by Robert Gray

A few months ago, Amazon started a program called KDP Select, which allows self-published authors and authors who own the rights to their ebooks to include their titles into the Kindle Lending Library, where you can earn roughly $1.40 each time someone borrows one of your ebooks. To sweeten the deal, Amazon lets you promote your ebook for free for up to five days every three months. There is, however, one major caveat: if you decide to include a title into the program, you cannot distribute the ebook version through any other channel, which includes Barnes & Noble’s nook, Apple’s iPad/Pod/Phone, Sony, etc. Somewhat reluctantly, I decided to give the program a try with one of my titles, and I wanted to share my experience with you. Of course, your mileage may vary, but here’s my story:

I self-published a middle-grade horror novel back in November 2011. During that first month, sales were modest (which is the ego-massaging way of saying “crap”). Most sales came from friends and relatives and a few people that either felt sorry for me or were sick of hearing me mention my new book on Twitter and Facebook. By early December, sales flatlined. And let me tell you, there are few things more depressing than seeing that brown bar on Amazon’s KDP site, but that’s a topic for another day.

Around mid-December, I decided to enter into the KDP Select program. At the time, my ebook was available on all the usual suspects, but since it wasn’t selling anywhere, I figured what the hell. Now, I still wasn’t getting any sales, and on top of that, I committed one of the greatest sins: I shrank my distribution. Oh, yeah, I felt like a marketing genius.

Right after Christmas, I ran my free promotion for five days. On Day 1, I went from 0 to 200 downloads. Day 2, I had about a thousand. By Day 4, my ebook hit number one in free children’s horror, and it stayed there until the promotion ended. In total, my ebook was downloaded over three thousand times. Not too shabby for a book that had no marketing push behind it and not a single review. When the ebook went back on sale on December 31, all of a sudden I was getting twenty to thirty sales a day. Nothing earth shattering, but considering where the book came from, I was pleasantly surprised.

But this is no rags to riches story. My ebook is still selling well; however, the momentum has ebbed considerably. Perhaps this is due to so many other authors attempting the same thing, and the market is flooded with free books (I hear there are over 100,000 authors in the program and that number’s increasing every day). Also, as the ebook dropped in ranking, it lost key placement on Amazon’s website, which makes it harder for would-be readers to stumble on to it.

Overall, though, I’d say the program is worth taking a look at. In a world where you have to shout to be heard, Amazon’s letting you borrow a megaphone for a few days. And it’s not an all-or-nothing type of program, either. You can test it with one poor-selling title. If it works out for you, then try it with your other titles. If it doesn’t work out, you only have to stay with the program for three months.

Good Luck!

Started one year ago by Courtney Schafer, author of The Whitefire Crossing, The Night Bazaar is the place Night Shade authors share their tips, experiences and aspirations with you. With topics covering film, reading habits, jetpacks, heroes, and more, you will always find something entertaining and informative to read.

There will be fantastic posts from Will McIntosh, Jennifer Safrey, J.M. McDermott, Nathan Long, John Love, Stina Leicht, Mazarkis Williams, W.G. Marshall, David Constantine, and editor-in-chief Jeremy Lassen, not forgetting awesome guest authors.

Upcoming Topics

• Jan 9-15: Writers Without Borders
• Jan 16-22: The Reading Habits of a Writer
• Jan 23-29: Trusted collaborator or annoying schoolmarm?

With something new to read everyday you won’t want to miss out! Join in on the fun at The Night Bazaar.

The Horror Writing Blog is a newly established writing blog aimed specifically at horror writers. Established by Hannah Green, an aspiring horror writer from South Africa, this blog is aimed at providing tips, advice and resources for horror writers of all kinds. Articles are added weekly and cover all aspects of the art of writing as well as providing resources for adding that extra edge to your fiction writing.

Check it out: The Horror Writing Blog

By Robert Gray

You’ve probably got a list a mile long of rules you must not break in writing fiction. I’m talking about using adverbs in dialogue attribution, passive voice construction, redundancies, head hopping, tense shifts, and so on. But there are also plenty of rules that are not necessarily wrong, but if overused, can lead to lazy writing. I’ve called this month’s article Proceed With Caution for that reason.

Linking Verbs + Predicate Adjective - Linking verbs connect a subject to additional information. These verbs offer no meaning at all. They are the equivalent to an equal sign. A predicate adjective follows a linking verb and describes the subject. In the sentence, The boy is small, is is the linking verb and small is the predicate adjective. While this sentence is grammatically correct, you’re asking a modifier to do all the heavy lifting, and that leads to boring writing. Not to mention small is a relative term. How small is the boy? Is he smaller than a house? An ant? Give your readers an image they can cling to by using nouns and action verbs. Use figurative language to compare the boy’s size to something readers can visualize.

Look, smile, turn, sigh and shrug - One of the first lessons you learn in writing is not to use adverbs in dialogue attribution:

“The boy is small,” John said loudly.

To get around that dreaded adverb, you have to build up the context of your story so the reader knows how John said something. As a result, we rely on the speaker’s actions to dictate his tone. But what often happens is we use clutch words in an attempt create mood:

He turned to the girl and sighed. “That boy is small.”

It’s an easy trap to fall into, because you know the speaker needs to do something, but you haven’t fully visualized what that something is. These little gems will probably be all over your first draft, and that’s fine. The first draft is all about finding your way, and crutch words can help keep you moving forward. But remember to go back and check for these. A few here and there, no big deal. My guess is you’ll find them by the truckload, though.

Ambiguity with demonstratives - The demonstratives are this, that, these and those. Demonstratives are used to point to nouns, e.g., this house, that car, those trees. Since demonstratives fall into the pronoun category (sometimes adjectives, too) they can stand in place for a noun to form a complete sentence: That made him angry. But if you’re not careful, they can confuse your readers. Here’s an example:

John hopped in his car, loaded in his favorite CD, and headed over to his girlfriend’s house. This made him feel alive.

It’s not clear what made John feel alive. Was it his car? Favorite CD? Seeing his girlfriend? All three? The problem can often be corrected simply by sticking a noun after the demonstrative to clear up the ambiguity. This CD made him feel alive. Not gonna win any awards, but at least the reader knows what you’re talking about.

Don’t overuse “there” at the beginning of a sentence - Beginning a sentence with there is or there are is called expletive construction. What you’re doing is removing the subject (noun phrase) from the beginning of the sentence and forcing there to act as a pronoun. The result, a dull, wordy sentence:

There are three days left until the weekend.

Notice how you can’t replace there with a noun, and you have are carrying the action. If you force yourself to rewrite sentences like the one above, you have no choice but to make the sentence better. To add to this, I’d also suggest you mark it was, that was, and who is as suspect. Why write, It was John who murdered Kelly, when you can just say John murdered Kelly?

Sentence Fragments - I’ll be honest. I love sentence fragments. Love them. Frags are a great way to get around passive construction. Even better, they can give special attention to what you want your reader to focus on. Here’s what I’m talking about:

John’s flight was delayed.

Here I used passive voice because I don’t care why the flight was delayed. The important thing is that the reader focuses on the delay itself. If I wanted to make the delay stand out more, I could rewrite the above sentence to something like this:

John scanned the departures until he found his flight. Delayed.

By using a frag, I can give focus on the delay and avoid passive voice. It’s a nice effect, but like any effect, if you overuse it, it becomes boring.

Qualifiers - Qualifiers increase or decrease the quality of an adjective or adverb. For example, in the sentence, He was very small, the word very is the qualifier. Qualifiers include rather, very, more, most, least, too, just, enough, a little, kind of, even, pretty, almost, somewhat, quite, and so on.

And if you use them just a little bit too much, they can really make your reader kind of want to toss your novel into a rather large fire.

by Robert Gray

It is shocking to me that there are so many new horror writers out there that haven’t read M.R. James or Stoker or Lovecraft or Poe or Stevenson or Jackson or countless others. Writers who only know Frankenstein as the Boris Karloff monster (and if you just asked, Who is Boris Karloff? Then please stop reading now. I can’t help you). I’ve even heard, though I like to believe this is urban legend, that there are some people masking themselves as horror writers that have not read Stephen King. Well, not on my watch.

There’s the old adage that writers should read inside and outside their genre, but, my friends, that implies that you’re reading too much in your genre and should consider reading outside it as well. Yes, read widely. Read everything. But know your horror, too. Horror has a rich and deep history, and if you think you can be a horror writer without immersing yourself into all the genre has to offer, then prepare yourself for a lot of rejections that say, THIS HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE, assuming you even get a personal response.

But Where Do I Begin?

Well, at the beginning … sort of.

Horror’s beginning is a slippery one. There is no definitive first horror story, because there is no definitive definition of what horror is. Some claim Poe as the father of horror. Others search for more humble origins like Horace Walpole’s gothic novel The Castle Of Otranto. Some argue between Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Dr. John William Polidori’s Vampyre. Others put a more literary spin on the genre and choose Shakespeare’s darker plays like Macbeth or Hamlet, or reach deeper to Dante’s Inferno or travel all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Medea. I’ve even heard some good arguments that claim Homer’s Odyssey has enough horror in it to be a contender (though I wouldn’t be surprised if every subset of the fantasy genre has argued this point at one time or another).

I would suggest reading all of these and drawing your own conclusion based on your own definition of horror, but if you still aren’t sure where to begin, then use your favorite horror author as a starting point and work backwards from there. If you want to be the next Stephen King, for example, it’s not enough to read Stephen King. You need to read his influences. Read Lovecraft. Read Matheson. Read Bradbury. Because there would be no Stephen King – at least not the Stephen King we know – if these writers had not come first.

Authors love to talk about their favorite authors, probably more than they like to talk about their own work. Many are approachable on this subject at conventions, through social media outlets or have lists of favorite books on their websites. Seek them out.

Why Bother?

You can’t create something new if you don’t know what “new” is. You can’t reinvent an idea if you haven’t explored all the ideas that have come before you. More importantly, though, you can’t expect to write good horror or even competent horror without having at least a rudimentary knowledge of the genre.

Reading is as much a part of the writing process as the writing itself. Learn the history of your genre, read the authors that have reinvented and reinvigorated the genre, and then make your own path as to where you think it should go next. And when an author you respect offers you advice on what you should be reading, take that advice. Horror writers are the biggest fans of the genre. They are not trying to deter you so they can sit atop their kingdoms and watch those medaling newbies fight some unwinnable ground war. Horror is a small community and when one writer succeeds, the community succeeds. The entire genre is placed in the spotlight. Everyone wins. And it all starts by opening the book to page one.

Some Further Reading

• Horror Writers Association (HWA) Reading List
• Danse Macabre by Stephen King
• Shroud Magazine’s Seminal Scream column by Brian Keene
• On Writing Horror by Horror Writers Association; edited by Mort Castle
• Writers Workshop Of Horror edited by Michael Knost

Ty Schwamberger

Ty-ing Up the Genre debuted in February 2010 with an article I wrote entitled “An Introduction.” It was basically a set up of things to come. It’s suitable, I think, to end the column with the title of this article. Although, I suppose it would have been more fitting if I had called the first one “A Prologue.” In any event, the idea behind the column started for me to give general ‘how to’ advice for folks interested in wanting to write horror and then morphed into bringing in guest columnists to write articles, do interviews, etc. I for one think Ty-ing Up the Genre became what it is today because of those people. It wasn’t me, but them. They made the column into something that people looked forward to month after month. The majority of people I invited are war veterans, while I’m just a grunt trudging through the trenches. Though, if you follow my website at all (and if you don’t, you really should), you’ll see that I’m trying to climb up the other side of the ditch and run out into the battlefield with guns ablazin’.

But I digress.

The main reason I wanted to host a column such as this was to give aspiring horror authors some guidance from veterans of my chosen genre. I personally didn’t have a mentor or anything of the sort when I started writing in early 2008 and pretty much just blazed my own trail into the great unknown (which isn’t always a bad thing). And while I think I’m doing OK with my ‘vision’ I often wonder what I’d be writing or even how much further I’d be if I did have a General ordering me to do this or not do that. But as I’ve stated elsewhere, I dig the business side of writing. In fact I get off on it. Nothing excites me more than pitching a project to a prospective publisher and the next thing ya know you’ve got a contract sitting in your mailbox waiting to be signed and returned. People often ask me, “Ty, how the hell do you do what you do?” Basically, they’re referring to me only being in the game for a relatively short period of time, but I keep announcing new book deals.

To which I always tell them…

If you want something bad enough and you feel that fire burning in your gut that writing is the only thing you see yourself doing in ‘X’ amount of time, then YOU have to get out there and bust your ass. Do the work. Write like a crazy that just broke outta the loony bin. Make contacts in the industry. Go to conventions and meet the same writers you read and admire. Meet your future editors and publishers.

And ask. Ask what, you say?

Haven’t you ever heard the old saying – ask if you want something? No? Well, if you want something it never hurts to ask. Never. Do you think publishers are going to come to you in the beginning even if YOU think your stuff is as good or better than King Kong? Hell no. Especially today, when the business model of publishing is changing. Instead, you have to pimp yourself now more than ever – from the initial pitch to marketing the book after it’s released. Do you think everything I have coming out was by way of chance? No. It was because I busted my ass and went out and got what I wanted. Now, don’t take this like I’ve got a big head or anything, because those of you that have met me know I’m far from stuck up. It’s more of a confidence thing. It’s about being honest, compassionate and friendly to people. Be Yourself. Though, if you’re an asshole in ‘real life’ but try to play the part of the ‘nice guy’ around other writers and publishers they’ll probably see right through you and you’ll end up nothing more than a hack. I hope people that have met and/or know me see me as an honest, friendly, down to earth person and I plan to be the same in 3 years as I am now because…

I better stop there. The ’3 years’ is when I plan on my ‘vision’ coming to fruition and if I told you anymore you might just wanna steal it and run away into the sunset laughing like a hyena. Kidding. Of course, if your skill set isn’t good enough then it really doesn’t matter how friendly you are, how much ass you kiss (which ultimately won’t work for very long anyway), etc. Anyone can write. Anyone. Hell, my 4-year old can sit down and scribble letters in crayon on colored construction paper, but that doesn’t make her a writer (insert wide grin here). It takes time and a whole lot of effort to craft a well-written and effective story. So, like everything else in life, you have to do the work. Yes, I know you’ve heard that before. But it’s so true that’s why almost every published person out there says the same thing.

In closing…

Just don’t take everything I’ve said here as the end all be all. If you haven’t already, go back through each article or interview that I’ve hosted on Ty-ing Up the Genre and read what the veterans of the horror genre have to say about writing and the publishing world.

Because someday, with a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work, your ‘vision’ could come true too.

Ty Schwamberger is growing force within the horror genre. He is the author of a novel, multiple novellas, collections and editor on several anthologies. In addition, he’s had many short stories published online and in print magazines. A short story of his, Cake Batter, was optioned for a short film and was released in early 2010. He is also the Acquisitions Editor of Ambrotos Press, a highly selective horror imprint of Dark Quest Books. You can learn more at: Ty Schwamberger

Writers looking for a new agent might want to consider attending this year’s ThrillerFest, where there will be 60 agents in attendance at the AgentFest, an exciting component of the convention. You can even check out the agents who will be attending, as well as their biographies, ahead of time to target the right agents for your work. The list is posted here: Participating Agents.

And to help prepare you for AgentFest, Jon Land and Kathleen Antrim have posted aa article here: Pitching Tips. The advice is designed to help you create a memorable pitch to wow the agents. In addition, Antrium and Land will conduct a workshop on pitching at CraftFest, so prepare your best pitch, and come to the workshop prepared to test it out on them before AgentFest.

There are only 3 months left until ThrillerFest. If you haven’t registered, please visit: ThrillerFest