This is the cover, done by M.P. McDonald, for my latest novella, THE NEVER ENDING NIGHT. It’s about a day when the sun doesn’t rise, and the terror that ensues on one suburban block.
It will be available on Amazon (for Kindle) very soon for $0.99.
*****
This is sort of an anticlimax, but the rewritten, novella-length version of ODD MAN OUT will be coming out very soon! And the cover is the same as the old cover for the short story. (It’s too good of a cover to waste on that short story!)
So: Without further ado, here is the cover to ODD MAN OUT:
Thanks to Rich Siegle for the tremendous cover art! It was exactly what I was thinking of when I envisioned an image for the short story, and will work great on the novella also!
*****
I finally checked off a box on the to-do list: I set up a Mailchimp Mailing List!
Please sign up! I promise not to spam you with tons of unsolicited emails. Things I will email you about:
To sign up, use this link: Scott Dyson Books
Other ways to keep up with me besides reading this blog:
If you read this post and sign up for the list, I will gift you a free Kindle ebook from the following titles:
When you sign up, please use the “Contact Me” page to tell me which book you want.
Thanks for signing up!
*****
A couple of new post-apocalyptic stories came out recently:
The first is by Aden Cabro, and is called HARRIER HUNT (ISLAND SURVIVAL BOOK 2). It’s more of a novella, a short quick read that is fast-paced with solid writing and good characters. I’m looking forward to Book 3. Here’s the link: HARRIER HUNT
The second is by M.P. McDonald, and it is called ISOLATION: SYMPATICO SYNDROME BOOK 2. I’m not done with it, but so far it’s started strong. I cared about the characters in book 1, and this one is continuing their story believably and with just the right balance of technical stuff with human stuff. Here’s the link: ISOLATION
Both are currently $0.99. That may change, so grab them soon!
*****
As you may or may not have noticed, I have not published anything…ANYTHING…in 2016. It’s not for a lack of things to publish. I currently have four works ready to go. They are, in no particular order, ODD MAN OUT, RECIPROCAL EVIL, THE NEVER ENDING NIGHT, and finally, DEAD OR ALIVE. Most are novella-length; RECIPROCAL EVIL is a bit over 50,000 words, while ODD MAN OUT clocks in at about 33,000. I think that both DEAD OR ALIVE and THE NEVER ENDING NIGHT are around the same length: approximately 27,000 words.
I have been writing. I have a YA novel finished called THE SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD: CIBOLA which is about 53,000 words. I am about 68,000 words into an untitled end-of-the-world novel which was inspired by Hugh Howey’s WOOL. I’m working on a longer vampire novel which would follow DEAD OR ALIVE and a horror story set in a fictional town called Addison Falls. I’ve also been tinkering with a series that I started with my son a couple years ago, called THE NINE KEYS. The first of that series is basically finished, and it is something around 68,000 to 70,000 words in length. The second is about 20,000 words at this point and has a long way to go. I also started a space opera novel but that’s stalled out at around 17,000 words at the moment.
Covers are done for three of the four ready-to-go works, editing and formatting are done for all four. So what’s the holdup, you might ask (assuming that “you” are reading this and are interested in reading what I’m writing)?
I haven’t been selling much (okay, I really haven’t been selling anything!) and I need to do something different. One option is to give up. Or keep doing what I’ve been doing, which involves tossing up my writing, offering it for sale, and having no one actually find any of it.
The second option is to try to form a better foundation. So far I have only published ebooks and only at Amazon. So, my foundation is this blog/website, my Amazon author page, and my Facebook page. I have, like, 64 followers on Facebook. Not enough. And depending on Facebook to get the word out is a crapshoot. When I look at how many people view my posts on my Scott Dyson page there, often it’s like 7, or 13, or at best low 20’s. So of those 64 people, only a small percentage even SEE my notifications when I publish. Without paying FB to show the post to more people, I guess that’s about the best one can do there.
I am thinking of doing Instagram, just for my cover photos. I have thought about taking down my collections and publishing the individual works for free on Wattpad, but after looking around there, I didn’t have much luck finding a lot of stuff I wanted to read. I went specifically looking for my friend Steve Moore’s work there, and I didn’t find it with their search functions. So I wonder how effective that will be for what I write.
I try to “network” with other writers as much as possible. I will promote authors’ works (assuming they are something I like and read) here on these pages, with FB posts, and in any other way that comes up, and I have a few author-friends who have helped me out as well. But I don’t think our audiences cross over very much, or at least what I write is not necessarily of interest to their audiences. I read so broadly and across so many genres that I am happy to promote their stuff; even more, I WANT to suggest and recommend good reads to my friends. I think that maybe if I could network with some horror authors, it would work better. I have tried with a couple, but they don’t seem interested in reciprocating.
But the biggest thing I want to do is set up a mailing list. And I don’t really know how to go about it. I mean, signing up is easy. And it seems that putting the widget on the website is not a big challenge either. But most authors I’ve spoken to who use mailing lists effectively offer a free work, and all I have are mobi’s of my works. I’d certainly be willing to offer one or both of my short story collections, or even one of my novellas, for free as an incentive to sign up for the list, but as I have not used any of the software (Vellum, Sigil, Calibre) that apparently can generate ebooks in various formats, I don’t know how to get these files to give away.
As a mailing list builds, eventually you have a ready-made list of people who are interested in receiving information about your releases, and maybe, just maybe, you can sell enough books upon release to push your work into some sort of visibility on Amazon. I think that this sounds like the best way to increasing sales and visibility.
I also plan on giving away both of my short story collections (as they’re both in Amazon Kindle Select and in KU) and I want to try a FB experiment, ask some friends if they’d share the links to the free books, see if I can give away a bunch more than I usually do. Watch this page for announcements about those giveaways, or if you’re a Facebook friend, watch my feeds there.
Anyway, I’m going to try to break the paralysis in the next month or two, and get this stuff out there for anyone and everyone to read. If anyone is interested, that is…
***
(I have three new stories ready to go; I’m just dragging my feet on publishing them because I want to get a few other things in place before I start running them out there. One is a long version of my short story “Odd Man Out,” which was published as a standalone (with another short story called “The House at the Bend in the Road”) and as part of the collection 14 DARK WINDOWS. What follows is the Prologue of that story, which is novella-length (about 33,000 words, if I recall correctly). Watch this space or sign up for my soon-to-come mailing list to find out when it is available on Amazon.
ODD MAN OUT
Prologue
Roger Sinclair checked the calendar that hung on the wall over his computer. October nineteenth. Only the nineteenth. It seemed that the thirty-first was taking forever to arrive this year. Time was dragging.
Anticipation had a way of making the passage of time seem very slow.
The Cabin Weekend was approaching, and Roger had big plans for the traditional yearly gathering of his friends.
Friends. That was a laugh. They didn’t like him any more than he liked them. They used him. They always had. Vinnie, Jack and Paul – they hung around with him – no, they let him hang around with them – because he was smart, dependable, and well-off. He made them feel superior – Look at rich, smart, loser Roger, who can’t get a girl and gets shunned by everyone…but us! We’ll take pity on the loser, and we’ll take advantage of his brains and his wealth.
Like the Cabin Weekend. They always went to Roger’s cabin. None of them had cabins. And why spend money on a real vacation when they could just sponge off Roger? Vinnie and Susan, Jack and Nancy, and Paul and whatever hot-looking hosebag he was dating at the moment.
Well, not this year. Paul wasn’t dating a hot-looking hosebag anymore. He was engaged. To Amy Wellington. Amy might be hot, but she was no hosebag. She was the epitome of class. She was the girl of Paul’s dreams, as Paul himself had pointed out.
She was also the girl of Roger’s dreams, but that was beside the point. Paul never cared about what Roger wanted, only what he wanted. He wanted Amy, so of course he ended up with her. That’s how it worked with Paul.
No matter that he had been Roger’s guest at a charity function when he met Amy. Paul had deigned to accompany Roger to the event when Roger’s own date fell through. ‘Fell through’ is sort of misleading. She dumped me on my ass, he remembered. Bitch.
Focus! Roger forced himself to get back on track with his thoughts. This wasn’t about Melissa, the stick-up-her-ass bitch that worked in the IT department of Roger’s family’s company. The point was Paul, and how he met Amy, and how he had practically run Roger over in his zeal to get to her first.
Paul knew that Roger saw her first, that Roger wanted to take a shot with her, but could Paul let him have a chance? No, of course he couldn’t. What Paul wants, Paul gets.
Roger’s fantasy was that Amy would see Paul for what he was and eventually they’d split up. It would be Paul’s fault, of course, and Roger would be there for Amy. He’d be the understanding friend she would need, the shoulder she could cry on, the guy who’d be there for her as she worked through the pain of their broken engagement. Of course it would end Paul’s friendship with Roger, but that was okay. It wasn’t a real friendship, and it had not been one for a long time. Ever since that day at the frat party back in college…
Focus! he told himself again. This isn’t about embarrassment that Paul caused him in college, this is about Amy Wellington. Paul’s fiancee. Roger’s one true love.
And the Cabin Weekend would be the time when things would turn in favor of Roger.
#
(To find out what happens at the Cabin Weekend, watch for ODD MAN OUT at Amazon or on these pages…)
I haven’t disappeared…not completely, anyway.
I’ve just been busy. And when I’ve had time to write, it’s been mostly spent editing three separate works. And now, all three are very close to being released for Kindle. Here are the titles:
As I mentioned, ODD MAN OUT started life as an 1800 word short story, released as an ebook combined with the short story HOUSE AT THE BEND IN THE ROAD. Both stories can also be found in the collection 14 DARK WINDOWS. I thought that ODD MAN OUT would make a good novella, or at least a much longer short story (sort of how DEAD OR ALIVE, originally a 2400 word short story, became a 7600 word short story on the rewrite). It ended up coming in at over 30K words, and tells the story of how the main character (not named in the short version, but named Paul in this longer version) comes to be…well, maybe I shouldn’t spoil it. Suffice it to say that a weekend retreat with college friends doesn’t go the way Paul wants it to when he brings his fiancee for the first time. His friend Roger wants her, and he’ll go to any extreme lengths to get her.
NEVER ENDING NIGHT was inspired by a Richard Laymon story I read (but can’t recall the title of) where a night goes on and on. I thought about something like that — what if night never ended in a suburban town? So I started writing from the POV of a high school girl (age 15) and it started as a diary kept by the girl where she rambles about her friends and her family and about what’s going on in their neighborhood when the sun just doesn’t come out one morning. Then I interspersed those diary entries through the third person narrative, which alternates between the girl’s POV and some of the neighbors’ POV’s. Bad things happen when the masks of some people in the neighborhood come off when they believe that some sort of apocalypse is coming and the rule of law has broken down…
The last, RECIPROCAL EVIL, is about a college kid, Chris, who experiences a campus murder as a dream, and is surprised to find out that the dream really happened. Why is he sharing dreams with some serial killer? He’s drawn further in when his girlfriend’s roommate disappears. And when the killer contacts him, he learns some things about his own background, about his family, and about his younger sister, believed to be traveling the world and having the time of her life. But is that true? And who is the killer’s next target?
There you have it. Three soon-to-be-released novellas/novels. See, I haven’t been completely idle in terms of my writing!
*****
Well, not done exactly, but the story is finished. It needs editing and other such stuff, but I wrote “The End” yesterday at a little over 33K words. It felt good. I knew there was a longer story in there when I started thinking about it, but wasn’t sure how much longer. Was I talking about 12K words? 20K words? I was thrilled to find out that it ended up a little over 33K. And I like it. I think it holds together pretty good and tells an interesting story.
I’m going to unpublish the short version sometime very soon, but it will be included at the end of the novella and will still be available in 14 DARK WINDOWS. Look for it in the upcoming months!
*****
Today is the last day that THE INN will be priced at $0.99.
In case you aren’t aware, THE INN is a 37000 word horror novella. The description from its Amazon blurb:
BAND TRIP TO PERIL…
The Jackson High School Band and student director Kimberly Bouton are making their biennial journey to a music festival in the deep South for fun and educational opportunities. Kim expects to deal with hormonal teenagers, a severe lack of sleep, and long boring bus rides, but the roadside inn where the band stays on their visit hides a sinister secret – and it translates to unimagined horrors for students and teachers alike…
Check into THE INN, where the guests are the entertainment…
Tomorrow it will go up to $1.99. So if you see this today and you were thinking that you might want to grab it, procrastinate no longer!
My 25000 word novella THE CAVE will remain priced at $0.99, as will all of my short fiction and short fiction collections.
****
My book THE INN now has 4 reviews (three of which have text), all 5-star ratings. J. Michael Major, author of ONE MAN’S CASTLE, had this to say about it:
Talk about the band trip from hell! Young and beautiful student teacher Kimberly Bouton rides along with the high school band from Minnesota to Alabama. But one of the stops along the way is an inn where creepy things have started to occur. Miss Bouton and other band members wake up sore and with headaches. Is someone at the inn abusing the women in their sleep? Dyson cleverly weaves a great tale with events in the news that quickly escalate out of control. Filled with twists and turns, you won’t want to put this one down!
(Check out his book, for a good serial killer book that focuses on some interesting issues!)
Another reader identified as “Anne” posted this about the book:
Really enjoyed this short but scary read. Extremely well-written — and difficult to put down. The characters were compelling, and the suspense was thrilling. A perfect story for a night by the fire.
It was nice to hear that a reader thought it was extremely well-written. I try…
And finally, Steven M. Moore, author of too many books to count, including his latest, FAMILY AFFAIRS, wrote this about it on his blog:
Scott Dyson, author (Deadlock Press, 2015). Is this the longest story I’ve read by Mr. Dyson? It’s a novella, and there’s a lot of horror, mystery, suspense, and thrills in these few pages. I loved it, and It’s not a genre I often read (the horror part). No zombies, vampires, or werewolves (thank God!), just one seemingly ordinary human being doing horrible things to other human beings. Some scenes reminded me of Hayton’s novel Breathe and Release reviewed here and that real life atrocity with the three girls in Ohio.
The band director, his student teacher (a woman not much older than the students), and the band are on a road trip. They plan to perform and then spend a day at a nearby amusement park, crashing two nights in the inn. I can’t say much more without writing spoilers, but I will send out a warning: if you were a member of a high school band, any nostalgia might fly out the window as your read this. Or, some readers might say, “This is a lot more exciting than our band trips were.” Mr. Dyson’s writing is fresh and original. Fans of the genre will enjoy this one. (Rating? How would you rate the TV show Dexter?)
So there are three very positive reviews of THE INN. Thanks to those reviewers for taking the time to read and review it!
Here’s another from Mit Sandru, author of the VLAD vampire series and TIME HOLE, among others:
This is another fine novel written by Scott Dyson. While reading I had to remind myself that I wasn’t reading a Stephen King or Dean Koontz horror novel, but and equally well written book by Scott.
I love it! I’ve been compared to King and Koontz! Two of the best ever, in my opinion!
I thought I’d toss some stuff up here about the background of writing THE INN. I flew through it; the story seemed to write itself. I went back and added in the material about St. Louis and the store where my main character purchases the flute pendant after the first draft was completed. I tried to give a little more depth to the parent-chaperones, who were barely mentioned in the first draft. And I fleshed out a few of the students a bit more in the narrative, making them more than just names that passed by in the story.
The idea to write it came after I finished a book called TEXT MESSAGE by William Malmborg. In that book, Malmborg describes a college student who loses her younger sister at the mall, and then begins receiving text messages from her sister’s phone telling her to do embarrassing things (mostly of a sexual nature) or bad things will happen to the sister. When the girl refuses, the bad guy (girl?) texts a photo of the sister with a finger cut off. So the girl follows instructions to the letter, and…well, it goes on from there.
I thought, after reading it, that I could probably write something similar, and started thinking about storylines. I thought of a motel or an inn (instead of a school or a mall) where bad things happen, and then I flashed back to a recurring concern I have when I’m in a motel room — that somehow they have surveillance cameras in the rooms. I mean, how would you know unless you start tearing the room apart?
It so happened that band trips came to mind, and I combined the two things — a band trip to a motel with something of that nature in some of the rooms. I recalled certain things about my own band trips as a high school student, and about more current band trips and how they are organized, and out came the story.
It ended up being something around 37,000 words, give or take. After about six months of polishing, getting input from my beta reader, and repolishing, I finally came up with an idea for the cover. I searched out images that would fit what I was picturing, and I think what I came up with is pretty close to my original idea.
It hasn’t sold well…two copies in October and eleven copies in September, at least at Amazon.com (not sure about the other Amazons in the UK or other countries), but it’s been getting some KU page reads — over a thousand last month and over five hundred so far this month. My shorter novella THE CAVE (about 25,000 words) has been read in KU a few times as well, although it has only sold one copy in two months.
So that’s the long story behind THE INN. I’m currently working on a long version of ODD MAN OUT, and am polishing a couple of other things that are done.
Looking forward to getting some more things out. Till then, try one of my other books! They’re still all only $0.99, which is a huge bargain. (THE INN is going to go up to $1.99 soon…)
Oh, and do yourself a service and read FAMILY AFFAIRS, TIME HOLE, and ONE MAN’S CASTLE. All three are excellent books!
*****