Radio Hope is now Free!

Radio Hope, the first volume in my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series, is now free on all platforms. That's right. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and all other vendors have it listed as free. So if you like gritty, realistic science fiction, give it a try! 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.

My Writing Year: A Look Back And A Look Forward

This past year has been an interesting one for me, being both productive and unproductive.

How so? Well, I wrote the least amount I ever have under my own name in a long time, coming out with just two books in 2021. This is due to getting a lot of ghostwriting work. While remunerative, it kept me from doing as much as I would have liked under my own byline.

I still wrote a lot. Although I once again missed my goal of writing a million words in a year, I did get well past 900,000 and made the most money I ever have in this career or my previous one, so that was nice.

I did come out with two books under my own name. The first was Flight to Fez, the third book in my Interzone Mystery series. The second was The Case of the Asphyxiated Alexandrian, book five in my The Masked Man of Cairo historical mystery series. So a good year for mysteries!

What's coming up in 2022? My ghostwriting work is still going strong, and I have managed to get on a saner publishing schedule that will allow me to build up my own career a bit more. My new year's resolution is to write 1,000 words a day of my own stuff. A trio of short prequel novels for The Masked Man of Cairo series are in the works, as are two new series. These are Tech Scavengers, a space opera series, and an as-yet-untitled mystery series set in Weimar Berlin. I'd also like to squeeze in book 5 of Toxic World, titled Election Day. If you have any preferences about what you'd like to read next, tell me in the comments section!

You can follow my progress with the word count bars to the right and also by signing up to my newsletter.

It's going to be a fun year!

A Free Book, A New Look, and New Markets for the Toxic World Series!

As you can see from the photo, my cover designer has switched out the cover for Radio Hope, Book One of my post-apocalyptic Toxic World series. The old cover was a bit flat and this one has more pop. I hope you like it.

I've also taken the series out of Kindle Select and published it wide. You can now find the series on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Scribd, and many other outlets. Click on the title to find a list of links for Radio Hope. Hitting on your favorite store will take you to that title and the rest of the series.

Also, I'm giving away The Scavenger, a novella set in the Toxic World, for free on all those venues. Click on the link to grab your copy today!

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.

Two Free Lockdown Reads!

Bored during lockdown? Have a couple of free ebooks on me! Through the end of this weekend I'm offering my novel The Last Hotel Room and my novella The Scavenger for free.

The Last Hotel Room deals with the Syrian refugee crisis and is based on several refugees I interviewed in Iraq and Morocco.

He came to Tangier to die, but life isn’t done with him yet.
Tom Miller has lost his job, his wife, and his dreams. Broke and alone, he ends up in a flophouse in Morocco, ready to end it all. But soon he finds himself tangled in a web of danger and duty as he’s pulled into scamming tourists for a crooked cop while trying to help a Syrian refugee boy survive life on the streets.
Can a lifelong loser do something good for a change?

The Scavenger is set in my Toxic World setting for the series of the same name.

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.

Enjoy!

The Fourth in the Toxic World Series is Out Now!

The fourth book in my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series is out now. It's called Emergency Transmission and takes up where We Had Flags left off. Yu-jin is back, and we get to learn more about some of the other characters who have been in previous books but haven't had their chance to shine. A blurb is below:

Trust is the only thing that can save the world.
The problem is, everyone has their own agenda.
When an offshore platform starts emitting toxic fumes that threaten to destroy the last outposts of civilization, the residents of New City have to team up with a foreign freighter to fix it. But a lingering mistrust remains, and neither side has the resources to stop the leak.
That is, until help comes from the least reliable source.
Can old enemies finally set aside their differences for the greater good?

Emergency Transmission is available on Amazon US and all the other Amazons.

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!

Word Count Wobbles

You might have noticed the word count meters I have on the right-hand margin of this blog. It helps my readers keep track of where my projects are and helps inspire me to write more. The book I'm currently working on the most is The Masked Man of Cairo: The Case of the Purloined Pyramid, a neo-pulp detective story set in 1919 Cairo. I'm almost done with that, but I've been almost done for a couple of weeks. At first I thought it would be 60,000 words. Then I upped it to 65,000. Then a minor character sent the plot sideways and I corrected it to 75,000. Now I really am almost done and it will be 75,000 words or a little less.

This is unusual for me. I can usually guess the final word count of a novel to within 5%, even before I start. I know how a story feels to me. Perhaps it's because this is a new genre for me.

You'll also notice that annual goal of one million words. I just reached the one-third mark on that yesterday, but of course we are slightly more than a third of the way through the year. I'm going to have to pick up speed if I want to hit that goal.

Then there are the other two books. Emergency Transmission, the fourth in my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series, has been on hold for the past couple of months. I'll get started on that again the first week of June. Last but not least is The Saga of Egil Thorfinnsson and the Weaklings, a historical fantasy about Norse Greenland. That was a novel that stopped dead in its tracks years ago before I really hit my stride of daily productivity. I've put it up there to remind myself to finish it someday. And I will. Someday.

Then there's all the ghostwriting I'm doing. . .

I update the word count meters every Sunday if you want to watch my progress!

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!

Finished National Novel Writing Month!

Hello from Morocco! I'm down here for one of my regular writing retreats and making a rare appearance online. I mostly ignore the existence of the Internet when I'm here. Anyway, I just wanted to announce that I made it through another National Novel Writing Month, a movement of mass craziness every November when people around the world write 50,000 words in 30 days.

Actually it's not as hard as it sounds. Like any other skill, writing becomes easier with practice. The more you write, the more you can write. It helps that in Morocco I don't have any distractions to lower my word count!

Mostly I've been working on the fourth of my Toxic World series of post-apocalyptic novels, Emergency Transmission, which sees the reappearance of the mysterious freighter`and the reappearance of a certain crazed cult that wasn't fully done away with in the first book. I also did some ghostwriting. I've been getting a lot of that sort of work lately.

I'll be in Morocco for another couple of weeks. I'll post some pictures when I can!

Doing National Novel Writing Month Again This Year!

It's that time of year again, when writers all around the world brew an extra post of coffee and pound their keyboards until their fingers bleed. That's right, it's National Novel Writing Month, when we go for the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month.

This year is a bit different for me because I'm in the middle of a bunch of things, so instead of writing a whole novel in a month, I'm finishing one ghostwriting novel, starting another, and continuing work on Emergency Transmission, the fourth in my Toxic World series of post-apocalyptic novels. I guess that means I'm doing National Partially Write Three Novels Month. Whatever, as long as I make 50,000 words!

If you're doing NaNo and want to hook up online, you find me at my participant page.

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!