Greg Thomas's Blog

Thirty-four cents. Thirty-four cents! This can’t be right. This can’t still be right. I’ve written several thousand words by now. I’ve toiled over so much more. Wait, no. This can’t be right.

In late December of 2014, I decided to self-publish the first part of my first novel, ‘Dreamcatchers,’ to Amazon’s Kindle Publishing Platform. I’ve been writing for about two years.

Wait, no. That’s still not right.

I’ve been thinking about writing for about two years. I actually wrote, haphazardly, about 1,500 words per writing session off and on for about twelve months, gaining steam towards the end of that first publishing year. And by ‘gaining steam,’ I mean I completed about 20,000 words and felt it was at a satisfying enough of a cliffhanger to push it to the indie publishing realm without really doing much else. I’d separate my book into exciting parts, at a lower price than most books, and make it exciting enough to come back for the next one. Yep, you read that first part right. I spent about fourteen days writing, and about 700 days thinking about writing.

I had been listening to podcasts for several hours a week. I’ve read, by now, more than a few self publishing how-to’s to tell me all the rights and wrongs of indie (aka self) publishing. I watched some video tutorials. I’ve subscribed to all of the coolest social media stuff. I knew I didn’t know it all. Honestly, I knew I didn’t know much of anything. But I couldn’t take the silence anymore. The silence of no feedback. The silence of no one but you telling you that this is horrible and you should stop while you’re ahead. Someone had to read this.

Someone had to tell me I was awesome.

And so, with little concern of quality, goals, or (really) anything else in mind, I clicked on that ever tempting “Publish” button and released my eighty-eight page thought-child into the world for the simple little price of $2.99.

And I waited.

And…I waited.

And then, I said to myself ‘screw it’ and bought my book.

For me.

My own book.

That’s not pathetic, right?

Because, hey, at seventy percent royalty, I’d make most of my money back on buying my own book…right? And it would jump me up in the computational algorithms for the holidays and I would coast into the new year with some healthy seed money to move on to bigger and better things…right?

Only it didn’t happen that way.

Was I being impatient? I couldn’t, because this holiday was huge. I ignored my family, typing away at the keyboard trying to figure this whole thing out during their holiday break. This couldn’t not work. I dropped my price. Supply and demand, right? I’m a new author, so I need to push myself into a bigger pool so that other people can notice me. Then, I’ll raise the price back and everyone will come and love me.

Someone, bless his or her soul, bought my book on the Twenty-Seventh of December, 2014.

For ninety-nine cents.

Ninety-nine cents!

Two days had passed and no one but me had bought this simple little book with it’s simple little cover, and now I had to do something drastic. Your first book leads you to readers on the mailing list, or to your second and third books and all of the rest of your catalog, once you have them (I had heard and read), and so you were not thinking long term enough with your $2.99 launch strategy and you needed to drop the price…now!

And that first purchase came in and I thought to myself, You mad evil scientist, you! You’ve done it! Mwah ha ha!

Ok, that probably wasn’t my first thought. My first thought was something in the Oh, that’s cool range. This was just number one. I gave myself a boost buying my own book, and then someone else found me at a third of the price and this thing would just snowball.

I actually broke down my wall of secrecy and told my wife what had happened. She seemed thrilled. I still to this day don’t know if she was pretending, but it made me feel good to have someone else share the minor euphoria, and at the same time feel bad, because I knew I was being euphoric (even mildly) over pennies.

And then I waited, again.

It only took a couple of days from my own purchase to this person’s purchase so at least I’d be making a few cents a week at a bare-bones minimum while I worked on the next release. At least I’d have coffee money. Sandwich money. Getting to leave the house every once in a while money. Right?

Right?

Only, that wasn’t what happened. For three whole days, I waited.

Three whole days, you guys!

I had to do something drastic. I was already enrolled in the Kindle Direct Publishing, or KDP, Select program, which allowed me to give my book away for free for up to five days every ninety, in exchange for some exclusivity and a few other perks. This was it. This was my chance. No one’s going to jump at this on January 12th. People have already unwrapped new e-readers, cell phones, and any other digital medium to consume text. They’ve been spending their gift cards, filling their machines with lots of new digital toys. Books, of course, would be included in this bunch. It was New Year’s Eve. If I wasn’t live by New Year’s Day, get my hundreds of free downloads so that people could read my book and tell the world what they thought about it, then I just wasn’t sure what might happen next. So, I gave my book away for free for one whole day…and sold forty-one copies.

Worldwide.

Across several countries within Amazon’s ecosystem.

Woo-hoo.

Ok. Ok. Calm down.

Nothing yet to freak out about, right? It only takes a couple of hours to read this thing and someone is going to read it, comment on it, join my mailing list, check out my website. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither will my business. My publishing empire. One book at a time, right? Right?…

The phrase ‘Silence is Deafening’ felt like it was a phrase just for me. I waited, and waited for someone to give some kind of an opinion about my writing. Tell me it’s interesting. Tell me it’s horrible. Tell me it’s a masterpiece. Tell me you want your money back. Tell me you got it for free and you want me to pay you because you just read it. Just tell me something. Tell me anything other than nothing. Don’t tell me I’ve been thinking about this for two years, getting excited about this for two years, and I’m going to end up making thirty-four cents.

Just don’t tell me that.

She didn’t even know she was being watched.

Oh, she had been watched before. Selma Watkins had been watched by men…maybe her whole life. She had the type of features that, well, honestly the kind that you didn’t look away from. But this night was different. This night, above all others, was the night that Tommy Hopkins was watching her.

From far away, at first. Tommy had known better. Then, from the windows across the street. Then, from the sidewalk that she walked past at 6:20 every night, as she left the office for her (routinely) late dinner. Tommy felt himself getting more and more comfortable as he realized how oblivious Selma was to her actual patterns.

Often (maybe too often as Tommy would think to himself), he would wonder of her boldness of walking alone. Tommy eyed her the way that hyper-obsessed men always eyed her. With a notice at first, then a passion. Then, an obsession.

Tommy Hopkins was obsessed.

At first, she noticed him like most women would.

“Why is this creeper staring at me from across the street?” she would ask.

“I’m scared,” she would say, and, “Who is this guy?” would follow.

Tommy Hopkins wasn’t the kind of guy to let some inquisitive little tramp ruin his day.

He had watched her – often.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

Tommy Hopkins, as a matter of fact, was a serial killer.

Now, he didn’t see himself that way. Of course not. No, Tommy Hopkins thought of himself as a kind of hero.

Tommy thought he was doing good in the world.

Tommy thought he was cleansing the world of the trash that sometimes came through. The kind of trash that no one else could see, but Tommy could.

He felt bad. Not because of the murders (Tommy himself had done at least two dozen). No, he felt bad because of all of the other people that didn’t see the things that he saw.

Selma left her office that night, not hoping she would live, but also not thinking she would die.

It’s funny, right? Who leaves at the end of the day hoping they would live?

It was, in fact, the least possible thought from her mind. But Selma Watkins, through the unfortunate circumstances of being a person in the wrong place-wrong time point of her life, was going to die tonight.

Selma came out of her office building like any other evening that she would have – alone. Somehow, she knew Tommy was watching her. Somehow, Selma Watkins also knew this would be her last night.

And somehow, through the unfortunate magic of the stars, Tommy Hopkins would show up at the dank, empty corridor of her office building and would meet Selma Watkins.

“Hello,” Tommy would ask, to the only person standing across from him.

“Hi,” Selma replied, paralyzed, as she knew who he was (or at least who he might be).

“Nice night, right?” she asked as it somehow (intuitively) was a mark of her knowing her fate, but somehow stalling at the same time.

“This night is simply…lovely,” he would smile to his latest victim before saying, “Selma.”

Knowing the immediacy of the situation, Selma (fearing for her life), would turn to run.

Tommy, anticipating the situation and the ‘type’ of his victims that would turn, spins around to grab Selma’s ponytail.

He would reach as far as his arm would go, meeting his fingers around Selma’s hair. Yanking; pulling; he grabs what handle he has on his next victim and pulls her back down, yanking bones and flesh and hair and throwing that beautiful bundle that he’s been searching down to the ground.

Screaming, Selma yells out, “Tommy! Tommy! You’re name’s Tommy, right?”

Frozen, he waits.

“And you’ve been chasing me for a while, right?”

Tommy nods yes.

“Tommy. Thomas,” Selma’s breathing heavy. The kind of heavy that means you might not breathe any more, “You’re missing the whole point.”

“What is the whole point?” Tommy would ask.

Silent, Selma realizes she has no follow up, and her silence is deafening.

Selma reaches her hand up, to block Tommy’s last, final, blow.

And then Selma was alive no more.

And then she was dead.

THE END

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There was a time when Johnny Beaumont thought he’d never see a dead person. It was a perfectly rational thing to think – to think you’d never see a dead person. At least to never see a dead person…alive.

He’d always look the other way when he felt it – the crunch. At least, that’s what he decided to call it. The crunch.

Johnny felt like that was a good name for it. His body always hurt in different ways whenever he felt the presence of those who should not be there.

It started years ago, though Johnny will never tell you that.

He lived down along the river, where all of those fancy TV shows come to tell you where the spirits are.

Johnny never believed them. Called them a bunch of phooey. A name his Dad gave all the nonsense of the ghost hunter business back when he was alive. “A bunch of phooey, that’s what it is,” is what he would say. And Johnny agreed.

Then Johnny got older, the age where you shouldn’t live with your folks anymore. So he decided to go and find a place for himself.

Johnny settled on a place about six blocks from home. He figured he could get some privacy while still checking on his folks with that kind of distance. And that’s what he did, for six years. Until the fire.

One day, Johnny came home from work at the hardware store, turned onto his street and found the whole block on fire. His mom and dad’s house. Burning. His neighbors, the McGillicutties. In flames. Every friend, relative, acquaintance and stranger that he ever thought he knew. All of their homes, gone.

Johnny stood there and just watched the whole block burn.

He stood there when the fire trucks whirred past him.

He stood there when all of the police cars – Johnny would say every police car in the whole town of Admont – came. (Came for what at that point, he wasn’t sure.)

And he stood there after the fires were out. When the coroners came and identified what they could, and told Johnny his folks weren’t gonna be around no more. He stood through that, too.

Some time passed over that. Between the fire and when Johnny first felt the crunch.

He was walking home from work one day, along the river. A path he’d taken dozens and dozens of times before. Except this time instead of staying along the path, Johnny decided to check out one of the many abandoned homes along the way.

This was a different place than his folks’ old block. This one has seen rain and the water and then more water till they called it a flood. It had been a rough couple of years for the town of Admont.

He walked up to the first one he saw – an old Victorian house with a sagging roof that made it look like one of those old cartoon houses. The kind that might start singing. Only this one had more of a howl.

He walked up the rail to the top porch, not quite knowing why he was exploring – Johnny was not the exploring type.

He walked inside, holding his elbow from an increasing pain that came as he walked deeper and deeper into the house – a tingling feeling going down through his fingers. The place felt empty and abandoned – yet full of a kind of energy that Johnny just could not explain.

He ran. He didn’t like that tingling feeling in his fingers and the elbow pain and didn’t need to stay long enough to figure out why it was there.

A couple of weeks later, Johnny found himself walking along the same path. He saw the house as he approached, this time deciding that he was definitely NOT going inside.

Although this time when he walked past the house, a heavy feeling pressed up against his lungs. He felt like it was harder to breath than just a few seconds before, although nothing had changed along the path besides the fact that he was walking past the same house. He ran as fast as he could to home that day.

Only one day passed the next time Johnny would walk past the house. He had slept on it all night and realized something…or someone…was calling him to the house.

He turned to stare the house down. The old house seemed reborn. No longer drooping in the middle. The roof looking fresh. Staring at Johnny. Daring to make him call himself crazy. Only Johnny knew he wasn’t crazy. He walked inside.

Now already he had felt the deep breaths, the compressed lungs. As he walked past the threshold and then deeper into the house, a pain pinched his left shoulder. Then deeper still, a mild headache nagging in the side corner. Then stronger pains. All of these feelings Johnny knew were unnatural. He just knew.

But a house doesn’t make you have pain, he thought to himself. Walking through a yard doesn’t make it tough to breathe.

The nagging pain in the left side of his head starts to migrate from the left, to the middle, to the right over a span of about five seconds, giving him a dizzy vertigo feeling.

Johnny holds his head in pain as it rotates around and then turns to look a big familiar man in the face. It’s his dad. His dead dad.

He reaches to touch him and the figure that was his dad disappears, his fingers tingling as he reaches for air where he thought his deceased parent was just moments ago.

The tingling shifts back up the arm to the chest that made Johnny tingle earlier. He turns to the mirror and sees his dad in the reflection. Confused, he looks closer, “Hello, son. How can I help you?” His dad calls out.

Johnny, realizing after all of the terrible loss, that he’s been given the chance to see his dad again, “Hey, pop. I missed  you. And I love you.”

Johnny’s dad smiles, and then disappears. Then the house where Johnny’s standing disappears, as well.

Johnny, realizing he’s seen his first ghost, looks up and says, “Thanks. I was stuck before that.” Then Johnny closes his eyes and he, too, disappears.

THE END

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She didn’t know she was going to die today. And why would she? It was her wedding day, after all. She woke up to birds chirping at the window by her bedside, fresh breakfast sizzling downstairs. She had stayed at a bed and breakfast near the church where she was to be wed, to make things easier (she would say) for everyone, but really it was for her. One final night of living alone.

Her husband-to-be, a local politician – formerly a highly respected doctor – would be on his way soon. They decided they were going to meet for breakfast, traditions of not seeing each other be damned. It was their day, and they wanted to spend as much of it together as they could. Little did she know that he went to the local bar for one last light drinking night as a bachelor, maybe one last fling if it suited him. It did.

He woke up that morning next to a small brunette draped in black satin sheets. His naked body exposed to the open air, the sheets over on her half of the bed and the remaining resting on the ground. As his phone starts to ring he jumps up and quickly assesses the room, looking for his pants, trying desperately to stop the ringing. It’s his bride-to-be. He knows it is. A special ringtone of the latest country song twanging over the tinny speakers. It was her favorite and so she set it for him…without him knowing, of course. That twangy-soft, but raspy feminine voice whispering through his pants pocket,

You’re gonna die,

You know you’re gonna die,

and I’ll be the one (waaannn) who keels ya.

You thought you coulda lied,

wasn’t it a sur-prise,

when I was the waaaannnnn who keelled ya?

The top song on the charts was about infidelity and murder and the woman that would be his wife in just a few hours made it his ringtone. Did she know something? Was it just a coincidence? Was this the top song for a reason or did it just have a nice hook and no one really paid attention to the words? A sick pain rumbles through his stomach as he locates his pants and presses a button to silence the ringer. The small brunette rolls over in bed, but still lies asleep. Good, he thinks. He doesn’t remember her name and doesn’t want to. The quicker he can get out of here, the better.

He slips on his boxers and then his pants, finds his shirt thrown over a lamp in another corner of the room and his shoes in still another corner, the last one underneath her blouse that he ripped off of her last night. He thinks of tossing some money, maybe a few twenty’s, on her table as he’s leaving the apartment – for the blouse. But then he thinks she might believe the money to be for…services rendered. He imagines her out in front of city hall, sunglasses and maybe a newly minted black eye, in front of news cameras. He really pissed her off by leaving that money and just…leaving. He looks down at the wad of bills in his hand and puts them back in his pocket.

As he finds his car he gets in and looks in the rearview mirror. His eyes are beyond bloodshot. A cut across his face from the brunette that he just abandoned upstairs. It was a rowdy night. Great, he thinks. Perfect.

The phone rings again, that same idiotic twang coming through his pants pocket.

You’re gonna die,

You know you’re gonna die..

He switches on the speaker in his car, “Hello?”

“Hello, my darling! Where are you? I’m waiting for you to have breakfast with me.”

“I’m on my way. Sorry. Got a little sidetracked.”

“But, darling, it’s our wedding day!”

“I know, I know,” She knows, she knows. He can hear it in her voice. She knows. She knows.

“Well, get here as soon as you can. I have a lovely surprise just for you.”

“I will. I love you.”

“Mm-hmm. See you soooon!” She hangs up on that last part, the high pitch of soooon still ringing in his ear. She never hangs up without saying she loves him back. Maybe he’s just still being paranoid, he thinks.

He swings past his house, runs in to take a shower, get the various smells of last night off of him. The beers and…the rest. A few allergy drops in the eyes for the redness and he’s out the door. The bed and breakfast is about 20 more minutes away. The twang starts to ring over his car speakers now.

You’re gonna die,

You know you’re gonna die…

He jumps, thinking it’s his phone, but then realizes it’s the radio. Man am I paranoid, or what? Calm yourself down. He thinks to himself, before switching the radio off.

In his center console is a pocket knife. He looks at it as he drives to meet his bride-to-be. He wonders what the surprise is. What does she have in store for him? If she knows, not just of last night, but of all of the nights, then why put him through all the hoops of a wedding?

That crazy little…

She’s going to go through with it for half of my money, isn’t she?

She knows and she doesn’t care.

She’ll be little lovely housewife for a year, then file the papers for irreconcilable differences and off she goes into the sunset.

It’s all he can think of. The rage grows in him as he drives closer to his destination.

What a little… and

Stupid little… and then

She’s not getting away with it…

The thoughts and anger consume him. He’s unable to focus on anything else. That, and the little brunette that he left sleeping alone and how he might have to deal with her too if it comes down to it. Extortion. Threats. He’s seen it all before. They won’t take me down. She won’t take me down.

He pulls up to the bed and breakfast, grabbing the pocket knife and slipping it in his pocket right before he jumps out of the car. The rage, he can barely control it. He’s so angry. The twangy little lady starts singing on his phone again and he want to reach through his phone and strangle that raspy voice.

You’re gonna die,

You know you’re gonna die…

He throws open the door and runs up the stairs, Room 280 is where she is. He throws open the door and runs across the room. His bride-to-be has her back turned to him, concealing something at her side, her wedding gown pulled halfway up her torso, the rest of her body exposed.

“There you are, darling,” she says as she starts to turn. He has to get to her first. He reaches for the knife in his pocket and pulls her close to him as he approaches. Just as the knife enters into her abdomen, he sees her concealed hand reveal…a pocket watch. She screams. He pulls the knife out of her as the blood starts to fall to the floor.

She stumbles to the ground, looking intently at his dark blue eyes, “I love you,” she whispers, one last time, just as her eyes become dull, her breathing ceased. The bubbly life that consumed her this same morning now completely gone. The knife falls from his hands, landing next to the pocket watch and his now dead fiancée. His pocket watch. He thinks to himself: What have I done? Oh, my God. What have I done!

He looks at her, at her now hollow eyes staring into the ceiling, tears streaming down his face, “I love you, too,” he smiles a soft grin, “My darling.”

THE END

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I learned of Harold Ramis’ passing almost by accident, and it was early when the news broke. At first a little piece of me hoped it was one of those mistakes that the news outlets jump to reporting before confirmed. Someone hacked an account, somewhere. Someone posted without running it past their editor. Somehow, sadly, I knew it was true. That one of the Ghostbusters – one of my childhood heroes from the entertainment world – had passed. For real.

I don’t remember seeing Ghostbusters in the theater. I was 5 years old when the movie came out, so I probably didn’t see it then. Honestly, I don’t know for sure if I was hooked on the movie or the cartoon series first. What I do remember, though, is going to the video rental store in our neighborhood and getting to pick out whatever movie I wanted (within reason, at least, for a kid). Every time, without hesitation, I picked Ghostbusters.

I remember going home to watch it. I remember rewinding the VHS tape after the final credits had rolled and watching it again. And again. And again. Then I remember going to bed, waking up the next morning and pushing play again. Sometimes before school, sometimes on the weekend when I could watch it replay over and over again as a special treat. I would normally watch it six to nine times before it was time to return it back to the video store. That’s in no way an exaggeration. I don’t really know why my parents never bought the movie for me. I don’t recall really asking at the time. Being a parent now myself, it probably had something to do with the fear that it would never be off of the TV. That I would watch it in perpetuity, only every once in a while coming up for air or food or water.

I didn’t perfectly relate to Egon Spengler, Ramis’ character in the movie, though there were some parallels. I had glasses, I was skinny and quiet. I liked to study and learn things and figure out how things worked. Egon was a scientist who somehow became an action hero when he slipped on that Ghostbusters uniform and proton pack. That was pretty cool to me. He always had his PKE meter (probably more of a memory from the cartoon) that would read how strong the ghost in the room or vicinity might be (and by extension how scared we should be of the impending ghost(s) that would come on screen). So, I always had my toy PKE meter to investigate the anomalies around the house and the back yard.

In a way, modeling the way the Ghostbusters investigated the latest case helped me to learn how to imagine and create and discover. We look back at these things now as adults as ‘playtime’ or ‘kids being kids,’ but imagination is an important tool in a child’s learning and social development and without it, we can sometimes grow to become detached and unrelatable. Some of these traits come natural to people and those kids get to where they need to be developmentally at a faster pace than others. For me, it didn’t. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. There weren’t any kids in the neighborhood to play with and my friends from school lived in a different neighborhood, so I had a lot of alone time. A lot of time to think and figure out how things worked, pretend and above all have Egon and the other Ghostbusters as my imaginary friends to play with and go on adventures of discovery with me. I can’t say definitively that I would have had as rich of a life as I do without having been introduced to these characters and this world, a world that Harold Ramis had a large hand in creating. For that, I am truly grateful.

(This article was originally posted on Feb. 25, 2014)

Dreamcatchers: Part One is now available on Amazon. Click here to get it!

Part One of Three is now available. Click the link to get it now or join the mailing list to be informed when the full first book in the series is available.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00REE1G6C