Zombie City now in paperback

The paperback version of the Zombie City Omnibus is now available on Createspace. It's trade paperback size (6"X9") and 420 pages, and it costs $14.99. It should show up on Amazon in another few days, and they'll probably offer a discount when it's available. But if you want to order now, click here for the Createspace page.

Zombie City: Episode 5 is now available!

The final episode in the Zombie City serial is now available on Amazon and Smashwords. It should show up everywhere else (Barnes&Noble, iTunes, Kobo, etc.) within a few days.

Click here for Amazon.
Click here for Smashwords.

Thanks to all who have followed the story thus far!

Hardcore wRapper

The Goodreads Giveaway for Blood Brothers ended on July 14th, and Goodreads gave me the names of the six winners last night. I wrapped up the books today, and mailed them out. They might take a week or two to arrive--I sent them media-mail class, which is slower than regular first class, and I'm in Hawaii, so they've got to cross the ocean--but they're on their way. Thanks to everybody for participating!

ZC5 First Draft Finished!!! & Blood Brothers giveaway on Goodreads ends soon!

Yesterday I finished the first draft of Zombie City: Episode 5. Total word count is around 38K (like 120 pages). I wrote a little over 20K in the past two weeks, which is pretty fast for me. I'm going to start the revision process today, and hope to have it ready to publish in another week or so.

Also, my Goodreads Giveaway for six paperback copies of Blood Brothers is coming to an end on July 14th. If you haven't signed up yet, what are you waiting for?

write wild! (ZC5 update)

Friday, June 27th, was my last day of work with the temporary job I started back in January. Since Monday, June 30th, I've been writing as if it were a full time job. So far I've written around 15K words for Zombie City Episode 5, which puts the total word count at just over 30K (around 100 pages). I think the story will take another 10K words to complete, and I'm hoping to finish the rough draft this week.

I've been writing wilder than I normally do, just jamming words into the keyboard and plunging ahead. The story has gone in some pretty wild directions, and I'm sure I'll need to do more revision than normal, but I'm having fun.

Parkwriting, the AlphaSmart3000, and ZC5 progress

A while back I came across a post on kboards about the AlphaSmart Neo word processor. It sounded pretty awesome to me--a super-simple, super-portable word processor that gets 400+ hours of power from three AA batteries. No cords, no load-time waiting--you press the power button and you can start typing less than two seconds later. I got so excited that I went on ebay looking for one. I ended up buying the predecessor to the Neo, which is called an AlphaSmart3000. Cost me twenty bucks, shipping to Hawaii included.

Another bonus I've discovered about the AlphaSmart: the thing has such a tiny screen that it makes it hard to go back and edit what you've written, so you're sort of forced into just producing new writing instead of my usual "edit-ceaselessly-throughout-the-process" approach that always ends up taking forever. I'm hoping that getting the rough draft all the way out, and then doing a more-involved editing/revision, will be a more efficient and faster way to go about producing a story.

So I've been taking the AlphaSmart3000 to the park after work, and working on Zombie City Episode 5. I'm more than 13K words in so far, and I feel like the AlphaSmart's ease of use is helping me be more productive. I'm also showing a bit more discipline than I typically manage. If things keep going like they have been, I might have ZC5 ready in half the time it took me for the last episode.

Here's hoping!

great interview with Hugh Howey

First of all, I feel compelled to mention that the video host is a bit too "business-oriented" for my personal tastes. (If you want to skip past his intro, Hugh starts talking at about 1:30.) Even so, Hugh Howey has a very inspiring self-publishing success story, and this video is definitely worth watching.