Midwasteland Kickstarter Project Released!

Here it is! Please check out the link or the embedded HTML (assuming it works!). If you have any questions or feedback, please post in the comments section. Otherwise, let's make this work!

Midwasteland: The Kickstarter Experimet

I'm not sure how well known Kickstarter is, but readers of this site and my work will soon become very familiar with it. As I've been hinting, I'm going to try to publish Midwasteland, a post-apocalyptic novel set in the Chicago-land area, through Kickstarter. Basically the way it works is I set a goal (in this case $5000), and then offer a series of tiers with different rewards based on the amount of funding each person or entity pledges. Once the goal is reached, so is the project and people receive their rewards. If the goal is never reached, no money changes hands. It's an all or nothing way to connect with my fans AND give them reasons to buy. So...what are going to be the rewards for my book? Here they are:

-$5 pledge: a copy of the eBook

-$10 pledge: the above plus a signed copy of the paperback book

-$50 pledge: the above plus a DVD to accompany the signed book. This DVD will provide a hosted tour of the settings of the book as they are in real life Chicago and the surrounding area. It will also include an interview with the author detailing his creative intentions with this novel and a brief bit about his life.

-$250 pledge: the above plus the author will also agree to write one short story (between 10 and 15 full computer pages) on a topic, character, or setting of the funder's choosing. These can make for unique gifts or corporate media.

-$500 pledge: the above plus I will agree to name a non-major character after the funder or his friends/family upon release of the book. Please note that this is for real names only (no requests to name a character Wanker McSillypants).

-$1000 pledge: This is the corporate tier. For this, a donating company will get all of the above plus, as I have peppered the settings of the book with ruins and/or remains of generic businesses, I will replace those generic businesses with mentions of real world companies (a presence or planned presence in the Chicago-land area is required to be considered). This is a wonderful way to have your business woven into an original storyline (non-intrusive to the story of course) and to have it mentioned for promotional and posterity's sake!


I plan on launching this project on the Kickstarter website this coming Monday, the 16th, barring any unforseeable delays. I will need some help spreading the word, so please, if you like my work, please pass along links or post status updates on your social media pages once it goes live! I love writing and I do it as much for all of you as I do for myself.

And if you have any thoughts, criticism, or compliments, please feel free to post them in the comments!

Experiment Tim! (Part 2)

Okay, since I'm not the best in the world when it comes to planning out a business model and all the costs and expenditures that must be factored in, I thought I'd throw this out to the gallery and see what comes back. Basically, I'm likely going to be trying the Kickstarter route for crowdfunding my novel release for "Midwasteland", using the mechanics in the previous posts for a tiered payment/funding model. I am planning on setting a goal for $10,000 in funding for the project. Sounds like a lot, I know, but when you consider all of the bonuses and/or benefits in the tiers in the previous post, I think it's a number that makes some sense. But feel free to provide feedback if you think I'm crazy.

But, more importantly, I took the step today to analyze and research what it will cost me in physical hard costs to do this project. I went to www.bookprintingrevolution.com to get an idea of the costs associated with printing hard copy paperback versions of the books and having them shipped to me. I also tried to factor in an estimated cost to send them out to my readers who funded me (after signing them of course). It seems to me that these two costs represent what I would need from the physical book costs portion of my plan. Anyway, here's what I came up with:

1. Setup fee through www.bookprintingrevolution.com -- $99.99
2. Cost for 200 printed paperback books -- $986.00
3. My estimate of shipping the books to my home -- $200.00
4. My estimate of shipping the books to individual readers -- $400.00
Total book printing/shipping costs -- $1685.99

So...what am I missing? Anything? The rest of the costs associated with the tiers in my past post (free eBook copy, signed paperbacks, custom written short stories, reviews/edits of others' work) don't have much if any monetary cost. The additional addons I've had since (a burned DVD w/commentary video from locations where the book is set, free PDF chapters from my work in progress, acknowledgement in the paperback, naming characters within my next work after the donator) also have little cost (namely the DVD-RWs and DVD sticker labels).

So tell me, what am I missing?

Because if the answer is nothing, then this seems clear. Adding an additional $500 for buffer and unexpected costs, that gets me to 2185.99 in total costs for this project, assuming it isn't popular enough that I have to buy more physical books (which I hope it is!). So, setting aside costs for marketing for the moment, that means that if I get 100 people to donate to my project, they would have to spend an average of $21.86 for me to break even. And that would be if I only sold half the books! To me, that is totally workable, but you're the customer. Tell me if/why I'm wrong....

Echelon: Chapter 4

Ch. 4

Morning traffic was notoriously frustrating in Chicago. Fortunately Payton’s apartment and CUFOS headquarters were both near Western Avenue, allowing him to avoid the crowded highways and drive his Jeep Wrangler to work without too much of a hassle. Payton took a peek in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t had time to do much more than shower and throw on his clothes. His short dark hair looked disheveled and his naturally thin and angular face made the bags under his eyes look like moon craters. He used to be more active, playing volleyball at his health club, jogging after work. Lately he’d been spending more time in his apartment, trying out pricey bottles of Irish whiskey.

It wasn’t that he was depressed, and he didn’t think he was an alcoholic. But when you’re an investigator at the Center for UFO Studies, there were few people who could help from laughing at your vocation, and in modern times, your job was who you were. That made him a kook. His niece might enjoy telling people that he chased little green men, but Jennifer’s glee was everyone else’s disdain. Parents, former friends, old professors, all of them had expressed surprise when he’d left the corporate world for CUFOS.

He’d worked in human resources after graduating from Illinois Chicago. He had a BA in Psychology with a minor in Business. To make his job prospects worse, he had also chosen to pursue a focus on ancient languages, largely due to his interest in religion. His grades had been good enough that some of Chicago’s largest companies had come calling, including Leo Burnett, where he’d ended up as a recruiting executive. That had lasted a little over a year. Somewhere between growing up in a rigid Catholic family and a near obsession with his studies of human behavior, Payton had picked up a rather impressive ability to determine when people were lying. He’d long since shed his parent’s religion, but his hatred for liars had remained. That made the business world difficult to navigate, since everyone lied, particularly during the interview process. He found he had trouble recommending anyone he interviewed for hire, since he always detected a lie at some point in their interview.

He’d left Leo Burnett before they could fire him. He had briefly tried again at Prudential, but before long he gave that job up as well. He had considered going back to school, maybe getting his advanced degree and applying for a teaching job. Then he’d gotten a call from a Professor Hiroshi Mikora asking him if he believed in UFOs. He’d said no. Then the Professor had invited him to lunch.

Mikora was the director of CUFOS, a group comprised mostly of Astronomy and Physics professors from Northwestern. He said that he was friends with one of the Psych professors at UIC and that he’d heard of that special talent he had, the one that made it impossible for him to work in a corporate environment. Mikora told him that this same trait would take him far at CUFOS. Payton had argued at first, mainly because he didn’t believe in UFOs.

“That’s good,” Mikora had told him. “Most of the reports we get are fakes. You’re going to help us figure out which ones to study and which to throw away.” He’d also mentioned that the Center had moved beyond exclusively dealing with UFO reports. Now days they investigated all types of paranormal reports.

The pay wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. And the work had turned out to be interesting, though perhaps more monotonous than many would expect. Most days he spent behind a desk, armed with only a computer and a telephone. There were times when he was out in the field, and the travel was fun. But the truth was he preferred the work behind the desk. That was where most of the puzzles were, and he loved solving puzzles.

In return for solving those puzzles, he had access to virtually every level of the Center. There were a few other investigators, all of them older than Payton, but none of them was given the same amount of freedom. Records, physics, forensics: he had the run of them all.

He knew that his title of Investigator sounded more impressive than it was. It had the ring of law enforcement, with none of the authority. The few times that he’d gone in the field and been confronted by local detectives or the feds, they had snickered while treating him like a mentally disabled cousin. But CUFOS had its own following. It had been mentioned on television shows. Ufologists treated the Center with a mixture of reverence and wariness. The Center was one of the institutions that gave credence to the paranormal, though the inherent skepticism that investigators like Payton brought to the job caused flying saucer chasers to shy away from their final reports. They just couldn’t understand why he didn’t believe, and couldn’t seem to make them understand that he never believed anything.

He was still on Western, halfway to work, when Jennifer’s voice began ringing in his ears. Never keep a lady waiting.

“Shit.”

He yanked his cell phone from the charger and dialed the main number at the Center. It rang once and Carla picked up on the other end. Carla had been the Center’s secretary since its inception. Rumor had it that she was ex-CIA. Payton doubted she’d ever been a spy, but no one knew more about the inner workings of CUFOS.

“Center for UFO Studies.” She sounded bored. She always sounded bored.

“It’s Payton.”

“You better get your ass in here, Doc,” Carla said.

“What’s going on?”

“Schuda is going crazy,” she said. “No one else seems to know anything. Rumor is it’s something big, though. Did I mention Schuda is going crazy?”

Professor Michael Schuda was the head of research. He was also a notorious occultist, even by CUFOS standards. Like all the other department heads he was a professor at a local university; Columbia, in this case. Unlike the others, he taught classes in the liberal arts, specifically American History. His most popular class was called Who Killed Kennedy.

“Are you there?” Carla asked.

“I’m here.”

“What are you going to do about your new partner?”

“I wasn’t aware I needed to do anything,” he said.

“The Director wants you to pick her up and bring her in for the meeting this morning. Didn’t you get the email?”

“Uh, no.” Actually, he’d forgotten to check his laptop before leaving. It was something all investigators were supposed to do each morning, although there was rarely anything in his inbox at seven in the morning. It was just one of those bureaucratic rules that permeated all institutions, even weird ones like CUFOS. “Where does she live?”

“South Side.”

“You have to be kidding.” The Center was on Peterson. He’d been heading north on Western for the last twenty minutes. “How far south?”

“Near Midway Airport.”

“That’s forty-five minutes away. We’ll never make it on time.”

“Good thing I sent her an email asking her to meet you at your coffee place down the street.”

She was laughing, toying with him. He got coffee at the same shop every morning to supplement whatever he had managed to make for himself at home.

“When?”

“She should be there in the next ten minutes.”

He sighed. “Have you met her?”

“When she interviewed.”

“How bad is she?”

“She’s…eager.”

Christ, he thought. “UFO nut?”

“At least this one’s pretty.”

He asked her to tell Schuda that they were on their way just as he was turning into the parking lot of the coffee shop.

Craig’s Coffee was one of those special places that only remained in big cities like Chicago. It hadn’t yet been tainted by big company politics. They served strong coffee, plain bagels, and coffee cake. The kids behind the counter tended to have dark, spiky hair, regardless of their gender, and they all seemed to know his name.

Payton placed his order with a pouting teenage girl: one black coffee and one plain bagel. He paid and took his tray to the nearest window. He’d taken a brief look around the shop upon entering, looking for anyone who might be his new partner. Carla’s description didn’t give him much to work with, particularly with what appeared to be several good-looking women in the shop. Most of them looked high school or college aged, however, so he had a seat and pulled his new partner’s file from his briefcase while he waited.

At least Chanel Falasco had an impressive history jacket. She had graduated from Western Illinois with degrees in both Criminology and Forensic Science. According to the interview notes, she’d had the opportunity to do some photo modeling work, but she came from a long line of Chicago cops, and she joined up immediately after she graduated. There she progressed through the ranks with surprising quickness, particularly for a woman. She’d gone from patrol to narcotics in less than two years and had earned her detective’s badge shortly after. Then CUFOS had come calling.

When the interviewer had asked why she wanted to leave behind a successful career in law enforcement to join the Center, Chanel had revealed that she’d had an uncle growing up that used to tell her stories about his work looking for aliens for the government. He’d been part of the SETI program, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life, something of a running joke amongst the scientific community. It was a joke amongst the rest of her family too, apparently, since her father had all but barred her uncle from the family home.

“Excuse me?” came a voice from behind.

Payton turned to see a woman in suit pants and a garish button down striped shirt. It was the kind that college graduates were wearing, with vibrant colors and a wide, thick collar. Business casual clubbing gear, as he usually referred to it. She was a bit tall, and her hair was that distracting kind of dark brown that seemed to reflect every photon of light. He recalled from her file that she had gotten some modeling offers in college and he decided that she could have made a career of it if not for a slightly largish nose. Please don’t let this be her, he thought.

“You aren’t Payton Conner by chance, are you?”

So much for wishful thinking. He stood up and offered his hand, doing his best to put a smile on his face. “Call me Doc. Everyone else does.”

“Chanel,” she smiled and took his hand. “Pronounced like the perfume.”

“We don’t have long, Ms. Falasco, so have a seat.”

She pulled up a chair, looking comfortable and at ease. Payton remembered his first day at CUFOS. He had met the then ranking investigator in this very coffee shop. And he had been nervous as hell. Either this woman, this girl with the perfume name was extremely confident in herself or she had no idea what she was getting herself into.

“Everyone I’ve talked to has told me about you,” she said. He noticed that she had a stylish mug in front of her instead of a paper cup like the one in his hand. Brown foam was nearly spilling over the top, one of those expensive drinks that were in vogue.

“How can you drink that swill?”

She smiled. “I’m looking forward to getting in the field with you.”

The field? “The Center’s brochure gives an inflated impression of our job, I can assure you. If you are expecting excitement at CUFOS you are going to be disappointed, even on the rare occasion that we are in the field,” he said.

“Rare? I thought you were the lead field operative for the organization.”

“I am, and even for me, field work is rare. We go out four or five times a year, on average.”

“What do we do the rest of the time,” she asked. She looked uneasy.

“Research more than anything else. Chances are you will spend the overwhelming majority of your career at a desk behind a computer.”

“Sounds boring.”

He sighed. “What is it exactly you think we do at CUFOS?”

“We investigate reports of unidentified flying objects, unless I have the acronym wrong.” She was pouting

“The acronym is right, just outdated. CUFOS was started years ago by a college professor, a man who was skeptical of reported UFO sightings and abductions. Obviously he managed to keep an open mind about the subject, but his roots in the sciences remained. Today, the Center studies a variety of unexplained phenomena, any that we deem worthy of investigation. That boils down to about five or six cases per investigator per year.”

“Yes, I was briefed, you know.”
“Then you know that nine out of ten reports we get are deemed not credible enough to investigate. The majority are hoaxes so fake that we dismiss them without going out into the field.”

She seemed to consider for a moment. “For a group created to study the occult, it seems like you are being very judgmental about what is legitimate and what isn’t.”

Payton sighed. He hadn’t meant to broach the subject this soon, but what the hell. “You’re a believer, I gather.”

She gave him a dazzling smile. “In UFO’s? Absolutely.”

He shook his head.

“Is that a problem?”

He paused a moment. “There are two types of Investigators at the Center. There are people like you, who believe in UFO’s and aliens and every other crazy little story they hear. The other type of investigator is like me.”

“Annoying?” she asked, this time her smile was wicked in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible.

“Competent,” Payton replied. He would not have his emotions played upon, certainly not by a rookie. “I don’t believe in anything when it comes to this job. There are things I can prove and there are things that I suspect. You say you believe in UFOs, but all it means is that you don’t have any proof. You just want it to be true. Which, of course, means your judgment is affected? That’s very dangerous in this line of work.”

“And if you don’t accept anything except what you can prove, then you have closed yourself off to any possibilities that might be un-provable.”

He leaned across the table to look her more closely in the eye. “My way works.”

She smiled, but did not reply.

He glanced at his watch and then quickly drained the rest of his coffee. “Let’s get moving. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” He almost left, but then turned back to where she sat. “And from now on, you dress like me. White button down or blouse, everything else in dark colors.”

She looked at him sharply. “What, like a man in black?”

Payton grinned. “Hey, you’re the believer. Get moving.”

Echelon: Chapter 2

“United flight one-oh-two, what is your location?”

The dank, crowded control room of the Washington Dulles Air Traffic Authority building rang with the din of one-sided conversation. Four-year control officer David Barker had been tracking the movement of United Flight 102 for the last seventeen minutes, immediately after it had been handed off from the Dulles control tower. For the final ten or so, his senior advisor had been leaning over his shoulder.

The problem was the deviation from the flight plan. Barker was tracking the plane’s path via the transponder beacon that all airlines installed on their birds. He had first noticed the deviation roughly twenty minutes into the flight. Because it had taken off from Dulles, he hadn’t even had time yet to hand the flight over to the next leg’s controller. Its proximity to DC when the flight first diverted from the flight plan had nearly caused Barker to issue the terror alert, but its path never went near the capital. Instead, it flew southeast over Fredericksburg, south of Quantico, and over the Chesapeake Bay. At that point, they were effectively over the Atlantic and out of harm’s way.

Shortly before they had reached water, Barker had radioed the pilot to ask him what the hell was going on. The pilot had responded with some story about an Air Force training exercise, which didn’t make any sense at all. The nearest Air Force base that regularly ran airborne drills was in Langley, and they usually conducted them over the water to minimize collateral risk. Regardless, any military exercise would have been logged with the FAA and passed down the switchboard to all of the controllers at Dulles. Still, mistakes sometimes happened and Barker had put a call in to their Air Force liaison, who told him that no training exercises were planned for another week.

So what the hell was this pilot talking about? He hadn’t sounded hysterical, and Barker had dealt with flight crises enough that he could tell when pilots were speculating or lying. He decided to just play along, ready to hit the terror alert if the plane turned back towards Washington.

He had logged the new flight path and maintained contact with the pilot, listening for any sign that something was off. Eventually Barker grew frustrated and told the pilot that there was no training exercise and that he was going to alert the Air Force if he didn’t turn the plane around and get back on course.

“But I’m telling you, they’re the ones that gave me this heading,” the pilot said, sounding like he was getting frustrated himself. “And I’ve got two fighter jets tailing me that won’t let me deviate from this course.”

Barker immediately rechecked his radar. There were no fighters according to the screen. Only Flight 102. He frowned and began to wonder if the pilot might be having a breakdown after all.

That’s when he’d heard angry shouts about targeting locks and missiles over the radio. Barker glanced at his supervisor, who looked equally perplexed. Back on the screen, Flight 102’s readings had gone all screwy, registering severe pitches and oscillations that looked to Barker like evasive maneuvers. It wasn’t the kind of thing that commercial aircraft were built to withstand.

Then the radio crackled and went silent.

Barker looked back at the radar screen. United Flight 102 had disappeared.

And now he’d been trying for ten minutes to raise the pilot on the radio, but there was nothing but static. “What the hell,” Barker shook his head. He turned to his supervisor.

“I don’t get it,” the supervisor frowned. “Log the coordinates when the transponder went offline and issue the terror watch. I’ll call the FAA.”

* * *

John Baez had been the one on call for the FAA’s Washington-Dulles office, just down the Potomac. His office was in charge of supervising all of the commercial carriers, and he was one of the six agents assigned to United Airlines. It was an enormous job, one that far outreached the FAA’s funding, something about which his supervisor had reminded him after providing him with an agency sedan and a map to the crash location in the Chesapeake Bay. With fare hikes coming frequently and ridership plummeting due to the economy, the airline business was getting squeezed and the old whispered demands of deregulation were starting to be heard again. It was causing even the senior agents in Baez’s office to worry about their jobs and update their resumes.

He made the turn off of the highway and drove along the coast of the bay. Eventually he saw the flashing lights of ambulances and cars marked NTSB, for the National Transportation Safety Board.

He parked on the shoulder and made his way through the grass towards a rocky, dirty beach.

One of the NTSB lackeys who’d been milling about came jogging to meet him. “You from the IAD office?”

IAD was the abbreviation for Dulles International Airport. “Yes, what have you found?”

“We just confirmed that it’s Flight 102 from the serial numbers on part of the fuselage.” The young man squinted in the sun. “Truth be told, there isn’t a whole lot left.”

“Uh-huh.” Baez pulled out his blackberry and began typing notes as he asked questions. Was the flight recorder recovered? Was it intact? Had they confirmed the entry point? What was the condition of the flight deck? Were there any survivors? Were there any bodies?

The young man answered negatively or uncertainly in nearly every case, prompting Baez to lower the Blackberry and glare. “Look, you have to have found something.”

“Like I said, sir, there isn’t a whole lot left.”

“Let me talk to lead NTSB agent on site then. He ought to know more.”

“I’m the lead agent, sir.” The young man squinted again. “Look, maybe you should just take a look for yourself.”

They made their way towards the water. Baez hadn’t been able to see them before because of the high grass, but the agents had assembled three distinct piles of debris out of the reach of the water. One was tail, one was fuselage, and the other was flight deck. He could tell by material of the fragments and their shape. The piles were fairly small, with maybe fifteen pounds of scrap in each.

In the water were several inflated rafts manned by more agents. They were reaching into the water or casting out fishing nets. None of them seemed to be making for shore to drop anything off. “This is all you’ve collected?”

“Yes, sir, somewhere around fifty pounds.”

“And you’ve scanned under water?”

“Using passive sonar and magnetic response for the metal. We’ve got nothing, sir.” The agent bit his lip.

“Something to add?” Baez asked him.

“Sir, some of the men have been hearing rumors that the Air Force shot something down over the bay. Something big. And there was the rogue flight warning issued from Dulles.” His implication was obvious.

“The Air Force doesn’t shoot down civilian planes,” Baez sighed. “Tell your men to stop spreading rumors.”

“But if it really was terrorists, wouldn’t they—“

“They haven’t shot down a civilian aircraft in the entire history of flight,” Baez cut him off. “Perhaps they will have to sometime in the future, but I can guarantee you that they didn’t shoot down this plane.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they had no reason to,” Baez said, trying to maintain his patience. “They were over water and headed due east over the Pacific. What danger could they be?”

The NTSB agent seemed to consider that and then nodded. He said he was going to gather up the other senior agents and have them issue warnings to their crews about spreading false rumors.

In the meantime, Baez made his way back to the salvage piles and picked through them. He found the remains of the FDR in one of the piles. Flight Data Recorders were one of the infamous black boxes that the media constantly referred to. Reporters talked about them like they were they eyes of God on a flight, able to spit back exactly what happened on any commercial airliner. In truth, FDRs were notoriously unreliable. Single faults in one of the data drives could and often did result in faults throughout the machine. He was just about to bend down and collect the contents when he heard shouts from further up the beach.

He saw the NTSB lead agent gesticulating angrily as he argued with two men in dark suits. The men were frowning and kept shaking their heads, one of them repeatedly holding up a piece of paper. He stood and made his way over.

“John Baez, FAA,” he said to the two men, reaching out his hand.

They ignored it. The one with the paperwork held it up. “This area is being quarantined by the NSA. Everyone needs to be off of this beach in the next twenty minutes.”

“This is a crash site,” Baez said sharply. He couldn’t imagine what the NSA would be doing here. “We need time to investigate.”

“Not possible,” the NSA agent replied. “Twenty minutes from now, this beach is going to be hit by low-grade napalm. We believe that the plane that crashed was carrying a biological weapon. You’re to remove nothing from the site and vacate immediately. We need to cleanse the area to ensure it does not spread.”

Baez immediately felt unclean. He turned to the NTSB agent. “You heard them. Gather your men and let’s get the hell out of here.”

“But sir,” the agent began.

“Biological weapon,” Baez said, emphasizing the words. “You want to stay here and catch whatever they were carrying, fine. I’m going back to Dulles.”

The NTSB agent frowned again, but then went off to gather his men. It was only after he was out of earshot that Baez asked to see the NSA agents’ identification and paperwork again. It all appeared to check out.

There was little else he could do, so he began making his way back up the beach and towards the highway. The NTSB agents were already back on shore and gathering their equipment. He looked and saw the two NSA agents digging through the salvage piles. One of them reached down and pulled out a thin black laptop computer. He broke the laptop apart and retrieved some sort of data disc. He looked around quickly, not noticing Baez, and slid it into his trench coat.

Baez frowned. Something wasn’t sitting right about all this. But his supervisor’s statements about their budget and lack of pay rang in his memory. After one last look over the beach and the water beyond, he returned to his car and drove back to the office.