New: In Springdale Town by Robert Freeman Wexler

Reconciliation, longing, and ambiguity combine in one astounding locale: Springdale. Is it a mundane New England town on a picturesque river, or the nexus of the paradoxical?

Springdale appears to be a quiet village, unblemished by shopping mall or mega-store. The town sits in a fertile valley, surrounded by countryside rich in natural wonder. Summers, tourists attend the area’s many arts and music festivals, and hikers crowd the trails. In the fall, reds and yellows of turning leaves decorate the landscape, and in winter, mountain resorts fill with avid skiers.

But some say Springdale exists only on the contoured highways of our collective imagination. Others point to references dating back to Colonial Boston, to multiple versions of a ballad telling a story of remorse and disgrace.

Here are three facts:
1. Maps cannot be trusted;
2. All History is awash with fraud and hoax;
3. Springdale is an absence of identity.

For two people, a lawyer named Patrick Travis and a television actor named Richard Shelling, Springdale is home and anti-home, a place of comfort and a distortion of everyday life. They are strangers to each other, yet connected. Their lives will intersect with a force that shatters both.

This edition includes a specially written afterword by the author.

In Springdale Town by Robert Freeman Wexler is available in ebook format from:

• Amazon.com
• Amazon.co.uk
• and other ebook retailers

“Springdale is told in a deceptively muted style and cunningly crafted so that the story appears to assemble itself around the reader like a trap he or she has sprung, yet remains innocent-looking until the end, when a spring-loaded hammer smashes down.” —Lucius Shepard, from the introduction to the original print edition

“For some writers, prose is a means with which to construct an analogue of reality. For Robert Freeman Wexler, fiction is a means with which to de-construct reality. Yet his stories have such a strong sense of linguistic integrity, it’s hard to believe that he isn’t reporting his experiences from a parallel universe.” —Rick Kleffel, from an interview at fantasticmetropolis.com.

“…In a list comprising some of the biggest names in contemporary genre fiction the appearance of a novella by a virtually unknown author causes a certain interest. In Springdale Town represents its author’s first book publication (after only a handful of short stories) and yet it fits into the PS Publishing list with such subtle skill that its presence on the shelf feels as if an invisible gap in the collection has been suddenly filled.”—Lavie Tidhar, Dusksite

“…no need for Lovecraftian monsters or rampaging serial killers to transform Springdale into a seriously creepy place. An old ballad suggests that one death haunts this village, but Wexler deviously, almost casually, creates a sense of wrongness that goes well beyond some past saga of jealousy and murder. Don’t read this one right before bedtime–or your next road trip.”—Faren Miller, Locus Magazine, October 2003

“The basic idea is familiar, almost banal, but Wexler’s treatment is witty, his writing is excellent, his characters are really well captured—I was very impressed with the story.”—Rich Horton, Locus Magazine, November 2003

“…Other writers, wiry and wry, as lithe as dragonflies, may seem more vulnerable, but their grace, their maneuverability, becomes its own kind of tensile strength. They can travel farther, faster, and in disguise.”—Jeff VanderMeer, Locus Online

“…lovely Americana set-piece turned on its ear.”—Jay Lake, Tangent Online

“…An emotionally scathing yet tender insight into the frailty, ignorance, and misplaced motivations of that most ridiculous of animals, the human being.”—William P. Simmons, Infinity Plus

“…Robert Freeman Wexler dives into the heart of Americana in his chilling and tender novella.”—Rick Kleffel Agony Column

Tom Piccirilli – let’s do good by the man, and read some fine books too!

Tom Piccirilli: award-winning author of mystery, horror and, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody good fiction whatever the category.

Tom Piccirilli: lovely guy, always there to support his fellow authors, always keen to be in touch with his readers.

Tom Piccirilli: went into hospital last week with headaches, stayed there with a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball, having an operation on Monday (1 Oct), followed by radio- and chemotherapy.

Fuck. 

As others have said, there are bound to be fundraisers for so respected and well-liked a writer, but in the meantime, let’s buy his books – it all adds up. Also, much as it’d be cool to see his works from big commercial publishers doing well, income from those tends to get set against advance payments and takes a long time to ever reach the author; if we buy his indie books, there’s a greater likelihood that the money from sales will reach him sooner (and he’d probably get a bigger cut, too).

So… Tom Piccirilli: buy his books, buy his indie books, and let’s all send positive vibes.

• Tom Piccirilli at Amazon US
• Tom Piccirilli at Amazon UK
• Tom Piccirilli at Barnes and Noble

The Long and Winding Road – a guest post by Colin Murray

There are many roads to becoming a published author. This was mine.

A few years ago, I found myself with some time on my hands. This happens quite often when you’re freelance: it seems that it’s either feast or famine. You complain about both but you much prefer feast. On this occasion, I was feeling just a little bruised as a new number-crunching, pie-chart-eating CEO decided that the publishing company where I had been successfully running an imprint for about eight years could no longer afford me and had ended what had been a mutually beneficial arrangement. (They had a vastly experienced editor at a cut-rate and I had some element of stability in my income. For what it’s worth, I had the last laugh: the bookseller who replaced me lasted just five months. I’d told the CEO that it would be six, but I didn’t mind being wrong.) So, while I was looking for replacement work (which came in surprisingly quickly), I, for no good reason, sat down and started to write a novel.

Of course, I should have known better.

I’d worked in publishing for long enough to know that it was rarely the path to fame and fortune, and that, far more often, it ended in tears and recrimination. But I had an idea and time on my hands and I’d also heard that a major publishing house was actively looking for new crime writers.

The writing went surprisingly well but, by the time I’d written the first hundred pages, I had a living to make and work to do and so I sent that chunk of the book off to one of the editors at the publisher and got on with my life, while continuing to write whenever I could.

Some six months passed before I received a very pleasant letter from an assistant editor, apologizing for taking so long and asking if there was any more to be seen as she thought the novel was pretty good and was planning to talk to her boss about it. Which sounded promising. As I had, in fact, more or less finished the book. I duly sent it off.

At that stage, having set things in motion, I thought it might not be a bad idea to contact an agent. I made a tentative enquiry and received a very positive response so I told him of the publisher’s interest and hoped that things might happen.

I guess I should have been even more wary than I was because in the publishing world, as in most areas of human activity, little is simple and straightforward. When my often elusive agent peered through the cloud cover on Olympus long enough to say, ‘Nothing would please me more than selling this for a hundred thousand pounds but that’s not going to happen,’ I understood him to be making a realistic judgement on the book’s worth. But I was wrong. What I didn’t hear was the suppressed clause, ‘and I don’t bother with anything that sells for less than that.’ My fault, of course, for not being cynical enough.

I knuckled down to some revisions and, after a while, my agent did arrange a meeting with an editor from the publishing house I had sent the novel to. He told me that my book was one of the most accomplished first novels he’d come across and I left the meeting with a warm glow, expecting my agent to hammer out a deal.

However, it turned out that the meeting was the one and only thing he did for me.

I rewrote again, sent the new draft off to him and the editor and then waited. And waited.  After five months of hearing nothing, I tried to contact the great man on the phone. I failed. I tried again. And failed again. In fact, I kept on trying for a month. And kept on failing. Eventually, I decided that maybe I wasn’t the client for him and that, ipso facto, made him not the agent for me. I wrote accordingly and, eventually, I received a gracious reply, admitting that he had not served me well.

Meanwhile, times had changed and the publishing house that had been interested in new crime novels was no longer looking for them.

However, this where the long story becomes a short one. I decided to represent myself and looked at lists I liked and sent the book off to Constable & Robinson. I received a very favourable reaction in weeks, an offer soon after and then a contract. Of course, I didn’t get a hundred thousand pounds but I was consulted on the cover and the blurb, the copy-editing was superb, everyone was enthusiastic and the rights people even placed the book with an American publisher.

And, no matter, how jaded and cynical one pretends to be, there is nothing like holding a copy of your first book.

What had I learned, apart from that? Not a lot that I didn’t know already. Agents and publishers can be very dilatory and can’t always be relied on, but there are some good guys out there.

Oh, and I now know that first-time novelists have long memories and nurture and cherish grudges. There’s one agent who won’t be getting any referrals from me, and British crime reviewers (who, for the most part, simply ignored the book) probably shouldn’t look to me for any favours for a decade or two.

But there are things that make it all worthwhile: a reviewer describing my book as ‘riveting and suspenseful’ and then exclaiming ‘What a terrific first novel!’; another saying that it was ‘brilliant’; and another talking about its ‘pounding suspense’. The fame and fortune are probably never going to happen, but I’d made a little money, I was a member of the Crime Writers’ Association, some people had read my novel and they hadn’t been disappointed. What more could I realistically have hoped for?

Colin Murray’s first novel, After a Dead Dog, a contemporary crime novel set in rural Scotland, was published in 2007. No Hearts, No Roses (‘quirky, engaging, Chandleresque’ Booklist), appeared in 2011, and September Song in 2012. Both are set in London in 1955 and feature the same main character.

September Song:

• Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes and Noble

No Hearts, No Roses:

• Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes and Noble

After a Dead Dog:

• Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes and Noble

Iain Rowan’s Nowhere to Go shortlisted for a Spinetingler award

Great to see Iain Rowan’s rather good collection of crime and suspense fiction, Nowhere to Go, shortlisted for Best Short Story Collection over at Spinetingler magazine.

It’s very easy for good books to get lost in all the noise of e-publishing, and it’s common – and, to be fair, quite reasonable, based on the statistics – for reviewers and award-givers to assume the worst and overlook ebooks. It’s very much to the Spinetingler team’s credit that they considered and shortlisted Iain’s book, and yet another significant achievement in the career of a writer who deserves far more attention (it sounds silly to say that of a writer who has won a Derringer award for a story included in Nowhere to Go, and been shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger for his novel One of Us, but he should certainly be getting commercial attention to match the critical success).

To coincide with publication of One of Us in March 2012 we’ve given Nowhere to Go a new cover; you’ll also notice that it’s a wraparound cover – the collection will be getting a much-deserved first print edition very soon, which we’re very excited about.

On a personal note, it’s been a delight to work with Iain. Editing and producing Nowhere to Go was that rare experience where I found myself prolonging a piece of work because I was enjoying the fiction so much; similarly, when working on One of Us I found exactly the same thing happening.

Here’s hoping that what we’ve done at infinity plus is just one step in the process of Iain becoming a hugely successful and award-winning (again) writer!

More:

• Spinetingler Best Short Story Collection Award nominees
• Spinetingler Awards (voting opens on 31 March)
• Nowhere to Go (more details, and ordering links)
• One of Us (more details, and ordering links)

New: One of Us, a CWA Debut Dagger shortlisted novel by Iain Rowan

Anna is one of the invisible people. She fled her own country when the police murdered her brother and her father, and now she serves your food, cleans your table, changes your bed, and keeps the secrets of her past well hidden.

When she used her medical school experience to treat a man with a gunshot wound, Anna thought it would be a way to a better life. Instead, it leads to a world of people trafficking, prostitution, murder and the biggest decision of Anna’s life: how much is she prepared to give up to be one of us?

Shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award, One of Us is a novel by award-winning writer Iain Rowan.

BUY NOW:

…CreateSpace (paperback $11.99)
…Amazon US (paperback $11.99)
…Amazon UK (coming soon: paperback $11.99)
…amazon.com (Kindle format, $2.99)
…amazon.co.uk (Kindle format, £1.99)

To tie in with the launch of One of Us, Iain’s highly-praised collection of crime and suspense fiction, Nowhere to Go, has been given a new cover.

Praise for Iain Rowan’s Nowhere to Go:

“Fine examples of modern crime stories, gripping and perceptive, probing the dark secrets of the human soul, just like an old Alfred Hitchcock movie… Crime enthusiasts must not miss the book: this is noir at its very best.”
– SF Site featured review

“During the five years that I published Hardluck Stories, One Step Closer and Moth were two of my favorite stories. I loved the nuances and true heartfelt emotion that Iain filled his stories with, and Iain quickly became a must read author for me–everything I read of Iain’s had this tragic, and sometimes, horrific beauty filling it, and was guaranteed to be something special.”
– Dave Zeltserman, author of Outsourced, and Washington Post best books of year Small Crimes and Pariah

“A short story writer of the highest calibre.”
– Allan Guthrie, author of Top Ten Kindle Bestseller Bye Bye Baby, winner of Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year

“Iain Rowan’s stories never fail to surprise and delight, and just when you think you know what will happen next, you realize how much you’ve been caught unaware.”
– Sarah Weinman, writer, critic, reviewer, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and News Editor for Publishers Marketplace

“Iain Rowan is both a meticulous and a passionate writer, and these stories showcase his ample talent wonderfully well. You owe it to yourself to discover Rowan’s fiction if you haven’t already had the pleasure.”
– Jeff Vandermeer, author of Finch, Shriek: An Afterword, City of Saints and Madmen; two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award

“Every story in this collection is a gem… classy and clever Brit Grit at its best.”
– Paul D Brazill at Death By Killing

New: print edition of Kaitlin Queen’s “Essex noir” One More Unfortunate

We’re delighted to announce that the print edition of Kaitlin Queen’s murder mystery One More Unfortunate (described by one reviewer as “Essex noir”) is now creeping out into the bookshops.

Today it’s become available at CreateSpace, and in a few days it’ll be on Amazon and then starting to appear elsewhere. Here’s what one Amazon review said about the e-edition:

“There are twists and turns galore before finally the murder is solved… The characterizations are vivid, and in a couple of cases really quite affecting; the taut tale-telling rattles along at good speed; and the solution to the mystery is both startling and satisfying. Recommended.”

There’s also an extract up at the infinity plus website.

(Hint: while it’ll be great to have wider distribution, the author gets the best royalty if you buy direct from CreateSpace. Just so you know.)

10k at Amazon, and still shifting: One Step Closer

I’ve written here before about experiments with ebook pricing and marketing, but some time last night we hit a landmark with one of our experiments at infinity plus.

Back in March we published Iain Rowan’s first collection, a set of crime stories called Nowhere To Go which included his Derringer Award-winning story “One Step Closer”. The collection received some excellent reviews and blog coverage and performed reasonably at Amazon and our other distributors, but Iain and I wanted to give it a boost and so we discussed various options.

We decided to take that Derringer winner and produce it as a standalone ebook, priced initially at 99 cents but with a view to persuading Amazon to drop the price to zero. At those prices there’s a very different audience: casual browsers making impulse buys/downloads, readers who may like the look of something but not want to buy the complete book, readers looking for a quick lunchtime read, and so on.

What we didn’t know was how much crossover there would be. Would a reader with a liking for scraping up the freebies also be the kind of reader who would spend $2.99 on a book by the same author if they liked the free offering? Would there even be that kind of author-recognition once the quick read has been read and put aside?

One Step Closer went free at Amazon in September, and very quickly overtook our other free offering, the infinities anthology (which, itself, had been a big success, hitting number two in the free anthology charts in the US, and holding the number one slot in the equivalent chart in the UK for several weeks, a position it still holds).

To be honest, I don’t really understand why Iain’s short story has been such a big success. It’s a fine story, of course, and being an award-winner must help establish its credentials for anyone unfamiliar with Iain’s work. It has a great cover and is nicely put together. Iain has a strong social media presence, and has worked hard at promoting his various books. There must be lots of elements of good fortune involved, too, and a key thing is that success can be self-perpetuating: once a story hits number one, it becomes far more visible, which keeps the success going.

Whatever the reasons, some time last night Iain’s short story hit the landmark of 10,000 downloads through Amazon. It’s occupied the number one free story download slot in the UK for several weeks, and for that period has been a fixture in the top 20 free downloads of any kind at Amazon UK, against some tough competition.

What remains to be seen, though, is just how this translates into commercial success. What we do know is that more than 10,000 readers have liked the look of the book enough to download it. Some of those will have read it already; some will read it over the coming months; others will lose it among all the other freebies they’ve downloaded.

Of those who read it, some – a large proportion, I reckon – will like it a lot, because it’s a hell of a story. But how many of these will immediately follow up by clicking on a link to Amazon to find Iain’s other work? How many will intend to do that, but because they didn’t do it immediately, will become increasingly unlikely to follow through? How many will remember Iain’s name next time they’re browsing and so click on a link to his other books?

It’s incredibly hard to answer these questions, as it’s just not possible to track purchasing decisions back to their origins. Amazon gives us good reporting, but not that good!

After success like this, though, I’m certainly looking forward to trying to make sense of it all over the coming weeks and months!

Nowhere To Go by Iain Rowan – reduced to 99 cents for September

Eleven crime stories first published in Alfred Hitchcock’s, Ellery Queen’s, and elsewhere by award-winning writer Iain Rowan. Iain’s short fiction has been reprinted in Year’s Best anthologies, won a Derringer Award, and been the basis for a novel shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger award.

Iain Rowan: Nowhere To Go – a crime short story collection for Kindle, Nook and other e-readers

REDUCED TO 99 CENTS FOR SEPTEMBER! Here at infinity plus we think this book, and this author, are pretty special, so for one month only we’ve dropped the price.

BUY NOW:
…amazon.com (Kindle format, $0.99)
…amazon.co.uk (Kindle format, £0.86)
…Smashwords (various formats, including epub, mobi, Sony and PDF, $0.99)

Guest blog, Iain Rowan: Police and thieves

Often, when people think about crime fiction, they think of stories in which the hero is a detective.

When I put together Nowhere To Go, a collection of my short crime fiction that’s been published over the last few years, it occurred to me that none of my crime stories was like that. Closest it gets is one story where a character claims to be a detective, but turns out to be something rather different. It was never a conscious decision to avoid police protagonists, just the way that it turned out, story after story, so I’ve given some thought as to why this happens to be this way in the stories that I want to tell.

Some of the protagonists in the stories in Nowhere To Go are criminals themselves. Some of them are victims. Most are people caught in the middle, involved in something beyond their control – sometimes by the choices they have made, sometimes just by the random, uncaring malicious lottery of fate.

I read something once by a photographer which said the most interesting things are always at the margins: where day starts to turn to night; where land meets water; where cities meet nature. That littoral zone is what I’ve always been most interested in exploring in my stories: the edges of society and the people that live there, the blurry margin between good and bad, right and wrong, between what the law says, and what people do to survive. Sure, plenty of detectives swim those murky waters, but they are not of them.

No matter how maverick, no matter the disbelieving boss, or the rival colleague, the detectives represent the state, and the power of the state, and all of the resources of the state. Although constrained at times, they can call on that power, and those resources. The characters I enjoy writing about the most are people who have no power, have no resources, but must still find a way to survive or escape. Those drawn into crime, those who find themselves caught up in crime, the victims of crime, they’re all more fertile territory for me than those who are paid to solve it.

And sometimes, it’s the police that they are escaping.

This focus shapes the kind of stories that I write. There’s less scope for them to be whodunnits, and it’s much more likely that they turn out to be to be howthehelldoIgetoutofits. It’s not that one’s better than the other. It’s just that I enjoy writing one more than I do the other.

I like having a wide choice of protagonists, of backgrounds, struggles, conflicts. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read many excellent novels where the hero is a fictional police officer, interesting and rounded and believable. But I worry about falling into cliche were I to try, the terrible tightrope of making a character distinctive, without resorting to the cop-o-tron, where the lead is:

one of:

• divorced
• bereaved
• long-term bachelor

has one of:

• drink problem
• psychological disorder du jour
• implacable guilt

always plays one of:

• bebop jazz
• rare northern soul singles
• scouse house

especially while drinking one of:

• espressos, homemade in a lavishly detailed description
• Wray and Nelson rum, neat
• WKD. With a straw.

comes into conflict with one of:

• ambitious, ruthless boss with executive haircut
• cynical, jaded boss with wonky tie
• Lieutenant Dobie

and doesn’t:

• like authority
• like authority
• like authority

And anyway, everything I’ve said aside, the power and the politics and all of it, I’ve been re-watching Police Squad recently, and that alone ruins my chances of ever writing a detective lead.

“We’re sorry to bother you at such a time like this, Mrs. Twice. We would have come earlier, but your husband wasn’t dead then.”

Iain Rowan’s short story collection, Nowhere To Go, is available in the following formats:
…amazon.com (Kindle format, $2.99)
…amazon.co.uk (Kindle format, £2.12)
…Smashwords (various formats, including epub, mobi, Sony and PDF, $2.99)

Iain’s Derringer Award-winning story “One Step Closer” is available as a free self-contained ebook:
….prc format (suitable for Kindle)
…other formats, including epub, mobi, Sony and PDF, available from Smashwords

Guest blog: Kaitlin Queen on her first e-original

First things first: “Kaitlin Queen” is a pen-name. In real life I write for children aged six or so through to teens, and I write journalistic pieces for national and local newspapers, websites and radio (more feature-writing than reporting, although my experience of court-reporting contributed greatly to my first venture into adult crime fiction, One More Unfortunate).

You may be wondering why I felt the need to adopt a pen-name. I did seriously consider publishing One More Unfortunate under my own name, but ultimately opted to keep it distinct.

Increasingly publishing is about brand: the author as brand, the publishing imprint as brand, the series or protagonist as brand. It makes a lot of marketing sense to keep my adult fiction brand separate, confirmed by discussion with my agent and others in the business.

Once that decision was taken I was soon to discover a number of consequences, mostly positive. Taking on a new persona was surprisingly fun, freeing me up to write a very different kind of story: a love story with grown-up complications, a crime puzzle, and a novel deeply embedded in the history of a place I love dearly.

It also made me start thinking about approaching the publishing of the novel in new and different ways. While I hope the novel is a success, it’s not likely to be my main source of income, so I felt free to explore alternatives. The indie publishing phenomenon, where writers such as current indie darling of the press Amanda Hocking are major news due to the way they have found publishing success by going straight to the reader (well, via the good offices of Amazon). By dipping my toe in the water, I might learn valuable lessons, and I didn’t feel I had much to lose.

The technical side of it all was another matter. Friends assure me that electronic publishing is easy, but they are saying this to someone who still writes in longhand, who has just about overcome her fear of email but has yet to brave the world of websites and Facebook and blogs. This is my first ever blog entry; and I wrote it in longhand.

It just so happened that my old school friend Keith Brooke was in the process of launching an ebook imprint, infinity plus. We got talking, and I learnt of his plans to publish a first short story collection by Iain Rowan (a writer I know and admire from the pages of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Postscripts [Editor: IainRowan's Nowhere To Go was published on 25 March]) and a revised, definitive version of Molly Brown’s marvellous Restoration mystery An Invitation to a Funeral. Now, I have occasionally been known to be slow on the uptake, but really this seemed just too perfect a set of circumstances to ignore.

So here we are: my first novel for adults is an ebook original. It’s gathering some nice responses from readers and sales look good, although it’s very early days. I’m happy to let my publisher experiment with special offers and extracts. I did enter into this in the spirit of discovery, after all! So my novel is on special offer for the rest of this month at a mere 99 cents. Silly prices, but I still earn as much per sale from this as I do from a mass market paperback, and I hope it helps my Kaitlin persona a new audience.

Let’s see how it goes. Success for me would be if One More Unfortunate gathered a large enough audience for me to justify writing the next in the series. These are certainly very interesting times in publishing!

Kaitlin Queen, March 2011

Read an extract from One More Unfortunate on the infinity plus website.

Purchasing:
…amazon.com (Kindle format, $3.45 cut to $0.99 until end of March)
…amazon.co.uk (Kindle format, £2.47 cut to £0.86 until end of March)
…Smashwords (various formats, including epub, mobi, Sony and PDF, $3.45)
…Barnes and Noble (Nook format, $3.45)

“There are twists and turns galore before finally the murder is solved… The characterizations are vivid, and in a couple of cases really quite affecting; the taut tale-telling rattles along at good speed; and the solution to the mystery is both startling and satisfying. Recommended.” – 5* Amazon review