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

This weekend I created the Blood of my World Boxed Set for Amazon Kindle, a collection of my paranormal romance series containing Discovery of Death, Memories of Death and Life of Death. It is Volume Two of the A.P. Fuchs Library, with Volume One being books from The Axiom-man Saga (coming this week). These boxed sets are a great way to grab a bunch of my titles and/or complete your collection for a great price. It is also on Smashwords, Drivethru Fiction, and should start showing up on the Nook and iPad shortly.

I wrote an introduction to the Blood of my World Boxed Set and want to share it here.

Hope you check the collected book sets out.

The intro:

Blood of my World Boxed Set Introduction
by
A.P. Fuchs

It seems to me that there is a direct correlation between love and horror, the both of which are two sides of the proverbial coin. They are extremes, where one is light and bliss, filled with goodness, hope, stability–physical, emotional, mental. The other is darkness, danger, pain and untold suffering. They also have a tendency to gel, namely in the arena of romantic relationships.
One can’t help but wonder how much different our world would be if these two elements–arguably one element–were not present. I suspect life would look more like a simulation than an actual experience, with folks walking around conducting business mechanically, without nuance–robotic.
Is it not true that human life as you and I know it are birthed and lived from either horror or love or a mix of both? Is not every other human emotion rooted in one of these?
Love is an especially dangerous thing. Beautiful, yes, but dangerous. While ascending to new heights with your lover, when during those early stages all is well in the world and inner peace is achieved–the fear of it all slipping away always lingers a little or a lot until, perhaps, that fateful day comes and your fear becomes reality. The darkness descends, hope is abandoned, and searing pain rips through your chest until you can barely stand. Once you collapse, you think it’s won and the hot coils of loss’s embrace will finally leave you, but instead, it continues to ravage you in waves, bringing you to the brink of apathy and beyond, into self-destruction and mental chaos. Life is looked at through fogged glass. All other emotions are felt through the jagged pieces of a broken heart. Cynicism sets in, walls go up and survival kicks in full gear and you do all you can to fill the void and repair the damage your loved one has done.
Love and horror. Life and death. It’s what defines us. It’s what’s defined my fiction since I wrote my first book twelve years ago. In fact, my entire career was born out of this bizarre relationship between love and horror, and if you’re a reader of my work, you would have noticed that everything I’ve written touches on this in some way, whether a little or a lot.
There’s my novel April, written under the pen name Peter Fox, which is a firm statement about how people get to you and you fall in love because they touch that secret part of you no one else has.
There’s A Red Dark Night, a tribute to B-horror summer camp movies in which the main villain is a creature comprised of blood and evil–the blood you shed when your heart is broken and knife is brought to skin. For some this is metaphorical, for others, it is not.
The Axiom-man Saga, my superhero opus about a man without self-esteem who, as one of the motives for donning a pair of tights, is simply to prove to himself and others that he is indeed something of value after a lifetime of always feeling rejected and second best.
My zombie fiction–books like Blood of the Dead and Zombie Fight Night–utter indulgences into the world of the walking dead. Is this not what we become after love has crushed us? Is not survival our primary concern? Do we not find folks who are fighting just like us, whether in our relationships or even through the music we listen to so we can feel better?
These are more, but let’s move on to what you hold in your hands.
This boxed set, Blood of my World. Three novellas. Three aspects of love and horror–Discovery, memory, life.
Vampires are the horror world’s romantic hero. They are the regular world’s romantic villain. They embody life and death, love and horror unlike any other creature in fiction.
I set out to tell a story about two romantics whose love for each other was thicker than blood and just as red with passion and devotion. The reader must know, I decided, that there are others out there who live in love’s stream, who have gotten burned yet who also have lived and are living because of it.
Who have grown.
The vampires in the novellas you’re about to read are ruthless. There is blood and pain and indifference to human life. They are monsters.
The people in these novellas are you and me, folks living in two worlds: the past and present; light and darkness; love and horror.
I want to thank you for reading these as you join Zach and Rose on their journey of love’s joy, love’s pain–
–love’s horror.

- A.P. Fuchs
Winnipeg, MB
February 25, 2012

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.

2011 was a busy year publishing-wise, my time divided between running Coscom Entertainment and Torn Veil Books, while also spending time getting my own ideas out of my head and onto paper.

All-in-all, this year I managed to publish 14 books and 6 comics.

Not too shabby.

Unfortunately, I didn’t meet my writing goals nor some of my comic book aspirations but, hey, there’s always 2012.

This is what was published this year:

Coscom Entertainment

Books:

Comics: