Writing Wibbles

So Friday morning found me without a #FridayFlash and wondering what I was going to put up. On the morning commute, I decided to do something with zombies. Of course, as most of you know already, when it comes to well-trodden sub-genres (like zombies or classic fantasy), I like to go with a different angle — and so, I decided to write about the events leading up to the zombie apocalypse.

Despite the late start, UW-401 did pretty well as I rate things on the blog. It broke 100 pageviews early Monday — not the 200-view popularity of Geek vs. Zombies or Three Sprites, One Silent — but it got lots of RTs and mentions on Twitter from people I hadn’t seen before, not to mention an all-time high of 5 “+1” clicks on Google+. The comments included lots of requests for an expanded version, and I think it will become my next #TuesdaySerial.

And speaking of pageview count, what’s the deal with Dragon Rider? It’s suddenly over 1700 pageviews, most in the last two weeks! I’m not getting any more spam than usual, so I kind of wonder what’s going on there. There was more spam in the trap for the follow-up episodes. It’s also received 4 “+1” clicks on Google+.

Onto other matters. White Pickups is with the editor, who has things to say about long sentences (which I’m aware of) and punctuation (which I wasn’t). A release this month isn’t likely, but next month looks really good now. I’ll be firming up a late May launch day soon — I’d like to have it ready for people who want something to read over the long Memorial Day weekend. So it’s time to start the publicity push… if you’re on Goodreads, I’d really appreciate it if you added it to your “to-read” shelf. I also need to start lining up the ol’ blog tour venues, plan the release party, all that stoof. Other projects are lining up… hey, could someone pay off my mortgage so I could just do this full-time?

Meanwhile, Xenocide continues to provide intelligence if not money. I’ve learned that auto-tweeting ads for it twice a day didn’t annoy anyone (to the point of vocalizing annoyance, anyway), but didn’t lead to more sales either. Its next mission: infiltrate the Kindle Select program and see if Prime members will “borrow” it. Seeing as I’ve made one actual sale on Smashwords (through B&N), I don’t think I’m taking much money off the table with this experiment. I would love to see it hit enough sales (or borrows) to get a royalty check, just to say I did. I only need about 25 sales total, so if you have 99 cents kicking around you know what you can do with it. ;-) Or if you’re an Amazon Prime member, hang on until this weekend or thereabout. (If you’re a die-hard Smashwords customer, better hurry!)

This just in: Tor has announced that they are dropping DRM. The consensus so far is that the big pubs are doing it to break Amazon’s hold on the market — which may be true. I don’t care really, why they’re doing the right thing. But if it makes them more money, it’s even better.