Every Way You Can Get OTHER PEOPLE’S HEROES

Well, friends, for the last few months I’ve been deluging the hell out of you with each new announcement about the myriad ways you could get your hands on my novel, Other People’s Heroes. I’m very happy to announce that, as of today, it’s available in every conceivable format a person can experience the original novel. I’ll have nothing new to announce for OPH until somebody backs a truck full of money up to my house to make a movie about it. So let’s review…

• If you’re old-school… if you prefer to get your books on paper, you can order the print version from Amazon’s Createspace. The print version will cost you $15.99, but it comes with my undying affection.
• If you’ve got an e-reader, you have several options. Those of you with an iPad or iPod, you can just turn on your device, cruise to the bookstore, and do a search for the title or my name.
• Owners of the Amazon Kindle can get the book in the Kindle bookstore.
• If you’re the proud owner of a Barnes and Noble Nook device, the book is available in your store.
• And if you have any other e-reader, you can click on over to Smashwords.com, download the book in your preferred format, and upload it to your device. Oh — and ALL of the e-reader versions, no matter your format, cost a measly $2.99. You’re paying more for that for coffee at Starbucks, people.
• And finally, let’s say that you like your books in audio format. Let’s say you’ve got a long commute and you like to listen to books on the road. Cool. As of July 13, OPH is available to you as well. Cruise to Podiobooks.com and subscribe to the audiobook version of OPH, read and produced by yours truly. Oh yeah — and the audiobook version? ABSOLUTELY FREE.

So that’s it, right? We’re done? You’re never gonna have to hear me pimp my books again?

Oh, friends. Don’t you know me better than that?

At the present, I’ve got not one, not two, but four fiction projects in various stages. So here’s what you can expect in the future, probably in the order that you’ll see them become available.

1. The Beginner, my second novel, is completely finished and edited and ready to go to eBook and print. The only thing I’m waiting on is new cover art. I’d really like to get that done before I go back to school, but that’s up to my graphic artist (a.k.a. my sister, Heather.)
2. Lost in Silver, my fantasy novel for young readers, has been sent off to beta readers for their thoughts and commentary. Once The Beginner is done, my publish-fu will be dedicated to getting that in shape to release.
3. 14 Days of Asphalt, the sequel to Other People’s Heroes, has been in the works for a long time. As of last night, I have finished work on the second draft. Once LIS has gone through the beta process, I’ll be asking for betas again to take a look at that one.
4. And finally, my new year’s resolution back in January was to write or revise one of my fiction projects every day. With 14 Days finished, I need something else to start working on today, because I’ve hit it every day so far. So today, friends, I begin work on a new project. It’s actually the sequel to Lost in Silver, the continuing adventures of Linda Watson and her friends, and the continuing exploration of the strange worlds of Evertime. I’ll give you the title to chew on: The Light Man.

Damn, I’m busy aren’t I?

Calling all (beta) readers…

Yesterday, friends, I told you how happy I was with the performance of Other People’s Heroes in the eBook market. This continues to be true. But that’s really just stage one of my long-term plan (as much as it is a plan, anyway) to burn up the eBook sales charts. As I’ve mentioned, my book The Beginner is very close to joining OPH and A Long November in the eBook stores. But I can’t very well stop there, now can I?

I’m currently working hard on 14 Days of Asphalt, the sequel to Other People’s Heroes, and with any luck the newest draft will be finished by the end of the month. But I’ve also got another book, Lost in Silver, that’s pretty well finished now… at least in draft form. As someone going this alone, though, without the editing and production of a big publisher, that means I need to recruit some help. Some of you have, in the past, been kind enough to serve as Beta readers for me, going over manuscripts and giving thoughts, suggestions, and notes, which have invariably made my work better. And I thank you for that. I’m asking for that help again. Like I said, 14 Days isn’t ready yet, but Lost in Silver is. If you’ve been coming to the Realms for a while now, you may remember when I serialized that particular manuscript here, a chapter at a time. I’ve recently come around to a new direction for the characters, something that will really build well on that first story and help grow into new stories. And that means it’s time to make the first one available as well. Book two in that series, in fact, will most likely be my next writing project.

If you’re available as a beta for either — or both — of these books, I would greatly appreciate it. You don’t need to be a spelling and grammatical genius… just someone who likes to read and can clearly express your thoughts about a story. Send me your e-mail address and I’ll let you know what I’ve got in mind.

And thanks!

Other People’s Heroes-Where Things Stand

As you may have heard in yesterday’s post, I’ve finally got Other People’s Heroes back in print, so those of you who haven’t got the eBook because you don’t have an e-reader like a Kindle, Nook, iPad, Kobo, Blackberry, Blueberry, Schnozzberry, or Frankberry can finally get yourself a copy. You’re welcome!

So where does that leave the book, then?

Well, there’s really not much left for me to do with it. At the moment, I’m currently going through the audio files I recorded last year, fixing some errors (if you listened to it, you probably noticed the occasional flub or repeated line, especially as I got close to the end and got tired). Once that’s done, I’m going to upload those cleaner files to Podiobooks.com so that they’ll have a permanent home among the greatest free audiobooks on the web. And after that?

Well, until a producer comes to town with a big ol’ check to make the movie version, my work on OPH will be officially done.

Fortunately, it’s not the end of Siegel City. I’m working now on the sequel to OPH, 14 Days of Asphalt, and this October I’m going to release the Halloween short story The Restless Dead of Siegel City as a Kindle Single. After that, I’ve got two other works in progress set in the world of Siegel City — the tentatively-titled Cross Purposes and The Pyrite War. And I’ll get to those eventually. I swear. Consarn it.

And in the meantime, here (once more) are the links to all the places you can get Other People’s Heroes in its various forms:

• Amazon.com Kindle Store
• Barnes & Noble Nook Store
• Smashwords.com (For every eBook format)
• Also available in your iPad/iPhone/iPod bookstore!
• And available in print from CreateSpace!

Incidentally…

I’m going out with some friends tonight, so I wanted to knock out today’s work on 14 Days of Asphalt early. As I did so, I did what’s become a tradition for me: the 14 Days of Asphalt Tweet. I also put it up on Facebook. Every day, I’ve been throwing up a line from the section I worked on that day.

If you’re not following me on Facebook and you want to see those tweets (plus links to a buttload of reviews and my occasional snarky comments on the universe), follow me @BlakeMP.

Keeping up with the promotion…

So in the past month, I’ve gotten Other People’s Heroes in every online eBookstore of which I am aware. I’ve sent out queries to dozens of different book bloggers offering free copies in the hopes that they’ll do a review. I’ve heard back from over a dozen of them that have offered a review, and a couple of them have even posted so far.

But I’m still trying to get the word out, because I’m doing all this myself, friends. I’ve got no publisher hustling up reviews for me, or taking out ads, or giving big, squishy hugs to reviewers who may be available to get the word out.

One thing I haven’t quite gotten as much of a boost with as I’d like, though, are reviews at the online book vendors. Reviews at places like Amazon.com help to raise the book’s profile, and the more people who see it, the more sales I can theoretically get, right?

So the question remains, how do I entice people to write more reviews? It’s not like I can start running contests or anything. I mean, I could, but I can’t exactly afford to start handing out iPads or the like as prizes. What have I got to offer?

Just… more story.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m currently working on the sequel to OPH, 14 Days of Asphalt. As you may surmise from the title, it’s a story that takes place across two weeks. It’s also a roadtrip story, and I’m in the midst of what’s called the “vomit draft” right now — where you just pound out the story to get it onto the page, giving you the chance later to massage it and turn it into a finished work.

So here’s what I’ll offer. For the month of May (2011), anybody who posts a review of OPH at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, or the iPad bookstore gets a special incentive. Before the review goes online, e-mail me at BlakeMPetit@gmail.com with a copy of the text and which store (or stores) you posted it to. As soon as it appears in one of them, I’ll send you access to a special Dropbox folder where I’ll post each “Day” of 14 Days as it is finished. (At present, only Day Zero is complete.)

It may not be an iPad, but it’s something, right?

What People Are Saying About Other People’s Heroes…

Reviews are starting to appear for Other People’s Heroes, friends, and I like what I’m hearing. Here’s some of the commentary that’s starting to crop up on the internet…

• From Christopher Lawton of the Unsung Heroes
• From the Magic is in Words book blog
• From Jeff Hendricks.net (Jeff, full disclosure, is an old friend of mine, but that doesn’t mean he’s not an insightful sort)
• And here’s a review of the audiobook that came out back in January on Scott Roche’s Site

Plus, here are a couple of places I’ve shown up talking about OPH:

• The Galley Table Podcast Episode #31
• And an interview on the Kindle-Author Blog

If you’ve written a review of the book on your own blog, website, or talked about it on a podcast, please let me know! I’m anxious to hear what people think. And if you haven’t got any of those particular outlets, you can still help out by posting a review of the book on any (or all) of the sites where it’s available:

• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble
• Smashwords.com
• And also on the iBooks store, although I’ve got no idea how to make a link to that

As far as OPH goes, folks, right now it’s all about getting the word out. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, help spread the word and I’ll be eternally grateful. In the meantime, I’m hard at work on 14 Days of Asphalt.

Getting down to business… OPH2!

As I’ve mentioned on Twitter and Facebook, this week I started working on the sequel to Other People’s Heroes. It may be a little presumptuous, as the book just hit the eReader market and I’m still trying desperately to hustle up reviews and coverage wherever possible, but I made a decision this year that I’m going to work on some fiction project or another every day. And this is where the muse is calling me right now.

I won’t bombard you guys with OPH2 stuff constantly, I promise. Truth is, there’s not always a lot to talk about when you’re going through the actual mechanical process of writing, especially during a first draft, when the mandate is to just get the story out of your brain and on to paper where it can be sculpted as it should. But I did start, and I am excited, so I thought I’d give you guys just a little, teeny taste of what I’m doing. And therefore here, for your reading pleasure, is the opening paragraph of the sequel to Other People’s Heroes, also known as 14 Days of Asphalt:

I was busy with a fake museum robbery when my girlfriend called to tell me she was staying in California. This wasn’t unusual for me – fake robberies, fake plane crashes, fake alien invasions, that kind of stuff was what I did on a daily basis. I never carried my phone with me when I was in costume either, because (let’s face it) being a superhero is a rough job. Even in Siegel City, where fights are planned ahead of time and every punch is meticulously choreographed, accidents happen. People can get hurt. Things like “explosions” or “spontaneous bursts of microwave emissions” tend to “void” “warranties” and make me “lose” my entire “Weird Al playlist.” So at the same time I was crashing through the skylight of the Eisner Museum of Art, back at Simon Tower my phone was buzzing away in my hollow, tinny locker.

There ya go, folks. Literary gold. Tell your friends, and go read OPH while I get hard to work on this one.