Who do we love? Iowa City!!!

What a great weekend!!! We had a book signing at the Haunted Book Shop on Friday the 13th! We had about 50 people come out. Then on Sunday we gave a presentation on the good and bad of trying to find a publisher (our short answer- it is good!). There were about 20 people there. The main difference between the two was that on Friday night there were about 5 to 7 people there who weren't family or friends and on Sunday it was all people who we didn't know. It was really exciting because both experiences were very different. The first one included lots of personal stories. My mom, wife and children came, Karen our publisher and her husband and a lot of friends were there, and Clayton and his parents were there. We talked about how we grew to become writers, how we came together and how we wrote the book. We had lots and lots and lots of fun, and were told by the owner afterwards that she was so happy to hear so much laughter in her store. Afterwards we went out to dinner with Karen, her husband Phil, and some of their friends from Tipton. I had a great time and learned a lot, most importantly thatI need a favorite Axe and a few pygmaies. So, that was great! Sunday we shared less personal stories and really focused on the process of getting a book published. It was a very different message, but still a lot of fun. There was laughing, knowledged shared, and knowledge gained. We met some fantastic people and had a great time sharing our story. Thanks to those who came out and supported us. It was a great weekend!

This is us at the Haunted Book Shop! It was standing room only. This is after the reading was over and we were busy shamelessly selling copies of our books. We sold over 20 copies - thanks to those who bought one (or two!)

We met a great young author named Jenna who also bought a book. It was fun talking to her and encouraging her to keep writing. There is nothing more exciting in the world than giving advice to young writers! I hope she does well!

Proof that we were there. I wasn't able to get a picture, but they had one of these on the counter to order drinks and someone had put an I next to Jed. So, I was JedI Peterson - pretty cool!!!

This is Mike. I just wanted to take a picture showing how we are selling books out of the back of our car. As we were walking in, I asked if Stephen King ever did something like this, and Mike was pretty convinced that he had, so I felt cooler about what we were doing. What a fantastic weekend! The only thing that would have made it better would have been if Jaren was there, but we'll see him next month at Comicon!

Why amazon.com has helped me sell my book and ruined my life in the process

The truth of the world we live in is that if you want to publish a book, amazon.com has to be a part of your life. There really is no way around it. And that is the best and worst thing for an author. Our book, Hade's Gambit, hit amazon.com last week, and since it isn't in stores, people have to buy it online. And, of course, the mere fact that people can buy our book is a wonderful thing. The process itself of getting the book online has been a fairly simple and painless one from an author's perspective. It just sort of shows up one day, and all of a sudden you are a published author. Pretty cool!

There were some bumps as it got started going, but only for those of us watching the site constantly and wanting everything up and running like, I don't know, five minutes ago. Once it showed up, the book was not available to purchase (out of stock), but after a while the book became available, although at this writing they still don't have the artwork up for our book (we were told if it isn't there after 90 days to contact them...). And now, after a week, they have discounted the hard cover from 32.00 down to 29.75, so that is good! They seem to be keeping the book in stock as well. I guess what happens is that our publisher contracted with Lightning Source, the actual printer of the book. When amazon.com feels that they can sell some books, they send for a box of 20 paperbacks and 8 hard covers, and so they have it on stock. You can go on and see, for example, that on Monday there were 5 copies left of the paperback, and on Tuesday there were 2, so we must have sold three books!

So now you are wondering, where has amazon.com ruined your life? The answer is found in one little number found in the descriptive part of the book. They tell you who wrote it, who the publisher is, how many pages it is, etc., etc., and they also include the book's ranking on amazon.com. Ah... that little number, so meaningless, so vital, so ruinous to a person with borderline obsessive compulsive behavior! The number tells you how your book is doing in relation to all of the other books it sells. I would love it if there was a Mr. Irrelevant for this list - the absolute highest number on their list. But, you really don't know where the list ends. Are there 450,000 books, 4.5 million books? Is there a green zone, where those books are considered a success, a yellow zone for maybe, or a red zone for just awful? Are we in the majors, the minors, or just playing streetball with our neighbors? It is impossible to tell. But, if that was the only problem with that number, it wouldn't be terrible. The real problem is that the number never stays still for more than a few hours, and it swings about more wildly than a monkey on prozac.

The truth of the matter is that you become forced to check amazon.com hourly to see what your number is. We started around 240,000 (again, who has any idea what this means!), than moved up and down and up and down and up and down. We would be at 140,000 one day, than later that day we would be at 120,000, than all the way down to 79,000, than suddenly back up to 212,000. All in the space of one day. And then, horror of all horrors, was the moment that I realized they were tracking the book seperately for hard cover and paperback editions. Why would they do that to me! Are they out of the same pool, or different pools? Are the two versions of my one book competing against each other? If we had gone without the hard cover, would we be competing with Twilight, Hunger Games and 50 Shades of Grey right now? Or are we competing against a self-published cook book from an old woman named Marge who lives in northern Alaska, and having two books is helping us out? Oh yeah, take that Marge! I have found myself shouting at that number (now numbers) for them to give me some sort of understanding, some guidance on how I should feel about them, but they are maddeningly unresponsive. Perhaps this is why I never really liked math. Or women named Marge.

And all you can do is watch and see your emotions go up and down like a roller coaster that has flown off the track. When the number goes down, you think yeah! We are on fire - the world is going to love our book!!! At that moment I want to call all the people who have bought my book and personally thank them for making me a true American success story. Scotish mansions and tropical islands here we come! When the number bounces back up, you freak out. Oh no, what happened! Did we do something wrong? Are we failures? Are we on the fast track to living under a bridge and fighting with a man named Hobo Joe over a rusted out can of beans? Probably not, but still, the thought enters your mind. And I want to call all my friends and family (and random people in the phonebook) who I know have not bought my book and beg them for a reason why. Why! In reality, all that really happened is that we sold two books in the morning, than perhaps none in the afternoon, while thousands of other titles each sold one or two copies later that day. To a new author, with high anxiety and little information to go on, and even knowing that it is completely meaningless, you can't stop looking at that number. It is like an addiction of the worst kind! And the number just sits there mocking you, daring you to refresh your browser. You find yourself secretly thinking that Desomond on Lost had it easy. He only had to push the button every 108 minutes, and couldn't push it any earlier. I have to push the button every 1.08 minutes. I also have found that I have to do this alone, for some reason, because I have found myself more than once saying "big bucks, big bucks, no wammies!" as I refresh the page, bracing myself for the joy or heartache. Yeah, best to not let the kids see that one.

And, just to prove that I cannot control my new refreshing fetish, I just checked right now, and we are at about 203,000 for paperback, 114,000 for hardcover. A few days ago, we were at 79,000 in paperback and 22,000 for hardcover. Tomorrow, who knows? And in a week or two we will have the ebook come out and we will have a new drug for our addiction. I will have three numbers to check. If you see me on the street later this year, wearing my bathrobe, my fingernails unclipped and my feet in very large kleenex boxes, muttering to myself about book ratings and radioactive mice, just walk on by. You'll know I'm a new author, and you'll know I sell my book on amazon.com. Don't pity me, I jumped into this boat of my own free will, and I'm so glad amazon.com is helping sell Hade's Gambit. I just wish I could get my old life back. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go check out my numbers again.

Belle Plaine!

What a great day!!! Mike and I drove over to Belle Plaine, Iowa, on July 3rd for our first official signing / reading / discussion about our new book, Hade's Gambit. We stopped by the library to check in, then had lunch with the kids who came (Brandon and Annika) at the Lincoln Cafe. It was about 100 degrees out, so we were happy to stay indoors and talk about our book. Check out the pictures!!!

This is a stack of our books. Man, isn't that cover just the bomb! Seriously, it is super awesome. We will be giving a shout out to Clayton for the rest of our lives for how sweet this cover looks! 

Mike and I behind our table. And yes, real authors wear blue!

I don't always sign books, but when I do, I sign Hade's Gambit. Stay thirsty, my friends!

We discussed the book briefly, talking about what it is all about and explaing what we wanted people to think about it - mostly we want them to think they like it.



Mike read a cool part all about Belle Plaine. We read about the Lincoln Cafe, about the characters in that chapter, and about the cemetery, where important events occur. Since we were in Belle Plaine, it went over very well!

All in all, the reading can only be considered a success!!! We sold over 30 books (including my mother's, which was fine - at least she told me it was fine!), signed them all, and had a blast. I'll put up video that my daugher Annika took of us soon. We answered lots of questions, including if people who don't like zombies would like our book (yes), who did the awesome cover (Clayton!), how was it working with three authors (the best of times and the worst of times) and what would the book have been like if only one of you had written it (my answer - if it was Mike, it would have been awful, if it was me, it still would have been pretty good!). But, in all honesty, the best part was seeing all of Mike's family and friends come out to support us. Belle Plaine is a truly great place, and we wouldn't have put it in our book if we weren't hoping that someday tourists would come to Belle Plaine hoping to eat at the Lincoln Cafe and tour the cemetery. They rewarded us on the 3rd by treating us like rock stars, proving even more so that they deserve to be recognized for being truly special. So, yeah Belle Plaine, yeah Mike Koogler and Jaren Riley, and yeah Hade's Gambit!!!What a great way to start off our Book Tour!!!

P.S. Look for a post in the near future from Mike about Belle Plaine as well!

At a distance

I wanted to write a bit tonight to explain how easy, and how difficult, it is to write a book with two other people, neither of which lives in the same city as you. I live in Cedar Rapids Iowa (the City of Five Seasons!), Mike lives in Iowa City (well, actually Coralville), and Jaren is now in the big city of Denver (and still morning the loss of Tim Tebow). Mike and I are only about 20 to 25 minutes away from each other, which is more than conducive to getting together from time to time, but Jaren is a good deal farther away. So, in order to communicate with each other face to face (sort of), we have gotten to the point where now Mike will come over to my place, or I will head over to Mike's, and we will facetime with Jaren. Here are a few photos of us doing this. I am actually texting Jaren's wife Jessie as she is taking our picture in the second one. Yeah, that is how advanced we are :) This was taken a few months ago- I think we were discussing how Hade was going to dress up as a butterfly in a flashback of his days in ballet school.

One night, we actually all needed to chat with our publisher, Karen, so we set up facetime, and put my ipad in the middle of Mike and I on the couch, and then set up my laptop with a Skype session. We realized at that moment that while this worked, it was a bit clumsy. So, we are looking into other technology for the three of us to work together, and there is a lot out there. Some options are google plus, others are webinar based, like Adobe Connect Pro, and then there is the oldie but goodie of tying tin cans together and stretching them between us. Yeah, that third one isn't a very good option, but the other two have proven possibilities.

The problem with working with people in other cities is simply one of communication. We had some issues with our edits last fall because we were communicating via email for everything! While email is great for some things, it absolutely sucks for having a sustained, creative conversation about whether our character Petr should stab an undead opponent through the heart first, and then through the eye, or go the other way around, with the eye first and then the heart. Well, that was only one dicussion, but we had tons of them. And what we found, is that it is really easy to bicker and argue about who killed who when you can't see or hear the person you are dealing with. Mike and I would fight like crazy, sending each other nasty emails, and then we would call each other and be fine in about 10 seconds. So, we learned the hard way that in dealing with important issues, nothing beats real conversation, even if it is streaming live over an ipad.

Now, the past month we have been working furiously on book two, but we are still in the "just get it down on the computer and we'll deal with the consequences later" mode. So, for example, Jaren sent us a great chapter today where some of the characters are attacked in the desert. They then have this amazing discussion about the nature of God and mercy v. justice. It is super hard core stuff, and I loved it. Of course, it is 33 pages long, and Mike and I haven't even touched it! But, we will probably just leave it as is after a few notes, and move on to the next chapter. Once we get most of the first half of the book done, then we will go through and really start working through these chapters, and at that point we are going to make sure that we have our communication system up and running smoothly, because we are not going to make the mistakes we made the first tiime around.

So, the question we often get asked is how do three of you write a book together, and the answer is carefully, thoughtfully, and most importantly, with live, synchronous communication. We got together in Denver a month ago and worked our way entirely through the synopsis of book two, a process that took us a day together, and would have been a monthlong nightmare apart. We are always better when we are together, so that is what we are going to do as much as possible in the future. So, it is definitely possible to write a book with two other people who live in other cities, but you have to do it right or it will be a disaster. Of course, it helps to have great human beings to work with, but we can save that for another blog.  

Join us in Chicago in August at Comic Con!

So, now that the book is ofiicially sort of out, I am planning on going back and doing some of the blogging that I wanted to do over the past months but have been too busy to do. So, look for little tidbits most days, and longer posts about fun stories, important events, and other news at least once or twice a week. I'll try to have something really fun on Mondays, so stop by and check it out! I am including a link to the Chicago Comic Con website. We will be there August 9 through the 12, in our own booth hanging out and selling copies of our book. It is the big event of the summer for us, so if you are in the area stop by and come visit us!!! If you scroll near to the bottom of the page, you will see Mike, Jaren and Jed, all individually, with a blub about us and our book. It is near the bottom because they have actors first, and then comic drawers / toy makers / authors (there aren't a lot of us authors there) below, and it is in alphabetical order. But, we will be hanging out with Stan Lee, William Shatner, John Cena, The Situation, Draco Malfoy, Scott Bakula, James Hong, Bruce Campbell, and Luke Perry, amongst dozens of other important people. Just the fact that my name is on the same website as those people is pretty cool! Anyway, look for a longer post on Monday all about how to write a book with two other people at a distance!

The book is available on Amazon.com!

Here is the URL to check out and hopefully purchase our new book!!! It isn't available to ship yet, but should be soon. I love that it says our publication date was June 8th. Why not!
Amazon.com site for Hade's Gambit

How our original prologue became six chapters, a different prologue, and 83 pages long!

So, a while ago I promised a short blog post about how our "prologue" became six chapters, and a prologue. Unfortunately, if we would have realized how we worked together back then, we could have avoided a lot of pain, suffering, and probably about 240 pages of our 847 final pages. Basically, we really wanted to focus on character and character development so we started with six main characters. We had Owen DiConte, an honorable young man who really wants to do right by the world, Xanadu, a young African basketball player (who was later named Gideon), Petr, a Russian mafia member, Father Dalacourt, a Vatican priest, David Livingston Sumbawanga, an old African leader, and Alexis Kennedy, a young woman and love interest for Owen. So, we thought it would be great to introduce all of our characters with just a little snipet. We also wanted to make sure that we got Hade into the introduction, if only briefly. So, we started writing little pieces about each of them so that the reader would know who the main chracters were and how they were connected to the story. So, we started building up our prologue, thinking it would just be a short thing, perhaps six to ten pages. Wow, were we wrong. We soon realized that many of these short vinetes were becoming longer and longer. Eventually, we made the decision that we had to break them up into individual chapters. Some of them kept growing and growing as we worked on the book. We would realize that Petr needed something else added to the beginning, or that Dalacourt wasn't quite right and we needed to change something there, and so they grew and grew and grew. I was the worst offender with the Petr chapter, spending perhaps ten pages explaining Catherine's Palace (which, I found out on our last round of edits that I had gotten much of it wrong anyway!!!). So, even after cutting huge parts of these chapters, they still ended up being 83 pages! And, we added a prologue about our character John having a vision of the future, which is a few pages as well. So, honestly, we completely learned our lesson, right? We have to be careful about adding too much and making the book too long... Well, we are working on Book Two right now and just had to split two chapters in half because they were too long. So, obviously we are still cursed with the problem of writing too much. But, at least looking back at it, we know that it was a problem we have had from the beginning. And, hopefully, we will continue to have for the rest of our time writing together! :)

Here are some photos of our completed book. Doesn't it look amazing! 847 pages of pure gold! We are busy working on book Two and are putting our summer reading/signing tour together. At this point, expect to see at least some of us at Belle Plaine on July 3rd, Iowa City on July 13th and 15th, and in Chicago at Comicon August 9th through the 12th. We are looking for a few more places to sign our book, so as soon as we know more we'll post it. The book should be available within a few days!

Pre-order!

Hade's Gambit: Book One of the Krypteia Conspiracy, is now available for pre-order! Visit the publisher's website at mbedzipublishing.com, got to the "buy now" link, and you've got it! It will also be available on barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, the kindle and the nook on June 6th. While you're there, check out the publisher's other books too. One just won a wicked awesome award. Jaren Riley, Jed Peterson, and Michael Koogler.

Yoko breaks up the band

Well, not really!!! I am just writing to let everyone know that Mike is getting a book published on his own! Called Convergence, it is an epic tale of... Well... I will let Mike tell you all about it! I can't wait to read it! And it is good he is done with it, as Mike and I are flying out to Denver next week to get kick-started on Rise of Cain, book two in the Krypteia Conspiracy. And, other big news, we are up on the Comiccon in Chicago website. Things are coming togrther!