In addition to the new story, check out the new Inspirational Media Page for a collection of Youtube clips that have entertained or inspired me over the years. I’ll be adding to that as time goes by.
As you all know, over Labor Day weekend I held a free giveaway of Hometown. It did well, at least by my standards, moving about 1,500 copies.
Then…it did better. I expected for it to sell a few copies after the “sale” ended, get a few extra page-reads on Kindle Unlimited…
(For those of you who aren’t familiar, The way Kindle Unlimited works is people buy a monthly subscription, then they’re able to read any books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited for free. All of the subscription fees go into one big pot, and the authors get paid based on how many pages get read from one of their books. All of my books are enrolled in it, because although I’ve only ever had a few dozen pages read a month and thus gotten pennies, more established authors say that it’s an even bigger earner than actually selling the books.)
And I have indeed had a few sales. A few more than I expected, but still only a few. But since my Labor Day Sale ended, I’ve had thousands of page-reads on Kindle Unlimited. I couldn’t understand it until I saw that little factoid above on Twitter. That’s when I understood: the Labor Day Sale is what brought me over the top: that was when I went from eighteen customer reviews to twenty-one. Who knew it could make such a difference? Not only am I getting more page-reads, my sales rank is skyrocketing in the Occult Fiction and Occult Horror categories, which of course helps boost visibility even more. There are several positive feedback loops going on here.
So what I am going to do is I am going to beg…I am going to beseech everyone who has read this book and who has enjoyed it to please…please put a review up on Amazon. The goal is to get those reviews up over fifty – hopefully well up over fifty – so that second level of visibility boost kicks in.
Please. If you’ve read it, if you liked it, post a review. It’s the single most important thing you can do to help me right now.
Well, I’m afraid the Hometown Labor Day Sale has come to an end, but I am glad to announce that it has been more successful than I dared to hope. Not only were there more free downloads than I dared to hope, but a lot of people are reading Hometown on Kindle Unlimited. And that, my friends, is something where the priced never goes up. If you’re on Kindle Unlimited, head on over to Amazon and read Hometown today, just as free as it was during the Labor Day Sale. Find out the truth of what happened that terrible Fall in Belford so many years ago.
And if you should happen to like it? Please leave a review. If you write a review on your blog or website or – I hardly dare hope – create some fan art, please contact me and I will be beyond happy to signal boost for you.
More than 1,000 copies moved in the first day of the sale alone! I am so honored!
If you like the story, please remember the leave a review and pass the word. If you have a blog or website of your own, please consider posting a review there, and please let me know about it if you do. I will be more than happy to signal boost for you.
This next is a bit more troubling and thoughtful. I’ve often been deeply troubled by media, viral memes, and the like that glorify a “warrior class” as somehow wiser, more deserving (especially more deserving of rule), and generally superior to the rest of us. The “sheep and sheepdogs” meme that went around a few years ago, where the Warrior Class was literally a superior species was particularly disturbing. But I’ve never had an answer for it.
My dear friend Emily H. has posted what she hopes will be the first of a series of Youtube posts on food injustice. The first is about the disaster that is this year’s planting season in the Midwest and its connections to Climate Change.
Please check it out, like, subscribe, share, and – if Ko-Fi has corrected its issues – donate. Let’s help an independent documentarian get off the ground.
Fred Clark, the Slacktivist, whom I consider to be both a friend and teacher, has had an absolutely terrible June. His father passed away, and then…well, he experienced the string of events recounted at this linked post. Please help if you can, or share if you can’t.
Or even if you can. The farther this reaches, the better.
