The Trail in the Woods Excerpt

Here is an excerpt from The Trail in the Woods.  Chapter 2, The Fog.

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They drove to Salem and found the mental hospital at 2600 Center St NE.  “I read that it’s the oldest mental hospital on the West Coast,” Bob said as he parked the car across the street from the red brick building.  “I don’t know whether you know it or not,” Bob said looking at the hospital, but the 1975 film ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ starring Jack Nicholson, was filmed there.”

“That’s interesting.  I saw the movie but didn’t know that it was filmed at that mental hospital.  Let’s go in and see if the guy that the old man told you about is still there,” Janet said glancing up at the darkening sky where thunderclouds were gathering.  “Looks like we could be in for more rain.”

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They went into the hospital and found out that Tom Wilson was still there and what room he was in.

“Hi,” Bob said looking at the person sitting on his bed.  “I’m Bob and this is my friend, Janet.  We’d like to ask you some questions.  You are Tom Wilson, aren’t you?”

The guy looked at both of them with a blank expression.  It was like they weren’t even there.  Finally, he spoke, “Yeah, I’m Tom Wilson,” he said with a slight western drawl.  “What do you want?”  He sounded irritated that they wanted to talk to him.  Tom started thumping his fingers on the bed and continued while they watched.

Bob and Janet watched him tapping on his bed.  He looked like he was playing a broken record with his fingers.  After a couple of minutes, Bob interrupted his playing and asked Tom if they could ask him some questions.  He didn’t say anything, but looked up and nodded his head slightly in approval.  However, he never quit thumping out his rhythmic beating with his fingers.  Bob looked at Janet and shook his head.

Suddenly Tom blurted out, “They won’t let me out of here.”

“Who won’t let you out?” Janet asked looking around and glancing towards the door.

“The aliens,” Tom said, looking terrified.  He glanced around the room as though someone might be watching him and added, “They just keep me locked up in here.”

“The aliens are keeping you here?” Bob asked.

“Yes,” Tom said nervously and messed with his hair.  “They’ve been keeping me here since 1985.  They locked me up and won’t let me go.  They claim I’m crazy, but I’m not.  Hell,” he added, “if I was crazy, I wouldn’t be in this place.”

“You’ve been in here since 1985?” Bob asked.

“Yes, since that fateful day,” he said.  “It was the day I got back from the abduction and told the authorities.  They said I was crazy and brought me here and threw away the key.”

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I hope you like the excerpt and will want to read the rest of the book.  You can check out more of the book and more about me on my website.  Thanks for reading, Stan

Awesome Science Fiction

Check out my Website for some awesome science fiction books.  I’m an author and I specialize in writing Science Fiction.  I write other genres too but science fiction is my favorite.  Here’s a sample of my writing:

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“What is that strange looking thing over there?” Current asked his partner, Jessica as they stood in her yard one late evening in July 2055.

“That’s the leftover remnant from the Jeddie mission to Europa, Jupiter’s moon,” Jessica answered.   “It’s a monument to the last failed mission.”

“Do you mean the mission where everyone vanished after encountering the aliens from Elsewhere, the planet in the dark cloud nebula?” Current asked and scratched his elongated chin.

The fur on Jessica’s head stood straight up as she thought about the aliens and the last mission.   As she looked towards the monument, a statue of her late father, Current asked, “How did the monument end up here at your place?”

“It’s a long story but I’ll try to make it short,” she said nervously and looked with anxiety towards the statue like she was worried about seeing something.  “My father worked for the Space Agency in 2045 and when the mission ended, the Agency erected this statue to remember the people on the Europa mission.  When it was found that the people on the mission died because of what they found on Europa, the people at the Space Agency blamed my father.  Since the statue was made in his image, they wanted to destroy it.  I found out what they were planning to do and I managed to sneak in late at night and remove the statue.  I brought it here, where it’s been for the past ten years.”

“Didn’t anyone ever try to find the statue?”

“No, they were happy that it disappeared.”

“Oh my God!” Current exclaimed.  “What was that strange looking thing that peeked at us from behind the statue?”

“It was just one of the aliens that they found on Europa during the mission.  That one is very cute but a couple of the others are not and they are dangerous.  I hope that they don’t show themselves.  The last time I saw them they ate two of my pet dogs, both Rottweiler’s.  I tried to stop them but the ugly creatures came after me and I just managed to get away.  Now, where was I?”

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If you liked this partial story then hopefully you’ll like the other books and poems that I’ve written and will be writing.  I have a vivid imagination as you can see from my story I’ve written and I love writing.  Check out what else I’ve written and follow my writing adventures on my website.  I’m currently writing The Terminus List, which I hope to have completed this year.  Sign up for my newsletter while you’re at my website. 

I’m changing the world one word at a time.  Thank you for following me, Stan   

Check out my Website

My Website is waiting for you.  It’s a great site with lots of information about my writing career.  There are many freebies on the homepage.  Free stories, free poems, free updates on my books, a free first chapter of The Trail in the Woods.  I even have an offer for a reduced, can’t beat the price ($14.00), autographed copy of my book, The Trail in the Woods.  You buy the book, I’ll sign it and send it to you for one low price of only $14.00.  It’ll be a copy you can keep on your bookshelf or in your library.     

My Website has information about me and reviews of my books.  I love writing and I’d love for you to visit my Website.  There’s a contact page where you can sign up for my newsletter.  I specialize in Science Fiction but I’ve written other genres also.  Remember, I’m changing the world one word at a time.     

The Thirsty Author

The Trail in the Woods is a Science Fiction thriller that will captivate you and carry you from the opening chapter to the unexpected ending. Along the way, you will encounter an electrified greenish-yellow fog and then you will meet humans with gills. You will meet the Tribulator, a creature that runs the Valley of the Gods and thinks he is God. The valley is an environmentally perfect place that the Tribulator established. Two people, Bob and Janet, get captured and taken to the valley. They are locked up in the valley and coerced into helping promote the Tribulators brand of religion.

The Trail in the Woods is a frightening book that leads us to a possible future world waiting for all of us. The fate of the world hinges on whether Bob and Janet can escape from the valley and the powerful Tribulator.

https://thirstyauthor.com/book.php?b=24135

The Trail in the Woods

The Trail in the Woods is a thriller that will captivate you and carry you from the opening chapter to the unexpected ending.  Along the way, you will encounter an electrified greenish-yellow fog and then you will meet humans with gills.  You will meet the Tribulator, a creature that runs the Valley of the Gods and thinks he is God.  The valley is an environmentally perfect place that the Tribulator established.  Two people, Bob and Janet, get captured and taken to the valley.  They are locked up in the valley and coerced into helping promote the Tribulators brand of religion.

The Trail in the Woods is a frightening book that leads us to a possible future world waiting for all of us.  The fate of the world hinges on whether Bob and Janet can escape from the valley and the powerful Tribulator.

Don’t miss out on this Science Fiction masterpiece.  Stan Straub, changing the world one word at a time.   

The Writing World

Writing a book is not as easy as it sounds.  Writing a book is one thing, but writing one that is good is altogether harder.  Write a book they said, it’ll be easy they said.  Those words fall a long way from the truth.  Writing a good book is hard and writing it with the correct spelling and using good English or your language is really hard.  Having the story flow well is especially important.

Once the book is written, then the writer has to publish the book.  It requires a well thought-out book cover and a hook em’ book description.  Then, after that is done and the book is finally published, it requires marketing.  Part of marketing is getting reviews.

So, how does one go about doing all of this?  First, it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of time.  My first book, a medical mystery, The Killer Within took me several years to complete.  After I completed it in 2011, I set back and waited for the publishers to flock to my door.  Many rejection letters later I came to the realization that writing and becoming famous was two different things.  Finally, I joined many other writers and used self-publishing.  I had some success, but I didn’t really do well until I started doing my own marketing.

What is marketing?  It’s doing things to try to get people to buy your book.  It can include writing articles and having a blog, like this one.  I also started polishing my writing skills and it’s paid off by having better-written stories.  I followed up The Killer Within with a Science Fiction book, The Segmented Tail.  Then, I wrote another Science Fiction book, The Trail in the Woods.  I believed and was told that each new book was better written.  Writing better books is usually what happens to all writers that don’t give up.  Good writers learn from their mistakes.  Now, I’m in the process of writing a new Science Fiction book, The Terminus List. I feel that The Terminus List will be a blockbuster and I can’t wait to finish it.  You can read up all about me, my writing, and what I’m up to on my website.   Once you have your own website, then you need to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO is setting your website up with keywords that will attract readers.

Marketing is the hardest of the three 1) writing a book, 2) publishing a book, and 3) marketing a book.

Once you’ve written your book then when you start to market it, you will be inundated with people wanting to help you, at a cost.  The cost sometimes brings minimal results, but what I’ve found is that they don’t bring any results to you, only money to the ones claiming to want to help you.

What I’ve discovered is that to make it in the writing world, it takes a well-written book, a lot of marketing, and some luck.  If you have your heart set on becoming a writer, then follow my guidelines and never give up.  Continue writing and trying to make each new book better than the preceding ones.  I have all the faith in the world in you.  I’ll be waiting for you to join me in the writing world, Stan

 

I Still Need Book Reviews

I still need book reviews for my Science Fiction book, The Trail in the Woods.

If anyone is willing to write a review and put it on Amazon, I’ll send you a free Kindle version. Just go to my website and send me an email with your name and email address. I’ll send you a “free” copy of the book. There is no catch other than I would like an honest review. My goal is to get at least 20 reviews. Currently, I only have 5 reviews on the Kindle edition and 3 on the paperback. Will you please help me? Reviews can make a huge difference to an author! Thank you very much, Stan

The Best Mousetrap for Catching Mice

All mousetraps are designed to catch mice but some are better at it than others.  The top of the line mousetraps actually traps mice just as they were designed to do.  The unsuspecting mouse is trapped before it even knows what hit it.

Books are like mousetraps.  Some books are better at catching the reader than others.  What is it about books that catch a reader?  One is the cover and the second is the blurb on the cover.  Once you look at a book cover then the next thing you do is read the blurb on the cover.  If you read a blurb on a book cover and it strikes you like something that you want to read then it’s a blurb that has caught you.  It’s like the best mousetrap only it catches you and doesn’t let go until you’ve finished the book.  Fortunately, good blurbs on a book cover are not as deadly as a good mousetrap.  They hook you like a fish but then they release you like hook and release in fishing.

So how do you write a blurb that’s like a great mouse trap?  You write the blurb with a hook or several hooks.  Something that will draw the reader in and make them want to read the book.  For example, my book The Trail in the Woods has a well-developed blurb to hook readers.  Here is the blurb from the back cover:  Something or someone has encapsulated an entire valley on Earth.  The valley is called “The Valley of the Gods” and is given a perfect environment for people to live in.  The valley is like a Garden of Eden and is designed as an ideal place for an experiment.  People hiking on a trail towards the valley have disappeared over the years and never been heard from again.  Even searchers have disappeared that looked for the missing people. Something evil lives on the trail and controls the valley.  Two childhood friends set out on a courageous adventure to hike the abandoned overgrown trail to see if they can find out what has happened to the people.  The two hikers have to use machetes to get through the thick brush on the trail.  While on the trail, they are captured and are taken to the valley to live.  In the valley, they meet people with gills and come face to face with the one who runs the valley, The Tribulator, a Charles Manson type who thinks he is God.  It’s a fight for survival for the two hikers as they fight the evil forces controlling the valley.  The fate of humanity hangs in the balance as the hikers battle for their lives.

The hooks in the blurb standout, Something has encapsulated an entire valley on earth, Garden of Eden, People hiking the trail have disappeared, Something evil lives on the trail and controls the valley, two childhood friends hike the trail and are captured, they meet the Tribulator, and, finally, the fate of humanity hangs in the balance as the hikers battle for their lives.

These hooks were developed to hook readers and to draw them into reading the book.  Do they work?  Many people have read my book and therefore it shows that they do work.  I have written several books as can be found on my website.  Each book has a well-developed blurb on the cover.  The blurbs don’t just come automatically but take a lot of work.  A good blurb is actually harder to write than the book itself.  Check out my website and read the blurbs and then read my books.  Let the blurbs draw you in.  You and I will be happy that you were hooked.  I hope that you have a beautiful day and get hooked, Stan

 

A Hotdog without Mustard

A hotdog without mustard is like a book without a review.  Hotdogs automatically get mustard put on them but books don’t automatically get reviews.  Reviews are one of the hardest things to come by for an author.  

If you read my books, please write a review and leave it on Amazon.  An honest one-word review, like “good” or “bad”, is better than no review at all.

My Science Fiction thriller, The Trail in the Woods is requesting reviews.  It’s eager and it’s waiting to accept any that come along.  Reviews sell books.  Please help a starving writer.  I’ll thank you, the book will thank you, and visitors to Amazon will be rewarded. 

If you like the book, please check out my website.  Please send me a message on my website saying whether or not you liked the book and why.  I enjoy reading everything that people write to me.  And, you never know, your words just might help me write better and your words just might influence and encourage other writers.

I’m changing the world one word at a time.  I hope that everyone has a beautiful day.  Remember, the future is waiting for us.  Please write a review and help change my future. Stan Straub   Your reviews keep me writing and help keep me young.  The younger I become, the longer I can write.       

  

 

 

I’ve Written a Book, Now What?

I’ve written my latest book, a Science Fiction thriller, The Trail in the Woods.  It’s had a few reviews but it needs many more.  So, how do I get reviews?  It’s a question that only readers can answer.  I hope that readers read my book and like it and if they do, then I hope that they’ll write a review, either positive or negative, and leave the review on Amazon.  Reviews are what sell books and they seem to be the hardest thing to get.  It appears that getting reviews may be much harder than writing the book.  Some book authors get reviews by paying for professional reviewers. However, I don’t want to have to pay people to read my books.  I would like them to read my books because they like the book.

People that have read my book say that they liked it and that they’ll write a review but most have not followed through with actually doing it.  Does it help to get reviews on Amazon?  Yes, it does but the real question is, how to get them without having to pay professional reviewers.  So far, I have only gotten eight reviews of The Trail in the Woods on Amazon, three on the paperback version and three on the Kindle version.  It takes many more than eight before Amazon’s Algorithms kick in and start to help an author sell their book.  I’ve read that it takes at least fifty reviews before Amazon starts to help.

When an author doesn’t get a review, he or she starts to think that readers were not telling the truth about how good the book is or they just don’t want to take the time to write a review.  Unfortunately, writers assume the worse and therefore assume that the book isn’t that good and that the reader just doesn’t want to say so.  Then, it’s easy to start thinking that no one probably wants to read it.  The real question is, What to do after the book is written?  I can only hope that people are honest that read the book and write a review on Amazon.

When an author gets a good review on Amazon, it catches us by surprise and gets us excited.  Now, if enough reviews are written, then readers will start believing that the book must be good and then other readers will buy it and read it and then hopefully add their review.

If you read The Trail in the Woods or one of my other books and like it, please write a review and leave the review on Amazon.  And, if you really like The Trail in the Woods, check out my website and the other books I’ve written.  I want to thank you in advance, Stan