Friday Roundup


It's been a while, eh? Since the last roundup, I’ve published another couple of books. Well, one new book and one extensive facelift of an old and unpopular book. Preppies of the Apocalypse (that'd be the young-adult contemporary fantasy book based upon my old screenplay, not the website named after my old screenplay) is now The Changeling, complete with a flashy new cover intended to play up the horror-genre aspects of the book. It’s available wherever ebooks are sold, priced at $2.99 or less (Kindle link here, Smashwords link here). A paperback edition will follow sometime this summer. I’m hoping the title change will spur more people to take a chance on it, because it’s been my biggest dud by a huge margin. Something about this book sparks terrible disinterest and/or antipathy in readers! Historically, I’ve had difficulties giving it away for free, much less selling it. Under the old title, I once gave away ten paperback copies to specially-selected Goodreads members in exchange for fair and impartial reviews; not a single one of those ten people ever reviewed it. The book has been up for sale on Amazon for two years and has only been reviewed once. Total sales? Probably somewhere in the low double digits; I'm too demoralized to look up the exact number. Just an absolute disaster, in other words. There are times I start to think maybe I don’t have my fingers on the pulse of the needs of the general reading public.

My brand-new book is Three Warlords, the second installment in the rambunctious, lighthearted, sexy, somewhat porn-y gay supernatural mystery series I’ve been writing under the name Evan Allen. It’s available for $2.99 (Kindle link here, Smashwords link here). Want to read the first book in the series, Four Emperors, before plunging into Three Warlords? You’re in luck—Four Emperors is widely available for free. Here’s the Smashwords link.


You can check out my full book list here.

Site news: I know I’ve been treading water these past few months, what with posting nothing but Man From U.N.C.L.E. recaps. That’s about to change! Probably! I promise nothing! U.N.C.L.E. recaps will continue as usual on Tuesdays, but in addition to the return of the Friday roundup, I’m going to start adding more content throughout the week. I’m long overdue for a fresh new Duranalysis—as always, if anyone can think of a juicy potential Duranalysis topic, by all means tell me about it in the comments.



New York news: Doughnut Plant debuted its new savory doughnuts last month. Because: a) I love doughnuts, b) I love Doughnut Plant in particular, and c) I have to keep an eye on my sugar intake, I immediately had to investigate. They’ve unveiled two flavors thus far: avocado toast and samosa.


Avocado toast: Tasty, but not an unqualified success. Good avocado flavor and texture, but apart from that, it was a little bland. And I’m not sure the small bits of raw radish mixed into the filling were the best idea. Overall, it reminded me of indifferent guacamole stuffed into a sesame seed-studded fried yeast ball. Not at all bad, but not craveable.

Samosa: Delicious. It tasted… well, it tasted like a very good samosa. The filling was spicy, savory, and satisfying. I would happily go out of my way to buy it again.

My sister and I discovered these last week, on sale at the local Food Bazaar:


Binggrae’s Samanco! It’s a Korean ice cream sandwich shaped like a fish! These were wonderful. They were available in three flavors: red bean, strawberry, and chocolate syrup. We picked up the chocolate ones. The fish-shaped crust is made from an unsweetened wafer, like an ice cream cone; it’s filled with a generous amount of vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. Messy and delicious. I described them on Facebook as tasting like “everything good about childhood”, which pretty much sums it up.

Here’s a music video to take you into the weekend: 1985’s “Your Love” by The Outfield. Even though The Outfield were an English band, by way of Manchester, this video was (somewhat inexplicably) shot in my current neighborhood of Astoria, Queens:


Until next week.


Comments

Alexander Osias said…
Just found your site! Funny articles; was going through them and realized you wrote fiction too! Getting ready to check you catalog.
Morgan Richter said…
Thanks, Alexander! Glad you're having a good time going through the site.