Reflections on proofing the Sin and Nicki Box Set

I published Sin Walks Into The Desert, Regret Things and To Guns as a Kindle box set this weekend. Mostly, this is just a marketing thing. (My Owl and Raccoon box set easily outsells the individual books in that series.) But it's also because I want more readers to make it through to To Guns, which is one of my favorite books.

I did the due diligence of proofing the whole series, and it was a frustrating and illuminating experience. Sin Walks Into The Desert is undeniably a niche book. I get that. Sin is sulky and obsessed with guns and the language of the book follows his lead. Still, with all the awards the damn thing has won, I feel like it should be a best-seller. Some of the scenes - like the conversation between Sin and Sandy in the diner after Sin pulls a gun at school - are just fucking great.

Regret Things was a much more frustrating read. Some of my more creative friends say it's the best thing I've ever written. And there are places they're right. The dialogue between Nicki and Ryan before she asks him to help with her heist? Fucking brilliant. But the pages read like a mashup of scenes, not a novel. And too much time is spent with Nicki's illicit lover, Grant. He was the inspiration for the book, and therefore the whole series. But now I look back and worry that he sucks all the oxygen out of Nicki's story. And his nonstop leering feels eye-rollingly adolescent. I wish I'd culled his airtime back.

So I'm not surprised To Guns has been a flop. To enjoy it, you really need to have read both of the prior books. But I can't imagine there are many people out there who'd tolerate both a raw neo-Western and a casserole of bohemian excess. That's a huge regret of mine. To Guns' descriptions of the Colorado mountains, its shootouts, and its scene between Nicki, Sin and their underage bartender are all so, so good.

I hope this box set will finally get To Guns the audience it deserves.

How to get a free print copy of Sin Walks Into The Desert

I have seven copies of Sin Walks Into The Desert left over from its stint on the shelves at Tattered Cover. I figure I'll mail them out to the next seven people who sign up for my email list, which you can do in the righthand sidebar of this blog.

Sin is my most popular book. It's been well-reviewed and highly awarded. But it is desert noir. Sort of a moody vigilante story mixed with a dose of teenage melancholy. And as many reviewers note, Sin's uncomfortable fascination with guns colors almost every page. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, please skip it.

But if it does, well, I already have the books stuffed into envelopes. I'm just looking for a few good addresses to write on the front. Thanks for your interest.

#poweredbyindie: No one can take this away from me

Want to know a secret? I never tried to find a publisher. I never even considered it. I was DIY from Jump Street because I didn't want to tell marketable stories.

I wanted to publish whatever the hell I wanted.

My first novella, The Single Staircase, was plotted over years but written in just a couple months. It's 18,000 words of gritty, depressing, determined cop talk, mashed up with an Agatha Christie-style locked room puzzle. No publisher in the world would have touched it. But why would I have needed them to? It was exactly the story I wanted to tell.

So I got on to CreateSpace and KDP and figured out the process. And today the Owl and Raccoon series has fans all over the world.

Now, Sin Walks Into The Desert? That book, I could've found a publisher for. Desert noir isn't really a thing, but sexy tattooed loner kids with guns and grudges are pretty fucking marketable. But by the time I finished writing it, I was rolling. I loved my book. I wanted to make it real. Even more, I wanted ultimate responsibility for its success or failure.

Sin went on to sell thousands of copies, get picked up by the Thrilling 13 anthology, and win Shelf Unbound's award for Best Independent Novel of 2015.

At this point, any sane publisher would have been hounding me for more Sin books. But I wanted to jump genres. Sever is a melancholy memoir about college in the '90's, but with four rampaging ax murderers running around. Should it be marketed as YA horror or Gen X time capsule? I don't know. It's not my problem.

The most important thing is this. Every day I get to look myself in the mirror and say, "I did this. Maybe it sucks and maybe it's brilliant. Maybe it'll find an audience and maybe it won't. But I did this. And no one can take that away from me."

All because one day I decided to jump. To upload the file. To hit the publish button. To be #poweredbyindie.

[Ed. - This post is part of Amazon's #poweredbyindie month. I hear a lot of griping about how Amazon is a giant juggernaut that uses authors. But if Amazon didn't provide free publishing tools and a free sales platform, I might not be an author to begin with. The Single Staircase would still be a 122-page Word doc in a folder somewhere. So thanks, Amazon.]

Maybe you shouldn't try to disrupt your category after all

I work in advertising. For almost 20 years, I've been telling clients they need to stand out in the sea of sameness. Zig when the market zags. And so on.

When I started publishing the Owl & Raccoon series, I took my own advice. I looked at the covers of competitive police procedurals and flipped everything on its head. Instead of moody photos, I went with bright colors. Instead of modern type, I went with hand drawn titles. I asked for metaphorical illustrations instead of clear depictions of starring characters.

The authors I know told me I was making a huge mistake. They said my covers looked like they were meant for children's stories. And that crime readers are more likely to buy books if they are clearly marked as a series.

But I stuck to my guns. And I have to admit, when I put paid advertising behind my giveaways, the covers do pop off Amazon's Top 100 Free page. But the Owl & Raccoon books aren't making money. The Single Staircase has sold about 300 copies, WDYG half that. (Yes, I still give all proceeds from The Single Staircase to charity.) Compare those sales figures to Sin Walks Into The Desert, which has sold more than 9,000 copies. True, Sin Walks Into The Desert has that big fancy award, but most readers review the Owl & Raccoon novellas just as highly. What's more, Owl & Raccoon have actual fans. People tweet and email me to ask when their next case is coming out. I feel like The Single Staircase should be just as successful as Sin Walks Into The Desert.

Maybe it's not the covers' fault. But I want to try something. So yesterday I republished the cover art on the books' Kindle pages. If I see a sales bump, I'll finesse the layouts and apply the change to the print covers too, as well as the upcoming third Owl & Raccoon novella. In the meantime, if you have thoughts, let me know.

Sin Walks Into The Desert wins Best Indie Book award

A few months ago, I entered Sin Walks Into The Desert in Shelf Unbound's 2015 indie publishing competition.

One thing I've learned from advertising award shows is it's best not to fantasize what you might win. Enter your stuff. And then forget about it. Let the chips fall where they may.

A couple weeks ago I got an email from the magazine. Sin won the whole thing, beating out about a thousand entries for the title of Best Indie Book.

Holy shit.

The magazine's publisher wrote, "Our overall winner this year is Sin Walks Into The Desert by Matt Ingwalson, whose inventive modern Western noir style thrilled our judges."

I want to hug them.

There is a good-size interview with me in this month's issue. The questions were really insightful, and I tried to be as honest and raw as possible with my answers. For instance:

In addition to Sin Walks into the Desert and its prequel Regret Things, you’ve written a series of police procedurals. What interests you about crime?

David Byrne once said singing is a trick to get people to spend more time with music. And I think that’s part of it. The crime genre is a trick to get people to spend more time with characters, more time in uncomfortable situations. But part of it is that genre fiction is just cool. The real world is artificial and stupid. I’ve seen enough genuine tragedy that trumped-up literary drama makes me want to go around punching people. I write crime, noir and horror because they’re fucking cool. Sue me.

Please go read the whole interview on your tablet via the Issuu app, or on your desktop by clicking here. And congrats to all the finalists, as well. Some great authors I can't wait to check out.

Want to read Sin Walks Into The Desert yourself? Click here to get it on Amazon.

Manhattan Book Review on To Guns

The Manhattan Book Review takes on To Guns:

...All this escalates into a classic Western gun battle that is at times hilarious, and at times high-throttle, but always memorable... Ingwalson once again uses his trademark smooth, noir style to draw the reader into the novella while not distracting from the action at hand. To Guns is written in a novella style as it follows the action of this single chase to Colorado, so it is great for thriller fans looking for a quick read to pick up and breeze through.

Sound good? Get it on Amazon.

How To Guns is different than any of my other books

About a year ago, I wrote a post for Omnimystery about the difference between plotting mysteries and writing noir. You can read the whole thing if you want. But the upshot is that the former genre is about architecting the ending, while the latter is about losing yourself in atmosphere.

Both of the Owl and Raccoon books were outlined from the solution backwards before I started writing. While both the Sin and Nicki books chase a scene or sentence I found compelling.

To Guns is the first book I've written that's both. It has all the lush detail and moody atmosphere, but I finished chapter-by-chapter notes for the four main characters (Sin, Nicki, Mathieu and Meb) before I started writing.

Sin Walks Into The Desert: free for the first time

The title of this post sort of says it all. Sin Walks Into The Desert is my most popular, best reviewed, and by far best selling novella. And the Kindle version's free for the first time, all week long. Get it on Amazon.

UPDATE: Wow. I've run giveaways that reached 200 or 300 folks before. But this one took off. About 4,000 people downloaded Sin. There are already fresh reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. And Regret Things got a sales bump as a result, too.

Presenting a story about stories. And guns.

I finally pulled the trigger on the third novella in the Sin and Nicki series. And until July 1, it's priced as low as Amazon will allow. You can order a print copy now for $4.99. Or pre-order the Kindle version for $0.99.

It's a couple years after Regret Things. Nicki's hunting for a safe place to raise her family. And Sin's searching for a life without violence. But they're on a collision course with a lone Italian mercenary and a team of trashy Colorado meth dealers. Their separate storylines converge deep in the southern Rockies.

To Guns is more than just a neo-Western shootout. It's a story about stories, full of metaphors for the way people construct their personal mythologies. I hope you love it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Sin Walks Into the Desert is on the shelves at Tattered Cover

Tattered Cover is stocking Sin Walks Into the Desert. You can find it at the Colfax, downtown and Highlands Ranch locations. It's the third bookseller to pick up my neo-Western noir, after Tennyson's BookBar and Boulder Book Store. It's also theoretically available at Barnes and Noble, although you're extremely unlikely to find it on their shelves.

Putting out print editions is a silly proposition for an indie author. There's no way to get the scale you need. Amazon is a way simpler and more profitable platform.

But I love seeing the actual book out there so much I redid the cover with review blurbs and spine information that met The Tattered Cover's guidelines. If you want a physical copy and you enjoy supporting local entrepreneurs, this is a way to do it.

Won't misery make angels?

The horror movie retells the story of sin, penance and redemption. The moral is always that conventional lives are safe lives, and those who stray will be tortured until they find a way to redeem their sins.

The plot of the modern fairy tale - and specifically the Disney film The Princess and the Frog - is almost identical to that of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Wrong Turn, Hostel, and the Friday the 13th sequels. Tiana is a moral girl, working two jobs and saving her pennies so that one day she can open her own restaurant. One night, she's offered a shortcut. A frog promises her riches in exchange for a kiss. (Oh those talking frogs!) Tiana sells her virtue and is instantly given, not money, but the body of a frog. The two frogs are chased into the swamp, where they are hunted by alligators and tormented by voodoo spirits. Eventually the frogs fall for each other and discover long-term love is more important than worldly temptations. Their marriage washes away their sin. And their first kiss as man and wife is rewarded by a return to human form and the good graces of their parents and community.

Compare that to any of the movies I mentioned earlier, in which good kids' sexual desires lead them off the beaten path, where they are tormented by inbreds and slashers and must suffer until they find their way back to civilization.

These days, children gain knowledge of sex and violence before they're even out of diapers. Sin assaults them from every commercial and magazine cover. It's easy to say that is causing the redemption story to creep into tales meant for younger children.

But it's not true.

It's more accurate to say that the cycle of sin, penance and redemption is part of the human experience. It is something we live with at every age and in every circumstance. It is something we experience not just as horny teenagers but as four-year-olds pouting in timeout for eating too much candy, as celebrities making tabloid headlines for VIP room dalliances, as quarterbacks stepping onto the field after short stints in the slammer, and as middle managers working the weekend to make up for a Thursday afternoon on the golf course.

Our culture believes that suffering cleanses. Isn't that the lesson that our fictions have ground into us since birth? Is it any surprise that we blithely watch as mankind burns? That we do nothing upon hearing of starvation and genocide? That we accept poverty and war? That we brush off the serial killers and head for the sports scores? We shrug it all away. And no wonder. We've been taught that misery makes angels.