Another year almost wrapped up and in the books

2015 is knocking on the door. I, for one, am looking forward to waving bye-bye to 2014 as it recedes in my rear view mirror. This year was a rough one on many levels. Car accidents, major surgeries, flooded basements, etc, etc, and the list goes on. You name it, the Schiariti household dealt with it. I spent most of my free time revamping, fixing, editing, Funeral with a View. When I didn't want to, I worked on it. When my head wasn't in the right place to be doing much of anything, I worked on it. When it got to the point where I thought it would never be up to my standards and I felt like burning the damn thing, I worked on it. I've estimated that I'd spent about 1,000 hours fiddling with the manuscript between January and the end of September. That's a huge time investment. Did it pay off? In ways it did. In other ways it didn't.

Funeral with a View, after all the trouble, second guessing, and times when I just wanted to give up, turned out better than good. It turned out great. From cover to blurb, prologue to epilogue, I couldn't be more proud of what became of all that hard work. Busting my balls shows in a fantastic final product I can present to the world with my head held high. I did it. So, on a personal level the book is a win. That's not to say things are all sunshine and roses, though.

Similar to the months following the publication of Ghosts of Demons Past, I spent a great deal of time promoting my contemporary romance. I took a different approach this time: paid advertising. I bought spots, ads, a blog tour, hosted giveaways, contests. This promo blitz is just ending now, as the book is on sale for $0.99 through tomorrow. But here's the thing. None of it has really worked. It's moving in dribs and drabs, picking up killer reviews at a good rate, but it's still not getting into the hands of a lot of readers. Why? No idea. I've heard it's the lack of a large 'back list' on my part. I've been told that it may not be 'commercial enough.' This is really all supposition. Nobody can know the whys or hows of a book's success or failures. It simply is what it is. And that's okay. At least, I see it that way now. There was a period when I wasn't okay with it.

In the midst of all this promotion I fell into a profound funk. No matter how many messages I got from readers telling me they loved it or how many good reviews showed up on amazon and good reads, the piss poor performance tainted my perception of everything. Long story short, it made me feel like shit. A lot of that's my own fault, and I freely admit it. See, I'd gotten sucked into the numbers game. Sales numbers, ranking numbers, charting in categories, all that jazz.  I was in this mode of thinking where numbers were a sort of validation. If the numbers suck, that could only mean the book isn't as good as I thought it was.

I'm done with all that now.

Fact: no matter where you go there's always going to be someone bigger, smarter, stronger, faster, more successful, whatever. But ... that has no bearing on my work or what I do, not anymore.  I'm lucky enough to have a good group of readers who like what I've done and what I'm doing. That's awesome. And they're there when this new "Happy Matt" starts to regress back to "WAHHH Matt." Can't thank them enough for that.

All this numbers bullshit? It overshadowed the real reason why I do this stuff to begin with. I write because I like it and to have fun. It's not my job, and it's not my life's dream to be a best seller with millions of adoring fans ... although that would be groovy! As I've said before, I write for ME and publish to SHARE. Moving forward, it's about time to get back to having fun with it, because there's more to me than just books. Writing is something I've involved myself in, but it doesn't define me. Some folks are consumed by it. And that's okay! If that's what they want to do, good for them. Although I fed into the 'must be a success!' monster, writing is a hobby. Don't think that I don't take it seriously when I put something out there for public consumption. I do take it seriously. If my name's on the cover I'm going to make sure it's good. No half-assed stories coming from my computer, that's a guarantee. Still, there's more to life than books and writing.

Since this epiphany of mine, I've rediscovered other things I love to do that fell to the wayside, namely playing guitar. Up until a month or so ago, I hadn't touched any of my axes in almost a year. Oh, they gave me dirty looks when I took them out of the cases and plugged them into my amps, but they quickly forgave me once I spent some quality time with them. Out of all my hobbies, guitar is the longest lived. Been playing for about 23 years now. It was a crime that I took so much time off from them. For shame on me! Like writing, playing is something I like to do and something I'm good at.

New attitude going into the new year. No resolutions, no promises made that I can't live up to, but a different outlook. I'll write when I feel like it, publish when I'm ready. No forcing myself to do anything I'm not in the mood for, no getting sucked up in the popularity contest that is the world of independent publishing. Will 2015 see a new book from Matt Schiariti? Yeah, I think I can manage that. I've already started a couple WIPs. One's a romantic suspense that I've mentioned before either here or on my FB page (so hard to keep track of what I say, where I say it, when I say it). Another is the follow up to Ghosts of Demons Past. Then I have a bunch of short stories I'd like to revisit and polish up for publication in the meantime. Who knows how long it will take to write those other two novels? I don't know. And I don't care. It'll take as long as it takes to get them done and to get them done right.

I'm still getting used to this Happy Matt outfit. Fits nicely despite the, ahem, holiday weight. Will he be around 24/7? No way. He'll have his bad days like anybody else. However, he's more prominent than he was a couple months back and I have a good feeling he'll be around even more in 2015.

Happy New Year, everyone! If you've made it this far you have once again won a no prize. If you should ever heard a loud "KERRRANG" emanating from somewhere in the north east, do not be alarmed. That's me rocking out in Madison Square Basement, smiling.

Catch ya in 2015!

Wins and Losses

It's been an interesting couple weeks. I've survived my first blog tour, I've started hosting for other tours for the first time, and I purchased advertising for promotion, which is another first for me. That's a lot of firsts. How has everything panned out? Read on, faithful follower, and ye shall find out.

**By the way ...I believe in transparency here, so I'm not going to sugar coat or boast about anything. The numbers that I'll be mentioning are what they are. Take that for what it's worth**

Let's start out with Ghosts of Demons Past. For a couple days around Halloween I lowered the price on my debut paranormal/urban fantasy novel to $0.00. Yep, I made it free for all. I pimped the hell out of it on facebook and twitter, and I booked several free ads for it. The result? It moved a little over 4,000 copies. Not an astounding number by any stretch of the imagination, but not a number to be ignored, either. This middling performance got my name and the book out there to a wider audience, and helped me rank in the amazon free store, hitting #16 in the Paranormal & Urban category. Nice! This promotion is still paying dividends because I got a few sales out of it, a bunch of borrows (which are kinda like sales, but not really), and seven reviews thus far. The reviews are probably most important. Much like the mythical Sasquatch, Jersey Devil, and Jackalope, I've heard tell of this magical "fifty reviews is what it takes to get Amazon to promote you" number. Ghosts of Demons Past is now knocking on the door at forty-nine, forty-one of which are 5 star reviews. There have been a couple ratings on goodreads, too, but we'll stick with amazon for all of this stuff. I suspect I'll hit that all-important fifty review mark soon. Then we'll be able to see if that rumor is all it's cracked up to be.

On to the Funeral with a View blog tour. It ran for two weeks, and sixteen-or-so blogs signed up. There were interviews. There were tens lists (something I'd never heard of before but am now an expert on). There were guests posts, reviews, a giveaway ... all manner of shenanigans. Interest was pretty good. Lots of people left replies to my guests blogs, a slew of people tweeted and facebooked (is that a word? IT IS NOW!) about it, and around 3,700 entries were logged on the rafflecopter giveaway. The biggest "win" is the amount of reviews the blog tour generated. This is a very piddly number in the grand scheme of things, but Funeral with a View now has twelve reviews on Amazon: eleven 5 star, one 4 star. That's not too shabby, right? There were a couple blogs that reviewed it highly, but have yet to transfer said reviews to Amazon. That's okay. This is all volunteer, after all, and that they took part in the tour is greatly appreciated. That all sounds great, doesn't it? Tweets, reviews, interest, etc. It's early days yet, but I'm not sure how much the tour is paying off.

During the two weeks in which the tour ran, not a single sale was to be had. And I get that. People enter a contest to win an e-copy of a book to do just that: to see if they'll win. Why buy a book if there's a chance to win it. This is where the paid ads come in. Along with the tour, I bought a couple ads to get the book into people's hands, or at least bring it to their attention. The result of that? Two sales. That's what you call a tax write-off. Hey, it happens. Am I disappointed? Yep. Did I expect it? Sorta. No matter how good I think (and by the reviews, other people think) Funeral with a View is, I wasn't so deluded as to feel it would be a runaway hit. BUT! The people who have read it have really enjoyed it. We'll say that's a monetary loss, but a moral "win."

So what's the point of this rambling and word vomit? I'm looking at the bright side. The bright side is that I have now dubbed myself "The Best Reviewed, Worst Selling Author on Amazon."

 BEHOLD MY NEW FACEBOOK AUTHOR PAGE BANNER!

That right there cracks me up every time I look at it, and is more evidence of my twisted sense of humor as it pertains to me. But there is a reason behind it. Let us take a look at some math! Don't worry, I have an engineering degree.

SO! I currently have six titles with my name on them; three that I've self published, three small-press anthologies to which I've contributed short stories. All totaled, those books/anthologies have a combined 136 reviews. That's hot a huge pool from which to sample, but political polls have been based on much more insignificant numbers. Still, we'll make it more interesting and keep it limited to my three self-published titles. Taking out those others leaves us with 127 amazon reviews. For argument's sake, let's say that four and five star reviews are "positive." You could make an argument for 3 star being positive, too, and you wouldn't be wrong, but I'll be even more stringent on myself and keep it limited to the four and five star ratings. Ghosts of Demons Past, Words with Fiends, and Funeral with a View have, to date, received 123 ratings of four stars or higher. *doing the math ... % over 100 equals is over of ... multiply ... divide ... etc* What's the answer? Rounding rules being what they are, that leaves us with a 97% overall positive rating based on almost 130 reviews. Doing more math, 70% of my reviews have been five stars. What does this all mean? Out of my three independently published works, I have an average rating of 4.73 stars. That does not suck. Actually, it's pretty fucking good. It's not only pretty fucking good, but it's a win.

As it stands now, my books are selling at the pace of the continental drift. That's okay. It's not a race, it's a marathon. I know I'm not the only one in this position. There are plenty of authors out there, most of whom are more talented than I am, that are struggling as well. But someone's paying attention, and those who have gotten their hands on them have rated my stories very highly. My barometer for success right now is based on one sale at a time, one review at a time, one win at a time. It's been a scratching and clawing fight to get either of those going, but it hasn't been all bad. Judging from my reviews, I may be on to something. This whole "Best Reviewed, Worst Selling" thing started off as a joke with a good author friend of mine. We got a good laugh out of it. We still get a good laugh out of it. But what the hell? I'm rolling with it. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. If nothing else, I have a cool slogan for this niche I've carved for myself.

Coming soon (and I hope to be a little better with the blogging, promise) I'll be starting up a "Books That Don't Suck" feature here at Overly Verbose. Straight from my amazon review archives of over 400 reviewed titles, I'll be pulling some more obscure novels out to share with everyone. It'll be a mix of indie and traditional authors, but none of them will suck ... thus the title. I'd like to say this is going to be a weekly feature, but I learned never to let my ass write a check my mouth can't cash. Or is that the other way around?

Until next time! So long. Take care. See 'ya round the interwebs.

Matt "ABRWSA" Schiariti

 

You say it's your birthday?

Hey, it's my birthday, too, yeah! That's right. On this day in history thirty-nine years ago, yours truly came kicking and screaming into the world. Mom and Dad (R.I.P.) have been shaking their heads ever since, as have my siblings who were witlessly under the impression the parental units were done having kids eight years prior to my arrival.

How am I spending my day? That's easy: I ain't doing jack squat. I took off from work, content to sit here and do a shitload of absolutely nothing. But I figured I'd use the time to type up a blog. Consider it PT for my gimpy pinky finger.

Undoubtedly you're all dying to know what goodies I've received on this day that shall live in infamy. Here's the list:

• Socks (which I desperately needed...don't ask)
• An Amazon gift card (ALWAYS WELCOMED!)
• A variety of comic book-themed T-shirts (can never have too many of those)
• A sports watch (picked out by my very own almost-eight-year-old-daughter...AWWWW)

And that's not even counting the little things. The wife treated me to a Schwartzie from Primo Hoagies . It was delish. (Note: If you haven't had a sub from Primo's and there's one close to you, I highly recommend you drop what you're doing and go get one right now. They'll ruin all other sammiches for you. Holding a busload of nuns hostage and demanding one of their delectable deli delights as ransom is a distinct possibility once you've experienced their splendor. You've been warned. (Also note: I do not suggest in any way, shape, or form, that you take anybody hostage for any reason, nuns or otherwise.)) Then there was Babyface Vinster, my sixteen-month-old who strutted to 'What Does the Fox Say'. I witnessed much twerking, grinning, and arm waving. Not one to be left out, The Boo (previous aforementioned almost-eight-year-old daughter) got in on the movin' and groovin', and managed not to trample her baby brother. Winning!

But wait! There's more! What's a birthday without well-wishing and good vibes from some of my bestest book buddies? Joooooood (that's Jude to you and me) has the spotlight trained on me and Ghosts of Demons Past over on her blog. In addition to that, my great friend and fantastic author pal, Belinda Frisch, went so far as to buy me advertising for GODP. How cool is that? It was as unexpected as it was touching. It's nice to know that someone believes in the book so much they'll go out of their way to help it be seen.  Thanks to you two, Angela Pratt, and Venture Cecena, who've been flooding twitter with pimpage and birthday wishes!

In other news:

My most recent foray into the world of short story anthologies is live, right in time for my birfday. Padwolf Publishing's latest collection, "Lucky 13: Thirteen Tales of Crime & Mayhem" is now available in paperback on Amazon. My story is entitled 'A Dollar and a $cream', and it's, like, groovy in a far out way. The e-book version will be available soon, and marks the first time anything I've written will be read by a professional. Yep. There's gonna be an audiobook version. Despite my lobbying, James Earl Jones was unavailable to commit to the gig, but it'll be awesome regardless.

As far as Funeral With a View goes, I cranked out over two thousand words yesterday, thus increasing the feelz factor by 26.7%. Don't delve into the math. It's a series of highly complex equations and algorithms that would explode your head like Michael Ironside in the movie 'Scanners' if you were to dwell on them for an extended period of time. Because I typed so much awesomeness yesterday, I do not feel the least bit bad about sitting on my buttocks all day doing next to nothing. Anyway, I'm so very close to completing the final draft of this book that has been following me around for the past few months. Is my summer release target feasible? You betcha.

And that's all there is for today, folks! As always, thanks for reading, and see ya 'round Teh Intarwebz.

M.J.S.

MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR

Big thanks to Belinda Frisch for approaching me to participate in this blog tour. She's a fantastic author and a great friend who has a proclivity for keeping my butt in check. 

Here's a little bit about her:

After fifteen years of working in healthcare, Belinda Frisch's stories can't help being medicine influenced. A writer of dark tales in the horror, mystery, and thriller genres, she is a storyteller at heart, and has been writing since her teens. Her fiction has appeared in Shroud Magazine, Dabblestone Horror, and Tales of Zombie War. She is an honorable mention winner in the Writer's Digest 76th Annual Writing Competition. Her novel, "Cure", is the runner-up in the General Fiction category of the 2012 Halloween Book Festival and was optioned for film. She is the author of "Better Left Buried", "Fatal Reaction", "Cure", and "Afterbirth", in addition to a number of short stories. She resides in upstate New York with her husband, son, and a small menagerie of beloved animals. 

As you can see, her work is as eclectic as it is prolific, ranging from zombies, to dark horror, to medical thriller, young adult, and now romance. Want to know more? Check out her blog, Facebook page, and follow her on twitter.

On with the tour!

MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR

1. What am I working on?

Back in early 2012, I got an idea for a story. The idea came about when I asked myself "What happens when a guy walks into his own funeral?" Five weeks and 130,000 words later the rough draft for what is now known as Funeral With a View was born. What type of novel is it? While it started as something completely different, FWAV ended up being a romance, of all things. Yes, a romance. Written by a guy who's published stories about mobile scrabble games gone horribly awry and an alcoholic ghost hunter who can not only see ghosts, but can talk to them, too. You heard it here first, folks. I don't have a blurb as of yet, and the cover isn't finalized (I've seen the preliminary and it looks great!), but Funeral With a View is a life story.  It covers dating, family, friends, life, death, marriage, tough decisions, betrayal, forgiveness, letting go, and all points in between. I'm looking to have it out this summer, and I can't wait for readers to get their hands on it. You know what? How about a peek at the rough cover? I'm hyped up on coffee, so I'm feeling  generous. Once again, this isn't the final, but you get the idea. I'll be posting the official blurb and cover when they're ready.

Come see the softer side of Matt Schiariti

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

The short answer is: it's different because I wrote it. Style, tone, dialogue, characterization, these are things everyone does a little differently. 

Now for the long answer.

When I was writing Ghosts of Demons Past, I didn't want the main character, Seth Gabriel, to be your typical paranormal 'hero'. He's not a gun-toting alpha male who always has the right answers. In fact, he's a bit of a screw up. I also wanted him to go through some growing pains. Seth isn't an established ghost hunter, and has only been in the business for about a year. He freely admits that he doesn't know what he's doing half the time.

Funeral With a View is an entirely different kind of flying. Altogether. First off, it's a romance written buy a guy, told through a male first person point of view. That's not exactly the norm for the genre.  Secondly, it's a bit of a personal story. Some events in the book are things I've lived through. It's not a memoir by any stretch of the imagination, but there are some experiences in there I didn't manufacture. As for what separates fact from fiction? I'm not telling. If a person held a gun to my head (please don't do that) and demanded I find other things to compare it to, I'd say it's part The Story of Us, part Defending Your Life, part Get Low. Take those and put my stamp on it and you have FWAV.

I like flawed, but not severely broken characters that readers can relate to. There's a little bit of me in each story, including a liberal dose of my odd sense of humor, which makes my work different.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I write whatever story interests me. The lion's share of my work to date falls under the paranormal or horror umbrella, but I'm not limited to that, as evidence by Funeral With a View. If I come up with a monster story that jazzes me (and I do have one), I'll write that. If a thriller idea tickles the back of my brain (got one of these, too!), I'll explore it. My ideas are all over the place. As long as the story is intriguing and features characters I can sink my teeth into, I'll write it regardless of what label ends up attached to it.

4. How does my writing process work.

So far, I'm a confirmed 'pantser'. Everything I've published was written by the seat of my pants without an outline. An idea comes to mind, I think about the plot for a while, then I start writing, keeping in mind where it's going and a few key scenes along the way. Before writing Funeral With a View, which is actually the first novel I'd ever typed up, I tried outlining, going so far as to Google how other writers do it. I came upon Jim Butcher's old LiveJournal page and read it dozens of times. When I tried it I fell flat on my face. I was getting too caught up in thinking every detail through, spinning my wheels and getting nothing done. Needless to say, that was abandoned in short order. Being a 'pantser' is fun and a pain in the ass. I like letting the story and characters take me in directions I didn't plan on, but it leads to a lot of editing and rewrites and consistency checks. I do keep notes in my Word file, adding stickies in the margins for notes, what needs to come next, where I'm thinking of going, etc., so I'm not completely flying without a net. FWAV has been a long, involved undertaking because it was written early in my writing 'career'. As such, it's gone through many changes and rewrites. It hasn't been easy, but it'll be well worth it once I'm done fixing it up. This experience has made me reconsider the advantages of outlining. In the future, as I get into multiple perspective third person point of view, I plan to at least have a rough sketch from which to work where I can fill out the details as I go. 

Who's Up Next?

I've picked two authors to join in on this blog tour. That's how I roll. They're both very different, both very good, and it should be interesting to see what they have to say.

They are fellow Jersey author, Dave Conifer, who writes in a variety of genres, from topical young and new adult to thrillers, and fellow metal-head and Carnival 13 contributor ,Armand Rosamilia, who has written everything from the zombie apocalypse to non-fiction about women in the world of heavy metal music. I kid you not. Armand used to live in Jersey but has since relocated to Florida. Lucky duck.

Here's a bit more about them:

Dave Conifer is a fitness fanatic living in South Jersey with his wife and three kids. When he's not coaching wrestling or soccer or working as a boy scout leader or girl scout leader, Dave likes to read non-fiction history. He also blogs about the 48 solar panels on his roof and how they generate nearly all the power needed by his family of five.
Dave loves to hear from his readers. He can be found at daveconiferfanpage on Facebook. Send an email to daveconifer@rocketmail.com to be added to the mailing list and find out when something new is coming, or just to say hi.

Or visit Dave's official web site to sign up for emailed updates about new releases.

Book three of the Cold Cases series is currently in the works!

daveconifer.weebly.com

Armand Rosamilia is a New Jersey boy currently living in sunny Florida, where he writes when he's not watching the Boston Red Sox and listening to Heavy Metal music... and because of him they won the 2013 World Series, so he's pretty good at watching!

He's written over 100 stories that are currently available, including a few different series:

"Dying Days" extreme zombie series
"Keyport Cthulhu" horror series
"Flagler Beach Fiction Series" contemporary fiction
"Metal Queens" non-fiction music series

he also loves to talk in third person... because he's really that cool. He's a proud Active member of HWA as well.

You can find him at http://armandrosamilia.com for not only his latest releases but interviews and guest posts with other authors he likes!

and e-mail him to talk about zombies, baseball and Metal:

armandrosamilia@gmail.com

Look for their contributions on Monday, May19!