Tales From The Toxic World Out Now!

Toxic World fans, the wait is over! 

The latest installment in the series is out--Tales from the Toxic World. Here are nine stories featuring some of the most popular characters in the series, plus new characters and a town the citizens of New City have no idea exists! This collection expands the Toxic World setting. The fifth novel in the series, Election Day, will come out next year.

A scavenger with a wondrous artifact from the Old Times sets out to avenge his past …
The sheriff of a post-apocalyptic shantytown investigates a baffling murder …
Two fishermen in a toxic sea make a startling discovery …
A peddler has to compromise his faith to help others and not end up dead …
Here are nine stories from a grim future that’s all too possible. The world has been destroyed by war, pollution, and environmental degradation. Now only a few lonely outposts struggle to keep the light of civilization lit amid vast toxic wasteland filled with human predators.
This collection is a long-awaited addition to the popular Toxic World post-apocalyptic science fiction series. It’s sure to please fans and newcomers to the series alike.

You can buy Tales from the Toxic World here. 

To get it FREE, sign up for my newsletter, Sean's Travel's and Tales, the latest issue of which is coming out later this week. There will be a coupon in there for your free download.

Get Radio Hope for only 99 cents!

For the next week, through July 19, my post-apocalyptic science fiction novel Radio Hope is only 99 cents on Amazon. This is the first of the Toxic World series, which has three books and a spin-off novella. Book Four is coming out in the autumn. Radio Hope, however, can also be read as a standalone novel. I'm not pulling you into some sort of crack dealer arrangement. :-) A blurb is below.

In a world shattered by war, pollution and disease. . .
A gunslinging mother longs to find a safe refuge for her son.
A frustrated revolutionary delivers water to villagers living on a toxic waste dump.
The assistant mayor of humanity's last city hopes he will never have to take command.
One thing gives them the promise of a better future--Radio Hope, a mysterious station that broadcasts vital information about surviving in a blighted world. But when a mad prophet and his army of fanatics march out of the wildlands on a crusade to purify the land with blood and fire, all three will find their lives intertwining, and changing forever.

Radio Hope is available on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. Enjoy and please spread the word!

The Scavenger: Post-Apocalyptic Ebook Free Through May 22

I'm offering my post-apocalyptic story The Scavenger for free on Amazon for the next five days.

This story is a 67-page adventure set in my Toxic World series, which starts with the novel Radio Hope. The Scavenger a standalone story, but it gives a different perspective on some of the places and characters that appear in Radio Hope.

The blurb is below:

In a world shattered by war, pollution, and disease, a lone scavenger discovers a priceless relic from the Old Times.
The problem is, it's stuck in the middle of the worst wasteland he knows--a contaminated city inhabited by insane chem addicts and vengeful villagers. Only his wits, his gun, and an unlikely ally can get him out alive.
Set in the Toxic World series introduced in the novel Radio Hope, this 10,000-word story explores more of the dangers and personalities that make up a post-apocalyptic world that's all too possible.

I'd like to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. So please, between now and Monday, May 22, feel free to share, like, tweet, etc!

The Scavenger: Post-Apocalyptic Ebook Free Through January 22

I'm offering my post-apocalyptic story The Scavenger for free on Amazon for the next five days.

This story is a 67-page teaser for my Toxic World series, which starts with the novel Radio Hope. The Scavenger a standalone story, but it gives a different perspective on some of the places and characters that appear in Radio Hope.

The blurb is below:

In a world shattered by war, pollution, and disease, a lone scavenger discovers a priceless relic from the Old Times.
The problem is, it's stuck in the middle of the worst wasteland he knows--a contaminated city inhabited by insane chem addicts and vengeful villagers. Only his wits, his gun, and an unlikely ally can get him out alive.
Set in the Toxic World series introduced in the novel Radio Hope, this 10,000-word story explores more of the dangers and personalities that make up a post-apocalyptic world that's all too possible.

I'd like to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. So please, between now and Sunday, January 22, feel free to share, like, tweet, etc!

Get the Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Radio Hope for Free!

For the next five days, through July 11, my post-apocalyptic science fiction novel Radio Hope is free on Amazon. This is the first of the Toxic World series, which has three books and a spin-off novella. Book Four is coming out in the early summer. Radio Hope, however, can also be read as a standalone novel. I'm not pulling you into some sort of crack dealer arrangement. :-) A blurb is below.

In a world shattered by war, pollution and disease. . .
A gunslinging mother longs to find a safe refuge for her son.
A frustrated revolutionary delivers water to villagers living on a toxic waste dump.
The assistant mayor of humanity's last city hopes he will never have to take command.
One thing gives them the promise of a better future--Radio Hope, a mysterious station that broadcasts vital information about surviving in a blighted world. But when a mad prophet and his army of fanatics march out of the wildlands on a crusade to purify the land with blood and fire, all three will find their lives intertwining, and changing forever.

Radio Hope is available on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. Enjoy and please spread the word!

More Honest Numbers from a Kindle Giveaway

Back in March I blogged my numbers for an Amazon free promotion of my post-apocalyptic novel Radio Hope. Click the link to see the data. I just finished another giveaway, this time for The Scavenger, a 10,000 word short set in the same world. It also includes the first three chapters of Radio Hope as a teaser.

As usual when I do a promo, I tweeted and blogged about it, and I bought an ad in Book Barbarian, a newsletter catering to fantasy and science fiction fans. It goes out to more than 12,000 subscribers and my ad was posted on their Facebook page, which has 12,867 fans. The ad cost $25 and ran on May 6. Here are my numbers broken down by country:

Thursday, May 5: US (47), UK (3), Germany (1), Spain (1)

Friday, May 6 (Book Barbarian ad): US (616), UK (1), Germany (1), Netherlands (1), Canada (1), Australia (1)

Saturday, May 7: US (118), UK (2), Germany (1), Canada (1)

Sunday, May 8: US (52), UK (1)

Monday, May 9: US (29), UK (1), Canada (1)

TOTAL: US (862), UK (8), Germany (3), Spain (1), Netherlands (1), Canada (3), Australia (1)

GRAND TOTAL: 879 downloads

As you can see, there was a major spike on the day of my ad, and a sizeable tail for the following day. That launched me into the top five in two categories, where I remained for the next couple of days.

Otherwise the giveaway was rather lackluster. I have a couple of explanations for this. First off, this was the fourth time I've done a giveaway for this title, meaning quite a few people who search for this genre have already downloaded it (or decided they're not interested!). Second, note that my categories are in Kindle Short Reads. When Radio Hope got in the top ten for post-apocalyptic novels, that led to a lot more downloads than I'm seeing this time. It's been shown time and again, with my data and others, that readers prefer full novels to shorts. It appears that considerably more people are checking the top free books in novels than in Kindle Short Reads. I'm one of those people!

It's also interesting to note how few downloads I had outside the US. Normally about 15% of my sales on any given month are to the UK, with another 5% to the rest of the world combined. But for this giveaway non-US downloads accounted for only a little more than 2% of the total. The Radio Hope giveaway also didn't do so well beyond the US. I have no idea why this is the case, although part of it certainly is that low initial downloads kept me from getting into the top ten of these markets, hurting visibility and stifling downloads.

So was it worth the $25 I paid for the ad? Yes. Getting my book on 879 devices will lead to a lot more readers, some of whom will go on to buy the other books in my series. These giveaways are part of an ongoing process to raise the profile of my writing. There won't be any overnight successes, but a gradual climb upwards. It's already been heading that way thanks to my previous giveaway.

I hope this helps some of my fellow writers out there!

Free Post-Apocalyptic Story!

I'm offering my post-apocalyptic story The Scavenger for free on Amazon for the next five days, May 5-9.

This story is a 67-page teaser for my Toxic World series, which starts with the novel Radio Hope. The Scavenger is a standalone story, but it gives a different perspective on some of the places and characters that appear in Radio Hope.

The blurb is below:

In a world shattered by war, pollution, and disease, a lone scavenger discovers a priceless relic from the Old Times.

The problem is, it's stuck in the middle of the worst wasteland he knows--a contaminated city inhabited by insane chem addicts and vengeful villagers. Only his wits, his gun, and an unlikely ally can get him out alive.

Set in the Toxic World series introduced in the novel Radio Hope, this 10,000-word story explores more of the dangers and personalities that make up a post-apocalyptic world that's all too possible.

It's free on Amazon US, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. Enjoy!

Book Review: The Tilt by M.A. Robbins

The Tilt: Book One in the Tilt Series by M.A. Robbins
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway and was really excited because the premise sounded fascinating. A scientist promises unlimited energy by basically fracking into the San Andreas Fault and, of course, everything goes wrong. The world is riven by giant earthquakes that leave bottomless fissures cutting across the landscape. Now, in a post-apocalyptic Alaska, a sheriff has to fend off a Chinese invasion while suspecting the scientist might be up to his old tricks again.
Unfortunately the book went steadily downhill. Robbins has created an interesting world but never explores it. We don't learn the full effects of the tilt, nor do we get many details about society and how much technology survives. Instead we're treated to endless fight scenes. While well-written, they quickly become repetitive. Cutting out a couple would still keep this an action-packed novel while giving room for character and world development. As it is, we have cardboard characters in a two-dimensional backdrop. We also don't learn why the scientist would want to repeat the experiment that wrecked the world. Is he suicidal?
A deeper problem is the depiction of the Chinese. They are all evil, bloodthirsty, two-dimensional, and talk like Fu Manchu. It's like some Yellow Peril novel from 1905. Don't get me wrong, I'm no cringing college liberal whining about political correctness. Thugs come in all colors and it's OK to reflect that in your fiction. But when all members of a group are portrayed as menacing dangers to civilization, that's just lazy writing and you're doing real harm to real people.
It's a shame, because Robbins is a good stylist. The pacing is quick and the action scenes are well-done. With a little more thought and care this could have been a good novel. Instead it just falls flat.

View all my reviews

Results of an Amazon Kindle Giveaway One Month Later

A month ago, I posted my numbers from an Amazon Kindle giveaway. If you haven't read that post, click on the link and check it out. Now let's look at the numbers on month on. Has the giveaway, which moved 1684 copies of Radio Hope in nine countries, shown a significant increase in sales?

Radio Hope is the first book in my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series, which includes two more volumes plus a novelette set in the same world.

So in the four weeks since the giveaway ended, I've sold three copies of Radio Hope, seven copies of Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book Two), seven copies of We Had Flags (Toxic World Book Three), and four copies of The Scavenger (a standalone novelette). This is disappointing as it is not a significant rise over a usual four-week period.

The picture looks very different when you look at read pages from the Kindle Online Lending Library. This is a service for Kindle Prime members. For a fee they get unlimited access to ebooks in the Kindle Select program, which includes my entire Toxic World series. While it's free for them, we still get paid for every page view, called a KOLL unit. A KOLL unit changes in value every month but is generally about half a cent. Thus is someone in the program read Radio Hope, a 268 page book on the Kindle Lending Library, I'd get $1.34.

My KOLL units for the past four weeks have been as follows: Radio Hope (8194), Refugees from the Righteous Horde (7735), We Had Flags (6419), The Scavenger (325). This is a huge jump, over ten times my normal numbers. When you consider that my novels run 268, 390, and 341 pages (with The Scavenger only running 72 pages) you can see that's a lot of new readers.

(I'm lumping the numbers from all countries. The majority are from Amazon US, with about 15% from the UK and a small amount from Canada)

So why the disparity? It seems I've captured the attention of those most loyal of Amazon customers, the Prime customers. These are the ones who don't mind paying a monthly fee to have access to lots of free stuff. This is a distinct type of customer we're seeing a lot of in this new world, in publishing, video, and music. They've found my series and are up for reading it for free. What's nice about these figures is that a lot of people have already made it through the third book in the series. I'm also getting a lot of reads of the first book in the series. So people who missed Radio Hope's initial giveaway spotted the book through Amazon's algorithms and are picking it up.

So while Kindle Prime members have found my book, my giveaway did not help earn me more traditional customers who simply plunk down their money to download the ebook. I also did not see a commensurate rise in sales for my other titles. None of them are science fiction, so that may be the problem, or maybe it's just too early to tell. It's only been four weeks, after all, and a large number of the 1,684 people who downloaded Radio Hope will not have read it yet. Some won't read it for weeks or months from now. Others will never read it. So it goes.

I've also gotten half a dozen new reviews on Amazon, critical for indie publishers. All were four or five stars except for one three-star review. I also earned a few four- and five-star reviews on Goodreads plus I got added to many people's "to read" or "reading" list. This sort of thing is great for visibility, so maybe I'll attract some more of those traditional customers in the future.

If you're an indie writer and found this useful, feel free to share your own experiences in the comments section. We can all learn from each other!

Free Post-Apocalyptic Ebook!

For the next five days, through March 14, my post-apocalyptic science fiction novel Radio Hope is free on Amazon. This is the first of the Toxic World series, which has three books and a spin-off novella. Book Four is coming out in the early summer. Radio Hope, however, can also be read as a standalone novel. I'm not pulling you into some sort of crack dealer arrangement. :-) A blurb is below.

In a world shattered by war, pollution and disease. . .
A gunslinging mother longs to find a safe refuge for her son.
A frustrated revolutionary delivers water to villagers living on a toxic waste dump.
The assistant mayor of humanity's last city hopes he will never have to take command.
One thing gives them the promise of a better future--Radio Hope, a mysterious station that broadcasts vital information about surviving in a blighted world. But when a mad prophet and his army of fanatics march out of the wildlands on a crusade to purify the land with blood and fire, all three will find their lives intertwining, and changing forever.

Radio Hope is available on Amazon, Amazon UK, and all the other Amazons. Enjoy and please spread the word!

Free Post-Apocalyptic Short Story Set in the Toxic World!

 
In a world ravaged by toxins and brutality, a married couple eke out a precarious living catching fish from the poisoned sea. Will their devotion to each other ever be rewarded?

I've just posted a free short story, "The Fish Eaters" over on Goodreads. It's a flash fiction piece in the same setting as my Toxic World series of post-apocalyptic novels. Enjoy, and feel free to connect with me on my Goodreads account!

My Next Writing Challenge

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've just been sucked into my latest novel, Emergency Transmission, the fourth in my Toxic World series of post-apocalyptic novels. Every time I do a novel, I always set up some sort of challenge, something I haven't done before. Once it was writing from the point of view of a child, another time from a Hispanic woman, once I wrote suspense rather than my usual full-on action. Each book is a bit different, because that makes the writing more interesting.
When I start a novel, I have a general idea of the characters and a fairly clear idea of the ending. The fun is figuring out how to write to that ending. Sometimes the ending changes; usually it doesn't. For Emergency Transmission, I've thought up a great ending, one that fits perfectly with where I want to take the series. The only problem is, I have absolutely no idea how to get there. It doesn't seem possible to get from where I am to where I need to be.
I guess I've found my challenge for this book!

Working on the next Toxic World novel

You might have noticed that on the right-hand column I keep a running tally of my word count for various projects. Things have been changing over there because I finally got my Tangier novel, The Last Hotel Room, to beta readers and started on Book Four of my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series, Emergency Transmission.
It's always fun to get back to the folks in New City and the Burbs as they desperately try to keep the last remnant of civilization alive. As usual with this series, the action shifts between three characters. Song Yu-Jin is back after being introduced in Book Three; Roy Jones, the owner of everyone's favorite bar, finally becomes a major character; and a certain gentleman from the Righteous Horde also makes an appearance. You didn't those crazies were gone, did you?
People might be wondering about that other book, The Saga of Egil Thorfinnsson and the Weaklings. The more observant among you will have noticed that the word count never seems to go up. Yeah, this was a project I started a couple of years ago and it stalled. I'll get it done this year. I promise. Really. It's a historical fantasy set in Norse Greenland. The Norse called the Inuit skraeling, which means "weakling". Not very nice, especially considering who survived and who didn't! It's going to be a fun novella with a really nasty critter straight out of Inuit mythology. Stay tuned.
The meter I use comes from the NaNo page and is a good way to keep tabs on my various books. The final word counts are estimates, of course, but I'm almost always within five percent.
Back to writing!

Free post-apocalyptic fiction!

My post-apocalyptic novelette The Scavenger is a free ebook on Amazon through Friday, November 27. This standalone novelette is part of my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series. So go ahead and grab yourself a copy, and feel free to share!

A blurb is below:

In a world shattered by war, pollution, and disease, a lone scavenger discovers a priceless relic from the Old Times.
The problem is, it's stuck in the middle of the worst wasteland he knows--a contaminated city inhabited by insane chem addicts and vengeful villagers. Only his wits, his gun, and an unlikely ally can get him out alive.
Set in the Toxic World series introduced in the novel Radio Hope, this 10,000-word story explores more of the dangers and personalities that make up a post-apocalyptic world that's all too possible.

Pick it up on Amazon, Amazon UK, and any other branch of the store.

My lastest post-apocalyptic novel We Had Flags is out now!

We Had Flags, the third in my Toxic World series of post-apocalyptic novels, is out now. The series starts with Radio Hope and continues with Refugees from the Righteous Horde. The Scavenger is a novelette in the same world.

In We Had Flags, the residents of New City face their biggest challenges yet. For those of you familiar with the series, the main characters in this volume are the Doctor, Pablo Cruz, and someone you haven't met yet. A blurb is below.

A law doesn't work if everyone breaks it.
For forty years, New City has been a bastion of order in a fallen world. One crucial law has maintained the peace--it is illegal to place responsibility for the collapse of civilization on any one group. Anyone found guilty of Blaming is branded and stripped of citizenship.
But when some unwelcome visitors arrive from across the sea, old wounds break open, and no one is safe from Blame.

We Had Flags is available via Kindle's Prime program, so if you're a member you can read it for free!

We Had Flags blurb, version 2.0

Here's version 2.0 of the blurb I posted earlier. This is for WE HAD FLAGS, the third in my post-apocalyptic series. Blurbs are hard, so suggestions are most welcome.

A law doesn't work if everyone breaks it.
For forty years, New City has been a bastion of order in a fallen world. One crucial law has maintained the peace--it is illegal to place responsibility for the collapse of civilization on any one group. Anyone found guilty of Blaming is branded and stripped of citizenship.
But when some unwelcome visitors arrive from across the sea, old wounds break open, and no one is safe from Blame.

Blurb help please!

I'm getting ready to publish We Had Flags, Book 3 in my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series. It will be out in mid-September. Right now I'm fiddling with the blurb, always a tricky part of any project, and I could use some help. The blurb is below. Any thoughts? Thanks!

A law doesn't work if everyone breaks it.
For forty years, New City has been a bastion of order in a fallen world. One crucial law has maintained peace--it is illegal to place Blame for the collapse of civilization. Anyone found guilty of Blame is branded and stripped of citizenship.
But when some unwelcome visitors arrive from across the sea, old wounds break open and no one is safe from Blame.

Book Review: Trucksong by Andrew Macrae

Trucksong by Andrew Macrae
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the most original science fiction novels I've read in a long time.
The action takes place in a post-apocalyptic Australia, where the tattered remnants of humanity are preyed upon by intelligent trucks. A lucky few humans, including our hero, learn to link into the trucks and make a symbiotic relationship with them, but that by no means guarantees their safety. Think Neuromancer meets Cars. Being the father of a small child and having seen Pixar's Cars movie about 20 billion times, it was hard to get that imagery out of my head!
The Outback slang and invented words took some time to get used to but I didn't find it distracting. In fact, it added to Macrae's masterful building up of atmosphere. In addition to the dialect, he uses bleak imagery, weird cults, and fleeting glimpses of the world left behind to create an almost visionary experience for the reader. He really can write and kept me gripped right until the end. I'll be sure to pick up his next book.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Barricade by Jon Wallace

Barricade by Jon Wallace
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The publisher had a heap of these on the free table at the 2015 Eastercon and so I grabbed one. I was attracted by the blurb and the fact that it was post-apocalyptic, a genre I love.
The book, however, was only OK. The protagonist is a Ficial, an artificial life form who along with his fellow Ficials is trying to destroy the human race in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Ficials have no emotions and a set task they have trouble thinking beyond, and while this could make for a boring character, John Wallace's engaging writing style kept me interested. There's an action-packed road trip across a blighted landscape that was full of thrills, but after a while became a bit wearing. In a few spots the author lost my suspension of disbelief. There wasn't much purpose to a lot of the action and the ending was poorly done. It simply ended. I don't know if a sequel is planned, but the final page felt more like a chapter ending than the conclusion of a novel.
Barricade was a fun, fast read that didn't quite satisfy. Wallace has lots of potential, however. Here's hoping he does better with his next book.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Far North by Marcel Theroux

Far North by Marcel Theroux
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I finished this book with mixed feelings.
Marcel Theroux is the son of famous writer Paul Theroux and he obviously inherited some of his talent. He did not, however, inherit his father's keen eye for observation and human diversity.
This is a post-apocalyptic story dealing with the daughter of American immigrants who moved to Siberia just before the fall of civilization. She lived through the fall and became a local sheriff in an ultimately futile attempt to stop the chaos. The land and cultures of this post-apocalyptic world are interesting and well drawn and kept me flipping pages.
Yet I found myself increasingly frustrated. The book needed a good edit, there being numerous typos and occasional references to events that were never covered in the text. More frustrating was the protagonist's voice. Much of British literary fiction comes from its chattering classes (Theroux went to an elite boarding school and then Cambridge) and they have trouble getting out of their register. The protagonist swings between spouting home truths like some latter-day movie cowboy to sounding like a columnist for the Guardian. Such writers can't resist showing off their knowledge, even when their characters are unlikely to share that knowledge. This made the protagonist feel contrived. Supporting characters often suffered from the same problem or were just cardboardy stereotypes.
I wish I could give this book a better rating. The writing was at a high level and the setting was compelling, but my enjoyment of a novel centers on its characters, and it is because of them that Far North left me cold.

View all my reviews