Non-Kindle owners rejoice!
The first book in the Savannah Zombie Novel series is now available for both Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Kobo’s line of eReaders!
A New Death is no longer Kindle-exclusive, so now more people can get in on the Savannah Zombie action!
Click on the Books link above or on the links below to go to your preferred eReaders site!
The rest of the series will be making its way soon! And if you can’t wait until then, don’t forget you can always buy the paperback versions!
Jeez, I might need to work on that title. That is not a sexy blog title. Hmm, oh well…
Anyways, here’s the deal: I got a promotion at my “day” job, so I’ve been working crazy hours. (I clocked in nearly 58 last week.) These crazy hours have left me crazy tired, but I haven’t had much time to rest.
You see, my wife and I are expecting a little girl next month! We have been very busy trying to get ready for her arrival, but life keeps getting in the way! Here’s the quick rundown: wrecked our car, moved into new apartment, apartment infested with fleas, killed all the fleas, unpack everything, set up nursery, look for new car, try to get loan for said car, finally get loan for car, all on top of working 55+ hours a week, getting maybe 4-5 hours of sleep at night.
All while trying to publish my next short story.
Well, needless to say, you know which one fell to the wayside.
BUT…
It’s finally done!
Lexx’s Story is now available on Amazon!
My apologies for taking so long, but when you’re a one man show, you gotta know when to say “It will just have to wait.”
So here’s my proposition:
The cost of Lexx’s Story is 99 cents, BUT you can get it for FREE!
All you have to do is email me or tweet a screenshot of your review for ANY of the other three Savannah Zombie Novel books and I will send you a free ebook copy of Lexx’s Story.
Sound good?
Cool, my email is beencalled (a) gmail (dot) com. Send me screenshot or link to your review and I’ll send you Lexx’s Story.
Want to be super trendy and tweet it?
Tweet: “Check out my review of @SavZombieNovel” with the link or photo of your review and I’ll DM you the copy of the book. (I think you have to be follower for me to DM you.)
OR
You can just buy it for 99 cents. That works too. (Did I mention I was about to have a baby?)
Click on the cover below to go straight to the Amazon page.
Right now you can get Book 1 in the Savannah Zombie Novel Series for FREE on your Amazon Kindle!
This promo will last for FIVE days, so now would be a good time to pick it up if you haven’t read it yet! If you have, then now would be a great time to tell your friends!
Here’s what some readers have said about A New Death on Amazon:
“When you read A New Death,I think you will be shocked to learn that it is the authors first novel. The story is well written and has a good quick pace. It is surprisingly upbeat for a zombie apocalypse novel. I enjoyed it and definitely recommend it.” -J. Meister
“I can’t believe this is the authors first book. Very well written and flowed great. You Mr. Vasquez are a gifted story teller. I really enjoyed the character development, I could not put this book down I think this is the fastest I’ve read a book.”- Jesse E.
“Josh Vasquez has done a fine job for his first effort. The characters grab your attention and pull you along with them. This is very much a character driven tale and it works well. Plenty of zombie action and questions to answer. I am looking forward to the next installment.” – Belle Rouge
“Easy to read and entertaining. Fast moving. I Looking forward to the next book! Perhaps the Bible talk may be a turn off for some but so far it was tolerable.” – Amazon Customer
“one of the better zombie books I’ve read in awhile! fast paced, great characters…Loved lexx! really hope there is a sequel!! hoping for more from this author!” – Lisa Cook
“This is a bit different from other zombie books. There are the usual slow ones and some runners. What makes it different is that the bitten change into muscle bound rage monsters. While this not the best book I have ever read it certainly isn’t the worst. It’s a good first book.” – ladyboss230
“Josh Vasquez obviously found his calling in writing a zombie novel, keep up the great work!! A can’t put down read!” – Debra Ryan
That’s just a few people’s opinion. You can make yours by either clicking the picture above or by clicking here.
I hope y’all enjoy!
Josh
Hey everybody, just wanted to give a quick update and let you know what I’m up to.
First, A New Darkness releases on Kindle this Saturday! You can still pre-order it and save 33% on this weekend’s price and 66% on list price. If you haven’t yet, go and get it here.
Maybe you’re like, “I still haven’t read A New Death yet.” Well, good for you, A New Death is on sale until Saturday! Get it for $1.99 here!
Or maybe you like paper. (Who doesn’t? Books smell amazing.) Well, good news for you, I’ve made some updates to the paperback version of A New Death and started work on the A New Darkness paperback this week. So both of those will be live in the next couple of weeks.
And lastly, I don’t normally do too much promotion leading up to book launch (one of my weak points) but this time around, I’m trying something new.
It’s called Thunderclap. Thunderclap works like this: You go and hook up your social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr) to my Thunderclap promotion. Then on Saturday at noon, Thunderclap will blast out a message featuring my book and link through all of our social media accounts. Pretty cool, right? The only catch is I have to get full support or else the message won’t go out.
As of right now, I’m at 14 out of 100 supporters. With only 14 people signed on, it already has a reach of 4313 people. Can you imagine if we get all 100?
I’ve done this before and have never received any junk mail from it, or any emails afterwards. It’s an extremely easy way to help support me. All you have to do is give up one tweet or status update on Saturday.
100 people is an easily reached number. We can do this. Sign up here.
Thank you so much for the support and I look forward to hearing what you have to say about A New Darkness!
Josh
This next month I will be rushing to finish book two of the A New Death series. I have a lot of work ahead of me this next month, seeing that I’m two-thirds of the way through my first draft.
Don’t worry, I know you’re concerned. You’re probably like, “Joshua, what the heck have you been doing? I’ve been waiting forever for this book!”
I know, I know. I’m a slacker.
But here’s the good news:
I work my best under pressure.
Always have. (Well, except for one area, but don’t worry, that has nothing to do with my writing.)
In school, I always waited to the last minute to start reports or any other kind of projects. And for the most part, I always came through. This might turn some of you off, but I was that kid that just naturally retained information. (Except for math, that junk is hard.) I rarely studied for tests, I just remembered what I was taught.
Prodigy?
Probably not. You see, we all know that, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” 
Well, because I retained facts so easily, I didn’t apply myself that much. In fact, I spent a lot of my spare time writing stories that no one will ever read. (We see where that got me.)
So, okay, what does this have to do with Book 2?
I’m going to bust this story out this next month. I know exactly where I’m going with it. I know where it ends. ***SPOILERS*** I’ve already hit the climax and it’s all downhill from here. (Okay, that wasn’t really spoilers, but people are weird about that kind of stuff.)
One last story before we go and I get back to my dayjob. (I’m on lunch break as I’m writing this.)
My senior year in high school: The year was 2006. A year of dreams. A year of aspirations. In my 12th grade Lit class, part of our final grade was a book report. I had a buddy, who shall remain anonymous, who, let’s say, didn’t care for reading. (I know, who doesn’t like reading?) Anyways, he decided to hire me as a ghostwriter. (That’s what I’m calling it.) The deal was, he would pay me $90 and I would do his report. Simple. Plus, the book was 1984. (No! Don’t throw me into that briar patch!) I spent the majority of the time working on and writing his report. This was the first time I was being paid for writing, so I wanted to do the best I could. (Although I did knock off $10 for a sandwich, but I digress.)
This left me with little time to work on my own crucial report.
I decided to do it on a book I had already read, so I choose Animal Farm. I knocked out my report quickly and didn’t really put that much into it. Well, when we received our papers back, I ended up scoring several points higher than his. Long story short, I work well under pressure..
Speaking of working under pressure, I have set Book 2 up for pre-order on Amazon. I have to have it finished by October 1st and it will go live on October 10th! The cover is temporary, but the name has been revealed! Pre-order A New Darkness now on Amazon!
Okay, enough blabbering, I have a book to finish!
Josh
Okay, elephant in the room. If you read my last post, I ended it with
“Tune in next week for the rest of the story!”
That was three months ago. My bad. A lot has been going on these past couple months. My computer quit on me and I had to buy a new one. I started a new job, which requires me to work early in the morning and has taken some getting used to.
Anyways, my apologies.
Last time, I wrote about some of the events in my life that lead to me writing my first book. If you haven’t read about them, you can here. But it ended like this (spoilers), I’d come to the realization that I could publish a book via Amazon’s Kindle.
Now up until this point, it had always been a dream to have my own book published. But I didn’t have the first idea on where to start. I knew I would need a publisher, but to get a publisher, you need an agent, right? How do you get an agent? These were things I pondered. And to be honest, if I found out then what the process of being published entailed, I probably wouldn’t have even attempted.
Basically, this is how it works. You write your manuscript and then you mail it off to the publishers. (Yes, the old way.) But you also have to send a query letter, which has to be formatted a certain way to even be accepted. The publisher then reads your query letter, which sums up your manuscript (you know, the one you poured hours of your life into), and based on that, they decide whether to even read your novel or not. If they don’t, you get a nice letter saying how you’re not what they’re looking for.
Do not pass go.
Do not collect $200.
You then continue this process until you find a publisher who will give your book a chance. If you don’t, well, write another book. Not saying the one you wrote isn’t good, it’s just not what the publishers are looking for.
Amazon changed all this.
Yes, there were eBooks before Amazon, but the Kindle did what iTunes did for music:
It made it instantly accessible.
And not only instantly accessible to the consumer, but accessible to the producers as well.
Authors could now directly publish to Kindle and have their written word out in the world. You no longer had to get past the gatekeepers of Publishers and Agents. You went straight to your readers.
It was like the printing press all over again.
So much to the point that right now, Amazon is having it out with Major Publishing Houses. You can read about it from guys who know tons more than I do like, David Gaughran or Hugh Howey. There’s this whole friction between Traditional Publishing and Self-Publishing, between what’s established and those who seek to find a new path.
And how does this all tie back into my story?
When I set set out to publish A New Death via Amazon, it wasn’t because I thought Self-Publishing was the way to go. To be more accurate, I stumbled into it. I thought to myself, “Hey, I can do this.”
And then I got to it. I began reading books (on my Kindle, of course) about writing fiction, publishing on Kindle, eBook formatting, selling on Amazon, and just soaked in whatever I could. But as much as I read, I just did. (There is no try, only do.) I went through the process of writing, editing, publishing, and marketing my book. I set up social media for it. I created a website and blog. I started off knowing nothing about publishing.
And look at me now.
I am by no means a famous author. I’ve been on a few bestseller lists of some slightly obscure categories, but nothing too crazy. (Yeah,Metaphysical category!)
But I’ve sold books. Books that I have written. Books that people give five-star reviews and ask, “When’s the next one coming out?”
That is awesome.
A dream come true.
So why did I choose to Self-Publish?
Because sometimes, you have to do things on your own to find out what you’re capable of.
Josh
In my final semester of high school, when I should have been more focused on graduating, I was planning on making a low-budget zombie movie with my friend. We considered ourselves zombie film buffs and very knowledgeable to all things undead. We had studied the greats: Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and 28 Days Later. We’d even gorged ourselves on lesser quality flicks, my personal favorite being the redneck-infused Hide and Creep. It was this last movie which made us go, “Hey, we can make a movie this good.”
(Here’s the DVD cover. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.)
And so, we set out to make movie history.
But, we didn’t.
We didn’t even get close.
I have several loose pieces of notebook paper scribbled with our conversations, a progress report with a failing grade on one side and marketing notes written on the other, two different story outlines, several pages of script, and one short story. All of these documents prove that we had dreams.
Dreams that were crushed by the little thing we like to call:
Life.
I’m being dramatic. (I am a writer after all.) We could never really work up the funds to buy any kind of equipment, we graduated, I went to seminary (another story in itself), and well, time got the best of us.
So, our little zombie movie went into a three ring binder and dissolved into the past.
Flash forward five years: It’s Christmas and all I want is an iPad. (I already had my two front teeth.) I knew it was a long shot. I’m not sure if you know this or not, but those things are freaking expensive!
I open my gift from my wife: A Kindle.
I wasn’t let down, because like I said, the iPad was a long shot. I love reading, so while I couldn’t do all the fun stuff an iPad could do, I could at least read a lot of books. That’s a win. This was nowhere near the disappointment I felt the year we received a Nintendo Wii. (To a hardcore gamer like me, this was the human equivalent of the cone of shame.)
I take to my Kindle like a librarian takes to the Dewey Decimal System. (That means I liked it.) One of the things I fall in love with is that there are tons of free books.
Did you hear what I just said?
Free books.
Free books are like crack for bibliophiles. So I began downloading tons of free stuff. In the beginning, most of it was classic theological studies, but after some time, my love of the living dead brought me to free zombie books. But I didn’t read much of them because I came across something much more profound than free zombie books. (Yes, you heard me right.)
You could publish your own books to Kindle.
I had written stories all my life. (I wasn’t so good at finishing them, but whatever.) Of course I had dreamed of writing a book one day and having it published, but I just never thought it would be possible. What did I know about getting a book published? Yeah, I could string together a decent story, but was my prose up to par to be printed on paper? (See all those p’s? That’s alliteration. Boo yah.)
I made the mistake of downloading the publishing guide for Kindle Direct Publishing. Big mistake. It was a mistake because I realized how easy it was to publish an ebook to Amazon. (I say “easy,” but anyone who has done it knows it can be a lot of work. “Do-able” is a better word.)
So, now that I knew it could be done, what would I write? The Doom fan-fiction I wrote in high school was never finished and I knew I’d run into copyright issues. Other than that, what stories did I have to tell?
Well, in the same notebook of my Doom rough draft, I had the outline for a low-budget zombie movie that never got made…
Tune in next week for the rest of the story!
Not sure exactly how I got into the “Science Fiction TV, Movie & Game Tie-In” category on Amazon, but hey, I’ll sit in between Star Wars and Halo anyday!
Make sure you buy A New Death now only $0.99 and help it climb to the top!
