Sunday, January 26, 2014

AUDIOBOOK GIVEAWAY - 10 Copies of Lust, Money & Murder (Unabridged) in February

Lust, Money & Murder: Books 1, 2, & 3
During the month of February, I'm giving away TEN copies of the new Lust, Money & Murder audiobook (unabridged, $25 value).  Sue Sharp's fabulous audio interpretation of this bestselling thriller is getting rave reviews on Audible.  Don't miss out - sign up for the giveaway here (free) -

Monday, January 20, 2014

How 3,000 Copies of My Book Found Their Way from the Trash Bin to the #1 Spot on the Amazon Kindle Bestseller List

The story of how Wild Child, one of my early novels, was published is almost as wild as the story itself.

The idea for the book came to me in a dream.   I started madly writing it down the next morning, and  couldn’t stop.  In 40 days of frenzied typing at the keyboard, I finished the entire book.

The first literary agent I sent it to was Laura Rennert, at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency in Manhattan.  She loved it.  Laura sent it out to three of the biggest YA (young adult) publishers in the USA.  They loved it, too.  I was thrilled—my very first YA book, and I had already found an agent and willing publishers.  My baby was about to be read by thousands, and perhaps millions, of people.   It was a dream come true.

“But,” she told me on the phone, “there’s one problem with your book.”

“What’s that?” I said, my euphoria fading.

“It’s too short.  Can you add another fifteen thousand words?”

Fifteen thousand more words?  I was dumbfounded.  I didn’t understand why I had to add 15,000 words to a book that seemed perfect as it was.

“It has to do with the cost of paper,” Laura explained, "and retail price points, and so on.  It’s complicated.”

I spent the next two months struggling to make Wild Child a longer book.  Nothing about the process felt right to me, but I like most writers, I badly wanted to see it published.  When I finally finished padding it with all the extra words, I gave the manuscript to all my friends and trusted readers to read again.  “Mike,” one of them said, “congratulations! You totally ruined a really great book.”

Unfettered, I started packing up the manuscript to send to Laura.  But at the last moment, I changed my mind.  Why should I add 15,000 words to a book that seems perfect just as it is, just because of some rules about the cost of paper and cardboard boxes?  Would an artist make a finished painting three inches bigger on all sides to make it fit into someone's frame?  To hell with the big publishers, I thought—I’ll publish Wild Child myself, in its original form.

I was living in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time.  As I needed a book cover designed, I decided to hold a city-wide student art contest for the best cover illustration.  After all, Wild Child was a story about young people, written for young people—why not have young people come up with the cover picture?

The winning illustration came from a 17 year old at North Atlanta High School, a laid-back African American by the name of Seron Fuller.  Everyone agreed that his amazing, magical illustration for Wild Child perfectly captured the main characters, Kyle and Brianna, and the overall feeling of the story.

I excitedly arranged for 3,000 copies of the book to be printed with Seron’s cover illustration on the front, investing my own money in the project.  Then, as fate would have it, my work situation changed.  Within a week of the books being delivered to my apartment, I moved across the Atlantic, to Europe, to Riga, Latvia.

Printed books are heavy.  I could only afford to take two boxes of Wild Child with me—200 books, total.  I shipped the rest up to Nashville, to my parents’ garage.  My stepfather wasn’t too happy about keeping them for me, as they took up a lot of space, but he grudgingly agreed to do it “for a while.”

I settled in Latvia and began my job, teaching at a Latvian university.   My wife is also a teacher was working at a local high school.  One day she said, “Mike, I told our English teacher that you were a young adult writer and she wanted her students to read Wild Child.  Can you spare a few copies?”

Why not? I thought.  They’re just sitting here in a box, collecting dust.  So I gave five copies to my wife to pass along to the teacher.  A few weeks later, the teacher asked for five more copies.  And five more.  Then an English teacher at another Latvian school became interested, and I gave out more copies.  And the book began to spread.

In short, hundreds high school students in Latvia went crazy over Wild Child.  I had soon given away half my copies to schools and libraries.

Meanwhile, my stepfather had contacted me several times, asking me when I was going to get all the damn books out of his garage.  I investigated shipping them all to Latvia, but the cost was astronomical.  Finally, backed into a corner, I said, “Just have them recycled, I don’t know what else to do with them.”  It killed me to tell him this, but what choice did I have?  None of my American friends wanted 28 huge boxes of books taking up spaces in their garages.

To add insult to injury, my stepfather called me back the next day.  “Mike, it will cost two hundred dollars to have these books hauled off for recycling.”  Two hundred dollars!  I had to pay to have my precious babies thrown into the trash!

Feeling sick, I sent him the check.

More time passed.  I soon had given away all 200 of the books I’d brought with me to Latvia.  I sorely regretted having the others hauled away.

One day I ran into a student who had read Wild Child in his English class—he recognized me from my photo from the back cover of the book.  He asked if I had any more copies.  I told him, with pang in my heart, that no more copies existed.

“You’re wrong,” he said.  “They’re selling your book on Amazon.com.”

I blinked once.  “That’s impossible,” I told him.  “All the copies I had in the United States were thrown in the trash.”

He shrugged.  “See for yourself.”

Certain that he was mistaken, I went home and pulled up the Amazon website.  Lo and behold, there it was.  Wild Child, by Mike Wells. 

For a few seconds, I stared at the computer screen in a state of total confusion, overwhelmed by a surreal feeling.  I thought I was having some kind of strange dream.  How could this be?   All sorts of crazy thoughts flew through my head.  One of those publishers that Laura Rennert sent the manuscript to had printed it without my knowledge, somebody had stolen it, the story had fallen through a hole in the space-time continuum and had magically published itself...

But then I looked more closely at the book cover image, and I realized that there was a much simpler explanation.

These were the copies I had printed myself!  Somebody had pulled them out of the trash and started selling them.

After some reflection, I decided that even though I wasn't making any money from the book, I was happy that lots of people were reading and liking it.

Not long thereafter, I moved to the UK and started teaching in the University of Oxford Creative Writing Program.  In 2010, I witnessed the explosion of ebooks and reading devices, such as the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Stanza, etc..  It seems like everywhere I went, someone was reading a book on one of those gadgets, or an iPad smart phone or notebook computer.

I decided that Wild Child’s time had finally come.  Publishing the story as an ebook was perfect!  Ebooks don’t have any physical form—they can be as long or short as they need to be.

I converted Wild Child to ebook form for the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony,  etc.  and of course the iPad and all  the other Apple devices.  Young adult book bloggers started reviewing it and the book has received great reviews.  In July of 2011 it climbed to the #3 spot on in the Young Adult/Juvenile category on the Amazon USA Kindle Books Bestseller list, and in September of 2011 hit the #1 spot in Children's Fiction on the Amazon UK Kindle Bestseller List.

I have to say that I feel 100% better about myself now that I'm actually helping Wild Child find its way into the world.

Sometimes I think that Wild Child should have a subtitle:  The Book That Wouldn't Die.
 ____________

This story was covered in the UK Daily Mail

NOTE (August, 2013):  The 3,000 copies I threw in the trash have become collector's items—the current price in the UK for an original copy of Wild Child, unsigned, is £600, or almost $1,000! 

However, for the much more reasonable price of $3.99 you can download the ebook from any of the following stores (click links): 
 

Sunday, January 19, 2014

New Thriller Release - The Drive-By Wife


Description

In this explosive psychological thriller, Allen and Cynthia Hunt are an upper middle-class San Francisco couple who make one small but serious mistake. This momentary lapse in judgement plunges them into an endless nightmare that threatens to destroy not only their marriage, but their very lives.

"This book is a gripping, absorbing and disturbing portrayal of domestic strife leading to a violent nightmare." - Emma Hunneyball, Book Reviewers (UK)

"Excellent character development, plot line is through-the-roof original, and the whole premise is marvelously bizarre and intimidating." - The Word Verve, Alpharetta, GA (USA)

"If you are into psychological crime thrillers grab this book." - Reviewer CristiAk, Juneau, Alaska

"I have read most of the great thrillers and this is right at the top with them. Wells does not disappoint."  Sheena Jennings, Butte, Montanta (USA)


AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR EBOOK RETAIL SITES (CLICK BELOW)

 Amazon USA Amazon UK B&N (Nook)
 Apple iBookstoreGoogle Play Kobo


Also available on Smashwords and Flipkart (India).



Thursday, January 16, 2014

The Drive-By Wife to be Narrated By NYC-Area Theater Director Mark Torres

I'm excited to announce that Mark Torres, a NYC area narrator with over 30 years experience as a professional actor/director/producer, has agreed to narrate The Drive-By Wife. His audition for this thriller was amazing. When I heard him utter his first words as "Billy," the seedy villain in the story, chills ran up my spine. I knew I had the right narrator! 

The audiobook is due out in late March.  The volume will be unabridged and will be available for purchase on Audible, iTunes and Amazon.

Monday, January 13, 2014

The Crucial Importance of "Candy Bar" Scenes in Your Writing

I recently read through a long thread of comments from a random group of authors talking about their writing process during NaNoWrMo (National Novel Writing Month).  Many of them were lamenting about the same problem, how they had to "slog" or struggle through much of their story to reach those delicious candy bar scenes.

What is a so-called candy bar scene?  It's not a scene that involves a Snickers or a Kit-Kat, if that's what you're thinking.  It's a scene that "tastes" so good to you, the author, that you just can't wait to reach that part of the story so you get it all written down.  It's a juicy scene that you have been looking forward to sharing with readers perhaps ever since you had the idea for the book.

Well, I have some advice for you new writers out there.  EVERY SCENE in your book, from Page 1 to the very end of the story, should be a candy bar scene. 

Now, before you raise your hands defensively and say, "No, Mike, that's just not possible—there are great scenes in every book but there has to be some filler, too, all books have it..."

No, all books don't have it.  I can open up any of my all-time favorite novels (I'm not going to name them) and turn to ANY page in the story and—voila—I'm smack in the middle in a candy bar scene!  Each and every scene is scrumptious and engaging.  There are no plodding, lackluster, or filler scenes.  This even includes flashbacks and simple scenes that at first glance do not even appear to advance the plot.

If you want to write a truly great book, you must do likewise.  During your writing process, you must, with great care and discipline, eliminate every non-candy bar scene from your story, whether that means cutting the scene out (often the case) or reworking the scene (even more often the case).  If it's the former, simply muster up your courage and delete that scene.  If it's the latter, put on your creative thinking cap and dig deeper.  Ask yourself:  why am I not as excited about the scene as I need to be in order to make this into a wonderful book?  Trust me.  If you are not in Candy Bar Mode when you're writing a scene, the reader won't be, either.  Your story will drag along at this point, and your reader will have exactly the same feeling of wanting to get past this part and move on to something more interesting as you do.

So, how can you jazz up humdrum scene so that you're just as fired up about writing it as every other scene in the book?

Unfortunately, there is no simple formula for solving this problem—it's a creative one.  But I can share a quick example from one of my books to show you how I do it.  In Lust, Money & Murder, there is a section of the story where my hero, Elaine Brogan, graduates from a conservative, all-girls high school and then wins a scholarship to a very liberal, coed college.  When she enters the college as a freshman, she is not only shy and self-conscious around boys, she's a virgin.  All this makes her feel like a misfit, especially around her sexy, open-minded roommate. 

In these pages of the story I decided to summarize, rather than dramatize, how she lost her virginity in a well planned-out way.  It was a few paragraphs long and rather boring to write.  I was clearly not in Candy Bar Mode.  But I went on writing the rest of the story, knowing I would fix it, somehow, on the second draft.

On the next read-through, it became even more obvious that I wasn't nearly as enthused as I should have been when writing that part of the story—the narrative came across flat.  I thought something needed to be there but I wasn't sure why.  I first simply decided to cut it, but when I studied the scenes that preceded and followed it, I realized that cutting it would leave a gap.  Many readers would wonder how Elaine made this difficult transition from a conservative, all-girl environment to the liberal, coed one.

I put on my thinking cap and started brainstorming.  I began to imagine, in great detail, how Elaine would lose her virginity...and I realized that this could be funny.  Poor Elaine feels like a social misfit and wants to escape this feeling as soon as possible.   She's also very pragmatic, a problem-solver.   This was a chance to show more of her character, too.  I decided that she would go out and hunt down three different suitable-seeming guys, and the first two would be disasters but the third one would rise to the occasion, so to speak.  This triggered the analogy of Goldilocks and the Three Bears—the first guy would be too hot, the second guy would be too cold, and the third guy would be just right...or at least he would appear so at first.

Then I started creating these three characters, with the idea that the third and last one—Mr. Just Right (Almost)—would actually turn out to be a sports fanatic who was virtually "pickled in Viagra."  When he's on top of Elaine, going at it, he startles her by crying out "Go, Rodriguez, go!" At first she thinks he's speaking to his own manhood, but she when opens her eyes she sees that he's watching a basketball game on TV. 

By the time I had visualized these few scenes I couldn't wait to get in front of the computer and write them out.  They were funny and engaging to me.  I was clearly in Candy Bar Mode.  The three paragraphs were expanded to three pages.  It was a solid day's work, but well worth the effort.  One of the most frequent comments I receive about that book on the social networks is "Go, Rodriguez, go!" with a smiley face tagged on the end. 

So, if you want to write a great book, don't let yourself get away with any non-candy bar scenes.  Be merciless with yourself.  If you're not fully enthused about any part of your story—and I mean any part—go back and cut it or rework it until you are.

Now I think I'll go have a Snickers.

If you found this article useful, feel free to buy me a cup of coffee to go with that Snickers bar 😃  click here  - ☕️☕️☕️

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Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Happy New Year! (2014)

I want to wish all of my readers and fellow authors a Happy New Year and thank all of your for your support during 2013.

I thought this would be a good time to share what I hope to accomplish in the coming 12 months so you'll have an idea of what to expect:

Sequel to Lust, Money & Murder - as I mentioned in the December newsletter, I'm working hard on this project.  Although the way I ended the first series made it particularly challenging to write a sequel, rising to that challenge has resulted in a rich story that I believe is just as engaging, if not more so, than the original.  In fact, struggling with this sequel has made me realize that there a quite a few books that could be spun off from the original, books featuring different characters that many readers have expressed interest in knowing more about. These include Nick LaGrange, Luna Faye (Elaine Brogan's tough-as-nails martial arts instructor at the Secret Service Academy), and Dmitry (the Russian taxi driver who helps Elaine in Moscow).Escape from AtticaLust, Money & Murder audiobook has already agreed to narrate the sequel and hopefully can start as soon as it's in her hands.
You can expect to see the sequel and one or more of these books in 2014.  Also, Sue Sharp, who narrated the original trilogy has already agreed to narrate the sequel and hopefully can start as soon as it's in her hands.
I've already outlined several of these and even designed a cover for Luna's story,

Passion, Power & Sin Audiobook - this is a fairly long series, with about 22 hours of estimated recording time, but I hope to have this out in  the latter part of 2014.  I'm auditioning narrators as we speak.  This series also has the potential to branch out into more stories featuring Heather Bancroft and/or the minor characters (Alana Maya and David Winsor, for example). I feel some inspiration to move in this direction, but will have to gauge how readers feel about it--the series has not been out long enough to tell.

Wild Child 3, 4...etc.?  This is a series I really need to finish, but I'm in a sticky place with it.  The readers who want more are very loyal and vocal, but, unfortunately, small in number.  Believe it or not, Wild Child is the slowest selling ebook title of all that I've published.  I still haven't figured out why, especially considering the amazing history of the paperback version of the book.  But to those readers who are waiting for the continuation and conclusion of the story:  I will finish it, I promise.  I just don't know when.

That should keep me busy!

As always, I'm open to questions and suggestions about what you would like to see from me - always feel free to let me know your thoughts by commenting below or emailing at mike (at) mikewellsbooks.com

I wish you a happy and rewarding year ahead!