Shelf Life is an awesome web series starring Tara Platt and Yuri Lowenthall, and I just happened to interviewthem at ComicCon 2012 in San Diego. Watch the video interview, and check out the Shelf Life series on YouTube. 

Yuri and Tara have an IndieGoGo campaign rolling to raise $30k for the fourth season of ShelfLife. If you dig the series and want to see new Play Dough-based penis jokes (and who doesn't), kick 'em some scratch and get actual Shelf Life action figures. 

What do you think of the clip and the interview? Based on that, would you check out the series? 

Sha-ka-paaoww! Book IV of the GFL series is almost loaded into the power-canons and ready to fire across the globe. The book missiles will strike you in the face!

What? You haven't pre-ordered your copy of THE MVP yet? Don't come a-cryin' to me in October that you didn't get one, because you have been duly warned that this is the biggest pre-order yet. Click here to get yours. 

Click here to download the video.

ARealGirl and the FDØ knocked out one pallet of books as they kick off Day 1 of Hell Week. Three more pallets to go. That's just unboxing, signing, numbering and stacking, folks -- still have to do personalization.

Junkie Volunteers show up on Day 3. We are looking forward to it! However, don't count on "Hell Week: The Musical" to be finished in time to regail them with the dulcet tones of Scott "Cabaret" Sigler.

Click here to download video.

The last day of just ARealGirl and I before the Junkies show up to help. This video has giant bronze booties, wrestling burritos, and a surprise appearance by Rocky Balboa. Oh, a\nd some Bush.

Click here to download the video.

A whole mess of Junkies came in to help with Day 3 shipping. Much fun was had. No goats were sacrificed.

Click here to download the video.

Wave that checkered flag! Here it is, Junkies, the final vid of our wee little documentary of packing your copies of THE MVP. The Post Office trucks came today to snag your books, so as of about 10am Pacific Time on August 27, 2012, the book missiles are in the air! There are a ton of Junkies in this vid, so check out some of your peeps. Also, Scott yells at a person. He is a meanie.

Click here to download the video.

Junkies, my apologies, when I posted the Day 4 video I linked to the Day 3 vid. So, Day 3 downloaded twice to bloat your iTunes, and you didn't get Day 4. Here it is. Click here to download the video. Yes, I am the 1% of wasting your bandwidth. 

ARealGirl and the FDØ recently did a "Books & Beer" vidcast to discuss the realities of being an author in the digital age. Crack open a brew, watch, and enjoy. Also, Evo and Jeff from Books & Beer are trying to lock up a pair of panels at South by Southwest (SXSW). Give 'em some Junkie love by taking two minutes to click here, read what they want you to do, and then voting. And, yeah, Evo is the man behind Podiobooks.com, which gives you all of Scott's stories for free, so we'd love to help him out.

And here's a little video I did to put in the feed so subscribers would know the Books & Beer interview was here (it's too long to put in the feed, would keeeeeel your bandwidth). It's me packing for Dragon*Con! It's funny! Maybe!

Click here to download the video.

We're on the road, Junkies! Here's some sweet, sweet video of our first tour stop at Dragon*Con in Atlanta. See the full tour agenda at scottsigler.com/tour.

Click here to download the video.

Here's video of our second stop on the tour, Chapel Hill, NC at Chapel Hill Comics. There was a hell hound. It was awesome, and also well-behaved. Big props to Mur Lafferty for helping us hook this up. We love her, so we'll kill her last.

Click here to download the video.

Our fourth stop of the Sigler East Coast Tour took us to NYC, where we had some fun with the Keith & The Girl podcast (Keith also announces his undying love for the Orbiting Death in this video, in proper fashion: loud and offensive).

Click here to download the video.

The FDØ invades DC and eyes up which embassies will soon fall to his evil ways. Also, ARealGirl comes up with a great idea on how to "improve" the Lincoln Memorial. Five minutes of fun from the East Coast Tour.

Click here to download the video.

"Whose house?" "OUR HOUSE!" A big celebration of all things Dark Øverlord as we visited our East Coast office in Bethlehem, PA, and had a reading/shindig/party afterward. Thanks to Donna Mugavero, the Diva øf Design for opening up her office to a heapin' helpin' of Junkies who came from New Jersey, all over Pennsylvania and even Ohio for the event. We even had a star sighting: musician George Hrab stopped by for the festivities.

Click here to download the video. The tour is sponsored by the GoDaddy coupon code 599scott, which lands you a brand-new domain for just $5.99 (good for September, 2012). 

We drove through torrential rains to reach Pittsburgh and entertain dozens (and dozens) of happy Junkies. There was an infected child (with triangles), Steelers fans (sorry about that) and bathroom graffiti. Check out that GoDaddy coupon code 599scott, which gets you a new domain for just $5.99 (good for September, 2012 only).

Click here to download video.

What's that? Chicago is on the chopping block for PANDEMIC? Check out the great crowd we had in the Windy City, where I not only entertained fans of Da Bears but also did a walk-through of PANDEMIC's "path of destruction." You can see a couple of places where the action will go down in this third and final book in the INFECTED trilogy, due out Fall of 2013 from Crown Publishing.

Click here to download the video.

Hi, Junkies, ARealGirl here to announce another new Dark Øverlord product.

Finally! THE DETECTIVE is the second GFL novella, and it is now available in all formats for all eReaders by clicking right here (Kindle and Nook included). Just $3.99, this story covers Frederico Esteban Guissepe Gonzaga's search for the family of Quentin Barnes. We've posted it at Amazon.com for Kindle, Barnes & Noble for Nook (but we have no control over when they process the book for sale -- we've done our part, now we just have to wait until it's available there). 

Matt Wallace teamed up with Scott to pen this two-fisted tale that takes us to Micovi, Ionath City and even to the Jupiter Net Colony in the Planetary Union.

While this one is still YA (young adult), it's a violent tale that takes on some very adult themes. Fred's history is heart-wrenching. I love what Matt and Scott did to bring this character to life. 

In the GFL timeline, this novella takes place during THE STARTER and THE ALL-PRO. You'll see mostly brand-new stuff, as well as some familiar scenes told from a different point of view. I may be biased, but I think THE DETECTIVE is a little bit of storytelling magic. 

Those of you who attended the East Coast (THE MVP) and West Coast (NOCTURNAL) tours get this eBook for free! If you attended one of those stops and haven't received a download link yet, watch the video posted above and then send an email to media@scottsigler.com, saying what tour stop you attended. 

10/23/12, 4:14pm: edited to fix East Side/West Side info. (Thanks BigJohn!)

My buddy A.J. Colucci wrote this kick-ass horror/thriller called THE COLONY. I've been blabbing about it on the Twitters and the Facebooks for awhile now, and the book came out Tuesday.

I've never met A.J. in person. I only know her through this novel, which my agent, Byrd Leavell, asked me to blurb. I fell in love with the book, probably because it has a similar structure to my stuff, and you all already know what narcissist I am. I also saw a couple of things in the book that needed tweaks. Plot-structure stuff, mostly, because her science was spot-on. Stuff that it's crazy-easy for an author to miss when he or she is heads-down for years, looking at each word and sometimes missing the bigger picture. 

For my work, A Kovacs catches these problems in second-draft form (as does Big John Vizcarra, Jeremy Ellis, Joe Albietz, Tom Merritt, J.P. Harvey, Chris Grall and more). Trust me, when you are writting a novel-length thriller, where hundreds of plot threads have to line up in a "real world" fashion, it's very easy to miss a thing or two. 

A.J. impressed me because she was very excited to get this feedback. Some authors will get their feathers ruffled and be offended. In my opinion, these authors are more worried about themselves than the reader. Not, A.J., though -- as we went back and forth, I heard over and over again phrases akin to "oh, that would have so annoyed the reader." She is out to create the best product possible, because she wants people to get their money's worth.

You need to understand that when I received THE COLONY to review, it was basically finished. A.J. had to work hard to make final changes, because publishers do not like changes at that point. She also worked with Chris Grall, who does some of my military and weapons consulting, to smooth out some issues with guns (yeah, just like me, A.J. lives at the range and knows everything about firearms ... it's just what we writers do). 

I was pretty impressed with how A.J. doubled-down to fix these small issues and make the best story possible. On top of that, it's a kick-ass book. If you liked my novella EUSOCIAL NETWORKING, you will eat this one up with a spork.

So in A.J., I think I found a kindred spirit: an author who cares about you the reader first, and everything else second. That's why I consider her a buddy, even though we've never met in person. That, and she send me a bottle of Macallan's as a lil' thank-you gift. I'm easily swayed by the single malt. 

AMAZON BANS REVIEW!
I did the video above as an Amazon review, so it would appear on the page for THE COLONY. Guess what we found out? Amazon bans book reviews by other authors! I'm not the first to discover this; the awesome Joe Konrath blogged about it here. 

Konrath (pictured at right) is far more active in prosthelytizing the indie eBook world than I, and also knows more about the publishing biz. If you're curious why Amazon would ban authors -- people who might know a thing or two about what makes a book "good" -- than read his post. He kind of sums it up here:

The fact that a binder can get a thousand fake reviews because of Romney's comment, but I can't honestly review one of my peers because I'm an author, is a bit silly, don't you think? Amazon allows 1 star reviews from people who haven't even read the book, but deletes positive reviews from people who honestly enjoyed it, and somehow that's improving your review system?

That's some of the frustration I feel as an author. I do have a parade of douchebags, people who haven't actually read the book, giving me bad reviews because of some political statement I made, or because they don't like my slightly over-the-top, bloated-ego-boasting on the podcast (keep in mind, I also get plenty of one-star reviews from people who did read it, and just think I suck, which is fine), or people giving me one-star reviews because they didnt like the eBook formatting, or even people giving me one-star reviews because they don't like the PRICE of the book. Yeah, that happens. 

So those uninformed, misguided or even downright malicious reviews can stay, but reviews from authors are banned. Awesome.

Amazon did this, I believe, because some authors would organize two kinds of campaigns:

1. A "review circle," where 10-15 authors review each other's books in order to stack a ton of 5-star reviews in quick succession. This is common practive in the business and self-help book fields.
2. Attack reviews, where an author (and/or his or her buddies) would try to sabotage a book that was in the same category but doing better by posting a crap-ton of one-star reviews.

Those are real problems that Amazon has to deal with. I can see the flat-out banning of author reviews solves these problems, but it's throwing the baby out with the bath water. Authors spend their entire careers learning what makes a good story, and an honest review from an author is a great way for potential readers to know if they would or wrould not like a particular title. 

So, imma go back to writing. What are your thoughts on this Amazon banning of author reviews?

Click here to download the video.

Click here to listen to a pitch
from your Future Dark Øverlord

Well hello there, Mister/Miss big-time TV producer Junkie. What? You're not in the biz? Well you can be if you help NOCTURNAL win the 2012 Goodreads Choice awards. I recorded a little message so the audio would go out in the feed, just in case my shameless pimping missed those who don't visit here (or use Twitter, or Facebook, or G+ ...).

If you haven't voted for NOCTURNAL in the 2012 Goodreads Choice awared, click here to do so right now! Your vote must be in by Nov. 26. You may have to create a free Goodreads account if you haven't already, but it's a kick-ass site for people that love books.

WHAT I AM THANKFUL FOR
To be sappy for just a moment and show the soft, chewey center inside my onyx heart, ARealGirl and I want to thank you for all you do for us. You listen to the stories, you buy the books, you email us, leave comments, hit the forums, Facebook us, Twitter us, G+ us and on and on. I'm living every author's dream right now because I'm a full-time writer (the hookers and the blow come later on, I guess?). I'm a full-time writer because of all y'all.

I am thankfull for each and every one of you. I never forget who butters my bread (wait ... that wound up sounding kind of dirty ...).

-Scott-

October 11 & 12, 2013 • The Orleans Hotel & Casino
4500 West Tropicana Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89103

Click here to listen to the audio announcement 
for SiglerFest 2K13 Registration!