The Well of Gilgamesh

My debut novel, The Well of Gilgamesh: A Wampyr Novel, is now available from Amazon.com in both Kindle and paperback versions!

This has been an incredible journey, inspired by my love of vampire fiction, both written and cinematic. I’ve longed for the story of a vampire that could fit into a world without superstition, without mythology, and without magic. A world ruled by science, logic, and reason, where everything has a rational—albeit fantastic—explanation. I wanted vampires who mirrored the elegance and mystique that Bela Lugosi engendered in Dracula during the Golden Era of Hollywood, without the self-loathing, goth-inspired aloofness that has become the trope of his modern day counterparts. That’s what I’ve brought to The Well of Gilgamesh: A Wampyr Novel. This is set to be my first in a series of three novels through which I’ll reinvent the classic monsters of Hollywood using a careful mix of historical revisionism, evolutionary science, and subtle nods to the stories that gave the original monsters their first brushes with celluloid fame.

A spine-tingling novel of preternatural suspense, The Well of Gilgamesh: A Wampyr Novel straddles the line between thriller and horror, often reading like a graphic novel. Captivating and action packed, readers will not be disappointed by this stunning new twist on a classic genre. The following is a brief synopsis, as seen on my Amazon.com page:

When Ayden finally has the chance to confront his obsessive fan—the man in the red-feathered fedora—he seizes it, though it may be the worse decision of his life. It isn’t long before a dark and deadly picture emerges; his were the stories whispered by candlelight, the reason darkness is feared. He calls himself Hendrik, and he is a vampire. Hendrik claims lineage to a pre-Sumerian tribe of naturalists who discovered the key to perpetual life through artificial selection, splicing a new branch onto mankind’s evolutionary tree: a breed of humans born into darkness, fueled by bloodlust, and living the lives of gods, laying the groundwork for the earliest surviving work of literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Hendrik’s interest in Ayden is unclear, but when a centuries-old feud is reignited, a bloody turf war ensues and Ayden is unwittingly drawn into a nightmarish world of feral cannibals and preternatural carnage.

Set against the turbulent winter of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, The Well of Gilgamesh: A Wampyr Novel is a briskly paced story that combines ancient mythology and a remarkable modern scientific theory into a vivid and stirring tale of one vampire’s mysterious fixation on a local musician and another’s desire to repopulate the frozen metropolis with a new, deadlier breed of vampire.

If you purchase the paperback, the Kindle version is available as a complimentary download. Get your copy today, and remember, positive reviews are an author’s best friend! (nudge-nudge, wink-wink!)

Nine Indie Publishing Lessons We Learned in 2014

Last year, 1.5 million words or so hit the market with my name on them. This year, the same thing happened.

Sean and Dave, working in various combinations with me or without me, produced like maniacs.

Sterling & Stone, as a bona-fide entity rather than just a name on paperwork somewhere, came to fruition. We wrote a book live. We grew to six publishing imprints. We worked our faces off … and, in the process, learned a whole lot of lessons.

Here are the highlights. May your holidays be grand and your learning curves be a bit shorter than ours.

LESSON #1: There Is A Time For Production And A Time For Promotion

We sorta learned this lesson right off the bat as 2013 began. See, truth be told we didn’t try very hard to sell stuff in 2013. We wanted to produce … and speaking from the Realm & Sands and LOL sides of the coin (that’s me and Sean), we did that in spades. We closed a dozen product funnels, completing either first seasons or complete arcs in all of them.

We knew we wanted to produce first (2013) and then promote all we’d produced (2014). Two tasks, discreetly separated. It was a good idea, and we still believe it. But because we’re squirrels, we ended up all over the place. It might have been more sensible to book a bit more direct promotion earlier so we had focus, but we didn’t. We were all over the place. We had a ton of stuff to promote, but it took us until the middle of the year to settle down enough to start doing it right.

Which is maybe a good segue to head into the next point.

Is This a Turning Point in Self-Publishing?

To anyone with an Internet connection and a love of literature, it’s obvious that self-publishing is the future of the book industry.

Self-published titles are up 17 percent just since 2012 and a whopping 437 percent over 2008.

Clearly (and much to the delight of readers), writers are finding themselves increasingly empowered by the leveling technology of software like Scrivener and SmashWords and online marketplaces like Amazon that, for better or worse, have proved crucial to the success of our industry while ripping power from the greedy, grabbing hands of the traditional gatekeeper publishers.

But make no mistake: behind all those ones and zeros, this historic success is cemented in the ever-lengthening line of remarkable novels, shorts, and series from self-publishing authors who’re using this modern technology to craft the kinds of stories that keep us all coming back for more.