Greetings from 2 o'clock in the morning,

WE DID IT! After a month and a half of listening to me beg and plead in person and on Facebook, after four years of drafts, submissions, rejections, and rewrites, after a third thing that must exist, because of the rule of three, An Unattractive Vampire is finally going to be published! Thank you to everyone who helped me. If you bought a book thank you. If posted on Facebook or talked to friends, thank you. If you said, "No, seriously Jim, you should enter that contest," thank you. And for those of you who don't actually know me, but saw the title or read a sample chapter and said, "Huh, I kind of want to read that," thank you.

So, where do we go from here? Well, first of all, I'm going to go to bed. At noon tomorrow (or 2 for me), the Sword and Laser will announce which book will be the debut novel in the their collection. After that...I don't rightly know, but I'll find out. And when I do, I'll let you know.

But for now, sleep.

Thanks one and everyone.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Good morning everybody,

It's the final day of the Sword and Laser contest. At midnight PST, all of this comes to an end and whether or not this book is published will finally be decided. I expect a bumpy ride to the finish line: a day full of jumps from all the books as we make last minute pleas and pushes.

Again, if you have not preordered yet. Do it now! Seriously, right now. I'll wait...

If you have bought a book, you are a wonderful person. Also, tell a friend to buy a book. Or recommend it, using the recommend button. Or like a passage. Did I mention how cool and attractive you are?

In case you need some incentive, here are some things that await you  if this novel of mine (which, just to be clear, is long since finished) is published: more fun with the Puritans, the perils of modern New Amsterdam (or whatever they’re calling it these days), a vampire club, a werewolf bar, an Irish trickster shade, redundant terms like Irish trickster, a resurrected coma patient, corrections on what to call soda (pop), Proper Vampirism™ Revised Edition 7, the lost city of Akkad, a Chinese hopping vampire, a West African plague vampire, a Spanish Inquisitor, the Aztec god of night and magic, and much, much more...

So if you want to learn what any of that means, you know what to do: Preorder! Recommend! Like!

And as always...thank you all.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to obsessively update the Top Ten page every 30 seconds until 2 AM CST.

Happy Friday Everyone,

Hope everyone's having a good Memorial Day. Sorry to interrupt it, but...

  ...Update, update, everyone's got an update...  

It's the last week for the Sword and Laser Contest. By this time next week, we will know which books get published and which do not. In our favor, we broke 300 preorders! Hooray! I honestly did not think any of the books (beyond Cinnabar, that rapscallion) would go above 300, but here we are. Thank you one and all (especially all, you'll ALL-ways be my favorite) for ordering my book and making this happen.

That said, other books have made huge jumps in preorders over this last week which means An Unattractive Vampire is now perched precariously in the 5th spot. If we can hang on here, we get published, but we could very easily get bumped down, so we need to do what we can to get more orders. If you have a few extra credits from already buying a book, throw them into a second copy for a friend. Or just spread the word. Tell people about An Unattractive Vampire. Post the link on Facebook or Twitter. Force people you're blackmailing into buying a copy. That last one I can't LEGALLY condone, but hey, I don't have to know.

Some groups that have shown An Unattractive Vampire some love this last week:

The Blurry Photos Podcast: A great podcast for monsters and mysteries, they cover everything from Baba Yaga and Spring-Heeled Jack to Tiwanaku and The Hinterkaifeck Murders. I steal so much inspiration from these guys and will continue to do so, unapologetically. You can find them on iTunes or at http://www.blurryphotos.org/

Four Humors Theater: A critically acclaimed Minneapolis comedy theater. If you are in or visiting the Twin Cities and you have the opportunity, go see a show. I cannot recommend them highly enough. You can find them (and possibly pictures of me with actual hair) at www.fourhumorstheater.com

And of course there's my comrades over at Our Fair City, without whom, I would not have been consistently writing for the past six years. If you listen to just one post-apocalyptic audio drama featuring molepeople, mad science, and bureaucratic corporate overlords, make it Our Fair City. Available on iTunes and at www.ourfaircity.com.

I will post more updates and excerpts soon. Until then, go out there and LEGALLY get people to buy my book. In LEGAL ways. That are totally LEGAL. *WINK*

One and Everyone,

Some more good news for this campaign. First and foremost, we broke 250 preorders this week, the exact 250th being my boss. So thank you, He Who Signeth My Checks and also to all of you who don't. Although, by buying a book, you kind of did, which, according to the transitive property, makes all of you my boss. Suddenly, I'm less enthused.

Also this week, An Unattractive Vampire was chosen to be the contest's featured project on SF SIGNAL! And it includes an exclusive excerpt you won't find anywhere else (except in the book), so check it out here: 

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/05/read-excerpt-unattractive-vampire-jim-mcdoniel/

We've only got a week and some change left in this contest, so it's time to make that extra push. Spread the word, pester your friends, hold up signs at sporting events, realign the constellations so they spell out the link to my Inkshares page (I'm looking at you Living Tribunal!) and if you haven't bought a book yet, what are you waiting for: a written invitation? Because, seriously, if that's what you're waiting for I need to know now so I can mail it.

Thanks,

Jim

Greetings all,

It's Monday and that means, basically, everyone is updating their Inkshares promotions. I apologize if you are receiving fifteen of these from different authors. Although, good on you for buying 15+ books.

Also, if you've already bought a copy of An Unattractive Vampire, you will have received an e-mail featuring the rest of Chapter 7. It's a bit longer than the other excerpts, but I couldn't decide on where to cut it in half, so now you can enjoy it in all it's unfiltered, awkwardly footnoted glory. (Note: if you haven't bought the book, you can also enjoy this sample chapter using an intricate series of levers and pulleys after you click the "Read More" button below the sample Chapter.)

As for me, I am currently splitting my time between shameless self-promotion and writing audio drama scripts. Our Fair City Season 7 is slowly taking shape as we read through first drafts (Visit www.ourfaircity.com for all your mad science/molepeople-filled corporate dystopian needs) and I'm working to hit the deadline for The Marion Thauer Brown Audio Drama Scriptwriting Competition (if you're interesting in that sort of thing, you can check visit the website: http://mtbscriptcompetition.com).  So yes, as a snowman-hating magician once said, "Busy, busy, busy."

There are only two weeks left in the Sword and Laser contest, which, for some of you, means nothing, since you've already bought a book. But, if you haven't or you know someone who hasn't or you know someone, your time to help me get this published is running out. So please, buy a book and/or spread the word. I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

200 PREORDERS! 

Thank you everyone. Between this and having my book mentioned on the Sword and Laser podcast (the podcast/book club/everything whose contest we are all participating in), it's been a great twenty-four hours. 

You can listen to hosts Tom and Veronica laugh from reading my title at minute four here:

https://soundcloud.com/swordandlaser/sl-podcast-215-is-the-magician-s-quentin-too-handsome

I'm still playing with this website to figure out how it works (Oh, you mean sample chapters go on their own page and not in the comments?) so bear with me. But expect more updates and excerpts soon.

Also, there's plenty more to be done. We still have sixteen days and plenty of good books working their way up to replace us, so please, if you haven't yet preordered a book, do so. And if you have, tell a friend. Or an enemy. Or some stranger on the street. I'm really not that picky.

Nearing two hundred preorders. Thank you to everyone who has purchased a book and/or spread the word so far. And now, as requested, here is an excerpt from Chapter 7.

            On. Off. On. Off.

            Amanda let the revelation of her house’s ownership wash over her.

            On. Off. On. Off.

            It was one thing to appear at a window claiming to be a vampire. Turning up again and attacking her brother was pretty awful too. But claiming to have owned a suburban house for over three hundred years was insane, stupid, and utterly inconceivable.

            On. Off. On.

            “Could you stop that?” she said, her patience snapping as she considered impossibilities.

            Off.

            “With the light on,” she clarified.

            On.

            “How does a tiny switch ignite a glass candle?” asked Yulric, partially to her, partially to himself, but mostly to the universe at large.

            “Electricity,” she answered. After a minute’s thought, she clarified, “Bottled lightning.”

            “Ah,” he said. The intricate workings of various circuits, wires, and fossil fuel burning power plants were beyond him, but dominating an awesome power of the natural world and confining it to a jar was something he could easily understand. His respect for the troublesome blonde girl grew. “I suppose the jars are kept in the walls then?”
           

           “Sure,” she said patronizingly. He flipped the light switch off and on again, this time imagining how the action moved a jar lid over just enough for slivers of lightning to eke out, which wasn’t so far from the truth.

            “So, you are my landlord,” she reasoned. “All those checks…er…,” she paused to think back to what Simon’s books would call them, “…notes of script I paid, they were all going to a man buried under my cellar.”

            “Though it has been some time since anyone considered me a ‘man,’ I imagine your notes of script have mostly gone to the bank in whose hands I left the deed in trust. So, in essence, yes, your statement is correct.” The vampire picked a picture up off a table. “This is very well done. Who is the artist?”

            “It’s called a photograph. It’s a...” She sought an idiot’s definition of what a photo is.

            “Picture made from light,” he interrupted. “Photo meaning light, graph meaning drawn. Not that difficult.”

            “I suppose not,” she conceded. “So, the bank just kept the house for you all this time. Renting it out, taking the…money. All the while you were…”

            Yulric looked up from the photograph. He gave a condescending chuckle which only made Amanda angrier. “Brandenberg and Sons, or whatever it may be called now…

            “Premiere Bank of Switzerland,” added Amanda. She’d seen the name on top of her bills enough to know it by heart.

            “Ah yes, well, these moneylenders and I have a very…special relationship that comes with being its oldest…” he chuckled again. “… living client.”

            He glanced back at the light portrait in his hands. It showed a whole smiling family: mother, father, daughter, and oddly well-behaved baby. He wondered how long a light portrait took to make, how one wielded the light, and how much pain it inflicted on the subjects during the process. This last idea made him smile. He would have to look into becoming a photographist.

            While Yulric’s mind swam with misguided ideas of how photos were made, Amanda was summoning up powers of her own, powers which she possessed in abundance: powers which her brother called “Pure undiluted contrariness.”

            “So over three hundred years go by and they just hand your money back like that?” she snarked.

Yulric’s head snapped around at her words. “Three hundred years?”

            Amanda smiled, finally having made a dent in this thing’s impenetrable superiority. “Over three hundred years.”

            Yulric stared at her as if the words themselves hung in front of her face. Could it really have been so long? Surely not. Deep beneath the earth, he had been vaguely aware of events: a war or two, strings of foreign tenants who came and went, not to mention those blasted Quakers. Then, there had been the African slaves, the English mystic with the love of orgies, and those long-haired children who giggled and did not bathe.

            So fifty years then, he thought before looking again at the automatic candle in the ceiling and the portrait of light. Maybe one hundred.

            Utterly bemused, Amanda pressed her victory. “For over three hundred years, no one wondered. No one questioned. No one suspected you were even here. How is that possible?”

            “Cheap rent.”

            Amanda’s triumph, striding fast and confident, smacked into the easily given answer like a toddler’s head into a kitchen table: there was a moment of wonder and confusion before realization set in and it fell to the floor crying for its mommy. Meanwhile, Yulric examined the room once more with new eyes. Here and there, his 17th century gaze found 21st century technology. Lights lit by themselves. Machines moved on their own. Missing were familiar trappings of household life like churns and looms and body odor. Those that remained, like tables and chairs, were comprised of strange designs and, often, even stranger materials.

            And then there had been the horror from last night. The mechanical metal behemoth that had appeared in a flash and trampled him horribly beneath its wheels. How long had it taken to invent such a weapon?

            A hundred and fifty years! He thought. No more!

            Between her utter defeat and the pathetic old man this creature had suddenly become, Amanda couldn’t bring herself to be combative anymore. She left him to his ever more frantic analysis of his surroundings and got herself a beer.

            If there had been any lingering doubts as to the nature of the thing in her living room, those were settled upon her return.

            Yep, it’s definitely a man, she thought.

            Yulric Bile had found the TV.

WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS

Naturally, ten seconds after I send my first update, I look at the website and the new cover is up. So here I am, back to say "Hey, look at the new cover!" No really, look at it. It's sooooo pretty. A huge thank you to the Inkshares art department for drawing it up. Also, thanks go out to my former workmate Sarah for the original cover: a picture of me as a sun-averse vampire from The Nightmare Before Christmas.