"Happy New Years" From Nathan and Company

This is what one of our authors posted on FB and it's a sentiment Otto, Lisa, Marisa, Isabella and the rest of us share. I know things have been a little slow here on the blog, what with our 1st anthology , "The Vampyre Blogs - One Day At A Time" (available now in Kindle and Trade Paperback at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KMN78B2) having just come out and all, but rest assured new tales are on the way. And so are some long overdue volumes of work such as "The Door" which will be the fourth full-length novel in the Para-Earth Series, which me and my friends are a part of. 

Up until now, the authors have kind of taken a Terry Pratchett approach to the series. When Mr. Pratchett created his Discworld Series he had different groups of characters he'd focus on in each book, but all the stories were taking place in the same reality and on the same world. He had his rag-tag bunch of police constables led by the crotchety Commander Sam Vimes in 'The Watch' books, then he had his wizards and their Unseen University in books focusing on them, Death himself had a number of books focused on him and his granddaughter Susan Sto Helit, then there were Granny Weatherwax, Tiffany Aching, and the other witches who had their own area in the series, and so on. However, every so often Mr. Pratchett would mix his cast in some books to help solidify the idea that all of this was taking place in the same world.

Well, Allan and Helen are getting ready to do the same thing with us and the cast of characters from "The Bridge" and "The Ship". This has been an idea that has been long in development for them, especially for Allan who we have come to lovingly refer to as "Mr. Decisive". The reason we do this is because he's been working on "The Door" since 2014. While he had a clear vision for a beginning, most of the middle section, and an ending for the book, he could never quite find the right sequence of events to take place in between which bring them all together in a nice cohesive tale. 

Realizing he was getting nowhere fast, Allan took a break from that book and focused on us with Helen. This led to "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home" along with the creation of this blog and the short-stories contained within. For those who've been following this blog since the beginning, and have read "The Bridge" and "The Ship", you will know that on a few occasions some of the characters from those books have appeared in this blog along with Otto and myself in the past. Those past encounters will be the basis for what is about to come in "The Door", where I will come face-to-face with my old flame Police Sergeant Veronica Ross. This meeting will lead all of us to a haunted house unlike any you've ever seen before, as well as many more adventures to come. There will also be plenty of new short stories here on this blog.

So strap yourselves in and get ready for the long haul, because there's a lot coming your way. 

Until next time, thanks for all your support and please keep reading.  

  

Gifting E-Books

Okay gang, the big day is drawing near and you still want to get a few more gifts but don't know what to buy, or don't want to go out into the stores which have already pulled down half of their displays and are lining up Spring stuff. What to do, what to do... how about giving someone a good book to read on their Kindle? It's fast, easy, and you can have it delivered on Christmas Day and know it will arrive on time...

      
                           

Didn't know you could do this? Neither did I for the longest time. I only found out a couple of years ago when we released "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home". I found myself rewarding some of our beta-readers with a free copy of the finished product in whatever form they wished (trade paperback, Kindle, PDF).  Most requested a signed trade paperback, but a couple asked for the Kindle version.

                

So I headed over to Amazon, got into my account, and pulled up "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home".  Once there I quickly found the "Give As A Gift" button and clicked it.  From there I was taken to another screen which asked me to sign into my Amazon account, which I did.  From there I was taken to a final screen

                 

This screen asked only for the e-mail address of the recipient I was sending this book to AND what day I wanted it delivered.  It was the option of a delivery date that really caught my eye.  Now some of you might be thinking, "Duh, you never noticed this before?"  And the answer is "Obviously, I didn't.  I rarely gave e-books as gifts to anyone before, even though I'm one of the authors.  Most of my readers buy the books for themselves and hardly anyone in my family owns a Nook or Kindle."  So yes, this was  new to me and very exciting.

So now I have this huge new avenue for holiday shopping before me.  And with Black Friday and Cyber Monday looming on the horizon, I thought it important to share these options with all of you. Some of you may have known about all this, but for those (like me) who didn't you now have more options when it comes to shopping for gifts.  I personally love the idea of having a book to place in someone's 'Cyber Stocking'.

                       

So for anyone who didn't know about this option, now you do.  And the best part is you can do that kind of shopping right now.  The e-book will not arrive before the date you set.

Of course, being an author I'm going to shamelessly promote our books by providing links below so you can visit our author pages on Amazon, where all our books are listed and you can choose whichever one(s) you'd like to gift to the readers in your life.

US KINDLE USERS:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KT9C559?ref=series_rw_dp_labf

UK KINDLE USERS:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07KT9C559?ref=series_rw_dp_labf

CANADA KINDLE USERS:

https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1?ie=UTF8&text=Allan+and+Helen+Krummenacker&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Allan+and+Helen+Krummenacker&sort=relevancerank

Thanks for tuning in and don't be afraid to leave suggestions or ideas about gifting books that I overlooked in this post, in the comments section below.  Until next time, take care and keep writing.

COVER REVEAL

COMING NEXT MONTH:

The latest installment of the 

Para-Earth Series...

OUR FIRST ANTHOLOGY:

-25 Tales (8 of them never-before-seen)

-Spanning 150 years

- Starring all your favorites from this blog and"The Vampyre Blogs: Coming Home"

- Including guest appearances by characters from our other titles"The Bridge" and "The Ship"along with a host of all new characters!

*****PRE-ORDERS Coming Soon****

Things I Learned Writing An Anthology - Part I

Last night Helen and I finished the final story for our upcoming anthology.

     Thank you!  Thank you!  You're all being too kind.  But today's post is not to talk about the anthology itself, as much as what went into making it.  How did it differ from writing full-length novels?  Was it easier?  Was it harder? What was the process like?  Where did we get all the stories for it, etc.?

      Well, for starters, coming up with a decent number of stories was and wasn't hard really.  Helen had been writing stories long before e-books and well before I tried my hand at penning a tale.  I can easily say I learned so much from her earlier attempts at getting published, and let me tell you she got damn close to seeing some of her work in print.  But, that's a tale for another entry.

      What I want to say is that I learned a lot about what to expect when I decided to try  going the traditional published route.  Although in my case, I started shortly after the birth of e-publishing and after 2-3 years of trying to get an agent to represent and hearing over and over again "You've got something here, but you crossed several genres and I wouldn't know what publishing house to try and sell it to."  

      You see, at that time (and this still seems to hold true today) publishers don't like to take risks on unknown authors or mixed genres. They want a straight up "Mystery", "Thriller", "Horror", "Science Fiction", etc.  They're not keen on trying to sell a book that crosses multiple genres like the Para-Earth Series which we classify as "Paranormal/Sci-Fi".

  

      Now some of you may be pointing out that they do it more often these days, but most of those authors are well-known like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, J. K. Rowling, etc. who all have proven sales track records.  

       Anyway, getting back to how our upcoming anthology came to be a reality

.  

      During that 2-3 years I tried to get published the traditional way, more stories were taking shape.  New characters and ideas were forming.  One of them was vampire I called Nathan Eoghan (pronounced Ewan) Steward.  I swore I'd never do a vampire character, unless I could introduce new angle or angles to the character.  Yet I still wanted to keep a lot of the traditional trademark strengths and weaknesses people have come and know and recognize.

      By this time, I had already been blogging for several years and had learned from other writers the concept of giving sneak peeks into upcoming works, and even sharing short stories.  This is done to introduce characters and concepts to prospective readers and build a demand for them.  So, after creating a vampire character that would fit nicely into our paranormal/sci-fi concept, I began doing short stories with Nathan over on a new blog called "The Vampyre Blogs - Private Edition".    Over the course of 3 years we had a number of tales about Nathan and introduced a number of his friends who appeared with him in "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home".  And we're still making new stories.  And that presented a problem, how many people want to wade through 4-5 years of blog posts to read all those stories?  Furthermore, most of those tales are rough 1st drafts and it shows.

      During this time, I noticed some of my fellow authors who had created short stories on their blogs were bundling them into anthologies and that got us thinking.  With all the stories we'd already created, why couldn't we create an anthology centered around all those stories on the blog?  While it sounded nice and easy, it also didn't feel completely right to me.  While having all those earlier stories put into a more convenient format, shouldn't we give the readers more?  Shouldn't there be new never before seen stories in the collection?  Furthermore, should the stories not be just about Nathan but his friends, and even characters from our first two novels "The Bridge" and "The Ship"? 

    This led to Helen coming up with the idea of recycling some of her earlier works which were firmly established in the realm of the macabre.  With a little reworking and adding scenes, she felt a number of those pieces could easily fit in with our Para-Earth Series, while also giving those unread tales a chance to finally see the light of day.  

      *Now I want to pause and say one thing.  Remember how I told you all, many posts ago, never to toss out your unfinished works, or fragments because you never knew when they might fit into some new idea/concept?  This is a perfect example of why you do that.  You just never know when that day might come.*

      So right there, we had some brand new stories to slip into the anthology.  But we didn't stop there, we went ahead and created several more brand new stories just for the collection itself.  The result?  One third of the tales appearing in this anthology are completely brand new.

  

     Plus, we also added an afterthought following each story, sharing some of the who, what, where, and how each tale came into existence.  We thought it only right to share some of what the writing process can be like and hopefully inspire others to take that next step in whatever creative endeavors they are involved in.  

     Now, seeing how long this entry is getting and knowing there's still a lot more to share, I'm going to end this one here.  I know I covered a lot of background areas today and haven't really gotten to more of the technical and details of actually what went into the building of the anthology.  But rest assured that will be covered in the next installment. 

      Until then take care and keep writing everyone.

Announcement Time...

          *After almost a year, we are finally getting to the last leg of releasing our anthology "The Vampyre Blogs - One Day At a Time".  Provided all goes well, it will be available at the beginning/early October, just in time for spooky and weird tales.  Helen and I are working on the last story for the anthology even as I write this post.  We will be looking for Beta-Readers with hopes for feedback by the middle of September so we can make any final adjustments.

              In the meantime, here is a little peek at one of the 24 tales that await you within the pages of this newest installment of our Para-Earth Series.

THE SNOWMAN 

By Helen Krummenacker

          A chilly December evening was made cozy not only by the fireplace, but the scents of vanilla, cinnamon, and ginger from baking in the kitchen. Marissa turned the radio to a station playing all Christmas music. Isabella was excited even beyond the average child at Christmas time, for this was her first Christmas tree, her first time seeing fairy lights, and even the radio was a novelty for her. She would sit on the sofa, stare at the tree and get up again every few minutes to better distribute the ornaments for color balance and even presentation.

Marissa and Lisa were helping Nathan with paper chains, a decoration he remembered from his childhood. The girls were using a ladder to reach high, but Nathan took care of sites out of their reach. Otto, having recently surrendered the kitchen to Penny, who was making a couple of her own favorite treats, had started to show Richard how to wire pine and holly into swags to place around. “So ‘Boughs of holly’ are just branches done up to decorate the place?”

“Yes. Deck and decorate have the same word as a root.”

“Ain’t that something. I always wondered about that song. Especially the gay apparel.”

“That meant jolly, bright colored, festive.”

“And that makes ‘Johnny Comes Marching Home’ a lot better,” Richard laughed. The professor was  all right by him. Strange and a little weird how he treated the boss like a kid sometimes, but when he was around, you always felt a little bit smarter.

Just then, a new tune came on the radio. “Frosty the snowman, was a jolly, happy soul--”

“Turn that off!” Otto snapped. Isabella looked at him in shock a moment before heading to the radio and pushing the big circle button she’d learned made these new electric things go on or off. “I’m sorry… I just do not like that song,” he explained, suddenly aware that everyone was watching him, puzzled by his uncharacteristic change of mood. “I really do not like it. You would not like it, either, if you knew how dangerous that snowman could have actually become.”

“Wait, Frosty was *real*?” Marissa asked skeptically.

“There are more things on heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” quoted Otto, then sighed. “Yes. Frosty was real, and he was the result of my missing an important detail and behaving carelessly.”

“Story time!” Lisa called out.

“Oh, yes, we have to hear about this,” Marissa added.

“Really?” Otto asked, as if surprised by the attention.

“Even I haven’t heard this one,” said Nathan, “and it sounds like a doozy.”

Otto took a seat on the sofa, next to Isabella, and the others gathered around. Richard kept at it with the greenery, but still cocked an ear and moved so he could see Otto’s face and gestures. Taking a deep breath, the professor began to tell the tale in a rich, melodic voice...

Now On Kindle Unlimited...

"The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home"

is available now for "FREE" 

only on Kindle Unlimited

What reviewers have been saying:

“Pick this up if you like vampires!”

"Nathan is a fascinating take on the immortal vampire. His family and friends are as dysfunctional as any modern group..."

"Such a different approach to the "birth" so to speak and the para earths are fascinating!"

"Love this series..."

Start reading today by clicking the link below:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MDO8SLO/ref=series_dp_rw_ca_3