Hey all! Every once in a while, a reader will email me and say that although they love my books, they can't afford them. There are all sorts of reasons, unique to and personal to the reader, but in all cases the upshot is the same: They say they're going to have to stop reading my books because they don't fit into their budget. I always reply the same way: No worries ... You can get my books (ebooks and paperbacks) for free at the library! People tend to forget about libraries. I'm here to...
21 days ago • 2 min read
I have some good news for you audiophiles out there! (Or at least the kind of audiophiles who are into audiobooks.) I finally got tired of being asked "Are your books available in audio?" and decided to do something about it. For a long time, I've had to lower my head and admit, "Um, only Fat Vampire is available in audio. Sorry." Now, though, I've done two audiobook-related things that I think you'll like: FIRST, I've put all of the great audiobooks I've had from the past up on my direct...
28 days ago • 3 min read
Last month, I sent you something called "Why most of my books have two authors." It was all about my creative relationship with my constant co-author, Sean Platt. I got a lot of responses to that one. (Something I encourage, by the way. I don't get a lot of replies to these, so sometimes I wonder if anyone is reading.) I must never have explained the way Sean and I co-author to a lot of you ... or maybe I just didn't go into as much detail. Readers seemed to think it was interesting, hearing...
about 1 month ago • 9 min read
Hey and happy Saturday! I just wanted to remind you that my signed books sale ends tomorrow. Click here to check it out. I've never offered signed books online before, but over the past week, a lot of you have been ordering signed copies of your favorites: everything from Fat Vampire to The Beam, from the "Dark Tower on LSD" epic of Unicorn Western to the first book I ever wrote, The Bialy Pimps. But at some point, I need to close the sale, order the books, sign them, and ship them back out....
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
I sometimes forget there are two names on most of the books I sell. In fact, it's so normal for me to see "Sean Platt" beside my name that I never realize the idea of a two-author book is unusual for readers. I wasn't always so accepting of co-authorship. I'm a huge Stephen King fan, but until I became a writer myself, I regarded The Talisman with suspicion because "Peter Straub" was on its cover with him. What was I to make of that? How could two authors write a book? I thought book-writing...
2 months ago • 6 min read
I'm totally distracted right now, so it would make sense if trying to write my current project, called The Ephemera, was harder than normal. (You know: distracted because I've got that Kickstarter campaign going right now, for special signed editions of Plague of Demons and my complete Gore Point trilogy. Running a Kickstarter turns all of life into an ADHD fugue.) But as I think I've mentioned before, I underwent a weird sort of "writer's reboot" last year. As a result, I've been consciously...
3 months ago • 8 min read
** Quick PSA: My next Kickstarter launches on Tuesday! ** Yeah, yeah, I know. Some of you have been with me for a decade or more. I published Fat Vampire in 2012, for crap's sake. So you're probably thinking, "Dude. What do you mean with a subject line like, 'I finally feel like a real author'? You've been an author for a long time." True. But for all that time, I've dealt mainly with ebooks. And don't get me wrong; ebooks are great. They're great for a lot of readers. They're also great for...
3 months ago • 3 min read
It's funny. Sometimes people tell me about something they liked in one of my books, but I won't remember it. I can usually be goaded into some degree of recall, but not always. And then people will say, "How can you not remember your own books?" Okay. So, first of all, I totally understand why people wonder. I understand why people don't understand it at all. There are two answers to this particular weird question, and they are: I write a lot of books, and the cognitive load of keeping them...
3 months ago • 4 min read
I've got another new book out today ... this one HOT after the COLD of Winter Break. Today's new release is City of Fire -- sequel to my "horror procedural" Gore Point. (Which, in case you missed it, I've pitched as "Backdraft with demons.") A lot of my most ardent readers already have this book, having snapped it up during its Kickstarter campaign last fall. But if you weren't one of those readers -- if you're more of an "I just want the book" kind of reader -- now's your chance to get it at...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Hey there, and Happy New Year! I always like the week between Christmas and New Year's. It's a pleasant "dead zone": halfway on vacation (my kids are home, and that means slacking off to do stuff with them) and halfway working (because I love what I do and don't like to be away from it for long). Writing-wise, I've been playing with a brand new book over the past half-and-half week. Or, rather: an existing new book. If you're a die-hard, you might remember that earlier this year, I tried to...
4 months ago • 3 min read