Year-End Goals and Joys, Pepper’s Ghost Second Edition, and Advance Readers’ Copies
This month’s content is brought to you by readers like you whose paid Substack subscriptions and book purchases help produce and promote my work: extraordinary stories about ordinary Americans. If you’re a free subscriber, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Thank you for supporting and reading my work and spreading the word.
Your support this year not only helped me publish monthly stories here on Substack and Pepper’s Ghost second edition but also contributed to the following goals and joys of 2023:
Fire In Hand Media
I laid the groundwork for Fire In Hand Media, a publishing company, in 2021, which is also when I submitted the logo to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In March 2023, the USPTO officially registered the logo.
The next goal will be turning FIHM into an LLC.
Inroads
I published and advertised Inroads, my second short-story collection. A stock-car driver gets money any way he can for his son’s birthday present. A girl meets a horse for the first time. Two firefighters help each other while a storm delays their camping trip. A museum employee is asked to monitor her colleague. A boy wavers saying goodbye to his friend. A super receives an evening call from an elderly resident. A brother decides between the family business or his estranged wife. A daughter delivers a memento to her mother. After losing his main income, a craftsman continues supporting his grandsons…and more.
Coverfly’s ScreenCraft Cinematic Novel and Short Story Competitions
In early 2023, my novel October was selected as a quarter-finalist. And when this year’s competition opened, I submitted my short story “Cash In the Past” about two gameshow contestants untangling their pasts.
Hollywood has a history of transforming stories into film and television, and Coverfly connects writers to industry professionals. The Cinematic Novel and Short Story Competition’s judges look for novels, novellas, and short stories that can be adapted for the screen. Past winners sold their work to studios and worked as writers for Universal, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and CBS; winners also signed with literary managers and agents.
This is a great opportunity for a larger audience to discover my work. I look forward to submitting the second edition of Pepper’s Ghost to the 2024 contest.
Pepper’s Ghost Second Edition
BEHOLD THE GORILLA-GIRL! Charlotte Alexandra Long is determined to leave all she knows: her ill-fitting office job, her unreliable boyfriend, and the city she has lived in since adolescence. But leaving that life requires leaving her haunted father who wants nothing but the best for her yet reminds her of a past he’s not ready to let go. After joining a traveling amusement company as a sideshow performer, where an old theater trick blurs illusion and reality, Charlotte transforms into Alex who ascends into a star. While wrestling with a spectrum of coworkers, her evolving identity, her troubled father, and her concerned mother, Alex faces an uncertain future that threatens everything she has established. As Pepper’s Ghost weaves in and out of the South and Midwest, Alex must reevaluate who she is and navigate the crossroads of family, memories, and places that challenge her in times of ambiguity and tragedy.
This edition will be released 22 February 2024.
ISBN (print): 9798986092737
ISBN (ebook): 9798986092744
The second edition is eighty percent different than the first, which came off market when the publisher’s contract ended in 2017. But this also opened the door for an opportunity: shaping a stronger story and sharing it under my control.
A book’s success can thrive on word-of-mouth and grassroots marketing, and I’m asking you to help spread the word about the second edition of Pepper’s Ghost. Anything below you can do can positively impact me and my work:
Order the book (print and e-book).
Recommend to family, friends, acquaintances, book clubs, libraries, bookstores, bloggers, and platforms devoted to American fiction and culture.
Share on social media and websites.
Add and rate on Amazon, Goodreads, and similar outlets.
Place a copy in Little Free Libraries.
Advance Readers’ Copies
Are you interested in receiving an advance reader’s copy of Pepper’s Ghost second edition? I am providing five ARCs (as PDFs).
Use Contact on williamauten.com/contact and let me know you would like an ARC. Include your email, which I’ll use to send the PDF to you.
You must be eighteen years or older.
You will not be compensated.
First come, first serve by 7 January 2024.
If you receive an ARC, I ask in return you please leave a review (such as on Goodreads) or promote it and include the following language: I received this advance reader’s copy in exchange for a review.
Thank You
Producing and promoting stories requires time and money. Independent authors like me are often overlooked because of trends, sales, and genre. I do not answer to a board or a corporation and have no interest in being with the “right people” and saying the “right phrases.”
But this is where you help. Your book purchases and paid Substack subscriptions tilt the challenges of business and creating stories in my favor. A unique, well-told, well-written story not only illuminates experiences, similarities, differences, joys, pains, fears, and hopes about our short time here on Earth, but it also attracts an audience that, like a snowball, attracts a larger audience, resources, and opportunities—all of which lifts the audience *and* the writer.
My ideal reader is the individual (no matter age, gender, color, creed, number of degrees, or no degree) who invests in American culture—nooks and crannies and warts and all; loves plot, character, theme, and imagination; and longs to be entertained like the root sense of that word—to be held by. This everyday reader may be a farmer, work in an office, or clean the office.
I love shaping and sharing my stories that, be they novels or short fiction, focus on ordinary Americans real and imagined and offer an alternative to what’s popular, what’s prescribed, or what’s assumed you’ll consume. I hand-make everything you read—from writing and editing the stories; to book interiors and covers; to online content and marketing materials. I have a long-standing interest and background in science, classical learning, and making stuff.
Thank you for your time, supporting my work, and spreading the word. See y’all in 2024.