Thank You Zombie Fans

As an indie author I am honored to discover there are real people reading my work. Real readers spend hours of their lives staring at e-readers to follow Liam and Marty on their adventures. How cool is that?

I wish I could go out into the seats of the auditorium and shake hands. Alas, I must shout it from the stage–THANK YOU!

How did I get to such a great place?

In December of 2015 I hung my shingle on Kindle using KDP Select and more or less just waited to see what would happen. I did get on Twitter, I have a website, and I have a minimal footprint on Facebook, but I didn’t spend any money on promotion or advertising. A big reason is that I wanted to see if anyone even liked the books before I invested more than my time and sweat equity into them.

Someone liked the books. I wrote these adventures in the zombie world because I enjoyed being inside the new universe I created. I loved sitting down with my characters each night to see where they would lead me. Of course I hoped someone else would enjoy their journey, but I knew that was beyond my control. Many of the writers I enjoy in the zombie genre have characters that are hilarious all the time or are tough guys slinging lead into the Z’s or are females who can kick ass and chew bubblegum. I LOVE many of those characters. So when I sat down to write my books I thought maybe I would try my hand at one of those styles of hero.  I was surprised to find my heroes were a pretty much average fifteen-year-old boy who has to protect his fragile 104-year-old great-grandmother. Who would read about them? As it turns out, people did read about them, and seemed to enjoy the journey too.

It’s amazing to say it, but in the past month I’ve sold 1000 books in my Since the Sirens series. A little under 200 of those were from a free day, but all the rest are paid. I’ve got 100 pre-orders for the third book in the series (releases Feb 14, 2016). Here’s the incredible part! If all those people were in the same room they would fill a good sized school performance auditorium (see the picture, that’s 1000 seats). Imagine having a packed theater and they’re all there to be entertained by your imagination for a few hours. It blows me away, and is such an honor.

Writing is tough. I’ve been unemployed for almost 6 months from the IT field and I’ve spent the better part of that time, often working 12-hour days, writing, editing, re-writing, re-editing, designing covers, re-formatting for CreateSpace (paper version), re-submitting newer versions to Kindle over and over, and doing everything I could to make my books better. I’ve worked far harder, and far more consistently, over the past 6 months than I have at any other job in my life. Monetarily it was a bust, but looking out over the auditorium I have to admit it has been the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.

Thank you to all my readers. I hope to see you again as the theater expands! I have plans for books 4, 5, and 6 over the coming year. I can’t wait to see where the story takes us!

EE Isherwood
Jan. 31, 2016