Some writers will say that the best music is silence, but they can go fuck themselves. That’s right. You heard me, writers.

This is the part where I lose my shit and launch a scathing attack on the writing preferences of other authors for no apparent reason.

But no. I really don’t care that much. I actually write when it’s quiet and there are no distractions, too — I was just being an ass because it’s Sunday, and it’s raining, and my dumb dog commandeered my favorite spot on the couch. If I can escape into an area of seclusion where nothing but the words seek my attention, wonderful. Most of the time, however, no such luck. For example, as I’m writing this, three screaming kids are running around the living room, and the house is on fire or something. I dunno.

Point is, sometimes you need a good soundtrack to take you out of the present and also recalibrate your mood. Here are some of my go-tos:

Aphex Twin — Drukqs

Interstellar 

Nine Inch Nails — Ghosts

Contagion

Marilyn Manson — The Pale Emperor

If you check any of these out, you will soon realize, as I have, that most of this music is sad and dark. Definitely a theme here. Anyway, it fits the narratives of my books, which are not typically (read: ever) happy and light.

The headline says it all.

Here’s a direct link for you Nook users. 

Anybody?

Take that, Barnes & Noble! That’s what you get for carrying my book!

There she is. The cover to the Dead Weight audiobook, coming soon to an Audible and iTunes near you. Really soon.

It’s done.

The audio version, narrated by Joshua Nicholson — and he does a fine job of it — weighs in at 10 hours in length. That’s based on the 360-something-paged, 103,000-something-worded novel. (Should’ve been 135,000 words, and actually it was, but then an agency got to me and wham, bam, thank you — wait, damn!)

So here’s a detail I always noticed but never really thought about. Books are rectangular. Audiobooks are square. I think that’s because people used to do all of their listening on CDs — remember those? — and books on CD always came in square jackets. It’s been years since anybody picked up a CD and yet the industry never bothered to bring visual parity between book and audiobook. Customers couldn’t give a shit, of course, but authors — well, that’s just one more thing I didn’t think about. So, if you compare the cover of Dead Weight in its original novel form to the audiobook, you’ll see that a few changes have been made in order to square everything away.

Anyway, it’ll be available in a couple days, and then I’ll update with links to buy / download it, as well as some thoughts about the process.

There’s a service called Wattpad. It’s popular. Lots of authors use it to give their books away for free and then pray that somebody cares. (That’s kind of the state of the books industry, by the way.) I guess it works because some of these free books are rated by millions of readers.

One night, I used the service to write the beginning of new novel, After World, that sadly has fallen lower on the priority list compared to Sophistication and The Deep, Dark, Down. But I do, eventually, one day, want to return to it.

If you’re bored, have a read, and don’t forget to send me hate mail afterward.

Well, 2016 is finally over, which supposedly means that celebrities will stop dying. That’s good. Of course, it also means that 2017 has arrived in its place and that some racist, sexist, Twitter troll ass-clown is going to do his best to roll back the country to the 1950s. Can’t say I’m looking forward to that, America.

I was going to do great, wonderful things over the holidays. Legendary things. Things that future generations would commemorate with scholarly books and countrywide parades, perhaps. Instead, I battled the Worst Motherfucking Cold Ever, capitalized because it deserves my gods-damned respect, as I became one with the couch and the couch became one with me. For nearly two weeks. Two weeks, this cold! I say again, two weeks!

\

That ain’t right. That’s too long for any cold to hang around, especially one with the power to render its subject useless. I basically looked like the Two-Weeks Girl from Total Recall seconds before she exploded all over the place, hashtag spoiler. The result is that I didn’t do any of the following legendary things: finish Sophistication; work on Sophistication; write anything meaningful; play video games; consume any media worth consumption. I did, however, consume an endless surplus of fatty foods. Does that count? I was one with the chocolate chip cookies, and the chocolate chip cookies were one with me.

Does this update have a point? Listen, you’re asking the wrong guy. I just write this shit.

Right. So all of this to say, I think, that with 2017 here and a Trump-led cannibalistic nuclear fallout apocalypse all but confirmed for the first half of the year, I need to start in. People, that clock, it is a-tickin’. It’s hard to know how many more words I’ll need to tell the story of Sophistication. I have no idea what’s yet to come, to be honest. These characters are deplorable assholes. But I’ll shoot for 100,000 words and I’ll probably hit it, give (and then take) 50,000 words. The plan is to wrap the book by the end of February, but I should note that I hate plans and often plan against them.

Oh, Dead Weight is nearly profitable after two weeks. Well, depending on my measurement. If I simply account for the money I sunk into it, which includes the cost of the cover, the audiobook, and what limited marketing I’ve done so far, yes, I’m in good shape. Of course, this doesn’t account for the years spent creating it, so there’s that. Years that really should’ve been months, except Game of Thrones was on, or somebody brought over a bottle of Booker’s, or The Last Guardian finally came out. That’s not true — The Last Guardian came out well after I finished the book, but you get the point.

Anyway, I think that’s it.

This is my second book, totally unrelated to the Dead Weight series. Sophistication is set roughly 10 years in the future and follows struggling video game journalist Miyuki Mitsuraga, who finds herself enveloped in all sorts of cutting-edge fuckery and surrounded by lots of jackasses with their own agendas.

For the record, this isn’t the official synopsis, nor will it be used to sell anyone, but if you’ve landed on this blog, it’ll serve.

The book explores what might happen if a group of so-called terrorists possessed a seemingly unstoppable technology. I will note that compared to Dead Weight, Sophistication is loads more cynical, violent, and despicable, so that’s, uh, good.

The takeaway here is that it’s almost done. Final master is set to be delivered end of next week, and it’ll be on Audible shortly thereafter. Which will be great for several reasons, specifically:

1. It’s really the last thing I need to do for this book — other than, that is,  promote it.
2. Lots of people prefer to listen to their books, and now they’ll have that option.
3. I will be finally able to focus most of my efforts on Sophistication, which is in the final stretch.

Working on the audiobook has been an interesting experience — one that I’ll detail in a separate blog post. I’ve learned a lot during the process and some of those learnings will benefit the audio version of Sophistication, too. Which, by the way, should be finished by the end of February and available in the first half of 2017.

Well, this is awesome. Dead Weight is featured on the front freakin’ page of the Apple iBooks Store!

Look — proof for you unbelievers.

iPhone:

iPad:

And it’s also on desktop, but I won’t bore you with a screenshot.

Did you see that placement in ‘Popular Fiction’? Sandwiched between George R. R. Martin and Ann Patchett, as I often am in my dreams? Seriously, one of these things is definitely not like the other, but I’m not complaining.

I feel like I need to link again to the iBooks version to celebrate, so that’s exactly what I’ve done here.

I need to preface this update with an important fact, which is that I really wouldn’t know. Dead Weight has been out less than a week and so far it’s performing a’ight. Hundreds of books purchased, not thousands. But at least it’s not tens. From a first-time author, no less. I tell myself that every night before I cry myself to sleep, anyway.

I have, however, been studying the top charts in an effort to understand what performs. Based on what I can ascertain, my next book should be about vampires who screw… a lot. Or, I should call my novel ‘Dirty’ something. If it’s about a seamstress, I guess it’s ‘Dirty Seamstress,’ and if it’s about a lovable hamster, it should be ‘The Lovable, Dirty-Ass Hamster.’

There’s a lot of fiction about getting it on. Vampires getting it on. Werewolves getting it on. Dirty people getting it on. People getting dirty and then getting it on. And that shit is selling like crazy.

Dead Weight is at a slight disadvantage because it features no vampires, no dirty girls, and only a little sexy time. Also, there’s not a half-naked dude with a six-pack on the cover.