It’s a novella-length prequel to the first book. Agnes is alive and Topper, well, he’s still Topper. The set up is this: Edwin is approached by a vampire for advice on how to deal with the constraints of the modern world. Y’know, he wants Edwin to help him use unique powers to their best end.

It’s a pretty fun satire of the vampire genre in general. Which, c’mon, you gotta be just a little sick of, right? As Agnes observes in this story, “You live for hundreds of years and the most fitting consort you can find; the creature that fascinates you; Who you cannot bear live without is a teen-aged girl?” There’s plenty of stuff to poke fun at in this genre.

In addition to having some well-deserved fun with what I think of as ‘modern’ vampires, I wrote this story to work with Topper as a more central character. In the first book he was fun, he was over the top, but he was also little one-dimensional. Not anymore. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still absurdity and obscenity galore, but with this story you’ll get to know the manic little lawyer a little better.

I hope you’ll check it out. And I hope it will tide you over while I finish editing How to Succeed in Evil: Hostile Takeover.

It’s really hard to write that many words while editing. I ran into some pretty serious problems along the way, but came up with some pretty good solutions. That’s great for the work, but not so great for the word count.

I call it a good month. I’m inches from being done with “A Consultation with a Vampire” a How to Succeed in Evil short story that throws Edwin into the tropes of the whole Vampire mythos. (Yeah, it’s fun.)

I’ve also put up 30,000+ words on a piece of non-fiction. It’s the companion book  to the good words (right order) class I teach. My method for helping people improve their writing is like nothing I’ve ever encountered, so it has been an exciting and humbling exercise.

Any way you slice it. National Non-Novel Writing Month was pretty productive for me.

They are all exciting projects and I’m finding that when I’m procrastinating on fiction, I’m making headway on non-fiction and vice versa.

Here’s a live graphic from my writing log. The blue is my daily word count. The red is the total. It’s log scale so variations in the data are easier to see. Right now, I’m at 21% of the monthly total and 5% ahead of schedule, but this graphic will update, so enjoy my very public commitment. It will stay frighteningly up-to-date.

NaNoWriMo is such a good thing, I can’t resist. I wrote 1,800 yesterday, so I’m off to the races already. But there’s a twist. I’m not going to write a novel. Which makes it NaNONNoWriMo for me.

I’m going to put up 50,000+ words in November. And I’m going to count editing the HtSiE novel as 33% writing. That is, if I edit 1000 words, it’s like writing 333.33. (Don’t ask me how you edit a third of a word.)

I’ve still got 15-20k worth of writing to do on Hostile Takeover, so there’s plenty of word count to get to in the revisions.

The real reason I’m doing this is that I’ve got a couple of non-novel, non-fiction writing projects that have languishing. If the Seanachai taught me anything, there’s nothing like a scary, audacious public goal to the get the juices flowing. It is amazing how fast you can run when you can hear the baying of the wolves behind you.

As a writer raised by Economists, I have some perspective that other’s don’t have, and maybe don’t want. (There’s a reason it’s called the dismal science after all.) But when approaching the question of how to price an e-book, sound economic theory (not that macroeconomic crap that everybody is currently lying their ass off about) can lend some interesting perspective.

Price vs. Cost

A price is only part of what a good or service costs you. Especially a book. In the economic sense, the true cost of something is what you give up to have or consume it. In the case of the book, you spend some money on the book, but the bulk of the cost is in the time you spend reading it. So book price + time cost = the true cost of the book.

So let’s say I buy an e-book for $3 ($2.99) and it takes me 8 hours to read it. Apply some guesstimate for what my time is worth (say $30 an hour) and you get to a true cost of $243 dollars for me to read a book. A little over 1% of which is the actual price of the book.

This is fascinating. And moves me to ask.

Does it matter what the Price of a Book is?

If my estimate of the cost is correct, are people really that sensitive to a change in price? Or, more importantly, if I double the price of my ebook (a 1% rise in the true cost of consuming a book) are sales going to change at all?

Economic theory cannot answer this question for us. The only way to know the answer for sure is to try it for a specific book at a specific time. And even that is not a true experiment in the scientific sense because there are too many factors to control. All we can know it what happened with that one book for that one period. So here’s what happened when I raised the price of How to Succeed in Evil from $0.99 to $2.99 –

Sales went up. I was averaging about nine books a day. Now I’m up to fourteen.

It’s crazy to think that an increase in price causes and increase in sales. I think if I had left the price at 99 cents I would now also be at 14 e-books a day. I don’t think price matters that much. Especially within the accepted range. Economic theory can really say nothing about this particular case, but it can help us understand the forces at work. And before you discount this, please consider, this is really more help than it may first sound. To draw an imperfect analogy, even if you don’t know what the gravitational constant is, it is still very helpful to know that gravity sucks.

The Elasticity of Demand.

The Law of Demand states that the lower the price of a good or service, the more of it any one person will buy. For example, When cars are expensive, a family only has one. When cars are cheap, everybody gets their own car.

The question is, how much does the price of something have to rise or fall to make a difference. That’s the Elasticity of Demand. For example:

Cigarettes have very inelastic demand curve. They are addictive, so when you want them, you want them. Price goes up, still gonna smoke. Kidney Dialysis is inelastic. Unless you get another kidney, dialysis is perfectly inelastic. You get dialysis or you die.

So what about books?

Fans and the Elasticity of Demand.

By definition a fan is somebody who is addicted to an entertainment product. They have a highly inelastic demand curve for whatever that product is. For example, people who are fans of Game of Thrones or Harry Potter. When the next book comes out, they simply HAVE to have it.

Creating Inelasticity

First, you’ve got to be able to write well. That’s price of entry. If you can’t do that, no knowledge of economic theory (or any other kind of theory) will make up for lack of talent. But assuming you are a fair hand at pushing a noun against a verb there are a couple of conclusions we can reasonably draw.

Be unique. If there aren’t any other good substitutes for what you put out, then people have no alternative but to buy from you. I think that well-written fiction is a pretty inelastic thing. When somebody wants a Stephen King novel, pretty much only a Stephen King novel will do. Because he’s the only guy who sees the world the way Stephen King does.

Create rich characters. This is pretty obvious. You can put a character in the most interesting suspenseful situation you like, but if the reader doesn’t care what happens to them, why continue? I think this is why mystery is such a popular genre. It lifts a lot of weight off the characters. People can either like the character or need to know how it turns out.

Don’t screw up the plot. There’s an eternal tension between character and plot. And, in the larger sense, story construction is a gigantic, difficult subject. But the fact remains, if you plot well, you suck the reader in. They want to know what happens next. They need to know what happens in the next book. Which leads us to the last point.

Write a series. When a reader is bought in, they want more. They want more of you as a writer and they want more of the characters they have invested so much time in. It is not a coincidence that the best-selling Kindle authors, the ones that are really putting up some numbers have series. As a personal note, this may be kinda hard for me, as the number of ideas I have are always threatening to draw me off into new challenges. I believe that I, you and everybody needs to follow passion — that’s what keeps us working — but, if your bliss allows it, a series is a good way to create that inelasticity which all authors crave.

To sum it up

I can’t pretend that common sense won’t get you to all of these conclusions. But having names for things allows us to think about them more clearly. The elasticity of demand is no exception.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2032057/Laser-assisted-water-condensation-used-create-rainfall.html

If you’ve read How to Succeed in Evil, you’ll know I spend a bit of time tearing this idea apart. I never thought such a think would actually happen. Although it’s nice to see an Evil Scientist using a giant laser in space for something useful. Instead of, say, blowing up an otherwise useful city.

Very much so.

I’ve practiced a couple arts in my time, and there is a commonality between all of them. Progress equates to learning. When I realized this I became very interested in things like teaching and learning and practice. No matter how gifted you may be, to be very good at something, you have to practice your ass off. Even the most expensive diamond came out of the ground looking like a hunk of dirty, white-trash quartz. It’s only after careful cutting and endless polishing that its true worth and beauty are revealed.

So, the book works. People like it. But just because I wrote it doesn’t mean that I know why this is so. For example, the basic idea of the book is that Edwin gives advice, in a consultant role, and people don’t listen to it. On the surface, it seems that this is a pretty niche audience. People in a consultant role. But as the book has reached wider and wider audiences, I have learned that the pain and frustration of trying your best to help someone and having them ignore your advice is universal. It’s the deeper pain and frustration of not being heard. I have learned that this is frustration is as universal as the need to breath.

But I have just learned/noticed something else. I didn’t write a thriller. On it’s face that sounds pretty stupid, I know, but it’s very interesting to me that a great number of the authors who are doing well in e-books are writing thrillers/mysteries.

Sure, How to Succeed in Evil has a plot. It moves along. People want to know what happens next. But it doesn’t depend on brute force to drive it forward. The people who like it, like the characters. Sure, they like the funny bits, but many people go out of the way to talk about the parts where Edwin is thinking. For me, this is what is interesting. How someone’s mind changes as result of there experience. And how their experience changes as a result of changing their mind. And the drama (and it is often very dramatic) of ideation and problem solving. But when I was writing ‘Evil, I didn’t know if it would play or not. To my surprise, it has.

You learn something new every day, I guess, but only if you are paying attention.

• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,123 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #61 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Comic
  • #64 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction
  • #67 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor

Now, an overall Kindle rank of #2,123 might not seem like it’s that great. But it’s hanging out there. In fact, I think it’s picking up steam. (I haven’t been monitoring it all that well, I’ve been writing another book and generally living life at a frantic pace.) But consider, there are over 765,000 books available in the Kindle store. That means that How to Succeed in Evil is in the top 0.003%. Toto, I don’t think we’re in the Long End of the Tail anymore.

Look at the company I’m keeping!

I’m 8 spots higher than Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on the humor list! My mouth is hanging open. Honest to God I teared up a little when I typed that. I’m also right below the FRIGGIN FOUNDATION novels by Isaac Asimov on the general science fiction list!!!

Y’know, this isn’t the big time by a long shot. Asimov is sitting over there at 59 on the list with a work that was first published in 1942! And it will be there long after HtSiE is gone. Rightfully so, because if you asked me which book of these two books you should read first, I would say you gotta go with Foundation every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

In fact, Salvador Hardin was one of the characters I drew on for Edwin Windsor. And the Foundation novels were always in my mind when I was writing ‘Evil. Those books are about people being SMART. (That’s capital SMART) People solving things with their brains rather than ray guns or fisticuffs. For how riveting those books are, it’s remarkable how little action there is in them.

But still, I think I just crossed some kind of threshold. And I am overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude. Thanks to everybody who bought the e-book, listened to the podcast and told a friend. I might have written the book, but you made this happen. And based on the way things are going, it doesn’t look like my ‘Evil saga is over yet.

Anyway, back to writing. With a little luck I’m going to cross 100,000 words on the sequel today. I’m certainly fired up enough to do it.

Edwin making a video.

As rule, Edwin avoided the spotlight, but as CEO and primary owner of Omdemnity Insurance, there were certain figurehead roles that he needed to fill. You learn many things when you run your own business and the first one that Edwin learned was, “use a figurehead.” As he sat in a chair an endured having his face dabbed with make up, he reflected on this lesson now.

“There you go, you’re just beautiful.”

Edwin cocked his head like a bird and looked directly at the thin, sickly looking man who applied the make-up. It only took a moment of Edwin’s uncomfortable gaze and he went away. Beautiful? Edwin was concerned with far more important things than beauty. Beauty was fading. Beauty was fleeing, but capital — ah, capital lasted. Built fortunes, companies, countries.

It was not Edwin’s stare that drove the man away, but rather the utter calm behind it. When a normal person stares at you, you get these little flickers of transitory thoughts and fears and doubts — but when Edwin stared at the makeup assistant, the assistant saw nothing. An endless, clear calm stared back at him from the depths of Edwin’s eyes. For one who’s mind was absorbed with the endless trivia of the tabloids and talk shows and fashion magazines the experience was horrifying — like encountering an alien. “Oh my God, what is that in your head?” his eyes seemed to ask before he ran away.

A thought, Edwin’s gaze answered, there is a thought in my head.

Suitably prepared, Edwin buttoned his coat, tugged his collars into place and moved into position.

“Are you ready, Mister Windsor?” asked the director? Edwin merely nodded.

The newest employee of Omdemnity Insurance, a fresh-faced lad of twenty-three, dressed in a cheap, ill-fitting suit, took his place next to Edwin and the Director called action. Edwin looked into the camera and said, “Welcome to Omdemnity Insurance. As a new employee, there are many policies and procedures you will need to master. This video will help. But all of them boil down to just two things. Trust –”
Hearing his cue, the young man turned his back towards Edwin, crossed his hands over his chest, closed his eyes and fell backwards exactly as he had been instructed. He believed, with the faith of a small child, that Edwin was going to catch him.
He was wrong.

When he hit the floor, he learned an important lesson about trust. Edwin continued, “– and common sense.” The camera followed Edwin as he walked behind his desk. The sound of a young man attaining wisdom, which sounded exactly like a mildly concussed person trying to catch his breath after having the wind knocked out of him, did not take too much away from Edwin’s performance.

“At Omdemnity Insurance, our clients trust us to insure and otherwise indemnify them from a range of risks that only yesterday were thought to be uninsurable. So you can take pride in the fact that you are part of an organization on the cutting edge of risk management.
“We do not do our work recklessly or because we are rash. It is our prudence, more than anything else, our common sense, that allows us to grow and thrive.

In closing, I ask you to pay careful attention to the policies and procedures that have made this company great. Follow the rules and together we will all succeed.” He sat at his desk and picked up a stack of papers, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s plenty of work to be done.”

The director said, “CUT!” Two production assistants quickly ran in and scooped up the injured young employee. As they helped him from the room, he managed to turn and ask Edwin, “Why?”

Edwin gestured to a black man in a suit who was standing on the edge of the room. He quickly interposed himself between Edwin and the recently concussed young man and escorted him from the room.

Anyway, the sequel is coming and it’s title is ‘Hostile Takeover.’

I won’t spoil the plot, but I can give you this. The main character is TOPPER! And, in the course of the novel, he winds up in charge. With hilarious and extreme consequences. Of course, Edwin is a major character, but Topper tells the tale. It’s much like Watson telling us about the exploits of Sherlock Holmes.

It’s already very funny. And it’s also proving to be very moving at points. After all, we’re going to proceed deeper and deeper into the unlikely friendship between these two men. Of course, we’ll meet a new host of outrageous, super-powered characters, and we will resolve the unfinished business with Excelsior once and for all.

So for everybody who has been hanging in there for the next installment, it’s one GIANT step closer. Or, more to the point, 50,000 tiny little steps closer. Thanks, as always, for your support and stay tuned for more.

And if you’ve caught that Agnes reference. If you’ve listened to all the podcasts and versions. If you’re a true fan, then take a moment to write a review on Amazon, won’t you. The ebook version is tighter, tauter and another iteration better — but it’s the same story with the same wonderful characters that you’ve known and loved. If you are so moved, please gush with confidence. Your kind words will help others find it, and help me attract a bigger audience.

99 cents, right here.

There are those who think that the business of the law is conducted in the open air of the courtroom. That every discussion and decision is held in the hallowed halls of justice amid august assembly — wise fathers in togas chiseling words in stone so that Justice might be preserved through the ages. But it is not so. That’s the nickel tour. That’s civics class. That’s the “Babies-come-from-Storks” explanation. And just like the miracle of birth, the reality of the manufacture of justice is much, much messier.

He is praying, to whatever committee of dark gods bureaucrats pray to in their secret, inefficient hearts, that Gus will pull through.

He wears the Red, White and Blue, and is sworn do defend the US of A. Even the cold, flat parts that everybody moves away from when they get out of high school.

In some ways, it’s not funny at all. I was did some work with a company in Buffalo, NY. As the GM was driving me to the airport, he said, “This is our new airport. The joke is it’s where we take our kids to say goodbye to them.”

I said, “That’s really not very funny.” But hey, at least I made some funny out of it in the book.

“To this end, Gus is authorized to use whatever methods he see fit. Flattery, bribery, football metaphors, even appeals to reason —- anything, just so long as it keeps the big guy in the game.”

Authorized to use football metaphors. Something is either very wrong with me, or very right with me. You decide.

So the fact that Terry Pratchett exists at all (and is the #2 selling author in the UK) gave me hope. But when I realized I couldn’t enter his contest because of the accident of my birth, my hopes were dashed.

So to protest I entered anyway and sent the following letter. I am an American, there’s really not much I can do about that. But that means that not following English rules (or understanding Cricket) is in my blood.

Dear Sir Terry Pratchett

I was overjoyed to hear of the Pratchett Prize, but, upon examining the rules of your contest, my hopes were dashed, for you have excluded the United States and with it 36% of the world’s English-speaking population.

I implore you to make an exception. If possible, a general exception to include all former colonies, but I will settle for a personal exception for any or all of the reasons given below.

1) Turtles — You and I both know it’s turtles all the way down. Which makes national boundaries seem even more foolish and arbitrary than they already are.

2) Literary Asylum — I have written a nuanced satire involving the tropes of the superhero genre. And, in the United States, both nuance and satire have a rough time of it. I send my book to you in the hopes it might find a better life in a foreign land.

3) Historic Precedent — I submit this work from land which was originally conveyed to the 1st Earl of Shaftsbury by King Charles II. It was known as the Province of Carolina. So, while not meeting the exact letter of your contest’s rules, I do meet the spirit. (far more so than if I was submitting from say, the vapid, overpopulated desert of the Los Angeles Basin.)

4) Technological — If it is true that you have excluded the United States from your contest because our harsh Americanized spelling of words like color and flavor are too jarring to your English sensibilities, I am happy to run my manuscript through Google Translate.

5) Lend-Lease — While it is true that in 2006 your then Economic Secretary of the Treasury (and still unfortunately named) Edward Balls, made the final $83.3 million payment on the WWII lend-lease funds, it does not seem too much ask to allow the United States into your contest in exchange for the favorable credit terms which we extended you.

6) Ex Post Facto Residency — If I win the contest, I’ll move to London for at least two weeks. Maybe three.

7) Dignity — While there was the unpleasant business of the revolution (and the more recent debacles and embarrassments of American foreign policy) it is not in keeping with the high honor of a Commander of the Order of the British Empire to hold a grudge. How would one illustrate a grudge on your Coat of Arms? Besides retained grudges can become infected in a way no poultice or pill may cure.

8 ) Kafkaesque — Havent’ we all had our fill of senselessly applied procedures and rules? It is your contest, Sir Terry. You can change it.

9) For the Empire — You can make the admission of my book, “How to Succeed in Evil” a powerful message that you are reclaiming all former British colonies in the New World. Yes, it’s a long shot, but if it works you will most certainly be advanced to a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. Then you will get to wear that purple dressing gown thingee. Mantle is it? Which I hear is lined with grey silk and provides great relief during the drafty winter months.

10) Rhetorical — If you do not grant me admission to your contest it can only mean that words have no power to move the hardest of hearts. If this is so, how can any good cause hope to sway those in power to the side of right? Chivalry will have been dealt the final blow by your hand. Sir Terry, how could you?

11) Civility — I asked nicely. Hopefully humorously and eloquently, but I most certainly asked nicely. That has to count for something.

Okay, boys, this is the week we knock over the barn.

Uh boss? Why a barn again?

Because that’s where the blue bag is, you idiot. Remember: everyone wear suits, so we’ll stand out in a rural setting. Then we’ll meet up right under the big metal grain chute.

And there it is, “Why a barn again?”  The reason I wrote How to Succeed in Evil was to try and find a motivation for a villain that made a little sense to me.

Many more comic covers and commentary here:

http://www.lileks.com/institute/funny/07/45.html

Posted via email from PatrickEMcLean’s Posterous

Some fine folks that I don’t know posted this video to YouTube of their adorable child. In the comments, they mentioned that the audio in the background was Patrick E. McLean’s “How to Succeed in Evil.”

I’m not sure how to feel about my voice screaming obscenities and hilarities at a child, so I will default to AWESOME!

Posted via email from PatrickEMcLean’s Posterous