Book News – Page 11 – Matthew Keville

Looking the Other Way is now available for sale!

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The first story of the dark beneath the City is now available for sale! Check out the updated Short Stories page, the story’s own page, or, if you’re in a hurry, just go straight to Amazon. It’s available both for purchase and for checkout with Kindle Unlimited.

(All stories previously released through this site are now available only through Amazon, and can now be checked out through Kindle Unlimited.)

Excerpt:

The tracks were full of vermin.

It was a living river, flowing from the Queensward side – from the deep and unbroken dark beneath the East River. Probably shin-deep or worse, if I’d actually dared to get down there: rats squirming and climbing and tumbling over each other as an endless current of cockroaches carried them along.

They were running from something. Was the tunnel flooding? Should I be headed for the surface, like right-frigging-now?

But no, that wasn’t it. If I looked further up the tracks, toward the tunnel, I could see what they were running from. Right behind the cockroaches was a tide of…well, they looked like cockroaches, too, except that they were black – I mean absolute, gleaming, lightless, deep-space black, like chips of the all-consuming Void moving among the plain brown carapaces of New York’s everyday garbage-eaters – and they were big. The ones the size of my finger were running before the ones the size of my palm, who were running before the ones the size of my whole hand, who were…

Then, just as I was about to make a run for the surface – possibly while screaming like a little girl – a dark shape appeared in the tunnel. It looked human and it lurched along like it was drunk or unsteady on its feet, like the homeless guy up on the platform.

I started forward; plague of giant mutant cockroaches or no, a person down on those tracks is in several different kinds of deep trouble. The train would be along any minute, but it might not even be that long before a stumbling drunk stumbled into the third rail.

I didn’t get two steps before Janitor’s Coveralls grabbed my shoulder. “Dejalo, m’ijo,” he said. “Leave it. This is their territory.”

“Their what?” I said, starting forward again. Then I stopped short as the figure emerged from the tunnel.

It wasn’t human. If it ever had been, it wasn’t anymore. More of the black cockroaches – these ones with weird silver-colored ridges and knobs forming patterns on their shells – were swarming all over it. Over it and through it. Black bugs dripped from the sleeves of its trench coat and the cuffs of its raggedy corduroys; they spread like sweat stains across its ancient white undershirt; they concealed its feet as it shuffled forward through the swarm. It opened its mouth and a horrible crackling noise emerged, followed by more of the finger-sized black beetles. Worst of all, when it raised its head so I could see under the battered brim of its hat, I saw two of them lodged in its eye sockets, like tiny pilots operating the vehicle that had once been a man.

I Don’t Know What To Do

When I started this year, I had three ideas for changes of direction in my writing career:

Create this site, so my marketing efforts are associated with my own name, instead of a melodramatic and rather silly blog title that I must admit I still have quite a bit of affection for. It’s a little slow to get off the ground, but I’m going to keep plugging at it (if anyone could help by sharing me all over your social media, it would be much appreciated), because the original reason I did it remains valid and isn’t likely to change.
Take down all of my short stories and only sell them as collections. This idea has already been rescinded.
Stop using Amazon KDP Select, which requires Amazon exclusivity, and start publishing on Smashwords as well, which (through their Premium Catalogue) sells through a number of different venues and formats, improving options for potential customers.

That last one has run into a significant speed bump:

No one is buying anything at the alternate venues. A fair-to-middling month on Amazon KDP Select is better, in terms of sales, than my entire time on alternate venues. And that’s counting the significant amount of time I spent on those alternate venues before I signed up for KDP Select the first time.

Philosophically, I’m uncomfortable with being exclusive to one venue. I want my buyers to have options, and I don’t want to be at the mercy of some megacorp. This is how monopolies happen.

That said, I have to be realistic. I’m trying to build a career, here. If Amazon Kindle has become the public’s medium of choice, then I have to do what maximizes my exposure in it.

So talk to me, folks. I got my ears on, good buddy. My instinct is to hit “Depublish” on all those alternate venues, and get back on KDP Select. What do y’all think?

(PS – A little good news to go with all this: I’m very close to finished with Part 3 of Dreams of the Boardwalk, and it will be going up next week.)

The Guardian Cats of New York City: Shin-Nephura’s Neighborhood Now Available for Sale!

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Hey, all!

As I mentioned last week, I’m starting to put short stories back up for sale again, and I’m starting by republishing the ones that were published before. As you can tell from the illustration, the first story to get this treatment is Shin-Nephura’s Neighborhood. My apologies to the fans of the kittehs, but yes, this does mean that the free version of this story has been taken down from this site.

Take a look at the updated Books page, the brand-new Short Stories page, or Shin-Nephura’s own page. Or if you’re impatient, just head straight to Amazon or Smashwords to pick yourself up a copy.

To whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt:

It was deep into the night. Even the most cat-spirited of two-legs had finished with eating their burned meats, drinking their mind-fogging poisoned waters, and inhaling their strange-flavored smokes. They had all returned to their dens to mate and to sleep. Only those with no den of their own remained out in the open airs, or those performing some strange human task or other. The great metal serpents still roared in their caves, but their bellies were nearly empty.

It was the time of the Cat.

The cat known to other cats as Shin-Nephura the Gentle, to herself by the secret name no other knew, and to the two-legs as Dodger, was out walking the streets of her domain.

She was known as “the Gentle” because she was affectionate and gracious to the two-legs of her domain, visiting them often and allowing them the liberty of scratching her head and stroking her back once she was sure they belonged. This familiarity had the benefit of teaching her much about the two-legs. For example, she knew that the name they’d given her came from one of those marvelous two-legs stories, and that it was the name of a clever thief. This pleased Shin-Nephura greatly; clever thieves are highly esteemed among cats. Also, many cats who were less in-tune with their two-legs were confused by such habits as putting on obvious mating displays and heat pheromones, but not mating. Shin-Nephura understood that the mating ritual of the two-legs was simply much longer and more complex than that of cats.

Perhaps most importantly, she had learned the names with which the two-legs marked her territory. Two streets marked the boundaries of her territory, and she lived where they came together. Their names were “Seaman Avenue” and “Dyckman Street”. For some reason, the two-legs seemed to find this funny.

She had a family of two-legs that she stayed with, who fed her and tended her hurts and stood as her companions. But unlike many cats that shared nearby dens with the two-legs, Shin-Nephura did not content herself with enjoying their companionship, playing and taking the food they gave her. She kept to the old Compact: “You will shelter us, feed us, and care for us in our illness and injury. You will honor us and give us good company. In exchange, we will protect you from the rodents that eat and foul your food, the insects that trouble you and bring disease, and the darker things that come out of the night.”

During the day, Shin-Nephura guarded the food place that her two-legs ran (in her clever listening, she had learned the words “corner bodega”).

By night, she walked a patrol.

She’d finished checking the courtyard and was just returning to the Corner Bodega when she stopped, ears pricked.

“Aaaaaalllleeeee”

Something was coming. Something that raised the fur along her spine and made her claws twitch involuntarily in their sheaths.

“AllEEEEE!”

Closer and louder now. Close and loud enough so that even a two-legs could have heard it. If any two-legs did hear, they would have been disturbed, even frightened, but they wouldn’t know why. Shin-Nephura knew. Whatever was coming was…wrong. It had come from the river – it squished and dripped and splashed with every step, and Shin-Nephura could smell the tidal muds – but it was no right part of the world of cats, birds, mice and two-legs.

It drew closer, and Shin-Nephura finally caught a whiff of something other than the muds.

Rotten meat.

Not like the food the two-legs so wastefully threw away, the meat just moldy or spoiled enough to be flavorful, but the smell of something long dead and decayed.

“aaAAallEEEeee!”

As the dead thing came around the corner and into view, Shin-Nephura’s hackles went all the way up and her claws scraped on the sidewalk.

A two-legs. The dead, lurching, half-rotten thing was a two-legs.

No wise cat wishes to face a two-legs in a straight fight. Slow, clumsy, half-deaf, night-blind, nose-numb, so often strange and silly in their behavior…it was easy to underestimate them. But yet, they were giants. Their strength was immense and their clever forepaws could create horrors. Once a cat was in a solid grip, there was little hope of wriggling free. The best one could hope for was to make the price too high.

“AAAaalleeee”

Still. She had a duty. The ancient compact.

The dead thing was shambling toward the iron gates that led into the courtyard. They were locked, but Shin-Nephura doubted that would be any obstacle. Locks and gates were little use against something like this.

“AAAA—”

“You are not welcome in my territory, dead thing.”

A Slight Change of Direction

Hello, all.

A few months ago, I took down all of my short stories from Amazon. It didn’t seem that people were interested in buying them individually (though there were always a few who were glad to take them when I gave them away…), and I figured that people weren’t willing to shell out a buck for such a short story, not least because they were short enough that the 10% sample viewable on Amazon was essentially the title page. I took them down on the theory of putting them back up later in anthologies.

I’ve received some feedback recently, however, that tells me that there are people who are interested in buying my short stories after all. Given that, and also keeping in mind that it’s better in terms of publicity to keep producing work regularly, I’m going to republish the short stories I have saved at Amazon and Smashwords, then start putting up new ones.

This isn’t going to happen right away. I figure one story a week, starting next week, should be enough. But beware: once I put a story up for sale, I’m going to take it down here. The exception will be stories like Dreams of the Boardwalk, which were posted as drafts, and the version for sale will be at least somewhat different.

And there will still be anthologies, sooner or later. Keep your eye out for those. I’ll let you know when.

About the Upcoming Stories

The next three stories are also set in New York, and will almost certainly be included in the Shining Towers, Shadowed Tunnels compilation. I’m not quite as certain if they’ll be included in my broader New York City mythos, along with the Washington Heights Witches and other NYC supernaturals that I intend to introduce over the course of coming stories.

You see, the Guardian Cats of New York City series was originally inspired by this cartoon from the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:

Guardian Cat Source

What if, I wondered, there really was some kind of ancient pact between cats and humanity? What if they defended us from Dangers Of The Night that might otherwise slip beneath our radar? Human magic-users and monster hunters might be good at staking vampires and banishing demons, but we won’t notice the rat king in the sewers until the entire town is consumed with pestilence. We’re good a blocking the punch to the face, but we’d never even notice the bite from the plague-bearing flea until it was far too late. Thus, the Old Compact with the cats.

I got three good stories out of the idea, but then started to run out of gas. Cats secretly defending humans from occult threats is an inherently cute idea; I wanted to treat it seriously, but it was resisting. As for incorporating the Guardian Cats into my NYC mythos with the Rivera family and other characters I have planned, there’s no technical reason why not, I suppose, but it raises difficult questions: are all of the cats in my setting Guardian Cats, or does it take a special breed of cat, like a witch’s familiar or Sailor Moon’s companions? What about rats (cats’ eternal enemies) or dogs (their reluctantly-accepted comrades in the defense of the two-legs)? How sapient are they? Does all of this fit into a world of gritty street-level magic?

Those are questions I need to work on as I compile Shining Towers, Shadowed Tunnels. Any suggestions are welcome.

In the meantime, tomorrow’s story is the first story in the Guardian Cats series, and the one that establishes the rules. Come back tomorrow and enjoy Shin-Nephura’s Neighborhood.

The Truth of Rock and Roll is now available at new sellers!

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Great news! In addition to being available on Amazon, The Truth of Rock and Roll is now available at Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, iTunes Books, and Kobo!

The fable of courage, youth, and rock & roll magic is now available in almost any format you could imagine!

An Amazon review for The Truth of Rock and Roll:

This book might just save your soul.

By Amazon Customer on April 2, 2013

The Truth of Rock and Roll is an astoundingly good novel. It has a unique, yet still familiar premise. It begins with a young man who doesn’t want to go to business school arguing on the phone with his father. After the conversation, a middle-aged man approaches him and begins to talk. The young man stays and listens (against his better instincts) and is treated to a story about youth, love, rebellion, small town prejudice, courage and the magic of rock and roll, which in this story is not just a figure of speech. Rock and roll is literally magical.

The Truth of Rock and Roll is not a long book, nor is it an intensely intellectual read. It can be easily devoured in an hour. Devoured is the right word for how one should read this book though. Keville recently began releasing it in serialized form on his blog in an attempt to simply reach more readers. After just the first section I wanted to buy the book. After the fourth I needed to buy it. The characters had quickly become my friends, people I cared about and wanted to win. I couldn’t escape the story, or the world. It’s the world I want for myself, where life is magic and love conquers all, though not without some serious annoyance along the way. Keville shows his skill in telling a wonderfully cheesy tale while making it new enough and good enough that you don’t care if it’s cheesy or a little old hash.

It’s possible this book appealed to me so much because I grew up in a small town and know all too well the kinds of trials and prejudice Johnny and Jenny (what else would our rock and roll lovebirds be named?) come up against. He’s a rich boy, she’s just white trash from the wrong side of the tracks. It’s the same in Footloose and Grease and The Notebook and thousands of other stories. Yet The Truth of Rock and Roll brings something these other stories don’t. For one, it starts with an old man telling how he threw it all away. It is a testament to Keville’s skill at storytelling that when he gets to the part where Johnny rejects the rock and roll angel (yes, there’s really, seriously a rock and roll angel, and it’s just as awesome as it’s possible to be) we feel cheated. Keville anticipates this perfectly with our young man listener/narrator who interrupts, “You did what?” only to be met with “Hey, kid, I told you early on.” He is correct, but it only serves to make this departure from the standard tale more frustrating. That is not to say it makes it bad. In fact, the story is all the more poignant for it.

The Truth About Rock and Roll is a message to anyone who has ever had a dream, “it’s about rockin’, not remembering.” You don’t have to be a writer, an artist, or a rock and roller to appreciate the message. Dreams are worth fighting for.

New Story Up Tomorrow!

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Coming up tomorrow is Neighborhood Witch, a tale of everyday magic in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. Like Looking The Other Way, Neighborhood Witch will be part of the upcoming Shining Towers, Shadowed Tunnels short story connection.

Neighborhood Witch, like Looking The Other Way, is based on my own experiences – people I’ve met, places I’ve seen. They needed a lot less alteration than you might expect to create an urban fantasy story. There’s magic, both dark and bright, in those streets.

Excerpt:

The witch came out of the corner store with her carton of smokes and her two-liter bottle of Pepsi in a plain black plastic bag.

“Hola, Mami,” one of the old men playing dominos in front of the store greeted her.

“Hola, hola,” she replied. At seventy-one, he had a good six years on her, but “mami” was a title that honored more than just age. In fact, she’d earned it through sheer pushiness by the time she was three.

She turned the corner onto 180th street and waved at the local drug dealers before mounting the front steps to her apartment building. They waved back and shouted their greetings – “Hola, Señora Rivera!” “ ‘Ey, Doña Celia!” – before turning back to the people they were speaking with.

Such nice boys. Why, she remembered when her elder daughter and her husband had needed to move in with her for a few weeks as part of their move to New York (move back to New York in Aracelli’s case). Brian – also a nice boy, but ay, such a country mouse! More than once she’d had to rescue him from con artists or chatty street people – had been a bit intimidated by all of the people sitting on the stoop while he tried to parallel park, but the dealers had coached him through it and then watched the luggage so it didn’t walk away while Brian and Aracelli were moving it from the curb to the apartment.

They weren’t the kind of boys who went shooting at everyone who wore the wrong colors. They didn’t want trouble. They just wanted to sell their pot and ecstasy to Columbia students and at all the new clubs opening up in Inwood. Living in New York meant making such accommodations.

Besides, anyone who was more trouble than that didn’t get to stay in Celia Rivera’s neighborhood very long.

First Story Coming Tomorrow!

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I thought that the best place to start on this new site would be with one of my most popular short stories.

Looking the Other Way is a story of hard times and the darkness beneath New York City, and what you sometimes have to do to survive both. Inspired by my own experiences in the Great Recession, Looking the Other Way will be one of the stories in my upcoming short story collection Shining Towers, Shadowed Tunnels.

Excerpt:

2008 was a bad year. Even in New York City, where the Great Recession never got quite as deep as it did in the rest of the country, that fall and winter were deep, dark, tell-your-grandkids-how-you-lived-through-the-hard-times bad. Hundred-year-old investment firms closed down like Broadway shows, and Broadway shows shut down like a community theatre production in Ogdensburg. Even the strip clubs were hurting.

I was one of the lucky ones. Well, not one of the really lucky ones. They kept their jobs. But I had a good severance package, a couple of 401(k)’s I could cash out for a couple thousand apiece (hurt me at tax time, but you do what you have to do), and an ex who insisted on rooming with me as long as I needed help with the rent. Between all that, Unemployment, and the fact that I was able to find temp work almost immediately, I was able to hold on and get through.

That last part was really key. When 2008 happened, I was a paralegal at a big Wall Street law firm. That made me a very useful fellow, but in 2008, even I was taking whatever work I could, wherever I could, whenever I could, and was grateful to get it.

Even so, I quickly discovered that I didn’t like night shifts. It puts you out of sync with the rest of the world. Sure, it’s nice to be able to go to the gym at noon when there are maybe three people in the whole place, but it’s just not New York if you can’t take a date to dinner and a play. Not that I could have afforded to do that anyway, but still.

Anyway, that was how I ended up standing on the subway platform at 59th and Lexington at 3:30 in the morning, headed back out to my apartment in Queens: a temp job. This law firm had needed someone to cover for their Proofreading Department while he took his “use ‘em or lose ‘em” vacation days before the end of the year, and his shift was from 6 PM to 2 AM…and that night had run into overtime.