Free vampire story ideas

Yesterday I was scrolling through Twitter, or Facebook, I forget which, and I saw a post of someone asking for tips for writing a vampire story.  I didn’t read any of the suggestions because I didn’t really care.  Vampires have almost been done to death.  But the idea of a vampire story fluttered around in my head, and I thought that for a good vampire story there needs to be some twist.  As a random example, I thought of a reverse-vampire.

A reverse-vampire was just supposed to be a joke, but I started wondering what that would entail.  Like, would that just be a “vampire” that gives blood to the people they bite?  Like would royal families keep a reverse-vampire around to treat the hemophiliacs in the family?  Or would they be used to give clean blood to doping athletes?  I could picture a scene in an ER where someone had a bad accident and the doctor goes, “They’re losing too much blood.  Somebody wake up Vlad.” And a nurse grabs a broom and pokes a bat sleeping in the corner, and it would transform into a groggy guy who bites the patient and gives them blood.

I got a chuckle over these ideas, and I’d write them myself, if I didn’t have like, 8,000 other story ideas I want to write.  So if you can make anything of these, have at it.

Random Writing Tips – An interesting use for libraries/Twitter

 

At the beginning of the year, I did a post on my writing goals for 2021.  One thing I left off that list because it only relates to writing, is that I want to sell more of my Kindle books this year.  That’s a great goal, but how does one try to do that?  I don’t know.  Which is why I’m trying some things this year to see if I can find something that seems to work so I can expand on it in the coming years. 

While I would love to see all of my books get attention, I’m only going to focus on some of them.  And while I would love to see more sales in all markets, I’m also only going to focus on a few, like Australia.  If I figure anything out in selling Book A in Australia, maybe I can apply that to selling Book B in Brazil.

So how can someone living in the US get more sales in Australia?  Well, I figure the first step is getting people in Australia to know that I exist.  How can I do that, that’s cheap?  After some thought, this is what I’ve come up with.

It is really easy to search online for a list of libraries in some place, say Australia.  The majority of these libraries have webpages.  Now, I haven’t crunched the numbers, but it seems that only about a third of libraries also have Twitter accounts.  Some libraries are famous for one reason or another and have thousands of followers.  But other, smaller, libraries only have a few hundred followers.  Now, who would follow the Twitter account of a small library in a small Australian town?  Probably the locals who use that library. 

At this point some of you probably think that I just randomly follow a bunch of Australian people in the hope that some of them will check me out and hopefully buy some of my books.  I’m not that tacky.  I will read through the people following this small Australian library and if I see any with bios saying that they are “avid readers” or “lovers of all things sf,” those are the ones I will follow. 

So if you are trying to target people in some specific place, this might be one way to try to reach them.  Having only followed a few dozen such people (2021 feels really busy, but I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything) and not yet having any sales in Australia this year, I can’t say how successful this scheme will be.  But there’s only one way to find out if this works.  If it does, I might tell you.  Or I might keep the secret to myself.  We’ll see.

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Image from Pixabay.

Random Writing Tips – Schedules

A couple weeks ago, I posted a blog about my writing goals for this year.  One goal I didn’t mention because it’s not actually writing, is to sell more of my books.  Great idea, but how do you go about that?

I figure a good place to start is to just have more people know I exits.  Again, that’s a great idea, but what do I do?  More importantly, what can I do that is simple and cheap?  One idea I had is to actually blog more.  For the last couple of years I haven’t really done much blogging.  Part of it was that for a time I was on several sites where you got paid for interactions with your posts, so I put all of my stuff there.  But one by one those sites went belly up, and I kind of lost interest in posting stuff.  I’d post the occasional thing if the mood struck me, but there was nothing regular.

When I figured I should start blogging more, I remembered reading an article years ago on making the most of your author blog.  I forget who the author was, but they said that one way to have meaningful interactions with potential readers is to stick to some schedule.  If readers know that every Monday they’ll get to read some writing horror story and every Thursday they’ll get some writing advice, then they’ll keep coming back.

It’s great advice, and I think I tried to follow it years ago, but I think I overdid it.  It’s the classic story of having to split your finite time between writing your novel and writing the two or three blog posts for this week.  I tried to do too much, fell behind, and got discouraged.  So this time, I’m keeping it small.  On the first Tuesday of the month, I’ll post a blog about something, such as my writing goals for the year, and on the third Tuesday I’ll do a Random Writing Tip.  I’m also doing a couple things on my other blog, so I’m averaging about a blog a week, which I hope won’t strain my time. 

So that’s my … secondhand tip.  Make some schedule for your writing.  And it doesn’t have to just be for blogs.  It could be anything from writing a blog every Wednesday, or working on your novel on odd numbered days and your poetry on even, or working on your stories during the week and revising on the weekends. 

Like most good advice, this all sounds easy.  Sticking to it, that’s the hard part.  Of course, there are a couple things to keep in mind with your schedule.  First off, it should be achievable: don’t schedule yourself to write a novel every Thursday.  And secondly, and probably more importantly, don’t get discouraged if you fail to keep to your schedule.  If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that unexpected shit happens.  These schedules aren’t carved in stone, they can always be adjusted or replaced with a new schedule that better suits your current situation.

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Image from Pixabay.

Biden Inauguration Sale!

Just before the 2012 Election, I self-published Political Pies, a collection of forty of my stories with a political element.  I tried to make the stories as neutral or equally condemning of the parties as I could because I wasn’t trying to force an agenda, I just wanted people to start thinking about issues.  Since then, to try to get it into as many hands as I could, I usually have a free sale of it for the Fourth of July, elections, and inaugurations.  Usually I just have it by itself, but last year I started doing sales with multiple books, so that’s what I’m doing here. 

So, between Sunday January 17th and Thursday January 21st, you can grab the following five Kindle ebooks for free. 

Political Pies

Everybody complains about politics, but does anyone do anything about it? My attempt to do something about it is to collect forty of my short stories with a political element into my Political Pies anthology. My stories are either politically neutral or equally condemning of the national parties. Instead of trying to sway you to one ideology or another, my goal is to just get people thinking about politics in the hopes a rose might grow out of all the political manure.

The Future is Coming

As a science fiction writer, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how technology will change the way we live. I’ve come up with these ten short essays about science fictional elements that will – almost certainly – one day become science fact as a way for people to start coming to terms with them. Because I’ve spent time thinking about clones and AIs, I feel that I’ll be okay when they do finally show up whereas most people will probably freak out. I hope these essays will get people to start thinking about the future because, no matter what we do, the future is coming.

Brain for Rent and other stories

Brain for Rent and other stories is a collection of five of my short scifi stories to give a sampling of my writing. The collection includes: “Brain for Rent” about a ne’re-do-well failed writer with a conceptual implant who discusses his work with a young woman thinking of getting an implant herself. “The Demonstration” is about a different young woman wanting to show off her latest body modification. “Self Imprisonment” offers one solution of safe keeping the backup copy of yourself. “The Best Job Ever” is about a necessary – yet unpleasant – human/alien interaction. And the collection ends with “Why Stay?” which explains why, after years of fighting the humans, the robots just deactivate.

An Ounce of Prevention

Like most people, Jason Fisher wanted to make the world a better place, but he doubted he would ever have the chance to make much of a mark. Then a “woman” came to him, asking his help to save humanity by threatening it.

Lonely Phoenix

Partway to a new colony world, board member Geoffrey Ames is woken from hibernation by the caretaking crew of the Lucian. They require him to look into the matter of their fellow crewman Morgan Heller. Morgan’s claims – such as being over 1500 years old – would normally land him in the psychiatric ward, except he can back up some of his other claims.

My writing goals for 2021

 Last year I posted a blog of my writing goals for 2020.  I had four goals and I met two-and-a-half of them.  One goal was that every four years I go through my ebooks and fix any typos and outdated information.  I forget exactly when I finished my 2020 revisions, but it was around April.  After I finished that, I got to work on my collection Useless Cogs, which I published in October. 

The one goal from last year I didn’t meet – and will be carried over – was finishing a rough draft on The Pathfinder Saga, Volume 1.  Basically, it’s this super long, fantasy epic thing.  (See last year’s post for more details.)  I got some work done on it, but not much.  I’m trying to set aside two days a week to work on it, so hopefully I’ll be able to finish the rough draft this year. 

My main goal for 2021 is publishing The Uncapped Pen.  This is a collection of fifty stories covering various aspects of writing: author’s arguing with their muse, antics at writers group meetings, stuff like that.  It’s been on the back burner for a decade, but I’m finally going to finish it.  It was part of last year’s goal of working on other collections, so this is the “half” of a goal met. 

And my general goal this year is to write more.  Part of that will be working on other collections, but I’ve also been meaning to finish some stories and send them out to magazines.  That’s something I haven’t done much of for the last few years, and I’m hoping to get back into that.

So you’ll have to come back next year and see how I do.

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Image from Pixabay.

Writing Newsletter Fourth Quarter 2020

Way back in 2006, I began making a quarterly newsletter for my writing news.  At first, I emailed it to my friends, but part way through the year I switched over to putting monthly updates on my website.  It was a way to let people know what – if anything – of mine had been published, random updates, and I usually added a short story or haiku or something.  I continued for several years (I moved the posts to an old blog), but in mid-2013 I stopped.  And I don’t remember why.  My guess is that things were hectic at the time and I felt bogged down, and I took a break and just never got back to it.  Until now.   

I had been thinking of doing a year end wrap up blog, but it was rather depressing thinking of how little I did this year.  The only big thing happened in October, and after thinking for a bit I came back to the idea of a quarterly newsletter.  It will cover any writing news I have, or feel like sharing, and maybe a story or haiku or something.  I’m going to try to keep this version simple, so there’s less chance I’ll feel bogged down.

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In October, I self-published Useless Cogs.

It is a collection of forty, science fiction stories.  The stories range from only a few dozen words to a few thousand and are filled with time travelers, AIs, clones, aliens, even sexbots, although not often as you would imagine.  As examples, there’s a time traveler that’s always a step behind, an AI that’s late on rent, and a sexbot with bad software.  Some of the stories are humorous, some horrifying, and some … depend on your point of view. 

It can be found on Amazon for $1.99.

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In the last three months, I’ve also republished my short stories “For the People?” and “The Horror.” Over the years several of the sites my stories have been on have gone under, or the stories are still online, just on an old blog that nobody follows.  So I’ll occasionally repost them to keep them alive.

I also published a new “Christmas” story, “Too Good to be True.”

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I didn’t get around to writing a story for this quarter.  Maybe next year.

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Image from Pixabay.

Christmas sale!

So it’s Christmas.  Maybe Santa brought you a new Kindle, maybe in the last few months you’ve read everything in your house, or maybe you’re just looking to try something new from someone you’ve probably never heard of.  Well, I got you covered.  From Wednesday December 23, through Sunday December 27, my four Kindle ebooks listed below will be free to download. 

I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday season, and I hope you enjoy anything of mine you read.

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A Man of Few Words

 

A Man of Few Words is a collection of fifty of my flash fiction stories. What would really happen if a “T-Rex on steroids” attacked a city? Why do science fiction writers make the best lovers? How does a company get to Second Base with VIPs? I explore these questions and more using less than 1000 words and in various genres from humor to horror and general fiction to science fiction.

The majority of the stories were previously published (most on my website) but all were revised for this collection. In addition, each piece is accompanied by some background information on the origin of the story or a funny tale about the writing of it to give a fuller experience.

Rise

 

“Rise” is a standalone story set in my Human Republic Universe. The story follows the events after the tragic deaths of the colonists on a small colony in a distant star system.

A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories

 

Hopefully, in the not too distant future humans will return to the moon. We will build bases and colonies, make farms and factories, and live, love and learn. “A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories” contains five short stories that are all set upon the moon. They give the tiniest glimpse of the possibilities awaiting us there.

The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars

 

Over the last few years a lot of people have caught Mars fever. It seems a week doesn’t go by without a report of some new group wanting to send people to Mars, or some big name in the industry talking about why we have to go to Mars, or articles talking about the glorious future humanity will have on Mars. All of this worries me. In my opinion, a Mars base is currently not sustainable because there’s no way for it to make money. A few missions may fly doing extraordinary science, but if it’s then cancelled for cost the whole Mars Project may just be seen as an expensive stunt.

Fortunately, there are other places in the solar system besides Mars. While bases on the moon and amongst the asteroids won’t be as inspirational as one on Mars, they will have opportunities for businesses to make goods and services as well as profits, meaning less chance of them being outright cancelled. This will make life better on Earth and secure a firm foothold in space for humanity. The essays in “The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars” allow me to describe my ideas on what can be accomplished on the moon and with the asteroids, and why Mars isn’t the destiny of humanity its cheerleaders make it out to be.