CHAPTER TWO
Mog stopped at the second floor landing, squatting on the railing.  Rowan stopped, too, just out of sight as she waited for the boom of the door knocker.  Within moments of hearing it, she saw Miss Emily cross the entry hall and disappear inside the foyer.  She heard the grate rattle, then the gears [...]

To the book store that wanted to order copies via the form on this website, the form is fixed, now. It seems that new security patches disabled the captcha, but that’s fixed now with a more user-friendly, supposedly unbreakable version in place.

With all that’s going on in our family with Mom suffering continuing medical crises, one would think that my brain would be too preoccupied to conceive and organize a new novel. It seems, however, that novel writing is my brain’s way of coping. So, even with Deborah’s continuing nightmare with William cooking away in the sequels to To Inherit a Murderer, here’s the beginning of yet another novel about an orphan boy with special “gifts,” a single-parent teen with special “needs,” and the “family” who takes them in, and, yes, it’s another “wierd” one.

Chapter One

Nobody in town much liked West Gate or the Groves who owned it. Encompassing all of Gate Creek from its source to something the locals called The Plunge… .

Having mostly ignored Twitter, though I signed up months ago, I happened over to the place to block a hussy who was advertising her “wares” from following me…not that there’s much to follow, mind you. In the process, I happened upon some old, unread messages from authors directed at me and checked out a couple of their novels. Lo, many were quite good. Others were well-written, but too obviously a very visceral kind of horror.

I do not understand people who enjoy reading gore, explicitly violent, and visceral novels–graphic cruelty, gore, sex, or perverse violence. I mean, okay, graphic scenes are part of a book when needed, as is the intimate sex scene…when the story calls for it. But this stuff was uncalled for, in my opinion, because the violence wasn’t an integral part of the plot and story, but rather added for titillating the reader’s senses…if one can call gore and cruelty titillating (which I can’t).

If something happens in the violent scene that is key to the story climax or subsequent crises, then the scene belongs. But does the scene–any scene–belong when nothing happens in it other than graphic incidents, incidents that don’t have any pertinence to anything later in the story?

I don’t think so.

So, when applying the rule of “Cut everything that doesn’t forward plot and story” in writing and editing fiction, why are these scenes populating so many books? Are readers that hungry for blood, gore, and perversion?

I really don’t think so. Those who do aren’t the fiction reading majority, else these sorts of books would top the best sellers lists, and they don’t.

(…And, no, Liz, I’m not talking about Under the Bridge, which is very tame by comparison to some of this stuff.)

It’s official. I sold my first copy of To Inherit a Murderer. My thanks to the buyer, whoever they are. I hope you enjoy it.

E. J.

Well, much as I don’t particularly care for the title “independent author,” I’m tired of playing blind man’s bluff with literary agents. A look at publishers accepting unagented manuscript submissions and queries shows that I would be spending about 2 years waiting around for an answer for them, too. After a couple of high end agents read the book and said, “clean, excellent plot, excellent characters, but I just don’t know how to market this,” I’m done. If it’s that good, and it’s a break-out book, what’s the problem? I’ll tell you the problem. It isn’t something that would appeal to Twilight-swooning teens.

So I’m done. I’ve quit the game. No more Blind Man’s Bluff with literary agents anymore. Now I’ll simply write and publish, write and publish.

I’m also pretty much done with magazine submissions of short stories, as well. The only reason I write a short story is when one “pops” into existence on its own, so to speak — the creative Muse dictates, in other words. Submitting them, though, is always a pain…because it requires I steal time away from other things…like novel writing.

I’m tired of all of it. I’m just not interested in literary blind man’s bluff with me the blinded and them twittering as they evade me finding “the right niche:, be that an agent or publishing venture. You want to read me, come and get it. My stories and novels will be availabe through The Deepening, from me here, or from various other websites around the Net.

If you want it from the library or a book store, ask at the desk. If you want it from Amazon.com, you’ll have to wait till the hard copy releases.

To Inherit a Murderer by E. J. Ruek

…Is out in electronic formats suitable for Sony Reader, Kindle, Mobi-pocket, iPhone, epub and other electronic formats which you can get HERE

If you want to read and review it, contact me and I’ll give you a coupon for a free copy.

What’s it about?

Willed custody of her best friend’s son, Deborah Rheinhart suspects the twelve-year-old is a murderer…and he is.

At seven, William killed his mother’s dog. At ten, he stabbed his father with a letter opener. There’s the murder of the family maid.

Deborah finds that she’s brought home a boy who is driven by hatred and rage. Injured by him the very first day, William threatens Deborah’s carefully secured life. Finding a knife stuck in her bedroom door, waking to William standing over her when he’s supposed to be locked in his room, she’s is pushed to the brink of hysteria as both she and the boy’s hired chaperones suffer increasingly disturbing incidents.

Straddling North Idaho ranch life and the prestigious world of Grand Prix show jumping, To Inherit a Murderer by E. J. Ruek is the story of a woman who must learn to love and listen, regardless how evil-seeming the child within her care. It is a story about earning respect and admiration by actions, which Deborah achieves, despite herself. William believes in her as he has never believed in anyone. But when Deborah lets her guard down and begins to believe in William, death answers.

To Inherit a Murderer will also soon be released in audio, too. Keep an eye out both here and on The Deepening.

There are several discussions (and fights) going on across various writer’s venues around the Net concerning self-publishing verses traditional publishing. I’m afraid, I’m one of those who desires the traditional publisher, mainly because I cannot see where self-publishing isn’t just a way to keep me busy doing everything except writing.

Now, it is true that traditional publishing requires a lot of marketing effort from the author. Compared to the work a self-publishing author has to do, though, it is relatively painless.

It seems to me that self-publishing requires way, way too much effort and time devoted. A self-published author not only has to write the book, but s/he also has to:
1) create the book (typesetting, cover art and design, etc.)
2) create or contract for creation of the promotional materials,
3) place the promotional materials,
4) negotiate openings for marketing the book.

Only then can the author take advantage of those marketing opportunities, doing the interviews and appearances that will hopefully sell the books.

Then we come to the distribution and bean counting, all basically on the author’s shoulders, as well. It takes effort to even get your book listed in Amazon, or on B&N, never mind onto the shelves of chain and independent bookstores.

The established big publisher already has a means to create the book package and promo materials, has a good reputation among the media that matters, owns all the gateways to getting the book into distribution chains as well as coordinating marketing opportunities with the book’s release. All the author has to do is help, and then show up and do a good job presenting themselves in a charismatic way to the audience.

The very thought of having to write letters or make phone calls, much less do walk-in sales pitches designed to convince a radio station, a book store, or even local television to feature a self-published author and their book is summarily unattractive to me. This is the work of a publicist.

So the author who self-publishes wears all the hats normally worn by a team of people, normally paid experts in their fields who are very good at their jobs. I can’t possibly do the same kind of justice to those jobs, and the time required is at least as much it took to write the book in the first place.

Then there’s the income problem. If all I’m going to sell is a couple thousand copies of this book as a self-published author, the time and money laid out to publish and market, then distribute the book just isn’t going to give me a return worth sneezing at. In fact, it is probably going to cost me money.

So, nope. I don’t think self-publishing fiction is a good investment, unless I’ve already got an audience and a production and promotion team at hand.

That said, I can say that what I will do is allow The Deepening to record the audio of any book I write that doesn’t net me an agent and, ultimately, a publisher after submitting it for a year or two. If I can develop an audience for that book, then, I’ve got more ammunition to convince someone to take a hard look at that book as well as my other work — someone who counts in the real world of literature, that is, agents, editors, and big publishing.

I thought I’d share a bit of the kind of thing which inspires novel scenes. Here, with full permission of the original email author is an entry in what I’m going to call North Idaho Diary.

Free of the onus of having to battle the conscious will of its host person and resident body’s demands, the novelist’s brain takes sleep’s opportunity to…WRITE, PLOT, PLAN, OUTLINE, LIVE, REINVENT, MANUFACTURE, and EXPLORE the stories it insists on spawning into tangible reality whenever it can coerce and induce the person it owns and the body which owns it to sit down and type.