Duncan Ralston's Blog

Hey folks!

If you're a fan of Woom , I'd just like to let you know there's a new book in the Lonely Motel "universe" (or "Woomiverse," if you prefer). It's called Gross Out . It takes place over the course of a weekend at a horror convention, but also at locations from Woom, and features a handful of characters from that book, including Shyla and Angel. If you're curious what they've been up to since that fateful night in Room 6 back in 2016, I hope you consider checking out this new novel. It's a very different book from Woom, but it's still a story about stories.

Also, I've created a group on Facebook called Woomies, specifically to talk about the book with other people who enjoyed it or were traumatized by it. We're having a lot of fun over there and would love for you to join us!

WIN A WATERPROOF KINDLE PAPERWHITE w/ CUSTOM GHOSTLAND CASE, Preloaded with ALL OF MY EBOOKS + a T-SHIRT OF YOUR CHOICE!

It's Spooky Month, and I thought it would be a great time for a big giveaway. If you follow me on social media or are a site subscriber, you've probably already entered, but if you've just popped by the blog or are reading this from my Amazon dashboard, now's your chance to enter. No purchase necessary, and each entry gives you multiple chances to win!

CLICK HERE to enter now!



Multiple entries are allowed for each "task" you complete, and I believe some allow you to enter once daily. Shares are very much appreciated and also give you more entries! Each "task" has a specific value (for instance, sharing a pic of you with one of my books on SM and tagging me gets 5 entries, I believe), so take a peak and cross your fingers! :D

The Ghostland Kindle case is a one-of-a-kind item. And yes, you can enter even though you're already subscribed to my site, just in case it seems otherwise!

CLICK HERE to enter now!

Contest closes at midnight on Halloween. Winner announced on November 1st.

Thanks for playing, and good luck!

I'm sorry.


I need to say that, and not just because I'm Canadian and that's something that's ingrained in our DNA. Actually, I'm from Toronto, probably the least apologetic part of Canada. So forget about the Canadian thing. That's not pertinent to this apology.


As an indie author I do practically everything myself, aside from designing the covers (although I've done a few of those, as well). I write the various drafts, paginate, edit, proof, make the various book formats, QC the audiobooks, commission the artwork and market. It's time consuming, it's exhausting, it's aggravating... but in the end it's incredibly rewarding, especially when people enjoy all the work I've put into it.


But there's a lot of room for human error when you're practically a one-man band.


I'll give you an example: I sent out my novel, GHOSTLAND, to a few folks in the industry I thought would be nice to have a blurb from. You know, those one or two phrase endorsements of the book from writers usually in a higher echelon which tell potential readers, "I liked this, you might like this, too."


Well, that ebook I sent out had a huge glaring error in the third paragraph. And not just a typo. Somehow I had copied and pasted an entire sentence into the middle of another sentence, right at the beginning of the book. Right when the reader is trying to decide, "Is this guy any good or should I dump this book before it's too late?"


I'm sorry for that. As much to myself as to the writers whose time I (theoretically) wasted with such a rookie mistake. I mean, this was my 8th book. How did I not noticed that before I sent it out into the world? How was I not prepared for this kind of thing?


Possibly worse than that, the version of the ebook I uploaded for the launch had three chapters out of order. This was after I discovered the blurb copy mistake. Meaning there was no excuse not to have noticed this prior to upload it, aside from me being being burned the f out after spending two+ years trying to get the damn thing out into the world. Fortunately a very nice reader pointed it out to me, and I was able to fix the problem swiftly.


But here's why I'm sorry today. I recently discovered that I uploaded and printed a previous draft of the sequel to Ghostland, AFTERLIFE: Ghostland 2.0 all the way back in December. Meaning, all of those paperbacks out there have glaring errors because I used the "Final" docx file instead of the "Final Revised" docx file to create the paperbacks and the ebooks. (Even the audiobook, it appears, though hopefully that's been noticed by the publisher.) I've uploaded the correct version of the ebook and the paperback should be approved very soon.


I've come to terms (sort of) with the fact that it's virtually impossible to get rid of all the typos, no matter how many eyes you get on, professional or otherwise. I just read a major traditionally published book that had two errors in it. And I'm just one guy. I'm my own "publishing team." Every time I upload a "final" version of a book, I notice another issue: a typo, a homophone, a punctuation or formatting error. I can't even be sure they were in the previous version. Just today I went to upload the revised version of Afterlife and somehow an entire word had been deleted from the beginning of a chapter.


Every time someone handles a document, every time a new version is created, there's the potential to create another error.

In the meantime, it does a disservice to the readers, who expect a certain level of quality for their dollar, and to the other hardworking indies who are putting out quality, error-free work into the world and hearing things like "Indie books have so many typos." I'd hate to be contributing to that mentality.


So I'm sorry. I'm trying to do better. Mistakes h̶a̶p̶p̶p̶e̶n̶ happen, but hopefully one as bad as this doesn't happen again.


Now obviously, I'm not wealthy enough to give you all a refund. Hopefully those first edition paperbacks will be worth a few cents more someday and you can cash in on eBay. I think you should be able to download the new version on your Kindles, if you're into that. It doesn't change the story aside from a few mistakes of geography, dates and a name or two (for instance: Billy Turner, Lilian's class valedictorian, is called Jerry Turner later on in the story, but he's only mentioned the twice in Afterlife). However, you may want the latest update for when the third and final book comes out in the fall.


To those of you who read Afterlife (or any of my books with mistakes) and still reviewed it favorably on Amazon/Goodreads, thank you for your patience and kindness! I hope you enjoy the rest of my books.

A brand-new horror experience from the author of Ghostland and The Midwives!

Sinister forces gather in Duck Falls. Soon, this small American town will become a battleground for the future of humanity.

Six months after the "Ghostland Disaster," Duck Falls has become a reluctant tourist trap, and a new home to the activist group Ghosts Are People Too. When the Return to Ghostland televised event ends in yet another tragedy, ghosts once again fall under scrutiny… along with the effectiveness of the Recurrence Field.

Away at college, survivor Lilian Roth has discovered she's able to communicate with spirits. She and her best friend, Ben Laramie, use the skills they've acquired to free ghosts from their hauntings.

But Rex Garrote, the mastermind behind the Ghostland Disaster, is raising an army of ghosts to slaughter every living person on Earth. Left with no choice but to fight, Ben and Lilian must recruit their own army of freed ghosts, and prepare them for war.

Will it be enough to save the world?

Book 2 in the Ghostland Trilogy, AFTERLIFE is a novel of pre-apocalyptic sci-fi horror, perfect for fans of Stephen King and Blake Crouch. Get Afterlife: Ghostland 2.0 now for the preorder price of 99 cents!

Ghostland A Brand-New Horror Experience from the author of Woom and Salvage.

People are dying to get in. The ghosts will kill to get out.

Be first in line for the most haunted theme park in the park in the world - GHOSTLAND! Discover and explore hundreds of haunted buildings and cursed objects! Witness spectral beings of all kinds with our patented Augmented Reality glasses! Experience all the terror and thrills the afterlife has to offer, safely protected by our Recurrence Field technology! Visit Ghostland today - it's the hauntedest place on earth!
________

After a near-death experience caused by the park's star haunted attraction, Ben has come to Ghostland seeking to reconnect with his former best friend Lilian, whose post-traumatic stress won't let her live life to the fullest. She's come at the behest of her therapist, Dr. Allison Wexler, who tags along out of professional curiosity, eager to study the new tech's psychological effect on the user.

But when a computer virus sets the ghosts free and the park goes into lockdown, the trio find themselves trapped in an endless nightmare.

With time running short and the dead quickly outnumbering the living, the survivors must tap into their knowledge of horror and video games to escape… or become Ghostland's newest exhibits.

Featuring an interactive "Know Your Ghosts" guide and much more, Ghostland is over 400 pages of thrills and terror! 99-cent preorder exclusively on Amazon. Price goes up on Nov 8th!

Get it here.

In the fall of 1994, I quit Stephen King cold turkey. Mid-book, I threw up my hands (and the book) in frustration. “That’s it! I’m done with Stephen King!” And I brought the book back to the library unread.

Oh sure, I would later gobble up all the movies and “television events” I could get my hands on, like a reformed junkie sneaking back to the old digs for a little taste. I couldn’t miss out on The Stand, The Shawshank Redemption, Storm of the Century, The Green Mile, and Rose Red, not when everyone else was enjoying them. But for ten years, I never read another word the Master of Horror wrote.

Read More...

Enjoy your horror in the vein of Tales from the Crypt? Like those '80s VHS covers?
Well this book has both! Enter here to win a free copy. Put it on your bookshelf or in your old VHS cassette drawers.

ENTER HERE!

Check out my new and improved website! I've added a new eStore with deeply discounted books, links to all the major retailers (now that I've gone wide), as well as a page where you can read my film and TV scripts, if you're so inclined (some of which have won and/or placed in competitions). Please take a second to give the site a look. Opinions welcome and appreciated!

DuncanRalston.com

Some people have asked if I have a writing regimen.

I've been writing about 10k a week since January. That's good for me. I usually get about 1000 to 1500 words a day (I write slow - editing during so I have less to edit after), except on weekends when I usually take a break to do life stuff. So this is on average 2k per day in a five day work week. It helps that I'm enjoying the stuff I'm writing. I've had a helluva time banging out my latest thriller novella (due out very shortly - and yes, I'm nervously awaiting feedback!) and its accompanying screenplay, along with a new top secret horror novel I've been working on since March.

But it's not just the fun. I've also kept myself on track
by giving myself goals.

In 2016 I started giving myself yearly word count goals. That year I wanted to write 150,000 new words of fiction (ie. editing doesn't count). I beat that goal by almost 20k. Last year I gave myself a low goal of 250,000 words and a high goal of 300k. I hit 268k - a little shy of the high goal - but I didn't expect to reach more than my low goal, which I'd exceeded again.


This year I've given myself a low goal of 300k with a high goal of 350k. It's the end of April and I've already written a little less than 100k. I'll need to bump up those numbers a bit over the summer (which is usually my best time for writing), but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to make my low goal by October.

There's no penalty if I don't make my goal, but I have yet to miss one.
The key is just to give myself a goal.
The reward is in the achievement....

Continued at www.duncanralston.com.

"I will never do another Goodreads Giveaway again." - Me, in 2014

There are many reasons I said this back then, and those reasons still stand. Now that Amazon has monetized the process, making it even more difficult for indie authors to compete with traditional publishers, I feel it's imperative I warn you away from this before you get duped.

These are the supposed benefits of a Goodreads Giveaway, prior to the changes:

1) The entrants of Goodreads Giveaways have to add your book to their To-Read shelf.

2) The winners of Goodreads Giveaways must review your book or risk being rejected from any further giveaways.

3) Profit?

Let's talk about why these "benefits" just don't work for Indie authors.

1) The To-Read shelf (or Want-To-Read shelf). You may think someone having your book on their To-Read shelf is meaningful. That, at least, someone wants to read your book. That they will in the near future actually read it and, if you're lucky, review it. Yay!

Ostensibly this is meant to act "word of mouth" advertising. Wow! Susie from my Horror Book Club "wants to read" the latest title from Generic Horror Press. I'd better buy that one!

But take a closer look at some of the Want-To-Read shelves of entrants. There are thousands of books on many of them. No one can read that many books. Which means those entrants will likely never read your book. They will never review your book. They will never talk about your book. In fact, they will likely forget about your book a few seconds after they click Enter Giveaway because many of them – possibly MOST of them – are going through the list of giveaways entering every single one, as there is no limit to how many giveaways you can enter at one time.

I repeat: there is no limit to how many giveaways you can enter. None.

Which leads me to…

2) It is a known fact that MANY WINNERS sell the books on eBay etc without even opening them. There is LITERALLY NOTHING preventing them from doing this. So... the writer or the publisher spend however much of their marketing budget (and time, which is just as valuable) sending out books that will never be read.

As if that weren't bad enough, the only condition for entering further giveaways is to review the book they've won. But they only have to give it a star review. Not a single word of review is guaranteed. So you get a 3-star "review" with no actual review (ie. no proof the book was ever read) of a book you've spent upwards of $20 to send out. How does that benefit the indie author/small press?

3) The only way to profit under this new model is to spend thousands of dollars, which most indie authors/small press do not have. And even then you aren't guaranteed any ROI (Return On Investment). Now that Amazon has monetized this process with their "More Powerful Book Marketing Tool for Authors and Publishers" (at $119 for the cheapest Standard package, and $599 for the Premium package), it will be even more costly.

What makes it "more powerful"? Will they make these giveaways visible on Amazon? Will they tweet about them? Send out emails?

Nope.

Here are the "new" functions of a Giveaway: "Everyone who enters your giveaway automatically adds the book to their Want-to-Read list." This is not new. This was how the previous unpaid incarnation worked, and as I mentioned above, didn't work.

"The author’s followers and anyone who has already added the book to their Want-to-Read list get a notification." This, at least, is an improvement over the previous giveaways. But think about this for a moment. How many notifications do you get on Goodreads that you actually open? I'm willing to bet the ratio is pretty low. And now that this is added to notifications, it's going to be even less.

"Exclusive placements on the Giveaways homepage on Goodreads." This could possibly be beneficial. Although just try standing out amongst the Paula Hawkinses and the Joe Hills on the same homepage. Note: THIS IS THE ONLY ADDITIONAL "BENEFIT" TO THE PREMIUM PACKAGE.

The "not new" functions:

"About eight weeks after your Giveaway ends, winners receive an email from Goodreads to remind them to rate and review your book." This is already the policy. Have they changed it to a mandatory written review of 50 words or more? No? Then this is pointless. Stars without a write-up are meaningless.

"Giveaways are shown in the Giveaways section of Goodreads and the book page." They already were, they were just a little more difficult to find than in the image shown.

Conclusion: This is just another example of Big Business chipping away at the indie market. It happened with Bookbub, which now appears to be mostly Trad Pubbed books with the indies chosen by a lottery system. It happened when Facebook started choking page views. It happened when Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited.

Save your money. Don't participate in this fiasco.

Before this post gets taken down I'd be remiss not to plug my latest horror collection, Video Nasties.

You can follow me on Twitter @userbits or my website: www.duncanralston.com.