Making a HELLRAISER Musical?

I'm a regular participant in the Concellation Facebook group created to provide people who would have attended conventions canceled due to COVID with a social outlet. In late December I adapted my blog post about how Labyrinth is Hellraiser for kids into a YouTube video and posted it in the group. Someone asked if Hellraiser had a musical number, what would it look like? My response was that you could actually make a full-blown Hellraiser musical.

So here's where I plot out a Hellraiser musical. Some ideas for songs and sequences, complete with the relevant film clips.

*At the beginning, Frank Cotton has a musical number while he solves the Lament Configuration. He discusses how he's experienced every pleasure the world has to offer (with some pretty big hints that many of these pleasures are illegal and/or immoral) and now he's looking for pleasures beyond the world. As he solves the box and the boundaries between the worlds start to thin, an ominous chorus of the Cenobites join in. The song culminates in the solving of the box, the chain-attack on Frank, and the first appearance of Pinhead. Here's the relevant scene in the film.

*When Larry Cotton (Frank's brother) and his second wife Julia move into Frank's old house, we could have a three-person musical number featuring Larry, Julia, and Larry's daughter Kirsty from his first marriage. Larry is hoping moving back to Julia's hometown in Britain will help save their marriage, Julia is lamenting how boring it is to be married to Larry, and Kirsty (arriving later to help) sings about how she misses her biological mother and how much she dislikes Julia.

*Frank's resurrection from the floorboards of the room where he was taken to Hell, culminating in a terrible scream, might be an instrumental number. Alternatively, it could have Frank recounting in some kind of spoken-word fashion the horrible things the Cenobites did to him as his body reassembles itself from the floor.

*Bored at a party attended by Larry, some of his work friends, Kirsty, and Kirsty's new boyfriend Steve, Julia goes to investigate the strange noises in the attic, culminating in the encounter with the skeletal resurrected Frank. There's a duet between the two where Frank begs her to help him fully regain his body while Julia is torn between her disgust at this meatless bony monstrosity and her memories of Frank seducing her before her marriage to Larry. At the end of the song, she agrees to help Frank, provided no harm comes to Larry. Despite his obvious contempt for Larry, Frank agrees.

*We next have a musical montage number (possibly some kind of ballet?) of Julia luring men back to the house and killing them for Frank to feed on. Some near-misses where Larry nearly discovers what's going on and Julia has to come up with an increasingly bad series of excuses to conceal her and Frank's activities.

*Befuddled by his wife's odd behavior, Larry takes Kirsty out to lunch and they discuss the situation. This could be dialogue-only, or a sweet-natured duet between the two of them.

*Kirsty sees Julia bringing a man into the house and comes in, only to see Frank kill him and eat him. Frank then attacks her, either in a sexual fashion or to simply eat her too, but she's able to fight him off with the puzzle box and escape the house. She's taken to the hospital with the box, which she refuses to give up, and locked into her room by the staff, plays with it and accidentally solves it. This calls forth the Cenobites and we have a whole musical number about how the Cenobites are "explorers of the furthest reaches of experience, demons to some [and] angels to others" and how, since she's solved the box, Kirsty must come with them and "taste their pleasures." The terrified Kirsty manages to bargain with them, offering them Frank in return for herself.

*As Kirsty rushes home to warn her father, Frank and Julia murder him and Frank skins him. This is something that wasn't in the movie, but should have been, so the confrontation between the brothers and Larry's murder should be a musical number culminating in Frank's horrific appearance and Larry's death. Kirsty arrives and, momentarily deceived by Frank's disguise as her father, briefly encounters the Cenobites in the house as they brood over Larry's corpse. Frank attacks Kirsty, accidentally killing Julia (whom he feeds on as she's dying) and pursues Kirsty into the attic room where Larry's body is. There Kirsty tricks Frank into confessing his true identity and the Cenobites arrive to claim him.

*The Cenobites then try to abduct Kirsty anyway ("we have such sights to show you"), but she uses the box to banish them. Steve arrives and the two attempt to destroy the box, only for a vagrant to appear, take the box, and transform into a dragon before flying away.

You guys like? There's a ballet based on Dracula and a musical based on Evil Dead, so as long as the musical retains the film's score (or at least a version of it) and the best lines, this could be better cool. Heck, some of the film's best lines like "we have such sights to show you" could be the titles of songs.

(Also, check out the Myopia Movies episode on Hellraiser.)

Crossing Over THE CARE BEARS...With RIFTS

About six weeks ago, I spotted some discussion on the We Hate Movies Facebook group about unlikely fictional crossovers. It looked like a fun discussion, so I contributed a crossover between the rather violent role-playing game Rifts and the cheerful 1980s children's cartoon The Care Bears.

It's not as ridiculous as it sounds...the world of Rifts includes a lot of extradimensional beings. The Care Bears are clearly not from our world, while Dark Heart, the villain of Care Bears II: A New Generation, clearly is some kind of demon.

So here goes...

The Care Bears are beings of goodwill who have been observing Earth for some time from the pocket dimension of the Kingdom of Caring and can see the apocalypse coming. Being well-intentioned but not particularly powerful, they generally intervene in relatively small ways--befriending lonely children, getting people to talk about their feelings rather than lashing out, curing a town of unnatural depression, teaching lessons about the virtues of hard work, etc.--and hoping that like a falling pebble triggering an avalanche, the coming darkness can be averted.

And for a time it actually works. In Care Bears II, for example, the monstrous shape-shifting Dark Heart is not only defeated in his schemes to spur children at a summer camp into violence and destruction, but renounces his wickedness and becomes a real boy. Through the power of kindness, not only is a powerful supernatural force for evil neutralized, but it actually becomes a mortal force for good.

(Maybe the redeemed Dark Heart and Christy went on to found a food bank or something. Who knows?)

However, that's only a Hope Spot before the darkness falls--a nuclear war kills so many people that it reignites the dormant ley lines, tearing open holes in the fabric of reality and bringing in all sorts of aliens, monsters, and supernatural beings into the devastated Earth.

But somewhere in a ruined Magitek world, there are still several small bear-like creatures doing their best to make things better...

Ideas for a Soft Reboot/Sequel for HELLRAISER...

A common complaint about the state of the film industry these days is that it's all sequels and reboots, with few original ideas. One film that's been subject to Sequelitis and has had a reboot in Development Hell for years is Hellraiser, the tale of an occult puzzle box that can be used to summon the grotesque Pinhead and his Cenobites, "demons to some and angels to others."

This subject was discussed on one of the horror-related Facebook groups I joined in order to hawk my novel The Thing in the Woods and so I posted some of my thoughts on what such a film should look like in response to a June 23 post. The following discussion is my ideas, expanded.

Much like J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek, one could have a sequel that's also a "soft reboot." Ashley Laurence and Doug Bradley, who are both alive and in good health, could return as Kirsty Cotton and Pinhead respectively. The decline in the series began after Hellraiser 3, in which they have a completely new protagonist Joey Summerskill (Terry Ferrell), and it went straight to video after Hellraiser: Bloodline. They brought Kirsty back for Hellraiser: Hellseeker, but that was direct-to-DVD and had a plot that made no sense--there is no way in hell (hee-hee) that Kirsty would be stupid enough to touch anything resembling the Lament Configuration again. And they replaced Bradley with other actors in Hellraiser: Revelations and Hellraiser: Judgement and I've heard very little good about those films--they were very low budget and existed only so the production company could keep the rights. And Bradley wanted nothing to do with them. Fortunately Bradley himself is a good sport and is up for reprising his role.

However, both actors are a lot older than they were back in the 1980s--Laurence is in her mid-50s and Bradley is nearly 70--so it can't just be "Kirsty and Pinhead at it again." Since the original cast is aging and the idea is to reboot the series, this could be a means of giving the original cast their last hurrah before they hand off the torch to a new generation.

My idea would be take Hellseeker into account, but make it a nightmare Kirsty had or some kind of hallucination induced by a head injury from the film's car accident. Kirsty is older and married to Trevor (Dean Winters) and they have teenage children. Due to her experiences in the first two films, Kirsty has a lot of baggage and isn't the easiest person in the world to deal with, a contributing factor to her husband cheating on her.

(Obviously not to the degree he does in Hellseeker--in that one he was unfaithful to Kirsty with three separate women. However, Kirsty is likely a jumpy paranoid mess due to her backstory, so she might think it was more than just him venting about his marital problems to a sympathetic coworker and things just getting out of control from there.)

Kirsty, though she's understandably upset (especially given how she remembers Frank and Julia), doesn't file for divorce--yet. After all, she knows the pain a broken home can cause a child--she moved out of her father's home and lived in a nasty apartment rather than share a home with Julia--and doesn't want to inflict this on her own children, who aren't aware of his adultery. Furthermore, she recognizes Trevor strayed in part due to drama caused by her own issues. However, their marriage is in a very fragile state and more problems arise when a letter from a foreign bank arrives. They've been trying to find the next of kin for one Frank Cotton for twenty-odd years--a small amount of money he'd stashed away has, through the magic of compound interest, grown to a somewhat larger sum. Trevor would like to put the money for some useful purpose (perhaps a family vacation to make everybody feel better, or some needed renovations on the house), but Kirsty, suspecting the money was gained through crime--Frank in the novella The Hellbound Heart smuggles heroin and earns money through other illegal means--wants nothing to do it.

(In Hellseeker Kirsty was the beneficiary of both Larry and Frank's wills and didn't want to spend the latter's money, viewing it as dirty. However, it was apparently a large sum and Trevor was able to enlist a close friend in a plot to kill her to get his hands on it. However, Larry doesn't seem particularly rich in the first film and in the book Frank is always in debt due to his hedonistic lifestyle. More realistic that Frank had some bug-out money hidden somewhere and it's been slowly accumulating interest ever since.)

However, this isn't going to be a domestic drama however much the original Hellraiser came off as one at times. Pinhead is involved somehow, either to get his hands on Kirsty at long last or go after her children like Captain Hook threatened Peter's family in the film Hook. 

(Pinhead has shown a willingness to make deals, like sparing Kirsty to lead him to the escaped Frank in the first film and Kirsty's own bargain with him in Hellseeker. Perhaps someone from the bank had solved the Lament Configuration but Pinhead, upon learning he had found Kirsty, agreed to let him help take her instead.)

If the goal is hand off the franchise to a new generation, in the resulting confrontation Pinhead and Kirsty (and perhaps Trevor too) are all killed. That might be tricky given how Pinhead withstands gunshots and even futuristic laser cannon in some of the films, but maybe Kirsty could run him over with her car (something that would inflict a lot more damage than a single bullet or laser beam) and die in the process, defeating her old enemy at the cost of her own life. 

However, her sacrifice is in vain--the forces of Hell claim one of Kirsty's children as a new Cenobite. However, another manages to escape and vows to reclaim them for humanity, something Hellraiser II: Hellbound showed was possible with the Channard Cenobite reverting Pinhead to Captain Elliott Spencer before killing him. To save their sibling, the character would seek occult knowledge and we could use that to bring in concepts from the Hellraiser comics like the Harrowers, human warriors chosen by the hell-god Leviathan's sister-goddess to fight him. Subsequent films can get into the "war of the gods" angle with all-new Cenobites and human characters, much like the comics did.

Facebook Ads *Avoiding* Kindle Unlimited

In the past I've posted here extensively about my various Facebook ad campaigns. Although Facebook ads moved copies in ways that Amazon ads generally didn't, none of my earlier campaigns made a profit. The closest I ever came was making $43 royalties on $50 spend. Although there were times money from con sales or random hand sales could cover those costs, COVID-19 means a lot fewer conventions and those remaining are a lot smaller.

However, in early August I wondered if my ads might've been flawed--in order to make it clear that I was selling e-books (i.e. I didn't want people thinking the book I was selling was a video game, then costing me money by clicking and deciding not to buy) and attracting people with the magical word "free," I emphasized the book was "free on Kindle Unlimited." This meant thousands of Kindle Unlimited page-views per month, but at slightly under half a cent per page read, this came out to $4.80 per 1,000 pages read--aka not much even if I got thousands of page-reads (and believe me I did). Even though I made outright sales, no combination of sales and KU page-reads covered the costs. This applied even when I released The Atlanta Incursion, the sequel to The Thing in the Woods and advertised Thing in hopes people would buy it and then move onto the next book. Furthermore, based on my experience KU readers seem less likely to review than people who made full purchases and I was in severe need of reviews, especially for TAI.

So I created a new $100 Facebook ad for Thing with ad copy stating it was "available in e-book and print" rather than "free on Kindle Unlimited." Based on advice from a Facebook ad consultant (buy enough ads and they'll start wanting to call you to chat), I was also sure to include "engaged shoppers" as a behavioral characteristic--per the consultant these were people who are more likely to buy things. I also made sure to max out the spend at $5 per day, which is a recommendation I got from Help My Facebook Ads Suck, meaning an ad campaign running from 8/8 to 8/28.

The first day went pretty well. I sold two e-books of Thing and one e-book of TAI for a $6.18 royalties gross on $3.91 ad spend for a net of $2.27. There were also a few Kindle Unlimited page-reads, but we're talking less than a dollar. The sale of TAI took a little effort on my part--one person who commented on the Thing ad said he'd like to see the back-story for the titular monstrosity and I told him it would be in TAI, which was now available. He was glad to see it and bought it. I made another such sale on 8/10 (in which I suggested making a two-for-one series buy), so let that be a lesson--engage your fans on the Facebook posts. :)

Of course, one good day doesn't make a profitable campaign or a wise strategy, so I watched and I waited. Even after the campaign formally ended, I held off on commenting for a few days in order for the last Kindle Unlimited reads to come in and see if any sales came off the shares of the boosted post (there were 12 shares).

As of morning 8/29 when the post was no longer boosted, Thing and TAI between them had nine e-book sales and one paperback sale for Thing (per Amazon for royalties of $21.28) and five e-book sales for TAI ($10.30 royalties) during the advertising period. No additional sales were made for either book on 8/29, but the day did feature nearly 400 KU pages read for Thing. The Kindle Unlimited revenue for Thing in this period as $21.83 (a little over 4,500 page-views) and for TAI was approximately $3.55 (739 page-views). Overall, the ad campaign generated $56.96, $59.02 if one counts a Thing sale made 9/1 that might've been from a shared post. There's actually a decent amount of read-through from Thing to TAI in terms of purchases, but not nearly as much in KU. Also got one new review for Thing from one of the people I engaged with on Facebook, but no TAI--that's later on her reading list.

Ironically in July I had 19 Thing sales and 3,167 KU pages read, with a Facebook ad emphasizing Kindle Unlimited. There were nine TAI sales and 1,071 KU pages read (although this is skewed by the fact the book premiered in July), but even with those the ad didn't cover its costs. And this new ad ran for much longer at a lower cost per-day. I'm thinking that emphasizing free on KU might be a good idea, not a bad one. However, I also suspect I'm reaching the point of diminishing returns, even if one treats advertising as a loss-leader rather than something that should pay for itself each and every time.

(Bad idea--Samhain Publishing at one point had a banner ad in Times Square advertising to millions who'd never buy their books when that same money advertising in genre magazines would've been much more useful.)

However, before I decide on no more Facebook ads (at least until the third and perhaps fourth "Long War" books are done for more series read-through), there are more avenues I have yet to explore.

Firstly, as part of a multi-author promotion, I have set Thing to $0.99 from 9/2 to 9/7. I could advertise that on Facebook, hoping that the fact there's a sale generates more interest and that KU reads and read-through into TAI compensates for the greatly reduced royalties (35% on anything below $2.99 but 67% on $2.99 to $9.99). After all, I advertised Battle For The Wastelands when it was free as a COVID morale-booster and moved not only 250 free copies but at least some KU reads from people who didn't want to have the book permanently. And I got some reviews on Goodreads and perhaps on Amazon, something that TAI in particular needs. With the Augusta Toy and Comic Show coming up this weekend (Sept. 5-6) and the Next Chapter Con Sept. 19, I can afford another loss-leading ad.

Secondly, one of my reviewers (I can't remember whom) suggested that one really didn't need to read Thing to enjoy TAI. In late July after the presumed premiere boost wore out, I'd spent $100 on a Facebook ad selling TAI to fans of the Lovecraftian role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, horror fiction, and e-books (that didn't cover its costs and didn't even generate that many clicks for that matter), but blogger Matt Stienberg explicitly compared TAI to the X-Com game series. Given the focus on the Gray aliens on the cover art and throughout the book, X-Com fans might be a better target market for TAI on its own. Thing is, so long as TAI doesn't have any Amazon reviews, that might be quite a risk even if I emphasize that magical word "free" and use the KU ad copy.

Thirdly, I could send people to the Amazon series page showing off Thing and TAI together. That might be better to wait until I have more books, since a two-book series isn't exactly impressive.

Another alternative is to continue advertising but not spend so much money. Although the longer ad campaigns made more sales and grossed more, they also lost more money. Meanwhile, the $50 ad buy came within $7 of breaking even, and that was pushing Thing without TAI.

We'll see. I'll need to make a quick decision if I want to push the $0.99 campaign.

Muppet HELLRAISER? Muppet IT? Muppet MISERY? Muppetizing Famous Horror Films

As all of you should know at this point, I'm a regular participant in the film podcast Myopia Movies. In addition to appearing on the show in almost every episode, I also share a lot of memes and other amusing content in our Facebook group. Below is one meme I found that spawned some particularly interesting discussion.

Seriously, a Muppet version of A Clockwork Orange? The Hensons would sooner commit collective suicide. However, when I shared the meme in the group, some interesting discussions emerged. James O'Neil from my writing group suggested a Muppet version of Hellraiser, with Beaker as Pinhead. That would deprive us of the awesomeness of Doug Bradley as Pinhead, but I'll at least acknowledge that. Here's my cast:

Kirsty Cotton: Ashley Laurence

Larry Cotton: Kermit The Frog

Julia Cotton: Miss Piggy

Frank Cotton: Sean Chapman (alive), Oliver Smith (undead)
Steve: Robert Hines
Derelict: Gonzo
Pinhead: Doug Bradley
Female Cenobite: Janice
Butterball Cenobite: Bobo the Bear
Chatterer Cenobite: Fozzy Bear

The other characters (like Larry's party guests, the men Julia brings home for Frank to kill) can be a mix of humans and Muppets. Since they don't really have distinctive personalities, it doesn't matter who plays whom.

I thought about making Animal Frank Cotton (the "WOMAN! WOMAN! WOMAN!" stuff would tie in with Frank's sexual aggression), but Muppet Treasure Island uses human Tim Curry having been in a romantic relationship with Miss Piggy for jokes. Keeping the canonical actors as Frank would work for that purpose as well. Given how the Derelict (the keeper of the puzzle box) is supposed to be an unnatural and scary being, Gonzo would work for him too--until Muppets From Space revealed he was an alien, he was always a "Whatsit" or, in Muppet Babies, a "Weirdo." And making Chatterer Fozzy Bear would be amusing--instead of the click-click-click thing, he just says "wokka, wokka, wokka" all the time.

James also suggested a Muppet version of It. I was initially skeptical because Miss Piggy is always the female lead and I would never buy her as Beverly. When we see her as an adult, Beverly is beaten down by life (and literally by her evil husband Tom Rogan), while Miss Piggy is loud and takes no crap from anybody. James suggested the Muppet Janice might work better, but she's not one of the major Muppets. For convenience's sake, we're using the adults here for the most part, not the kids. Credit to horror writer @disneynine for Ben, Richie, and Eddie.

Ben Hanscom: Kermit
Richie Tozier: Fozzie Bear
Beverly Marsh: Jessica Chastain
Bill Denbrough: James McAvoy
Mike Hanlon: Isaiah Mustafa
Eddie Kasparak: Gonzo
Stanley Uris: Andy Bean*
Tom Rogan: Will Beinbrink
Pennywise: Bill Skarsgård
Sonia Kaspark: Miss Piggy (flashback)

Although Henson's special-effects crew could make a magnificent practical-effects Pennywise for the climax in which It's true spider-like form is revealed, I liked Bill Skarsgård's performance in It: Chapter One (I never saw It Chapter Two), much like how I liked Doug Bradley's performance as Pinhead. Replacing either with Muppets would be a shame. Jessica Chastain pulls off the sort of worn-down look the adult Beverly would have--she's nearly 40, has been smoking since she was in middle school, and her husband hits her. Depicting the mild-mannered and encouraging Kermit as her eventual second husband Ben would work personality-wise.

And if the vengeful Tom shows up (in the book he followed Beverly to Derry and was enslaved and eventually killed by Pennywise), we can play his jealous horror at the thought of his wife sleeping with a Muppet for laughs. He was ready to kill her because he thought she'd left him for Bill (in this version a human)--how psychotic would he get if he thinks she'd left him for a Muppet?

Also, since this is a Muppet movie, Miss Piggy has to be in there somewhere. The only way I could think of to work her in would be having flashbacks to Sonia Kasparak, who has Manchausen's Syndrome by Proxy and tricked Eddie into thinking he has asthma, and attempts to separate him from his friends.

*Although the cast seems a little too human (only four out of the ten major characters are Muppets), Stanley is the one who slits his wrists in the bathtub rather than return to Derry to confront Pennywise. His wife coming into the bathroom and finding "IT" written on the bathroom walls in Muppet fluff would be unintentionally hilarious, not horrifying. This isn't supposed to be The Happytime Murders.

Another discussion that emerged from that was Stephen King's Misery. Imagine Miss Piggy as Annie Wilkes and Kermit as author Paul Sheldon, whom she imprisons and terrorizes. :)

After-Action Report: Facebook Advertising for BATTLE FOR THE WASTELANDS

Once upon a time, I used Facebook to advertise this very blog and all was well, getting me 3,000 hits in a month. When the time came for me to promote my independent fantasy novel Battle for the Wastelands, I decided to go back to Facebook advertising. I created a new Facebook Page in order to use it, but owing to a clumsy and bizarre ad interface (the one I used years ago was much simpler), I ended up making two ad campaigns by accident. One was targeted too broadly (at pretty much everybody in the United States if I remember right) and although I did manage one sale, I shut it down pretty quickly to keep it profitable. The second campaign was more narrowly targeted, focusing on adventure fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic, fantasy, steampunk, and e-books and didn't turn out very well. I spent $8.96 and made, as far as I know, no sales whatsoever before I shut it down.

After the failure of my initial Amazon ad campaigns, I decided to give Facebook another try. I went to my Facebook fan page and boosted a post pushing Battle that said it was free for the Kindle March 15 and March 16, although the ad campaign was slated to run for five days.

(By the way, using "boost post" on your Facebook page allows for much easier targeting than the ad interface. Furthermore, getting into Facebook ads through the Facebook page rather than going into the ads directly also allows access to a much easier interface. Perhaps Facebook has tweaked its operations again, or the easier ad campaigns I remember from years ago were done through my now-defunct "Matthew W. Quinn: Speculative Fiction Writer" page rather than directly in the ad system.)

For my free-book campaign, I targeted people in the United States interested in "steampunk" and "Western." I budgeted $50 for that ad campaign in hopes of moving a lot of freebies and thus getting a lot of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads in addition to helpfully providing people in coronavirus lock-down something entertaining to read.

And in that respect, my campaign succeeded massively. Although I also shared the link around to certain Facebook groups (skewing the numbers and also-boughts--for example, sharing in the Facebook group dedicated to author S.M. Stirling meant a lot of Shadows of Annihilation also-boughts), my ad reached 6,609 people and got 402 clicks. I moved 233 free e-books and at least five people on Goodreads marked it as "currently reading" or "to read," with one person giving it a rating (3/5 stars) on Goodreads 3/19/ If only five percent of the people who got the free e-book decide to review, that's 11 new reviews, something I very much need. During this period, I also got 470 Kindle Unlimited page-views, which comes out to be $2.68, even though since it was free on Amazon they didn't need to spend any money at all. And in the remaining days of the campaign, I also sold seven e-books ($19.18 royalties) and got 508 Kindle Unlimited page-views ($2.44). Although this combined $24.30 covered slightly less than half of the advertising cost, I'm hoping the additional reviews generated from the freebies  will set Battle up for long-term success.

Then I decided to see what Facebook advertising alone could do, avoiding the confounding variable of posting the freebie link in different Facebook groups, on Twitter, etc. After giving it a couple days for the sales to cool off (I still made one e-book sale, one paperback sale, and got twenty KU page-reads), I created two new Facebook ads. One was a retread of the original ad focusing on Western and steampunk, while the other was more ambitious, targeting people interested in fantasy books, dark fantasy (although Battle is not supernatural dark fantasy in the vein of Hellraiser, it's bleak and morally gray like A Game of Thrones), and Stephen King's Dark Tower series and The Gunslinger. After all, my sales pitch for Battle (which got me some print sales at Days of the Dead this past year) is "Dark Tower meets Game of Thrones." I led my ad copy with "Free on Kindle Unlimited" so people wouldn't think they were clicking on an ad for a video game or film, something I learned from one of my podcasts. I budgeted $150 for the first campaign, given its predecessor's success, and $60 for the second, not wishing to spend too much money overall and wanting to keep my ads fairly focused.

In terms of sales made, the campaign was a massive success. Although there are still some confounding variables (like a purchase that might have been from a member of my writing group reading my twice-a-month newsletter rather than through the Amazon campaign), I sold fifteen e-books ($41.10 royalties) and two print books ($5.81 royalties) between the ad's premiere on March 22 and its conclusion on March 28. In that same time period, there were 2,790 Kindle Unlimited pages read for a total of approximately $13.39. I also saw an uptick on sales rank for my first novel The Thing in the Woods and The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2, a collection I have a story in, on March 23 and March 24. The first ad campaign reached nearly 21,000 people and got 655 link clicks, while the broader second one reached a little over 9,000 people and got 247 link clicks.

However, the gross revenues came out to be roughly $60.39 against the $215 I ended up spending. That actually represents a much larger net loss than my Amazon campaigns, although I brought in around four times more gross revenue. Although paperback sales don't post until they actually ship (and the coronavirus situation means shipping books is less of a priority), I doubt I sold enough paperbacks to make a significant difference. Hopefully this campaign will generate some reviews once people have time to finish reading--after all, four people on Goodreads marked it as "currently reading" in the 3/22-28 range and I got one rating (4/5 stars) on 3/25.

In conclusion, although Facebook advertising is still a money-loser overall (at least if I've got just one book in the series), I was able to move a lot more copies than using Amazon's advertising platform. This knowledge will come in handy when I post my own edition of Thing and its forthcoming sequel The Atlanta Incursion, since those who buy Thing might in turn buy TAI. Once I get "Son of Grendel" posted and especially once the second Wastelands novel goes up, then Facebook advertising Battle again might be a good idea.

And if I decide to go with another Facebook ad campaign for Battle, I think I'll use the first ad but narrow it further. In addition to "steampunk" and "Western," I'll add "Kindle Unlimited" and "Kindle" to the keywords keep the focus on e-books. Also a lower budget so it's easier to cover the costs--the first campaign covered half its costs (when two of the five days it was making KU peanuts), while the second campaign only covered a little over a quarter.

A Crossover Between THE THING and Dean Koontz's PHANTOMS?

One of the Facebook groups I follow is Stan Winston's School of Character Arts, which is always good for something interesting about movies, special effects, etc.

(When I was a little kid movie special effects was actually a field I wanted to go into and I remember reading a lot of books about it.)

The other day they had a poll on who would win, the alien Thing from 1982's The Thing and its eventual prequel or the Ancient Enemy from Dean Koontz's novel Phantoms, which was later adapted into a film starring Ben Affleck. The voting period has probably expired, but here it is b/c it includes snazzy monster GIFs.

(Apologies for the big blank block here--the GIF that was part of the original image seems to have disappeared.)

For those of you not in the know, the Thing is an alien parasite that absorbs people and can take their appearance--its original form might be some kind of microorganism but as it infects people and absorbs their biomass it can create larger and larger creatures. The Ancient Enemy, meanwhile, is a gigantic amoeboid creature that might be thousands or even millions of years old. Every so often it emerges from underground and feeds, causing historical mass disappearances like Roanoke, ghost ships like the Marie Celeste, etc. In the novel one such creature consumes a mountain town in California and torments those who arrive to investigate, claiming to be Satan himself (a concept it had derived from the memories of people it had consumed). Both of them can spawn lesser creatures from a central biomass to use as weapons, scouts, etc., although the Ancient Enemy when it's all in one place is basically The Blob as well.

So me being me, I devised a crossover plotline for anybody out there who might want to write a fan-fic combining the two stories. Basically a follow-up expedition to the Antarctic base destroyed in The Thing finds the frozen remains of the alien and after taking appropriate precautions (based on journals at the American or Norwegian bases or the testimony of a surviving Childs or MacReady) they bring it back to a secure facility in America to study. If we want to include the characters from the Phantoms novel, perhaps it's in the mountain town where the book takes place at the time Dr. Jenny Paige and her younger sister Lisa are coming home.

Then the Ancient Enemy arrives and attacks the town. During the hubbub the Thing is set loose (perhaps it's been in a freezer for 15-20 years and gets defrosted when the facility is attacked) and the Ancient Enemy in its pride simply tries to eat it much like it does the humans and animals nearby or simply consumes a Thing-infected human not knowing it's any different.

Bad idea. The Thing is infectious at the microscopic level and it begins assimilating the Ancient Enemy from within. The Ancient Enemy detaches part of itself to avoid being completely consumed--in the novel the characters theorize that fire wouldn't be effective at killing it because it could simply break off the burning part--but this means the Thing has absorbed a significant part of the Ancient Enemy's biomass and probably much of its intelligence. It is now a vastly more dangerous foe. The Thing at the Antarctic base was a relatively small group of creatures of roughly human size whose power was in their deceptive ability--now we're talking something even bigger than the monster from the climax of the film and probably a great deal smarter. Meanwhile, the Ancient Enemy has absorbed the knowledge and memories of the scientists studying the Thing (and possibly some of the Thing's own intelligence as well) and knows that cold will force it into hibernation and fire will kill it.

So when the sisters, the surviving local law enforcement, etc. show up, the town is a war zone between an alien parasite that could potentially assimilate the entire planet in a matter of years versus a vindictive, massively egotistical giant amoeba whose insane pride drives it to avenge itself rather than return to hiding and simply wait out this strange new creature. The story could even feature an alliance between the Ancient Enemy and the humans, since the former needs the latter as a food source and only feeds every few centuries or millennia and the Thing is a voracious monster who will assimilate the whole planet if it can. In the film it showed no interest in trying to communicate or bargain with the human scientists in Antarctica, after all. The Ancient Enemy could initially appear to the humans as a survivor or survivors of the town and the humans eventually deduce it's not really human (this is where Dr. Flyte, the eccentric scientist who was able to deduce the Ancient Enemy's existence from studying historical disappearances, could come in) or it appears openly, either due to its pride or in an attempt to get the humans to trust it and not the other shape-shifting predator.

Anybody want to take this idea and run with it? I'm too busy with my own work and my day job to actually write something I can't make money on, but if someone does take a stab at this idea, I'll promote it.

(Also check out the Myopia podcast episode on The Thing. Maybe we'll do one on Phantoms later?)

"Santa's Boot Camp": The Movie I PA'd For

Right now, I'm helping do social media for a film entitled Santa's Boot Camp. I got the position after doing some production-assistant work when the movie was being filmed last December/January. Here's the trailer for your entertainment.



If you like what you see, here's the Facebook fan page. Periodically, new interviews with cast and crew members will be posted.

UPDATE: The movie has an official website now and is raising funds to finish post-production.

The Great Summer Writing Challenge...

Today I was chatting with my friend Nick and we were discussing the progress of our various writing projects. I referenced author William Meikle, whom I have corresponded with via Facebook and Twitter. Meikle seems to have a book out every few months and I asked him what his secret was. His response was basically writing 2,000 words per day. Nick has a novel he's working on, but as a teacher, it's easier for him to write during the summer when he has lots of time off.

Nick suggested we have a competition to write 2,000 words per day during the summer. I'm preparing to go to graduate school this fall and I've got various freelance writing clients I need to attend do, so I figured instead of 2,000 words per day, it would be better to set the word count by month. The way I currently do freelancing, work tends to pile up at the end of the month, so 2,000 words per day isn't very practical for several days.

So here's what we're going to do. We're going to have a writing competition covering the months of May, June, July, and August. The loser (by word count) has to take the winner (by word count) out to lunch. The minimum amount of words to be written is 10,000 words, which comes out to roughly two or three chapters per month. And that's the minimum.

Luckily I have three possible projects to spread this out:

*The Cybele Incident, my NaNoWriMo project from last November. As of today it's 15,000+ words written, roughly 20-25 percent done. I've been using my Lawrenceville writing group to give myself deadlines to have each chapter done, which has served me well in getting the first five chapters written. I've also gotten most of the next-to-last chapter done. Five of the 21 slated chapters complete, with one almost done--two chapters a month means it's done in seven months. Three chapters a month equals five months.

*The Thing In The Woods, my one-shot Lovecraftian horror novel that draws on some of my experiences living in and reporting on a small town on the southern fringe of Metro Atlanta. 1,517 words long as of today. I was thinking that this was something that, if I really applied myself to, I could finish fairly quickly, since it doesn't require the same degree of expert knowledge that TCI (hard science and Naval protocol) does and it'd be shorter and require less military knowledge than the Wastelands novels (more here later). Eleven chapters total, so at two per month that's five months and three per month that's three and a half to four mouths. Given the lack of need for research, all I'd really need to do is apply myself.

*Escape from the Wastelands, the sequel to Battle for The Wastelands. As of today it's roughly 25,000 words written, around 20-25 percent done. Given how this is a sequel and I haven't sold the first one, this isn't going to be a priority. After all, if I can't sell the first one, what good is a sequel? Unless I e-publish it of course, which I'd really rather not do. At present this is 42 slated chapters, but many of them could be consolidated and worst case scenario, it could get split in half. After all, I've done it before.

I posted on Facebook and called on all of the mutual friends of Nick and me to witness the challenge and nag us into meeting our targets and now Sean CW Korsgaard wants to join in. The fact he lives in another state could be problematic re: actually getting lunch, but he will be coming to visit Georgia sometime during the summer.

As I said on Facebook, let the games begin...in a month. :)

More Lessons Learned From Kindle Publishing

Here are some more lessons I've learned from my experiment with self-publishing short fiction for e-readers.

For starters, using social-media advertising to drive sales for short fiction is a waste of money. I made $13.10 in the last quarter of 2012 and the first bit of January 2013, but I spent at least $60--and probably much more than that--on Facebook advertising. I also spent $25 for one day of advertising on Google that gained a few clicks. Although I've made a few sales during these periods, this represents a fairly large loss in terms of percentages if not outright dollar amounts. This includes "promoting" posts on Facebook linking to short fiction that is for sale or even free--I "promoted" the Smashwords page of "The Beast of the Bosporus" for $5, but only made two sales. I promoted the blog post with a short sequel (of sorts) to "Illegal Alien" and only got 45 or so views despite that many "likes" on the fan page and thousands of views (of the promoted post). Although one of the problems self-published authors face is that there is nobody besides themselves to market their work, it doesn't seem like Facebook advertising is the way to go, at least at this early stage.

(Maybe if I had a novel...)

However, Facebook advertising can be VERY effective for one's Facebook fan page. Before I bought an ad promoting my Facebook fan page, I had around 80 fans, around half of whom which friends or family members. Now I have just over 1,800 fans. When I promoted posts announcing new stories, this gained me a significant number of new Facebook fans even though I got few if any new sales.

One method that has gotten me new sales is to the KDP Select program, in which one's KDP stories can be offered for free for up to five days. In the last month or so I've had two stories offered for free for a few days and each time, I've made at least one new sale of my horror tale "I am the Wendigo," which is no longer part of KDP Select. In fact, checking on my most recent campaign (a free offer of "Melon Heads"), I've actually sold two copies of "Wendigo" and possibly another sale of "Illegal Alien." Although I've been taking stories off KDP Select to post them on Smashwords to widen my sales base, the lesson I've learned from this is to always have something available to offer for free to generate sales of other material.

However, the free promotional campaigns don't generate a lot of reviews. My friend Jeff Baker noticed this before with his own self-publishing effort and theorized that people who get fiction for free are less likely to have as strong opinions on the story because they didn't pay for it. So far my campaign has borne this out.

That being said, I have discovered a reliable way to get reviews--review swaps. So far I have reviewed two books by Chris Nuttall, The Cross-Time Road Trip and The Royal Sorceress in exchange for several reviews of my self-published stories. Soon I will do the same for Bruno Lombardi, a fellow member of my alternate-history forum who has a new novel out, Snake Oil. Although reviews don't necessarily equal sales, they do help.

And spiffy cover art does not necessarily bring improved sales. I paid $45 for a really nice cover of "Illegal Alien" but it's been one of my poorest sellers, even though it's gotten the most reviews.

My Return To Fanfiction.net: A Tale of the Draka

Awhile back, I posted about two alternate Draka timelines I'd written for my alternate-history message-board. Sometime later, I found some people discussing my timelines on another Internet forum and one person complained about how they had to join the site in order to view them.

This morning on a whim, I posted on my Facebook fan page to see if anyone would like to see these timelines and I got three "likes" within thirty minutes. Never being one to disappoint my fans, I started copying and pasting from the original thread, now many years old, and posting them on fanfiction.net.

Behold, "The Dragon and the Bear: An Alternate Drakaverse." The early stuff is up now and I'll be posting the rest of it over the next several days.

Long ago, when I finished "The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot," I said I would not write anymore fan-fiction and would instead focus on my original work that can actually make me money. What I'm doing now fulfills the letter of the promise, since this is material I wrote years ago. Furthermore, I have many, many more Facebook fans now than I did then and providing them with content will keep them interested while I produce more original stuff. Given the popularity of the Draka novels among the alternate-history community, this will also help cement my position among them in preparation for the publication of my original material.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy a world where there's no Stalinist purge, the German invasion of Russia gets stopped a lot faster, Operation Valkyrie succeeds, and the evil Draka get what's coming to them. Robert Heinlein, Carl Sagan, and Pope John Paul II make appearances.

My Friend Eli's Hilarious, Cynical Song

My friend Eli Banks posted this song he wrote in 2002 (when we were both juniors or seniors in high school, depending on which side of the summer it was) on Facebook. It goes to the tune of "My Favorite Things" and took 23 minutes for him to write:

People whose breath smells like ranch flavored Pringles
Speed limit drivers who use their turn signals
Geniuses, intellects, no one's a fool
These are the people I see at my school

Really fast walkers who know where they're going
People whose insight is constantly growing
Someone you couldn't refer to as "tool"
These are the people I see at my school

When I'm angry
When I'm hungry
When I feel irate
I simply start thinking of kids at my school
And then I start feeling great!

Good taste in music and beautiful fashion
Students who care who are learning with passion
Good human beings who follow the rules
These are the people I see at my school

Nobody drinks and nobody does drugs
Walk through the halls and start giving out hugs
Everyone's loving and everyone's cool
These are the people I see at my school!

When I'm angry
When I'm hungry
When I feel irate
I simply start thinking of kids at my school
And then I start feeling great!

For the record, this was written during his "glory days of sarcasm and bitterness." Those who didn't particularly enjoy high school or know people who didn't should get a kick out of this.

E-Reader Publishing: Three Months In (UPDATED 12/29)

This post was originally published on 12/25, but due to a sudden problem, I felt the need to go back and revise. Read it and you'll see why.

On September 3, I self-published my story "Melon Heads" on Amazon.com for the Kindle, thus beginning my experiment in self-publishing for e-readers. September 20 saw the second coming of my previously-published story "I am the Wendigo" and November 16 saw my Lovecraftian tale "The Beast of the Bosporus." My most recent self-published story, "Illegal Alien," debuted on Amazon December 11. At some point I created a formal Amazon author page as well.

At first, I enrolled all of them in the Kindle Direct Publishing Select program, which allows members of Amazon Prime to borrow my stories for free (I still get paid through a fund set up for this purpose) and allows me to release my stories for free on certain promotional days. However, being part of KDP Select is conditional on not having the stories available online anywhere else.

KDP Select proved to be a mixed bag. The promotional days allowed me to move large numbers of copies free, which I had hoped would generate more reviews and build buzz, leading to more sales later. The increased number of reviews I expected did not come through (most reviewers are people I already know), although there's no way of knowing the long-term effects of having dozens if not hundreds of readers having seen my content for free. Maybe I'm creating a fan base that will pay off in the future when I have real books available. After all, I did once get some traffic to this blog from a Google search for "Illegal Alien Matthew W. Quinn." The number of free copies moved on the first promotional day tends to be significantly higher than the number moved on later days, and I recall only actual borrow.

So I bought some Facebook advertising for the short stories, remembering how successful it had been in attracting readers to my blog in the summer of 2011. This provided to be a major bust--I'd spent upwards of $70 on advertising, but gleaned few if any sales. This not only applied to my ads for "Melon Heads" and "Wendigo" that received relatively few views and clicks, but even my ads for "The Beast of the Bosporus" that received over 100,000 views and over 100 clicks. Paying $45 for a much nicer cover for "Illegal Alien" didn't generate much sales either. So far, "Illegal Alien" has made 1/4 of the sales "Melon Heads" made in its first month, although since it was published mid-month, I won't be able to make an accurate comparison even after four weeks pass.

This meant more drastic measures were needed. I turned off the KDP Select auto-renew for all four stories. The other stories were either still in their first term or I'd allowed them to renew for another term, but "Wendigo" would no longer be Kindle-exclusive come December 21. This would be especially useful because an ad I'd purchased for my Facebook fan page increased my fan count from 80 to close to 1,400 (as of 12/29), most of whom apparently are from Turkey or other Middle Eastern countries. As far as I know, people from these countries cannot buy from Amazon (except through tricky means like getting a UK e-mail address to access Amazon.co.uk). People from India can access the same Amazon as Americans, but that would exclude Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.

On Christmas Eve, I made the leap to Smashwords, putting up "Wendigo." Soon afterward, I "greased the wheel" a little bit by paying $5.00 to "promote" the post announcing the story was now on Smashwords. The number of "likes" I've gotten from my Middle Eastern fans indicated the move was much appreciated. Within 24 hours, I'd sold ten copies of "Wendigo" in two batches of five. I figured Smashwords' sale of stories in multiple file formats (to allow people using different e-readers or not using e-readers at all) and not being limited by country had paid dividends.

Then when checking my Smashwords Dashboard, I noticed my royalties had been cut in half. I queried Smashwords and looked at the Excel spreadsheet and found that five of the ten sales had been refunded due to "fraudulent payment method." I wrote Smashwords and learned that thieves use Smashwords to either test out stolen cards or "max out" said cards. My remaining five sales were refunded as well for the same reason.

(Smashwords limits purchases to five at a time to minimize the impact of fraud--some poor author "sold" 1,000 copies to a fraudster and then had his purchases refunded.)

Rather than earning $7.85 in a day, I'd earned zero--and my royalties remained zero as of 12/29. I'm not going to complain too much, since it's just one short story and I've only been a Smashwords member for a week or so. Some discussion on LinkedIn indicates that "premium status" (which ensures one's writing is marketed on other sites) on Smashwords is where the real money comes from, and that's still pending. Before I pass judgement on Smashwords as a whole, I'll wait to see what happens with that. I might even buy a Facebook ad for "Wendigo," since it's much, MUCH less limited than Amazon KDP and that might have been a reason behind the first Facebook ad campaign's failure.

My strategy for the moment is to publish the three remaining stories on Smashwords as soon as their KDP Select periods end, which will be in February and March. Any future stories I self-publish will be on KDP Select for one term (to allow for one or two promotional days) and then placed on Smashwords. Maybe I'll post my stories on lulu.com as well.

Most-Reviewed Story So Far: "The Beast of the Bosporus"

My experiment in publishing short fiction for e-readers has entered into its third month. So far, although "Melon Heads" remains my top seller with a combined 200 sales and giveaways, "The Beast of the Bosporus" has gotten the most reviews on blogs.

Here they are:

Matthew Stienberg

Matt Mitrovich

Sean Korsgaard

It warms the heart to see my work so well-received, especially when Matt S. said I inspired him to blog and write.

However, blog reviews don't necessarily translate into large numbers of sales, at least at first. I've sold six copies of "Beast" so far and given away around 82 for promotional purposes. This is not to show a lack of appreciation for these upstanding gentlemen and the help they've provided, mind, but it is a lesson.

(Matt M. said his review got 19 "up" votes on the Lovecraft sub-reddit, so it might sell better in the long run. Things like reddit and StumbleUpon are avenues I've not really touched.)


At some point, I'm going to buy some Facebook advertising. When I did a Facebook ad campaign in the summer of 2011, it brought large amounts of traffic here, both as a result of direct ad-clicking and from people who'd linked my blog pages to the Starcraft Wiki, ensuring a continuous flow of hits (1,500-odd so far) from there. One of the downsides of self-publishing is that you've got to pay for advertising, not your publisher. I've run the numbers and I'd need to sell three copies (I get $0.35 per story sold as royalties) to justify every $1 spent on Facebook ads.

I'll keep you posted on how this goes.

My Top Traffic Sources and Lessons Thereof

Was checking the stats on my blog this morning and took a look at the top traffic sources since the blog began in 2010.

My single biggest source was www.alternatehistory.com, with 5,379 hits. Meanwhile, alternatehistory.com has 753 hits. Given how my blog has 60,000 hits total, this represents around 10% of my total traffic. Also, I've noticed my blog traffic has gone down during the recent months I've had myself blocked from posting on the message-board to avoid being distracted from my personal writing. This indicates my strategy of putting blog links in the signature of every post I make has been a successful traffic draw.

(For the record, this is the alternate-history forum I often mention in conversation.)

Meanwhile, google.com has brought in 5,043 hits, with google.co.uk bringing in 437, google.ca 408, and google.au 169. That's combined around 6,000 hits, another 10% of my traffic total. This shows the power of the Google search engine and possibly why putting one's blog on Blogger (which is part of Google) is a good idea.

Facebook brought in 1,496 hits. I typically post blog links on my profile page and on my Facebook fan page Matthew W. Quinn, Speculative Fiction Writer. Although this doesn't seem to have been the hit-getter I thought it was, I do recall getting a lot of hits on my recent post on why I'm voting Libertarian this year. I'm going to keep this strategy up.

A surprisingly large source of hits was the Starcraft Wikia, with 1,302 hits. Here's how it happened. In the summer of 2011, I bought some Facebook advertising (I can't remember how much) and after some trial and error, decided to narrowly target it to a certain few things. One of those things was Starcraft, since I had been blogging a fair bit about Starcraft II, a tie-in novel I outlined and planned to propose to Blizzard, and some suggestions I had for the future of the Starcraft storyline. Some of these links ended up in the Starcraft Wikia and have been bearing fruit since. Lesson: Facebook advertising is good, as is narrowly targeting it. I considered buying some Facebook advertising for my two short stories available on Amazon.com, but I'd need to move some very large numbers in order to break even (for $50 worth of advertising, I'd need to sell 150 copies).

Last of these outside traffic sources is Wikipedia, with 158 hits. After DragonCon one year (I can't remember if it was 2011 or 2010), I put some links to my DragonCon blog posts there, in particular those relating to S.M. Stirling and his Draka, Island in the Sea of Time, and Emberverse novels. I think one of the links got purged, but others are still there.

Finally, last of all traffic sources period is the blog itself, with 149 hits. This seems to indicate that visitors to the blog visit one page or another but don't go from page to page very often.

One of the sources not listed at all was my personal Twitter feed. I have definitely gotten blog hits from tweeting my blog posts (t.co being the source listed), but it doesn't seem like I've gotten very many. I also haven't been getting many blog hits from guest blog posts. However, I haven't done very many of those and I haven't done those until recently, so that should be expected.