Year: 2019

Posted on by

5 Weird Things I’ve Never Shared With You

5 Weird Things I’ve Never Shared With You in the whole three years I’ve been writing this blog. How can I be sure? I’ve just learned about them in the past month.

But first, let’s have this:

I wasn’t planning to count this as one weird thing since it’s satire, but I wanted to start with something funny.

Okay, this next item begins the weirdness:

This triggered so many things in my mind: first, the cloaking field from Star Trek.

The Enterprise decloaking

Next, Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility:

https://giphy.com/gifs/harry-potter-magic-J5lxA8X7kisRG
Harry Potter getting his invisibility on

But the oldest example is below:

The Invisible Man – “I’ll show you!”

On we go to the next weird thing.

Your Second Weird Thing of 5 Weird Things

How can I not have the phrase ‘intelligent slime mold’ in my blog post? You may ask, ‘How can a slime mold be intelligent?” They can efficiently solve the famous ‘Travelling Salesman’ problem. You haven’t heard of that? Check out the following article:

5 Weird Things
The Travelling Salesman Problem – click the image for more

Earlier in my life, I worked in operations research and this problem was difficult to solve by computer. How difficult? It belongs to a class of problems called ‘NP hard problems’. That means the difficulty goes up as a factorial (1*2*3 = 3 factorial) of the number of cities.

You can solve this by brute computing force, but the slime mold does it without brains! That’s weird.

Your Third Weird Thing

But first, a book break!

I am an author, so I love books. Tell me your favorite and I’ll send you a free short story.

On to our next weird thing! How about a robot that does gymnastics? It also weighs about four hundred pounds.

If this robot isn’t grist for a science fiction story, then I’ve never read SciFi before!

The Penultimate Weird Thing

I love vocabulary for its own sake, ever since I read the ‘Abecedarian Book’ when I was twelve. Penultimate is one of those weird words you read, but may not know the meaning. Look it up.

I read this book when I was 12.

Your new weird thing begins here.

Do you believe this?

You know it’s weird when you can’t believe it (I didn’t) and yet it’s true.

The Last Weird Thing of 5 Weird Things – And Free Stuff

Who doesn’t like dragons?

Finally, I bid you adieu!

5 Weird Things
Andy Zach at Archon in St. Louis

PS: I forgot to tell you where you can get free stuff.

First, you can get 31 free books here:

5 Weird Things
Click image to get 31 free books

Then, you can get my comic paranormal animal book, Zombie Turkeys here:

5 Weird Things
Click to get your free copy
Posted on by

How You Can Publish 4 Books in 3 Years Like Andy Zach

How You Can Publish 4 Books in 3 Years – stop reading! Go to the first part of this blog now, How I Published 4 Books in 3 Years.

If you just came here for the first time, welcome! I’ve been a self-published author for three years and I’ve blogged the whole time.

But you want to know how I did it. My first post covered publishing Zombie Turkeys, my first book. (Psst! If you want a free copy, go here. This link is only good for a limited time.)

You Can Publish 4 Books
Zombie Turkeys

I left off that post mentioning my second book, My Undead Mother-in-law. Here’s the story of that publication.

You Can Publish 4 Books
My Undead Mother-in-law

First, I didn’t take time off after Zombie Turkeys came out October, 2016. I entered November NaNoWriMo and wrote 50,000 words of MUM (as I like to abbreviate it.)

I finished up the book in January and sent the book to my editor, Dori Harrell, as with Zombie Turkeys. Then I contacted my illustrator Sean ‘Fuzzy’ Flanagan. He stressed the covers should look similar, so people can see this is a series. He created another fantastic cover.

Like before, the back cover is a scene from within the book. In this case, the first chapter family meal with the zombie family, the Newby’s and the normal inlaws. Did you notice the back cover is a parody? Compare it to this famous Norman Rockwell painting.

Freedom From Want by Norman Rockwell

Fuzzy also created unique chapter icons, like this next one:

MUM Chapter 1 Icon

You Can Publish 4 Books in 3 Years – The Process

At this point, I’m getting a rhythm to working with my editors and illustrator and Amazon. I used over a hundred step project plan for Zombie Turkeys. For you, I’ve boil it down to:

  1. Write as much as you can every day until you’re done with the first draft.
  2. Then edit your first draft. Remove all grammar and spelling errors. (I use the free version of Grammarly).
  3. Next, hire an editor. I hired Dori Harrell.
  4. Also get an illustrator, like Fuzzy Flanagan.
  5. Then you’ll need a book format editor like Rik Hall. He puts your final manuscript into a professional format for print and ebook publishing.
  6. Now you can upload your manuscript and cover to Kindle.
  7. Consider this optional step: print out an author copy to check. I did that with Zombie Turkeys, but not the other books.
  8. Finally, you can publish it. Plan a date two to four weeks in the future for time to generate buzz and interest.
  9. Don’t forget to hold a launch party on the day of your book’s availability. Choose a library or bookstore and advertise it. I also advertise online by creating a Facebook event for each book launch.
  10. You can now buy posters and promotional material for selling at book conventions.
  11. Finally, sell your book at conventions. I’ve gone to Chabanacon, PennedCon, Archon, and Quadcon.
  12. Start writing your next book

What’s Next? Last Notes

My goal is to publish a book every nine months. A successful author said he writes four per year in a series and releases them every month for four months. I may try that in the future.

Would you like that? How about if I wrote four volumes of my Secret Supers series and release them monthly? Would you like that? Let me know. I’ll send you a free short story for your response.

You Can Publish 4 Books
Secret Supers

Posted on by — 1 Comment

How I Published 4 Books in 3 Years – You Can Too

Yes, I Published 4 Books in 3 Years. Here they are:

Published 4 Books
Andy Zach’s Published 4 Books

First I published Zombie Turkeys on October 31, 2016. Then ten months later, out popped My Undead Mother-in-law on August 5, 2017. I still strove to hit my nine-month publishing goal with Paranormal Privateers, which debuted on May 5, 2018. Finally, I switched genres to middle-school science fiction with Secret Supers, appearing March 29, 2019.

I feel like these dates are the birthdays of my children!

4 Books Published
The Andy Zach Family, before publishing

In the next section, I’ll give you a rundown of my steps in publishing.

4 Books Published – First Zombie Turkeys

  1. I wrote the first draft in November – December 2015 – I used NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month) as my motivation. You can too!
  2. Then I self-edited my book – inefficiently. January to March 2016. I checked grammar and spelling and reviewed checklists of what not to do. I think I went through six or seven revisions.
  3. Next, I studied publishing and self-publishing. ‘Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual, Volume 2‘ and How I Sold 30,000 eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle were my primary influences.
  4. In April, I worked with an editor for the first time. April to August 2016, Dori Harrell. She’ll work with you too! This created another six or seven revisions.
  5. I knew I needed a cover artist, so I got one: Sean “Fuzzy” Flanagan. We went through ten ideas and we selected the handprint cover. August to September 2016.
  6. Then, I bought IBSNs from Bowker. September 2016.
  7. After this, I set up Amazon Kindle and Createspace accounts. They’re now merged. September 2016.
  8. I learned I needed a format editor: someone who edits the text into ebook and print formats, Rik Hall of Wild Seas Formating. You need him, too. September 2016
  9. I set up a website, zombieturkeys.com. It’s now merged with andyzach.net. October 2016
  10. Finally, I uploaded my edited ebook and print book with their covers to Amazon and set the launch date to October 31st. October 2016
  11. Before I could order books, Amazon had to approve them. As soon as they did, I ordered my print books. Mid-October 2016.
  12. Then, I set up my book launch party at the Peoria North Library for October 31st. That was probably a mistake. I learned that some people were out, due to Halloween.
  13. I got my print books in the mail. Huzzah! I got them just before the launch party. Late October 2016.
4 Books Published
My First Book Copy

The first concept sketch for Zombie Turkeys:

Zombie Turkey Concept Art

Zombie Turkeys, the first sketch

Next, My Undead Mother-in-law

I knew I had to surpass my first book with my second one. I had to be crazier, funnier, wilder, more exciting, more violent. In November of 2016 when I wrote my first draft of My Undead Mother-in-law. I’ll tell you what I learned through that book in my next blog post.

This one is long enough.

My Undead Mother-in-law, Andy Zach’s second book

But naturally, you’ll have questions. Ask me! I‘ll do my best to answer you.