F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Amazon.com

Uninvited Blurbs Reinstated to Paperback

by

The Uninvited, © 2013, F. P. Dorchak and Duvall Design
The Uninvited, © 2013, F. P. Dorchak and Duvall Design

I just received and approved the physical proof of The Uninvited, with the blurbs reinstated to the front matter. This updated version may be immediately purchased at the CreateSpace site, or in about 5-7 days, at Amazon.com and other outlets:

  • Amazon.com: 5-7 Business Days (the original novel is already here, this is just the updated version)
  • Amazon Europe: 5-7 Business Days (the original novel is already here, this is just the updated version)
  • Expanded Distribution channels: 6-8 Weeks (the original novel is already here, this is just the updated version)

Remember, if you’d like an autographed copy, please send me your book(s), with appropriate return postage, to the following address, and I’ll sign them! F. P. Dorchak, P. O. Box 49393, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80949.

Related articles

ERO—On Sale Now!

by

ERO (© F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)
ERO (© F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)

Well, my team and I have done it—Lon Kirschner, Pam Headrick, Cherry Weiner, and all the other readers and people (see Acknowledgements/Author Note in the beginning of the book) who have read and commented and helped out in any way—ERO is finally available through Smashwords, Amazon, and soon, Nook (not yet processed; please, keep checking back)! Thanks, for everything, folks! I’m charging $5.99 for this book. It’s bigger and I have more money invested in it. I will shortly be working on getting the physical copy out there; it takes more coordination.

Wow, what a sprint. As with The Uninvited, it’s so weird to actually, finally see this out there after so many years (seven). I have in my writing log that I started plotting for the novel on March 6, 2006, and started actually writing the manuscript itself “in earnest” on March 9th, around 4 p.m. (Mountain Time). I’d called the working title of the manuscript Brilliant Eyes. You’ll see that tile in the story. I also note in the log, that a few days later—March 11th—my wife and I took a trip to Roswell, NM. Yeah, that Roswell. That was an interesting trip. Met and talked with some very interesting people, including an “Earth Station Roswell” guy who took us into his back room to spend a serious amount of time talking with us about his plans for a huge Roswell conference center using advanced/state-of-the-art technology in creating this center…basically, making it like a huge UFO mothership for the conference center itself. It was so cool. Incredibly cool. And we thanked him for the honor of his taking the time he did talking with us. He and I had to have been talking about an hour or more. Anyway, I’d kept tabs on him for a couple years, but last heard he’d been fighting not only water rights issues, but his fellow locals, for him pulling the “UFO business” out of downtown Roswell, and to the “front” of Roswell. I’ll have to check up on all this, now, that I’m reminding myself of it. Maybe interview him for my blog.

This also reminds me of the woman behind That Crazy Lady Down The Road, Judy Messoline (I have a signed copy of her book; will now have to give her the same, since I’d been talking up my book with her for years), and her UFO Watchtower. We’d gone down to see her many times over the years, and would just hang out and B.S. with her at her place, in the 90+ degree heat…watching the summer thunderheads roll in and out, talking about UFO sightings and, once, even getting some violin lessons from another lady also hanging out with Judy. This lady also went on to play some violin music. That was sooo cool, the four of us and Judy’s dogs, out in the middle of nowhere, violin music gracing the airwaves! After visiting her the first time, my wife and I then went around the area asking residents whether or not they’d seen anything weird, and, boy, did we hear some stuff. One was told us from a person who told us their grandmother used to sit on their front porch and watch UFOs rise out of Blanca Mountain (the prominent peak down there). Their grandmother’s time was the late 1800s.

Well. Here it is. My opus. My space opera. My signature work, as I’ll call it, because that’s how I look at this one. Of all I’ve written, and those who have read all of my work (including my ex-agent), this is the one everyone loves the most. This is my “Big Book.” It’s got it all: intrigue, love, conspiracies, UFOs, aliens, thinky stuff, scary stuff, funny stuff. Parts of my life. My DNA.

Thoughts for our future.

And I give it all to you.

I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for stopping by, and I thank you all in advance for taking a chance on it.

Related articles

Going Indie—What I’ve Learned (So Far)—Part 5

by

Disturbed
Disturbed. On Different Levels. (Disturbed, photo credit: cjmod)

Well, this was kind of disturbing.

I checked my The Uninvited numbers for the first time, since release, and found that through Amazon.com, for the month of June, there are a couple hundred downloads sold for free…when, in fact, they were not supposed to be free. So, I contacted Amazon, and asked. I kinda figured that there must have been a time lag of some kind, and expected that answer back from them. I didn’t get that. What I got were various iterations of the same response, in that what was shown was correct, and that the report time periods are what’s at issue. That I needed to look at and analyze all said info.

Well, I did that before even contacting them.

So…I looked around some more, checked with Smashwords, and, yup, found out on their FAQs, a little line, that reads:  “Please allow anywhere from two days to two weeks for price updates to reflect at retailers (usually it’s about a week or less).” Yeah, I’d read that months ago, that’s why I thought there might have been a delay in changing the price between Smashwords and a retailer.

But…I had another really cool takeaway…

There are several hundred downloads of The Uninvited out there!

How cool! Thanks, folks, free or not, I appreciate your taking a chance on my work! Please, write a review, however short!

Happy writing!

Related articles

Let’s Kindle a Fire in HD

by

OK.

I’ve been on the fence about getting any kind of a tablet. Any kind. Had “nice little discussions” with info geeks and you name it. But, even I’m starting to get interested in these things…especially the smaller (7 inch or so) versions. They are great information platforms.

The Kindle Fire HD.

Check out this video—sure, it’s over an hour (but you can drag faster through the timeline), so run it in the background while doing other things, but this thing—if it delivers—sounds really cool. I don’t have a smartphone, but this thing could be my mitigator…accessing e-mail and keeping more “live” on what social media I belong to, making me more accessible to post comments and timely responses to my agent and other writerly needs without paying for the data coverages that rape smartphone users (really, does all of Humanity need to pay such outlandish rates when nearly every human being has a smartphone?!). Were I to own one of these things it has exactly what I’m looking for, and at a rather nice price.

According to Mr. Bezos, with the Kindle Fire HD (7-inch model to ship September 14th, 8.9 inch November 20th), they wanted to create the best tablet at any price. They want to be about services, not hardware. They make money when people use their platforms, not when they buy them and leave in the drawer somewhere.

Many think Amazon the enemy. I’m not convinced they are. And I find this new tablet of theirs quite intriguing, better than nearly every other one I’ve looked into, including the iPad (did I just write that out loud?). For a while I was thinking an iPad the best platform (click here for a comparison link)—better if they came out with a 7-inch model, but so far, I’m really liking what I’m seeing in this Kindle Fire HD.

And, for me to even take the time to post about this, scares even me, but that’s how impressed I am by this thing (at least on paper).

It’s smokin.

Related articles

Amazon.com…Brick and Mortar?!

by

Say it ain’t so, but Amazon.com has just announced that it plans to open an actual–walk in–brick-and-mortar bookstore. Yeah, just when you thought…

This single store is to be opened in its home town and will be a test market for its creation. It will carry high-end products. My first thought was why open it in its hometown as a test? Too incestuous. They should open it elsewhere to really test it.

I got this (of all places!) from a Business Baramoter report on the Weather Channel this morning, but was unable to find any other info in a quick search….

Added Feb 7th: click this link for more information.

Added Feb 12th: click this link for more information.

Publishing — Rights and Wrongs

by

There has been a lot of discussion among writers, lately, about Amazon.com’s library lending and publishing imprints, not to mention the usual publishing ills–and even some DRM discussion. Now, I’ve worked for a large corporation or two (if you also count the military), and one thing I’ve found is that though some “entity” might do something that might piss off the rank and file (and evil/criminal activity notwithstanding), there are a lot of well-meaning people in those organizations–actual human beings–who exist at every level. It’s so easy to vilify a “corporate giant,” an entire entity, but the one thing I’ve thought about through all these discussions I’ve heard and read is that (to my mind) if something really is the best and the greatest–shouldn’t it survive? Bear itself out? Because if it wasn’t, won’t it fail? Just as “the cream always rises,” isn’t it also true that “the chaff always sinks?”

Sure, if you feel strongly about something, you should take action…be part of those who cause that chaff to sink…and I guess all the ongoing discussion is in determining just that. But what I take issue with is that everyone continues to throw poison-tipped spears at Amazon.

Look:  I don’t see a whole lotta change coming out of anywhere else.

You?

At least these well-meaning guys and gals at Amazon.com are trying to make an effort at things. Last I heard, they even pour lots of profits back into the company, rather than taking it all to their local yacht or bling establishments. They seem to be doing two very important things here: 1) giving writers new outlets, and 2) giving readers new outlets. Whether or not they have it “just right,” or “perfect,” isn’t so much the case…it’s evolving. The newest hip term: WiP (work in progress). Unless I’m missing something, if readers want to pay money to rent things, let em. We already have libraries. Contracts and legal definitions are being re-examined, put to their (as a friend on mine years ago used to say) “logical conclusions.” And, sure, and of course, these things can make Amazon a shitload a dough–but who cares?

Do you really care if Amazon makes more money?

This whole dang world revolves around making money or gaining power, and there’s always gonna be someone more wealthy and powerful than you. It’s just the way it is. But hopefully, along the way, some of that wealth and power can be put to good use, right? There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Yes, intentions are everything, but we can’t control everyone’s intentions. We can only control our own, and–maybe–help others to see their way to a little bit of good intention along their journeys through life. But we can’t control their intentions. Hopefully their legal teams make it known to the Rich and Powerful that if you “want this” you have to “give that” to make it publically viable.

So, maybe Amazon didn’t do exactly the right thing by grabbing publishers’ works like they did, or maybe it was due to legal [mis]interpretations that got lost in the shuffle, I don’t know. But what I do know is that if something is truly wrong, it will either be corrected or stomped. If anything about what they did was right…it will succeed. But either way, they (the people at Amazon) are trying. And if you know anything about succeeding in life, in success, you know one takes many stumbles along the paths to greatness. People make mistakes, well-meaning and otherwise, in trying to make something better.

Once again, I point this out:  I don’t see anyone else trying to change…trying to make things better.