All right, Junkies, it's time to vote! After the debacle that was the last T-shirt contest, we've decided that all future votes (this one included) must be done in the comments, and by people that have a user profile. So if you haven't signed in already, do so (or create a profile), and put in your vote.

In your comment, put "I vote black!" or "I vote orange!"

There are no options but these, so while we appreciate comments like "how about crushed-velvet tie-dye with silver sprinkles," we will be ignoring any such suggestions. These shirt designs were created by in-house artist Scott "BigFish" Pond. 

EDITED TO ADD: I feel terrible that I didn't mention this originally, but the idea for these shirts came from our own Belladonna420. She made a cool graphic for her Facebook page, and we totally stole it. And then I *really* stole it by not mentioning her in this post! Anyhow, I'm sorry for the oversight. THANKS BELLA!

Also based on our last experience, we reserve the right to choose ourselves if this thing goes off the rails. I don't know how it would, or could, with voting in the comments, but you clever people always surprise me. 

Have at it Junkies!

UPDATE on April 20th: 

Okay, it looks like black wins the day here. But, since I love you people, here's what we're going to do: If you mustmustmust have an orange tee, I'll be doing a pre-order-only run on those. That means that next week I'll put up the item for sale, leave it up for a few weeks, then order whatever tees have been purchased after the few weeks are up.

You'll have to wait longer than normal to get your tee (the few weeks of the pre-order, then the two weeks to get them delivered plus a few days for me to send them to you) but you'll have a limited edition orange KEEP CALM and RUN THE PLAYS THAT I CALL tee of your very own. 

Keep your eyes on this site, pre-order will open next week when we put up the new tees up for sale.

This April, ARealGirl and I have been doing a lot of back-end (awww yeah) work that y'all don't see. We've called this "Get Shit Done Month." We're cleaning up delayed projects and getting squared away for creating brand-new fiction (and if you ask about MT. FITZROY, I will fart in your general direction). 

One of the projects has been addressing the overwhelming demands of our website and social media. We've revised our social media activities over the past eight years, but as time marches on and things change you have to be flexible and adjust. Since many of you are creators, authors, or just curious about how such things work, I thought I'd share what we're doing on the social tubes. 

MY WEBSITE:
This website is its own social media presence: we've got registered users and an active community. The site has gone through many changes since 2005. We started out with a simple site with five static pages, then a Drupal site created by Pulsar and Robbie Trencheny, then moved to a custom site created by BackMyBook.com. We've grown beyond what BackMyBook can do for the front-end part, so we're moving to a custom WordPress site. We're still using BackMyBook's eCommerce suite, though, because it's a great solution for us. 

One of the biggest issues is spam. We're getting hammered. We hope the open-source community of WordPress and the community spam-killing tools will help reduce the amount of hours we put into manually controlling that digital cancer.

So, in the next few months look for more changes here. We're going to improve the layout and, hopefully, make all of our functionality work like a charm.

FACEBOOK:
When I started using Facebook in 2005-ish, it was primarily to promote my books and interact with the Junkies. Yes, I had a bunch of personal friends on there, but I do not have 5,000+ personal friends. A few years back, I reached Facebook's 5k friend limit and couldn't add anymore friends. So, we made a "fan page." That worked well for years, but it always annoyed me that I had to post the same content in two places: first to my personal page to share with the fans who had followed me there, then on the fan page to share with everyone else. 

The second problem was the URL. I made my personal page facebook.com/scottsigler years ago, as soon as that option came available. But, I wanted the fan page to have that address, and I could not because it was already used. So the fan page was /scottsiglerpage, which I hated. I wanted facebook.com/scottsigler so I'd have one easy place to send new fans, where they could follow (which they could not on the maxed-out 5k+ personal page). 

Earlier this year, peeps at my publisher, Crown, were able to chat directly with Facebook and ask them to combine the two pages. Presto-change-o, we merged the two pages and I got to put the /scottsigler on the fan page. Problem solved, suckas! 

There's still an issue that my personal page has 5k+ followers. The duplicates were supposed to be purged out in the merge, but that part didn't work and Facebook couldn't fix it. I'll work on that later in the month, possibly even shut down my personal page and make a brand new one. I don't want to miss what Junkies are saying to me because I don't use the personal page. 

So, can do you, author or creator, learn from my experience with Facebook?
Make a fan page. Make that page's URL end in your brand. DO NOT MAKE IT THE NAME OF YOUR BOOK OR ALBUM OR PRODUCT! You are going to make more stuff after that product. Make your Facebook page end in /yourname, where "your name" is the name that will go on the cover of future products. 

TWITTER:
Twitter is a great tool for creatives. It's a solid way to stay in front of some of your core fans, or to disseminate info about new product releases, news coverage, etc. The most important function, however, is the same function it serves for most users: a way to share your thoughts and what's going on in your life. 

There are hundreds of "Top Ten Secrets to Using Twitter To Make Bank" posts out there, so I'm not going to get into any of that. I'll tell you what I'm doing with it lately. 

Once upon a time, circa 2005-2008 or so, if someone followed me on Twitter, I followed them back. I tried the "auto-follow" approach, with a canned message that would say "Nice to Tweet you!" It was fun for awhile, but around 2008 or so I realized I was following a lot of spam accounts. I turned off the auto-follow and have been purging ever since. When I started this purge, I was following about 12,000 accounts, many of which were inactive and/or spam. Ugh. That's a freakin' mess and it's taken awhile to clean it up. 

The Great Unfollow of 2013
Right now I'm using justunfollow.com's free service to manage this. You can purge about 25 users a day from your lists for free, or upgrade to a paid service and nuke 'em all from orbit (just to be sure). 

• Unfollow those that aren't following me: I'm doing quite a bit of this. I still follow 6,000+ people, so there's a ton of action in my Twitter feed. But, if someone has soured on my constant tweets about poop, pee, Twinkies and the Detroit Lions, and has unfollowed me, I'm probably going to unfollow them. Twiter is about finding like-minded people, and/or following persons of interest. If we're not like-minded, I have enough going in without seeing your tweets. 

• Inactive accounts: Because I am still following so many people, this is another way to reduce the number of people I am following. If you've been inactive for three months, I probably already unfollowed you. It's nothing personal, it's just business ...

• People with political views I do not agree with: That does not get you unfollowed. I'm an atheist, but if people I follow like to tweet about their love for God and Christianity that's not a reason for me to unfollow. I'm also pretty moderate, which means the one-sided myopic views of the ultra-left or ultra-right often rub me the wrong way. Still, I usually don't unfollow unless the user (from either side) is spewing illogical hatred on a regular basis. I encourage and embrace differeing opinions, but life is too short for people who are too far gone to consider the other's sides viewpoint. 

• BUT: Douchebags, assholes and fuck-tards: Yes, if you are an unmitigated ass-hat, I aint got time for that. Straight-up hatred, mysoginy, racism or wishes/promises of violence make for an easy unfollow. 

TWITTER CONTINUED: BIGGER IS BETTER ... RIGHT?
As an author, I used to get caught up in the "higher Twitter numbers are good I MUST GET MORE!" mentality. As a rule of thumb, the higher your numbers, the better, but if you don't have hundreds of thousands of followers it's not a problem. It won't hurt your sales. And having 100,000+ probably won't increase your sales all that much: people get hundreds of thousands of followers because they sell hundreds of thousands of books ... people don't sell hundreds of thousands of books because they have hundreds of thousands of followers. Get me? Below are a few guidelines on how to not get angsty about your "poor" Twitter showing: 

How to spot the fakers, and use them to learn that big numbers don't result in big sales:

• Are they adding a consistent number of people every day? Go to twittercounter.com and check it out. If they add, say, 36 followers every day for two weeks straight, that means they probably paid for a service that added followers for them. There's nothing wrong with that practice, but it's good to know so you don't get angsty that you're doing something "wrong" because you're comparing your following to theirs. 

• They have 200,000 followers, and are following 199,500: If the following/follower numbers are very close, and very high, it's probably because they are auto-soliciting other Twitter users that have the primary goal of just growing numbers. You follow me, I follow you. That doesn't help sell books. It's a fun game, sure, but if you see people with these kind of numbers don't spend a lot of time worrying about how they market their products. 

• Sometimes that author you've never heard of has a huge following because they are legit. It's true! There are a lot of authors who are kicking ass, and they don't require your awareness to be successful. They sell a ton of books and have a ton of followers. These are good people to follow and watch. How do they interact on Twitter? How are they marketing? There are people out there who did it naturally from whom you can learn a great deal.

• I've never heard of this woman: how can she have 250,000 followers? If an author you've never heard of has 200,000+ followers, odds are they are using a service for that (or they've been tapped as "recommended" by the Twitter staff), and also that they are very much full of shit. That's not everyone with big numbers, mind you, but Twitter is easy to game and if you want to shell out some bucks and/or auto-follow people whose only goal is to get more followers. So if you see an unknown author (at least unknown to you) with giant-ass numbers, and you want to know if you're missing out on someone who could have great business practices to emulate, check out http://fakers.statuspeople.com/. Sometimes it's easy to see that that user is implementing a "bot follower" service. 

Here's an example. I often look up authors with high numbers of Twitter followers and follow them, looking to see what I'm missing, what kind of different things I can do to find new fans, etc. I found the user in the image below who has 386,000+ followers. Wow, right? Then I checked on StatusPeople to see if those followers were legit. The image below shows that I probably don't need to be watching this person at all: 

GOOGLE+
I love G+. I think it's an excellent way to interact and share. We're not doing much here other than just sharing the same things I share on Facebook and Twitter; we just don't have time to exploit any unique features. 

If you're a creator, you need to be on G+. It reminds me very much of Facebook back in Facebook's early days: it didn't do all that much, but there was this feeling that it was going to topple the 800-pound gorilla known as MySpace. G+ isn't going anywhere. It will continue to develop, so get your page up and get in the habbit of using it to share with people who prefer that service.

THE SOCIAL WEBS!
There's a few more things we're doing, but those are the primary areas with which we spend time. And come May, Junkies, I could give a crap about all of that stuff, because it will be time to write new stuff! If you're a creator, your real fan base comes from creating things, so don't get too caught up in the Social Webs. 

Mickey Mouse tells LucasArts "You're fired!", Zoe Saldana gets her Kermit on for Guardians of the Galaxy, and a new movie gives everyone in America a 12-hour license to kill. 

This episode brought to you by the GoDaddy code scott295, which gives you a new domain for just $2.95. See more deals at our GoDaddy code page.

PANDEMIC's publishing date has been pushed back, Junkies: the new release date is Jan. 21, 2014. This is the third and final book in the INFECTED trilogy.

On the third draft of PANDEMIC, I found some issues that weren't up to the quality of plot/science/logic that you as a reader have come to expect — those things had to be fixed. I want this book out as bad as you do, but I'm not going to deliver a sub-par story and expect you to pay your hard-earned money for it.

Your time is irreplaceable: I will always treat it with respect and appreciate the fact that you spend it with my stories. This is a deadline-driven business. We have to release books to put food on the table. I can't spend ten years re-writing to get everything just-so, but the final product still has to be as good as I can make it.

I hope PANDEMIC will be worth the additional three months' wait.

Click here for pre-order links.

Well, that was awesome. Honestly awesome.

Hello from the Director of Døøm. On April 1, we sold 1,301 books — in 24 hours. That's 797 copies of THE ROOKIE and 504 copies of THE STARTER in paperback. That's a lot of books, in case you were wondering. 

We're very happy that so many peeps stocked up on copies of these books for their local libraries, their kids' schools, and for their not-yet-Junkie friends and family members. It's wonderful to know that folks enjoy the Galactic Football League series so much that they jumped at the chance to share it. It's humbling and inspiring and cool as all get-out.

WARNING: IT WILL TAKE US A BIT TO SHIP THESE OUT!
I'll be honest, it was also a bit of a surprise; we estimated we'd sell about 400-500 books. Selling more than twice that many changes the game in the best way, but still changes the game. We had to order the additional forty cases of books from our distributor. I placed an order for additional mailers today. It's the best kind of surprise for a company that works everyday to delight our customers.

Due to the huge success of the Ascension Day sale, the timeline for shipping out all orders will probably stretch through April. We've got lots of help at Dark Øverlord South for when all the supplies finally arrive, and we'll move 'em out as fast as we can.

If you ordered, I appreciate your patience while we process these orders and get them sent.

As always, Scott and I thank you for your support. We couldn't do it without you, and wouldn't want it any other way.

It was April 1, 2007 that the FDØ kicked the publishing industry square in the ding-ding. That's the day that ANCESTOR went on sale, a trade paperback from a wee little publisher in Canada. The book hit #1 on Amazon.com's Horror and SciFi charts, and was the #2 fiction book overall (behind a HARRY POTTER book, fer cryin' out loud).

This was before eBooks, mind you. We accomplished this with a $15 paperback, not a free or .99 cent ebook, and for that fear we are quite proud.

Henceforth, April 1 is and always will be Sigler Ascension Day! So on Monday, April 1, we're havin' us a big Ascension Day sale. Just come to scottsigler.com on Monday, April 1, 2013. The sale runs the twenty-four hours of that day, on Pacific Time. We'll plaster this up on the front page.

Are we crazy? YES WE ARE! Monday, April 1, 2013 only, we're selling THE ROOKIE paperbacks for just 41 cents each, plus shipping. 

But wait! Don't order yet!

We're also selling THE ROOKIE and THE STARTER paperback combo for just $4.10 plus shipping.

And for both offers, unlimited copies! What? Did I just say that? I must be innnnn-sannneee!

That's right, unlimited copies. Shipping depends on quantity ordered and on your location. You'll get the shipping price when you order on Monday, April 1, 2013.

We'll be using PayPal, which means you can use your account there or just a straight-up credit card. PayPal helps us dial in cheaper shipping costs for multiple copies, if you're so inclined to order them.

FILL YOUR PERSONAL COLLECTION:
That's right, fill it all up. Why not deck out that bookshelf with paperback glory?

STOCK UP ON GIFTS:
Gift-giving season isn't far away, and neither are birthdays. No one has to know you paid so little for these great books. It's our secret!

FILL UP YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY:
At these prices, a few dollars of your disposable income means great books for the kids in your area. Think of it, Junkie — for a few lousy bucks, you're helping kids discover reading. And for just $50-ish, you could give ten sets of the GFL Books I & II to your local library sytem.

FILL UP YOUR SCHOOL LIBRARY:
Face it, there are some kids that don't want to read Shakespeare or Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for their school reports. That doesn't mean the kids are dumb, it just means they have different interests. Why not give some lads and lasses the opportunity to grab these great paperbacks from their school library? They have a book they can fall in love with, and hence, discover the joy of reading. And you spread Siglerism!

Man, this was a great time. ARealGirl and I hit LA to be on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. They U-Stream live video, then put that on YouTube (which is below), and then release the audio podcast. I'll link to that when it goes up.

What a crazy conversation. We talk police corruption, my fiction process, I get to geek out on MMA, I tell how I came up with the concept for THE ROOKIE, tardigrades, the evolution of sentience, my story of podcasting and getting a print deal, and — finally — I reveal who is behind the NOCTURNAL TV series. Get ready to soil yourself with excitement.

Sometimes getting old sucks.

The Evil Queen™ is still laid up with a monster of a back injury. She's been out of work for quite some time, which has necessitated changes around the house. Remember when we were all 15 years old and bulletproof? Yeah, that doesn't last.

So, she and I got to talking about what might happen if I also suffered an injury that put me out of commission — like most families, we'd be in a bit of a financial pickle. Her injury is particularly relevant to my profession, because she literally can't sit down for more than fifteen minutes at a time, and can't stand for more than about an hour at a time. Those things are important if your job is angrily punching keys on a computer.

(And before anyone suggests it, no, Dragon Naturally Speaking would never be a solution for my writing style of write a sentence, deleted it, re-write it, move something, move it back, delete, change, etc.).

There is danger inherent in all modes of transportation, including even walking (especially in San Francisco). The thing with a motorcycle, however is how exposed you are to the drunken jackasses, the latte-sipping hipsters that can't see out of their asinine fake frames, the lipstick-applying ladies focused on the rearview mirror, the "gotta check the scores on my cell phone, bro" dudes, and — above all — the licensed-to-kill bus drivers of this fair city (if you have bad lateral movement, it's best to vacation elsewhere, trust me, crosswalks and lights are merely suggestions to these cats).

Just one mistake by someone else and it's two tons of car up against my 155 fighting pounds. As Pookie Chang once said, "you can fuck your math teacher, but you can't fuck math."

I know it's not the greatest bike in the world. It's not a loud Harley, it's not a sweet-looking Triumph, it's not a Buell crotch-rocket or a flashy BMW or anything that turns the heads of other motorcycle drivers, but I loved that bike. Few things made me happier than driving my Savage across town to Borderlands Books to see my buddies Alan and Jude, park that thing right in front between two cars, and stroll in like a gangsta (I still stoll in like a gangsta, mind you, it will just take me longer to get there).

But, the realities of life sometimes catch up with you. People get hurt. Hurt people sometimes can't work. A two-income family becomes a one-income family, and you have to circle the wagons. While I certainly hate giving up the ride, it's the smart thing to do. Brains over heart.

And now I have fewer chances of said brains winding up on the pavement. That's not a good scene for anyone.

How about you Junkies? Ever have to give up that favorite thing or that beloved hobby because of financial woes, time constraints, or just because you have kids and have to start thinking long-term life as opposed to short-term fun?

Some things speak for themselves. But, that doesn't mean I can't jibber-jab about how effing fantastic this is.

Junkies, I present the "hatching hatchling" tattoo of RevBone76, also known as Junkie Jeremy Daniels. Amazing. This is creative and very accurate to my vision of the hatchlings. The tat is, of course, an image from the novel INFECTED.

I'm always humbled when a Junkie inks up with elements of Siglerism. This time out is no exception. RevBone76, I hope you enjoy this tat your whole life long. May you be 120 years old in a nursing home, with this tat scaring the living shit out of the normals.

Junkie Jolene sent me this great picture of Baby McButter. Yes, that's his name! I love to see the Siglerism tats, and I love to see pet names inspired by my stories.

I think Jolene said it best:

"FDO, We got Baby from a friend that had bought him as a gift for his girlfriend. Baby ate more than expected, was more stubborn than expected and tore up more shoes and socks than expected. I accepted to take him in only as a last resort. The night before he was to go to the pound he came to my home instead. I was listening to Ancestor at the time so with his mighty jaw and stubborn will that everything needed to be tasted he earned the name Baby McButter. "

I see the look of evil in that half-open eye ... someone give Baby McButter a treat before he tears open Jolene's throat!

Okay, I freaking love stuff like this. Junkie Murle the Girl is an Orthodox Jew who learned about Siglerism through another member of her Synagogue (and that member learned about it through another member ... gosh, it's almost like Siglerism is contagious or something ...).

To celebrate Purim, she whipped up some blue-triangle Hamantash for her and her fellow Junkies. 

Personally? I like the top-middle one, which has clearly "fizzled" and is leaking delicious, sweet, rotting-triangle-goo onto the plate.

Sadly, I did not eat any, because the Rules of Siglerism decree that "Scott is unable to accept any foodstuffs or packages containing snacks or candy. These will be discarded untouched." 

Murle knew that and did not send any my way. She must be one smart hamantash. 

Happy Purim!

We're still working on the pitch for the NOCTURNAL television series.

First off, an update: I still don't have a contract for the option. It's a strange thing, because we're toiling away on a series bible and writers are scripting the first draft of a pilot episode. No, I still can't say who is involved. This is a demanding, fun and educational process, so we're plowing forward hoping that the deal comes through. The task itself provides sufficient reward – so, even if it falls through, A and I are learning a lot about the business, which makes it all worthwhile.

Now, onto the good stuff. On Sunday I watched THE WALKING DEAD, then Chris Hardwick's THE TALKING DEAD. His guests were Robert Kirkman (WALKING DEAD creator) and Joe Manganiello (pictured at left), an actor from the series TRUE BLOOD and the movie MAGIC MIKE. If you don't know Joe Manganiello, he's an excellent actor and a pure specimen of manliness. He's also a crazy genre fan: loves comics, loves WALKING DEAD. I thought to myself: Self, here's an action star that likes the horror, who can glower like nobody's business, and who can really sell fight scenes ... wouldn't he make a great Bryan Clauser?

(Yes, I talk to myself a lot. And I always address myself as "self," although sometimes when I fear my own powers, I say "Mr. Self," or, "Your High Holy Selfness.")

I sent my little idea to the producer, and he loved it. Awesome! We're on the same page for what might make an ideal leading actor for the NOCTURNAL series! Then the producer reminded me of a wee little detail: Manganiello is a prominent actor on a top-rated series. He's probably not looking for anything new at the moment.

Common sense, right? Hey, I'm new here, cut me some slack.

That got me to thinking of a casting director's plight. If you want a lead actor with a pedigree, especially a pedigree in the genre world, how do you find a marquee name when the marquee names are already working?

So now, little man (and/or little woman), I give the watch to you. Who do you think would make a great Bryan Clauser for a TV series?

BUT WAIT! There are rules ...

THE RULES:

1. He can't be a prominent character on a current series, unless that series is in its last season. So, no, we couldn't get a Kit Harrington or a Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (both from GAME OF THRONES).
2. He can't be an active movie star Yes, I'd shoot a Hobbit in the face to get Brad Pitt, but Brad's a little busy ... so is Channing Tatum, Will Smith, etc., etc.
3. He's got to be believeable as a bad-ass. Yes, I know that comes down to ACTING! (quick shout-out to Jon Lovitz), but I think a TV Bryan Clauser has to sell "danger." One look at this guy should make you think, "maybe I won't poke him in the chest just to see what happens."
4. He has to look the right age: 30-40. Please do not comment "Tom Selleck back in the day would be perfect!" Don't do that. Don't be that guy.
5. No, I don't want to know who is the perfect Pookie Chang. Not yet, anyway. Focus on Bryan. 
6. A name and a face we know? Packaging a series involves selling it to networks and producers. While they will go with new faces (TRUE BLOOD was full of 'em, and it's a hit), someone with TV street cred is a better pitch for us. Not a deal-breaker by any stretch, but hey, if you were investing your money in a series, wouldn't you rather have someone that people already want to see?

Have at it, my Junkies! And feel free to play off of each other's comments: if someone comes out of the blue with a great pick and you like it better than your pick, say so.

Enjoy!