Suspense Magazine

Oooh! There’s an unsavory element lurking within the pages of the Summer 2018 issue of Suspense Magazine!

I was interviewed by Weldon Burge for this issue, and you can read the digital edition for free right HERE. (Despite what the introduction says, I’m addicted to neither video games nor Spider-Man comics. I don’t play video games at all, minus Words With Friends on my phone, because if I did you’d never get another book.)

Publishers Weekly gave a great review to Hark! The Herald Angels Scream. They didn’t mention my story, but that’s okay, I’m not feeling left out or heartbroken or anything. Check it out right HERE.

Con Season Continues

I’m back from Necon! Actually, I’ve been back from Necon for a week; I just haven’t posted any blog entries since then, what with me being a slacker and all.

Necon was amazing as always. It’s got a “family” vibe that’s unlike any other convention I’ve attended. Of course, it’s a family that will devote the prime Saturday night spot to saying horrible things about one of their own. Once again I was co-emcee of the Infamous Necon Roast, where poor Matt Bechtel was the surprise victim. He finally stopped crying after he went comatose.

Up next, very quickly, is Scares That Care, which in many ways is the complete opposite of Necon, except that they’re both awesome. I’ll be much more in “author” mode there, spending most of the convention selling books and meeting readers. Unlike many other conventions that have a strong movie/TV component, Scares That Care attendees actually like books! That weekend will see the launch of Welcome to the Show, an anthology of stories all set at the same music venue, containing my story “Parody.”

After a two week break, I’ll be off to KillerCon. I’ve never been to this one (which has been on hiatus for a few years) but I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews.

In October, I’ll be at the Merrimack Valley Halloween Festival, which has a jaw-dropping lineup of horror authors. More than sixty of ’em!

I will, of course, keep writing books during that time. Expect a new one soon….

Gigantor Kindle Sale!

Holy cow! From July 12-19, a bunch of my Kindle titles are on sale for 99 cents. (US/UK only; for the explanation, scroll down a couple of blog posts.) This is your chance to go click-crazy! Fill your Kindle! Fill the Kindle app on your phone! Buy them and don’t even read them because they’re just so cheap that it doesn’t matter!

Everything Has Teeth

Cyclops Road

Blister 

The Haunted Forest Tour

Kumquat

Pressure

Dweller

Dead Clown Barbecue

Benjamin’s Parasite

Mandibles

Elrod McBugle on the Loose

Also Gleefully Macabre Tales but that doesn’t start until the 14th.

 

 

Fun With Formatting!

Since a bunch of my Kindle titles are going on sale this week, yesterday I decided it was time for a project that I’ve been dreading.

The back of each book has an Other Books By Jeff Strand page with titles and very brief descriptions, so that you think, “Gosh, Mandibles was such a jolly good romp that I can’t help but wonder if the author has written anything else? Why, here’s a convenient list right at the end of the book!”

However, each book was only current as of that book. So if you read Bring Her Back you’d get a complete list of titles, but the end of Wolf Hunt was missing everything I’d published since 2010. I also wanted to add hyperlinks. The less work people have to do to acquire more books, the better.

Sure, the hyperlinks took a while (I used the site BookLinker, which gives you a magical link that takes the link-clicker to the Amazon store of their own country), but it wasn’t THAT big of a project. That part that filled me with fear was revisiting the older titles that were a formatting nightmare.

In 2018, it takes very little work for me to format a Kindle book, and it’s almost always right on the first pass. Several years ago, that wasn’t the case. Some books I never could format correctly except by uploading an HTML version. Well, I didn’t want to use HTML versions anymore…which meant revisiting the horrors of trying to format the early novels.

It took most of yesterday and most of today. It sucked. But it’s done. Now if you purchase one of my e-books (except for the ones published by Sourcebooks) you’ll find a handy list of links to help you purchase more of them.

Okay, I also didn’t put the links in Elrod McBugle on the Loose. When I revisited the file, I thought, “Wow, I completely forgot to include the Other Books By Jeff Strand section!” Then I remembered that I’d decided that maybe I shouldn’t be pushing stuff like Benjamin’s Parasite on the 10-year-olds who just read Elrod. I stand by that decision.

Next up: I have a fairly long interview to do for the Dark Regions Press newsletter, and I still need to write a short story for my own July newsletter.

Deaaaaals!!!

It’s a week o’ deals. Right now Dark Regions Press is offering a six-book bundle of my trade paperbacks for $45! This includes Dead Clown Barbecue, Dweller, Wolf Hunt, Wolf Hunt 2, and Gleefully Macabre Tales, plus the anthology Christmas Horror Volume 2 which includes my short story “December Birthday.” Forty-five bucks! That’s CUH-RAAAAAAZY!!!

Order it right HERE.

Meanwhile, The Haunted Forest Tour was accepted for a BookBub deal last month and the listing goes live this Friday, July 13. BookBub deals are this amazing thing where you submit your book for a listing, they probably reject it (they only accept 1 in 5), you keep trying, and eventually they say yes. Then you pay for the listing, it goes out in their newsletter, and your sales go through the roof. Or at least you get enough of a boost to cover the cost of the listing.

So starting on Thursday, the Kindle edition of The Haunted Forest Tour will be 99 cents. But that’s not all! In case people who have no idea who the hell I am see the listing and start browsing, I’ll also be dropping the Kindle editions of Dead Clown Barbecue, Elrod McBugle on the Loose, Benjamin’s Parasite, Pressure, Dweller, Everything Has Teeth, Mandibles, Kumquat, Cyclops Road, and Blister to 99 cents as well!

Q: Does this apply to all markets?

A: No. Just the USA and UK.

Q: Whaaaaaat? Why do you hate your Canadian fans???

A: I know, I know, it sucks. Unfortunately, Amazon only allows you to do a Kindle Countdown Deal for the USA and UK.

Q: So screw the Countdown Deal! Just lower the price!

A: Here’s how it works: A book that sells for $2.99 or above earns you 70% royalties. (This is what let me become a full-time writer.) If it’s below $2.99, the royalty drops to 35%. A Kindle Countdown Deal lets you temporarily drop the price and keep the 70% royalties.

The problem is that 35% vs 70% royalties are one or the other. You can’t mix and match. You can’t take 35% royalties in Australia and 70% everywhere else. So if I drop the price in one market, it becomes 35% royalties across the board.

When I put the four-book Andrew Mayhem collection on sale, I didn’t want to leave out the non-USA/UK readers. So the 99-cent (equivalent) price applied to all markets, and my royalties were halved. The handful of extra sales didn’t come anywhere close to making up the significant loss from dropping the royalty rate.

The same thing happened with my Dweller BookBub deal. It feels good to not leave anybody out, but it stings to do the math and see how much it cost you. Since writing is my only source of income, I really can’t be dorking around with this kind of thing.

Q: You’re still a jerk.

A: Fair enough.

Q: When is Bring Her Back, which I hear is awesome, going on sale?

A: Not anytime soon. But it’s only three bucks!

Q: Eh. I’ll wait.

A Sharp Stick in the Eye

Available August 14th! This anthology contains my story “Clyde the Necrophile,” because apparently nobody told the editor that when you receive a story called “Clyde the Necrophile,” you say, “No, thank you.”

Welcome to the Show

Check out this review from Sci-Fi And Fantasy Reviewer of the upcoming anthology Welcome to the Show, edited by Matt Hayward and Doug Murano. Here’s what they said about my story “Parody.”

“Just as disorientating, and with a comedic edge to it that is so dark as to be almost impenetrable, is Parody by Jeff Strand, who provides the tale of a musician trying to break into the music circuit at The Shantyman by performing unique song parodies; Strand writes beautiful prose, and he easily takes the reader into the mind of a desperate and distinctly unhinged performer determined to be noticed no matter what. I was absolutely not expecting the story to take the turn that it did, and it took several re-reads to appreciate just how subtly Strand had built up to those final few moments in the story.”

The full review, which says many, many nice things about the stories lurking in this book, is right HERE. The book itself makes its grand premiere at Scares That Care next month, which is yet another reason that you should go.

 

Summer Con Season!

I’ve got three horror conventions coming up this summer. Necon (July 19-22, Bristol, Rhode Island), Scares That Care (August 3-5, Williamsburg, Virginia), and KillerCon (August 24-26, Austin, Texas).

Necon, of course, I go to every year. This year I’m on the panel “Children’s Literature Vs. Middle Grade Vs. Young Adult” and I’ll also be co-emcee of the infamous Necon Roast, where I get to gleefully oversee the suffering and misery of some poor bastard.

I went to Scares That Care three years ago and absolutely loved it. Tragically, it then moved to the same weekend as Necon for two years and I whined a lot. But this year they’ve been separated by a couple of weeks and I get to go to both! I’m doing a reading and I’m on a panel to discuss the upcoming anthology Welcome to the Show, which contains my story “Parody.”

I’ve never been to KillerCon. I’ve heard it’s awesome. I’m doing a reading (assuming my flight is on time) and moderating a panel on villains. In a fit of madness, I also volunteered to take part in the Hot Wing Eating Challenge, so if you see me and I’m coughing and hacking and I scream “Just leave me alone, okay???” when you speak to me, please don’t take it personally.

Which of these events will I see YOU at?

Gazebo

My wife and I spent most of the Fourth of July putting this gazebo up in our back yard. We were armed with the written instructions AND a how-to video. However, it turned out that the instructions were written in indecipherable ancient alien hieroglyphics, and the video was not actually intended to show you how to assemble the gazebo but was rather a  state media propaganda piece designed to lie about the ease of putting it together. Crucial steps appeared in almost subliminal cuts.

But in the end, we prevailed.

Happy Almost Fourth of July!

You’ll be happy to know that I haven’t snorked down the entire bag of vampire gummi bears yet. Or maybe this news disappoints you. I don’t know. I can’t monitor all of you.

The July issue of my newsletter should come out this week, although I haven’t started the short story. I don’t even know what it’s going to be about. I’ve got nothing! Nothing!!! Why the hell did I commit to writing a new short story for every issue? What kind of FOOL does that kind of thing?

I’m hard at work on my next novel, and all I’ll say is, if you thought Sick House and Bring Her Back were dark, well…you’re right Those books were pretty dark. This new novel is a thriller but it’s way lighter and funnier.

The Bring Her Back discussion thread in the Goodreads Horror Aficionados group has been a lot of fun so far. As of now, it’s really just a general Q&A. If you’ve got any Q’s you want me to A, pop on over. (You can also just post a Q as a comment, and I’ll make it a future blog entry.) The thread is right HERE.