Jennifer Hudock is an author, poet, and more besides, who writes a free podcast novel Goblin Market and blogs over on The Inner Bean.
Jenny was kind enough to have me as a guest blogger, musing on what exactly made me decide to become an indie author, and what it means to be one. I write about how being indie means being more than just an author, and about how much I love it.
Do head on over to check it out and be sure to click around to learn more about Jenny, too!
One of my brother’s favourite stories about me has to do with my absolute laziness when it comes to going to the shops when there’s no food in the house. He came home one evening to find me hunched over my laptop, a half-empty plate of undistinguishable mess on the table beside me.
“What did you have for dinner?” my brother asked, ever-concerned that I wasn’t feeding myself properly.
I barely glanced up from my laptop, intent on writing. “There was nothing to eat, so I invented this kidney bean and rice thing.”
“Oh? How was it?”
A frown crossed my face. I looked up. “Weird. It was really weird.”
(Somehow my successful experiments — like the sausage & avocado scrambled eggs — never get mentioned. Figures.)
What does this have to do with zombies, you ask?
I’d like to present to you my latest release:
Introducing Hungry For You, a haunting speculative fiction short story collection.
This is the result of hours of experimentation in the kitchen living room with only two ingredients: zombies, and relationships.
Are you curious to discover the results? Trust me, it tastes better than kidney beans.
EDIT: Grab a copy today from Kindle (US) or Kindle (UK)! (Other retailers to follow.)
Over on 12 Days 2010, Jim Bronyaur has organized a fun initiative to give you a daily double dose of fiction for 12 days, inspired by the 12 Days of Christmas song.
Every day since December 14th, two short stories by two different authors have been posted. December 14th featured two stories inspired by the line “a partridge in a pear tree”, the next day’s prompt was “two turtle doves”, and so on.
My story, Swan’s Act, went live today. Swan’s Act is a short story about zombie swans and a couple in love, and a longer version of this tale will feature in my upcoming short story anthology.
Hats off to author Cecilia Dominic as well, who was my co-partner in today’s prompt and cleverly twisted the seven sins and the seven swans into a romping little tale.
Two days ago, as I was perusing through my weekly Google alerts digest, I came across the website ThinkDoBecome, which was offering Other Sides for sale for $0.99, discounted from $9.99.
Think that discount is a bargain? Think again: Other Sides is available for free download on the Ergofiction magazine main site, and is $0.99 from Smashwords and Amazon. No where in the world is it priced at $9.99. Even the print version’s cheaper than that!
I searched the entire website, and found no contact details. The comment boxes didn’t work either. Even more suspicious. Eventually, I subscribed to the website and got a confirmation email from info@thinkdobecome.com — success!
I sent a polite email bringing the unusual situation to the webmaster’s attention, and querying whether the site had some kind of distribution agreement with one of our publishers, because from what I could tell they did not have permission to sell Other Sides.
This morning I got the following reply:
Ms. Harte:
We purchased both the ebook (PDF) “Other Sides – 12 Webfiction Tales” and its resell rights from a 3rd party online however, in an effort to simply this issue we have removed the ebook from our online store and will no longer offer it for sale or as a giveaway.
Regards,
Roy Edwards,
Managing Partner
http://www.ThinkDoBecome.com
I try to think the best of people. Maybe he was duped by some other person, and spent money on the PDF. Maybe. But incredibly unlikely. In any case, I replied with a polite thank you for removing the ebook, and recommended he never purchase from that “3rd party” again.
But the situation has continued to bother me. I know we’re small fry in the big picture, but that someone could go and make money off of our hard work — make money off of something we chose to offer freely — it just upsets me. But the straw that broke the camel’s back is that I just went over to the website again and took a look at some of the other products.
What do you know? Razor Wire Christmas by Justin Peters is available for free download from Plough, but you can buy it from ThinkDoBecome for an amazing $0.99 “discounted” from $6.99.
David Meerman Scott’s non-fiction free ebook on viral marketing (which you can download from his website) is also for sale, “reduced” from $9.99 to $0.99.
Many of the listings do not mention even author names, making it even harder to track the original authors down.
I’m sorry, Roy Edwards, but your website needs to go.
Merrilee Faber is one of my favourite writers online: her blog Not Enough Words is always insightful, amusing, instructive and just generally envy-inducing, and she writes some pretty awesome stories.
She was kind enough to have me as a guest blogger, rambling about the making-of for Other Sides: 12 Webfiction Tales, including some general advice on how to make a short story anthology of your own.
Do head on over and check it out.
A.M. Harte 