Just pure action and suspense
I’m committed. I saw that there were no books with this title in the first page of search results on Amazon.com. Shocked — since it seems like such a good title someone else would have used it by now — I went to look at domain names. The .com domain name wasn’t taken either. So I bought it.
That’s it. Done deal. The Sequel/prequel to Death of Secrets will be called Life of Secrets.
Death of Secrets took either seven months or thirteen years to write, depending on how you look at it.
I first wrote the book in 2001. I wrote it in about seven months. And I had no success in finding an agent or a publisher for it. None. So it sat on my hard drive, and every so often I would open the file and tweak the manuscript.
Then, in 2014, I was really feeling like it was a good idea to return to my writing. I opened Death of Secrets and started updating it for the modern age.
For a sequel, I’ve done the same thing. I opened back up a manuscript I had from the old days, and started updating it for the modern age.
The main thing I notice, looking back on my writing from those days, is how much more profane I was. The original manuscripts were laced with language to make a sailor blush. Cleaning that up has been one of the main jobs.
In Death of Secrets, cleaning up some of Kathy’s ethical choices had to be done as well. I remember one particular location in Death of Secrets, where my editing note was simply, “Kathy shouldn’t lie.” Back in the old days, telling a “little white lie” about where she had been was the simplest way for her to solve a problem, so she did it. The new Kathy would invest in the harder way, rather than lie.
All across the Internet, people are protesting today about the electronic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency. They’re calling it #StopTheNSA. Since my novel is all about the dangers of upcoming technology and mass electronic surveillance, I could hardly pass up the chance to join in.
So, today only, Death of Secrets is free on Amazon in e-book format!
We need a boundary. We need a line where society and the government stop, and “this is my life, butt out!” begins. We don’t all draw that line in the same place. But I think most of us would draw it somewhere before our phone calls. We need to end the era of our government storing data on every phone call we make, and every e-mail we send.
I hope Death of Secrets can help do that. But more, I hope America can do that.
I’m about 37,000 words into my second novel. The plan calls for it to be published in June.
It’s another political suspense thriller. What sets it apart from Death of Secrets is that it will be much more character driven, whereas I would call Death of Secrets plot driven. When writing Death of Secrets, if I needed the characters to take an action, usually the question I asked myself was “what can be thrown in their path that will make that action necessary.”
In the new novel, the question is far more often, “Why would she do that? How would she react to this?”
The novel is to feature characters from Death of Secrets, but mostly in supporting roles. I hope to be introducing a new main character who’s a lot more “action hero” oriented than any so far. The idea of Death of Secrets was to take ordinary everyday people and drop them into the middle of a deadly conspiracy.
The idea of the new novel is to take a highly competent, highly trained individual and put her in the middle of the same kind of deadly conspiracy.
This is not set in stone by any means, but a couple titles I’m kicking around are “Life of Secrets” or “Upper Chambers.”
The great thing about electronic privacy as an issue is that it meets so many of my own political goals.
It’s about defining the boundary where authority lies between an individual and his government. That means, by speaking out about surveillance I get to work for liberty.
It’s an issue where Democrats and Republicans agree. So when I speak about it, it’s a great opportunity to promote mutual respect in American politics. I want to see a different political environment, where people don’t get rich for calling each other names and making fun of each other. I want to see an environment where people prosper and are fulfilled by respectfully advocating for their beliefs.
That’s why my first published novel is about electronic surveillance — or at least one reason.
Launch day for Death of Secrets was super exciting. Placing the ads, watching sales start to come in, seeing engagements with the book on social media, and all kinds of other things.
Now, the week after, comes the long term outlook. I won’t say disappointment, because I expected this when I started and my expectations haven’t changed now. It’s just that, in all that excitement of launch day, it’s easy to get caught up.
I did not launch the book on Saturday and become the next Tom Clancy before the Superbowl was over.
The book did well on opening day, and sales are happening about on pace with my low-end estimates before this all started. Now it’s time to set my eyes back on the long-term plan. I opened up one new advertising vector on Monday. I have another one to try out probably next week. I have new ad styles to test out on Facebook and Twitter.
Build Death of Secrets for long term sales. Build an audience. Earn enough on this to launch the sequel in June with at least enough or more success. Keep building the audience. Third book in time for the Christmas season.
Lord, please help me to stick by what I said. I trust you with my book, and with my writing.
Sometimes, my inner geek comes out.
Death of Secrets launched, and already my mind turns to the next book. I know the beginning of the story — it’s one I’ve been working on for a long time. Some of the characters from Death of Secrets will be making another appearance.
But I’m not sure what to call it. I’m not sure that it properly fits the idea of a sequel or a prequel. And there’s the rub. If I say “takes place in the same universe as Death of Secrets,” I feel a bit nerdy, like an obsessive comics collector debating which version of the DC Comics universe was better.
That’s silly, of course. I’m an obsessive Star Wars collector, not an obsessive comics collector!
I had a new photo taken to use for book publicity. For a person who sees himself in the mirror every morning, the wonders that a good photographer can work are amazing!
By the way, this photo first appeared on www.deathofsecrets.net. You should head on over there and enter to win a free copy of the book!
“In all things, God works for the good of those who love him,” reads the famous verse from Romans. I’m leaning on it heavily right now.
With less than a week to go until my novel is published, I obviously hope it’s wildly successful. Who wouldn’t? But even as I hope, I know there’s a chance it might not sell very well.
Whichever happens, I know that God will work it to my good. I trust him.
Today is the first free day I’ve had to work on the book in some time. I’m polishing up the manuscript with some last minute edits from my awesome editors.
I don’t think I’m Earnest Hemingway, but I do like to think of myself as a workmanlike writer. I do the job. So it’s embarrassing how may little things my editors are catching for me as we make the last preparations for publication.
Writing “form” when I meant “from” is my single most common typo.
Death of Secrets underwent a major change between its first draft and now. It was revised to better reflect the person I am in 2014. And it’s shocking how many little traces of that change slipped through my attempts to make the change and clean it up. I’m glad all those got caught.
When this book finally sits on bookshelves — or, more accurately, sits on amazon.com — there will be a huge number of people who helped make that happen.
Publishing a book is a good way to help you remember Donne’s famous words. “No man is an island.”