Category: Swag

It’s Live!

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My Grim Life is now available in paperback and on Kindle! I want to send a big THANKS! to everyone who pre-ordered, and who has ordered since. Unfortunately, the signed copies are not quite live yet, because I have yet to receive the paperback copies to actually sign. Right now they are scheduled for delivery on the 9th, and I hope to have them setup for sale on the Keyboard Monkey store ASAP. In the mean time, My Grim Life has taken over the Riley Custom Guitar shop, with (3) book inspired 3-string guitars available. The Perfectly Punk RG13 guitar sports the Keyboard Monkey logo, the Totally Punked Out RG10 has the My Grim Life lettering on the front and the skull logo on the back, and the Grunge Gunner ammo can guitar has the Lettering and logo. Each guitar will ship with a signed copy of the book as well. Future plans include a hardcover version of the book as well as a special guitar giveaway. I hope to have both of these ready in time for Christmas.

Please let me know which guitar is your favorite.

My Team

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The Savage Race is coming up very soon and this will be our 5th year participating. Every year I say I’m going to start training earlier, and every year I fail to start as early as I would like. Even though I didn’t get an early start, I’ve been training for a few weeks and so far I’ve been focusing mainly on my running. When it comes to the obstacles, my upper body strength isn’t usually an issue; my only real concern is my grip strength and my running stamina. 6+ miles and 30 obstacles takes it’s toll on you.

But regardless of how well I am prepared or how well I perform, the best part about doing the race is my team. It started out with my brother, sister, and son, and now has grown to include my nieces, nephew and family friends. The camaraderie of not just the team, but every participant is amazing. Throughout the race you are guaranteed to have complete strangers cheering you on, encouraging you and even helping you on obstacles if you need it.

And every year there are tons of teams dressed for the event and they will wear everything from cowboy hats, boots and daisy dukes (usually guys) to face paint and tutus. It’s great to see all the team outfits, but my team has never dressed as a team… until now. While we’re not quite ready to wear short-shorts or make-up (yet), we will all be sporting the same logo:

I probably won’t make this design available for sale in my shop, because even though it is my original design, it is based on the video game of the same name and I don’t want to step on the toes of the creators (Team 17). But if you are interested in any of my other designs, you can check them out in my shop at: https://www.etsy.com/shop/krileydesignshop

Just Write

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My books haven’t been selling as well as I’d like recently so I’ve attended a couple webinars by extremely successful Indie and hybrid writers on how to improve this. Most of the advice and research would suggest that my biggest problem is not having enough reviews (so if you’ve read any of my books, please post a review on Amazon, Itunes, Kobo, Goodreads, wherever. Any honest review would be great!) but getting reviews is not something I can control. A great webinar yesterday with extremely successful Joanna Penn and Mark Dawson had some good tips on how to encourage reviews, but at the end of the day there’s nothing I can do (short of spending $425-$575 on a Kirkus review) to guarantee I get a single review. So rather than focus on this I’ve decided the best way to expand my readership and grow in my writing career is to “Just Write”.

The phrase “Just Write” has been in my head for a few weeks now though I don’t know why. And while I haven’t been spending as much time writing as I would like, every time I sit down to work on My Life As Death I end up averaging around 1,000 new words. This is unprecedented for me. In the past I’ve usually averaged 350 words, and considered 500 to be great. I don’t know if it’s the story, which is really flowing well, or the characters which surprise me every time I sit down, or even just that I’m getting better as a writer but whatever the reason, I’ll take it. But there are times that I get concerned that because I’m not really in control of the writing process that the creative energy will suddenly stop and I won’t be able to get it back. That bothers me a little but then I realize that I can’t control that either, and in the end the only thing I can do is “just Write”.

By the way – the “Just Write typewriter graphic will be making its way to some merchandise soon. Check back here or at the design shop for updated offerings.

UPDATE! “Just Write” T-shirts are now available! Check them out HERE