Wide Spot in the Road by Wayne D. Dundee

Vagabond P.I. Jack Laramie stops in the remote town of Buele’s Corner for a bite to eat. Before he finishes his bowl of chili, he gets caught up in a tornado of events that starts with a panicked, young couple racing into the diner to use the phone to call for help—a menacing motorcycle gang, The Deguelloes, is chasing after them. When the couple discovers the phone is out of order, Jack steps in to help them fend off the gang who’s accusing the couple of running some of their fellow bikers off the road.

Wide Spot in the Road is the fourth novella in The Drifter Detective series, following on the heels of The Girls of Bunker Pines, Hell Up in Houston, and the eponymous debut, The Drifter Detective.

Wayne's thoughts on Wide Spot in the Road here.

How the West Was Written: Frontier Fiction, 1880-1906 by Ron Scheer

This book began as a question about the origins of the cowboy western ... how it grew from Owen Wister’s bestseller, The Virginian (1902), to Zane Grey’s first novels a decade later. A reading of frontier fiction from that period, however, soon reveals that the cowboy western was only one of many different kinds of stories being set in the West.

Besides novels about ranching and the cattle industry, writers wrote stories about railroads, mining, timber, the military, politics, women’s rights, temperance, law enforcement, engineering projects, homesteaders, detectives, preachers and, of course, Indians, all of it an outpouring between the years 1880–1915. That brief 35-year period extends from the Earp-Clanton gunfight in Tombstone, Arizona, to the start of the First World War.

The chapters of How the West Was Written tell a story of how the western frontier fed the imagination of writers, both men and women. It illustrates how the cowboy is only one small figure in a much larger fictional landscape. There are early frontier novels in which he is the central character, while in others he’s only a two-dimensional, tobacco-chewing caricature, or just an incidental part of the scenery.

A reading of this body of work reveals that the best-remembered novel from that period, The Virginian, is only one among many early western stories. And it was not the first. The western terrain was used to explore ideas already present in other popular fiction—ideas about character, women, romance, villainy, race, and so on. A modern reader of early western fiction discovers that Wister’s novel was part of a flood of creative output. He and, later, Zane Grey were just two of many writers using the frontier as a setting for telling the human story.  –Ron Scheer

 

Currently available in ebook format for Kindle and in paperback. A second volume is in the works for the years 1907 - 1915.

Free: Beetner's The Year I Died Seven Times Book #2

It will take more than dying to keep him from finding the truth. Book #2 is now available.

Watch for book #3 in April.

Free eBook: Hell Up in Houston

The latest Jack Laramie Drifter Detective ebook is free for a few days.

Give It Away, Give It Away

I've read many thoughts about giving away books for free and there are a whole host of opinions. It seems it comes down to whether it was successful or not for that particular author. Here are a few quick thoughts on my experiences.

Both volumes of my Cash & Miles Adventures have been offered for free at different times. I began with Vol. II because Vol. I was doing well and I wanted to boost sales of the second collection. During the freebie offer, there was an unexpected increase in sales of the first volume, but that makes sense, right? If you have the second installment of a series, you probably want to know how it started. After the offer closed, Vol. II entered the Top 100 sales charts. I had several readers on Twitter thank me for the free book and mention they bought my other title.

Kinda, sorta the same for MANHUNTER'S MOUNTAIN written by Wayne D. Dundee--a Cash Laramie story with a new author taking the reins. To introduce this first novel (in what I hope will be an ongoing series), I gave it away free for a few days. A couple thousand folks downloaded the book, which helped to expand its horizons through the Amazon charts and recommendations panel "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought." Both these things brought my eBook to the attention of folks who might not otherwise see it. MOUNTAIN has re-entered the best sellers charts several times, and I feel the success goes back to that free giveaway in January.

So I'm going to try again with our latest release, BULLETS FOR A BALLOT written by Nik Morton. We'll see how it works out this time but, so far, giving away books for free has been a good move for me. What has been your experience?

More On Free Can Equal Sales

Heath Lowrance has a short bit on sales for our MILES TO LITTLE RIDGE eBook. I had a post a few days ago called Free Can Equal Sales. Check that out and then read Mr. Lowrance's post here.

Manhunter's Mountain

Manhunter's Mountain shows a powerful side to Cash Laramie as he makes his way down the side of a mountain with a prisoner in tow, and two prostitutes eager to flee a mining town that's gone bust, looking to make a new life for themselves. An early winter storm promises to make the journey more than a normal struggle. And, leaving town with two of its most precious gems, the prostitutes, puts Cash in the crosshairs of an angry gang of men who are willing to keep the women in town ... at any cost.

A fast, hardboiled Western that continues the Cash Laramie legend with swagger and good, solid writing. Wayne Dundee brings his masterful voice to the Western and tells a Cash Laramie story in perfect pitch. Manhunter's Mountain should be on every Western fiction reader's bookshelf.

-- Larry D. Sweazy, Spur Award-winning author of The Coyote Tracker.

Edward A. Grainger's outlaw marshal is on the trail again in this first full-length Cash Laramie novel written by hardboiled veteran Wayne D. Dundee.

Reviews: R Thomas Brown's Criminal Thoughts | James Reasoner's Rough Edges| Larry Sweazy's Tense Moments

Free Can Equal Sales

Thanks to support from friends on Blogger, Google+, and Twitter, I was able to sell a few hundred copies off the bat with the June release of ADVENTURES OF CASH LARAMIE AND GIDEON MILES and it's sequel, VOL. II. Then after the excitement died down, sales puttered along at ten or so copies a day. Not bad, but how to reach a wider audience?

Give it away seems to be the answer!

Kindle now provides the opportunity to offer your book for free for a limited time -- no more than five days to be exact. So I did it, and I stared in amazement when I hit the refresh button -- nearly one hundred copies had moved in less than a couple of minutes. Then I hit refresh again and another sizable batch flew off the virtual shelf. It went on like that for two days nonstop. I eventually ended up moving just over 3k. Now if folks had bought that many of my books, I would have pocketed a cool grand *dreams a bit* but I know that wouldn't have happened.

So what good did the free offer do?

Three thousand readers who weren't familiar with Cash & Miles now have it on their Kindle. If only a quarter of them like my heroes, then that's an improvement on future sales when, hopefully, they purchase the next book for $0.99. Additionally, I sold two hundred copies of the first volume that most likely wouldn't have been purchased if I hadn't decided to offer my book for free -- more than one person on Twitter mentioned they bought the first collection after getting the second for $0.00.

I hope you don't mind me posting about this, not bragging here, and many other writers out there are way ahead of me on this, but I thought it may be of use to a few. In a nutshell: free is good and can equal other/future sales.

Agree? Disagree? What are your experiences?

EU opens antitrust probe into Apple's e-book deals

EU opens antitrust probe into Apple's e-book deals.

Available: A RIP THROUGH TIME

Dr. Robert Berlin has created The Baryon Core, a powerful device with the ability to predict the future and retrodict the past by tracking the position and vector of every particle in the universe. Berlin swipes his own creation from The Company and disappears into history. The Company's time-cop Simon Rip and the sexy, brilliant Dr. Serena Ludwig join together to track Berlin and return the device. Their pursuit will take them back to the ice age and forward to the end of time.

A Rip through Time follows the time-cop's travels in a series of five short stories written by several of today's top pulp writers. Chris F. Holm opens the collection with the fast-paced "The Dame, the Doctor and the Device." Charles A. Gramlich's "Battles, Broadswords, and Bad Girls" and Garnett Elliott's "Chaos in the Stream" breath new life into the time travel story. Bringing the saga to a gripping conclusion in "Darkling in the Eternal Space" is Chad Eagleton, who then takes it a step further with a mesmerizing coda, "The Final Painting of Hawley Exton." And for all the time-traveling enthusiasts, Ron Scheer provides an insightful essay, "Are We Then Yet," which explores the mechanics of time travel in popular fiction.

A RIP THROUGH TIME is now available at Smashwords for $0.99.

Let's Give Away...

Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles. My eBook is currently the 3rd most recommended on Amazon. Leave your name and e-mail in the comments section and I will send a Kindle version. No Kindle? I'll send a pdf.

I'll leave this offer open through July 17, 2011.

How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months by John Locke

The first How To (eHow?) book I've read and haven't felt like I wasted my money. And I actually took notes! Recommended.

Amazon link.

A Word of Thanks

I want to thank everyone who has purchased a copy of Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles and especially those who took the time to do a review. The support from the writing community has been nothing short of exceptional.

For the past two weeks, Adventures has been on Amazon’s Top 100 westerns and quite often in the top twenty. As I said in a recent post, I’m humbled to be hanging out with McMurtry, L'Amour, and, good lord, Elmore Leonard!

I received an e-mail from a new Cash & Miles fan (that’s another first for me) who asked if there were other stories and where he could find them. Well, the success of this first collection has spurred me on to release the remaining short stories in the months to come. It will probably be the same approach with five previously released adventures with two new ones.

While waiting for that next collection, Cash will be in Crimefactory, Gideon Miles will be in the forthcoming Western Fictioneers eBook, and another tale of the outlaw marshal written with Chuck Tyrell will be at the next Wild West eMonday.

But for now... thank you, folks.

The Queue, it Never Ends

Chris La Tray highlights several collections you may want to consider.

eBook, eSpam

Check out Jack Martin's post on eBook, eSpam. If you self publish you will want to take a look.

Chap O'Keefe Responds to 'Into The Void'

Chap O'Keefe at Broken Trails.

Libraries Beef Up E-Book Offerings

In Run-Up To Kindle Lending Program, Libraries Beef Up E-Book Offerings.

The Affair of the Wooden Boy by Ian Doyle

I had a lot of fun reading this Mina and James Stark Investigation, THE AFFAIR OF THE WOODEN BOY, that is now available on Kindle.

More Fred Zackel Titles Now Available On Kindle

Many writers are putting their backlist, OOP and unpublished works up on Kindle. Fred Zackel recently released several of his works as Kindle ebooks including his 1978 novel Cocaine and Blue Eyes and Cinderella After Midnight (an excerpt, "Big and bright and colorful, like the California Dream", appeared earlier this year at BEAT to a PULP). Fred is set to release three more books for the first time ever:

Tough Town Cold City
An old friend is brutally murdered and San Francisco private eye Frank Pasnow is told the funeral home needs a down payment. He goes after the security deposit from the cute and cunning landlady.

Murder in Waikiki
It's 1985. Murder arrives in sun-drenched Waikiki Beach with a van filled with tourists from the Mainland. (Agatha Christie meets Joseph Conrad.)

Crow on the Cradle
Murder, intrigue, revenge, betrayal, suspense, thriller, conspiracies, sex, swords, mythology, noir, classic, regicide, inheritance, birthright, throne ... and pagan.

In January 1978, Ross Macdonald wrote, "Fred Zackel's first novel reminds me of the young Dashiell Hammett's work, not because it is an imitation, but because it is not. It is a powerful and original book made from the lives and language of the people who live in San Francisco today."

Charles Gramlich's CHIMES

Dena sucked in a mouthful of air, almost gave in to a yell. The chimes gonged and clanged. Her finger tightened on the automatic's trigger and she clenched her teeth. A gagging sound came from downstairs. Quiet followed.

"Mommy?"

I bought a Kindle this week (more about that soon) and one of the first ebooks I bought was this edge of your seat thriller by Charles Gramlich. What I like about CHIMES, and actually all of Mr. Gramlich's stories, are the believable characters that anchor the plot. Dena is a woman raising her child alone after her husband was raped, couldn't handle it, and split. When she hears chimes coming from downstairs where there shouldn't be, she realizes she has an intruder in her home. Her instinct in protecting her child and dealing with the trespasser are all handled masterfully. The story is a brisk read with some unexpected plot twists, and the ebook is priced very reasonably through Amazon's Kindle Store. Whole-heartedly endorsed.