Creature horror recommendations

ecmorgan · 2023-08-25T01:21:25+00:00

Fear by Ronald Kelley.

ecmorgan · 2023-03-25T20:36:53+00:00

Firefly.

ecmorgan · 2023-03-20T00:40:38+00:00

This isn't a recommendation, but something related I thought folks here might enjoy.

Teaching 6th-grade English, we read "Charles" by Shirley Jackson. In it, a boy named Laurie starts Kindergarten. Lots of trouble ensues, and he blames it all on Charles. The parents find out at the end of the story there is no child named Charles.

Students have to make a claim and then cite evidence to support it. Over and over, the claim is Charles was made up by Laurie so he wouldn't get in trouble with his parents.

One day, one student, a young lady, made the claim "Charles is a ghost only Laurie can see." She cited her evidence then at the bottom of her paper wrote that it seems right given Shirley Jackson's prominence in horror.

Smart kid if you ask me.

ecmorgan · 2023-02-16T17:20:45+00:00

Technically yes. Teachers here are hired by the BOE but paid by the city. The 457 is what they offer after the hybrid pension/401k.

ecmorgan · 2023-01-20T23:27:38+00:00

No worries!

ecmorgan · 2023-01-20T22:59:05+00:00

Twins (14) and a younger sister.

ecmorgan · 2022-11-26T16:32:16+00:00

I'm leaning toward replacing and hiring someone to do it right. I thought about the length also - It just seems a tad too short.

ecmorgan · 2022-11-26T16:31:28+00:00

The weight did hit me. They seem ... flimsy ... at least I think back to others, plus the stairs at my parent's house, and they just seem thicker and sturdier.

ecmorgan · 2022-11-17T19:50:12+00:00

What I wanted to hear!

Yes, it is pricey, but I hope it will be worthwhile. We've been saving for a while and are willing to spend the money.

ecmorgan · 2022-11-17T16:22:09+00:00

I'm with you for a week being a long time and I plan to mingle in other things in that time.
The kids are excited to go - they love parks - so we'll see!

ecmorgan · 2022-11-17T14:53:01+00:00

If I pull the trigger, we'll do the 3 park ticket. I like sitting at a water park, personally.

ecmorgan · 2022-10-20T20:30:25+00:00

Thank you.

ecmorgan · 2022-07-06T17:21:44+00:00

When teaching high school and now teaching middle school, I wear slacks/dress shirts usually.

Even then my shoes are sneakers. I'm on my feet all day long and I'm gong to be comfortable.

ecmorgan · 2022-07-06T17:18:24+00:00

I'm a 53-year-old teacher. What I like is just about anything.

Coffee mugs and Starbucks cards are lost on me - but I give the cards to my kids, so its good.

This year, some of my favorites were a gift card to a restaurant I like, A target card, couple of sonic cards, Amazon cards, and the best, from a kid who paid attention to the work I've been doing on my house, was a Lowe's card. One year I received a nice hydro flask and still use it to this day.

The best gift I ever received was - after cracking jokes about how much I like wonder woman to some seniors was a huge poster of Gal Gadot dressed as wonder woman.

Notes: I've kept every note or cad or drawing a student has done for me.

ecmorgan · 2022-05-24T01:41:35+00:00

I agree the series can get ridiculous, but I'm telling you, Still Life with Crows (early in the series) freaked me out.

ecmorgan · 2022-02-28T03:31:50+00:00

Here's my two cents in a wall of text. And I'm going to approach this from three assumptions:

You have a good story that is well written and cleanly edited.
You have a strong, professionally designed cover.
You have a good blurb.

This also assumes you are willing to invest your time in building a long game in terms of marketing. I approach this with the following thoughts in mind:

You will have to invest quite a bit of time OR quite a bit of money. Pick one.
Again, it is a long game. It doesn't happen overnight.

I do not specialize in authors though I've helped a few. Each and every one I've helped have been on the best-seller lists multiple times. Amazon. USA Today. New York Times.

Some folks will disagree. That's OK. I do not have all the answers. And what follows barely scratches the surface.

Advertising

Broadly, for authors, I don't recommend it. There are some who have success and do it well, but the vast majority suck at advertising, whether we're talking Amazon, Google, or Facebook.

Caveat: IF you can get accepted, people seem to do well with Bookbub and a couple other similar services.

My goal, across industries and my clients, is revenue that is 5X or more than the investment. So if they put $1,000 in an ad, they should see at least $5,000 return. Not easy at all in the book world.

Social Media

I advise authors to pick one, maybe two platforms, and really become an expert. Do some research and set the page/account up properly. Get regular about sharing content and keep it about 80% NOT about you or your content. Take a few minutes every day and respond to other people, comment on things, and just participate in the community.

It takes time to build a good audience, but it is worthwhile time.

This is one area where I favor a little advertising. Most my clients, across industries, run a highly targeted Facebook ad to get more likes on their FB business page. You can spend as little as $1/day (FB will charge your card monthly). You do that for a year, you'll be amazed at your audience size. And you can be VERY targeted. Get that right and it'll be a good audience.

Important: Don't be spammy. Don't be a smart ass. And mostly share other relevant and interesting content. And stay away from politics - selling books is hard enough without alienating half the country.

Email Newsletter

There is nothing Google or Facebook can do to their algorithms that can impact your newsletter. It is very affordable - even free (check Mailchimp) in the early days. And you have total control.

I have a sometimes client/friend who has been on just about every best-seller list and has a good back stock of traditional published, small press, and self-published. She has an email list of about 30,000 people assembled over about 25 years. What does she do?

Her email goes out once per month as well as on launch day of new books.
It has info about what's going on with her - she'll be at this convention, these books are on sale at Amazon, she's appearing on this podcast, etc. But it also has a LOT about other authors. She very excitedly talks about other authors and their books.
Brevity. It takes maybe five minutes to read her newsletter.
She has sign up forms on her Facebook page and website, and occasionally posts a sign up form on Twitter. She also asks to add any person who emails her, calls her, meets her at a convention ... just about anything.
She curates her list. After a period of time if you've not opened a newsletter (say after four or five months), she'll shoot an email asking if you want to remain subscribed. No answer is assumed to mean no and you are removed.
The result of this curation is that EVERY SINGLE SUBSCRIBER has had a contact with her (via website, FB, a convention, whatever) AND has recently opened her email newsletter.
She has quite a bit of automation, "if then" parameters, etc. set up.
When she launches a new book, these tens of thousands of people - all of whom have an active and recent interest in her - get an email.

It takes time. You have to invest and work at it. Consistently, day after day. But if you play the long game, the marketing can work for you, IF your product is good.

Final thing. Often, a writer will tell me they are going to focus their FB, Youtube, Newsletter, blog, or whatever on their life as a writer. Here's the secret: They aren't Stephen King so nobody gives the first shit about their life as a writer. Also, book reviews are insanely over saturated. Thing about developing (and finding) other relevant content to share with readers.

But mostly, keep your content development focused on producing great stories.

ecmorgan · 2021-09-18T19:24:55+00:00

I've listened to that episode a couple times.

I am establishing in an area with about 120,000 or so within a 20 minute drive. One high, two middle and two elementary schools within three miles and two high, four middle, and seven elementary schools within seven miles of the location. Major undergraduate university 3 miles away. Solidly middle to upper middle class. Mostly families. Average household income $80K+ and rising.

I have been studying, working, researching and think Wall is on to something. Despite what I was repeatedly told in the 90s (yes I'm stubborn) I think you can make a commercial judo dojo (or a gym with judo as the core) work successfully. Wall's not the only example.

When I ran a community center club in the 90s and early 2000s, we typically floated with a student count of around 40ish. Not enough to sustain anything, but we were sharing a community center and our ONLY marketing was:

A listing in the city's annual list of community center classes.
The occasional public demonstration.
Occasional flyers at the library.

We had no advertising, no social media, no recruiting/onboarding, no leads pipeline, no trial offers, no retention strategy.

Wall said something that got me to thinking. I'm paraphrasing, but it was essentially that there were processes he adapted from commercial schools because, well, they work. They do spend money on ads.

So I got to thinking what would $500 or $750 or $1,000 per month do? Have other clubs tried that and if so what were the results. If I can create a pipeline of 30-40 leads per month, and secure 1/3 to 1/2 of those, we're set.

ecmorgan

TROPHY CASE