Over on Facebook, I complained about the stupid way news and commercials refer to the Super Bowl as "The Big Game" all the time, and Facebook slapped their little warning on it like it was vaccine disinformation.
Today, I continued my push to get all the short stories in my collection Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies published in standalone versions. This time, I got a cover together for "Active Shooter Training" and published it on Amazon.
This is the last story that I hadn't put out yet, so I've finished up the whole book. Feel free to pick it up, or you can buy the whole collection with this story and many more for just a few bucks more.
I got two more stories published today. I'm almost done now. These two are some of the smaller stories. The first one is called "Missing You," and I'm sure I put it out there somewhere. It's either in an Anklecast or a Dunesteef episode in one way or another. I can't for the life of me remember, though.
I really like the cover that I came up with. It's pretty good, I think. Doesn't it make you want to read it?
The other story I did was "Party Girl."
This cover is pretty much just a variation of the cover that I did for the episode of the Anklecast where I presented the story. If you listen to the Anklecast (although who does, amiright?) then you are probably pretty familiar with the story. I mean it wasn't very long ago that I put out that episode. But if you're not, you might want to buy the story. Or you could just buy the whole collection and get them all in one go.
Did a few more covers so I could publish a few more stories today. This first one took some help from my daughter, who is really good with photoshop, just to make it work. I once made a cover for this story years ago, and it sat on my desktop waiting to be used forever. Then one day, I finally got sick of seeing it there and deleted it without ever publishing the story. Now, I am recreating it today so that I can finally publish the story.
I really should have done this years ago. Imagine what it might have been like if I'd published my stories back when someone still cared. Would have been neat, right?
Anyway, this story is called "Do Over," and you might have heard me mention it here and there on Dunesteef and Anklecast episodes over the years. It's was the longest story I'd ever written before I wrote my first novel. This story is just shy of being a novel on its own.
It's about a guy who falls through a portal that takes him back in time to an earlier point in his life. He tries to change his life for the better, but old Father Time doesn't like to be messed with, and the original timeline keeps trying to reassert itself, causing chaos.
Here's the cover I came up with. It's the portal hovering in the air at the Grand Canyon.
This is one of my favorite stories I've written. I think it's pretty good. You should definitely buy it, or just get the whole collection. This is the big finale of the collection.
The other story I published today was the one I wrote for the Broken Mirror Story Event where the premise was "The phone rings in the middle of the night. The voice on the other end only says one word, but it is enough." It's the famous story that got a 1 from one of the judges. I complain about it all the time, and make sure always to counter with the fact that it also got a 10 from another one of the judges.
I like the story, but I guess it's polarizing. You might have heard it before, because I think we released it as an incentive episode for the folks who donated to the show. That's probably a pretty small number of people who have heard it, however. So, if you want to get it, it's available now. It's called "Moonlit Confession."
I did also publish it once on Smashwords, and this cover I made for it is just a recreation of that one.
It's basically a paranormal romance. The main character is a werewolf who decides to finally confess this fact to his girlfriend. How will she take it? Will he have a girlfriend anymore when he's done? Find out by buying the story and reading it. Or you can buy the whole collection and read them all! What a deal!
I took part in Journey Into... #183, and provided a voice for Marshal to use in the Edgar Allan Poe story he produced for Poe month called "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether." I had fun with it, and I hope you do too.
You can follow the link over to the Journey Into... website to listen to the story, or you could just right-click HERE and download the file to your device. Or, be as loathsome and lazy and can be and click the play button below to hear the episode.
I did a couple of covers and was able to publish a couple of stories from Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies today. This first one is a story that I have never released to the public before. It's called "Sepia Tone Prison."
The main character is a ghost who is longing to move on to the actual afterlife. What he's been doing so far is what all ghosts do. He hangs around the people who once knew him in life, and helps them by sending love their way that helps them get through their struggles. But now the very last person who ever knew him has died. There's no one left to hold him to this plane of existence. Yet he's still stuck, and he doesn't know why.
The story starts with him at the estate sale for his final dead relative. He can tell that he is attached to a desk that is for sale, and a woman buys the desk and takes it to her house, and he goes along with her, because he's tied to something that's in the desk.
Well, then hijinx and calamities ensue. Actually, there's no hijinx. It's a more serious story, but it's interesting, and now you can buy it on Amazon if you want. Or you can just get the whole collection.
After I finished with that, I went on to make a cover for "Little Caesars Ghost."
But I think it's a better version of the same idea. That old one was a combination of two pictures—the pizza, and my hand—and they don't really look like they go together. But the new one is one picture that I doctored to make it look like a ghost hand grabbing pizza. Does it look like a ghost? Or does it look like an alien hand instead?
Anyway, this is what you get. I'm out of time for now, but I'll get some more stories out tomorrow.
The other day, I whipped up a cover for the other lead story in my new collection, Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies. You guessed it, it's "Kingdom of Flies." Rish and I have been using this website called Unsplash, which is really great, and I highly recommend. It was a breeze to find a picture that would work for the cover, and it looks absolutely great. What do you think?
I made sure to carry the style from the cover of Fireflies through, though I had to move the author name up because of where the fly was positioned. Hopefully, these stories still look kind of connected in the same way that they Christmas stories were connected.
So, now that story is published and available for anyone who would prefer to buy it separately rather than get the whole collection. I'm like Burger King here, I want you to have it your way.
Alright, folks, let the crossover event begin! Here's part one, in which I present my story, "Long Term Memory." After spending his life inventing a time machine, a 70-year-old-man travels back to when he was merely 25. He's going to make sure that this time he ends up with the woman he's spent the last 45 years dreaming of. He's thought of everything...or has he?
Afterward, the crossover continues. I am joined by both Marshal Latham and Rish Outfield to discuss the story, the crossover, and everything in between. Hope you enjoy it!
Right click HERE to download the episode, or just listen by pressing the play button below.
Continuing my quest from the other day, I put together a cover for the lead story of Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies which is "Fireflies", as you might have guessed from the title. It was probably one of those two, right? Anyway, at first I came up with this:
One of the first scenes in the story when the supernatural phenomenon manifests itself is when bright floating lights appear in Oscar and Simi's room, and I wanted that for the cover. But then I thought it might look better if there was a room in the background instead of just plain black, so I made a second version.
That's the one I decided to go with. What do you think? Which is better? Should I change it up and put the first one in?
Anyhow, I was out of time to blow on making covers, so that's all I got to today.
I was talking with Rish about whether I should publish standalone versions of all the short stories that are in my two collections that I've published so far. I've always been a big believer in providing the customer with whatever it is that they might want. Dean Wesley Smith talked a lot about that on his blog. When you write something, you should publish it in as many versions as possible: paperback, hardcover, audio, eBook, foreign language, large collection, small collection, and yes, standalone.
I've been helping Rish put together covers for a lot of his short stories so that he can publish them...or republish them with non-repellent cover art, and he said that at the very least, I should give it a shot and see how easy it is. So, I figured, why not? It seems like that was one of the mottos of some podcast I used to listen to...or talk for...
Anyway, I started with the Christmas stories from Christmas Creatures. My daughter had done fun little pictures for most of the stories, so I had art ready at hand. This is the first cover, the one for "The Christmas Creature."
I used the same fonts and everything, and just changed the background to white. It was really simple to put together the file and throw together the cover, so I published it right away and started on another.
I just went down the table of contents, making standalone versions and covers to go along with them. Next was "The Spirit of Christmas".
I made sure to keep the covers similar. I wanted people to be able to just look at the cover and know that it was a B.D. Anklevich Christmas story.
Next was "Dear Santa." Way back in 2014, I actually did publish a few stories on Smashwords, and this was one of them, so it had a cover from those days.
It's actually a much better cover than the new one I made, but I wanted the covers all to match, so I used the clipart of a candy cane instead of Santa swinging a crowbar.
Next was "A Christmas Wish" which had a fun picture of a yeti for the cover.
I quickly moved on to "Taking a Left Turn," a story I put on the Anklecast and nobody listened to.
And, lastly, there was "Crossing the Globe," which may be my favorite story of the whole collection.
Those last two stories are available on their own now, so if you don't want to buy the whole book because it has stories you've already heard on the Dunesteef, but you would like to hear some new stories, then definitely pick those up. That's the reason these versions exist at all, because I want to do as Dean Wesley Smith and Rish Outfield say and give the customer every chance possible to buy a copy of something from me.
Oh, speaking of wanting to read a new story, I did publish one more story. This one isn't even in the Christmas Collection. Instead, it's the first story in my next Christmas Collection which will come out someday in the future when I've written enough new stories to fill a book. This one is called "Postdated" and is available nowhere else but in this standalone version available on Amazon.
"Why not?" Rish had asked, and he'd been right. It wasn't too hard. I'd put all those stories together and published them in one weekend. Mind you, I did little else the whole weekend, but still, that's a lot of publishing for a two day period.
It wasn't that hard, and I figured I'd get going getting the rest of my stories published as well. I'll do the ones in my other collection, Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies next. Then maybe, once I've finished that, I can keep going on the ones that will be in the Short Fiction Collection, Volume Two. This is pretty fun.
I should have done this so many years ago, considering how easy it is. I can't believe that I sat here on my hands while Rish Outfield did this for years and years. I am so ashamed for letting him best me. I have to turn the tables somehow. Excuse me, while I go plot for a while.
Okay, the day is here. I finished with the eBook manuscript, and Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies is available to buy on the Amazon store.
It's a nice book with 83,000 words of fantastic storytelling. You may remember some of the stories from the years of the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine. Others are completely new.
It contains the stories Fireflies, Date Night, Little Caesars Ghost, Party Girl, Sepia Tone Prison, The Search for Freedom, Active Shooter Training, Moonlit Confession, Missing You, Kingdom of Flies, and Do Over.
And it shouldn't be long before I finish the paper versions of the book. Then you can get a version that you can put up on your shelf next to your 50 Shades of Grey collection. Won't that be nice.
My son said he was going to turn his banana into a dolphin, and I thought he did a pretty good job of it, though the fin on the side is hard to see in the picture.
Ever seen a finished show on a timeline? That’s a lot of edits. Sometimes it blows me away to step back and see how much work goes into something like this.
Anyway, the January Anklecast is finished, and I should get it posted for the patrons tonight. The rest of y’all will get it on the regular feed next Saturday, I guess, or you could join the Patreon and get it right now!
Every author wants to see his name on a spine, it's what we live for. We'd probably all be fine with the books never even selling as long as we got to see our name on the spine and own our own copy of it.
I published my first book, a collection of my crazy Christmas stories called, Christmas Creatures back in September. It was quite a triumph for me, and something long overdue, but what I put out was only the eBook version, and I wanted all the versions of that book to be available.
So, once the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season passed us by, I got to work learning how to format a file for print. I've worked at it almost constantly for the last few weeks. There's something about it that just fascinates me, and it's enough to keep me going, flailing away until I figure out how to do each and every thing necessary to get the book formatted properly.
Yesterday, at long last, I submitted my paperback version. Today, I submitted the hardback version. Then, I ordered myself some author copies. Before I recommend that any of you buy a copy, I want to make sure that they are as good as I hoped.
So, I guess stand by, and soon enough, I'll get those books, see if they're any good, and then either fix the problems they have or try to convince you all that you need a copy on your shelf.
I'm also going to start right into my next book, another collection, this time of my non-Christmas related stuff. It will be called Kingdom of Flies and Fireflies: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume One.
I'll publish that as an eBook, then get right into making the manuscripts for the physical copies too. I can't wait till you can get your own paperback or hardcover copy, or till I can get one too.
Okay, okay, one more. I helped Rish make a cover for his story "Not the Same." It's about a set of identical twins that one day are not quite identical anymore. Rish gave me a few options for the picture, and this is what I chose to go with.
I had fun with it, bringing in one of Rish's cover designs, and using the eyedropper to match the color to that green that he uses for everything. Why not, right? It could be his brand.
After finishing, I sent it to him and said, "here you go, eat your heart out." Immediately after that, I started second guessing myself. I just really didn't like it. I didn't like where the author name was on the picture, and I didn't like the font for the author name anymore either. It just looked way too hard to see.
One of the things they say that is very important is to design your book so that you can read the important stuff even when its the tiny little thumbnail of the book cover, and you sure couldn't with that font. So, I took another stab at it. I chose a totally different picture option with more dark space to put the words in, so they would stand out better. Here's the final version.
I like it a lot more, and I suspect you'll see it on Rish's Amazon page soon.
I did a few more covers for Rish. It's the same as it ever was, he goes to Unsplash.com and gets an image, I do the typesetting for the covers. First there was another side story from the series.
Then I re-did the cover for the original story, "Lost & Found." The photo Rish got was really great, interesting and evocative, so it didn't take much to make it shine.
Although, in the font that we've been using, the ampersand looked really weird. I didn't like it, so I did another version with the actual word "and" instead.
I'm pretty sure Rish likes it better too. I think he's going to use that one when he puts it up on Amazon.
Rish asked me to help him with some covers for some of his stories. He's trying to get stories from his "Lost and Found" series published, but he knows his cover design usually doesn't cut it. So, I put these together for him:
I really like how they look, from the font to the color of the text, and I really like that all the stories match and look like they go together. I think Rish likes them a lot too, so you can expect to see them gracing the eBooks that he has on sale at Amazon soon. He also said that he will be sending more covers my way for similar improvements.
