I’m not a fan of Westerns. Yeah, I hate them. I love the 1966 film “El Dorado,” though. It’s got fantastic characters (and John Wayne), it’s got GREAT screenwriting, and the story isn’t half bad. I think the movie handles tension extremely well, and this scene is a great example of that:

(Thanks to TCM for the video.)

Two old friends, now possibly on opposite sides of a range war. Both of those relationships come out clearly in the scene. There’s no confusion about what’s going on, yet you aren’t beaten over the head with an explanation of it, either. The bit of comedy at the end is a nice play against Wayne’s and Mitchum’s tough-guy attitudes, too, in what I like to call “awkward humor.”

Had my first return today at Amazon. I know it’s not a big deal, especially since it was on a short story that I don’t have a lot riding on, but it still felt crappy.

I’m a hack! No one will ever respect me! I’m return-worthy!

Or they just finished the 6k words and wanted their money back.

I got around to epublishing my new short story from last month. I also renamed it to make it more interesting. Yeah, naming something a common phrase is not a good idea. The new title is “The Dragon Prince and the Hideously Unattractive Woman: A Tale of Deep Meaningfulness.” It’s a bit old-school and also lets you know that this book is not to be taken seriously.

I did the cover, and no, I’m not super happy with it. I’m giving the book away, though, so I don’t know that I care too overly much at this point. It’s been downloading steadily at Smashwords.

Yes, it’s at Smashwords, but no, I haven’t properly uploaded anything there yet. I don’t use Word. That’s the main reason I didn’t upload there until they started accepting .epub files. My point is, until Amazon gets around to price-matching me, no one can get a free .mobi of my books, which is bad. Maybe the $0.99 price tag will still entice.

My latest book, Gods of Metal and Blood, sold a copy on Barnes and Noble the other day. It was the first sale I ever got on B&N so I’ve added that badge to my sash. Brightened my day, to say the least.

It was also nice to see that my first book, Sunshells, is in seven libraries. Fun! It’s free on Smashwords, Kobo, and hopefully soon on B&N and Amazon, and Smashwords alone has racked up 77 downloads in the past three weeks. I’m liking how it’s looking.

Yes, the much-anticipated “Gods of Metal and Blood” is on sale! Kobo is still processing, and B&N decided to have technical difficulties (sigh), but they’ll be ready in the next 24 hours.

Sunshells is going free. Yes, you heard it right! So, all of you millions secretly pirating it, now you have a chance to get it legitimately! Shazam! You’ll be able to ease your guilty, guilty conscience at long last.

To top it all off, I’m going to start writing and posting free stories right here on the site. They’ll probably end up as collections on sale as ebooks, but they’ll be free here individually.

2013 is going to be a fun year. Make sure to sign up for the RSS feed or email newsletter so that you can be notified when the next story or novel comes out.

Just broke a couple of milestones on the WIP. I’ve caught up with my NaNo words-per-day average (after starting with four days of nothing), and the WIP has broken 60,000 total. There are quite a few scenes that still need writing out, but I am definitely on the downward slope.

Now all I need to do is finish the scenes, revise, get alpha reading done, revise, beta reading, edit, cover, formatting, crap.

Apparently, Hugh Howey’s book marketing plan for “Wool” was to:

1. Write a powerful story.

2. Make it available.

3. Profit.

Seriously, read this interview and tell me if I missed a step. He also said that he worked his butt off to promote earlier stuff, which you’ve probably never heard of. His conclusion?

“You like to think you have some control over what succeeds and what doesn’t, but for me it just highlighted that the reader is totally in charge of what succeeds and what fails.”

…why did I ever think that was a good idea? Well, in the last month or so I realized that the cover for Sunshells needed new type. Badly. So I got rid of the Times New Roman with color border and went with a font called Ringbearer. Here’s the result:

That feels a lot better. Also, in the spirit of science hacks everywhere, I decided to experiment with the price at the same time. I’m out of the 70% royalty on Amazon. I need to sell about 3x the copies to make equal money, but that wouldn’t be all that hard.

WIP breaks 24k words. Time for wine with publishing executives to celebrate. Ah, the life of a writer.

This town isn’t big
But we still light the clouds at night.
My whole life is here
With these people.
I’ll keep it if I can.