Top Ten Reasons Why YOU Want To Read "Atticus for the Undead"

10.) Because it's better than whatever task you're procrastinating on.

9.) Because neither Once Upon A Time nor Terra Nova have zombies

8.) Because you want to see if John uses as many parentheses in his books as he does in his blog posts (He doesn't, we promise.)

7.) Because zombies are the 99%. (They work in dangerous conditions -- what with the high risk of being shot in the head, and all -- with no pay, education, or health benefits, are the subject of vicious and inaccurate stereotypes, and 1% of the zombies consume 70% of the brains.)

6.) Because Hunter Gamble is damn sexy.

5.) Four words: Sabrina the teenage witch.

4.) Because you want to see the extra goodie we hid at the end of the book. (This one's for real, folks. Be sure to keep turning the e-pages after the story ends.)

3.) Because now you're really  curious about that whole "parentheses" thing.

2.) Because it's what Chuck Norris would do.

1.) Because it's an awesome story, has received uniformly positive reviews from the blogs and Kirkus Reviews, and only costs 2.99. Oh, and did we mention the ZOMBIES?

Convinced yet?

Guest post!

Friends-

Today I hopped on over to the blog of the delightful Bookalicious Pam to share some thoughts. (Delightful, that is, except when she starts binging on American Horror Story. Watch out! :)) See what I had to say here.

Traditional publishing house as "quality" filter

I saw this the other day on a website I went to where the discussion of "are self-pubbers worth reading" was being had. The commenter suggested that while it was greatly unfair to many high-quality self-publishing authors, it was unfortunately probably best to let the publishing houses and their screening process weed out the bad/lazy writers.

But I have to ask myself if we honestly believe that?

We've all heard, for instance, the story of J.K. Rowling, whose first Harry Potter novel was rejected by a dozen publishers before she found one willing to publish it. I think anyone who suggested that the first dozen were correct in their judgment would find a lot of people to disagree with them. (And I suspect that the owners of those publishing houses are probably hanging their heads and wringing their hands even as we speak.)

And we can all think of some books/series that made it past the traditional publishing houses that we wish hadn't. (I'll make no comment here, though you can  probably guess at least some of my thoughts on the matter.)

Also, as my writer friend Angela Scott wisely put it, "it's all subjective." Ask ten people what makes a good story and you're likely to get twelve different responses. Almost any work, in almost any style, is going to find some people who think it's brilliant. Story quality is a matter of taste. (Editing, admittedly, is not. And as I say below, I'm on a one man quest to prove that not all self-pubbers are lax on this front.)

So, with all due respect to the traditional publishing process, I have to ask -- isn't it ultimately up to the reader/buyer to exercise their own filter, regardless of whether the book is trad-pubbed or self-pubbed?

what's with all the self-pub hate?

So, I have to ask:

What's with all the hate against self-published authors?

I see it everywhere I go: Goodreads comments, Amazon reviews, etc. To judge by the discussions that go on in places like those, self-pubbers are roughly as popular as the United States Congress (currently sitting at 9% approval rating, by the way).

As a self-publishing author, I don't exactly take this personally -- after all, it couldn't possibly be aimed at me or in response to anything I did, since I only hopped on the self-publishing bandwagon relatively recently. Still, I can't help but be concerned by it.

After all, I didn't get into this on a whim, and I intend to take it as far as I can -- all the way to a print deal with a dead-tree publisher, if I can manage it. But my chances of that are significantly lessened if no one will read my books because I'm a self-publisher.

I understand people may have legitimate reasons for rejecting self-published authors. I'm sure many self-pubbers are lax on the editing or the proofreading. Also, not needing to be "accepted" by anyone for publication probably leads to some crap stories making it to print (though I can think of a few crap stories that made their way through the filters of traditional publishing houses, too).

At the same time, though, I'll never get anywhere if no one is willing to take a chance and go against the apparently-widespread prejudice against self-publishers.

So, here is the promise I make to all of you. My "seal of quality," as it were:

1.) Nothing I write will ever reach your Kindles (or Noooks, etc.) without passing through at least 3 sets of eyes besides mine. Don't take my word for it -- I always credit my editors and proofreaders in the acknowledgments section. I can't promise you there will never be a typo, but there will be damn few.

2.) I will never ask you to buy a story of mine without providing a "sample" of it for you to read free of charge. All of my currently-available stories have such samples on their respective pages on this blog. This way, you can judge for yourself whether the writing and editing are up to snuff. You'll have to trust me that the quality of the sample reflects the quality of the rest of the novel. If you don't think so when you finish reading -- write a bad review. I promise, I won't start a flame war. :)

3.) I will only ever publish stories that I truly, personally believe in. I said on Lindsay Buroker's blog that you have to love what you write, and I truly believe that.

I take my obligations to my readers very seriously. I ask you for the chance to prove that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Best wishes for a joyous Thanksgiving from On The Bird.

Atticus Makes The News!

This one is extra exciting since it's the newsletter for a UK corporate law firm!

I feel a British readership coming on.

Check it out!



*Wow, I fail at linking correctly today, apparently. Oops. :P

We might just pull this crazy stunt off...

As I write this, Atticus for the Undead is #81 in Amazon's "Legal Thrillers" Top 100 list. Help push that number up!

Let's see if we can get it into the top 20!

Many thanks for all you do,

John