Next New Breed Chronicles

This is just an update to let you know that the next episode of THE NEW BREED CHRONICLES is finished.  She just needs editing and she'll be ready to go.  You should be able to expect her live on Amazon in the next couple of days.

I have a question for the fans of this series.  When I started out these episodes I had a vision of completing one each month and I still plan on trying to reach that pace.  Life, other books, family and business all naturally get in the way of this process.  My question is this:  should I continue to release these short episodes, as I have been doing at irregular intervals, or at this stage would it be better to just wait until the first "Novel" or "Season" has been completed and simply release that when it's ready?

J.T.

Thanks to Reviewers

This is just a really quick post to put something out there.  It's been a while since the release of Breed and the influx of a number of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.  The majority of these reviews have been very positive.

The reason that I am writing this post is that I want to respond to every review I get but I feel that there must surely be some kind of taboo against that.  If I respond to a positive review and tell the reviewer that I love them and want to have their babies (that's meant to be funny because I'm a man but, because all you guys see is my initials, I guess I need to clarify) then how are they supposed to feel free to give a negative review on my next book.

So I just want to say:

To my positive reviewers:  thank you so much.  You might not know what it's like to log on to Amazon or Goodreads and see some completely unknown person praising your work.  It is an injection of happiness into my day and can put me on a high for hours and days afterwards.

To my negative reviewers: thank you as well.  Sure it's a bummer to see that I didn't strike a chord with you.  But thank you for the comment because you help me get better at this thing that I'm trying to do.

This post is probably inspired because DEEP was recently released with hundreds of free downloads.  This means that reviews are probably on the way and I am, honestly, very anxious.

J.T.

DEEP is out now on Amazon.  It will be free for five days starting tomorrow (Tuesday).  The only price for the free download is that you have to rate it 5 stars and give it a glowing review no matter what a mess it might be to read!  Only joking of course...  unless that would make you give it 5 stars no matter what a mess it is, in which case...

Quick Update

This is just a quick update to let anyone who cares know that my new horror novel, DEEP, should be releasing on Amazon this week.  After that the next episode of THE NEW BREED CHRONICLES shouldn't be far behind.

Thanks to everyone who continues to support me by buying my work on Amazon.

I'll be back with another post this week.

J.T.

Breed has sold over 200 Copies - Thank You

Dear Internet,

Breed has moved over 200 paid copies (that's counting paid borrows and Kindle Unlimited which certainly matter to me).
I am just writing a thank you to every single reader who has taken their hard earned money and spent it on a copy of my book.  200 copies might be a nothing to many authors but to me it is a gigantic milestone.  The idea that 200 of you have read Breed and made the characters real is very special to me.
I am working hard on another horror novel which, if luck is with me, should be available in April (and maybe even by the end of March).  Once the horror novel has been published the next episode of The New Breed Chronicles won't be far behind.

Path to Together Discount Glitch

Hi Internet,

The discount of Path to Together to 99c did not happen as scheduled.  There appears to have been a small glitch in the system and Amazon are working on it right now.  I am hoping the discount will appear as promised in the next day or two.

J.T.

Path to Together Discounted & Free Book Update

Hi Internet,

The latest installment of "The New Breed Chronicles" launched yesterday.  To give everyone a chance to catch up I am running a promotion on the collection of the first three episodes, "The Path to Together".  For 5 days, starting Saturday the 21st of February, "The Path to Together" will be 99c on Amazon.
For those who care, "The New Breed Chronicles" is an episodic series.  A I mentioned in a previous post it is something along the lines of a serialized novel.  I have not been releasing content for the series as frequently as I originally intended but I plan on remedying that situation.  The idea is the first novel will be concluded in about 8-12 episodes, at which point I will collect them together into a single issue.

As for the free book experiment with "Breed", things have actually performed better than I expected.  After the free book offer I really thought that I wouldn't see another download.  The result has actually been quite different.  Sales, though extremely modest by comparative standards, are the best I have ever had for a title.  They have actually been multiple times better than any other title I have ever had.  The other interesting effect is that I am now seeing sales, albeit very small numbers of sales, of my other titles.  It's almost as if, and I say this very tentatively, readers are enjoying Breed and are then going looking for more stories from this poor hopeless scheister.

Anyway internet, that is all because the day-job beckons,

J.T.

The New Breed Chronicles Update

Hi Internet,

Very very quick post.  I have noticed a few sales of The New Breed Chronicles recently.  For those who don't know, which is basically the entirety of the Internet, the New Breed Chronicles are episodic stories that follow on from each other.  It is kind of like a serialized novel, except it is being serialized as it is being written.  The idea was to release a new episode every month.  This would have resulted in a decent novel's worth of material annually.  Then reality happened I have been dripping out the installments at an anemic rate.
Working on Breed distracted me from Episode 4, which is now very overdue.  If anyone is actually reading the first three episodes, and cares about where things might be going for Ardia and Homer, then Episode 4 is on the way and should be along in the next couple of weeks.  I say the next couple of weeks but what I really mean is as soon as I can get it put together... that should be sometime between next week and the end of time.
It will be titled "The Golem" and looks like it will be longer than any of the previous installments.

The Social Media Thing

Sorry Internet,

I forgot to say some stuff about social media.

I am not an old man but I live like one in a lot of ways and I simply don't exist on social media.  I am trying to fix that a little bit.  I noticed some people took the trouble to visit this blog and there were no posts at the time.  I would like to apologize for that.

I now have a facebook page which is here.  There is sweet nothing on it but I will try and fix that over next few days.  It really would make my day if someone from the ether tried to attach themselves to it.

Anyone can email me at lomasneyjt@gmail.com

And this twitter thing is another story altogether.  I have a twitter, which is @lomasneyjt, but I have no real idea about how to use it.  Up until now twitter existed for me so I could see what Pittsburgh Steelers players were saying whenever there was a bit of drama like a firing or a painful loss and so on.  Now I guess I had best see what all the fuss is actually about.

And with that I will bid you farewell for now sweet Internet, I shall return,

J.T.

The Free Book Experiment

Dear Internet,
(I wish I had something cool to open with like King's "constant reader".  Is that copyrighted?)

I published Breed last week and put the book on Amazon's Free Book Promotion for the maximum allowed five days.  So far it has been an interesting little experiment even if it has produced some mixed feelings for me.
Over the course of the five days Breed was downloaded almost 500 times.  I know these are not staggering numbers for a free book but I find it kind of daunting to think that 500 people out there might actually be reading Breed.  The book reached the top page on Genetically Engineered Category and the third page of Horror.
The most interesting, and incredible part of the experiment, has been the feedback.  I will tell the truth; I tried to give the book five stars myself.  I was sort of priming the pump, if you will, in the same manner as a street performer drops a few coins in his hat himself to get the ball rolling.  Amazon of course did away with my deception in short order.  The next day I was checking the books page on Amazon.com and saw a five-star review.  'Nice one,' thinks me, 'they put it back.  I got away with it.'  Then I looked a little more closely and the bottom kind of fell out of my stomach.  It wasn't my review.  Someone had read the book and liked it.  She hadn't just liked it, she really liked it!
Since then I have picked up a half dozen reviews, all but one of them are 5 star reviews.  The only one that was not was a four star review and was still a very constructive commentary.
It's a very strange thing to actually know that other people have read this book.  It's even stranger still that they haven't been outright disgusted by it.  It almost boggles my mind that the book has been enjoyed.  Seeing reviewers talk about characters, making them real in a mind other than my own, has been incredible.  It has been oddly emotive as well.  When I read the first five star review it took me on quite the emotional roller coaster.
I know the advice.  Every one from Stephen King to J.A. Konrath will say not to read your critics.  And I know the bad reviews are just around the corner (if I even get any more reviews).  But I can't help it.  We have to learn from our own mistakes and I guess I will keep reading reviews, and learning from them, until someone finally breaks my heart.
So that's that.  This post has also been a sort of priming the pump experiment.  Nobody reads this blog but if someone decides to pay a visit there should at least be something here for them to read.  This social media stuff completely escapes me so I really don't know what I am doing writing to the Internet in general.  Hi Internet!
With that I must get back to task at hand and make another story to put out there so I can once more go through the torturous highs and lows of obsessively tracking downloads and waiting for that inevitable awful review.

Bye for now Internet,

J.T.