Monster War: Apocrypha - free again to celebrate a bad review!

Hey! I got a review on my short-short story, Apocrypha on Amazon! Unfortunately, they didn't like it much. "No need for bad language..." I hope they got it on one of the free promotions and - dear God - I hope they don't ever read The Monster War! Talk about bad language... Anyway, to celebrate the story's first review, it's free again! If you don't mind the 's' word you might like it. And if you don't, well - at least it's short - and free!

Download it from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EX6CUYA

New Short Story - FREE for a limited time!

I wrote up a quick short story set in the Monster War universe to give away for my birthday! Amazon doesn't let me set the price at 0 - even for a story as short as this one (1500 words). However, it does let me run a promo price, which is going on right now! Until May 3rd, 2016, "Tales of the Monster War: Apocrypha" is free! It might be good, it might be bad, but at least it's short! (There's also the first 3 chapters of The Monster War excerpted, so there's a little more to read if you want.)

LINK: http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Monster-War-Bob-Cram-ebook/dp/B01EX6CUYA

Monster War Giveaway Winners

Congratulations to Elizabeth Steen, Raymond Stone and Tina Wright - you've each won a signed copy of The Monster War! Your copies are set aside and will be going in the mail on Monday. Hope you enjoy!

Thanks to everyone who entered and I hope you all got a chance to go out and see Godzilla. Loved it myself, flaws and all.

-bob

Signed Copies of Monster War Giveaway!

Today, Godzilla makes his ponderous, destructive way back into theaters. In celebration of his return, I'm giving away 3 signed copies of The Monster War! This is a Goodreads giveaway, so it's being run through their site. Here's the link: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/92831-the-monster-war.

This isn't connected in any way to the Godzilla film - I'm just excited to see the big guy back in theaters and wanted to do something to share that.

The Monster War does have giant monsters in it, though! And giant insects. And one giant girlfriend. And some zombies.

Book Covers

Bit of a repost, but hey - it's a migraine day. Here are a few covers for books/short stories that I've done. All of these (except for MW:Apocrypha) are available on Amazon.

The Revisions Begin

I've been participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) on and off for years. I've never gotten very far - I think the first time I did it in 2001 I wrote 20,000 words and that's been the benchmark ever since. This past year I was going to skip it - I'd tried the year before with a lot more free time and barely cracked 7,000. My brother Scott did it with me that year - 2011 - and finished early. He self-published the resulting novel (The Well of Trees - available in Print and Kindle formats from Amazon) in early 2012. That was his first year trying NaNoWriMo.

I hate him a little for that. ;)

Anyway, this year I was a LOT more busy. Behind on work projects and just generally feeling stressed. Having failed to finish every time before I thought there was no point in writing this year - I'd be even less likely to.

However another brother (Jeff) decided he'd jump in this year and he has even LESS free time than I do (what with an hour commute each way and 2 kiddos). Scott's wife Crystal joined in and another brother (Micah) also signed up, so I threw my hands in the air and said 'what the hell.'

Usually I try and start a writing project with some idea of the general plot and characters. This year I started too close to the start date and didn't feel like digging out an old idea. So I just sat down and wrote the first thing that came to my mind:

"I woke up remembering how I’d had to fight the monsters in 1997, which of course I had never done. If you’re reading this, it means things got back to normal and you’ve forgotten how it all went down. If you somehow manage to track me down to verify this, I won’t remember either. As far as reality is concerned, there are no monsters. There was no monster war. It never happened.

Until it happens again."

That was my starting point and I just went from there.

In many ways this was a really freeing experience. I started each day not knowing where things were going. I even started leaving things in the middle of scenes - kind of daring myself to figure ways for the characters to get out of the situation.

It was stressful and at times I was really just typing words with no desire or intent behind them just to hit my minimums for the deadline, however somehow it all came together. I actually finished!

I have no idea if it's any good or not - I have the feeling it's at best a fun genre adventure - but what the hell, I actually finished a novel.

Now's when the real work begins - the rewrite/revision/editing process. I'll keep you posted how it goes.