dennis batchelder’s blog

Lately there’s been a ton of Soul Identity sales, sparked, I presume, by its aggressive Kindle price of only one penny.

But you may be asking what Soul Identity is all about, and whether you will like it. Should you blow the penny (on the Kindle/iPhone; ten bucks in paperback), take a chance, and download it? Or is it a waste of your time?

All are good questions. I don’t like wasting time on the “wrong” books: I tend to hurl them at the wall when I can’t get engaged. And since I don’t want you to bust your Kindle or iPhone, I thought I’d help you decide if you’d enjoy reading this novel.

My protagonist Scott Waverly is a computer security guy, like me. But he’s more funny than I am, and maybe a bit more smart-alecky. He’s got a sense of adventure, he’s in business with his parents, and he falls in love (and scores) as quickly as he can whip out a new piece of code.

Scott will tell you the story about his new client and how he’s trying to save them from insolvency. They’re a strange organization: they believe they’ve found how to track people’s souls throughout their lives. He travels from Maryland to Massachusetts, then to India and Italy, and he meets some really wacky people along the way. This journey lets him explore his own feelings on reincarnation and relevance.

Soul Identity is a quick and fast read. It’s mostly believable. It’s not intellectually deep; it’s not literary fiction. It should be entertaining, and hopefully it’ll leave you something to think about: what would you leave in your soul line collection?

I hope this helps. And if you do choose to order and read Soul Identity, I hope you enjoy it!

I’ve gone ahead and listed Soul Identity for only a penny on the Kindle. Here’s why:

1. Kindle and iPhone readers are kinda techy, so they’re more apt to be attracted to my book.
2. My sequel, Soul Intent, will be released some time before Christmas.
3. Attracting many readers is more important than large royalties.

If you don’t have a Kindle or an iPhone, you can find Soul Identity for a penny on mobipocket.com: they have all sorts of ways to read books on your phone or computer. You can also get it for free from smashwords.com: they support the Sony Reader, Palm, and PDF formats.

And now that I’ve cleared all the roadblocks, why not give Soul Identity a try? I’d love to hear what you think about it.

Happy reading!

Night Owl sent me a review copy of their Soul Identity screenplay, and I immediately dropped everything to read it. Ninety minutes later I put it down and apologized to Irina for not helping get the kids to bed. Then later that night I couldn’t sleep–the movie wouldn’t stop playing through my thoughts.

Night Owl modified the story a wee bit, and they consolidated a few of the characters, but it was great seeing Scott and Val embark on their round-the-world reincarnation adventure.

I can’t wait for the movie to be made! In the meantime, I hope you’ll get yourself ready by reading Soul Identity - the novel.

today is scott waverly’s 3rd birthday.

i started writing “soul identity” on january 1, 2006, as part of a new year resolution. we had arrived in india for a 2 year stint the previous july, and i had promised myself that i wouldn’t return before getting the novel out of my head and onto paper… it had been kicking around inside of me since 2001.

we had flown to the philippines right after christmas for a wedding on my ex-wife’s side… this allowed us to see the three older kids. it also allowed us to pick up a pregnancy test kit in singapore (we could find none in india), and irina confirmed her pregnancy with her second (my fifth) the day before. we assumed irina, her mom, and nicholas would be returning to the states at some point to have the baby, and i’d be left alone, and this was my motivation to get the book started, so it could keep me company during the year we’d be apart.

seven months later the first draft was done. christopher was born in august, and irina came to india in march to help me pack and return to the states. i published “soul identity” in july, and i immediately started on “soul intent”.

“soul identity” came about in 2001 when irina and i went on vacation to aruba with my uncle and aunt (the inspiration behind george and sue). my uncle was explaining his current spending spree: he said, “because coffins have no pockets.”

and then i asked myself, “but what if they did have pockets?” and the organization of soul identity was born. then i spent the next four years trying to figure out a story to write around the organization, and come up with a way to actually identity a soul: one that could have worked 2,600 years ago.

i modeled scott on me: he’s a lot quicker with his comebacks than i am, and he doesn’t have any kids, but he’s got a hott russian girlfriend, great parents, and he loves his security stuff, just like me. i put characteristics of my family into many characters, and used their middle names (my twin girls’ middles names are rose and marie), and hijacked some characteristics from an old boss and made him my villain.

and that’s the story of scott and soul identity happy birthday, scott!

I’m so jazzed about this news: Night Owl Entertainment, LLC (www.nightowlllc.com) has optioned the rights to create a screenplay and then a feature film of Soul Identity!

From their web site: “Night Owl Entertainment is an independent film company formed in 2004 to develop and produce high quality, low violence, efficiently budgeted projects. Working in all genres and targeting specific audience niches, Night Owl endeavors to create exciting, edgy, emotional, marketable films with a high IQ and a low violence quotient.” Night Owl’s run by co-presidents Ephraim Schwartz and Armand Garabidian, and they seem as excited about this opportunity as I am.

And although I’m thrilled that Scott and Val and Archie and Madame Flora may really end up one day on the big screen, what makes me really excited (and just a wee bit humbled) is that Night Owl believed enough in Soul Identity to take a bet on it: they’re off in some dark hole getting their draft written, investing their time and money to give this a shot.

There’s probably a-thousand-to-one odds of the screenplay making it all the way through the system until it’s a movie in a theatre near you, but I can’t imagine being happier than I am already. Thanks, Night Owl, for your belief in Soul Identity!

Great news: Reader Views rated Soul Identity as a General Fiction finalist!

(Austin, Texas) “Soul Identity” was selected as a finalist for General Fiction book of 2007 by Reader Views Annual Literary Awards. Reader Views Annual Literary Awards were established to honor writers who self-published or had their books published by a small press, university press, or independent book publisher.

“Reader Views reviews more than 2,000 books per year from budding authors who have worked hard to achieve their dream of being published,” Reader Views Managing Editor Irene Watson says. “Our Annual Literary Awards recognize the very best of these up-and-coming authors, all talented writers who we know have very promising writing careers ahead of them.”

You can check out the entire 2007 Reader Views Literary Awards here.

Between the books you bought and what I gave away, somewhere around five hundred of you have read Soul Identity. A big THANK YOU to all of you, and please tell your friends about it!

The end of the year is rushing at us. I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the writing lessons I’ve learned this year:

1. Writing is easier than it looks, and it’s lots of fun to live in the dreamworld of the first draft.
2. But writing is just the tip of the iceberg: revising, rewriting, and editing make up the bulk of time spent on a book.
3. Procrastinating on research drastically increases the time spent refactoring a story.
4. Writers have to be sensitive enough to create ficticious worlds, but hardened enough to handle real-life criticism.
5. Amazon’s Kindle just may work. I want to figure out how to sell better in an electronic world.
6. Lousy and well-promoted outsells great and obscure. Here’s to the end of obscurity!

I published Soul Identity in July, and immediately started writing Soul Intent. I also had a lot of fun on the Amazon Discussions, and ended up reading over 30 self-published books this year (check out my Amazon Listmania to see which ones), and that taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

Happy new year, everyone! And if you haven’t read Soul Identity yet, may I humbly suggest that you put it on your new year’s resolutions?

Amazon is about to announce its Kindle eBook reader, and I thought it was time to get Soul Identity available in eBook format.  I had thought that eBooks were mostly good for technical book and porn, but maybe Bezos is onto something, and it’s really about to take off this time.

Anyway, it was simple to get it published, both on MobiPocket and on Amazon’s kindle page. Here’s what I did:

FOR MOBIPOCKET

1. Went to www.mobipocket.com and downloaded the MOBIPOCKET eBook Creator. This only runs on Windows.  I also downloaded the MOBIPOCKET eBook Reader, which runs on lots of platforms, phones, and PDAs - including Blackberry.  (The reason I went with mobipocket: they’re owned by Amazon, and they have reselling relationships with hundreds of other eBook retailers.)
2. Started the creator and used the easy wizards to create the content. It was really simple to do. I think the Word option was best.  One thing to remember to do: set the Metadata properly. I used a new ISBN (and registered it on http://www.bowkerlink.com/): you can’t share ISBNs on print and eBook versions.
3. On the “build” panel, chose the “Content Encryption with DRM” option. Note: you probably want to do the “No encryption” first, so it’s easier to see what it will look like.
4. Used the “deploy” panel to upload to mobipocket. The software gives you an option to sign a publishing agreement - this was very convenient. They sent me an activation email, and I was ready to go.
5. Clicked on the activication email’s link, and “activated” my eBook.
6. Set up a “promotion” for the eBook edition of Soul Identity - it’s only 99 cents until the end of the year.

Mobipocket pays 35% royalties for all downloads. So I won’t get rich off the 35 cents/copy, but I think that getting me out there and maybe getting some buzz going is more important.

FOR AMAZON KINDLE

1. Signed up with Amazon’s DigitalTextPlatform (you use your Amazon account info).
2. On the DTP page, added a “new item” and entered the product details (I reused the same ISBN from above)
3. Used my MobiPocket creator (see above) to create a “no encryption” version of Soul Identity.
4. Uploaded the file onto the DTP page
5. Entered a price (I used the same price as MobiPocket: since I was using the same ISBN)
6. Clicked “Save Entries” at the bottom of the DTP form
7. Clicked “Publish” at the top of the DTP form
8. Waited 12 hours, as requested, for amazon to update their central servers. **note: after 12 hours, it’s almost there - no price yet, but the page showed up a few minutes ago.

Good luck to Amazon with their kindle! If it works, eventually my kids won’t have to lug around so many pounds of textbooks… they can carry a single kindle and a notebook.

Click here to see the eBook version of Soul Identity on MobiPocket. It’s less than a buck - don’t you think it’s time to see what it’s all about?

Click here to see the kindle eBook version of Soul Identity on amazon.com.

I feel like I’m earning an advanced degree on how US technology was used in post-war Germany.

My next novel has Scott and Val investigating a sixty-year-old robbery, and the story is told by a young Archie and Flora and how they assisted an ex-Nazi attempting to join Soul Identity before he’s executed.

My first novel, Soul Identity, is set in the present day (which I know), and took place mostly in Maryland, Massachusetts, and India (where I’ve lived), and had a heavy reliance on today’s technology (which I use). I researched to verify things I already knew.

But now I’ve had to read a bunch of books on the Nuremberg trials, learn about color photographic techonology of the 1940’s, figure out how to drive a 1944 Willys-Overland Jeep, trace the various Nazi gold legends, and search for salt mine locations all over Central Europe. I’ve had to sort through thousands of photographs of rubble to find what buildings still stood at the end of the war.

I know I’m not done; just this morning I spent three hours searching for what US Military railroad tickets looked like - all for a six word sentence.

I have gained a lot of respect for the amount of research a historical fiction author goes through. And I also feel bad about how little of what I learn will actually make it into the book.

I know the time spent on the research will make the next novel not only thrilling, but also authentic and informative… stay tuned!

Yesterday somebody left a review of Soul Identity – it’s titled ”Fails to live up to its full potential as a good mystery.”

I guess that’s fair. The bad guys in Soul Identity pop out in the beginning, and Scott has to outwit them–not identify them. Boring for mystery readers.

Soul Identity is a really bad romance story, too. No torrid relationships; no choices between opposite lovers; no heated scenes. Boring for romance readers.

And it’s a bad western, a lousy science fiction, and a pathetic cookbook… you get the picture.

Here’s what Soul Identity is: a great techno-thriller that’s hard to put down… give it a try!