Arthur Slade: The YA Fantastical Fiction Guy

Another Navel-Gazing Ebook update: December Sales

2012-01-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

Hello and welcome to my ebook navel gazing! What frabjous joy it brings! What slithy toves it creates! Okay, before you all pull out your vorpal blades I'll stop quoting Jabberwocky. In a snicker-snack that is!

December was officially my 2nd best ebook sales month since I started last February. Yes, that's 11 months of self-publishing. Funny how the time passes when you're navel gazing. We're almost at the 1 year celebration where I'll spend all my massive royalties on a party in the South Pacific. Or a party in a corner of my garage. Depending on funds, of course.

Herewith is the graph you've all been waiting for:

No new and amazing conclusions this month. Dust did take off and was in the top 100 for horror on Kindle US for a short time. That accounted for most of the sales (Dust is the blue colour on the graph). The Hunchback Assignments continued to sell moderately well in the UK. Total sales across all platforms was 833 copies (Dust sold 570 copies, so that gives you an idea of why there's so much blue in the above column). And total sales since February is 4554 copies (divided between the 9 books I have for sale). Kindle is still about 90% of my sales.

All in all I'm pleased with the response to the ebooks. And every little bit of money I make is going against my mortgage. If someone would just buy about 50,000 books it would all be paid off.

Happy mortgaging!

Art

Attack of the Treadmill Desk III

2012-01-02T08:40:00.000-08:00

Well, it's a new year! We've all likely made resolutions. Some of us (okay, me) have already broken a few of those resolutions (but who could stick to a "not eating a Turtle before 9AM" resolution? It's the evil toffee chocolate goodness that gets me).

But I've stuck to my treadmill desk addiction. Since January of 2009 I've been using a treadmill desk as my main means of work and exercise (I blogged about it here and here). I still average four hours a day at 1.6 kph (or 1mph--that's 6.4 kilometres a day or 3.97 miles). The remainder of my writing time I stand at my treadmill desk. I only sit to put my shoes on. In fact my un-treadmill desk is becoming lonely.

Since that first small step on the treadmill desk two years ago I've geekishly kept track of far too many numbers:
1. Walked 108,174 minutes.
2. Traveled 3342.3 kilometres (2076.8 miles).
3. Burned 207,333 calories (equivalent of 2591.7 Turtles).
4. Written 190,000 words.

Benefits:
1) More awake while working and able to work for a longer period of time without fatigue.
2) Able to eat more turtles.
3) Consistent exercise combats depression.
4) Able to eat more turtles.
5) Now able to entertain guests with amazing treadmill desk stories.
6) Generally in better shape.

I've decided to issue a call to action for all you treadheads and treadhead cadets out there. It's right here in this amazing and inspirational video (including some subliminal advertising):

Rise up. Press your start buttons. Live long and prosper...

Art

Dust wins the Governor General's Award (a decade ago)

2011-12-22T04:47:00.000-08:00

Recently, I was going through a few old VHS tapes and I—what why are you interrupting me? Oh, what's VHS you ask? It's the video recording format that conquered Beta—what's Beta you ask...ah, just Google it. Anyway, I discovered a dusty tape of the award ceremony for the Governor General's awards in 2001. My novel Dust won the award for Children's Literature that year and that meant a trip to Rideau Hall in Ottawa to see the Governor General and attend an extremely fancy ceremony (Oh, and pick up a cheque for $15,000.00). Money, free food and a mini-holiday! It's every author's dream. Here's the video:

Oh, wait! I wish I was at that ceremony! Actually, the Governor General's ceremony is the closest I'll ever come to getting a medal from Princess Leia. Here is the actual video. The two hour ceremony has been edited down to 5 minutes (in other words I cut everyone else's presentation out).

This is still the highlight of my career. Ten years later I'm surprised that all of this happened and that Dust received so much attention. When I finished writing the book I remember wondering who would want to read a slow-building, dark fantasy?

Ten years! I'm a little grayer and waiting for that wisdom that is supposed to come with age.

Art

A Mini-Ebook Sales Update: November

2011-12-15T08:15:00.000-08:00

No major news this month on the ebook front. But I do have an amazingly interesting graph:

Okay, it's just a graph. I apologize for calling it amazingly interesting! As you can see after the big "sale-apalooza" in September (1467 copies) sales have levelled out to 493 in October and 586 in November (actually my second highest sales month now). So sales are beginning to trend upwards, though part of this is due to the fact that Tribes was "free" on Amazon last month and that brought the sales of other books up (and the sales of Tribes rose once it went from free to paid status). What's interesting to me is the colour of the November column. Psychedelic, eh? Well, actually I point it out because each colour represents a different book. A variety of my books are selling consistently now, which is a good thing (the blue colour represents DUST which is still by far my bestselling book). And my monthly income will be just over $800.00. Hey, that's a mortgage payment!

If only I had 1000 books on offer. I'd be a millionaire!*

Art

*Actually I did the math. If my 9 books make me 800 dollars a month then 1000 books only make me 88, 888 dollars a month. Hmmph. What a rip off. I can't even buy a jumbo jet with that...

This Dark Endeavour: Interview with Kenneth Oppel

2011-12-14T07:47:00.000-08:00

Ladies, non-ladies, gents and non-gents,

Herewith is my interview with Kenneth Oppel. It previously appeared on the brilliant Cynsations blog.

Kenneth Oppel's first novel Colin's Fantastic Video Adventure was published when he was seventeen and he hasn't slowed down one iota since. He is the author of the Silverwing series (which has sold over a million copies), the Airborn series (winner of the Governor General's Award for Children's Literature and the Michael L. Printz Honor Book award), and the highly acclaimed Half Brother. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

A: Congrats on the release of This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein. The idea of doing a prequel to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is very inspired and I'm certain there are many authors shouting, "why didn't I think of that?" Has anyone accused you of stealing their idea?

K: Amazingly, no, especially since there have been plenty of other classics rebooted with young heroes lately. You yourself may be familiar with the fabulous Hunchback series; there’s also young Sherlock Homes, young James Bond, among others. But Frankenstein was still unclaimed! I was making a presentation to a group of booksellers in the US a few months ago, and someone in the audience asked me if I was planning on ripping off any other literary classics. She didn’t actually say “ripping off” but you get the idea. I said I didn’t have any immediate plans, but asked if she had any suggestions. “Moby Dick,” she said, “focusing on Captain Ahab.” It’s not a bad idea. But I don’t think I’ll take the bait.

A: Hmm. Steampunked Moby Dick! Just let me write that down...anyway, back to the interview. Can you pinpoint when you first had that aha moment?

K: I love Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’d just re-read it a couple of years ago, and the mentions of his childhood were brief but evocative. There were mentions of seeking out the Elixir of Life, raising ghosts and demons – you know, pretty typical teenaged stuff, right up there with rep soccer and hot yoga. But I saw these things as the seeds of possible gothic adventure stories. I spent a lot of time wondering about what might happen on such adventures, and what would motivate them in a powerful way. I sat on the idea for quite a while, almost a full year, before I shared it with my agent and approached publishers, because I wanted to make sure the idea was well formed; I really didn’t want it to be seen as a gratuitous attempt to cash in on the Frankenstein myth.

A: Did you channel Mary Shelley while you were writing? By that I mean did you want to imitate the style of the original book? Shelley's Frankenstein is a rather slow and dreamy novel at times, yet you manage to keep that dreaminess but also the plot moves along at a good clip.

K: I’m a pretty good mimic, so yes, I did try to capture the linguistic flavour of the original, but without making it inaccessible to contemporary readers. I quite enjoy the richness of period fiction, so the language in Dark Endeavor might be a little more formal, but I made sure it’s effortless to read. I read all my books aloud during the writing/editing process, and if the prose sounds too constipated, or unnatural, or the pace is slack, I know about it, and change it. The book combines gothic adventure and horror and romance, and I wanted it to belt along. I’m not sure I could write a book that didn’t have a fairly powerful plot as its internal combustion engine.

A: How much leeway did you give yourself to play around with the backstory from the original novel?

K: Well, once I invented a twin brother for Victor, I was making a pretty clean break from the world of the original. I like to think of it as an alternative backstory to the Frankenstein myth. A search for the elixir of life is a great idea for an adventure, but I thought it would be even more powerful, and personal, if Victor needed the elixir to heal someone he loved. It could’ve been any family member, but I decided a brother – a twin! – would have the richest emotional possibilities. As for the cast of characters, I made the love interest, Elizabeth Lavenza a distant relation (as opposed to first cousin). Their best friend Henry Clerval was transformed into a slightly comic Woody Allen-like character who’s riddled with phobias and fears, making him the least likely person to enjoy a Frankenstein-style banquet of horror. Victor’s parents I actually based on Mary Shelley’s real parents, the radical writers William Godwin and Mary Wollestonecraft, so my Frankenstein household is very liberal for its time. Mrs. Frankenstein writes pamphlets on the rights and education of women; Mr Frankenstein is a fair magistrate who insists on his own family making the servants their Sunday dinner as a gesture of egalitarianism (a concept that was sweeping through Europe in the late 1700’s). And my Victor himself certainly shares traits of both Percy Shelley and Lord Byron (as did Mary Shelley’s Victor)..So I tried to work in lots of insider Frankenstein information.

A: Giving Victor Frankenstein a twin certainly upped the "interest" factor of the novel. The fact is, I liked "steady" Konrad more than the "impetuous" Victor, the narrator of the story. And yet, I was somehow cheering for Victor, too. Was that your intention?

K: Anti-heroes can be incredibly charismatic and exciting. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call Victor an anti-hero. He has some dislikeable traits, but he’s never truly wicked (not in this first book anyway). You cheer for Victor, I think, because he has so much life and drive and passion in him; and you never forget he loves his brother, even though he’s ragingly jealous of him, and wants to steal his girlfriend. So yes, I wanted Victor to be complicated – but that makes him a much more interesting character I think.

A: It must have been rather exciting to have the book optioned before it was published. What was the process for that?

K: It was very exciting. My literary agent Steven Malk thought the book had strong movie potential, and showed the manuscript to an amazing pair of agents in Hollywood, Nick Harris and Josie Freedman at ICM, who specialise in book-to-film rights. They really liked it, and sent it out to a dozen top producers and within a couple days we had three offers from major studios. This doesn’t happen often. I know. I used to write screenplays, and I’ve had many books and scripts optioned over the years and usually you’re lucky if you get one offer amidst the tsunami of “passes”. Our decision was pretty easy: we sold the rights to producer Karen Rosenfelt and Summit Entertainment, the producer and studio who made Twilight movies.

A: The book ties up the ending nicely, yet there is still room for a sequel. What's next for Victor?

K: At the end of Book One, Victor promises himself he’ll unlock every secret law of the earth to achieve his goals – let’s just say he honours his promise.

A: You've gone from the rich "bat" fantasy world of the Silverwing series, to the post-Victorian atmosphere of the Airborn series, to the modern reality of Half Brother. And now Frankenstein. Where will you be taking us next?

K: Straight to hell, in the second instalment of the Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein. It’s called Such Wicked Intent, and should be published August 2012. After that, who knows. I’ve got a couple of ideas I’m very excited about and now that I’ve just finished revisions on Such Wicked Intent, I have the wonderful luxury of daydreaming them into existence.

Thanks for the interview, Ken.

I hereby request readers to visit his website at http://www.kennethoppel.ca/

Art

Cover Contest: Island of Doom

2011-12-13T05:54:00.000-08:00

Harpercollins Canada is having a "Cover" party on my Facebook page. Just click here and enter to win (alas, Canucks only). Contest closes real soon... You're welcome to "like" my page, too, if you're so inclined.

Here's a peek at the cover. It's the 4th and final book in the series:

And for extra fun, here's the concept sketch. It has its own charm.

www.hunchbackassignments.com

Cheers,

Art

Emily the Librarian

2011-12-09T04:31:00.001-08:00

Recently a librarian named Emily Mitchell passed away. She's right there in the center of the picture. For many years she was the librarian at the Chinook Regional Library branch in the village of Tompkins, SK, Canada (my hometown). By any measurement it's a small library, but it was made much larger by inter-library loan and by Emily's presence. She helped me become a reader and encouraged my imagination to grow. I have so many fond recollections of marching the six or so blocks from school to the Chinook Library downtown and perusing the shelves, looking for my next fantastical read. If I couldn't find it, she had suggestions. And, once I realized I could order books through inter-library loan, I would approach her with such varied topics as the Roman Empire, Medieval Torture Weapons, and Norse Myths. Despite my somewhat dark choices, she was always encouraging and supportive (she was like an early version of Google, I'd ask her a question and two weeks later the answer would appear in the form of books). The library was a warm place to retreat from the cold of winter or just to get away from the outside world for a few minutes. She made it that way. Her lifelong gift to me was the love of stories and the encouragement to visit all those worlds of the imagination. Again and again.

Thanks, Emily.

Art

There's $$ in Them Hills: October Ebook Sales Report

2011-11-17T05:29:00.001-08:00

I'm always looking for a clever title for these updates. If anyone has any clever titles please send one my way. I can't keep using Stephen King in my title! He'll come to my house and challenge me to a write off! I can't keep up with that guy! I figure people like the $$$ sign so maybe I'll just keep using that.

Anyway, here's the report on my ebook experiment for October. What you say? You're late! Well, I decided to move these reports to the middle of the month because that's when Amazon sends me my monthly sales records (up until that point it's a bit of guesswork as to exactly how many copies I've sold). So here is your first chart!

Aha, you say. Your sales dropped in October! Ha, so much for that yacht you were dreaming about when you sold all those copies of DUST in September. But wait, I say, let's celebrate the good news first. There have now been over 3000 copies of my self-pubbed books sold. As we speak 3000 people could be reading my words. Or playing games on their iPad. Anyway, that's a nice milestone to pass. It's also important to note that October was the second highest sales month so far.

I did expect sales to slow down after that first bump that I received in September. Mostly that's because I raised my prices. Dust was no longer $1.49 but was bumped up to $2.99. At that price I get the 70% royalty from Amazon. So for each 1.49 book I am making .52 cents (because any book priced at .99-2.98 is a 35% royalty), but for each 2.99 book I'm making $2.09 (or 4x as much). That means I only have to sell 1/4 of the number of books to make the same amount of money. That's math even I can do!

Ah, so let's talk about the money. And about the beautiful American dollar and the lovely British pound. Doesn't the image above make you all teary eyed? Anyway, wipe away the tears. In September my income from U.S. sales on Kindle was $557.64 and from UK Kindle £216.49 which, once converted, adds up to about $897.98 US (I won't further complicate this by converting to Canadian since our dollar is nearly the same as the US). That's a nice tidy sum for very little work (err, if you don't count the weeks it took me to figure out all the various ways to convert files and upload all that ebook "stuff"). So I made $898 dollars by selling 1467 books in September. In October I made $251.96 from US Kindle store and £339.35 from the UK Kindle store for a total of $785.12 U.S. Except this time I only sold around 493 copies. And obviously it's easier to sell fewer copies than it is to sell more.

Two other short observations. One is that the October sales were partially propped up in the UK store because I was giving The Hunchback Assignments away for free for two weeks of that month. The second is that I'm starting to have more sales through the UK store because I have 10 books available there and only 7 in the US (I'm publishing my three Hunchback Assignments books in the UK Store but they are published through Random House in the US).

The only problem with higher prices is that you drop out of the bestseller charts faster and therefore fewer eyes are seeing your books. Already I see that my November sales are slowing. I have yet to have a book "stick" in the charts for a long period of time.

What you want another chart? Look I don't just have charts up my sleeve! Oh, wait there's one right there:

This is the Amazon ranking for The Hunchback Assignments on UK Kindle charts. As you can see it was selling a copy every once in awhile, thus the zig-zag pattern. Then it went "free" on Sept. 23rd (creating that straight line) and became "paid" around October 16th and jumped up to about 1000th spot on the charts (which made it one of the bestselling kids books for a few weeks). It's continuing to slowly decline but it pops back up every once in awhile.

Does anyone have any glue? I'd like to stick it in the top 500 at the very least.

Until Kindle sticky glue is invented, I'll keep on keeping on!

Art

P.S. I do refer to Kindle a lot. My books are sold on other sites. In October I sold 1 book on Kobo, 1 Book on iBooks, and 5 books on Barnes and Noble, so obviously it's easiest to talk about Kindle.

A "Found" Conversation

2011-11-09T13:30:00.001-08:00

Here's a conversation I "found" on a bus heading for Toronto. Almost word for word.

(SFX: Cell Phone Ring).
Hello? Oh, yeah. Just riding the bus. Shift coming up.
(Pause) A stabbing. At a school. Been working at it for awhile, was off for a few days, now back on it. Have it all on security camera but no one will talk. Can't get them to. It's like we know you were there we see you on the camera, but they say they don't remember anything.
(Pause) Her? Yeah, she's trying to find a job. I guess. But she sent all the wrong cover letters with her application. I think she's just happy with a few shifts at the centre. And spending all my money. Our last credit card bill was 3000 dollars. That's why I'm taking the bus. I figure it saves me $250 a month. But she just thinks she can spend that money, too.
(Pause). Out there. That must be nice. No. No holidays coming up. She thinks the parents should come down to babysit while she goes out. That's an hour drive for them and hour back so she can go out for an hour. That doesn't make sense. But I did get to come down and her and I went to a movie but when I came back there was a torn plastic bag on the floor. That stupid dog had been at it. My parents tried to hide all the evidence cause they know that I beat the crap out of it when it does that stuff. But I asked them what happened and they said it got up on the table and found the treat bag and ate all of it, even the bag. It's a stupid dog. How do you fix that? I figure I'll just put mousetraps on the table loaded with those little wieners, that'll show him. He won't go up on the table again.
(pause) Yeah, okay. See ya. (Click SFX).

It's quite the character study. Truth is always stranger than fiction...

Outselling Stephen King: the September eBook results

2011-10-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

Well a few posts ago I told you how I miraculously sold more books than Stephen King (in a 48 hour period)!

Well, now I can report to you the amazingly stupendous results. Yes, this is breaking news folks! Last month DUST sold a whopping 1355 copies. Since the highest monthly total before that was 360 copies, I was bountifully pleased by this result.

Now Dust was selling for $1.49 (that's .52 cents per book for me) for the majority of those sales and then I bumped it up to 1.99. (or .70 cents a book). The book has slowly dropped down the sales charts (from a high in the 600's) and seems to be levelling out at about 10000 on the sales charts in the US (and 4000 on the UK charts). That equals about 10 sales a day (but since I've bumped the price up to 2.99 I am making 2.05 per sale). I don't know how long it will hold at this level. What, you want to see an amazing chart? Here it is:

That chart shows dust jumping up from abut 160,000th place to 600th. Then slowly falling back down. Apparently what goes up must come down. Thanks a lot for the gravitational laws Newton!

At one point I had told myself I'd be happy if I made about $1000.00 in the space of a year. Since that goal was surpassed in the space of a month...well, I'm green with happiness. I don't expect next month's sales to be anywhere near the same amount as September. But if they continue at the level they're at today (about 10,000 on the charts) I'll actually make as much money through fewer sales (because at 2.99 I make a 70% royalty, at .99-2.98 it's a 35% royalty).

Here's the overall sales chart:

Isn't that pretty? And it has different colours, too. The blue colour represents the sales of DUST. But you can see that a few of my other books are starting to pick up a bit (in fact every book had increased sales over last month). The total for all books was 1467 copies sold.

So last month was a good one. And this month I now have all three of The Hunchback Assignments books available on kindle UK (in fact I'm giving away the first one to get my British cousins to try the series). We'll see if that strategy works.

Over and out,

Art

A Decade of Dust

2011-09-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the maudlin post but Dust has been out for ten years now. I launched the book on September 21st, 2001 in Saskatoon's Western Development Museum: 1910 Boomtown. It was the first time I'd launched in such a big and perfectly-themed venue (I wish I could find the pics but they are in storage somewhere). Here's a pic of the museum interior.

I honestly had no idea how successful the book would become and am still surprised by its reception. It went on to win several awards including:
*The 2001 Governor General's Award for Children's Literature
*The 2001 Saskatchewan Book Award for Children's Literature
*The 2002 Mr. Christie's Book Award (this came with $ and cookies. Mmm)
*Nominated for a 2004 Edgar Award.

Here I am with Adrienne Clarkson, once the Governor General of Canada. She's presenting me with a leather-bound copy of DUST.

There are a few things you may not know about the novel. Here's the first draft of the Canadian cover:

And here's the original American cover:

The American version is about 5 pages longer. Because it came out in 2003 I was able to have one more crack at the book and I fine tuned it a bit more and added a few smaller scenes, including one at the end that helped explain the townspeople's reaction to their "forgetfulness" about their children disappearing. It's a particularly poignant scene.

There have now been 13 movie companies that have shown interest in the rights, including 4 major Hollywood studios. So far no one has come up with the money to make the movie (or pay off my mortgage).

Work on a graphic novel was started with Christopher Steininger but, as of yet, it has not been picked up by a publisher.

The book continues to be popular in Canada and I've received hundreds of emails and letters about it. It eventually went out of print in the U.S. and was never sold to any other countries.

With the advent of ebooks I was able to re-release the book in the US as an ebook (and in the U.K., too).

So it is good to have the book come back to life. It was briefly the #12 bestselling horror novel on Amazon U.S. and the #2 bestselling horror novel on Amazon UK. If only it would stay in those positions I could finance my own movie! : ) It has been rather fun for me to see the book gain a new readership.

So there you have it. A decade of Dust. Happy birthday! Here's to another ten years....

Art

Nap your way to Fame and Fortune as a Writer.

2011-09-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

The cornerstone of all good writing is the nap.

Don't let those nap naysayers try to convince you that naps are for children. That somehow it is lazy and unnatural for you to nap. Don't allow them to make an outcast of you. They are only jealous of your ubernap capabilities.

Yes, I say verily to you (and somewhat unverily) that you must take hold of your inner napper. You must celebrate especially the "power" nap (20 minutes). In that time you will descend into your subconsciousness and emerge from that dank, creative cave like a writing god (or goddess or demigod or mime, depending on your background) and return to your writing desks in the perfect frame of mind. You will be refreshed. More attractive! And more powerful! All the answers to all the plot and subplot and characterization problems will be solved by a nap (this works 100% of the time, though results vary by +-101).

Sons and daughters of nap! A day may come when the courage of those who nap fails, when we forsake our naps and break all bonds of napping fellowship, but it is not this day! This day we nap! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you nap!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZ

How I sold more ebooks than Stephen King (for 48 hours)

2011-09-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

We interrupt regularly scheduled blogging for an ebook update. To my surprise and delight my epubbed novel

has shot up the Kindle charts in the US and UK and is outselling Stephen King. Yes, that Stephen King!

I blame him and Ray Bradbury for turning me into a writer (and Tolkien and Frank Herbert and...). I'll explain how the sales jump came about in a second, first a few braggardly details: Currently the book is #680 on the Kindle US store and #158 on Kindle UK. It has made several bestseller charts including #15 overall on the Kindle US Horror charts and #4 in Children's Spine-Chilling Horror (who doesn't love chilling the spines of those children?). In the UK the numbers are even higher (it's a smaller market): #1 in Children's Horror and #2 in Horror overall.

Actually, that #1 spot deserves a graphic:

Now let me attempt to explain how it was achieved:

I sacrificed an organic carrot to the god of ebooks.

Oh, wait that's not it. Dust has been for sale as an ebook since February and has once before briefly cracked the top 1000. At the start of September I priced the book at free (who can refuse free?) on iBooks as a brief promotion. This was discovered by Amazon (okay, I told them) and since they have a price matching clause in their epub agreement they matched the price. On iBooks I had given away about 5 free copies. Amazon Kindle beat that in the first five minutes. In the course of a week I gave away about 8000 books on Amazon UK and 11000 on Amazon US (that's a swack load of free books). The book reached #32 on the US free charts and #5 on the UK free charts. For me it was free advertising (the vast majority who have downloaded a free book likely won't read it...assuming they're hoarders like me). More reviews began to appear within days on both websites. I changed the price of Dust to 1.49 on KindleUS (Dust had previously been .99 cents and not doing well, so I chose 1.49 because...well...because Seth Godin's book was 1.49 and it was in the top 10). Then I chose .99 for the UK price (I chose the .99 pence for the UK because most of their top 20 bestsellers were in that price range...I have to sell 2 ebooks to equal the royalty I receive on a paperback). I changed the price to $1.99 on iBooks (anyone bored of all these geeky details yet?) and emailed Amazon to let them know that the book was no longer free on their competition's website. They changed the book back to the prices I had chosen.
And, blammo (that's an official epub word for wow), it shot up the charts.
A chart? Sure, I've got a chart for you:

This is Dust's kindle sales in the US over the last month. The lower the number the better the sales. Like golf. But more literary. Dust started at #849 on AmazonUS paid 48 hours ago and #736 on Amazon UK and has been climbing ever since (warning here are even more geeky details: it takes about 67 copies sold in the space of 24 hours to climb from #849 to #700. To add more perspective Dust sold 48 copies last month...so that's more sales in a day than the book had all month). I don't know exactly why when it switched from free to paid status it ended up in such a good position on the charts. Is it because several people downloaded it accidentally thinking that it was free (Amazon does warn when a books price is changing)? Or is it some kind of magical algorithmic kindly thing? That part is beyond my limited IQ.

I don't expect this to last. I think Dust is successful because it has been on Amazon for over ten years in one format or another and has 20 reviews that average 4 stars. This lets prospective buyers know that it's a good gamble. I think that the fact that it's for young adults and doesn't have a romance angle or vampires, will limit the audience in the long run. I just want it to find its happy "sales" place.

And I'm enjoying the ebook ride right now. Go Dust go!

Best,
Art

P.S.: Here's the horror sales chart with Mr. King. Expect the position to reverse quickly.

Gorgeous German Steampunk Edition!

2011-09-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday I received the author's copies of the German version of The Hunchback Assignments (which is called Mission Clockwork: Attack on The British Empire--love that title). They're absolutely gorgeous. Please accept my apologies because I am about to gush with authorial joy...

Doesn't that look like the mouse will jump right off the cover? And the books are shrink-wrapped, too (in recyclable plastic!). The Germans think of everything. Here's the spine:

And the cool back cover:

The awesome interior:

And the 3D amazingly triumphant cover:

They really went totally steampunk on the book. And it's a good look. Now if only I could read German!Thanks for listening to my gushing.ArtPS: Let's watch the trailer again, just for fun:

A Brobdingnagian-sized Ebook update!

2011-09-01T06:12:00.000-07:00

Yep, I'm going all literary with this update on my ebook sales. We all know from Gulliver's Travels that Brobdingnagian means giant-sized.* And this is a giant-sized report! Well, actually it's kind of small. It's more Lilliputian. But, really, who would click on a headline that says, "Author shouts out about lilliputian book sales!"?

Anyway let's start with a chart!

Eeek! My sales have gone all Lilliputian! I was warned about the doldrums of August by other ebook publishers. Apparently sales do drop in August. Get off the beach and buy books everyone! Anyway, here are the numbers:

Feb 12
March 43
April 377
May 204
June 139
July 154
August 72

Abandon ship! That's it mateys, all hands off deck and swim for shore. Oh, wait there were some grand developments. I crossed the 1000 sales barrier. That's good. And my little experiment last month of giving away this Norse horror book for free worked:

I gave away 7545 copies. But when I switched the book back to "paid" status Amazon's magical algorithms made it shoot up the charts and it sold 33 copies in two weeks (the highest it had averaged was 18 copies in a month). So there was some small immediate benefit to giving it away (plus it now has several new positive reviews). And I hope over time those 7500 readers will look kindly on the other books in the series.

Hey and there's other good news. I released The Hunchback Assignments and The Dark Deeps in the UK.

That's one of the clever things about ebook publishing. My agent sold the rights to these books to several countries, but the UK hasn't picked it up yet. So, with the click of a button, I can invade the UK. My hope is to make a little noise over there. So far...3 copies sold! C'mon Britain, remember when we Canucks helped out with that Boer war thing? You can finally pay us back! I am doing a few experiments at the UK amazon with free books...which I'll update at a later date (see, I'm trying to make this all sooo mysterious).

Overall, I had hoped to be further ahead in the ebook world after 7 months. I think the real test of this experiment will come over the next few months which are traditionally the busiest in book sales. And, as I've said before, every copy sold is a copy I wasn't selling before. All of these books were either out of print or not for sale in selected countries, so I'm making money on them now.And someday that Brobdingnagian load of royalties will come my way, right Gulliver! Right?

Cheers,

Art

*next time you go to Starbucks refuse the Grande Latte and demand a Brobdingnagian latte. That'll shock their organic socks!

Funny Answers to Odd Writerly Questions

2011-08-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

These are inspired by a few questions I've been asked...

Q: Arthor, I read your book DUST. Tell me the symbolism in it. I have a paper due tomorrow so I need to know now.
A: I will tell you the symbolism. But first I'd like you to cut my lawn. It needs to be cut now. I'm waiting.

Q: I have an idea for a book that you should write. It's my life story. Some really interesting things happened, so far. I can't tell them to you because you might steal the ideas. I'm too busy to write it.
A: I'm not busy at all! Would love to sacrifice a year of my life writing your book. Is 2071 too soon?

Q: Why does your book suck so much?
A: This may seem hard to believe but writing a book that sucks takes years of work. First I take anything that is remotely interesting or exciting out of the book. Then I add all the boring characters and have them sit around doing nothing. Finally, I inject suckiness into the prose using a special method taught to me by a suckiness master. It's like becoming a kung fu master, without the exercise. Glad to know my hard work has paid off.

Q: Really, I'm not joking, what is the symbolism in your book? I need to know. I got an extension.
A: My lawn still needs cutting.

Q: I have some really great ideas. How do I stop people from stealing them?
A: I don't want you to feel paranoid, but I'm reading your mind right now. Those are amazing ideas! If you want to prevent others from stealing your ideas wear a tinfoil hat.

Anyone else have questions? Post them below...

Art

Faith: the foundation of writing

2011-08-24T08:47:00.000-07:00

You must have faith.

That's the conclusion I've come to after all these years of writing. The cornerstone of becoming a writer and continuing on in this odd field is faith. By that I don't mean religious faith, but a personal faith. You must believe in your story. Believe that, with enough work, the words will take the proper shape and become a perfect (or as perfect as possible) story. Believe that each word, each sentence, each paragraph is getting you closer to your goals. Believe that what you will create will be worth it in the end (that worth can be defined as making money or your actual happiness with your story).

This "literate" faith is what carried me through having my first six novels rejected by publishers. I certainly had my doubting moments (or even months) but after ten years of trying my first book was published. It was important to believe in what I was doing. I still need faith now--the act of beginning a novel is an act of absolute faith (perhaps even more so since I don't use outlines). The road does get rocky at times, either I can't solve a problem or a character goes off in a direction I don't expect, but I believe the answer will come. And so far it always has.

So have faith. The rest will fall into place after that.

Art

Allo UK! The Hunchback Assignments is now available

2011-08-23T07:13:00.001-07:00

Allo, UK!

The Hunchback Assignments is now available as an eBook on Kindle and iBooks. Love live steampunk! Love live the queen!

Visit kindle or iBooks for all the joy, thrills, and brillig adventure!

1000 eBooks sold but 0 Big Macs!

2011-08-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

Light a cigar! Open a fizzy drink! Eat some chocolate! Have an organic carrot! My first ebook went on sale February 4th, 2011:

Since then I've added 5 more:

and we've finally sold 1000 copies (I say we because I know some of you have bought copies and I thank you sincerely--your imaginary royalty cheque is in the mail).

The sales are divided out this way:
66 B&N
20 iBooks
17 Smashwords
8 Kobo
889 Kindle

Which of course...and you knew this was coming...makes a lovely chart:

Ah, Kindle, how I love thee. Are the rumours true that you dominate the market?

And here are my sales divided by books (the price in brackets is the price most copies were sold at):
Dust = 752 (.99)
Draugr = 75 (.99)
Drang = 42 (2.99)
Loki = 39 (2.99)
Shades = 36 (.99)
Tribes = 56 (.99)

I've only made about $400.00 but I'm not too concerned about the $ at this point. It was more learning to understand how the ebook system works (err, as much as it can be understood, that is).

Art

From 100% on a Short Story to Parade Captain!

2011-08-08T10:57:00.000-07:00

This last weekend I had a highlight in my writing career: I was a parade captain in the Gull Lake Centennial parade. Gull Lake, SK, Canada is here:

It's the town where I graduated from high school in 1985 (I attended Tompkins school from K-9) and learned that heavy metal is the greatest music that ever existed (my older brothers had already started those lessons). The organizers were kind enough to invite me to participate in the parade. At first I thought my high school friends were just playing a trick on my super-sized ego, but it turned out to be really real! This is how cool I looked in 1985 when I graduated:

Yeah, weren't the 80's great? I miss the smell of perms.

I couldn't decide what to wear. I mean do you go all casual for a parade or do you wear your old high school football jacket?

Anyway, I did make it to the parade lineup in time. There were many old friends there and many old cars and many old friends in old cars. There were also mounties:

Oh, you're a writer. Is it still legal to shoot writers?

There were soldiers there, too, of course. After all you need all the security you can get when clowns and writers infiltrate your town.

This is a buddy of mine, Gord Kozroski, who was in the army for ten years. And still fits into his uniform. He is a real captain (retired). See--people who listen to Iron Maiden can do something with their lives!

And here I am in the parade:

Oh, wait. That's a clown. How can you tell the difference between a writer and a clown? The clown has the nicer vehicle. Here I am with the two other parade captains:

Man, was waving ever tiring! And looking at the disappointed faces of all the children was tiring, too--they thought we might have candy in our car. We didn't. But we did have lots of incredibly funny jokes. My two fellow captains had so many jokes that I nearly broke my face laughing (it is possible).

Oh, here's another clown:

Or that might be a writer, actually. I can't tell because the vehicle is an old one. And, of course, here are more shots of the parade:

It was a 45 minute parade. Absolutely amazing. I did see my Algebra teacher on the parade route and shouted out to him, "Thanks for passing me!" I must say Algebra was very touch and go there on that last exam. But luckily I guessed right on the multiple choice questions. Otherwise I'd still be in high school.

Later I did the traditional selling and signing books thing:

And I posed for a photo with MLA Wayne Elhard!

I also got to thank my english teacher, Mr. Leek, for passing me way back when. And I meant to thank him for teaching The Cruel Sea, which influenced my novel Megiddo's Shadow.

Two of Mr. Leek's students posing with him. Susan forgot that we're supposed to age with time.

Mr. Leek gave me 100% on a short story in Grade Eleven and it was one of those encouraging moments in life where I paused and thought, "Hey, I should do this as a living." What was the story about? Oh, a happy little tale about someone who died and went to hell. Hmmm. Guess I was a little twisted back then. I also have fond memories of Miss Wenner teaching Fahrenheit 451 in grade ten. A science fiction novel in school! That nearly blew my 15 year old mind. She also gave me 89% on a poem once. What was it about? Oh, it was about the Antichrist coming to earth alongside the four horsemen. Happy stuff, eh?

The rest of the day unfolded perfectly and ended with a beef on a bun dinner. Mmmmm. I would show you a picture of that, but I ate it too fast. So I'll end with another picture of a clown:

Happy Parading through life everyone,

Art

How I Didn't Sell 1 Million Copies in six months: July Sales

2011-08-01T05:48:00.000-07:00

Amazing new stupendous ebook developments this month!
Okay, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but I have discovered that "free" sells. Or at least it leads to numerous downloads. About the middle of June I made this book free on iBooks and Smashwords:

And now it's free on Kindle (just click the above image but click right now because this offer is only good for 12 10 9 minutes--kidding, I was going all slap chop on ya). There is a trick to this because you can't actually just choose "free" on Kindle. Instead Amazon will set your price to the same as the competition. So once Amazon "noticed" that Draugr was free on other websites it automatically made it free on Amazon kindle. Even though I'd read about other people having "free" success, it isn't until you see it for yourself that you believe it. The book became free on Kindle somewhere around July 6th. Within a day it had shot up the "free" charts to as high as #52. By that time there had been 2000 downloads. In the next two days there were another 3000 downloads. Then it began to drop out of the top 100 and the downloads have slowed to about 100 a day so that the total for July is 7402 copies. To put this in perspective the book first came out in 1997 and sold 5000 copies in the space of a year. It took 4 days to "sell" that same amount for free. So Amazon's distribution model really does work (no surprise, eh). In that same time only about 80 copies were downloaded free on iBooks and 0 on Smashwords. What? You want to see a chart? Okay!

This chart shows the # of total sales I've made in the last six months (it's the tiny column second from the right) and the green column is the total free books I've given away. Now how to get those "free" people to buy books? Ah, there's the rub and the dub (and why I did the little experiment). I hope that over time there will be an increase in the sales of the other two books in the series:

Aren't they cute? Don't you just want to take them home and cuddle them (on your eReader that is)? Anyway, my theory is that this massive # of downloads will lead to more sales of these two books in the next few months as people read Draugr. Or those thousands of copies of Draugr might sit unloved on people's kindles. Poor electronic words...just waiting to be read. I was pleasantly surprised that there was an immediate increase: Drang sold 4 copies in June and jumped to 18 copies in July on Kindle. Loki sold 7 copies in June and leapfrogged to 16 copies in July on Kindle. So that's a nice increase for both the books. Obviously, I'm not going to get rich from that (it is an extra $69.36 in my pocket, tho, since I make 2.04 per book--they sell for $2.99).

But what about my total sales you ask? Ah, I knew you wanted to see another chart. Consider yourself charted:

As you can see by that chart sales stayed steady for July. Here are the totally exciting numbers:

Feb: 12
March: 43
April: 377
May: 274
June: 139
July: 148

So there hasn't been a huge jump. In fact DUST sold 77 copies on Kindle in June and 79 in July. Gee, that is consistent! I still plan on keeping DUST at .99 cents until I've sold 1000 copies (it's at 727 right now). As a point of interest 126 copies of my books were sold on Kindle this month and 21 on B&N (0 on Smashwords and 0 on iBooks--hmmm guess buying every Apple product in existence doesn't help e-book sales). I don't know what that means other than, well, Kindle is king obviously. The good news is I've nearly sold 1000 copies in total. That should happen next month. Oh, and I haven't included Kobo numbers in this because they don't send me my report until mid way through the month...but I only expect 4 or 5 more sales through them.

By this point I had hoped I'd be making enough money to be on a beach somewhere with my feet up while I hired retired ewoks or sasquatches to bash out my novels. I mean isn't that what the internet promised? Easy riches? But I'm satisfied with chugging along. I've done all the experiments that I can think of so far (other than releasing a brand new book--which is in the works) but I may make other books free (there is a theory that if you make a book free and then switch it to "paid" status it will jump up the charts--there are many theories in the e-book biz, I'm finding. Amazon.com is like a bunch of pig entrails that we're all staring at to find the future).

Anyway, it's still fun. And yo! Look over there--it's a another rainbow to chase!

Cheers,

Art

Alas, Writing Doesn't Get Any Easier

2011-07-31T16:55:00.000-07:00

I don't want this to be a depressing post but writing doesn't get any easier. I've just sent off the first "readable" draft of my seventeenth published novel (tentatively titled The Hunchback Assignments 4: The Island of Doom) and the whole process from beginning to end was no less painless than writing my first published novel (I should add that I had six unpublished novels before that, too). I don't write any faster than I did before. My prose doesn't need any fewer drafts in order to be legible (or, Muse forbid, actually creative). Dreaming up new characters and wrestling with plot lines doesn't become any more straightforward (part of that may be that I have never done an outline and my process is to write a very quick and dirty draft of the novel then rewrite it, and rewrite it, and rewrite it).

So my conclusion is: this whole process isn't any easier. And that's a good thing. Yes, every once in a while whole sections of a novel will pour out and settle perfectly in place. But most of the time I'm hammering away at the stone to find the statue inside. What has changed over those estimated 1,115,000 words is that my intuition is more fine tuned. I tend to intuitively choose the interesting characters and plots that are right for the novel (which I was not doing with my unpublished novels). And the one thing that hasn't changed is that I still am engaged by the magic challenge of creating these new worlds and telling the stories about the people inside.

And isn't that what it's all about? *

Art

*oh, and it's about the money, too. It's always about the money. : )

The Amazing June Ebook Sales Report

2011-07-05T08:43:00.000-07:00

Here's my monthly update on the ebook sales experiment. The totals below are from these six books.

They are sold on Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, and iBooks.
Feb: 12
March: 43
April: 377
May: 274
June: 182
And here's the handy dandy chart (you knew there'd be one, didn't you?):

As you can see sales were down for the second month in a row. This was partly due to Amazon having a massive ebook sale for the first two weeks of June. My sales picked up again after the sale was over, so I'm pleased that they reached the "heights" that they did in that short of a time. Again the majority of my sales were on Kindle (about 80%) with Nook being in second place at 10% and Smashwords and iBooks at the bottom.

One side note that doesn't show up on the chart above is the number of sales at 99 cents compared with the sales at $2.99. I sold 141 copies @ .99 cents. Since I make .35 cents per book that totals $48.85. But I sold 18 copies at $2.99. Since I make 2.09 per sale (70% royalty) that totals $37.67. So there's more money in the 2.99 books. They just have to start gaining momentum. I also gave away 49 copies of Draugr on iBooks and Smashwords, so I made nothing on them. But, of course, I see them as promo.

I'm not totally thrilled by the # of sales, nor am I disappointed. Things are steady and this month I have an ad for DUST in Kindle Nation Daily so that should help with sales. Also, though the extra money that is trickling in is nice, this whole experiment is about knowledge. I have learned so much about the ebook ecosystem and still intend to write a novel for ebooks only. I am curious about the summer sales. I know people read more during these months, but do they buy more? Or are they all on the beach (out of wireless range?).

Either way, it's fun to watch.

Art

Jolted: Measuring Success using Amazon, NovelRank, and Bookscan

2011-06-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

If you're an author you've probably checked your Amazon rankings once or twice. Or every three seconds. And, perhaps you've stared at the rankings like you're trying to read your future in pig entrails. The great thing about the "modern" era is now there are even more ways to track things. Most of the time they're just charts that you stare at and learn nothing (and perhaps a little depressing) but I was recently able to track a "success" story to do with the my novel Jolted.

On May 17th or so the novel was chosen for 2011-2012 Florida Sunshine State Young Reader’s Award master list. This was great news. But because Amazon recently allowed authors (through their Author Central program) to see their Bookscan details, I was able to track the actual sales of the book from that day forward (I'm only concentrating on the paperback):

As you can see from the map, the darker the colour, the more sales. So obviously sales of the paperback had really taken off in Florida (and in one tiny corner of Louisiana...for some reason). The chart below shows the sudden increase in sales in bookstores in the U.S.:

For those of us who are chart obsessed (and really who isn't) Amazon also provides another chart to stare at (for hours at a time sometimes). This chart shows the uptick in sales through Amazon. So obviously the sales in the "ground" stores were also being reflected at the "virtual" store that is Amazon.

The final chart that I'll inundate you with is from Novelrank which also tracks sales on Amazon. It essentially gives you the same information, but with a slightly different appearance. Novelrank also can keep track of the # of copies sold per month (though this is a guesstimate on their part).

Perhaps I should end this with a chart of my geekiness (no, I better not...that would be jumping the shark). The sales in this time period might only amount to a thousand copies (so I won't go out and buy a new car), but I do find it interesting that I now have the ability to track all of this information. I won't know the actual sales until I get my royalty statements about six months from now. How to use the information is perhaps the tougher part of this exercise. It's not like I can fly down to Florida (or Louisiana) and start pitching my book (though I am beginning to get requests for Skype visits in Florida). Right now I'm filing it under the title: Interesting to know.

Plus, Jolted has been out for nearly 4 years now. It's nice to see it suddenly get zapped back to life (sorry, I couldn't resist).

Art

The Hunchback Assignments Wins Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire 2011

2011-06-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

I'm extremely pleased to announce that The Hunchback Assignments has won Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire 2011: Roman jeunesse étranger (The Grand Prize of the Imagination, Youth foreign). This is the most prestigious fantastical fiction award in France and it is proof that my novel's translator, Marie Cambolieu, is brilliant. The official award website is here if you want to see the other categories. The book is called Les agents de M. Socrate, Tome 1 : La confrérie de l'horloge in France and is released by Le Masque (loosely translated as The Agents of Mr. Socrates: The Brotherhood of the Clock). The award was presented at a festival in Saint-Malo, France. I nearly was able to attend in person, but had to stay home to watch the NHL Playoffs (I'm kidding, of course, great effort was made to fly me out there but the scheduling didn't work out). Instead I sent a short video of my acceptance speech:

The other award nominees in the same category were:

Roman jeunesse étranger

Le Sortilège de pierre de Cornelia Funke (Gallimard jeunesse)

Voraces de Oisin McGann (Mango jeunesse)

Alcatraz (Série) de Brandon Sanderson (Mango jeunesse)

La Confrérie de l'horloge de Arthur Slade (Le Masque)

Léviathan de Scott Westerfeld (Pocket jeunesse)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Les Portes de John Connolly (L'Archipel)

Entremonde de Neil Gaiman et Michael Reaves (Au Diable Vauvert)

Un endroit où se cacher de Joyce Carol Oates (Albin Michel jeunesse)

Jenna Fox, pour toujours de Mary E. Pearson (Des Grandes Personnes

Frankly, I didn't expect for my book to win. There are some very heavy hitters on that list (and I'm especially intrigued by Oisin McGann's Voraces. Irish steampunk!). But I'll take the prize and run (actually I don't know if there is a prize--the honour is enough). The book has been selling briskly in France, so this should help it sprint to the finish line.

If you'd like to see a few photos of the event just click here.

As you can tell, I'm very excited about this award. Last night, at dinner club, we raised a glass of French wine in honour of Grand Prix de l'imaginaire (and had Beef Wellington, which also fit the theme since Modo used the name Wellington as a code name).

Au revoir,

Art

Odd Questions Students Have Asked

2011-06-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

I do a great number of school readings. And when I get to the end of my presentation I say, "Now it's time for the dreaded Q&A. You ask the questions and I'll attempt to answer, though I don't do mathematical questions." Often I get asked, "Where do you get your ideas?" "From a factory in Pennsylvania." Or "Which book that you wrote is your favourite?" "Dust...because it made the most money for me."

But here are a few of the questions that I didn't expect:

"Do you own a tractor?" From an Aussie student on Skype (I was wearing a John Deere t-shirt at the time).

"Does your wife think you're funny?" No.

"Are you in the military?" Huh?

"Did you have any friends in high school?" Sometimes.

"Do you wear briefs or boxers?" Hmmm, I think this student may have received a talking to after I was gone.

"Are you evil?" This was in a "bible belt" area school. I had just read the first chapter of DUST. "Uh, do you mean do I write horror scary type stuff?"
"No...are you evil?" I actually had no answer. Other than a demonic chuckle...

Art

Amazing Ebook Update (warning GRAPH-ic material)

2011-06-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I have all my ebooks up online now. Here are the fancy covers (with clickable links, of course):

And here's my updated report across all platforms:

February: 12 copies
March Sales: 43 copies
April Sales: 377 copies
May Sales: 273 copies

That's a drop of over 100 copies since last month. Here's the handy dandy graph (the different colours match different books...DUST is the blue book):

The drop for sales between April and May is even bigger than it appears because 70 of those copies in May (of Draugr--more on this later) were free copies given away as a promotion. Many epublishers reported a drop in sales last month, partially due to Amazon having a massive giveaway of free ebooks and, about mid-month, Amazon changed their format for "tagging" books. Well, actually they deleted the way books are tagged, so this affected which bestseller lists my books appeared on. One assumes the tags will return with a revamped tagging system in the future.

All in all I'm happy with the sales. April was a bit of an anomaly because DUST had several mentions in influential kindle websites and that really affected sales. I still hope that the book will, over time find traction on its own (and my other books, of course). Plus I think the YA/Kids market is still a year away from reaching its true potential. I am pleased that I now have an account with Barnes and Noble, so my books can be bought and read on the Nook (love the app for my iPad). The Nook market isn't as big as Kindle, but it's the second largest of all the markets. Plus they have a really easy interface for keeping track of your books and sales.

Free Horror!

Also, for the month of June, I am giving DRAUGR away for free. So if you go to iBooks or Smashwords you can download it for nada. I can't lower the price past .99 cents on B&N nor Amazon (though Amazon may drop the price to zero once its "robots" recognize the book is on sale in other places). It should soon be free on Kobo, too. This is my way of introducing readers to the series (and hope that they pick up the second and third book). Plus, if you've never downloaded an ebook before, there's no risk in downloading a free one.

Update over. Art out.

Thank you Star Wars for blowing my mind

2011-05-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

On this day (May 25th) in 1977 Star Wars was released. At the time I was ten years old. I still have a very clear memory of convincing my father to take me and my three brothers and my mother off the ranch and cross country to Shaunavon, SK to see the movie. I remember that first scene where the Imperial ships are moving through space above the camera, larger than any battleship imaginable. Would they ever end? The very molecules of my brain began to vibrate. This was the world I was suppose to live in. And then that entrance of Darth Vader. Was he not evil incarnate? Here was someone who could knock Sauron off his pedestal. And it turned out the story was about a farm boy who was going to learn to use a lightsabre and save the princess. For a ranch boy in South West Saskatchewan this was speaking directly to me. Yes, Luke, get off the farm! Save the princess! Blow up the Deathstar. My brain was altered from that moment forward. I knew I had to live in the world of imagination. As we left the theatre, I felt as though I was floating in the air. My father turned to my Mom and said, "Well, that movie was far fetched."

Obviously the movie isn't for everyone. But thank you, Star Wars, for blowing my mind.

Art

How my iPad made me a better iWriter

2011-05-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

Well I've had my iPad for several months now (it's the iPad 1: 32 Gig wifi) and it has been a real help in the various aspects of my career. I should give you forewarning that I am a Mac geek (since 1984) but I'm sure you can trust my opinion anyway. : )

First and most importantly--Writing:
You can write on the iPad but don't expect it to be a good as a laptop. I use Pages for my text because it can easily be saved as a PDF. If I plan on writing a longer piece I will connect my wireless keyboard and zip along. But most of the time I am working on shorter pieces and in that case the virtual keyboard works just fine (as long as I don't try to type too fast and I always check that the autocorrect function hasn't changed my words dramatically). I usually only use this program when I am travelling and it's too unwieldy for me to work on my current projects (I don't like keeping track of various versions), so I have an iPad "book" that I'm working on. I noodle away on it whenever I'm on a plane or in a train etc., It's very handy because it only takes a few seconds to open.

Secondly--School presentations:

I talk to many, many school classes and I usually do a whole audio/video extravaganza presentation. And for years I've been lugging around my laptop and power source and connecting cables (I use Keynote for my presentations). Well, Keynote also works on the iPad:

Screenshot of Keynote (image reversed by my webcam)

It isn't as robust as the version on my iMac. But it handles audio cues, video (in fact I have my book trailer as part of my presentation), and a nice array of special effects (cool page turns, etc.). Occasionally, for reasons beyond my tiny brain's understanding, a projector won't recognize the signal from the iPad (it's happened once out of about 50 visits). The great thing is that the battery power means that I can do 4 presentations and still have plenty of battery life. So all I bring with me is my 15 pin connector and the school provides the projector and speakers (that I plug into the audio port of my iPad). The one drawback is that you can't use a clicker to advance the slides so you have to be standing near the iPad.

Thirdly--Social Networking:

Ah, the dreaded social networking. Bane of the writers who want to get work done. Blessing of the writers who are trying to avoid doing work. Well, the iPad does make it a little easier to do and less time consuming. I use Hootsuite for both Facebook and Twitter updating. The program makes it easy to update both at once and follow them, too (I also use the Twitter app and Friendly). There are many apps out there (Flipboard is rather cool if you want to see a newspaper-like version of Twitter). But the beauty of the iPad is its transportability. Now while I'm watching a hockey game I can sit on the couch and also reply to tweets or update Facebook. So it means I don't have to be tied to my iMac and I can practice multitasking.

Final word: There are many other aspects of the iPad that are handy for writers. I mean I can check my Novelrank rankings every minute if I want! Or my ebook sales. I also have all of my favourite blogs on the iPad for easy access. Recently I was on a two week trip that took me from Saskatoon to Nanaimo to Toronto to Ottawa. I wrote on the plane, read Hunger Games, listened to my own music, did my school presentations using the iPad, checked my mail (whenever I had wifi), tweeted in the airport (most airports have free wifi now), had four hours to write and tweet and read on the train from Toronto to Ottawa (CN has free wireless on the trains), did more presentations, and read my book on the way home (I didn't have any movies uploaded or I might have watched one). So the iPad is an extremely adaptable device and I'm happy with the wifi one (haven't felt I needed 3G). I haven't been lured into getting the iPad2 because I'm still quite happy with this one (but when iPad3 comes out...hmmm).

Art

Howl for the Wolfman! It's the official elaunch of The Loki Wolf

2011-05-17T05:39:00.000-07:00

Today is the official worldwide--no galaxy-wide--wait, I mean, universe-wide release of the ebook for The Loki Wolf, the third novel in the Northern Frights series. It's a happy little Christmas werewolf story (because really we need more Christmas werewolf stories, don't we? Santa and the elves get all the attention).
Here's a description:

"On the third night the worst nightmare -- the very worst -- invaded my mind. Loping behind me was a gigantic wolf, its jaws snapping together and tearing off pieces of my flesh. There was no blood. No pain. But bit by bit he swallowed chunks of my body until nothing of Angela Laxness remained."

When Angie dreams about being devoured by a giant wolf, her parents tell her it is only her imagination. But later, while on a vacation in Iceland with her grandfather and two cousins, she begins to wonder if the dream wasn't a warning. First, there are strange scratches outside her window. Then she finds out that sheep have recently been disappearing from her uncle's farm. But it isn't until she and her cousins go to the old croft house that they discover the horrifying truth.

See? A happy little Christmas werewolf story! And it follows that general "horror" rule: don't go into the croft house!

I'm absolutely excited to be releasing this ebook today. The novel has been out of print for several years and I'm so glad that it has come back to life (with the aid of electronic technologies). The extremely frightening cover is done by uber-artist Derek Mah. I get nightmares just looking at it. It's so fleshy and beardy all at once. And, in re-reading the book, I was pleased to discover that it is still a frightening story (really, don't go into the croft house). And I had forgotten how much Icelandic folklore was injected into this book (and the series). Those Vikings could really tell tales.

So The Loki Wolf is on the loose and available for the jaw-dropping, saliva inducing price of $2.99. Just click this link for the various ebookseller links.

Happy Hauntings!

Art

P.S. This brings to a close the first part of my ebook experiment. To recap I've released the following novels and short story collections as ebooks:

Don't they look pretty altogether? I'm going to concentrate on my Hunchback books for the next while (looming deadline!), but am toying with the idea of a few other eprojects (including a novel). Stay tuned. Peace out. BHM's in.
P.P.S. BHM's are Big Hairy Monsters. Join the Fur Nation!

How to Sell a Gazillion e-books (exaggeration free).

2011-04-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm reaching the last day of the 3rd month of my eBook experiment. Since mid-February I've released several of my out-of-print books and one selection of short stories as eBooks. Here they are below.

The books are available on Amazon, iBooks and Smashwords.
My total sales were as follows:
February: 21 copies
March: 51 copies
April: 368 copies

Because I like graphs, I'll put this one in to the left. It does make it rather clear that there has been a large growth in the number of sales. Part of that is due to the fact that there are now more books available for purchase. I'll break down the individual sales:

Dust: 397 copies

Draugr: 18 copies

Haunting of Drang: 9

Shades: 16

Tribes: 1

Of the sales 440 total sales, 419 come from Amazon, the rest are spread between iBooks and Smashwords. Obviously DUST is the biggest seller and (sniff) poor TRIBES is the least (and always the last one picked for the eBook "baseball" team). The books that have sold more are the ones that have been out longer. The reason for DUST's sales though are twofold. One is that I dropped the price to 99 cents about mid-March (from $2.99). The second is that DUST was listed on Pixel of Ink, which is a website that lists low-priced and free books for Kindle owners. Dust had sold 16 or so copies in the space of a month and a half. And started to pick up a bit once I lowered the price, but really grew after the listing.

In fact I kept track of the daily sales starting April 1st when the book was listed:

April sales:

1st-80 copies (Pixel Ink listing)

2-10

3-5

4-5

5-5

6-42 (have no idea why it suddenly jumped up here or the next day)

7 -40

8-8

9-7

10-5

11-6

12-8

13-6

14-15 (Daily Cheap Reads listing)

15-9

16-4

17-6

18-7

19-6

20-9

21-6

22-2

23-4

24-6

25-22 (holiday monday sales)

26-9

27-4

28-5

29-4

30-2 (so far)

So you can see that DUST, which used to average two or three sales a week has jumped to 6-10 copies a day. Obviously at 99 cents a copy (that's 35 cents for me), I'm not making a bundle (in fact only averaging about $3 a day or so). But my hope is that the book will continue to climb (even if it continues as this pace it will sell 4200 copies in a year's time). The more people who buy it the more it ends up in the "people who bought this also bought this" list.

What the DUST buyers are Buying

Obviously the more times DUST is recommended the more times it has a chance to sell. At first I was going to leave the book at .99 cents for two months, but now I might wait until it has sold at least 1000 copies, just to see what kind of momentum it will gain from having so many recommendations.

As far as my other books go I'll let them grow slowly. Draugr, The Haunting of Drang Island and (soon to be released) The Loki Wolf are more middle-grade novels, and I don't believe the market is that big for them yet. They're a long term investment. Shades is a collection of short stories and they tend not to sell as well (but I always have hope). For Tribes I bought an ad in Pixel of Ink to give the book a leg up because I believe the novel is attractive to both young adults and adults, and therefore has a wider audience for me to aim at. If only I'd put a vampire in the book!

Which reminds me, I am considering writing a "direct-to-ebook" novel. Something short, snappy, and full of action and aimed at adults. I'd really like to test out everything I'm learning on a brand new project. Oh, but first I better finish writing the next book in The Hunchback Assignments.

Art

Uncle Ray Bradbury

2011-04-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

When I was twelve years old, I first met Uncle Ray. I found him in the back of the grade seven classroom in a cardboard box. In that box were paperbacks with torn covers and rough-edged pages whose best days were far behind them; they had fought the good storytelling fight. I dug through the jumble of books and clutched The Martian Chronicles. The cover was orange, the planet mars was in the background, and in the foreground was the author’s floating, majestic face looking as though it had been carved in stone. Daring me to read it. His name was printed in letters that seemed to rise off the page. RAY BRADBURY.

I brought the book to my desk and when the final school bell of the day rang, I carried it along with my homework onto the school bus. It usually took forty minutes to get home to my parent’s ranch on the bus, so I opened the book. And I fell inside: I suddenly walked a world where a rocket could bring summer to winter, where Martians lived and breathed, where the macabre house of Usher could stand again. I did not want to leave Mars.

The book changed me. Oh, I had been altered by other books (The Hobbit, for example), but there was a deep, trance-like beauty in Brabdury’s prose. It lived, it breathed. His words could build temples. His words came from the deepest wells of the earth, of the soul. I was possessed by an overwhelming desire to read more. I wanted all his words, all his worlds inside of me. And so, in the next few months, I hunted for his books, demanding them from librarians, scouring bookshops, until they were in my possession.

And in that time he became part of my family. I began to think of him as Uncle Ray. If I were to draw up the family tree he would be right there alongside my other uncles. After all, he has guided me, shaped me. And he was along for every family vacation, right there during every holiday.

Flash forward eighteen years. I had become a writer (a path I am certain his words helped me choose) and I had written my fourth novel, Dust. It was my ode to his words, his worlds. And, gathering my courage, I sent my book to him. I did not expect a reply. Just the thought that his hands might touch it, or even that the book might sit at his front door, was enough.

Three months later a letter from California arrived at my door. I stared at it. I turned it over in my hands. Finally, I opened it to discover this:

I was (and still am) dumbfounded that a man as busy as Bradbury (and obviously ill at the time), would take the precious minutes to write to me. The letter is framed and on the wall of my office, a daily inspiration.

One of the concepts in life is the whole idea of "paying it forward." In other words if someone helped you get into your position, then instead of paying them back you should pay it forward to the next generation. This is obviously what Bradbury was doing. And I thank him. And I will continue thank him by paying it forward myself.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the letter, of course. After all, he is my Uncle Ray.

Art

Worldwide eRelease of TRIBES

2011-04-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

Today I'm releasing the ebook of my novel TRIBES worldwide (except Canada*). It will be the fifth ebook of my backlist that I've released so far. To recap here are the others:

I've really enjoyed the challenge of understanding how to create and market ebooks and of working with the various distributors. On a "gee where is my career going" level, it has been an experience to reread these books from my past. Some are even as old as fourteen. I mean that's grade nine for Pete's sake!

TRIBES is a short novel, weighing in at a little over 25,000 words, but it is dense with ideas: evolution, big bang, first love, suicide, grad week shenanigans. I still remember writing a note to myself that went something like this: anthropological study of high school students big bang science stuff. That's about how much sense my notes make sometimes. But soon Percy the anthropologist wannabee was appearing on the page telling me all about his high school and the dangerous tribes that lurked inside it: The Lipstick and Hairspray tribe, The Hockey Tribe, The Gee-The-Seventies-Were-Great-Even-Though-I-Wasn't-Born-Yet Tribe.

If I am allowed to have favourites out of my sixteen novels, this one is near the top. I just loved the way Percy's mind worked, his obsessive and tragic need to catalogue every experience. On another level I had always hoped for more for this novel. Just before it was going to be released there was a real buzz about the book (Spike Lee's movie company came close to optioning it and selling it to Disney) and both my editor and agent felt the book would really make a splash. It did well, was nominated for several awards, and grew a following, but it never really knocked on the door of true success. That's why I'm happy to have it out there as an ebook. We all deserve a second chance. In fact I'm big on third chances, too.

And I must say I adore the new cover created by Christopher Steininger. I had absolute confidence in his skills to create a brilliant piece of artwork and he didn't disappoint.

Just click here for the official TRIBES page. It is available on Kindle and iBooks(and soon B&N and Kobo) for the existentially low price of $2.99.

Art

*TRIBES. is not available in Canada at this point as an ebook, but is available in paper at fine bookstores everywhere.

My E-Newsletter Winners

2011-04-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

About every three to four months I send out a somewhat glib and perhaps funny newsletter about the "goings on" in my career.

And I always, always have a contest where I give away stuff (because there should be some payoff for reading my newsletter). My latest contest had three giveaways. Here's the first one followed by some of the more creative answers:

1. For everyone. A free signed copy of Empire of Ruins. Just answer the question "What is the airspeed of an African pigeon?" Be creative.

"Hmmm hard to come up with airspeed of African pigeons as you don't specify if the pigeon is actually flying at the time or even if it is in the hold of a 747. I think I'll have to split the difference and say.... the envelope please... the envelope?... give me the damn envelope 156 ppm (pigeons per minute). Fast, I know but that's the best estimation."

"Zero…NATO has put up a no-fly zone."

"Depends how hard it farts. :)"

2. For teachers only. A Box of Tribes. That's right if you answer this question properly "What is 2 + 2 - 4=" you will receive a class set of TRIBES, my anthropogical study of high school in a novel.

"2+2-4=0"
"0 - which happens to be the name of one of the characters in Holes - one of our other favourite books (after all of yours)."

3. For everyone. A free copy of the ebooks Draugr and Dust. Just answer the question, "how much wood does a virtual eChuck chuck?"

"Virtually all of them !!"

"A virtual forest is chucked by the eChuck."

"The amount of wood a virtual echuck chucks, if a virtual eChuck could chuck wood, would be however much wood a virtual echuck chucks, whenever a virtual echuck would chuck wood."

The Winners were:
1. Cameron from Regina
2. Harriet from Winnipeg
3. Elizabeth from Calgary

See the fun we have with my eNewsletter? Feel welcome to join in the winnings and fun by signing up below:

Cheers,
Art

The Haunting of Drang on iBooks

2011-04-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

Please don't let the cover scare you. I apologize if it causes you to recoil in fear. I just want to let you know that the book is now available on iBooks all across the world:

Just click here for the links to download it to your iPod or iPad (and if you have an iPad2 I don't want to hear about how great it is, okay? Some of us are completely happy with our first generation iPads, okay! Hmmph! There's nothing wrong with being old you ageist, iPad1 prejudiced person).
Oh, did that I speak that last bit out loud?
Art

How to write novels and lose weight and make millions (Part 2)

2011-04-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

Tempo Fitness 611T

Way back a long, long time (and twenty or so pounds) ago I added a treadmill to my desk. In fact the date was Feb. 9th, 2009 if you want to read that original post. Since then I haven't looked back. I do have a newer treadmill (a Tempo Fitness 611T) which I bought for $400.00 from Canadian Tire (it was on sale). I removed the plastic tray and added a wooden desktop (see below). The console detached nicely and could be attached to the top of the desk for easy access to the controls.

As you can also see I bought a wall shelf and that's where my iMac sits (I highly recommend the 27 inch monitor, it's so much better for editing and gaming). I use a wireless mouse and keyboard, very handy. I usually walk about 1.6kph (or 1mph) a very leisurely pace (I did walk faster, but due to an old knee injury this is the only speed I can maintain without extra stress on ligaments and such). I know everyone always wonders about numbers with authors. How many copies did your book sell? How many fan letters do you get? How much do you weigh? Okay, no one has asked how much I weigh (they're so polite).

But here are the numbers:

Total number of hours walking since Jan 2009: 1320 hours

Total distance travelled: 2568.12 KM's (or 1595 miles)

Total number of books written: 2 1/4

Average distance traveled (per day): 5.5 km's (3.4 miles)

Average calories burned daily: 450

Yes, I do actually have a chart:

When I started I weighed 197 pounds (I feel odd about mentioning my weight, but I'm male so I'm allowed to... funny society we have, eh?). I've reached that goal a few times, but always bounced back up. In fact I have a graph (isn't this exciting?).

The graph shows a big loss of weight at the start, then a bounce upwards (which is entirely natural, the body goes into starvation mode after a weight loss and so you don't have to eat as much to gain weight). Generally where the graph is lower it was summertime, so I was more active and it went back up in the winter (the last spike is from a week at an all inclusive resort in Mexico...mmmm). I now think that my "natural" weight is somewhere around 182 pounds. I'm happy with that. I do eat more healthy (I'm a Nutrition Action fan), but I am known to "snack" far too often and I have KFC once a year. The nice thing about the treadmill desk is when I pick up a Coffee Crisp I can ask myself is this chocolate bar worth walking for an hour and a bit? The answer is always yes.

But more importantly, how has this affected my writing? I am much more alert, can write for a longer period of time, and one of the side affects of consistent exercise is that it fights off depression (which is something a good number of we writers seem to struggle with, especially since the invention of Amazon rankings). I don't sit in my office chair unless it's a task that demands I sit. If I'm not walking, I'm standing at my desk. In all I feel that the constant exercise has added to my ability to multi-task and tweet.

It doesn't do much for cardio, so I do use an exercise bike most mornings. And Tai Chi when I remember to.

There you go....the update! All written while I was walking.

Art

Breaking the top 100 on the Amazon ekids list!

2011-04-01T16:37:00.000-07:00

I don't usually update my blog twice a day, but something extremely interesting happened today on the ebook front. Just after I finished my last blog I noticed that my ebook

had sold three copies. I thought great! Social networking actually works! Then at lunch time it had sold 10 copies on Amazon. Considering it had only sold 14 copies all last month, I thought this was a perfect start to the month. Then it jumped to 20 copies, then 30 copies, and 40 copies...

I was shocked. I couldn't figure out why there this sudden climb. So I went to kindleboards (it's a great place for writers with ebooks to chat) and Monique Martin was kind enough to point out that Dust had appeared on Pixel of Ink, a site that features free and bargain books.

So the result, at the time of this posting (5:25 PM April 1st, 2011), is that Dust has sold 56 copies and climbed from #62,700 on the Amazon rankings to #1117 (I can't help it, I really want it to break the #1000 barrier). It is the 80th bestseller in Children's Literature eBooks (near Cassandra Clare and PC Cast) and is #6 in Spine Chilling Horror (below Amanda Hocking and Stephanie Meyer). So, obviously, I have to say thanks for being my fairy godmother Pixel of Ink!

And, it's not an April fool's joke. That's the best part.

Although, I may have worn out my refresh button.

Best,
Art

The Amazing Ebook Experiment (update)

2011-04-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

Well, I've sold 200,000 copies of my ebooks in the last two months. That's a so-so start but I'll have to live with it. Oh, wait, what's that you're saying? It's April 1st? You're right! How about I tell you the real amount.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

So, as many of you know, I've been dabbling in the ebook world. I started on Feb 5th (with the release of DUST) and so far I've converted 4 books to the various formats (if you want to read my previous post on this topic it's here):

Hey, they look kind of nice all lined up like that! I hired two artists to do the covers for the first three books (Derek Mah and Christopher Steininger, respectively) and I put the cover of SHADES together myself using an image from iStock Photo. I then uploaded the books to Amazon, Smashwords, and iTunes. Each time I released a novel I, of course, tweeted and Facebooked about it (I describe some of my promotions here).

And here are the results so far (cue the drum roll): 68 copies sold.

Okay, that's not amazing, but I'm pragmatic about these things. Somewhere in the back of my mind I, of course, was hoping to add a few more zeroes to that number, but apparently, like everything to do with writing, you actually have to work at this! My plan from the start was to see this not as a sprint, but as a marathon. After all, these books will be on the shelves forever.

Here's the breakdown:

Amazon US

Draugr 13

Dust 7 (2.99) + 12 (.99) = 17

Shades 8

The Haunting of Drang 3

Total: 41

Amazon UK

Dust 2 (2.99) + 2 (.99) = 4

Total = 4

Smashwords

Draugr 6

Shades 2

Total = 8

iTunes

Draugr 6

Dust 6

Shades 3

Total = 15

Grand Total = 68 copies

What the numbers tell me is that, of course, Amazon sells the most. And I am not reaching beyond my base yet (in fact I could probably name at least half the people who purchased the ebooks). I think this "expansion" will come over time as reviews of the books trickle down into the public consciousness and as the books pop up more often as "recommends" on Amazon. I'm really curious what the sales will be like six months from now. I do feel that the children's ebook market is still about two years behind that "grown up" market--just not that many young readers have ereaders yet.

All of the books are priced at $2.99 except for Dust which is .99 cents right now (I've explained my logic behind the lower price here). As you can see (just using the Amazon numbers) Dust has sold 9 copies at $2.99 and 14 copies at .99 cents. So obviously I'd make more money if I flipped it back up to $2.99. But I want to experiment with that price level for another month or so to see if the price point allows the book to get more traction.

Overall, I'm happy with the results. No, I won't be buying a new car. But I do consider this an investment in my future. And these books weren't making me any money before this so it really is a win win win situation.

I'll do another update at the six month mark. If things go well enough, I'll buy each of you a car (no money back guarantee).

Art

Worldwide eRelease of The Haunting of Drang Island

2011-03-31T06:46:00.000-07:00

Today is the official re-release of my second novel The Haunting of Drang Island. All three books in the Northern Frights series have been out of print for several years now, so I'm glad to see the second book in the series rise like...uh...like a giant serpent out of the water. It's the story of a teen going on a holiday on Drang Island (near Vancouver Island), meeting a girl, and...well...a horrible haunting occurs (really, folks, the details are too scary to give you, but there are ghosts and apparitions and shades and Icelandic swear words---well, they sound like swear words).The cover is done by the amazingly talented Derek Mah. I really love the feel that he's given this series--scary, but somehow a little humorous. The book is intended for grade four and up and is being released in e-format only.

The Haunting of Drang Island came out in 1998 (that year Saving Private Ryan won the Oscar for best picture and the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley cup in case you were wondering). As I did with Draugr, I decided to keep the text as original as possible and only fixed a few grammatical mistakes and misspellings of Icelandic names. Just click on this link if you want to see the web page I've put up about the book.

I've priced The Haunting of Drang Island at $2.99.
The last book in the series, The Loki Wolf will roaring to life soon.

Here are the eReader links:
Kindle link (US & Canada)
Kindle link (UK)
All other eReaders.

In the next few weeks the book will also be available at B&N, iBooks, and Kobo.
Thanks for being part of the worldwide release!

Art

P.S. Here's what the covers look like side by side. Doubly frightening!

Draugr is a NookBook

2011-03-23T08:48:00.001-07:00

Draugr is now available on B&N as a Nookbook. Wow, that really cooks like a wookie cooking cookies!

Art

Interview with Katie Davis about the Brain Burps App!

2011-03-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

Today, in my ever-ongoing quest to try and figure out how this whole interweb thing works, I'm going to interview Katie Davis, author/illustrator extraordinaire. She is the author of Who Hops, I Hate To Go To Bed, Kindergarten Rocks, and the middle grade novel The Curse of Addy McMahon. More importantly, she has an app! Brain Burps About Books. Here's the link. Isn't the cow cute?

And now the interview:

First off, I think Brain Burps is such a great title. No one forgets it. Did it take long to come up with that? And is the purple-blue cow there because cows often burp?

It’s SO funny you say that because I’ve been advised by smart marketing type guys that it doesn’t take me seriously enough…not that I’m ever going to stop laughing at myself, heaven forbid! But more in terms of will I be taken seriously as someone in the business with that name.

But I love it! So I don’t know what to do, and plus, people often tell me how it makes them laugh and I’m a sucker for making people laugh.

As for how I came up with it, it started as the name for my blog. My mind pops from thing to thing all the time and add to that I didn’t want to be locked into talking about one specific thing, so I figured it covered anything to do with children’s literature. That way I can talk about specific books, but also, the business end of things, libraries and librarians, how to read books, how to write them, school visits, craft, you name it, it’d come under that umbrella! And it worked for the podcast, too.

The cow comes from my first book, WHO HOPS? which has a hopping cow on the cover.

I love hopping cows. Or Kangacows as we call them in Saskatchewan. Why an app in the first place?

The app kind of came along with the podcast. As I got my show structure and equipment together (for good sound quality), I found out about Liberated Syndication, or Libsyn for short. Libsyn is my podcast server, and I pay a monthly service fee to upload and store my files, which can be very large, or about 1.5 mb per episode minute. For my service fee, there is an app included. All I had to do was create the art.

To be clear, anyone can hear the podcast free via my blog (soon to be within my redesigned site) or iTunes. But if you want it automatically downloaded to your iPod, iPhone, Android or Blackberry, you need to buy the app. I didn't have anything to do with the pricing of $1.99, either - that was Libsyn (I get a few cents per app sold...my kids won't be paying for college with the app). As a sort of thank you for buying it, I make the podcast available to my app owners a full day early. That’s an advantage when there is a contest! I’ve also included PDFs only available on the app, like the first chapter of Nancy Werlin’s latest book before it came out.

Who's your audience? Bovines? Teachers? Anyone with $1.99?

I am pretty sure you can’t text without thumbs so probably no bovines have purchased my app, sad as that makes me. Anyone who wants to learn about the business of children’s lit and wants to hear the show before everyone else buys it.

Whether you’re an established author or a hopeful, there is content for you. Teachers and librarians have liked it too, as they can hear their favorite writers and illustrators talking about the creation of books they’ve read, or their students are reading. I feel so lucky to do this - I love my guests! I get to support my friends' books, I’ve had Newbery and Caldecott winners, app creators, eBook publishers, bestselling authors and illustrators and school visit experts.

What was the "app" process like? Do they take a cut of the $1.99 or do you pay them upfront? Is it an expensive endeavour for authors to consider?

It was very easy but I’m an illustrator so that wasn’t a big leap – though I give props to Janie Bynum who gave me valuable graphic design input, as I am definitely no graphic artist! And as I mentioned above, the app is part of the monthly $20 fee. Knowing how much it would cost me elsewhere, it seemed like a great deal to me.

Do people think you're cooler because you have an app? Just curious. I need to work on my coolness. I think you're cooler, in case you're wondering.

What are you talking about? You are the coolest guy I know. After my husband and Justin Timberlake. Sorry. But third place isn’t so bad.

And to answer your question, I am actually 17.5% cooler than I was before. Except to my teenaged kids who probably think I’m not even in the same state as cool.

Seriously, I think I am the only one who thinks it’s cool. And now you. So now there are two of us.

Justin Timberlake? Is he another YA writer? Anyway, what has the reaction been to the app? Was it better than you imagined?

Nope. It’s actually way worse. 8-)

I get the statements and it’s embarrassing. Meanwhile, the show grows by leaps and bounds every day! As I write this I’m just about to pass the 15,000 download mark and have been heard in 67 countries. By the time you print this, those numbers will have gone up by a lot. So the app not selling isn’t that big a deal to me but ONLY because it’s not a book app. That would be a completely different story. And I will be doing a book app, so let’s talk again then!

I didn't even know there were 67 countries in the world! Now that the app is out there, you still have work to do. Interviews, cutting and splicing of digital tape, etc., Is it time consuming? And what tools do you use to do all your podcasting?

I have good sound equipment, including my favorite thing, an Edirol digital recorder, about the size of an iPhone, only fatter. I’ve gotten more streamlined as I become more experienced, but it still takes anywhere from a couple of hours to 6 hours, depending on the episode. I do research, read the books by my guests (I’m not counting reading time), then I write my show notes. The interview usually lasts about an hour, maybe more “off camera” if we’re having fun, and then I edit the show, which means listening to it, and adding music, the reviews by Betsy Bird and Jennifer Hubert Swan (Reading Rants) and the new feature, Take5 Marketing Tips, submitted by Dianne de las Casas. I also delete things, like too many “ums” or if I interrupt someone.

Um, I see. So you should cut out the ums. Ummm, that's a great tip. I assume one of the advantages to having the podcasting app is that you can react to changes in the industry instantly. Do you pursue topics that are...uh...topical? Or is it more general?

You are so right! I’ve had timely episodes, including one with the editor who removed the N-word from Huck Finn, Bruce Coville’s escape from Egypt during the recent revolution, and one of my first episodes was with Ellen Hopkins, right after she was “uninvited” from a Texas book festival. I had her on and two other authors, one of whom boycotted the festival and one who decided to go.

I see that people can also phone in with questions. That is so great. It's kind of like being able to talk directly to Oprah. Have you found this interactive aspect of the podcast useful? Do you get crank calls?

I love that I can do that. People can also email me an mp3 message recorded on their iPod or iPhone – it has better quality. And yep, that number has gotten some crank calls. But that’s okay – I got the service to make it easy for people to ask questions. It’s been pretty dead lately on the question front, though so I don’t know how much longer I’ll keep paying for that!

Did I mention that you're now 90% cooler because you have an app? Anyway, has anything really surprising come out of the whole app thing? Like, perhaps, Brain Burps the movie?

The most surprising thing is that you think I’m 90% cooler because of the app.

Ha! So what are the net benefits? Are they measurable? Does this sell books or is it more a way of reaching out and growing your audience (which we hope in turn will sell books). And, most important of all, is it fun?

It’s so much fun I can’t even believe it. The benefits are multi-fold: I get to support other people’s books, I feel good supporting literacy and spreading the kidlit gospel, my name is associated with respected book reviewers who contribute to the show, and I’m going more speaking engagements because of it. I was just asked by Chautauqua to interview Candy Fleming for their website, I will be podcasting the New England SCBWI and the Rutgers One-on-One conferences this year and I’m appearing at the NY Reading Association, presenting “How to Turn Reluctant Readers Into Stars Through Podcasting.”

So, though I don’t know if it directly is selling my books, through these appearances and associations, maybe it is. Most of all, it’s really fun and very fulfilling.

One thing I know for sure, this interview was fun! Thanks Katie, I really appreciate you sharing your time and information and laughing at my jokes. You were laughing right? Please check out Katie’s Website and buy all of her books. Err, wait, first buy mine. Then hers! Oh, and don't forget to watch her very cool video FAQ's. All your FAQ's will be answered! Finally!

Art

Shades on iBooks (a poem)

2011-03-16T05:59:00.000-07:00

Dear mighty iBooks
Thank you for giving Shades, my book, a look
As an Apple fanboy
This has produced in me
Plenty of joyous joy
Oh, frabjous happiness
Oh, iPadded deliriousness
May the sales be blessed
May the downloads outlast the reign
Of Ozymandias.

Notice how I add that deep literary stuff at the end?

Yep, Shades, my collection of short stories is out on iBooks. Click on the link if you want the various worldwide links.

Art

I blame my 4th grade teacher

2011-03-15T06:26:00.001-07:00

I blame my grade 4 teacher for turning me into a writer. His name was Mr. Fitzgerald and he came to our small town of Tompkins right out of Education. He was only there a year, but in that year he did two things that changed my life forever. The first was he read The Hobbit to us. That book blew my mind! I was amazed by the dwarves and spiders and, of course, Bilbo himself. Wow, this book didn't have the Hardy Boys in it! It had swords! I remember staring at the cover for hours.

The second thing he did was teach us how to play Dungeons and Dragons. The year would have been 1976. At that time no one had heard of the satanic, amazingly fun game. Only college geeks played it. I have no idea how he started teaching us, or why, but I do have memories of going on "adventures" during math class. I may not know my multiplication tables, but I can tell you the percentage chance of a 20 hit point strike with a +2 sword on a green dragon! The game, like The Hobbit, suddenly made my imagination explode. The game taught me that anything could be imagined. And I blame it (and my grade four teacher) for turning me into a writer.

SO thanks Mr. Fitzgerald!

.99 cent books and the apocalypse

2011-03-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

.99 cent eBooks will destroy publishing!
.99 cent eBooks will save writers!
.99 cent eBooks are the 4th horsemen of the apocalypse!
.99 cent eBooks will save the Toronto Maple Leafs (or fill in your favourite sports team here _______)!

Okay, I don't know which (or if any) of these statements is true. The more I dig into the world of ePublishing the more arguments I hear for and against pricing eBooks as low as .99 cents (or free!). One argument is that this devalues books. Hey, that makes sense to me. eBooks should be worth something! I spent a year writing this book and I want money (preferably truckloads of money)! Another argument is that if you sell a book at 99 cents you make 35 cents. That's essentially a 35% royalty. Wow, I'd kill for a 35% royalty! Plus, the .99 cents opens up the purchaser to make an impulse buy. I love it when people follow their impulses...especially if their impulse is to buy my book.

Should I sell a book for .99 cents? I wondered. Will it devalue my book? Will it launch my books into the stratosphere? I meditated. I scattered the bones and read the pig livers (oink).

And the answer came back: yes.

I chose Dust because it is my most valuable book. It has won the most awards and has been the most successful and it would make the best impression on new readers. And that's who I am aiming the .99 cent price at. The eBook of Dust is only available in the U.S. and U.K. I am relatively unknown to the general public in these markets, so by lowering the price I am essentially saying, "hello, I'm over here. Pick me! Pick me!" Kind of like when I'd jump up and down hoping to be picked for the baseball team.

My hope is that the book will catch on and climb up to a steady sales rate. If I sell two copies that's almost the same amount that I make for selling a paperback version of the book. If I sell six copies then I am equalling the 2.01 that I was making when the ebook was priced at 2.99. If the book does gain traction I will have a choice to make, either to keep it at .99 cents or to put it back to $2.99 or $3.99 and hope the sales stay steady (I've seen both large publishers and small epubbers have success at this strategy).

The main reason I'm testing this is because if I didn't I'd always be curious. And it is a no risk situation for me. I make the vast majority of my income from my paper books (like 99.9%).

Art

P.S. for a great argument for keeping books above .99 read Write to Publishing. For a great argument for pricing at .99 cents read this John Locke interview. For another great blog post on .99 cent books read Nathan Bransford's blog post. For a laugh read this.
P.P.S. I believe that the .99 cent book is an oddity of our times. I think Amazon/iTunes/B&N are letting it exist because they are trying to sell more and more Kindles and iPads and Nooks and the more easily available the content for their devices the more they will sell. But the profit margin is too small for them to continue with the .99 cent price forever. It does cost money to upload and download books. Once they've saturated the market they'll likely raise the price of books. Of course, I base this theory on no stats or charts or anything tangible. The pig liver told me.
P.P.P.S. I realize at the beginning of this post some people might get the impression that the Toronto Maple Leafs are my favourite team... they aren't. I have a soft spot for them. But I'm an Oilers fan. So please don't start a flame war. Or a Flames war.
P.P.P.P.S For those who have never received a real letter, P.S. stands for post script. It was something you added to the end of a letter that you forgot to write in the main text. In the old days people used pens and so words were permanent. Unlike now. : )

Using Project Wonderful ads to sell eBooks

2011-03-11T05:17:00.000-08:00

For those keeping track I recently posted about using Facebook for advertising here. In that "campaign" I spent 15 dollars and received 49 clicks and may have sold one book due to the ad.

An artist friend of mine, Christopher Steininger, has had tons of success with Project Wonderful, so I gave it a try. Project Wonderful is a site where you can create an account, create an ad and have your ad displayed on various websites. You are able to search for websites that might have potential customers then bid on the ad space (which comes in various sizes). It's a system that looks complicated in the beginning, but after about twenty minutes makes sense (plus they have a clever tutorial, though the best way to learn is from doing). So I came up with two ads.
and
Both are quite small, as you can see. I was hoping the cover of Draugr would intrigue
"clickers" and the Dust ad does let them know that it is an eBook. Then I deposited 15 dollars in my account using paypal and bid on several websites (some to do with comics, others to do with fiction).
Here are the results for Draugr

I have two ads because I changed the ad slightly. Overall you can see that I spent $5.24. The websites I advertised to over the 10 day stretch had 360,000 visits and received 98 clicks that took people to my website. So already this is much cheaper than Facebook per click.
Here are the results from Dust :

I spent $9.84 and the websites I advertised to had over a million hits and I received 73 clicks to my website.

So the total for both campaigns was 171 clicks. A higher number than I received from Facebook (which was 49 clicks).

Number of sales from these clicks = 1 or 2. That's about all I can attribute to the campaigns. So I didn't earn my money back. What's up with that? I thought advertising was the answer to everything! : )

I do feel that there is more potential at Project Wonderful. If I were to do another campaign I would use larger banner ads with better designs. I also understand the bidding system a bit better now and you can literally spend pennies a day (even nothing--that's right your ads run for free) and get a good return if you're willing to do a bit more "poking" around at various websites. In the future I would rather do a long-term campaign (for pennies a day) to get attention and "branding." Most people don't just click and buy. They click then go away. But if they keep seeing your ad for two or three months then they are more likely to click again and go "Oh what the heck" and buy.

Meanwhile I'm going to go back to writing!

Art

Shades--an eBook of short stories

2011-03-09T04:51:00.001-08:00

I'm continuing on with my eBook adventures. For those curious I posted about the creation of both
and as eBooks here.
So as my next project I decided to gather all of my short stories together under one name and release them (very few anthologies get published in the print world, so it was a chance to bring these stories back to life). First, I hunted through all my files and came up with 17 short stories that I thought were presentable. Many had been published previously or broadcast on radio and a few were orphans whom I believed deserved their moment on stage. It's a really eclectic collection--fantasy, horror, literary fiction, humorous, irreverent, violent and, well, weird. They do span the length of my career. I rarely write shorts stories (only 17 so far that are publishable) whereas I've written 16 published novels (and 6 unpublished novels). The curious thing is that they almost all ended up for an older YA/adult audience.

I gave the collection the title Shades in an attempt to describe the eclectic styles (there are all different shades of stories) and I bought an image at http://www.istockphoto.com and made my own cover. I'm pleased with the cover, though I feel it's utilitarian, but it shows some of the mystery of the stories. I may give it a new cover further down the road.

Here's a short description of a few of them and a guesstimate of when they were written.

Stubb This is my most recent short story. All about a boy who may be a werewolf. (2007)
Snow White and the Seven Elves a snarky retelling of the fairytale. (1997)
Garbage Day A young boy has a tough home life. He wants revenge. Exactly what does he put in the garbage? (1992)
Fairytale I seem to be channeling Ray Bradbury in this story. I could draw a direct line from it to Dust. (1993)
The Jesus Trilogy Three short looks at Jesus. Two have to do with the resurrection and one with Pontius Pilate and a rodeo. They are written in a bluesy style. (1997)
Virtual Dragon A cyberpunk kung fu story. Because...well...the world needs more cyberpunk.(1995)

And that's just a few of them.

They're available at Amazon (kindle) and Smashwords (most every eReader). Just visit the links here. It's fun to have the stories out there again. They usually have such brief lives.

Art

Read an eBook week

2011-03-07T08:42:00.001-08:00

It's read an eBook week! Both my titles:
and (short stories)
are available this week at Smashwords for 50% off. Err, which makes them only $1.99.

Of course, every week is "read a book in general" week, right?

Art

Does Social Networking Work?

2011-03-02T06:18:00.001-08:00

I've recently released two ebooks unto the world.
and
As part of my awareness campaign I did several things. I blogged about both books. My blog appears on Livejournal, Blogspot and Myspace (aka deadspace) and it is "fed" to Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, and Jacketflap. So my rough estimate is that around 5000 people have friended or follow me on these various networks. So that's a potential audience of 5000 (or 10,000 eyeballs if you're counting).
Arthur Slade's Profile

I also tweeted and "Facebooked" about the books, exposing them to about 4800 people (many of them the same people as the first group). These tweets were also re-tweeted by several others for even more exposure.

Total sales in the last two weeks: 25

That may seem like a small amount but I'm actually extremely pleased by it (hey, there was even one sale in the UK). If I examine just my Facebook friends alone I have around 3200. But only a small part of them would be actual fans -- the rest are other writers, people who collect Facebook friends, other writers, teachers, other writers, etc. Only a certain portion of them would own eReaders and only a small portion of those owners would be interested in Draugr and Dust. Not everyone wants to read YA. And not everyone wants to read horror. Add to that all the other "noise" out there (how many tweets can you read in a day?).

Actually if the sales pattern continues of 12 copies a week by the end of a year I'll have sold 624 copies and made $1248. Hey, that's not too bad. Add to that the fact that I intend to release two more books in the Northern Frights series, a book of short stories and maybe even a novelette--all of that can only help sales.

So does networking work? It depends on what you hope it will achieve. I see it as a way to both join the community of other writers and readers out there (and the heavy metal/starwars/startrek/geek community) and a way to be able to communicate directly to people who enjoy my work. "Friends" won't just purchase something the moment you tweet about it. They have lives of their own (apparently!). I rarely like seeing a direct sales message (unless it's something I'm dying to get) so I don't expect others to want to see too many of my own. In fact, I think you're far more likely to sell books if you're a good online citizen and nice to people (hey, maybe that could be a t-shirt--be nice to people...it sells books!)

So the social networking works for me.

And it's a great way to procrastinate from writing...

Art

Empire of Ruins -- out today in Canuckland, eh!

2011-03-01T08:41:00.001-08:00

Finally! Book III of the Hunchback Assignments is out in stores all across Canada. Empire of Ruins is the story of Modo, a trip to Australia, crocodiles, and, of course, airships. There's also a sabre involved. Oh, and 3% more romance, 5% more bromance, and 117.7% steampunk.

Art

The (BOX) of Empires Strikes Back

2011-02-25T12:59:00.001-08:00

My author's copies of Empire of Ruins: The Hunchback Assignments III have arrived. Don't they look all comfy in the box? Very colourful!

It's in stores in Canada on Monday.

Facebook Ad sells a Bazillion Books!

2011-02-23T05:34:00.000-08:00

Well, a long time ago (April 21st, 2009), I tried out Facebook's ad campaign to mixed results. Enough time has passed and I've saved up enough cash that I decided to try again.

I chose to advertise my recently released eBook DUST.

As you can see I made up a clever ad (which is relatively easy to do with Facebook Ads) and pressed the "go" button. Facebook allows you to choose your target audience, so I selected America (because the eBook is only available there) and young adult/horror. I chose to pay $5.00 a day for three days. Because I published this version of DUST it meant that I could track sales exactly. My hope was that people would see the ad, click on it and go directly to the Amazon kindle site, then voila--buy the book. And I'd pay off my mortgage (okay that's more of a long term goal).
Here were the results:

As you can see there were 91,000 impressions and 49 clicks. And the number of books sold during that time period = 1. Yep, only sold one. I needed to sell at least 8 to break even.

Now I didn't expect the ad to sell bundles of books. First the person who clicks on the ad would have to own an eReader, then they'd have to have $2.99 to spend, and finally be willing to take a chance on an unknown book. So obviously this ad wasn't hitting the impulse buyers (all I need is about 100,000 impulse buyers...is that too much to ask).

I have been told that advertising usually takes 3 months to imprint onto your audience's brains. At that point they are more likely to buy the "product." But I'm not prepared to buy 3 months worth of ads. I may try Project Wonderful next, which is much cheaper. And have been itching to give Goodreads a try, too.

Art

iDraugr on iBooks

2011-02-21T18:08:00.001-08:00

Well, Steve Jobs is pleased to announce that Draugr is available on iBooks. That's right -- 40,000 words of YA fright is waiting to spring into creepy life on your iPad (or iPod Touch or iPhone or iBrain). Just click the corresponding link.
iAustralia! iCanada! iUS of A! iUK! iFrance!

Yep, I'm a Macgeek. Sorry.

Art

Browse inside Empire of Ruins

2011-02-19T17:31:00.001-08:00

Dust on iBooks Worldwide (mostly)

2011-02-18T05:47:00.001-08:00

G'day Australia! Howdy US of A! Bloody top of the morning UK! Bonjour France!

Dust is officially up for sale on iBooks in the above countries. I am enough of a Mac geek that I find this thrilling (alas, again I must mention it is not for sale in the Canadian store because of "negotiations" etc--I can't even download my own book!).

It has been ten years since the book was released. When I talk to students they often ask me which of my 15 books is my favourite and I always answer Dust. It is the one that I feel "worked" the best out of all my novels.

Art

The Ebook Experiment...so far

2011-02-17T06:12:00.000-08:00

Well, yesterday I launched (or resurrected) my first novel, Draugr, as an ebook.

A few weeks before that I released Dust as an ebook (available only in the US and UK because I don't have the Canadian rights).

Total sales so far: 6
I'm actually very pleased with that. I don't see this as a massive sales rush, but more a long term project that (I hope) will pay off over time. If I only make $1000.00 a year from the experiment...then that's ten grand after ten years (because the books will not be taken off the shelves unless something major happens to the internet or people start downloading them into their brains).
Why bother? Well, two main reasons. One is that these books were out of print in various countries, so I could at least be making an income from them. The second is that right now in the publishing world there is great, numbing fear about the changes coming to the industry via ebooks (umm...update the changes are here) and, frankly, the e-rights being offered by major publishers are not very generous (to make it simple if I sell an ebook through a publisher I make $25% of net which on a $10.00 book would be $1.75. If I upload that same book to amazon myself I make $7.00). Obviously there are a multitude of factors on why a traditional contract is still very much in the cards for a new book ("paper" books are the vast majority of my sales and, at this moment, the sales of the Children's market, publishers have promotion budgets, editors, sales staff, etc.) For my out-of-print books it was an easy decision to go it alone.
I am a bit of a techie and I like to have control over my own work. I was inspired by blogs by people such as JA Konrath

and Robin Sullivan of Ridan Publishing.

Read those blogs. They are very inspiring and eye-opening about the ebook world (Konrath has a long list of authors who have been successful on the epublishing front--some heady stuff, to be sure, though of course I can't find a corresponding blog about failures of e-pubbing--then again you can't win if you don't play).

So armed by inspiration, I researched how to make an eBook. And you know what, it's relatively easy. First I signed up at Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)(Amazon's ebook publishing program). Then I converted my book into html following this guide by Derek Canyon:

Then I asked an artist friend to do the cover for a fee (in the case of Dust it was Christopher Steininger and Draugr was done by Derek Mah--hire them, they're great). Then I uploaded my file to KDP and within 24 hours it was for sale worldwide (C'mon brits...buy a book...I dare you!).
Of course, Amazon isn't the only game in the ebook market. There are many others including B&N, Apple, Sony etc. I am in the process of getting my books on iTunes myself, but for the rest of the distributors I used Smashwords. What Smashwords does is take a word file (prepared exactly to their specifications) and put it through their "meatgrinder" which spits out your book in various formats (epub/pdf/html) and then distributes it on their website and to all the major ebook sellers (Amazon/B&N etc.,). For a fee, of course (15% of net). This is likely the easiest way to go--I chose to put up my book on iTunes and Amazon on my own because it was easy enough to do and I kept that 15%.

Anyway, that's been the journey so far...

Hmm in the time it's taken to write this blog another sale appeared on Smashwords. That's 7 total. I'm gonna open the bubbly when it hits double digits. Err, maybe I'll wait until after 11 AM.

Art

Draugr, my first book, comes back from the Dead!

2011-02-16T05:45:00.001-08:00

Good news! Books can come back from the dead! Today is the official re-release of my first novel Draugr. All three books in the Northern Frights series have been out of print for several years now, so I'm glad to see the first book rise out of the grave and roar to undead life. It has a lovely new "chilling" cover by Derek Mah. It's being released in ebook format only and I am the publisher (I started a company called Dava Enterprises named after my grandmother, because well...everyone should have a company named after their grandmother). At a future date I'll post about all the reasons why I decided to put the book out on my own (like, err, I get a 70% of cover price royalty instead of a 25% of net royalty) and explain some of the process (if you're interested in that sort of thing).

Draugr came out in 1997. It was my first book to be published after writing six unpublished books. So it does hold a dear, frightful place in my heart. But, as part of the publishing process, I had to read the book again. It is an odd experience to read your own writing fourteen years (and fifteen books) later. I decided to keep the text as original as possible and only fixed a few grammatical mistakes and misspelling of Icelandic names (don't get the Vikings mad, that's a general rule of mine). I'm glad that the book still holds up--at gut level it's a very scary book. And that was the point, of course. I must say I'm still proud of the opening line: "Grandpa was going to murder us. Not with an ax. Not with a shovel. But with words." Just click on this link if you want to see the web page I've put up about the book.

I've priced Draugr at $2.99. That may seem amazingly cheap (or expensive depending on your view), but the reality is I make $2.01 on every copy sold. Which is more (per book) than I've made from the sale of any of my hardcover, trade paperback, or paperback books.

Anyway, if you have one of those fancy Kindles, or iPads, or iPod touches or eReaders of any sort I'll now provide links for you (I'm the publisher, I have to sell the book, right...err and get that author to write another one). The rest of the series will be coming out over the next few months.

Kindle link (US & Canada)
Kindle link (UK)
All other eReaders.

Thanks for joining the party!

Art

The French Hunchback edition (Part Deaux)

2011-02-16T04:54:00.001-08:00

Today, La Cité Bleue d'Icaria d' Arthur Slade is out in France (and Quebec, home of the Montreal Canadiens). Yes, it's the French version of The Dark Deeps, 2nd book of The Hunchback Assignments. Of course, they called the series The Brotherhood of the Clock and changed the title of the second book to "The Blue City of Icaria." But that's the great thing about the French...they have a different word for everything. Viva la France!

Art

Dust Sample Chapter

2011-02-12T20:10:00.001-08:00

I'm taking part in #samplesunday, which is a "tweeted" promotion for authors (if you want to find a few interesting excerpts from novels or stories, just search #samplesunday on twitter). I decided to feature the first chapter of DUST, my supernatural/mystery/dark horror novel, which has just been released as an ebook in the U.S. and U.K. (alas not Canada yet--but of course, the unelectronic version AKA a paper book is available.). The cover is done by Christopher Steininger--I love his interpretation of the story.

So, if you haven't read the first chapter of Dust before...here it is. Honestly, it's probably the best chapter I have written so far.

Dust

Copyright 2001 Arthur Slade All Rights Reserved

Chapter 1

Matthew Steelgate had five cents in his pocket and a yearning for chewing gum and licorice. He wasn't sure which he wanted most, but knew he could buy both and have at least a penny left over. He walked along the edge of the grid road, three miles from his family's farm and about two miles from Horshoe. The sky was cloudless.

The sun had shifted nearer to the earth in the last half hour, so near that the air crackled with heat. Matthew, following his mother's bidding, had worn a straw hat. Like his father, his neck was tanned brown, along with his face, hands, and forearms to the line where he rolled up his sleeves. The prairie had marked Matthew as one of its own. He understood the connection between himself and the land, understood that he belonged there; when the wind blew, when the rain dotted his face, when the snow fell, he belonged. When the sun darkened his skin, he knew the invisible rays were also working on the field of wheat beside him.

He patted his shirt pocket and was rewarded with a muffled clinking. He had spent three weeks saving this cache of coins, payment for helping his older brother Robert with chores. Three weeks dreaming about town. About candy.

A daddy longlegs darted out of a crack in the road and Matthew squashed it underfoot, then examined the flattened body. It looked like a gray flower pressed and dried between pages in a book. Its insides were outside now. A friend had said that killing a spider meant seven days of rain, so Matthew squished any he could. Next, he crushed a few grasshoppers inching across the road, but he quickly grew bored.

Even though he was tired, he quickened his pace. He had a good head start on his parents, but if he dawdled he'd soon hear the clop clop of the horses and the rattling of chains on the wagon, followed by his father's voice, saying, "Hello there, partner. Going our way?"

He hoped to reach town before his parents. That would be an accomplishment. He would stand proudly on the corner of the street, waving as they arrived to pick up nails and tractor parts. He'd shout out, "See, Mom, I made it. My legs aren't too short." That'd show her. She had told him to ride in the wagon, but he'd convinced her that he could travel on his own, by running three times around the table as fast as he could. He'd only knocked over one chair. His father had laughed. His mother had relented.

A low, distant rumble made him think of thunder. But thunder needed clouds, didn't it? And the sky was clear as glass.

The sound came from behind him. He turned and saw a truck on the horizon, a black, sun-streaked square that wavered in the heat. It vanished into a gully, then appeared again seconds later. He walked into the shallow ditch, wading through the belly-high yellow grass, and watched the truck approach.

A grasshopper, holding tight to a strand of swaying grass, banged its head against Matthew's back, making a small tobacco spit stain. When the truck neared, the grasshopper leapt into the air, wings clicking.

Matthew didn't recognize the truck. Very few people around Horshoe drove their vehicles; most saved the gas for tractors. The truck looked old, an ancient vehicle from a far-off time, its big knobby tires spinning. The sun flashed across the windshield, making him squint.

He stared at the curved fenders, watched as the steel-spoked wheels turned more and more slowly. The truck stopped, rocked back and forth; the grumbling noise died, and the prairie was silent. No crickets singing. No grasshopper wings whirring. All was still. Matthew breathed in, waiting for a sound. For motion.

Then the door on the other side opened, hinges screeching. In the ditch, Matthew was low enough to see under the truck. A dark boot hit the ground, then another.

A man walked around the front of the vehicle and stopped near the edge of the road. He gazed across the prairie, like he was just catching a breath of fresh air. He was tall and lean, wearing a long, beige trench coat. His shoulders were a wide crescent. His face, even under the shade of his circular brimmed hat, was pale.

He must be hot, Matthew figured.

The man looked toward the ditch, almost as though his name had been whispered. His eyes were hidden behind round, dark-lensed glasses.

"Hello," the stranger said. His voice reminded Matthew of dry leaves rustling across autumn earth. "How are you today, young man?"

"Good," Matthew answered.

The man smiled. "What's your name?"

"Matthew." Matthew shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He clutched a handful of grass.

"Well, Matt, where are you traveling to?"

"Town."

"Why you going there?"

"To buy gum ... and ... and licorice."

The tall man nodded. "Now, that's a very noble pursuit." He ran a finger below his eye as if wiping away a tear. He was wearing black leather gloves. Matthew wondered if his hands were soft. He didn't know anyone who wore gloves during summer. The man smiled again. "Tell me, Matt, have you ever ridden in a truck?"

"Sure, lots of times," he said, nodding.

"Would you like to ride in my truck?"

Matthew let go of the grass. He looked to the east, down a long, straight road. "Mom and Dad are coming along soon," he explained.

The man was silent, as if what Matthew had said required deep thought. "Wouldn't you like to beat them to town? Wouldn't that be nice?"

Matthew narrowed his eyes.

"It would, wouldn't it?" The man's soft voice carried easily across the space between them; it seemed to Matthew that the stranger was whispering right into his ear. "I can see that gum too, Matt. It's on the second shelf in the pool hall candy counter. Red Hand Chewing Gum. It's pink, it's wrapped in waxed paper, and it's in the shape of a cigar. It's waiting for you. Would you like to see it?"

Matthew's tongue explored his moist cheeks. He shifted his weight from side to side.

The man opened the passenger door and gestured. "Your place is here." He paused. "The gum is waiting for you."

Matthew breathed in and walked slowly up the ditch. He stopped on the road, looked in the door.

"Go ahead."

Matthew peered at the dusty seat. He pictured the gum sitting on the shelf, saw himself pointing, saw Mr. Parsons reaching for it. He would get to town so much faster with a ride. He stepped onto the mud rail, then pulled himself into the truck.

The door closed softly.

The stranger was seated on the driver's side. How had he gotten there so quickly? The man sat still momentarily, humming softly and rubbing his chin as though pondering deeply. Then he slid the gearshift down. They rolled smoothly ahead. Matthew couldn't remember him starting the motor.

The man's skin, which showed between the glove and the sleeve of his coat, was the color of the moon. Muscles writhed beneath that ivory layer as the stranger turned the wooden steering wheel and they headed to the middle of the road. The truck accelerated gracefully; weeds became a yellow blur. The engine was a distant hum.

Matthew heard a muffled rattle. He peeked through the oval-shaped back window. A stack of red clay jars, about the same size as his mom's honey pots, were all tied together. They glowed. Or was it the way the sun caught their sides? A pink hair ribbon was trapped under one, flapping. Beside them were several bundles wrapped in burlap. Strips of shiny metal, about six inches wide and six feet long, sat piled on the far side.

"Do you like being young?" the man asked.

Matthew didn't understand the question. He examined the stranger's smiling face. After a moment's thought he answered, "Yes."

"I was never young," the man said. He tipped his hat back, showing glistening white hair. "Do you believe me? I was never young."

Everyone was young at one time—Matthew knew that. His father had once been a little boy and his mother a little girl, and even his grandma had been a kid long before her skin wrinkled and sagged and her teeth fell out. But he also knew that adults understood more about the world than he did, and he trusted in the wisdom of the giants who hovered above him.

"I think I believe you."

The pale man nodded. The windows were rolled up; the cab grew hot and the air smelled stale. Sweat lined Matthew's forehead.

They drove on, and over time he grew more comfortable with the stranger. They passed an abandoned farm, the house gray and paintless, windows black like empty eye sockets. The wind had ripped the shingles from the roof. The barn leaned to one side, threatening to collapse. Matthew knew the drought had killed this place. It was a monster made of dust—it had dried up the crops so the cows couldn't eat and driven away the folks who had once lived there. His mom worked hard to keep that same dust out of their house, stuffing rags in the bottom of the door and along the windowsills. Despite her efforts, the grit always found its way into the cupboards, the beds and their food.

The truck's motor lulled him and time shifted to a slower speed. He watched roads go by, more ghost farms, as though they were traveling in a loop. He pictured the gum again, tried to keep the image in his head.

Then towering grain elevators appeared on the horizon. The rail yard and a collection of houses became visible as the truck cleared an incline.

"What is this town called?" the man asked. Time snapped back to normal speed.

"Horshoe," Matthew answered, scratching at his arm. The man nodded.

They drove past the access road and the stranger studied the town as they went by. Matthew stared too, his heart speeding up. He peeked through the back window as the elevators were eclipsed by a hill.

"Why don't we stop?" Matthew asked.

The man smiled. "Because you're a child. And you know what it's like to be young." He paused. "I was never young. I was never, ever young."

To be continued

Sales pitch to follow...

The full book is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.uk

And, of course, the "paper" book is available at a store near you.

...here endeth sales pitch. Happy Sunday to you.

Art

canuck launch

2010-12-08T08:53:00.001-08:00

Sales Rankings

2010-10-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it. I have Amazon sales ranking fever. Every once in a while (or every two seconds) I check to see what ranking my various books have on Amazon. It's a horrible, time-consuming illness. But I need to know exactly where my career is at! Of course, just checking Amazon isn't enough. I actually use three different websites to keep track of the rankings.

The first is Aaron Shepard's Sales Rank Express. Doesn't Aaron look friendly? This allows the user to look at the rankings in "top selling" order and get a quick look at other countries. C'mon Japan, just buy one book. One book, that's all I'm asking.

The second website I use is TitleZ. Here you can sign up your books and see the "historical" sales of your various novels and even compare up to five of them at once. It's a good way to look back at your career and see where the high point was and then watch your slide into oblivion (also known as 5 millionth bestseller on Amazon).

By far my favourite is NovelRank. At this site you have to register your books and it will keep track of them from that day forward. At first I didn't see how effective the site was until my books were tracked for a couple of months. Now I can look at their total sales (and it does actually break down how many copies you sell, using a complicated x-y-market=geewhiz formula). You are able to choose in which order you want the books ranked (Sales/RecentSales/Monthly sales) and you can see how your books are doing head to head.

As you can see by the graphic above Jolted is outselling The Dark Deeps by 26-24! What an exciting battle. It's like a football game without the action. Who will win at the end of the month? Which book will sell better over time? Which will make me the most money (right now I'm cheering for Dark Deeps since it's in hardcover). As you can see the NovelRank keeps tabs on the last time one of your books sold. 20 Hours! That's a lifetime (for a gnat, anyway). Good golly, my career is already on the way down.

Anyway, kidding aside I appreciate the way NovelRank works and how it allows me to change the format.

Hmmm....maybe I should just be seeing a therapist instead...

Art

SiWC and TD CCBC Book Award Bash in Coquitlam

2010-10-29T18:04:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I was at the Surrey International Writer's Conference in Surrey, BC. It was an energizing, tiring, overwhelming, frenzied and wonderful conference. 500 attendees. Agents. Editors. Writers Galore and more classes than you can shake a stick at. I did a presentation on "Making Money with your Writing" and "Fantastically Speaking: weaving fantasy with reality (in novels)." Oh and two Blue Pencil sessions and a Keynote speech. Very busy and rewarding time. And this is the only pic I took.

Boring, eh?

Then on Monday I was off to Scott Creek Middle School. They had won an "appearance" by me through CBC and provided by TD Bank in honour of the TD CCBC Children's Lit Book Award that The Hunchback Assignments is nominated for. It was a wonderful time. And hour in a gym with 600 or so excited students while being interviewed by CBC and the students. Many of them were JOLTED fans:

One of the teachers in JOLTED outfit--he had a cool first name: Arthur!

One of the many Posters

And librarian extra-ordinaire Tu Loan Trieu!

It truly was one of the highlights of my career. At one point about 100 of the students came in wearing tinfoil hats...just like Newton in JOLTED.

Stay tuned for the show on CBC Radio in Vancouver on Nov. 7th.

Cheers,

Art

Copy Edited MSS

2010-10-08T09:48:00.001-07:00

This is what I'm doing today (and for the next week at least)--going through the Word version of the copy edited manuscript for Empire of Ruins, the third Hunchback Assignments book. Isn't it colourful? Sometimes confusing. And yet I feel a bit like a kid with a new set of crayons.

Well back to scribbling electronically...

Art

JLG and Shout Line

2010-09-30T10:12:00.001-07:00

First off, I'm pleased to report that The Dark Deeps is a Junior Library Guild selection in the US. It is so cool to have a book that features The Clockwork Guild be recognized by The Junior Library Guild. Long live the guilds! On top of that I get a neat JLG badge and award certificate. It's like I've joined a superhero club! A nice mixture of books there. I'm especially looking forward to reading fellow Canuck writer Erin Bow's Plain Kate.

Also received a jpg of the Australian cover for Empire of Ruins, the third Hunchback Assignments book. I love this cover (the Canadian version will have the same cover) and I like the font choice, too. As you can see it says "shoutline here" on the bottom. A shoutline has appeared on the other two Hunchback Assignments books, the first being "Unmask the Truth" and the Dark Deeps shoutline was "Unravel the Lies." I've asked for "Uncoop the Chickens" but no one seems to like it. I'm sure we'll find something...

Art

The Dark Deep Blogs Tour is Over!

2010-09-27T09:33:00.003-07:00

Whew, what a tiring tour. I mean I was everywhere, man. And I didn't even leave my home (except to get milk). Here's the recap.

First I started off at Home Base...err, my blog.

Then I was off to Cynsations discussing how to write steampunk in two easy steps.

I then zipped over to Free The Princess and answer a few Q&A's.

Last Monday I was at Steamed. Where I discussed the creation of the book trailers for The Hunchback Assignments.

I then airshipped over to Steampunk Tribune to discuss villains! Villains! Villains.

This was followed by a musical interlude at Suvudu to let you all know the playlist behind The Hunchback Assignments.

Then I waxed all philosphical at Steampunk Scholar.

And the tour ended with a bang at Looking Glass Review .

Now, I'll sleep.

Art

Dark Deeps Blog Tour--Day 4

2010-09-20T06:23:00.001-07:00

The Dark Deeps blog tour is at Steamed! Today's topic: groovy, cool book trailers.

Art

Dark Deeps Blog Tour--Day 3

2010-09-19T10:20:00.001-07:00

The Dark Deeps blog tour is at Free The Princess today!

Art

Dark Deeps Blog Tour Day 2

2010-09-18T07:04:00.003-07:00

The Dark Deeps blog tour is at Cynsations today! Join me and learn how to write steampunk and make millions.

Art

The Dark Deeps Amazing Blog Tour Begins!

2010-09-17T05:40:00.000-07:00

Today’s the day that I’ll be pulling on my aquasuit and diving into The Dark Deeps blog tour! The virtual excitement is palpable. It’s all part of the Sept. 14th release of the American version of the novel. I thought, like all trips, I’d start off here at home on my own blog then splash, zip, fly, glide and telegram my way across the steam-powered interweb for the next week.

My topic is one I know you’re all dying to hear about. Yes, I'm going to let you have a peek into the secret world of an author and answer that age-old question: “What’s it like to receive all those free author copies?” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been asked that question I’d have two nickels! Yes, two of ‘em. I might even rub them together.

I tell you, the day my author copies arrive is a glorious day. And my publisher pulls out all the stops. First, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie drop off the boxes of books. I know they’re busy people, what with movies to star in, diapers to change, and paparazzi to avoid, yet they still take the time to generously deliver books to authors. They say hi, btw.

Here are some snaps of the boxes filled with author copies. See their carboardy goodness? See the on sale date? Is there nothing more exciting than an author taking pictures of cardboard boxes?

Then I open the box. You’ll be surprised to know that Random House uses bling as packing material: jewels, money, and free movie tickets! It’s very kind of them to do that (though I usually throw it away, after all kid-lit authors already have natural bling).

Finally I get to hold the very book in my hand. That’s right someone somewhere took all those words out of my electronic file and put them on flattened tree pieces and ta dah--it’s a book! A miracle, I tell thee! And yes, I always wear a suit to work.

I got a big surprise when I opened the next box, though! Inside were more books! They practically leaped out. And there was a stuffed puppy (toy puppy, that is). This is in case there’s a bad review of the book. It’s for the author to hug, obviously (they used to send Dr. Phil to comfort dejected authors, but it got too expensive to fly his audience around with him). You may also notice the key to the Jaguar--I get a new car whenever Random House publishes one of my books. I now have four Ferraris and a Jaguar. Oh, and an iPad and an iPod were used as packing material (I just throw these out because I already have twelve of them and only two hands).

And that’s it! Well, not entirely. You may not know it but authors often recreate famous scenes from movies with their free author copies. Here’s an example:

Does it look familiar to you? It’s the scene in The Lord of the Rings where the orcs are scaling up the wall to attack Minas Tirith! I knew you’d get it.
Oh, and the rumor that the American version of The Dark Deeps hired puppets to attack the foreign editions is not true. Unless you believe in photographic evidence.

And there you have it, just another day in the glorious life of a children’s author. Swell, eh?

Cheers,
Art

Please feel free to join the rest of my tour.

On Saturday I'll be at Cynsations discussing how to write steampunk in two easy steps.

On Sunday I'll zip over to Free The Princess and answer a few Q&A's.

Monday you'll find me at Steamed. Here I'll discuss the creation of the book trailers for The Hunchback Assignments.

Tuesday I'll airship over to Steampunk Tribune to discuss villains! Villains! Villains. Eeek!

Wednesday I'll take the steam train to Suvudu to let you all know the playlist behind The Hunchback Assignments.

Thursday I'll be heading over to Steampunk Scholar to wax on about steampunky things.

And Friday the blog tour will end at Looking Glass Review where I'll attempt to define steampunk. Ha, good luck!

How to Write A Novel and Lose Weight

2010-09-16T20:46:00.001-07:00

Writing a novel is a great way to lose weight. I recently finished a deadline a week late (or perhaps it's more correct to say that I asked for an extension and met the new deadline). Anyway, it was about two months of concentrated work. I added about 20,000 words to the first draft and did all the usual rewriting. But I do believe it's my treadmill desk that pulled me through this latest deadline. In that time I walked for 167 hours, travelling 266 kilometres (165 miles,) and lost 4 pounds. See, writing novels is the newest weight loss program! I just need a celebrity spokesperson and I'll be off to the races.

Art

Dark Deeps Released in the US of A!

2010-09-15T10:44:00.001-07:00

Well, yesterday The Dark Deeps was released in the US. It's making a big splash! It's going full fathom five! It's going all Davey Jones' Locker on the charts...err, that last one doesn't sound so good. There was a big Book Birthday Bash on Twitter, always lots of fun. The virtual cake was delicious! I especially enjoyed the oceanic Horse Doovers...ordervers, 'orsderves. Ah, I should just give up on talking fancy.

Starting Friday I'll be doing a "steampunkalooza" blog tour. It'll begin right here on my blog, where I'll talk about the joy of receiving author's copies. Mmmm. Free copies.

On Saturday I'll be at Cynsations discussing how to write steampunk in two easy steps.

On Sunday I'll zip over to Free The Princess and answer a few Q&A's.

Monday you'll find me at Age of Steam. Here I'll discuss the creation of the book trailers for The Hunchback Assignments.

Tuesday I'll airship over to Steampunk Tribune to discuss villains! Villains! Villains.

Wednesday, I'll take the steam train to Suvudu to let you all know that music is the real inspiration for the Hunchback series. Yes, that question everyone wants to know about everyone else...what is on your iPod?

Thursday Ah, I feel scholarly. I'll be heading over to Steampunk Scholar to wax on about steampunky things.

And Friday, the blog tour will come to a stop at Looking Glass Review to try and do the impossible. That's right I'll attempt to define steampunk.

Then I'll take off my goggles and snooze...
Art

Another Jolting pic!

2010-09-13T14:00:00.001-07:00

I recently received another cool "book" pic from Tu Loan Trieu, a Teacher Librarian in BC. My books get to go to the greatest places! Though, I must say that she's amazingly brave reading a novel about lightning on top of a mountain. Rumours are that the abominable snowman took the picture.

Cheers,

Art

P.S. Actually the picture is part of a "get caught reading" promotion that her school is doing. The idea is to take books to picturesque places then take pictures of them. Lucky books!

One of the Coolest Pics That I've Received

2010-09-11T09:04:00.001-07:00

Every once in awhile some cool things come your way. I recently received this photo from Eric Walters, a fellow writer and a friend of mine. It's a photo of two students in Kenya reading my novel DUST. You just never know where your book is going to end up once you release it to the world.

Eric sent the pic because he has been working tirelessly on a project called Creation of Hope that involves a children's residence in Kikima, Kenya. They recently opened a library there named after Eric's grade five teacher. There's a lot more going on than I can describe here and help is always needed, so if you're interested click the link and read all about it.

Cheers,

Art

Dark Deeps Audio book excerpt up!

2010-08-29T12:49:00.001-07:00

Yep, the excerpt is up and the wonderful Jayne Entwistle narrates again. Can't wait to hear the whole audiobook. If you want to give a listen visit the website And click on one of the "play" buttons.

Cheers,
Art

US Release of (sniff) The Hunchback Assignments paperback

2010-08-24T07:28:00.001-07:00

It's a birthday, of sorts. Today the paperback of The Hunchback Assignments is released in the U.S. I, of course, will give you a complimentary link to Amazon but encourage readers to visit the bookstore of your choice if interested in this humble offering. If you do see the book please tell it that I am very proud of it and wish it well in this new format. Sniff. Sniff. Sorry, I promised myself I wouldn't cry...but it's so young and petite and gosh where is my hankie? My kingdom for a hankie! Just fly and be free Hunchback Assignments. Be free!

Art

Dark Deeps Book Trailer

2010-07-31T15:05:00.001-07:00

I meant to post this much earlier:

And here's the first trailer:

Art

New Hunchback Cover

2010-07-29T07:03:00.001-07:00

The third book in The Hunchback Assignments series is called Empire of Ruins. In it Modo, Octavia, Mr. Socrates and a few others are searching through the Australian rainforest for a lost temple that contains an ancient artifact called The God Face.

Here's the Canadian/Australian cover done by Christopher Steininger:

In theory the book will be out in January 2011 in Canada, February in Australia, and September in the US. I say in theory because I'm working on the revisions right now...

Must say I love this cover. Especially Modo's mask.

Art

The Dark Deeps Covers

2010-04-05T09:29:00.001-07:00

Just a preview of the various covers for The Dark Deeps, the second book in The Hunchback Assignments series. It'll be out in early May in Canada, June in Australia and area, and September in the US of A.

This is the Canadian cover:

Cool, eh? Can't wait to see the real thing, of course.

And here is the Australian/NZ cover (or ANZAC as I like to say).

The cover was done by Christopher Steininger.
And finally the American Cover is right here:

Love it. Very steampunky. By Christian McGrath. Yep, only people with the first name Chris can do my covers. The odd thing is that my U.S. editor looks a lot like the woman with the sword. Which has inspired me not to miss my deadlines....

Art

The Hunchback Assignments Storms France!

2010-02-10T07:46:00.001-08:00

Holy joie de vivre! The Hunchback Assignments is officially released in French in France (and Quebec, I presume) today. Let the bells ring out! Here's the cover:
Yes, it's the same as the American cover. You'll notice that the name of the series has been changed. In France it is called "The Agents of Mr. Socrates: The Brotherhood of the Clock." Curious, eh? Why do titles get changed in different countries? (My novel "Tribes" was changed to "Moi, petit hominidé poilu cherche tribu désespérément" ). My theory is the longer the title the bigger the sales. That's why Harry Potter was changed to "Le Young Boy Wizard With The Lightning Bolt And The Cute Sidekicks Takes On The Philosopher And His Stones." Err, I might be making that up!

You can visit the French version here: Editions du Masque. Now that's a cool name for a publishing company.

I had Google translate my biography from French back to English and it came up with: "Arthur Slade is Canadian. After five years in advertising, he said goodbye to a lucrative job and a good mutual health to concentrate on writing. Author Popular in Canada and the United States, he has already received numerous awards in both countries."

I had a lucrative job? I wish. : )

I get a particular thrill thinking that Modo, my "Hunchback of Notre Dame," is returning to France.

Art

Artifice 3

2010-02-02T09:02:00.001-08:00

Deep Dark Secret

2010-01-29T07:07:00.001-08:00

Just a small clipping from the inside cover for Dark Deeps (Hunchback Assignments II). Can't tell you what it is though. It's a Deep Dark secret. Err, get it?

Artifice 2

2010-01-18T17:50:00.001-08:00

Artifice 1

2010-01-09T11:28:00.001-08:00

Skype Visit with Royal School in Winnipeg

2009-11-23T15:42:00.001-08:00

It all went royally!

In other words, no one fell asleep. Well, at least that I could see on the web cam, that is...

Art
*Next stop on the Hunchback Assignments Half Hour Virtual World Tour Extravaganza: Schenectady, NY

Hunchback Australia Arrives

2009-11-23T10:42:00.001-08:00

Yay, my copies of The Hunchback Assignments have arrived from Australia! They look downright cool! Only a week and a day until the book is released Down Under.

Art

A Peek @ Hunchback II Canuck Cover

2009-11-21T15:02:00.001-08:00

This it what it'll look like...mostly. Still a bit more work to be done.
Love the crazy steampunk hand...

Art

Hunchback Worldwide Virtual Tour stop #3!

2009-11-20T08:22:00.001-08:00

Yep, today I visited 42°54′22″N 74°34′19″W! Can you believe it! It was the 3rd stop in The Hunchback Assignments Half Hour Virtual Tour of the World! I took the SKYPE train to the Canajoharie Library and Arkell Museum and spoke to 100 grade five students (or fifth grade students) from Canajoharie Middle School. As you can see they kept the library dark so that the students could close their eyes and be lulled into a sleep as I told them stories of assassins, goth queens, and steam powered monstrous creations. I recommend a Google street view of the library, it looks like a very cool place. The students followed up with brilliant questions and we all talked about how much we love Iron Maiden. Err, maybe that was just me talking.

Then I stepped into a time/space/Skype continuum and ended up back in my office with a cup of tea. It's the magic of science!

Art

P.S. Next stop...Winnipeg--again!!!!

Greystone School Launch

2009-11-20T05:27:00.001-08:00

Had an absolutely wonderful time launching The Hunchback Assignments at nearby Greystone School. 500 students! Forced to listen to me! It was especially fun because it was the first time I played the "book" trailer live and they applauded.

Thanks Greystone!

Art

PS: Here's the trailer one more time:

Miami Book Fair!!!

2009-11-19T05:56:00.001-08:00

Well, last Friday I plopped myself on a plane and ended up in Miami for the Miami Book Fair (actually it was a bit of a longer trip than that, as I first flew to Colorado then on to Miami, but I thought I'd skip telling you every detail...you know what kind of snacks I had, the amount of turbulence, did I fasten my seatbelt, did I read magazines etc..). We landed. I was eager to learn more about Miami (this being my first trip), but was pretty sure I already knew most everything from watching Miami Vice (it's like CSI: Miami, but everyone dresses better) and Dexter. As my cab pulled up to the Hyatt I saw a crowd of people dressed to the max (tuxedo suits, fancy suits, fancy dresses) and thought "I am soooo underdressed for this festival." Turns out they were all people waiting for Donald Trump to arrive. Oh!

The next morning I went to the festival site. It was like going to the future. They even have bus thingys that fly through the air. Or at least drive up above the streets. There were tents, and books, and tents, and people, and corn on the cob and books. Did I mention it was 27 degrees! (err, that's 80 F).

First I had a "speak off" with Al Gore. He talked about Global warming and ways to save the world and I talked about myself. Exciting, eh?

Next I went to the "artist's room" and ate as much dainty food as possible. Then off to my panel on "boys reading." See there really was a panel! It wasn't all an elaborate joke planned by my "friends." I shared the stage with myself, Reade Scott Whinnem, and Frank McKinney. We expertly entertained the audience. First Reade scared the bejickles out of them with his excellent book The Pricker Boy. Then I "steampunked" them with The Hunchback Assignments , then Frank brought them back to reality (well if you consider Megalodons in the present day reality) with Dead Fred, Flying Lunchboxes, and the Good Luck Circle. They were great to do a panel with, but I found myself very jealous of both of them. I mean Reade, how cool is that for a name? It's almost like a command. Reade my book! And Frank looks a little like David Lee Roth. I always wanted to look like David Lee Roth! Anyway this blog isn't about me (wait a sec--maybe it is).

I did get to meet the "Whatcha Reading Now Group!" (this photo and the next one are courtesy of Mark Safra Photography) Do they know how to dress, or what?

Next Frank, Reade, and I signed books. See the lives of superstar authors...aren't they exciting?

I did later get to visit with my fellow author Alex Flinn. Alas, I forgot to get a pic of her. I would "doctor" one, but that would be wrong. Plus there's a rule about only doctoring one photo per blog post. Isn't there? Hey go see Beastly when it comes out as a movie (but Reade the book first, err, I mean read the book first).

After that I saw an angel. I was going to make a joke about this being a photo of my editor, but that would be an obvious attempt to suck up to the higher powers. Though the angel does have a remarkable resemblance to my publicist. Oh, and my mom. And my first grade teacher. And my agent. Really!

The next morning I was on a plane and flew back to the mystical city of Saskatoon (via Chicago). I won't bore you with the details about that, but boy was I ever thankful to have an iPod touch stuffed with a few movies and audiobooks. Whew!

Art

P.S. Frank McKinney is also a superstar Real Estate guy when he's not being a superstar author. Check out this video of him:
Now that I've watched it, I was a little disappointed that he didn't rise from the grave or jump through the air with a motorcycle during the reading. There was probably some kind of "liability insurance" thingy, I bet. People are so sensitive about other people shooting flames from their hands.

Hunchback Worldwide Virtual Tour stop #2!

2009-11-12T07:08:00.001-08:00

The Hunchback Assignments Half Hour Virtual Visit Tour (AKA as HAHH!) steamed it's way to Beaverlodge School in Winnipeg, MB, Canada. Ah, home to the mighty Bluebombers, wheat fields, and incredibly intelligent students.

I read. I pontificated. I burbled. I extrapolated.

Of course, I discussed The Hunchback Assignments. And threw all the Victorian factoids I could at them. The class listened intently. See here's proof:
And we ended it all by singing "God Save The Queen." Err, well maybe I just hummed a few bars quietly to myself. Once again another free signed book and bookmarks were received by the class. Three cheers!

Art

P.S. There are still a few spots left on the HAHH! Worldwide tour. Just read about the contest and enter!
P.P.S Next--Canajoharie Library, Canajoharie, NY, United States.

The Official Hunchback Assignments Movie Trailer

2009-11-10T11:24:00.001-08:00

<a href="http://www.linkedtube.com/RY0EMAZeXkE808d3dade9a96bf78009c857bbfc6384.htm">LinkedTube</a>

I'm extremely pleased with this. It was done by My Next Demo. I highly recommend the company!

Art

Hunchback Worldwide Virtual Tour Begins!

2009-11-09T17:17:00.000-08:00

The Hunchback Assignments Half Hour Virtual Visit Tour (AKA as HAHH!) started today at Cosgrove Middle School in Spencerport, NY. Using Steam Kinetic Yabbering Protocol Engines (AKA Skype) I was able to communicate directly with the students even though I was standing 3134 KM's away (1947 Miles) in Saskatoon, SK, Canada.

The presentation consisted of an introduction to my latest tome, The Hunchback Assignments, and some percolating pieces of information about Victorians and their inventions and oddities (read the bit about Thomas Crapper, really he's a hero for the ages). The classroom also won a free signed book and some groovy postcards. The students had many questions, including what was my favourite pie (pumpkin--well steampumpkin, if you must know) and what was my favourite book (Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury). When all was done we said fair thee well and I caught the first high speed Skype dirigible home.

Art

P.S. Any teachers and librarians out there--let it be known that there are still a few spots left on the HAHH! Worldwide tour. Just read about the contest and enter!
P.P.S Tomorrow--Beaverlodge School, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.
P.P.P.S. Thanks to the staff at Cosgrove. They deserve the invisible medal of Victorian grooviness for helping to organize the event! The medal is a keeper. Uh, I already sent one for each of you. The reason you haven't seen it, is that it's invisible. Wear it proudly!

Miami Festival!!

2009-11-06T12:30:00.001-08:00

Well in a week, I'll be off to the Miami International Book Fair to talk about The Hunchback Assignments. I'm looking forward to my "fun in the sun" tour (sadly, I'm really only there for about 36 hours). It looks like a high of 29 C (84F) there and here in Saskatoon it'll be 2 C (35F). So slightly warmer in Miami! The event is on Saturday, Nov. 14, 1:30 p.m., Auditorium Pavilion C. I'll be sharing the stage with Reade Scott Whinnem and Frank McKinney.
So be prepared for laughs and frights and frights and chuckles. As you can see I'm listed as "no image available." The weird thing is that I actually look like that blue image.

Hey, the event is free! Come one! Come all! We can talk about hockey. Maybe even the Florida Panthers...

Art

The French Hunchback edition

2009-11-05T10:09:00.000-08:00

Just got word that my French publisher, JC Lattès, will be releasing The Hunchback Assignments in February, 2010. The cover will be the same as the American cover, except, of course, titles and words will be in French. The series will be published under a different name in France: LES AGENTS DE MR. SOCRATES with the subtitle LA CONFRERIE DE L'HORLOGE. Alas my French is rusty (I took it in school a million years ago), but babelfish helped me out. It's The Agents of Mr. Socrates: The Brotherhood of the Clock. Curious, eh? I wish I could have sat in on that meeting to know all the reasons for the name change. I assume it will mean massive sales!

If only I could somehow find my way there when they launch the book.

Art

BOOKED video #5

2009-11-03T18:33:00.001-08:00

Unmask the Truth!

2009-10-30T09:05:00.001-07:00

Here's the final version of the Australian cover, along with the cool "shoutline": UNMASK THE TRUTH.*

I'm looking forward to the book coming out Down Under (Dec. 1st!).

Art
*my suggested shoutline was: Buy this book and your IQ will quadruple!
They didn't go for it...

A Top Secret Interview

2009-10-29T15:57:00.001-07:00

A month or so ago, I was interviewed for Costco Magazine for an article about Steampunk and what is hot in YA literature. When the interview was printed I was pleased to see a mention of my book, but the rest of the interview ended up on the cutting room floor. Now I understand that these things happen, but I thought that I’d resurrect the interview and post it on my blog. Since the answers belong to me, but the questions don’t, I’m going to leave the Q’s blank. You can guess what the questions were...heck, make up your own!

Here it is:

Q:?

A: Arthur Slade, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, 12 years writing full time, my most popular titles are DUST and TRIBES and my upcoming series is THE HUNCHBACK ASSIGNMENTS.

Q:??

A: I really fell into writing for young adults by accident. I had sent a manuscript that I thought was for adults to a critiquing service and was told it was the perfect novel for young adults. I was totally surprised by this. That novel was never published but when I sat down to write my next one I began to think a lot about the types of books I'd loved as a teenager and they were mostly science fiction, fantasy and horror. I'd always enjoyed Old Norse sagas, so I decided to write an updated version of some of the frightening stories the Norsemen loved to tell. That became my first published novel DRAUGR (a draugr is someone who comes back from the dead).

There are two things I always try to remember when I'm writing for a teen audience. One is, would I have liked this book when I was a teen? I'm constantly trying to recapture the feeling I used to get when I was reading at that age. I could really disappear right into a book. The other important element to remember is to never write down to the audience. Young adults are smart, hip, and they see right through any attempts to "teach a lesson." I always try to aim above the audience and I often find that young readers understand quite a bit more about the world than I give them credit for.

Q:?
A: Both Twilight and Harry Potter are such big phenomena that it's almost hard to explain exactly why they were so popular. Twilight certainly does aim for an older audience right from the beginning, though I am surprised at how many younger readers (mostly all female) have been drawn into the books. I think this is natural, though, because pre-teens and teens often read at such varying age levels, often far above their actual age. Also, when a book has such a massive popularity it tends to become like a black hole (in a good way) pulling in people from outside the age group it originally captured. Parents want to know what their older kids are reading, so do a million younger siblings. The one major difference I see between Harry Potter and Twilight is that Twilight truly is a "girls" book. Harry Potter bridged the gender gap but Twilight is mainly read by one gender. Boys like reading about vampires, but not necessarily slowly developing books about the "romantic" aspect of vampires. This gender gap, though, is also exacerbated by the fact that the older boys get the less they tend to read. So Twilight's success comes from telling its audience the type of story they want to hear--a romantic, mysterious story about a handsome boy with a problem--he's a vampire. Now this story has been told before, but Twilight tells it in a new way that is familiar enough that the reader feels comfortable, and yet with enough new and interesting details that the reader feels compelled to continue reading.

Twilight hasn't really affected what I write (other than I'm tempted to throw a few more vampires in). Anytime an author attempts to follow a trend,
you're already behind the curve and too late. Where books like Twilight affect an author like me is that they bring more readers to fantasy/horror fiction and the more who become familiar with those worlds the more readers who will branch out in directions away from Twilight.

Q: ??

A: Younger imaginations are very active and keen to explore in many different areas. I believe that's part of the reason fantasy, science fiction, and horror novels are so attractive to them. It's natural for young minds to gravitate towards fantastical fiction (especially horror fiction) because they are just testing out ideas of immortality and mortality. When you're young you feel as though you'll live forever, so it may be easier to identify with immortal creatures like vampires. But a young rational mind also knows that death is a reality for all humans. Horror fiction is a way for younger readers to explore these aspects of life in an almost mythological manner.

Q:???

A: Young adult readers are very picky but they're also extremely loyal to the writers they enjoy. As a group they are much better at communicating (especially via texting or the web) so that if they find some work of fiction that they enjoy they can easily "broadcast" this information to a number of other teens. As consumers they tend to buy smaller priced items, so books fit easily into their budgets. What also helps to drive sales is the adults in their lives--parents, uncles, grandparents--often buy books for younger readers because its a gift that elders feel is helping to "educate" the child. The real key to identifying work that teens would like (especially if you're an elder buying for a younger audience) is to try to find that book the fits into their taste in genre, yet is something new. As an author I'm always impressed by the energy and vigor that young adults bring to their reading. They will read a book they enjoy sometimes five to ten times. It's important to write a novel with enough depth that they will find new joys in the book each time they read it.

Q:???
A: The readers enjoy the feeling of continuity that a series can provide. Once they've already invested the time it takes to read a novel they feel as though the characters are their friends and they want to find out what happens to their "friends" next. There is a real comfort for young adults to spend time in a familiar world that has a set of rules and that feels as though they own it. Like any writing, a relationship develops between the reader and the book. Younger readers will want to know every detail about the world that their favorite characters inhabit. So they enjoy reading series to discover more and more about that world.

A:????
Q: Gail Giles is an author who writes gritty, real life crime dramas for the young adult audience and her success is partly driven by her ability to make her stories appear so real. Suzanne Collins has a series called the Hunger Games, about a group of teens surviving a life or death reality TV series style game, (the latest is called Catching Fire and will be a huge hit). This combination of something that everyone is familiar with (reality TV) and the powerful life and death drama has really taken the young adult audience by storm. Scott Westerfeld, the author of the Uglies series, has a new novel titled Leviathan coming out this fall, which is a steampunk book (steampunk is a type of fantastical fiction inspired by Victorian times, but jammed full of steam powered ships, zeppelins, mad scientists, etc). My latest series, The Hunchback Assignments, falls neatly into the fantastical steampunk genre--it's the story of a hunchback who has the ability to change his shape, but he always goes back to being a hunchback. He is raised by a British lord to become a secret agent for the British empire and is pursuing Dr. Hyde, a man who plans to use his secret formula to change the street urchins of London into an army of monsters. So the book, obviously, draws inspiration from my horror roots, too.

Cheers!
Art

Last Week's Roundup

2009-10-27T08:02:00.001-07:00

Just a round up of last week's events. Last Wednesday I had the pleasure of taking my Hunchback Assignments traveling show to the Chapters on Runnymede in Toronto. A beautiful bookstore, built in an old theatre. I spoke to students from the Canadian Children's Book Club Program and was able to chat with them individually as I signed books.

Then I was off to Ottawa for the Ottawa International Writers Festival. Rainy and cold, that first day, but the people were friendly. I spoke at 4 schools (Immaculata High School, Saint Frances Xavier, Queen Elizabeth, and Saint Patrick Intermediate).

Here's a shot at Queen Elizabeth. The students were brilliant and laughed at my jokes...err I think they were laughing with me...

Here's Saint Patrick school. 450 students and they were perfectly well behaved and all had IQ's of 180 or more (I'm just judging by the quality of the questions that I received).

Art

Jolted PB

2009-10-26T14:29:00.001-07:00

Yay, I received the preview of the cover for the US Jolted paperback. Poor Newton...poor pig...

Art

Booked/Brampton Extravaganza!

2009-10-24T13:49:00.001-07:00

I had an absolutely wonderful time on Tuesday, October 20th. Caught a 6am flight from Saskatoon to Toronto (okay, the early flight was not so great), checked in to my fancy hotel, was picked up by the Harpercollins "posse" and taken to Cheyne School in Brampton for a surprise visit with BOOKED (B.O.O.K.E.D is a group of students who received advance reader's copies of The Hunchback Assignments and are the focus of a documentary that HarperCollins is producing). It was a surprise visit, so they appeared suitably shocked when I walked in the room. Here I am with the BOOKIES.

We had a chat about the book and I answered questions about the characters and the next book in the series (The Dark Deeps). I was absolutely impressed by this group of readers (and their teachers). I had seen the videos from the HarperCollins documentary, so I felt like I knew them all already. And it was a little like meeting movies stars for me. Really smart movie stars.

They had so many ideas about the book and about other characters that could appear in future books. Very impressive. And there was even a great series of posters on the wall (do notice what BOOKED stands for).

Then I was off to sign stock at Chapters and Coles Stores in Mississauga and to dine with the "Posse."

They kindly laughed at my jokes and I hid my jealousy when their jokes were funnier than mine.

Then we zipped back to Coles in Brampton for the main event--an audio video presentation. The place was packed (I even had some family who I forced to come).

Several of the readers had dressed up as characters from the book. We started with a video presentation from the BOOKED students, then another vid presentation by HarperCollins and I followed with my audio/visual extravaganza (I just like to add "extravaganza" to the end of things, to make them sound cooler). It was so bizarre to look out at the crowd and see several characters from the book. It was as if it had all come to life (thankfully no one dressed like mechanical steam powered hounds, that would have scared me). And in the end the BOOKED students gave me a brilliantly designed scrapbook and a t-shirt (there are even more photos at this
link, including the groovy t-shirt). Then the "posse" spirited me away for donuts at Tim Horton's. It honestly was one of the best days of my long (in the tooth) career.

Art

READ Inside the book

2009-10-19T20:13:00.001-07:00

http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/hunchbackassignments/HbAssignSampler.pdf