Dave's Author Blog

Three weeks into using facebook ads, and the results are interesting. I’m getting better than average click through rate … meaning how many people actually click the button when they see the add. Seems like the average is about 0.9 percent, or less than one in a hundred, which seems abysmal. It’s a little hard to say by category, because they are very broad, but in “retail” it’s about 1.5%; I’m getting 2.4%.

Then comes conversion rate; how many people that click on the link buy the book. Average (again, in a very generic sense) seems to be 10%. I’m getting about 1%. That means if one out of three people then go on to buy the rest of the books, I’m breaking even. It will take a while to see how that pans out, but I’m thinking it’s a high bar.

The vblog that advised how to set up a facebook campaign suggested pointing the add to your author page on amazon, but I think it’s time to try something a little different. We’ll see if things pick up a bit!

Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis Hominidae

Day 1

John woke up ill, the light sweat from running hot making the sheets cling to him, uncomfortable and restricting.  Dorothy was tucked under the old white and blue quilt, facing away from him, either asleep or unwilling to admit she was awake.  The quilt was bunched up against her back.  He must have kicked it off his side of the bed in his sleep to cool down.   John sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers.  Tuesdays were full of the kind of meetings that made you want to call in sick, long and pointless, thrashing old topics worn threadbare by their intractable nature but still destined to be brought out and paraded around in lieu of any actual forward progress.  But bonus season was coming up and his absence would be noted, the sly innocuous comments by coworkers over coffee advertising his empty chair, a subtle, malicious spotlight.   

He rolled up to a sitting position and shook his head a bit, cobwebs from sleep and the faint lightheadedness from the mild fever making him dizzy for a moment.  He didn’t know what he’d caught but he knew where he’d gotten it.  That old drunk entering the office building and bumping into him when he left the prior day, in clothes that would have been fashionable if they hadn’t been rumpled and dirty.  And the smell… like wet gym clothes left in a hot locker room for too long, rank and sharp, permeating clothes and nostrils like water soaking into a sponge.  It had given him a sneezing fit.  He could still feel it in his sinuses, even had a faint taste of it in the back of his mouth.

He stumbled into the bathroom and popped four ibuprofen.  By the time he finished with his shower, after letting the lukewarm water cascade over his head for a while, he was feeling better, the unobtrusive brittleness that came from masking a fever with drugs an acceptable version of normal.   He dressed quickly, running a bit behind, blue slacks with slightly wrinkled creases, a light blue oxford shirt, brown conservative shoes, no tie.  He leaned over Dorothy, still lying with her eyes closed, and gave her his routine peck on the cheek.  Her nose wrinkled and she said “Yuck, you need mouthwash.” 

Pretending to be asleep, then.

He smiled and said “Love you too.  See you tonight.”  She half waved him away and wiggled deeper into the quilt cocoon wrapped around her, auburn hair thrown haphazardly over her face, a victim of her own restless sleep patterns.  It was a comfortable routine, grooves worn deep after ten years of marriage.

The drive in was the usual atherosclerosis of the freeway, lumps of slow moving traffic sending resonating waves rippling forward and back, cars darting aggressively between lanes in a futile attempt to avoid the resulting sluggish pockets of petulant vehicles and drivers.  That was routine as well, and he’d made his peace with rush hour long ago.  His body gently reminded him that he should have stayed in bed with occasional hot flashes, which he took stoically.  In the parking structure near his office, he misjudged the angle pulling into the absurdly small parking spot, almost scraping paint.  His door wouldn’t open wide enough for him to get out, and he backed up and tried again, grumbling a bit.

It was a half block to the office building, twenty stories of glass and stone, homogeneous and generically modern inside and out.  His firm was on the sixteenth floor, secrets jealously guarded by the electronic pass system with its aggressively non-descript bionic congeniality.  His card slapped against the reader twice before it made its happy chirp and the light went green, unlocking the door.  Inside he grabbed a coffee at the K-cup machine, not as good as the fresh ground at home but convenient.  Armed with a caffeine fix, he settled in at his desk and pretended to study the morning accounting reports, numbers vague and menacing through the warped lens of the flickering fever, attempts to concentrate only serving to accentuate the dull throb of a proto-headache.

He welcomed the first meeting of the morning with unusual relief, even with a topic like customizable virtual meeting tools to improve communication with the London office.  The meeting was surprising pleasant in a hazy sort of way, and he blended in, nodding agreeably when others did.  The actual context and contours of the conversation washing over him like waves hitting a rock on the beach, leaving nothing behind but a damp memory that evaporated quickly.  Not that it mattered; the London office disdainfully referred to the corporate office in the US as the “mother ship” and a project that attempted to replace the warmth and personability of meeting in the flesh with a simulacrum on a computer monitor did not seem particularly viable for improving an already hostile relationship.

The rest of the day drifted along in a similar fashion.  He found a warm companionable fellowship in the back and forth banter between his peers, but his mind skittered over the surface of the words like a water strider on the surface of a pond, responding to the ripples of conversation, chuckling when he should, looking quizzical when it seemed appropriate, but without really following the topic at hand.  In one of the late afternoon meetings he had a small coughing fit and Jim, who was in his group, leaned over and whispered “Are you ok, John?  You look kind of flushed” and he realized the fever was back in force, sudden chills running down his back.

John answered back quietly “Ya, caught something yesterday, a cold I think.”

Jim jerked back and waved his hand back and forth in front of his face with a frown.  “Wow, you should audition for the ‘before’ example in a Listerine commercial.  What the heck did you have for lunch?”

John felt surprise but it was a distant, dull thing, muffled by the fever.  “Sorry, nose must be stuffed up, I didn’t notice.”  But his nose didn’t feel stuffed up.  Maybe you just couldn’t smell your own breath.  And thinking back, he was pretty sure he’d skipped lunch.  His memory was glitchy, the day soft and bland and run together like a child’s watercolor paints that had been dipped in too many times.  It dawned on him that he really was out of it.  “You know, I am feeling kind of crappy.  I think I’m going to call it and head home early today.”

Jim nodded knowingly.  “Good idea.  There’s something going around, a lot of people are out sick today.”

After the meeting, John found the Tylenol, two pills to a glossy, slick package, haphazardly mixed with other sample sized residue in a large dispenser that had been in the coffee area since the beginning of time.  He dug around until he found another one and took all of the pills.  It was close to four, and now that he was thinking about it the achy joints and feel of sandpaper behind the eyes, hobbling little irritants, all came crashing down on him.  His cough was getting worse as well, a dry, raspy cough that made his lungs feel twitchy. It took a few minutes to pack up and log off his PC and then he headed for the elevator.  Out the front door, the streets were just starting to fill up with people lucky enough to beat the end of day exodus.  He joined the throng, heading for the parking garage, glanced over and saw the Liverpool.  It was one of those simulated English pubs, long on mahogany and brass, glittering bottles lined up neatly behind the bar on shelves backed by a mirror to make it look like a boundless cornucopia of alcohol. The place was a faux rendition of 1920s Tudorbethan architecture, justification for charging a premium to the after work drinking crowd.

John had never much cared for that sort of thing, but the Tylenol was kicking in and the place had a glow about it that promised cozy and intimate juxtaposed over noisy and boisterous, rubbing congenial elbows with your mates.  Your mates, or people that would stand in for them after a few beers.  Without meaning too, he found himself angling off the most direct path to the parking structure to swing by the entrance.  He glanced in the door.  There was a small raised platform with a four piece band setting up, getting ready for the just-after-five crowd.  Scattered wooden tables and chairs jammed just a little too close together, a long bar with a few clusters of people forming a semicircle to wall off intruders, an unmistakable personal space claim for their section of the bar.  While he was standing there a couple more guys approached the door in half business dress, slacks and collared shirt but wearing bright neon running shoes for the commute.  They edged by him with uneasy smiles, unaware of his intentions, flight or fight response queued up if he challenged them for the entrance.  He returned his own awkward smile, stepping aside, and they promptly forgot him and wandered in.  He followed them through the entrance and found a table in the corner.

The waitress came by dressed in servant-girl Downtown Abby chic, a feigned smile plastered on her face, clearly bored and wishing she was someplace else.  John ordered a microbrew amber ale with a predictably silly name.  It arrived quickly, but he could see the place was on a steep inbound gradient and service would drop off proportionally as tables filled with people looking for liquid relief from lives of quiet desperation.  He took a sip of the beer and frowned.  It tasted off, either a bad luck pick on his part or because of his cold.  He tried a second sip, no better than the first, and it caused another coughing fit, loud enough that people at nearby tables glanced at him.  He finally set it down and just watched as the stream of people coming through the door picked up steam.  The band kicked in just before five, the door and windows open so the sound could roll out to the street, a pied piper lure for passersby.  It felt warm, welcoming, and he felt happier that he could remember feeling in a long time as the place filled up.  The waitress came by again, lifted one eyebrow while glancing between his mostly untouched beer and his face, and when he didn’t respond put down a bowl of pretzels huffily and moved on.

He found his eyes wandering and realized he was checking out the women at the tables around him.    And with more than just a cursory glance.  Which was crazy.  He’d never had any interest in cheating on his wife.  But he felt it, felt desire, and not just for the pretty little blondes with their predatory, instinctual awareness of the men around them, on the prowl for handsome and successful.  The old ones, the fat ones, the plain ones… he wanted them, wanted to kiss them, wanted to do things to them.

The waitress came by again, interrupting his thoughts, and asked if he was waiting for someone.  He shook his head no and she huffed a bit more and said “You want the table, you need to order more than a beer.”

He smiled at her and words poured out of his mouth without conscious intervention.  “I’ll order what you want and leave a tip you won’t want to share with your coworkers for a kiss.”  He watched her expression go from shock to incredulity to anger in the beat of a heart, then a tight control.  She was attractive in an understated sort of way, not a lot of makeup, and he had to guess people hit on her pretty often.

“Thanks for the offer, think I’ll pass.  Finish the beer in the next ten, or order something, or leave.  Your choice.”  And she walked away, shoulders set in angry angular lines.

John was still grappling with how exactly how those words had come out of his mouth when his phone buzzed.  It was a text from Dorothy.  Wru?  He typed clumsily on the keypad.  Sry, meeting ran over at work, omw.   A few seconds later she sent back Sick.  Leftovers 4 dinner.  My fault, caught something at work he typed back.  He fumbled at his wallet, tried to remember what the beer cost, and finally just threw down a twenty.  The drive home was easier than normal, his time at the bar letting some of the traffic die down.  When he walked in the door, Dorothy already had some reheated lasagna waiting.  Her eyes were a little glassy and he could see she was running a fever.  She blinked when she saw him.  “You look like hell” she said.

“Feel that way too” he replied.  They commiserated over dinner.  She offered to pour him a glass of wine but he shook his head no, remembering the beer.  “Not good to mix alcohol and Tylenol” he said.  He’d read that somewhere.   When they were cleaning up, he had one of those intense flashes of desire again and he grabbed her and kissed her.

When they came up for air, she looked at him wide eyed.  “Where did that come from?”  He shrugged and kissed her again, letting his hands wander.  When he started unbuttoning her blouse, she said “I think we can leave the dishes for the morning,” and they headed for the bedroom.  The sex was short, passionate, energetic, and as they both recovered their breath she leaned over and looked at him quizzically.  “That was … different.”  But he had a sudden coughing fit before he could think of a witty answer.

He went to the bathroom. Washing his hands, he noticed the water flowing down the white porcelain bowl of the sink was stained black.  He looked at his fingers.  There was some kind of black, fuzzy dirt around his fingernails.  Something he must have picked up in the bar, although he couldn’t for the life of him think of what it could have been.  But it all washed off easily enough and he collapsed into bed.  Dorothy was already out.

Day two

The next morning dawned after an evening of feverish dreams that left him more exhausted than when he went to bed.  The dreams evaporated while he dragged himself to consciousness, leaving a residue of discomfort and distaste, a vague memory of sex and sweat with an undertone of abuse and domination.  Even that vanished under the onslaught of a blinding headache and alternating hot and cold flashes.  He was really sick.  He stumbled into the bathroom and popped a handful of ibuprofen into his mouth, seven or eight of the things, started the shower and stepped in.  The water felt good, washing the night sweats away, and gradually eliminating an itching he hadn’t noticed at first, like he had mild poison ivy all over his body.  He stayed under the water for a long time, not moving, not thinking.

The ibuprofen took the edge off the fever enough to allow him to decide on the plan for the day.  He could go to the doctors.  He’d clearly contracted the flu, not a simple cold.  But prior experience told him a doctor’s visit would be pointless.  Nothing to do with a virus but wait it out.  He could spend the day at home, but the thought of being cooped up in the house made his throat go tight and his breathing ragged, a strange, uncharacteristic claustrophobia that brought him close to panic.  No, he wanted to be around people.  Bonus season, he reminded himself.  He needed to make an appearance.  Dressing, he looked over at the bed.  Dorothy was moving restlessly.  On his side of the bed, where the sheets were thrown back, he saw black streaks down the white cotton and frowned.  Whatever he’d gotten on himself at the bar hadn’t just been on his hands.  Dorothy was going to be angry, but he needed to head out.  She would just have to deal.

At the office, he didn’t even pretend to study the accounting reports still stacked on his desk, just tried to focus on suppressing the racking cough that had progressed along with the virus.  People in the cubes next to him looked at him sideways with expressions of distaste.  They were easy to ignore, a pounding headache making everything else white background noise, easy to tune out.  Just before noon, Jim came over and herded him into one of the small conference rooms.  “John, man, what are you doing?  If you’re sick enough that you can’t take a shower, you’re too sick to be here.”  John stared at him stupidly, blinking, not comprehending.  Jim said “the smell, buddy.  You stink” with exasperation.  John had no idea what he meant.

“The new accounts meeting” he said, grasping for something that would make sense.  “I wanted to make sure we covered the …” and he stopped, unable to recall the name of the new client.

Jim shook his head.  “Buddy, you belong in a hospital.  Or home in bed at least.  New accounts meeting was cancelled for the week.  Let’s get you home.”

“Cancelled?” said John, and it sent an irrational flash of panic through him.  No meeting?  But Jim insisted on escorting him to the elevator, even offered to drive him home.  “No, no, don’t need it.  No traffic at this time of day” said John.   He made it to the car and home, but it was good that the roads were mostly empty.  His eyes burned and everything seemed cloudy and dark even though the sun was shining.

In the house, he called for Dorothy, and heard a muffled reply from the bedroom.  She was lying in bed with a damp cloth across her eyes.  He collapsed next to her, not bothering to take off his clothes.  The next few hours, he faded in and out, short bursts of fever dreams interspersed with feeling like he’d been run over with a truck.  Dorothy insisted they both have something to eat for dinner, and he dragged himself to the kitchen.  Dorothy poured a couple of bowls of cereal and squinted at him.  “Did you roll in dirt or something?” she asked.

He wasn’t sure what she meant.  Maybe this smell Jim was complaining about.  But when he asked, she said he smelled fine, it was just that his face and hands were smudged with dirt.  They dumped the bowls from dinner in the sink.  The dishes from the prior evening were still there, food slowly turning to patches of hardened residue as it dried on, but the blinding pain of a migraine eliminated any compulsion to clean them.  They both staggered back to the bedroom.  He meant to shower, to get off whatever was covering his face, and because his skin itched like mad, but he barely made it back to the bed.  He blacked out within minutes.

Day Three

The next morning it felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to his head.  The only thing that drove him out of the bed was the itching, which was worse than the headache.  He wanted to scratch until he was bloody, until he had no skin left.  He staggered to the bathroom, finding his way by feel.  Even though it was morning, the bedroom was preternaturally dark and he could barely see.  He turned the shower on, and stepped in still wearing his clothes from yesterday.   After a few minutes, the intolerable itching dissipated and he could think a little, but his thoughts were loose and disjointed, put into a blender by his fever until he couldn’t tell where one thought started and another one ended.  He stripped off his clothes and let the water run over his face, and that helped with his blurred vision too.  He stared stupidly at the tub.  The side walls were splattered with black, and the water running down to the drain looked like something from a sewer pipe.   There was an alarm going off in the back of his head, an adrenalin spike that let him think clearly for a minute.  He was really sick. So was Dorothy.  They both needed to go to the hospital.  But the thought of the hospital with its clean white walls and smell of disinfectant filled him with a jolt of terror and vertigo so intense he had to grab the faucet handle to keep from falling over.

No.  Bonus season.  He’d stay home, take it easy today.  He just needed a day to rest.  He staggered back to the bed and crawled in.  Before he could lie down, he had a terrible coughing fit.  Where he’d coughed into the white pillow casing there was a black stain, some kind of powdery residue that had come out of his mouth.  Another adrenalin spike hit, and he felt another bout of panic, but he was just too tired, and he collapsed into the bed.  Things faded in and out, intense fever dreams of a carpet of naked men and women he was crawling over, kissing and touching each as he passed, interspersed with moments of dreadful clarity, feeling  like his body was collapsing in on itself.  There was a longer period of unconsciousness that ended when Dorothy shook him awake.  “Party” she said, then coughed.  Her face was smudged with black around the eyes, nose and mouth, like she’d put on witches makeup for Halloween.  “Jacob’s party” she repeated.  After what seemed an eternity, he remembered.  Dorothy’s  bridge partner and husband had invited them over for dinner along with a number of other couples.

There was some reason they shouldn’t go, he was sure of that, but it sounded so welcoming.  Maybe they could help with the itching, the coughing.  Maybe he could touch them.  No, that was wrong.  He shook his head.  Nothing seemed clear, other than the desire to be surrounded by people.  He dragged himself out of bed, grabbed something from the closet, pants and a shirt.  He fumbled around for a belt, but it was too dark in the closet, and he gave up.  The thought of finding socks was overwhelming.  He grabbed keys from the nightstand.  “Let’s go” he said, his voice a strange, shocking croak.  But Dorothy was pulling urgently on his arm, trying to get him to hurry.  He didn’t remember getting to the car, was suddenly just driving, going on instinct and some vague memory of direction rattling around in the back of his head.  Driving felt strange, and he realized he was barefoot, hadn’t put on socks or shoes.  Fortunately, Chris and Julie Jacob were only a few blocks away.  When he reached their street, he tried to turn, but his arms didn’t seem to be working properly and he couldn’t remember how to use the brake.  The car went into a tree at twenty miles an hour and he blacked out when the airbag hit him.  It could only have been for a moment, because he could still hear the mechanical death rattle of the ruined engine fading away when he came to.  He looked at Dorothy.  She hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt.  The passenger window was fractured and blood and some black, oily looking liquid dripped down from it, dripped down her face.  He didn’t think she was breathing.

He pushed his door open, stepped out and immediately collapsed.  His left leg was bent at a 90 degree angle just below the knee.  He could see bone sticking out of a rip in his pants, and wondered dully why there was no pain.  In the distance, he heard the wail of a siren in the distance and it filled him with panic, panic that stuck this time; they would keep him from the party.  The Jacob’s house was only two houses down, and he managed to drag himself to a white picket fence, use that to lever himself upright, and half hopped, half dragged himself down two houses.  The Jacobs had a stone wall instead of a fence, and inside it, with nothing to support him, he fell again, crawling the rest of the distance to the door.  Inside, he could hear music, loud music that must have covered the sound of the car crash.  He reached up, pulled the handle to the storm door, and crawled into the foyer.  He heard footsteps, then a crash of dropped china and screaming.  That seemed to go on for a long time, but it faded along with everything else as he raced down a tunnel to total darkness.

——-

Chris woke with a start, memories flooding back, trying to make himself believe for a moment that it had been a nightmare, that John Rowland hadn’t crawled into his house after a car accident, a bloody mess.  Worse than that.  John had looked mottled, like there were patches of black blood pooling under his skin, and his eyes and lips had been caked over with some kind of ugly, gunky residue.  How did you get something like that from a car accident?  And, my god, the smell, a stench so terrible it had permeated the entire house.  Even thinking about it made Chris have a sudden sneezing fit. 

Great.  On top of last night’s horror show, he was coming down with something.

Day 1

There was an alternate ending to “Truthfinder” that had two sets of responses

One was that it was setting things up for a sequel. The other was that it was depressing.

The real reason I wrote it was because Tessa was the last major character in the book that hadn’t had her actions justified with some level of backstory, and the more I thought about it, the more difficult it became to fit a completely altruistic do-gooder kind of motivation to it, given her Machievallian actions in the first book.

Then I thought … what if she was actually a black hat instead of a white hat, and it all dropped in place.

With respect to it being depressing … Gur and company have persevered against extreme odds before. No reason to think they wouldn’t here as well.

So, for those interested, here’s the alternate ending

Epilogue Two

Tessa arrived at the Sambhal temple in a carriage. The coachman jumped down to open the door for her. When she stepped out, he went down on one knee, looking down at the street. She gently put a hand on his head. He trembled at the touch and looked up at her.

“There is no need for that,” she said.

“My lady,” said the driver, then stopped with his mouth open, whatever words he had been about to utter lost at the sight of her.

She smiled gently at him. “Go now, good sir. I thank you for the ride.” She turned and walked up the broad staircase to the temple. There was no sound behind her. The coachman wouldn’t move until she was out of sight. With her glamor up, the more mundane individuals of Kethem tended to react that way. Many of the less mundane as well.

The temple had three entrances, one for men, one for women, and one for couples. She chose the men’s entrance as it was closest to her room. Her innate sense of what was happening at the temple let her know there were no clients there who might be offended by the breach in protocol. If there had been, they would have forgiven her, not because she was the Chikal, the head of the temple, and the Precenter Di, the head of the order, but because people would forgive her anything that wasn’t too egregious.

Inside there was a grand entryway with a cathedral ceiling and crystal chandeliers lit by soft yellow glow disks floating in the center. Behind a walnut reception desk placed between two grand staircases stood three women in the gauzy, tight-fitting blue silk dresses of Sambhal acolytes. Two of the women were striking because of their beauty. The third was more wholesome than alluring. She had an air of innocence and youth the other two were missing.

As Tessa entered, all three women clasped their hands in front of their hearts and bowed. They had wide leather belts with gold thread work through them in various levels of complexity. The younger woman’s only had two strands.

The woman with the most ornate pattern said, “Welcome, Chikal. There are seven messages waiting for you, none urgent. The Maj Di is requesting an audience concerning the budget for musical instruments this quarter. The meeting of Elders has been moved out three days at your request. All have been notified.”

Tessa nodded. “Very good, Ruelle. Have my assistant find a time for the Maj Di tomorrow.”

“Yes, Chikal. Is there anything else I can provide for you?”

“Yes. The Regent and Taite are going to dine with the Elvish ambassador this evening. Have a runner sent to Taite. Based on her preference, send Aster to the palace to assist with the meal, or have the Chandler room readied for them here.”

“A runner to be sent to Taite, Aster to assist there or here in the Chandler room at Taite’s pleasure. Understood, Chikal, it will be done.”

Tessa looked at the youngest of the three women. “Novice. What is your name?”

The woman said, “Seraphine, Chikal,” not taking her eyes off the floor.

Tessa walked over to her. She cupped the novice’s chin in her hand and pulled her head up until the two of them made eye contact. The novice trembled under Tessa’s touch. Her pupils were dilated so far the irises were nothing but a thin blue line around them. Tessa didn’t need to look to know Ruelle and the other priestess were mesmerized as well. They had much more experience with Tessa’s glamor than Seraphine, but when Tessa had it amped up, it didn’t matter much whether the moth knew the flame would burn them or not.

“What time is your shift over, Seraphine?” Tessa asked.

“Eleven this evening, Chikal,” the girl breathed out.

“Good. Come to my quarters afterwards for private instruction.”

“I will, Chikal. Thank you, Chikal.”

Tessa tipped her head to the three women and walked up the staircase, feeling their eyes tracking her until she was out of sight. She made her way to her quarters, doors opening and closing behind her in the labyrinth of the temple.

Two clergy stood guard at her door, a man and a woman. “I am not to be disturbed under any circumstances until novice Seraphine arrives at eleven,” Tessa said.

“No one to be allowed in until the novice arrives,” said the man. “Understood, Chikal.”

Tessa entered her suite, closing the door behind her. She walked over to the ornate dresser near her bed. She touched the shoulders of her dress, and it slid off her like water off a stone. She put it on top of the dresser, then added her undergarments. There was a full-length mirror beside the dresser. She stood in front of it naked, turned a little right, a little left. She smiled.

She went to the bathroom. There was a soaking tub large enough for four people, already full of water. She touched a round disk on the side. The heating rune at the bottom of the tub glowed. She put her hand in the water. It took less than a minute for it to reach her preferred temperature. She added bath salts, then slipped in slowly. She liked the water hot, and it took a moment to adjust to the heat. Then she let herself float on the water, the salts making her buoyant enough that her face didn’t sink below the water level.

She relaxed. Her breathing slowed. Her eyes closed. After a while, the sensation of the water against her skin disappeared. If anyone had been there, it would have been difficult for them to tell if she was still breathing.

Tessa was in a dark place, with nothing to differentiate the floor from the ceiling, if there was a ceiling. She looked down. She was still naked, her perfect body the only thing visible in the equally perfect blackness.

She started walking, her bare feet slapping against a floor she couldn’t see or feel. After a while, she became aware of a dim red glow in front of her. As she approached, it turned into two red spots. Gradually, an outline of something vaguely humanoid became apparent. It towered over Tessa. There was an impression of horns reaching up from the head and hooves where feet should be, but it was just an outline, not fully visible. The red spots were the demon’s eyes.

Tessa went down on one knee, head bowed. “Goddess,” she said.

“Welcome, Tessa,” the demon responded.

“How goes the war, goddess?” asked Tessa, standing again.

The demon shrugged. “As it has for millennia. We are losing to the angels. Which makes it all the more important that we find a new home. What news?”

“All is going well, goddess. Hotherial’s warning is mentioned less and less frequently. Gur has built a third full-sized World Gate in Pranan and is talking about building one in Tawhiem due to the logistical difficulties in shipping artifacts out of Bythe. Taite, his wife, is helping with that. There is even talk of creating another World Gate in southern Kethem. In his rush to convert Kethem to a true democracy, Gur is using the gates to keep his allies and enemies in line. He is dependent on their power.”

“Power he is attempting to give away, is he not?”

“He is giving away governing, and even that will not be as clean or quick as he hopes. It doesn’t matter. He is not giving away control of the World Gates, and that is where the true power lies. His alliances will unravel without them. He is becoming more dependent on the Sambhal clergy to run them as well. As the number of gates grows, he and the others are being stretched thin. Grim and Ziwa in particular are becoming more occupied with their daughters and son.”

“And the clergy are ours?”

“Some of them. Daesal’s powers waned three years ago. Many of the clergy she touched have become interested in helping others and moved on to do more charitable work. Along with that, more clergy is needed for basic operations as the number of World Gates grows. I am feeding them individuals who seem altruistic and innocent but where you have touched the priest or priestess’ core. I will bring you one this evening, a novice. By the time the clergy have learned enough of gate commands to open a door to your universe, there will be some who are fully under your sway, done slowly and subtly to hide their true nature. Or, if we can capture one of the chaos containers, one Gur is using to activate the new gates or the one the elves hold, it will be enough chaos to allow you to breach the walls between our universes. All we need is one or the other.”

The demon nodded. “I am pleased with your progress.”

“I live to serve, goddess.”

The demon laughed. “If that were true, I do not believe you would be standing here.”

Tessa tipped her head and smiled. “It is true that I have certain expectations around serving you.”

“Expectations that will be met.” The demon paused. Finally, it said, “I will admit to being curious. You know the initial breach will be localized. But as time goes on, as I and my kind unravel the web of law that binds chaos in your universe, it will spread. Not just to the planet. Eventually, your universe will be a hell plane.”

“But up until the time it will no longer support life, I will remain as I am today? I will not grow old? I will be able to control others with my power?”

The demon nodded. “Much more so than what I can do in this halfway state. They will fall on their knees and worship you. They will put you ahead of everything else. Ahead of me, ahead of the destruction of their habitat.”

“And that is enough for me,” said Tessa.

“I understand biological creatures procreate. Are you not worried about your offspring?”

Tessa gave the demon a brittle smile. “When I was much younger, a group of drunken young Holders became disorderly. They did things to me. An unintended consequence of their actions is that I am incapable of having children. There were others watching, commoners, two brothers, but they feared the Holders too much to interfere. I have no offspring to worry about.”

“Or other humans.”

“There are some humans I appreciate, but they are not enough to outweigh the dark side of humanity. Where we go, pain, suffering, and death follow. That is the truth I will spread when I rule, that is the truth everyone will understand as they burn, one after the other. Ultimately, they will know what I am, know what I have led them too, know my true name.”

“Which is?” asked the demon.

“Why, isn’t it obvious, goddess? I am the one and only truth that matters. There is only one name that fits.”

“And the name?”

Tessa smiled. “Truthfinder.”

The final book in the Kethem series is out:

It ties together the prior four novels and ends the arc started with “The Fair Elaine” (subsequently renamed “Truthseeker” because the consistent feedback I received was that the original title sounded too much like a romance novel). It’s been five years in the making.

I’ve spent what free time I’ve had in the last week plus trying to come up with a marketing plan for the Kethem Novels. A few things are clear to me, the biggest one of which is that it’s a bootstrapping kind of thing. The general approach is to reduce the cost of your book, then get one of a number of services to tell a lot of people about it (by paying them). If only it were that simple, because the ones that everyone suggests requires you to have a lot of reviews, and is chock full of established authors, making it difficult to get a slot.

So you can try to use the smaller guys … which really doesn’t work particularly well, as far as I can tell, but I’m going with it. I’ve tried one such service (which has a variable cost, so I’m not sure how much it’s going to be) which ended up with a grand total of 9 sales. ENT has a great rep, and when you submit your book for consideration, there’s a “companion” service that will reach 120k+ more readers. But ENT rejected me and the companion service didn’t. That has as yet to kick in, but I’m thinking it was a bit of bait and switch; now, I’m just trying to get a ENT signup.

There are other options for advertising, that more or less are “give the book away” kind of promotions. I’m happy to do that … if you want readers, you need to get a bunch hooked somehow. But it’s moderately expensive. You can do a giveaway on Goodreads that’s going to cost you about $1 per book, you can do a free book off your author website for about $1 per book, you can sign up for a service that lets people download your book for free … at $2 per book. If you give away 1000 books, you’re spending $1,000-$2,000, which is a hefty sum, and you better believe in yourself because it’s going to take a thousand sales to break even.

Which leads to the question, do I believe the Kethem novels are that compelling? And the answer is I do. I think I’m reasonably objective about the entire thing. They aren’t great prose like Daniel Abraham’s The Long Price Quartet, but they are as good as any number of other books I’ve read.

We will see how it all turns out. I’ll post more when I see the results of the requests I’ve put out there.

I have book 5 back from the editor, and some feedback that it’s a solid addition to the Kethem series (always important; as a author, it’s hard to subjectively or objectively compare your books side by side). But, given that, it was time to rebrand the series as, well, a series.

Based on feedback from a few people, I’ve renamed “The Fair Elaine” to “Truthseeker,” and changed the cover to match the color schemes from the other four books. Plus added a new domain name/author web site (http://www.dwdickie.com/).

And now it’s time to start trying to sell the series. It’s still a bit bewildering how exactly you build a name brand, despite a large amount of material in book and blog form on how to do it. Most certainly, for books published through Amazon’s self-publishing service, Kindle Direct Publishing, the most important thing are getting reviews. So if you’ve read the books, but haven’t posted a review, please take the time to leave even a one line review of the books.

There are some chapters that were cut from the books; sometime for brevity, sometimes because they were from the perspective of someone other than the main protagonist (or protagonists, in the case of World Gate). This was one of them, a snippet to give a little more backstory on Delia, the Golem, and her relationship with Teinhaj, the commander, in World Gate. I thought it was interesting, but it didn’t flow with the rest of the story. So, here it is for your reading pleasure.

Teinhaj Kaysareeth was in a dour mood. He was bucking for a promotion and that meant you needed two things: know the right people and don’t pet the mudrake. He was working rather successfully on the first part and had thus far been either lucky or talented… he went back and forth sometimes on which… for the second. That was, until now. In twenty years of service, he’d never had anything turn on him like this. His latest op was so far south of the border he was expecting glacier sightings. And it was all because of the two people–using the term ‘people’ a bit loosely–in front of him.

He leaned back in his rather utilitarian wooden chair and threw his feet up on his equally utilitarian desk with his hands crossed behind the back of his balding head, looking relaxed, something that told anyone that knew him that he was angry and trying to keep his temper under control. The coat of arms with crossed oar and spyglass was framed behind him, a subtle reminder of the organization they worked for. Kethem Naval Intelligence, or KNI, was the newest branch of Kethem’s military. While it had started as a branch of the Kethem Navy, it was independent now, independent and, in many ways, more powerful than the service that had spawned it. From its early days as an organization dedicated to using precog and detection spells to assist in naval battles, it had changed over time to be a central point for gathering, synthesizing, and reporting on any activity that might affect the security of Kethem. While the director theoretically reported into Kethem’s Naval Strategic Command, they were appointed by the HIgh Council, and much of the information that flowed from the KNI to the High Council was classified at a level that the heads of the Kethem Navy did not have access too.

Delia and Corel were on the other side of Teinhaj’s utilitarian desk, sitting on even more utilitarian chairs with square, straight backs, chairs Teinhaj had picked out personally because they were uncomfortable. If he was meeting people he wanted to impress, he used the conference room, with its dark polished wood table and padded armchairs. When he meet with his staff, he wanted them squirming. Not that Delia cared, being who and what she was, and Corel… Corel was a master of projecting an image. Nothing broke through that. She looked almost grandmotherly, certainly old enough to be Delia’s mother, but looks were more deceiving than usual in this case. Delia was older than Corel by a wide margin. Centuries. Neither of the two would lose their composure from simple tricks like uncomfortable chairs.

Delia was dressed in a tight-fitting black leather dress, looking about as different as possible from the quiet acolyte who had worn ornamental robes in the Hasamelis temple. The subservient, blue-eyed innocence was gone as well. Now, she looked casually lethal and her blue eyes sparkled with faint amusement the source of which was not clear to Teinhaj, given current circumstances. He needed to change that. The straight backed chair might not intimidate her, but there were other ways to fluster people. He looked her up and down slowly. “Nice outfit. Sexy. So, out of curiosity, you think you were made for …” and he paused and raised his eyebrows suggestively. Something he could never have done with any of the other staff, but then, they were human.

Delia’s grin froze for a second, then she smiled a bit wider, leaned over his desk, and said huskily “I wouldn’t know, Commander, but if you want we can find a room with a bed and experiment. It could be the happiest minute of your entire life. Possibly the last minute, too, but I’ll try not to damage you that much if I can help it.”

Teinhaj’s frown hardened. Delia was always hard to intimidate, mostly because she rarely reacted the way you’d expect. Also because, for reasons he didn’t fully comprehend, she could get under his skin in a way no one else in the organization could. But she should know better than to toy with him. Time for a different, more direct approach. “You want to tell me again why you attacked a sixth dan Hasamelis priest when we spent half a year placing you in that temple?” They had already had that conversation but it was still baffling to him. Delia was a valuable asset to the organization, being immune to most detection spells, telepathy, empathy, and other tricks used to screen people. A total chameleon. Not to mention her physical capabilities. Six months of her time was a precious commodity.

Delia sat back and shrugged. “The goal was to find out who — if anyone — is trying to infiltrate the Hasamelis religious order and why.”

Teinhaj said, “Someone, or something, is. You know that came from an indisputable source.” A source Teinhaj only knew about as a codename, GOLDEN GATE. A source that was infuriatingly specific and too pointed at times, which made interpreting its information like trying to see a beach based on a single grain of sand. But it had also always been accurate.

Delia waved her hand to mollify him. “Yes, yes. The point is that after six months I had nothing. Even this mission to retrieve the Staff of Hasamelis that you said was related, somehow, appeared to be just what it was; a mission to Tawhiem. So after six months, the first clue about anything was Jedia knowing the mission was a hoax. We didn’t tell him, so someone else must have, someone that may know more than we do. So I wanted to find out who.”

“And to do that you had to splinter his shoulder bones?”

Delia sighed. “You know how sneaky those priest are. I had to keep him from casting spells or he would have popped someplace else. So I had to inflict a little pain. He isn’t a Holder, so there are no legal issues with using force to extract information. And really, a few healing spells and a few weeks of pain blocking spells and he’ll be fine. It wasn’t like he was going to die or something.”

Teinhaj wasn’t so sure about that. Jedia was pretty old, and the shock of having your bones crushed wasn’t trivial, but he let that go. “And you got nothing out of it.” Delia nodded. The old codger had been tougher than she had given him credit for and he had teleported out before she could get him to talk. “So, you blew your cover for nothing,” continued Teinhaj.

Delia said in sudden exasperation “I made a judgment call, well within mission parameters.”

Teinhaj stood and looked at her coldly. “Well, then, time to change those, I think. Pop it.”

Delia’s eyes widened and the amusement went away, replaced by doubt and concern. She laughed in disbelief and said, “You’re kidding. I’ll lose everything.”

Teinhaj shrugged. “Which, like you said, is nothing valuable. Pop it,” he said again.

The doubt in Delia’s eyes morphed to fear; her jaw muscles tensed and her teeth ground together audibly. Corel spoke up for the first time. “Teinhaj, dear, I don’t think that’s called for.” Corel didn’t like Delia; too much of a loose cannon in her book. But they were both on the same team, and that meant watching each other’s backs.

“That’s Commander, Lieutenant,” said Teinhaj to Corel harshly. He turned back to Delia. “Pop it,” he said for the third time. There was a grinding noise, the noise of machinery that had not been properly oiled creaking into motion, and Delia’s mouth started to open. Her eyes held panic now.

“Please,” she said, words slightly garbled through frozen teeth, as her mouth continued to open slowly. “Please.”

Teinhaj waited a moment, then said “order rescinded.”

Delia’s mouth closed with a snap. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. “Thank you,” she said, but there was more hate in her eyes that gratitude. It didn’t matter. She was bound by the three laws. She could hate all she wanted but it would never result in any action against him or the organization.

Except he suddenly realized it did matter; he felt like he’d stepped over a line he hadn’t meant to cross, and had done it out of anger. Teinhaj almost apologized before he could get himself under control, but the awkward pause was probably more telling than an apology would have been.

Trying to regain control of the situation — he was supposed to be chastising these two — he turned to Corel. “And you. You abandoned the mission in Tawhiem. Want to tell me again exactly why?” Corel had already given a shortened version of the events just before Padan had teleported her to the Hasamelis temple; they were together because Corel had shown up unexpectedly an hour ago. She was still in the travel-stained clothes she had been wearing in Tawhiem.

Corel shrugged and said, “To avoid certain death?” Before Teinhaj could rain verbal blows down on her, she added, “And I did bring back that elvish crystal ball, the evowna. Oh, and please, don’t forget, when the artifact boys are done with it, I need to deliver it to the elvish ambassador to Bythe.” She said it with total conviction, clearly meaning it, and Teinhaj almost laughed for the first time since the start of the conversation. An elvish evowna alone was something the analysis team would work on for a year. This one was encrypted with some secret an elf was willing to die for. It was going to be more like a decade. Or it would be, as long as the elves didn’t realize it was missing. They had some method of remotely destroying the things. But thinking that it would end up back in the elves’ hands, that was Corel; she could fool the most sophisticated detect truth spell by fooling herself.

The evowna would be a silver lining to the dark cloud of this op, but he didn’t need to acknowledge that. “Yes, you brought back something that has nothing whatsoever to do with the mission. Brilliant. And this certain death… you saw black things and a floating guy, and that’s certain death? Not sounding so certain to me, outfitted the way you were.”

“The elf thought so,” said Corel, lips pursed.

That stopped Teinhaj for a moment. You couldn’t argue with it, given the elves’ gear was substantially better than anything they could field. He conceded the point and continued, “But you’re sure that it wasn’t whatever was trying to lure a Hasamelis priest out there? That whatever was trying to do that was in the cave? And everyone was heading there?” Corel nodded. “Well, I received word that Padan teleported into the Temple just after you did, so I doubt he knows much more than you. Which means we have to focus on this group you were with; if they went in, they may have seen something, heard something. Tell me about them.”

Corel went down the list. She had a good memory for detail. When she hit the Stangri’s name Delia broke in. “His name was Gyeong?”

Corel nodded.

“You know him?” asked Teinhaj. Delia nodded this time. “How?” asked Teinhaj.

Delia looked almost embarrassed. “Sometimes I join the Mautua fights on the harbor front.”

Teinhaj blinked. “Mautua?” Amazement was written across his face. “You?” Delia nodded again. Once in awhile, she just wanted to … well, she wasn’t sure what she wanted out of it. She just did it, the mix of punching, kicking, and wrestling without much in the way of formal rules appealing to her. She didn’t do it often, and only floating competitions. In her line of work, you didn’t want to attract undue notice. She always won. With her strength and durability there wasn’t anyone that could best her. But this Stangri, Gyeong… he’d been a tough opponent, and unlike most Stangri he did not seem to find it odd that a woman wanted to be in the ring. He’d somehow sensed she was not what she seemed, had let go and danced away when his holds failed, and he had incredible dexterity, dodging her attacks. It had been a long time before she finally landed a solid blow, and even then she’d had to use a lot of force. And at the end he had grinned, blood pouring from spots where things had gotten a little rough, and said she was a worthy opponent and that they should meet again.

And they had met again, twice, in private sparring matches she’d also won, and the Stangri had wanted to come back for more each time, and not for her looks or for revenge; just to have a worthy opponent. She’d kind of liked him for that.

Delia went on. “Just simple matches. We didn’t talk much at all, and I don’t really know anything about him; it’s just unusual to have a Stangri that far west in Kethem, so I remember him.”

Teinhaj was still staring at her in amazement. “You. Mautua matches on the waterfront.”

“Me. Mautua. Hell, Tei… Commander, I don’t even sleep. What do you think I do with my time off, stand in a corner gathering dust?”

Teinhaj had never thought about it before. He shook his head to clear it. “A topic for another time.” He turned back to the other woman. “Corel, continue.”

Corel went through the remaining list of everyone that had been on the expedition. Teinhaj listened carefully. When she was through, he nodded. “Ok, then. Padan can’t teleport back to Tawhiem, or at least not anywhere near where they ended up. There’s no teleportal pad or any other way to lock in his destination, so they are on their own for the moment. But we should assume they will make it back. For some of them it should be pretty easy to dig up their history. The high born lady, Daesal, the drunk, Stegar, and the priest Hantlin. Daesal may not have said much about herself, but there aren’t that many holder’s daughters out adventuring. We can have a few discreet inquiries made on the waterfront for the Stangri, Gyeong. If he was fighting there, he must have lived there. The thief may be a bit tougher–he sounds like someone living off the grid–but let’s put out feelers. I want to know who these people are. And, more important, I want to know when they get back.”

“And then?” asked Corel.

Teinhaj grinned. “Then we ask nicely about their experience. If they don’t like to share… Daesal might be a problem, but the rest aren’t Holder’s daughters. We squeeze them until they change their minds.”

We just watched “Queens Gambit” on Netflix and “Lovecraft Country” on HBO Max. If you wanted to pick a single theme for either, it would be “diversity.” Queen’s gambit focuses on a female chess prodigy when the game was dominated by males. Lovecraft country focuses on blacks in the Jim Crow era and the raw deal blacks had in 1950.

So why was Queen’s Gambit so interesting, whereas I bailed on Lovecraft Country on the second episode? Because Queen’s Gambit had nuanced characters. Beth Harmon was not a perfect individual; in fact, she had a number of flaws beyond the addiction and abandonment issues that were a driving force in her life. Likewise, the men who arrogantly dismissed her early on overcame their own biases as she continued to demonstrate her mastery of chess… but even that wasn’t like flipping a switch. The men had their own share of issues, be it narcissism, ordinaryness (ok, that’s not really a word, but I mean they had some role early on in Beth Harmon’s development but didn’t have the ability to keep up), or other things.

All in all, it was the believable, nuanced characters that made Queen’s Gambit work so well, whereas Lovecraft Country was so bludgeonee about the entire racial dissemination thing it felt completely contrived.

I like books where the hero is the hero. But heroes with no flaws, with no self doubts, with no inner demons… just aren’t that interesting.

Book 5 in the Kethem series is in final edits, and with that, finishes out the main story arc that “The Fair Elaine” started. Somewhat accidentally. I think it’s pretty obvious that the Kethem series was launched from a Dungeons and Dragons campaign; a few separate ones, actually, but all running in the same universe.

Those campaigns were story driven, with the players trying to find out the secrets of the collapse of the human empire and the origin of the story of the twelve swords of power. And they never quite made it to uncover the full history of Kethem and the other nations around the Lanotalis sea.

The books did that, finally finished stories that I thought would come out in the campaign. It’s been a multi year journey.

And now comes the hard part. Marketing. There’s a bewildering array of services and suggestions out there for how to sell your books. Time to dive in.

One thing about the Kethem series that I like is that it has classic fantasy elements, but there’s an explanation for them beyond, “well, D&D has elves” or “Lord of the Rings has elves.” You really could have called them anything you wanted, and if you did, someone might say “huh, tall, fair, blond, startlingly homogeneous humanoids, sounds like elves,” but in fact they really are just tall, fair, blond humanoids, not Sindarin elves. Calling them elves gives players some context, fills in a lot of background that you’d otherwise have to spell out, but the four races that inhabit the Kethem universe are their own unique selves.

Part of that was around the world building, where I did want the players to find out the secrets of Kethem as part of the campaign. What caused the explosion that ended the first empire? Why are the high orcs (Ohulhug) so psychotically evil? What happened to the great trolls? Who is the mysterious group or person who’s opposing the elves?

Not everything in the books is what I had originally envisioned. What works for a D&D campaign doesn’t necessary work for a fantasy series. But the core elements were all there to create the Kethem universe that has slowly unfolded in the last four books.

Book five is underway, and that will close out the Kethem series. There’s a lot of other things to explore which I didn’t have time to fit into the five-book narrative, and perhaps there will be other short stories or stand alone novels set in Kethem.

Only time will tell!