The Dog Stars - Peter Heller

I wish that I could say that someone recommended this book to me.

I wish that there was someone I could figuratively walk up to and thank for telling me about this it.

I stumbled upon it late one night while letting my kindle roam the book lists. I saw it and on a whim hit the purchase button.

What a great find.

It's hard to describe the book without giving a whole lot away, so I won't go in to great detail:

After a flu epidemic, and then - just to make sure - a liberal round of blood poisoning wiped out 99.5% of the world's population, those that survive do what they have to do.

Staying alive is paramount, but the book also alludes to the processing of the grief of loved-ones lost, along with the moral switch that occurs to enable people to carry on and survive the horrors that they have had visited upon them, along with the violence they must inflict upon others that come within the boundaries of tenuous safety.

Unlike "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy - there is some working infrastructure left, and the Narrator, a writer-turned-building-contractor, has use of a plane, (he lives in a rural airport in Colarado) the company of his dog Jasper, and the sometimes overbearing protection of a professional survivor and only human cohabitant - Bangley.

The immediate nature of their lives is counterpoint to the slow unfurling of information about "before".

Brutal, and never without a sense of impending failure or loss the book still manages to deliver some magnificent image-scapes and explores the nature of personal relationships in impossible circumstances.

The writing style is not your run of the mill layout, and takes a couple of pages to get used to - but if the reader lets go of some of the literary  rules that they might expect, and the allow that this is a narrative of an articulate man speaking in his own and honest voice, the rewards are immense.

Available in paperback or Kindle.

US and most other places, get yours here:

UK folk - here's your link.:

Want a free paperback edition? Live in the USA? Come on in...

NOTE: This offer has sadly expired. "Yay" for those that got on to it though!

Back from my travels and refreshed. The adventures I've had, places seen, and people met have left me revitalised, and so ready to start writing again I could burst.

The thing about being self published, though, is that there is always the Albatross of the previous book looming  nearby. The cord attached to it, tightens every time I look away - the connection has a tendency to choke... to stifle the creative process of the new.

So, what am I to do?

I've decided to get some books into peoples hands.

I'll be writing a post about the $500 lesson I learned regarding some social media decisions I made a month or two ago, so without going in to detail, and thus turning this post in to that one, the guts of it is this:

I could have spent five hundred bucks on books, and actually had them in peoples hands to read, and love and talk about.

But I didn't.

Now I aim to rectify that. Although I no longer have five hundred clams to foist at the printer, I will be able to send at least a few to you fine folk out there in the actual world. As opposed to the non-world we inhabit here in the great data stream that is the internet.

I'm talking paperback here, people. Not a kindle promo. Not a .pdf file to squint at on your computer.

A book. A real, book. From a printer.

You get the point.

The way the printing distribution thing goes this offer is only valid to USA folk. Don't hate me "rest of the world", blame the system. It is one that is quite limiting, from an Author-buy-dropship point of view, except to the states, where it is fast and easy.

I have a VERY modest (small) marketing budget now so numbers are limited - to 50. Now... don't think "oooh I'll be too late for this offer" because everyone will say that. Send an email anyway, you might be lucky!

Interested?

Send an email to: athwebber+freeUSA@gmail.com
With the subject "I want one" and your postal address.

IMPORTANT: Copy and paste the email exactly as it is, athwebber+freeUSA@gmail.com - include the plus sign. Trust me. It will work, even if it looks weird.

That's about it. Oh... except that I intend to try out the Middle Eastern postal Gods, and send a signed bookmark to each of the lucky book aquire-ers. But that's a fingers crossed kind of thing. Not that I won't post the bookmarks I will, but whether they get to your address in the next decade is debatable. Thankfully the books will all be coming to you from within the US.

Get on it.

Charities announced...

Right, so July is marching on and on... and it's about time I mentioned the charities that the cash will be going to, so without further rambling:


http://www.womenheart.org/ gets the heart vote, and doubles up for Melanie, who the book is dedicated to...

http://www.cancerresearch.org/ for my and behalf of my friends who have won, and lost to the bastard that is cancer.

The last charity is up for grabs and I'll gladly take suggestions - the only requirement that I will make of it is that it needs to be depression/bi-polar related. Because that's what I said at the beginning and I am always true to my word.

I am just finding it hard to get hold of a charity that rates well from a financial point of view. Who knew that trying to foist money at a charity would be fraught with such challenges.

If I had it over I would have chosen a "buy a family a flock of chickens and goats and stuff" charity instead.

But the thing about the internet is that once it's out there it's out there.

Send any suggestions for the third charity to athwebber @ gmail.com. Or leave them here. Either way is fine.


UK  and Australian residents: If you want to keep your charity within your respective countries, just let me know by sending a copy of your purchase receipt and I'll pick a charity in each country to hand over to (will post my charity receipts up here in the interests of full disclosure).

NOW - I have not contacted any of these charities directly, and am working in an autonomous fashion.

I don't want to jump through hoops, I just want to hand over cash.

So where are we at?

Where are we for the wonder of social media and the potential it holds?

*drumroll please*

21.

That's right, 21 sales for all of July.

Sure, I've been completely reliant on social media as a bit of an experiment (more on that in another post) but the response has been a little less than was expected.

I won't bore you with the details, BUT July is not over and even if I don't sell another book I am going to take it upon myself to give $100 to the above charities - primarily out of sheer embarrassment. (more on that in the aforementioned "another post")

SO.. it's up to you fine folk who have already read it, or are considering reading it, to get the word out.

This could be a really good thing.

Book of the month...

www.bloggingdangerously.com

And so the day has arrived.

What day?

The day that Erasure gets listed as 'book o' the month' on the much visited, irreverent blog, Blogging Dangerously. It's a fun blog, sometimes with a serious message, but mostly about the trials and tribulations of a Mother, Wife, Lover and a personal device called Carmen Electra (more recently usurped by another device called Siri, and we aint talking apples here).

Yes, the fabulous Kit will be singing the book's praises to her connections and, more importantly, adding it to her book club.

Most exciting.

What is more exciting is that for all of July I'll be donating $1 from every book sale to a yet to be decided charity. For those of you who aren't enjoying the wonder that is a published book of one's own, $1 equates to either 50% or 80% of the total after tax proceeds from each book. (depends which country you order from).

Yes, I know I currently reside in a country without a tax system, but because I sell my book exclusively through American owned/based companies, they hold 30% in tax for me. Well, not FOR me, they collect it on my behalf, hopefully it will go to repairing a pothole in a road somewhere. That would be far too wonderful.

I know. you'd think that there was more in the bucket wouldn't you? Well there is, but amazon take a large scoop of it, then tax what's left. Which is perfectly fine, in fact I'm only banging on about it so you, dear reader, don't think I'm using the charity angle to make a stack of cash for myself thus enabling me to get my yacht/gold-plated-porpoises ensemble.

Yet to be decided charity?
The idea of charity is a tricky beast. Well, not charity itself, but the decision on which charity to lob wads of cash at.

• The book is dedicated to Melanie, a friend of mine who died last year at age 30 of heart disease. So a heart charity is an obvious choice.
• I've also had friends fight and beat cancer in the last couple of years, so for me that's a tick as well.
• Depression and related illness? Yup, a little too much experience with such things, so that's a tick too.

See what I mean?
It's a little too, choosey if you take my meaning. Depending on the amount that is accrued I'll probably split it between suitable charities from the check-list above.

Nonetheless there will hopefully be a sizeable wad to disperse at the end of the month, and I'm up for any input people might wish to add. If it's too personal a thing for you to add your suggestions to the blog, shoot me an email to athwebber at gmail dot com. (apologies for the spelled-out email thing, but having a post primarily about charity will have the search bots filling my inbox with junk otherwise)

It would be a dream to be able to donate a thousand bucks. And  impossibly fantastic if at the end of the month there was 50k to disperse to charities - but I'll take what I can get. It really depends on how much people are willing to talk about the whole concept, and how much they recommend the book for July.

Kit won't have posted her links/got the ball rolling yet - due to time differences etc. but please feel free to get the ball rolling. Simply share this post with whatever social media stream takes your fancy, OR if you have any better ideas, try them out.


The book can be purchased in Kindle format AND paper back at:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0087QG37S - US Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Erasure-series-ebook/dp/B0087QG37S - UK Amazon.

All other readers (and for those who simply prefer to buy their eBooks from anywhere BUT Amazon, smashwords has you covered: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/167457


More news as it comes to hand. (along with a less wordy post)

Erasure gets put up for book of the month.

It's a slog, but an interesting one.

Next up in the adventures of Erasure-as-a-book-to-be-sold as opposed to Erasure-as-a-book-to-sit-quietly-in-the-ether is the impending situation of it being listed by the fabulous Kit from BloggingDangerously.com.


Details as they come to hand, but we've agreed that there should be some charitable component to the sale of the book.

Sure, I could just discount the hell out of it for the book club fest that will follow, but I like the idea of the discount cash going somewhere.

I also like the idea of a book being valued, and am a little concerned with the state of play in the 2.99  eReader lists.

SO

We shall see -  I'd love to be in the very rare position to be handing over 50k to a charity, but will be happy will 500.

Or 50.

Or something.

Exciting, no?

Self Publishing: The story so far

"You should totally write a book."

The call from many a fan after reading my adventures about searching for coffee in a new country.

"Should I though?" was my usual answer.

It's fine attempting to be humorous on the pages and posts of a reasonably well attended blog, but a work of fiction is a whole other bag of clams.

Nonetheless, I did, and I am really happy with the result and hope to be as happy with the further instalments of the Erasure series.

On getting older...

I turn 40 today...

...and I am liking it.

While my distaste for birthdays during my twenties confounded my friends and family, getting to thirty was a turning point for me, and for the last decade I have enjoyed the natural progression of years that inevitably comes around every 365 days or so. (taking leap years into account)

More so in the last couple of years after the great-big-dose-of-perspective train pulled into bon anniversaire station (I know, bask in my use of French). The metaphoric train was driven by a guy who I passed every Saturday on the way in to my apartment building.

His name is Charles.