The Hidden Truth–a Review

Author Hans G. Schantz and I run in some of the same circles, so we’ve bumped into each other before (he also organizes the Big Based Book Sales). But this book was recommended to me by somebody I know online who is not an author. I’ve become so gunshy about all the poorly written indie novels on the market that it took this little nudge for me to give The Hidden Truth a try. I am now thankful for the recommendation.

It doesn’t hurt that the subject matter is right up my alley. I’ve long been fascinated by hidden truths (behind myths, legends, history, common knowledge…but I repeat myself), so the title alone should have been enough.

For my money, the story lives up to the title. Of course, I hope the succeeding books dig deeper into the plot groundwork laid here.

Peter Burdell finds a strange reference while perusing an old book on electricity (I think it’s actually called “wave theory). The information has been censored from other editions of the book. Why? Naturally, our hero is curious, though at first this could all be chalked up to coincidence or inconsistent editing/revisions back in the Dark Ages before the Internet, personal computing, or even television. But when other people stumble across this hidden truth, they die under mysterious circumstances.

Peter is hooked, and just has to dig deeper. As a reader, I’m hooked, too. Again, I’m a sucker for hidden truths–like the missing song in Shadow Hand Blues. or “Rosebud” in Citizen Kane or “Calima” in Planet of the Apes.

I like the characters and never had trouble relating or sympathizing. There was a bit of mustache-twirling by Uncle Larry when he tries to recruit Peter, but overall the storytelling is strong enough that I won’t give this any less than five stars.

The author even dabbles in the socio-sexual hierarchy and the concept of game–and does so in an amusing way.

Seriously, this has been the most enjoyable book I’ve read in years. Strongly recommended.

Coming Soon: Robert Victor Mills’ Man of Swords

Just a heads-up that Gio will soon be reviewing RV Mills’ first Legends of the Wandered Lands book: Man of Swords. Sounds like there may be a follow-up interview forthcoming, as well.

The Wandered Lands. The crucible where legends are forged...

Atop a sacred mountain a young man discovers himself doomed with the cruellest of curses, ever to wander, never to find rest. So begin his adventures through realms of dark peril peopled with men and monsters both, his purpose unknown to all, save perhaps the Gods themselves.

Man of Swords chronicles the first six adventures of the mighty hero Rhoye of Khetaine, wanderer, wildlander, sellsword, as his legend begins. Contains six thrilling tales of dark heroic fantasy, including:
  • The Eye and the Dragon, where the young hero faces his first trial in the Cave of Rite.
  • The Knight Who Would Not Kneel, where Rhoye becomes unwillingly sworn to a dying king desperate to rescue his realm from monsters.
  • The Devil Out the Wych Elm, where Rhoye is saved from sure death only to face a peril all the greater – what is the strange secret of the old spirit’s tree?
  • The Queen of Scorpions, where Rhoye grapples savage pirates and priestesses of terrible purpose in a chase across the Wild Main.
  • The Ember Nixie, a drunken misadventure in the gambling underworld of a snowbound northern port.
  • The Beast Beneath Druihmkirk, where the only escape from an ancient walled city is through the sewers, through the belly of the beast beneath.
Across these six thrilling adventures of sword and sorcery, of chance and fate, and of great deeds, Man of Swords charts the rise of the newest hero to join the Legends of the Wandered Lands.

Book News

Amazon has discounted Rebooting Fate to $2.99. Don’t know how long that will last, but based on experience: probably until the first few people jump on it.

Speaking of Paradox Book 2, it acquired a rating. A whopping 3 star rating. No reviews, just that. This is a 1st for my books. I don’t get a lot of reviews normally, but when I do, at first they tend to be from readers who liked the book in question. In that way, at least, I’ve been fortunate. Hell and Gone only had 4 & 5 star reviews for years before suffering the first drive-by 1-star.  “Ratings” have made it even easier for drive-by book-bombing. There’s a lot I’m tempted to say about ratings/reviews, but whatever. (UPDATE: While getting links, I saw that a second rating had finally come in–a 5 star, which pulls the average up to 4.)

The bottom line is, Paradox was written as one Tolstoy-length saga, not a series. But to sell it in today’s market, I broke it into a series. It was not meant to be episodic, originally. And though I did what I could to make it work better as an episodic tale, I knew there were going to be problems.  It’s not surprising that a reader would feel they only got part of the story–because any one of these books really is, in fact, just part of the overall story.

And along those lines, I’m mulling over an idea to possibly make the integrated, comprehensive saga available as a hardback and an E-book “box set.” I’ve never done that before, but I think it would be a good fit for this project.

Both of the Paradox books released so far were bestsellers. In fact, both became the #1 Hot New Release. Pleasant surprise, seeing as how I didn’t discount the 2nd one as deeply, nor promote it very hard. And it clung to that #1 Hot New Release spot for almost a week–even after I changed it back to normal price. So yay.

But it sure looks odd when a bestseller only has single-digit ratings/reviews on ‘Zon.  What can ya do?

Paradox Book 3 is scheduled to release in early February. It looks like the paperback will be available not too long after.  Pete/Ike is in college for Defying Fate. There’s a lot of football. As his mind matures, he also becomes aware of parts of life that never interested him as a kid (like politics). Though Uncle Si gave him a good head start, he still has much to learn about friendship, leadership, and women. Not all that learning is painless. He also gets into some sticky wickets that could not happen without a time machine.

It might do better than the previous books for those reasons. It might do better because there’s a nubile blonde on the cover:

Or it might not do better at all. I do plan to lower the price and run a promotion, so we’ll see.

There’s other developments regarding books going on. You may have noticed the new contributor, Gio, has begun reviewing and interviewing. He mines some rare nuggets in today’s literary landscape, and is helping others discover them. Personally, I plan to read Robert Victor Mills‘ old-school sword & sorcery books based on Gio’s recommendation.

I need to post my own review of Hans G. Schantz’s The Hidden Truth–a really good conspiracy thriller with a touch of speculative/sci-fi thrown in. Will look to do that, soon.

Right now I’m reading The Babylon Codex, which, being time travel fiction, is technically competition for my latest. I’m enjoying it so far. Not only is it well-written and plotted, but it deals with (and offers an explanation of) a phenomenon very similar to what I call “The Big Spooky” in Paradox.

With all the stuff happening in the world right now, and what looks to be a whole lot of bad news staring us in the face for the immediate future, there is still some good literature being produced. Embrace it!

An Interview with Robert Victor Mills

As in the recent review of the author’s latest, this Q & A is brought to you by the INFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO.

Gio: This being only your second publication, how long have you been writing and what made you decide to publish your works only recently?

RV Mills: Well, on leaving university in ‘94, I decided to have a stab at this writing game. Over the next five years I wrote two fantasy novels, submitting them to publishers and agents. A different business, back then, just before the birth of the internet, when sample chapters had to be printed out and mailed in big brown envelopes. I stuck at it for about five years of silence and polite rejections, but, life forged on; family, a full time job and more college. I don’t recall ever consciously giving up on the dream, though I definitely gave up on the reality. All those papers were thrown into a document box and forgotten about.

Nearly twenty years later, 2017, with both my parents gone and me in the process of selling the old family home, I came across that document box. It was, shall we say, interesting and informative. One experience that a writer can never have, is to read his own work completely cold, with fresh eyes. Reading the contents of that box was as close as one might get, because I’d forgotten almost everything I’d written! Of course, the tale would be wonderful if I could romantically announce that I had rediscovered some lost masterpiece. Oh no, it was all terrible! Just awful! But, with that fresh perspective and an older head, I could see plain as day where all my failings as a writer lay. A very useful experience.

Should you be wondering, I burned those manuscripts in the garden in a steel bucket. The world has no need of such horror!

I guess, that would have been that. However, once again, life happened. The virus came, and lockdowns. Like everyone else I read books, watched movies, listened to music, picked up new hobbies, slow tortured by increasing boredom. It drove me to again pick up the pen. I started scribbling science fiction stories, just for my own amusement, nothing else.

Towards the end of that very peculiar period, three things happened, all seemingly the same week. First, I read an article which essentially argued that many talented writers were being turned away by publishers and agents for the sole reason that they didn’t fit a desired demographic, and that this had been going some years. Second, I caught a livestream by the comic book artist Ethan Van Sciver. There’d been an incident with a movie director that had him really riled. And he persuasively called on his viewers to have a go at creating, something along the lines of: “If you can draw, draw! If you can write, write! We need you!” Thirdly, that same night, I had a dream.

I quite often have vivid dreams. Boy, this was one! An entire story played out in my head, like a movie, of a mighty warrior with hair like flame, and his companion, a poet and bard with a tongue like quicksilver. Together they were rescuing a princess snared by a snake cult. Vicious fights, monsters, gore, glory. No names, no dialogue, just images and allusions, but as real as if I were there, involved. I woke up, it was as if a switch had gone over in my mind. I got up, sat down, started writing. And that, eventually, became the first story of Rhoye and Astropho.

Gio: The first thing that we notice when reading ‘The Isle’ is your prose. How did you come to develop and hone such a brilliant prosaic style?

RV Mills: Well, firstly, thank you for the compliment, that’s incredibly kind.

I suppose the short answer is, a long lifetime of reading. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, youngest of eight children, in quite a traditional working class family. Having five older brothers, there was always a lot of stuff left lying around to read, not all of it of a suitable age rating, either. I adored reading. I would read anything I could get: Bond novels, horror, movie tie-ins, comics, magazines, but I always gravitated to more fantastical stuff, myths and legends. Then, for Christmas 1982, my eldest brother gave me a copy of ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. That gift pretty much started me down the path I’ve followed since. From reading those fantasy gamebooks I progressed to Tolkien. I remember saving furiously for weeks to buy a paperback edition of ‘Lord of the Rings’ in 1985. And from there to Mervyn Peake, Anne McCaffrey, Robert E. Howard, and so on. Those books also got me started on a decade of Dungeons and Dragons, first as a player and then, while I was at university, as a dungeon master. I long since gave my rulebooks away, but I still have the dice! 

Naturally, I suppose, my love for reading channeled me in that direction academically, which led to a degree in English Literature. That opened me to a deal of far older material, such as Homer, Mallory, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and classic novels and poetry. That’s chiefly where my reading interests lie now, in older writings, in heroism and chivalry. I often joke that the most recent book I’ve read is ‘The Return of the King.’

As you can tell, my jokes are seldom ripsnorters!

Gio: Your novella seems to be paying tribute to the greats of pulp narrative such as Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft. How do you prevent modern progressive culture to leak into your work, as we seem to be constantly bombarded with it?

RV Mills: Part of it for me, I think, is modern stuff just doesn’t interest me. I’m engaged, as a reader and now as a storyteller, in older ideas, of nobility, of chivalry, of duty, of sacrifice. And I think Van Sciver and the creators in the Iron Age movement are right, there has to be representation of those older strains of literature and entertainment for those members of the audience that still want and desire them. That’s where I’m at, and, honestly, it’s where I’ve always been. That is what my fictional world of the Wandered Lands represents, I think, a place where a reader can become lost in pure escapism, like Middle Earth, Hyboria, or Lovecraft’s old Arkham. My creations are never going to be for everyone. And I’m fine with that. Plenty of other stellar creators out there doing great, great things to satisfy other tastes.

Gio: Rhoye is your MC, however your novel is so rich in characters that he really never steals the spotlight. Was that something you did consciously?

RV Mills: You mentioned Howard. One of the aspects of his Conan stories I really admire is that, in quite a few of them, Conan is almost a secondary character, while the heroine leads the narrative. Valeria in ‘Red Nails’ springs to mind. I like that technique. I think it broadens the scope of the story and grants fresh perspective to events as they unfold. So in ‘The Isle’ we see Rhoye’s standpoint, Astropho’s, and Aona’s. Each offers a unique flavour, I think, which allows the tale room to breathe.

Gio: Speaking of supporting characters, I must admit the crabs were my favorite ones. How did the concept of an island so very much dominated by these crabs come about?

RV Mills:

Another dream, a nightmare, and with a very specific source. I’d been reading Dr. Jordan Peterson’s ‘Twelve Rules for Life’. That opening chapter, the one with the lobsters, really stuck in my mind. That night, I had a dream of two swordsmen dueling to the death on this hellish shore just swarmed over with the most disgusting crustaceans, not just lobsters but crabs and horrid sticky slimy things. So vivid, I just had to weave it into a story! So I got me a cup of tea, sharpened my pencil, and set to work!

As it happened I’d been working on an idea for a pirate story which really had very little direction. And I had another idea for a tale about a lost shrine. Suddenly these three ideas fused as one in my brain, and that was that. I had no real conception of how long it would turn out to be. I tend to just let each story dictate its own length. It came out long! But I’m exceptionally proud of it. I think it’s a very entertaining piece.

Gio: Can we expect more longer format stories similar to ‘The Isle’?

RV Mills: Yes, I have another finished novella which I’m hoping to put out in February. I’m waiting on artwork for that. It is called ‘The Girl with the Fire in Her Hair.’ It was written before ‘The Isle’ and is a little shorter, but I’ve included a back-up story which is a natural sequel and companion piece.

I’m currently writing the sequel to ‘Man of Swords’, hoping to put that out at the end of summer, which will contain further adventures of Rhoye as a younger man, his wandering through Bruthulia against the backdrop of the war with the Sarkaenid. About halfway complete on that project, as we speak. 

Gio: What inspired the title of this novel?

RV Mills: I struggled to decide on the best permutation! I wanted to mention the ‘shrine’, because shrines are mysterious, and the ‘scarab’, because also mysterious, and also ‘sickness’ to add a pinch of peril, but also the ‘isle’ to hint at location. I wrote it all down, read it back, and yes, it is indeed a mouthful. ‘The Isle of the Shrine of the Sick’ning Scarab.’ But I love it. The ‘e’ in Sick’ning was the only edit I could stand to lose!

Gio: Any plans for spinoffs? Astropho seems to be a very complete and well defined character who could possibly branch out and have his own adventures.

RV Mills: Astropho will return in ‘The Girl with the Fire in Her Hair.’ I have half a dozen other completed stories featuring the two friends together, I’m just in need of some connective tissue to link them into a narrative that is itself compelling, rather than just throw out a collection of disjointed short stories. But, yes, there’s more to come from Rhoye and Astropho, for sure.

Regarding spin-offs, I have two other characters that I am very endeared to, and have written two long stories with a third in outline. They are two templars of Erishala, Vicatiora and her mentor Kionates of Dalathopos. They are essentially sleuths in a fantasy setting, with Kionates being observant and wise if a tad senile, and Vicatiora being green, yet headstrong and quick. Together they solve very peculiar mysteries which abound in the city of Altamantia, and which usually have a magical bent.

But, that is a good ways off, as yet. Watch this space!

Note from Virtual Pulp: Stay tuned for a follow-up interview of Robert Victor Mills by Gio!

Isle of the Shrine of the Sick’ning Scarab – a Review

By THE INFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO

 

The tragic loss of Robert E. Howard from this world also represented the creation of a vacuum of creativity in a pulp genre unique in itself. Seldom had a writer been able to inject such vivid realism into a fantasy genre to such a degree that the reader could actually almost see, hear, and smell the places where they were transported via the written word such as Howard did…

Introducing Robert Victor Mills, an up and coming author who, by way of this 126-page pulp novella, seems to have boldly picked up the torch to continue into the footsteps of the late Howard.

The first element to jump out at us when reading this piece of pulp fiction is the…

PROSE:

Mills is a true master at carefully choosing every word, every noun, every sentence to elevate his work to a place where few other indie authors can reach. If you like a modern and direct style of written English language with plenty of modern euphemisms, this book is NOT for you! But if you long for a language that fully matches the world and characters we are presented with, and you care for tradition, ancient myths, and authenticity, then this might as well be your best pick of 2024!

CHARACTERS:

Mills is not just satisfied with good prose, oh no, he also has to indulge his readers with well thought-out characters that resonate with each of us individually. You won’t find dull characters or dumb villains here. Every player has a story, a vested interest, a strength and a weakness. By the time we’re halfway in, we can’t help but feel fully invested in these fellas and their perils.

PLOT:

What on paper seems a pretty straightforward storyline (which it is) in the hands of Mills becomes an ‘unpredictable hike’: you know where it starts, but it may suddenly take abrupt turns to only the author knows where. Again, that R. E. Howard’s realism makes this all the more interesting with the island, the elements, the beach crabs (LOTS of ‘em!), the turn of the tide, all intersecting.

Boys and girls, if this is not a 5 out of 5 pulp novella I don’t know what is. Robert in my opinion is destined to become one of the GREATS of our modern fantasy literature. Only the future will tell us for sure, but as the other Robert once said (and I’ll leave you chewing on this):

“I think the real reason so many youngsters are clamoring for freedom of some vague sort, is because of unrest and dissatisfaction with present conditions; I don’t believe this machine age gives full satisfaction in a spiritual way, if the term may be allowed. ”

Robert E. Howard

 

Come back soon for an author interview!

Coming Soon: Robert Victor Mills’ Isle of the Shrine of the Sickening Scarab

Got a couple treats coming up for you from guest poster IINFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO Probably next week, you’ll see the review right here–followed by an interview with the author.

Gio calls this a legendary tale in the tradition of Robert E. Howard.

Sounds like this book is a standout, five star read, so start the New Year off right and come back to check it out!

The State of Online Writer/Author Spaces

I quit Farceborg and Twatter cold turkey circa 2013. Never got rid of the Twatter account. Had to dust it off when a friend gave me a lead on a possible artist for a graphic novel project. So I got back on and was surprised to discover there’s some right-wingers tweeting over there. Also a whole lot of authors and some readers.

There must be dozens of writers who host #shamelessselfpromotion threads there. Every single day, it turns out. At first I jumped on, because I could always use new readers, especially for my new series. Now it’s dawning on me that there probably aren’t any readers/buyers who look at any of those threads. It’s like most other thirsty writer spaces–a bunch of tryhards pimping their wares without even reading what others post.

It’s one heck of a reader-friendly market out there. Unfortunately, most of the literature out there is mediocre or worse, written by tradpub wannabes/imitators. And authors seem to outnumber readers by maybe 5-to-1.

I had a group on MeWe but didn’t have the time (or personality) to manage it, and it became one of those shooting galleries for thirsty authors. A ghost town where everybody self-promotes but nobody reads, responds, or even clicks “like” buttons. I didn’t want to have a bunch of rules or be the content cop, but human nature being what it is, I guess that’s what you have to do if you want a quality space with interest, engagement, value, etc.

The book-related groups on Gab (that I’m still a member of) are mostly the same–no conversations, no sharing, just thirsty authors shooting their full auto promotion guns into the ghost town.

In conclusion…just kidding–I don’t have a coherent conclusion.

I suspect a lot of us are Generation X, and even though we are on “social” media, we just can’t overcome our survivalist “look out for #1” mindset.  We’re not networking, or “building relationships,” we’re fishing. And we’ve depleted the fishing hole’s already-shrinking population of literate consumers by inundating them with bait and lures. I guess.

Too bad, It would be nice to have those conversations and take a break from the sellsellsell! mania.

When the Bullets Fly, How Will the Swamp Media Spin It?

The sponsors of the invasion at America’s border aren’t even trying all that hard to conceal their intentions anymore. The military-age male invaders are bringing weapons across openly, in broad daylight, knowing nothing will be done to stop them.

The last, most daunting obstacle to enslaving the American people is that we’re armed. Before the coup de grace can be executed to finish our fundamental transformation, a strategy must be devised to defeat an armed population. Efforts to disarm us have progressed considerably since the Prohibition era, but haven’t completely succeeded in most of the country. Maybe 70-90 million people in the US keep and bear arms. If even 3-10% of them decide to actively resist the Great Reset, our would-be overlords will have their hands full trying  to subjugate all of us. So how do you deal with that threat?

Looks like the Cabal has decided to import and prepare (all at their intended victims’ expense, of course) a foreign army to make war on us. Cabal stooges are already revealing their plans to install the invaders as police and soldiers. “Defund the police” initiatives were one tactic herding us toward that mission objective. The Cold Civil War probably won’t turn hot until the Cabal is confident their invaders are sufficiently trained (and armed/equipped/organized) to shoot it out with the American people and prevail.

Lack of critical thinking in our dumbed-down population, public incredulity, and Swamp Media gaslighting, prevent most people from understanding what is going on all around them. But what will the Ministry of Propaganda do when the shooting starts? They won’t be able to deceive people about it anymore, right?

Wrong.

The Cabal needs as many of us as possible to sit on our hands “trusting the plan” or whatever until the invaders have locked down the initiative and secured crucial objectives. The reporting might go something like this:

“Crazed white supremacist militias (we told you those right-wingers were hateful and dangerous!) have organized nationwide in an ethnic cleansing campaign to rid the country of all non-white people! Oppressed, marginalized communities have no choice but to fight back. With the help of our heroic troops and police, the domestic terrorist forces are being split, enveloped, and neutralized in separate firefights across the country. If someone you know might be a right-winger, call this hotline.”

Even if, by some miracle, we could repeat 2016 and overcome the election rigging in ’24, a hostile foreign army will obey its masters, no matter who is in the White House, They are even less beholden to the Constitution than the criminals and traitors running our government now.

The State of Comic Book Fan Media

According to Vox Day, the cultural Marxist Thought Cops are now taking over  BIC (Bounding Into Comics) too. News to me, though I should have expected it.

Anyway, a new online entertainment magazine has already stepped in to receive the baton.

First off, BIC was never a right-wing, right-leaning or culturally consoivative site to begin with. As mainstream comics became increasingly feminized and sodomized, BIC always struck me as firmly in the “not that there’s anything wrong with that” camp.  So I can’t even say that once they, too, are completely pozzed, it would be 180 degrees off from their founding principles (like I even know what those were). Will they begin gushing over comics that suck? To the extent they even cover comics: yeah, probably. More on that soon.

I went over to Fandom Pulse and looked around. What I found was in sync with online comics media and forums I’m familiar with.  I follow the BIC group on MeWe, a more Big Tent comics fan group on Gab (that I haven’t managed to get kicked off of, yet), read the Arkhaven blog regularly, and have BIC and Bleeding Fool bookmarked in a browser. This has been part of my status quo for a couple few years now. In case it is not for you, breaking story:

They hardly have any comic-related content.

Visit any of these sites and you will find all kinds of posts about manga, movies and toys, but not much at all about comics. After pondering this over a glass of wine at the country club (not really, but it makes me sound more sophisticated, don’t it?), I concocted a theory. The theory has two major components/exhibits.

Exhibit A: Mainstream comics/the Big Two are in a flaming death spiral, due to abysmal writing and utter depravity. Bloggers could fisk and critique DC/Marvel’s latest abominations on a regular basis, but that’s like asking them to spend their life sniffing turds and reporting on what they smell.

Why not write articles about the indie comics and graphic novels being produced? There’s decent work out there.

Exhibit B: From what I can tell, current SEO doctrine dictates that websites must generate scads and scads of content. (Please note my courageous stand here at VP that defies SEO doctrine.) From my brief perusal of Fandom Pulse, I can tell Supply Side Content Creation is their guiding philosophy, too. Content, content, content! More content! There’s just not enough sequential art being produced they can write articles about to meet this mad demand for 500-word articles.

Where is that demand coming from–the fans or the editors? That’s a question worth asking IMO. As somebody who loved comics as a kid and is stumbling toward creating some original graphic novels of his own, and is still interested in the medium and whatever good sequential art can still be found, I would rather read one or two relevant articles a day about comics/graphic novels than 50 articles a day about Hollywood inside baseball, action figures, videogames, film adaptations, and Bob Iger’s most recent brainfart.

But, as often is the case, my reasoning is much, much different than the prevailing wisdom.

The (Short) Story of a Bestseller, in Pictures

Part of the story has been told in previous posts.  It turned out that November would be the best month for the debut of the first book in the Paradox series. When I had a publish date, my next step was to arrange a promotion.

I hate marketing; I’m not good at it; but it’s one of those pesky chores you just have to do if you want folks to know your book exists, so I did what I could. My hope was to assemble a package of promotions that would overlap and feed each other seamlessly.

That didn’t work too well early on. I got some sales that bumped my sales rank, but it petered out before the next promotion kicked in. I was driving long hours on the 19th and couldn’t get my “smart” phone to take a screen shot. When I got to a place with an Internet connection I was able to take one with my laptop (I’m using Amazon to track sales, rankings, etc., because they update all that the fastest. Other sellers might give you sketchy info a week after the fact–which doesn’t help with this kind of data study).

The overall ranking had slipped by over 10,000 places by the time of this screen shot, but it never reached an impressive rank during this phase anyway.

The next phase began on the 21st. From early morning until about 2pm, the ranking continued to slip, down to about 220,000+ overall. Then, finally, evidence began to show up that the needle was finally moving upwards again.

 

Not a bestseller yet, but moving in the right direction with enough time left in the day to possibly get there. Two of my Retreads novels had already topped multiple categories at this point in their promotions, while the other one took a little longer (it got harder every time to reach the top, though all three did crack #1 bestseller rank). Then around 6pm I checked for a data update:

 

 

Top 100 in three categories was less than what I hoped for, but might possibly mean that the book was showing up where book shoppers could at least see it. And technically, it was now a bestseller.

Around 8pm, when the data updated again, Escaping Fate was  at #6 in Time Travel Science Fiction (for the Kindle); #25 in Time Travel Fiction (all formats); and #45 in Conspiracy Thrillers (all formats). Glass was half full.

 

This not being my first rodeo, I remembered to go to a bestseller’s page to grab a screen shot.

Here’s where I noticed a John Scalzi book was holding the #2 spot. My first encounter with Scalzi fiction was in a library many moons ago. I knew almost nothing about the author at the time, but after a reading a chapter or two, decided it was representative of everything wrong with the pozzed, woke publishing industry. Later, after discovering Vox Day’s blog, I learned more about the author and discovered my instinctive assessment was spot-on. Long story short, I thought it would be a satisfying coup if my underdog politically incorrect heteronormative red-blooded right-wing indie novel could unseat his gatekeeper-approved Establishment Left cookie-cutter book from that #2 slot.

Lo and behold, at 11:30ish pm…

Not only was it sitting at #2 in Time Travel Science Fiction (Kindle), but it was now designated as the “#1 New Release.” So a quick re-visit to the Bestseller’s Page was in order.

And there you can see Escaping Fate sitting at #2 with Gay Time Between the SJWs coming in 3rd. I wanted to stay up and see if it would hit #1 that night, but pooped out and went to bed.

I’ll probably never know if it cracked #1 in that category for a hot second–unless one of my readers just happened to be grabbing screen shots in that corner of the Web right then, and sends me one.

It had slid down to #3 the next morning when I checked it, and held that position throughout the day–so in that respect, at least, my promotion package has managed to sustain a decent ranking for a while. Not bad for a one-man operation cutting against the grain with none of the advantages handed out to the woketard authors.

On the subject of bestsellers, it hasn’t met with the same success as my Retreads novels (yet), but it’s a pretty strong launch, and the series is just getting started. I’ll call this one a “W”.

BTW, heartfelt thanks to the readers who have posted reviews. Those help immensely with visibility.  I’ve written about the importance of reviews before and elsewhere, and groused about what’s been happening to mine, so will spare you that this time.

Red-Blooded American Men Examine Pop-Culture and the World