Independent book review: Reckoning, by RS Guthrie

 With Reckoning, RS Guthrie takes the fiction writer’s rule book, shreds it in mighty fingers and reassembles it into a new way of engaging audiences.

Reckoning is the third of Guthrie’s books to feature Denver Detective Robert Macaulay, also known as Bobby Mac and also known as the heir to the occult power of Clan MacAulay.

Busting through the genre boundaries

Reckoning, like Black Beast and LOST, the previous Bobby Mac novels, is a noir cop thriller, a police procedural whose villain just happens to be (spoiler alert!) a demon.

Right there, he’s broken the artificial boundaries imposed on genres. Guthrie’s Bobby Mac novels read like gritty cop stories, yet somehow the supernatural elements fit perfectly.

Another rule that he breaks: modulating between the first and third person perspective. Most of the book is narrated by Bobby Mac, and Guthrie’s command of the tough, no-nonsense cop dialect (ever notice how cops all sound the same, no matter where they come from?) is flawless. But where the story needs a third-person omniscient POV, Guthrie smoothly shifts for exactly as long as he needs to.

He has created his own style here. It's as if Bobby Mac is sitting beside you on the porch, telling you what happened. No, actually, it's more like he's sitting across a campfire on a moonless night, telling you about what is deep in those shadows. At times, Guthrie gets a little too philosophical, waxing about the relationships between parents and children or mentors and protégés; occasionally, I started to lose patience. But for all that, Guthrie kept me flipping pages (or flicking my iPad screen, to be precise).

Plot

This trilogy is all about the battle between a demon, Samhain, who is opposed on earth primarily by the Clan MacAulay of Scotland. Today, that clan is represented by Detective Bobby Macaulay of the Denver police force, who has inherited the Clan’s ancient weapon against Hell, the Crucifix of Ardincaple.

Decades ago, Pink Floyd said "One day you find, 10 years have got behind you.” The story of Reckoning picks up where LOST left off, but 10 years later. Bobby Mac has remarried, had another family — triplet girls — and is starting to think about retiring from the police force. Evil returns in the form of a serial killer plaguing Denver. In a nod to noir thrillers of yore, the first case mimics the Black Dahlia.

Like any good police procedural, the story follows Bobby Mac tracking down clues and fighting against the awful realization that the enemy he knows best, and thought destroyed, has returned.

Best and worst

The best part of Guthrie’s stories are the relationships between the characters. They’re all combinations of positive and negative qualities, inconsistent and flawed. You never really know their motivations, because the characters themselves are never really sure just what combination of attitudes, fears, desires and blindnesses are driving them.

I have always enjoyed Guthrie’s descriptions of Bobby Mac and his son trying to communicate through all the layers of love and mistrust and history and baggage. However, as mentioned, this time it seemed to get a little long. The narrative seemed to keep veering off onto tangents.

Also, I felt that with this installment of the story, you really had to have read the first two books to understand what was going on.

For example, as the book approaches the final confrontation between good and evil, Bobby Mac explains "the whole story" to his partner, but not explicitly in the story. The book reads more like "I told him the whole story,” rather than recapping it, or describing some action that would encapsulate the conflict. While this technique is a good way to abbreviate another info-dump and avoid rehashing stuff that loyal readers already know, it also risks alienating those who have not read the previous installments. (Maybe it's a clever way of boosting sales of the other books.)

Overall, Reckoning, the finale of the Bobby Mac trilogy (although Guthrie keeps saying he'll have other stories about Bobby Mac) is an enjoyable, satisfying completion to the trilogy. It wraps it all up in Guthrie's lean, aggressive writing style without missing a beat or leaving a loose end untied.

And it's engaging, one of those stories you can't put down.

If you want a good read that breaks all those worn out conventions of genre boundaries and unnecessary rules, read Reckoning. But you should probably read LOST first, and probably Black Beast before that.

To get the books, the best place to start is Guthrie's website or his blog. Or visit his Amazon author's page.

You can also get a signed copy of Reckoning directly from Rob.

Money Land by RS Guthrie: an independent novel review

How do you follow up a magnum opus?

With the best story you can tell, exploring new literary grounds.

Money Land is the sequel to RS Guthrie’s Blood Land, which was originally titled Dark Prairies. Guthrie himself called it his magnum opus, and any reader can see that the author had poured his heart, soul and sweat into it. It was an ambitious novel that successfully combined a western murder mystery with a deep human tragedy. Between the virtual covers of that one novel, Guthrie took on alcoholism, family estrangement, racism, government corruption, big money, the oil industry and unconstrained greed. He successfully portrayed the character of the independent Wyoming spirit and even managed to evoke old-time Western movies and the very real, if poorly understood Johnson County War.

Money Land picks up three years later, with the protanoist, Sheriff James Pruett of Wind River, Wyoming, having come to terms with his wife’s murder. He has been clean and sober since and has been rebuilding his relationship with his daughter, Wendy.

Guthrie has labelled this novel “A James Pruett Mystery.” It’s not as personal for the author as Blood Land or even as his paranormal/occult horror/mystery-thriller novels featuring Bobby Mac: Black Beast and LOST. Money Land is more of a straightforward mystery, and Guthrie succeeds in keeping his readers turning the pages (or flicking the screens of their e-readers).

Guthrie knows how to create deep, realistic characters that have many sides to them. There are aspects of his heroes that enrage me, and sides to the villains that could make me cry. Even the tertiary characters, like the dirtbags who mostly annoy and distract the Sheriff, have nuances that I admire. Creating a novel filled with complex characters takes a writer of skill and subtlety.

There are a few passages where the story drags: the back-story— or maybe it’s mid-story — where the author fills in the three years between Dark Prairies/Blood Land and Money Land. They’re few, and we can and should forgive Guthrie for these. They don’t detract from a gripping and rewarding novel.

Guthrie skillfully juxtaposes the ugliness of the worst of human behaviour against inspiring and tender relationships and the spectacular backdrop of Wyoming’s plains and mountains.

5 stars
Visit Rob Guthrie's blog.
Visit Rob Guthrie's website.
Purchase Money Land from Amazon.

Getting ready for my first book signing

Stressed-out image courtesy the Canadian Bald Guy.com

 

On Saturday, September 29, I will have my first book signing event, and I’m now starting to stress about making sure I’m ready.

 

Map and Directions

 

 

As regular readers of this blog (and I know there are a few of you) know, it’s going to be at Gaia Java — Ottawa’s newest and best chain of cafés — at 1300 Stittsville Main Street in Stittsville, in the far west end of the city.

 

I’ve done everything I can to try to publicize the event in advance:

 

• sent notices to all the local newspapers, radio and TV stations
• posted the announcement on local “event” websites
• put up posters at libraries, cafés, bookstores and other places where people interested in books and book signings might see them
• sent emails to everyone I know (well, almost everyone), even though they may be living in a different continent
• created an “Event” on my Facebook page
• announced it in a variety of Facebook and LinkedIn groups
• announced it to my Google Plus circles
• Tweeted
• and of course, announced it here on my blog.

Short of hiring a publicist or sky-writers, I don’t know what else I can do for very little, or no, money.

 

So now, I’m trying to think of all the things I need on Saturday. A good friend, actor Van Brown, reminded me to bring “something to write with.” Obvious as that may seem, I had not put “pens” on my list of Things to Bring to the Book Signing.

 

I’ve made up a couple of other posters, including one with an enlargement of my book’s cover (at the suggestion of Melissa Bourbon’s and Tonya Kappe’s The Tricked Out Toolbox). I’ll bring a couple of pads of paper where people can write down their email addresses in case they want to subscribe to the blog or notices about the book or other books. Maybe some kind of raffle tickets for a free copy of Bones or one of the other books. Tape for putting up the posters. Pins, maybe. Pencils in case the pens run out. Bookmarks that promote The Bones of the Earth. Cards with my contact information.

 

Money for coffee: if you come out and mention this post, I’ll buy you a coffee!

 

What else do I need? Oh yes, copies of my book. The Bones of the Earth.

 

And I’ll have some copies of books by other members of Independent Authors International.

 

There. Is that everything? What have I forgotten? If you can think of something, PLEASE leave a Comment.

 

Finally: if you’re nearby, please drop in on Saturday! I’d love to meet readers!

 

 

I’m having a book signing!

I’m excited to be having my first real book signing with real, physical books next weekend.

Paul Melsness and Paul Jay, co-owners of Ottawa’s newest and best coffee chain, have graciously allowed me to invade their Stittsville, Ontario store.

Not only will I have copies of my novel, The Bones of the Earth, ready to autograph and personalize for anyone who wants to buy them, I’ll also have copies of other Independent Authors International titles:

 • Dragonfriend: Leonard the Great, Book 1, by Roger Eschbacher
If you think it was all good deeds and fancy ideals back in the days of Camelot, think again. For a time things went seriously bad: Arthur was imprisoned, Merlin had vanished, and a vile demon had taken over the throne.

Young Leonard is page to Sir Ronald, a poor but kind knight. When Sir Ronald is arrested for "bravery without a license" and dragged off to Camelot's dungeons, Leonard must do whatever it takes to free his master even if that means doing battle with dangerous monsters, trying to outwit Camelot's dark overlord, or taking a bath!

• Dark Prairies/Blood Land, by RS Guthrie (this book was retitled and re-covered)
Crime's an ugly constant in the big city. L.A. Chicago. New York. But when a savage murder brutalizes a small town and neighbor turns on neighbor, a tough-as-nails cop is essential to restoring order. Blood Land is a gritty, emotional saga set in the Wyoming badlands with both greed and vengeance at its core.

When billions of dollars in natural gas rights hang in the balance and the town's top law officer's wife is slain by her own blood, a reluctant hero is forced to battle his own demons and ultimately choose between justice, revenge, and duty.

 • Cassidy Jones and Vulcan’s Gift by Elise Stokes.

Two months after being infected with a strange retrovirus, Cassidy Jones continues to live a double life while she struggles to master her newly gained superpowers. High school has become the only normal thing left in her life--except for tall, dark, and handsome Emery Phillips, who shadows her every move, making sure she doesn't reveal her secret. Then an overnight sleepover at Catamount Mountain Zoo takes a menacing turn, putting everything at risk.  

I also plan to have paper copies of my first published fiction (since high school, anyway), Sam, the Strawb Part. As always, all the proceed from sales of that title go directly to Children at Risk, an Ottawa charity that supports families of children with autism spectrum disorders.

Now, if you live in the Ottawa or Stittsville areas, you have no excuse! I look forward to seeing you all at Gaia Java on Saturday, September 29, between 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.

Where: Gaia Java
1300 Stittsville Main StreetStittsville, ON

When: Saturday, September 2911:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

What do free giveaways on Amazon lead to? Lots of people getting your book for free.

Through the Labour Day long weekend, I used three of the five days out of ninety in which Amazon lets me set my book’s price to zero as a promotion. As best as I can figure it, over 1,400 people downloaded a full e-book copy of The Bones of the Earth gratis.

Of course, it’s done very little for my bank account.

Downloads versus rankings

As a member of Independent Authors International, a writers’ cooperative group, I participated in the group’s first Labor Day Free Reads event. Seven of us (see last week’s post) all set September 1 to 3 as “free days” on our Amazon Kindle Select accounts. We joined and/or notified I don’t know how many bloggers, portals, reviewers and Facebook groups to publicize it; we wrote and shared updates for our own Facebook pages and scheduled hundreds of tweets.

The giveaway began at midnight on September 1. While some participants thought progress was slow, for my own part, I was happy. I had over 300 downloads by Saturday evening, and when I got up the next morning, some 30 hours or so into the program, Amazon US was showing over 600 downloads. The UK site showed 39 downloads, plus one sale of The Bones of the Earth, Part One: Initiation Rites.

Some of the other participants noted that there were no downloads from the UK site after sometime on Saturday afternoon, September 1. It turned out there was some kind of glitch in Amazon.co.uk’s tallying system. I experienced it, too: while downloads from the US site climbed fairly steadily all weekend, the UK site was stuck at 39.

More exciting to watch were the rankings. By the end of Saturday, The Bones of the Earth had advanced to no. 1,300 or so in the Free lists, and by Sunday afternoon, September 2, it was number 2 in Historical Fantasy in Amazon.com’s US Free lists, and number 5 in Epic Fantasy; in the UK, despite only showing 39 downloads, it reached number 1 in Historical Fantasy!

After that, it started falling in the rankings, to number 3 and finally settling at number 5 in historical fantasy, and number 451 overall, by the end of the event, even though total downloads kept advancing.

Image: Creative Commons

Why did I give my book away for free after trying to sell it for so many months?

Good question. I’m glad I asked it.

Many other indie authors who have tried the Kindle Select giveaway program since it became available at the beginning of this year reported a sales spike immediately following the end of the giveaway period. For example, Russell Blake made his Geronimo Breach free for three days in January and saw about 12,000 downloads. “Then, when it went back to paid, a funny thing happened. After languishing for the first day, it shot like a rocket, finally hitting #165 in the paid Kindle store,” he reported in his blog.

Russell wasn’t the only one. I read similar stories from several other indie authors. But as time went on and more and more independent writers used the program, the results were less and less striking.

Still, I was hopeful. Writers I respected for both their writing and marketing ability kept using the program. In the summer, I participated as a supporter of the Book Pushalooza for Derek Blass, Elise Stokes, Robert Guthrie, Shannon Mayer and a few others. The planning and organization in that group effort was amazing.

Lessons learned

How did iAi Labor Day Free Reads go? For me, 1,400 downloads is great — it’s many times more copies than I have sold in the past 8 months, even if it was a small number compared to Russell Blake’s results.

Still, I have to keep that in perspective. Russell was already selling thousands of copies of his book before he had the giveaway.

Another lesson: maybe next time, I won’t do this over a long weekend. People, and readers are people, often go away from their computers during holidays.

Yet another lesson: I will participate for a longer period in the Facebook and other groups that I want to promote my book before asking them to do that.

And there are still more bloggers and reviewers to contact.

As far as sales go: strangely enough, I have sold 12 copies of The Bones of the Earth, Part 1: Initiation Rites at 99 cents through the weekend. I don’t understand this, because Part 1 is, as the title implies, the first part of the full novel. Part 1 came with parts 2 and 3 for free last weekend. I’m not complaining — four bucks is enough for two cups of good coffee. But it seems strange to me. I guess the fact that Part 1 is the first part of the full book is not that clear to some people. Anyway, I’m glad people bought the story, and I hope it makes them want to read the rest of it.

As for the hoped-for sales spike: I’m writing this during that first day after the end of the event, during which Russell Blake reported “languishing” sales. So I’ll watch my reports from Amazon. And I’ll let you know how it’s going.

Progress report: Amazon promotional giveaway event

It’s one day into the first promotional giveaway of my book, The Bones of the Earth, and I’m thrilled with the results. The numbers may not seem huge to some people, but for me, they’re great.

As I mentioned in the post last week, I’m participating in Independent Authors International’s first multi-author, multi-book giveaway through Amazon. Throughout this Labour Day long weekend, seven of us have used our Amazon Kindle Select program free days to give away copies of our e-books.

In total, there have been over 700 downloads of my book in the first 34 hours of the multi-author giveaway event. As I’m writing this, The Bones of the Earth is ranked the number two historical fantasy in Amazon’s Free lists, and number 1 in Amazon UK’s lists!

Strangely, traffic on my blog is not much heavier than normal. Other participants and friends like Cinta Garcia (who guest posted here a few months back) have noticed heavier blog traffic.

So, great results? Compared to my book’s sales since the beginning of the year, this is great! Compared to the big sellers, fair to middling.

Reasons? Perhaps the last long weekend of the summer was not a great choice: there are a lot of other things for people to do, like go to the beach one last time, or get the kids ready for school. Or maybe there are a lot of other giveaways to compete with.

Those are the results so far. I promise to publish further updates for anyone who is thinking of trying this strategy.

The 777 challenge

Joe McCoubrey has nominated me for the 777 Challenge.

Joe is author of thrillers like the soon-to-be-released Someone Has to Pay and Absence of Rules. He’s a very active blogger and member of the Master Koda Facebook group. As he explained on his blog, he was tagged for the 777 Challenge last week.

The idea for the Challenge is to post seven sentences from page 7 or 77 of your work-in-progress, and nominate seven other authors you admire to pass the challenge on to.

Before getting to my seven sentences, one explanation: this excerpt probably won’t end up on page 7. I’ve written about three-quarters of the book, but because the plot isn’t linear, I haven’t finished with Chapter 1, yet.

So what we have here is what’s currently on page 7, but pages 1 and 2 represent fractions of chapters.

The WIP is tentatively titled Walking from the Soviet Union. It's the story of my father-in-law, who was drafted into the Red Army in 1941, between the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact’s dismemberment of Poland and the invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany. The story combines my memories of Maurice and his stories of his wartime experience.

Page 7 deals with his induction into the Army, and one person in particular that he met in training camp:

“Good lord,” said Maurice, in Ukrainian.

“You—you look exactly like me!” said the other.

The two men stared at each other, then stood back to look each other up and down. Other cadets looked at them curiously, and soon started to laugh. “Hey, look at the twins!” said one.

“Who are you?” Maurice asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Hrech Kowalchuk,” the other answered.

Okay, here’s a little more, just to tell you what was going on:

Maurice was relieved to hear that the man’s voice was distinct from his own. “From Kharkiv. Not too far from here. Who are you?”

“Maurice Bury. Ternopyl.” He looked for a long time at the other man, still barely able to believe his eyes. From the look on Kowalchuk’s face, he felt the same. 

Now, for the seven authors whose blogs I want to encourage you all to visit — and who I hope will carry the 777 Challenge further:

1. Rob Guthrie
2. Scott Morgan
3. Gary Henry 
4. Alan McDermott
5. Will Granger
6. Roger Eschbacher
7. Benjamin X. Wretlind

 Readers, encourage them to pick up the challenge!

Who are iAi?

On Monday, I used this blog to announce the launch of a new group of independent authors from around the world, aptly called Independent Authors International, or iAi.

iAi is a cooperative publishing model. The idea is to bring together the skills and resources that a traditional publishing company offers to writers: appraisal of ideas, editing, proofreading, design, formatting for publication and promotion — while leaving control, and revenue, in the hands of the author.

All writers have several skills in addition to writing. Some I know are also skilled in graphic design; some have of necessity become skilled in efficiently formatting manuscripts for e-publication or printing. And some are good at promoting, marketing and selling books.

Books that are reviewed by iAi members, professionally edited (by a member or another professional), professionally designed and manufactured to a high standard, can bear the iAi colophon — a standard of quality.

Members of iAi share their skills, and at the same time, raise the quality, professionalism and credibility of its members work.

I’m proud to be associated with these skilled, talented and professional authors:

Haresh Daswani: Evolution of Insanity

Roger Eschbacher: Dragonfriend: Leonard the Great, Book 1

Will Granger: Anabar’s Run, Anabar Rises, and horror short stories

RS Guthrie: Black Beast, LOST and the newly released Dark Prairies

Gary Henry: American Goddesses, What Happened to Jory and Other Dark Departures, The Moon Poem and Other Strange Jingle Jangles

Alan McDermott: Gray Justice and Gray Resurrection

Zoe Saadia: At Road’s End, The Young Jaguar, The Jaguar Warrior, The Warrior’s Way
Elise Stokes: Cassidy Jones and the Secret Formula, Cassidy Jones and Vulcan’s Gift

Benjamin X. Wretlind: Castles: A Fictional Memoir of a Girl with Scissors, Sketches from the Spanish Mustang



Their names are all linked to their Author pages on the iAi website. If you’re looking for some good e-books to read, you’d have a hard time finding anything better!

Plunging The Bones of the Earth into Kindle Select

I’ve decided to take the plunge.

Creative Commons. No, this is not me.
Thanks for asking, though.

I’ve enrolled my novel, The Bones of the Earth, into Amazon’s Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) Select program.

I’ve resisted this for some time. In fact, the first time I heard of Kindle Select, I objected to it. At the same time, though, I understood why Amazon structured it the way it did.

KDP Select is a marketing program, as well as a method for Amazon to reinforce its dominance of the digital book market. An author or a publisher who has published a book on Amazon’s Kindle store can choose to enroll it in the KDP Select program, which gets the book included in Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library. This allows member of Amazon Prime to borrow the book, free of charge. The author/publisher gets a share of the fund that Amazon sets aside to reimburse them for these free book loans. Lately, that fund has been around $600,000 per month, divided among all authors in the program according to how many times their books get borrowed.

Authors can also set five days out of every 90 during which their books can be downloaded for free. Otherwise, you cannot set your book for a free download on Amazon, unless you go through some tricks by setting your book for free on other sites (like Smashwords, Apple’s iBookstore,Kobo, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Book Store, the Sony e-bookstore or Diesel, to name the few that I know of) and hoping that Amazon matches their price. This has not always worked for me.

The catch

The downside to KDP Select is that Amazon demands exclusivity. If you enroll your e-book in Select and the Lending Library, you cannot distribute it through any other retailer, paid or not. If you do, and Amazon finds out, they’ll not only refuse to pay you any royalties on that book, they may withhold your royalties on all your other title sold through Amazon. They may even bar you from the Kindle digital publishing system entirely.


Creative Commons


This exclusivity applies only the digital books. Authors and publishers that have joined Select can still sell printed books any way they wish — or can.

I can understand why Amazon did this. It dominates the e-book market, and it’s not a charity. It’s a business. I’m not a lawyer, but I doubt this qualifies as an anticompetitive tactic. No one has to join the Select program. You can still sell books through the KDP system as well as every other digital channel you can find, and Amazon will still sell your e-books for you. And Amazon still provides lots of free tools for making e-books in the first place.

A large number of authors have signed up for KDP Select, including several that I know through social media and some that have even written guest posts on this blog. Obviously, they’re not that worried about the exclusivity clause — or they feel that the benefits of lending royalties plus increased sales more than offset the downside.

Many have written that the majority of their sales have been through Amazon, anyway, so they weren’t really losing much.

For my part, Amazon accounts for about half my sales; the other half is mostly through Smashwords, with a few other sales from the other e-retailers.

Select results




Rob Guthrie's magnumopus is now out!

 Some authors have found Kindle Select works. Those were RS Guthrie’s words on his blog, Rob on Writing. “Each of the past three or four times I have run one or both of my books free on Amazon, I have seen a nice increase in sales post-freebie,” he wrote in April.
In February, author Russell Blake (who guested here in December) reported on his blog:

Last month, I dipped my toe in the water by making The Geronimo Breach free for three days. During that time, I saw about 12K downloads. Not too shabby. Then, when it went back to paid, a funny thing happened. After languishing for the first day, it shot like a rocket, finally hitting #165 in the paid Kindle store.

So, it does work. Of course, both Guthrie and Blake outsell me by orders of magnitude. But the potential is there.



At time of writing,
number 6,554 Paid in
Kindle Store  — not shabby at all.



Do I really want to give my books away for free?

Of course not. I put a lot of work into them: planning, writing, re-writing, editing, re-writing again, throwing parts out, filling in plot and characterization holes. I engaged editors and designers, and I had to pay them. So no, I don’t want to just give them away.

But we all appreciate that free promos and cut-rate special offers help drive up sales, too. Free is a promotional tool that I’d like to be able to use.

Also, there are some multi-author book giveaway promotions that I’d like to participate in — but again, you have to be a member of Kindle Select.

Mostly, I want to experience that paid sales spike after the free promos. I understand that it’s only a temporary spike. At this point, I’ll take temporary.

As of July 12, ##431,700 Paid in Kindle Store. Let's see if we can boost that to the low hundred thousands, at least.

I promise to blog about my experiences regularly. I’ll keep you all up to date on my progress.