Another June Newsletter!

The latest issue of my newsletter just went out. It includes a link to 30 free thrillers on Kindle, including my own Blister, along with the brand-new story “Fresh Fish” and an interview with Tod Clark, who reads all of my books before they’re published.

Check it out HERE.

 

Random Stuff

My “successful” books on Kindle tend to follow an anxiety-inducing sales pattern:

1. A very strong launch day.
2. An okay but concerning second day.
3. “Oh no! It’s all over! Goodbye, writing career. Time to go back to an office desk job.”
4. Then, 10-14 days after the book is published, sales momentum suddenly kicks in and all is well.

No matter how many times I go through this, there’s always the “NOOOOOOO!!!!” reaction in those first two weeks. Of course, if it’s a non-horror novel like Bang Up, the sales momentum may never kick in, leaving me with a book that readers loved but which didn’t help me buy many groceries.

Fortunately, My Pretties is a horror/suspense novel, and after that stomach-churning first couple of weeks, it’s doing very well. I’m very happy with reader reaction so far. I usually only share really bad or really funny quotes from Amazon reviews, but…

• “My Pretties is the best novel Jeff Strand has published to date.”
• “One of Strand’s best novels.”
• “One of Strand’s darkest and most disturbing novels.”
• “One of the most original and suspenseful horror releases of 2019.”
• “One of Jeff Strand’s best if not his best book to date.”
• “The story twist had me floored.”

Mark Sieber at Horror Drive-In was also a sweetheart: “My Pretties is full of twists and turns, and just when I thought I knew where Strand was going with the story, he turned it on its head and shocked the s**t out of me. And being Jeff Strand, he made me laugh as much as he was making me cringe.”

(The full review is quite funny. Check it out HERE.)

So I’m happy with how things are going so far. And I’m hard at work on the next book, which, though still a horror novel, switches gears from “dark and nasty” to “lots and lots of fun.”

The next issue of my newsletter will go out late this week. In addition to the usual brand-new story (so brand-new that I haven’t started writing it yet) it’ll have the first installment of my “Get To Know A Beta Reader” feature. Learn what it’s like for Tod Clark as he reads my books before they’re published!

Subscribe to my newsletter HERE.

Darrell Grizzle did an interview with me at Ghosts In The Kudzu. Check it out HERE.

 

MY PRETTIES Available Now!

I hadn’t expected the Kindle edition of My Pretties to go live so quickly, or I wouldn’t have posted the earlier description!

Anyway, yep, it’s available right HERE. (Paperback edition coming soon.) Though the plots are nothing alike, I think this one will most appeal to fans of my novel Pressure. There’s humor, sure, but it’s no Bang Up! My crack team of test readers have been extremely enthusiastic about this one, so hopefully readers across the world will agree with them.

Also, the June issue of my newsletter (featuring lots of fun stuff including the brand-new story “And There Was A Metal Hook”) just went out. If you’re not a subscriber, you can read it HERE.

 

MY PRETTIES Description

The Kindle version of My Pretties will be available this week, with the paperback edition to follow soon. Here’s the description:

A novel of terror from the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of Pressure.

A serial kidnapper is preying upon women. He abducts them, then locks them in one of the cages dangling from the ceiling in a soundproofed basement. There, he sits quietly and just watches them, returning night after night, hoping he’ll be in the room at the moment his beautiful captives finally starve to death.

Charlene and Gertie have become fast friends at the restaurant where they work. But Charlene is concerned when she hears how Gertie spends her evenings: her cousin is one of the missing, and Gertie wanders the city streets where many of the abductions took place, using herself as bait with a high-voltage stun gun in her pocket. Charlene reluctantly offers to trail her in her car, just in case she does lure the kidnapper and things go wrong.

Unfortunately, the women find themselves the source of unwanted fame. And now they’re on the radar of a very, very dangerous man…