Tag: whiskey delta

New Cover for Whiskey Delta!

Whiskey_Delta2Call me fussy, but since I decided to create a video trailer for Whiskey Delta, I’ve begun to think extra hard about promotion and marketing. What’s more, creating that trailer required me to open an account at Shutterstock so I would have images that I alone have the rights to and can use without worry of copyright infringement or rights.

And so, what you see above is how the new cover will look like now. Rather than the small arsenal that was featured on the original, this one has some real, bonafide zombie content to show the world! It’s something I’ve been thinking about for some time now, and even approached some friends and family who I know are skilled in visual arts. I mean, a zombie novel should have one on the cover right?

Addendum: All this experimenting with the first cover has made me want to redo the cover for the sequel. Now that I got images which I feel more accurately express the content, I feel I must tweak some more! And as usual, I produced a few different versions because I can’t seem to decide on which one is best. What do you think?

Cover One:

papa_zulu

Cover Two:

papa_zulu5Cover Three:

papa_zulu2Cover Four:

papa_zulu3

Papa Zulu: First Round of Edits Done!

editing1At long last, and months after I was hoping to have it done, I’ve finally managed to give Papa Zulu a full first-round edit. Now, I just need to make all the corrections, maybe get an edited proof, and let my beta readers look over it for additional mistakes. Alas, after all that reading and correcting, this is only the first of many read-throughs.

See, this is why I hate editing! It’s slow, tedious, repetitive, and I hate having to read my own writing because it’s like listening to your own voice droning on and on and on. But lucky for me, I’ve got people lined up to handle things from here. Good thing I decided not to do NaNoWriMo and instead dedicate myself to this. Otherwise it would be 2014 before anyone saw this sequel! Not to toot my own horn, but those who liked Whiskey Delta did ask for a sequel. People don’t like to be kept waiting…

Pappa_Zulu1Oh, and when it is finished, this is what the cover will look like. I chose to split the difference and incorporate the best of both covers, which gave me this. Look for it on Amazon and Kindle in the coming weeks. Onto round two!

 

Video Promo for Whiskey Delta

Whiskey_DeltaFor awhile now, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a promotional video for Whiskey Delta and its upcoming sequels. As someone who has never done this before, I found the idea very appealing, though admittedly a bit daunting. For example, what could I – a humble indie – really do other than string a few images and some words together with some background music?

And of course, I was concerned rights and such. I didn’t want to get sued after all. Not before I’ve actually had a chance to become famous! But today, with not much else to do, I went over to Youtube and just dived right in. And after a few hours of tinkering and some stock photos which I bought straight up, I managed to put the following 41 second video together.

Please check it out and let me know what you think:

Papa Zulu’s Cover Selection…

zombies-city-and-the-crowdHey all! Its been a busy season thus far, and after many months of slow progress, the editing process for Papa Zulu is just about over. Which means its time for me to start picking out cover designs! Recently, I tinkered with the write-up and then added some of the more recent reviews (these would be the five star ones I’ve been going on and one about lately!). Here’s how it reads:

“Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.”

–Niccolo Machiavelli

In the barren deserts of New Mexico, the war against the Whiskey Delta continues. After years of fighting, the “Mage” and his Rattlesnakes have managed to get the upper hand on the undead, while back at their base, “Doc” Ross Cooper and his team are getting close to producing a vaccine from the Patient Zero strain. But things quickly change when a new opponent enters the arena. Ever since their encounter with rogue forces in LA, the Mage has worried that there are military forces back East, people who owe allegiance to another master and want the Patient Zero strain for themselves…

Praise for Whiskey Delta:
“This was an excellent book from start to finish.” -K.C. Williams

“Great story about soldiers doing solider business.” -John

“This was an absolutely fantastic read. Highly recommend for any fan of the zombie genre.” -Britanny

“This is a badass Zombie book.” -Kellie H.

“I could not put Whiskey Delta down till the end.” – W.M. Morgan

“This book is for all those zombie fans out there!” -The Pragmatic Procrastinator

As for the design itself, I’m a little torn between two contenders. For awhile now, I’ve been working with one that boasts olive borders, orange font, black background, and the photo of a soldier firing tracers into the night. That would be this one:

Pappa_Zulu2But recently I came upon another cool photo and began designing a new cover around it. Much like the other one, it’s an army stock photo, but this one shows a group of soldiers conducting live fire drills during the night. Using high-speed photo, it looks like an eye=popping laser show. Now here’s what that design looks like:

Pappa_Zulu3

What I also like about this one is the way the photo is watermarked into the background. The red tracers are really quite impressive, and the orange font still seems to work since there are traces of orange here too. But dangit if that black and olive pattern from the first one doesn’t still seem totally appropriate, not to mention the way the orange font and black background just blend with the photo!

So I’ve decided to crowdsource this one with a poll. Which shall it be? Cast your vote and help me determine what the sequel to Whiskey Delta is going to look like.

Another Great Review! ‘Bout Time!

Whiskey_DeltaIt’s been awhile since Whiskey Delta got a rave review over at Amazon. Sure, it got some good ones lately, but they really didn’t seem to take my mind off the few bad ones. Somehow, a person saying “this was good, but” doesn’t take the sting out of another person saying “this sucked!”
But a five star review with nothing but good things to say is something truly rare and wonderful. It came a few days ago and totally brightened my day:
Outstanding! (5 out of 5 stars):
Brilliant Storytelling, Outstanding Military Adventure writing and, Most Importantly….Remarkable Characters that make it all matter. I’m anxiously awaiting the next book.
-noozman5
Another good thing about it is that it also served to encourage me to finish editing Papa Zulu, but in a good way this time. Rather than trying to get the next book out there, and corrected for grammar and typos in advance, I am actually eager this time to let a satisfied reader see what happens with the story.

Zombie Hunters!

apoc_soldiersHello fellow zombie smashers! As you may recall, a few weeks back I hosted a zombie hunters get-together. People were asked to take part by designers their own warriors, specifying weapons, apparel, and a bit of a back story. And of course, those who took part would have the honor of seeing their character featured in the next installment of my Whiskey Delta series – Oscar Mike!

So far, only three people have fashioned characters, but this is more than I need to work into the story. Still, if anyone’s interesting in seeing their creation presented in literary form, there is still time. All you need do is consult the pages on Apparel and Melee Weapons, then pick a primary weapon, a secondary, and create a little backstory to go along with it.

And in the meantime, allow me to present the first three zombie hunters that have been created for this challenge, arranged in alphabetical order:

Khaalidah Muhammed-Ali:
Alias: The Hurting Healer (Jamilah Al Mo’alej)
Apparel: Hooded Cloak, denim clothes, leather gloves, hijab
Primary Weapon: Composite Bow
Secondary Weapon: Desert Eagle .357
Melee Weapon: Truncheon
Backstory:  When the zombie apocalypse happened, Jamilah I put her three children (aged 22, 20 and 11) into her truck and hauled out of the Houston metropolitan area. Her husband was one of the many casualties when the biters first came, and the people in her area proved worse when chaos followed in their wake. Once they reached the countryside, they decided to take up residence in an old farm house where she grew herbs for medicine and vegetables while her oldest son, 22 years old, hunted rabbits, birds and fishes in the local stream. Her 20 year old daughter, the nervous ninny that she was, served as their lookout and security adviser and her 11 year old daughter, taciturn yet brilliant, created devious little traps to snare food, and the undead!

Rami Ungar:
Alias: Ghost
Apparel: Trench coat, glasses
Primary Weapon: MP5
Secondary Weapon: MP5K
Melee Weapon: Katana sword
Backstory: Originally from Ohio, when the zombies began to roam, Rami packed up his gear and what weapons he could get his hands on and hit the open road. Realizing quickly that the only way to stay alive was to move fast and remain unnoticed, he adopted the name “Ghost”. After losing everything to the undead hordes, he lost his old name and has maintained the alias ever since. Though nominally skilled in firearms, his weapon of choice is the naked blade.

Rhys C. Ethan:
Alias: Tromos
Apparel: Kevlar vest
Primary Weapon: Crossbow
Secondary Weapon: .357 Magnum
Melee Weapon: Baseball bat
Backstory: Tromos  was an honourably discharged police officer when the zombie apocalypse first hit. And when the law failed to act in the midst of the crisis, he took matters into his own hands and became the terror of the living dead. His life now is spent traveling to wherever zombies endanger safe shelters, and slaughtering as many of the living dead as humanly possible!

And as promised, these characters will have the honor of appearing in the upcoming Oscar Mike. The re-released Prologue is coming soon, which will offer a sneak peak at these badasses as well as the larger plot of the third book in my Whiskey Delta series. Stay tuned!

300,000 Views!

fireworks1Oh dear. It seems a milestone was passed this week, one which slipped under my nose once again. Ever since I hit 200,000 views, which seemed like forever ago, the milestones have been fewer and further between. You tend to stop keeping track of noticing when they roll around. But when the stock ticker hits a number with five zeroes behind it, you suddenly find yourself taking notice.

And when I did, I noticed some other important milestones had also slipped by unnoticed. For example, back in March  Stories by Williams celebrated its second anniversary. That alone was reason to celebrate, but since that time, the site also surpassed 2000 followers, 5000 comments, and 10,000 likes. Oh yes, and I also passed 1000 posts by a significant margin (1148, as of this posting). Awful lot of number here!

Oh yeah, it was also since the second anniversary – roughly one month later in April – that Whiskey Delta was published and sold over 1300 copies. A special shout out to all those who helped make it possible – Rami, Audrey, Carla (my darling wife-editor), and of course, Mr. Max Brooks himself!

Looking ahead, there’s always plenty more to do. First, I want to publish part II of the zombie-fiction series, Papa Zulu! And of course, there’s a few anthologies to take care, such as Yuva and Flash Forward. And then there’s the ongoing Revengers saga that’s been growing some serious legs of late. And I imagine there will be plenty of science, tech, and pop culture news to share in the meantime…

Good News! The Latest Reviews Are All Positive!

picture by tt83x at deviantART
picture by tt83x at deviantART

Well, well, well… you remember when you were young and things weren’t exactly going your way? Remember how your parents would tell you to hang on and wait because things would only get better? Or perhaps you had one of those cheery optimistic friends who’d constantly tell you that things are always darkest before they turned to light. Not to be over dramatic, but I felt myself in need of that kind of advice awhile back.

And now, I feel like it’s paid off, because for once I got some good news on the review front that was all positive. As I had hoped, it seems that the 2nd edition of Whiskey Delta has been absorbed by the reading community and the returns are coming back positive! Two more reviews have been added to the queue, one a four star and the other a five! The net effect of this has been to push the overall review of Whiskey Delta up to 3.4 stars (though it looks like 3.5 on the book’s listing).

But what I’m most happy about was that there were people who had just “good book” or “good read” to say, without all the additional remarks about editing and proofreading. In fact, out of a total of twenty, only two reviews actually came back negative on the story itself. Most people who gave it two or three stars said they liked the story, it was just the technical errors that bothered them.

Not so much here. Here’s what the latest reviewers had to say:

(5.0 out of 5 stars) Great read:
Great story about soldiers doing solider business. I recommend it to anyone who likes this type of book. Waiting for the next one!

–john

(4.0 out of 5 stars) A great read:
Lots of action like the way he made me feel as if I was there in the middle of the action. Looking forward to more.

–Jesse

Not too wordy, but that’s fine by me. In short, they liked it, and wanted a sequel. And I thank them for it. This is the stuff authors yearn to hear, the stuff that makes the effort feel like it was worth it and which encourages them to keep writing. And to all my fellow indies out there, especially those I know personally, I hope that you too are getting your share of positive reviews. Lord knows we need this kind of thing, don’t we?

Competition is fierce, the market is being flooded and publishing houses are simply not taking risks on new authors as much as they used to. Every additional star and positive review we earn translates to more sales and more recognition!

Go indies! Peace out!

Latest Reviews!

Whiskey_Delta

Hey folks! It’s a new day and a new week. And during one of my many trips over to Amazon to see how my books were doing, I noticed that I picked up some additional reviews. As expected, they were a bit of a mixed bag, which seems to reflect the fact that the new edition is getting out there and earning its keep. On the other hand, some reviewers aren’t done with the 1st edition, and once again opinion is divided when it comes to how much they care about editing.

See for yourself. I’ve arranged the three latest in order from best to worst:

(5.0 out of 5 stars) fantastic read:
This was an absolutely fantastic read. Highly recommend for any fan of the zombie genre. There are some terrible spelling and grammatical errors, at least with the 1st edition, but nothing that detracted from the story nor made hard to read in my opinion.
Cannot wait to read more from this author!

-echOs

(4.0 out of 5 stars) Great Story and Characters:
Surprisingly good story of combat in a military responding to a frightening zombie infested world. Strong, consistent characterizations, great story lines, believable situations, and good use of humor. Delightfully without massive amounts of information regarding weapons and ammunition. An author worthy of continuing support. A 4 1/2 star book and a 5 star author. Kimohair

-Irish Kathleen

(2.0 out of 5 stars) Poorly written, not proof read and his editor simply didn’t do her job!!!!!
I thought this was the first book in the series no preface lended to my confusion – therefore the story starts off unfocused with no clear beginning! This is followed by a character development that is non-existent backed up with so many misspelt words that lends itself to drive the poor reader insane.

Sorry to say but each page has so many errors it makes it hard to follow the storyline, which is actually not bad. But makes reading this extremely frustrating.

In my not so humble opinion the writer did not do his homework in regards to military chain of command,terms and or squad tactics which was again frustrating.

Moreover for me his insistence on using abbreviated terms such as “mage” for major and his reliance on buzzwords such as “whiskey delta” is annoying to the point of nails on a chalkboard! This shows a lack of respect for the armed forces rank and an overall disregard to the readers intelligence.

I would suggest this writer spend some time with a seasoned older mentor while collaborating. Plus make sure you have a proof reader who actually reads your proofs – so you release something that is somewhat grammatically correct and free of spelling errors.

-Putty Tat “Tat”

Okay, so that was one stellar review, in spite of what I can only assume is the 1st edition’s share of editing mistakes, one good review without any mention of editing issues – assuming they read the 2nd edition – and the worst review I have received to date! In fact, this last one was originally one star out of five, but ol’ Putty there seemed fit to upgrade it two stars after a having a change of heart (said with only mild irony!)

So basically, it seems that things are looking up for this little work of indie fiction. Fingers crossed the sequel will be well received, consistently so!

Reviews Got You Down?

thumbs upIn a word. Yes.

Whiskey Delta has been racking up its share of reviews lately. Unfortunately for me, the majority of them have been rather punitive of late. Despite the release of the 2nd edition, a thoroughly cleansed and updated version of the story, the book continues to get slammed because of what I can only assume are the weaknesses to be found in the first edition.

In total, six people have added their reviews of the book in recent weeks, and four of those six gave it two stars out of five. And, as usual, three of those four had the same things to say, just worded differently:

Good story, bad editing.

You ever hear something so many times it lost all meaning to you? Or so many times that you swore the next person who said it would receive a thorough thrashing? Well, that’s kind of how I feel about these. But don’t take my word for it, here’s what they had to say:

Proofread!:
There is actually a decent story here, but it gets lost due to a strong need of proofreading. Needs more than just computer spell checking.

–William Boyles

Good story, awful editing:
This is a solid zombie story – the story gets 3 or 4 stars – but give us a break with the sloppy editing. At least pretend to care about the finished product. The punctuation mistakes, grammatical errors, and spelling mistakes make parts of the book unreadable and confusing. You have seen this complaint several times in the reviews – how hard is it to go through the book, clean it up, and re-post it? The author and publisher should be embarrassed by the condition of the editing. It is the worst I have ever seen in a purchased work.

–Justins Are Cool

Good story, horrible editing:
The story itself is good enough to keep you engaged but the editing made it a chore to finish. Misspelled words, missing words, bad grammar all through out took so much away from this book.

–Jackie L. Willis Jr. “waterboyjlw”

Ah, and check out this gem. This is the only thoroughly bad review Whiskey Delta has picked up since it was published. And for some reason, this person gave it the same rating as all those above who thought the story was good but the editing was bad. That seem right to you?

boring:
boring and poorly written. Story didn’t flow and there was no cohesive story line. I guess what can I expect for a couple bucks.

–Gil L Nicholas

In truth, this wouldn’t bother me so much if these rating weren’t hurting sales, or if these early reviews weren’t weighing down the overall rating. As much as I wanted to believe that the publication of the 2nd Edition might be a fresh start, every review contributes to the overall rating. And now, the book’s overall review now stands at a middling 3.1 stars out of 5. At this rate, I’ll need at least half a dozen five star reviews just to bring it back up to something respectable.

Luckily for me, there’s been some light at the end of this tunnel. In the same stretch of time, two 4 star reviews came in. There was this one, which I can only assume was for the 1st edition, and from a person who didn’t choose to knock me a whole bunch of stars over editing issues:

good book
Great story with interesting people. Spell check was poorly done and many editing issues were present. Would like a sequel

-Light

And then there was this one, which actually sounded like it might be from the 2nd edition since editing didn’t even come up in the review. In fact, this person chose to focus on matters pertaining to the plot and story, God bless their hearts!

good read but…..
Interesting story, but how do they have so many new guys in their unit? Where are they getting the replacements??
Pro’s- The military isn’t completely useless, a strong female character, interesting story
Con’s- The story starts somewhere in the middle and ends before the story seems done.

-DawnG

So that’s where things stand for this book right now. More good news, an advance proof of Papa Zulu arrived the other day and I’m getting down to editing it. By the time it is spruced up, say in a month or so, I hope to deliver on a sequel that is clean and proper coming out of the gate!

Maybe then this bad mojo will dissipate and I can get to entertaining fantasies of becoming a successful author and writer, the kind that has money, power, and access to the depths of sleaze that these things provide! Well… I’ll settle for money and power, thank you very much! Until next time…

zombie_keepcalm