Pass-along post: KDP Select and Amazon's Recommendations Engine

Post by David Gaughran: Amazon's Recommendation Engine Trumps the Competition.

Some interesting discussion on the future of KDP Select going on in the comments.  I had some modest success with KDP Select when Super first came out, but I agree with the general assessment that it's usefulness in getting paid sales is waning.  The best current use for it, IME, is as a way of getting those all-important reviews, and I'm not sure that being restricted to Amazon for 90-day stretches is the best way to go about it when issuing a Smashwords coupon is so easy.

REVIEW: Alexander Death by JL Bryan

Description: While Seth searches for Jenny, Dr. Heather Reynard of the CDC unravels Seth and Jenny's secrets.

Alexander opens Jenny's mind to her deep past, and to the full horrific extent of her powers.

Torn between her feelings for Alexander and Seth, and between her past lives and her present, Jenny must prepare to face her enemies while fighting against the powerful, ancient darkness within, which threatens to grow until it consumes her...

My Thoughts:  All right, I'm probably one of the biggest champions this book series has and will gleefully fangasm about it to anyone who stands still long enough to let me.  JL Bryan has still created one of the most interesting and complicated heroines I've read over the past few years, and hands-down the best female villain.  Ashleigh of the first book will never not be deliciously evil and clever.  

That being said, I do have to finally admit that the series is starting to suffer as it rounds into its third installment, so much so that I'm not sure yet if I want to read the fourth.  (I would feel this way even if the wear and tear hadn't become so apparent, as Alexander Death comes to such a natural stopping place that to open the series up to further books seems a little forced.)  Jenny has run off with Alexander in order to save her own life after Ashleigh's latest attack, Seth is trying to find Jenny again while being harassed by the Department of Homeland Security, Ashleigh is sadly marginalized as a villain, and Tommy...well, Tommy actually really disappointed me.  The potential for truly epic villainy or even a stance as a solid antihero expressed in the second book of the series just sort of *poofs* off into nowhere, but he still gets his happy ending without actually doing anything to earn it.  Throw in a fairly silly PSA about drug use and a what-the-hell black ops rescue, and I did a fair amount of giggling through my fingers at points of this book.  

This isn't to say that Alexander Death doesn't still have a great deal to recommend it, because it does.  Though she doesn't get as much to do as in the first and second book, Ashleigh is still absolutely electric.  (She's Randall Flagg with a better leave-in conditioner, people.  I'm telling you, even if I didn't like Jenny so much, Ashleigh alone is worth the price of admission.)  The descriptions of the kids' past lives are rich and varied, Seth is back to being the good-hearted goober we saw in the first book, and the final showdown ties together three books worth of themes and plot lines in a neat little bow.  It's a fitting end to the series, but who am I kidding? I already know I'm going to read the fourth book sooner or later.  It's like crack.  (So maybe I was supposed to learn something about Jenny's little stroll down the dark side, after all.)

Self-Forgiveness and Mindy

Everyone makes mistakes, right?  I know I have.  Hell, the last five years of my life have seemed like nothing but one long mistake at times.  I know what it's like to feel as though your very touch brings rot  to everyone you care about.  That aspect of Mindy's personality comes to me very easily.  In December of 2012, my GRE scores expired.  See, back when I was in college, I had my whole life planned out.  I was going to go to graduate school, get my Ph.D., and sail smoothly into a career as a tenured professor.  (Tenure-track positions hadn't declined quite so much that the idea was completely laughable at that point, but...well, let's say I wasn't completely living in reality on that one.)

And then I had a complete meltdown that involved me sobbing on a bathroom floor for three nights and scaring the living crap out of everyone who cares about me, the start of a six-month period where it seemed as though I broke just about everything I touched.  How does this relate to Mindy, you ask?  I know what it's like to screw up so badly that you feel like you can't ever do anything right again, and I put that into Mindy.  (What, you thought it was relentless optimism and natural goodness that came naturally to me?  Oh, you are just adorable.)  I also, after my friends forcibly dragged me out by my ankles, threw me into the shower, and then made me start sending out job applications, learned how important it is to forgive yourself for your mistakes.  More importantly, I learned how to let other people forgive you for your mistakes.  That's Mindy's main struggle in Leech and, frankly, throughout the series.  It's been an interesting experience writing that in a character who's not by nature a classic brooder, especially since Mindy sits alongside Ophelia as one of the series' major moral voices.

Like I said, Mindy's not really a brooder.  She's good for the sake of being good, but in a chirpier way than Ophelia's Hepburn-esque poise.  She's optimistic, she sees the good in people and gets them to see it, too, and she knows the value of a plate of hot wings and a good football game.  I'm not going to lie, I had to stalk one of my more wholesome friends a little bit in the writing of Leech.  She eventually learned to handle my popping up over her shoulder and stage-whispering "Say something wholesome!" with a fair amount of grace.

Leech can be found for sale on Amazon and Smashwords.

Review: Tommy Nightmare by JL Bryan

Description: While Fallen Oak recovers from the Jenny Pox, someone new is hunting Jenny.

Like Jenny, Ashleigh Gooding belonged to a pair of opposites with powers that mirror each other.

Now Jenny and Seth must face the opposite of love...

My Thoughts:  I've mentioned before how completely blown away I was by Jenny Pox, so I had high expectations heading in to Tommy Nightmare.  Happily, it measured up.  Tommy is genuinely terrifying in moments, moving in others, and juuuust complicated enough that I mourned every time he made an evil decision.  I'm not willing to count him out of the game just yet.

While Bryan has introduced a fun new villain in Tommy, that doesn't mean he's short-changing the girls.  Jenny is every bit as real and amazing as she was in the first book, and Bryan introduces a new girl in the form of an old love of Tommy's.  Furthermore--spoiler alert--we also see the return of Ashleigh Gooding, who is every bit as noxious and calculating in this book as she was when we first met her.  My favorite part of these books is how neatly Bryan writes the relationship between Ashleigh and Jenny--they never lose their petty, high-school nastiness for all that they're immortals fighting a war with incredible, potentially world-ending powers.  Jenny was punished in the first book for her refusal to attempt to understand her powers while Ashleigh was so busily strengthening hers, and she's still struggling with much the same problems in Tommy Nightmare.    Granted, her power is much more difficult to safely test than Ashleigh's, as people either die or are permanently disfigured by her touch rather than finding themselves love-stoned for a few hours.  Jenny's entire arc in this book is, once again, that of trying to stay one step ahead of her own abilities, this time with the added knowledge of just how destructive she can be.  This would be repetitive if not for the added drama of Jenny's secret being released into the world and the additional supervillains thrown into the fray.  Jenny has to grow up, whether she wants to or not, because she's going to be eaten alive if she doesn't.  And, by the end of the book, she seems to realize that she can't just stay in Fallen Oak and be a perpetual child forever, not when Ashleigh is once again on the move and is determined to destroy Jenny's life utterly before continuing with her plans for--I'm not kidding--world domination.  Unfortunately, she's now in the sway of someone even more dangerous than Ashleigh or Tommy, and she's not in a good emotional place.  Jenny Morton is poised to become Batman with mittens, and I love it.

Leech Premiere Celebration.

It's finally here, it's finally here!  Leech, the third book in my Super series, premieres today, and I could not be more ridiculously excited.  I had a lot of trepidations when I began this little book for last year's NaNoWriMo: Super was originally going to be a one-off, J's voice came more naturally to me than anyone else in the series...what was I going to do with Mindy, the character I actually understood the least?  And in the series' major pivot point, at that?

I shouldn't have worried.  Leech turned out to be one of the easiest books I've ever written, with my very favorite villain of all time.  (Um, to the point that my beta readers were a little worried about me.)  I'm so glad to finally be able to present it to the world.  And don't forget!  As part of the premiere celebration and to mark its exit from the KDP Select program, Fire With Fire will be absolutely free on Amazon December 6-8.  I apologize in advance for how obnoxious I am going to be on Twitter.

Buy Leech on Amazon and Smashwords.

And then I failed NaNoWriMo.

I'm throwing in the towel at 28K words and change.  Yeah, I know, there are four days left.  22K isn't an insurmountable goal in that timeframe, especially since I've been possessed of a white heat on all of my other projects over the past few days.  Throwing away four days worth of energy at a book that is fundamentally, fatally flawed seems like a waste of time.  (I know.  You don't edit during NaNoWriMo, every writer thinks they're shoveling shit from a sitting position at least once, but by now I have a certain sense for when I'm being crazy and just need to push through, and when something is going off the skids.  Eat went off the skids.)  In spite of not finishing, though, it felt good to get back in the groove after writing virtually nothing for the better part of five months.  It felt incredibly good to realize that my mental health is back on track to that degree.

And even if I didn't finish NaNoWriMo, buckling down and working on something again helped to unlock my other creative processes, to wit: finally figuring out where Bulletproof, Bonnie's book, fell apart and how I need to fix it.  Involving space zombies, because let's face it: there is nothing I can come up with crazier than what various superhero canons have already done over the years.  The trick is to be outrageous with conviction.  I also had this epiphany as to how to fix Bonnie's story during one of my customary three a.m. flails.  It's been awhile, I had missed them. :)

Leech cover reveal!

 

So, um, yeah.  I'm pretty excited.  Since Audrey's pregnancy is kicking the living hell out of her, I went with Graphicz X Designs.  They're closely affiliated with Mojito Press Plus, whose founders were incredibly kind and friendly to me when I first joined Twitter and had no idea what the hell I was doing.  I give Graphicz X two thumbs up; they're friendly, have fantastic prices, and are fast.  I had a cover less than a day after expressing interest.

With my cover finalized, I can announce with certainty that Leech will be premiering on December 5th, 2012, and in celebration Fire With Fire will go free for three days before exiting the KDP Select program.  So mark your calendars!