5 Demons - Special Announcement!

Big things are afoot for The Five Demons You Meet In Hell. First and foremost, I’m removing it from Smashwords and Amazon. July 31st, 2015 will be the last day it will be available from those ebook retailers.

Does this mean it is gone for good? No. Bigger things are in store! I have just signed a contract with Pop Seagull Publishing, who will republish the novel next April both digitally and... IN PRINT! Yes, those of you who have asked for a hard copy of this epic afterlife story will finally be able to hold it in your hands and get it signed by yours truly!

When? That announcement is coming soon. In the meantime, I am permanently lowering the price of the book to $2.99 for the remainder of its run, both on Smashwords and Amazon. That’s less than the price of a Large Double-Double and a bagel at Tim Horton’s! If you haven’t read 5 Demons yet, and want to buy it for less than a Timmy’s breakfast, now’s the time to do so!

5 Demons - The Beginning!

The idea for The Five Demons You Meet In Hell came about because my then-publisher wasn't happy with a trend they saw in my work. I'd just submitted a manuscript to them that I was quite pleased with (aren't I always?) called Young Nostradamus, and they turned it down in fairly short order. "You always write about the bullied kid rising up and beating the odds," my editor told me. "We like to see our authors grow and try new things."

I still have plenty to say about the bullied kid, but I saw the merit in my editor's point of view. What if I mixed things up a little, and wrote from the POV of the bully?

With that thought, Boston Lefebvre was born. Don't ask me where I got the name from - it just popped into my head fully-formed and seemed right. It's certainly memorable. Boston was my bully, around which my new story would wrap.

But if anyone had the notion I was going to sympathize with the plight of the high school bully, well... they have another think bloody well coming! I'll write about a bully, all right... getting what he so richly deserves.

With that in mind, and given my fascination for the metaphysical coupled with my love for demons, it seemed only natural to send my bully Boston Lefebvre to Hell. The title was another inspired bit of brilliance - I just love a good spoof title! Harvard Lampoon has Bored of the Rings, Robert Rankin has Raiders of the Lost Car Park, The Sprouts of Wrath and The Toyminator, and I have a take-off of Mitch Albom's classic. If you meet five people in Heaven, it seemed likely to me you'd get five demons in the other place!

Also, I originally titled the book The 25 Demons You Meet in Hell, because I wasn't sure if five demons would cut it. I needn't have worried; five demons were more than enough to get the job done. Good thing, too - my spoof title works much better as-is!

The story came to me as I wrote it, and it was a joy to put on paper. I'd tell you more, but as one of my favourite fictional characters is fond of saying: "Spoilers!" Go check it out right now, with this link here.

PS: I just found out this very second that I'm not alone in spoofing Mitch Albom's title. There is a book on Amazon called The Five People You Meet In Hell by Rich Pablum! Guess he was faster on the draw. I have not read this work, but I am confident my novel and his are very different. It seems we had more-or-less the same idea on tag lines, however; both of us use the "This is not that book" gag. No worries. There's plenty of room on the Internet for both of us.

PPS: There's also a book called The Five Jerks You Meet On Earth by Ray Zardetto. I'm starting to not feel so special about my title now... :(

The Five Demons You Meet In Hell

That really big announcement I’ve been hinting at? Well, here it is:

On November 13, 2013, I will release my latest novel, The Five Demons You Meet in Hell on Amazon’s KDP program! Below you will see the finished cover artwork, courtesy of my artist friend Sarah Water Raven:

I’ve met many authors on Facebook and Twitter who have used Amazon to publish their novels electronically, with varying degrees of success. My first foray into the world of ebooks, Closets, has been something of a spectacular failure. I’m hoping that, with a more marketable novel aimed at an older audience, I will have more positive results.

So, set your clocks and start the countdown! And buy a Kindle. That would really help! And please, tell everyone you know, and even a few that you don’t, that Timothy Carter is back in the far-fetched fiction game!

So Now I'm 40

Yes, today is the day of my 40th Birthday. It's an enormous milestone, the way all birthdays that end in a '0' tend to be. I'm glad I was able to get one last birthday in before the apocalypse, which is of course scheduled for next Friday.

*#$*ing Mayans.

The day has gone well. I had a job interview that seemed to go swimmingly. I got some more work done on my current novel project, Zombie Jesus Day, and am nearing the 1st 3rd mark. Violet got me the blu-ray of The Avengers as my birthday present, and I am currently enjoying a second viewing (with director commentary!). I had my party last Saturday; it involved good friends, English beer, and a fantastic selection of chicken wings. Good times all around, and memories I shall cherish while the world is ending.

I've had some good writing-related stuff recently. My good friend Rebecca Lovatt reviewed my novel The Cupid War, and you can read that review here. She also did a thorough and intensive interview with me, and the link to that is here.

My good friend Steven Pearl, author of Tinker's Plague, filmed an interview with me at SFContario. You can see Part I of that interview by clicking here.

So, happy birthday to me! Jolly good, and all that stuff. Now, if you'll excuse me, The Daily Show is on. Bye!

The Cupid War - First Love!

I am tremendously grateful to my editors at Flux for helping me make my books the best they could be. A perfect example of their help came during the revisions of The Cupid War, when they suggested I flesh out the details regarding the first couple Fallon had created. Originally, I had simply mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 9 that Fallon had successfully brought two people together. Flux thought I could do better, and I did; I came up with the idea that Fallon had united two writer/performers at a spoken word event. Thanks to those extra details, I not only had a stronger scene in the novel, I also had the seeds for a short story!

The Cupid War: Fallon's First Couple is an even-more-fleshed-out version of that scene. It features both Fallon and his mentor Caleb, and includes a certain naughty song that I wrote during my own spoken word days. I plan to release this story here, on this blog, in just under a month's time. If you liked The Cupid War, don't miss this sequel... no, it's not a sequel. Or a prequel. It's more of an... inthemiddleofquel. You'll see what I mean when you read the story. And you can do so on November 1st.

Mark your calendars, cancel your appointments and practice your call-in-sick voices! You won't be sorry.

Don't forget to check out this blog's other short story, Walk of Evil. And please post some comments - I love feedback!

Killing Characters and Fixing Mistakes

I just killed off a minor character. Then I brought him back. One of my main characters stabbed him. And then he didn't. It occurred to me that the stabbing was a possibility, so I gave it a go for a couple of sentences. It was sudden and completely unexpected, but it wasn't quite right. That, and I didn't really know what to do with it. So I took it out. I turned back time. You can do that, when you're an author. Sometimes, though, it takes a lot more than a couple of sentences for me to realize I've gone the wrong way. Once, I had to excise an entire chapter to fix a mistake. More recently, I had to chop about five chapters from a novel. And, both Evil and Epoch required a three-chapter rewrite near their ends to correct some serious gaffes (that my editors caught, not me). Mistakes happen. Even in writing! Even when you're still in the super-creative, make-it-all-up part of the process. Realizing you've made one is actually a sign that you're doing something right; you know your characters and story well enough to detect when something's wrong. It's a gut thing, for the most part. Trust your gut. Try things out. One way might look right; go for the one that feels right. The one that feels like it's part of the story. That minor character of mine gets to live. It wasn't his time to go. Not yet. I killed off a major character instead. I'm a whole chapter past that point now, and still going. It works. The story is happy. So am I.

An Evil Fan!

2012 is off to a wonderful start. Here is an email I received from a fan named Angel Albright last weekend:

Dear Mr. Carter,
I have always thought about reaching an author to compliment them, but your novel, Evil?, is the first that has pushed me to do so. I had first stumbled upon you when I was searching my local library's website for books that had homosexuality as a subject. I love reading 'homo-fiction', mostly because I'm a flamboyant les. However, your book was more than simply a gay main character. It starts out with such a jaw-dropping subject and leads into such peculiar circumstances that whenever I tried to explain the book, it was an agitated struggle and I quickly gave up! It was filled with humor, heart-warming dialog and unbelievable characters. The plot was mind-blowing. There were spins in the book that made me put it down and have a silent fit. It was definitely one of the best books I have picked up. Thank you (oh so much) for writing it.

Euphoric,
Andrew-Angel


I can't tell you how much that brightened my spirits! Good to know that Evil? is reaching people. Thank you, Angel Albright!