BOOK SIGNING IN DENVER, SEPTEMBER 9

I will be joining about 40 other authors from across the fiction world at a book signing in Denver Friday night September 9 at 8 PM. Come to the Renaissance Hotel at 3801 Quebec St, Denver, CO 80207 and say hi. There will be a cash bar. I look forward to meeting each of you!

PATRICIA DUFFY - FROM PLAIN TO PLAIN AWESOME!

    Patricia Duffy is the foremost female heroine in my latest thriller, Presence of Malice. Many readers have asked how someone as nice as Patricia ended up working for such a prick as Dr. Gerald Gannery, and moreover, why she stayed.

    Such things happen gradually. To a wide-eyed college student still several months away from graduating from business school, it seemed like a dream job come true, at first. Not only was one of New York's most prominent plastic surgeons and purported philanthropists willing to hire her as his business manager before she graduated, but he would pay all of her student loans and buy back the mortgage her parents had put on the family ranch to pay for it. When, after a year beyond graduation, Gannery never did get around to signing the mortgage back over to her parents, well it seemed ungrateful and rude to press him on it. So she waited, hoping he would remember his promise himself.

    The job itself never quite seemed to rise to the level of Business Manager, either. While she was given free reign over his schedule and appointments, many of which were for consultations but none of which were ever for the actual surgery itself, he remained quite secretive about the practice's books and investments. It wasn't for some time that she realized he wasn't being cautious, he had no intention of sharing the books or other aspects of the business with her, and her job quickly devolved into little more than Secretary, though she preferred Executive Assistant.

    Patricia was raised on Midwest Judaeo-Christian values, to respect authority and one's elders, to show gratitude to benefactors, to be humble and never boorish or overbearing. When Gannery expressed dissatisfaction with her performance, she strove to do better. When dissatisfaction became disdain, and disdain gradually gave way to outright disrespect, still she tried to work harder to please him. By the time things had progressed to full-blown abuse, she wasn't in a position to recognize it right away. Her focus still remained doing a better job to please her boss.

    So what finally gave her the spine to rebel? It was a combination of factors really. His most recent tirade when she failed to book a socially advantageous lunch date for him led directly into his public humiliation of her on national cable television. That left her in just the right resentful mood when she spotted Gregory, Jet Gatling's paraplegic brother, hacking into her employer's computer. Suddenly, lashing out, getting back at Gerald Gannery was all she wanted to do.

    Read the exciting Presence of Malice and see how she does it!

Jet Gatling - Man of Mystery

Jet Gatling is the central character in my latest book, Presence of Malice, and yet very little of the book is told from his point of view (only two short narratives, in point of fact.) I did that deliberately, I wanted Jet to remain a mystery to the reader, with a big question - is he the good guy or is he another bad guy? If a bad guy, why didn't he outright kill Dr. Gannery, the man he'd been contracted to take out, given multiple opportunities to do so? If a good guy, then why doesn't he warn of the bomb that takes out an entire hotel floor?

These and other burning questions are answered in Presence of Malice, hopefully to the satisfaction of the reader. All except one - how far is Jet willing to go? What lines in he willing to cross? What, if anything, will make him stop and reconsider his rage-blind determination to accomplish what he sees as necessary?

Add Jet to any situation and he immediately becomes the wild card. There's no predicting what he's going to do, or how he'll go about fulfilling his contract. Is he constrained by the same laws and moral code as the rest of us? Or have his years as a Navy SEAL, carrying out black ops for his government, placed him above the law? Did eight years as a prisoner in a Chinese prison, disavowed by the same government that used to employ him, tortured endlessly by his captors for information, unmoor his moral compass, send him adrift amid his own roiling rage, to redefine justice...his own way?

Read Presence of Malice and decide for yourself!

THINGS TO DO IN VEGAS WHEN YOU'RE UNDEAD

Sorry it's been a while since I posted on this blog. Been busily promoting the release of Bloodtrail, the enthralling sequel to Bloodflow. Sales are steady and we're pleased. I'd like a few more reviews on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com but I am pleased with the ones I have. It strikes me as I read these reviews though, that many readers are reluctant to reveal certain details about the book for fear of giving spoilers. Well, as the author of the book there are certain details I don't mind you knowing, as I think they help readers see what a fun and exciting adventure the book is!

So below is a list of some of the details I don't mind you knowing about Bloodtrail before you buy:

• In the first book, Bloodflow, Kate only had enough time to learn a few things about what it means to be a vampire when it became necessary to betray Darkthorne and help Litchner's militia destroy him. Even then, she was in a haze of denial. Now, in Bloodtrail, a year later, she still hasn't fully come to grips with what it means to be one of the undead. She has made the necessary concessions to her new nature - she only works at night, she feeds as her animal counterparts, the Falcon and the panther, and no longer eats regular food. But she is still striving to live her life as normally as possible. She avoids the use of her new capabilities where possible, has refused to explore what other powers she may have that Darkthorne didn't have time to teach her, and has otherwise entirely ignored the fact that she is no longer human. But this sort of denial of her true nature is a time bomb, and on her new assignment to find a poor misguided runaway teenaged girl, Kate will find herself confronted with the realities of her new form of existence in brutal ways that will no longer allow her to deny it - she is a vampire!
• Kate runs afoul of a cabal of creatures that look entirely human but who are able to draw off of the most foul, greedy, prurient, unsavory emotions of human kind as if it were a narcotic. They are addicted and have resorted to hosting a series of gruesome and bloody gladiatorial games to elicit these emotions from their guest in order to get their fix. The creatures are able to recognize Kate for what she is, and she them, but as they lack any real power Kate dismisses them as no real threat. But struggle as Kate might with the moral and ethical implications of what it means to be a vampire, the leader of these creatures, a Mr. Konig, entices her, tempts her, and seduces her to drop all pretense to the hero's ethic and fully and freely indulge her power, take her place as superior to the humans around her, and rule them.
• In all his eight centuries of roaming the Earth, Darkthorne claimed to never have met another vampire like himself, except those he, himself, fathered and later destroyed out of self preservation. Kate herself learns what this means first hand as she inadvertently encounters a newly-minted vampire and must fight him to the death in all their animal forms - she the panther and the falcon, he a hyena and a giant bat.
• As in the first book, Kate finds herself pitting her supernatural powers against man's technology in a climactic scene, trapped in the belly of an unmanned fighter jet that is targeting two innocent young people fleeing for their lives.
• Early in the book Kate saves the life of a very unlikely ally who, in the end, defends, protects and nurses her as she strives to recover from a catastrophic, near-fatal conflagration.

These are just some of the thrilling adventures waiting for you in Bloodtrail, sequel to the equally as exciting Bloodflow!

"BLOODTRAIL"

    "Bloodtrail," the hotly anticipated sequel to "Bloodflow" and second volume in the Kathryn Desmarais Gothic Mysteries is finally complete and at the presses now, release data to be announced!

    "Bloodtrail" takes Kate to sin city, Las Vegas, in search of a misguided runaway teenage girl. Kate, who is still struggling to come to terms with what she has become, runs afoul of a cabal of strange subhumans who feed off of the basest, most prurient emotions of human-kind. These creatures may seem harmless at first, but underestimating them may just be the last mistake Kate ever makes.

    As part of our promotion, because Bloodtrail takes place in Las Vegas, the world's adult playground, we are giving away decks of "Bloodtrail" poker-size playing cards. Go to KevinPaulTracy.com to enter!

    Thanks to these sites for listing our contest for us. visit them for other great giveaways!

• Online-Sweepstakes.com
• HyperSweep.com
• GiveawayCube.com

More listings to come...

SEQUELS

    I'm back from a long hiatus. I apologize to regular readers of my blog - it appears when I'm writing a manuscript, most of my writing energy is taken up by that. Between that and certain outside obligations - most notably my monthly contribution to the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers blog the first Thursday of every month - and it seems I have little energy left to keep up my own blog. I'm going to work on that in the future, because this blog is every bit as important to me as any of those other projects. It's how I keep in touch with my readers, after all.

    The good news is Bloodtrail, the hotly-awaited sequel to Bloodflow, is off to the editor. Now the rest is up to him. But this has prompted me to share a few thoughts I have on sequels. A new perspective, as it were, gained by working on this project and facing the age-old challenges of all writers struggling to write a series.

    For example, with so many fans of the first book, is it possible to please them all? It's unlikely that everyone likes all the same things about the first book, so what are those elements of the first book that drew most readers and kept them reading? Can those elements be carried over to a sequel? Can you pick-up, once more, the same rhythm and cadence of the first book, the same atmosphere and voice, while also making it fresh and advancing the series in important and, most of all, entertaining ways?

    The biggest difference I see between a single, stand-alone novel and a series is that while a single novel deals with a a story arc, and with character arcs, a series expands that. Each successive sequel must contain it's own, internal arc, yes, but now it must also extend an even larger arc that is not resolved in each book, but is carried over throughout the series. Likewise, the arc of recurring characters must also extend across the series. While some conflicts must be resolved in each book, others must be carried over. And these extended arcs must by expanded in realistic, believable ways. There are television series on the air now who use old, dried-up soap-opera tactics for extending story arcs, plainly transparent artificial constructs to make a plot-line carry over several episodes. These blatantly manipulative "plotting devices" insult me, and therefore they anger me. I can only imagine others feel the same way. I don't want to insult or anger my readers, so I better make damn sure that my extended plot-lines come tight and smart and believable.

    In video game design, there are four levels of opponents a user must face. There are Pawns, or nuisance opponents that present obstacles but little more than that. These are the little mushrooms or strawberries or ghosts or whatever that could kill you if they hit you head-on, but are easily dispatched with a single shot or bop on the head or other similarly simple action. Then there are the Fighters, the ones that, themselves, track you, follow you and shoot at you. They are also fairly easily dispatched as long as you are wily and don't get hit first. Next, there is the Boss, who much like the fighter can track you and shoot at you, but who also must take more than one hit in order to defeat. Then, finally, there is the Super-boss. The Super-boss is the hardest yet to kill. He is smart, mobile, heavily armed and heavily protected. Killing him is not a straightforward proposition, you must make use of some trick or special ability or some such rare commodity to defeat this villain.

    Writing a series is much the same. There is the immediate plot-line of the current book, the obstacle (which does not have to be a human enemy, perhaps a disease or impending tornado, etc.) which must be overcome within the current plot-line, being resolved by the end of the book itself. Then there is the small-arc plot-line - an obstacle that recurs over a wider arc than just one book, but not, perhaps, the entire series. This plot-line can take two, three, even four volumes to be resolved. And finally the overarching series plot-line, the primary question of all questions that cannot be answered so easily, but whose solution must be found by the final book in the series.

    These are the series' that grab and hold my attention, and I imagine most readers as well. This, I think, makes a great starting point when developing a series. Please feel free to share, via comments, below, your thoughts or ideas on other things to incorporate into a successful series.

BOOK GIVEAWAY: BLOODFLOW

    Sorry, folks, no posts for the next couple of weeks. I'm right down to the wire on "Bloodtrail," the amazing sequel to "Bloodflow." Meanwhile, why not enter to win your free copy of "Bloodflow?"

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Bloodflow

by Kevin Paul Tracy

Giveaway ends October 31, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

BACKGROUND NOISE

    This week's article is going to be a brief one. I wanted to wax rumanitive about background noise when you're writing. Some people are not only able to write in a cone of utter and complete silence, or as close as one can get, but they even require it. I can't imagine that - silence drives me crazy. To me, and this is just my opinion, but I'm sure certain others of you out there agree, silence isn't anything in an of itself, but rather the lack of something...noise.

    I've been known to write in noisy places: the cafeteria in high school; at home with parents and siblings talking or arguing or playing loudly; at a restaurant or cafe; etc. Once I lived in a house in which my den window overlooked a preschool. It was about a half a block away, so it wasn't too loud, and I actually found the mixed and incoherent sounds of children playing soothing and very conducive to concentration. Some of you probably find that hard to believe, and I suspect you have children of your own and so hear such racket much too often and much too closely.

    A writing buddy has a machine...yes, an actual machine...that produces "white" noise, which from all I can tell is pretty much just an electronically produced hissing or shushing noise. He finds this most conducive to writing. Others I've talked to have machines that produce the sounds of the ocean, tropical rain forest, deep woods, etc. That does sound kind of nice, to me.

    These days more often than not I put on one of several Pandora stations I've created to listen to while writing. For those of you who don't know, Pandora.com is one of those websites that allow you to define audio channels to your own taste - you can thumbs-down tracks you don't like and don't want included in that particular channel, and thumbs-up tracks that fit well. Based on this Pandora does a remarkably good job at selecting tracks from literally millions at its disposal that most closely fit the tracks you've indicated you like. The more thumbs you click, up or down, the better job it does at this. The free version includes ads which aren't too intrusive, or you can pay the nominal monthly fee for the ad-free version, which has turned out to be worth it to me.

    I've created a couple of favorite Pandora channels that are so ideally suited to my writing I find it hard to imagine how I got by without it before. For calmer, beatific, even romantic scenes or chapters I have a channel with mixed New Age classical music, which is absolutely NOT muzak, but a softer mix of music influenced by Celtic, Native American, Asian, even sometimes African traditions. For more lively, upbeat, or silly passages I have a channel of Broadway musicals. Yes, that's right, I love broadway and I'm straight...deal with it! Heheh...

    But given that I mostly write adventure/thrillers, my favorite channel by far is the one I call Epic Soundtracks, which plays instrumental tracks played behind some of the world's greatest movies. You don't often notice the music when you're at a movie, but listening to these tracks I've discovered some of the most surprisingly beautiful and inspiring orchestral pieces I've ever heard before in my life. Music from movies like Pandora, Lord of The Rings, Cloud Atlas, and so many others is not only ideal for writing scenes of epic struggle and sacrifice myself, but has actually become one of my favorite things to listen to even when I'm not writing.

    I'd love to hear about the kind of background noise you have to tolerate when you write, or choose to listen to for inspiration. Drop me a comment.

WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

    We all know it. Like the demon possessing the man from Gadara, it is Legion, and it goes by a hundred different names. The bog; the swamp; the stairway to nowhere; the wall; the well; the pit; the wasteland; the middle part; etc. It is that part of our story past the setup and the inciting incident, but before the build to the climax. It's the middle part of our book in which the story must be carried forward, but we have no earthly idea what to do with it. Understandably, the opening and inciting incident of out book gets a lot of attention - often it was the idea that sparked us to write this book to begin with. Generally the climax and denouement of our story has gotten at least some focus, as well - we've at least imagined variations on how to bring our story to a close. But the middle part rarely gets much thought until you're there. And then, you're stuck.

    Generally I find this is a great time to introduce complications into your story, subplots, if you will, as we discussed earlier this month on the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers blog. But what kind of subplot could we introduce? We've given our main plot a lot of thought, now suddenly we have to come up with another?

    I've heard the advice before, and though I've never had occasion to use, it, it's an interesting thought. Think of the worst thing that could happen in relation to your story...and then make it happen and see how your characters react. If you've set up a murder mystery in which an innocent man is imprisoned forma murder he didn't commit, ask yourself, after all the setup and inciting incident, what's the worst thing that could happen? Maybe he gets shanked in prison by someone connected to the victim; maybe his six-year-old daughter is kidnapped by a disgruntled relative of the victim; maybe he is visited in prison by a US Marshal and we discover that not only has he been living under Witness Security, but because of the arrest they are cutting him off. Anyone of these twists can eat up a lot of pages to bring around, meanwhile still advancing your main plot.

    I keep telling myself one of these days I'm going to try this in one of my books. Unfortunately up to this point my stories have been pretty tightly scripted, with not a lot of room for experimentation like that. But if anyone out there has tried this trick, or plans to after reading this blog, my readers and I would love to hear about how it all came out in the comments, below! Drop us a line.

THINGS I HATE ABOUT WRITING

    I love writing. It's much more than a pass-time or hobby for me. Yes, you could call it a drive, or obsession. But even more than that, it is sustenance, nourishment to me. When I haven't written in a day or two, the urge to do so is much like starving.

    On the other hand there are some things I downright hate about writing! Things that drive me bat-shit crazy and make me want to throw my typewriter across the room (if I wrote on a typewriter instead of a laptop.) Here are some things I hate about writing.

    I hate it when the final sentence of a chapter ends up, through coincidence, alone at the top of an otherwise blank page, all by itself! Since much of what I write involves adventure and action, most if not all of my chapters end in some sort of cliff-hanger. That means generally the single most important sentence in a chapter is the very last one. I can't just cut it! But leaving a single sentence alone on a page is a formatting nightmare - it doesn't just waste space, it looks stupid! And you would think, given the literally tens of thousands of words I write in a book that this would have to be rare, but you'd be surprised how often it happens! Argh!

    I hate cutting! Removing parts of my blood from the page, whether for space or just because it doesn't contribute to the overall narrative. I have no trouble adding more story, but I hate cutting. The words I write are like my children. What if someone told you one of your kids didn't fit in with the rest of the family and you had to get rid of her?

    I hate the swamp! You know it. It's that stretch of the book somewhere just past the middle where you suddenly find yourself stuck for story. You've worked hard and done an admirable job of writing the beginning of the story, setting up great conflict and plot, characters and events, and even carried them forward toward a phenomenal climax and denouement. You know in your head how you want things to come together at the end. But you're not there yet. If you ended things here the book would be too short. You need to carry the story forward more, ratchet up the tension, bring the readers along toward the climax. But you're stuck. You can't think of what to add to prolong the conflict and enrich the plot. The swamp. Grrr!

    Sex scenes. I know I'm not alone in this. The search for metaphors and similes and imagery and subtext for sex is exhausting and frankly not very sexy. Just about everything has already been used as a metaphor for sex in literature: from automobile racing to cooking; from rock-climbing to cliff-diving; from horseback riding to, of all things, golf! The movie Ghost found a way to make pottery-throwing sexy. Go figure. Trying to find new and fresh ways to say "they fucked" without being so crude and abrupt about it is work, not fun!

    Meta-choreography. Choreography, in writing, is placing each character on stage where he needs to be for the scene to work, and being sure the reader can envision that. What I call meta-choreography is bringing all of the characters into place for the final conflict and resolution. Sometimes it's hard: he's just boarded a plane in Baltimore but you need him to be in Los Angeles sooner in order to be in place on time; she needs to be at the arena before the bus explodes, but it is essential she take a shower first so she doesn't show up smelling like teargas; the hero must be knocked unconcious in order to have the final vision that explains everything, but he can't still be unconscious when the aliens arrive or he'll miss the final battle, in which he plays a pivotal role; etc. Sometimes meta-choreography can be a bitch.

    So what are some things about writing you find frustrating?

WHAT OTHERS DON'T GET ABOUT WRITERS

    My friends don't understand how I can write so much. For that matter, my family doesn't get me, either. Only other writers, with the same devotion, the same passion, the same drive as I have, get me. Which is why attending critique groups and writers conferences can be such an important part of being a writer - just a couple of hours' exposure to other writer can energize the creative batteries more than almost any other writing-related activity.

    So what is it that others don't get about writers?

    Well, for one thing, they think it is a lonely, solitary profession. What they don't understand that when I'm sitting alone at my computer writing, I'm not as alone as it may seem. That room is crowded elbow-to-elbow with characters, all clamoring to be heard. Granted, not all of them are very likeable people, and some are down-right despicable human beings. But it's anything but lonely, and the furthest thing from boring that I can imagine.

    Another thing they don't understand is how I can have so much to say. "How do you come up with all those stories?" they ask. As fellow writers, you know that our minds are never idle. Any snippet of conversation, song lyric, grocery store mishap, traffic altercation, overheard argument, etc. can spark the flame of inspiration in us. We are constantly thinking in terms of storyline and plot, meaning and subtext. I once drove by a restaurant with a fountain out front. There was a single young girl sitting alone on the low retaining wall of the reflecting pool, dressed impeccably and even a little provocatively, in a tasteful way, looking into the water, lost in thought. I began to spin a yarn centered around that single image out loud to my companion in the car and by the time we got to our destination I'd woven a complex plot involving inchoate love, loss, epic war and a solitary gold Roman coin that had inspired men for centuries, both to the good and the evil. My passenger was gob smacked at what I'd done. But to me in was all in a day's occupation.

    Something I hear often from my non-writer friends is that they often thought about writing a book or short story, but hadn't, yet. What they don't get about writers is that when the urge to write hits us it isn't a vague impulse, but an obsessive drive that gnaws at the base of our skull, much like a migraine, until we finally feed the beast and sit down to write. If you're like me, and you haven't written anything in a few days, you start to get irritable, snippy with other, and sometimes downright cranky. A writer needs the outlet of writing like a full bladder needs pissing. And you can quote me on that!

    Others don't get us, but our fellow writers do. That's why every o9nce in a while we need to be around other writers. To be reminded that there are others out there just as haunted by phantom characters, inspired by seemingly mundane events around them, and just generally grumpy little crazy people...like us!

    For just such a fix, look into attending this year's Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Writers Conference this year.

BOOK SIGNINGS: UTILITY OR VANITY

   In a prior life I used to manage local music talent, mostly helping teen garage bands make the transition into actual performance venues and the like. It was not uncommon, unfortunately, to schedule an opening act and a headline act for a venue and, no matter how much advertising is done - print, social, marquee, etc. - the bands are the only ones to show up, some stragglers aside. The headliners would sit and watch the opening act perform, and then they'd trade places on the stage and the openers would watch the headliners perform. I used to call nights like that, none too politely, Incest-a-poloozas. Maybe we could say it was good performance practice, but let's agree that's just putting lipstick on a pig.

   Sometimes an author's book signing can feel like that - the number of friends and fellow writers that show up can be counted on one hand, and the rest of the time you're left smiling at passers-by, attempting to look friendly and approachable, and just generally looking like a doofus!

   So why do we do book signings? It certainly isn't for the one book or two we might sell at every third appearance, which is a distinct kind of thrill, more like a drop of water on a dying man's tongue, great for what it is, but hardly life-saving. Is it vanity? Is it just to see our name on the chalk-board-sandwich-board set on the sidewalk outside the store? Does it make us feel somehow like real writers to sit idly behind a banner touting our latest release, sorting the three pens we brought with us, rearranging the books from one pattern to another? If we don't sign a single book, or even sell one or two, is there really any utility at all in working so hard to schedule book signings for ourselves?

   There are self-promotion superstars, personal-marketing gods who will tell you to pick creative, out-of-the-box venues for your signings; promote your appearances with contests and giveaways; don't wait for customers to come to your table but go out and engage them; etc. But the secret little truth is these people are making more off the money you pay for their advice than they are from putting their own advice into practice.

   So do appearances and signings have any utility at all? Or is it all just a single tear into the ocean?

   The answer is in how you, yourself, shop for books. I'm betting the vast majority of you out there are like me. How many of you have walked by the lady offering samples at the grocery store, maybe you take a sample, maybe you don't, but you don't take one of the boxes or packages she has stacked around her for sale. Then, later, on another aisle, you see the product, the very one she was pushing, and you take your purchase from here? No one likes to be sold stuff, even if later they decide it sounded pretty good after all.

   Like me, you are reluctant to pick up a book written by someone you've never heard of before. You almost always buy books by author's you already know, or someone whose opinion you respect has recommended. Name recognition is the key. Getting your name out there so often and so much that people begin to recognize it, even if they don't know where from. So much that one day they pick up your book, recognize your name and think, "I've heard a lot about this guy/gal before, so he/she must be good." And they buy your book!

   Book signings - indeed all self promotion - is all about name recognition, putting your name on the lips of customers, or in the backs of their minds like a seed to take root and bear fruit at a later time. So, book signings: vanity? Maybe. Sure. Okay, a little bit, yeah. But utility! Very much so!

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

     I'm lucky enough to have four appearances scheduled over the next four months (see Appearances in the sidebar at right.) I certainly would like to have more scheduled, but I still think that's pretty darn good. So in this week's post I'd like to say a word or two about each of the venues I'll be appearing at in upcoming signings and panel discussions.

Hearthfire Books of Evergreen
1254 Bergen Parkway
Suite D118
Evergreen, CO 80439

FRIDAY, MARCH 14, 3PM-6PM

     Hearthfire Books in Evergreen is a cute shop set in one of those strip malls where some of the stores face away from the street. The store is one of those, down a short set of steps, tucked cozily in the corner. It's a quaint shop open to a cafe next door where I will have a table set up signing copies of both of my books: Rogue Agenda and Bloodflow. Drop by and say hi to Kappy and Luda and have a look around. You'll really like this place!

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Covered Treasures Bookstore
105 Second St.
Monument, Colorado 80132

THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 5:30PM-7PM

     Covered Treasres Bookstore in Monument is another one of those storefronts that are much bigger on the inside than they appear on the outside. In late April and early May they are hosting A Spotlight on Local Authors meant to celebrate local writing talent and feature some writers with recent releases. If you're a local Colorado author, or just aspire to be, then this means you! I'll be joining a panel of writers and signing copies of Rogue Agenda and Bloodflow.

Come to the event, get your signed copies of my books, network with other writers, and have some fun!

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Bookbar
4280 Tennyson Street
Denver, CO 80212

SATURDAY, MAY 10, 12PM

     Nicole, owner and proprietor of the Denver Bookbar has always been a big booster to RMFW and it's members, carrying our newly released books, hosting appearances and panels and signings. And she always puts on a fun event, and the Bookbar is a really original space with a refreshing take on books and wine. I love it there, I feel very comfortable curling up with a good book and a glass of chardonnay or something. I'll be joining a panel of writers and signing copies of Rogue Agenda and Bloodflow in May. Come to the Tennyson Street unofficial arts district and show Nicole your appreciation for everything she's done for us at RMFW!

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Old Firehouse Books
232 Walnut Street
Fort Collins, CO 80524

SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 2PM

     Yep, you guessed right, this bookstore occupies an old firehouse in the middle of Fort Collins, a great shop that goes on further than it initially appears to. It's open to a tea-shop next door from which the smell and aromas are exotic and wonderful. The neighborhood is full of great cafes and restaurants to snag a bite before or after the signing. Come join me at The Old Firehouse where I'll be signing copies of both of my books: Rogue Agenda and Bloodflow.

OPEN LETTER TO A BOOKSELLER

    In today's post I'd like to reprint an email I sent to a local independent bookseller in response to their email detailing their outrageous policy for hosting book signings for local authors. This is not, of course, any representation of independent booksellers as a whole. In general these are some of the warmest, friendliest people with the biggest hearts that has ever been my privilege to know. But I do think the last paragraph of my letter to this particular bookseller says it all.

"Dear M. Bookseller,

    "Thanks for your courteous and professional email. Unfortunately it appears I will not be able to do a book signing at your store after all. Let me explain why.

    "Your requirements are, to be brief: a reasonable expectation of 40-50 attendees; at least 20 sales at the event to consider it successful; a $200 co-op fee; a 40% discount on at least 50 books; and a $5 voucher fee from each attendee. I am surprised if, under these strictures, you are scheduling any such events at all at your store.

    "For anyone to be willing to buy a $5 voucher to attend such an event, they would already have some certainty of buying the book, in which case they most likely have bought the book already, given all the more convenient options than attending a booksigning at a store to do so.

    "If I do not have a reasonable expectation of drawing 40-50 people to a signing event you will not host it. On the other hand, if I already had a reasonable expectation of 40-50 such people in any one community attending such an event my sales would already be strong enough in the community not to warrant the 40% discount, $200 co-op fee, and $5 vouchers to do such a promotion. I would simply choose another, more writer-friendly venue. I am scheduling book signings to attract new readers for my books, not to simply glad-hand the readers I already have, grateful as I am for them.

    "The margin of markup for all of the participants involved in publishing a book - writer, publisher, printer, distributor, retailer, etc. - is already narrow, and you are asking me or my publisher to remit a $200 co-op fee for an event only considered successful if it sells 20 books, which comes to $10 per book if that many are sold, more than that if fewer books are sold, when books in general are priced between $12 and $20 retail. Then, additionally, you want a 40% discount on 50 books provided for the event, and the right to return unsold books.

    "In short, you will only host a book-signing event at guaranteed revenue for yourself, 0 risk, while beggaring every other participant along the supply chain who also has fair expectation of making a profit on the enterprise.

    "Finally, I was not even asking for a formal signing event, with reading and discussion and Q&A. I was only asking to set up a table somewhere in your store to sign books purchased by your customers. Such an arrangement requires minimal but equal effort on both our parts (you have an employee set up a table, I carry boxes of my books in from my car) and $0 in cost to each of us, since the retail space my table would take up in your store is presumably empty at the moment anyway. As to promotion, we each do promotion on our own parts utilizing our own resources to benefit the enterprise collectively.

    "Respectfully, in today's anemic print-book-selling climate I feel it is the responsibility of all of us in the industry, especially us independents (publishers and booksellers) to work in unity to promote reading and the enjoyment of the written word, not to further the demise of reading as an entertainment form by seeking to exploit each other out of all possible profit.

    "It pains me that we cannot help promote each other in that spirit of cooperation.

"Sincerest best wishes,
"Kevin Paul Tracy"

NEW RELEASE: BLOODFLOW

Available RIGHT NOW at all major booksellers and in all major ebook formats, my new gothic mystery, "Bloodflow." Check your local bookstore and if they don't carry it, demand that they stock it now (give them the ISBN:978-1936991679)!

You can also find it on Amazon sites around the world, Barnes and Noble. etc. Electronic formats can be found at these sites, too, including Kindle and Nook, as well as on such book sites as Smashwords and Omnilit.

If you visit the publisher's site, TWB Press, you can get all these formats plus you can see the thrilling trailer for the book and read an excerpt!

When you read the book, feel free to drop me a line, let me know what you think of it.

BLOODFLOW, A Gothic Mystery by Kevin Paul Tracy

My new release, "Bloodflow," will drop Wednesday, December 18, 2013. This is the first in a gothic mystery series featuring one of the toughest, smartest, and sexiest female protagonists I've ever written: Kathryn Desmarais. Kate is a private investigator for International Investigations, Inc., or Tripple-I, a large private investigation firm in Manhattan. She's tough, savvy, an expert in martial arts.

In this first book, the search for an ancient casket leads Kate into the midst of a battle between two undead souls, each backed with armies poised to wage war. One, the most powerful vampire to ever stalk the Earth, has plans for Kathryn, plans that have nothing to do with happily-ever-after. Now, everyone she loves is in danger, and the only way to save them is to either find a way to stop the coming conflagration before the city itself is bathed in blood...or pick a side.

I'm calling this a "grown-up" gothic horror story. You won't find any melodramatic teen angst dripping from these pages. And the monsters you find between these covers aren't watered-down shadows of the legends from which they are spawned. These are the real, full-blown evils under your bed. They are the genuine hungry hell-beasts lurking just behind the threshold of your half-open closet.

I hope you enjoy reading "Bloodflow" as much as I enjoyed writing it. As my editor described it: "The cool factor is very high in this one!"

And check out the bitchen trailer!

CRITICAL MASS

THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO ENTERED THE NEXT GREAT ROGUE AGENDA CONTEST!
THE WINNERS ARE BEING NOTIFIED AND WILL BE ANNOUNCED SHORTLY.

I've had the good fortune to have two of my books published in as many months (coming soon, "Bloodflow," a novel of gothic horror by Kevin Paul Tracy.) While this is undoubtedly, as I said, good fortune, it also means I now have two projects to promote at the same time, which can be overwhelming. But while I am, no doubt, overwhelmed, my plan is to dive into double-promotion head-first.

I wanted to take a moment to discuss public critiques of your work. These days, because of the Internet, virtually all opinions are given the same appearance of gravitas. In spite of our best efforts to remain impartial, there is still a part of the human psyche that is impressed by words in print, and when couched in a website and surrounded by the opinions of many others it can sometimes be hard to read these statements from total strangers with a critical eye. So when a critique is published on a website such as Amazon, it often carries with it a certain weight because it's in print on such a renown website, whether we know the person writing the critique or not. It is just as likely that the author of the critique has little standing as a critic, bears little to no education on the topic, and perhaps has not even read the book he is critiquing, as it is that he is someone whose opinion has earned the right to demand respect and reverence. But the opinion goes up on the site either way, whether it bears merit or not, and shares space with other opinions that may or may not be of greater authority.

One bad review on such a site can affect sales, and a mere two or three can kill a book entirely. Some publishers or authors have recruited people to counter such negative reviews with more positive ones. But then comes the risk of playing keep up, trying to post enough positive reviews to counter the negative ones. Then the question becomes, were your bad reviews earned, and you are merely struggling against a tide when you should take to heart what's been said, lick your wounds, and learn your lessons. Should you remove the book from circulation and try again with a different one?

The good news is that joy produces more energy than angst. Those with negative things to say about your book will expend their energy in a single flame-blast. Resist the urge to counter them, engage them. This is the carrion these 'Net predators seek, and it only serves to churn up more of their bile. If we deny them the fuel that keeps their fire burning, they lose interest rather quickly and move on. If you let them, these vulture will forget about you and your book quickly and move on to places where their venom is rewarded.

Fans, though, and those who loved your book enough to post a positive review are energized by their joy. They are the ones most likely to recommend your book to others and feed your word-of-mouth buzz. Dwell on these, read them more often than the negative reviews, or copy them and paste them into a file you can go back to and read whenever your confidence runs low.

In short, you make the conscious decision yourself which critiques to give the most weight and which not to. Don't give space in your head to those seeking only to be destructive and malicious. Only take to heart critiques from those who you know have the experience and gravitas to render a constructive one. Only listen to the opinions of those whom you respect and admire. And feed your inspiration with the critiques of those who love your work, because these are the Johnny Appleseeds of your success.

THE PROCESS

So your book's all written, you've gone through critiques and rewrites, it's tight and about to be published into a book. What to expect in the actual process of publishing your book?

Having just spent months slogging through the process of getting publish I frankly don't really feel like reminiscing about it, reliving it here on my blog. But I know there are readers who are going to want to know what it's like, so I'm going to do it anyway. My sacrifice to you, dear readers. (Heheh!)

In all honesty it isn't really all that bad...in the rear view mirror. And having done it several times I can tell you the decisions come easier each time you do it. I think it's both because you've done it before and are developing a strong sense of what works and what doesn't, and because your confidence builds each time you do it.

The first chore is editing. Editing is different than rewriting. Presumably you've gotten all the plot inconsistencies and other story-telling flaws ironed out during the rewrites. Editing is the meticulous search for misspelled words, grammar mistakes, punctuation errors, inappropriate capitalization or lack of it, etc. This book is going out to the world and it must be absolutely dead solid perfect, because there are those who will not hesitate to go to your blog and point out every mistake in your book. Some editors I talk to do their first pass backward through the text. This takes a little getting used to, watching for spelling and punctuation backwards, but it keep the content of the text from distracting you and getting in your way. Then they make their forward passes. If possible it helps to have more than one editor take at least one pass at your manuscript if not two.

Then there's the formatting. The thing here is all the decisions that have to be made, and not just the fun one's like what the cover should look like, but the niggling little details like what font to use for the text, what font to use for the chapter headings. The text must be set to justified margins if it isn't already and this can sometimes change your pagination, so you have to wade through and make sure that the end of a chapter doesn't leave a single word dangling on a page by itself. And if so, then what do you do? You have to find some way to cheat the formatting to make it join a prior page. You must be sure each chapter ends with just the right combination of line-break and page-break so that when printed the chapters don't end up run together or a last line isn't all spaced out weird to meet your margin settings. Etc. A million little details that all have to be, once again, perfect.

I promise you that when you think you're done, you're going to find yourself going back over it again and again looking for errors. You're going to find some, and have to fix them, and those fixes may undo others and you'll have to go over it all over again. And god forbid you have pictures, diagrams, tables, charts, and what-not. These can make pagination a nightmare.

Finally it all goes to the printer. While waiting for your proofs to come back - test copies of your book to verify it looks just exactly how you wanted it to - this is a good time to think about a release date. Trust me, you don't want to just drop a book into the market without some sort of advance fanfare - ads and promotions to get the title of your book into the minds of potential buyers before it's released. You are going to want to pick a release date far enough in advance to allow for the proofing process, especially in case you find changes need to be made and reproofed, and to allow you to build some buzz about your book.I've already gone into self promotion in a prior post so I won't reiterate it all here. But promotion starts in the proofing stage of your book and doesn't stop on the release date. Indeed it never stops./

Not everyone's experience will be the same, but that was mine. Would I do it all over again? In point of fact I already am. I have several projects in the works even as we speak. I hope you keep an eye out for them!

NEW RELEASE: "ROGUE AGENDA"

Hooray! My new novel, "Rogue Agenda," is now available on Amazon.com and Amazon Kindle!

In a future post I'll go into my experience with the whole publishing process, but for this week I'm just going to relax and let it settle in!

Buy it! Read it! You'll like it!

ROGUE AGENDA: CHAPTER 1

With two weeks to go until the October 1, 2013 release of my next highly anticipated novel, "Rogue Agenda" I thought I'd give everyone a preview. So here, for your enjoyment, is chapter 1 of  "Rogue Agenda":

CHAPTER 1

     Lainie Parker rolled her eyes as her phone rang. She turned the TV off with the remote and picked up the receiver. Only one kind of call would be coming in at 2 AM.
     “Hello, Kim.”
     “Hi, Lainie. You’re next up on the roster.”
     “Cool,” Lainie said. “Thanks.”
     She hung up. Making herself comfortable on the recliner, she picked up the small laptop computer from the end table next to the phone and balanced it on her knees. Opening her browser, she entered the URL for the website of Capri Entertainment, Inc. and entered the staff area. Answering with her ID and password, she was rewarded with her call screen. The man’s name lurked at the top.
     When a customer called he got a Screener, like Kim, who took down his credit card information and telephone number. All Lainie could see was his first name and telephone number, so she could call him back through the web site, and any notes about his preferences or prior calls.
     Putting on her headset and adjusting the microphone so that it hung suspended on its armature in front of her lips, she pressed the call button. She wasn’t entirely sure how the call went through over the Internet, something Orin the technician called VOIP, but he promised her that there was no way anyone could trace the call back to her. She was safe from psychos.
     “Hello,” came the man’s voice over the line. The screen said his name was Michael and he was thirty years old...just four years older than Lainie.
     “Hi, Michael,” Lainie said in her sultriest voice. “This is Samantha.”
     “Hi, Samantha.” He sounded sort of nervous and uncertain, like a newby, not all familiar and creepy like a regular.
     As the call timer churned away at the top of the screen, steadily chewing chunks out of his credit card, Lainie sighed, long and sensuously. “I’m, bored, Michael. What are you doing tonight? Would you like to entertain me?”
     Her job, according to Mitch, her boss, was to keep that timer rolling as long as possible.
     “I...um...could you just...start...y’know?”
     It was a delicate balance.
     “Of course, sweetie,” she said.
     Draw out the titillation too far and the caller got frustrated and was likely to hang up, but let things get too hot too fast and he was liable to finish early, same result. Newbies popped quickly, just like in real life, but if you can somehow hook them enough to call back, it usually took progressively longer the next few times.
     Lainie turned the TV back on, muted, and activated the closed captioning. Notorious, starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, a black and white Hitchcock classic.
     The screen said Michael liked it straight, no kink. Thank God for that, at least. “First of all, I’m there right now. Can you see me, standing by your bed? I’m five-ten, long blond hair, jade eyes, in a nightie. A red one. My legs are long and tanned. As I slip one strap off, you...”
     “No.”
     “Pardon?”
     “No sex,” Michael said. “Just...just be nice to me. Okay?” His voice cracked on okay.
     “Well, I...um...okay. I sit on the edge of the bed beside you. I stroke your arm. I’ve never met a man as handsome and strong as you.”
     She heard him sigh, not with pleasure, but with impatience.
     “No,” she amended, “I mean, you are kind, and a little funny, you make me laugh. That’s what makes you attractive to me, whether others see it or not.”
     This time the sigh was no less exasperated. “This is stupid,” Michael said.
     “What is?” she asked.
     “You don’t even know me.”
     “Sort of the point,” she said.
     “It’s like sending flowers to yourself on Valentine’s Day, only even more...pathetic.”
     “Stop it,” Lainie said. “That’s not fair.” She turned off the TV again and sat up in the chair. “Look, you sound lonely. Nothing’s wrong with that.”
     He didn’t answer.
     “It’s better than slitting your wrists, isn’t it?”
     No answer.
     “Michael?”
     “I gotta go.”
     “Wait, Michael, you’re not thinking of doing something like that, are you?”
     “No.”
     “Really?”
     “Now I’m really sorry I called,” he said. His voice got hard, ugly. “I had to get the one phone-sex girl with a heart of gold.”
     “Fuck you,” she moved the mouse pointer to the hang-up button, but when he didn’t respond immediately, she hesitated.
     “Samantha?”
     “What?”
     “Don’t hang up.”
     “Why? Are you done being an asshole?”
     He sighed. “I shouldn’t have called. It was selfish of me to burden you with my angst. For talking to you like that. For everything.”
     “Are you a writer?” she asked.
     “Um, no. Why?”
     “Angst. No one says that these days.” His laugh sounded hollow. “I’m a fact finder.”
     “A what?”
     “You ever watch the news? Ever see the newscasters compare this snowfall with the one back in 1864, or those election results with the ones in Nowhere, Kentucky in aught-six, or reminisce about the price of rice husks in Romania back in the fifteenth century? That’s me. I find those facts for them.”
     “You must be smart.”
     “Just know where to find facts, that’s all. You sound young. You in college, Samantha?”
     “Graduate school,” she said, “last leg.”
     “What’s your major?”
     “Doctorate in education, with a focus on special ed.”
     “Handicapped kids?”
     “Excuse me,” she said in mock disdain, “we prefer challenged to handicapped.”
     “Sorry. So you must do sign language, read Braille, all that stuff.”
     “Yup, all that stuff.”
     “Smart yourself.”
     “Thanks.” She found herself smiling.
     “So you do this to pay your way?”
     “Uhuh. Friend got me into it. Lots of girls do. It doesn’t pay as much as porn, but it’s safer.”
     “And cleaner.”
     “And less embarrassing.”
     “How so?”
     “You can’t see all my cellulite.”
     “Oh.”
     “And there won’t be videos of me circulating around for years to come to bite me in the ass, no pun intended, during an interview with Barbara Walters down the road.”
     “There’s that.”
     “It could happen.”
     “Sure. Samantha?”
     “Yes, Michael.”
     “Are you really wearing a red nightie?”
     “Truthfully?”
     “Yes.”
     “No. I’m wearing sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt with two pigs doing it and the slogan ‘Makin’ Bacon’ on it.”
     He laughed, more naturally this time. “And the cellulite?”
     “Tight as a drum, Baby,” she said, not entirely truthfully.
     “I’ll have to take your word on that.”
     She realized that once again this call had turned into more of a therapy session than phone sex. It intrigued her how often this happened. Assured of her complete anonymity, Lainie never balked at talking on a personal level with her clients like this. She was careful not to give any identifying information like her real name or the city she was calling from.
     “It’s good talking to you,” he said. “I feel better.”
     “I’m glad. No more talk of suicide?”
     “I didn’t talk about suicide, you did. I’m not suicidal. Maybe at one time, maybe not too long ago, but not now. Haven’t you ever thought about it, though, even knowing you never would?”
     “No.”
     “Never been depressed?”
     “Well, yeah, but...”
     “You’re depressingly well adjusted, Samantha,” he said.
     “No I’m not,” she said.
     “No? Tell me one of your deep, dark secrets.”
     “No.”
     “C’mon.”
     “Well...”
     “What?”
     “I chew my toenails.”
     “No.”
     “I do. When I’m watching TV. I sometimes pull my foot up to my mouth and bite my toenails off.”
     “Setting aside how suggestive such flexibility is, why do you do that?”
     “I don’t know. Habit.” She was embarrassed now, vaguely defensive.
     “Well as deep dark secrets go, that one’s not really very provocative. Creepy, just a little. Definitely worth a call to Guinness. But not really Earth-shattering.”
     “Fine, tell me one of yours.”
     He was silent.
     “Michael?”
     “I have to go.”
     “Oh no,” she laughed. “You made me tell you one of my deep dark secrets. Now you have to tell me one of yours. You hang up on me and I’ll put a thousand dollars worth of charges on your card.”
     “Samantha...I can’t.” His voice had gone all dark again.
     “Why not?”
     “I...” “Look,” she said, “this blind thing works both ways. The service doesn’t give you my real name, and they don’t give me any information about you except your first name and telephone number. Who am I going to tell? Come on. Dish.”
     He was quiet for a long time.
     “I killed my first man at the age of twelve.”
     “Yeah, right,” Lainie laughed. “Seriously, now.”
     He laughed, but it sounded forced, false. “Okay, seriously. I love the smell of expended ordinance...burnt gunpowder.”
     Lainie thought she should laugh again, but somehow, it didn’t come. She just sat, her smile fading.
     “I gotta go, Samantha.”
     She didn’t say anything.
     “Samantha?”
     “Huh?”
     “I just wanted to say thanks. You’re a real peach. You have a nice...”
     The gunshot was so loud in the headset that Lainie jumped, her laptop rebounding off the coffee table and crashing to the floor.

Don't forget to pick up your copy of "Rogue Agenda" on October 1, 2013 on Amazon.com and Amazon Kindle!