I Give Thee: “Irregular Creatures”

And so it is done.

Up on Amazon’s Kindle marketplace: my first short story collection, IRREGULAR CREATURES.

Click here to purchase.

And, in fact, if you’d be so kind, I’d love it if you purchased it today. Just to see if I can’t get a rush of sales. A caffeine-sugar spike of greedy eyes hungry to gander at my gibberish.

Still, you might be on the fence. You might be saying, “Ehhhh, ennnnh, nnnmmmgh, I just don’t know.”

Could be that you need a little convincing.

I can do that. Here, then, are five reasons to buy my short story collection, IRREGULAR CREATURES. Choose one or several reasons. Collect ’em, trade ’em with your friends.

1. Because Hey, Look, That Chuck Wendig Guy Is Writing Crazy Shit Again

Contained within this short story collection you will find:

Flying cats, Bigfoot, mermaids, demons, zombies, a giant chicken, a vaginally-capable Thai dancer, candy bar aliens, an incarcerated mentalist, and one mystic hobo hermaphrodite.

These are all irregular creatures. Just as I, the writer, am an irregular creature. In fact, I’d say all writers are sort of that — we’re a little goofed-up at the margins, us author-types. I dig that.

These irregular creatures are bound up in nine short stories totaling about 45,000 words. Hell, one of those stories — Dog-Man and Cat-Bird (A Flying Cat Story) — is a big ol’ 14,000 word fun-fest.

The collection is equal parts horror and humor, equal parts fantasy and sci-fi, equal parts sadness, weirdness, absurdity, and hilarity. Some of it is family friendly. Some of it is soaked in blood. You”ll find tales of Bangkok pussy shows, bizarre auctions in the middle of Amish country, soul-switching, and wars between heaven and hell (as fought by cats).

It contains many bad words.

It contains lots of weird ideas.

It contains a host of (I hope) engaging characters.

Click here to purchase.

2. Because This Is The Last Five Years Of My Writing Life

I’m a sucker for authorial point-of-view; I love the “auteur” theory of writing and writers. I like that certain writers carry — often unconsciously — certain themes and motifs through their work. It’s a little bit obsessive, a whole lot unconscious, and maybe a tiny bit batshit crazy. Looking back over these short stories (which comprise the writing years of 2005-2009), I did not realize how these all pieced together. They do. They’re clearly my work — while I think I’ve definitely developed as a storyteller since then, I still see a lot in these stories I like. They are bound together by common ideas and shared themes.

Hopefully that’s the same for you. But you’ll need to buy it to see what I’m saying.

Click here to purchase.

3. Because, I Mean, Pshhh, Three Bucks, C’mon

You can’t buy jack shit for three bucks. Fast food meal? Hardly. Action figure? Nope. Handjob from a hobo with callused hands? Not the last time I checked, no. (And I check often.)

I’m offering you hours of entertainment for three bucks. You go buy Chinese food from the mall, it’s going to cost you twice that and it’ll be gone in a half-hour. Of course, it’ll come back about three hours later (remember, you don’t own food court food, you just rent it for a little while and then you return it back to the water supply like that kid with that killer whale in that movie with the kid and the killer whale).

Irregular Creatures will last a lot longer than that.

Plus: no diarrhea.

In this day and age, that has to be a selling point. Especially given the quality of some of the stuff you might buy on the Kindle marketplace. Am I right? Am I right? I’m totally right.

Click here to purchase.

4. Because You Believe Self-Publishing Is The Future

Forget that shit Whitney Houston sang about — you mayhaps believe that self-publishing is the future. Hell with the children. Are children going to provide you with cheap and easy literary entertainment? Can you download children to a hand-held device? Can you turn children off and on? I think not.

See, I’m on the fence about self-pub. This is an experiment for me to test its viability. You want to confirm that it’s viable? You want to see more self-published work, not less? I’m going to be publishing my results, after all — if the results are good, I’ll say so. Do you want me to proselytize the power of self-pubbing?

Then pony up, wordmonkeys! Money where your mouth is. Boom. Yeah. Nnngggh.

Click here to purchase.

5. Because You Really Love Terribleminds

(Warning: Guilt alert! Guilt alert! Awooga! Awoooga!)

You’ll note that I blog here every day. I do so for free despite it costing me for the theme, for hosting, for the domain, for the hookers, for the meth lab, for all of that. It takes me a lot of time.

And I do it all for you. (It has nothing to do with my ego. Shut up! Shush!)

I’ve had folks contact me and tell me they wanted to donate. I tell them, “Nope.” Some writers ask for donations. I’m not one of them. No harm no foul on those that do, but I figure — hey, this blog is here to keep me disciplined and to put myself out there for you crazy cats and kittens. I say “No donations, but once I have something to sell, please support me and this website by buying it.”

And thus, the guilt. Here I am, offering you a product. And I have big wide doe eyes blinking at you — blink, blink — and at the bottom of those doe eyes is a shimmering pool where my tears are starting to form. You like this site? Been enjoying its free content for ten years? Want to help throw a little money my way to help support the child that is one day soon going to spring forth into this household? Want to help support my “chocolate milkshake and Burmese heroin” diet? Here’s your chance, superstar.

Two words: IRREGULAR CREATURES.

Click here to purchase.

Only On The Kindle Machine?

You may be asking, “Is this only available on Das Kindlemaschine?”

To which I respond, yes, for the foreseeable future. I’m interested in keeping this experiment fairly well contained. Besides, Amazon offers a pretty robust marketplace, distribution network, and chunk of the pie.

What If I Do Not Possess A Magic Kindle Device?

You did know that Kindle offers a mighty host of Free Kindle-Reading Apps, right?

But that’s okay. Maybe you have a Nook or something.

So, I’ll offer you this:

I will send you a PDF if you give me the $2.99 via PayPal.

Contact me through this site, and I’ll get you squared away with the PDF.

The PDF should work in iBooks, on the Nook, or across various other apps or devices. Plus, if you’re morally Amazon-averse, hey, here’s your way to get the collection.

But Wait! I Want To Do More!

That’s awesome, because as it turns out, I need you to do more.

If this experiment is going to succeed, I could use your help in other ways.

First, spread the word. Get on the Twittertubes, the Faceyjournals, the Clown Sex Forums, and spread the love far and wide. “Hey,” you might say, “I found this really awesome collection of stories called IRREGULAR CREATURES and it gave me a word-boner. And I’m a lady! It gave me a lady word-boner. You should go buy it, or I will hate you forever.”

You may need to compress that into 140 characters, to which I offer:

Hy I fnd ths rlly awe coll of stor IRRGLR CRTRS gve me wrd-bner Im lady gve me ldy wrd-bnr u shld buy or I h8 you 4eva http://amzn.to/e6JeQy

Also, I would love it if you went to Amazon and gave it a review.

Now, you might be asking, “But what if I hated it?”

Uhhh. Well. On the one hand, I encourage honesty, on the other, I’ll merely remind you what your mother told you: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

And then she whipped you with a metal coat hanger. Just a reminder of that.

Alternately, if you don’t want to do these things, then I’m just happy that you bought the book.

In A Perfect World, You’ll Buy This Today

I’d love to see a crazy spike of sales today. Hell, wouldn’t it be cool to get into the Top 100 Kindle books for just one shimmering moment? No, it probably won’t happen, but my father always said to “aim high.” I mean, sure, he was just exhorting me to account for distance and wind speed when I was to shoot a zombie in the melon, but I like to think of the advice as one big metaphor for my hopes and dreams.

I Will Report Back From The Wilderness

As promised, I will periodically send missives back from the Self-Publishing Front with my data rolled into a leather tube and staple-gunned to the back of a donkey. A donkey with firecrackers in its ass to ensure it picks up the pace and is not eaten by a lazy puma.

I don’t know how often I’ll report data — I guess as often as necessary.

Bee Tee Dubs: “Thank You”

If you purchase it, thank you.

If you write a nice review or spread the word, thank you.

If you love terribleminds, thank you for that, as well.

If you don’t buy my short story collection, I’ll kill a unicorn in front of a little girl.

Thanks again, tmeeps.