I hope you had an amazing August!
For me, August was one of those months that just seemed to fly by while also somehow dragging. The heat of the summer gave way to a cooler fall tease at the end of the month, and I started several new projects.
Let's start with talking a little bit about the contest I mentioned last month that I was hoping to place in with The Journal. That contest officially ended September 1 and I unfortunately didn't place in it. While I know that says nothing about the quality of my debut novel, it is nonetheless a little disappointing. I take solace in the fact that those who have read it have all given me fantastic feedback and have had nothing but positive things to say and at the end of the day the opinion of my readers means a lot more to me than the opinion of some judge in a contest.
I also received a couple more reviews for The Journal on Amazon (making me really excited), and I want to take a second to ask you to leave a review over there if you've read the book and haven't yet reviewed it. Reviews help others know what to expect when they are thinking about purchasing a book and help authors know what we did right and what we could do better in the future. I'm also trying to reach 20 sales by the end of 2023 (I'm currently at 6), so spread the word if you enjoyed it and let others know to check it out!
With that out of the way, let's shift to some more positive things!
I've been able to get back on track with the Podcast, and there have been some fun episodes of that released over the past month. The most recent one focused on the differences between AI and a human author (myself) and what we should be thinking about as both authors and readers as this technology evolves. It isn't as creative as human authors yet, but it does a pretty good job at writing overall. I shared a story from myself and AI in the Podcast and asked listeners to decide which story was written by me and which was AI written.
Cemetery Chats made a return as well this month, with the first of 2023 coming out this past Monday. My amazing wife, Bunny, and I will be chatting about a wide range of topics as the fall goes on, and we're looking forward to sharing our thoughts and hearing what the audience out there thinks as well.
Aside from Cemetery Chats and the normal short horror stories I've been releasing, I started a new project aimed at writers or aspiring writers. "Josh Bearheart's Writers' Den" is a series of videos where I'll be talking about various writing topics, sharing what I've learned over the past few years and trying to cultivate a community that can help each other become better writers. The format of these videos is a bit different for me as I am scripting each video and recording a voice over with a caricature of me on screen instead of video. It takes a lot of time to put each video together, but I think it's worth it in the long run.
So now there are 3 active YouTube channels and the Facebook page, what else could I possibly be doing?
Well, for one thing, I'm still working on my degree. I just finished a finance class (which made me hate finance) and I'm working on a few other classes over the next couple of months. I'm also finalizing the new book, "Legends and Tales: Creepy and Fun Stories to Tell Around the Campfire". That will be coming out October 1 on Amazon as a paperback. I'm on the fence about releasing it as an eBook as I really want to focus on the physical aspect of it, but I haven't made my mind up completely yet. I'm super excited to get this book out and I can't wait for you all to get the chance to see it. It includes written versions of all my short horror stories as well as about 50 flash fiction stories (under 100 words each) and several stories I have not released on YouTube. The book is divided into Monster Stories, Ghost Stories, Legends and Flash Fiction and each section contains a fun introduction to talk about the coming stories. The Legends section contains stories based on legends or actual history and each story has a foreword where I talk about the story a little, kind of a behind the scenes view of it.
This is the first reveal of the full cover of the book:
One last thing.
After announcing the winner of the book giveaway last month, I realized something was wrong with my email. I wasn't getting the response with the mailing address I needed to ship the book out and I wasn't sure why. It turns out, when I changed the domain of my website earlier this year, I needed to do some additional backend work to be able to receive email at this email address. Basically, any replies people were sending to this email were being lost to the void. I fixed that issue as soon as it was brought to my attention (Thank you Bree for your patience!) and all should be well now. This email is one of the best ways to get ahold of me outside of Facebook or YouTube comments and I will be happy to chat about anything book related or just answer general questions about anything I am working on.
That's all I have for this month. Keep an eye out for the short horror compilation coming out in October, have a great month and I'll see you all in the next one!
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