This is a peek into UNKNOWN INNOCENCE, which is included in UNDER PRESSURE-MOTIVATIONAL VERSION by Mr. D. ($9.99, Midnight Express Books), copyright 2013 by Wayne T. Dowdy. Read my last blog ("Publishing & Unknown Innocence") for my future plans with the book/personal magazine. I will send the rest of the story in a blog next week. After I the cover gets completed and I get the manuscript to the publisher, the whole chapter will be posted on my website (StraightFromthePen.com). Enjoy.
An excerpt from Chapter One: Sheila Bobby sat on the barstool guzzling a cold one, his twentieth of the evening, most of which he had drank with his college buddy, Roger Johnson, the son of Senator Leroy Johnson. Sheila had been standing outside smoking a cigarette when Roger dropped him off in the parking lot an hour earlier. She sat on the stool beside him. Her coworkers strutted the stage to the tune of Girls, Girls, Girls. "Let's go handsome, I'll drive," she said. Then she grabbed him by the arm and led him from the lounge to the passenger door of her Honda CRX. "It's nothing like your friend's Mercedes, but it works for me, honey." She rushed to the other side. He stood staring. She put her arms on the roof. He leaned over and grabbed her hands: His encased hers and the car keys she held. "I'm drunker than a boxer who had his bells range by the champ," he said with slurred words. Lights flickered on their faces from the strip club sign. "I see two of you." "I can see you fine. Good thing I'm driving." Huh, huh." He nodded and then laid across the roof. "Come on, honey. Let's get in the car so I can get you in my bed to show you a good time." He raised his head and said, "I'm going to marry you bay ... be. ... What you think about that?" "Ha, ha, ha, very funny. That would sound so much better if I knew you, big man." "You sure are pretty," he said, his eyes slightly opened. She gently pulled her hands out of his. "Thanks. You're eye candy, too, but we need to go before the cops come and shuffle us into jail cells." "They call me Big Bobby for more than one reason. Let's go so I can show you why." He raised the right corner of his top lip, and then attempted to wink with his right eye, but it stayed closed two seconds too long. He shook his head. "Where we goin'?" "Come on, now." She hurried around to the other side of the car. He turned to meet her; staggered a few steps away from the car, grinned, and then reached out his massive arms to embrace her. He leaned a little too far forward and staggered into the side of the car. She slid around him and opened the passenger door. "We'll have time for that later. We need to get you into the car right now, all right." At almost seven feet tall and three hundred pound, he looked like a grizzly towering above her as he moved to get in the front seat. "Watch your head, sweetie." He swayed slightly as he ducked his head to get in, backing into the seat. With the back of his head, he missed the door frame by an inch. Sheila helped put his tree-size legs inside and then closed the door, shook her head. When she climbed in the other side, Bobby stared into her eyes for a moment before his closed. ***** He opened his eyes and looked around the dimly lit room. Next to him lay a slender, brown-skinned, naked woman in the fetal position, facing him. She had high cheekbones, a narrow nose, long eye lashes, and streaked mascara under her eyelids. Her breasts were a nice size and held their forms, probably implants; her hips made a perfect curve as they tapered to the legs and waist. She had a pert look about herself, sassy looking, maybe Native American or of Spanish descent. What time is it, he wondered. He raised his arm. No watch. He scanned the room for a clock. None of the surroundings were familiar to him. Across the room, beside a large window with streaming light shining through a crack in the full-length, burgundy curtains, he saw his watch laying on an end table with his boxer shorts wadded up next to it. Hmm. That's interesting. He raised up on his elbow to get a better view of her. The light reflecting off her raven hair made a halo. Man, what a doll, this one is. Too bad I don't even know her name. When he rolled over to ease out of bed, trying not to disturb whoever the beautiful woman was, she opened her eyes; sparkling amber-colored irises flashed as a smile erupted across her face. "Good morning, handsome," she said. "Hey." He massaged his temples to fight the pounding demon inside his head. He squinted; admired her beautiful features, felt the pain and shame for not knowing her name. "You're gorgeous. What's your name?" She sat up in bed. "You're joking, huh?" He scanned her full body, smiled. "No." "Sheila. You really don't remember my name?" [To be continued next week]
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by Wayne T. Dowdy The best thing about self-publishing to me is the ability to control prices and any other factor concerning the product. In this case, combining my first novel with what I had written as the sequel, without having to get permission from anyone else to do it. I like that. I will work with Midnight Express Books (MEB) to accomplish that goal, but that's okay.[1] I pay MEB to assist me in getting my writings from inside a prison out into the world by creating the finished product from my typed manuscript. After receiving my manuscript, they process and format it to post on the World Wide Web as an eBook or paperback or both. The paperback becomes available through various channels for online and offline sales in eStores and brick and mortar bookstores. In other words, MEB helps me do what I cannot do without their help or someone else qualified with time to do what I need done. Several other companies also provide book publishing services to prisoners, but I prefer MEB because I have dealt with them for years and know they are trustworthy and reliable. Traditional publishing would pay instead of cost me, which would be great; however, my patience expired when I read in Writer's Digest, Writer's Market Guide, how long finding a traditional publisher to accept a manuscript might take. To be paid for a book deal instead of paying to publish one would make life much better, of course. The drawback to self-publishing is the difficulty in marketing and promoting my books from inside a prison. I cannot directly access the Internet or do things I am technically capable of doing. You might say my fingers are tied to keep me away from the thousands of people waiting to see my creativity and to read my profound words typed on a manuscript I wrote after hours of research on the waves of the Deep Blue Web. One day in the near future I will break the chains and take the world by storm. Well, at least, I like to think my success as a writer will improve once I have control over access to the Internet and can do simple things like tweet on Twitter, post photos on InstaGram, and create my authors page on Facebook and other social media outlets. Right this moment, I would go do book signings but I am afraid the authorities would miss me if I were gone and then make a big scene to bring me back to the confines of a prison cell. SELF-PUBLISHING: My publisher likes Createspace.com to create my print-on-demand books. Some people may prefer Lulu.com, or to use subsidy publishers like Dorrance Publishing, Outskirt Press, Inc., or iUniverse. Subsidy publishers charge a fee to produce certain quantities of books, and will then help promote, sell, and may store them in a warehouse for the writer. Self-publishing can be expensive. Many services are free, providing you have the technical knowledge to format the book for uploading into a system like Createspace or Smashwords.com. Some of the greats who paid to have their first works published were as follows: Ernest Hemmingway, T.S. Eliot, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, Henry David Thoreau, Rudyard Kipling, Lord Byron, Stephen Crane, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alexander Pope, and many others. EBOOKS: For the eBooks, MEB uses Smashwords.com and Amazon.kindle. Personally, I favor Smashwords because they are an eBook distributor whose system formats my eBooks and allows distribution through various eBook retailers (Apple iBookstore, Sony, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, etc.). Additionally, I am paid a higher percentage for sales if readers buy directly from Smashwords by going to my author's page or directly to the particular eBook or essay link. Visit my author's page at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/WayneMrDowdy. PRINT-ON-DEMAND: I like print-on-demand because it eliminates warehouses and cuts cost by not making the author pay for runs on specified quantities. It also saves trees by letting them live until the demand requires another to fall at the blade of an axe or chainsaw. For the print-on-demand versions, I earn more if readers buy from my website at StraightFromthePen.com (http://www.straightfromthepen.com), which allows my representative to process sales through my author's discount at Createspace, which is the self-publishing wing of Amazon.com. If a reader buys from Amazon, I pay forty percent commission, compared to twenty percent I pay Createspace. Through my author's discount, my representative purchases the book for me at the minimum cost and then has Createspace to ship it straight to the customer. Createspace also offers a lower price for shipping and handling than some book distributors and offers a price break on shipping multiple copies. The hard part of the self-publishing process is finding those willing to purchase the books from available options. My dilemma is no different than many other self-published authors. Some never sell a book. I have not sold thousands, but thousands have read my writings, since I've had clips and a few essays published in International magazines. But, thus far, that has not translated into book sales, even though I receive favorable comments from readers, magazine editors, and manuscript readers. [2] BOOK PROMOTION: My readers want more. I will give it to them within the next few months if things go as planned. I am executing my editorial right to modify the story. Several people who read UNDER PRESSURE by Mr. D* commented to me that they hated for it to end and that it made them want to keep reading more; especially, those who read the motivational version (see next paragraph). Great, I thought, now they will buy the sequel when I complete it. I have completed the sequel but have changed plans. I created UNDER PRESSURE-MOTIVATIONAL VERSION by Mr. D** to add two chapters from the sequel, UNKNOWN INNOCENCE. Those two chapter had the effect I wanted: to make readers want to read the sequel. Now that I completed the sequel, I came up with a better idea to improve the product and to give my readers more for their money: put two books into one. FROM NOVEL TO MAGAZINE: To make it motivational, I added "The Story Behind the Novel" to inspire the aspiring writer by showing how I managed to get the book into their hands from inside a prison, with the hope of encouraging them to pursue their writing dreams. However, adding that aspect to the novel created a genre nightmare because, technically, that made it cross over into the nonfiction category. Even worse is that the changes turned it into a magazine by combining fiction and nonfiction under one cover. (Read "PERSONAL MAGAZINES" about another magazine I own that looks like a book, for a free eBook offer of "An Airport Ate the Neighborhood.") When I added the first two chapters from UNKNOWN INNOCENCE to UNDER PRESSURE, I had three things in mind: 1) to help the reader understand how one of my two protagonist, Big Bobby, ended up in prison for a crime he did not commit; 2) to influence the readers' decision to buy the sequel upon release by creating an interest in the characters; and 3), to change the format to make it easier to read and more attractive to the eye. I believe the title helps create an interest in the story: UNKNOWN INNOCENCE. How can the innocence of someone be unknown to them? DNA put Bobby in prison but that doesn't make him guilty. FAVORITE CHARACTERS: When I ask readers who their favorite characters were in UNDER PRESSURE, most say Stan or Big Bobby. A few say Nicole. Each will be in UNKNOWN INNOCENCE. Nicole met Bobby where she worked as an exotic dancer when Bobby was arrested for the crime that sent him to prison. Later on a mutual friend formally introduced her and Bobby. She is a voluptuous heroine who knows martial arts and proves she can defend herself if attacked. She has a lively spirit and her desire for love, sex, and attention makes most men want her. Big Bobby is a gentle giant who towers near seven feet tall and weighs close to three hundred pounds. No one compares to him. I got the idea for him from a friend of mine at the former United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. Big Hawk belonged to a Motorcycle Club. He used to duck to come into my cell to visit, the same as Big Bobby does when visiting his friends. SELF-PUBLISHING PRIVILEGE: I wrote UNKNOWN INNOCENCE as a prequel and sequel. UNDER PRESSURE is about Stan Mason's life before, during and after prison, whereas UNKNOWN INNOCENCE is about Big Bobby before prison, very little about his life inside, and all about the task of getting him out of prison to live the life he deserves to live. Nicole helps all she can and adds a lot of steam to the story. Now I will let UNKNOWN INNOCENCE consume UNDER PRESSURE and will write UNKNOWN INNOCENCE under my real name. To do that, I will put the prequel parts of UNKNOWN INNOCENCE before the events in UNDER PRESSURE, and then add the remaining parts of the sequel behind UNDER PRESSURE to conclude the story. That will allow me to correct what I feel kept UNDER PRESSURE from experiencing robust sales. Reading the Prelude (yes, I intentionally used Prelude instead of Prologue) and the synopsis leads one to believe that the novel is all about prison. Not so! Many scenes concern Stan's life before he went to prison and his life afterwards as a free citizen. The plot also shows the drug conspiracy that lead him to prison for ten years of his life for doing what most readers would not believe could land them in an American federal prison. I promise it is true. I know numerous people serving life without parole in letters (LIFE), and life without parole in numbers (50-100 plus years). Many who will spend the rest of their lives in prison because of Ghost Dope (drugs spoken about in a conspiracy--no actual drugs existed). Anyway, I will write a more accurate synopsis of UNKNOWN INNOCENCE, and now that I have a website, I am doing now what I wish I could have done before releasing UNDER PRESSURE. Promoting my novel before its release. I'll do the eBook first, and offer a free coupon code for UNKNOWN INNOCENCE to those who purchased UNDER PRESSURE as a way to show my gratitude for their readership. Many readers commented having read UNDER PRESSURE multiple times, so this will give them another opportunity. TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING: To have a book published the traditional route is great. My problem with traditional publishing is how time consuming it can be. Some publishers do not want simultaneous submissions and may take up to ninety days to respond to a query letter or book proposal. If they want to see your book, then take several months or longer to let you know; if accepted, then take a year or two to put it on the market. That's just too much waiting for me. I would love to have a publisher to help market and promote my writings but by going that route in search of one to publish my books, I might be out of prison before the book even hits the market. I am trying to let my writings provide me with enough income to allow me to get started in a reputable occupation upon release. At least to help me afford to buy a laptop or PC to continue my writing on. As it stands now, I would have more money if I had put my money into a bank account, instead of choosing to self-publish, but I have faith that success is on the way, somewhere over the rainbow, hidden behind the prison walls. *$6.95, Midnight Express Books **$9.99, Midnight Express Books (for eBooks: the reader sets price at Smashwords; $4.95 elsewhere) [1] Midnight Express Books, P.O. Box 69, Berryville, AR 72616 (Email: [email protected]). Discount rates available from the publisher for ten or more books. [2] These are some magazines my writings appeared in print over the years: THE SUN, Chapel Hill, NC; THE ICONOCLAST, Mohegan Lake, NY; CONFRONTATION Magazine, Long Island University, New York. I've had a short story accepted by THE SAVAGE KICK magazine by Murder Slim Press, 29 Alpha Road, Gorleston, Norfolk, NR31 OLQ, U.K. It will appear in SAVAGE KICK #8 in December 2015. I've also been published several times online by PRISONLAWBLOG.COM, and PRISONEDUCATION.COM, as well as other magazines and publications under various pen names. By Wayne T. Dowdy I own a magazine, two actually. Imagine that, having a personal magazine for the world to read. When I created ESSAYS AND MORE STRAIGHT FROM THE PEN with Midnight Express Books, I did not think about it as a magazine, but, that's what it is, regardless of what I thought. All it takes to have a magazine these days is a website to post them on, or some system to publish it by putting it in print for everyone to read. What was I thinking? Well, I was thinking that I had twelve superb essays to share with all who wanted to read about a variety of topics that involved the infamous "Me." ESSAYS ABOUT WHAT? Essays about survival against the odds; essays about love and pain; essays about the cost of crime on human lives from a personal perspective; essays to inspire, to shed light on life from a different perspective; essays that show life inside the American criminal justice system; essays that show the price I paid to become a better man; essays, poetry, and a short story that offers something unique to the reader. FREE ESSAYS: I made three essays available for free, two of which are on this blog: "We Are the Cancer," "No Sympathy," and one from my author's page at Smashwords.com (https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/WayneMrDowdy), "A Prisoner and a Poem for a Princess." The latter is more about the spiritual side of life, than it is about a strange romance. "We Are the Cancer" has an environmental theme. "No Sympathy" contains a combination of politics and slices of my life as a child and young adult. I grew up in the criminal justice system and now want to change the system that ruins the lives of millions of people who find themselves sitting inside a jail cell or trapped within prison walls. For your taking time to read this blog, I offer another free essay for your reading pleasure. Use Smashwords Coupon Code MQ86S to download a free copy of "An Airport Ate the Neighborhood," from my author's page (click on the link listed in the above paragraph). Enter the coupon code near the end of the process as if you are purchasing the essay. The free offer is only available at Smashwords.com, even though you may purchase the essay for $0.99 at several online outlets. For downloading on a personal computer, use the html format option. WHAT'S THE "MORE" IN THE TITLE? I wanted to give my readers more for their money, so I added three select poems and one short story, which is what converted my essay collection into a magazine by definition. My personal magazine. I hope you start reading it today by downloading a copy from your favorite eBook retailer. If not that, at least order yourself a paperback from my website at StraightFromthePen.com or from your favorite bookstore, which I will really appreciate. A Federal Bureau of Prisons case manager read it and commented that it contained a lot of wisdom, has parts to make you laugh, and others that were touching; a well-written book and good read. He said he read in a couple of days. For that to come from a prison staff member, it's a great compliment and one that made me proud of what me and Midnight Express Books put together. Treat yourself by reading it today and then share it with others.* Many people have told me they found something to identify with in it and that it helped improve their outlook upon life. I did a similar experiment with my first novel, UNDER PRESSURE by Mr. D. Things haven't worked out as I planned. When I created UNDER PRESSURE-MOTIVATIONAL VERSION by Mr. D., it turned it into a magazine. For more on that one, if you haven't done so already, please read my other blog post, "PUBLISHING & UNKNOWN INNOCENCE." So, I own two magazines. :-) _______________________________________ *ESSAYS AND MORE STRAIGHT FROM THE PEN by Wayne T. Dowdy, Midnight Express Books ($10.95 plus S&H for paperback; eBook lists for $4.95 at all eBook retailers, except Smashwords, where the reader sets the price at what they want to pay). For the best price on the eBook, go to Smashwords.com. |
AuthorAtlanta, Georgia, a city of models & movies. I rode hard & crashed young. Welcome to my life: inspirational, drama, emotional struggles, all defining my character and visions of a new life. Archives
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