20th Century Ghosts Done Dirt Cheap
So get this – right now 20th CENTURY GHOSTS is available over on Amazon, as a download for Kindle, for a big fat .99. No, not the title story of the same name… the whole collection. I’m not sure whether this is an AmazonFail, or a one-day promotion; apparently Neil Gaiman’s FRAGILE THINGS was also available for .99, around this time last week, for a single day, leading me to believe the latter. Whatever the case, if you got one o’ them Kindlethingees, here’s your chance to fatten your library with a book of stories on the cheap. Go help yourself.
(Yeah, yeah, I know. You don’t hear from me round these parts for a month, then I go and blog twice in one day. Go figure.)
April 20th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
I don’t have a Kindle thingy, but I went to check it out. Are you sure, Joe? Now it reads: Kindle Price: $10.52. Perhaps I’m going mad?
April 20th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
[...] – Joe Hill’s magnificent collection, 20th Century Ghosts, is currently on sale for 99c to Kindle customers. [...]
April 20th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Okay, Joe: I read your twitters. Someone at Amazon must have fixed the price quickly. Cheers.
April 20th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
I have a Barnes & Noble Nook and Gaiman’s Fragile Things was .99 cents there too. I’m saw 20th Century Ghosts for .99 cents as well, but I think it might have just been the story — I’m not sure.
April 20th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
I just went to the kindle store and it was available for 0.99. For those who do not have a Kindle, Amazon.com has a PC App, a Mac App, a iPhone/iPod Touch app and an iPad App available for no charge. I use the PC App and enjoy reading on the PC. Thanks for the heads up Joe!
April 20th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
Someone told me Macintosh doesn’t have Kindle supported software. It was my computer systems analyst. He’s been hanging around looking at my machine, b/c some doofus retailer sent me a message that my machine was full of spyware.
It’s been acting up ever since last week. He did something that sped up the computer, but it’s still acting up on Facebook-which is where I think the trouble started.
I was really steamed about some recent online behavior, so I went off line and decided watching a movie would help but it didn’t. Because the movie was called ‘Jennifer’s Body.’
When it came to the part where they sacrificed her to Satan by stabbing her to death, I lost it emotionally and could not continue watching. So I turned it off.
I never know when or even if I’ll lose it. Sometimes I do. Other times nothing happens. I’m able to continue watching even after I find out a brutal murder has been committed.
Today wasn’t one of those times. Of course it doesn’t help that I don’t really know or like any of the actors in this movie. I don’t care if Megan Fox is in it; I’ve never seen her in anything else, and I don’t like her in this movie. But maybe that’s just a reaction to how I responded when I found out she was murdered and her body is now a shell being animated by a demonic entity.
I own this movie, so I really don’t need to watch the ending now. I can watch it some other time or not at all.
I feel most comfortable being over here, b/c Facebook’s games aren’t letting me play anything w/out massive glitches shutting down my opportunity.
I got sick of that in a REAL big hurry and came over here.
April 20th, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Vicki,
Amazon’s free Kindle for Mac application is new. Your analyst may not have known about it. One possible issue for you is that your Mac needs to be on OS X 10.5 or above. I am not a Mac guy, even though I have a relative who was one of the original Mac developers and worked for Apple for many years, but I do use the iPod Touch app and it works great. Take care.
April 21st, 2010 at 7:09 am
Woohoo! I just got it! I don’t have a kindle, but you can download kindle for your pc for free
I have that on my work computer, and this is a PERFECT way for me to be able to re-read 20thCG in my downtime!! Sweet 
April 21st, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Damn…Mel. might do that.
April 22nd, 2010 at 7:00 am
I bought HP Lovecraft short stories for 99cents, too. And I have SK’s UR and a couple of other random free ones. I’m a slacker at work
April 22nd, 2010 at 8:14 am
Wow…this is amazing! I’ve gotta get a Kindle!
BTW Joe…thanks for the rec on CITY OF THIEVES. Finished it last night and it very well could turn out to be one of my all time favs!
April 22nd, 2010 at 6:04 pm
It is still .99, I just bought it. I already had the hardback, but for .99, I figured what the hell. Keep up the awesome work Joe!!!!!!!
April 23rd, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Ditto what Mark said.
This way if I’m online and need to reference something from it, here it’ll be.
I also did the free dl, thanks Melissa!
April 25th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Too bad this wasn’t 0.99 cents when *I* bought it. I could have used the extra money since I have none at all right now.
No thanks to my insurance company, that’s making me pay for THEIR mistake.
I sent them information via their web site, they never got it and now they’re making me pay the price for their ineptitude.
That’s why I’m in a legal battle w/ them now.
Work hasn’t been much better. I really wish people would stop taking their advice from fiction books and internet chats from people who prove w/out doubt that a LITTLE knowledge really is a dangerous thing.
The patient had second degree burns on his neck from boiling water splashing on him. He asked online what to do about it, and someone told him to put aloe vera on it. So he did, and it sealed in the infection.
When we arrived, he had signs of infection and it was rapidly spreading in an area you don’t want an infection to spread.
The little knowledge was that you put aloe vera on blisters but only those that are caused from friction. Like work blisters.
Friction blisters don’t have the high incidence of infection that burn-related blisters do. The aloe vera seals in the infection, that’s why using it on a second-degree burn is not advised.
April 25th, 2010 at 7:45 pm
You can download Kindle for your PC?
For free?
Where do I go to download it? Amazon?
I’d like to get 20th Century Ghosts for .99 but then I’d feel like I was ripping of the author. Would you still get paid the normal amt or would it be less?
When getting books for kindle, do the authors still make any $?
Just wondering…
April 26th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Thanks Joe, will be buying. Just read Heart Shaped Box last week on vacation. Scared the hell out of me!
April 27th, 2010 at 9:34 am
Hey Shannon, don’t worry about Joe. I’m sure his contract with the publisher takes care of him financially in a nice way.
Take advantage of .99 kindle books on amazon, as they are a come-on to gather customers. No one is hurting from this deal. eBooks are the future and amazon and the publishers are just paving the way for us!
April 27th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Joe: Ofc, the collection is great, but your story “Pop Art” really struck a nerve and resonated with me. The last line of the story describing Arthur’s fate is really excellent writing.
Good work.
Gene
April 27th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
I saw a copy of 20th Century Ghosts in a store today. There was only one left. I guess it sells like hot cakes, and Heart-shaped Box is always sold out. You have to order it, and they’ll send it to you that way.
Just thought I’d share that.
Today was the wildest day I’ve ever had as a paramedic. That’s why I went to the bookstore afterward. Looking at books calms me for some reason, and I’ve learned to do what works.
In fact, I thought about what being a book mender must be like and decided I could cheerfully do that for the rest of my life w/out complaining. Menial or not, I love fixing old books.
And it’s way less dangerous than having some guy pull out his IV and try to stab you w/ it.
The hardest part of writing IMO is working w/ the editor, who wants to cut almost everything I write. I have to agree w/ him in several areas, but I just can’t when it comes to medical knowledge. His is a layperson’s ideas, and I can’t change medical information to something untrue.
I wish Robin Cook was my editor. He would have understood that your head isn’t as hard as nonmedical professionals think. That, although it appears to be one skull, it’s actually sections knitted together by sutures.
My editor thought it impossible to crack someone’s skull by hitting them w/ something, b/c he has no idea the sutures make it more than possible.
Sutures are thin lines that are actually two parts of the skull which come together sort of like plates in the earth. But they don’t slide over or under each other in your head. There are temporal, cerebral, parietal and occipital sutures.
If someone hits or stabs one of them, the skull can crack in that area.
My editor didn’t want to hear a damn bit of that, so I compromised by making my character die a different way. One so obvious even a great big dope would understand it’s possible.
My editor didn’t understand it, so I stopped working w/ him.
I often think I wasn’t cut out for writing, even though I have the talent. The editor noticed I was taking Stephen King’s advice from his book ‘On Writing,’ which made me happy b/c it meant I was doing it right.
The editor wouldn’t have noticed it was King’s idea if I’d misinterpreted the advice from the book.
Anyway, he told me not to copy Stephen King’s method and implied I have no idea what I’m doing. Which may be right. But I didn’t like hearing it.
I’m still happy about getting the directions from that book right. And I still try to do it the way Stephen King said, b/c he’s the one w/ a household name and major profits.
I’m not expecting a major name and handsome profits, but I think I’ll improve my technique if I take some advice from someone who knows what he’s doing.
April 30th, 2010 at 10:19 am
I didn’t get it. I already bought it. Playboy wanted to publish something I wrote, but I declined. I hate that magazine. I’d rather write for Black Belt. I’ve done 6 martial arts. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do… write about what you know?
April 30th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
My friend’s husband could write for Black Belt. He has a 4th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. But he’s one of the calmest people I know.
Maybe that’s why, IDK. He wasn’t calm at the gas station about a year and a half ago, though. Some menacing guy wouldn’t let an attractive woman get in her car after purchasing gas, and nobody would help her (they could have at least used their damn phone to call police.)
Alex approached the guy and told him to let her get to her car. The guy wouldn’t listen and tried to full-out attack Alex, which ended up being a really stupid idea.
That’s one of 3 times, out of 17 years, I’ve seen him use it on an actual person. All 3 times were b/c the person attacked him-or tried to. He never struck them first.
I wish I could write for the Journal of Emergency Medicine, but even they don’t accept my articles. Although, to their credit, they believe a person can be killed by a single blow from a hard object to the head, if it’s delivered in the right place. Especially when it occurs in the occipital region. The back of the head.
I don’t feel comfortable divulging exactly WHERE in that region you can kill a person w/ one blow, but it’s possible. You can ask most doctors, but the best doctor to consult about Emergency Medicine is an Emergency Physician. They work w/ it every day, and medicine has become highly specialized.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Got it at just the right time and am enjoying it very much — thanks. You’re a wonderful writer. I’m still thinking about “Pop Art” 24 hours after reading it.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
My story has to do with American Indian Gods and the relationship with my main character. I have found that the reading is as important as advertised. “The devil is in the details” as they say. I have not been so lucky to have an editor yet but hope to in the future. I think the chopping should be done by a team , and not one person. That opinion comes from an undereducated person like me but I believe I’ll still have it years from now. Understanding individual situations is as important to telling a story as embellishment. Maybe keeping your own knowledge of your craft and sticking to the check-able facts is the way out Vikki. I sometimes think asking friends to help would work but then they would be writing my shit. (no help) Also your editor could very well be a jerk. Look into that. There are a number of very interesting American Indian Gods out there, a Zombie God, a vampire God etc. Probably something an editor would chop off and tell me it blows, fuck it just keep trying and don’t quit. I hope my issues aren’t off topic.
May 6th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
I almost hate to say it, but the fact that the skull has sutures is so checkable it isn’t funny. Especially in the age of Internet. But even before that, you could find it in a first-year Med student’s textbook.
Type in ‘sutures in the skull’ and I bet you’ll get all the information you need about it. I haven’t done it yet, so I can’t say for sure, but I know they teach it to you in the first year of Paramedic School. That was one of the first things we learned in Anatomy at the Paramedic level.
They teach EMT’s to know that the skull is more like an eggshell than people think. That means if you hit your head against a wall, the impact will go from the front to the back of the head. Or side to side if you hit it that way.
I’m referring to more than a minor bump, but even that can cause you to see stars, which are really nerves misfiring.
It’s also checkable that being burned from radiation vs. direct heat are different, but my editor told me it would take 2000 degree heat to burn the body to cinders.
I had the murderers set the character’s body on fire after dousing it in gasoline (direct heat), and he’s going on about cremation processes (indirect heat; fire never touches the body in a cremation).
If it’s ‘impossible for the body to burn so completely that nothing is left,’ why did they never find a single remain of my former husband, who was burned in direct fire? The never found so much as a bone splinter.
I never bothered to ask him, I just stopped working w/ him and haven’t tried to publish anything since then.
This relates to 20th Century Ghosts, b/c I noticed that the general medical information in THOSE stories was spot-on. The specifics didn’t matter, b/c the general information was correct and he didn’t really go into specifics anyway.
In fact, we had a discussion about the one called ‘In the Rundown’ or something like that. Where the child gets his throat slit.
We discussed whether the child would have held on until paramedics arrived to treat him or died. Britt, our Senior paramedic, was impressed that someone ‘finally got the general information right.’
He read other stories in 20th Century Ghosts b/c of it.
May 7th, 2010 at 1:22 am
Vikki your posts are honestly a joy to read. You have lived a very tough life and I wish you the best, if in fact your husband was burned by direct heat they should have found his heart. As I understand it the heart is the hardest muscle we have (and some how at the same time the tenderest) there should be some of it left. Your writing skills are unquestioned and I feel sorry for that poor kid who got his throat slit. I believe sutures were used to put my shattered patella back together. There’s only about 60% of it left but oh well at least I’m alive. I guess life is full of challenges and you are facing one right now. You have already seen the worst Vikki the rest is easy.
May 24th, 2010 at 3:22 am
I think the guy who knows about my computer said they have Kindle for Macintosh if you have an iPad, but I wouldn’t quote me on it. I’m really lousy at remembering computer terminology, and I really don’t see much use for an iPad.
I have to think price these days. I’m not finished w/ the litigation over my health care, and it’s costing a pretty penny.
I wonder why they call it a PRETTY penny. It feels anything but attractive.
Oh well. Ipads would probably be uninteresting even if I had as much cash as I did before the health care incident began.
I still don’t understand why Israeli security has a problem w/ allowing iPads into their country. Talk about obscure priorities.
I may be a bit of a dinosaur about it, but I still like the idea of holding a book in my hands.
June 22nd, 2010 at 1:38 am
That’s so funny! I just found a Hard Cover of 20th century ghosts at my local Dollar Tree Store! Crazy! Im doing a blog giveaway with it . Spreading the Joe Hill Love
July 26th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
I just bought this book at the Dollar Tree. Amazing! I’m only half way through, but “Pop Art” had me crying. So good!