Book Funnel Sniper Giveaway

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That’s right get your free pdf copy of “The Sniper.” All that’s needed is to provide your e-mail address and view my harrangue at the end of the book to leave a review on Amazon. What’s fairer than that? Don’t answer that! It’s a rhetorical question as part of my sales pitch.  Let me know if there are any problems with the download.  This is my first attempt to use BookFunnel.

 

Click Here for Link to Sniper Giveaway

 

 

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

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Update:

To verify my ownership of “The Sniper” for the Royal Road folks, I am adding this note to show I also control Orion’s Cold Fire.

 

We interrupt the daily progression of actual civil war to bring you a message about a fictional civil war story.  I’ve finished the manuscript for my book, “The Sniper.”  Now I’m looking for beta readers.  I’m looking for folks to read the book and give me their honest feedback.  Also I’d like to disseminate the book to friends and family who you judge would be a good fit for the book based on your estimation and if they agree to read it I’d like to get their opinions too.

I’m looking to get this book out to the largest group of people possible to see whether it is something that people will want to read.  So after reading it if you think it’s appropriate for people you know let me hear that too.  And remember, I’m not a fragile author.  If you think it sucks, say so, but also tell me why you think it.

If you’re interested leave a comment to that effect and I’ll e-mail you a copy of the story.  Now this is just a pdf.  No nice cover, no actual paper.  Just electrons.  But I will guarantee that this sniper is nothing like the actual sniper we’ve had to hear about for the last week.

And just to remind you here’s the beginning of the book.

 

Chapter 1 – An Object Lesson

Joseph Boghadair was set up at a loophole in a small prefabricated metal building at the top of the mountain that contained the Icarus Mine.  His .50 caliber sniper rifle was trained on the narrow road that led up to the mine.  He could see a line of black SUVs about a mile and a half down the road and he was getting ready to start firing on the convoy.  His first shots took out the engine of the lead vehicle thereby halting the convoy.  His second volley took out the engine of the last car in line thus trapping the rest of the vehicles between.  Then at a more leisurely pace he took care of the other eight vehicles.  By this point the passengers were crouching behind their disabled cars and randomly firing handguns and automatic weapons in Joseph’s general direction with almost no discernible results.

After about half an hour a few of the men in black body armor attempted to reach a stand of trees about 300 yards away to their left.  Joseph put a few well aimed rounds in front of their path and they quickly retreated back to the supposed safety of their not-so-mobile-autos.  Joseph snorted wryly at their shyness.

An hour after that a helicopter approached the mountain from the opposite direction to Joseph’s loophole.  Walking over to a window on the other wall he could see a distant Blackhawk approaching at relatively high altitude.  Joseph then began his preparations for their reception.

Between crew and troops, the Blackhawk had a dozen men on board.  And more importantly it had a couple of Hellfire missiles.  From a very safe distance away it targeted Joseph’s position and fired.  The missile struck precisely on target and obliterated the steel structure almost completely.  All that remained was the foundation of the structure around the mine shaft, now clogged with debris.

The Blackhawk landed about three quarters of a mile from the mine entrance.  At this point the agents, hunkered down behind their vehicles, began to stream toward the helicopter.  By the time they reached the aircraft the troops had exited and were waiting for their rescued brethren to arrive.

FBI Special Agent in Charge, George Chastain assembled both teams and briefed them on the updated mission plan.  “We will proceed to the mine head and look for any human remains.  We will collect whatever we can retrieve for lab analysis and attempt to seal the mine head until qualified personnel can be assembled for recovery operations.  It is presumed that the target, Joseph Boghadair was killed by the missile strike but we will take no chances.  He was an extremely dangerous individual and should not be approached by anyone without backup and prior approval from leadership.  In addition to his war record it is believed that Boghadair is responsible for the shooting deaths of forty-six people in the last six months with thirteen of those people being FBI personnel.  No one enters the mine until remote sensing equipment is brought in.  Alright, proceed.”

The agents formed two groups.  Apparently, SUV agents and helicopter agents must not bond very well.  But before they were more than a hundred feet from the helicopter the ground began to quake so powerfully beneath them that they were irresistibly knocked off their feet.  And while they were clawing at the ground for dear life, they could see that the high ground where the mine head was located had collapsed into the earth.  The roar of that collapse was more frightening than the initial earthquake and some of the agents hid their heads under their arms in abject terror.  When the mountain stopped shaking the men started to collect themselves and stand up.  When they looked around them, they were astonished.  A circular pit had opened up centered on the mine head.  It was a thousand yards in diameter and so deep that only blackness could be seen at its center.  Several cracks had formed outside the circular pit.  One of these had nearly swallowed the Blackhawk.  It was on its side and half buried in the crevice.  Its rotors were fractured and it wouldn’t be flying away from this landing.

Chastain went over to the edge of the crater and just stared down into the blackness below.  Then he went back to his team and started giving orders to begin a retreat from the stricken mountain.  He was trying to think of what he was going to tell his boss.  Nothing reasonable came to mind.

Critical Vindication

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So yesterday “The Sniper” sold over a thousand pages on Kindle Unlimited in one day for the first time (1,014 pages to be exact).  In fact, before this the highest daily total was 688 pages so it beat it by a good large margin.  And in fact, since the promo ran there hasn’t been a day where I haven’t sold pages on Kindle Unlimited and the total for September will exceed August by more than 100% (4,228 for all August versus something more than today’s 8,561).  I consulted Grok about how my progress compared with the average first self-published novel and it told me I was significantly above the average new book.  But it then qualified my success by adding that a mid-lister needs 50,000 to 100,000 pages a month to be taken seriously.  So that means I need to increase my sales by a factor somewhere between 5 and 10.  Well, that AI really knows how to put a budding writer in his place!  But when I showed it the graph of my sales before and after the promo it said that there clearly was a change:

“What stands out is the pattern, not the raw total. Through most of July and August the daily line is choppy with frequent near-zero days and isolated spikes of 300–550 pages. From mid-September onward the baseline rises, the zeros become rarer, and the last few days reach 600–700 pages. That timing lines up with a five-day giveaway of ~3,600 copies. Free promotions rarely convert 1-for-1 into paid or KU reads, but they do push the titles into more “also-bought” and “customers who viewed” recommendations and give Amazon’s algorithm fresh activity to work with. The chart is consistent with a fraction of those new readers later borrowing the books in KU.”

Well, some of that doesn’t make sense to me but without a doubt selling has increased.  I’ve calculated that sale of books (not pages but paperbacks and e-books) increased 59% after the promo.  So even though these sales amounts are objectively minuscule the fact that they’re being driven by the people who participated in the promo and the fallout it caused in Amazon’s “algorithms” is very significant in the way it affects the book’s visibility on the platform.

And just as a reader’s comment recently took most of the wind out of my sails morale-wise, a new comment has restored my faith in human nature (and good taste in literature):

“Lauriea

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read

Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2026

Format: Kindle Verified Purchase

“I thoroughly enjoyed “The Sniper”. It followed the main character through his days in the service until his eventual retirement. He had a lot of hard times, but was a good man wanting justice for the murder of his only child. Lots of ups and downs and I wondered often just how this book would play out to my satisfaction. But I needn’t have worried. The author knew exactly what he was doing.””

So, thank you Lauriea wherever and whoever you may be.  Your impeccable ability to recognize and applaud literary greatness is gratefully acknowledged by Jake Barter.

Conventional Activity

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As part of my story development, I’ve been thinking about throwing a Constitutional Convention into the plot.  So, I checked my copy of the US Constitution and this is the relevant section:

Article V

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

So, 34 states would need to propose the convention.  It’s a little unclear how the convention would be run (none have been called up till now) and no one knows whether its scope would be limited to some fixed agenda ahead of time or not.  Then 38 states would have to ratify the amendments.  Apparently, there has been much speculation in the past about the way votes would be counted and limitations on the scope of such a convention.  But as a plot device it seems singularly fraught with both dramatic opportunities and problems.

Now a careful count of red and blue states made me aware that the red states cannot call a convention on their own never mind ratify its results.  So, this convention will need to be some kind of a bipartisan effort that is seen as a last chance to head off secession by disgruntled red states.

The story telling opportunities I mentioned above probably occur where the various “sides” get to make their points of view known and haggle between each other about what changes would allow both sides to agree to stay inside the same political framework.

One amendment that seemed interesting would be the right of a state to secede from the union.  Recently we witnessed Brexit leading to the UK leaving the EU.  Quebec has twice voted on leaving Canada and other Canadian provinces have also toyed with voting on secession.

Beyond this, there are several other amendments that sound interesting.  But ultimately, I think the convention in the book will be a failure and non-constitutional actions will be necessary to resolve the disagreements between the various factions.  So, this book will be about a national crackup, I think.  But the main question is whether I can make it more than just a little entertaining.  War is not my forte so writing a story with Americans fighting each other sounds very controversial.  Can it be done without alienating enormous swaths of the reading population?  Well, that’s what I have to figure out.