Category: Indie author

The Thing

Published by Crawford on February 28, 2025

One of the things I’ve done this winter in lieu of writing, was to do something I haven’t done in about 45 years: build a model tank.

However, I wasn’t just acting like a 14-year-old, lurking in the basement, blasting Black Sabbath and gluing together squidgy little plastic parts of a tank replica. No, I was doing research.

This was in aid of the current work-in-progress, a sequel to Fester now using the working title Fester Descent. One of the initial mental images I had for this book was a column of tanks rolling through downtown Fester. (Pretty sure I copped this idea from the Book of the SubGenius, of which you should own several copies.)

Further consideration rendered the idea of a column of tanks too complicated, but a single tank should be much more manageable. And I already had a character to command that tank: Billy Snyder, the disgraced former Chief Constable of Fester. It had already been established that Billy had served with the Marines in Vietnam and that he was adept at procuring classified military hardware.

Then it became a matter of research: what type of tanks did the U.S. Marines use in Vietnam? There weren’t many choices, as that war did not see much in the way of armor battles. Then I hit upon the beauty seen at the top of the page: the M50 Ontos. The Ontos was used in Vietnam, and it was small, so it could conceivably be operated but just one whacked-out ex-cop. Best of all, it was weird.

The Ontos – Greek for thing – isn’t so much a tank as a mobile platform for a half-dozen recoilless rifles, with some sheet metal over top. That made the Ontos maneuverable and powerful – but also very vulnerable. It could go places other armored vehicles couldn’t, but was also vulnerable to any weapon more powerful than an assault rifle.

Of course, I had to also research under which circumstances the M50 was used in that war. It came down primarily to two engagements: the Battle of Khe Sanh and the Battle of Hue. The latter seemed more likely from a dramatic perspective, owing to the brutal building-to-building nature of that fight and the likelihood of using the Ontos to blow up buildings. After all, what do you think Billy Snyder is going to do with this piece of hardware? Hint: he’s not fixing it up for the Fester Veterans’ Day parade.

The research included a detailed investigation into the Battle of Hue in 1969. The research also stumbled across a plastic model of the Ontos. At 1:16 scale, it was large enough to boast a detailed interior. This was important, as I really wanted to know what it was like to ride around and fight in this thing.

The answer: awful. It was cramped, it must have been loud, and with the hatches closed, the only way to see or steer was through periscopes in the hatches. It also had to be difficult knowing that the armor was so paltry, to cut down on weight. One thing became apparent – the driver’s position (the one Billy had in the war) was the safest on the vehicle, since the engine compartment protected the driver’s right side.

It was an aggravatingly detailed model, and it took nearly three months to put together. After it was done, my wife asked if I was going to do any more. I said no way. One could be excused as research, but any more would just make it another pathetic middle-aged white-guy pastime, and I already have enough of those.

Fester — Read the classic that started it all!

NaNoWriMo: the Wrap-Up

Published by Crawford on December 3, 2024

In a previous post, I mentioned that I was going to attempt the NaNoWriMo Full Meal Deal. That is, I was going engage in the National Novel Writing Month challenge of writing 50,000 of a novel during the month of November. This breaks down to 1,667 words per day. This was pretty intimidating to me; I usually only crank out ~500 words per day in my usual laid-back style of writing. This was going to take courage! This was going to take discipline! Did I have what it takes? I wasn’t sure, and it was only at the last moment (literally, Halloween) did I toss my hat in the ring and commit myself to the NaNoWriMo challenge.

On November 1, I wrote 2,187 words. It didn’t seem that hard. On the 2nd, I wrote 2,031 words, just to prove to myself that it wasn’t just a fluke. After a few more days of 2000+ words per day, I decided to shoot for an overall goal of 60,000 words by the end of the month. And I did!

I had a work-in-progress: the sequel to Fester, which is currently using the working title of Descent. The manuscript had been off to a sluggish start, with a little under 25K words written in 5 months. NaNoWriMo seemed like it would be a great opportunity to give the project a boost.

And it did – but it was not without its challenges. I am a pantser when it comes to my writing. That is, I don’t do a lot of planning or outlining – I just fly by the seat of my pants. This typically isn’t a problem when I’m writing at my normally glacial pace, but it got to be an issue for NaNoWriMo.

One of the fun things about pantsing is that the story and characters will take off in directions I’d never conceived. It can be fun, but also frustrating. Cranking out 2,000 words a day in this mode can be a problem, however. I liken it to driving fast at night. The headlights can only illuminate so much of the road ahead; the faster you go, the less time you have to react. And I was going pretty fast, especially towards the end of the month. It felt like I was running out of road. Up until then, I’d had a pretty good idea what was going to happen over the next three or so chapters. Not so for the last week, where I was pantsing it to the max. The verbiage became verbose: I was shoveling adjectives and adverbs as much as I could.

In the end it was a good thing, though. Having to write something, even when I had no idea what it might be, definitely introduced some interesting elements into the story. My characters really had to bear the brunt of my word count goal!

At the end, it was a good thing. Tapping into my long-dormant overachiever tendencies, I kept going even when I’d met the 50K goal. I needed to collect all of the badges (see image above). And I did, just because I’m a Lisa Simpson-type geek.

More than that, it really helped me as a writer. First, it helped move my latest project along by getting 10 or 12 months’ worth of writing done in just one month. It also allowed me to understand how to deal with some serious production. I intend to keep moving Descent along sharply – but I’m taking a week off just to let things percolate in my subconscious. I have a lot of loose ends to tie up in the story now!

Laughingstock — Buy this book! Buy it right now!

Following the Threads

Published by Crawford on July 21, 2024

After a bit of a rocky start to the summer, I am moving forward more briskly with my sequel to Fester. The working title is Fall, although that is almost certain to change eventually. I had hoped that this story would be an easier one to write because I had somewhat of an outline.

The outline came from a series of local newspaper articles from Astoria, Oregon. It chronicled the final downfall of a once-prominent local family called the Flavels. And the end of their story was so weird, it seemed straight out of Fester. In fact, Astoria has some geographical similarities to my mental picture of Fester – save the three-mile-wide river mouth and the Pacific Ocean. I’ll save the story of the Flavels for another time, though.

I’m about 50 pages into the manuscript, which isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but it is enough to give me a broad view of how the story is progressing. And I’m not particularly surprised to discover that the vaunted Flavel narrative is not the watertight outline I’d originally (and unrealistically) expected, but more of a loose framework.

I guess that is to be expected of an inveterate pantser. To Hades with the outline; we pantsers are allergic to them. However, what I do have, 50 pages in, is a number of narrative threads that will weave themselves together in ways I can’t predict and may not even want. Even better, I have a number of characters in interesting situations that have yet to reveal themselves. This is the best part of being a pantser: winding up the characters and observing what they do.

Seriously, I frequently have no conscious intention about a characters actions. I just watch and report. It’s like having a movie projector that only works when I hammer on the keyboard. Entertaining as hell, and also a little spooky sometimes.

Here’s how things are shaping up right now. Normally, I would be hesitant to give too much of the narrative away this early in the process. However, since this is the Shitty First Draft, what’s going on now may have absolutely no resemblance to the final product, so what the hell. Here are the threads that have manifested themselves so far:

Martin Prieboy has now been the Chief Constable of Fester for nearly twenty years. He has just lost his spouse to cancer, and finds himself bonding with a police informant.
Billy Snyder served several years in the state pen for his part in the events in Fester. Now he lives in the boondocks outside of town, where he sells military antiques – and plots revenge.
The land once known as the Wizard’s Woods has been developed into a mall. However, in 2014, malls aren’t doing too well, and Harold Todd, the mall’s owner, is starting to get worried about its financial viability. And there are some strange things going on at the mall after hours…
Michael “Bolly” Bollinger has successfully taken over his father’s automotive repair shop. His landlord, the Schmidt family, is once again hiking the rent on the shop, making Bolly concerned about his financial future.

What happens next? OK. I’ve got a pretty good idea what Bolly’s going to do now, and maybe some ideas about the mall, but that’s it. The rest will reveal itself as I pound the keyboard. That’s part of the fun of being an indie writer. That and the money. Woo-hoo!

Coming Soon (Sorta) and Other Miscellany

Published by Crawford on June 2, 2024

ITEM! It’s official! Work has begun on the sequel to Fester. Granted, it’s not a lot of work, and there is no title as of yet. As I am a pantser when it comes to writing, I don’t even have a clear idea of exactly what’s going to happen. There are a number of things I can share of which I am fairly certain:

The timeline of the new story is set 20 years after Fester, which puts it around 2014.
Martin Prieboy is still Chief Constable of Fester, but is struggling with the recent loss of his spouse.
Billy Snyder is out of prison and living in a secluded house in the hills, where he spends his time plotting revenge.
Michael “Bolly” Bollinger has taken over his dad’s automotive repair shop and is a respected local businessman -but his business is in trouble.
The Schmidt family now teeters on the brink of destruction, their huge mansion looming over the town of Fester like something really, really symbolic.
Cynthia Hoegenbloeven is still running around somewhere with the remnants of the money she ran off with. Presumably she has now gotten some clothes.

There are other characters who we probably won’t see: the Plummer family moved out of town shortly after the events of Fester, and haven’t been heard from, ditto Janie Simpson. Roscoe Dirkschneider has died in prison, and Randall “Cowboy Bob” Warnke never recovered from his injuries sustained at the hands of the parishioners of Calvary Lutheran. Of course, the Top Hat families are still around, although most of the characters from Fester have gone to that Great Country Club in the Sky.

That’s what I’ve got for now. I’ll keep you posted as the story develops, although it usually takes me several years to actually write, edit and publish these books. You patience will be rewarded.

ITEM! In the course of marketing Laughingstock, I had the fortune to encounter a new book promo site called Shepherd. It’s a fascinating premise: authors are asked to list their five favorite books related to a theme of their choosing – which is presumably related to one of their own books. Then they write a short review of those books.

The theme I chose was “hilarious high weirdness,” which is a fairly regular theme in my writing. This allowed my literary eclecticism to really stretch – it was a great deal of fun! Here are the books I chose:

Wilt by Tom Sharpe
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Book of the SubGenius by the SubGenius Foundation
Noir by Christopher Moore
The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien

My reviews can be found at THIS LINK. Give the page – and the whole site – a good going-over – it’s a lot of fun!

ITEM! There will be an eBook promo for Fester, starting this Wednesday, June 5, running through Sunday, June 9. For this time, the eBook version of Fester will be available for a measly $0.99. Of course, it’s still too early to promote the sequel (coming Summer 2027 if I really work at it), but I wanted to take another run at the Amazon Bestseller ranking as I did with Laughingstock. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that these promos are the best way to get people to read what I’ve written, and that investing heavily in advertising profits nobody but the advertising platform. We’ll see how it goes!

We’re (Almost) Number 1!

Published by Crawford on May 4, 2024

I almost called this post “We’re Number 2!” but decided that the wording was a little too ambiguous. I want to tell you of my adventures with a run at bestseller status.

Keep in mind that I’m referring to Amazon bestseller status. This is quite different from, say, New York Times bestseller status. To put it into an athletic context, getting your book on the NYT bestseller list is like winning a gold medal in the Olympics. Getting a book on the Amazon bestseller list is like beating a marginally athletic second-grader in a foot race. Sure, you might not make it, but it wouldn’t be that hard to achieve.

In retrospect, the second-grader gave me a run for the money.

The NYT has ten slots for fiction in its bestseller list, which is updated weekly. Amazon literally has thousands of slots – or categories – under which a book might be considered a bestseller, and these results are updated hourly. For Amazon Kindle, there are several thousand categories of fiction, and with updates 24 times a day, there are close to 100,000 opportunities to make a bestseller list every single day.

Of course, choosing a category is key to success here. One needs to choose a category that doesn’t have a lot of competition. However, the category also has to be relevant to the content of the book. If you list a book under a completely inappropriate category to boost your ranking, the Amazon Police will be banging on your door soon enough, or so it is said. However, I found an appropriate category (you get to choose three) called Humorous Dark Comedy that was a great fit for Laughingstock, and low-competition.

Back when Fester came out, I’d gotten my mitts on a document called the “Bestseller Launch Blueprint.” I was rushed at the time, and didn’t have the time or inclination to follow through on the instructions, which seemed a little hokey to me at the time.

After Fester was published, I spent a fair amount of time and effort attempting to promote the book, with not a lot to show for it. As Laughingstock was ramping up for publication. I had a little more time and a little more inclination to see what came of applying this formula.

The formula itself is pretty simple: wait a few weeks after publication, then drop the price of the eBook to $0.99 and advertise the hell out of it. There are a number of websites and services that have subscribers who are on the prod for cheap-as-free eBooks, and they will gallantly allow authors to pay to advertise their book specials. The 800-pound gorilla of these services is BookBub, which has a huge subscriber base and is definitely an important outlet for indie authors looking to get the word out about their books.

So I went all-in on BookBub and a number of other similar services, and scheduled an advertising blitz for two weeks after the book was published. I had followed all the steps in the Blueprint, and was ready to see what would happen.

Damned if it didn’t work! Sales shot up immediately, and it wasn’t long before Laughingstock had cracked the top ten in the Humorous Dark Comedy category. I was pretty chuffed when the book first landed at #7, although I was still several slots behind a book of Great Memes of 2023, by a “Mr. DANK DANK.”

In a day I had climbed even higher, and on the afternoon of the second day, I had reached #2 in the category. “Suck it, Mr. DANK DANK,” I told the wall. Surely, I would soon crack the number one spot and brag my ass off.

Then I took a look at the book occupying the #1 slot, and knew I was boned. The book was called Shorts, by Caimh McDonnell. A closer look showed that the book had been published on the same day I had launched my ad blitz. Further, a quick look at Goodreads indicated that Mr. McDonnell had upwards of thirty titles, each of which had thousands of 4- and 5-star ratings. There’s no way I could compete with a brand-new book from this author. The guy absolutely dominates the Humorous Dark fiction category for Kindle: of the top 50 books in that category, McDonnell’s books currently occupy 12 of those slots. (Mr. DANK DANK’s meme book is #50; Laughingstock is #129. DAMN YOU MR. DANK DANK!)

Well, it was a good run, and my takeaway is to check your competition’s publishing schedule before starting your launch This overall worked out well in that I sold more copies of Laughingstock in a week than I did for Fester in the three years since it was published! I will wait a month or two and try the same Formula with Fester to see if I can claim the top spot.

I think I can still claim bragging rights. I’ve a friend in publishing who considers making the Top 10 good enough to put “Amazon bestseller” on the resume. Plus, I had this little recognition of being the #1 New Release in Comedy. For about an hour, true – but I’ll take it! It’s a dog-eat-dog world in indie publishing, and you have to grab whatever accolades you can.

Gotta Love A Laugh

Published by Crawford on April 14, 2024

Who doesn’t love a good laugh? I’m sure there are people out there like that, but I sure wouldn’t want to spend any time with them. I’ve always loved a laugh, and the best way to get my chucks was through stand-up comedy.

My parents had a lot of comedy LPs in the house. Their tastes ran to 60s hipster/Laugh-In stuff: Bob Newhart, Don Rickles, Smothers Brothers, Vaughn Meader (anyone remember him?). And Bill Cosby. I really loved Bill Cosby when I was a kid. The very first comedy show I ever went to was Bill Cosby playing at the local fairgrounds(!). We had front-row center seats too, which was great except for the opening act, which was the odious and terrifying Up With People. It was great to see my childhood comedy idol up close; shame he turned out to be such a scumbag. (It was almost as if he’d shot me in the face with pepper spray!*)

Laughingstock is my love-letter to standup comedy. There are a lot of stand-up comedy references in the book, some obvious, some pretty obscure. I’m sure some comedy fans will notice the parallel between the teen comedy duo of Chuck Marshall and Duckie Dunne to the careers of comedians Bill Hicks and Dwight Slade . Chuck, like Bill, made the big-time; Duckie, like Dwight, wound up in Portland. There’s lots more standup references for the hard-core comedy nerds out there.

To prepare for writing Laughingstock, I actually tried my hand at doing some standup. It’s hard! It takes a lot of time and effort to perfect that craft, and a lot of time hanging out at divey open-mics, swilling cheap beer and waiting for my turn to go on. I found myself regretting that I hadn’t tried it when I was in my 20s, since I spent a lot of time hanging out in divey bars swilling cheap beer then, anyway.

I managed to dredge up a video of one of the performances I did at a comedy club here in Portland. Not exactly A-list material, for sure – but I had a lot of fun doing it. Ironically, almost all of the content in Laughingstock that was based on my first-hand experience got cut for the sake of brevity. Most of this was in the form of Chuck and Duckie’s early stage experiences at a rickets telethon and the open mic for “Night Yuks.”

While I may not have wound up with a Netflix comedy special, and most likely won’t have a bestseller on my hands, I sure had a lot of fun researching and writing it; I hope you will enjoy reading it!

*Read this to get the reference

Now For the Real Fun!

Published by Crawford on January 30, 2024

I’ve gotten to the real fun part of Laughingstock – the one where someone else gets to do the work, and I can simply criticize and/or suggest improvements. I’m talking, or course, about COVER DESIGN.

Sure, it’s fun creating worlds out of my fevered imagination and bringing them to life. Not quite so fun revising and revising and REVISING, so that by this time, I’m glad to unwind at least a little. Of course, still apprehensive that the cover will not adequately pique potential readers’ interest, regardless of what I think. Then there’s the possibility of running into issues with Amazon Ads, as happened with Fester.

I’m going with the cover artist who bailed me out with the Fester problem – Stuart Bache. Stuart’s a consummate professional and a lot of fun to work with, so this is always a fun part of producing a book. We’re still in the preliminary stages, but I’ve already got some concepts to share. Here we go!

Concept 1

I like this concept, as it definitely hits the stand-up trope with the stool and the mic stand. At first, I was a little put off by the way the title is broken onto two lines, but the longer I’ve thought about it, the more it works with the content of the book.

Concept 2

Currently not as enthused with this concept, although that could change. The tragedy/comedy masks are compelling. It’s good comedy is dominant, but the tragedy mask is kind f a downer. Of course, there is tragedy in the story – I’m just not sure if I want to give it equal time on the cover. Bonus points for having the title on one line, though.

I’m looking forward to developing the design with Stuart. Right now, I’m leaning towards Concept 1, as it better conveys the stand-up comedy theme better than the masks.

Intelligence – Artificial and Otherwise

Published by Crawford on May 22, 2023

So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure

How amazingly unlikely is your birth

And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space

‘Cause there’s bugger-all down here on Earth!
Monty Python, “Galaxy Song”

Hola, amigos! I know it’s been a long time since I’ve rapped with ya, but I’ve been busy reading old editorials from The Onion.

No, actually, I’ve been busy doing things other than writing, alas. April was a bit of a mess, having to make a short-notice cross-country trip to deal with family issues, then getting the RSV virus, which pretty much laid me out for two solid weeks. No fun.

I had honestly thought that I’d been done with the third draft of my new novel, Laughingstock, at this point. Unfortunately, it’s not to be – at least not yet. I know there may be literally dozens of fans out there clamoring to read this. I can’t blame them, as it is shaping up to be pretty good. There are still a few rough patches that need to be smoothed over, but what I can’t take care of in Draft 3, surely the editor will be able to address.

Which brings me to another issue that is delaying the moving forward of the project – I can’t really afford to hire an editor right now, nor shell out for the cover art. It’s a drag, and I hope that I’ll be able to do so in the immediate future. However, one of the unfortunate truths of indie authordom is that the author has to pay for these up-front costs out of pocket, as well as ongoing advertising costs, etc. This is not a business for those looking to get rich quickly.

There are those who would have you believe otherwise. A lot of jibber-jabber in that direction nowadays revolves around artificial intelligence (AI). AI platforms such as BlowHard and SplatGTH have been featured on a daily basis since the end of last year. Most of these platforms are language-based or art-based, and I know a lot of writers and artists who have been having a blast playing with them.

I’m not one of them.

I’m taking a very cautious wait-and-see approach to Artificial Intelligence. Any technology that made Stephen Hawking nervous should be approached with extreme caution, I think. Seeing how much of a shit-show social media turned out to be, I think I’ll just keep my distance for a while. Maybe that makes me a Luddite – I really don’t care. I turned 55 a few months ago. I feel that gives me the right to be cranky and suspicious of new stuff. ‘Scuse me – I gotta go holler at some kids to get off my damn lawn!

Okay, I will admit that I can think of at least one area where I would be willing to entertain the use of AI in my writing process: proofreading. I did not have my manuscripts professionally proofread previously, and I came to regret it. For Fester, I just did it myself. In restrospect, this was silly. Sure, I caught some typos, but certainly not all of them. It’s not going to happen when you read the same 100,000 word MS over and over again. You’re too familiar with the words, and your eyes just sorta slide off of them.

The trouble is that professional proofreading can be expensive – usually a penny a word. That’s a cool grand for a 100K word MS. This was more than my editor charged! So I’m conflicted. On one hand, I’m leery of sinking more money into a project that I will most likely never make back. On the other hand, I’d hate to be contributing to literary people losing income due to the Rise of the Machines. On the third hand, I sure as hell don’t want to try proofreading my own novel again.

It’s a bit of a quandary, fer sure. However, given that I have yet to finish writing the thing, it’s all hypothetical, at least for now. So I’ll just quit bitching and leave you with a little treat: Stephen Hawking singing the Galaxy Song. Enjoy!

The Brick

Published by Crawford on March 11, 2023

I’m not a fast writer. I have a full-time job, and I’m also pretty lazy. I’d love to be able to crank out two or three full-length novels a year, but that may not be in the offing anytime soon. Consequently, it’s always an amazing feeling when I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for a project I’ve been working on for a long time. I’ve finally reached that point with my latest novel.

The novel is called Laughingstock. It’s about two comedians who grew up together and began doing standup as a duo while in high school. The family of one of the teens moves out of state (to Fester!), but they continue to pursue their comedy careers. Chuck Marshall ends up as a successful standup in L.A., who manages to grab the brass ring and gets his own network TV show. His pal, Wilbert “Duckie” Dunne, manages to escape from Fester, but languishes in a comedy backwater, working crummy jobs and appearing at small venues in the Pacific Northwest. When Chuck disappears at the height of his success, Duckie goes out in search of his childhood friend. Along the way, he encounters a secret comedians’ retreat, a deceased comedy legend who isn’t as dead as everyone thinks, and the sinister machinations of the head of the Wolff TV Network.

I was about three-quarters of the way through the second draft when I realized, “Hey, this might actually be a story that people would enjoy reading.” It was a good feeling. That feeling was tempered somewhat by the final word count: 165,000 words, which was about a 50% increase from the first draft.

I nominally like to aim for a word count of 90,000 words for a completed novel MS. For Fester, I settled for 110,000 – I’ll probably end up landing around there for Laughingstock as well. That’s the problem with “pantsing,” which is my preferred method of writing. Since I usually start with a premise, a handful of characters and a very general notion of the direction I want the story to go, I always end up with huge manuscripts that then need to be brutally pruned to something readable. It’s fun, however, to kind of wind up the characters and just observe what they do. A lot of the time they end up doing or saying things that I had no notion of them doing or saying. It can be kind of spooky, honestly – but also fun, like a Jaycees haunted house.

Now I have a 592-page brick of a manuscript that I need to cut nearly in half to be workable. I thought about just removing all of the even-numbered chapters, and pushing it as an “experimental” story form, but that would probably only appeal to MFA students who do a lot of hippie drugs. Instead, I will now break out a red pen and proceed to “murder my darlings.” The best approach is to treat the whole project like I’m having to pay by the word for having the thing printed. Given that Amazon is my primary sales conduit, this isn’t that far from the truth.

So off I go with a brand new red pen and a ruthless gleam in my eye to get this next novel out in the world. Wish me luck.

Welcome to “Book World” – Enter at Your Own Risk

Published by Crawford on February 11, 2023

In late 2020, fans of indie romance writer Susan Meachen got shocking news: she had recently died. Even worse, she had taken her own life, and it was intimated that online bullying had driven her to do so.

Meachen had been an active member of a number of online communities of indie romance authors. Any number of online author communities exist for different genres, and I can attest that they can get ugly. Just like any other part of the Internet – and especially social media – some people participate in such groups seemingly for the sole purpose of dumping on others.

Not surprisingly, the indie/romance world is especially drama-ridden. Meachen had earlier intimated about her struggles with mental health issues to her 700+ followers on her Facebook page – known as “the Ward,” a reference to a psych ward. Regardless, they were shocked when a post on Meachen’s account by her daughter in September 2020 announced that Meachen had taken her own life, and strongly intimated that online “book world” bullying had been a contributing factor.

Naturally, Meachen’s online fans and friends were devastated. Some pitched in to edit Meachen’s final manuscript for publication. A short story anthology called Bully King Anthology, which was dedicated to Meachen, with the tag “Let’s keep bullying where it belongs – In fiction.” There was also on online auction to help cover the expenses of Meachen’s funeral.

As the months after Meachen’s death rolled on there would be posts on Meachen’s FB page from her daughter, many calling attention to mental health issues. Eventually, a new admin called T.N. Steele began moderating and posting to the Ward. Strangely enough, Steele shared the same birthday and anniversary as did Meachen.

The mystery was solved on January 3 of this year, when the following post hit Meachen’s FB page:

Indeed, the fun did begin. Many people were outraged that Meachen had falsely reported her own suicide, then seemed to try to profit from it as well. One former friend contacted FBI’s cybercrimes unit. There was much recrimination about the anguish caused by the fake death announcement, and similar concerns related to mental health issues.

The media had a fun time with it, although mostly in a superficial, frothy “ha-ha-look-at-the-lengths-these-indie-authors-will-go-to” sort of way, perhaps with a soupcon of concern about mental health issues.

The mainstream “traditional” publishing industry weighed in with an unsurprising level of condescension. “Mainstream” book reviewer Laura Miller wrote the following in Slate:

While Meachen and the other writers who befriended her virtually refer to their community as “the book world,” what they’re talking about has little to do with what most outsiders would associate with that term: the mainstream publishing industry, the professionals who work in it, and the authors whose books fill your local bookstore. Meachen’s “book world” is the community of self-published romance and erotica writers who sell low-cost e-books and print-on-demand paperbacks, primarily through Amazon.

Snotty, yes – but the “book world” for indie writers is just as real – and drama-filled – for indie writers as the traditional publishing industry is for folks like Ms. Miller. The New York Times pointed out in an op-ed that the traditional publishing scene is not without its own scandals and drama. The point being that even if your glass house is a 29-story building on Broadway, you should be careful about chucking stones.

Then the NYT came up with a more nuanced take on the story that cast Meachen in a more sympathetic light. A resident of rural Tennessee, Susan Meachen found herself at loose ends as her husband Troy was away from home for long stretches as a long-haul truck driver. Meachen discovered her “book world” by immersing herself in romance novels, often going through them in less than a day.

Then she began writing them, and entered the singular purgatory of indie authorship. It can be a difficult world, one with a constant need for attention and validation. These, unfortunately, can be achieved for some by slagging other authors in online forums, on Goodreads, on Amazon reviews and elsewhere.

Add genuine mental health issues into this environment, and things can quickly deteriorate. Meachen had been diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder. The feedback of the indie/romance “book world” was a double-acting whipsaw, elevating the manic highs and depressing the dismal lows. Meachen’s family began to express major concerns about her well-being and possibility of self-harm.

In September 2020, while Troy was on the road, Meachen’s daughter checked in on her and discovered her semi-conscious, after having taken a large quantity of Xanax. Obviously terrified by the effects that “book world” were having on his wife’s mental health, Troy instructed his daughter to post the announcement of Susan Meachen’s death, hoping to sever the connection between his wife and an online community that was harming her.

This was the first of a series of questionable choices made by the Meachen family. Besides the (admittedly small-scale) donations solicited in Meachen’s name, there was also the issue of her apparently lurking amongst her mourners for two years as “TN Steele.” Meachen herself seems surprised at the controversy and attention that her resurrection has garnered. Apparently, the fuss has died an ignoble death, and Susan Meachen has been effectively canceled and cast into the outer darkness of social media nothinghood.

So what’s the point of this? I was actually hoping that something would come to me as I wrote this, but other than being a moderately-interesting but slightly-slimy tale of the intersection of social media and grimier parts of human nature. If anything, it’s an illustration of the uglier part of indie writing and publishing. There’s a lot of dog-eat-dog competition out there, especially in popular genres such as romance. A microcosm of social media in general, there’s a constant need for attention and validation that can be poisonous to even those who beam down to “book world” with relatively good mental health. It can be tough out there. As a wise guy once said, “Life sucks; get a helmet.”¹

¹ Note that this is not to diminish the problems of those struggling with depression or any other form of mental illness. “Helmet” is meant metaphorically to mean any mechanism to help mitigate from external harm, like turning off your computer and going for a walk.