Cheers to S.W. Lauden, who put the screws to me over at his website, Bad Citizen Corporation. He had some great questions—I hope I gave some good answers back.
The Last Safe Place
Want a free copy of my novella? [UPDATED]
UPDATE: All copies are now spoken for. Thanks for playing!
I recently updated the print edition of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella. This is for a few reasons:
1. I wanted to use a different font.
2. I wanted to add in the cover and release information for New Yorked.
3. There was a typo I was burning to fix.
The new edition looks very nice—but now I’m left with a handful of copies of the old version. So I’m going to give them away! I’m sorry you won’t get the new font and will be subjected to a typo, but hey—free book!
There are 10 copies available. Want one? Hit me up on Twitter or on Facebook. Just ask. First ten folks, I’ll send them a copy. United States only. I’ll pick the winners and mail them out, probably later this week.
All I ask in return is that you consider leaving a review of The Last Safe Place on Amazon, or that you consider pre-ordering a copy of New Yorked. Or both, if you’re feeling saucy.
None of that is required. The important thing here is: I’d like to clear some space on my bookshelf, and I’d like to get these into the hands of readers.
Two ways you can get a sneak peek of NEW YORKED
We’re a few months out from the release of New Yorked. Want to get a sneak peek? There are two ways to do that.
The latest issue of Thuglit includes an excerpt of the first chapter. Special thanks to the mag’s editor, Todd Robinson, for including that. It’s also full of awesome crime stories, so this is a good bang for you buck. Get it here.
I’ve also added the first chapter to The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella (eBook only, not the print edition). You can find that here.
The novella in print!
The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella, a thing I wrote that, until now, was only available as an eBook, is not anymore limited to a single format.
Wow, that sentence.
Anyway, The Last Safe Place is available as a paperback! And it’s only $5.69 at Amazon. Not bad. Cheaper than lunch in Manhattan. Cheaper than a life-size replica of the Iron Throne. I don’t go to Starbucks but I imagine it’s cheaper than most of their faux-coffee sugar drinks.
May updates!
- I’ve got a piece up at Salon on the cult of self-publishing. I measure my relative success or failure on how long it takes for someone to call me a douchebag. Since it happened in the first comment, I’d call this a success.
- We’ve got a solid slate of classes coming up at LitReactor, covering query letters, eBook coding, thriller and horror writing, character archetypes, and grammar. Find ’em here.
- New podcast! We talk about transgressive fiction. Good times all around.
The novella is back at B&N and Kobo
My KDP experiment is over. The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella is, once again, available at Barnes & Noble and Kobo.
Awesome new review
Got a very nice review of the novella, from fellow zombie-writer Leah Rhyne. She’s the author of Zombie Days, Campfire Nights (Undead America), and is generally a pretty cool person, so I was thrilled to get featured over at her site.
Here’s an excerpt:
This book is something more than your standard zombie-fare, though, at least in my opinion. Stylistically, it’s almost…noir-ish. Noir-zombies? Sure! It follows a hardened cop, the people he protects, and his deathly-ill wife, all dark images and long-shot descriptions of the battered Manhattan skyline.
Zombie noir. Love it.
Various things have happened
The fourth installment of my column, Adventures in Self-Publishing, is live. In it, I talk about the Amazon KDP program.
Also live: The third episode of Unprintable, the LitReactor podcast. This is our best one yet. Probably because I was a little drunk. Check it out. If you could pop over to iTunes to review/rate it, that would be greatly appreciated.
The LitReactor shop is open for business. We are selling a very handsome t-shirt and a snazzy mug. Just in time for the holidays! Nothing says love like a mug.
Hey, also, I’ve been promoted to Class Director at LitReactor, which means that I’m now in charge of developing all those online writing classes the site hosts. I’m thrilled to be doing it.
We’ve got two classes coming up that are pretty great: One with Suzy Vitello on dialogue, and one with Taylor Houston on grammar and style. Check them out here. And there’s going to be more to share in the coming weeks.
And, on a final note, this week I got my very first check for a piece of fiction—a short story that’ll appear in Kwik Krimes, an anthology of flash fiction edited by Otto Penzler, to be published by Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint.
It is gratifying beyond words to get paid for making something up in my head. Also, there’s a ton of really amazing authors in it. I don’t know why they let me in.
Kwik Krimes will hit in the spring, I believe. Don’t worry, I will tell you when.
Want my novella for free? OK, fine!
As I mentioned last week, I enrolled my novella for Amazon’s KDP Select program. Today, it’s available for free, because I wanted to try on this promotion thing, to see what would happen. Go and get it. I’ll recount how it goes in my column on LitReactor later this month. But not before I write a piece comparing the book and film versions of Anna Karenina, which I am very excited for, even though no one will read it.
Apology
As I’ve noted, my venture into self-publishing is an experiment. In order to continue that experiment, I plan to enroll my novella in Amazon’s KDP Select program. That means I have to take it down from Barnes & Noble and Kobo for a period of three months. The Amazon version is DRM-free, if that helps. I don’t like the idea of alienating anyone, but for the sake of this, I want to try it. That, and both sites have posted very slim sales–a dozen at B&N, zero at Kobo.
I’ll expand on all of this in my next column at LitReactor, and as soon as the three months is up, I’ll re-list the novella at the other sites. In the mean time, please accept my apologies if you’re unable to get a copy.
Rob Hart 