Thanks for your interest in my new novel. I hope you enjoy reading TRUMP IN HELL – Chapter 1 as much as I enjoyed (!) writing it. The download is 100% FREE. Just scroll down the page and click BIG RED BUTTON. You can have the PDF, ePub or both. They'll both automatically download to your computer or device. No fuss. No muss.
I'm hard at work on the follow-on parts of the story. Chapter 2 and 3 are well underway and I'll be publishing excerpts — for the in-crowd, of which you can be a member—soon.
NOTE: As of this point, the audio for TRUMP IN HELL, Chapter 1 is also in production. Believe it or not, doing audio is a bear. I won't say it's as much work as writing the damn content in the first place, but it's no lark, either. Look for it soon! Announcements and initial availability will be made via our push message system, so be sure to click the red bell (lower right hand corner) and opt-in to be first in line.
So, heard of crowdfunding? Yeah. That. I'm hoping to get some support as I write this, the Great American Novel of and for our time. (Ahem) This is going to be a big book. If I was an already established writer, they'd probably call it my magnum opus. It's a big, sprawling story, involving a lot of characters. It begins with Trump alone, but you'll meet a lot of strange and scary characters along the way, many of whom are quite familiar.
So it's like this: Writing an epic novel is a b-i-t-c-h. Seriously. Word. It's a ton of work, and homie here ain't rich. Let's just say I sold my Apple stock a few weeks before the iPod came out. 🙁
Crowdfunding is an outgrowth of the “angel investor” idea, but amped up by the web and made egalitarian. In the investment world, “angels” are rich individuals who help fund startups. But these are guys (and gals) who, generally speaking, look for large returns. They commonly invest hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars at a pop, and aren't really interested in “small stuff,” like a novel, no matter how timely or potentially YUGE.
And they want returns! Big returns. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Helping to fund a one-off (be it a book, game, album, etc.) isn't what they're all about. They want a piece of the action, and they want it going forward. This, by the way, is perfectly understandable. It's just not a model that works well for a lil ol' author like myself.
The good news for us small guys is that there are a lot of cool people out there willing to help keep an artist or content creator going while he or she does his or her thing. That's what I'm after here. Do you think you might be willing to help?
I looked long and hard at using Kickstarter, Indigogo and other crowdfunding sites as a means of funding this project, but ultimately decided against going that route. The main reason is a simple one: control. Or rather, lack thereof.
When you put a project up on any kind of site like these, you're making them a partner, of a sorts, and that means they get a say—to whatever extent—in your business.
Homie don't like it!
But there are plenty of other reasons I decided against going this route, too.
One of the big ones, if not the biggest one of all, is what I call the Hassle Factor. I have to deal with the ever-changing idiosyncrasies and ongoing, non-stop, relentless BS of Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc., et al, in my day to day operations. The last thing I need or want to deal with is yet another set of onerous “must dos” and “can't dos” when I don't have to.
Keeping up with all the demands of the digital age is very time consuming, and yes, draining, too. You can literally lose a day or more of writing for all the make-work BS you have to do to “keep up with” all the sites out there that the experts tell us we need to be on. And that's “just” social media. There's a lot more where that came from. Losing days due to unforeseen and unexpected fiat changes made by giant companies has happened to me more times than I care to admit. And I look forward (not) to the same thing in the months ahead. :-/
Maybe someday I'll have a social media manager who can have the joy of dealing with all that sh*t! Until then, this is a one-horse town, baby, and the old bastard is gettin' worn out. He's swaybacked, needs new shoes, hungry—and there's a question as to whether the feed bill will get paid.
I considered first publishing through Medium, and even made inroads to going this direction, as they pay their popular authors. But again, you've gotta leap through hoops to be among the elect. Their editorial board determines who gets the juice on the site. Call me cynical, but I can guess how that's gonna go.
Ugh. So Medium is not for me. No sir. Not right now, anyway.
Limited time (and patience) is also why I've done away with Ko-fi, another crowdfunding site I flirted with—though I confess, I really do like the idea of being bought a cup o' joe now and then, so much so that I rolled it into the membership levels. :-p
Speaking of time, though, it may well be the single most important consideration of them all. At this juncture, I think it's the best use of my time—my limited number of hours every day—to get the word out myself and generate my own following. If you haven't figured it out by now, that's what I'm trying to do here with this FREE GIVEAWAY of TRUMP IN HELL – Chapter 1.
One day I came to the (D'oh!) realization that everything I need to do—insofar as “self funding” goes—can be done with PayPal, and all with far less hassle. Going it alone may not give me the exposure a big crowdfunding site can give, but such has been, to this point in my experience, fools gold anyway.
Them that has gets. If you've got a following, you do well on any of those platforms. If not, odds are you're going to quickly get buried by those that do, and by the latest, hottest, greatest fad gadget, whatever that turns out to be.
So… seriously… F it! And if you think I've got my head in my keister—it certainly wouldn't be the first time—please let me know in the comments section.
Perhaps the best part of this is that I don't have to share your money with a third party, and you still have all the protection that PayPal gives. No additional middlemen take a cut, which should make you happy. I know it does me. In short, going the PayPal route is better for all concerned.
So no offense to all those great crowdfunding platforms—but go stuff it!
At least for now, anyway. 😉
Files come in a .zip (compressed) file which is standard issue these days. You should be able to unpack it without any issues. No, there's no malware or anything that shouldn't' be there.
Another little “side project” of me and mine is The Best Awards. We've finished the first book for the project, called THE TOP 10 MOST POPULAR WESTERN NOVELS OF ALL TIME, and it's available FOR FREE on Amazon.
We're really proud of this creation. It's full of interesting lore, biographical info, great photos and more, as well as story summaries that will whet your appetite for the classics discussed therein (mostly no spoilers—we hate those)!
If you love Westerns, then I strongly urge you to check it out. THE TOP 10 MOST POPULAR WESTERN NOVELS OF ALL TIME makes a great gift, too! Comments and reviews are, of course, greatly appreciated.
KSK had his first professional work published at 14, and has been writing ever since. Recent works include QANON & TRUMP EXPOSED, a serious examination of the inane, insane, harebrained conspiracy theory, and THE TOP 10 MOST POPULAR WESTERN NOVELS OF ALL TIME. Future works will be fiction, though one can argue that in the Age of Trump, reality is already fiction, like Donald's tan, his "$10+ billion dollars" and his integrity.