by Ben Zackheim | Dec 14, 2012 | The Camelot Kids, Writing |
Did you know Merlin is 3276 years old? It’s true. In fact, today’s his birthday. He’s celebrating in his cave so he doesn’t have to listen to our nonsense.
Did you know Lancelot lived for hundreds of years and actually became really good friends with Merlin? They even built New Camelot together!
How about Excalibur? Who wields it now? The answer is one of these: A ghost. An elf. A dragon. None of the above. Yes, I cheated there.
All questions will be answered in The Camelot Kids, a four-part ebook series.
And you can get updates on the series through my newsletter (monthly, max). It’s packed with Camelot lore, concept art, sneak previews and contests. You can even win a role in an upcoming Camelot Kids book!
You can read some more about the ebook series below. Enjoy!
The Camelot Kids is a series that tells the story of Simon Sharp, 14. Simon isn’t a normal teenager. He’s a kid on a mission.
Simon is determined to find a family.
His archaeologist parents died two years ago in a plane crash while searching for King Arthur’s grave, leaving a bitter, wandering kid as their legacy. He hops from foster home to foster home, but passes most of his time stealing books for a street vendor and panhandling. One day, Simon sneaks into his old halfway house to visit the kindly Head of School, who’s on her death bed. He’s cornered and caught by the same bullies who’ve made his life hell for years.
To Simon, being back in the halfway house is like being in hell.
But when a letter arrives, informing him that he’s to stay with his estranged uncle in Scotland, Simon finds new hope. That hope is quickly dashed when the uncle turns out to be a creep.
Now Simon is miserable in another country. Not a big improvement.
One evening, while banished to his room for the night, Simon discovers a stairwell under his bed. He hates confined spaces but, out of spite for his controlling uncle, he takes the plunge into darkness. What Simon finds at the bottom is beyond anything he could have imagined. What he finds there is his future, wrapped in a past filled with magic, chivalry, King Arthur and Merlin.
The Camelot Kids is an epic story that allowed me to delve into how families fall apart and why so much of our strength and our goodness comes from our connection with others. By the end of writing the first book I knew I’d have the guts to push it out into the real world. I enjoyed the entire process so my assumption is that some of you may enjoy it too.
I’ll be releasing the first four 100-150 page books as ebooks, available on all platforms, including the old-fashioned dead tree platform in the shape of a softcover. Four ebooks will be released monthly, one after another starting in August, 2014. Then the series will be collected in a softcover in December, 2014!
So sign up for Ben’s Books newsletter. There’ll be excerpts from Books One to Four, book illustrations, concept sketches, contests and chances to be included as a character in a future book (don’t worry, you’ll be awesome, I promise). I’ll also offer up little known facts about King Arthur, Excalibur, Lancelot, Guinevere, Camelot, Mordred, Morgan Le Fay, you name it.
Join me at the start of The Camelot Kids. It’s going to be epic!
by Ben Zackheim | Nov 21, 2012 | Book Promotion, Writing |
How many moments do we miss? A joke told by a buddy with slashing panache that leaves you breathless. A month later you can’t even remember the setup, much less the punch line. Or the moment your six year old son uses the word “coincidentally” in a sentence and then looks up with the same eyes he had when he was a baby. Then later in the year you try to recall that word he spoke. And nothing. Nope. Lost to time, to the priorities that aren’t really important.
So at the moment, as I enjoy watching Shirley Link books climb the ebook charts (in the free category) I need to document it somewhere. Because next week I won’t recall this feeling of accomplishment, if I even recall it at all. Next week I’ll be back in the weeds.
But, for now, I have the #4 and #10 spots in Teen ebooks. #1 and 2 in Teen Mysteries.
by Ben Zackheim | Nov 9, 2012 | Opine, The Camelot Kids, Top Menu, Writing |
NOTE: This is the third post in a series,where I hope to capture the stress, heartache and rewards of writing a book with characters from the Camelot mythology. The title of my upcoming book is The Camelot Kids.
Catch up with part one and part two in this series for a complete picture.
***
Writing is hard.
Writing about famous figures is harder.
Writing about Camelot is downright dangerous. The consequences of taking creative license with something that has Ivy League programs dedicated to it invites wrath that’s usually reserved for atheists writing about God. But, really, can you think of a more exciting hill to climb?
When I started researching The Camelot Kids, I’d never read any of the classic Arthurian tomes. I’d never seen the racy Excalibur flick or Disney’s Sword in the Stone. But somewhere along the line I’d become so familiar with the gist of the key characters that I spontaneously grew an appetite to consume their stories, old and new.
As I immersed myself in the myth of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table I’ve been struck by how familiar it is. Where did I ingest the story so deeply that I could tell you about Mordred or Morgan Le Fay? How could I recall the young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone? Why was Lancelot so burned into my mind’s eye?
When I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, I was surprised to find that it was good to see these old stalwarts, these staples of fantasy. It wasn’t quite the same as seeing a new Indiana Jones movie, or picking up a new Harry Potter, but it was still a tug at the heart which is the sole domain for old favorites.
But how could a myth that I’m unfamiliar with mean anything to me?
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by Ben Zackheim | Sep 11, 2012 | Writing |
I’m a huge fan of Google’s products. I like their search. I like their email. I even like Google+, even though I use it as often as I use my treadmill, which is to say, “whenever all other possible activities have been exhausted.”
But one big disappointment, especially for a lot of writers, has been Google Drive. Many writers eagerly waited for the cloud service to launch once we started leaning heavily on Google Docs (for writing) or Google Play (for “writing music”). Wouldn’t it be great to see everything I worked on and listened to in one place?
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by Ben Zackheim | Aug 28, 2012 | Book Promotion, Shirley Link & The Safe Case, Writing |
I dream of Shirley Link over Piccadilly Square!
My mother was in my head, as usual.
She’s old-school and doesn’t take to this whole new digitalized twitty world and virtual socialized friendship thingy. She also doesn’t know what to make of independent authors partnering with Amazon. She just knows she doesn’t like it. She advised against relying on Amazon for my new book, Shirley Link & The Safe Case. She’s an accomplished author so I tend to favor her opinions. But after years in the online games business, and jumping spastically around the brushfire of free/.99 cent apps, I know where this ebook inferno is going.
Still, she’s my mom! So against every old bone in my body I opted into Amazon’s KDP program when I self-published Shirley. What’s KDP? It’s a lot of things to a lot of people. In a nutshell, KDP asks for exclusive distribution of your book for 90 days, which seems a little excessive to me. 30 days would be cool – but 90? In return, you can opt into the Kindle lending library, which lets you collect funds from a bucket of cash for the author community every month. I have yet to see if that will yield much dough, but will update one way or another when I find out.
The other benefit of the KDP program is the ability to give away your book for any 5 days of your choosing (within that 90 day exclusive window). Big deal, right?
Yeah, it is, actually. It’s the biggest deal Amazon offers authors.
On Shirley’s free day I saw 3000 downloads and would have seen at least double that if I’d kept it going for two days. Yes, they were free but somehow I still made .02 per copy. I’m not sure why that is, but when I find out, again, I’ll update here.
The sales the day after were disappointing, with only 17 sold. Some writers report a conversion rate of 10% within two days. I’ve seen examples of a book giving away 8000 copies over two days and then selling 800 copies within two days of the sale. Shirley converted at .04%
As I get more experience with self-publishing I’ll determine the reason for the dismal sales rate post-promo.
On the upside, wow. One day, 3000 downloads.
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by Ben Zackheim | Aug 21, 2012 | Book Promotion, Writing |
Book promotion is an imprecise science, which is why I’m delighted to have actually succeeded at something! I had great success with my free promotional day on Amazon. 3000 people downloaded Shirley Link & The Safe Case and the book shot to #1 in Kids Mystery ebooks, and #113 in all free ebooks. The key to success appears to be simple.
Get the word out.
Who’d have thunk it, huh?
To that end, you have a friend in websites that promote free ebooks. It’s the perfect relationship — your free ebook is their content! They don’t succeed unless they have your book listed.
Author Marketing Club is a site that includes a single page where you can submit your free book for promotion on a number of great destinations around the Web.
While using the submission page above may be the easiest way to go, it may also send you to dead or unresponsive sites.
Below, I’ve broken down which sites I submitted to that are still around (I’ll update often):
Good luck! Please let us know if you’d like to add a site that did well by you.
