Before I start, I have two book giveaways for you for sci fi and fantasy. Giveaway #1 and Giveaway #2.

I had a lot of fun answering your questions, so I’m happy to answer more. No question is too weird. So please give me more! Think of it like having a trained monkey dance on your command except with words. On to the fun:

BeerLord from BeerNation asks:

“What are some good camping spots?”

That’s a good question BeerLord, and since I currently reside in Montana and grew up in New Mexico, I feel that I have some authority on the matter. I suppose whether or not it’s a good camping spot all depends on what you define as good camping experience. If your goal is to get chewed alive by mosquitos, I would recommend Lonesomehurst Campground near West Yellowstone. Seeing very few people about and when you do see someone, they look like extras in a post apocalypse with head to toe mosquito netting, should have been our first warning as I drove in with my family. We really should have turned around when they swarmed the car as we drove close. Horror movie wisdom tells us that any bug that swarms cars shouldn’t be ignored.

But since we were seasoned campers where our bug protection involved setting up the tent quickly and opening and closing doors as quickly as we could, I could have answered a casting call for a small pox victim and would have gotten the part after our experience at Lonesomehurst. At least it explained why the hurst was so lonesome. It was one of the few camping experiences where we checked the sunset hours and decided to wait around in town before returning to our tent.

We must have killed twenty of the critters on the car ride home, and it was still a better experience than the time I got food poisoning in the middle of the night in a campground a couple mile hike from the car. Sadly, beer was not consumed on either experience.

There is a lesson to be learned from all of this and that’s you can drink beer from your own home which I assume, BeerLord, is your primary motivation for camping. But seriously if you are looking for good campgrounds, pretty much the entire state of Montana or New Mexico, just come prepared (a cooler full of beer).

Eleanor from New York asks:

“Which of the books in your giveaway are great literature that will stand the test of time? Which are the great writers?”

All of them. None of them. 3 of them. All of those answers could be true or none are, or if you believe the Many Worlds hypothesis, every reality that could be true is true somewhere in the multiverse. But before we get bogged down with theoretical physics, let’s get to the heart of the question. The first is are any of the books in the giveaways featured in my emails worth my time? And will any of the books be ones humanity reads years from now?

Let me answer the first one because it’s by far the simpler answer. The truth is that I don’t know. Every giveaway I share, and all the books at the end of my emails weren’t vetted by me. I haven’t read most of them, but if I do see one that piques my interest, I’ll get it, and be more likely to read it if there is an audiobook (I go through about 10 audiobooks to everyone I read. It’s just how my brain is wired). A vast majority of the books I share end up in these giveaways and at the end of my emails because I joined an author exchange network to help build an audience.

The idea is that you tell your readers about my book, and I’ll tell them about yours. Giveaways are the same concept but in a much larger scale because one link for many books. At the end of the day, I collect a reader’s email address if they download my book, and hopefully that person then pays for future books by me, and like magic: writing career develops. While I have seen an increase in readership and sales since using this marketing tactic (I went from making zero dollars a month (unless I’m releasing a book), to reliably making $50-$200 a month when I’m not releasing a book). Not exactly a career, but pays for editing, cover art, and making some marketing experimentation on the side.

So, the question are any of the books in the giveaways worth your time? I say if it looks interesting then download it. The worst that can happen is you don’t enjoy it, stop reading, and then have to unsubscribe from some random writer’s email list (happens all the time, one of the things they don’t tell you is that people unsubscribe at just under the rate that your list grows, and I try to make my list have more value than just “Hey look at my books!”).

The best that can happen is you discover a writer you love, and make someone’s day because you left a kind, glowing review on their book. So, are the books worth your time? Some, all, none? Depends on how adventurous you are. Depends on what you like. Depends if you want to help someone out who is doing something they love for very little recognition and pay (I calculated my hourly rate on a book once, and it was like 25 cents an hour or something dismal, all the money going back into the cost writing more books (editing, cover art, etc.)).

Whenever writing feels lonely, and I truly question if all the work I’ve put into it was worth it, I have to think about Stephen King’s railroad nail. In his book, On Writing, he talks about how he had a railroad nail where he’d put his rejection letters, and it was full before he sold his first book. That is to say, there was a time in Stephen King’s life where no one knew his name (sure his class did and his wife) but you know what I mean. There was no Stephen King in the world. Now there is and whether you love him or hate him, you all know he exists, and it’s hard to go through a bookstore without seeing one of his novels.

Which brings me to the second part of the question, are any of the people, including myself, the next Stephen King? Yes, no, maybe…. Judging if a person is the next great novelist who will be taught in college literature classes in the future is hard to do. If you look at Stephen King before he sold his first book at the railroad nail of rejection, it may be easy to say, nope, no one will remember him. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Stephen King classes in American Literature programs across the country.

Philip K Dick is another great example of this. Even if you haven’t read any of his books, you probably have heard of Minority Report or the more famous adaptation of his book Blade Runner. There are other movies that have been made of his novels, but since those have Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford in the leading roles, I’ll stick with them. Philip K Dick wrote the books those are based on in the 1960s. It wasn’t really till the tail end of his life when he’d started seeing the cultural impact of his writing such as movies being made.

Could you have said in the 1960s that Philip K Dick would be a highly influential Sci Fi writer remember years after his death, and continuing to influence culture through movies and television. I don’t think you could have. Sure, he won a Hugo and was nominated for Nebulas, but so have other writers who are forgotten by readers today.

The point is that we can’t predict what future readers will love and recite years after the author’s death. Shakespeare had lots of contemporaries, but their plays don’t get nearly the same amount of attention and productions today. Google “Shakespeare plays in my area,” and I’m sure there is one within driving distance going on this weekend (except for you random person who lives in Siberia or not within 8 hours drive of a major city). Now google “Thomas Kyd plays in my area,” and you’ll probably be hard pressed to find them. Not saying they don’t happen, just that Shakespeare gets way more attention than Kyd.

Now let’s take a look at the self-published author and ask are any of them going to be remembered? If I were a betting person, I’d put my money on Hugh Howey. His self-published book Wool did so well Apple TV turned it into a television series, and he sold it to a traditional publisher. All signs that readers 100 years from now will be reading his stories, but will they be? I don’t know. Maybe vampire novels are what everyone is reading and this totally retro series called Twilight has college classes and majors dedicated to studying it. Or maybe it was a book that was in one of my giveaways that was discovered in a used bookstore by an influential filmmaker who fell in love with it and made a hit movie 100 years after it was published kinda like Lord of the Rings did (okay so maybe not 100 years, but a really long time later, we got an awesome movie).

One thing I do know for sure is writers have never had a harder time being notice then right now. My spouse is writing a book series, and she was thinking about traditionally publishing it. A lot of a agents want to know about how many followers she has, social media size, mailing list size, etc. before they will consider talking to her. It’s romantic to think that a good story will rise to the top, and catch on like wildfire because we see a story like Hugh Howey and say, that could be me.

The truth is that even Hugh Howey had an entire science fiction series that wasn’t letting him quit his day job before he wrote Wool, and even then, what if the first person to read and review Wool gave it one star because there weren’t enough vampires, and the story just didn’t gain momentum because the reviews weren’t there. Or what if Hugh didn’t know anything about cover art and chased away some readers with a bad design. The point is that there are plenty of ways that have nothing to do with story, for a book to not do so well, and in the days where an algorithm dictates the chances of books being discovered by readers who are not already looking for it, something not landing in the exact right way to juice that algorithm could mean the difference between best seller and barely getting by on book sales.

The funny thing is that what may have failed to juice the algorithm at the time of publication may light it on fire later on. There is no way to tell. Vampires may be the single distinction that makes a book a best seller one year, and the reason it’s buried in the yard after barely anyone ever read it the next. My day job is at a University and I see people wearing Iron Maidan and Nirvana t-shirts all the time, both bands popular when I was in high school. I honestly wouldn’t have predicted that.

So. will readers of the future be reading any of the books in the giveaway? Which ones will have college classes taught about them? Which ones will be made into TV, Movies, Video Games? Some of them? All of them? None of them? It’s easy to look at the great writers from a historical perspective and say off course they were great, but what if Stephen King quit writing before the nail filled, or Shakespeare’s plays were lost in a fire? Or Hugh Howey decided it was time to pack it in after his Molly Fyde series? Or the deal for Blade Runner fell through and Philip K Dick was only known to readers who shop at the used bookstore?

What about the person who is writing the next great novel right now, but they aren’t so good with marketing or cover art? They giveaway the book but no one reads it because any potential readers have 50 free books to choose from on a daily basis, and the algorithm just doesn’t favor them. What about the writer who was way before their time, and their career explodes after they retired from writing?

One last story that’s about music, not writing, but the principle still applies. There’s a band out there, I’m sure most of you have heard of them, Metallica. Whether you love them or hate them, most will agree that they were there in the birth of a genre we know today as Heavy Metal. Now, there are points in musical history like Helter Skelter by the Beatles or King Crimson that sound very metal for lack of a better word, And who can forget Black Sabbath who did metal before metal was cool?

Metallica, however, filled stadiums of fans and has legions of bands that would cite them as their inspiration. My AI fact checked stats estimate Metallica at 121 million album sales worldwide and Black Sabbath at 75 million. While it is undeniable that Black Sabbath had an influence on the genre of heavy metal, I would say Metallica became the template. While I’m sure I could debate for hours on who was more influential on the heavy metal genre over beers for hours (I mean who can forget that Dave Mustaine was a member of Metallica in the early days, but Megadeth is in the 50 million mark for album sales). If we go by album sales, Metallica is the top.

However, this story isn’t about Metallica or Megadeth or the names that an AI would put on the top lists for heavy metal, I merely needed to establish their importance to the genre and their success. The story is about Anvil, a band that had influenced Metallica and others. Listen to their cover of Paint it Black and in the first few notes, you can hear the crunchy galloping guitar Metallica is famous for. If Metallica is the template for heavy metal, then Anvil were the creators of that template and until a documentary put them back on the spotlight, they were doing food delivery and construction jobs after their musical career fell into obscurity, right around the same time Metallica was filling stadiums.

A lot of the most successful metal bands, Metallica included, cite Anvil as their inspiration, yet if it wasn’t for the documentary, they probably would have disappeared in relative obscurity. So, who are the great writers in the giveaways that generations will remember years after anyone who is alive right now or even knew a person alive right now? All? Some? None? I can’t tell you, and I don’t think anyone could. Their may be an Anvil among them that’s going to have a hand in shaping an entire new genre of fiction, but we’ll only figure it out years later, when a famous writer is asked, what book influenced you?

That’s why I say, if you see something that you think you’d like to read, give it a chance. It may be the next Anvil.

Books Leaving KU

Kal's Duty

Leaving KU: 10/31/24

Destroy her home world to save the galaxy?

Kal’s not a murderer like her father. There must be another way. A darkness is poised to destroy worlds, and she’s the only one who believes that it’s a threat.

To save the galaxy, Kal must broker peace between two warring galactic empires and endure trials that test her strength, mental fortitude, and wits.

She also needs to connect with her father, a man she’d rather launch into the heart of a star.

Find out if Kal has what it takes to destroy what lurks in the dark, waiting to devour the universe, in the third Teristaque novel.

Orcs in Portland and Other Social Justice Issues

Leaving KU: 12/28/24

Orcs invading Portland, a wolf in the janitor’s closet, black ooze dissolving the gym teacher: a typical day for the students of Beaverton High and their fearless teaching assistant.

Petra thought working for her old high school was the worst thing that could happen to her until a magical disease infects her son.

Meanwhile the Barbarians Breakfast Club faces creatures invading their high school and murdering their classmates and principal. Okay, so maybe the latter isn’t that bad.

The phenomena intensify, and soon it is not just the high school that’s infested with murderous creatures. So, our hapless heroes much seek aid from old allies and enemies.

Find out if Portland can survive in the second Misfits of Carnt novel.

The Homeless Monologues, The Chair, and Other Plays

Leaving KU: 12/13/24

This was a collection of plays and sketches I wrote when I was in the Eat, Drink, and Be Larry sketch comedy group. We did about 20 shows in two years and ended with Hamlet: The Vampire Slayer. We were doing them around the birth of YouTube, and I tried to convince the group to do more online content, but their wasn't much interest. Some of the aged well, others not so well. I think I'm going to remove this from internet entirely and I'll give away a free copy on Black Friday for anyone who's interested.

Back before I wrote Time Agency, I fancied myself a screenwriter. I also got an MFA in playwriting where I got to write plays and screenplays. I haven't counted, but I'm pretty sure I've written 10 full length plays/screenplays, and countless shorts like the ones in this collection. Most have been staged, and some have been made it to film back when staying up all hours making a film a handful of people would see at a film festival appealed to me.

The reason I published the Homeless Monologues is because they were arguably my most successful theater work. But they were never staged where I could watch them. I wrote them because a director wanted to do a project where 100 monologues about unhoused people were preformed throughout Albuquerque and each writer would have 5, and the actors would just do the monologue every time someone strolled down the alley. People would be given a map of the city, and free to wander the monologues how they liked.

I thought it was a great idea, so I wrote some monologues for him, but the project never happened. Not sure why, but the result was I had these monologues I wrote with no home. I wasn't really doing theater at the time, so I decided to upload them to a website where people looking for auditioning material could get royalty-free stuff to use in their auditions.

Whether it was my double A in my name, or just some quirk of fate, they become one of the highest viewed monologues on the site, I was getting emails all the time of people asking my permission to use them, which I always gave. I'm sure plenty just used them without contacting me. For a while, I imagine theater programs throughout the US were hearing my words from acting students. They were perfect audition length, and some a mix of serious a silly that would give an actor a way to flex their muscles.

I figured, man, I have something here. I should publish them. So I gathered a bunch of my shorts and published. Then planed to publish all my plays and screenplays. Very few people bought or read this book and I was making progress on novels that people were buying and reading. So I decided to let the book fall into obscurity. The monologue website even disappeared one day too. Now this collection seems like another life, one that I'm far away from (there are three books I published before anything else, even a lot of the plays, when I fancied myself becoming the next Dave Barry), but I'll save that for another email when do a last call to before I depublish the 3rd (the first two are already gone, but have some fun stories about them).

Anyway, if you want a snapshot of what I did before I switched to books, this collection is a glimpse into that world.

Book Swaps

The following authors are kindly sharing my books with their readers. Show them some love and click on their links.

When a signature has the power to start a galactic war….

Betrayal, love, and a fight for freedom collide in this gripping sci-fi novel.

Read Conspiracy today!

A hunt for relics in the caverns deep within a distant asteroid. All is not what it seems...

Read Perilous Quest today!

Can Johnny overcome his self-doubt, prove himself to his meddling father, and stop an out of control hyperloop in time to save everyone from certain death?

Read Hyperloop to Hell today!

The bar for heroes just got lower.

Read The Singer and the Charlatan today!

In this tale of space opera and cosmic adventure, the Ambassador of a mysterious and ancient family must forge a path through chaos to overcome the terrible enemies that desire humanity’s destruction.

Read The Survivors today!

Zoe Calloway is about to unravel the secrets of time travel and her father's mysterious disappearance.

Read Zoe Calloway today!

Will Divian go down the path of destruction like his father?

Read Divian today!

Would you like to see your book here? Hit me up on Story Origin.