available from some great writers.  It is fun to see how different writers tackled the same picture and just how different the stories truly are. You’ll find some good stuff!

PS – This weekend I plan on doing a few little updates on the site, and I might even have time to do another post on some aspects of forensics, as  I did in my post on luminol.

Coupon Code: LG59J

Find it at Smashwords by clicking HERE.

Sincerely,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Writerman

Uneasy Reading is a collection of four short horror stories. The collection, at nearly 11,000 words, also includes an excerpt from the upcoming vampire/crime novella Wetwork.

The little tastes of horror found in Uneasy Reading include:

“Dead Favors” – Martin hates Silver Point and all of the rotten memories his old hometown holds. He’s only returning because his father is finally dead and because Cassie needs Martin to help with some unpleasant work.

“Rorschach’s Vampires” – Only Gordon sees them. They change shape and they tell him what to do. They demand things and he’s more than willing to give in to their needs.

“Worst Thing I Ever Did” – What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? Find out the terrible thing one man did in this short zombie tale.

“God’s Food” – Here is a dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairytale of the same name.

Excerpt from Wetwork: Joey ‘Nine’ is a first class killer, a hitman who gets the job done no matter the mess. But now he has to contend with a former crime boss who wants him dead and a shifty drug dealer with the munchies. When the damned vampires show up, they don’t make things any easier.

“Under the Skin” – excerpt

Randall Kagan ached. A rotten, soreness crept over him as he woke and his eyes adjusted to the motel room’s darkness. His muscles felt as though they were trying to knit themselves back together, ripped fiber by ripped fiber. As he edged closer to wakefulness, he realized that a sticky glaze covered his pained body and aching fingers. The scent of blood and flesh crept into his nostrils and seeped into his brain.

“Jesus, not again,” he whispered into the blackness. He sat up quickly and flicked on the small table lamp next to the ratty bed. A bloody stump, a slender thumb with a painted blue nail rolled from his chest down to the blood soaked bed sheets.

His heart beat faster, thrumming in his chest and keeping almost perfect time with the steady flicker from the lamp’s pale light. He panned the room and saw the fullness of the atrocity and the horrors that he didn’t remember committing.

A bloody smiley face grinned down at him from the far wall. Intestines lay draped around the television and dresser like strands of tinsel on a Christmas tree. The rest of the dead girl’s body lay in pieces here and there around the room.

Kagan leaned over the side of the bed and vomited. How could a person do these things and not remember? He’d asked the familiar question a thousand times over the last two months. The answer was in front of him every time he stepped in front of a mirror. He’d peered into himself and seen the monster; he’d gazed upon the anatomy of the terrible that made a home deep within his wretched mind. He could feel it, the thing within, writhing inside of him even now, wanting to be let out to play. Even worse, he could feel them calling to him, pulling him somewhere.

The desert.

The desert had been calling him ever since the killings began. Even Ahiga, Doli’s grandfather had told Kagan that he needed to go into the desert and that it might be the one place that could purify him.

It didn’t make sense to Kagan, but none of what was happening really did. The blackouts, the murders, the crimson eyes watching in his dreams whenever he dared fall asleep… it was all the  workings of a crazy mind, he feared. If the desert didn’t bring answers, he hoped that it might at least be able to grant him death.

He glanced at the clock – two in the morning. It was still early and that was good. He needed to make a stop in Albuquerque to say goodbye to his sister and then he would listen to the voices within that urged him into the wilderness. He had to move fast too. The law was after him. Every cop and meter maid in the West probably knew his face by now and he didn’t figure shaving his head had provided him with much of a disguise.

He turned off the lamp so he wouldn’t have to look at the mess.

To find out what Kagan discovers in the desert, you can head to one of the retailers above and grab the collection. It’s currently only 99 cents, and I truly appreciate it!

In this post, I’m going to talk about my current pricing structure and I’d be happy to listen to any input that readers and other authors have.

Readers: I’m interested in how you decide how much to spend and where to spend it. What is the limit that you spend on an e-book? How much does genre factor into the amount that you are willing to spend? How much more are you willing to spend on a name you know and trust?

Writers: I’m interested in how you chose the prices for your own books and what led you to make that decision. And yes, I know marketing is hard so if you have a book that you are selling you should feel free to add a link in your comment here.

My current pricing structure looks like this:

Short Story Collections or a long short story up to 20,000 words is 99 cents

Novellas, short novels and longer
collections that fall between 20,000 and 60,000 words are $2.99

Novels that are 60,000 to 90,000 words are
$3.99

Also, I have a first book in a series coming out this year and I will likely price that initial offering at a slightly lower price to start – maybe at $1.99 or $2.99. Or I will try to charge the regular $3.99 and lower the price on the first one when the second book comes out. Or I will… you see, I could do this for days and still not have the right answer. It’s going to be all about experimenting. I’m also going to have to research to see what the good price points are for different genres.

Keep in mind that these are just the current prices that I will be playing with over the next year. They probably aren’t right for everyone and they might not even be right for me. Also, these prices don’t account for putting books on sale, changes in the market or changes in the gray matter sitting behind my eyes that cause me to make drastic decisions.

I’m looking forward to hearing what any and all of you have to say about e-book prices.

http://www.briankeene.com/?p=6683

and

http://www.briankeene.com/?p=6715

With these problems and countless other issues that authors have with various traditional publishers – you are going to want to keep watch on Kristen Kathryn Rusch’s blog for more information on oddities in royalty statements – the brave new world of independent publishing (new for me at least) is looking mighty tempting. I’ve already released one title on my own with quite a few others in the pipeline.