J.E. Sutton Jr.'s Blog: Bold City Storytelling

The giveaway was a great success. More than 2500 readers added The Failsafe Program to their Want to Read list. The three winners have been selected and will receive a signed copy of the paperback along with a couple of tokens of my appreciation. Those copies will be sent this week, so they should arrive by the Holidays!

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest. If you didn't win, you can still get a copy of the book. In addition to a 60% off sale on the eBook on Amazon, there are 75% off Sales on Smashwords and Barnes & Noble. Check them out.

You can also read Holiday Hustle, which is a light holiday tale of fun, humor, holiday cheer, and chaos featuring some of the same characters.

Have a great holiday season.

J E Sutton Jr

This month, I am giving away three signed copies of my debut novel, The Failsafe Program. If you haven't read this yet, sign up to try to win a free copy. You have until December 9th to sign up for the giveaway.

You can enter the contest at this link: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

The response to the novel has been overwhelmingly positive, and I am grateful for the support I have received.

If you liked the book, or are just curious what the fuss is about, you can get a little taste of the universe with my new holiday short story, Holiday Hustle. This story takes place at the Screaming Goat Coffee Company and is full of fun moments and maybe a few surprises.

If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free; otherwise, it is an affordable $.99

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G45D5CN5

Have a happy holiday, and look forward to some announcements about my next novel in the coming weeks.

One of the most challenging aspects of being a newly published author, whether self-published or not, is promoting the book to readers after its release. This is an essential element of the endeavour, but not one that most writers I've talked to really enjoy. We tell stories, and our minds want readers to magically discover those stories and come to us to read them. That isn't how it works, and that fact can be frustrating.

I did not write a book to become famous, nor did I write it to become rich. Neither would be a hardship for me, but those were not the primary motivations. I wrote the book because I have always had a desire to tell stories and move other people with them. So, the sheer revenue generated from the book is not something with which I have an emotional connection. Still, the engagement that the number of copies sold represents is something I think all authors connect with. And so, in the days after my release, I would obsessively check sales reports. Seeing little or no movement would cause me pain and self-doubt. Wondering if my work was resonating with anyone. This is irrational. Several people have read my work, some with a personal connection to me, and a few with no connection or a limited one, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Even comments that offered criticism highlighted the connection the reader had with the story. I was letting my fears take over and treating the slow build of an audience, which is true for almost any author, affecting my emotions and well-being. Slowly over the week, I started to deal with it better, checking my sales less often and thinking about ways to extend my reach so I can attract more attention to my work, and planning for more content, which, everyone says, is the key to an expanding market.

Am I cured of the obsession? Doubful. But I am improving. For those who have already been exposed to my work and who appreciated it, I am grateful. For those who are blissfully unaware of it so far, I am coming for you. Be prepared.

J E Sutton Jr

It's finally here. After months of writing, editing, and editing, and then the longest 9 days of my life waiting for the launch day to arrive. I woke up this morning with a book published in both eBook and paperback formats on more than a dozen distributors, including Google Play, which was a personal goal of mine and one thwarted for the past two months by a dispute with them. That is miraculously solved the morning the book is set to be released.

Now, all I have to do is wait to see if the book connects with people the way it does with me. I hope you enjoy it. I am off to write a chapter for the next book in the series. Happy Reading.

I can't remember the first story I wrote. It was probably in my early teens. I am sure it was about Star Trek or Batman or something like that. I remember someone finding some of these early stories in some things stored at my parents' house after they had passed.

Even then I wanted to write a novel. I tried many times. Inspired by things I had seen or read, wanting to take ideas and develop them into something new. I wrote a few outlines. I wrote a chapter once about an ice fishing ship in deep space. I wrote a summary for a story about the first faster than light test flight, inspired by things like the Right Stuff and the scene from Star Trek Firs Contact.

For years I have used an exercise when falling asleep to tell myself a story. Usually heavily influenced by whatever i was reading at the time. My upcoming debut novel started there years ago. The idea of an AI (I don't even think I knew that term at the time) detective and a partner were inspired by both Asimov and Rex Stout. The idea went through many iterations in my head.

A few months ago, an offhand comment by my wife led me to create a story about a superhero called Spider Bee. I couldn't really get the idea to work, but playing around with that idea, it gave me the motivation to write this story.

Now months later after writing the novel in a rush of inspiration, and spending night after night reading over it with my wife finding spellling, punctuation, and continuity errors and refining the story, it is done. I submitted the final draft a few days ago and now all there is to do is wait to see if anyone finds it compelling. That and the million details of trying to publicize a self-published book.

So now the countdown is on, as of this writing it is four days. Tuesday. I am of course wanting others to enjoy the story, but I took a comment by Taylor Swift recently to heart. When asked about some people not liking her new album she pointed out that all art is subjective, it speaks to people at certain times and circumstances in their lives and that all art is not for everyone. Hopefully there will be a small number of people who this work will speak to.

I am excited because I am more than halfway through my first draft for my upcoming debut novel, "The Failsafe Program." The excitement is mixed with the sober knowledge that I still have a long way to go. Currently, you can get a preview of the novel by reading "The Digital Witness" short story on sale on Amazon. The Digital Witness