The Body Era: Blog Entry at Cabin Goddess

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Check out the creative piece I did to promote Beyond the Will of God at CabinGoddess.com.

http://cabingoddess.com/2012/09/the-body-era-david-biddle-visits-for-fourth-wall-friday/

Kriss Morton is awesome.

If you’re up for something different, Beyond the Will of God is it. 

Implosions Making Slow But Steady Progress: Reader’s Draft Available

CRT Implosion – Source: Niels Noordhoek, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CRT_implosion.JPG

I have Implosions of America out now in Reader’s Draft form. I am looking for readers who are interested in giving me review, copy-editing, and consistency advice. The book is available in any form your ereader wants. Just email me and I can forward a copy. You will likely pay up to $7.99 for the book in final form this fall.

This week I’ve been working carefully with my Reader’s Draft making changes and catching shit that shouldn’t have ever slipped through but did. I’m surprised, Continue reading

Expanded Horizons and Raising the Price: More Adventures on the New Frontier of Publishing

Economic and technology revolutions happen in the unlikeliest places…

This week Beyond the Will of God has jumped the Amazon Shark and arrived at two additional ebook sales sites — Nook and Only Indie. I have also raised the price of the ebook. The $2.99 price was an introductory offering. The book will now be $4.99 at both the Amazon Kindle site and the Barnes & Noble Nook site. Continue reading

Awesome Indies Reviews My Novel BEYOND THE WILL OF GOD

My little novel about really big issues has been reviewed by Awesome Indies. I’m pleased to announce it made the cut to be posted at their site. Check out the review…

http://awesomeindies.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/review-beyond-the-will-of-god-by-david-biddle-speculative-fictionmystery/

Shifting Gears: From Psychedelia to Reality

My first novel, Beyond the Will of God: A Jill Simpson Mystery, is a psychedelic mystery that I’m very proud of. The original idea for the story came to me in the mid-1970s. Six years later, on New Years Day, 1981, I wrote the first scene (where Cecil Miller gets off the bus in the middle of Missouri farm country and meets Coral McGrey). I didn’t really know what I was doing then. It took another 12 years for me to actually feel like I needed to get serious about turning that scene into a novel. But what a stupid thing, to write a novel. Continue reading

More Thoughts on Fake Reviews and Other Stupid Writer Tricks

ImageI published an opinion piece at Talking Writing called, simply enough, “Can You Trust Online Reviews.” This piece identifies a small component of a much bigger phenomenon in the writing world today. Yes, there are loads of fake and biased reviews to be found at Amazon and on other book sites throughout the worldwide web. But writers are doing all sorts of other things to try to get noticed. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking so-called indie writers here or them that’s been dunned by a publishing house (Big Six or small independent). I for one don’t see a distinction between the self-published and Continue reading

Real Romance: Implosions of America

My fellow Americans, we are all so stupid and wishy-washy about love. Those of us in our 50s and beyond are also faced almost daily with the weird little gremlin of loss — loss of parents, loss of friends, loss of libido, loss of joy, loss of sanity, loss of things to hide beyond.

I shake my head here. So many people I know, my fellow parents, have spent their best years lying to themselves and driving their cars. We stop these games long enough to watch TV and drink. Haven’t we been confused? Continue reading

On Beauty, Genius, and Paying Attention: Tim Williams Got Me Through So Much

“Morning of the Magicians”Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shitao/3197160727/in/set-72157625031441773

From about 1993 through 2000 I worked as best I could on my first novel. I am deeply indebted to nearly 20 friends and colleagues who read various drafts over that period.

From 2000 through 2005 I tried to get agents and publishers to pay attention to my insane story — best described as a psychedelic mystery about music and consciousness. I came close a couple times, but no one took me on. After over 100 Continue reading

Results of My Experiment in Publishing

Source: Shitao, “Don’t ever let go of my hand…….”

Last week I reported that I was doing an experiment on the Kindle Direct Publishing promo system. I wanted to see what would happen if I didn’t use the multi-pronged marketing apparatus that’s set up around KDP free books. See the blog entry for that HERE.

The results are in and not so happy. Over a two day period, Saturday and Sunday, I received 230 downloads of my novel, Beyond the Will of God. Two weeks earlier, I’d pushed on the marketing apparatus hard and received over 10,000 downloads in three days. 
This was not a controlled experiment. The biggest wild card in it is that the poor showing last weekend may have been because those fishing for free books were saturated from my offering just two weeks earlier. If that’s so, it makes me doubly wonder about readers in search of freebies. Maybe it’s a smaller group than we realize. Or maybe they don’t use Amazon’s standard Kindle Free listings that pair with the Kindle Bestsellers list. Maybe they use places like Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today. 
Whatever the case, I know a little more firsthand now. It pays to put on the dog if you’re going to optimize the KDP system. For what it’s worth, though, I’ve only sold about 60 copies of my novel since that initial free weekend with 10,000+ giveaways. It’s not making a lot of sense to me to give Amazon an exclusive deal for my book through their KDP program. I can offer it free directly from my website. In fact, that may well be the next experiment I do in electronic publishing. 
We’ll see…in the mean time, click on the cover image to the right and buy yourself a copy of the weirdest and funkiest novel you’ll read this year. Where else are you gonna find Jimi Hendrix, Jesse James, Elvis, John Lennon, the CIA, Deadheads, wanton sex, experimental drugs, questions about consciousness, and a full-tilt argument for the spiritual and intellectual magic of loud guitar music? 
-dcb

To see more amazing art work by Shitao, go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shitao/sets/