WHY YOU SHOULD STOCK UP ON TOILET PAPER (and everything else you need to keep your household running for 2-4 weeks of complete or partial isolation) RIGHT NOW.

WARNING: THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE A POPULAR POST WITH SOME.

THE SIMPLE ANSWER IN TWO PARTS:

1.) You and your loved ones will have a far better chance of remaining uninfected by COVID19.
2.) As it starts to become even more obvious that COVID19 is here to stay for a while, this may be your last chance to acquire these supplies (I don’t have data to support this one, but just take a look at the news).

Is this panic or fear based? No. It’s data based.

The first thing we need to do is DROP the mantra “BUT THIS ISN’T AS BAD AS THE SEASONAL FLU!”

It isn’t, YET…but scientific data and disease epidemiologists says it WILL BE…or at the very least IT SHOULD BE. Let’s hope math and the experts are wrong. Or as a good Marine buddy of mine once said, “you can wish in one hand and shit in the other…and see which one fills up first.” You get the not so pretty picture.

THE SLIGHTLY MORE COMPLICATED ANSWER IN MANY PARTS:

1.) COVID19 IS NOT GOING AWAY ANY TIME SOON. It’s Reproductive Number (R0 or “R-naught”) is somewhere between 1.4 and 4, which is consistent with historical coronaviruses. R0 is the number of patients each patient infects on their own. An R0 BELOW 1 means the disease dies out. An R0 AT 1 means it infects one person and the disease grows at a steady rate. An R0 OVER 1 means the disease spreads exponentially. Season flu has an R0 of 1.2…WITH A VACCINE ADMINISTERED AHEAD OF TIME AND DURING THE FLU SEASON! COVID19’s R0 is most likely double or triple the seasonal flu, and there is NO VACCINE.

1A.) BONUS! Infected people typically shed the virus (directly give it to you or give it to a door handle that gives it to you) for 7 DAYS before showing symptoms. Some can remain asymptomatic for 14 days…higher time periods are suspected. ALSO, a study released today in the LANCET indicated that the mean number of days a patient remains contagious in ICU is 20 days in survivors. 37 days was the longest observed. This is not like your typical cold or sinus thing, where we all think “once I’m showing symptoms, I’m not contagious.”

2.) COVID19 IS MORE LETHAL THAN THE SEASONAL FLU. The latest data points coming out of China (44K patient analysis) and Italy did not dampen the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) as many had hoped. Data confirmed a fairly steady 2.3% overall CFR. That’s 23X higher than seasonal flu at .1%. The older you are, or sicker you are, the worse the scenario. If you’re older than 60, or have comorbid diseases (heart disease, diabetes, etc), you are anywhere from 36-148X more likely to die from COVID19 than the seasonal flu.

2A.) BONUS! 37,000 Americans died last year from the flu…and WE HAD A FLU VACCINE (admittedly influenza vaccines are not perfect). We will not have a vaccine for COVID19 for at least a year, maybe longer.

2B.) CYNICAL TAKE. Hey…maybe only the same number of Americans will die from COVID19 as the flu. WHAT A MORBID THOUGHT…one I see repeated day in and day out. One I’ve now seen both the leader of the US and UK state publicly. SEE the part where I say BUY TOILET PAPER and other stuff NOW, because with our leaders spouting this attitude, I can assure you they do not have your best interest at heart. Listen to the experts please.

3.) COVID19 IS MORE WIDESPREAD THAN THE NUMBERS SUGGEST. This is a math based theory.I’m not going to get into the math, but the bottom line is that we haven’t been testing for COVID19 in any wide scale manner. As testing picks up, we’ll start to see a glimpse of the real numbers. WE HAVE TO FACE IT. COVID19 has been here since the first infected travelers got off the plane from Asia. We don’t know when that happened, but since China has been fighting the outbreak since December, it’s fair to say that the first infected passengers arrived in January. TWO MONTHS AGO. If you understand exponential growth, you’ll quickly understand why the currently reported numbers are likely off by a magnitude of ten or more.

SO…WHAT WAS I SAYING EARLIER? Oh yeah. It might be prudent to prepare for a short (2-4 week) period of time when you can stay away from the general public…or anyone outside of your circle of sanitized trust. Make sure the vulnerable in your family or in your neighborhood are similarly situated. Significant social distancing by the population (to include self-quarantine/isolation) will be the only way to drop that R0 below or close enough to 1 to slow this thing down to a manageable level. Please plan accordingly, in a non-panicked manner…before it is too late.
AND an updated reading list for those interested:

Exponential growth explanation: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236095180459003909.html
Deep dive into the data: https://emcrit.org/ibcc/COVID19/
The basics: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-cases-deaths-countries-symptoms-contagious
Proof I don’t just make shit up: https://www.thelancet.com/pb-assets/Lancet/pdfs/S014067362305663.pdf
Testing is going great in the US…not: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-many-americans-have-been-tested-coronavirus/607597/
Frontline observations from China: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/fbt49e/the_who_sent_25_international_experts_to_china/
R0-Contagiousness: https://www.popsci.com/story/health/how-diseases-spread/
The reason I based my first novel on a pandemic (title of article says it all): https://www.vox.com/2015/5/27/8660249/bill-gates-spanish-flu-pandemic
For those with more time on their hands than me (NOT MANY!): https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/coronavirus-synchronous-failure-and-the-global-phase-shift-3f00d4552940

For those of you that made it this far…YES, I should be writing a book right now, but I’m trying to keep you and your peeps alive and well. And I’m happy to do it.

TOP COVID-19 ARTICLES

As you can imagine, I’ve digested hundreds of articles over the past few weeks related to the coronavirus threat. Several have stood out as well-balanced and informative. Giving these articles a few minutes of your time will put you on the right track to “Prepare without fear. Prepare with intelligence. Prepare with benevolence.” — Dr. Hal Cohen.

And, if you missed my blog post on COVID-19, you can read it here: COVID-19 PRIMER.

COVID-19 Primer

As of yesterday, I can no longer individually reply to requests for information or opinions regarding the COVID-19 virus. The number of emails and messages has become overwhelming. That said, I don’t want to leave readers and friends hanging, so I’ve put together the key information, predictions and recommendations that I’ve gathered or formed over the past few weeks.

BEFORE I GET STARTED—THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO PANIC, but it is definitely time to take a few key steps to avoid panic later.

Disclaimer: I’m not a scientific expert in pandemic epidemiology…or anything for that matter. I exhaustively researched pandemics and healthcare plans to address pandemics for my first novel, THE JAKARTA PANDEMIC (TJP), which was published in 2010. TJP was one of the first modern novels to address the average citizen’s experience during a lethal pandemic, from the arrival of the virus to a sensationalized breakdown of society. The virus I “brought to life” was far worse than anything we’ve seen in recorded history. That’s how you sell fiction. I don’t think we’ll ever see anything even remotely as deadly and destructive as the virus I created for that novel. Why tell you this? Because we’re not dealing with this kind of scenario with COVID-19—BUT WE’RE STILL FACING A UNIQUELY LETHAL CRISIS. Let me explain.

WHAT ARE WE ACTUALLY DEALING WITH?

CONTAGIOUSNESS:

COVID-19 is very likely twice as contagious as the seasonal flu, spread by DROPLET CONTACT (cough, sneeze or nose/mouth wipe that ends up on a surface and is then transmitted when someone else touches the surface…or if someone sneezes/coughs right into your face) and quite possibly some AIRBORNE CONTACT (aerosolized droplets from coughs and sneezes float around for a while and land in your mouth, eyes or other mucus membranes). Airborne contact has not been scientifically demonstrated, but the fact that it spreads faster than seasonal flu has experts suspected an airborne component.

MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY:

Chinese epidemiological reports based on current infection data puts the case fatality rate (CFR) at around 2%. This may change, but experts think it will hover right around that number. Seasonal flu has a CFR around .1%…so COVID-19 is 10-20X more lethal if contracted. On top of that, 20% of those infected require critical care (ICU level) to survive. This is important to remember.

EPIDEMIOLOGY AND CASE FATALITY BREAKDOWN:

Noted Harvard epidemiologist and many other experts expect 40-70% of world population to be exposed to COVID-19 within a year.

  • UNDER 50 Years old—.2 to .4 CFR (2-4X greater than seasonal flu. Not so bad?)
  • 50-59 — 1.3% (10X)
  • 60-69 — 3.6% (You do the math)
  • 70-79 — 8%
  • 80 and above — 15%
  • Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, pulmonary disease? 6-10%

PREDICTIONS:

This is rough guess stuff based on data presented above and expert opinion (not mine).

  • This will not be an apocalyptic scenario like any of my books. We’re looking at a slower burn scenario with limited, but significant impacts on society and daily life.
  • The food supply/power grid/water supply systems are unlikely to fail. I just don’t see that happening. What I do see happening is a brief, intense run on the stores (a few weeks), which will empty the shelves temporarily. Food will return, but daily essentials like toilet paper (think of what you resupply every few weeks), OTC medicines, prescription medicines will constantly be in demand. Picture a grocery store and how much shelf space is dedicated to different classes of items.
  • You will need to prepare for a 1-2 month period of general, but not complete “shut down.” Businesses closed. Restaurants shut. Day care and schools closed. Work places closed? THIS WILL BE THE MOST FRIGHTENING TIME—FOR GOOD REASON. You will want to avoid or severely limit public exposure. YOU NEED TO PREPARE FOR THIS! Can you remain mostly at home for a month or two, without resupplying? If you have to go out, can you keep yourself safe from infection and panic induced crime?
  • The closure of schools, daycares and work WILL SERIOUSLY STRAIN financially insecure families, if not ruin them financially. YOU MUST PLAN FOR THIS. Talk with employers ahead of time. Whatever it takes. This won’t last forever, but too many people can’t afford to take a single unpaid day off from work TODAY! I can’t understate the importance of this aspect.
  • Don’t count on the healthcare system to help you. The U.S. has 1 million hospital beds…only a fraction of those are capable of ICU level care. If 20% of half of our population requires critical care—that’s around 30 MILLION very sick people without a bed when the pandemic music stops!

WHAT CAN YOU DO TODAY?

  • Do whatever is within your means to prepare for a 1-2 month period of minimal public contact. Food. Medicine. Home essentials. FOCUS ON STUFF YOU CAN YOU USE EVEN IF COVID-19 DOESN’T MATERIALIZE. This is the key to readiness. Everything I buy will be used no matter what within a matter of a few years.
  • Prepare for your kids to be home. Even if the schools don’t close, do you really want them at school? The reported fatality rate is VERY LOW for kids, but they can still bring the virus home to YOU!
  • Start talking to your employer today about COVID-19 plans. Better to get the conversation rolling now, then to pull an absence that cost you your job or a few weeks of pay.
  • Stockpile FLU mitigating medications. CLICK LINK TO SEE LIST. Most of us will come down with nasty flu symptoms that are not life threatening, but can be very uncomfortable…and possibly get worse if left untreated.
  • Stockpile disinfectant supplies like bleach based sprays/solutions, disinfectant wipes for door handles/cars/shopping carts, hand sanitizer, and masks (any kind…to prevent wiping mouth with contaminated hand in public).
  • Stockpile IMMUNE SYSTEM boosting supplies like Multivitamins, extra Vitamin C, Elderberry in any form, Oregano Oil…lots of stuff out there that can help with this. Stay rested. Eat Healthy.

SUMMARY:

Let’s hope this doesn’t get nearly as bad as the experts suspect—BUT LET’S TAKE SOME STEPS NOW TO EASE EVERYONE’S FEARS AND BURDENS IF COVID-19 CONTINUES TO SPREAD.

WHAT I READ IN 2019 and the first month of 2020

This topic often comes up in conversation, and I often lead with “I don’t read nearly as much as I did before I started writing.” While that may be true, after doing a little back-tracking into 2019, I came up with a fairly healthy list of books that I somehow found the time to read.

I’d like to share that list with you, to include a few words about the titles or series. I’ll also link these titles to Amazon if you want to dig deeper. No affiliate income is derived from these links. I probably missed a few books…as I created the list, I thought of more.

LITERARY FICTION:

  • We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter – Heart wrenching, based on the true story about one Polish-Jewish family’s epic struggle to survive the World War II. Compelling from star to finish.
  • YES…I need to expand this section in 2020!

HORROR:

  • Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay – Modern day, sublime version of The Exorcist…and so much more. The end will blow you away.
  • Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Trembly – Made me scared to get up in the middle of the night…again.
  • The Outsider by Stephen King – King at his best. Read the book and then watch the HBO series. They compliment each other perfectly.
  • The Institute by Stephen King – Loved this one. Had an epic feel. The end will leave you thinking hard for days to come.
  • We Sang In The Dark by Joe Hart – (Not yet released) This one left me afraid of the dark for a while. Joe has a way of doing that with his novels.

THRILLER (Any subgenre):

  • Recursion by Blake Crouch – Mind-blowing. Just get it right now and take this incredible journey.
  • Don’t Make a Sound by T.R. Ragan – (Not yet released) Takes the revenge thriller to the next level in a gritty and chillingly realistic hunt for a killer.
  • Origami Man by Matthew FitzSimmons – (Not yet released) Hard to beat the first four books in the Gibson Vaughn series, but FitzSimmons does it handily. Highly recommend the series!
  • A Gambler’s Jury by Victor Methos – Underdog, scrappy lawyer caught up in vicious conspiracy. Edgar nomination for Best Novel.
  • The Killer’s Wife by Victor Methos – Serial killers and a haunted prosecutor. Twists and turns galore.
  • Pray for the Girl by Joseph Souza – Edgy, tense…will keep you guessing until the end.
  • The Chain by Adrian McKinty – One of the most inventive premises I’ve read in a long time. Unputdownable.
  • Green Sun by Kent Anderson – A hypnotic cop thriller set in early 1980’s Oakland, California. Couldn’t put it down.
  • The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins Book 1) by Robert Dugoni – Flawlessly executed espionage novel and white-knuckle journey through the byzantine world of modern intelligence.
  • The Last Agent by Robert Dugoni – (Not yet released) Book 2 in Charles Jenkins series. Knocks it out of the park with a full throttle cat and mouse spy story.
  • The Killer Collective by Barry Eisler – A mashup of Eisler’s most iconic characters in full-tilt covert operations thriller.
  • Dark Tomorrow (Lisa Tanchik Book 2) by Reece Hirsch – (Not yet released) Cyber-espionage and warfare amidst a high stakes federal manhunt for a murderous sleeper agent.
  • The Spider Heist by Jason Kasper – Not your ordinary bank heist book. Not by a long shot. High octane action and twisty plot.
  • The David Rivers Thrillers (Books 1-5) by Jason Kasper – Gritty, brutal, unapologetic action by a former Green Beret. Burned through these books one after another.
  • Murder Board (Boston Crime Thriller Book 1) by Brian Shea – Brian Shea is the real deal. A veteran detective turned thriller author…It truly doesn’t get any better.
  • The Little Drummer Girl by John le Carre – Classic le Carre. Meticulous. Sets the standard.

POST-APOCALYPTIC/DYSTOPIAN/SCI-FI:

  • Bar at the End of the World by Tom Abrahams – Tom takes a killer premise and builds a dystopian world like you’ve never seen before.
  • Winter World (The Long Winter Trilogy Book 1) by A.G. Riddle – Classic A.G. Riddle. End of the world story that takes reader across space and time.
  • Solar War by A.G. Riddle – Book 2 in the Long Winter Trilogy. Riddle does what he does best…pushes the story to unimaginable places.
  • Our War by Craig DiLouie – A second civil war burns out of control across America. Brilliant rendering of a worst case scenario that feels all too real.
  • Sons of War by Nicholas Sansbury Smith – (Not yet released) As always, Smith reboots the post-apocalyptic genre with a unique story of a societal collapse.
  • The Path Between Worlds by Paul Antony Jones – Epic, saga like potential set in a world beyond imagination, but eerily familiar.
  • Forward Collection (short stories by Andy Weir, Blake Crouch, NK Jemisin, Paul Tremblay, Veronica Roth and Amor Towles) – Take your pick…you can’t go wrong with this powerhouse group of authors.
  • The Second Sleep by Robert Harris – Eerie from start to finish. A slow burn, dystopian masterpiece.

NON-FICTION:

  • Red Notice by Bill Browder – A sweeping indictment of Russian corruption and malice. Fast paced, expertly crafted. A must read.
  • Bad Blood by John Carreyrou – Investigative masterpiece chronicling the rise and fall of Theranous, a nebulous and sinister Silicon Valley startup.
  • The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder – Hard hitting book. “A stunning new chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism from Russia to Europe and America.
  • The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis – “Masterfully and vividly unspools the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works.

THE RAID (Ryan Decker 2) is now available

Book 2 in the Ryan Decker series is now available internationally at Amazon (see links below book cover) in ebook, paper and audiobook formats.

A Border Patrol murder exposes a high-level conspiracy in USA Today bestselling author Steven Konkoly’s explosive thriller.

After exposing and dismantling a deep-state conspiracy that nearly destroyed his life, Ryan Decker finds his covert skills have put him on the radar of influential Senator Steele. Now Steele needs his help. Two patrol agents were killed in a bizarre explosion near the US-Mexico border—and the evidence doesn’t line up with the official story.

Enlisted by Steele to run an undercover, off-the-books investigation, Decker and his partner, Harlow, head to the border town of Tecate. But when they’re caught in an ambush, Decker realizes they’ve stumbled onto something far more dangerous than any of them understood.

The cover-up is rooted deep in the Department of Defense itself. Fearful for their own lives and unable to trust anyone outside their small circle of skilled associates, Decker and Harlow set in motion a risky plan to stop a criminal conspiracy.

US AND INTERNATIONAL LINKS BELOW! Available at AMAZON in ebook, hard copy, hard cover and audiobook form.

CLICK HERE FOR THE U.S. STORE

CLICK HERE FOR THE UK STORE

CLICK HERE FOR AUSTRALIA

CLICK HERE FOR CANADA

THE RESCUE (Ryan Decker Book One) — The #1 Thriller on Amazon during March 2019!

WOW! It has been over a year since I last posted here. Crazy that more than a year has passed since the last Steven Konkoly book. I promise I won’t make you wait that long again. That said, I think you’ll find the long wait to have been well worth it.

THE RESCUE has arrived, featuring Ryan Decker, Harlow Mackenzie and a cast of memorable characters that early readers have thoroughly enjoyed. Don’t take my word for it! Over 600 reviews with a 4.6 out of 5 average speak for THE RESCUE.

US AND INTERNATIONAL LINKS BELOW! Available at AMAZON in ebook, hard copy, hard cover and audiobook form.

CLICK HERE FOR THE U.S. STORE

CLICK HERE FOR THE UK STORE

CLICK HERE FOR AUSTRALIA

CLICK HERE FOR CANADA


Sucked into a FIRE STORM

That’s what will happen when you start reading book 3 in The Zulu Virus Chronicles!

SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? Fire extinguisher is probably the right answer.

FIRE STORM: Book 3 in The Zulu Virus Chronicles is now available in ebook and hard copy format. Audiobook will be available in mid-March.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE KINDLE BOOK

CLICK HERE OT ORDER A PAPER COPY

SOMETHING MERCILESS WATCHES OVER THE OUTBREAK–GUIDING ITS COURSE.

Having narrowly survived the KILL BOX, HOT ZONE’s hardened survivors and their KILL BOX allies separate to pursue different objectives–outside of the Indianapolis quarantine zone.

For David Olson, that means bringing his son south, to the safe haven of his parents’ home–far away from the infected cities. Eric Larsen takes him up on the offer to rest and heal at the house, before departing on the long journey to find his family in Colorado.

For Rich and his secretive black ops team, that means transporting Dr. Chang and Dr. Hale to a secure facility out east, where they will join the nation’s few surviving bioweapons researchers–with the hopes of pinpointing the source of the virus and possibly developing a vaccine.

Neither group will get very far, before the true face of the evil controlling the Zulu Virus arrives–tempting them with irresistible opportunities.

DANGEROUS OPPORTUNITIES, WITH THE POTENTIAL TO SWEEP THEM RIGHT INTO A LETHAL FIRESTORM

Your KILL BOX has arrived

Not something you normally hear! 

FOURTEEN NOVELS—8,000 pages—6,300 Amazon reviews later, I bring you….

A FIFTEENTH NOVEL. 

KILL BOX: Book 2 in The Zulu Virus Chronicles is now available in ebook and hard copy format. Audiobook is on the way (early January).

CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE EBOOK

CLICK HERE TO ORDER A PAPER COPY

A LETHAL BIOWEAPON HAS BEEN RELEASED ACROSS AMERICA.

With their daring escape plan thwarted at the last possible moment, HOT ZONE’s motley band of survivors faces a worst-case scenario. Forced to take refuge near the epicenter of the bioweapons outbreak, deep inside in a city gone mad, THEIR TIME IS RUNNING OUT.

Unable to slow or adequately contain the infected population, the government has triggered KILL BOX, a desperate and merciless contingency protocol.

HOT ZONE’s survivors have less than twenty-four hours to escape the KILL BOX.

The Zulu Virus Chronicles places you at ground zero during a chillingly realistic, insidious “event.” This is a story about regular people from different walks of life coming together to survive an unthinkable disaster.

Welcome to the KILL BOX!

 

Author Steven Konkoly and the Wonderful World of Audiobooks

I know. The blog post title sounds like some kind of movie nobody should watch, or an audiobook nobody should listen to! I figured the worse the title, the more curious you’d be. Morbidly curious.

HOT ZONE just hit the audiobook shelves at Audible and iTunes, so instead of a post with a single title, I thought I’d create a post listing all of my audiobook titles. A one stop reference for those of you with long commutes, long walks to take, long breaks at work OR those of you who simply don’t like to “READ.” I know who you are!

CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW FOR EACH STORE

I’ll start with HOT ZONE and break it down by series after that. Happy Listening!

HOT ZONE at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES



THE PERSEID COLLAPSE SERIES

 

THE PERSEID COLLAPSE (BOOK 1) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES

EVENT HORIZON (BOOK 2) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES

POINT OF CRISIS (BOOK 3) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES

DISPATCHES (BOOK 4) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES

THE JAKARTA PANDEMIC at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES (sort of a prequel)



THE BLACK FLAGGED SERIES

 

ALPHA (Book 1) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES

REDUX (Book 2) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES

APEX (Book 3) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES

VEKTOR (Book 4) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES

OMEGA (Book 5) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES



THE FRACTURED STATE SERIES

 

FRACTURED STATE (Book 1) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES

ROGUE STATE (Book 2) at  AUDIBLE | iTUNES

 

Welcome to the HOT ZONE

Not words you’d typically want to hear under any other circumstances.

HOT ZONE, the first book in THE ZULU VIRUS CHRONICLES, is now available in Kindle or hard copy on Amazon. The audiobook version will follow in August. HOT ZONE is also enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program.

CLICK HERE TO GRAB THE KINDLE VERSION

CLICK HERE TO GRAB A PAPER COPY

While you wait for you book to arrive or download, check out my recent chat with LEE WEST, author of the Blue Lives Apocalypse series. Lee was one of first to read HOT ZONE, providing some spot on developmental advice. You can also CLICK HERE to check out THE ZULU CHRONICLES VIRUS PRIMER for more information about the series.

QUESTION AND ANSWER WITH STEVEN KONKOLY:

Lee: Having just finished HOT ZONE, I’ll start out by saying “I see what you did there.”

Steve: Is that a good or bad thing?

Lee: It’s a very good thing. For those of you wondering, there’s a subtle tie-in to one of your previous series, I won’t give it away, but let’s just say that it’s brilliant, hiding just below the surface. Obviously, you did this on purpose. Can you expand on that?

Steve: Guilty as charged. When I set out to write another series in the post-apocalyptic/dystopian/disaster genre, I wanted to take it in a different direction than most of the books recently written in the genre. I didn’t have to look very far. I had been sitting on a devastating scenario since 2012, when I wrote REDUX: A Black Flagged thriller. I had already created the perfect bioweapon, and put it in the hands of some very nefarious people. They just never got to use it thanks to some skilled and enterprising American operatives. The ZULU VIRUS CHRONICLES imagines what might have happened if that virus had been released.

Lee: So this isn’t a Black Flagged book.

Steve: Right. Fans of those books will find a few Easter Eggs, but this is an entirely new story that every thriller reader will enjoy. There’s no homework required to read the ZVC books.

Lee: That’s good to hear. Nobody likes homework. You obviously enjoy unleashing viruses on the world—that sounded kind of odd, didn’t it?

Steve: It did, but let’s go with it.

Lee: I’ll rephrase it. This isn’t the first time you’ve fictionally unleashed a virus on an unsuspecting world. Your first novel, The Jakarta Pandemic, imagined what it might take for an everyday family to survive a lethal pandemic and the ensuing societal collapse. In HOT ZONE, I strongly sensed a return to that type of storytelling.

Steve: I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that. I really wanted to return to my roots with the ZULU VIRUS CHRONICLES, and tell the kind of story that launched my career. The Jakarta Pandemic was an intimate, if not claustrophobic, look at a pandemic’s impact on “normal people.” It focused less on the disease itself and more on the unpredictability of the human factor.

Lee: That’s what made it so fascinating in my opinion. It bucked all previous trends, focusing on regular citizens instead of the usual “CDC scientist running around the world saving the day.” Your characters barely left their neighborhood, and the neighborhood nearly killed them.

Steve: I take a similar approach in HOT ZONE, but the characters won’t have the luxury of lingering in one place for very long. Readers will get a taste of several different walks of life, as the disaster unfolds around this diverse group of characters. By the time the outbreak is in full swing, the characters will be doing what they do best in my books. Trying to survive. Moving frequently will be one of the keys to survival in this series.

Lee: You certainly don’t make it easy on your characters in this one. I can attest to that. I do have to call you out on one thing. There’s a hint of conspiracy in HOT ZONE, and a scientist who looks like he might be in a position to “save the day.” He definitely falls into the regular character category for now, but I see some potential. Am I wrong?

Steve: I can neither confirm nor deny the expansion of his role in future books, but I do like to take characters out of their comfort zones, so we’ll see. As for hints of conspiracy in HOT ZONE—don’t forget that we’re talking about a suspected, widespread bioweapons release on U.S. soil. A conspiracy lurks. I just haven’t decided how much of it will come into play within the series. Right now, it’s in the background, where it might reach out from time to time to hinder or even help the characters—the true focus of the story.

Lee: HOT ZONE is a frighteningly realistic look at a bioweapons attack from several angles on the ground. You obviously put a ton of research and thought into this scenario. So…why bioweapons?

Steve: Because bioweapons scare the $#@% out of me! Seriously. I wrote The Jakarta Pandemic partly because I’ve always been obsessed with viruses and biological warfare. I blame Stephen King’s The Stand, which I read as a teenager. People forget that Captain Trips, the virus in The Stand, originated in a fictional U.S. bioweapons lab. The beginning of that book was brilliant, and stuck with me for years. Still does. I’m rambling. After The Jakarta Pandemic, I didn’t stray far from viruses. No wonder. Right?

Lee: I see where you’re coming from, now.

Steve: I don’t like to be predictable. That’s a bad thing for an author.

Lee: You’re hardly predictable, especially with HOT ZONE. I guarantee readers won’t see where this book is headed. Last question. You claimed to have “created” the perfect bioweapon. What did you mean by that, fictionally of course.

Steve: I appreciate the disclaimer. I don’t need any more black vans on the block. Bioweapons in general are horrifying by nature, designed not only to kill and maim, but to inflict fear. A slow killer that requires the maximum amount of resources to handle. There’s no easy solution when dealing with an effective bioweapons attack. Unlike bullets or bombs, a properly designed bioweapon can cripple everyone, but leave them alive—needing extensive on site care and support. The impact of a bioweapon can’t be underestimated or overstated. It’s more like the “perfect weapon.” And in the grand scheme of terrorist weapons, they can be relatively inexpensive, flying under the radar in hidden laboratories around the world, or right here in the U.S.

Lee: Thanks for scaring the $#@! out of me, Steve.

Steve: Any time. Sleep tight.

THE ZULU VIRUS CHRONICLES PRIMER

WITH LESS THAN TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE PROJECTED RELEASE IN LATE JUNE…I figured it was time to give give you more than just a few teasers about HOT ZONE, book one in The Zulu Virus Chronicles.

Before I go crazy here, I want to highlight an opportunity to be an integral part of the The Zulu Virus Chronicles launch. I plan to provide advanced reader copies (ARCs) of HOT ZONE (and all future books in this series) to a sizable group of readers. I can’t include everyone in this, but for those of you that would be willing to read a free copy of the books ahead of the launch, and possibly share your opinion of the book with the pubic, I will consider you a candidate. I will also form a members only group on Facebook, where we can “hang out,” and I can pass news, launch material and get your opinion on aspects of the story. You don’t have to be on Facebook to be part of this group. If you’re interested in doing this, send me an email at freebooks@striblingmedia.com OR message me directly at my author page on Facebook by CLICKING HERE.  

NOW FOR THE FUN STUFF. What exactly can you expect from The Zulu Virus Chronicles?

Fans of my Black Flagged books will be somewhat familiar with the Zulu Virus, which has been featured in that series. The Zulu Virus Chronicles, however, takes place in a world mostly separate from the Black Flagged series. An alternate reality, so to speak. Black Flagged readers will catch a few “Easter eggs,” but The Zulu Virus Chronicles is a post-apocalyptic thriller saga, with a strong hint of political/government conspiracy. The setting is current day, in a Midwest city—Indianapolis. Much of the action takes place within a thirty minute drive of my house. I’ve driven the routes. Walked the streets. Shopped in the same stores. Visited the locations. I kind of feel bad inflicting this disaster on my new hometown, but it’s what I do. Scarborough, Maine was never the same after The Jakarta Pandemic. I just hope my new neighbors don’t think I’m crazy…too.

With that said, here’s the cover and blurb for HOT ZONE, BOOK ONE. After the blurb, you’ll find several sample chapters, which will introduce you to all of the main characters, and hopefully scare the $#@! out of you. Keep in mind. The weaponized virus you’ll meet in these chapters was not my idea. Minds far more disturbed thought of this first. I just hope they never successfully create and deploy it.

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

-William Shakespeare’s Macbeth-

SOMETHING INSIDIOUS HAS EMERGED—RIGHT IN THE HEARTLAND OF OUR NATION.

Dr. Lauren Hale, a hospital resident, is nearly killed by a raving mad emergency room patient, in a senseless, unprovoked attack.

Officer David Olson, veteran cop and former Marine, returns from a father-son camping trip to discover that his ex-wife has vanished under bizarre circumstances, and his police department is on the verge of collapse.

Jack and Emma Harper, a young upwardly mobile couple, find their cozy, city neighborhood rapidly descending into madness.

Dr. Eugene Chang, a research scientist for major pharmaceutical company, makes a shocking discovery that might explain the rapidly spreading wave of illness and violence gripping the city.

Eric Larsen, leader of a top-secret, rapid-response unit, circles high above Indianapolis, in an unmarked military transport. Mission still unknown, his team waits to parachute into the night.

WITHIN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS, ALL OF THEIR WORLDS WILL COLLIDE, driving them to join forces to survive the living nightmare that has been unleashed on their city—AND THE NATION.

WELCOME TO THE HOT ZONE!



SAMPLE CHAPTERS BELOW. Keep in mind, these have not been professionally edited. This is a raw, sneak peek into HOT ZONE.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD SAMPLE CHAPTERS IN WORD FORMAT

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD SAMPLE CHAPTERS IN PDF FORMAT

 

MAY DEALS

THE DEALS AND NEW RELEASES KEEP ON COMING! I’ll keep this short, in bullet format, because my wife informed me that I have a tendency to ramble…and she’s the boss.

1.) Both novels in my Fractured State series (near future covert operations and conspiracy thriller) have been discounted by my publisher to $1.99. They aren’t free, but at $1.99 each, you’re looking at a 75% discount for the series. Click the images below to grab a copy from the U.S. Amazon store. Sorry, but the deal is not available outside of the U.S.

 

 

 

 

2.) Long time good friend and fellow author, Lee West, just released Resist and Evade, sequel to the smash hit, Survive and Escape. Lee’s Blue Lives Apocalypse Series focuses on the police response during a widespread EMP event; a unique twist in an overworked genre. At my recommendation, Lee keeps the series at a very affordable $2.99 each. Trust me. These books are a steal at the price. Check out this series if you’re looking for something new in the post-apocalyptic genre. CLICK ON THE IMAGES for the U.S. Amazon Store.

 

 

 

 

 

3.) Bestselling author and good friend, Nicholas Sansbury Smith, has taken the post-apocalyptic genre by storm with his TRACKERS series. Nick rocked the military post-apocalyptic thriller world with his EXTINCTION CYCLE series, bringing that same expertise to the TRACKERS books. THE HUNTED, book 2 in the series hits the shelves (ebook and paper) on May 4. THE STORM, book 3, comes in October 2017. This is a very reasonably priced, rock-solid series of books. The first book is $2.99, a complete steal for this USA Today Bestselling author. CLICK ON THE IMAGES for the U.S. Amazon Store. You can also follow Nick through his newsletter by CLICKING HERE.

 

 

 

 

 

4.) Later this week, I’m going to reveal the full premise of my upcoming series, THE ZULU VIRUS CHRONICLES, to include a few initial chapters. I’m beyond excited about this series—the first book will be available in June 2017.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED READERSHIP AND SUPPORT!

 

A CONSPIRACY COME FULL CIRCLE—THE BLACK FLAGGED LEGACY AND BEYOND

***Post-apocalyptic fans will find some VERY exciting news at the end of this post (new series), so keep reading. Warning: Spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the Black Flagged series***

I’ve led readers on a wild ride through the Black Flagged series, most of that ride centered around a particularly nasty, weaponized virus created by Dr. Anatoly Reznikov, a devilishly unhinged, former employee of the Russian Federation’s State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR Institute).

REDUX (Book 2) followed Dr. Reznikov to Monchegorsk, Russia, where he infected a city of 60,000 inhabitants with the ZULU Virus—in a twisted revenge plot against the Russian government. Readers saw first hand what can happen to a populated area hit with the virus.

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APEX (Book 3) brought the ZULU Virus to the United States, where it was snatched from the hands of Al Qaeda, by a sophisticated domestic terrorist group that had orchestrated the creation and delivery of the virus from the very start.

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VEKTOR (Book 4) extinguished the bioweapons threat created by Dr. Reznikov, along with the illegal bioweapons research program at the Vector Institute—ALMOST.

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OMEGA (Book 5) brings Dr. Reznikov and his designer viruses back into the spotlight, amidst political turmoil in the United States and a blossoming conspiracy.

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VORTEX (Book 6)—TO BE RELEASED IN 2017 OR EARLY 2018—will marry Dr. Reznikov’s lethal creations to the ultimate conspiracy against the United States.

Excited yet! I am. The conspiracy introduced in REDUX (Book 2) will come full circle in VORTEX (Book 6), which I promise will be unlike anything you’ve read before. I know, that’s a tall order.



Why should post-apocalyptic readers and fans be excited by all of this?

Think The Jakarta Pandemic meets The Perseid Collapse, with a hint of conspiracy. Still not convinced?

CLICK HERE (PDF) to read a few of the hard core post-apocalyptic chapters from Black Flagged Redux to get a taste of what’s to come. This series will not be directly linked to the current Black Flagged books. It is a standalone, post-apocalyptic series based on a worst-case scenario release of the ZULU Virus in the United States.

virus-imageWHAT IS THE ZULU VIRUS? Check out the description of the virus taken directly from the Black Flagged novels. 

“A weaponized form of herpes simplex encephalitis, genetically modified to aggressively attack the brain’s temporal lobe. Left untreated, herpes simplex encephalitis has a high fatality rate. Near seventy percent. Treated aggressively, we can reduce this to thirty percent.”

“If the Zulu virus is released into a public water source, containment of the disease itself will not be our biggest challenge. Physical containment of the impacted community and the management of information will be your biggest priority. Weaponized encephalitis is the ultimate biological weapon.”

“Herpes simplex encephalitis does more than produce casualties…In those treated aggressively, less than three percent regain normal brain function. This can vary from very mild to severe impairment, depending upon several factors. Early treatment with high dose, intravenous acyclovir is the only modifiable factor scientists have identified.”

“If released in a municipal water supply, unknown to the population, it has the potential to affect nearly everyone. Take a small town of twenty thousand people. Even if we discovered the attack immediately after the virus circulated through the drinking water and treated everyone in the town with acyclovir, 95% of them will suffer neurological impairment at varying levels. 19,000 citizens. Neurological impairment will range from full homicidal rage and hyper-aggressive behavior to minor seizures. Brain damage in almost every case.”

Media Report regarding situation in Monchegorsk, Russian Federation taken from Black Flagged Apex—IMAGINE THE SAME REPORT COMING OUT OF INDIANAPOLIS.

“Confirmed news from the area is scarce, but persistent rumors of a deadly epidemic continue to surface. So far, nobody has been able to confirm the shocking and unbelievable footage sent anonymously to Reuters, suggesting that the Russian military is systematically destroying the city and killing its inhabitants. Russian officials have made no comment. One thing is for certain, the Russian government has taken extraordinary measures to seal off the area surrounding Monchegorsk. What is truly frightening is the fact that the world hasn’t seen an emergency government response on this scale from the Russian government since Chernobyl.”

MORE NEWS ABOUT THIS SERIES TO COME! Enjoy this cover reveal. 

OMEGA

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FINALLY! Three years isn’t that long…right?

Don’t spend another second waiting. CLICK HERE TO ORDER

1543-steven-konkoly-omega_2THANK YOU for very patiently waiting for this book. I released Black Flagged VEKTOR (Book 4) in the summer of 2013, after deciding to take a short break from the series. I’d written four books back-to-back in two years and was starting to see the Black Flagged characters in my sleep. That short break turned into a long detour. Six books and several novellas, in two different series, to be exact. I really appreciate your loyalty and patience. I think you’ll find OMEGA worth the wait.

I had a lot of time to ponder the fifth book, which I thought would be the last novel in the core series. I’m very pleased to let you know that there will be a sixth book. Halfway through OMEGA, I realized that the finale I had in mind for this story was worth a full novel, so you can expect book six within the next year or so. I don’t want to give too much away, but the scope of the conspiracy unveiled in OMEGA is vast and devastating, unlike anything you may have read before.

On that note, I need to make a statement that I’ve never included in my books before OMEGA:

All characters and corporations or establishments appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Why the disclaimer? You’ll soon find out. Here’s a little background and a hint. In 2012, I created a fictitious political movement for Black Flagged APEX, called True America. Some similarities in core beliefs between the Tea Party movement and True America existed, but my intention, as stated in APEX, was to create a third, viable party vying for political power. I had plans for True America later in the series. Fast-forward to the spring of 2016, when I finished the first third of OMEGA, in which True America shocks the establishment and wins the 2008 (series time) presidential election. You can probably see where this is headed.

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t” — Mark Twain.

Black Flagged OMEGA takes place in 2009, roughly two years after the events of Black Flagged VEKTOR.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER OMEGA TODAY

OMEGA is available in Kindlebook and Hardcopy. The audiobook version will be available in April 2017.

THREE YEARS LATER—HOW DO YOU REIGNITE A SERIES?

WITH A BIGGER CONSPIRACY, AND A COMPLETE SHAKE-UP

 

1543-steven-konkoly-omega_2OMEGA: A BLACK FLAGGED THRILLER (Book 5) redefines the characters, organizations and all of the relationships readers have come to known in the Black Flagged series. At the same time, OMEGA introduces a blistering conspiracy perpetrated at the highest levels of power.

VORTEX: A BLACK FLAGGED THRILLER (Book 6—COMING IN 2018) will unleash a disturbingly familiar, but entirely reimagined conspiracy to the American people.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER TODAY AND GET IT TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT!

“A joint U.S.- Russian Special Forces raid against a hidden laboratory yields an alarming discovery. Anatoly Reznikov, the deranged bioweapons scientist stolen from U.S. custody a few years earlier, vanished minutes before the attack—taking his deadly work with him.

In the United States, Beltway power brokers grapple withTrue America’s surprise presidential win, finding the new administration to be anything but easy to work with. Karl Berg, demoted within the CIA due to the sudden shift in agency leadership, seeks to stay out of trouble, and retire quietly—a task he finds impossible when news of Reznikov’s near-capture unofficially reaches his desk.

Oblivious to the growing threats domestic and abroad, Daniel and Jessica Petrovich finalize their plan to abandon the “Black Flag” business for good, only to have it delayed by close-hitting news. A last minute trip to the United States drags them closer to an unfolding plot in the heart of Washington D.C.

A plot connected to everyone and everything the Petrovich’s have touched. A diabolical conspiracy none of them saw coming—AND ONLY ONE GROUP CAN STOP!”

 

 

 

Behind the Scenes of the Fractured State Series: Part Five—THE UNFOLDING BATTLE OVER WATER

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For those of you who’ve read FRACTURED STATE, you’ve probably guessed that the key conflict of the series revolves around WATER. While the public faces of the One Nation Coalition (anti-secessionists) and the California Liberation Movement (secessionists) fight over the fate of California and the disposition of its natural and man-made resources in Fractured State, a game changing plot has been set in motion that will be exposed in ROGUE STATE. A plot that could potentially undermine the billions of dollars invested by One Nation Coalition supporters to ensure the future of the profits in the Golden State. 

Nathan Fisher’s family, along with David Quinn find themselves at the very heart of a second conspiracy aimed at virtually guaranteeing California’s secession from the United States. I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ll leave you with a few clues.

1.) The image below shows a recent picture of Lake Mead, on the reservoir side of the Hoover Dam. The light colored rock represents the water level several years ago. The drop over the last decade has been drastic, unlike anything seen since the dam’s construction. The continuing drought has dropped the water level of Lake Mead to critical levels. In the 2035 world of Fractured State, the level would be at least four to five times lower,  at the point where water trickles downriver. At that level, no water can be pumped to Las Vegas, or diverted to Arizona. The electrical power plant run by the flowing water has been decommissioned. California receives little to no water from a source that had once provided most of Southern California’s water supply.

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2.) In 2035, the only peaceful way to restore the Colorado River flow would be to either convince multi-billionaire agriculture barons in the Great Plains to stop illegally diverting water, the only way for them to currently water their crops, OR, to convince the U.S. government to stop the illegal redirection of water from the Colorado River. Southwestern states have pursued both options for nearly two decades, but nothing has changed.

3.) Another option exists. Rivers flow naturally, unless they’re obstructed. You can probably guess the rest.

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If you’re interested in digging deeper into the politics,history and controversies surrounding the Colorado River Basin and other major fresh water sources, you can explore this links:

Overview of the Colorado River Basin

The disappearance of ground water throughout the world

Lake Powell slowly vanishing

Lake Mead sinks to record lows

$650 million pump station constructed to draw water from lowest levels of Lake Mead

California continues to draw from Lake Mead water bank despite record low levels

Spoiler article for Book 3. Read the entire article. 

Draining of the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest source of fresh water in the Great Plains.

Speculative article about what happens if the Colorado is denied to California

Dust Bowl days are here again.

Return of the Dust Bowl.

CLICK HERE TO GRAB A COPY OF ROGUE STATE 

Read Behind the Scenes PART 1, PART 2, PART 3 and PART 4

 

 

Behind the Scenes of the Fractured State Series: Part Four—WHAT’S NEW IN ROGUE STATE?

If you missed them, read Part One, Part Two and Part Three of Behind the Scenes of the Fractured State series!

Konkoly-RogueState-21878-CV-FL-V1With the launch of ROGUE STATE (Book 2 in the Fractured State Series) a few days away, I wanted to give readers and fans a look behind the curtains of the upcoming release. I thought I’d go with a TOP TEN list, because it’s early and I don’t have to come up with clever seaways between paragraphs. I have a 10 hour writing day ahead of me, so bear with this streamlined process. What this really means is that 1.) I haven’t had enough coffee yet. AND 2.) I’m getting a little lazier, truth be told.

HERE’S WHAT READERS CAN EXPECT ON JANUARY 10th!

predator-invisible-camo1.) Adaptive Camouflage: Sometimes called “active camouflage,” this fledgling technology today will be fully developed and available to the military and highest bidder in the 2035 world created for Rogue State. You can imagine the tactical benefits of rendering a vehicle or operative invisible to the naked eye or infrared detection. Check out a few links describing today’s efforts to harness this technology. The image to the right is from the movie Predator, I couldn’t resist…the ultimate in adaptive camouflage.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a11105/behold-the-octopus-inspired-adaptive-camouflage-17108661/

http://www.military.com/video/logistics-and-supplies/military-equipment/new-hi-tech-adaptiv-camo-system/2450498175001

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-01/active-camouflage-system-uses-e-ink-make-tanks-invisible-battlefield

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3072599/US-Army-developing-invisibility-suit-soldiers-say-begin-trials-just-18-months.html

rifle-camera2.) Rifle mounted, goggle integrated cameras: This isn’t exactly something new, but it isn’t routinely fielded today. I got the idea from playing Call of Duty and did some research. Like anything that might provide the modern day field operative or soldier an advantage, companies are putting consider time and money into development. Consider the benefit of being able to stick your rifle around a corner, see a target and shoot it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2649051/The-app-lets-shoot-round-corners-Smart-rifle-uses-Google-glass-sight.html

https://defensesystems.com/articles/2016/10/31/wireless.aspx

face_recognition_fr_pic33.) Facial Recognition Software is widely, publicly and openly used by law enforcement and government agencies in 2035. A few states have declared it unconstitutional and prohibit the use of FRS technology. This isn’t new either, but as far as we know, proactive, wide scale use by the government hasn’t been implemented yet—OR HAS IT?  Here’s a quick paragraph from Rogue State describing the problem.

“Federal law enforcement agencies devoted significant funding to co-opting municipal and state FRS feeds, posing a significant detection risk. The Department of Homeland Security maintained a massive persons-of-interest FRS database, reportedly tracking the real-time movements of nearly a million people.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/10/20/from-cellphone-tracking-to-facial-recognition-minority-report-is-here/#25840ce6742a

4.) Most of  Texas, the American Southwest and the western half of the lower breadbasket states have become the New Dust Bowl, an area ravaged by drought severe weather patterns. Massive dust storms and firestorms have driven most of the population, in the worst hit areas (Arizona, New Mexico and west Texas) away permanently.

mexi35.) Taking advantage of the population resettlement, drug cartels from Mexico have seized control of most of Arizona and New Mexico. The U.S.-Mexico border no longer exists as a barrier in those areas, and fierce battles rage between well equipped cartel soldiers and National Guard units in key border cities along the Texas border. It’s fair to say that the State Department has issued a travel advisory to Americans thinking about vacationing in Mexico. Much of Rogue State takes place a few miles south of the border or in these lawless U.S. areas.

6.) Social Media Network monitoring provides real time crime and terrorist information for law enforcement agencies and our government. Once again, this isn’t something I imagined. It’s happening today—I just took it to a new level in Rogue State.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/computers/item/7248-fbi-pursues-social-media-surveillance-to-gather-intelligence

https://it.ojp.gov/documents/roleoffusioncentersincounteringviolentextremism_compliant.pdf

i-qyrtdrhisa7.) Mercenaries used by corporations to achieve their “goals.” You already got a good taste of this in Fractured State. CERBERUS is essentially a high-end mercenary outfit retained by corporations to safeguard their financial interests—or create new ones. In Rogue State, you’ll meet a slightly less refined group of mercenaries, comprised of former Russian Special Forces (GRU) operators. They specialize in murder and mayhem, which will unfold spectacularly and gruesomely.

https://informnapalm.org/en/russian-private-military-companies-as-licensed-tool-of-terror/

8.) New Characters: Sounds kind of boring, but trust me, you’ll like some of the new faces that appear in Rogue State. David Quinn’s father, Stuart Quinn plays a key role, along with David’s brother in-law, Blake. The Russian mercenary commander, Chukov, won’t fail to make an impression. He’s a piece of work, and was a pleasure to write. Nissie Keane, a hacker employed by CERBERUS will play an important role in Rogue State and future books (spoiler). Finally, readers will get to know Jose (Nathan and company’s mysterious savior from book one) very well, along with some of his most trusted California Liberation Movement operatives.

9.) Fracking: And not the kind from the rebooted Battlestar Galactica show. I won’t say much about this, because it would be a big spoiler for the rest of the series. Let’s just say that CERBERUS isn’t looking for oil in the California desert.

shutterstock_12301414310.) A Bigger Plot Unfolds: I’ll talk more about this in the fifth Behind The Scenes article, but it will become clear to Nathan Fisher and David Quinn that the California Liberation Movement is far more than what it seems to the public. They’ll face a tough decision when confronted with the full scope of Jose’s plan.

Click here to order ROGUE STATE TODAY for $4.99 and grab FRACTURED STATE for $1.99. 

Check out Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Five of Behind the Scenes of the Fractured State series!

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2016 YEAR IN REVIEW (Part Two): Thriller reads

(Click here for Part One-Post Apocalyptic and Dystopian novels)

If you’re read this in the other post, go ahead and skip this paragraph. Instead of the traditional “end of the year review” about what I’ve accomplished as a writer, I wanted to highlight something different this year. What I accomplished as a reader. 2016 was without a doubt my best year as an author from every angle, but it was also one of the best years I can remember as a reader.

2016 introduced me to new writers and firmly solidified my commitment to some of my previous favorites. Below you’ll find my 2016 THRILLER reading list, in no particular order. This is not an all encompassing list by any means. I’ll probably add to the list as the days go forward. It’s also worth mentioning that you should strongly consider checking out the backlists and earlier in series books for ALL of these authors. 

Poisonfeather by Matthew Fitzsimmons

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Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 

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Embrace the Fire by Stephen England

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The Last Girl by Joe Hart

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First to Kill by Andrew Peterson

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The God’s Eye View by Barry Eisler

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Pushing Brilliance by Tim Tigner

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Furious by T.R. Ragan

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Need to Find You by Joseph Souza

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Written in Fire by Marcus Sakey

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Once Was Lost by Matt Iden

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Captive in Chief by Murray McDonald

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Jihadi Apprentice by David Bruns and J.R. Olson

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The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins

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Rules for Revenge by Ian Graham

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Cold Blood by Alex Shaw

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2016 YEAR IN REVIEW (Part One): Post Apocalyptic and Dystopian reads

(Click here for Part Two-Thrillers if post-apocalyptic/dystopian isn’t your kind of story)

Instead of the traditional “end of the year review” about what I’ve accomplished as a writer, I wanted to highlight something different this year. What I accomplished as a reader. 2016 was without a doubt my best year as an author from every angle, but it was also one of the best years I can remember as a reader.

2016 brought some exciting new names to the POST APOCALYPTIC and DYSTOPIAN genres, in addition to plenty of releases from the “tried and true” PA authors of the past several years. Below you’ll find my 2016 reading list, in no particular order. Some of the books are first in a new series. Some are a 5th or 6th in a series. Each author is worth checking out in full! Many have written multiple series. I hope you get as much entertainment out of these as I did.

Survive and Escape by Lee West

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Trackers by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

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Surrender the Sun by A.R Shaw

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Spaceman by Tom Abrahams

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Push Back by R.E. McDermott

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Blood Honor by Russell Blake

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Unexpected World by Chris Pike

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Devil Dog by Boyd Craven

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Canine Plague by Burt Walker

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Cry Havoc by Angery American

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Locker Nine by Franklin Horton

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Hell Divers by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

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Trial by Murray McDonald

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Razor’s Edge by G. Michael Hopf

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Gavin’s Woman 

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99 CENT CHARITY BOXSETS for the holidays!

UPDATE 12/14/16: The THRILLER THIRTEEN boxset raised close to $4,000 for the International Justice Mission. A HUGE THANK YOU to the thousands of readers that supported this cause, and grabbed a great compilation of stories. On top of that, the boxset hit the USA Today Bestseller List! See below:

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SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE HERE! Each boxset on sale for 99 CENTS! The best part? One of my stories is included in each set! Already read my books? No worries. You’ll find novels and novellas by some of the top authors out there.

thriller-thirteen

UPDATE 12/11/16: THIS BOXSET IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR THE LIMITED TIME OFFER OF 99 CENTS. 

THRILLER THIRTEEN  features novellas and short stories by bestselling authors in thriller, mystery and crime. All proceeds go to the International Justice Mission, an organization dedicated to fighting human slavery and trafficking around the globe. You’ll find ORIGINS: A Black Flagged Short Story in this boxset, which takes readers back to Daniel Petrovich’s early years as a Black Flagged operative. It’s a gritty, brutal look at Daniel’s undercover mission to infiltrate a Serbian paramilitary group during Slobodan Milosevic’s reign of terror in Yugoslavia.

 

KILLS, CHILLS AND THRILLS features a “first in a series novel” from seven bestselling authors that spawned fan-fiction Kindle Worlds. Proceeds will go to Read Aloud America, an organization dedicated to promoting family literacy in the United States. I have contributed The Perseid Collapse to the boxset; a book that has spawned 35 fan-fiction stories set in that post-apocalyptic world. The fan-fiction worlds created by seven authors featured in the boxset have inspired more than 200 stories set in those worlds.

AN EARLY HOLIDAY GIFT! Sort of…

The long awaited fifth book in the Black Flagged series is now available for PREORDER. Ebook version only for the preorder. Hardcopy and audiobook versions will be available closer to the FEBRUARY 20, 2017 release date.

BOOK FIVE has been renamed OMEGA (Reprisals and Vortex are gone), to symbolize the events and circumstances that will unfold in the story. Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet, and Alpha is the first. It is no coincidence that the series starts with Alpha and ends with Omega. Beginning and end. And that doesn’t mean the series ends with OMEGA. It means things as series readers know it will change significantly…you’ll see what I mean. GRAB A COPY OF OMEGA TODAY!

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OMEGA: A Black Flagged Thriller (Book 5)

“A joint U.S.- Russian Special Forces raid against a hidden laboratory yields an alarming discovery. Anatoly Reznikov, the deranged bioweapons scientist stolen from U.S. custody a few years earlier, vanished minutes before the attack—taking his deadly work with him.

In the United States, Beltway power brokers grapple with True America’s surprise presidential win, finding the new administration to be anything but easy to work with. Karl Berg, demoted within the CIA due to the sudden shift in agency leadership, seeks to stay out of trouble, and retire quietly—a task he finds impossible when news of Reznikov’s near-capture unofficially reaches his desk.

Oblivious to the growing threats domestic and abroad, Daniel and Jessica Petrovich finalize their plan to abandon the “Black Flag” business for good. An unforeseen, last minute personal trip to the United States drags them into an unfolding plot, based in the rotten heart of Washington D.C.

A plot connected to everyone and everything the Petrovich’s have touched. A diabolical conspiracy nobody saw coming—AND ONLY ONE GROUP CAN STOP.”

POST ELECTION DAY MADNESS SALE

Update: Due to a small mistake, the deal for The Perseid Collapse books will commence in the UK on Nov 11. I can’t offer the discount on The Jakarta Pandemic in the UK at this time.

Because a relaxing book about SOCIETAL COLLAPSE is just what the doctor ordered after this election. I don’t know about you, but I’m SO GLAD it’s over. 

ALL OF MY POST-APOCALYPTIC BOOKS ARE DEEPLY DISCOUNTED FOR A LIMITED TIME. 

—You can grab THE JAKARTA PANDEMIC  for FREE if you’re a member of Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited, if not, it’s half price at $2.99. CLICK HERE FOR THE JAKARTA PANDEMIC

1390 Steve Konkoly ebook THE JAKARTA PANDEMIC_symbol_2015

 

 

 

 

 

THE PERSEID COLLAPSE books are $1.99 or less—EACH. OR, you can grab the entire series for less than $7. CHECK OUT THE PERSEID COLLAPSE BOOKS

Book One

Book Two

Book Three

Book Four

 

The Perseid Collapse World

HUNDREDS OF YEARS IN THE FUTURE!

When author Richard Stiller reached out to me earlier in the year to discuss his possible participation in the Perseid Collapse Kindle World, I was instantly intrigued. Unlike the rest of the Kindle Worlds canon, Richard proposed setting the books hundreds of years in the future, long after the collapse. The link between the Perseid Collapse story set today and Stiller’s imagined future was Aaron Fletcher, a direct descendent of Alex Fletcher from my original series. The more I learned about Richard Stiller’s imagined world, the more excited I became about the Perseid Oracle series. What I read blew me away. Richard has created an epic story, extending the Fletcher legacy far into a dystopian future. I encourage you to take a look at what he has created.

518L7-84A5L._SX312_BO1,204,203,200_Perseid Oracle: Book of Aaron

A hundred years have passed since the Perseid Collapse. Aaron, a direct descendent of Alex Fletcher embarks on a journey across a post apocalyptic North American Continent in a last ditch attempt to stop the pandemic that is killing off mankind. The answer lies with a solitary oracle named Sybil who is located in the mountains of the continental divide. First Aaron must navigate a world where civilization has slipped backwards. Where the strongest rule and the enemies of man are in ascendance.

GRAB BOOK of AARON HERE!

51nGL8SnPDL._SX312_BO1,204,203,200_Perseid Oracle: Book of Sybil

This is the second book in the Perseid Oracle series. It is a century since the Perseid Collapse. Aaron Fletcher travels westward to find Sybil, the oracle that holds the answer to the virus that is slowly, but surely killing off mankind. The world that we know has been ripped apart. Mankind and civilization have slipped backwards. Aaron must navigate what was once known as the USA, but is now a series of ruined cities, fortified towns and open country where the strongest rule. In the west a new nation has arisen. In a remote mountain cavern Sybil awaits the coming of those who would seek her help while destroying those who would annihilate her.

GET BOOK 2 in The Perseid Oracle series!

Book 3 is due in late 2016: Perseid Oracle: Book of Daniel

Aaron Walker reaches The Red Mountain and encounters The Oracle. He sees the bleak future of mankind and realizes that he holds the fate of the human race in his hands.

STEADY ON THE HELM, EYES ON THE HORIZON

Note: I talk numbers later in this post, lots of numbers, so bear with the more didactic start to my year end post.

I DON’T DO PREDICTIONS

2016There’s nothing wrong with predictions, I just think other authors tackle the subject better. Why reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Take a moment to read Russell Blake’s End of an Era and Joe Konrath’s New Years Resolution for Writers. Each author takes a different approach, but you’ll notice a common theme at the core of each post. Indie authors need to write, AND WRITE A LOT, to be successful. Not exactly rocket science, but it’s worth repeating. I’m going to make a small tweak to that message, which I think is critical to success.

WRITE WHAT YOU ENJOY WRITING—A LOT. Once again, no atoms have been split so far, but this is an important distinction, and part of the overall theme of this post. You can probably guess why.

Ship in wavesThe past two to three years has been tumultuous for both the indie and traditional publishing industry. Authors have seen ups and downs, like waves, and panic has ensued when they starts the downward journey into the trough. Of course, the waves come in different sizes for each author, and in some cases, the ride down is indeed scary—just like the ride up a massive wave of sales can be exhilarating. Kristine Kathryn Rusch does a far better job describing the wave metaphor in one her most memorable 2015 posts—The Hard Part. 

HERE’S THE THING. Storms always pass, leaving mostly calm seas.

You need to build a career strong and stable enough to weather these storms (real and perceived)—so you’re still around when the winds die down and the clouds part. 

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What’s worked for me? You’ll be glad you didn’t pay for this. Ready? In keeping with the nautical theme:

KEEP A STEADY HAND ON THE HELM—WRITE WHAT YOU WANT TO WRITE

KEEP AN EYE ON THE HORIZON—PLAN FOR THE LONG HAUL

ADVERTISE SMARTLY AND FREQUENTLY—I know, that’s not a nautical term. 

Feel let down? You’re not alone. I felt the same way when I dug into what has brought me the most success over the past five years. No tricks or gimmicks. This is it! And this is why I don’t do predictions. I don’t care what’s predicted for the next six month or year. Predictions have never changed the CORE of my approach. They’re little more than distractions. That’s not to say I ignore trends or pass on sudden opportunities. I just make sure they fit into one of the CORE tenets of my approach.

And I’m not claiming this was my master strategy all along. Far from it. It somehow naturally developed, likely while I was juggling a day job and publishing two to three books a year. I didn’t have time for distractions. I spent 95% of my available time WRITING and the rest developing long-term GOALS. Many of those goals seemed unattainable and SO far away at the time. Like a dream—but I saw the importance of pursuing them, regardless, in order to build a CAREER that could smash through waves. READ MY 2014 POST ON DIVERSIFICATION to learn more about these strategies.

I still have a long way to go, but based on 2015 numbers, I feel good about my  strategy. 

WHAT HAVE I DONE IN 2015? 

I released a grand total of one 75K word book and one 25K word novella (in Russell Blake’s Kindle World). Not exactly my most prolific publishing year. I typically release about three times this amount.

I wrote and delivered Fractured State (105K words) to Thomas and Mercer. Being the first book in a new series, I spent a considerable amount of time building the Fractured State world before writing in it. A sacrifice I was willing to make in order to realize the long term goal of publishing with Thomas and Mercer. More on that later.

I launched The Perseid Collapse Series Kindle World, which took an extraordinary amount of time and energy to coordinate. WELL WORTH THE EFFORT on many fronts. The world has attracted top notch authors across several genres. I couldn’t be happier or more humbled to be a part of it. Thank you to every author involved, and to Sean F. at Kindle Worlds for believing in The Perseid Collapse. To date, 25 novellas wait to be read by fans of post-apocalyptic and thriller fictionwith more on the way. 

I moved from Maine to Indiana. Don’t ask. Needless to say, this was the BIGGEST, unavoidable distraction of the year, and likely cost me the writing and release of a book. From March through the end of June, it was a non-stop event.

At this point, you’re probably thinking that I had a mediocre sales year. We all know the formula for success, right? Publish, publish, and publish again! While there’s certainly truth to this. I’m going to show you some surprising numbers, based on a very modest publishing year by my standards.

Underachiever

THE NUMBERS

-Overall income is UP 61.5% over 2014. Remember, 2014 was UP 57% over 2013. NOT A BAD YEAR AT ALL, considering my modest production schedule.

Ebook sales are up 20% (units sold increased by 25%), not including  Kindle Worlds or Kindle Unlimited numbers.

Paper is down by 25%, but this has never been a significant income area.

Audio unit numbers are down 6.5%, but sales are up 37%. Head scratcher, but deeper analysis shows that the royalty escalator clause (no longer offered) kicked in big time this year for The Perseid Collapse books, and I’m getting paid more per audiobook. I can’t stress the importance of audiobooks to building a strong career. Audiobooks account for 15% of my total business, and they seem less susceptible to some of the sales cycle storms that occasionally strike. Do some research here. It’s not a guarantee of quick income, but it is a viable long term strategy. It has paid off handsomely for me in both genres, more so in the post-apocalyptic books. Invest in audiobooks—NOW!

Kindle Unlimited. You’re either going to love this part or hate it. For me, it’s a love story. Let’s start at the beginning. All of my titles are in Kindle Select, but it hasn’t always been this way. My Black Flagged Series had spent nearly two years out of select, gaining LITTLE traction in the wider world of ebooks. When I finished the series in 2013 (4 books over two years), I took the series wide after enjoying enough success with the books to quit my day job (the books sold well to say the least). Good thing I had a hot post-apocalyptic series in the works, because going WIDE didn’t work. Not even BookBub could not ignite a steady income stream outside of Amazon. It took me until June of 2015, right before the advent of KU 2.0, to throw it all back into Kindle Select. Good timing. KU 2.0 boosted income across all of my book.

Units borrowed increased 132% over 2014. Close to 25K units total. After July, I divided pages read by the KENPC calculation for each novel to arrive at unit numbers since the program was now measured by pages read. For 2015, sales through KU increased by 158%, and much of that came from the second half of the year under KU 2.0. The Black Flagged franchise was a big part of that.

Kindle Worlds. It’s hard to compare this from year to year, since 2014 was my first year publishing on Amazon’s fan fanfiction platform. Here are the raw numbers. Between three novellas and an omnibus, I’ve sold close to 9,000 units in Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines Kindle World. I had a big surge in  sales when Wayward Pines hit Fox Network as a mini-series. That was the business side of why I wrote the novellas in 2014. I mostly wrote them because I loved the series and can’t get enough of Blake’s work. That said, a little looking ahead made it a no brainer decision to take time away from The Perseid Collapse series to indulge in Wayward Pines. I also used some time in 2015 to write a novella for Russell Blake’s JET Kindle World, adding another 1,500 units to the Kindle Worlds mix.

ADVANCES made up 10% of my income in 2015. I can’t get into specifics, but 2015 was the first year I was ever paid an advance. I like the concept, and hope to that percentage increase.

Foreign Translation of The Jakarta Pandemic? Let’s just say that German readers weren’t ready for an intense pandemic survival story based around an all-American in New England. Who could have guessed? I was pushing for the translation of my international espionage thriller series. I made money, but thankfully did not invest any of my own capital.

HOW DID I DO THIS?

I aggressively advertised multiple books in both series. This is listed first, because it had the biggest impact—and it’s a bit complicated to pile onto this post (another will follow). In a nutshell, it’s no secret that BOOKBUB is a powerful advertising and book marketing tool…depending upon how you use it. I use it to generate buy through for an entire series and expand readership. A short and long term goal. I don’t mind giving away free books to meet that end.

I experimented with Facebook ads. I’m not going to lie to you. I haven’t seen uber success selling books directly through Facebook, though like any hardcore gambler, I’m convinced my luck is about to take a turn for the better with the next ad.  Always experimenting. With that said, I have seen considerable success growing my mailing list with targeted Facebook ads.

I grew my mailing list from around 1,000 to 9,000 (not all through Facebook!). They bought a lot of books, full price and at special discounts. My goal for early 2016 is to better engage this list and turn it into a powerful marketing and promotional tool to launch books. Sounds all business-like. Let me rephrase this. I want everyone on the list to look forward to my updates and special offers, especially the ones announcing a book launch.

I resisted the temptation to write another purely post-apocalyptic series, and instead, created the story I’ve been dying to write. Fractured State. No genre is a sure thing, but post-apocalyptic books sell. I know from experience, which is why this was a hard decision to make. I had my reasons. I made some contacts at Thomas and Mercer in 2014, with the hopes that they sign me in 2015. I’ve had my eye on this goal since 2013, when I became a full time writer, knowing that they don’t publish post-apocalyptic novels. By the time my talks with the editorial staff at Thomas and Mercer blossomed, I was in a position to present a full series synopsis and 10K words of the first novel in the series. Fractured State will be published by Thomas and Mercer, in May 2016, followed the second book in January 2017. I have no doubt this decision will make 2016 my most successful year ever.

I diversified in 2014. Every time one of my book titles rose in Amazon rank during a promotion, buyers, borrowers and audiobook listeners alike were drawn to the commotion—and all of my books. Sales across all platforms increased, contributing heavily to the bottom line.

I had a little help from my friends. I certainly didn’t do this alone. I can’t stress enough the importance of community for writers. We all sit behind desks most of the day, by ourselves, and there is only so much you can do to get the word out about your books. I love helping other authors, and find that I’m not alone in that feeling. THANK YOU to everyone that helped. This includes writers and READERS!

Those readers keep buying my books! And to that, I am eternally grateful.

SHALL I END HERE? WHAT ELSE CAN I SAY?

2016?

-I shall write the books I want to write. As many as I can. It’s worked for me so far.

-I shall advertise aggressively.

-I shall stay in Kindle Select, even if the seas look rough.

-I will continue to look as far ahead as possible and steadily build the sturdiest ship for those waters.

-Hopefully go on a nice vacation.  

I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST IN 2016!

What are your plans for the NEW YEAR?

 

 

 

 

 

Diversification in the new Indie landscape

2015Without borrowing too many of the themes expertly highlighted by my esteemed colleague, Russell Blake, in his recent flurry of end of the year, must-read posts (The New Landscape and 2015 Predictions), I want to take a few moments to explore a critical strategy for navigating the new Indie publishing landscape. Diversification.

There’s little doubt that the e-book landscape has changed. From the weakening impact of popular promotional services (if you can even get selected for one of the major services) to a softening of the traditional Indie pricing advantage, most Indies (big and small) have reported a decline in e-book sales and revenue. The launch of Kindle Unlimited remains a key suspect in 2nd half 2014 declines, ironically affecting authors that had taken steps to shield their book portfolios from Amazon by taking their books out of Kindle Select. This is the kind of irony that leaves nobody laughing.

For ebooks, 2014 yielded a seismic shift in the Indie landscape, with after shocks that will be felt long into 2015. 

What can an Indie author do to prepare for 2015? As I sit down to create my 2015 business goals, I look back at 2014, and wonder how I can replicate the year’s sales numbers? Financially, 2014 represented my best year as a writer, and it had little to do with ebooks. That’s not exactly true. It had less to do with ebooks, and more to do with treating the novels as fully exploitable property. It also had to do with seeking completely different opportunities, some of which represented a bit of a risk. 

Before I talk strategies, here’s a brief recap of the basic numbers, which you might find surprising. I certainly did:

Ebook unit sales were down 28.7% in 2014, over 2013—With the addition of 4 relatively successful titles!

Income across all sources was up 51% in 2014 from 2013.

This may have you squinting, because it came as a surprise to me. I knew e-book sales were down, but I hadn’t assembled the full financial picture. This is clearly a business performance I would like to repeat. What did I do differently in 2014, and how will I proceed in 2015?

– I raised the prices of all of my titles, and saw an immediate impact on revenue without a drop in units. I had always hovered in the $3.99 range, with $4.99 the going price for a new release. I bumped that up a dollar in each category. Nothing earth shattering, but it made a difference. I don’t know if these prices will be sustainable in 2015, with the advent of subscription reader services and lower priced “big name” offerings. See Russell Blake’s New Landscape post for an in-depth look. I’ll be watching this aspect closely.

– I started a real mailing list. Prior to going full-time as a writer in the fall of 2013, I handled this task miserably, collecting emails myself. I had “calls to action” at the end of my novels, but they were about as compelling as a cold hamburger. I signed up for MailChimp  and tripled my mailing list using basic strategies found in various Indie help guides. This allowed me to sell a lot of books surrounding each new release, at a good price. When you see over a thousand people on your mailing list click your pre-order link, that’s a good feeling. I sorely wish I had taken this more seriously from the beginning. I’m constantly looking for ways to improve sign-ups. In 2015, I will be giving away free books for readers that sign up.

– Switched Genres. Actually, I went back to my original genre—post apocalyptic. My first novel, The Jakarta Pandemic, launched my early writing career. I wrote four books after Jakarta, all in the covert operations thriller genre. The books fared extremely well from 2012-2013, allowing me to quit my day job, but 2013 marked the beginning of huge resurgence in post-apocalyptic books, particularly prepper-themed books like The Jakarta Pandemic. I started writing The Perseid Collapse Series in late 2013, publishing 3 books in the series in 2014. Trust me when I say, GENRE MATTERS. As a small example, my paper sales are up 210%—all in the post-apocalyptic realm—and the numbers represent 6% of my overall sales. As you can probably guess, I will not stray far from the post-apocalyptic genre in 2015.

– Audiobooks saved 2014. I sold more than 9,000 audiobooks in 2014, most of them in the post-apocalyptic genre, and most of them through pay-per-production deals through ACX. I can’t understate the importance of analyzing your genre and seeing if audiobooks are profitable. My thriller audiobooks (Black Flagged Series) are on a 14 month investment recuperation schedule. I can live with that. My goal is to create viable, long-term income streams. However, my post-apocalyptic (PA) audiobooks earn out within a month, sometimes less than that. Another strong argument for sticking with the post-apocalyptic genre. I won’t hesitate to produce all of my books in 2015.

– Loans through KU/KOLL up 107% over 2013. Not just from Kindle Unlimited. Loans early in the year were strong, though the total numbers were clearly bumped by KU. To date this year, I’ve seen more than 10,000 loans, 60% under KU. Kindle Select has been a benefit for 2014, however, I’m constantly analyzing the landscape, and here’s what I’ve seen and done.

Loans for my Black Flagged series have always lagged behind my PA work, and after a brief Kindle Unlimited boost, they dropped significantly with overall e-book sales in October. My PA work held steady. That gave me enough of a push to take the series out of Select and widen distribution. I’ve heard nothing but good things about iBooks and Kobo, and these rumors proved true. The numbers haven’t reached the break-even point compared to Select, but the trends are positive, and I don’t think this will be a decision I regret. With that said, my post-apocalyptic books will stay in Select for now.

– Kindle Worlds. This has been the biggest surprise of the year in many ways. I started out writing one novella for Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines world. Blake reached out to me in February 2104, asking if I’d be interested in writing in his world—how do you refuse one of your favorite authors? You don’t, especially if you love the Wayward series as much as I do, and found yourself in between projects. I took two weeks to write a 23K world novella, discovering a story arc for a three novella series. I wrote the next two installments in August, once again taking a break between novels. In October, I was contacted by Kindle Worlds and asked to combine the three into an omnibus, which they’ve featured prominently on the Kindle Worlds page.

Shortly after that, I was asked to write a novella for A.G. Riddle’s Atlantis World, which I published in early December. To date, I’ve sold close to 5,000 novellas through Kindle Worlds, establishing a new, unexpected income stream. Sales have been steady, tied to the success of the original series. Not a bad deal at all when your novella shows up on the first or second page of “also boughts” of books consistently ranked in the top hundred paid Kindle titles.

This is my ultimate diversification story. Not only do I receive numerous emails from Blake Crouch’s fans, who have found my work through the novellas, but I’ve managed to strike an incredible deal. Through working extensively with the excellent folks at KW (one gentlemen in particular), I successfully pitched my series as one of their worlds.

On February 3, 2015, The Perseid Collapse Series launches as one of their Kindle Worlds. This would never have happened if I hadn’t decided to take a chance on Kindle Worlds. I’m not telling everyone to run out and write in Kindle Worlds, but I took a chance on this, and it paid off in a way I never expected when the journey began. It’s hard to beat that, but I’ll offer a few more areas to explore.

– Foreign Translations. I’ve dabbled unsuccessfully in this for a few years, but finally managed to attract the attention of Amazon’s foreign translation unit, Amazon Crossing. My first novel will launch in Germany on January 6, 2015, and I hope this represents a new frontier for my books. I’m waiting to see how this novel fares in the German market, and will evaluate the possibility of paying for the translation of follow-on novels. It’s an expensive venture, one I’d prefer to leave in Amazon Crossing’s hands, so I hope Die Jakarta Pandemie does well enough to attract another offer in 2015.  

Live Connections. I attended two conferences this year. BEA in New York City and Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach. At BEA, I met several fantastically helpful authors—all several stratospheres more successful than Steven Konkoly. They’ve all helped me in 2014, one of them in particular. I don’t want to name names, but TR gave me the idea to pitch my series as a Kindle World, and she’s been instrumental in pursuing the foreign translation market. Not only did I meet authors, I had the pleasure of hanging out with the talented crew behind the scenes at KDP, Createspace, Audible, Kindle Worlds and Amazon publishing imprints. I fully intend to repeat this circuit. 

New Series in 2015. Can you guess which genre? I plan to write a three book series in 2015, leaving room for other projects. I don’t know what these projects might be, but that’s half the fun. I’m good for about 450K words in a year, so that leaves me some wiggle room, if not an entire fourth novel.

WHAT AM I MISSING? What are you planning to do differently in 2015, or the same? 

 

 

Post-apocalyptic 99 CENT Holiday Sale

Spread the End of the World cheer with deeply discounted titles by yours truly!

***Make sure to keep reading to claim your own special gift***

From December 15th thru the 21st, all of my post-apocalyptic, prepper-themed titles will be on sale at Amazon for 99 CENTS each

Consider giving them as gifts to friends, family OR neighbors you want to scare away during the next major disaster. When you click the links, look in the upper right corner for “Give as a Gift.” You can even select the delivery date to fill the favorite reader in your life with exciting reads on Christmas Day or any of the days of Hanukkah.

Remember, the victims…I mean recipients, can read these on pretty much any device out there (tablets, phones, computers, Kindles)…and they won’t know you only paid 99 CENTS! They’ll check out the books on Christmas morning and say, wow, [INSERT NAME} sent me five books valued at $25, and all I got them was a $5 Starbucks card. Guess who will get a $10 Starbucks card next year?

I wouldn’t ask you to buy my books as gifts unless I was willing to do something for you in return. Please join my mailing list, and you will receive a gift (significant Christmas discount) announcement in the sign up confirmation email. Hint: Dispatches from The Perseid Collapse (Book 4) will be released in early February. JOIN MY MAILING LIST

THANK YOU and Happy Holidays!

BUY SOME GIFTS:

1057 Steve Konkoly ebook JAKARTA PANDEMIC_update_2_L1165 Steven Konkoly ebook PRACTICAL PREPPING0979 Steve Konkoly ebook THE PERSEID COLLAPSE_3_L1051 Steve Konkoly ebook EVENT HORIZON_3_L1245 Steve Konkoly ebook POINT OF CRISIS_2015_3

What I think you should know about Ebola—Part Two

Have you thought about Ebola lately?

1057 Steve Konkoly ebook JAKARTA PANDEMIC_update_2_LProbably not. If you have, it’s most likely because U2 and dozens of artists have just recorded a new version of the original 1980’s Band Aid charity song “Do they know it’s Christmas?” to raise money for Ebola victims. THAT’S IT! IT’S OVER FOR NOW! Not so fast.

Ebola (for now…never say never) has remained squarely an African problem, and one month after the massive Ebola fear hype in the U.S., most Americans have returned to their pre-Ebola scare lives. Some of us have a few more sterile gloves and N95 masks than before, but that’s not a bad thing. An influenza pandemic is a far more likely scenario to affect us. There’s a great fiction book written by someone I know that explains exactly how that might happen. 😉

Did we beat Ebola? According to a Denver Post opinion piece, the U.S. beat Ebola. http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/1824674-155/ebola-africa-spencer-west-care-denver

Good news for everyone. Right? Of course, but this article falls squarely in the hindsight is 20/20 category, and fails to look forward. AT ALL. The opinion piece derides the fear that gripped the U.S., pointing out how the system in place worked. You know, the ten systems progressively implemented after the CDC and White House couldn’t answer why and how they couldn’t prevent individuals infected with Ebola from entering the U.S. to infect others (a very low number, thankfully.). The article even quotes Dr. Spencer (the infected NYC doctor), who stated:

“My early detection, reporting and now recovery from Ebola speaks to the effectiveness of the protocols that are in place for health staff returning from West Africa,” Spencer said. “I am a living example of how those protocols work and of how early detection is critical to both surviving Ebola and ensuring that it is not transmitted to others.”

The article fails to mention that Dr. Spencer, recently returned from treating Ebola patients, essentially ignored symptoms for two days while “painting the town.” Nor does the article point out that Dr. Spencer forgot (lied?) to mention his city-wide travels to health officials or the NYPD investigators assigned to track down others that may have been exposed.

Investigators pieced this together with his credit card statements and Metro card. Dr. Spencer sounds like the perfect candidate for imposed quarantine. Here’s a more accurate assessment of Dr. Spencer’s lucky break. http://nypost.com/2014/10/29/ebola-doctor-lied-about-his-nyc-travels-police/

THE GOOD NEWS. Dr. Spencer is right on one account. Early detection and treatment makes a big difference, as does being treated in the United States. I take solace in that, along with the fact that Ebola is low on the contagion scale. These two factors alone should ease our minds. Ebola would be a very difficult disease to propagate in the United States…THANKFULLY.

Does that mean all of the Ebola rhetoric and news coverage was fear based and nonsensical? No. It got fairly heated and political, which is never a good thing. Especially with the safety of our citizens at risk. The quarantine question became purely political. Here’s the ONLY question that needed to be asked:

Is it worth quarantining and inconveniencing a few hundred healthcare workers to save one life? 

I pose this question for one reason. The only way to guarantee 100% that Ebola didn’t spread beyond a “self-quarantined” healthcare worker is to enforce their quarantine. I can count four healthcare workers in the U.S, with direct contact with Ebola patients that thumbed their noses at the idea of quarantine. Statistics and a little luck kept them from infecting others, and possibly killing them. Low numbers kept that ONE LIFE intact. If the number of healthcare workers returning to “self quarantine” increases, statistics will claim a victim. Who will it be, and how will you feel about it? I can tell you this, inconveniencing a few hundred healthcare workers is worth saving my wife’s, son’s or daughter’s life. I wish more people had thought of that before jumping on the political bandwagon and deriding a more stringent quarantine option.

But Steve, imposing quarantine is not science based. That’s a fear based reaction with no basis in science. 

If by science, you mean “what the CDC tells us?” I agree. But that’s not science. Science involves the search for knowledge—and never taking absolute statements seriously.

Here’s a quote from my local newspaper, celebrating a judge’s decision in Maine to override the state’s request that a local nurse remain in quarantine at her home. “They” refers to the governor’s office:

“They could have made the following points to address the fears and direct attention to the real threats, not the imagined ones:

• You can’t catch Ebola from someone who doesn’t have it. Hickox was exposed to people with the virus, but she has been tested and found healthy.

• You can’t get Ebola from someone who is not symptomatic. Hickox has had no fever, vomiting, diarrhea or any of the other signs that she is sick. These symptoms are hard to miss, and as a nurse, she is capable of monitoring herself and getting treatment if necessary.

• You can’t catch Ebola through the air, like a cold. The reason it is an epidemic in some countries is that they have a shortage of medical personnel as well as inadequate sewer and water systems, exposing the population to the bodily fluids of people who are infected.”

HOLY $#@! Batman, absolutism at it’s most dangerous. So, according to the article’s author, he or she would feel completely comfortable letting someone who recently treated Ebola patients (in a front line treatment center in Africa) babysit their infant after a single ebola test and a little temperature monitoring? How about if they were allergic to cats and started sneezing? I call B.S. on that, BUT ONLY BECAUSE I’VE DONE A LITTLE DIGGING.

Here are a few articles to shed some new light on this newspaper’s absolute statements:

1.) You can’t get Ebola from someone who doesn’t have it. No kidding. So a test is proof positive that you don’t have it? That was the basis of the Maine nurse’s argument. I’ve been tested and don’t have it. Bugger off, I know better. Hmmm.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-doctors-mistaken-ebola-test-we-were-celebrating–then-everything-fell-apart/2014/11/16/946a84da-6dd5-11e4-a2c2-478179fd0489_story.html

Now, he had symptoms, which she didn’t…but that makes it even worse! You can have Ebola symptoms and not test positive. But we already knew that. The scientific community already knew that.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/28/359567808/blood-test-for-ebola-doesnt-catch-infection-early

2.) You cannot catch Ebola from someone who is not symptomatic. Really? That’s interesting, because the top scientists that study…I don’t know…Ebola, don’t feel so sure about that statement. Why listen to them? I mean, just because you won a Nobel Prize for “work researching the cellular subsystem of the body’s overall immune system — the part of it that defends the body from infection by other organisms, like Ebola” doesn’t mean you might be able some light on the topic. Right?

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/10/christies_quarantine_policy_attacked_by_aclu_cdc_and_even_the_un_is_embraced_by_2011_nobel_prize_win.html

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-1012-ebola-fever-20141012-story.html#page=1

I’m sure a scientific article in the New England Journal of Medicine is utter rubbish too. So what if 13% of Ebola victims (in the current outbreak!) never had a fever, the hallmark of symptoms for Ebola…and were full of virus!

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100#t=articleResults

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/13-ebola-victims-west-africa-never-fever.html

The Lancet also supports this FACT.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10881895

3.) You can’t catch Ebola through the air. Well, it’s not “airborne” in the traditional sense of the virology term, but I wouldn’t want an Ebola patient sneezing in my face, unless I was wearing a positive pressure Biohazard Level 4 rated suit. I shouldn’t have to link to articles to prove this, because Ebola is a virus, and if a virus enters your bloodstream (through many mechanisms), it does what all viruses do. Replicates. But there’s debate about this, because some would like to believe you have to stick yourself with an Ebola infected needle or accidentally ingest a quart of infected blood to get infected.  Here is the quick version from the New Yorker article (written about the geneticists trying to find a cure…smart folks I suppose).

“The virus is extremely infectious. Experiments suggest that if one particle of Ebola enters a person’s bloodstream it can cause a fatal infection. This may explain why many of the medical workers who came down with Ebola couldn’t remember making any mistakes that might have exposed them. One common route of entry is thought to be the wet membrane on the inner surface of the eyelid, which a person might touch with a contaminated fingertip. The virus is believed to be transmitted, in particular, through contact with sweat and blood, which contain high concentrations of Ebola particles. People with Ebola sweat profusely, and in some instances they have internal hemorrhages, along with effusions of vomit and diarrhea containing blood.”

Guess what, it’s also in your spit, urine and semen…it’s everywhere in your $#%! body. It’s a virus. If you sneeze on a door knob, and  someone touches the door knob within a few hours, then rubs their eye—they CAN get EBOLA! Not likely, according to the statistics, but frankly, they have no idea how most people actually “got” the disease. That’s why most of the medical doctors can’t remember the mistake they made…it’s not clear cut in many cases. Yes, they are working directly with patients, day in and day out, which increases their chances of exposure dramatically, but they often don’t know. It’s not like one of the doctors said, “I reached over for my drink without looking and accidentally guzzled infected blood. My bad.” Don’t take my word for it.

http://news.yahoo.com/u-scientists-uncertainties-loom-ebolas-transmission-other-key-003751718–finance.html

http://www.newyorker.com/?p=2864789&mbid=social_tablet_e

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/30/cdc-ebola_n_6078072.html

The next articles comes right from the World Health Organization website. I believe what they say. Coughing and sneezing is not a likely transmission source because these are not common symptoms in an Ebola patient. Ebola is not a respiratory disease. However, respiratory disease is not the only reason we cough or sneeze. I sneeze several times a day, quite randomly. I cover my mouth (even alone in the house), but not everyone is so polite.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/06-october-2014/en/

BOTTOM LINE: We appear to have dodged the Ebola bullet for now, and hopefully forever. The disease is still still running strong in Africa, so we haven’t seen the last of it here.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/mali-high-alert-ebola-cluster-26950832

Trust me on that. Let’s just hope the ABSOLUTISM and POLITICS takes a back seat to SCIENCE. Maybe with the elections behind us, there’s hope for that ONE innocent victim sitting in a bowling alley, riding the metro, handing change over a counter, or opening a public door with their child. Until then, take advantage of the lull to assess your pandemic readiness.

If you want to dig deeper into pandemic preparedness or general disaster readiness, check out my latest book (co-authored by Randy Powers) Practical Prepping: No Apocalypse Required.

 

What I think you should know about the Ebola crisis…

1057 Steve Konkoly ebook JAKARTA PANDEMIC_update_2_LWhen I published The Jakarta Pandemic in 2010, I had no idea it would be so widely read. Nor did I ever expect to be considered a “source” of information about pandemics. Over the past two months, I have fielded questions from concerned readers, friends, family, readiness bloggers, authors and preparedness consultants regarding the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa. I’ve been rather guarded in my approach to the crisis, having watched it slowly build throughout the summer. When the death toll exceeded previous outbreaks, including the outbreak made famous by the groundbreaking novel The Hot Zone, I started watching it more closely. The novel The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston was the catalyst for my interest in pandemic grade viruses and an inspiration for my first novel.

With that said, I want to share my thoughts on the current crisis and point you in the direction of some balanced, informative articles on the topic…along with a few other resources.

WHAT DO I THINK ABOUT THE EBOLA CRISIS?

I suspect that world health authorities have currently lost control of the virus in Africa. A combination of controllable and uncontrollable factors conspired to worsen this crisis far beyond other Ebola outbreaks.  Take a quick look at the following link and you will see that the 2014 outbreak is VERY different from anything we’ve seen in the past.

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/history/chronology.html

Until late May of this year, the Ebola outbreak more or less statistically resembled one of the previous outbreaks. In June it became clear to Doctors Without Borders that the disease had spiraled out of control. Here’s a snapshot of a chart provided by the BBC, showing the progression. If only the international community had responded in June or July.

Screen Shot 2014-10-11 at 9.35.12 AM

Why didn’t the international community respond swiftly to the growing epidemic? The answer is not as simple as some would like to think. I won’t speculate, but based on the following article, one of the best I’ve seen covering the crisis, I can guarantee you this is not an international conspiracy. The circumstances were ripe for a systemic-wide failure in Africa. You have to read this article by the Washington Post to put it all in perspective.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/10/04/how-ebola-sped-out-of-control/

Clearly, the virus is winning in Africa. Here’s a shorter article from the BBC, highlighting the pleas of the region’s leaders.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29563530

The original calculation that we might see 100,000-200,000 plus cases of Ebola in Africa doesn’t sound so far-fetched anymore. I was skeptical of that number at first. Not anymore.

HERE’S MY INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK:

If the international community does not step in and take immediate control of the situation, to include a MASSIVE increase in FUNDS, EQUIPMENT and PERSONNEL, the Ebola virus has a strong chance of overtaking the African continent OR at the very least catapulting central Africa into complete chaos (not a far stretch for this region). A humanitarian crisis already exists there, but it’s the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Once this escalates out of control, refugees will flee in every direction, by every means possible…

They will reach Europe. They will reach south-west and east Asia. They will reach South America…thereby reaching North America. I don’t think Europe will lose control of the disease, but countries like India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia will not be so fortunate. The more this spreads throughout Asia and Africa, the more chance it will have of reaching North America. RIGHT NOW, the battle is overseas.

DOMESTIC OUTLOOK:

Based on what I’ve researched and recently read about the Ebola virus, unless the virus mutates, I don’t anticipate an Ebola outbreak in the United States, regardless of how many cases slip through the southern borders or arrive on poorly screened flights. It’s a relatively tough disease to spread compared to the flu. Read this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/09/will-i-get-ebola-transmission-virus-spread_n_5946534.html

and read this (counter point):

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ebola-questions-20141007-story.html#page=1

The reality lies somewhere in between. Given out healthcare system (don’t laugh…), I have to agree that this will not take root (in its current form) and burn through the population. There are far bigger healthcare concerns on the horizon…the very near horizon. Avian Flu is still out there. Swine Flu. All kinds of nastiness. Read about them in this article:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/03/-sp-ebola-outbreak-risk-global-pandemic-next

WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

I’m going to disappoint some of you…maybe not. Honestly, I think the worst case scenario you and I might face is a very temporary disruption of our daily lives. If cases of Ebola start to surface in the United States, even at small numbers in contained situations, the population might overreact. The availability of food, medical supplies and public services (schools, public transportation) might be limited for a very short period of time, while the population rushed to react. I don’t see this lasting long, but you should be prepared to spend  a week or two at home to avoid getting caught up in some of the uglier behaviors that often arise when people are stressed about their safety—and haven’t adequately prepared.

That’s the perfect transition to my next segment.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

You don’t have to do much. Heres a short list of steps to keep  yourself out of the fray for a week or so. It might not even be that long if the government can demonstrate that the virus has been contained. If you want to dig deeper into pandemic preparedness or general disaster readiness, check out my latest book (co-authored by Randy Powers) Practical Prepping: No Apocalypse Required. 

Actions to Consider:

-Avoid public areas, unless absolutely necessary—and only then when exercising caution and situational awareness. Carrying some kind of self-defense item is advised.

-Fill up your cars’ gas tanks in case you have to leave your residence during the crisis.

-Get some cash to keep on hand. Opportunism flourishes during disasters, and credit cards might not be accepted if you have to travel.

Supplies to Consider:

-Food for 2-3 weeks. Enough to keep you off the streets. I usually recommend having more than that at any given time, but I’m not expecting a pandemic. Just a little panic and brief disruption of the food system.

-First aid kit, expanded to include fever and cold medicine…for what’s most likely to infect you at any given time.

-Toilet paper. Don’t laugh. Can you name another item in your house that is guaranteed to drag you to the store? Tampons? Diapers? Get them.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Take a deep breath and relax. You’re in no immediate danger. Every sneeze and fever is not Ebola. Some of the media has hyped this crisis to the point of PANIC.

Is there cause for alarm? Not yet, and not here.

Will the situation get worse? Definitely in Africa. It may spread to other less developed countries and take hold. I highly doubt it will proliferate in the U.S.

Will I be keeping my eye on the situation? YES. If my assessment changes, you’ll be the first to know. Visit the Prepper/Survival Corner on my blog to see my latest blog posts.

Additional articles of interest:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/04/ebola-zaire-peter-piot-outbreak

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/06/how-survivalists-in-america-are-plannning-their-escape-from-ebola-apocalypse-right-now/

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=123359

Zombies, black helicopters, the government…

I’m not sure which is worse!

1165 Steven Konkoly ebook PRACTICAL PREPPING

In Practical Prepping: No Apocalypse Required…it doesn’t matter! From a snowstorm induced power outage to a full-scale invasion of the United States, Randy Powers of Practical Tactical and I will point you in the right direction…the hills out yonder in case of an invasion. Seriously, the title says it all. There’s something for everyone in this book, written with a little humor and a lot of humility. Don’t be caught off guard by the next disaster, adopt the Practical Prepping mindset TODAY!

Available as Kindle book or hardcopy

Order From Amazon

 

A quick Homesteading lesson

From the Konkoly family garden.

BeansI decided to try something new this year. After researching and writing three post-apocalyptic, prepper-themed books in a row, I started to grasp the sheer scope and effort required to raise enough food on your land to survive without supermarkets and 2-day Amazon prime delivery of freeze-dried food buckets. I won’t go into the details of my broader “awakening” here. Instead, I’ll share one stark example.

I’ve never planted dry beans (beans suitable for drying and long-term storage) before, so I wanted to get a handle on the difficulty involved and general yields. I planted a 1.5ft x 6 ft row of Cannellini bean plants, spaced according to the seed packet recommendation. 9 square feet. I wasn’t planting for a big harvest…this was a test run. The results?

Growing the plants proved to be effort free. We saw a small amount of bug damage and light spotting on the leaves, but the pods looked healthy throughout the summer.

Yield: 9 square feet produced 2 cups of beans or .22 cups per square feet. 

Lesson Learned: Depending on the availability of other protein sources, to provide 8-10 cups of beans per week for a family of four, we would need to plant nearly 2,000 square feet of bean plants!  I’m not even sure my 2-cup yield would be enough to sow a field that large.

Randy Powers of Practical Tactical (co-author of Practical Prepping:No Apocalypse Required) wasn’t kidding when he said it takes about an acre of land to feed ONE person for an entire year. I’ve seen estimates lower than one acre using “square foot gardening” and “vertical gardening,” but the number of plants required will remain the same.

Homesteading will not be easy, but it’ll sure go smoother if you start now. Start small and build your experience level—one season at a time.

 

Who wants to listen to me talk for 4 hours?

Probably none of you. I know I wouldn’t. How about one hour? Sounds better to me.

Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 6.45.14 AM Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 6.46.20 AM Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 6.49.02 AMLast week I spent four combined hours on live internet radio and podcasts, talking about the upcoming post-apocalyptic collapse, survival, prepping, the Ebola threat, myself (occasionally), my books and the menstrual threat lurking around every corner (you can thank Prepper Chicks for that). Lots of great information, hearty laughs and serious confessions broken into four, one hour segments. There’s something for everyone—I promise.

Prepper Chicks morning segment via You Tube. Shooting the breeze with NRA instructor and kick-$#! prepped-mom Lori . Check out her website.

Prepper Chicks After Dark segment via You Tube. Playing the survival card game “Conflicted” with Lori and Kat “Herbal Prepper.” By the end of the show I had been awake for nearly 20 hours, so it gets a little “punchy.”

All Things Apocalyptic show via You Tube with best-selling author G. Michael Hopf. G. Michael served as a Marine in the Gulf War and now writes post apocalyptic novels for a living. Check out his critically acclaimed New World Series. 

Rational Survivor Podcast. Finally, Randy Powers and I spent more than an hour talking with Kyle, the Rational Survivor, about our upcoming collaboration, Practical Prepping: No Apocalypse Required, and many, many prepping topics. Lots of information in this one.

ENJOY!

Point of Crisis Arrives

1114 Steve Konkoly ebook POINT OF CRISIS_4_Lon thousands of Kindles across North America and the UK! Yes, I did have nearly 50 pre-orders from eager readers across the pond. Paper versions will ship today and the audiobook should be available in late August or early September.

If you haven’t purchased a copy, may I direct your attention to this link? Purchase Point of Crisis

Don’t forget to join my mailing list. I just uploaded an exclusive Black Flagged short story, available for download to members of the mailing list. Other perks include exclusive sneak peeks at upcoming work and exclusive discounts. Sign up here!

Pre-Order Point of Crisis today for July 30th release!

LINK TO PREORDER!

Check out THIS POST to see the cover and detailed description.

Thank you!

Cover reveal and blurb for Point of Crisis: Book Three in the Perseid Collapse Series

Getting close to the end now. With a launch date set for July 20th, I thought it was time to reveal what I’ve been slaving over for three-month, in between boat work, garden prep, yard prep, spring school festivities, dance recitals, book revisions…a little sleep here and there. Poor me, right? Not really.  Take a look at Jeroen ten Berge’s knock out design for the third, and possibly the last installment to The Perseid Collapse series. I haven’t decided if this is the last Fletcher adventure. Truly, that’s up to you—the reader. I will return to the Black Flagged books next, no matter what you say. I promised, and I keep my promises. A teaser blurb follows the cover, so keep scrolling. I’m extremely excited about this story.

1114 Steve Konkoly ebook POINT OF CRISIS_3_4L

 

“In the aftermath of the brutal attack on his family compound, Alex Fletcher embraces his rapidly expanding role within the New England Regional Recovery Zone (RRZ). Fueled by a limitless drive to protect his family and a rekindled sense of duty, he enlists the reluctant aid of a local militia commander—to help ease the public’s fears of a federal government takeover and maintain civil order within the Security Area (SA).

As Captain Fletcher digs deeper into the government’s plans, he starts to question the federal government’s intentions—and capability to stabilize the situation in New England. With the region’s major port facilities destroyed and the nation’s electrical grid crippled, Alex can’t envision how the government can supply the camps throughout the winter. He predicts a human cataclysm, with several hundred thousand desperate refugees marching north—into Maine.

At the same time, Alex learns that Eli Russell has started to rebuild his militia. Obsessed with finding and eliminating the psychopath that attacked his family, Alex scours the back roads to find him before he can destabilize the tenuous security situation in southern Maine—unaware that Eli’s plans are far more personal.

With the world swiftly unraveling around him, Alex will face his most difficult decisions ever…”

Doubleshot Reviews take on Event Horizon

1051 Steve Konkoly ebook EVENT HORIZON_3_LA special thanks to Heather Faville for putting the time and detail into an incredible review. I figured she would enjoy the novel, but you never really know with Heather—or any reader. I change up just enough in each novel—even closely tied series—that the experience isn’t the same. The last thing I want is for readers to feel like they’re digging through the same book they just finished.

Doubleshot Review of Event Horizon.

Interviewed by James Moushon of HBS Author’s Spotlight

This is a fantastic interview (not because of me) by James Moushon of HBS Author’s Spotlight. He clearly put a lot of time and effort into his questions, and I enjoyed taking the time to delve deeper into my own process. Take a look.

SPOTLIGHT Questions and Answers with the Author:

First things first. Let’s start with what’s next. Rumor has it that you have another book on the horizon called Event Horizon. Can you tell us the timeline for its release and give us a little tease?

Yes! I just wrapped up Event Horizon, the second book in The Perseid Collapse Series. It’s available now for preorder on Amazon, and will be released on March 20, 2014. The Perseid Collapse Series is a gritty, post-apocalyptic story set in New England that chronicles the collapse of society from an “event.” The “event” is a devastating combination of a natural phenomenon with a sinister, manmade attack. The first several chapters of the novel focus on the big picture conspiracy and mechanics behind the “event,” but the reader is quickly put in regular shoes, to experience the disaster on a personal level.

You have a good following on twitter. How important have your social media relationships been? How did you build your following in your niche? Did you use forums, newsletters and methods like that?

My Twitter following can be a little deceptive. While I do engage with readers on Twitter, most of the impact there comes from retweets by other authors or followers interested in my genres of writing (Post-apocalyptic and political/espionage thrillers).

It’s an easy way for readers to reach out to me, without a ton of expectation. 140 characters makes for short conversation. Twitter also draws people to my blog. I keep a Twitter feed rolling with book reviews (for other authors’ books) and articles that I have posted to my blog. I see these retweeted quite often. The bulk of my regular social media presence comes from Facebook, both my personal page and thriller-writing page. It’s probably the best place to catch what I’m doing, besides my blog.

All of my news filters through Facebook. Blog posts, new release updates, exclusive content releases, contests, genre related news pieces. Beyond that, I do keep a mailing list, which I regularly (2x per month) update with new release information, exclusive content (sneak peek chapters), and upcoming book deals. I converse regularly via email with many readers on this list.

Finally, I’ll talk about finding a niche and expanding it— on my blog at http://wp.me/p1knlr-8h. Sorry to do that to everyone, but I can’t possible do justice to this important topic without sending this interview’s word count through the stratosphere.

Do you do book signings, interviews, speaking and personal appearances? If so, when and where is the next place where your readers can see you? Where can they keep up with your personal contacts online?

I have to admit that this is one part of the writer’s world in which I am conspicuously absent. Prior to quitting my day job in September of 2013, my time was divided between day job, family and writing, which left little time for anything else. The prospect of giving up weekend time or evenings to sign books didn’t appeal to me.

I have started to do radio interviews, which typically occur later at night and do not interfere with home life. Last week I spent an hour talking to a radio host and listeners in Fairbanks, Alaska. Reaching out and expanding my public exposure is one of my 2014 goals.

You have great covers. They carry a theme and your brand with them. How does your book cover creation process work? Do you hand over the basic theme or do you have more of a hands-on approach? Do you get your readers involved in its development?

Jeroen ten Berge is a gifted artist. I truly wish I could say that I had a direct hand in creating these amazing covers, but I don’t. I send Jeroen an early draft, sometimes just half of the book, and he starts to conceptualize the cover. He’s a big post-apocalyptic fan, so we talked back and forth quite a bit about the story, but I never dictate what I want to see. I leave that to him, and the results are incredible.

What writer support groups do you belong to? Do they help with the writing, marketing and the publishing process?CATCH THE REST AT HBS AUTHOR’S SPOTLIGHT!

 

A quick look into the prepping world of The Perseid Collapse series

Readers of The Perseid Collapse series know that I teamed up with Randy Powers from Tactical Practical  to put a professional eye on the survival/homesteading/prepper aspects of the novel. The Perseid books take these themes to the next level, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t too far into left field with my ideas and theories. I reference a Handbook created by Randy in the acknowledgments of The Perseid Collapse, which contains an incredible amount of valuable, distilled information. I thought I would share one of his blog posts, which explains the BOLT Kits used by Alex Fletcher and his family. Randy has a unique take on the heavily popularized “Bug out Bag.” Enjoy!

Practical Tactical B.O.L.T. Kit©: What It Is And What It’s For

You’ve probably heard of a Bug Out Bag (BOB) or a Get Out Of Dodge (GOOD) bag that can be used as a grab and go kit in case you have to leave an area during an emergency situation. At Practical Tactical, we urge our clients to build what we call a B.O.L.T. (Basic Operations for a Limited Time) Kit. This mobile kit based on the basic tenets of preparedness: shelter, water, food, fire, comms/defense and psychological…and is geared towards executing your plan that was developed based on the threats in your area and your individual circumstances and will allow you to maintain your Basic Operations for a Limited Time as you BOLT to your next location that will hopefully be your safe haven from the immediate threat.

BOLT packBOLT pack II

Now, what makes our B.O.L.T. Kit any different from every other Bug Out or GOOD Bag out there? A focused philosophy, that’s what. Often when people talk about emergency bags (regardless of what you call them) the idea starts out the same…put together a bag of essential items like food and water in case you have to leave in a hurry because of an emergency that will help you survive the event…simple, right? But from there, things tend to spin out and become ever more nebulous. Inevitably you end with Jack the Survivor strapping a pack to his back that contains everything from his favorite comic books to ammo for his Barrett 50 cal. which by the way, he has lovingly cradled in his arms as he treks into the wilderness to live off the land for the duration of the apocalypse, and if you don’t do that too you’re doomed to fail miserably and die immediately or be swallowed up by the very mindless hordes you were trying to escape in the first place.

Whew! Just thinking about that was exhausting.

READ THE REST HERE!

I don’t often cry…

but when I do, it’s usually because I just completed the plot board for one of my novels and realized—I have a long way to go! Each Post-It represents a chapter. I typically add Post-Its as I go. Now I’m really crying.

Point of Crisis: Book Three in The Perseid Collapse Series promises to be a game changer.

Point of Crisis

Fiction Research: Black Hole or Thousand Points of Light?

The answer to this question depends on the genre. I’ll stick to what I know and focus on Technothrillers. 

Walking a fine lineReading reviews for my novels can be confusing. “If you like Clancy, you’ll love—” “Doesn’t overwhelm the reader with technical details.” “Too many equipment descriptions.” “Not Clancy.” All true, depending on the reader. For story details, I strive for the middle ground, with a tendency toward descriptions that would satisfy the pickiest Clancy readers.  On the flip side, Clancy-esque minutiae is NOT for everyone, including myself. I’ll be the first to admit, that I’ve read about three quarters of every Clancy novel. Readers skip passages no matter what you write, that’s reality—my goal is meet readers half way.  This has always been my personal preference as a reader, but as a writer, it’s necessary for survival. With most of my books purchased ($5.99 or below) and read on an e-reader, I can’t afford to lose a reader’s attention for very long. Within seconds, they can switch to something new and forget about me.

Research Bookmarks for The Perseid Collapse
Research Bookmarks for The Perseid Collapse

Been there. Done thatMany of my readers are convinced that I’m 1.)  a D.C. insider 2.) a former covert operative 3.) still involved in intelligence agency operations and 4.) have travelled extensively across every continent. There may be some truth to this. I’m not here to dispel rumors or burst anyone’s version of Steven Konkoly. What I will admit, is that I’ve never led an “off the books” Black Ops team on a raid against a Russian bioweapons facility or secretly crossed the Finnish border to investigate rumors of a virus outbreak in the Kola Peninsula.

How do I manage to capture the essence of these operations? My background gives me an advantage. I know the lingo (there’s still a ton I don’t know) and how to navigate online research. I know where to look for articles and how to tell if it’s authentic. Reading everything and anything (books, online articles, subscription sites) helps immensely. I wasn’t on the raid to capture Osama Bin Laden, but I know I could write a fictional OBL raid scene right now, and most readers would believe I had exclusive access to one of the DEVGRU operators on the mission.

How did someone like Tom Clancy get his descriptions, operational details and military jargon so close to reality? In the beginning, he must have fought for exclusive access to some incredible sources. There’s no other explanation. When he became famous, Clancy was granted nearly unfettered access to the military and D.C.  Keep in mind, Tom Clancy  worked in the insurance industry for nearly 15 years before his first novel, The Hunt for Red October, was released. Clancy never served in the military, but he managed to create the impression, from the very start, that he was an insider.

Research Bookmarks for Event Horizon
Research Bookmarks for Event Horizon

Prepping the battle field For me, initial research is critical to achieving momentum. I research on the fly, but I prefer to have the “framework research” already established. Once I finish with my version of plotting, as described in THE PROCESS, I sit back and figure out “framework” topics that need research. If a Marine Infantry Battalion plays a significant role in the story (like in The Perseid Collapse series), I need to know everything there is to know (without going crazy) about the current and future structures for a Marine Infantry Battalion. The Perseid Collapse series takes place in 2019, so I was particularly interested in papers published out of Quantico or the Navy War College about future structure and equipment concepts. This is one example of  dozens of framework research.

Don’t get bogged down here. You have to start writing at some point, and if you’re like me, I feel lost when I’m not in a story. This doesn’t require weeks of prep work. I identify the framework research and do enough to get me started on the novel. I typically like to write 20K words without breaking for heavy research.

Research on the flyThis is the land of Black Holes. Vast seas of time vanish from my day when I’m not disciplined about research on the fly. Sometimes it’s necessary to gain a solid understanding of an important concept, but there’s a difference between researching for the sake of educating yourself and researching to enhance your novel. Trust me, the line is extremely blurry. I still haven’t mastered it. Most of the time, you’ll only know it AFTER the fact. Like getting pick-pocketed. You’ll feel guilty and probably take a break—treat yourself to a snack, because…you’ve gone down a rabbit hole looking for a rabbit, and ended up finding Wonderland. I know I’ve seriously mismanaged my time, when I go on YouTube to watch a clip of a suppressed .50 Caliber sniper rifle for a scene in a book, and emerge from YouTube land 40 minutes later after watching the .50 Cal sniper scene from the movie Smoking Aces. It’s crazy if you haven’t seen it.  Careful, it’s violent and full of bad language. I just watched it again—I never learn.

Google Maps street level view of bridge in Event Horizon
Google Maps street level view of bridge in Event Horizon

Google is my travel agent:  I’ve never been to Novosibirsk, Russia, or Moscow, but I have it on pretty solid authority from a Russian author that most readers would never figure that out through my writing. Damn, I just spilled a secret. Oh well, while I’m at it—I’ve never been to Kazakstan or Argentina. My Russian author friend was surprised that I had never travelled to either Russian location. He knew I hadn’t lived there for any length of time, but the descriptions of the locations, the general feel and the “little things” passed muster.

I like the “little things.” Details about the culture, restaurants, beers, food, street conditions, traffic, graffiti, weather, money, trends—stuff you can find by reading traveller articles, restaurant reviews, hotel reviews, city reviews and tourism board sponsored sites. I spend time on this stuff, and in most cases, if I put a specific description of a location, hotel, street corner, park or restaurant in my novel, it’s real. I change the names (sometimes) for obvious reasons, but here’s a little hint. I rarely make us street names, and I often visualize scenes using Google Maps. If a gunfight occurs in front of 22 Bondegatan in Stockholm, disrupting a cafe with a red and white checkered awning, you’ll very likely find this to be a real place. Okay, I sort of pulled a fast one on you here. I’ve been to Stockholm—but I wrote the scenes from that book and submitted the manuscript to my editor before our Iceland Air flight left Boston.

Militia stronghold in Event Horizon-Eli Russell's place.
Militia stronghold in Event Horizon-Eli Russell’s place.

Here is an excerpt from a recent review. The reviewer is Gustavo Rossi from Buenos Aires. “…The political context is well managed too, and the references to Argentina (books 2 and 3 have long parts there) are surprisingly correct for an american writer…” I’ve never been there in person, but I’ve logged dozens of hours on the internet in “virtual Argentina.” Lesson learned? You don’t have to write on James Michener’s level to connect with a locale. 

Secret Contacts : I graduated from Annapolis with over 1,000 top notch men and women (somehow I got mixed in this crew), many of whom are still on active duty or in the active reserves. They’ve commanded warships, led SEAL platoons and Marine infantry companies in combat, served in the Pentagon, rotated on and off Unified Combatant Command staff (PACOM, CENTCOM, EURCOM, etc). During my eight years on active duty, I’ve met 100’s of other officer, enlisted and civilian contractors. It’s a vast network of professionals that doesn’t divulge secrets or pass information to celebrities. I’ll leave it at that.

The Bottom Line: For my style of writing and genre, detailed research is well worth the time. I’m always feeling the crunch to make progress on a novel, but not at the expense of the reader experience. The trick is deciding which details are essential to the story, and which are gratuitous displays of knowledge gained during a Black Hole trip through the Web. I’m still honing this process. 

 

EVENT HORIZON: Book Two in The Perseid Collapse

Cover Design and Pre-Order

The cover design for EVENT HORIZON is insanely amazing. Jeroen ten Berge went beyond the call of duty on this one…it doesn’t hurt that he has read every word of these books and has a deep understanding of The Perseid Collapse world. His vision of Boston’s post-apocalyptic landscape is evocative to say the least. Thank you, Jeroen!

I’ve seen bits and pieces of his creative process before, but nothing like this. He’s taken an iconic image of Boston and transformed it into the hell Alex Fletcher must face in EVENT HORIZON. Truly epic!

Before you take a look, and I forget. EVENT HORIZON will be available as an e-book on March 20th. YOU CAN PREORDER EVENT HORIZON TODAY

1051 Steve Konkoly ebook EVENT HORIZON_3_L


Boston before the fire

 

Exclusive sneak peek at EVENT HORIZON: Book Two in The Perseid Collapse Series…

Available for members of my Thriller Fiction Mailing List. 

Since I’ve passed the halfway point, I want to celebrate by releasing the Prologue for EVENT HORIZON: Book Two in The Perseid Collapse Series.

4,700 words (16-20 pages) chronicling Ryan Fletcher’s experience at Zero Hour on the morning of the EVENT. In this extended chapter, you’ll experience the terror from a different perspective, at a location much closer to the point of impact. What Ryan Fletcher experiences is by far the most apocalyptic scene in the series.

Below is a teaser. To receive the full passage on January 19th, sign up for my MAILING LIST. In addition to exclusive content, you’ll receive news of future discounts/promotions, along with new release updates. SIGN UP NOW!

If you’re already signed up, check your email for the full chapter! Thank you for reading.

 

EVENT HORIZON Teaser:

Prologue

EVENT 00:00 Hours

Boston University

Boston, Massachusetts

Ryan Fletcher squinted at his alien surroundings, agonizingly aware that he had been robbed of sleep. Unnaturally brilliant light penetrated the flimsy, translucent curtains, exposing the beige cinderblock walls and sparse furniture to his blurry vision. The glaring view of his dorm room faded quickly, replaced by a soft flickering light. He raised his head a few inches off the pillow to view the digital alarm clock resting on his desk. A dark object stared back. Wonderful. Heavy hands came together on his chest to manipulate the tiny buttons on his digital watch. A blue-green light bathed his face. 4:59. Brutal.

He closed his eyes and let his head sink into the familiar, worn-out pillow brought from home, and started to drift off—when the steel bedframe under his thin mattress started to rattle against the wooden dresser behind his head. Angry thoughts of the “T” waking him every morning of his freshmen year yanked him out of the murky depths of sleep. This is bullshit! He sat up, fully awake and pissed off at his room assignment. Nobody had mentioned the fact that the train would make a stop inside his room. The vibration intensified, accompanied by a deafening roar.

“No way I’m dealing with this for an entire year,” he mumbled.

The bed heaved upward, tossing him face down onto the carpeted floor. He lay prone for a few seconds, stunned by the sudden mayhem unleashed on his room. Another massive jolt rocked the building. He needed to get out of here.

Ryan grabbed the bedframe and tried to stand, but the room pitched violently, dropping him to his hands and knees. This is good enough. He crawled in the darkness toward the door, tumbling sideways into the wooden dresser beyond his bed as the building swayed. Ryan scurried into the small vestibule next to the door, moments before both of the room’s heavy, wooden dressers crashed to the floor. He leaned his back into the vestibule’s cold cinderblock walls and pressed his bare feet against the other.

Adding and releasing pressure on his legs to stay in place, Ryan moved with the building, hoping the walls didn’t collapse. Not that it would matter at that point. The building was nearly fifty years old, and if the interior walls started to fail, rescue teams would be lucky to find any of them alive. He dug his feet into the wall in front of him and closed his eyes. He was on autopilot, too disoriented and terrified to put any effort into anything beyond his immediate survival. He knew that he should be sitting under the doorframe, but he couldn’t convince his body to give up the stable position he had established between the two walls.

Moments later, the shaking abated, and the thunderous rumble yielded to distant car alarms and screaming. Ryan stood on wobbly legs and braced himself against the walls with both hands, taking deep breaths to fight the nausea. A strong campfire smell drew his attention to the flimsy curtains flapping gently through the jagged remains of the window. A wave of dizziness struck, buckling his knees. The window could wait.

Bright yellow and orange light danced against the room’s dark interior, pushing his curiosity. He had to see what happened outside of the building. Testing his legs, he edged out of the vestibule and stopped in front of the fallen dressers. Glancing up at broken windows, a flash-flood of rational, analytical thoughts overloaded him. First things first.

He tilted the top dresser upward, letting all of the empty drawers fall to the floor as he heaved it against the opposite wall. His dresser was next, but he took care to keep the drawers pushed firmly shut. Ryan dug through the dresser and quickly replaced his athletic shorts with jeans. Thick wool socks covered his feet, followed by a pair of well-travelled, dark brown hiking boots. He saw no sense in cutting his feet on broken glass before he left his room. He stepped over to the window and brushed aside the flimsy curtains. Flames engulfed western Boston, extending as far as he could see from his sixth story window.

That was 700 words…get the rest on January 19th by signing up HERE

The complete Perseid Collapse interview…

by Randy Powers of Practical Tactical.

This isn’t the first time Randy has challenged me to dissect one of my novels. Our early 2013 discussion of The Jakarta Pandemic is one of the most thorough, well-constructed interviews I’ve had the pleasure of giving. Mr. Powers puts time and thought into meaningful questions, which deeply explore the themes buried in my work. Even if I didn’t have themes, I’d have to make them up to satisfy Randy’s incredibly rich line of questioning 🙂

THE INTERVIEW:

The Fletchers are back in The Perseid Collapse and, I’ve got to say, we’ve missed them. Six years after the the Jakarta pandemic ravaged the life they had known Alex and Kate are pushing ahead into the new reality and are even sending their son Ryan off to college. How about you take it from there and tell us a little bit about the Fletchers and sort of set the stage for what’s going on in The Perseid Collapse?

The Fletchers are trying as much as they can to maintain a normal life. They live in the same home as they did in the first book. I struggled with whether they should stay in that house, whether there was too much bad juju in that neighborhood, a lot went down. They learned that bugging in like they did in The Jakarta Pandemic, although Maine is not as populated as some areas, in a relatively crowded neighborhood in a suburb was not a good idea then and it won’t be a good idea next time because the next time it’s going to be worse. Even if it’s the same or a lesser disaster, it’s going to end up being worse because the memories are fresh. The Fletchers made some money, or retained more money than everyone else, when everything was more or less wiped out after the Jakarta pandemic. So that’s kind of where the novel starts. Their son is on to college, they’re out on their sailboat, which is part of that normal life. They’re not afraid to go out, but they’re cautious. They have preparations. They have BOLT kits. They don’t live like most Americans, but they maintain the appearance that they do.

The Perseid Collapse opens up in China (something I certainly was not expecting) and once again it seems the Red Dragon is impacting the Fletchers world. Can you offer us a little insight into your motivation here?

I think it reflects more of my techno-thriller background that I’ve developed over the last four books in the Black Flagged series. I wanted to give readers a little more. Often times reading other books where you see an America that has been impacted by an EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse), there was never an explanation for what happened or even a hint of it….For me, I like to know a little more. So, I set up this international conspiracy based on the Chinese to get them back on the international scene and level things.

One of the things I noticed very early in the book is even though they’re the same people, no one that survived the Jakarta Pandemic escaped without being changed in some way. I noticed it in Kate first, but as the story moved along I saw the same thing in each of core characters and especially in Alex. Everyone seems to have a bit more edge to them and felt a bit grittier. Not in a bad way, but in a real way, and it seems like our group of survivors are more comfortable with themselves and with each other in their reality following the pandemic. Was this intentional and do you want to walk us through your thought process on how each member of the Durham Road group has come through their last six years?

In the first book of the Perseid, everyone has changed. They’ve retained a lot of their characteristics and their core values, but I think realism has really settled in. I thought it was most obvious in Alex, but I agree with you…and a number of other readers have said that they really liked seeing Kate and learning more about her and her mindset. Like you said, early on she establishes herself…not necessarily forcefully…but you know she’s a force to be reckoned with. She was always like that in the beginning. She was always the one that recommended doing the early shooting. She was kind of the more hard core proponent of violence in the first book. Now that’s kind of transferred over to Alex, but you can definitely see that shift.

This story gets downhill in a hurry and just picks up speed from there. A pandemic virus shook things up for the Fletchers last time around, so what is the disaster catalyst that kicks things off in The Perseid Collapse?

READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW HERE! Sorry to do that to you, but head on over to Randy’s site. He doesn’t bite and you won’t find yourself on a government watch list…like you will reading my stuff!

READ The Jakarta Pandemic Interview.

Two amazing reviews for The Perseid Collapse

I rarely post reviews of my own work here, but two writers have gone above and beyond the call of duty to bring The Perseid Collapse to life for potential readers. Joseph Souza (an award-winning writer and friend) and Devon Kodger (reviewer, blogger and writer) at triplemreviews  have written, what I call “dream reviews.” The kind of review every author prays will materialize.

Don’t let these two scare you. Any review is a dream come true—good or bad, because it means that someone has read your work and cared enough to express an opinion. It’s all good in my book.

Joseph Souza’s review

Devon Kodger’s review

My writing has made me a little paranoid…

which isn’t a bad thing. I think.

Here’s the situation. My son needed a ride to a friend’s house on a weekend morning, and like every weekend morning, I like to lounge around (after writing…I’m up early on weekends too out of sheer habit). 9:30 rolled by, and my son appeared out of nowhere to inform me, “It’s time to go.” I was dressed in a pair of shorts, a sweatshirt and Birkenstocks (no socks). Without donning a jacket, I dutifully jumped in the car and drove him. I didn’t plan to get out of the car, so why would I need a jacket or shoes? On the drive home, my brain started to come up with SCENARIOS, and NONE of them ended well for a man dressed in shorts, a flimsy sweatshirt and sandals, on a 25 degree morning.  

I spend six months at a time (longer for my first book, The Jakarta Pandemic), researching, creating and “playing out” one worst case SCENARIO after another. Not surprisingly, it has left an indelible mark on my thought processes and awareness. 

We had our first “sticking” snow this morning, and after a brief, “I love winter” sentiment, my mind went somewhere else. “Do we have enough food to last the winter, if the power failed right now and didn’t return?” That’s a product of The Jakarta Pandemic. The protagonist had to endure a Maine winter without power or the prospect of replenishing their food stockpile, while everyone was trying to take what they had. Which reminds me, “better check the ammo supply to0…what time does Cabelas open?” Eventually, I settle back into “these SCENARIOS are one in a million,” no need to run out today and fill up the grocery cart with canned goods, dried foods, medicine…”where’s my list again?” See what happens?

Right now, I’m living in Alex Fletcher’s new world, imagining what it would be like to navigate the unfamiliar jigsaw puzzle streets of Boston, in a city on the verge of violent, ugly collapse. He’ll get back to Maine, eventually, but the state will never be the same—for either of us. When I look around, I catch glimpses of the post-apocalyptic Maine brought to life in The Perseid Collapse. I can live with that…at least I’m not writing about zombies. I can’t imagine running around with that in my head.

Is this a writer’s curse? An occupational hazard for sure, but I think it better describes a writer’s GENESIS. The SCENARIOS didn’t start when I decided to write a novel. The novels came when I finally decided to write about the SCENARIOS. At some point, everyone asks at what point I decided to write a novel? It’s hard to answer, since I’ve been creating them for years.

I just finally decided to put one of them on paper. Now I can’t stop.

Maybe my paranoia made the writing!

The Perseid Collapse goes live

Not that this comes as a big surprise. Still, it’s a little surreal to know that another book is out there, for anyone to read.

It’s a little scary too, since this is what I do for a living now. Write books. I no longer have a convenient paycheck rolling into my bank account, on top of what Amazon pays me. It’s actually a lot more exciting than scary, and it couldn’t feel better.

With that said, The Perseid Collapse is now available on Amazon. You can download the ebook or pre-order a hardcopy(will be shipped Dec 6th), or wait for the audiobook in January—can you really wait?

Apparently, someone has already read and reviewed The Perseid Collapse. It’s an incredible review, capturing the essence of the story.

Check it out: First Amazon Review for The Perseid Collapse.

Another review just hit Amazon from award winning writer and apocalyptic author, Joseph Souza: Souza’s Review

Welcome to  The Perseid Collapse world! 

One for the Black Flagged fans

I realize all you have been hearing lately is “Perseid Collapse this and Jakarta Pandemic that.” I’ve admittedly been in POST-APOCALYPTIC mode for nearly five months at this point, and I haven’t spoken a word about Black Flagged and the Petrovich’s, aside from assuring everyone that THEY WILL RETURN.

While writing the acknowledgments for The Perseid Collapse, I commented that my wife has been instrumental to the difficult shift between The Petrovich’s in the Black Flagged series to the Fletcher’s in The Perseid Collapse. After writing FOUR Black Flagged novels, it wasn’t easy.

Writing those lines reminded me of a short story I had written about Daniel Petrovich’s early years, when he went by a different name, Marko Resja. I haven’t mentioned this piece in a while, and some of you may not be familiar with it. It’s buried in Black Flagged Redux, at the end of the novel. At some point, it will fit into one of my novels…when I go back and tell Daniel, Jessica and General Sanderson’s stories. Black Flagged Beginnings. Until then, I still owe you Black Flagged Book Five, which will end the current CORE series. I hope to start working on this in the spring of 2014. Coming up soon.

Here is the excerpt I wrote for Black Flagged Beginnings. Unedited. Enjoy!

Excerpt from Black Flagged Beginnings

Resurfacing one of my favorite interviews

With The Perseid Collapse launch rapidly approaching it’s magic date—December 1st, I wanted to bring back some memories of it’s predecessor, The Jakarta Pandemic. TJP was my first novel, kicking my writing career into full gear. A ton has been said about TJP, covering every aspect of the story. I’ve been interviewed several times, and hundreds of independent reviews (individual blogs and websites) have been posted.

Randy Powers of Practical Tactical interviewed me during the late spring of 2013, and his questions blew me away. It was evident from the very start, that he had put an incredible amount of time and thought into my novel. This is by far one of my favorite interviews. He asks some hard questions about the more “controversial” material, giving me an opportunity to explain how I merge fiction with research.

THE INTERVIEW:

Welcome, Steve.  First and foremost, thank you for your service.

Thank you, Randy. I really appreciate the opportunity to dig below the surface of my writing and expose some of the core ideas and concepts that help shape the stories. Regardless of what other authors may claim, writing is a personal endeavor, no matter how far fetched the plot or action may seem to the reader. There is always something deeply personal embedded in the writing, and the threads that wrap around these aspects often define the story’s core essence.

In your writings, there is no such thing as black and white.  You deal in personal confliction and there are no easy answers.  You have also said that your military experience figures heavily into your writings.  With all that said, TJP brings all that together in a complex character and gives us Alex Fletcher.

Ten years out of the Marines, Alex has fully transitioned back into the private sector and seems to be doing quite well.  Putting aside what I assume would be Alex’s tendency to be prepared due to his military experience, I would like to talk a little about what motivated Alex to focus on the threat of a pandemic and make preparations for his family.  At the end of Chapter 5, we learn about a presentation that Alex did for his company Biosphere and the research that went into it.  We learned that process “changed his life” in apparently more ways than just professionally.  Can you talk about how this process impacted Alex and his decisions when it comes to his family’s preparedness?

When I started to conceptualize The Jakarta Pandemic, I wanted to highlight the difficulties of surviving a catastrophic level event in a suburban setting. The leading difficulty in my opinion would be dealing with everyone else’s varying degree of unpreparedness in the face of a complete lack of essential services. With that in mind, I wanted to start Alex in a position of self-sufficiency, and I chose this “presentation” as his catalyst to start preparing for a worst-case scenario. The conclusion Alex draws from his research reflects the culmination of my own examination of the scenario. In a nutshell, it’s not a matter of IF something like this will happen, it’s a matter of WHEN, and WHEN it happens, survival will depend on your basic level of preparedness and planning.

I’ve read that you raised your personal level of preparedness AFTER writing TJP.  I was a bit shocked by that fact.  One of my favorite parts of the book is when we get a first look at the Fletcher’s supplies as we join Alex for an inventory “the Frito supply” for the first time.  You describe the Fletcher’s well rounded stockpile in some detail and even lay out a good plan for rotating food stores as if you had been doing it yourself for a long time.  I particularly appreciated how you pointed out throughout the book that building a stockpile like the Fletcher’s is something that anyone can do if they make a plan and execute it in a practical way.  Was family preparedness and establishing an emergency survival kit a chicken and egg type thing for you as you wrote the book?  And, without divulging too much, how much did Alex teach you about being more prepared and what steps have you taken in your personal life to be better prepared for any future emergency?

Most people are shocked to learn that I never visited a prepper or survivalist website prior to finishing The Jakarta Pandemic. In many ways, I’m glad that I didn’t. I’m a details oriented writer, and despite the fact that the scene you described is exhaustively detailed, I would have driven myself insane trying to get the Fletcher’s “bunker” perfect. I put a considerable amount of thought into the contents of their survival stockpile, starting with the basics: Food, Water, and Medical Supplies…and expanding from there. And I certainly expanded far beyond the basics. Solar panels connected to battery storage, two oil tanks for storing fuel (this is a New England phenomena…most of you have natural gas or propane), wood burning stove (which I don’t think they ever used), generator, antibiotics (unethically obtained through Alex’s employer) and many other items that might come in handy if the shelves at your local Home Depot and grocery store emptied overnight. Imagine going cold turkey off Fritos…devastating. :0)

So to answer your question, I created this incredible stockpile or “bunker” in my novel, and didn’t have so much as three extra cans of vegetables in my own house to back up one of the main themes in my book. A few months after publishing the novel, I took Alex Fletcher’s advice and started to slowly build up a reserve of food and supplies, one shopping trip at a time. It’s truly amazing what you can amass in two years, when you take a systematic, consistent approach to stockpiling supplies. Does my basement now resemble Alex’s? Not even close, but I feel confident that my family could ride out a major disaster, without resorting to desperate measures. Of course, the same question always remains, regardless of how much you prepare…what is your neighbor doing to avoid resorting to desperate measures, and what is your plan to deal their desperation. This becomes a pinnacle issue for Alex, and his plan is woefully lacking in this author’s opinion…on purpose.

Most folks living a preparedness lifestyle understand that planning is paramount to the success of any emergency plan.  This usually means having a plan to ride out an emergency situation at home, also known as sheltering in place or bugging in, and also having a plan to evacuate if the situation dictates, commonly referred to as bugging out.  If the plan is to shelter in place, neighbors can become a real problem like we see in TJP.  We don’t want to give the story away, but what are your thoughts on working with neighbors or building a survival team, given that the necessities of dealing with a pandemic primarily call for isolation?  Makeshift alliances develop in TJP, but should Alex have developed relationships and built his team within the neighborhood well ahead of the pandemic since he viewed it as such a real threat?

This is hard to say. Unfortunately for Alex, his plan from the start was isolation, but he quickly learned that this wasn’t going to be a viable option. Without recognizing the need for a diplomacy based “crowd control” plan prior to the arrival of the pandemic virus, he really shortchanged himself and put his family in danger. With that said, none of us want to view our neighborhood as an episode of Survivor, where shifting alliances and secret plots undermine the ease of living and sense of relaxation we come to expect when we pull into the driveway. Alex had some core friends in the neighborhood, which came in handy as the conflict escalated, and he found a few surprise allies along the way. If anything, Alex could have been more open to dispelling a few stereotypes that hindered him in the beginning. I don’t write big moral lessons into my novels, but Alex’s character gave me the opportunity to point out a few negative behaviors that most of us can find in ourselves from time to time.

Read the full interview

Final Cover for The Perseid Collapse

0979 Steve Konkoly ebook THE PERSEID COLLAPSE_2_LJeroen ten Berge has turned the tables on me! He’s delivered an incredible cover design, and I haven’t finished writing the book!  As always, Jeroen scored a bullseye. His design brilliantly captures the core essence of The Perseid Collapse’s sweeping apocalyptic world.

2019. Six years after the Jakarta Pandemic, the United States stands at the brink of a fiscal and industrial resurgence. Stories of prosperity and confidence dominate the headlines, orchestrated to distract the nation from a dangerous current of hostility and fear—running strong below the surface. Nobody has forgotten the horrors of the Jakarta Pandemic. Sickness. Hunger. Desperation. Unspeakable violence.

On August 19, 2019, an unprecedented “mass event” will release a darkness across the United States. A human darkness with a vast appetite for violence and chaos. Alex Fletcher will awaken to this new world, catapulted unwillingly into an frantic odyssey, against overwhelming odds, to save his family and friends.”

Big News Part Two…

Last week, I alluded to a second big change in the works, though I suppose the word “change” is a bit of an understatement. The news is a complete paradigm shift for me. The bottom line?

I RESIGNED FROM MY POSITION AT PFIZER INC. about two weeks ago, in order to pursue a career as a full time writer/author. For those of you who know me outside of my books, this move should come as no real surprise.

My passion for writing long ago eclipsed my enthusiasm to continue working as a pharmaceutical sales representative. With five books published, and an endless supply of ideas rattling around in my head, I had reached the point where it no longer made sense on any level to continue donning a suit every day and driving all over Maine to do a job I had long ago ceased to enjoy. It was truly a no-brainer, and couldn’t come at a better time. As you can probably guess, this is a good thing for everyone…not just me.

Most importantly for you, the books will come faster. The Perseid Collapse will now be available in mid to late November, instead of December. Instead of writing for two hours in the morning, I now have the entire day…and I have no intention of abandoning my early morning routine. I anticipate releasing 4-6 books per year, instead of two. It’s amazing what I can accomplish without having “report for duty” at Pfizer every day. I’ve written more in the past several days than in all of August, and I haven’t settled into a routine yet.

Tomorrow will be my first FULL day writing, and I couldn’t be more excited. For the first time in 24 years, I have no work uniform to pull off a hangar. No Service Dress Blues (Navy). No camouflage (USMC liaison days). No suit (Pfizer days). Just shorts and a T-shirt…I couldn’t be happier.

The Perseid Collapse series concept

The past few weeks have yielded a changes. Big changes. I’ll share one of them with you now, and the other in a few days.

First, after an impromptu strategy session with cover designer, Jeroen ten Berge, I decided to expand the Perseid Collapse universe into a multiple book series (three minimum).  I had originally planned a single novel, with the possibility of a sequel, but 50k words into the story (200 pages), I had only finished one-third (barely) of my storyboard. Not only was The Perseid Collapse heading into uncharted page-count territory, but I felt like I was holding back to keep the novel length under control. I don’t like to hold back in my novels, so I picked a logical break point on my storyboard and divided it into two books, adding additional scenes and incorporating a new thread into the overall series concept. Nearly 20K words later, I can assure you this was the right decision. The new thread binds the books together far more tightly than I had originally envisioned. I’m extremely happy with the result.

What does this mean for you? The Perseid Collapse books will be shorter (325-375 words), but they will arrive more frequently. Since book two is already plotted, I will start it immediately upon completing book one. I typically take a month off between books…not this time. I anticipate launching The Perseid Collapse in early December and The Perseid Collapse: Event Horizon in March. The third book, The Perseid Collapse: Point of Crisis, will likely arrive in the fall of 2014.

At this point, the Black Flagged series readers are probably scratching their heads, wondering what has happened to Black Flagged Reprisals. Have no fear, Reprisals is on target for early summer 2014. I had to push it back, just slightly to accommodate the revival of the apocalyptic world started with The Jakarta Pandemic. While The Jakarta Pandemic and Black Flagged series are distinctly different worlds, The Perseid Collapse series incorporates more of the technothriller flair that I’ve developed over four Black Flagged books. Without reading The Jakarta Pandemic (though I highly encourage it), Black Flagged readers should be able to sink right into The Perseid Collapse series, feeling very comfortable in a gritty, fast paced, plot twist rich environment.

The fall promises to be an exciting time. More big news on the way! Be sure to sign up for my new release updates list HERE

Chapter Three Sample now available

I just posted Chapter Three here on my blog. I plan to release one chapter every Friday (or Thursday if I’m out-of-town), but I won’t add a new post like this every week…no need to clog your email boxes with notifications. I do have some exciting news about The Perseid Collapse, which I will release by next Friday, along with at least two chapters. Sorry to leave you with a cliff hanger, but I still have some details to work out and a plot board to modify. Trust me when I say, that the news is good for reader and author alike.

If you haven’t signed up for my New Release Updates List, I highly encourage it. It’ll give you a leg up on New Release information…and some of the giveaway prizes that will be linked to The Perseid Collapse Trilogy’s release. Did I say Trilogy? Click here to sign up.

Review of Russell Blake’s Upon a Pale Horse

Pale HorseFans of Russell Blake have a lot to celebrate with this novel. The prolific writer has been relatively quiet lately, for good reason. His latest thriller sizzles with intensity and combines the best of Blake’s worlds in one, “must read” novel. This one will leave you questioning everything. Grab a copy HERE.

“This is Russell Blake at his best. A perfect blending of Ludlum-esque international conspiracy, “The Firm” like intrigue and Crichton-level biomedical detail. Nobody can take a conspiracy theory and spin it into a convincing, high stakes “cat and mouse” game like Blake. If you think Upon a Pale Horse is just “another medical thriller,” you couldn’t be more sorely mistaken.

Blake’s ambitious, finely executed story pits a resourceful attorney, Jeffrey Rutherford, against a ruthless cabal, in a race against time to stop a jaw-dropping plot to unleash the apocalypse and cleanse the world. The background conspiracy fueling Blake’s plot is exquisitely (and frighteningly) weaved, leaving the reader with a well-founded sense of urgency and dread. Tightly staged across two continents, Rutherford’s plight will keep you affixed to the screen, as David takes on Goliath in an unforgettable end game.

The intrigue, deception, and twists alone are well worth the price of admission, along with a blistering plot; but as an author well versed in bioweapons, virology and pandemic research, I have to give Blake credit for doing his homework. His pandemic information is accurate, accessible and damn scary…his scenario will leave you sleepless, wondering what lurks around the next corner. Trust me, if Blake’s instincts are correct, you don’t want to know.”

The Process…

Six Books Later.

Never before has the process crystalized so clearly, as it has for my sixth book, The Perseid Collapse. The long overdue sequel to The Jakarta Pandemic has percolated in my head for nearly six months (while writing Vektor), which certainly helped smooth the transition, but I credit “the process” for swiftly delivering me to the starting line…the point where I can start writing. For me, the less time I spend in between novels, the better. I find myself lost without a manuscript-in-progress. Putting words into a story eases that feeling.

I often joke around about the”organic” mental process for creating the complex plots in my novels. “Neural Flow” is a term I used recently to some amusement. The Black Flagged series is extremely complicated and deeply nuanced, or so I have been told, and I wish I could keep it all straight in my head. “A Beautiful Mind” I am not. Instead, I rely on a process that appears rigid, but is inherently flexible. Let’s face it, any system based on the placement of yellow stickies on poster board isn’t exactly chiseled in stone. Still, I’ve followed the same process for three novels, which implies a level of rigidity…for the process at least

The rest is fluid and can change at a whim. A random thought while driving (I have more windshield time than I care to admit), a tech article on the internet, YouTube gun video (I watch far too many of those), a ten minute Call of Duty game play with Matthew (son), a sudden discussion about a character with my wife…all of these can change the course of my novel within the flash of a synapse. I’m always thinking about the story, and the story is always changing, slightly…sometimes drastically. This is the neural process, and I can’t really explain it. What I can explain is how I tee up the writing and keep myself on track throughout the three to four months it takes me to strike the words.

I start out with a “talk through.” Basically, I vomit a VERY rough synopsis of the story and expand it over the course of three to five days. If you read it, you’d probably feel like puking. It barely counts as English, but it works. I take this four to five page document and try to identify potential scenes from the scribble.

TalkthPerseid

For the Perseid Collapse, I identified 44 scenes, which translates into a minimum of 44 chapters. I created a yellow sticky for each scene, and added them to my board.

The board takes on a life of its own over time, with stickies moving back and forth, up and down…or into the trash. New stickies arrive weekly. The topmost stickies are labeled to represent individual or group entities in the story. I place scenes involving these entities under the appropriate heading, in chronological order. Books in the Black Flagged series required some creative space arrangement on the board. The Perseid Collapse is a welcome break from multiple organizations and diffuse subplots. Compare the two. Vektor is shown in the first picture.

PBvektor PlotboardPerseid

The last piece of the puzzle was recommended by a fellow Maine writer and the host of my local writing group, Bryan Wiggins. He thought Aeon Timeline would help me keep track of the complex timing involved in the Black Flagged novels…wow has that program saved my ass on multiple occasions. I finished Black Flagged Vektor without it, which was a big mistake. My inner voice told me to take the time and input every scene in Aeon Timeline. I resisted, but quickly relented and spent an entire day inputing the scenes. Without going into detail, let’s just say that I found a few critical timeline errors that my readers would not have missed. For Perseid, I will input the scenes as they are written. The story takes place over a 72 hour period, which doesn’t give me a lot of wiggle room in terms of timeline.

A lot happens to the Fletchers in those three days.

Did I mention the research? I’ll save the details for another post.

Interviewed by Practical Tactical

INTERVIEW with STEVEN KONKOLY

I was recently interviewed by Randy Powers, creator of Practical Tactical, a prepper based  blog focused on passing “practical” information on a wide variety of survival, prepper and every day situational awareness. His collections of interviews and articles is diverse, entertaining and not what you’d expect. One in particular was eye-opening and education. Al Bartlett’s talk on Arithmetic, Population and Energy. Read the article once and you’ll become smarter. Read it twice and you’ll surpass 99.9% of the population in terms of understanding statistics…very practical statistics, and how you can apply them to debunk much of the nonsense you hear on the television today. Al Bartlett’s Talk.

 

As always, I digress a bit. Randy’s interview was by far the most comprehensive to this date, showing an in-depth analysis of The Jakarta Pandemic and the situations the unraveled throughout the story. Since initial publication, The Jakarta Pandemic has reached over 50,000 readers. The most common theme brought up by readers in reviews or emails is that the story made them think about their own situation in a similar crisis. Randy really took this to a higher level in his interview, cherry picking what he interpreted to be the most important lessons for readers and asking me to expand on my thought process while creating specific scenes or characters.

Enjoy the interview and by all means check out Randy’s posts and articles. If you have any questions at all about home defense, prepping, self defense…whatever you can think of in this arena, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Randy. He is a wealth of information.

INTERVIEW with STEVEN KONKOLY 

The Jakarta Pandemic’s LOST SCENES

Actually, they were never really lost. I cut 60,ooo words from the first draft on purpose…to save you from reading a 200,000 word novel. Think Stephen King’s THE STAND length.

21 months after The Jakarta Pandemic’s launch, I have brought about 30,000 words back to life in a re-release. I reformatted and added this material to the end of my book as bonus material. Of course, I don’t expect previous readers to buy the new version. You can download the material right here: BONUS MATERIAL PDF or BONUS  MATERIAL MS Word

What made me decide to resurrect this material? Reading The Thin White Line by Craig DiLouie.

I’ll explain. Most of the material cut from my novel consisted of imbedded news reports, television interviews and radio show segments. Since the story is told solely from the main character’s point of view, there is no omniscient presentation of information about the world pandemic situation. The reader learns about the pandemic through Alex Fletcher eyes and ears. Since I did a ton of research for the novel, I was over eager to “share” volumes of this information with my audience. Not the best idea when you are trying to move a story along and maintain tension. The virtual editing floor was littered with cuts made on the reader’s behalf.

Craig DiLouie’s self-published book, The Thin White Line, is a painstakingly researched, fictional account of an avian flu pandemic in 2012. Presented on a more clinical scale than The Jakarta Pandemic, he tells the story from multiple perspectives within a beleaguered healthcare system and collapsing civil structure. He masterfully details every academic aspect that I cut from The Jakarta Pandemic and more. Way more. Read together, I believe The Thin White Line and The Jakarta Pandemic redefine pandemic fiction.

To complete the ultimate pandemic experience:  Check out The Thin White Line at Craig’s website.

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT FREE! for now, so don’t miss out on this great opportunity.

For those of you unfamiliar with Craig DiLouie’s work, he is a well established writer within the apocalyptic horror genre, featuring several wildly popular titles, including Tooth and Nail (which I reviewed on this blog) and Infection. His most recent work, The Killing Floor (a continuation of Infection) was just released by Permuted Press to an eager fan base.

The Jakarta Pandemic #samplesunday giveaway


All of my samples so far have focused on my upcoming novel, Black Flagged, leaving my first novel, The Jakarta Pandemic,with abandonment issues. To remedy this, I added a sample to the “samples” link box, or you can find it here:

Jakarta Pandemic Sample

Thanks everyone, and have a happy #samplesunday