I swear, unless there’s a review, this’ll be the last post I write about Snake for a while. I know by now some of you are so sick of hearing about it you want to strangle me, but hey, I’d be remiss in my job as an author if I didn’t do my fair share of advertising for my books. And the one month milestone is pretty big.
For those of you who aren’t aware, Snake is my second published novel, and my third published book overall. It follows a young man whose girlfriend is kidnapped by mafioso after she overhears something she shouldn’t. In order to get her back, this young man becomes the Snake, a serial killer who takes his cue from techniques used by the Russian mafia, and starts hunting down members of the family who kidnapped his girlfriend in order to find her. He will go to any lengths to get her back, including becoming a worse monster than the ones he is hunting.
I’m very happy with how this book’s been doing during its first month. I’ve had plenty of people checking it out, including two people from England and Germany who downloaded e-books within the past week (first time that I can remember having someone from outside of North America checking out my work). And I even got my first review on Snake, from fellow author and good friend Angela Misri. Here’s what she had to say on Snake in her four-star review:
Rami Ungar makes a promise to (the reader) in all his writings: he WILL scare you, and if he does “his job is done.” Snake will scare you. I am a huge Stephen King fan, so this should give you some idea of my tolerance level for gore, death and mayhem – I was scared. Rami takes you into places you would never have believed possible, and manages to pull his hero (and eventually his heroine) out of them against all odds. If you like to be scared. If you LOVE to be scared. You should read this book.
Considering that I’m a huge fan of Stephen King and I got favorably compared to him, this is probably one of my favorite reviews of all time. And I hope it leads to more people giving it a chance and checking it out.
If you’d like to get a copy of Snake, you can follow this link to Amazon and check it out (though I will be uploading it onto other sites soon). And if you like or hate it after reading it, please don’t hesitate to write a review and let me know what you think. I love feedback, positive or negative, so if you have some for me, please don’t hesitate to share it with me.
You can also check out the page for Snake here for excerpts and more information, if you wish.
That’s all for now. I’ve got a few things to take care of this morning before work, so I’m going to get on that. Have a great day, my Followers of Fear.
Oh, I doubted I would actually get this far. I mean, with all the delays and breaks and whatnot I had to take with this novel, I really despaired about getting to the climax of the book. I’m happy to say that after four or so days of working through Chapter Fifty, I whizzed through Chapters Fifty-One and Fifty-Two and finally finished Part IV: Inauguration Day of Laura Horn.
This part of the novel actually got longer and shorter while I was writing it. I added two chapters to give the antagonists more page time, and then I combined two chapters into one so that the flow of the novel would…well, flow smoother. I’m glad to say that it all went very well in the end. Now I’ve only got ten chapters left of the novel, seven of which are in Part V: Triumph, and three in the Epilogue. I can’t wait to see if I can’t get through these last ten chapters in the next seven days. Ten or twelve at the most.
And now for the page and word counts (and by page counts, I mean 8.5″ x 11″ pages). Part IV was fourteen chapters, comprising about seventy-five pages and seventeen-thousand, seven-hundred and ninety-four words. Combined with the preceding thirty-seven chapters, that’s a total of 292 pages and 77,274 words. Wow, we’re right up in the novel range. I’m going to make a guess between 85,000 95,000 words at the end of it all. Well, that’s around normal for one of my books, I guess. Video Rage was around eighty-four thousand, while Snake was 110,000. Reborn City was somewhere between them, around ninety-one or ninety-three thousand.
Huh…funny now that I look at it. The novels that had longer chapters but less of them had smaller word counts, while the novels with shorter chapters but more of them are much longer. I’m not sure why that is, but I’m sure it might have something to do with the books I read growing up and how I began writing with the goal of being as good as the books I was reading.
Well, I’m going to probably write an article for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors and a blog post or two and then get to work on finishing this novel about a girl with a very dark past who confronts her demons and ends up saving her country from a horrific coup. Should be fun. Wish me luck on it.
Well, I’ve got a big day tomorrow. I’m meeting someone who’s helping me find a job after graduation tomorrow morning, and if I’m lucky I might be able to pick up my new glasses beforehand. Plus another shift at work, so that’ll be my whole afternoon. I might as well go to bed now and get some sleep. Goodnight, my Followers of Fear. Pleasant nightmares to you all.
Ten reviews. I’ve never gotten ten reviews on a single book before. I only have three right now, but still, this is a major milestone that I’ve been hoping would happen for a long time. And today it finally happened.
The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones was my first book, a collection of short stories I wrote and assembled while still working on the final draft of Reborn City. By far it’s also my bestselling book, which doesn’t surprise me considering that it’s my oldest book and I’m still very early in my writing career. It’s taken nearly a year for it to get to ten reviews, but I’m so glad that it finally did. This one comes from reader kimberly brouillard, who named her review liked this book a lot and gave The Quiet Game four stars out of five, bringing the book’s average to a 4.3 out of 5. Here’s what she had to say:
All of the stories were really diverse and fun to read. I also enjoyed the authors blurbs about each stories origination and development. Keep up the good work!
Thank you kimberly, I’m glad you enjoyed the book. And I’ve got two more if you want to read either of those, one sci-fi and one thriller. I’m also very glad to you and all those who provide feedback on my work. It’s very touching and it means a lot to me, because it shows where I’m doing well and where I could stand to improve. And this early in my career, I’m sure there’s spaces and places to improve.
If you would like to read The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones, you can find it on Amazon and on Smashwords. And if you do decide to get a copy and read it, please let me know what you think in a comment or in a review. I love feedback, positive or negative, so I’ll be happy to get yours.
That’s all for tonight. I’m tired, so I’m going to get read for bed and do a little reading. Goodnight, my Followers of Fear. Have some pleasant nightmares.
It’s been one week since my sophomore novel (I believe that’s the technical term, anyway), Snake, has been released. I’ve heard from people who have gotten their copies already or are planning on getting their copies as soon as possible. It’s very exciting to find out all these people want to read Snake, and I’m hoping that as time goes on, more people will want to read about the young man who, in order to save the love of his life, becomes a serial killer and starts hunting down the very people who hold his lover hostage.
If you wish to check out Snake, it’s available on Amazon. The print paperback’s price has gone down a bit, so it’s a bit more affordable right now should you want to read it. And of course, the e-book is available to read as well, and the price will remain at $0.99 until next week, so now’s a good time to download it if you wish.
And if you do decide to read Snake, please let me know what you think of it once you do. I love feedback, whether it’s positive or negative, so please don’t hesitate to tell me your honest opinion of the book.
All for now. Ill have plenty to write on later, so I’ll try to do that later today. If you would like to find out more about Snake, you can click here or watch the book trailer below. Have a good one, my Followers of Fear.
With the Columbus Pride Festival coming up this weekend, LGBT people from around the country (including George Takei as Grand Marshal for events this year) will be descending upon Columbus for a huge parade and festival to celebrate their sexual orientations, fight discrimination and injustice, and to push for same-sex marriage in Ohio, which is on the ballot this year. It’s sure to be a great time for many.
For some though, the Pride Festival will not be so welcome, and while Columbus may be one of the Midwest’s LGBT hotspots, there is the very real chance that protesters will show up and decry what they see as perversion, sin a horrible lifestyle, or some sort of disease/genetic defect/psychological disorder. Usually I ignore these sorts of people, but I figured that since I’ll most likely be attending the Pride Festival this year (my first), I thought it would be interesting to do a post on these protestors, most of whom have a Biblical basis for why they’re opposed to homosexuality, and show how the Bible could actually endorse homosexuality rather than outright ban it.
Before I do though, I wanted to post this video I found, which I think is very eye-opening, and gives some very good points on the Bible and homosexuality:
Interesting, isn’t it? And that thing about Sodom and Gomorrah mirrors pretty closely what I learned growing up about why those cities were destroyed. In fact, I remember a pretty graphic tale about how two girls met at a well, one realized the other’s family was very poor and gave her some flour for her family. When the town elders heard about it, they basically took the first girl and stoned her in public (I’m not sure what happened to the second girl, but she probably came away from that emotionally scarred and still hungry, if not dead). And if you want to know more about that book they talked about in the video, here’s a TIME magazine article on it.
I would like to add some points on to these, based on my own upbringing, experience, and understanding of the Old Testament (I’m not very familiar with the New Testament of course, being Jewish). First, that famous verse in Leviticus that anti-gay pastors love to quote, “Thou shall not sleep with a man as thou sleeps with a woman”. First off, what can women do? Second, this sounds like a prohibition against homosexuality, but it could have other meanings.
Of course, there’s the anatomical one: men can’t sleep with other men like they can with women, because men don’t have vaginas. But I’m pretty sure that argument, although obvious, won’t sway many people, so here’s two more that might. Firstly, there’s the patriarchal argument: women in the days when the Bible was written were expected to attend to their husband’s sexual needs, and most likely that meant they had no say in it unless they were impure and couldn’t have sex anyway. In an age where men were expected to be dominant in all matters, especially in the home, forcing one man to attend to another man’s sexual needs at the latter’s beck and call would be considered the ultimate emasculation, so therefore sex between men was forbidden.
The other reason (and the one I feel makes the most sense), is based on pagan idol worship. Many Near East and Mediterranean societies practiced homosexuality, not as a distinct orientation, but as an activity. The Greeks were famous for having relationships between other males before marriage, and there were other societies at the time that had cultures that permitted men to have relationships with each other before or after marriage. Some of these relationships were especially prevalent in military circles to increase unit cohesion, and a few were ritualized in the form of idol worship. God would have seen this latter act, worship of idols through sexual intercourse, as detestable, so He created a form of worship and sacrifice that did not involve sex, and forbade a form of sex that does not lead to procreation, as well as because it was used in idol worship.
There’s a pretty big difference between this and emasculation or idol worship, wouldn’t you say?
Since today there is no idol worship through sex (as far as I know), it would be permissible for same-sex relations to occur. Besides, these interpretations deal with a form of emasculation or idol worship. They do not apply to men, women, or other gender-types who are in loving, committed relationships like we see today.
There are other factors to consider here as well. For example, there is the belief that marriage should be as it is in the Bible. If that’s the case though, why do we outlaw polygamy and women can choose who they marry? Not to mention the definition of marriage and marriage roles have changed throughout the years, so it’s no surprise that it’s being changed in our day and age and “pro-marriage” activists shouldn’t be alarmed. And even if not always legally accepted or endorsed by religious establishments, same-sex relationships have been taking place for many, many years. There have been relationships between high-ranking clergymen and other men since the early days of the Church, but it was tolerated because of fear of worse sins, ones that at the time that were considered venereal.
Even during waves of religious upheaval, reformation, or resurgence, same-sex relationships flourished: Queen Elizabeth may have been a lesbian, and several members of her court were gay and able to get away with it due to their status. King James–of the Bible translation–actually had several relationships with men as well as women. And recently there was an article from The Boston Globe about two women who lived together and were treated as married…in 1807! So even if it’s not exactly legal, same-sex marriage is not exactly as new as cell phones.
This post is getting very long, so I’m going to continue this discussion in another one. I hope some of you who read this post found it informative and may have given you some food for thought. I don’t think it’ll sway anyone who’ll protest at Pride this weekend, but it may sway some people who are undecided on the issue. Or that it may prove helpful for those who want to try to reconcile homosexuality with religion.
Oh, and before you wonder what sort of religious authority I am, I can only say that I’m the son of two Conservative rabbis, I went to a Jewish day school from Grades 4-12, I’ve gone to synagogue for most of my life, and I still learn and keep in touch with my religion. So I may not be a rabbi or pastor, but I’ve done as much studying as some, and more than some others. I guess I can speak with some authority on these matters. What do you say?
*I will be screening the comments for offensive, inappropriate, or just plain rude comments. Be warned.*
Hello my Followers of Fear. Well, it looks like Amazon has finally figured itself out, because both the e-book and paperback versions of Snake are now visible and available from its Amazon page. This is good, because Amazon has been known to have kinks in the webpages of its self-published authors during the first few days of a new book’s shelf-life. Why that is, no one is sure. It’s just one of those things you deal with when you are a self-published author.
Anyway, I’m excited and glad to say that both versions are now available and you can go online and order them now if you wish by following this link. The paperback version is about thirteen dollars, which is a little more than I’d like to charge for the book, but Amazon has more say on the prices than I do. Once again, that’s something you deal with when you’re a self-published author.
The good news is, the e-book version is much more affordable. In fact, from June 10th (yesterday) to June 24th, the e-book will only cost $0.99 to download. Afterwards, from June 25th to July 7th, the e-book will be $1.99. And from July 8th onwards, the e-book will cost $2.99 until the next sale. So if you’d like to get Snake‘s e-book, now is the time to go and download it.
Also, this is the last week to get Reborn City‘s e-book for $1.99. On the 15th the price will return to $2.99 until the next time I do a sale (probably in November), so now’s the best time to get RC on sale. Hope you decide to check both books out. You can check out RC by going here.
That’s all for now. I’ll write again when I have something to write about. Until then, have a great day, my Followers of Fear.
Not sure how, but it looks like I have another piece of good advice to tell everyone about. Laura Horn, the WIP I’ve been working on on-and-off since last summer, has reached another milestone, with Part III: The Ringleader, done and out of the way. This part of the novel was actually rather interesting to write: not only did the three main characters find themselves isolated from just about everyone they know and care about, but I had to cut out two chapters I found extraneous and unnecessary, and I merged two more into one, reducing the chapter count by about three. Just goes to show that a lot can change between the original outline and the actual writing of the novel.
With the completion of Part III, I also move pretty quickly to the climax of the story. At the moment, I only have about twenty-five chapters left, and most of them will probably be less than ten pages left. Good for me, because I’m aiming to get the first draft of this novel done before I go back to classes in August. With the rate I’ve been going these past couple of days, as long as I’m able to not get distracted and find time to write, I might jut get there some time between the end of the month and mid-July.
Before I start Part IV though, I’d like to be able to take on some quick projects: I’d like to write a few articles for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors, as well as write some poems and some flash fiction pieces. Once I get those out of the way, I plan to finish off LH as quickly as possible and move onto the next project, which will probably be editing Video Rage and working on some short stories.
First, I’d like to update the page and word counts of LH (for those who weren’t around for the last update on those counts several months ago, I do this every time I make it to a milestone in writing my novels. Not sure why I broadcast it on my blog, it’s just something I like to do). Remember, by pages I mean 8″ x 11.5″ pages. The total for the Prologue was about 10 pages, and 2,190 words. Part I was 43 pages and 12,019 words. Part II was 107 pages and 29,634 words. And Part III came out to be 57 pages and 15,637 words. That brings LH‘s total to 217 pages and 59,480 words. Since most authors use word counts to gauge the length of their books, this makes LH just under novel length, by about 520 words. I’m looking forward to seeing where it gets with Part IV!
For now though, I’m going to head to bed. It’s been a crazy birthday, I’ve got a busy day tomorrow, and I’d like to be well-rested when I go about my day tomorrow. Especially with the articles and with work. Good night, Followers of Fear.
I don’t know what I should be happier about: today’s my 21st birthday, it’s exactly two years from the day I began work on Snake, and it’s also the day that Snake has become available for the public. I think two of those are cause for public concern!
Anyway, I’d like to focus on the latter, if possible. I’m very excited to announce that Snake is now published and available in paperback and e-book. It should be, anyway: it always takes Amazon a while to get e-books on the same webpages as the paperback versions. So if you go onto Amazon and you don’t see the version you’d like immediately, please come back later and hopefully it’ll be there. (I’ll write another post when all the kinks are sorted through).
It’s still pretty amazing to me that two years of work is finally available to the public. I just hope the public wants to read it and enjoys it now that it’s out! And if you do decide to buy a copy of Snake, please let me know what you think once you’ve read it. Did you love it? Did you hate it? Did something strike you as totally weird or that made it hard for you to enjoy the book? Did you get turned off by the painting of a naked woman on the cover (if you did, then that might be judging a book by its cover)? Let me know. I love feedback, whether positive or negative (except when it comes from trolls).
Anyway, if you’d like to check Snake out, you can go to Amazon to get a copy. I hope you like it and thanks for checking it out. And if you’d like to know a bit more about Snake before checking it out, you can click here.
That’s all for now. I’ve got some work to do, so I’m going to get on that. Have a great day, my Followers of Fear.
Yes indeed, Snake is only one day away from being released. I can hardly believe it myself and yet I’m so excited! I just hope nothing happens to derail the publication and force me to push back the release. That would suck big time.
Also, today is the last day to enter the contest to win a free, autographed copy of Snake. Yes, that’s right, you can win a free, autographed copy of Snake, that I will ship anywhere in the world. All you have to do is follow the directions below:
Give me your name
Give me your city, state/province, and (if you’re outside the United States) your country
What’s your favorite scary movie/book or something that scares you
And tell me how far you would go for love and/or revenge (I would ask how far you would go for love and revenge, but I know not everyone likes to go that far, so I’m giving options)
The contest is open until 5PM Eastern Standard Time today, at which point I will select a winner from the entrants and announce it here on the blog. The contest is open to everyone who is not closely related to me, hasn’t helped with the creation and publication of this book, and/or isn’t receiving a dedication in the book. Good luck to all entrants and I hope you enjoy reading Snake, whether or not you win the contest.
If you would like to know more about Snake, you can click here, or watch the book trailer below.
That’s all for now. I’ll post the contest winner later today. Good luck, my Followers of Fear.
It’s only three days away from the release of Snake, the thriller that I started nearly two years ago. I’m really excited for the release of this book, which has been quite an exciting story for me to write as well as a ton of fun to edit and prepare for publication. I’m so glad that I can finally share it with the whole wide world now that the release date is only a couple of days away.
In the meantime, I would like to announce a special contest for Snake: from now until 5 PM on Monday, June 9th, readers of this post will have the chance to win a free, autographed copy of Snake, which I will send to them from anywhere in the world. You enter by leaving this information in the comments below:
Your name
City, state/province, and country (only do the latter if you live outside the United States)
Your favorite scary movie or book or what really scares you.
Answer this question: “How far would you go for love and/or revenge?”*
Anyone 15 or older may enter the contest, as long as they are not related to me the author, did not have a hand in helping to make this novel possible, or you are not one of the people to whom this book is dedicated (sorry folks, but I don’t want to be accused of favoritism. Besides, do you really want me to call you up, make you think you’re the winner, and then tell you you’re not just to mess with you? I didn’t think so). The winner will be chosen by me personally from all the entries. And if nobody enters…well, I won’t think about it.
Anyway, I hope you decide to enter. The contest winner will be announced on June 9th, before Snake comes out, so start preparing your answers now. And if you would like more details about Snake, you can click here or watch the video trailer below. And may the best person win. Good luck, my Followers of Fear.
*I decided to do “and/or” instead of just “and” like in the novel’s tagline. Let’s face it, not everyone will go to the extreme lengths that the Snake went to. Anyway, you can enter an answer for love, for revenge, or for both, whichever you feel comfortable with. Just remember to make sure it’s an impressive answer if you want that free book.
Rami Ungar The Writer 