I wish it was a movie…

I came across this Goodreads list and I boldly entered two of my own books on the list. The list is a list of books that people believe should be made into movies.

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/31077.Wish_It_Was_A_Movie?page=1

Now, there are two books that I have written that I really hope some day will be made into a movie. I don’t have ANY illusions of this Goodreads list making that magic happen – but it is quietly and nerdily cool to just to think about it.

I have always felt that SINKING DEEPER would make a wonderful true Canadian movie. It has CBC written all over it – back when CBC used to have money-to-burn. Heck, we could even have a guest-appearance by David Suzuki for his near-assassination scene.

As for SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME – well, that of all of my books would make the best darned horror movie you could imagine – something along the lines of FROM DUSK UNTIL DAWN or FRIGHT NIGHT or 30 DAYS OF NIGHT or REANIMATOR.

I also voted for Tim Curran’s HIVE and Robert McCammon’s STINGER – both of which would make terrific creature-feature style movies.

What’s your favorite cheap and cheesy monster movie? I’d love to hear you talk about it.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Getting the most out of your Amazon Reviews…

Let’s face it.

If you’re interested in selling your e-books Amazon is pretty well the place you want to be.

In a word – Kindle. They are still the top of the food chain when it comes to moving e-books.

But they are awfully fussy about reusing their reviews.

Basically – once you post a review at Amazon in their review section it belongs to them – which means that if you want a potential reader to buy one of your e-books – and you believe that a certain review on Amazon is just what is required to make that sale happen – then you have to figure out a way to get that potential reader over to Amazon and aim their eyes at a specific review. Which is relatively easy if you only have one or two reviews on that book in the first place – but if you’ve got more than a dozen reviews you don’t REALLY want to take the chance that the first review that potential reader looks at is the one bad one that says that your feet smell funny – and so does your book.

So – how do you get your reader to a specific Amazon review?

It is easy. So easy that I suspect that a lot of folks already know – so I am posting this entry for those folks who just haven’t figured it out yet.

Click over to the book in question.

Scroll down the review page until you reach the review you want to link to.

THEN – click the title of the review. That will take you to a separate page where the review is proudly displayed.

Look down at the bottom of the review and you will see a little tag that reads “Permalink”.

Click “permalink” and then copy the link that it takes you to off of your browser bar.

For example:

http://tinyurl.com/9j6yx6g

That should take you to the latest review of SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME. It’s one of my favorite reviews and – as soon as you read the part about Tim Hortons – you will understand why!

The man read the book in Tim Hortons.

I absolutely love it.

 

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

 

A brand-new SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME review

I’m still hip-deep in the Busker Festival and too busy to write a proper blog entry – but here’s a link to a brand-new review of SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME!

 

Hockey 30 Days of Night in Canada.

 

And here’s a link to brief write-up concerning SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME. I wrote it – so it’s really sort of an infomercial – but if you’re looking for a little publicity for you next Kindle e-book release you ought to try it out.

 

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Won’t be no Bubba…

Sometimes you just need to prioritize.

Say you’re a hero in an action movie.

Okay, so hypothetically.

You’re a hero and you’re supposed to save the day. You need to run down to the airport and single-handedly bodyslam an attack bomber that is targeted upon your favorite girlfriend’s beauty salon.

I made it a girlfriend because it’s important that a good story should have some “personal motivation”. I mean, let’s face it – if Bruce Willis was to come up against a skyscraper full of bad guys, odds are he would just dial 911 and then walk down the street out of pistol range and maybe get himself a bacon double cheese burger.

I don’t know, but Bruce Willis just seems to me to be a sort of a bacon double cheese kind of dude. Not in the first place, you understand. When he was doing Moonlighting he was more of a crab dip and olive spread kind of fellow – but he’s evolved over the years – which is how us old guys say that “He got old.”

But then he finds out his wife is being held hostage by those bad guys and all of a sudden he’s got himself a case of deeply seated personal diehard motivation. There is just no way that he is going to let old Hans and his boogey-boys get away with that kind of foolishment.

No how.

So let’s say that it is your favorite girlfriend’s beauty salon that is in jeapordy – and no, I’m not talking Alex Trebek – I’m not talking deep-fried danger. To make matters worse you had an appointment with her for a body perm – no, scratch that – way too metrosexual for an action hero – let’s say she was going to hew you high and tight like the god of all marine attack squads. Only, if that bomber drops it’s payload on the salon you are probably going to have to fall back on some sort of cheap barber – on account of action heroics just don’t pay like they used to – and he’ll mess up the haircut on account of he’s holding his mouth wrong when he wields his barber shears – on account of you probably punched him in the mouth after he good morning-ed you on account of your favourite girlfriend just got attack bombed to death.

Call it a mood swing.

So there you are – racing to save the day – and you’re running down the freeway towards the landing strip where the attack bomber is about to take off and then – out of the corner of your eye – you see a brand new reconditioned mint class Pac Man machine with one game already paid for.

Well heck.

You just have to stop and play that one game. I mean, this is Pac Man we’re talking about. You always rocked at Pac Man. Nobody could beat you. You were the freaking Pac Man King.

So you stop and you play that game and you get in that ghost-gobbling groove, acing up level after level, rolling and smoking that Pac Man machine like it has never tasted tobacco in its life.

Free game.

Free game.

Multi-free game.

And while you’re doing that the attack bomber takes off and drops its payload which brings you right back to that cheap barbershop where you are probably going to get yourself arrested for assaulting that poor hapless barber who just happened to good morning you at the wrong time of existence.

Next thing you know you’ve got a jail sentence and some three hundred pound bald one-eyed three-toothed dude named Bubba Chumsicle Gruntlebee is bringing you posies and smiling at you hopefully.

All because you let yourself get distracted.

Focus on what you are doing.

If you are trying to finish a story or a novel or a limerick about a three legged man named O’Reilly – then don’t stop in the middle of it and run off and write yourself a ninja opus.

Start something.

Finish something.

Won’t be no Bubba Chumsicle Gruntlebee.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Who here hates combing their hair???

I’ve got uncombable hair.

I drag a comb through it. Get it all lined up. Look at myself in the mirror.

Cool.

I’m a killer.

I’m a god.

And then I breathe.

Sprangowang!!!

Just that quickly – that perfect godlike comb-job winds up looking like something that was dragged through the business end of a combine harvester.

I used to have long hair.

Long like this.

(that’s me in the Aquaman costume, in case you were confused, Mera is actually my wife Belinda)

(and what is up with Aquaman? How come he comes out of the water every time without ever having to comb his hair?)

The hair was uncombable – but when it’s that long you can sort of get away with faking it. You could get away with saying such hoopdoodlery as “Hey, I’m not into conforming to civilization’s unreasonable expectations.” or “Yeah, the wind caught me.” or – if you’re in your teenage years you can even get away with a blank stare followed by “Comb?”

Or, for a couple of summers I even tried this.

Then, when I reached the age of fifty I decided to have it cut short. To hell with combing. I had it cut reasonably short and settled on looking like the way I look on that blog photo to the right of this entry.

Unfortunately, unless I want to opt for a special forces buzz cutt the darned stuff still needs combing. Not all of the hair gels of Arabia – or Shopper’s Drug Mart – would neaten this mop.

Editing is a little like that.

The first time you begin to comb through the manuscript the darned thing is completely unmanageable. The chapters won’t line up.  You can’t decide whether your hero is a blonde or a brunette. You misused there instead of their about two thousand and eighty two times.

It’s absolutely impossible.

Then, you begin to build a little structure and the work begins to come together.

Finally, when you are happy with it, comes the best part of all. The part when you send your work off to your editor.

Which, in hindsight, is a little like sending your delinquent teenager to a military academy. Let somebody else worry about that little sucker. Let somebody else get him into shape. Turn him into a man.

(I know, I know, I have dropped my metaphors into a blender and hit frappe)

Then, sooner or later the little fellow comes back – and he’s carrying a gun.

Damn it, that seemed like a perfect plan at the beginning of things, now didn’t it?

Editing is the same way. Sooner or later you’re editor sends your work back to you and you have begin to comb it straight it all over again.

(whizz, frappe, whizz, frappe…)

Only this time you have some step-by-step directions to follow.

It is as if the god of design reached out his magic highlighter and crayoned out a few step-by-step comb-to-the-dotted line directions.

Wonderful.

That’s where I’m at this morning. I am about 125 pages into a 300 page manuscript that has been gone over carefully by my editor and I am picking my way through the blue and red lines, looking for glitches and queries – like – “Wasn’t this dude red-headed three chapters ago?” or “How did ten bullets grow out of a six shot revolver anyway?” or “Who in the hell ever told you that you were a writer?”

Well, maybe not that last one. I might just be reading between the lines.

(Danger Will Robinson, frappe overload is iminent…)

The book is entitled TATTERDEMON and you are going to have to wait just a little bit longer before I can pass any more information your way.

For now, I’m just going to continue to comb my hair and play with my blender.

…whiz, frappe, whizzzz, frappe, whizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Choosing Cover Art…

I love covers.

When I go in the bookstore and browse it’s the interesting covers that often get me to pick a book up from the shelf and browse it. Once I’m browsing the sucker I am halfway to the point of actually picking it up.

E-books are the same way – but different. Cover art is still important – in fact it is damn near critical. It is tougher for e-book covers because you don’t get to see the whole picture. All that you are usually looking at is just a thumbnail image. So sometimes going to grandiose and striving for a really wonderful painterly cover isn’t necessarily the way to go. That picture of a unicorn leading a conga-line of brandy-tippling mutant shrimp across an ocean floor scattered with rare doubloons and giveaways from a thousand K-Tel promotions isn’t necessarily what you want to choose for your next e-book.

You shrink it down to a thumbnail image and that unicorn is most likely going to look like a unicycling French Poodle blowing on a twisted sort of saxaphone.

In my e-books I have worked with several wonderful cover artists.

Peter Francis, a local gent that I met at a Gothic Christmas Festival, did the cover art for my SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I liked this cover. It’s bold and it is simple and it captures the kooky off-beat eeriness of my little novelette. It’s got a kind of old-school EC Cemetery Dance sort of flavor to it that just sort of shrieks out “Bring on the booga-booga!” And, like I said, it shows up nicely in the Amazon thumbnail – which is where most prospective readers are going to be looking at it. The cover was even mentioned in the FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND review. http://famousmonstersoffilmland.com/2012/02/10/book-review-sudden-death-overtime-by-steve-vernon/

Incidentally, Peter is on the look-out for clients. You can contact him at his Facebook page.  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Petes-Gothic-Art/169630223059273

************

I’ve also worked with Neil Jackson. who has done the cover work for a couple of my books now. I just had a look at his latest cover and it is definitely a stand-out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The book is called TATTERDEMON and I won’t tell you much more about it until it comes out just a little later this spring. Until then – try not to drool on the computer screen, would you?

I will let you know that Neil is also on the hunt for his next victim so if you are looking for a good cover artist get in touch with Neil. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Petes-Gothic-Art/169630223059273#!/profile.php?id=788512064&sk=wall

*************

Lastly, I want to point you towards a great little article on this subject. I already Twittered this article and plunked a link on my Facebook page but I decided to plunk it into my blog entry that I had been meaning to write. Definitely check this link out and you could do worse than actually following that page. There’s always a lot of information there. http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com/self-publishing-tips-cover-art

If you liked this blog entry you can always do the same. Follow my blog or Twitter a link to it or plunk (that’s a technical term, by the way) a link to my blog on your Facebook page. Or of course you could always be old-fashioned about it and just buy my book. http://www.amazon.com/Sudden-Death-Overtime-ebook/dp/B0077ZR2TS

I’m an old-fashioned kind of gent myself.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Just in time for play-off season…

Just in time for the play-offs!

Read it between commercials.

Read it while your husband/wife/labrador retriever is monopolizing the television set!

Read it on the toilet!

(warning Will Robinson, too much info-dump…)

Just read it!

 

 

DEATH OVERTIME.

 

 

I know, I know – this is just another vampire/hockey novelette. But I am big-time excited to see SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME begin to move this month after a March of gentle stagnancy. There have been a couple of VERY visible reviews and the right people have begun to talk.

(insert dramatic music here)

Like it, tag it, buy it, review it. Read it to your cat. Carve SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME upon the bark of the oldest tree in the forest – and then apologize to the tree for defacing it’s grainy squirrel-ridden epidermis – and then buy and sacrifice 117 (a holy number in certain nameless sects) copies of SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME to the gods of random Amazon statistics.

Turn a rock over in your garden and whisper “sudden death overtime” to the fattest earthworm you unearth.

(hey, oligochaeta have e-readers too…)

“Steve Vernon gets it right. SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME hit all the right notes with me. A wonderful cast of characters, great dialogue between the characters and an evil bus full of vicious vampires. Reading SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME brought back so many memories of my childhood and our backyard skating rink that our father would painstakingly work on for hours. We would spend hours out there in the winter playing hockey. Of course, we didn’t have a bus load of vampires to fend off…unfortunately.” – Famous Monsters of Filmland

“With SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME, Vernon perfectly captures the dark heart of a Canadian Winter and the lifetime passion surrounding the game of hockey. He takes a group of old friends who never backed down from a fight on the ice when they were younger and still refuse to do so even when they’re old enough to know better. Toss on the rink some memorable characters, truly great dialogue, a bus load of nasty vampires, and a shocking surprise ending that you won’t see coming and you’ve got yourself a story that’s sure to be a winner.” – Gord Rollo – author of VALLEY OF THE SCARECROW

“Steve Vernon was born to write. He’s the real deal and we’re lucky to have him.” – Richard Chizmar

What are you waiting for? Order a copy today.

“This novelette reads like a bottle of very cold beer – goes down smooth and fast with very little after-burpage!” – The Hanson Brothers

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME – a perfect combination of hockey, vampires and canlit!

HAPPY LEAP YEAR! – My novellette of hockey and vampires and canlit, SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME, is available today on Amazon for free. You will not need to sell your blood to pick this one up. You will not need to sell your soul, either. Heck, you won’t even need to sell your feet.

 It’s free, I tell you. Free, free, free.

And you can order it here in Kindle format. http://www.amazon.com/Sudden-Death-Overtime-ebook/dp/B0077ZR2TS/ref=sr_1_7?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1330511450&sr=1-7

Don’t have a Kindle e-reader device? No problem. You can read it directly on your very own home computer simply by downloading the KINDLE FOR PC APP. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

But only if you take advantage of this time limited offer.

Do not sit upon your hands and wonder to yourself, “Just how does this lunatic of a Nova Scotian manage to combine the simple hockey madness of Paul Newman’s SLAPSHOT with the nonstop bloodbath wonder of Steve Niles 30 DAYS OF NIGHT?”

Do not even stop and wonder how I could manage to blend the didn’t-I-eat-that-an-hour-ago resonnance of Bill Murray’s GROUNDHOG DAY with the thud-blundering-fist-antics of Michael Dowse’s GOON in my bonus time-travel-hockey tale, “Time Out”.

Don’t believe what I am telling you?

Then go and see what the folks at FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND are saying about SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME.  http://famousmonstersoffilmland.com/2012/02/10/book-review-sudden-death-overtime-by-steve-vernon/

Go and see what THE GINGER NUTS OF HORROR said. http://thegingernutcase.blogspot.com/2012/02/sudden-death-overtime-by-steve-vernon.html

(and, as my sainted Aunt Winifred Mctavish used to say “Well, if you can’t trust ginger nuts, than nothing in this life is safe, is it?”

The digital incarnations of this novellette e-book are waiting upon the virtual bench for you to hit that BUY NOW WITH 1-CLICK button and free their unholy presence upon the cybernetic word.

Free them. Free them now.

Do it now, I beg you, before it is too late.

Let’s play some mother-pucking hockey!!!

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon