“You’re losing money, Blake, every single day RUN is not for sale.”
Around December, Joe started making a point of telling me this every time we talked on the phone, emailed, or Skyped. I thought maybe he was right.
I had a great December selling ebooks.
January came close to doubling that.
“Blake, this is the best thing you’ve ever written. You know that novels sell better than short stories. Why are you sitting on this?”
Now, every time Joe said this, it was like a gut punch. Because I knew he was right. I knew the potential monthly income I was turning my back on, the new readers I was missing out on.
We’re in the Wild West of ebooks, and my best work was on the sidelines. We hadn’t had any offers on RUN, but had gotten very close with a couple of dream editors. It’s always been a tough market, but with Borders going under and the ebook-induced turmoil, it’s harder now than ever.
So I released RUN myself this past Saturday, for the following reasons, and many more:
1. It’s my best book. A lot of my work has a horror bent, and this certainly does, but it’s far and away the most commercial thing I’ve written. It has the most potential to earn me new fans, and now I have a substantial backlist for them to dive into if they dig it.
2. As I’ve blogged about here before, I need more novels. My novels far outsell my short story collections, single stories, and novellas. This was an opportunity to add a fourth novel to my catalog.
3. For the first time in my writing career, I can support myself solely through writing. Releasing RUN has the potential to launch me to the next level, and the window for doing that is open and here.
4. Numerous ebooks, already released, have been picked up after the fact by publishers. See Michael J. Sullivan, H.P. Mallory, the Encore crowd, etc. If numbers are strong, it can help an agent make an argument for the sale and negotiate a better advance.
5. Ebook royalty rate: 25%. This royalty rate is so completely biased in favor of publishers, it’s not even funny. The ebook rights to my catalog are far and away the most valuable thing I own.
To give a publisher the exclusive license to my e-rights when I have no control over pricing, and in light of that 25% royalty rate, is a terrifying proposition. This all adds up to my suspicion that, even if an offer were to come, I would have a very difficult time parting with those rights if the offer wasn’t stellar and life-changing money.
6. No one knows yet what the selling trajectory of an ebook is, although we do know that it doesn’t follow the traditional arc of sliding into coop and needing to sell huge in those first 6 weeks to stay alive. Konrath is a prime example. All of his titles have been his greatest sellers at different points in time, and at different price points. But if a book is never available, you can never find that sweet spot where it works for you. Your old books sell your new books, and vice-versa, and the more books you have available, the more you will sell, and the more you sell, the more you sell.
7. I don’t know what the future of RUN will be. Will I always control the e-rights? Will I ultimately sell them? Hard to say. But I know that having it available right now is a great weight lifted off my shoulders, because there is no longer any benefit to sitting on good work, and waiting for a “Yes.”
Joe sez: Not only is RUN the best novel Blake has written, it's the best thriller I've ever read. That's not an exaggeration. RUN is powerful, moving, frightening, exhilarating, and the end will reduce you to tears.
I considered it my duty, as a friend of Blake's, to nag him to self-publish RUN, but he wanted a big traditional publishing deal. And guess what? I understood his thinking. RUN should have gotten a big traditional publishing deal. Blake should have been offered six-figures for RUN, months ago. It has "blockbuster" written all over it.
But the current publishing climate is awful. Publishers aren't buying as much, and they aren't paying as much. And every day Blake waited, the legacy publishing climate got worse, the self-publishing climate got better, and he missed out on making money.
How much money?
Let's be conservative and say RUN sells 20 copies a day. If he'd self-pubbed it nine months ago, like I told him to, He'd have $10k in his pocket right now. Ouch.
Double-ouch because 20 a day is a low estimate. I sell 90 copies a day of Endurance, and it isn't even my best selling ebook. If I'd waited nine months to publish Endurance, I'd have missed out on about $49,000.
That's what I mean by, "Ebooks will earn money forever, but you should start forever right now, not tomorrow."
It could be that RUN does really well as an ebook, which might spark some publisher interest. But if it is doing that well, Blake would be foolish to sell the rights. A 25% ebook royalty is really 14.9% after everyone takes their share. If ebooks are the future, why would any author choose 14.9% over 70%?
I encourage all of my blog readers to pick up RUN. It's terrific.
I also encourage all of my blog readers with a book on submission to rethink their priorities. I know you want a big book deal. I felt the same way, not so long ago.
But that was before I was selling 800 ebooks a day. Right now I'm earning $1 a minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Big book deal? No thanks.
Blake sez: It’s so annoying when Joe’s right.
If you’ve benefited from any of my posts here, I would humbly ask that you check out RUN, available for $2.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.
Here’s the pitch:
For fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Thomas Harris...
Picture this: A landscape of American genocide...
5 d a y s a g o
A rash of bizarre murders swept the country…
Senseless. Brutal. Seemingly unconnected.
A cop walked into a nursing home and unloaded his weapons on elderly and staff alike.
A mass of school shootings.
Prison riots of unprecedented brutality.
Mind-boggling acts of violence in every state.
4 d a y s a g o
The murders increased ten-fold…
3 d a y s a g o
The President addressed the nation and begged for calm and peace…
2 d a y s a g o
The killers began to mobilize…
Y e s t e r d a y
All the power went out…
T o n i g h t
They’re reading the names of those to be killed on the Emergency Broadcast System. You are listening over the battery-powered radio on your kitchen table, and they’ve just read yours.
Your name is Jack Colclough. You have a wife, a daughter, and a young son. You live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. People are coming to your house to kill you and your family. You don’t know why, but you don’t have time to think about that any more.
You only have time to….
R U N
This is a unique opportunity to own an amazing completely redone Harmony Rocket. I purchased this from an avid collector who loved rockabilly music and hot rods. He took his favorite vintage rocket and had it “hot rodded”. He had his luthier overhaul everything. He redressed the frets, he replaced the floating wooden bridge with a modern roller bridge, he replaced the original tuners with a set of Grovers and readjusted everything to maximize playability. To complete his rockabilly/hot rod project he sent the guitar a custom bike shop in California to paint an amazing professional hot rod flame job paint on the body. The paint metallic paint just leaps out and in the light and looks incredible. The back of the neck is super smooth and plays like butter. Overall the guitar plays and sounds phenomenal! This is easily the best playing Harmony or Silvertone I’ve ever encountered.It just screams "Rockabilly" at you, doesn't it? (I have to admit that I do hate that expression "plays like butter". That seems to be one of those eBay guitar listing clichés. For me, it just conjures up an image of a really digustingly greasy guitar.)
The guitar’s neck is very comfortable and is shaped like a 59’ roundback, it isn’t super large like the old Silvertone archtops and it isn’t skinny either…just nice and meaty. There are no dead spots on the neck and no buzzing along the board. The frets are vintage and are shaped like the thin/wide vintage Gibson style. The famous Dearmond gold foil pickups sound big and bold clean and thick and juicy when overdriven. All the tone/volume knobs work and are not scratchy, however two of them don’t turn as easily as the others. They still turn just fine but just not as freely as the others. The pickup selector works and feels very solid. The guitar stays in tune like a dream. Overall an incredible instrument that is perfect for the studio or the stage.
To my knowledge everything is original except for the paint finish, the headstock decal, the replaced tuners, the replaced bridge, and the matching pick gold pickguard. The guitar is in very good condition, all the binding is very tight with no cracking. No major dings, scratches or blemishes...
On Feb 15th I dropped the price of my technothriller novel, The List, from $2.99 to 99 cents on Kindle and Nook.
My horror ebook, Trapped, which is currently ranked at #325 on Amazon, has sold 3640 copies this month. It is priced at $2.99, and I earn $2 per copy sold.
My novel Shot of Tequila is my poorest selling ebook novel, currently ranked at #2523, and having sold 453 copies this month at $2.99 each.
My intro
duction to the world of e-books was back in 1999, when author Pauline Baird Jones encouraged me to send one of my novels to an electronic publisher. My initial reaction was “Sure, or, in a similar vein, I could print out my manuscript, sprinkle a little Fresh Step on top, and let my cat defile it.” But after a little more research, I decided to give it a try, and in 2000 three of my unpublished novels came out as e-books. (Out of Whack was also supposed to come out that year, but its route to publication was hampered by the minor detail that the publisher sucked.)
Back then, you were an “e-book author” before everything else. Stephen King had given the format a bit of legitimacy with Riding the Bullet, but 99.999% of the e-book authors were not Mr. King. I could’ve played a drinking game with the number of times I heard “Let me know when it’s a real book.” Despite my insistence that my publishers provided cover art, formatting, editing, etc. there was still a very real perception that E-Book = Self-Published = Crap.
But, hey, I threw myself into e-books full force. I spent three years on the board of EPIC, an e-book authors’ organization, two of them as President, and emceed the EPPIES awards banquet (in a tux!) nine times. I continue to emcee awards banquets (in June, I’ll emcee the Bram Stoker Awards for the third time) but I will never, ever, ever, ever be on the board of a writers’ organization ever, ever, ever again. That way lies a descent into the gaping jaws of madness.
In 2003, my novel Mandibles appeared in actual print, and was soon followed by a few others. It was print-on-demand and thus didn’t really appear in bookstore shelves, but the “When are you going to publish a real book?” question had been answered. I still liked e-books, but I was no longer required to be a passionate proponent of them to market my work. Sweeeeeet.
Though the hardcover edition of my 2006 novel Pressure was available as a $25 trade hardcover and did get bookstore distribution, almost all of my work after that was part of the limited edition market. Unlike e-books in 2000, hardcover limited edition horror novels had a built-in market, and books like The Sinister Mr. Corpse, Disposal, The Haunted Forest Tour, and Gleefully Macabre Tales all started out exclusively available in $35-$50 editions. It was fantastic, because these books looked incredible, but in terms of reaching actual readers…well, your potential audience is not huge when you’re offering 250 copies of a $50 book. Once again, the format overshadowed the content.
And then, in 2009, it finally happened. My first mass market release. The paperback edition of Pressure was in bookstores everywhere for $7.99. My sister picked one up at a military base in Korea and my dad got one in a grocery store in Alaska. There was nothing to block anybody from reading this book. It was cheap and easily available. If you wanted a copy of Pressure, by golly you could get a copy of Pressure. Dweller followed. Suddenly, it was ALL about the content. There was nothing to explain except that it was about being best buddies with a serial killer.
I did a ton of book signings for it, and what question kept coming up? “Is it available for my e-book reader?” Being polite, I did not shout “Are you freakin’ KIDDING ME??? It’s a $7.99 paperback on the table right in front of you!”
In 2010, I looped around right back to where I’d started, with Draculas, a novel written exclusively for the e-book market. It wasn’t quite where I started, because this time I was piggybacking off JA Konrath, F. Paul Wilson, and Blake Crouch, but still, the world of publishing had changed to the point where it actually made sense to not even try to get a print contract!
In 2011, I looped around again with The Sinister Mr. Corpse…except that this time, there wasn’t even the cry of “It’s not self-published! My publisher is like any other publisher except for the format! I’m a real author, dammit!” The Sinister Mr. Corpse is a self-published e-book. Eleven years later, after clawing my way up through the ranks, getting my work in a format that everybody in the world would agree was a “real” book…I decided that the best home for my zombie comedy novel was to upload it to Amazon and Smashwords myself.
I can’t deny that there’s an element of frustration in watching the market change just as I broke through, but at the same time, it’s incredibly exciting. I can control the price. Upload it whenever I think it’s ready. Write whatever the hell I want. I have to admit that I’m nowhere near ready to abandon the pursuit of traditional publishing, and my next novel is going to my agent and not Amazon…but still, the freedom, and the possibilities the whole Kindle revolution offers are jaw-dropping.
Unless The Sinister Mr. Corpse tanks. Then I’ll be completely bitter.
1. I Was E-Published Before It Was Cool
Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary) was published as an e-book in May 2000. Back then, if you were e-published, everybody thought you SUCKED! You were a LOSER! I suffered for the technology! There was none of this “Oooooh, how I love my Kindle!” sentiment. I practically got beat up in playgrounds over this.
2. It’s Dirt-Cheap
It’s $2.99. Have you ever heard of an e-book only costing $2.99? Well, yeah, lots of them are these days, but still…$2.99 for a novel? That’s madness! Honestly, when you finish reading The Sinister Mr. Corpse you’re going to feel like a criminal for having gotten it so cheap. And there’s no better feeling than the adrenaline rush of committing a crime, even if it’s a white-collar crime like this one.
3. You Don’t Need A Kindle (Though They’re Awesome)
The Smashwords edition is available in a bunch of different formats, covering pretty much any e-way you’d want to read it, and you can re-download it if you change your mind. The Amazon edition does not have DRM (digital rights management) enabled, so if you use Blake Crouch’s handy guide you can convert it to whatever format you want.
You can also download the Kindle app (for free!) for your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, ColecoVision, or whatever and read the Kindle editions that way. The download links are on the right side of the Amazon ordering page.
This also means that you could copy and share it pretty easily, but if you do, I’ll hunt your e-pirating ass to the ends of the earth.
4. It’s Suitable For Zombie Fans and Zombie Haters
Love zombies? It’s a zombie novel! Hate zombies? It’s a satire! It’s the ultimate in have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too storytelling. If you’re humorless and grim, it’s possible that you won’t enjoy this book all that much, but that’s what my novel Pressure is for.
5. People Kinda Like It
“For pure, unadulterated, foul-mouthed, off-the-wall Strand at his humor-horror sarcastic best there is nothing that comes close to The Sinister Mr. Corpse.” — Savannah Now
“Those expecting the typical apocalyptic world full of flesh eating corpses will quickly realize they are in for a different treat altogether. For those familiar with Mr. Strand’s popular Andrew Mayhem novels, take the witty banter, sharp one liners and laugh out loud moments, and then turn it up a notch or three.” — Horror World
“With loads of relentless action and characters that make reading seem more like eavesdropping, The Sinister Mr. Corpse will have even the biggest stiffs among us laughing all the way to the grave.” — Rue Morgue
“I liked it, but Strand is a tool.” — J.A. Konrath, millionaire author
6. If You Don’t Buy A Copy, In Three Days You Will Be Walking Down The Sidewalk, Lost In Thought, And An Ice Cream Truck’s Brakes Will Fail, Causing The Vehicle To Careen Off The Road And Splatter You Like A Melted Cherry Popsicle.
Sorry, but it’s true.
7. If You Do Buy A Copy, In Three Days You’ll See An Adorable Orphan Walking Down The Sidewalk, Lost In Thought, And Because Your Senses Are Hyper-Aware From Having Read The Sinister Mr. Corpse, You’ll Save Him From An Out-Of-Control Ice Cream Truck, And Get A Reward That’s Way More Than The $2.99 You Spent.
Awesome, huh?
8. It’s Not Another Frickin’ Mash-Up
I’m not suggesting that Pride & Prejudice & Zombies was not the single most brilliant idea of the 21st century, because it totally was, but maybe you’re getting sick of authors saying “In my mash-up novel, you can’t tell which parts were written by me and which parts were written by F. Scott Fitzgerald!” You can buy The Sinister Mr. Corpse with confidence, knowing that none of it came from a public domain work by an author whose skills are far superior to my own.
9. I’m Saying “Please.”
Please?
10. Stick It To The Man!
The Sinister Mr. Corpse is my first venture into the world of self-publishing, and every time you buy a copy, some man is getting stuck! Fight the power! Support the little guy by heading over to Amazon right now and…okay, yeah, I’ll admit that Amazon fits the criteria of The Man, so you’re actually sort of supporting The Man instead of sticking it to him, but, still, they’ve created a world where I can self-publish a novel for the Kindle without people saying “You suck!!!” (See Item #1 above.)
Click HERE to get it from Amazon.
Click HERE to get it from Smashwords.
Joe sez: If you want to win some Jeff Strand books, head over to All Purpose Monkey's Blog and follow the instructions.
I'm proud that Jeff is finally releasing his work on Kindle, after I've been screaming at him for two years to do so. Strand, like Barry Eisler, is proof that you can lead a mentally challenged horse to water and make them drink, but it takes twenty-four months of nagging.
Also, for those who are still reading, here's my review of The Sinister Mr. Corpse:
Lately I've been accused of "shilling" reviews for my writing friends.
That's complete and total absurdness.
I do write a lot of 5 star reviews for friends of mine because I truly love their work, and it deserves five stars.
I never write a 5 star review simply because I like someone. Especially in this case.
While The Sinister Mr. Corpse is a laugh aloud horrific romp and well worth the low price, I'm not giving it 5 stars because I like the author, Jeff Strand.
In fact, Jeff is a jerk. A jerk, a ninny, a butthead, and a lowlife.
Now, Strand may get on his high horse (as per usual) and claim that I'm calling him a poopypants because I'm envious of his writing ability.
Nothing could be more untrue.
While Strand is, admittedly, an excellent writer, I'm not the type to be envious of anyone.
But I do feel a need to warn everyone who may come into contact with Jeff Strand to arm yourself with some pepper spray if he gets feisty, and a portable video game if he starts talking, because hooo boy that guy can TALK. And he never says anything the slightest bit interesting. He's lucky he's gets paid for being a writer, not for giving speeches, because he's so bland he could bore monks. His delivery is slower than a snail surfing on molasses. He's so full of hot air that HE is the true cause Global Warming.
You get the idea.
Where was I?
Oh, yeah.
The Sinister Mr. Corpse: 5 Stars
Jeff Strand: 1 Star, because these isn't an option for zero
Trust me. I'm an author.
Thanks for the praise, but I don't think I'm going to come up trumps in this case. This is a design that I feel I should know and am sure I have seen somewhere before, but unfortunately I cannot put a name to it. If any of our readers can help, please tell us what you know via the comments.Hi GavinI've been an avid follower of your blog for a few years now and I have always admired your ability to identify random guitars!Attached is a pic I took at a gig in Bristol earlier this week. It was the support band for Morning Parade and the guitar was seriously unusual.Don't know if its that obvious from my (very bad) pic but the guitar had slanted lipstick pickups on humbucker sized plates, an old varitone switch on it and what looked like a small pushbutton switch, in addition to a pickup selector and volume. Tune-o-matic and then through body stringing. Unusual finish too. Not sure if it was modern or vintage... not a lot of help I know! I couldn't read what it said on the headstock, annoyingly!I think the support band was called Jet something but I didn't quite catch it. Probably not a lot of use but you never know, someone may know what it was. It sounded awesome, by the way!Thanks for any help you can give.Jack Floyd
th Interviews Barry Eisler Joe: Correct me if I’m wrong (not), but I believe The Lost Coast is your very first short story. Why haven’t you visited this form before?
Barry: Because you’ve never suggested it to me, you bastard.
Kidding, obviously — my reluctance has been despite your frequent blandishments, and I’m glad you finally got through to me. I think there were a number of factors. The thought of appearing in an anthology or magazine never really excited me that much, even though an anthology or magazine placement could be a good advertisement for a novel. And probably I was a little afraid to try my hand at the new form (though now that I have, I think I must have been crazy. Short stories are a blast to write). In the end, I think it was the combination of knowing I could reach the huge new audience digital publishing has made possible and make money doing it. Plus you just wore me down.
Joe: I really liked the Larison character in Inside Out. Though he’s one of the antagonists in that book, I wouldn’t actually label him a villain. He’s more of an anti-hero, sort of a darker, scarier version of John Rain. Why did you decide to write a short about him?
Barry: As usual, it wasn’t a conscious plan; more something influenced by my interests, travel, and reading habits. Anyone who reads my blog, Heart of the Matter, knows I’m passionate about equal rights for gays. At some point, I was reading something about gay-bashing, and I had this idea... what if a few of these twisted, self-loathing shitbags picked the absolutely wrongest guy in the world to jump outside a bar? That was the story idea that led to The Lost Coast.
Joe: The ending of Lost Coast is pretty ballsy (in more ways than one.) You could have gone a more conservative route, but you didn’t wimp out and shy away from what I feel is a laudable climax. Are you purposely inviting controversy? Was this the story you intended to tell from the onset?
Barry: I imagined it from the beginning as a pretty rough story — a little about redemption, a lot about revenge. But midway through it got darker than I’d originally envisioned. Thanks for saying I didn’t wimp out because for me, the story was being driven by Larison, who while being a fascinating guy is also a nasty piece of work. When I’m writing a character like Larison, there’s always a temptation to soften him a little to make him more palatable to more readers, but in the end I’ve always managed to resist that (misguided) impulse. For the story to come to life, you have to trust the character as you’ve conceived him and as he presents himself to you. For better or worse (I’d say better), that’s what I’ve done with Larison.
Joe: After this interview, there’s an excerpt from the upcoming seventh John Rain novel, The Detachment. This is also a sequel to Fault Line and Inside Out, featuring your hero Ben Treven. It also showcases Larison, Dox, and a few other characters from your past novels. Was it your intention all along to bring both of your series together?
Barry: I’m afraid that “all along” and related concepts will probably always elude me. Usually I get an idea for the next book while I’m working on the current one, and that’s what happened while I was working on Inside Out. I thought, “With what Hort’s up to, what he really needs is an off-the-books, totally deniable, awesomely capable natural causes specialist. So what has Rain been doing since Requiem for an Assassin? And how would Hort get to him? Through Treven and Larison, naturally... and the next thing I knew, I was working on The Detachment. It’s like the Dirty Dozen, but deadlier. Plus there’s sex.
Joe: Your sex scenes tend to err toward the aggressive side. That isn’t a question. It’s an understatement. The question is, why do you think the US is so repressed when it comes to sex in the media, especially homosexuality, and at the same time so tolerant of violence?
Barry: George Carlin had some typically wonderful insights on this subject in his book, Brain Droppings. When you look at not just our laws on drugs and prostitution, but the whole approach to those laws (unlike just about any other regulated area, drugs and prostitution are dealt with without any weighing of costs and benefits), it becomes obvious America has some hangups about pleasure. With regard to homosexuality specifically, some of the craziness is probably driven by self-hatred; some by the need for an Other to denigrate (Orwell was all over this); some just by inertia. As for the relative comfort with depictions of violence as opposed to sex, I’ve never understood that, either, because in fiction I obviously enjoy them both
Joe: Will we be seeing more short stories from Barry Eisler?
Barry: Yes! Got a great idea for a Rain/Delilah short set in Paris in the period between the end of Requiem for an Assassin and the kickoff of The Detachment. The research, the research...
As of 2/15/2011 7:30pm, The List had sold 592 copies sold on Kindle this month. That had earned me about $1200.
I recently found an interesting guitar on German eBay. It's said to be a 1977 Gibson RD Artist.Hi Karl, as far as I remember the RD series were top of the line Gibsons at the time, but have vanished into near obscurity as have many other models including the relatively recent Blueshawk and Nighthawk models which were said to be fantastic guitars but just didn't capture the public's imagination (basically they weren't Les Pauls!). The RD Artist was the top model in the series and featured active electronics courtesy of Bob Moog - yes, the now legendary Moog synthesizer guy. That's why there's such a large access panel on the back of the guitar pictured here. However, from what my memory is telling me, these active electronics weren't too popular with guitarists and were a major contributing factor to the downfall of this model.
The RD series were produced between 1977 and 1979. According to www.vintageguitarz.org it contained three six-string guitars and two four-string basses.
The six-strings have a 25.5" scale and 2 humbuckers (active and passive, depending on the model). Body and neck are both made of laminated marple, the fretboard of ebony.
Actually I've never heard about this before (but before I starded reading Guitarz I didn't know Gibson's Kalamazoo and Corvus either) and I wonder whether it's a collectable item, quality instrument or just some kind of student model made to close a gap in Gibson's price list.
Karl Dreyer
"We want to market this guitar to young girls."I mean, c'mon... Am I the only one that finds this "let's make it pink and cutesy" attitude cloyingly sickening? And isn't it a little bit insulting to women? I'm all for "guitars for girls" but much prefer the designs of Luna Guitars who make guitars suited to the female form that are feminine without being nauseating - some of which appeal to male players too.
"Let's make it pink."
"Yes, good idea. And maybe add a cute cartoon character too."
Six stringed guitar, gold glittered pick guard.That "steel bar at the side" would appear to be a Teisco (or similar) gold foil pickup. Yep, someone has had a go at electrifying this old (not quite antique) guitar. Witness also two pots - without knobs - and an output jack behind the guitar's bridge. But... What's the deal with the weird location of the pickup? Shouldn't it be under the strings? My guess is that the pickup is so microphonic that it works just about anywhere.
The finish is worn at the base of the guitar.
Visible markings to this area as well.
The wood is a very nice rich brown in color.
Uncertain of the wood used. There are two areas
where the edges are chipped, black and white pos. celluloid edging.
There is a neck pull to the guitar, no visible splits in the body.
There are nineteen frets in total, I see a few deep scratches in the wood.
The steel bar at the side has one missing screw.
This guitar was likely made sometime in the 1930s though sort of hard to pinpoint.
The guitar measures approx. 36.5" L X 13.5" W.
For the three of you who don't have ereaders yet, SHAKEN, the seventh Jack Daniels thriller, is available in print today.
I sometimes comment on the Guitar Blog and I thought I'd send in this - your comment on the Burns/Hayman guitar, "I've always liked acoustics that have obviously been electrified with pickups and control knobs on show for all to see" spurred me into photographing and videoing one of my own guitars for submission for your blog.Hey Jim, great stuff. Thanks for sharing it with us. I guess this is the same kind of do it yourself ethos as displayed by cigar box guitar builders. I'm reminded also of Seasick Steve, who besides playing his "3-string trance wonder" also often riffs upon a beaten-up old parlour guitar with a Teisco pickup screwed into the top - and it sounds fantastic.
The attached photos are of an old acoustic that has been "modified" over the years by me, The original guitar was sunburst, made in Eastern Europe model with a white scratchplate, trapeze type tailpiece and no bridge (or strings). Over the years different paint finishes and hardware have been added to the guitar, including a pickup from a Japanese Telecaster copy (wired straight to a jack) and homemade bridge, scratchplate and soundholes. I keep it in an open-E tuning based on the "Keith Richards" open G, so it only needs 5 strings. The strings come out of the big bridge straight onto the wood - there is no saddle - which lends the guitar a sitar-type quality.
I made a YouTube video so that you can hear what it sounds like amplified and acoustically too.
I used to think that perhaps I had gone too far with the things I had done to the guitar, but a few years ago I found an unmodified version of the same guitar in a charity shop. I bought it, got it home, put new machine heads on and strung it with new strings and realised why I had gone to such lengths to change the original; it sounded awful! Attached also is a cameraphone photo of the two together [inset, above].
Regards
Jim Davies
BLAKE: So, 
Joe, you’re watching me type this, right? Even though we live over a thousand miles apart...
JOE: I am. And you're watching me type this. In fact, I'll purposely make a typo, and watch you correct it as I'm finishing the sentence (which you just did.)
We're using Google docs (http://docs.google.com), which is an online storage method that allows several contributors to all have simultaneous access to a single document.
Now you and I have collaborated on many previous projects. For the original SERIAL, we each wrote our introductory sections, then wrote the third part together by trading emails. It was cool, but not very fast.
Then, for Draculas, we used Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) which allowed us and the other two authors (Jeff Strand, F. Paul Wilson) to all save and access MS Word documents by sharing the same folders on four different computers. While that was cool, Google docs is even cooler.
BLAKE: Before we started writing KILLERS, which we can talk about in a minute, we did a dry run on Google docs, just to test the software out. I knew immediately that it was going to change the way we collaborated. For people unfamiliar with Google docs, I’ll explain what it’s like to be in the document.
It looks like a standard Word doc, with some formatting toolbars at the top. The difference is, I not only see my cursor, I see Joe’s as well, which is pink at the moment. While I’m typing, I see you typing, and at first, that can be a little jarring and distracting (particularly when you correct or change a sentence as I type, like you’re doing right now!).
I can scroll up and down the doc while you write, but it doesn’t scroll the document for you. I feel like this makes the collaboration process so much faster, easier, and more interactive. You?
JOE: It's pretty cool. I never would have guessed that co-writing could be so easy. While it is a bit odd at first to see someone changing the sentence as I write it, it actually is both time-saving and simpler than going back and doing multiple rewrites. Two pairs of eyes on the same story at the same time means it takes less than half the time finish.
As for writing over each other, we worked out a system. When one of us is finished for the moment, we type a #. That means I'm ready for you to pick up the scene, or vice-versa.
BLAKE: I have a hunch that Google docs is responsible for KILLERS being three times as long as SERIAL. The writing just seemed to flow in this format. I felt more immersed in these scenes than the ones in SERIAL, because I could watch my co-writer create them in real time, and he could watch me. I have never experienced a collaborative situation like this before.
JOE: Do you think it might be daunting for potential collaborators to try and write together using Google docs? Some writers are slower, more deliberate. Others despise their first drafts and don't let anyone see them until they've been reworked extensively.
BLAKE: It could absolutely be daunting, and probably not something to just dive into without doing a little experimenting first, to make sure you’re comfortable with your co-writers. If you’re overly protective of your sentences, or don’t like someone looking over your shoulder while you write, this may not be the approach for you. But I find this method helps me to think faster on my feet, and lets the scene evolve more organically, instead of it being overly-thought out. On my own, I’m a slower, more methodical writer, and sometimes that has its drawbacks. Sometimes, you just need a freestyle approach to challenge yourself.
One of the other things we used was Skype, so that we could send each other instant messages while we were in the Google doc. Frequently, we’d IM each other, with something like, “I’m not feeling that line,” or, in one case, “are you sure you want to take the story in that direction?”
JOE: What I actually messaged you was: "You really want to stick that up her ass?" BTW, that turned out to be my favorite scene in the novella.
BLAKE: And I did, and it turned out to be my fave scene in the novella (ha! - we just wrote that at the same time). The thing about Google docs, is that it strips away all barriers to collaboration, most importantly time. So if you can get comfortable with your co-writer(s) and let your guard down and allow them access to the way you write, it can really take the story to unexpected and spontaneous places. That’s what I love most about this software.
JOE: I love correcting your mediocre prose as you write it. Saves me the time of having to try and explain to you why it isn't working.
But seriously, my truly favorite part is when we're both working on the same section at the same time and then start
BLAKE: finishing each other's thoughts.
JOE: LOL. Yeah. It is truly instantaneous, and really gets the creative juices flowing. It's the written equivalent of a conversation. But it's a conversation you can change, shape, and mold, and it is forever saved as a document.
Damn, I sound like a paid spokesman.
BLAKE: Wish Google was paying us. At least the software is free.
JOE: So let's talk about working on KILLERS, and what it's about (other than things in asses.)
BLAKE: It’s the sequel to the short story, SERIAL, which featured Donaldson (written by you), a psychopath who drives around picking up hitchhikers and killing them, and Lucy, my character, a hitchhiker who travels around the country killing the drivers who have the misfortune and poor judgment to give her a ride.
At the end of SERIAL they were both involved in a horrific accident of their own making. I think everyone assumed they were dead, but, as often happens with popular characters, they found a way into a sequel. In this case, they each wake up in a hospital room on the same floor, gravely injured, under arrest, but still wanting desperately to finish what they started--to kill each other.
JOE: We got over one hundred 1 star reviews for SERIAL, so of course we had to write more about these two. And once again we followed the same structure. You wrote a scene. I wrote a scene. We didn't show each other our scenes. Then we hopped into Google docs and tried to kill each other.
It was like playing tennis, or paintball, or chess, because we were both trying to win. While our characters interacted, we didn't use any interior monologue, so we didn't know what the other one was thinking, or any of the prior set-up (how injured they were, the weapons they carried, the plan they had.)
I can't think of anything I've ever written that was more creative, spontaneous, and downright fun.
BLAKE: In some ways, writing like this feels more like a performance than the drudgery of solitary writing or even standard collaboration. What you just wrote is accurate. It’s like playing a game. Cause and effect unfolding right before your eyes and although we have a broad idea of where we’re going, the journey from A to B is constantly a surprise.
We had a blast writing KILLERS
JOE: And writing this quickie interview.
BLAKE: and I hope that translates into a more intense experience for the reader. I also hope more writers explore collaboration through software like this, because it really stretches different muscles than sitting alone at a keyboard, slogging your way through a story.
JOE: Now I encourage everyone reading this to buy KILLERS, and judge if the story works or not. It's available right now on Amazon for $2.99, and will soon be available on Nook and every other ebook format.
Buy it right now, or I'm deleting my blog. :)
About KILLERS
Guess who's back?
