Category Archives: Only Son

One Year Later…

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Only SonOne year ago today, we unleashed my book upon the world. In the 365 days since, we’ve sold over 200 copies. The numbers aren’t great by any stretch, but considering we self-published and had no advertising budget, I think we did okay.

Where we did better than okay – in my opinion – is with the feedback. Most of the readers seemed to enjoy the story, and some were nice enough to review it (positively) on Amazon.

I don’t pimp the book nearly as much as before, mostly because a lot of you must be sick of hearing about it. But also because I’ve resigned myself to the fact that we’ve sold all we’re going to sell. Pam and I have talked about a sequel, but to be honest, life has intervened.

There is a decent story rattling around my head, but I need to get off my arse and put fingers to keyboard. We’ll see.

That said, thank you all for the support. it means more than you will ever know.

No More Pencils, No More Books…

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Only SonSo, I made my bi-annual visit to the dentist this morning. It was also my first meet-and-greet with the new dentist. My former dentist retired a few months ago, and the new doc took over. While Dr. Bendler was all sorts of awesome, Dr. Ogan seems nice enough.

During my last visit, I gave Dr. Bendler and his entire staff copies of my book, Only Son. (Available now at Amazon and CreateSpace for a low, low price!) Any hoo, I’m sitting in the chair when one of the hygienists comes over and tells me she read the book and really liked it. Always nice to hear.

Then she said, “My son actually used Only Son for his high school book report this semester.”

Dude.

Naturally, I was flattered, but I was also apprehensive. If her son received a lousy grade… and she was holding sharp instruments…

Thankfully, she said her son did well, so I breathed a sigh of relief. Had he not, I assume I’d still be sitting in the chair, covered in blood and sweat. /snark

Yes, I Saw It

And yes, I was humbled by it.

Oregon Muse put of a Sunday Book Thread as Ace of Spades HQ this morning. In it, he more than generously highlighted Only Son:

“You’re all probably familiar with longtime moron commenter Wyatt Earp. You’ve heard him bitch about his home town, Philadelphia (“the crack whore of cities”), and you’ve heard him piss and moan about the Eagles, an NFL team known primarily for being used by other NFL teams to blow their noses on, but despite all this, he got off his sorry ass and actually wrote a book. When I was highlighting moron authors awhile back, I somehow missed him. Anyway, Mr. Earp’s book Only Son, is available on Kindle for the absolutely outrageous very reasonable price of $3.99. The plot of this crime novel involves “a discharged U.S. serviceman [being] found dead on a Philadelphia street and a pair of homicide detectives struggle to solve a crime with no witnesses, no leads, and no family to speak for the victim.”

And you know no one knows the mean streets of Philadelphia (“we’re not as corrupt as Baltimore”) quite like Wyatt Earp, a police officer who no doubt spends all of his time dealing with perps, creeps, scrotes, toughs, punks, thugs, and Methodists.”

After whoring the book for its first two months, I took a break – mostly because I figured you were sick of hearing about it. I’m glad Oregon Muse brought it up again, especially with the Christmas season approaching. It would make a good gift. /pitch

McKayla Is Not Impressed

But maybe you should be. Pam and I have decided to slash the price of our novel, Only Son, to $9.99 for the paperback and $3.99 for the Kindle version.

The reasons for this are two-fold. First, sales are, to put it lightly, lagging. We’ve sold a mere 129 copies since we published in March. By comparison, SYLG averages about 1,600 hits a day. That’s the nature of the beast in self-publishing, and with nothing in the way of an advertising budget, it is what it is.

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Booked Solid

By the time you read this post (hopefully), the new, improved, edited version of Only Son will be on sale here and here. (The Amazon.com paperback version isn’t updated yet.) Being virgin authors, we enrolled in the vaunted learn-as-you-go program. I assumed I could edit and proofread the manuscript myself, and that was a huge mistake. After hearing you folks point out a few errors here and there, I hired a freelance editor named Autumn Conley.

Her services were worth every penny.

Autumn went through the manuscript like a surgeon, and like major surgery, it was red with blood ink. Subject-verb agreement is not my friend, and apparently I’m not nearly the author I think I am. Autumn threw in corrections, offered suggestions for transitions, and left detailed notes for me to follow. The story is pretty much the same, but the book is much, much better now…

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A Timely Book Update

I was never one for following conventional wisdom. When my friends played football in high school, I ran cross country. When my friends in college played baseball, I played lacrosse. I like to do things a little differently, and one look at the blog will confirm that statement, so hiring a book editor after publication was right up my alley.

I hired a terrific editor a few weeks ago, and she finished the edits and corrections last week. Grammatically, it’s as close to perfect as we’ll ever get, and I also fixed a few other minor inaccuracies. It’s the new and improved version of what was already a great story.

I should have everything done and ready for printing by Wednesday at the latest, so if you know someone who wants to buy Only Son, please ask them to hold off for a day or two. It’ll be worth the wait.

Some Ol’ Broad Rambles About My Book

Kate from An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings was nice enough to read and review Only Son. She posted a straightforward and honest review at her blog, and I wanted to throw a link up for it. She’s good people, and you should check out her blog.

You can check out her review here.

In addition, I wanted to thank Realwest and JCM at C2 for their pimping that went above and beyond the call.

Also, since I’m Slovak, we do everything backwards. The editor I hired will have the errors fixed and the book cleaned up in a few days. We’ll have her version on Amazon immediately after. (I’m learning a lot with this self-publishing attempt, and the biggest thing I’m learning is that I’m a moron.)

Oh, and if you’re interested we set up a Facebook page. Yeah, yeah, I know …