STEAL THIS BOOK. Oh, you did? My Stepmom Died on Facebook. I'm about to co-write a supernatural thriller.

John Ramsey Miller


Here's one for ya. My stepmother, JoAnn, died a week last Monday. I dearly loved my stepmother. She was an intelligent, humorous, loving, and wonderful woman. She was as responsible for my writing career as anyone because she loved my writing and said so. She pulled stacks of my work out of the burnpile and gave them to me years later. (I later burned them). We shared a love of literature. She was a yellow-dog Democrat and I a Republican scally-wag, but she never held it against me, and we got along just fine. My father died several years ago and she moved out to Texas to be near her Texas-living daughter. I found out that she was sick and I asked my stepbrother to keep me posted and to give her my love. I found out on Friday when someone my sister knows saw my stepmother's obit in the Jackson Clarion ledger. When I blasted my step-brother for not bothering to tell me she passed away he said, and I quote: "I posted it on my Facebook page on Monday." The funeral was a private affair, and I was not invited. Holy Shit Bat-woman. Needless to say my step-siblings don't care much for me. But I love them anyway. Well, at least I can write that book I always wanted to write but wanted to wait until all of the people who would be less than favorably portrayed were dead.

By the way, I am joining forces with Mark Tufo (one of my favorite supernaturalists) to pen a series of novels. Since I'm a long-standing fan of this guy's work, I didn't hesitate to agree to play in the sandbox with him. His genre and mine are in different locales on the literary map, so we are thinking we will be meet at the fence. He'll be putting his best characters into the pasture, and I'll be sending my gang into the same place. It should be quite a shot of ice water to the face for our fans on both sides. We're presently working on how this is going to work on a practical level, but I'm thrilled to be doing something challenging with someone I admire.

I am using my best character or two, and taking them into a world they would have never believed existed. Can I take established straight thriller characters and put them into a bump-in-the -night world. We shall see and I intend to. The great thing about not being under contract is that one can experiment and do that which one would never ordinarily be allowed to do.

By the way, if any of my author buddies want T-shirts for promotion, my son has a new company and lots of tasty equipment. Use my name and get deals.

On Monday evening I received this from a tech-savy author friend's wife email via my web site contact form. She runs his e-enterprises, and she is upset about how many of her husband's novels are not being paid for.

Comments: FYI stolen books:

The Last Day, Too Far Gone, Inside Out,Upside Down, Side by Side, Smoke & Mirrors.
Downloaded average of 723 times each, last time 2 hours ago. Maybe your publisher can do something?

She went on to say: Most of the authors that you blog with on Kill Zone are on there. I wrote one of them as she had an easy contact to find. I can get you a list and you can pass it around if you so desire.

I forwarded the email to my editor and agent, but I expect if Bantam could stop it, they would have. There are more sites like this. That one site is responsible for a minimum of four thousand copies of my books being downloaded for free. I appreciate that so many people downloaded my books, and most downloaded all of them. That means dedicated fans. I have mixed feelings about this loss of revenue, which I, like most authors need in order to pay bills, which enables us to write more books for our fans--a % of which will download others of them. If we have the cow in the pasture, why buy milk. Cheese, which is hard to make, maybe, but not milk free for the tugging.

One way to look at this is that this is really no different than having a book someone buys, sharing it... often until it falls apart. If it is outside our control, should we worry about it?

Gosh, I've had a busy week on the farm.