Digital short Saturday Guest Post Wade J. McMahan author of Bite This! A Richard Dick Mystery

[Giovanni Gelati]

Guest Post Wade J. McMahan author of Bite This! A Richard Dick Mystery

Thanks Giovanni, for allowing me to post the following comments.

I’m a forester by profession, and fiction writer by disposition. My work allows me to spend countless hours in the forest where I rarely encounter anyone other
than woodland creatures, though they are shy and seldom seen. Sometimes, I sit to rest on a fallen log or
perhaps my ATV if it’s nearby, and my thoughts drift into the realm of “What
if?” Often, as I rest there in my sylvan
solitude, a new storyline will come to mind or simply a sentence, or well-turned
phrase.

Foresters know that it commonly takes at least a human lifetime to grow a forest, and abrupt, unplanned changes are to be shunned. “Old school” foresters, like
me, are by our very natures, traditionalists, and view change, any change in
anything at all, as we would a wildfire racing through the forest. Nothing good can come from it.

You can imagine then, my consternation when I began investigating publishing options and heard that the publishing business was undergoing a radical change towards—e-publishing. Oh my god!
Publishing was changing?! There had to be an evil extremist group behind
it with wicked plans to dominate the entire civilized universe! Well, no.
To my everlasting relief I found that e-publishing isn’t the next coming
thing, it’s already a well-established publishing option. Armed with this knowledge, all became right again
in my never-changing world. I readily
bought into the e-market, and began to ride the wave.

(If you’ve spotted a moral in all of this, you’re well ahead of where I am at this point)

I write commercial…um, make that “mainstream” fiction (that sounds far more dignified, don’t you think?). My first attempt at writing consisted of spending many months to complete a lengthy novel. Afterwards, I instigated the standard drill
of emailing it to literary agents across the country. Rejection notes soon flowed in, some of which
contained lurid details of the novel’s many flaws. I re-read my novel and was horrified to realize
that the agents were right. It stunk! Thankfully, I came to that realization before
I concocted a nefarious scheme to self-publish the book and unleash it on an
unsuspecting public. I fear I would have
been rightly imprisoned for perpetrating malicious mischief.

I’d learned my lesson. (Hold it! Stop the presses! There may be a moral here!) If you want to pursue
writing, you must first hone your craft to a razor’s edge. That sounds simplistic enough, but trust me—I
had missed it. I turned to penning works
of short fiction for the quick write/feedback opportunity they offered, and my
writing started to improve incrementally.
Thanks to that amazing website, Duotrope’s Digest, I found a virtually limitless
e-publishing market. I shipped my short stories…first
here, then there, and finally en-masse.
Glory be, I received my first acceptance, followed soon by my second,
third…

More recently, I encountered that super-sleuth private detective, that man among men, Richard Dick (no need to call him Richard, Dick will do). It
seems Dick is forever doomed to attract a wacky cast of clients that lead him into
madcap adventures ill conceived for mere mortals.

I truly hit the Daily Double when I simultaneously discovered Publisher Jay Hartman at Untreed Reads Publishing. Thanks to Jay and CEO K.D. Sullivan, my Richard Dick Mystery series has reached undreamt of heights. My first Richard Dick Mystery, “Bite This!”
has resided on OmniLit’s bestseller list for several months, and is still going
gangbusters across the pond where it also made a brief appearance on the top 10
bestseller list at Waterstone’s (UK).

Dick re-emerged in October in “Witches Witch? A Richard Dick Mystery,” again published at Untreed Reads. It is available on e-bookshelves including Amazon,
Barnes & Noble, OmniLit and Smashwords.
Dick is currently aboard a luxury liner bound for the UK, “Witches”
in tow, and should arrive at Waterstone’s and other European bookstores any day
now.

You were probably unaware that Santa Claus uses private detectives to research his annual list of naughty or nice children. Oh yes, and Richard Dick is
one of Santa’s volunteers. That and Santa’s
secret persona are all explained in Dick’s upcoming, “Naughty or
Nice? A Richard Dick Mystery.” It will
be available at Untreed Reads Publishing before Christmas, so please watch for
it.

More adventures in the Richard Dick mystery series are already in-progress, and will flow into the market in coming months—so, keep your eyes peeled!

You are invited to see (read “buy”) my current and all future Richard Dick works at the Untreed Reads Publishing bookstore by visiting their website at,

http://www.untreedreads.com/

Thank you for staying with me throughout Wade’s history of the world. Best wishes to all during this holiday season.

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