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.
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.
Reports of autism cases per 1,000 children grew dramatically in the US from 1996 to 2007. It is unknown how much, if any, growth came from changes in autism’s prevalence. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you’ve never read a book as a serial, think of it like a television season broken into episodes. Just like TV, I throw hooks and leave characters hanging off cliffs until next week.
There are five episodes in Season One. You can purchase the weekly episodes at 99 cents each, or look under the couch cushions and find out what happens next immediately by buying TPODSeason One for just $3.99.
Gosh. Um. Getting the discount is the recommended course. Not in the couch? Try your winter coat pockets or the change in the car’s ashtray. Thanks!
Strap in, buckle up and say, “Pickle!” (You’ll find out.)
And watch out for the zombies. They’re coming for you after a long voyage and they are starving.
This is not a poem…exactly. It’s the table of contents to a coming episode of This Plague of Days from Season One.
Here we sit in Death’s Cafe We are the zombie’s reluctant buffet The deepest wounds are those unseen Between what we were and where we’ve been Be killed or kill in days like these Pray for God’s mercy or the Red Queen’s disease Say farewell to your comfortable home Goodbye to tea, clotted cream and scones The fruit of war, the wages of sin You don’t yet know what it will take to win Or even half of the trouble we’re in Save your strength for the fight Use your rage. Defy the night.
(Getting close to finalizing the cover art, hearing back from the last beta team members and getting this bird off the ground.)
Family matriarch Jacqueline Spencer on the existential abyss that is the plague:
How deep would Sutr reach down into the fabric of what had been and tear with unforgiving teeth? How resilient was that fabric? Was civilization just a thin sheen of varnish over shiny, black claws of primal aggression? She knew Theo thought so, but she hoped her husband was wrong.
On a scavenging trip to the mall, a little band of explorers from the Spencer family encounters a wall with notes and graffiti:
A little further on stood several memorials. “Olivia, you were a good wife,” read one. That was in white and, unlike the others, writ large to fill the height of the wall for several concrete panels. The tribute had been painted with a wide brush by a tall man.
Another simply read: Andrea. Why?
Here and there, fading pictures of missing loved ones dotted the wall and fluttered in the breeze. A phone number was listed below a picture of a stunning redheaded woman wearing cat’s eye sunglasses. Heather Pritch, 29, separated at hospital. Came back for you. Will wait at train station. Tara.
The flyer, fixed to the wall with a scrap of twisted duct tape, looked like it would lose its tentative hold with the next breath of wind.
There were also a few with directions and warnings:
Todd, Meet Us At Deb’s, Love Beth.
Go around Chicago!
Detroit’s Burnt DOWN!
Army’s taken over Tahoe. They shoot all who approach.
Another read: Michigan has militia! but it wasn’t clear if that was a warning or a hopeful sign that somewhere there was order.
A more informative message read: Refugee Camps at NIAGRA FALLS has gone X. Many dead. Stay home and indoors. God bless.
Just before a gap in the wall ahead, a green winking ghoul admonished them with a pointing finger. ‘We want you!’ was scrawled over its grotesque head. Below a smeared wagging finger were the words: Not to Litter! Burn Your Evil Dead! It was signed, The Ungrateful Living.
At another spot, a column of numbers from one to 24 stood, each number exed out. The next number in the series jumped to 26. Beside the column were the words: Tally of Looters shot.
Worldwide distribution of plague infected animals 1998 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When I began writing This Plague of Days, it wasn’t about zombies and, in a way, it still isn’t. It’s about people in desperate circumstances trying to survive extinction. Also, the infected are not the walking dead. It’s more of a 28 Days Later, humans with rabies sort of situation. Things happen that may be paranormal or they may have a rational explanation. (I won’t spoil it.)
I will say that my horror serial begins with one plague that spirals society down as the virus mutates. The Sutr-X virus evolves, things get worse and, of course, the world will never be the same. There are great human losses to both strains of the virus. Jaimie and his family face illness, death, danger and betrayal. Worse? The pandemic wasn’t an accident of Nature. There’s an awesome villain and a group spreading the virus for purposes they consider noble, right and true. As the book unfolds, terrorism and the plague’s evolving horrors stretch across the world. A new strain of Sutr-X rising in Britain puts vast forces on a collision course with the little family from America’s midwest.
The serial evolved into a big book that started with a character study. TPOD started in 2009/2010 with a small seed of an idea, my fascination with the world flu pandemic and a daily visit to Starbucks to write. I was so passionate about the project, I lost a job over a key health and survival issue that pitted me against the bureaucrats that employed me. I told them they were endangering healthcare workers and their families. They didn’t appreciate my input. (I take a chapter in TPOD to show those same bureaucrats how wrong they were, but that job loss and the issues around it are for another blog post on another day. I’ll get into that background when I publish that episode, no doubt.)
I began the book exploring the mind of the main character. It is an ensemble cast, but everyone loves sixteen-year-old Jaimie Spencer:
Autism spectrum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
1. He’s on the autistic spectrum.
2. He is a very shy, selective mute who must hold his father’s hand when they go out in pubic.
3. He sees auras.
4. His special interest is Latin phrases and English dictionaries.
5. He’s in his own world.
6. Jaimie is a boy who sees significance in every detail and every word. He often gets lost in those details and so seems oblivious to danger.
When the Sutr plague strikes, stress and circumstance bring Jaimie closer to our world in surprising ways. When worlds touch, they ignite sparks that let his family and the reader glimpse his mind and true abilities.
But why pit this strange boy against a world filled with nasty survivalists and infected, rage-filled cannibals?
I could tell you that high stakes and steep odds matched against a charming underdog in a tough conflict makes for a compelling story. But you already know that. The simpler answer is, I’m a bit strange, too. I do not have Aspergers Syndrome. I do, however, see the world askew and you’re going to love the odd word excursions almost as much as the zombie attacks, evil villain and my strange plague apocalypse.
This Plague of Days launches soon. I love surprising readers. I will.
This Plague of Days 