Revising Season 2 of This Plague of Days this evening. Here’s a bitter taste of Sutr-X. This is just before the Infected invade America.
Jack stomped on the brake and swerved to avoid a body in a narrow gap between abandoned cars. It had been a woman. Three large black birds tore into the gore of her open belly.
Jack blasted the van’s horn. The birds backed away a few feet, but did not fly. In their retreat, the birds revealed more horror.
The dead woman lay on her back, swollen and decomposing. The corpse was too close to avoid being seen. What was seen could not be unseen.
One eye protruded, swollen in its socket. The other eye was missing, lost to the vultures. The tongue, too, was fat and stuck out at an angle from the yawning maw. Then Jack spotted something worse…
Episode 4 is out now. Get each of episodes for 99 cents each or grab all of Season One for a discount of just $3.99.
An autistic boy and his family versus The Running Dead
(Author’s Note: The following article is about why I serialized This Plague of Days. If you came for a secret revealed that isn’t a spoiler, The Link for the Curious is at the bottom of this post.)
Dickens wrote serials. So did Hemingway. Much of television is based on the serial format. The formula for reader satisfaction is pretty straightforward: hook ’em and give them some play but keep them on the line. Give readers rising tension and cliffhangers and you have a story that keeps them coming back week to week.
When I worked in traditional publishing, the model was much different:
The Zombie Apocalypse serial is here. Get it week to week for a scary summer or get the whole season.
One launch date; blitz all media all at once; concentrate the push within the first couple of weeks of launch; watch all efforts either win or peter out as bookstores sent back their inventory returns a few weeks later.
Here’s what’s different about This Plague of Days:
It has six launch dates; five episodes per season sold at 99 cents each; or get the whole book immediately at a discount (just $3.99) and find out what happens to my autistic boy and my uber-villain.
The change in the publishing model
Amazon used to work something like old world publishing in that you could marshal your forces and do a book bomb. A book bomb is where you get everyone you know to buy your book on Amazon at 2 pm on a Tuesday. The way it used to work, the algorithms would boost your book up the charts. Once the Mighty Zon recognized that was what some people were doing, they changed the algorithm to push those books down as fast as they rose.
Now I know drip marketing is the best way to go (as I learned from David Gaughran, author of Let’s Get Digital and Let’s Get Visible). Amazon algorithms favor book sales over time. It’s still great to get a big X of sales over a short Y amount of time, but Amazon likes sales consistency, not stabs in the dark that can’t be sustained.
Serials can sustain. With each episode serving as a sample to encourage readers to go ahead and buy the full Season One (and Season Two comes out in September) I feel like I haven’t even begun to reach new readers. When you launch one book, it feels like the date comes and goes quickly. Maybe you make an impact, but it feels like one kick at the can. After that, you’re repeating yourself and boring potential new readers. (What? He’s still on about that book he published all the way back in June?)
An autistic boy and his family versus The Running Dead
Serialization allows me to keep talking unselfconsciously. I have new launch dates, new material, and new information. I give readers a lot to look forward to.
What’s more?
I didn’t skimp on the episodes. Many serials give 10,000 words per episode. My episodes run 20-25,000 words. I wanted to be generous and give them lots of action.
Also? This Plague of Days is like two books in one! This is a zombie apocalypse with a contemplative side. At its heart is a boy with autism who sees the world very differently. So yes, there’s tension and creepiness and fast zombie action and an international thriller. There’s also a family dealing with a plague from the cold comfort of their living room in a world suddenly dystopian and unfamiliar.
Not all mysteries will be solved in Season One. A very important story arc in This Plague of Days is fooling readers right now!
Many authors experimented with serialization. It didn’t work well for them. Perhaps they were ahead of their time. Perhaps there were other variables that didn’t fall into place. I modelled what successful authors were doing and added length to the episodes to give bang for the buck. Then Amazon came out with its serials program and I felt like the biggest brains in publishing blessed the model I adopted.
If you haven’t bought Season One yet, there’s a secret I’m prepared to reveal now.
Not only did I serialize This Plague of Days, I did something no traditional publisher would have allowed.
An autistic boy and his family versus The Running Dead
When I worked in traditional publishing, author Anne Rice made vampires huge in popular culture. It seemed everyone was reading Interview with the Vampire (and then all her other books). Soon after, many agents and editors burned out on vampires. Vampires were done to death. The professionals were ready to put a stake through the heart of the phenomenon, so it must be so, right?
Foolish humans.
After the pros declared vampires were finished, the next wave came: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Twilight series, endless graphic novels, fan fic and True Blood.
If you live long enough, you begin to see patterns repeat. It happens in products and news cycles and franchises. Interesting things don’t go away. They get made anew.
The challenge in resurrecting any subject is to make it fresh: Cheerleader versus vampires in a world secretly packed with demons; vampires that sparkle in sunlight, more sex and whatever else it takes to make the old seem new.
Today I ran across an interesting blog entry. The author is tired of zombies. Good news! Zombies are still undead, too. Whether it’s new fans discovering old material in new forms (e.g. the World War Z movie), zombies as love interests, or my new serial (This Plague of Days), fresh takes abound for new fans and for those who think they’ve seen it all.
Innovation doesn’t stop with George Romero, or any other artist no matter how gifted.
If we’d stopped because the genre seemed to be running on fumes, we wouldn’t have 28 Days Later,Shaun of the Dead or The Walking Dead!
My zombie serial features a hero on the autism spectrum, eco-terrorists and more Latin phrases than Harry Potter has spells. It starts with one terrible virus (as if that wasn’t bad enough) that mutates into something more deadly.
What interests me most about dangerous situations is how they bring out truth.
I wrote it so, yeah, five stars from me. It’s like two books in one where two groups of interesting characters are on a collision course. The stakes? Human extinction and the lives of people we care about. But since I wrote it, I wouldn’t believe me, either. I guess if apocalyptic fiction with more Latin phrases than Harry Potter has spells intrigues you, you’ll have to read it to see for yourself. I hope you enjoy it.
This Plague of Days pits an autistic boy against a rising zombie horde. As the world we know comes apart, the infected become cannibals. Take elements of The Stand and
The Zombie Apocalypse serial is here. Get it week to week for a scary summer or get the whole season.
Cell, mix in World War Z and 28 Days Later with a terrorist plot and a strange boy with an obsession for Latin phrases and wham! It’s a zombie apocalypse you’re going to love.
An autistic boy and his family versus The Running Dead
An autistic boy + The Stand + 28 Days Later = This Plague of Days
This Plague of Days iskind of like two books in one. It begins with a world flu pandemic that makes civilization grind to a halt. Then the virus mutates to a form of human rabies that turns ordinary people into cannibals. As a terrorist organization works to spread the contagion, the new strain of the virus rises with the mayhem. In the heartland of an America falling apart, a boy on the autism spectrum discovers he has curious abilities in the midst of the chaos. A war is coming as forces for good and evil come together on a collision course.
I’m so excited to finally release season one. You can get the episodes week by week for 99 cents each or buy the full first season for just $3.99. (Take the discount!) If you enjoy the book, please do review it.
Thanks to Kit Foster of Kit Foster Design for his great work on this project (and there’s more to come for the print version.)
Thanks to the editorial team at Ex Parte Press. Many thanks for your suggestions as I built this huge story. Season Two arrives in September.
This Plague of Days 