Virtual Book Tour Dates: 6/25/14 – 7/23/14
Genres: Fiction, Horror, ComedyBlurb:
“Midwestern nice” is hard to pull off when you’re a bloodthirsty monster.Poor Herb isn’t even sure how he got vamped in the first place. With no one to guide him, Herb fumbles into his newfound abilities, courting disaster with each bumbling step. Sure, there are some perks. The local stripper wants him, he can do this whammy mind-control thing, and he is getting a lot better at bowling. But he can’t drink beer, the bodies are piling up, and his best friend Dallas is getting suspicious. When Herb and Dallas go for the same girl, keeping his dark secret becomes the least of Herb’s concerns.Booze, billiards, babes, blood, bake sales, bowling, bar fights and karaoke. Who would’ve thought that being undead would make life so interesting?Excerpt:
Red tears flowing freely, he sat in the middle of the carnage, trying to sort-out just how in the hell he managed to get half a petting zoo into his house. The phone rang and rang again, causing Herb’s head to swing in a dazed circle, bringing his eyes to bear on where the phone stuck out from beneath most of a dead grouse.
“Um, hello. You’ve reached the Knudsen residence. Um. The Knudsen, Herb, I mean me, well it’s a recording of Herb. Me. Oh crap. Does this rewind? Uff dah. Aaah crap. Oh, ok. Sorry! Can’t take your call! I’d sure love to, and I hope I can take your call again. Later. When I call you back. Um. Ok den, thanks! So wait for the beep… um, the beep. It should be this one. Oh for chrissakes…” Beeeep!
It had been a long time since Herb had listened to his answering machine greeting, and found himself wondering when the suave and self-confident message he remembered had been replaced by a drunken Ole impersonator.
“Herb? Herb! Are you there? Why aren’t you at work? Ronnie’s furious and Hector is exhausted ‘cause he’s been here since like five o’clock last night.” Lois’s voice floated from the tinny speakers of the RadioShack machine, leaving Herb in awestruck wonder. She called me, thought Herb. She’s worried about me and she called. A smile cracked the caked blood around Herb’s mouth as he leaned toward the voice.
“Ronnie’s making me call since you haven’t picked up your phone all morning. He’s been calling and calling and thinks you’re trying to ruin him or something. You’d better call back or get your ass in here pronto, ok Herby? Seriously, it’s like 10:45 in the A. M. Just…”
Herb knocked the remains of the grouse off the phone and grabbed the receiver. “Lois! Hi, Lois. Um. Wow. Hi there. It’s Herb. Me. I’m Herb. Um…” Herb squeezed his eyes shut, slowly pounded his forehead on the lifeless grouse and took a deep breath.
“So. I’m here. You called. Me. Lois. Um, how are you?”
“How am I? Oh just peachy, thanks so much for asking. It’s busier than heck here but our morning cook has apparently decided to take the morning off, which means the exhausted overnight cook can’t leave since Ronnie only knows how to make Rice-A-Roni.”
“Ronnie.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, Ronnie calls it ‘Rice-A-Ronnie.’ He ah. Adds cilantro, dill, some mayo. He thinks it makes it fancier.”
“Roni, Ronnie, whatever. Hector burned his hand when he dozed off near the deep fryer half an hour ago. Seriously, I don’t know what your deal is, but you really gotta get to work.”
For a few treasured moments after the phone was slammed into the cradle, Lois’s voice flittered on Cupid-wings through the fog in Herb’s brain. Gone were the dead animals, the blood-soaked couch, the gore-spattered Brett Favre bobble-head doll. Even Lady, Jerry and Pam’s poor little pug, flew from his conscious mind like dandelion fluff on a warm summer breeze. Herb bobbed in a sea of bliss, looking at the phone that had recently held her angel voice. Gently setting the receiver down on its cradle, he caressed it with a grimy finger.
A red 11 blinked at him from the answering machine, a stark reminder of the ten angry Ronnie’s and one blissful Lois waiting for his attention. Herb quickly stumbled to his feet, hit play and delete in rapid sequence, turning Ronnie’s messages into a staccato of angry reproachment.
“Come on, come on!” Jittering with anticipation, he hit play, delete. Play, delete. Reaching the final truncated message, he stopped, quivering in anticipation, and gently, reverently hit play. Lois’s voice again filled his senses, buckled his knees, and sent him sliding back to the floor. Oblivious to the fact that he was sitting in a half-congealed puddle of blood, Herb smiled, contentment incarnate. She had called him. Called his phone to talk to him. And she was waiting for him. All he had to do was get in the Pinto, go to work and…
Reality crashed down like kitchen knives from an overturned drawer.Buy Links:
About the Author:
Scott lives in the Midwest with his wife, Liz and their Staffordshire Terrier, Frank. Raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he spent many summer weekends in rural Wisconsin where a friend’s dad had about 50 acres of wooded land near a small town. Those magical summer days of Scott’s youth were spent shooting pop cans with a .22, playing Frisbee golf amongst the trees and sticking the collected wood ticks to rolls of duct tape on the fridge. Wisconsin came to represent idle days and entertaining nights, simple times complete with good friends and beef jerky.
Years later (1998 to be exact), Scott had made a mess of college and moved to Chicago, IL. For six years, Scott drove back and forth between Minneapolis and Chicago. More than once, he wondered what it would be like to just take the next exit, drive north into the woods and settle down. He dreamt of running a small bar or bowling alley, living in a little rambler in the trees, and amassing a daunting collection of cassette tapes and flannels. Somewhere in those musings, the seeds for Wisconsin Vamp were planted, although Herb Knudsen wouldn’t appear for many, many years.
Scott moved to Los Angeles, CA in late 2003. He quickly realized that only people who had written a screenplay were allowed to live in L.A., so he set about whipping one up. Looking for some easy subject matter, Scott catalogued the things he enjoyed. Drinking, bowling, karaoke, pining for cute waitresses and funny horror flicks topped his list. After not nearly enough consideration, Scott wrote half a screenplay about the things he enjoyed, set in the northwoods of Wisconsin and featuring a very atypical vampire named Herb.
Since he didn’t finish the screenplay, he was politely asked to leave L.A. Returning to Minneapolis with his wife, he converted what he had to novel format. The rest is, as they say, is available for the reasonable price of $2.99.
Author Links:
Coffee Books & Art Interview with Scott Burtness
I grew up in Minnesota and spent many summers with a friend’s family in northwestern Wisconsin. After college, I lived in Chicago, IL and drove back and forth across Wisconsin more times than I can count. Wisconsin bars and bowling alleys were my post-college playgrounds, and the myriad of roadside truck stops were my go-to spots to get gifts for virtually any occasion.
When I decided to write Wisconsin Vamp, I wanted to capture a specific slice of rural Midwestern life. My time in and around Wisconsin really helped me create Herb Knudsen and his world. The characters in the book are all slightly over-the-top caricatures of the people I’ve crossed paths with all my life. Genuine, unassuming, real folks that just happen to have a vampire in their midst.
“Ringworld” by Larry Niven (
- The best book you ever read
). Louis Wu was and still is my hero!
I seldom write at home. Most of my writing is done at a neighborhood café or bar. Nothing beats writing about a bunch of northwoods bowlers and a vampire while sipping a cold brew on a bar’s patio.
I think my preference for writing in public places started back in my college days. I lived in a 4 bedroom apartment with 9 people. If I wanted to get some peace and quiet, I had to go anywhere but home.
I often joke that I got into writing when I lived in Los Angeles, because you’re only allowed to live there if you write a screenplay. To be honest, I’ve always wanted to entertain. Early in my college years, I played with an improve comedy group. In Chicago, I did some stage acting and directed a few plays.
The real catalyst for when I became a “writer” is a little hard to nail down. At this point, I still wonder if I can legitimately call myself a writer. I usually feel more like a guy with a job and a wife and a house and a dog who just happens to have written a book and is working on another one. I guess the next milestone will be when I wake up one morning and say, “Huh. I’m a writer. That’s cool.”
This is going to seem a little Hallmark movie-ish, but I think my best accomplishment was helping a homeless man in Chicago that I befriended get back to Ohio to see his son’s swim meet. (
)
“The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone…” – William McDonough
I think a cover is vital to a physical book’s success. When considering options for cover art, I considered two main questions.
1- Would someone be embarrassed to be seen holding the book on a city bus or an airplane?
And 2- would someone see another person reading it on the bus or a plane and be curious about the book. I’d like to believe Wisconsin Vamp’s cover passes those test. At least, I hope so!
The question I’ve been wrestling with is whether a cover is as effective for an ebook. The new challenge for covers is to covey the right information and evoke the right emotion from a thumbnail image. Not an easy task.
I’ve honestly only seen a handful on YouTube. It’s a great idea, but it’s an early art form. Like music videos from the late 70’s, some were fantastic and others were… not. I think that as the demand for book trailers increases, they’ll become better as a whole.
A lot of people have asked me why it’s Wisconsin Vamp and not Minnesotan Vamp. Honestly, Wisconsin Vamp just rolled off the tongue better.
For names, I wanted to make sure they were a little unusual. I didn’t want Mike and Joe and Jenny. I wanted names that spoke to the characters’ uniqueness and captured their awkwardness a bit. I mainly spent time picturing the characters in my mind, and then hanging names on them.
When I pictured Stanley, fidgety and convinced he’d been abducted by aliens, he wasn’t a Bruce, or a Steve, or a Lawrence. He was Stanley. I pictured him in my mind and he looked like a Stanley. The same exercise worked for Lois. Well, that and ‘Bella’ was already taken…
Honestly, the most surprising thing was how much I enjoyed writing. Before I started writing the screenplay, I was nervous about whether I would ‘do it right or not.’ When I started to convert the screenplay to a novel, I was very nervous about whether or not I’d ever figure out how to finish the dang thing. Luckily, I found writing to be a helluva good time. I didn’t worry much about whether I was writing something good or readable or enjoyable. I just had fun writing.
LOL
I’ve had more than a few, so it’s hard to decide which one was the worst. Let’s go with the one at which I had my salary cut and had to watch good people get laid off, while the CEO and execs got bonuses, stock awards and stock options. That was a rotten job. No one likes doing more work for less money so the already-rich CEO can get even richer.
I hope that someday my writing generates enough money to provide a decent living. Even if that happens, I think I’ll keep working in the public or non-profit sector. Writing is fun and all, but I also want a chance to make the world a better place.
Hi Scott it is a real pleasure to host you on my blog
Giveaway:
Direct Link To Giveaway:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/96837
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