Finding the right readers

Okay, I need some help. I'm protective of sales numbers for my publishing company, Hall Brothers Entertainment, but I'm going to share a little about them right now. We're doing well, our first book sold beyond our projections and turned a small profit, our two anthologies have done extremely well and turned healthy profits, but one book hasn't quite found its audience yet. And that's where I'm hoping you can help.

Scrolls is my favorite thing I've ever written. If you're unfamiliar with it, I'll give you a fast summary. It's about a college kid who longs to be alone, but his life is complicated. His co-worker likes him, a campus security guard wants to be his best friend, his sister is in town trying to expose his well kept secret, and his ex-fiancee that he left without a word two years ago just transferred to his school. Oh, and magic is real and he's able to use it in ways no one else can, making him the target of a local magic wielding madman.

I feel like Scrolls is awesome. I'm not trying to be egotistical here, I'm just being honest. It's a collection of all of my favorite things, and I love everything about it. The people who've read it agree with me and seem to really enjoy it, but unfortunately it's a little bit different from everything else we've done on the website so far. If we were a television network, most of our projects would probably be on a network like FX. But Scrolls is much more like a CW show (but ya know, good). The problem is, most of our current audience seem to be those that like FX style shows (gritty, action packed, etc..), and reading about a college kid with magic powers dealing with his feelings for his ex-fiancee while trying to start a new relationship with a different girl doesn't seem to be getting them interested in buying the book.

So here's what I'm hoping you can do. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, come over to the site and check it out. If this sounds like something someone you know might be interested in, please steer them over to check it out. I'm not asking anyone to blindly buy the book (although it is a gorgeous and wonderful book), I'm just trying to get people who are interested in this type of thing to check it out. If you/they like it, then awesome, and if you want to buy the book, then awesome. But the whole thing is online for free, and more than anything I just want to build the audience and get more people on board before season two debuts.

Anything that you can do to help me out with this would be greatly appreciated. I love this project and would love to get the sales numbers up enough to where this isn't something that we have to consider cancelling before I have a chance to delve deep into the years and years of Scrolls stories I have planned.

The Hall Brothers Entertainment Scrolls page can be found HERE.

The Kindle edition of Scrolls can be bought HERE.

The print edition of Scrolls can be bought HERE or HERE.

The big 3 - 0

Thirty years sounds so dang old. Today is my birthday, and I am in fact 30. I hate the idea of being thirty. I feel like everything about me screams "guy in his twenties", but I guess it's just time I break the mold of what we expect of people in their thirties. Or more than likely, it's time I break my own mental barrier of what I perceive people in their third decade to be like. I'm all for being responsible and a good human being and more wise, but I'm not all for being boring, normal, or into NCIS (or related shows).

So, thirty years old. It doesn't feel like I've been alive for all that long, which is just frightening evidence that one day soon I'm going to wake up and be sixty and wonder how the heck I became an old man so fast. I feel good about who I am these days. I feel like a good person in general, a good uncle/son/brother/friend/employee/business owner/writer/citizen of the earth. But I feel like I've always been pretty good at those things, and maybe the thirties is when I should focus on kicking it up a notch, going from good to great. I need to do better with my relationship with God, that is something I'll immediately identify as a deficiency in my life. And I need to lose weight and make that something I commit to fully and just do. But beyond those things, I'm pretty awesome. I know, I know, sounds like something someone in their twenties would say, right?

So that's it. For my birthday I teamed up with close friends and family to buy myself an iPad2, and I'm thrilled about the purchase. It's awesome and super powerful and all that jive, and I feel like I'll be using it three or four years from now. I also now have a new (used) car. It's my first ever car payment. Having a car payment is something that people in their thirties are all about.

As far as the past year, I have zero regrets really. It was by far the most productive year of my life, and from 6/15/10 to 6/15/11 I've written not one or two, but three novel length projects. I've also written a bucketful of short stories, just another thing that has caused my creative output to surge far beyond past levels. Creatively it's the life I always dreamed of living, and Hall Brothers Entertainment has made it a reality. Few people have the honor of saying they are living off of money made doing what they love most in life, but I get paid to write, and spend my days and nights writing fiction and journalism, and people read it and most enjoy it (some cuss me out over it, when the news doesn't fall their way, but that's okay).

I deeply love my family, and I love my life. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, I still believe that there is goodness in this world, that people can be gentle and kind and thoughtful and funny and wonderful, and that the world is a place full of wonder and hope and amazing things and people just waiting to be discovered. I believe that there is joy to be found in every day, that happiness is possible for each and every one of us. 98 out of every 100 days are good days for me, full of laughter and optimism and creativity and passion and love, and I see no reason why turning thirty will change that whatsoever. I kind of wish I was still 28, or 29 even, but oh well, I guess I'll just have to accept being thirty, at least until I finish work on this time machine...