Malachi Stone's Blog

Mr. Answer Man: So how's the whole KDP experience coming along, Little Jimmy?

Little Jimmy: Gee, Mr. Answer Man, my book's making money, but not half as much as I make on my paper route. What gives?

Mr. Answer Man: Maybe you should follow the advice of sales leaders like Jeff Shelby and Joe Konrath, Little Jimmy. If you want your books to make money, first you have to give a shit ton of them away for nothing. Make sense?

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

http://jeffshelby.com/2012/02/20/how-...

Little Jimmy: I guess so, Mr. Answer Man. Are you sure Jacqueline Susann started out this way?

Mr. Answer Man: You mean giving it away for free? How should I know, Little Jimmy? My guess is, Jacqueline Susann never gave anything away without charging for it, except maybe that one time with Ethel Merman. Malachi Stone, now, there's another story. He's giving all four of his novels away absolutely free again, starting tonight on KDP. When the clock strikes twelve, you can download DEVIL'S TOLL, CONJURER'S OATH, PRIVATE SHOWINGS and WICKED KING DICK gratis beginning on March 22, 2012 and for the next five days. Here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0069696AE.

Little Jimmy: I know Malachi Stone has written nine books. Besides the four KDP novel's there's ST. AGNES EVE, HEARTBALM, TWO SHOT, AMERICAN BANSHEE, and DEAD MAN'S ACT, all without making a dime. But is he working on any new novels now?

Mr. Answer Man: I'm glad you asked me that question, Little Jimmy. It just so happens that Malachi Stone is about a third of the way through writing his tenth novel NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE.

Little Jimmy: Can anybody read a sample of NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE online?

Mr. Answer Man: Can they? Just look!

Read NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE here for free: NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE 3-17-12

Little Jimmy: Who's Malachi Stone's literary agent, anyway?

Mr. Answer Man: (suspiciously) Why? Don't tell me you're thinking of sending her a query!

Little Jimmy: Nah. Just curious, is all.

Mr. Answer Man: Go peddle your papers, Little Jimmy. You don't want to go dropping Malachi Stone's name in any queries. It's the kiss of death. Malachi Stone has what Darryl Ponicsan called "the reverse Midas touch." Everything he touches turns to [Abrupt David Foster Wallace/last episode of The Sopranos ending.]

READ IT HERE: NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE 3-17-12

In his dreams Bosco hacks up some old bag he doesn't even know. Jason wants to burn a DVD of Bosco's freestyle surgery session but first he has to name a murderer who confessed under anaesthetic. With me so far?

My literary agent is Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency in NYC.

http://www.maassagency.com/

READ IT HERE: NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE 2-25-12

Bosco prepares to meet Big Bertha. She's a what, not a who or even a whom.

My literary agent is the much-esteemed Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency in NYC.

Comedian Kevin Meaney used to do, and for all I know still does, a big finale to his act where he belts out the Eva Tanguay standard I Don't Care peppered with interruptions where he morphs into his mother, à la Tony Perkins in Psycho, and continually hectors the audience: "Don't encourage him!"

Although some of us may not like to admit it, writers need encouragement. Since I began writing novels sixteen years ago I have occasionally found myself no more than a day or so away from chucking the whole endeavor. Most recently, when an unforeseen and damnable chain of events caused Maria and me to miss the February 21st Noir at the Bar in St. Louis, I once again took a wrong turn both literally and figuratively down that road to despair.

Thank God, this morning upon my return from yet another stunning legal victory I booted up the computer and discovered Elizabeth A. White's review of my novel DEVIL'S TOLL under the Christmas tree. The analogy may be seasonally inapt but nevertheless valid: as I read her review I was instantly transformed into a kid on a Norman Rockwell Christmas morning, from my tousled Alfalfa hair right down to the non-skid feet of my pajamas.

Prodigal in her praise, Ms. White "gets" the novel in its essence, a fact I find highly rewarding in and of itself. Given her wealth of encouragement, how can I abandon the writing avocation I've come to love? Thank you, Ms. White. You have no idea how much your encouragement means to me.

http://www.elizabethawhite.com/2012/02/24/devils-toll-by-malachi-stone/

READ IT HERE: NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE 2-17-12

Hello. I'm Malachi Stone. I have written nine novels. NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE will be my tenth. The closest I ever got to a Guggenheim was watching Crazy Guggenheim on the Jackie Gleason show. NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE is among other things a murder mystery. Even I don't know whodunit and I'm writing it. One of these days my subconscious mind will show me the killer's identity and I'll wake up in a cold sweat. Until that happens I'm posting NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE on here. If enough of you pledge enough money, I'll write the ending. After I write the middle. And, because this is my blog, not Kickstarter, I'll go ahead and write the damn thing whether anybody pledges any money or not.

Some of the authors I admire are Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Gregory McDonald and Robert B. Parker. You'll notice that all those guys are dead. The only way they're going to write anything more is on a Ouija board. I, on the other hand, am alive and well. If I manage to stay that way I WILL finish NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE. By the way, NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE is only a working title. The final manuscript will be called something else. Something catchy and funny, with an edge to it.

When I was a kid there was this old codger who lived across the street. Everybody called him Old Man Crockett. Word was, Old Man Crockett could never fall asleep without a night light because he was afraid of the dark. Somebody still managed to climb in his window one night and slit his throat. It's called irony.

Okay, I made up that last part about Old Man Crockett, but you will find a lot of irony in NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE. So enjoy, but keep the lights on, just in case.

My literary agent is Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency in NYC, the World.

READ IT HERE: NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE 2-14-12

Just in time for St. Valentine's Day, here's a freshly-tuned MS of my latest WIP. Damn, I'm good! (Somebody had to say it.) My literary agent is Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency in NYC.

The photo has nothing to do with the content of this blog post. However, this picture for some unaccountable reason tends to be a hit magnet. It's either my name or Jayne Mansfield's hooters capturing the eye.

READ IT HERE: NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE 2-11-12

More tweaks and some added pages to NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE, my latest novel-in-progress. My literary agent is the indomitable Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency in The City.

Publishing on Kindle is a hot and heady impulse not unlike waking up one morning with a wild hare to go on American Idol. Everybody in America, it seems, fancies himself as either an undiscovered singing talent or a brilliant but as yet unknown writing genius. Or a Republican presidential candidate.

Recently I posted four of my "backlist" novels on Amazon Kindle. Those titles are: CONJURER'S OATH, DEVIL'S TOLL, WICKED KING DICK and PRIVATE SHOWINGS.  Kindle Books offers a publicity deal where any author enrolled in the Kindle Select program (in which one grants Kindle a 90-day exclusive) can list his or her books free of charge for promotional purposes for up to five days per ninety-day period. So, having nothing to lose, I offered all four as freebies.

I doubt my own humbling experience was unique. Publishing ebooks on Kindle proved relatively easy. Perhaps too easy. For just as the unsuspected horde of would-be novelists began actually writing those novels and exploded onto the scene with the advent of the word processor and personal computer, there are now in excess of 1.2 million books currently listed on Kindle Books. I am willing to assume that, given the strictures—and I DO mean strictures—of traditional publishing which prevailed until a very few years ago, the overwhelming majority of those Kindle authors would have had no hope of ever seeing their novels advance to the stage of being available to the public for sale or giveaway were it not for the technological breakthrough provided by Amazon. Orphaned and agentless, those authors' labors of love and the tangible fruits of their artistic inspirations would have taken their inevitable course in days gone by: FedEx to slush pile to shredder, like Tinker to Evers to Chance.

It's convenient to stroll down the primrose path of such negative thinking. The problem is, that path leads to subtle self-deception. As Jules Feiffer once observed, we must never let our enemies define us. I might add a corollary to Mr. Feiffer's rule: we must never view ourselves, let alone our written works, as dime-a-dozen.

If you find yourself tempted to wander down the path that leads to surrender and despair, my advice is that you first consider those novels that Amazon freeloaders' choices ranked above yours. Utilize the "look inside" function and browse around for a while. You may find a certain mean-spirited consolation in the fact that, while some novels rated higher than your own may be excellent indeed, many if not most of the rest are trite, cliché-ridden pieces of excrement, replete with errors of grammar, diction and syntax like undigested kernels of corn.

Lest the reader precipitously accuse me of envy or sour grapes, I rush to add that I truly do not bear any of these other authors the least bit of ill will. Amazon's ranking is no different from the selective service lottery those of my generation are unfortunate enough to remember from the Vietnam era. Amazon is simply following the numbers. Those numbers don't lie. The question is, what truths do they tell?

Dr. Samuel Johnson was once asked what he thought of supporting a cause he knew to be bad. Johnson replied: "Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad until the judge determines it. I have said that you are to state facts fairly; so that your thinking, or what you call knowing, a cause to be bad, must be from reasoning, must be from your supposing your arguments to be weak and inconclusive. But, Sir, that is not enough. An argument which does not convince yourself, may convince the Judge to which you urge it; and if it does convince him, why, then, Sir, you are wrong and he is right. It is his business to judge; and you are not to be confident in your own opinion that a cause is bad, but to say all you can for your client, and then hear the Judge's opinion." Substitute the word "public" for the word "judge" and you have it all.

Consider my own experience: out of the quartet of novels I have posted on Kindle, in my own opinion PRIVATE SHOWINGS is by far the weakest. It was written almost fourteen years ago at a time when I was first teaching myself to write novels using my own combination of the hit-or-miss method and the wag system. My wife and I sat around and spitballed ideas of story and character at each other and if we thought something belonged in the book, in it went. She wanted me to write a romance and so I did, albeit a cross-genre jabberwock of a romance. In other words, the book is about as close to a piece of shit as I would ever confess to writing. The book was such an embarrassment to me that at first I seriously considered withholding it from the list of books I eventually decided to publish on Kindle. Imagine my astonishment when downloads of PRIVATE SHOWINGS exceeded the total downloads of all three of my other novels combined by a margin of nearly two to one, consistently leading downloads of my other books by similar margins in North America, the UK and Germany. I regard those numbers as a baffling statistical puzzlement.

Perhaps the mere fact that PRIVATE SHOWINGS falls in the romance category explains its sales leadership over all my other Kindle books. Maybe the book's suggestive, even salacious title contributed to its popularity. In any event, there's rare exhilaration in seeing one's novel rated higher than free Kindle offerings by established romance authors, many of whom have penned NYT and international bestsellers.

Maybe my judgment is no good when it comes to popular fiction markets. Maybe I lack that Broadway producer instinct of knowing what the public wants. Apparently it's not the same sixth sense as knowing what a jury will do. I thank each and every one of you who took the time and trouble to download one of my novels and wish you many hours of reading pleasure. And a few five-star ratings and rave reviews would be more than welcome, deserved or not. Who's to say?

Here's a slight addition to the MS. Day job duties summon me away. My literary agent is Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Ltierary Agency.

READ IT HERE: NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE 1-30-12

I know there's a nursing shortage, but that's no excuse for hiring werewolves. Bosco and Lanny trade smartass remarks as I attempt in my own poor way to invoke the shade of the late, great Gregory McDonald.

READ IT HERE: NIGHTMARE NUMBER NINE 1-28-12

My literary agent is Bouchercon 2012′s own Stacia J. N. Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. Take the elevator to the eighth floor. Avoid the stairs.