Applied Modeling

I was very happy to see yesterday that one of the Atheist pendants I sell in my Shapeways Model Shop sold yesterday.  A silver one, no less!

I've sold a couple of those, and would certainly like to sell more!

Here's where we come to the helpful part of this blog.

You could say that I'm an aspiring marketer.  To be honest, I've done a terrible job with marketing in the past, particularly of my existing books.  However, I'm studying how to improve that currently.  As I mentioned yesterday, I'm going to review the marketing book I'm currently reading, once I've finished it.

My first big marketing success came when I ran my Kickstarter campaign for my upcoming novel, Bodacious Creed.  One of the things I learned, and that helped quite a bit, was how to share the campaign on Facebook.  You want to get the word out, but you don't want to come off as begging for money.  My posts would essentially "I'm running a Kickstarter campaign for my upcoming stampunk zombie western novel! Come see what it's all about!"  These, I posed to groups and pages related to the topic, where such posts are acceptable.

I should probably do the same for these pendants, now that they've sold a few.

I just updated my page on Amazon's Author Central!

I've been reading a book about Kindle marketing, and I will review it for you all once I've finished.  Getting back to my Amazon page is one of the steps I'm taking.

I'll have more interesting updates in the coming month!  December, as I'm sure all of you can imagine, has been extremely busy.

Review of Carlton Mellick III's "Clusterfuck"

If you haven’t read a bizarro novel yet, you are seriously missing out.  The genre takes all the gore of the freakiest horror movies, throws in strange sex and absurd ideas, and gives us some of the most entertaining and often hilarious novels available.

Carlton Mellick III is often called the godfather of bizarro fiction, and his frat boy spelunking horror novel, Clusterfuck, is a sick, demented, and thoroughly entertaining read.

Technically, Clusterfuck is the sequel to Mellick’s novel Apeshit, a favorite among his fans, though it isn’t necessary to read the first before reading the second.  Both are tributes to B horror films, but while Apeshit is about high school kids in a secluded mountain cabin, Clusterfuck is about seven college students who go spelunking in the caves under that same mountain.

The students include Dean, a douchebag frat boy with lactating breasts, Trent, who was encouraged to be an asshole by his mother and has risen to the challenge, Lauren, a seemingly sweet sorority girl with a hell of a disgusting fetish, and adopted sisters Selina and Marta, whose fucked-up secrets are two awesome to give away in a review.

These fools—and yes, all the main characters are all fools—go caving in Turtle Mountain despite warnings from a local ranger to stay the hell out of there.  For Trent, this is all a player, PUA style scheme to get laid.

If you are claustrophobic at all, take this as a warning: Mellick’s protagonists get themselves literally into a lot of tight spots, and not the sexy kind.  I don’t know if this book will help or exacerbate claustrophobia, but I got a thrill out of those intense scenes.

What else is under the ground besides tight spaces?  How about white-eyed children, immortal mutants, and radioactive crystals?  Yep, all there.   We also learn more about what the hell was going on in Apeshit, including the likely background of a couple of monsters in that book.

I’ve read and loved nearly thirty of Mellick’s novels, and I recommend this one as highly as any of the others.  If bizarro sounds intriguing to you, this is a great first book to get you into the genre.  If it sounds too strange and freaky, try it anyway.  You just might become disgusted with yourself when you find that you really, really like it.

NaNoWriMo Has Concluded

Howdy, Friends!

This entry is going to serve triple duty.  It is an update to the Bodacious Creed Kickstarter page, and a new post to both my Bodacious Creed and From Idea to Art blogs.

NaNoWriMo has concluded!  Alas, I did not technically "win" this year.  The goal is to write 50,000 words of a novel over the course of November.  My word count came to 31,400.  Still, that's 31,400 words of Bodacious Creed written!

Why not the 50,000?  Well, November was an especially busy month for me.  I've been working to get my son into an after school day care, so that I can get a day job.  This will mean significantly more income, less having to seek out jobs, and more focused creative time.  I'm a single father, and son had the week of Thanksgiving off, from November 21 to 28.  We had a great week, but that also meant less time to write.

Now that he's back in school, I'll have more time to continue with the novel!  I will, of course, continue to keep everyone updated.

I guess the point here is that of the old adage that if you shoot for the starts, you may not reach them, but you may at least reach the moon.  I didn't hit the 50,000 word goal, but 31,400 in a month is something to be proud of.