Now Available on Kindle #GBE2

In 2010, I held an event to promote my self-published novel, Fortress Beverly Hills. This event was near my home and there was a very nice turnout. About twenty people came, and I sold and signed thirteen of my books. It was an uplifting event and gave me a great deal of hope that I was launching into what could be a very successful small-scale promotional tour in my local area.

Unfortunately, this hope was short-lived. The next two times I held events locally, only two people showed up to each one and I ended up giving books away at the second. It seems that my local market, after around thirty sales (including those out of the trunk of my car on a one off basis) has been tapped out. This also applies to reviews and passing-it-along. So far, I’ve had three reviews of the book completed by friends and family and posted to the online sites and as far as I can tell, less than five people have forwarded or shared links to my work through Facebook, Twitter and other sources. I don’t want to speak ill of this group, I really appreciate them and what they’ve done for me so far. But it’s now clear to me that the group of people who are close to me that I can trust to help me promote this book and my writing in general is, at this point in time, too small for me to reach even my very modest goals.

So, it’s with a sense of very limited expectations that I announce to mostly this very same group that Fortress Beverly Hills is now available on Kindle through Amazon.com. I continue to hope that this book will one day be a success and will reach my ultimate big goal of seeing it translated onto the big screen.

I'm pretty sure now that reaching that goal will take one of two paths: 1. A long, difficult many-year-long slog where I slowly, perhaps painfully build a following for my writing online or 2. Some brave soul with connections will "discover" me and/or my book and will help me get there. Obviously this second path would be far more preferable, and I mentally cross my fingers every time I go online that that someone is out there reading. But knowing how life has been so far, the first is far more likely and unfortunately it may lead to a lifelong struggle in obscurity that ultimately leaves that big goal unmet. But it could provide some modest success that I can learn to live with. So slog away, Kyle!

P.S. Of course, the possibility could be (and strongly possible at that) that I'm not good enough at this to "make it" yet. It could be that Fortress Beverly Hills is nowhere near the best work I'm capable of. It could be that through Best Dad Evar and whatever I write next I'm taking the steps I need to take to actually get to a place where my writing is worth noticing.

So if you want to get in on the bottom floor of the building that is Kyle's writing career, think about spending the three bucks to get Fortress Beverly Hills on Kindle

Idea: New Character & Story/Blog – Best Dad Evar

I was reading a book recently where the author said something like “all the best writers write about what they know.” (Thank you, Ann Rule). As often happens when I read, this gave me an idea: to write about being a dad. At the same time, I’ve always wanted to see if I could write something funny. And I also liked the idea of writing something short that I could post piece by piece on the internet. So the idea of a Dad’s blog came to me. But not just a Dad describing stuff that happens. There are tons of those out there. Instead, I quickly came up with the idea of a Dad being interviewed by a Jeff Probst-like narrator who sees everything and asks the tough questions that Dad might not answer otherwise. So the Adventures of Best Dad Evar was born.

I’ve included a disclaimer at the top because I, like Eminem, will need to cuss in my stories to make them funny. Well, maybe that’s not true, but I find that when I write things the way they sound in my head, there are often swear words, and sometimes they’re disgusting and/or exaggerated from real life. So that’s what you’re going to get from Best Dad Evar. Enjoy!

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