Category Archives: Danny Tompkins Short Stories

Danny Tompkins Short Stories

A Teenager Experiences the Death of a Parent

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Not too many teenagers these days experience the death of a parent. Medical advances mean life expectancy is greater. Workplace safety rules mean fewer industrial accidents. There is war, and military deaths, but even these are fewer than during the Vietnam years.

So I wonder if much of a market exists for my two short stories. These tell the story, fictionalized, of my own experience with my mother’s death when I was 13. In “Mom’s Letter” I tell about the sharpest memory at all, when Dad told me while we were driving home from scout camp that Mom’s death was imminent. I had no idea. Just like in the short story, he asked me how I could possibly not have known, that it was obvious from looking at her and how much more difficult it was for her to move around. Somehow I had missed it.

The second short story, “Too Old To Play“, recounts the after the funeral gathering at our house. At the time it seemed inappropriate. All I wanted to do was grieve. Yet here were all these people: neighbors, cousins, neighbors of my grandparents, and who knows who, at our house, yucking it up. I didn’t understand the power of diversion to assist with the early part of grieving. So I fumed a bit, hid in my room as best I could, and weathered the storm.

My adult perspective is different, of course. I understand the grieving process much better. Death has come ever closer, and I now know the people who die around me. Years ago they were vaguely familiar names. Now they are friends and relatives. If I don’t understand grieving now, I’m in trouble.

Why did I write these two short stories? I suppose just to tell a story. But in my subconscious, maybe it was with the intent of helping some teenager somewhere through the grieving process, to help them see that someone else went through it at a vulnerable age, and “graduated” to adulthood without too much trouble. If I could do it, they can too.

I have a couple of more memories I could share in short stories, and possibly I will. Having completed and published two, I only want to write more if I can do it in a way to help someone with their grief. A teenager perhaps, or an adult who experienced what I did, and still needs help with it. I’m thinking about it.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, self-publishing

One Book at a Time

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Today I attended a meeting at the City of Centerton, Arkansas—a simple preconstruction conference for a small project at First Baptist Church in Centerton, to add a baseball/softball field on vacant land next to the church. The contractor is a man who used to work for us; the engineer is one I’ve worked with for a long time.

As I drove to the meeting, I saw that I had two copies of Documenting America in the pick-up. When I got to City Hall I took a copy of the book. Upon seeing my contractor friend, I asked him, “You got a spare $10.90? I think you’ll like this,” and I handed him a copy of the book. He said he would take a copy, but that he didn’t have any money on him at the moment. His coworker also looked interested.

It was during the meeting that he said he didn’t have the money right then. So I took the book from him and gave it to the engineer, saying, “Maybe you’d like this.” She seemed impressed that I’d published a book, and said she wanted to buy one for her husband. When I told her it was available as an e-book for 1/5th the price, she said that’s how she’d buy it. I hope she follows through.

So I gave the book back to my contractor friend, and said he could pay me later. I kiddingly reminded him that I have to sign off on the project, and that he needed to pay me before I did the final inspection.

That’s the way book sales seem to go these days: one sale at a time, mostly at my efforts. Writing is a hard business, the sale of one’s writings harder yet. Yesterday “Too Old To Play” went live at the Kindle store. So far I have two e-sales of it, and it stands about 58,500 in the Kindle store, but will sink fast unless there are more sales. I’m okay with the start. The two sales probably came from people I know, somewhere, who bought it in response to my notices on my blogs, on Facebook, at Ozark Writers League, or at Christian Authors Book Marketing Strategies. I’d be shocked if they were bought by strangers who stumbled upon the title at Amazon.

So my sales and revenue for January 2012 stand at 7 and $6.36 respectively, with 3.5 days left in the month. I’m okay with that. I might get a boost on Monday Jan 30, when “Mom’s Letter” will be the featured short story at the Short Story Symposium. That may generate some sales, and if any of those buyers go to my Amazon page and see I have another short story in the series…who knows? I reached out to TSSS in late December, and am pleased it worked out.

One book at a time. That appears to be the rule in these early days in the brave new world of eSP—e-self-publishing. Will it ever move beyond that? I hope so.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

And So We Watch, Again: “Too Old To Play”

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The second in the series.

Yesterday evening I finally pulled all the elements together to make “Too Old To Play” live at the Kindle store. After I did so, I realized I forgot to put the word count in the description. I like to do that so a potential buyer knows how many words they get for their money, and so there’s no charges of it being a really, really short story for the money. I’ll correct the description tonight. The Kindle instructions say it takes 12 hours for something to go live after submission. That’s down from the 48 hours it used to say. Sure enough, when I looked it up at 7 AM this morning, it was already live, about 11 hours after uploading.

Today I put a notice on my Facebook author page, as well as on my personal Facebook page. I added a promotional post to An Arrow Through the Air. I modified my books available page on this site to list it. With this post I will have completed my internal promotion—that is, those things I can do without going to an outside site. I also added it to my Kindle/Amazon author’s page and to my Author Central page, but have not yet added it to Goodreads. Maybe tonight. I also made announcements at the Ozark Writer’s League and the Christian Authors’ Book Marketing Strategies pages on Facebook. Beyond that, I’m not sure I’ll do a lot for this. In a day or two I’ll mention something that I did a month ago that will give it some publicity.

So now I watch. As of two hours ago I had one sale. Let me check now…still one. I just talked with someone about it at work, and she says she’ll buy it when she gets home and has her Kindle in hands. I’ve had a total of 12 sales of “Mom’s Letter” in the eleven months it’s been out. The “theory of multiple titles” says that the two short stories will feed sales to each other, and that together each one will have better sales than they would have apart. We’ll see if that proves true. Nothing to do but wait and watch, and try not to check the sales board every hour.

Soon, perhaps even tonight, I’ll format it for Smashwords and upload it there. Since it’s a short story that shouldn’t take too much time, and it will then be available in all major e-reader formats. So I do have that small amount of work to do before I will just be waiting and watching.

I’ll still in the waiting period for my query to an agent for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. On the agency website it says if we don’t contact you within 30 days assume it’s a No, but the individual agent’s web site says to assume that after 60 days. Today is day 16, so there’s still quite a lot of waiting to do on that. Meanwhile, the first round of edits is complete, the mss re-printed, and waiting for one more read-through and perhaps a few more edits.

So I’m waiting and watching on two fronts. That doesn’t mean I’m idle though. My next work, The Candy Store Generation, beckons me. I did an hour of research last night, and hope to do two hours of writing tonight. I hope to present it at the next writers group meeting, which will  be either Jan 30 or Feb 6. I would love to have this done in three months, though I may be over-stating my writing capacity. We’ll see.

Church History Novels, Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Doctor Luke's Assistant, fiction, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Short Stories, Writing

2012 Writing Plan: Fiction

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Now, on Jan 4, 2012, looking ahead to what I plan to accomplish this year with my fiction, here’s what the year will look like.

  1. Publish my second short story, titled “Too Old To Play”. The story is written. I’ve  edited it for typos, plot, language usage, etc. It’s ready to publish, in my view. I e-mailed it to my critique group mailing list and to another trusted reviewer, so far with no response. I’m not really worried about  receiving critiques. If I get some, I’ll see what I need to do. If I don’t get any, I’ll publish as is. My schedule is to eSP this in January. Since it’s a sequel to my previously published short story, “Mom’s Letter”, I hope they will feed sales to each other. I’ve already “commissioned” creation of the cover.
  2. Publish my novel Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I finished what I consider the last round of edits a month or so ago. Publishers have told me it’s a good idea, but they won’t publish such a long work in a difficult genre from an unknown author. I figure it won’t have great sales, but what’s the downside in self-publishing it? Only the cost of a cover (already commissioned). If it doesn’t sell much, then the editors will be proved right in their judgment of it. If I make anything on it, that’s more than my prospects through commercial publishers. Right now I’m planning for an e-book. It’s so long I’m afraid a POD print book will be too expensive. I’m targeting this for February, which is very do-able
  3. Publish my novel In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. The book is written, and partially edited. I sent it out to about twelve beta readers in October, and have heard back from three. The copy they read had many typos, as I had not proof-read it. I have a few plot issues to address, and must make a judgment on the amount of dialog vs. narrative. I think I can have all this done by the end of February, making production of an e-book in March fairly firm.
  4. Publish another short story in the Danny Tompkins series. I hadn’t thought of adding another story to this series until recently. Heck, the second one didn’t even come to me until three months ago. I haven’t seen myself as a short story writer. So I’m still testing the waters. A plot for another one (actually two) has run through my mind, so I might as well schedule it to be written and published. I’m guessing this will be somewhere around June, but I’m still in the early stages of this.
  5. Begin work on my third novel. I could go several ways with this. I could work on a sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I hadn’t planned on that, but my friend Gary pointed out to me how the things I left hanging at the end of the book could segue very well into a sequel. I’m thinking my espionage book, China Tour, is most likely to be next, since it has had the longest gestation period. But a series of cozy mysteries has been brewing, and the first of those might be next. Given the uncertainty of what I’ll be working on, I’d say completion of the next novel in 2012 is unlikely, and I’m not putting completion in my plan.

So, there are my fiction writing plans for 2012. In a vacuum (i.e. with no non-fiction), it would be an easy schedule. Covers may be the hold up for maintaining my publication schedule.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, self-publishing, Writing

Summary of e-book sales and royalties

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Don’t be fooled by the title of this post. Nothing much has changed. Other than it’s July 25, and I’m already standing at my best month yet for both sales and royalties.

That doesn’t mean much of course, since I haven’t sold much at all. But so far this month I’ve sold 2 copies of “Mom’s Letter” and 3 copies of Documenting America. These sales have accrued $2.01 to my accounts at Kindle and Smashwords.

See, I told you these were not earth-shattering numbers. But the fact it’s still my best month so far. Previously my best month was 4 units sold and $1.68 in royalties accrued. So it is indeed a better month.

This is what the e-self-publishing experts say: More books on more e-reading platforms will result in more sales. That’s turning out to be true. In July I added “Mom’s Letter” to Smashwords. I’ve wanted to add Documenting America to it as well, but that’s a little more involved as I have to create an electronic Table of Contents. That’s not difficult; it just takes time. Maybe I’ll get a little time to work on it tonight.

That brings my total sales to 8 of “Mom’s Letter” and 7 of Documenting America. My accrued revenue stands at $6.28. That’s over five months for the former and less than three for the latter. I would love to have more, and I’d hoped the increase would come quicker than this, but I’ll take these for now, considering how little time I’ve put into promotion.

But, today I had a big surprise. I have three sales reports I can check: sales in the USA Kindle store, sales in the UK Kindle store, and sales in the German Kindle store. Normally I only check the USA one, but today I checked the UK, and discovered I have one sale of “Mom’s Letter” there in July! Surprise surprise. I earned 0.22 Pounds Sterling for that sale, which will work out to $0.35. I’m not quite sure how that gets accumulated and paid out, but it’s there in the record as a sale. I’ll take it.

So, I’m on a roll, albeit a very small and slow roll. I really need to get Documenting America up on Smashwords, and find something else to publish. Doctor Luke’s Assistant is more or less ready to go. I could probably have that on Kindle in a week and on Smashwords in two. I also still have to do the work needed to get Documenting America on CreateSpace, so that I have a physical book for sale. I don’t want to do a lot of promotion before having the physical book for those who don’t want an e-book. Then I’d better get busy finishing In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People so that I can slide over to another volume of Documenting America. Or maybe get serious with The Candy Store Generation.

That’s a plate full. Oh, well, better to have ambitious goals than to sit and watch TV all night.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, family, Writing

Limited Writing Time

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This week looks to be a dud as far as writing goes. We have out-of-town family in-town. Not staying with us, but staying in the area and performing each night at the Country Gospel Music Association convention being held in Springdale. I believe the performances are each night from last night through Friday, and maybe some during the day on Saturday. We went last night, not getting home until almost midnight. The 5:45 AM alarm seemed kind of early this morning.

And actually, I didn’t get much writing done over the weekend. On Friday this illness that has beset me, be it Lyme disease or whatever it is, seemed to flare up a little. Saturday we went to see a matinée performance of the last Harry Potter movie, then shopping. I came home and felt totally wasted, perhaps the result of all the popcorn I ate. By Sunday afternoon I was better and was able to…

…format and upload “Mom’s Letter” to Smashwords. It was easier than expected. The Smashwords Style Guide is long, but as it turned out my MS Word file was mostly according to the style guide. Almost immediately I had a sale, and I’ve had the sample portion downloaded four other times. I like the statistics that Smashword gives; much nicer than Kindle. You can see more items, and have a better feel for what’s going on. That’s all on the page for the book if you are logged in as the author. Then there’s another stats page that gives even more information. As I say, very nice.

So, I don’t know if I’ll be going every night to the sing or not. I suspect so, in which case I’ll get little writing done this week. I’ll try to make a blog post or two, before work, on breaks, or on the noon hour.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, self-publishing

What One E-book Sale Can Do

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Actually, it was an e-short story sale. Yes, yesterday I sold another copy of “Mom’s Letter” on Amazon Kindle. That puts it up to 4 sales since I published it in mid-February. I did a little promotion on it today, both on Absolute Write and at the Suite101 forums. I don’t know where the sale came from, and no new review has yet shown up. I’m happy for it, and for the 34.65 cent royalty I’ll earn–if I ever make payout, that is. I’ll make payout, I have no doubt about that. It’s mainly a question of whether it will be on this side or the other side of the next New Year’s Day.

What are the impacts of this sale? The book ranking of “Mom’s Letter” skyrocketed from something below 300,000 (hadn’t checked for a while) to 45,632. At least a 260,000 place jump from one sale! That tells me that 260,000 other e-books haven’t had a sale recently. I don’t know how the Kindle rankings work. Are they cumulative since publication? Are they based on the last 30 days? Last 7 days? I haven’t figured that out yet, though I haven’t tried very hard to figure it out. I suspect it’s based on sales in a recent time period. That means 45,632 e-books have had at least 1 sale during that time period. Since the Kindle Store has some million or millions of books available, that means many, many, many had no sales in that period. Welcome to the world of self-publishing.

Another impact is promotion. This demonstrates how important promotion is. A simple link posted to a forum can generate a sale. It might be a sympathy sale, given that I mentioned how sales were lagging, but a sale is a sale. Actually, I don’t know if the sale came from my post. One gal responded to my post saying she would tweet it for me. But since that tweet (if she did it; I don’t tweet to check on it) came as a result of my forum post, that forum post should at least earn an assist. So I guess I should bet busy and promote some more.

What about the impact on my psyche? It’s not as great as the third sale was, nor the first two way back in February. Self-sustaining sales, not directly attributed to promotional efforts, might give me a bigger morale boost. But if I have to make two Internet posts to generate one sale…well, seems like a lot of effort for 35 cents.

But I am a little more encouraged to go ahead and complete the editing round currently in progress on Documenting America. I have four more chapters to read, and then fifteen chapters of edits to type. I’m not really finding much. I had a few embarrassing typos, a few not so embarrassing, and a couple of places where my wording could have been clearer. Nothing much, really. I hope to have the improved, artistically-designed cover available in a day or two, and it would be nice to have the text edits available at the same time, do the re-up-load in one shot instead of two.

Any encouragement is good. May the sales continue.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, self-publishing

"Documenting America" Kindle e-book for Sale

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So Sunday I uploaded it. Twenty-four hours later they said it was accepted for publication. Another twenty-four hours and it went live, for sale at a bargain price of $1.25. Do I sound like a shameless self-promoter?

Here’s the link:
Documenting America, Volume 1

So far I have two sales! One coming from my Facebook announcement, and one from my announcement on the Suite101 forums. I’ll probably do more promotion for this than I did with “Mom’s Letter”, and see if that results in better sales. A 40,000 word book for $1.25 will seem like a better deal than a 1850 word short story for $0.99. That might help sales. I wonder, too, if the recent taking out of Osama bin Laden will result in a surge of American nationalism, which in turn might help sales. I don’t say that I’m hoping his death feeds my sales, just thinking out loud at what the possible reaction of the American buying public might be.

I still have so much work to do. I have to figure out how to get a properly formatted Table of Contents for the book. I have to get it—and “Mom’s Letter”—formatted for and uploaded to the SmashWords distribution platform. And I have to get DA formatted though CreateSpace to have a print-on-demand book for sale.

But I’ll take an evening to enjoy the moment, and dream a little.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, self-publishing

A Sale and a 4-Star Review

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My e-short story, “Mom’s Letter“, continues to languish in the Kindle bookstore, ranking a little lower than 100,000. I haven’t promoted it, the hours in the day being insufficient for the purpose. Heck, I haven’t even figured out how to put a widget promoting the book on this blog. I haven’t had time to promote it on the Kindle boards. I haven’t figured out the HTML commands needed to add promotional words/links to my blogspot signature. I haven’t figured out how to change my Yahoo e-mail signature to include those. In short, I’ve done nothing to promote it except a couple of posts on Facebook and pleas in a few posts on the Suite101 forums.

 

I check the Kindle report almost every day, just in case something does, but it never does. I had the two early sales in February and one review. Then March was zero sales. April was zero sales, until today. When I checked the report this morning, it showed a single sale in April. Now there were three! That’s $1.05 in commissions earned, nowhere close to the $10.00 payout, but it’s earnings accrued. Not only that, but the purchaser posted a review on the Kindle boards. This purchaser/reviewer is unknown to me. I haven’t interacted with her on any writer’s boards, or in a blog. She’s not a relative. Here’s what she wrote about “Mom’s Letter”:

 

Very touching and sweet. The only downfalls? I have to agree that it’s not so much a short story as a slice of life-ish vignette. That and this is the only work available by this author. Too bad, because I really enjoyed it.

Well, if that doesn’t get the juices flowing! Makes me regret all this time I’ve had to work my day (and evening) job this last month. How quickly can I finish Documenting America and upload it? I’ve spent the last two evenings on my Wesley small group study. Maybe I need to be working on the other.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America

My First Sale of "Mom’s Letter"

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My e-short story, “Mom’s Letter“, has sold one copy since I listed it not quite two weeks ago. Yea! That sale was to someone I know, a former colleague in the poetry wars on Poem Kingdom, years ago when we were moderators together there. Poppy also wrote a nice review for it, an honest review, not a fake one. I’m grateful for that.

Due to having been away from home for an engineering conference, combined with a little vacation, I haven’t been able to do anything to create a buzz for the story, except for one post here, one on the Suite writer forums, and one post at Facebook. I need to get to a few other places and do some posts. A few more sales would be nice.

On this trip I’ve managed to write one chapter for Documenting America. The document I reviewed has also given me fodder for at least one more chapter, maybe two if I want to. Once I type that chapter in I should be at 28,000 words. So that’s edging ever closer, and publishing it before the end of March is possible, though possibly rushing it.

The sun is shining. I’m on vacation, and by the view through the windows it appears a gentle breeze is blowing. I should be outside, walking the campus or sitting by the pool, reading. Perhaps I will. I’ll set this to publish tomorrow, actually, and fool all my readers (all ten or so of you) as to my whereabouts.