Canister X – A.P. Fuchs: Zombie, Paranormal Romance and Superhero Novelist, Blogger, Artist, Publisher

On the 5th of January, I put my book, Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead, up for free at Amazon after joining their Amazon Exclusive program. Right now, the book is still free even though it was meant to be a five-day promotion, which should have ended yesterday. Perhaps they’re keeping it free and will eat the cost of paying me from today onward? Or maybe it’s just free and I won’t make anything. Regardless, I don’t mind it being free right now as, to me, it’s one of the geekiest and coolest books I’ve ever written and I simply want to share it with people. If you as a reader want to support my work–I do feed my family off my publishing–then by all means please check out the Kindle books on the left of this page, or the paperback versions on the right. Thanks, if you do.

Since the 5th, and as of 1:07CST today, Zombie Fight Night has been downloaded 1377 times across all Amazon platforms. Not bad at all. I’ll have to see how the free thing goes behind-the-scenes and if Amazon’ll start charging for it or if I’ll have to manually do something. Regardless, now’s a great time to get a couple free books from me, no strings attached.

What’s the other free book? It’s book one of my Paranormal Romance series, Blood of my World, called Discovery of Death. Memories of Death and Life of Death are the sequels. Discovery of Death became a freebie in September of 2011 and has been downloaded 15,976 times, and that’s on Kindle only never mind Nook, iPad, etc. I plan on keeping it free for now as it’s helped move copies of its sequels.

Here’s the point: I’m fortunate to have been writing long enough to have enough of a backlist that I can put books up for free while still earning a living off the other ones. Ever since I started writing, money has never been a motivator. The only “motivation” dollar-wise was to be able to make enough to live on so I can write and publish fulltime. Also, by having a large backlist, this enables me to conduct these experiments without taking too much of a hit or any at all. Like I posted last time, I try these things out on myself first before considering adopting it as part of my business model for those I publish so as to ensure it’s worth doing so on the money front. To short change an author with their own work . . . yeesh. No, thanks.

Will the risk of offering Zombie Fight Night for free pay off, or will it be a loss monetarily but a gain readership-wise? Time will tell. Watch this space.

I’m conducting a publishing experiment with Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead and between now and the 9th–the 9th being the last day–it will be free on Amazon Kindle. And it is also only available on Amazon Kindle as I hooked up to their exclusive program for this eBook.

As both an artist and publisher, I need to find good ways to promote not just myself but also my authors. However, to suddenly take all the books I’m responsible for and do a campaign like this one, which is essentially a gamble, it would be unfair to take away 5 days’ worth of royalties from my authors without knowing if it’s to their benefit in the long run.

Anyway, I just got online now after being offline all day and at about 5:30PM CST, my Kindle rank in the free store for Zombie Fight Night is #604. That’s pretty good considering I haven’t promoted anything yet. Can we hit #1? I don’t know, but you’re more than welcome to help by clicking on the book cover above and downloading a copy. It’s free, and will only take you around 30 seconds. If you don’t have a Kindle, then a whole host of free apps are available here for your iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, PC, etc.

Here’s the story:

In 2027 A.D., the Zombie Apocalypse took the world by storm and no one was prepared. Countless lives were lost as humanity battled to regain control of their planet. Eventually, they did, and out of the ashes of fallen civilization rose a new world, one bent on revenge against the hordes of the undead that took everything from them.

Enter Tony Sterpanko, entrepreneur extraordinaire who found a way to capitalize on humanity’s thirst for vengeance against the zombie. He created Zombie Fight Night, a worldwide craze where the undead men and women who remained from the apocalypse faced off against people and beings that once existed on Earth or were existing for the first time.

It is ten years later and at Blood Bay Arena, fortunes are won and lost. Men are made millionaires over night. Others are not so lucky and find themselves broken and destitute.

Mick Chelsey is one such man: gambling addict, lousy husband and Zombie Fight Night fanatic.

Except now, in order to still watch the fights and try to win back all he’s lost, he needs to bet fast and big otherwise death will come for him.

Let the battles begin.

Zombies fight Bigfoot, werewolves, vampires, Axiom-man, Bruce Lee, samurai, kickboxers, robots and more in this ode to blood-and-guts action from Blood of the Dead author, A.P. Fuchs.

You ready to get it on?

I now present to you what I think is one of the most coolest books of my career, Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead, for free.

Enjoy, and thanks for downloading.

Those of you who are in my inner circle know that I keep very busy, usually with 7-8 projects on the go at any one time. Usually, those projects are not my own but those of whom I publish. Sometimes some of them are mine.

This year has been a hectic year, namely running from around July through September and into October in which I worked like a mad man, trying to get everything done for the C4 Comic Con. As a result, I burnt myself out and November was a hard month for me workwise. I’m anything but a lazy guy and in November I felt kind of empty inside, my drive and passion for what I do still there, but the desire to carry it out was muted. I was tired all the time. No matter how much sleep I got, it wasn’t enough. Something broke internally during the July – Sept. marathon and November was the month I paid the price for it.

Anyway, December was much more productive, and as we head into 2012, I’ve been thinking about what the beginning of the New Year will look like for me, both for my personal work and those that I publish. That said, I’m eager to get going, but am taking a Christmas break before getting back into the swing of things, ensuring I’m recharged to the max before going hardcore again.

As a starting point, I want to get back into daily blogging. I really enjoyed posting something daily for you guys and plan on getting back into that starting the New Year. Likewise, Zomtropolis will resume and will conclude. Free installments will be on Fridays like before. Then the book will be bigtime edited and prepped for publication. I’m still hoping to keep the book online for free once it’s done, whether as chapter-by-chapter like it is now, or a simple eBook download in a multitude of formats.

Also coming–I promise–will be the new Axiom-man book. I felt like a goon at C4 this year because I didn’t have a new Axiom-man story for the fans despite aiming to. Sure, I published a few new books this year, but Axiom-man is overdue for one–the last one, The Dead Land, was in 2008–so I need to get the latest adventure out before June 2012. I have to.

I also am going to wrap up The Undead World Trilogy.

Those aforementioned books are priority in 2012. Anything above and beyond that is bonus.

This is a little of what you can expect from me in the New Year.

In the meantime, Happy New Years, everyone. Hope it’s a good one. Stay safe. God bless.

For a limited time, I’m offering the first novella in my slayer vs vampire paranormal romance saga, Discovery of Death, for free as an eBook.

Have a Kindle? Got you covered.
Have a Nook? It’s free on that, too.
Have another eReader? Got that figured out as well.

Discovery of Death is available via the following channels for free, no strings attached. I hope you enjoy the book. Feel free to send in any emails with your thoughts. And if Discovery of Death incites you to try any of my other titles, by all means, I won’t stop you. Thanks.

The story:

When Zach goes missing for three months, Rose is heartbroken. Zach awakens in the dark of a coffin, his memory erased. A strange group of people who identify themselves as his family reveal he has become a vampire. Rose has also learned of her secret heritage: she comes from a long line of vampire slayers. It is only when her path accidentally crosses with Zach’s does love surface again.

Discovery of Death on Kindle, on Nook, at Smashwords.

…I’m going to give you a free comic book right here at Canister X. One page a day for 20 days or so. It’s an experimental comic called The Fade, told with black-and-white photos, the story in captions.

Just need to dig it out of the archives so the first page will go up either sometime later today or starting tomorrow.

Hope you like it.

So on a whim today I decided to offer the following deal for anyone who purchases a copy of one or more of my just-released vampire love story series, Blood of my World.
The deal:
Grab any one of the Blood of my World books–in paperback or eBook–and I’ll send you a free short love story, My Angel and Me (written as Peter Fox) in PDF. Buy all three, and I’ll send you a free full zombie novel in PDF. Just shoot me an email with proof of purchase(s). Email address is coscomentertainment(at)gmail(dot)com. Thanks.
All books can be accessed at this link here: http://amzn.to/mvHc9Q
Hope you check it out.

A.P. Fuchs Free Zombie Book Offer (Buy One, Get One)

Get an eBook PDF of Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead or Axiom-man (or both) for free!

All right, folks, here’s the deal:

Snag a copy of either Undead World Trilogy books, Blood of the Dead and Possession of the Dead by A.P. Fuchs in paperback, then email your receipt to coscomentertainment at gmail dot com and weI’ll email you back a free PDF of Fuchs’s Zombie Fight Night. If you grab BOTH books in the trilogy, then we’ll sweeten the deal by not only sending you a copy of Zombie Fight Night, but also a free PDF of Fuchs’s first Axiom-man novel as well.

Offer valid until December 4, 2010, so this is a good chance to get an early jump on Christmas shopping.

Just click on the thumbnails below or the links above to go to the books’ Amazon pages.

Thanks.

What are these books about?

Blood of the Dead (Undead World Trilogy, Book One)

One year ago, the world came to an end.

First came the rain.

Then came the screams.

Then came the undead.

The Haven became the only place in the city free of the walking dead. A place of community. A place to be safe.

Now, things have changed.

The zombies are coming to the Haven, seeking out the remaining survivors of the human race.

Joe Bailey prowls the Haven’s streets, taking them back from the undead, each kill one step closer to reclaiming a life once stolen from him. Billie Friday and Des Nottingham soon have Joe to thank for their lives.

As the dead push into the Haven, the trio is forced into the one place where folks fear to tread: the heart of the city, a place overrun with flesh-eating zombies.

They soon discover they are not the only humans there. After meeting an old man with a peculiar past, Joe and the others must make one last stand against the undead or unwillingly meet the same fate.

A desperate escape leads them to a place thought impossible to exist and to a discovery that will shake the future.

Welcome to the end of all things.

Possession of the Dead (Undead World Trilogy, Book Two)

Angels.

Demons.

Giant Zombies.

Things have changed.

Ever since returning through the Storm of Skulls to the present day, Joe, Billie and August have discovered the world they now inhabit, is not the world they left behind. The zombie threat has evolved to gargantuan proportions. Now aided by giant undead—massive monsters with phenomenal strength and power, with deadly appetites just as vast—the zombie population moves to devour any and all life.

Separated from his friends, Joe learns that not all hope is lost for humanity when he meets, Tracy, a woman who exudes a strength to rival his own. Tracy brings him to the Hub, an underground sanctuary where life continues in a dead world, but his thoughts linger on his missing friends.

August and Billie have problems of their own, and soon learn the same plight that affected a past friend of theirs now affects many: zombies with shapeshifting capability. Now, anyone is suspect. Yet even with this newfound knowledge, more is heaped upon them when the agenda of the undead is revealed and humanity is the one caught in the crossfire.

A war is raging, one between angels and demons, monsters and man.

And it’s only escalating.

Zombie Fight Night

In 2027 A.D., the Zombie Apocalypse took the world by storm and no one was prepared. Countless lives were lost as humanity battled to regain control of their planet. Eventually, they did, and out of the ashes of fallen civilization rose a new world, one bent on revenge against the hordes of the undead that took everything from them.

Enter Tony Sterpanko, entrepreneur extraordinaire who found a way to capitalize on humanity’s thirst for vengeance against the zombie. He created Zombie Fight Night, a worldwide craze where the undead men and women who remained from the apocalypse faced off against people and beings that once existed on Earth or were existing for the first time.

It is ten years later and at Blood Bay Arena, fortunes are won and lost. Men are made millionaires over night. Others are not so lucky and find themselves broken and destitute.

Mick Chelsey is one such man: gambling addict, lousy husband and Zombie Fight Night fanatic.

Except now, in order to still watch the fights and try to win back all he’s lost, he needs to bet fast and big otherwise death will come for him.

Let the battles begin.

Zombies fight Bigfoot, werewolves, vampires, Axiom-man, Bruce Lee, samurai, kickboxers, robots and more in this ode to blood-and-guts action from Blood of the Dead author, A.P. Fuchs.

You ready to get it on

Axiom-man

One night Gabriel Garrison was visited by a nameless messenger who bestowed upon him great power, a power intended for good. Once discovering what this power was and what it enabled him to do, Gabriel became Axiom-man, a symbol of hope in a city that had none.

One night after a routine patrol, a mysterious black cloud appears over the city. Flying over to investigate it, Axiom-man is stopped short when the cloud’s presence shakes him to the core. An electrifying fear emanates from the cloud and he can barely get near it. Quickly, the cloud takes flight and leads him on a wild goose chase throughout the city, only to flee from him in the end. Almost immediately after the cloud’s appearance, a new hero arises, Redsaw, clad in a black cape and cowl. The people, now enamored with this new super-powered marvel, seem to have forgotten about Axiom-man and all he’s done for them.

Except something’s wrong. That same fear that emanated from the cloud drips off Redsaw like a foul smell and Axiom-man can barely get close to him without feeling ill.

What is Redsaw’s agenda and who is he? And why is it every time Axiom-man gets close to him it feels as if his powers are being sucked away?

As if that wasn’t enough, Gabriel’s day job hasn’t gotten any easier. His co-worker and the woman he adores, Valerie Vaughan, has little interest in him, and his boss has made it clear that one more day late to work will be the day he cleans out his desk. Then there’s the new trainee, Gene Nemek. What is his fascination with Redsaw and why is he never around when Redsaw appears?

From flying over city streets and soaring at dizzying heights, to balancing a secret identity with destiny, Axiom-man must discover what Redsaw’s presence means and how it ties into the messenger’s life-altering visit before the city—and the world—are enamored with an evil that has haunted the cosmos since the dawn of Time.

Thanks again.

The Black Glove: Horror Culture and Entertainment Magazine interviewed me for their new issue (it’s monthly and free, people, so check it out).

Well, that interview is now up.

Really enjoyed doing this with them.

Come take a look by going here.

Thanks.

Copyright 2010 by A.P. Fuchs. All rights reserved.
14: Before

I couldn’t take it anymore, the wondering.
I had to know if Selena was alive.
Though the world got screwed up a long time before, not knowing was killing me.
I did the math: everyone dead equaled she was dead, too.
Still didn’t compute. That’s the funny thing about hope. No matter how bleak the circumstances, no matter how unlikely things would work out, it still nagged at you, telling you that somehow, some way, some when everything would be all right.
I go on-line, did some searches, feeling something like a super spy able to discover whatever I wanted at the touch of a button.
See, nowadays everybody’s plugged into the Net. Most people are users; the only ones who aren’t are those who live on the streets. Communication was everything before the dead rose. Still is now—if you could find somebody to talk to. Have a job? There’s a trail somewhere in Cyberspace. Have money? Your transactions are wired into the Net, too. Like movies? Same deal. All rentals are done on-line. No more going to the video store, but even if you do shop at the few left, those rentals are still tracked via the store’s Web site.
I digress.
Finding Selena’s address didn’t take long. Got her phone number off a video receipt of Rents-‘R’-Us. Stuck her phone number into 411 and, wholla, there she was.
Address committed to memory, I grabbed my Louisville and stood by my door. Was I really going to do this? Go out there, try and evade the dead and see if she was home? I must have stood there for a half hour just thinking about what I was going to do. See, Selena didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Long story there, but let’s just say I didn’t handle the break up very well. Had a thing for trying to contact her after the fact even after being repeatedly told the show was over.
But this was different. It wasn’t every day the world ended. I figured she’d cut me some grace and let the past be the past.
If I found her, that was.
When I finally went outside, it was evening, the cool air just setting in, the silence of a dead city almost soothing to the nerves (if I made an effort to not think about what was out there).
I began walking. For every zombie I saw, I made sure I had ample time to either hide or take a different route. It caused the walk to Selena’s to take forever. I got there, however, some two hours after I left (I think). She lived in a highrise called Sweet Iris, the building’s name making zero sense (as did a lot of the things named in Comptropolis). I didn’t know how long she had lived there for since we last spoke. It didn’t matter.
Sweet Iris looked to be about fifty stories tall. Her suite number was 4912, so I assumed that meant the forty-ninth floor.
The front door, all glass, had been smashed a long time ago. I went in, the stench of rotting flesh thick on the air. I stepped back outside and breathed in deep and readied myself to get back in there and “take it like a man.”
Once back inside, I kept taking big gulps of air, holding it, as I went further in, thinking the less I breathed the better off I would be. Then I realized that by holding the air in, I was allowing my lungs ample time to fully absorb whatever microscopic organisms were in the air. Even diseased.
Breathing normal, I finished crossing the expansive lobby, one lined with wilting trees and a no-longer-running stream with gold fish floating belly-up on its surface. Must have been nice back in its heyday.
The elevators were dead and the thought of climbing forty-nine floors made my stomach do a flip.
Then I remembered it was for Selena.
It was always about Selena.

* * *

I nearly died by the time I finally reached her door. Panting, heart rapping inside my chest, I had to put a hand against the doorframe to deal with my dizzy head and the stitch in my side.
Selena’s door.
I’ve been here a million times before, both when I was with her and in my mind ever since. This door was a gateway to a world of love, pleasure and the infilling of something that only happens when you meet the one person you’re sure you’re destined to be with forever.
The feeling of her safety was there, overwhelming me, and for a moment I forgot about the creatures lurking outside and how the rest of the world was dead.
Then reality came back and there I was, ready to find my girl.
I kicked down the door.
Selena’s apartment was rank, the funk of death immediately bringing bile up to the back of my throat.
The white walls and ivory-colored doors that lined the foyer still looked like they had the last time I was here.
I closed the door behind me and checked the light switch, just in case. No power. I inadvertently glanced back at the door and felt tears well up in my eyes at what I saw: blood, dark smears of the stuff all up and down it as if Selena had tried to beat down the door and busted her hands open in the process. Why she hadn’t used the handle, I didn’t know, unless—
Then it hit me.
She couldn’t escape. Something or someone stopped her.
Movement behind me.
I spun around, Louisville ready, just itching it plow it into the skull of the monster that took my sweet girl.
The floor was coated in blood, black and dried.
Slowly, I stepped forward, gently placing one foot in front of the other as lightly as I could so as not to make a sound. Too late. The dried blood on the wooden floor cracked as I walked on it.
I passed the kitchen on the right, the one where we cooked our first-anniversary meal together. Heart aching and throat dry, I pressed on. The living room was next and it was just in behind the ornate swinging door in front of me.
I thought about getting out of there, about running for safety.
But I had to know.
I gently pushed open the door.
That’s when she charged me.
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With the release of Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead just days away, I’m pleased to present the first four chapters for your enjoyment, now available as a free downloadable PDF from Scribd.com. You can also read it by using the interface below as well.

Hope you dig it.

Oh, and be sure to utilize the Share link below this line and pass it around. Thanks in advance.