Beam's Doorway

Just a quick post to invite you to my website, Beam's Doorway. It is now ancient in internet years, and has become the repository of every internet experiment I have ever done. There is layer upon layer of  material if you care to explore this internet archaeological dig. I am now using it to promote "Hallucinations" and "Channeler" my  weird, strange, reality bending horror novels in the Kindle Store. I love creating the stories but promoting them is, well, a bit of a pain. Exactly how do you get someone to part with their 99 cents? It is an odd kind of selling. You don't want to be a spammer but you must somehow promote the work or it is a waste.

Speaking of spam, Spam is very important in my eBook "Hallucinations." I even have a disclaimer at the front of the book:
 [TECHNICAL NOTE: Spork is a food product made from finely ground pork and chemical preservatives, formed into a solid block, and then packaged in gelatin. It is unique in flavor and texture, and very delicious by many people's standards. The name "Spork ", as you may have guessed, is merely an alias for a real food product that exists in this reality and is guarded by trademarks. Spork is important to this story.]

So, what does Spam have to do with the desert, hallucinations and reality distortion? Gotta spend $0.99 to find out. There. Did I spam you?

This is an Email I received from a reader:

"I went to your Shelfari site and found out about your two books. I read Hallucinations on my Kindle and am now nearing the end of Channelers. The former had me laughing at times, which is rare for me. Very interesting writing. You have quite an imagination. It's hard to put down your books, so I am going through them very quickly. Do you have any more?"

Synthetic Reality Horror

I am trying to coin a term for a sub-genre of horror that I believe doesn't quite fit into other sub-genres of horror. I could call it surreal horror, and that might be okay, but isn't quite accurate. I think of David Lynch's movie "Eraserhead". This is the movie that made me a permanent David Lynch fan and serves as an inspiration for my endeavors at writing eBooks for the Kindle Store. "Eraserhead" is the crowning glory of all offbeat movies. Nothing can match it for pure strangeness of mood, but it is more surreal than what I have in mind for my sub-genre. There is another factor I am including besides surrealism.

Surreal doesn't imply manufactured - manufactured reality that exists alongside "real" reality. A "Matrix""/Inception" type reality, where everything we might believe real is questionable. Another good movie example is the disturbing, reality twisting movie "Jacob's Ladder". A good book example is Phillip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" that was made into the movie "Total Recall".

To experience my vision of this horror sub-genre please visit Amazon's Kindle store and download the free sample of my e-Book called "Hallucinations". If you are curious to read the entire book it is cheap - 99 cents. This is the sub-genre of horror I am coining  "synthetic reality" horror. It is surreal but it contains manufactured or synthetic reality that begs the question:  is it real or not?

I am in the process of discovering authors who share this vision. I look forward to reading and recommending their eBooks. Please comment and leave links to your synthetic reality ebooks on  eBookOsphere Blog.

Thanks,
Stephen Beam

Independent Horror Authors Publishing On Kindle

I would love if some indie horror writers that publish to the Kindle store would post comments and links to their works on this new blog. I believe strongly in the this emerging trend of self publishing. It throws wide the doors to discovering new talent, even genius, that would otherwise be hidden.

To help in your quest for recognition as an author I have found this Blog that lists reviewers. It can help save you  time in your search for these services. This list contains only those that do not charge for reviews. Yeah! Free and Freedom. I love it. http://www.simon-royle.com/indie-reviewers/

I am looking for unique, strange, weird, synthetic reality type horror that strives for an original literary style. Post your book's sales blurb and link to your Kindle book. The Kindle format is what I use so that is what I'm looking for right now. My time is limited,  I'm working on a novella at present, but if I see common ground in my artistic vision and yours I'll read and try to review it - as time allows.

The popularity of eBooks

Physical bookstores are disappearing. This doesn't make me happy, but as technology evolves the market shifts. We are moving rapidly to a digital world. I love to visit quaint used bookstores. I love the musty smell of aging paperbacks, the cozy atmosphere, the rare finds, the nicked and sometimes poorly painted shelves holding all those treasures.

We watched as music stores disappeared. Music stores switched from vinyl LPs to plastic CDs, but that didn't help because music moved to the cloud and the trend shifted to downloading songs. Annoying dial-up gave way to a maturing broadband market and this changed web surfing and our buying habits. Physical bookstores are vanishing from your neighborhood and buying virtual books, or ebooks are definitely the trend. Why house bulky books at home when you can carry a library of thousands in the palm of your hand?

I've read that book sales have diminished somewhat, and I am speaking of physical books, but this doesn't mean people have not stopped reading, they are actually reading more! EBooks are popular and becoming more popular all the time. Kindles are very popular. Amazon sells tons of them as as the price for Kindles drops they will be increasingly popular.

These circumstances make it possible for a new phenomenon to appear, the indie author and publisher. No longer waiting for the next rejection slip to come in the mail, the new author writes and publishes books without need for a large book publisher's blessing. The talented and not so talented stand on equal footing and the readers have more choices and often discover great authors that would have remained hidden if big publishing companies remaind in control.

I love the digital revolution, despite the loss of physical stores. Many physical bookstores will remain and fill that need to browse and hold leather and paper, but the digital revolution in literature offers increasing choices and opportunities for readers and authors.