My Mom’s Birthday Giveaway

As you may recall, last month, on 3 February, I gave away copies of A Gathering Evil for free through Amazon and the Kindle Store. That was a Friday, and, by happenstance, the day after my brother’s birthday. (I know, seems like a random fact, but it will tie in nicely later.) I’m still gathering data on how well that giveaway went in terms of promoting the book and its sequels. I’ll blog on that more as I finish up with some charts and all, but the prelim report is that it worked out very nicely.

Note: that is not a blanket endorsement of the Kindle Select Program. My sample size is one book, which was the first in a trilogy. I’d had that book out for several years on the Kindle, so I had a solid baseline of sales figures on which to judge the results. Right now all I’m comfortable in saying is this: if an author has an old, dead series, working a promotion through the Kindle Select Program can breath some life into it.

Anyway, I was talking to my parents on the phone, telling them about the giveaway. My mom, not a techie, for whom email consists of my father printing out notes and typing up replies, listened and locked in on one very important fact. My sale was the day after my brother’s birthday. And she asked a very important question. “So, what are you going to do for my birthday?”

This was not one of those whiney or wheedling questions. It was more a statement of fact. It was taken as given that I’d be doing something for her birthday. She merely wanted to know what I was going to do.

Not being stupid and, because I’m her son, being rather quick on my feet, I said, “I’ll repeat the experiment. That’s the soul of science, after all, repeatability. It’ll just be better this time.”

She allowed as how it would be better.

So, this is where I need your help.

A Gathering Evil is the first of a trilogy of books I originally wrote for Game Designers Workshop. They were developing the game Dark Conspiracy at the same time I was writing the novel. I was working from partial rules. Loren Wiseman, the developer, was pulling stuff from the novel to put into the game. It was great fun. GDW coined the label “techno-horror” to describe the genre, and I agree. As I used to tell folks, “Vampires have SPF 666, and you’ve got really big guns.” (This was in the pre-sparkle vampire phase.)

Here’s a link to the first chapter, which you can read for free. I also put the link to the free giveaway at the end of it.

The Kindle offer will run from 12 AM Pacific time on 5 March 2012 to 12 PM the same day. The offer is for a free copy of the novel, A Gathering Evil. This giveaway is open to all world territories.

To snag a copy of the book, click here. Please feel free to share/retweet/favorite that link all over the place.

Just so you know, last time you guys were great at helping me get the word out. In 24 hours we gave away 2,000 copies of the book worldwide. I know we can do better than that. Heck, we have to.

My mother wants us to do better!

This is the woman who, for years, wondered when I’d get a real job. She’s not a fiction reader, much less a science fiction/fantasy reader, but once she realized this was what I was going to do, she got on board. When she was in the hospital getting her knees replaced, she had copies of my books in the hospital room so she could convince staff and visitors to buy.

So, in her honor, on her birthday, you get the present! Click on the above link or on the picture at the top of the post and let everyone else know.

Note: Nook, iPad, Sony and other reader device users, I know it bugs you when Amazon has all these deals set up for Kindle users. I feel your pain. I have something special in the works that I will only make available for epub readers. March is turning into a killer road month for me (I’m out of town more than I’m in), but I’ll let you know when its ready. You’ll have it first and the others will just have to wait.

Again, thanks for making my mom’s birthday wonderful!