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.

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.

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.

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.

Sin Walks Into The Desert selected for The Thrilling Thirteen: Volume Two

Here's how The Thrilling Thirteen series works. A bunch of different writers contribute one of their best books. Readers get the whole set for $0.99.

Some buy The Thrilling Thirteen because they get six months worth of reading for pennies. Others probably flip through until they find a new writer who grips their imagination. They'll find cozy culinary mysteries, hardboiled police procedurals, even tales of paranormal suspense.

When I was asked if I'd consider including my neo-western noir Sin Walks Into the Desert in The Thrilling Thirteen: Volume Two, it took me two seconds to say yes. My book's got rave reviews from Crime Fiction Lover, Indie Reader, Kirkus Reviews and San Francisco Book Review. Yet it's sold all of 162 copies, whereas The Thrilling Thirteen volumes reach something like 50,000.

The Thrilling Thirteen: Volume Two is out now. You can get it just about anywhere you like to shop for ebooks. Amazon. Kobo. Barnes and Noble. Anywhere. Just get it. Best $0.99 you've ever spent.

Why do you write?

I never really asked myself that question. Why do I write? I don't know. Why do you breathe, jerk? But then there's this from Field Notes:



"I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing it down to remember it now." That's just inspiring as hell. So I decided maybe I'd think about why exactly I've spent the last 40 years writing. (And it has been about that long.)

People tell me I have a recognizable voice. I disagree. The dizzying Manhattan chapters of Regret Things aren't anything like the cop dialogue of The Single Staircase, which is nothing like the haunted noir of Sin Walks Into The Desert.

And the themes of my books seem disparate to me, too. Sin is about family and violence, while the characters in Regret Things are obsessed with materialism and driven by a need to be desired.

I asked, ok, what do my books have in common, then? And I came up with this. They're all about how our lives are ruled by ghosts. About the things we do to get right with the dead. About our search for the vanished.

Owl & Raccoon are barely human. They're detectives defined by their hunt for missing children.  And they know their mission is hollowing them out, stealing their evenings and ruining their relationships, but they can't stop themselves:

Back in the Explorer a few questions later, night fallen all around. "This is what I do," Owl thought. "I get in and out of this car chasing shadows."

It's the same in Sin Walks Into the Desert. As a child, Sin spends his days in his big sister's empty room, writing her letters he will never send. And years later, he leaves his job and girlfriend to hike into the desert, guns on his belt and go-bag over his shoulder, to learn if and how and why his uncle has disappeared.

It'd be a spoiler to tell you whose death begins the cycle of violence in Regret Things. But Nicki's no dummy. She knows she's committing a terrible crime to get right with someone who'll never know what she's done. When her accomplice asks her if the dead would even want revenge, she replies it doesn't matter:

"The dead don't live through us. We live through them."

So why do I write? Maybe I'm like Owl. I got shadows to chase. Shadows I never expect to catch.

What all writers should learn from ad writers

I wrote three novels when I was in college. I’m ashamed of every one. They were navel gazing explorations of what? The coming of age of a healthy, wealthy white teenager? Whine me a river. So I shoved them in a drawer and spent the next 18 years in advertising. Then I wrote a new book. And it doesn’t suck. What did I learn?

1. Know the end. When you write an ad, it only ends one way. The reader buys what you’re selling. You work backwards from that point to build gripping copy. This is the opposite of the inverted pyramid technique journalists are trained in. And of the meandering style many novelists employ.

2. Inhabit a voice. Writing is not the linear assembly of grammatically correct and accurately spelled sentences. The best ad writers are method actors, slipping completely inside a brand and effortlessly speaking its language. Porsche and Toyota could hand you the exact same brief, and the ad that’d result would be totally different.

3. Have an idea. The events of your own personal teen romance are profoundly dull to everyone but you. Advertising forces you to be original. (Or if not completely original, at least charmingly unexpected.) And it teaches you to grab attention. Fast.

4. Learn to write dialogue. You want to write how people talk, go bust out a few dozen radio spots. Your ears will guide you. Many novels are positively unreadable because of the unrealistically structured and complete sentences the characters feel free to use.

There’s one other thing I learned over the past two decades, but I didn’t learn it from advertising. There’s a reason why there’s no such thing as a literary prodigy. Writing isn’t like math or music. It requires experience. Writers have to live. To make mistakes. To experience poverty, war and love. And then give themselves over to a story that's not even their own. You want to write well? Partially, you just got to get older.

But mostly, ad writers are absolutely killer with the written word. And there's a good reason why.

A judge in the 22nd Annual Writer's Digest Self Published Book Awards on Sin Walks Into The Desert

I entered Sin Walks Into The Desert in the 22nd Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards. Winners won't be notified until December 31. But each entry comes with written commentary and advice from a judge. Here is a portion of what mine had to say, good and bad:

"What we have here is a hardboiled detective novel without the theatrics, stripped bare to the bones with prose that is tight and taut, that causes as much damage as a loaded gun. It's a thrilling ride and the story not only grips the reader because of the expressive characters, like Sin himself, but because of the way the phrases turn and return like a stacked deck of cards. The story bounces around in time a little bit and while this makes sense, overall I'd suggest that these transitions be played up a bit, prepared for in a way."

There's more to it, but that's the gist. I have no idea what this means for the awards, but I'm honored to be considered. And taken with the reviews from CrimeFictionLover.com, IndieReader.com, Kirkus Reviews and San Francisco Book Review, well, I guess I'm pretty convinced my book doesn't suck.

Review of Sin on crimefictionlover.com

Crime Fiction Lover is one of the best blogs for mystery and thriller readers. They feature pretty much all of the latest releases, including bestsellers by Ian Rankin, Lee Child and so on. So I was taking a bit of a risk asking them to please, please take a look at Sin Walks Into The Desert. They published their review Oct. 27:

Sin Walks into the Desert is a tense novella, a neo-Western noir with a cast of larger-than-life characters who will earn your respect and interest despite their flaws and personal vendettas. It’s a little coyote of a book that holds on and doesn’t let go. In some places, this is the best self-published writing I’ve read – original, well-edited, and filled with interesting and compelling characters. 

"A little coyote of a book." That's just perfect. Go read the whole thing.

Book club questions for Sin Walks Into The Desert

A local book club offered to make Sin Walks Into The Desert their book-of-the-month if I'd set them up with a list of discussion questions. I'm posting them here for anyone else who might want 'em. There are no spoilers per se, but some of the questions point prettily heavily to where the action in the book is headed and how Sin's character develops. You've been warned.

I was a horrifically difficult Lit student. I picked fights with every teacher I ever had. The running theme was this:

"Authors don't consciously use metaphor, parallelism, setting or anything else. They just write. Talentless hacks made all that shit up because it's easy to teach."

I still believe that, which made the process of putting these questions together eye-opening. There were so many things I did subconsciously that were revealed only as I tried to reverse engineer a study guide.

For instance, one question is, "Most of the action in the book is set on the high plains of Wyoming and the empty deserts of Arizona. Why? What do those places share in common?" The answer is the lack of boundaries. A horizon so distant, it's meaningless. The sensation that there is no container for our lives. I didn't sit down before I started writing and think, "What setting would be a good metaphor for Sin's emotions?" The desert found me.

And when I ask whether the reader thinks Sin's obsession with birds of prey comes from a longing to escape or a need to control, I'm really asking. Either interpretation is valid. I would be fascinated by any reader's thoughts.

The difference between mysteries and thrillers

I have a guestpost today on Omnimystery News named “The Difference Between Mysteries and Thrillers.” It’s not just about genres. It’s about different approaches to writing. And it talks about the surprising debt Sin Walks Into The Desert owes to Game of Thrones. Check it out and let me know what you think.

"No one walks off into the sunset; no one is a hero."

The IndieReader review I mentioned a couple days ago is online. Check it out.

Doting descriptions of guns: Sin and his Beretta

I got an email from IndieReader with a sneak preview of next month's review of Sin Walks Into The Desert. They're giving it five stars and awarding it the IndieReader Approved designation. Here's an excerpt:

SIN WALKS INTO THE DESERT is a short, violent story of loyalty and revenge. The dialog is terse and fits perfectly with a title character whose fluency is in his skill with a gun rather than his words... SIN WALKS INTO THE DESERT is a taut, suspenseful tale without a wasted word or scene.

Exciting as hell. I can't wait for the full review to come out.

Sin sizes up friends, enemies and strangers based on the weapons they carry. So I spent time making sure I got them right. Apparently that showed. Kirkus' review stated the book was a "sterling achievement, featuring an ultracool protagonist and doting descriptions of all types of guns." And one reviewer on Goodreads wrote:

I found myself involuntarily getting an adrenaline high as the author's descriptions of stealth tactics and firearms fluency in the face of evil forces brought back long-forgotten memories.

Sin carries a Beretta Px4 Storm. It's not just an awesome gun. It's a metaphor for the complex relationship he has with his larger-than-life uncle, who is known as el Viejo. Here's excerpt from the opening pages, in which Sin gets ready to make a late-night journey to his girlfriend's tattoo parlor.

In the hallway he stopped, extended one foot backwards, caught the door before it latched shut. Something didn’t feel right. His eyes flashed up and down the rows of doors, registered ceiling lights that had blown out and corners with indistinct shadows behind them. Nothing out of the ordinary, really.

Sin went back inside and opened up the drawer.

El Viejo had Berettas so Sin’d wanted a Beretta. But el Viejo’s were M9s, classic military sidearms chambered for 9, so Sin asked for the new model, the Px4 with a rail on it and the smooth black slide, rounded and mean, space age almost. And Sin wanted it chambered in .40, not 9. DA/SA please, with the exposed hammer. And fullsize even though he intended to carry it tucked inside skinny jeans because fuck that compact shit. El Viejo’d given him that and also a custom-molded leather IWB holster for it.

It was about the best gift ever.

Sin clipped the holster inside his jeans, brass checked the gun and seated it. He tugged his t-shirt down. It pretty much covered his belt and even if he leaned the wrong way, what was anybody going to say? This was Arizona, after all. Sin stepped out of his tiny rented hole-in-the-wall apartment and thought, “I didn’t grab a spare clip.” And then he thought, “Fuck it. For real this time.”

He let the door latch behind him and went off into the night.

In City Book Review's story about Sin Walks Into The Desert, they gave it four out of five stars, praising almost everything but dinging it for "the overuse of unnecessary expletives." I guess I see their point.

Trailer for Sin Walks Into The Desert

This is a trailer for the neo-Western, noir thriller Sin Walks Into The Desert. The music features Jeff on EBow and acoustic and me playing the lead on my Fender Strat. The voiceover is me reading from the book. Check it out on Amazon.

How should you structure a Goodreads giveaway?

Over the month of June, I ran Goodreads Giveaways for my books The Single Staircase and Sin Walks Into The Desert. I structured the promotions completely differently, altering almost every variable and testing what worked better. Considering a giveaway of your own? Read on.

The variables
I offered 20 copies of Sin Walks Into The Desert. And only four of The Single Staircase.

Readers had a whole month to sign up to win Sin Walks into the Desert. But just a few days to register for The Single Staircase.

For Sin Walks Into The Desert, I pulled the cover copy verbatim. But for The Single Staircase, I pulled only one intro sentence off the back cover, and then followed it with the literal description, “If you like interrogations, cops and impossible crimes, this is the novella for you.”

So what worked?
More that 500 people signed up to win The Single Staircase, with 203 of them adding the novella to their to-read shelves. Within two weeks, 75% of the winners had written reviews, with an average rating of 4.66 stars.

Meanwhile, only 386 people registered for Sin Walks Into The Desert, with 180 adding it to their to-read shelves. In the first couple weeks after the books shipped, 40% of the winners wrote reviews, with an average rating of 4.0.

Conclusion
Most of the entries in both giveaways came in the last couple days, as the books crept onto Goodreads’ “ending soon” list. This means a long giveaway is pointless.

I also learned that the chance of winning plays no role in how many people enter a giveaway.

And although I can’t prove it, I believe that more people signed up to win The Single Staircase because my copy clearly identified the book’s genre.

If you’re trying to get as many reviews as possible, the biggest factor is simply how many copies you can afford to give. But for almost any other goal, including building awareness, a short, small, focused giveaway is cheaper and more effective.

Want a free copy of Sin Walks Into The Desert?

You can enter to win one right now on Goodreads. If you're not sure if it's for you, check out the reviews on Amazon.

Every bullet had hit something: An excerpt from Sin Walks Into The Desert

Over the weekend, I published Sin Walks Into The Desert on Kindle and in paperback. It traces the story of a young man searching the desert for his missing mentor. The action bounces back and forth between the present day and scenes from his troubled childhood. Unlike my previous novellas, it's driven by character, setting and emotion, not plot and dialogue.

To celebrate, I thought I'd post a bit of it here. In this scene from chapter four, Anderson has stolen his dad's .357 and is trying to teach himself to shoot:

This was heaven.

Freezing cold, two inches of crusted snow across a never-ending prairie, horizons miles away, gray skies everywhere, sharp winds turning his pink twelve-year-old skin red.

Anderson had stolen the .357 again. He crunched through the snow to set up a target he’d made in the basement. A piece of plywood, cut six feet tall and three feet wide, a red dot the size of a fist right in the middle.

He stepped back twenty yards, extended one hand. The gun felt heavy in it. He reached out with his other palm, tried to cup it beneath his fist. His hands were already turning red in the cold, his fingers going numb.

He extended both arms out in front of him, squeezed one eye shut, aimed, jerked the trigger and felt the gun kick a foot high.

The bang was so big but there was no echo, the soundwaves spreading out over the field in all directions off into infinity. That was ok. There was no one within a mile. His parents weren’t home yet. The nearest farm might assume someone was poaching and call the sheriff, but probably not and even if they did, Anderson’d be long gone before anyone made it out here.

The boy looked around the barrel of the gun at his plywood target. He squinted.

Nothing. Not a scratch.

He took four steps closer, extended and squeezed again.

The gun bounced high again. He waited for the ringing in his ears to stop and looked at the target. Again, nothing.

Anderson took big steps forward, firing with each one. Bang, bang, bang, bang until the cylinder clicked dry. By the time he got off the last shot, he was only ten feet away.

But of six bullets, only one had hit the target at all, low, crotch level, and way to the right.

One of six.

Where were the other five bullets? Anderson’s heart started to pound. Even in the cold, constant wind, his face began to burn. He looked into the distance and could see nothing except the horizon line out there.

He imagined the five bullets racing towards it, straight lines until what? They slowed, gracefully arced to the ground, buried themselves harmlessly past the snow into the soil?

No. Every bullet had hit something.

Anderson took one more long step, kicked the target over, shoved the gun in his pocket, turned, and ran the half-mile back, his boots high-stepping, breaking through the crusted snow the whole way home.

Sin Walks Into The Desert is on Amazon now on Kindle and in paperback. Enjoy.

Back cover copy from Sin Walks Into The Desert

I have two books coming out on Amazon next month, Regret Things and Sin Walks Into The Desert. Together they tell the stories of Nicki Kenfax and her baby brother, Sin. Here's the copy off the back of Sin Walks Into The Desert:

"Whatever you think is going on, there's always some damn dead person pulling the strings."

Sin gets a late-night call from la Calavera. She's an ex-federal agent living on half a lung in a retirement home near the border. And she says el Viejo is missing.

This is el Viejo she's talking about. Diabetes and arthritis may have the old man in a rocking chair now, but in his day he was the baddest of snipers and the bravest of private eyes. He also saved Sin's life, back when the boy was a 12-year-old punk hellbent on shooting up the school bus with his daddy's .357.

So Sin sets off to find his mentor, only to discover a nest of killers with ancient vendettas waiting for him in the desert with the kingsnakes and coyotes. 

I am publishing two new books soon

A few months ago I hinted I was wrapping up a full-length novel. Now it's close to done. It's something I've been working on, in fits and starts, for more than a decade.

Regret Things is a sweeping story about crime, consequences, ego, infidelity, and the ways our lives are influenced by those who aren't with us any longer. As one character says, "The dead don't live through us, we live through them."

But here's the wild thing.

While I was editing and re-editing Regret Things, I started scribbling on the side about one of its minor characters. And within a couple weeks, that little bit of free writing became a thirty-thousand word stand-alone novella. Sin Walks Into The Desert is about a homicidal young man searching the Arizona desert for his missing mentor. I am simply in love with it.

I've gone back and forth about which book to publish first. And I finally decided, fuck it. I'm going to try to publish them both on the same day, about a month from now. I realize this is a confusing and arrogant marketing strategy. Oh well.

These books are very different from the Owl and Raccoon novellas. Those were about dialogue and plot. Regret Things and Sin Walks Into The Desert are about character and setting. Hopefully you'll try one of them. Which? I'll be blogging about them both in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.