Thursday, December 8, 2011

E-BOOKS AND HOW TO SELL THEM

On December 10th the  California Writers Club is having a book sale. All authors are to bring their books to the meeting. Every member is urged to buy at least one book for either their own enjoyment or as a gift.
This put me at a disadvantage as all four of my books are e-books. Fortunately my editor and cover specialist, Jeanne, had an idea. She made up a booklet for each novel.
On the front of each book is a picture of the cover in both black and white and color. Each booklet contains the name and summary of the novel along with information about me and how to buy the novel.
E-books are a new world and we are still finding the tools we need to survive in this new world.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

As near as I can see, the successful E-book authors have ten or more books on their sites. They have gotten around the idea of only producing one book a year. Some have three or four books published each year. Another point of interest is that these books are not as long as the standard hard cover. They run ten to twenty thousand words less.
The Price
Pricing is a problem. All pricing must end in .99. That’s Apple’s rule. Prices under $10 and greater than $2.98 will give you a 70% royalty. Over ten you are competing with King and Patterson. Would you pay $12.99  to read an unknown writer’s work? when you could pay $12.99 to read the latest Patterson’s book?
I price mine at $2.99
Letting people know you are alive.
There is a lot of money to be made. We are at the right place at the right time with the right tools. Throughout history how many people have been able to say that? But you must be willing to do the PR work. PR work consists of writing blogs, visiting blog, making comments, and doing reviews. Both Smashwords and Kindle have forums for authors to comment, ask for help, or make suggestions. Some writers who do very well at this are Joe Konrath, Barry Eisler, and John Locks. Check out their blogs. Joe’s blogs for 2009, when he was just starting e-books, are  both informative and avaliable.
But the star of the show is Amanda Hockings. In one month last year she made enough money to buy a house, free and clear. She is twenty six, single and never published anything but an e-book. She just signed a two-book deal for a half million dollars.
The Industry
Which brings me to my final point. Most of the stuff out in e-land is not good. People can read free samples of the book and find that out. So I don’t think the agent is going to disappear. Nor will the publishing house collapse.
At one time every publishing house had their in-house, first readers. Then the publishers found it was more profitable to hand that job off to the agent. They made them do the culling. Now what I think I see happening is the agent is going to be looking for the high selling e-book. He will search out an author who has a large following that shows he knows how to build a platform. The agent will suggest the author sign with him. And some will do it. Amanda said she signed because she was tired of networking and wanted time to write.
And the publishing business is here to stay because no matter what you do on the internet, or in the world of e-books, it will not equal that one Tuesday morning where, in five hundred Barnes and Noble stores all across the county, your book is on display with a professional cover. And it is sitting there on the table by the front door.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

E-BOOKS PART FOUR

The cover is a problem. I don’t know a pixy from a pixel.  I have found the best way to handle the cover is to have a friend who knows photo shop. Show up Saturday morning at their place with a six pack of beer or, depending on the person, a bottle of white wine--Barefoot wine works pretty well. With a little fast pouring and faster talking you can get them to help you. Now I know nothing about photo shop, but I do know it never works the first time and so it becomes a point of honor for your friend to show you they can do it. This allows you to smile, take your time, finish the wine, and continue to write. Of course you can hire someone online to do it but, for most of us, I would not recommend it. They will charge more than you will probably make.

An Inconvenient Truth

Most of us hope to make a large amount of money writing. Oh we don’t necessarily want to be the next Stephen King. Most of us would settle for being the next Robert Parker. Yet most of us will end up being the next Ed Dweker. Never heard of Ed? See what I mean?
Publishing an e-book is not like having a book published. It is more like owning your own bookstore.
Unfortunately your bookstore is hidden on a street no one has ever heard of. There is no sign outside and the book is in a drawer in the back room. You can guess how many you are going to sell. You need to let people know you have a book. And you need more than one book so that people who do find you will keep coming back. A series with the same hero works very well. It would be good if you have a famous character hang out at your store. Someone like Stephanie Plum, Harry Dresden, Reacher, or Spencer. Then people will drop in to see what is going on and leave with one of your books.

The Name of the Game is Reviews

For some reason your friends and family will not be rushing to buy the book. Maybe they are still upset about the white wine and the cover. Not even other authors. I am running at fifty percent as to the people who suggested that I buy their book and they would buy mine. Then we would write each other reviews. I have written twice as many reviews as I have gotten
And reviews are important. If you look at the best sellers in the Kindle store you will find that some have several hundred reviews. That seems to be what a best seller needs.

Friday, September 2, 2011

E BOOKS PART THREE
The biggest problem with uploading the book on Amazon--or any e-reader--is formatting. The industry is new, and the desired formatting changes by the month. Two years ago they wouldn’t accept smart quotes. They do today. For formatting you must remember that the pilcrow is your friend. The pilcrow is that backward P in the middle of the Microsoft Word ribbon. It shows you the formatting in your manuscript, such as spaces between sentences, page breaks, and use of both the tab and enter key.

THINGS TO AVOID

Tabs are a big no-no. To get rid of them use Find and Replace. Select More at the bottom left, then select Special, and then Tab. The symbol for tab will be shown in Find. Put nothing in Replace and chose Replace all.
Another area to look at is the number of spaces between sentences. Many of us were trained to use two spaces between sentences. Nowadays they want just one. Again find and replace will help. Go to the find field, hit the space bar twice. Then using the mouse, go to the replace field and hit the space bar once. You won’t see anything, but the computer will know what to do.
By using paragraph from the center of the ribbon you can change the indent from five to two or three. I would not recommend more than three. The e-readers allow the reader to change font size and on some of the larger fonts you will find that five spaces take you half way across the screen.
When all else fails
The best and most up to date help in formatting will be contained in the free books available on Kindle. Publishing on Kindle with Kindle Direst Publishing and Smashword Style Guide By Mark Coker are both free and can be downloaded to the computer from the Kindle store. You do not need a Kindle, However make sure those books are current. Anything published two years ago is of little use.

THIS IS A REQUIREMENT, NOT A SUGGESTION!

Studying the books are a must! This is why you need to install Kindle on your computer. You need these free books. Little things will be mentioned like, no strange fonts and no fonts larger than 19. No page numbers or headers and footers are to be used, page breaks and the number of space before each chapter number/ Also how to use an index.

MORE NEXT WEEK

Saturday, August 27, 2011

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

Many years ago--never mind how many--I came across my first science fiction/fantasy magazine. It had been wrapped up with a lot of other magazines in stout wire and deposited at five AM in front of a drug store in San Francisco.  Now at that time I was a paper boy with wire cutters--our papers were delivered in wire bundles.
The covers of the pulp magazines back then were quite enticing to an eleven year old boy. I grabbed one stuffed it into my paper bag and read it later. Too my great disappointment the contents did not match the cover.  But hope springs eternal in a young boy’s breast so I tried it again next month. A strange thing happened. I got to liking the stories.  The third month I actual paid for the magazine.
Now decades later I have traveled with Conan, laughed with Fhfard and the Gray Mouser, Rode Jordan’s Wheel of Time, De Camped from one universe to the next, and kept an eye out for Boskone.  My children are grown now and I have misplaced my wire cutters but I have a computer. Maybe I can entice a few young men, and women, into a universe were the good guys win.  So different from ours 
PUBLISHING AN E-BOOK  PART  TWO

Everyone is familiar with Amazon and Kindle, but have you heard of Smashwords, and heard why should we use them?
Smashwords is a free service that converts your book to eleven different formats. These formats will fit on different e-readers. If you want to see which ones, go to the Smashwords Publishing web site and select any title. When you go to the book’s home page, scroll down and you will see the e-reader formats available.

TIME SAVER

You could go to all the different e-book readers, including the smart phones, and upload your book making sure it was formatted correctly for each reader--or you can let Smashwords do it. If Smashwords does it, they’ll charge a few cents per sold book. They will also check your formatting and distribute your book to all the different e-readers and sell it from their site. If you have no sales, you have no charges.
They also will supply an ISBN number which you need for Sony and Apple. Smashwords has a variety of ISBN payment plans including some that cost nothing. I picked one that costs just under ten dollars. And I pay for that number with the money received from the sale of my books.  

YOUR SALES TOOL

To publish on Smashwords you go to their site, choose PUBLISH at the top of the page and follow the directions. The only difference from Amazon is they ask for two summaries, one of 400 characters and another not to exceed 4000 characters. These summaries should be your sale tool for the book. I use the description on my query letter.  Again at the proper point they will ask you to both upload your cover and your manuscript.
In the next post we will talk about formatting


Sunday, August 14, 2011

How to publish an e-book

E-books
Are they the future of our business, a danger to book stores and publishing houses, or the world’s biggest slush pile?
The answer is--yes.
I have published three e-books. My motivation was very basic. It was not to make a million dollars, and it was not to retire in Tahiti. It was much simpler. I was looking over some old files in the computer one day and saw that one file consisted of a manuscript finished eleven years ago. It was book one of a trilogy. The trilogy itself had been completed six years ago.
It was just taking space in my computer, so I decided it should sit in someone else’s computer and maybe make me a few bucks. I began to look at e-publishing and this is what I found.
The eight hundred pound gorilla in the publishing world is Kindle. Amazon will not release the figures, but the industry’s best guess is, as of December 2010, that there were thirteen million Kindles in the hands of readers. And that doesn’t count this year’s sales. Their closest competitor is the Barnes and Noble, Nook. About five million of them have been sold. The Nook is more expensive, but the controls are easier to use. It will even display color--though how important that is for novels is a good question. Its battery life is not nowhere near as good as Kindle’s.
World wide, I’m told Sony is the leader, but in this country they are a small player. In fact Apple is bigger.
The Apple I-pad has I-Books, just as the I-Pod has I-Tunes. To get your book in the Apple, or Sony catalog, you need an ISBN number (more on that later). Strange to say that you can download a Kindle app to the I-pad which allows you to bypass Apple’s requirements and go direct to Amazon. This may change. As of the first week of August, Apple and Amazon are in an argument.
When it is about E-books, it always seems to come back to Amazon. To e-publish on Kindle you must download Kindle for PC (OR Mac) and set up an account. This is very important and basic because you will need to download some instruction books that are both free and available. Once you have signed in you go to FORUMSKINDLEDIRECTPUBLISHING.COM and choose bookshelf. On the right side of the page you will see a button labeled New Title. Click on that and they will walk you through the process. At the proper place they will ask you to upload your cover and then manuscript just as you would attachments.
MORE NEXT WEEK

Thursday, August 11, 2011

E-BOOKS

I will be posting info on E-books shortly. Check back on this blog frequently.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

PROOFREADING IN THE E-BOOK WORLD

from. . . Walter J Golden, author of the three books in the Seamount Series: Blue Glory; The Queen In Silver & Black; and Red Devlin.

My editor, Norma Jeanne Strobel, and I are engaged in one of the most frustrating, and necessary tasks known to a writer--proofreading. The middle of next month, or maybe even sooner, we will be e-publishing our first adventure/dectective book in a new series.

The title of the book is Carolina Nights. I will run this book through two critique groups, and get together with my editor for careful proofing. I read it from the computer and she follows on a hard copy. However, no matter how carefully we think we have proofed it, it is amazing that after all our attention to detail, our readers will still pick up errors.

Everyone knows that in good writing, the most important thought of a sentence is too go last. At one time, maybe a year ago, I realized I needed to move a prepositional clause from the end to the beginning of the sentence. Apparently I changed it so that it would now start with the prepositional clause; however I forgot to take the clause off the back end. We now had a sentence that started and finished with the same three words. Not to worry. We caught it and got that one fixed.

Another time, a mystery revolved around the word “through”. It sat there, between two sentences and seemed to have relationship to neither. Once there was probably a complete sentence surrounding that word, but now, like the gates of a city standing in the middle of a flat desert with no sign of a city, it becomes an intriguing mystery. What was it attached to?

But the really sad part is that no matter how many writers peruse the manuscript, or how careful we are in our proofing, after we publish, a devoted reader will still be able to find an error--or two--or three in the book -- and will not hesitate to bring it to our attention!

In our last book, it was dining and dinning room.



# # #

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

HOT -- JUST OFF THE PRESS -- NEWS ABOUT MY EBOOKS

JUST GOT WORD THAT ALL THREE OF MY SEAMOUNT SERIES BOOKS are now publisshed to Kindle, Nook, Sony, all Apples devices including the IPad, I phone, and I pod and are ready for you to purchase at the all time low price of $2.99.

The last book is Red Devlin -- that is, last for now. If the series is well-accepted, I am ready to write book five, which promises to be the best one yet. Don't worry about reading them in order. You could always start with Red Devlin, and if you really enjoy it, go back to Blue Glory, book one, and then to The Queen in Silver & Black, book two.
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Hope to read your review of the book when you finish it. We authors are really eager for those reviews!!!

Monday, August 8, 2011

SEAMOUNT SERIES COMPLETE WITH THREE BOOKS

Red Devlin, book three in the Seamout Series is now published as an ebook on Amazon.com/Kindle and Smashwords.com where it will soon be forwarded to the Barnes & Noble Nook, and all the Apple Devices. The first two books of the series are: Blue Glory & The Queen In Silver & Black.

To purthase the books, just go to either Amazon.com and select Kindle books, or Smashwords.com and enter Seamount in the search box.

Here is a new series for all you Fantasy lovers. Happy reading.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Writing Reviews -- Importance and How To

Reviews are of great importance to the success of the author in the E-book world. If you enjoyed a book, take a few minutes to leave your gift of a review for the author and his future readers.

Here's how: For Kindle, go to Amazon.com Kindle, and enter the name of the book. Click on the book cover, and then scroll down until you see the section on Reviews. Just write your review, and then click ----> Submit.

And it will be appreciated very much.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

2ND BOOK OF SEAMOUNT SERIES NOW FOR SALE ON AMAZON KINDLE E-BOOKS

After Blue Glory, you have been waiting for the sequel: THE QUEEN IN SLIVER AND BLACK, Book Two of the Seamount Series by Walter J Golden.
It has has just been released as an E-book, on Kindle and soon will be out also on the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Border's Kobo, the Apple Ipad, Ipod, and other Apple devices.
You can purchase it starting today at Amazon.com/Kindle Ebooks, for $2.99, and if you haven't read book one, Blue Glory, you might want to read it first. Currently, it is on special for the next month at the inviting price of $.99.
Ready for a bright, and exciting epic fantasy -- and a wonderful device for reading books? The Kindle and the Seamount Series books await you. The Amazon.com Kindle E-reader continues to outrank all E-readers in numbers of books available, battery life, easy-on-the eyes technology, and is now offered at the lowered price of $114.00. Click on the link at the top right hand side of this blog, and it will take you right to Amazon where you can buy the books, and the E-reader.

Walter J Goden, author looks forward to hearing about your pleasant reading experience with his first two books, and reading a review which you may post on the Amazon site, and is at his desk as we speak, readying book three -- RED DEVLIN -- for publication in early June.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

FEBRUARY WITH ORANGES -- INSTEAD OF ICE

I can remember February in Michigan on the Upper Peninsula where you had to go due south for forty miles to hit the Canadian border. I can still see that frozen shore line of the great lake. I can also remember driving past the prison at Marquette. The huge, gray, inclined walls sucked the sun’s feeble heat from the air. A very cruel but not unusual punishment for its inhabitants.
I still recall looking out the window in upstate New York seeing the steam rise off of Lake Champlain when the air temperature dropped to twenty degrees and the lake was still a chilly sixty degrees.
Despite the fact that some say cold does not radiate, there were days on the flight line there when something made its way through my insulated boots and stole all the heat from my ankles down and left an ache behind.
One of my memories of February is hitting a patch of ice while driving, doing a one-eighty, and ending up in a ditch facing the way from which I had come.



Do I miss all that?
Take a look at my face and make a guess.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Blue Glory, Book One of Walter Golden's Seamount Series Available on all Ebook Readers

THE NEW AND EXCITING WORLD OF EBOOKS IS UPON US:

Blue Glory, a fiction, epic fantasy by Walter J Golden is now an Ebook and can be purchased for the Amazon KINDLE, Barnes & Noble NOOK, Smashwords STANZA, SONY, KOBO, all Apple devices, and many other Ebook readers.

You can download a sample of several chapters to help you decide if you wish to buy the book.

If you would like to read my award winning short story, A GLOBAL WARNING, please scroll to the end of this blog where you can start with chapter one, and read posts backwards.

You will find a few other Walter Golden posts along the way.

Please email me if you have any ebook or writing questions: walter.golden@att.net

Chapter 4 -- A GLOBAL WARNING final chapter -- First place winning Short Story

The sound woke Mehdi. No longer befuddled by my talents, he realized what had happened and wailed louder than the imam on the minaret. He grabbed KC's arm and pointed at me. “Get him back in the bottle.”
KC looked puzzled . . . almost sober.
Mehdi shook his arm and pointed at me. “That’s a genie. He’s evil. They’re all evil. They love to destroy things.”
KC heard the word evil, took a good, hard look at me and realized I resembled the pictures he had seen in Sunday school. Suddenly sober, he backed toward the door, all the while staring at my wings and claws, occasionally craning his neck trying to see if I had a tail hidden in my red pantaloons. “Okay, keep your shirt on, storekeeper,” he said. “I agree, it’s time to quit. I’ve one wish left. Genie,” he ordered, “fix the bottle and get inside.”
I smiled and flipped him the one finger salute that seems to have replaced the old heart, lips, and mind greeting. “Sorry,” I said. “No bottle, no wishes. Tough luck, but I don’t make the rules.”
I picked up a small piece of the bottle, no bigger than a finger nail. As long as even a sliver of glass was missing, the bottle and the spell couldn’t be fixed. It was against the rules for me to destroy even this small a piece, so I’d hide it. There was a rock at the bottom of the Mariana Trench that would do. Giving them another one finger salutation, I strode out the door.

The rest is history. No one found any weapons of mass destruction. Reputations were destroyed. A President was made to look foolish, a Secretary of Defense was left foaming at the mouth. Old friends became enemies and the powers of the world realigned.
Kinda nice, huh?
On the personal level, Bob was now a fumbling klutz. His commanding officer refused to trust him with anything that could explode. Mehdi, after his father disowned him and stopped paying his tuition, found a new career as a New York cab driver.
But KC was unfinished business; he had come out ahead, and we don’t let that happen. There are all sorts of rules against it, and all sorts of very, very unpleasant penalties for the genie stupid enough to let it happen.
I knew what I had to do, but I hadn’t decided whom to use. Should I report to Army Intelligence that a ranger sergeant had deposited a half million untraceable dollars in his account the day before the invasion? Or should I tell the IRS he hadn’t paid taxes on it?
As I sipped my beer and listened to KC talk, I made up my mind. It would be Army intelligence. I wouldn’t involve the IRS. After all, I’m a malicious spirit, not a truly evil one, even if the difference is sometimes hard to tell.
I stood up to go, flipped a penny onto the bar and changed it to gold as it arched through the air. KC would find it, realize I had been here, and maybe sweat a little. I‘d like to watch, but I’d be busy. Things were beginning to warm up.
So far my job at the National Weather Service has been a real ball. After all, weather is nothing but air, water, and fire, and I’ve played games with them for centuries. I’m still keeping the drought areas dry, and the sliding hillsides wet, but it isn’t much of a challenge. The snow is gone from Florida now, and the ice from Georgia, and it’s too soon for another blizzard. But it has been an outstanding year, one for the record books. Hurricane season is rapidly coming to an end, and it’s time to get ready for the tornadoes. I have some new tricks I want to try.
After that I think I’ll work with Wall Street. I could have a real effect there.
But first the tornadoes. Thinking of them, I strode out the door, whistling a song from The Wizard of OZ. I stopped a moment on the threshold, took a deep breath of freedom and smiled as another tray of glasses hit the floor.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

A GLOBAL WARNING PART 3 (continued)

Sunday, January 2, 2011Part 3 A GLOBAL WARNING A waltergolden SHORT
Continued. . .
The front door crashed open and the hot desert wind blew straight in, tearing the rollihg smoke to tatters. Just before it disappeared, I materialized from the bottle, spread my leather wings until they brushed the ceiling, extended razor edged claws, bent down, and grinned at KC with teeth filed to sharp points.
Some of us just love to make an entrance.
And, we don't all look like Barbara Eden.
I put Mehdi to sleep, but left Bob alone. He was standing there, dazed. He would come in handy later.
"What the hell are you?" KC gasped, almost, but not quite, sobering up.
I bowed and made that Arabic heart-lips-and-mind salute they love so well in the movies. "I am your servant, Effendi. What are your wishes?"
He stared up at me, greed instantly replacing fear.
"I get three wishes, don't I?" he demanded, more than asked.
"Of course, Oh-Wise-Master." I knew what was coming next.
"I want half a million dollars. Not in gold, but in my bank account. And I want it untraceable.
To KC and Bob I hardly flickered, but it took a while. Still, time is the simplest of things. Over the last few decades I had paid a lot of attention to Hollywood, but not much to commerce, so I had some work to do. I studied the banking system and was amazed at how vulnerable it was. Not much better than the old guarded vaults and locked strong boxes. I filed that knowledge away for future reference. I was glad to see humans hadn't gotten smarter over the years. Next I manipulated the data, found the money, put it in KC's account, erased my tracks, crashed a few computers, just for the hell of it, and arrived back at the shop just as I left.
"It is done, Master," I said, all the while thinking KC was a piker. Usually my masters want millions, and they want it all in a large, hernia-producing gold pile.
KC licked his lips. Okay, now I need to live to spend it. He waved his arm north. "Go to Iraq; find all Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and get rid of them.?
That didn't take long.
I did the flicker bit anyway and arrived back at the shop as Bob was examining the bottle. He looked up as I materialized and said, "Hey KC, I hear our next stop's North Korea. Have SharpTooth get rid of their bombs and maybe we won't have to go."
Once, long ago, back when it had been known as the Hermit Kingdom, I had been to Korea. I had no desire to return. The mountains are steep and the weather is abominable--and that wasn't the only thing abominable. It's not the Himalayas, but if you look hard enough you can find Yetis there. Though why anyone would want to look hard enough to find them is beyond me. They are huge, stupid creatures, bigger than I am--and stronger--and they smell. They're also immune to my powers, but luckily for me, just the slightest bit slower. I had no desire to see if they had grown faster over the years.
It was time for my exit. I used one of my tricks and Bob's fingers and palms suddenly extruded a silicone liquid not normally found in humans--though I understand that now days it is sometimes discovered in the female of the species.
The long neck of the bottle went sliding through Bob's hands, hit the stone floor and broke into a thousand pieces with a lovely, bell-like sound that filled the shop and rang my long-awaited note of freedom.

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Monday, January 31, 2011

How I got my First Science Fiction Magazine

Many years ago--never mind how many--I came across my first science fiction/fantasy magazine. It had been wrapped up with a lot of other magazines in stout wire and deposited at five AM in front of a drug store in San Francisco.
Now at that time I was a paper boy with wire cutters--our papers were delivered in wire bundles.
The covers of the pulp magazines back then were quite enticing to an eleven year old boy. I grabbed one stuffed it into my paper bag and read it later. Too my great disappointment the contents did not match the cover.
But hope springs eternal in a young boy’s breast so I tried it again next month. A strange thing happened. I got to liking the stories.
The third month I actual paid for the magazine.
Now decades later I have traveled with Conan, laughed with Fhfard and the Gray Mouser, Rode Jordan’s wheel of time, De Camped from one universe to the next, and kept an eye out for Boskone.
My children are grown now and I have misplaced my wire cutters but I have a computer. Maybe I can entice a few young men, and women, into a universe were the good guys win.
So different from ours

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Part 2 -- A Global Warning Part (continued)

Of course it was a little late for that. I'd already drunk my usual breakfast, a couple of Bloody Marys. The night before, Bob and I had closed the NCO club, doing our best to make sure they didn't have any open bottles or barrels of beer to go flat."

"Barrels of beer don't go flat."

"Not when I'm around they don't."

"I had only three hours sleep," KC continued, "and felt woozy. We were in the old town, doing some last minute shopping. About noon, just as the sun became unmercifully hot, Bob and I came across one of those little shops that sell everything from camel saddles to brass plates. Bob wanted a camel saddle, I wanted out of the sun."



I stared into my beer, remembering that day. I had been waiting for them--or someone like them--for a long time. I was stuck in one spot, but I knew what was going on in the world. For years I had been watching TV trying to decide which was funnier, the sitcoms or the news. However, boredom had set in decades ago, so I was ready when they staggered into the small shop with all the grace of two ruptured camels dying of thirst. KC had smelled like one, too.

Mehdi, the twenty year old son of the owner, hurried from the back of the store, throwing aside the curtain that separated the junk in the front from the treasures in the rear.

As soon as Bob stepped inside, his gaze locked on a white camel saddle on the counter. From the back of the store I could see that KC's gaze was marvelously unfocussed. I decided it was time to make my move.

Bob began the tourist dance, pointing at the camel saddle, raising an eyebrow, then holding up his wallet, asking in pantomime, "How much?"

"Twenty-five dollars, American, "Mehdi said.

Ah, the advantages of a university education. Mehdi was bright and, best of all, sure he knew more than his father. Right now his father was sitting in a coffee house down the street, complaining to his cronies that his over-educated son was forgetting the old ways. Which was just fine with me. I had always found the old ways too confining.

"You speak English?" Bob regarded the young man with the same open-mouthed surprise a child displays at the sight of his first giraffe.

"What's that?" KC interrupted, pointing at the bottle in the back of the other room.

"Just and old . . . ." Mendi stopped as I mentally clobbered him. He peered at KC. In a flash I could see the rug unrolling, the young man's white shirt and tie disappearing, and a robed merchant seating himself in front of the customer. Mehdi may have been going to the university, but there was a thousand years of trader packed into his genes. "Just an old and very, very valuable antique, my friend. A jar dating from the time of the first caliph."

KC strained forward, trying to see past the Seal of Solomon and through the amber glass. "How much does something like that cost?"

Normally Mehdi knew better than to try to sell the bottle, but I was in control now, and all thoughts of what his father might do disappeared. "Five hundred dollars," he said.

KC straightened. "Too much. I'll give you twenty-five dollars."

Mehdi laughed and I felt insulted.

Then Mehdi scratched his chin and peered at KC. "Since you are a warrior that soon will be going into battle, perhaps I could come down a little--say to four hundred and fifty."

Now it was KC's turn to laugh.

I leaned on them both pretty hard, but it still took fifteen minutes to settle on an amount, one hundred dollars. And Mehdi had to throw in the white leather camel saddle.

At my silent urging, KC took the bottle and pulled the cork.

That was all I needed.

Deep in the earth and far to the east, I set off a great rumbling. It thundered toward the shop like a fast moving avalanche, getting louder as it came. The three of them shot to their feet, stared at each other, opened their mouths, but before they could say a word the sound was inside, all around them.

Now the building shook, now it swayed, now the shop seemed to roll and spin, caught in some monstrous wave. They staggered as they were ripped from their safe, smug, little reality into my very strange, wine-dark sea. Green smoke boiled from the bottle and filled the shop. The front door crashed open and the hot desert wind blew straight in, tearing the rolling smoke to tatters. Just before it disappeared, I materialized from the bottle, spread my leather wings until they brushed the ceiling, extended razor edged claws, bent down, and grinned at KC with teeth filed to sharp points.

Part One -- A GLOBAL WARNING By Walter Golden

GLOBAL WARNING
Though I drink more than I should, I'm not much of a drinker, so that isn't what drove me to take shelter in this particular bar on a rainy, North Carolina night. It was my unfinished business with Smith, and maybe, just maybe, it was a compulsion to be near my old home.
I grinned at that thought. Once that had involved a very real compulsion.
I walked in, casually flicked the rain from my claws, and headed for the bar, secure in the knowledge that no one would notice me. Just like the hero of the old radio program, The Shadow, I had the power to cloud men's minds.
If you know where to look, you can find a bar like this near any large military base. They're always off the beaten track. Sometimes they're in a warehouse district, sometimes down a back alley, occasionally on a dead end street. There may not even be a sign outside--but then they are not looking for the walk-in trade.
In France the bars are for the Legion, in England, for the Royal Marines. The Russians have gathering spots sfor their Spetsnaz, and the Americans have theirs for the Special Forces.
And in all of them, civilians are never welcome.
The Legion throws them out, the British insist they leave, the Americans pretend they don't exise, and the Russians stick them with the bar bill.
Of course my kind stop by any damn time we want.
This was a Rangers' watering hole and normally crowded, but not tonight; only one of the four pool tables was in use. The Rangers had returned from the Gulf last week and most of them were home trying to remember how to reconnect with their families.
The place was a typical elite troop hideaway. Willie Nelson was on the jukebox, a picture of John Wayne was tacked beside the cash register, and over the door hung crossed American and unit flags.
I took a seat at the far end of the chipped mahogany bar next to a large man with chevrons on his sleeves. As I expected, the owner of the place, my old friend, Keith C. Smith, was a bartender. A short man with a clean white shirt the color of his thinning hair, KC moved with the relaxed grace of a martial arts expert. The rolled-up sleeves showed firm muscles. And he was sober. That was a change from the last time I'd seen him. He must have taken my money and retired from the service. From the looks of it, retirement suited him.
But I'd fix that.
I grinned, showing sharp teeth. Naturally, KC didn't really see them, and he didn't question my right to be here. To him I looked like someone he had once met, but whose name he had forgotten. KC nodded politely and started to set down a frosty stein of beer. Suddently, f rom the far end of the room came the sound of glasses crashing to the floor. Grinning wider, I watched KC wince and almost spilled my beer.
"Bob, you butterfingered idiot, " KC muttered. "I wish to hell I'd shot you years ago.
I didn't say a word. Somehow Bob's subconscious had warned him that I had entered the bar. I have that effect on the poor man. I glanced at the b roken bottle with a long neck and etched with the Seal of Solomon, sitting on the shelf above the cash register. More of Bob's work--and in my opinion--his very best.
Someone had painstakingly glued most of it back together, but, naturally, there was still a small piece missing from the two-foot tall, amber bottle.
"Don't be so hard on the boy," the sergeant next to me told KC. I nodded my agreement, but KC didn't notice.
Instead, he glared at the soldier as if trying to make up his mind about something. Then he turned, reached under the cash register, and poured himself a straight shot from the bottle on the bottom shelf. He downed it in one gulp and poured himself another.
"Phil," he said to the sergeaqnt, "I wasn't kidding. I should have shot Bob two days before we hit the sand in Iraq."
I wouldn't have like that, but maybe I could have worked around it.
KC took another sip of whiskey, rolled it around in his mouth, swallowed and sighed. "For a long time I've wanted to tell someone my story, but if I had tried while I was in the service, they'd have had me out the gate and on the street with a section eight discharge. Hell, you won't believe me anymore than they woul. Just chalk up the weirdness to the whiskey."
"And mighty fine shiskey it looks to be, " Phil said, staring at the bottle.
KC took the pointed hint and poured the sergeant a glass. He looked at me, but I shook my head. Like I said, I'm not much of a drinker.
"We were on R and R in Kuwait City, " KC said. "It was the day before the curtain went up. We didn't know anything official, but the captain told us to stay sober.
TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR THE NEXT EPISODE

WILL THE REAL WALTER GOLDEN PLEASE STAND UP. . .

I was asked to write a description of myself for my readers. That is not an easy task, but here is what I offer. . .


Many years ago--never mind how many--I came across my first science fiction/fantasy magazine. It had been wrapped up with a lot of other magazines in stout wire and deposited at five AM in front of a drug store in San Francisco.

Now, at that time, I was a paperboy with wire cutters--our papers were delivered in wired bundles.

The covers of the pulp magazines back then were quite enticing to an eleven year old boy. I grabbed one, stuffed it into my paper bag and took it with me to read later. Too my great disappointment the contents did not match the cover.

But hope springs eternal in a young boy's breast so I tried it again the next month. A strange thing happened. I got to liking the stories.

The third month I started actually paying for the magazines I claimed for my collection.

Now, decades later, I have traveled with Conan, laughed with Fhfard and the Gray Mouser, rode Jordan's wheel of time, DeCamped from one universe to the next, and kept an eye out for Boskone.

My children are grown now and I have misplaced my wire cutters but I have a computer. Maybe I can entice a few young men, and women, into a universe where the good guys win.

So different from ours.