I'VE BEEN MUGGED!

Cyber-mugged that is.

It is frightening to think someone is wearing my face across the internet.

I was checking my emails this morning after a draining weekend of blood runs 

to find this email from Createspace:

"This is an automated message confirming that royalty payment information has been updated in your CreateSpace account. 

 

If you did not make any changes to this information, please use the Contact Support feature in your account to reach our Customer Service team."

I had done no such thing!

I checked my account settings to find that instead of the Send Check option, 

 

the direct deposit option was now chosen with a name that was not mine!

Payment Type

Direct Deposit

Bank Account Location

United States

Bank Account Number

*********2662

Bank Routing Number

*****0084

Bank Account Type

Checking

Name on Bank Account

MAXIM KISLYI

Who the blazes is MAXIM KISLYI?  

Of course, I contacted Createspace and took the appropriate measures.

Now, few are buying my print books, but I would like to get the few royalties from them!

What is scary is that this is the SECOND time in ONE week this has happened to me.

On September fourth, I received an email from eBay

Your item has been listed!

Innosilicon A9 ZMaster 50ksols/s Zcash Miner w/PSU Limited Qty Price: $2,500.00 Item #: 292712215395 End Date: 10/04/18

 

I never list items to sell on eBay.

 

Wow!  $2500 is felony territory.

Of course, I phoned eBay Support and got things straightened out, quickly changing as many passwords as I could remember.

It never occurred to me to change my password to Createspace.

MAXIM KISLYI, pick on somebody with more money than me!

Has anything like this 

ever happened to any of you?

Disappointed in THE NUN?

Richly atmospheric but ultimately 

story-less. 

You see what it could have been, 

but the creators

drew back from bringing it to that level.

Being a writer,

I saw what I could have done.

In fact, I believe

I have already in a sense done it.

In The Town That Hated God

Four priests have disappeared in a rural village.

The fifth sent is not there to listen to confessions. 

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GVFH1PF/

For merely $1.99 see for yourself if my story,  

The Town That Hated God, doesn't evoke a shiver or two.

There is actually a story with character arcs, actions taken which make sense, 

and evils that have genuine, understandable agendas. 

The interior images are evocative, too.  

C'mon, give me a chance to entertain you this weekend.

How To Make An Impact With Your BOOK_IWSG post

We all want to write a best-seller.  Not for fame nor for fortune.  

Just to be able to support ourselves living out our dream.

But how to do that?

I could date Gal Gadot, of course, but I think her husband might object.  

And he looks mean! 

No.  

We will have to do it the old-fashioned way: by using the tools at hand the best way we know how.

HOW TO ULYSSES YOUR WAY 

TO NOVEL SUCCESS

1.) SUCKER PUNCH YOUR READER WITH THE FIRST SENTENCE

The thinking behind the studio's thinking on making movie trailers of late is 

TO MAKE IT SO COMPELLING THAT PEOPLE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BUY A TICKET 

no matter what the critics say.


The first sentence to my story in TALES TO BE TOLD AT MIDNIGHT is

"The rape had been the best thing to have happened to her."

How could you not want to read on?  

And remember the FIRST LOOK option on Amazon will hook your reader 

if you just set the bait correctly.

2.) LEARN FROM THE MOST POPULAR GIRL IN HIGH SCHOOL

BE FAST.  

Not free.  People value what they pay for.

But put out ... as quickly as you can with quality one after another.  

 You want to have other books to offer should lightning strike and you gain a fan.

Which leads me into the next point:

3.) BRAND YOURSELF WITH A SERIES

It won't hurt much, 

but it will give a new fan certainty 

of enjoying more adventures with the characters she or he has grown to love.

Readers who like one novel will confidently buy the next.

And the series name will draw the eye of past readers browsing thumbnails of your book covers.

Which leads me to my next point:

4.) LET YOUR TITLE BE LIKE THE SKIRTS OF THAT POPULAR GIRL

BE SHORT

Choose a brief emotive title. Pack it with meaning, menace and drama.

 Why short? 

Your cover will shrink to a fingernail on Kindle and other mobile devices. 

So make it legible!

James Patterson uses such titles: 

ZOO, THE FIRE, WITCH & WIZARD, THE QUICKIE

Which, of course, leads me to the next point as well

 4.) ATTENTION SPANS HAVE CHANGED

TV sound bites, Twitter feeds, Buzz feeds, Facebook posts ...

All of them have conditioned those who still read to bore easily.

A bored reader is more dangerous to us than any lion, for you will lose them as customers.

Keep your sentences as short as models' skirts.

James Patterson is the expert here. 

His sentences average just six words. 

His paragraphs are typically no longer than five lines and often just one line.

Tell your story your way, but if it is to make an impact there is a model to follow.

 5.) WE ARE A LONELY SOCIETY 

Give your MC a foil character with whom to talk ... even if it is only the moon.

Even Tom Hanks had Wilson, the basketball, 

with whom to share his innermost thoughts and fears on that island.

Conversations with the buddy character can introduce conflict to keep a scene alive, 

give the main character a plausible sounding board for their woes and triumphs, 

and also prompt the protagonist to reveal  information.

 Foil characters also furnish sub-plots. 

Get them into troubles of their own. Make them victims.
  
Use a foil as a series character in your every novel as I do with Mark Twain 

in my NOT-SO-INNOCENTS series and in my Egyptian Victorian fantasies.

6.) A PLOT WORTHY OF A MOVIE

Dueling vampire empires, alien evil clashing with ancient darkness, 

Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Nikola Tesla -- 

all worrying less about saving the world than 

saving their friend who is married to a demon-empress,

poised to set all the world ablaze with her dark ambition.

Outlandish but so was SHE and LORD OF THE RINGS.

You must strive to craft a riveting plot worthy of your reader.

7.) WATER COOLER DIALOGUE

My blood center still has a water cooler and coffee maker where workers chat a bit during the day.

Work to have your dialogue be quoted at the water cooler of today's culture:

Twitter, Facebook, Buzz Feeds, personal blogs.

There is a reason NIKE sells ball caps and T-shirts with their logo.

Be as smart as NIKE, have your fans advertise for you.

I HOPE THIS HELPS 

IN SOME SMALL WAY, 

ROLAND

Prelude to Terror

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GVFH1PF/

{Only $1.99 in Kindle}

What scares YOU?

What nightmare wakes YOU up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat

THE DEAD HAVE NO SAY –

 
In 1946, a former O.S.S. agent seeks oblivion and anonymity as a faceless prop master in a movie studio. 

One midnight, what he finds is an actress' severed hand and a deadly manhunt where the roles of predator and prey constantly change.

THE TOWN THAT HATED GOD – 

Four priests have gone missing in a rural Massachusetts village. The next priest sent is not there to hear confessions.

DEAD YET NOT – 

A Boston crime lord and a Lakota psychologist learn the things death can buy cannot be returned or refused.

MURDER AS A KINDNESS –

A dying woman is irresistible prey for her enemies … and one lost Lakota love.

A SHORE NEVER REACHED – 

A prodigal Native American son returns to the revelation you always bury the past alive, and soon or late it digs its way back up for its pound of flesh.

REUNION OF ENEMIES

 
The House Eternal. Its Viking caretaker finds doing the right thing is never appreciated.

IN TOO DEEP

 
An undead Texas Ranger and a dying author discovers he misunderstood the deal he made with the devil. 

 Ignorance of an unholy contract does not keep it from being fulfilled.

These are stories of a barren age filled with those who worship the new god of technology, 

and the old ones of lust, greed, and ambition that are as insubstantial as the beliefs of those who venerate them –

While ancient evils sneer in the shadows, picking off the self-blinded one by one by one.

Take a Halloween chance on my stories, 

will you?  

It is filled with evocative pictures ...

Even one of Midnight at the end requesting you be nice to his human with a review!

FLY WITH MARK TWAIN

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G9XZTDC/

 Now, an audio book!

Imagine a honeymoon aboard a flying Mississippi River boat.  

Then, imagine Mark Twain being a guest! 

Imagine him being a mentor to 11 year old Nikola Tesla.

Unwelcome passengers include 

a vampiric Benjamin Franklin, 

an insane Abraham Lincoln,

a vengeful General Sherman,

a pursuing Captain Nemo aboard his Nautilus, 

and a thieving Thomas Edison.

Add to that company: 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, 

Ada Byron (inventor of the 1st computer language a century before computers), 

Margaret Fuller, first American woman foreign correspondent ...

Well, things get interesting!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YTMNRG/

(Audio book under $10) 

Hurricane Katrina made landfall this day in 2005 as a Category 4 storm 

but still remains the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

What would have been its aftermath if supernatural and undead predators existed?

 

ALTERNATIVE To Twitter

Brendan Nystedt wrote 

an intriguing article on WIRED

https://www.wired.com/story/join-mastodon-twitter-alternative/

Luke O'Neil wrote
another in ESQUIRE
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/amp22777589/what-is-mastodon-twitter-platform/


Beth Skwarecki
another 
in Lifehacker
 https://lifehacker.com/a-beginner-s-guide-to-mastodon-1828503235

Mastodon

 mastodon.social

Mastodon is a refuge from the mean tweets 

and somewhat "unique" mindsets that hammer at your Twitter accounts lately.

 

Visit the site and me 

to say Hello 

will you?

@scifi.fyi 
mastodon.cloud