Okay, it’s time. Mark those calendars, tell your friends, tell your enemies, call the newspapers. I just got the physical proof of HELL NIGHT, the second Alex Rains adventure, and me and my cat agree that it’s pretty awesome. So, let’s do this thing. And if you haven’t already, this would be a great time to check out the first Alex Rains Novel, The Devil’s Mouth
Thanks so much to all of you who have been waiting patiently.
-Matt
Hi, folks.
Okay, I know I said that the book would be out in January. As it turns out, that was a filthy lie. But don’t despair, it’s coming soon! We had some minor production hiccups, and the manuscript went back to Santa’s workshop for a few weeks. Things are back on track now, but I’m still not entirely sure about the release date. I’d like to thank everyone for their enthusiasm and their patience.
Story time. As those of you who read The Devil’s Mouth early on know, that book had a fair amount of typos. Those were all my fault, and due largely to my own impatience, not to mention my vast overestimation of my own proofreading skills. The result was a final product that was less than it could have been. Those mistakes cost me with reviewers, and, I’m sure, with a fair number of readers. It wound up being an embarrassment to me, and to everyone else involved in the book.
Your enthusiasm has been contagious. I’ve been working my butt off to try and get the new book out as soon as possible, but I have to force myself to take a deep breath. And then let it out, because otherwise I wouldn’t be breathing anymore and I’d die. Seriously though, I hate to push the release date back, but I want to take as much time as is needed to make sure this one is as good as I can make it. If people hate it, I’d at least like them to hate it for subjective reasons.
Thanks for your patience,
Matt
Hey folks, just a quick update. Hell Night is coming. Pretty soon. Like really pretty soon. I’ve been quite busy getting all my ducks in a row, and, you know, life stuff. I’ve also been slightly more active at my weird side project, The Mud Lake Proboscis, so if you’re into ill-conceived liberal propaganda, check that out. More updates to follow.
ALEX RAINS knows all about hunting vampires—after all, that’s his job, and he’s the best at what he does. But when he follows a lead to the tiny desert town of Prosperity, Nevada, Alex quickly learns that vampires aren’t the only things that go bump in the night. He’s just as surprised as the town’s residents when the dead start walking the streets of Prosperity . . . and they’ve got a bit of an appetite.
Together with a ragtag group of survivors, Alex will have to dodge undead horrors and small-town drama as he digs into Prosperity’s darkest secrets and macabre Wild West heritage to figure out why the dead aren’t staying dead, discover what–or who–is responsible, and put a stop to it . . . before the whole mess gets out of hand.
After dealing with the undead in Prosperity, Alex Rains is going to have to update his resume.
It’s sunny with a chance of apocalypse in HELL NIGHT, Matt Kincade’s eagerly anticipated follow-up to THE DEVIL’S MOUTH. With HELL NIGHT, Kincade once again delivers fast-paced, gritty pulp action, engaging characters, and delightfully grim humor.
![Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000039_00021]](https://matthewkincade.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/hell_night_ecover2.jpg?w=495&h=799)
What the heck is a Bearalope? Where the heck is Prosperity?
That’s why we call it a teaser.
Alex Rains knows all about killing vampires. Too bad it’s not vampires this time. If Alex survives his trip to Prosperity, he’s going to need to update his resume.
Aw, heck yes. After a whole lot of time and effort, I am kicking this little baby bird out of the nest. The Devil’s Mouth is available on the Kindle store, and for a limited time it’s only .99 cents.
I’d just like to give a great big thank you to all of you out there in blog land, you’ve all been so supportive and just all around awesome.
Writing a book description is nerve-wracking. You’ve only got three or four sentences to convince someone to read your book. First, it needs a hook. Then it needs to be an accurate description, but not give too much away. It has to go into detail, but still leave something to the imagination. It has to introduce the reader to the characters and the world and the story, but still not be too long. And the punctuation? You can get away with a missed quotation mark on page two hundred of your self-published work, but on the blurb? That’s gotta be perfect. Stressful.
So, like always, my brain responds to stressful situations with humor.
Me: Okay brain, we’ve got to get serious here and figure this out.
Brain: Haha what if the book was about like a zombie apocalypse but with ducks. A duckpocalypse.
Me: Shut up, brain. That’s a terrible idea.
Brain: No, but seriously. Duckpocalypse.
And so without further comment, a few blurbs I thought of while trying to think of a blurb.
***
One man. One canoe. One creek…of shit.
And no paddles.
1845. William Fudge was a warrior. A poet. A gentleman. A family man. Until the tragic accident that changed everything. Now, a broken loner, he accepts a job that only he is qualified for. To journey, alone, up the wild and dangerous Shit River, into Deep Shit territory, all the way to Shit Creek. His mission is to map the Deep Shit territory for the fledgling United States Government, to find the source of the Shit River, and the mythical city of Porcelaina.
It was all going great until he lost his paddles. Now William Fudge is up to his neck in shit, fighting against the current, and trying to figure all this shit out.
Book one of the Up Shit Creek series, Up Shit Creek: Without a Paddle.
Available wherever shit is sold.
***
He’s a badass vampire hunter. A lover. A fighter. He’s also a talking golden retriever.
She’s just a cute, quirky girl, living life to the fullest, trying to learn how to love again while she tries to make her artisanal cupcake shop a success.
After a series of dog-gone implausible events brings them together, they team up to hunt for the vampires that took his puppies and gave her cupcake shop a terrible Yelp review. Together, they’re going to teach those vampires that their bite…is worse than their bark.
Woof at the Devil is available on the Kindle store, and soon to be a major motion picture starring Jennifer Anniston and Rob Scheider.
***
London, 1585.
Up-and-coming playwright William Shakespeare has just written a work that will live on in history. But when rival playwright Richard Greene steals the only copy of Richard III, Shakespeare pulls out all the stops to get his play back…and get his payback.
The race is on as Richard begins production with his stolen play, and Shakespeare fights his way through London’s literary scene with his rapier wit, and also an actual rapier. Even though it’s the renaissance, the Bard is about to get medieval.
Together with a ragtag gang of misfit actors, William Shakespeare is about to prove that the pen is mightier than the sword. Except he still has a sword, because a pen is only mightier in a figurative sense, and he’s going to murder all of his enemies in an extremely literal sense, in which case a sword is still far mightier than a pen.
Coming this summer: Bard Hard.
***
Melanie Strudel is just a normal girl, except for one extraordinary power: She can understand the language of birds.
She can’t talk to them, but she can understand them.
This superpower doesn’t change her life in any meaningful way, because birds don’t say anything worth listening to. As it turns out, they mostly just complain about the weather, talk shit about each other, and discuss the things they ate.
Melanie goes on living a perfectly normal life, except that birds annoy the crap out of her, because they’re a bunch of boring, loudmouthed, gossipy little shits.
Pick up The Language of Birds, wherever boring, uneventful books are sold.
***
#URDEAD
Until she found that hashtag, Rebecca Doodler was just another social media queen, instagramming duckface selfies and food pics to her hundreds of thousands of followers, spitting out pithy 140 character witticisms, basking in her odd quasi-fame.
But then the message showed up. “retweet this in thirty seconds or you will die in one week. #URDEAD”
She thought it was just a joke. Until her followers started dropping like MySpace users.
Now, Rebecca has to use every ounce of her social media prowess, racing from the fetid swamps of facebook to the ghettos of instagram, to the ghost city of MySpace, fighting against time as she tracks down the source of the mysterious hashtag. If she doesn’t figure this out soon, she won’t have any followers left. And then who’ll like her bikini selfies?
Coming when you least expect it: #DeathByTwitter.
So, a year or two ago, I decided I’d like to publish something. Anything. Just for the sake of having something out there. Just for the sake of actually finishing something. I had a novella, We Only Come Out At Night, that I’d written years and years ago and never really done much with. I dusted it off and gave it a read. It wasn’t as bad as I’d remembered. So I polished it up, made a cover, and published it—with high hopes— on Amazon Kindle.
I didn’t know anything about promotion. About Search Engine Optimization. About Kindle algorithms or keywords or categories or advertising or any of that stuff. I just wanted to publish a book. And so I did. I sent my baby out into the world.
You can probably guess what happened next. Of course, my book quickly and unceremoniously sank to the bottom of the Kindle Sea, like a mobster wearing cement shoes. And there it stayed, drowned under millions and millions of slightly less unsuccessful books, while the giants of the sea, the Kings and Rowlings and Koontzes, swam by far overhead.
Through Kindle’s free promotions I managed to give away fifty or sixty copies; I even sold three or four. But nobody felt strongly enough about it to actually leave a review, good or bad. This left me feeling strangely neutral about my work. I mean, it’s not good enough for anybody to say good things, but at least it’s not bad enough for people to say bad things, right? After a few weeks of obsessively checking my Kindle reports, I sort of gave up and forgot about it. I moved on to other things.
I don’t think it’s a bad book, per se, or I wouldn’t have published it. But I never expected it to be a blockbuster. It doesn’t exactly fit neatly into a genre. It’s kind of a sad, tragic little story. Sort of Romeo and Juliet meets The Outsiders, but with vampires. It isn’t even 20,000 words. It’s kind of angsty teen vampire fiction, and isn’t really representative of where I’m at today as a writer. And yet, I’m pretty fond of it. It’s got a special little place in my heart. So I keep hoping that someday it’ll maybe get some traction, maybe someday I’ll find out that someone wasn’t angry that they spent ninety-nine cents to read it. Someday.
Imagine my surprise when I returned from vacation, and just for shits and giggles, took a look at my Amazon sales report. I sold a book! Not only that, but that person actually read the book! And they liked it! They liked it so much they left a good review! Oh, happy day.
Witty, adventurous, and heart-wrenching, this book hooked me and wouldn’t let go! The descriptive writing had me visualizing every pleasant and disturbing moment, and everything in between. Cant wait to see what else Kincade has in store!
Omg omg omg author boner.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, you sold one book. You got one good review. That’s not really much to get excited about. To you I say: Shut up. Don’t you fucking ruin this for me.
So hey, if Sydney Katzen enjoyed it, maybe you might too. It’s less than that cup of coffee you bought this morning, and you can probably read it in an afternoon. And maybe, just maybe, you might leave a review and make my day.
Of course this doesn’t apply just to me. All you aspiring authors out there probably already know this, but for the rest of you who buy ebooks, the single biggest factor that determines kindle rankings, that decides whether a book shows up in searches so people can buy it and the author can make the monies, or whether a book gets sent down to the depths of Kindle hell, is reader reviews. So if you like a book, the best thing you can do for that author is simply leave a review.
I don’t know about the good book, but I can tell you about a good book. The prologue and the first three chapters of my upcoming action/horror novel, The Devil’s Mouth, are available for free! Give it a read! See what you think! And then when you think it’s totally awesome, you can read the whole thing when it comes out in April. Really, what do you have to lose?
Click those links. You know you want to.
The Devil’s Mouth Preview (.pdf)
Matt Kincade 