The First 10: Self-Published

Agent Phoenix marks my 10th book so I'm looking back at the first 10. Today: the self-published work.

I was fortunate enough to be published before having to self-publish, but with everything I was coming up with, I knew I'd end up doing so. To date I've self-published five books. Half of the first ten was with publisher Supposed Crimes and the other half were released through Amazon. My self-published work was really run-and-gun, write and release. All of them are cheap, and free for Kindle Unlimited.

Sharp Items & Bad Intentions (2017) started as three separate horror screenplays. I'd written them but couldn't get any traction. My scripts at the time were poorly written and over-detailed. At this point any time I'd tried to write a short story, it would end up sitting unfinished. Looking at these scripts with big blocks of prose, it occurred to me that maybe I could do it now. But maybe I can transfer these into stories and make a horror anthology.

So that's what I did. I took three of my screenplays that I felt would go well together: The Slit, All in a Day's Work, and Big Prizes. They were all three slashers and I felt they'd fill a slasher anthology. So, I went through and stripped them of their script format and transferred everything to three lengthy stories. The transfers were really barebones with nothing really rewritten to match that of typical stories. These stories are raw, bloody, indie horror. Sleazy and trashy as well.

The Slit started off as a film I was actually hoping to film, but of course, that wasn't meant to be. All in a Day's Work was my coping with being unjustly fired from my job at the time. Big Prizes was another one like Slit where I'd hoped to film it myself. Along with others, these three nasty, gory scripts sat around on my computer until I started transferring them and putting them together as Sharp Items & Bad Intentions.

$.99 Kindle e-book and $4.99 paperback.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075TJ6YY7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1


Beyond the Wall (2017) was Sharp Items' sister book. Like Sharp Items, Beyond the Wall started as a horror screenplay. But unlike that book, Beyond the Wall was one script, a horror anthology like those that I grew up with. There was only one story that was separate that was incorporated in the shuffle. Some of the stories came from dreams I'd had, others were old short story ideas that I'd written into the script format - only to transfer the Beyond the Wall screenplay into this little book.

I love horror anthologies. You get different kinds of horror in one piece. Like Sharp Items & Bad Intentions, Beyond the Wall is bloody as all hell. These were both written back-to-back, or transferred back-to-back rather. As said, it was real run and gun. Beyond the Wall wasn't one I was planning on making myself as I would probably never have the money to do so.

Transferring these to story form was taxing especially for someone who wasn't that kind of writer at that time. My first novel Last Rites of the Capacitance was written in a similar fashion but it didn't start off as a script like these did. These two were released before that book. The covers, like the covers to all my self-published works, are real bare and minimalist.

$.99 Kindle e-book and $4.99 paperback.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076W3Q54Y/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i5


Duo de Macabre (2018) I don't consider as a separate writing, just an extra in the ten. Duo de Macabre is both Sharp Items & Bad Intentions and Beyond the Wall together in one. My lovely Aunt Wanda had edited the two when they were released. She helped make them palatable. But over time, I was looking at the format of them and realized I wanted something tighter. Both were small books and so I had the thought of giving them a tighter format, another quick edit, and then put them together in one indie horror collection.

Someday I may go back and rewrite it all to more like I've come to write today, but I'm a bit swamped at the moment. I look back at these fondly as a struggling writer trying to find his voice, and the horror kid loving the creativity and mayhem. You could buy them both separate or just buy this one volume and have both together.

$.99 Kindle e-book and $7.00 paperback.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BZYJGGV/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0


Doomsday Think Tank (2018) is a conspiracy theorist play. It started from a deleted scene from a comic book I work on with Dennis Magnant called Tourniquet. In the comic, the team of monster heroes rescue a man with a microchip in his possession and I wrote a scene which the lead characters discuss what could've been on the chip. They sat around a table throwing theories back and forth. The scene wasn't working for the book but I was still loving it as I was coming up with more theories. I copy and pasted the conversation into a blank document and it continued to grow.

I'd be working on other projects and periodically go back to my conspiracy theory conversation and add more to it. It just kept growing! As I was writing on it, I started to see it as a stage play. Writing plays was always part of the plan but was for when I was older. But life is what happens when you're planning for the future. Eventually I dubbed it Doomsday Think Tank and started writing it more seriously as a play. Like my scrappy horror work, my aunt edited it and quickly saw how it kept growing as questions "What about...?" and "What if...?" arose every other line.

The story was now that a mysterious disc was picked up by the pentagon and four conspiracy theorists come together to weigh in on what it could mean. If you're into conspiracy theories or conversation/dialogue pieces, I think you'd like Doomsday Think Tank. It's another one I may rewrite someday. I've never heard it performed and long to someday hear a table reading of it. It would be a cost efficient play to put on, just four actors and a table. I aim to write more plays as soon as I get an open window to do so.

$.99 Kindle e-book and $7.00 paperback.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B7CMN3M/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i6


Blue Sweep (2018) was my second novel and it couldn't have been more different than my first. While Last Rites of the Capacitance was very sci-fi and written in a different style, Blue Sweep was a work of literary fiction written in a more traditional style. Being in an interracial marriage, my wife and I will often discuss race in politics and the like. For a long time, she'd send me countless articles about cops killing unarmed civilians. It went from sad to just angering me. Blue Sweep was born of two thoughts: 1, I had stated that if the cops aren't careful, it's going to go too far and there's going to be an uprising calling open season on all police officers. And 2, I had thought of how I would react being the parent of one of the slain.

The two thoughts, along with the barrage of articles being sent to me, collided as I put my fingers to the keys. Writing Blue Sweep, I was focused. It was one of the rare times I wasn't writing multiple projects as my main focus was on it. I saw the format in my head and where it was going. When a young black woman is killed by police, her father's revenge sparks a nationwide uprising. Blue Sweep juggles multiple storylines involving police brutality and police murders. The only person to date to have read this book is my wife. Regardless of no readers, I couldn't be more proud of this book. It's my only real-life story as I mainly work in horror and science fiction, etc.

I recently unpublished the novel to give it a fresh edit and a new cover. It will be rereleased later this year and hopefully someone will read it. I have to admit my surprise that it went unread for so long seeing as it's timely subject matter. After the murder of George Floyd and the extreme protests, my wife showed me the article and asked if it sounded familiar - it did, I wrote it. Written mainly in 2017 and finished in 2018, Blue Sweep sees the average citizen fighting back against the police. Again, nobody read the book. Years later, people finally start fighting back and all we could think of at our house was how strange it was. Art imitates life imitates art, regardless if it's seen or not. As people are waking up and realizing there are more of us than police and fighting back in their own ways, I'm curious as to how much of the book will come true.


How to Sell Sunblock to a Vampire (2018) is a writing sampler platter. I wanted to release an eclectic mix of writing that would have a little bit of everything I dabble in. The title had been with me for some time. Everything in this collection was at one point on this blog. I had some poetry - not enough for a full book and it was too late to add them to the books already out - that I'd written in my stay at the hospital when I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I'd also had some short stories, mainly horror and just all around weird. I'd written some short screenplays, ranging from humor to drama. Sitting around were a few comic book scripts that never found a home.

All of this stuff was separate until the thought to make such a varied collection came to me. It sounded fun; I know if more writers did books like these I'd buy 'em up. It's one of the only books of mine I have no mind to rewrite. It's got poetry, short stories, comic book scripts, screenplays, and notes on the craft. I'm proud of every book I've written but this one holds a special place in my heart because it's the only one I've done like it, and I don't know too many other books like it. I could see me doing another one of these, I have the material, but this one was never read so I'm not sure.

How to Sell Sunblock to a Vampire was like a home for lost work, pieces that didn't have a home. This book is a good place to start if you're wanting to check out my work.

$.99 Kindle e-book and $7.00 paperback.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1980965064/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i11


That concludes looking back at my first 10. I had a lot released in those two years ('17 & '18), between Supposed Crimes and self-publishing. I will be self-publishing another book very soon - a horror anthology I wrote with my wife in 2015/2016. As said, I will also be rereleasing Blue Sweep later in the year. One of the great things about writing and releasing so much in a short time is getting to see the growth in the craft. Now and then I'll go back and look at my old stuff, self published and traditionally published, and I can see it. It makes me happy and hopeful that someday I'll look at this new stuff I'm cooking up with the same growth.