Relentless Promotion with a Twist

All the best advice I've seen about how to succeed as an indie published author claims that you have to be relentlessly upbeat in all your social media posts while you're trying to market your book. I've tried this to the best of my ability, but it has become increasingly difficult to do given my lackluster sales numbers and the fact that, even though everyone tells me to my face that Speedster is a real page turner, hardly anyone has bothered to go to Amazon or Goodreads or Barnes & Noble or any of the other places where the book is retailed and give me a nice 4 or 5 star rating or post a review. Staying relentlessly upbeat is requiring ever greater amounts of gin and vermouth and repeated trips to the grocery for olives and/or lemons. Just sayin' . . . in the most relentlessly upbeat possible way.

BTW, if this piques your interest in any way, Speedster is now FREE for a limited time in virtually all ebook formats, including Kindle, from the Smashwords Store. Just follow this LINK.

People who have read it really do say good things about it, and I tend to believe them even though the only posted rating I have from someone who is not a friend or relative only gave it two stars. Two stars in the Goodreads universe means okay. To have any chance of respectable sales numbers, I apparently need to have an average of 4.5 stars.

I really want to know what people think. If the book is not as good as I think it is, as I've been led to believe by others that it is, then I want to be able to to make the next one (already in progress - working title, Hiding Teeth) that much better. I need some thoughtful and independent feedback. If you want to help me out in this regard, I promise to love you forever in the most relentlessly upbeat way possible.

New Synopsis for Speedster

I rewrote the synopsis for Speedster, hoping to better convey the things I think make it stand out from the crowd without giving too much away about the plot. Tell me what you think.

At 48, Jack McCain is beginning to resemble the antique Auburn Speedster his grandfather left him years ago. Sleek, classy, and powerful in its day, the car is now an anachronism that needs to be sheltered from the harsh realities of its environment to prevent its slipping into an ignoble dotage.

Jack would like nothing better than to keep himself garaged and under wraps next to his Speedster, but fate has conspired against him. Driven to distraction by a manipulative ex-wife, an insensitive girlfriend, and an epic mid-life crisis, Jack finds himself the chance owner of a customized import car. Hoping to sell the car, he joins a car club run by a bunch of twenty-something tuner punks who don't seem to know very much about cars. When one of the members, a beautiful tomboy who happens to be an exotic dancer, follows him home his life begins to spiral out of control.

Meanwhile, a screwball collection of villains including a pair of neon-haired underachievers, a serial sexual predator, and the owner of the gentleman's club called Glitters, scheme to separate Jack from the valuable Speedster. They want to sell it to launch a black tar heroin enterprise on Florida's posh Lower East Coast. They will stop at nothing to get it. Fueled by their spectacular and often hilarious ineptitude, they mire themselves and Jack in a predicament that seems more and more hopeless as it unfolds.

When a murderous deviant named Mateo abducts two women to force his hand, Jack must shake his malaise and come to grips with the boredom and indecisiveness at the root of his troubles. He enlists the help of his best friend, Mike, to rescue the women, but even a bagful of guns and the best of intentions are not enough it seems against a resourceful and determined foe. Tensions rise and bodies fall, from the walled mansions of Palm Beach to the mangrove labyrinths of Florida's Gulf Coast, as events race to an exciting and unexpected conclusion.