My 2014 plans: Book signing, new novel release, big sequel brewing

After reaching so many milestones last year both professionally and personally, I have more groundbreaking writing planned for 2014.

First up, I’m doing a book signing at the renowned Books & Books in Coral Gables on Jan. 28 at 8 p.m. I’ll read a chapter from Mute – I have one in mind but I’m open to suggestions – and then talk about how the story of my novel is a metaphor for my life. The discussion really moved the people who heard it at the Miami Book Fair so I suggest you hear it live.

If you can’t be there in person, Books & Books will stream it online. Go here for more information about the free event.

This fall Silver Leaf Books will release my second novel, Famous After Death, in print and e-book. My publisher already posted a landing page for my novel. How do you like the cover photo? It’s by the same photographer from Mute, El Cesana in Australia. The font for the title will probably change, but I feel the photo captures the shocking nature of the story.

I’m glad there weren't camera phones and YouTube when I was a teenager because a lot of the stupid things I did probably would have been shared, to maximum embarrassment. I’m lucky some of those stunts didn’t go so bad that people got hurt. But what if…

In Famous After Death, three Miami teenagers figure: Everything else has gone viral so why not murder?

This is fast-paced thriller set in South Florida (mostly Miami). The teenagers do terrible things for attention as the trials of their childhoods drove them to dehumanize their victims, and make them famous by posting their deaths online.

Most teenagers who glamorize their violence online are too stupid to hide their identities, but this trio is clever, and they have help from a mysterious hacker with an ax to grind against the police officer tracking them down.

Besides all this, what else could I possibly have cooking? Well, another novel of course. Mute is just itching for a sequel and I’m hard at work on the first draft. I can’t say how long it will take to finish and, especially, to edit. That’s the hard part.

I’ll say this, though. It’ll have more science fiction than the first novel, and more romance. Yet, other parts are pure horror. 

I call it…

Silenced

E-Book Excitement at the Book Fair

I’d like to share some great insights on the e-book market that I recently picked up.

I introduced a panel on e-books at the Miami International Book Fair on Nov. 20. It was organized by Christopher Kenneally, of Copyright Clearance Center, and included Ami Greko, of the Kobo e-reader, and Argentinean publisher Ana Maria Cabanellas. The classroom was packed for their discussion and there were plenty of questions from the audience.

Greko was particularly giddy over Japan’s Rakuten recently acquiring Kobo for $350 million. Not only does that validate the importance of e-books, it should give Kobo access to more international markets, especially Asia and Brazil. Right now, e-reading is strongest in North America, Greko said, but international expansion could open doors for many authors.

“Small publishers have realized that their audience has been magnified tenfold because of the international market,” Kenneally said.

Still, downloading e-books is more difficult in Argentina and much of South America, Cabanellas said. They usually can’t be downloaded directly to mobile devices and there isn’t a large enough selection of Spanish books in digital format. Yet, the demand is there. Some “e-pirates” have copied thousands of books onto a CD and sell them all for $20, she said. 

“If the book is ready in digital and at a good price, the pirates don’t do it,” Cabanellas said.

Greko touted some of the unique features of e-books. Kobo allows readers to share their favorite passages of a book on their Facebook and Twitter networks. An optional feature allows readers to track their reading speed. Internally, Kobo is debating whether it should share information with publishers about when readers stop reading certain novels. 

Would it be helpful for publishers and authors to know that a certain chapter made many readers quit? By the time the book is already for sale, it’s probably too late to do much good. Greko noted that publishers are divided on whether they want this information.

I’m hoping that the launch of my novel Mute with Silver Leaf Books next year will be an international affair. I already have some fans in the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand that I met on Authonomy. 

To hear this discussion from the Book Fair in full, check out the podcast at www.beyondthebook.com