Christmas 2012: The Ghost of Simon Tower

It’s time again, my friends, for my annual Christmas gift to you, a new short story. And this year, we’re going back to Siegel City and Josh Corwood. Every Christmas Eve the heroes of Siegel City come together to raise a glass to their fallen friends. On Josh Corwood’s first Christmas among them, he learns of an apparition that has haunted Simon Tower for years… a mysterious, nameless phantom, who may hold some of the Tower’s biggest secrets yet. This short story continues the tale of Other People’s Heroes with a gateway into the past of Siegel City, and a glimpse into its future.

So how do you read this story, do you ask? It’s simple, guys. If you’ve got your Amazon Kindle, it’s available in the store right now for a mere 99 cents. But just between you and me, the reason I charge even the 99 cents is because you can’t make a book free on Amazon unless it’s enrolled in their special program, which I’ve decided not to do for reasons.

The Ghost of Simon Tower in the Amazon Kindle Store ($0.99)

But let’s say you don’t have a Kindle… or you don’t have 99 cents, because your kid needed that Tickle-Me Emilio Estavez doll I hear all the kids are crazy for this year. I feel you, my friend. Now before long, the book should be in the Sony Reader store, the Kobo Store, the Nook store, the iPad store, but all of those things take a bit longer than Amazon. So for the rest of you, friends, the book is now available at Smashwords.com, and at Smashwords, for a limited time, it’s absolutely free. Yep, for the whopping price of nothing, you can download the book in any format you want, ready to load on your Nook, your Kobo, your iPad… and yes, even your Kindle. And if you don’t have any of those, there’s also an option to read it in PDF format or HTML, right there in your web browser. So if you’re a fan of Siegel City and Josh Corwood, there is literally no reason not to check the book out right now.

The Ghost of Simon Tower in the Smashwords bookstore (FREE!)

As always, my friends, I ask just one favor of you. If you like my work, please post a review of it online — at Amazon, Smashwords, wherever you happen to get it. Reviews help the book get attention, attention gets more sales, more sales means Blake can keep writing stuff like this. And after some of the hints I drop in The Ghost of Simon Tower, I think you’re really going to be excited to see what I’ve got planned for 2013.

Special thanks to the great Jacob Bascle, who once again has come through with a great cover for the book! Merry Christmas, everybody!

National Novel Writing Month Finished — OPH II Not So Much

I haven’t spent a lot of time here on the blog talking about National Novel Writing Month this year, but I have been giving pretty regular updates over on my Facebook Writer’s Page. You guys are all following that, right? You should. All the cool kids are doing it.

Anyway, if you have been following, you know I’ve been slowly inching towards the annual November goal of 50,000 words of a novel, and that this year’s book is the all-new sequel to my first novel, Other People’s Heroes. In this new book, it’s been several months since the first novel ended, Siegel City has changed dramatically, and not everybody is happy about it. Josh Corwood learns that life as a legitimate superhero isn’t as great as he expected it to be, and a new enemy begins operating right under their noses.

I’m about two-thirds of the way finished with the first draft of Other People’s Heroes II as of right now. (That’s not going to be the official title, by the way. I’m just calling it that because I haven’t come up with a title yet. Titles are hard for me for some reason. The original OPH was going to be called Capes and Masks almost right up until the final moment, but I never quite liked that title and kept looking for something better For marketing reasons, I’m thinking of calling the sequel Tyler Perry’s Fifty Shades of Ways to Die Hard in Twilight, Presented By Oprah.)

However, now that I’ve reached my goal, OPH II is going to be moved over just for a bit to make room for a few other projects. While I still intend to work on OPH II every day, I’ve got not one, but three other projects that are more time-sensitive, all of them holiday-related. In the coming days, you can look forward to…

Reel to Reel: The Christmas Special. I’m going to give the R2R treatment to 25 of the most beloved Christmas TV specials of all time. Charlie Brown, Rudolph, Frosty, the Muppets — I’m gonna talk about all of them over the next few weeks.

The Obligatory EBI Vol. 2: Is Santa Claus Super? Like my first Obligatory EBI collection, this will be a short, cheap e-book collecting some of my best EBI columns and other features associated with the Christmas season, including the now-legendary column that asked the eternal question, is Santa Claus a superhero? This one will hopefully be available no later than Monday, and I cannot WAIT for you guys to see the kick-ass cover Jacob Bascle has created for this one. He’s outdone himself.

The Ghost of Simon Tower. As you know, I do a new Christmas short story every year, and this year’s tale is going to take place in-between OPH and OPH II. It’s going to star Josh Corwood and a mysterious holiday visitor. And I’m not going to say any more about that just now.

And then I’ll get back to working full-time on OPH II. And then I’ll throw myself wholeheartedly into the revisions for The Pyrite War, the story of Siegel City’s first superhero. And hopefully you’ll see BOTH of those full-length novels in 2013.

So even though I’ve gotten extremely busy in my personal life as of late, in case you didn’t know, I find that this is only making me MORE determined to get my work out there, to build my audience, and to give you guys some content. So if you’re among the people who like reading my stuff, thank you wholeheartedly. All I want is to give you more to love.

So about that Other People’s Heroes sequel…

So, you may be asking, what’s the deal with the actual SEQUEL to Other People’s Heroes?

After all, the original version of the book came out a long time ago. In fact, those of you who’ve been with me for a long time may remember how I originally serialized the sequel, 14 Days of Asphalt, as a work-in-progress on the old Evertime Realms website. But some time after I finished that, I took it down to “rework” it. And that’s the last you saw of it.

Here’s the thing with 14 Days — I was never totally happy with it. There was some stuff in there I liked a lot, particularly a pair of characters, but the second half of the book simply never came together the way I wanted it to. And I tried several times — at least three separate passes at the book over the years failed to create a story I felt I could really dig into and turn into a worthwhile sequel to OPH.

I eventually turned to other Siegel City stories, such as the upcoming The Pyrite War and a few short stories you may have read. But the only thing you guys have seen of Josh Corwood and friends in these intervening years was the Halloween story, “The Restless Dead of Siegel City.” And you wanted to know what happened next.

So did I.

Eventually, I had to face facts. As a writer, you come to realize that if the end of a story isn’t coming together, chances are there’s a problem at the beginning of it that you aren’t even realizing. And some time ago I realized I would have to start over, throw out everything from 14 Days and come up with a whole new story that would begin the next stage of Josh Corwood adventures. But until a few days ago I didn’t have anything.

Now, I may.

I’ve got an idea — a sharper, more cohesive idea than 14 Days was. A little smaller in scope — it’s all in Siegel City again, rather than a road trip story — but bigger in its potential, as it’s really about the nature of superpowers in my world, how they work and why, plus what exactly makes Josh so unique.

And if I can make it work, who knows? Maybe later I’ll be able to come back and do that road trip story. Maybe I’ll be able to find a home for those now-orphaned 14 Days characters. I hope so, but I promise nothing.

Except this:

I’ve always known where I want Josh to end up. What I didn’t know was how to kick him in that direction. I think I’ve got a handle on that now. So once I get Opening Night of the Dead finished (Heather is working on the cover, I’ve seen preliminary sketches), and after I do a second pass on The Pyrite War, turning to the next story of Josh Corwood will be my top writing priority.

Here’s hoping I can stay on the road this time.

Where to Buy: The Restless Dead of Siegel City

It’s time for a special Halloween treat for fans of my debut novel, Other People’s Heroes. While the sequel, 14 Days of Asphalt, isn’t going to be released until some time in 2012, that doesn’t mean you’ll have to wait until next year to meet up with Josh Corwood and the heroes of Siegel again.

In this new 99-cent short story, it’s Halloween night and the city of faux superheroes finds itself overrun with the REAL undead — mummies, zombies, vampires, and all manner of creatures of the night have come to wreak havoc. Copycat, Animan, and their crew have to dig out the root of the infestation, and Josh has to confront the ghost of his greatest failure.

• Amazon Kindle store (99 cents)
• Barnes and Noble Nook store (99 cents)
• Smashwords.com in all other eBook formats (99 cents)
• And in your iPad bookstore (99 cents)

The Beginner: Now (mostly) available!

You can’t get it everywhere and in every format yet, friends, but for you early adopters my novel The Beginner is now available!

After spending many (many, many) hours this weekend tweaking and playing with formats and uploading and retweaking and reuploading and re-retweaking and re-reuploading, you can now purchase The Beginner in the Amazon.com Kindle Store for a mere $2.99!

“But Blake,” you say, “I don’t have a Kindle! I have an utterly different eReader of a different sort! The sort that reads books in EPUB, PDF, or other assorted formats? Is there anything for me?” Oh, indeed there is, my friend. You folks can cruise on over to Smashwords.com right now and get the book for the same $2.99 as those Kindle readers!

Now there are a few more formats in which the book is not yet available. I’m waiting for the book to go through the “Meat Grinder” process which will make it available in the Barnes & Noble Nook store and the iPad bookstore, but in both cases, I anticipate the book will be ready in a couple of weeks. And if you’re holding out for the print edition, that’s coming soon too! As soon as the proof gets to me and I give it the thumbs-up, it’ll be available for $13.99.

So it’s all coming, folks.

Don’t forget, in the meantime, I’ve still got two other books available!

Other People’s Heroes  is available for Kindle, Nook, iPad, as an audiobook or in print!

A Long November is available for Kindle, Nook, iPad, and as an audiobook!

Make sure you get the entire Blake M. Petit library!

Where to Buy… OTHER PEOPLE’S HEROES

Other People’s Heroes

My first novel, Other People’s Heroes, is superhero adventure. Josh Corwood is a reporter for Powerlines, the premiere newsmagazine covering the heroes of Siegel City. Josh has always dreamed of joining the heroes, but his world is thrown into upheaval by a pair of discoveries. First: he has a power of his own. And second: the heroes of Siegel City are all fakes. The villains are actors, the fights are choreographed — it’s like professional wrestling on a much bigger scale. In this comedy/adventure, Josh attempts to blow the lid on the cover-up, only to find himself embroiled in a mystery about what happened to the real heroes of Siegel City, and about the nature of heroism itself. You can listen to the whole thing in the Evercast, or buy it as an ebook!

• Amazon.com Kindle Store ($2.99)
• Barnes & Noble Nook Store ($.299)
• Smashwords.com for every eBook format ($2.99)
• Available in your iPad/iPhone/iPod bookstore ($2.99)
• Available in print from CreateSpace ($15.99)
• Available as a free audiobook download at Podiobooks.com ($0.00!)

A while back, just for funsies, I whipped up some images of the heroes of Siegel City. I’m no artist, mind you, so I used the Hero Machine template. Here’s what I came up with:

• Aquila
• Condor
• The Conductor
• Copycat
• Deep Six
• The Defender
• Doc Noble
• Doublegum Man
• First Light
• Five Share
• Fourtifier
• Goop
• Hotshot
• Lightning
• Lionheart
• Mental Maid
• Miss Sinistah
• Oriole
• Particle
• Spectrum
• Tin Man
• V3OL

Weird Karma

1. My sister, Heather, finally has time to finish the cover for The Beginner, and a spiffy job she does of it, too.
2. A friend of mine contacts me out of the blue to ask if I’d be willing to arrange a podcast interview with the writer of an upcoming comic book that I’m actually quite excited about.
3. Another friend of mine contacts me to offer to help set up something very cool for Other People’s Heroes.
4. My iPod suddenly stops synching to my computer or drawing power. A quick glance confirms some of the little bendy things (I looked it up, this is the technical term) inside the port where I plug it in are inexplicably bent.

On the other hand, I suppose if I’ve got to get hit with a problem to balance out the goodness of the last few days, I should be pretty grateful it’s so relatively minor.

An OTHER PEOPLE’S HEROES interview!

Back when I was making the book blog circuit, trying to find people willing to review Other People’s Heroes, I got a particularly kind review from the Magic Is In Words blog. This afternoon, I did a little interview with Katie, the site’s author. I tell her a little bit about the creation of the book, give an exclusive preview of the sequel, 14 Days of Asphalt, AND you have a chance to win a free eBook edition of Other People’s Heroes (y’know… if you don’t have one already). Check it out!

Other people’s Heroes at Magic Is In Words

Gentle reminder…

I’m still working on The Light Man. And it’s actually getting easier now that I’ve changed my opening gambit.

I’m still waiting on the cover for The Beginner. As soon as I have one, that book will be made available both as an eBook and as a print book, just like Other People’s Heroes.

OPH is extremely available. Check it out on Amazon.com, where you can get the eBook for just $2.99 or the print version for $15.99. If you’ve already got it, thanks, and please help spread the word by writing a review on whatever site you used to buy it.

And if you DO have either OPH or my Christmas anthology, A Long November, you can request an “autograph” for your eBook 100 percent free of charge. Just check out Kindlegraph.com!

Get your eBook of Other People’s Heroes signed!

One of the few real arguments against eBooks left for me is that you can’t get an eBook autographed as a collectible or keepsake. I don’t have an awful lot of autographed books, but I know some autograph hounds that would be upset to lose this potential source of enjoyment, and may even avoid eBooks entirely because of that. But it seems now that somebody has found a way to get around this.

Earlier, thanks to a post by my friend, colleague, and fellow author Andrea Speed, I learned about Kindlegraph.com. At Kindlegraph, you can request an electronic “autograph” from over 800 authors on over 4000 eBooks. The author will get an e-mail and you’ll get the autograph — along with a short personalization — as a PDF file. You can have it sent directly to your Kindle (which may incur Amazon’s e-mail charge, which was 10 cents last time I looked), or you can have it sent to your e-mail address for free, then load it up to your Kindle (or any other device that displays PDFs) yourself. In fact, you don’t even need an e-reader to take advantage of this service. As you can see here, I’ve got an autograph from one of my favorite eBook authors to display.

The only catch is that — at least currently — you can only sign in via a Twitter account, which means if you don’t have a Twitter account, you can’t get Kindlegraphs. Hopefully, the developer is looking at other ways to get these to people — if nothing else, adding Facebook connectivity would expand the potential audience enormously.

It’s kind of a silly idea, admittedly, but it’s kind of cool as well. It’s a fun way to give your eBooks a little added meaning. There aren’t any big name authors signed up for the service (at least, not yet — I’m lookin’ at you, Stephen King!) but the number of books and authors available on the service is going up very quickly. I’ve added both Other People’s Heroes and A Long November to the catalog of available titles. If you own either of these — hell, even if you’ve got OPH in print — and you’d like an “autograph,” just click in and make the request!