Since the Sirens

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

My zombie book exists in the real world, at least as 3 proofs. Soon it will be available for sale, and then all will be right in the world…with book 1 at least.

It’s been a long journey, and one that was much harder than I originally thought possible when I sat down to write the outline of a glimmer of an idea back in the summer of 2014.

Writing the dang thing turned out to be the only easy piece of the publishing puzzle for me. If all I did was write stories and put them in a closet, I could write around the clock forever. However, I got greedy. I decided to make this a trilogy.

What did a trilogy do to my production schedule? First, it meant that I couldn’t publish book 1 until I was done with book 3. Why? All 3 books had to tie together in a way that made sense, and naturally that couldn’t be done effectively without getting that third book completed. Even today, after getting as far as having printed books on my desk, I think of ways I could have more effectively tied things together. I think that will go on forever though.

I lost my day job in August of 2015. Almost the ENTIRE 3 months since, all I’ve done was edit, edit, and…oh yeah, edit. It still isn’t perfect to the point a professional editor would take it, but I think it is very close now. I’m not embarrassed to let people read it anyway.

And then there was cover design.

And then there were blurbs, descriptions, back cover, loading it to Amazon, loading it to Createspace (Amazon print-on-demand books), and waiting for the proofs to show up. Corrections. More art. Dot dot dot.

But seeing the physical book sitting here in front of me is like a jolt of Throwback Mountain Dew at the tail end of a long night of writing. It’s just what I needed to know this project has an end, and the end is pretty sweet!

EE. Isherwood

 

 

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What would you do if a mysterious plague begins to take hold in your city and the dead start to bang on doors? As the sole remaining caretaker for your elderly great-grandmother, you know her survival outlook would be bleak. Do you ditch her to give yourself a better chance to live? Would anyone know? Maybe you’d turn her home into a bunker, and hope help arrives before the food runs out? Don’t forget the hordes of looters. Or do you play the hero and bind your fates together out in the collapsing city? You’ll be entering a footrace with zombies, crazies, panicked civilians, and the military—all while supporting a woman who can’t walk ten feet on her own. You can be honest.

Liam Peters is a runner. He knows the odds, but decides to take his chances on the outside with 104-year-old Marty in tow. Since the Sirens tells the story of Liam’s gamble. What used to be a thirty-minute drive to the suburbs becomes an impossible slog. Can he get them through, or are they destined to wash aground on one of the islands of police cordons in the city, left to watch the defenders slowly get chewed up by the zombie plague as the ammo runs out?

As society blows apart, it dawns on Liam why there are no atheists in foxholes.

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This zombie story is the first in a trilogy of books. Eventually the series will grow beyond three!

Thank you for being a reader. As an aspiring author I truly appreciate your time and hope you’ll share this book with your zombie friends. Reviews appreciated as well–they keep me in business!

E.E. Isherwood

The second zombie book in this trilogy finds Liam and Marty in the suburbs of St. Louis. Far from being a safe space, the zombies explode everywhere. This leaves our heroes with some tough choices about how to survive the plague.

So you’ve just dragged your sweet great-grandmother across a city full of zombies, crazies, and criminals. You think you are safe in the suburbs. At least until the rest of the city folk show up. Liam learns this lesson the hard way. Perhaps there are less people on any given street in the suburban sprawl, but the open lands have their own dangers. Safe fortresses are just an illusion when one bite can lead to mass infection.

This book was released January 17, 2016. Buy on Kindle.

The last book of the Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse trilogy attempts to wrap up the mystery of the zombie plague. Liam and his companions are searching for his missing great-grandma…and all clues point them to one particular location.

However, mounting a rescue effort becomes more and more difficult the longer they wait. The mirage of safety is shattered as violent survivalists clash with bands of Boy Scouts. US Marines conduct sweeps of the ruins for dangerous fugitives. In the end, the only way to save Grandma is to ignore all the reasons not to go, and just go.

Liam and Victoria join up for one last journey back into the city they struggled so hard to escape. Now, those who remain are either already dead, or have nefarious reasons for being there. It leaves little room for error as the fate of Grandma is left hanging in the balance.

We also discover more about the philosophical side of this book series. The zombies play the role of the bad guys, but there is also a virtual superhero who is only seen by Grandma when she’s sleeping. The person appears as her deceased husband–someone who passed away decades ago. Who is he? What does he want? Why can he talk to Grandma exclusively? His role becomes a focal point as the story rolls to its conclusion.

The end of the trilogy answers a few questions, but dumps many new ones into the story line, or more precisely reminds the readers that many questions have been left unanswered from the entire trilogy. The genesis of the plague is hinted, and enemies are revealed, but much material is left for future volumes beyond this trilogy. That is by design.

Book 3 was released on February 14, 2016. What a great Valentine’s gift. LOL.

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E.E. Isherwood

The author page at Amazon is now live for my pen name E.E. Isherwood. Writing zombie books has been my goal for the past 14 months. Now I’m finally getting somewhere.

It is exciting to see this project moving into the next phase of the publishing process. After a year of writing and editing, I’ll be glad to get my books in front of the public and see if they are loved or hated.

Step one of that journey is getting the material on Kindle, and creating an author page there. While there are hundreds of authors of zombie books, and likely thousands of books about zombies, plagues, and the end of the world, I’m proud to join the group with my very own landing page. I’m honored to be in the same room with so many of the writers I grew up reading.

E.E. Isherwood Amazon Author Page

I’ve already got my introductory short story listed, and part 1 of my Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse book trilogy. In the next couple weeks I should have all 3 volumes of the series listed. Siren Songs is the second volume. Stop the Sirens is the final book of the first trilogy. Yes, more are planned!

In the meantime I have a day or two to do some final edits on book 1–editing a book is a process that never seems to reach the finish line. I also need to submit the material so I can use print on demand services, and then begin marketing this title everywhere I can.

With a little luck I’ll have the other two books ready to go when the first one launches, so a potential reader could cut through all 3 in the series in one fell swoop. That is how I like to do my reading too.

E.E.