My last post suggested five things you could do to promote your stories and get them read, bought, downloaded ... whatever. Here is another way to do it, and I will confess it also is shameless self-promotion. But if I did not do it then how would a reader know to read my stories? So, here's another suggestion for when marketing your stories. Share a sample of it on your blog (You don't have a blog? Sheesh, start one up! What's the matter with you, you slacker?).
On July 2, 2014 my first full-length novel, ONE SECOND BEFORE AWAKENING, will be available for purchase through all the major book retailers. Currently, it is available for pre-ordering on certain select sites, such as Smashwords.com and Barnesandnoble.com. You can check out a sample using this link if you would like (shameless self-promotion): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/442792
Of course you do this sort of thing because then readers can look at a sample of your story to determine if they like it and want to keep on reading, and also so that readers can see the quality of your writing without taking a risk. Remember, I talked about risk with the reader last blog post when I mentioned making some of your stories available for free. Well, a sample is free, too!
But also, you can run the sample on your blog or your website (www.roberthillauthor.com - more shameless self-promotion). In fact, I did that last week. I put up the first chapter for readers who might stumble across the website to get a sneak peak at what I've put together.
And now, I will do it here on the blog as an example of what you should do with your stories (and also, did I mention, for the purposes of shameless self-promotion).
Here it goes -
One Second Before Awakening - Chapter One
Suddenly, he was in the
painting; not just staring at it from the museum bench, but actually standing
in it, looming over a naked woman just as two tigers came spewing from the
mouth of a gigantic goldfish.
Drew turned, feeling
dizzy, disoriented, and trying to locate the museum bench upon which he’d been
sitting. The bench was gone and so was
the museum. What had been a two dimensional
canvas hanging on the wall was now a three dimensional world sweeping all
around him as if he had stepped through a doorway leading out to the busy
streets of Chicago. But where he was now
was not amongst the concrete and steel of the city, although it felt just as
real. No, Drew now stood at the jagged
edge of a rocky islet surrounded by placid ocean water and illuminated by a
blistering orange sun hovering low upon the horizon of a pastel sky.
How had this
happened? Bits of images were there in his
head, like in that moment before waking when the last threads of a
drifting-away dream were slashed by the blade of waking. He had been sitting on the bench, thinking
about the depressing state of his life, only half-staring at the Dali, when he
had felt a breeze brush over him. That
breeze had swiftly grown into a gale so strong that it had buffeted him from
the bench, pushing him toward the Dali, and then he found himself in a free
fall, tumbling head over heels. Then in
an instant he stopped falling, stopped tumbling – and stood in the midst of the
image upon which he had only just been gazing.
There was
movement. Drew stumbled about to see the
woman from the painting – the painting he was now a part of – scooting away
from him. Her green eyes were startled
awake, and her breast heaved like a blossoming lily. In the glare of the sun with the dizzy
sensation of disorientation blurring his vision, Drew still sensed, though,
that there was something about her; familiar, intimate.
A ripe red pomegranate
tumbled from the woman’s fingers and rolled against Drew’s tennis shoe as a bee
buzzed past his ear. He dodged it,
grateful not to be stung as he was allergic to bees.
What was
happening? How did he get here?
A million questions
raced from the starting gate of his mind.
But he couldn’t speak, couldn’t grasp – couldn’t stop staring at the
woman clothed only in her alabaster skin, who was in turn staring back at him.
A splash and the slap
of cold water against Drew’s legs pulled his hazel eyes from the woman down to
the water surrounding the islet. The
huge goldfish had just disappeared beneath the rippled, broken surface of the
ocean, its massive body becoming shadowy as it slipped into the murky, azure
depths. But Drew had to redirect his
attention away from the behemoth, drawn toward the pressing reality that two
tigers, just yards away from him and the woman, had landed on the islet upon
which he stood, their claws scraping against the igneous stone.
The rifle! In the painting there had been a rifle with a
bayonet affixed to it floating in the air above the woman’s chest.
Wait, he thought. That wasn’t exactly what he had seen in the
painting.
Actually, the rifle, in
the painting, had not been floating at all, but rather had been in the forefront
of a succession of objects portrayed by Dali as being flung forth from the
backdrop of the painting into the forefront.
Yes, in the background of the painting there had been a gigantic,
exploding pomegranate that had been floating just above the water’s surface
right where the burnished sun was now, and from that exploding fruit had sprung
forth the goldfish, as big as a car, and from the mouth of the goldfish, one of
the tigers had leapt, who in turn had vomited the second tiger, and from the
second tiger’s maw must have come the rifle.
But in the reality of standing there with everything in motion … where
now was the rifle?
Both predators coiled
back preparing to lunge, roaring in concert.
There, next to where
the woman had lain! Drew dashed forward,
picking the rifle up barrel first.
The tigers jumped.
The woman screamed.
Drew twisted about,
instinct and adrenaline swinging the butt of the rifle for him.
The hard wood of the
rifle stock slammed into the jaw of one of the tigers, deflecting its lethal
strike. The beast growled and a flailing
claw just missed Drew’s narrow face as he stumbled back and tripped over the
woman behind him.
The stricken tiger
tumbled against the other and both went flailing off the edge of the
island. Huge bodies of striped fur
sprayed foaming welts of water as the tigers fell into the ocean.
Drew pushed his lean
frame upward with the rifle butt as a crutch.
The tiger he had struck
was clamoring for a purchase on the edge of the rock, trying to draw itself
up. The other was shaking its soaked
head of the ocean water while paddling back toward the islet, having drifted
several feet out into the no longer placid waters.
Drew yanked the rifle
up into the crook of his arm. He’d never
used a rifle like this. It was old, like
the ones used in World War II – the bolt-action type with a bayonet
affixed. In the army he’d shot an M-16
more than a few times, especially in Afghanistan, but this thing – this antique
– he wondered if it even worked.
It’s a rifle in a
painting for crying out loud, his mind yelled at him.
The first tiger was
still struggling to get its massive body out of the water.
Drew lifted the rifle
and aimed it, figuring if the tigers were real then the rifle might be just as
real.
“Don’t!” It was the woman behind him. “There is to be only one bullet.”
Drew glanced at her
through stray locks of sandy-colored hair.
“It’s to be for me!”
she said.
His forehead wrinkled,
wondering at what she was saying – ‘it’s to be for me’. The statement, and by the way she spoke, were
both peculiar and puzzling at the same time.
“One bullet, one less
tiger,” he muttered, raising the rifle back up to his cheek.
Then the trumpeting
call of an elephant blasted his ears from somewhere close behind him. Startled, Drew lowered the rifle, flinching
from the cacophony as he looked way up into the sky behind him.
How stranger could
things get? What more had been flung
into the midst?
His eyes saw it, but as
with everything else his mind was experiencing in the expanse of mere seconds,
there was a dislocation between reality and whimsy. Yet, there it was, forty feet above him, the
full body of an African elephant walking upon stilt-like legs, skinny like
spaghetti and long like endless beanpoles.
It was as if someone had used a medieval rack to stretch the poor
pachyderm’s legs to inhumane proportions.
Atop the elephant’s
back was a tremendous saddle laden with an obelisk of ice, and a midget dressed
in a clown suit that appeared to be directing or driving the spindly
beast. The midget’s face was done up to
look like a clown, too, but he wore a Nazi-style storm trooper helmet.
“Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing?” said the
midget-clown, a look of anger overriding the exaggerated clown grin plastered
on his face.
The long-legged
elephant had been in the painting, too!
When Drew was sitting in the museum looking at the painting, the
elephant with its spidery legs had been trudging through the water like an
innocent passerby as the two tigers were leaping from the mouth of the goldfish.
A tiger growled. Drew cringed and looked forward again in the
direction of the sound. The tiger was
still struggling to drag itself up onto the rocks. The second one, the one that had been made to
paddle its way back toward the islet, was now beside its companion, and was
also trying to pull itself up.
Drew flashed his eyes
up at the midget-clown. “Help us!”
“Did you hear me?!”
yelled the little man, his arms akimbo as he stood on the front of the saddle
staring down at Drew. “What are you doing?”
“Throw us a rope!” Drew
yelled back.
“You’re not supposed to
interfere. Get out of there, you idiot!”
Drew’s jaw tightened,
and he pivoted around, pointing the rifle up at the little man standing on his
high saddle. “Help us!”
“Bloody Hell!” The midget-clown ducked away and Drew
thought he would turn his elephant away and flee.
But then, instead, the
towering pachyderm moved closer to the edge of the island and as it did so the
little man hurled down a long rope ladder.
Drew jumped back a step to avoid being hit as the ladder clacked against
the stone.
Then the midget-clown
started cranking on a lever attached to the saddle. Drew didn’t know why the little man was doing
this or for what purpose, but he didn’t have time to worry about it.
“What are you to be
doing?” yelled the woman still beneath him at his feet. “Where have you been coming from?”
Drew turned toward her,
his brow furrowing at the strange way she spoke. He understood her, but the way she phrased
things. There was no time for this. “Come on!”
“I cannot!” she
replied, her voice shrill.
One of the tigers
finally got its hind legs up onto the surface of the islet. The other was still struggling, but it, too,
was almost out of the water.
Drew lunged toward the
woman. “Come on!” He grabbed her arm and yanked her to her
feet.
“I cannot!”
“The Hell you
say!” Drew began dragging her toward the
ladder. “Up you go! Get going!”
“Who are you to be
doing this?” she asked, resisting.
“We can discuss it
later,” Drew said, pushing her to go up the ladder.
Then the first tiger,
the one he had struck with the rifle, prowled forward with its dripping belly
hanging low against the stone. A growl
escaped its snarled jaws.
Drew raised the rifle
to his cheek, pointing it at the tiger.
“Get up there!” he said
to the woman as his finger curled about the trigger.
The other tiger then
pulled itself up, stopping to shake the ocean from its thick fur as the first
one continued stalking toward Drew.
The creak of the rope
behind Drew messaged that the woman was climbing the ladder. Drew kept the rifle pointed at the closest
tiger.
Then he switched the
rifle into his left hand and grabbed hold of the ladder, putting his foot into
the lowest rung while still pointing the rifle.
“Let’s go!” he yelled
upwards.
“Just a moment, will
you!” the midget-clown replied. “Look
out below!”
Drew looked up and then
saw falling from the other side of the long-legged elephant the enormous
obelisk of ice that had been atop the elephant’s saddle, but was now tumbling
toward the water. It crashed into the
ocean, and a great wave of foaming water rushed over Drew’s legs, nearly
tearing him from the ladder. The deluge
spilled over the islet, forcing the closer tiger to slide backwards while the
other tiger slipped its feet under the force of the wave and plummeted back
into the ocean.
Drew felt a jerking
motion, and he almost lost his hold as the ladder swung away from the little
island, swaying free into the air above the open water. He gripped the ladder harder, pointing the end
of the rifle away from the remaining tiger in order to grab hold with both
hands.
The tiger rebounded to
its feet and leapt toward Drew, roaring as it soared through the air.
“Come on!” Drew said as he fumbled with the rifle,
trying to bring it up against his hip, but as his finger grasped for the
trigger, the tiger reached the apex of its jump and then plummeted toward the
water, flailing claws just missing Drew’s shoes in the midst of its descent.
The long-legged
elephant kept moving away as Drew stared down at the tiger. It was paddling in the water, still coming
toward him, but the stilted elephant’s stride was too enormous for the beast to
keep up.
Drew lowered the rifle,
remembering what the woman had said.
There was only one bullet and Drew figured he might need it if he didn’t
wake up soon from this dream – this twisted nightmare – he found himself in.
He began climbing the
ladder, stopping once halfway to look back at the tigers. Both had turned about by then and were
clawing their way up onto the islet again, breaking off their attack.
When Drew finally
reached the top of the ladder, the midget-clown was standing over him, glaring
like a reproachful mother.
Drew stared back at the
comical-looking little man.
The midget-clown
offered his stunted arm to help Drew up, but he waved the point of the bayonet
at the little man. “Get back,
Shorty! Move it!”
“Suit yourself,” said
the little man, grimacing as he turned.
Then he clawed forward onto the neck of the elephant and turned about
facing opposite the direction it was traveling, perhaps so he could scrutinize
his sudden passengers.
“So who are you?” he
asked. “And where did you come
from? Do you realize what you’ve done?”
Drew ignored the man’s
questions as he managed his way on to the top of the huge saddle that was
straddling the girth of the elephant.
The woman he had just saved was cringing near the rear of the large
golden platform atop the saddle where the obelisk of ice had previously been.
“Are you okay?” Drew
asked her, stepping toward her.
There was a feral look
in her eyes as she skittered to the side of the platform away from Drew. He thought she might jump off the side as her
shoulders twisted away from him.
“Wait, I won’t hurt
you! Somebody, tell me what is going
on?” Drew reached his free hand toward
the woman to grab at her delicate, thin bicep.
She edged even closer
to the side, her mouth half-opened but with no words coming forth. Only a rapid breath blew past her lips and
her eyes were wide with terror.
“Who are you?” he asked
her.
She refused to
speak.
Drew turned his head to
face the midget who was still glaring at him, studying him as if he were some
sort of freak oddity of nature. “You,
what’s going on? How did I get here? Who are you people?”
“I should be asking you
that,” replied the midget, brusquely. “I
just lost my commission because of you.
It’ll cost you, you know? The
Corporation ain’t taking it out of my pay, that’s for sure.”
“Commission? The Corporation?” Drew shook his head. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”
“I’m talking about my
ice, you idiot!” snapped the midget. “It
took me three weeks travel from the north to get this far. I had to dump it for room up here, you know. This ain’t a passenger ‘phant, you know? Only ice.
That’s what I do for the Corporation.
Bring the ice from the north, take it to the Heart, and make a hefty
profit. All gone now, thanks to your
meddling in the Sacrifice.”
“Slow down, slow
down. I don’t understand what it is
you’re talking about.”
“What are you, some
kind of idiot?” Then the midget rolled
his eyes. “Oh, what am I saying, of
course you are! Only an idiot would do
what you just did. That woman was the
sacrifice to the Leviathan and you botched the job, you did. Someone’s not gonna be happy about it,
either. I hope you got a lot of money to
pay for the mess you’ve caused. And even
that might not get you out of the fix you’re in – the fix you put us all in.”
Drew glanced back at
the shaking woman. She was curled tight,
her knees drawn against her naked chest.
“Sacrifice?” Drew said. “Why was
she being sacrificed?”
“Why else?” replied the
midget. “Gee, you really are an idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot. I’m just not from here. I’m not even sure I am here.” Drew shook his head and looked about at the
slowly darkening sky announcing the onset of twilight. “I have to be dreaming,” he said to
himself. “This has to be a dream. An intense, vivid dream. That or I’m cracking up.”
“You’re not dreaming,
but if you think you’re crazy, I would agree,” remarked the midget. “And as for not being from around here, I
would agree with that, too. If you don’t
know about the Sacrifice and you’re running around wearing those strange clothes,
then you must be from someplace so far away not even the Corporation’s been
there.”
Drew almost
laughed. Whether the giddiness that
suddenly rose up in him was because he was indeed losing it, or he felt like
laughing from the remark the midget had made, he wasn’t sure. After all, a tiny man dressed in a clown suit
with a clown face painted on his face and sporting a shiny Nazi helmet on his
head should be the last person to comment on Drew’s attire. Tennis shoes, blue jeans and a pullover
V-neck was hardly outlandish in comparison.
“So’s maybe you oughta
tell me who you are, eh?” the midget then asked. “And how it is that you came to be out here?”
“Drew. Drew Anthony.”
The little man
grimaced, his smiling clown face screwing up like a wrinkled raisin. “Drew Anthony. Strange name for a strange man. You certainly aren’t from around here.”
“I’m not. That’s what I keep saying. None of this can be real. And I certainly don’t belong here.”
“Hah! Well, suppose you tell me where you think you
belong?”
“Not in a painting,
that’s for sure!”
“A painting? What do you mean?”
“I wish I knew myself,”
Drew replied. “I was in the museum one
minute, looking at the painting, then the next thing I know I’m standing back
there on that rock, which was in the painting, and those two tigers were jumping
at me and her.”
“Painting? What painting? Now you’re making even less sense.”
Drew sighed,
frustrated. “This place! This painting! I was staring at it! I was in the museum. Ana and I – “
“Who?” asked the
midget.
“Ana, my wife. She was off in another room of the museum
when I sat down at the bench and was staring at this painting.”
The midget
laughed. “So you think you’ve fallen
into a painting, do you?”
Drew gritted his
teeth. “I’m not crazy!”
“Okay, okay, suit
yourself,” said the little man, his suddenly cautious eyes drifting toward the
rifle held loosely in Drew’s right hand.
Drew looked down at the
rifle, then back at the midget. “I’m not
gonna hurt you.”
“I know,” he replied,
but his tone and his gray eyes suggested otherwise.
“Look, I just need some
answers. None of this is making any
sense.”
“Well, I’ll tell you
one thing. You’re not in a
painting. This is the real world,
Mister.”
Drew laughed. “Maybe to you, shorty – “
“Chunk,” he said, once
again frowning at Drew.
“What?”
“My name is Chunk.”
Drew gave the midget
named Chunk a weird look. Then he
continued. “Sorry. Anyway, maybe this is real to you, but from
my perspective I feel like I’ve just been dropped right into the middle of one
of Salvador Dali’s paintings.”
Chunk’s mouth fell open
and Drew heard the woman behind him gasp.
“The name of the
Creator!” Chunk said, his eyes darting from side to side. “If you know His name, then you can’t be from
too far away.”
Drew shook his head in
confusion. “Who, Dali? You think Dali is your god?”
Chunk raised himself
up, almost standing on the neck of his spindly-legged transport. “Think?
Think! Everyone knows he is the
Creator. He made this world, you know,
or don’t you and the people from wherever you’re from believe in the Word.”
Drew laughed. “Oh, we believe in the Word, as you put it,
but Dali is hardly a god.”
Chunk leaned forward as
if to conspire. “You best watch
yourself. Don’t you blaspheme around
here. Saying such things is heresy.”
Drew laughed once
more. This twisted dream of his was
getting nuttier by the moment. If only
he could wake up, he’d have quite a story to tell Ana.
Ana.
Right about now she had
to be going out of her mind wondering where he could have gone off to so
suddenly. He had only been just a few
feet away from her in another room of the museum when he landed where he was
now – wherever this place was that he had landed. He had to get to her, find his way out of
this delusion or nightmare he was in. He
had to wake up, snap out of it, or otherwise figure out how to get back to her
if indeed he really and truly had disappeared from the museum. None of these scenarios, of course, was he
certain of at all. Had he merely drifted
into some vivid delusion and he was actually still sitting there in the museum
or had he somehow through some fantastic twist in the fabric of the universe
truly jumped through a portal connecting the real world with this other,
seemingly real dimension.
Chunk sighed and
started to turn about. “I don’t know who
you are or where you came from, or where you think you came from, but I can’t
wait to get to the beach and be rid of you.”
Chunk then turned
completely about, looking out toward the last glow from the already set
sun. Drew turned back around himself to
look at the woman he had “rescued”. She
was still curled into a tight ball, her green eyes watching him like a timid
squirrel, as she hid her chin behind arms that were wrapped about drawn knees.
“Do you have a name?”
Drew asked her.
Still she wouldn’t
speak, nor would the terror in her eyes be snuffed out.
What was going on with
her that she could be so stricken with fear, Drew wondered. If anything, he would have thought she’d be
relieved to still be alive. Moments ago
she was about to be torn to pieces, and he had saved her from that. So why was she looking at him as if he had
been the one that was about to rip her body open?
“I’m not gonna hurt
you,” Drew said, his tone frustrated. “I
saved you from those tigers. Why would I
choose to hurt you after saving you?”
Half-muttering,
half-whispering, she said, “Ca -- Calliope.”
His eyes widened with
the fact that he was making some progress with her. “Calliope?
That’s your name? Calliope?”
She nodded, and then
glanced about for an instant before returning her gaze to him.
“Calliope, I’m
Drew.” He tried to reach out to her
again, but she shrank back. “It’s okay,
you know. It’s over with. Nothing’s going to hurt you now. Those tigers are way back there.”
“No, it will not be,”
she replied, her voice barely audible over the breeze that buffeted her shoulder-length
auburn hair.
“But of course it is.”
Calliope looked over
her shoulder, back at the rocky island now far off in the distance. When she turned, Drew couldn’t help but
notice the exposure of her right breast.
Small, yet pleasingly round and full. Not unlike the familiar beauty of his Ana when
she would lie upon their bed …
He turned his head
away, feeling the sudden heat in his cheeks.
He glanced at the back of Chunk’s helmet. “Hey, you got something she could put on?”
Chunk turned his head
around and laughed. “No, and if I did it
wouldn’t be anything that would fit her.”
Drew started to pull
his shirt up over his shoulders.
“Calliope, here – “
“I don’t have to be
wanting your clothes!” she said back, the words spraying forth as if she had
spat them.
Drew pulled his shirt
back down, surprised by the sudden anger in her tone. “What’s the matter? It’s all right now. And you can’t go walking around like that.”
Calliope eyes sharpened
and her nostrils flared. “Don’t you
understand? You have been ruining
everything! It’s not all right! Nothing has been all right! You have not been saving me from anything. You have been only making things worse! It is my destiny. I was to be the one chosen!”
“What are you talking
about,” Drew asked, annoyed.
“She was the Sacrifice,
fool,” Chunk interjected. “And she’s
right, you’ve made a mess of things now, that you did.”
“Sacrifice? Sacrifice for what? What are you, a bunch of barbarians?”
“Tell it to Him. It’s His command,” replied Chunk as he pointed
a finger straight up into the darkening sky.
“What, Dali? Your Creator?
That’s crazy!”
“Hah! The spoken words of a lunatic,” Chunk
muttered as he again faced forward.
“This is all crazy,”
Drew said to himself as he looked to Calliope.
When he turned she
glanced over her shoulder again back in the direction of the islet, and then
she looked back at Drew. “I was supposed
to have been dying. And he knows it.”
“He? Who’s ‘he’?
Dali?”
Calliope turned her
frightened gaze back toward the islet and pointed. “No, not the Creator – him.”
Drew peered back at the
islet. Even from far off, and
illuminated only by a rising gibbous moon he could see the figure of a slender
man on a large horse. The man was just
sitting there on the horse on the islet, unmoving. At the hooves of the horse were two lumps
that could only have been the tigers, slouched upon the stone as if relaxing
after a heavy feast of antelope.
Then the man on the
horse pointed what looked like a long staff in Drew’s direction, not to signal
them, but rather poised as if it were an accusing finger.
Chunk had turned about
when he had overheard Calliope’s declaration, and he scuttled to the back of
the saddle platform. He stopped next to
where Drew squatted and shook his head.
“I told you, you shouldn’t have interfered with the Sacrifice.”
Drew didn’t like the
tone of Chunk’s voice, even less so than previously. He swallowed despite his dry throat,
wondering if this dream of his was turning as dreams sometimes did … toward
nightmare.
“Who is he?” Drew
asked, noticing the man on the horse now lowering the staff and then urging the
horse down from the islet and into the ocean.
The horse slipped
slowly into the water, moving in their direction.
“The sooner I can get
to the shore and be rid of you, the better,” Chunk replied, glancing upward at
Drew.
Drew turned and yanked
the midget close to his face. “Who is
he?”
“Don’t tell me where
you’re from, you’ve never heard of the Horseman.”
END OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION SAMPLE.
And if you actually read this far, then at this point you might actually be hooked on the story, leading to your possible purchase of the novel. You should do this, too, with your stories, so don't be afraid to be ... well ... uh ... shameless.
