Ted Mahsun

It only took four years but I've finally finished writing a short story that I never thought I would finish. As I mentioned in the previous post , on the very last page of Zombies Ate My Muslim , I had promised that the next story would be The Dangers of Growing Volkswagens in Your Backyard . I didn't think anybody would be interested in reading it due to its ridiculously silly title, and so I never was motivated to finish writing it. Yet here I am, basking in the glow of a freshly completed short story. By complete, I mean first draft complete and not rewritten-umpteen-million-times-and-edited-to-hell complete. That process would probably take several more weeks and after that I'll self-publish it on all the major e-book outlets. That's still an achievement though. I shan't be bothered submitting this one to any pubs; it's way too silly for the likes of them. Like Zombies Ate My Muslim , it doesn't take itself seriously and it doesn't even want to t...

You know, I'm feeling inspired again. Inspired again to write. I'll be the first to admit I've been a little slack in my writing. Writing only a short story per year, for the past five or six years. Most of them aren't even complete. I kept abandoning what I started because I kept second guessing myself. Is this good ? Ugh. No, it isn't. I never want to see this piece of crap again. And so I wrote at a glacial pace and only when I felt like it. Until 2014... 2014 was a bit of a strange year for me. Mainly because in a year full of horrible tragedies, so many good things happened to me. Career-wise I was hitting it off. Kids too had finally grown old enough that they stopped trying to commit acts of random suicide every few minutes. And, in terms of my writing, I had finally gotten round to putting up Zombies Ate My Muslim on Smashwords and Google Play . It was no longer an Amazon exclusive! ( Pat on back, Ted. ) Putting it up on Smashwords is a big deal fo...

Give the love of your life the gift of zombies! Muslim-eating zombies! My short story e-book Zombies Ate My Muslim is free only on Valentine's Day and can be downloaded from Amazon's Kindle Store . UPDATE: Offer has ended. Thanks to everyone who downloaded the e-book! Hope you enjoy it!

And has nice things to say about it as well : I’ve recently read a bit of bizarro and have to say even the one with freshly birthed wolves being shot out of a bears mouth isn’t as strange as this book. It’s stupid but funny. I was like wtf! while reading it. This book is weird, wacky and funny.  Thanks, Jessica! This is exactly the kind of reaction I was going for with the story and was glad to see it worked. That makes me feel glad.

I don't remember who said this, it was either J.A. Konrath or David Gaughran , but it goes something like this: "Staring at your sales figures every minute will not make them go up." Very true indeed. Then why the hell can't I peel my eyes away!!!

I had a promotion yesterday to coincide with the launch of my short story ebook, Zombies Ate My Muslim , where I gave it away for free. If you missed out, well... sorry! Keep checking this blog or subscribe my to Twitter feed @tedmahsun to find out when my next promotion will be. At the end of the day I managed to get 93 downloads on Amazon US and 30 downloads on Amazon UK. The book also wound up on the Top 100 Best Selling Kindle Books for Horror. (EDIT: It's since gone back down to somewhere in the 80,000s.) So, not bad I guess? 100+ downloads was more than I expected. My aim for making the book free was for exposure and I got that. But I also wanted the people who downloaded it to write reviews on Amazon and so far I've had none. Reviews are important to get people to buy the book as well as visibility of the author. Perhaps in the coming days? If you're one of the awesome readers who downloaded Zombies Ate My Muslim and you enjoyed it, please consider leavin...

Zombies Ate My Muslim is my latest short story ebook: All he wants is to have a simple life. And that simple life he wants to spend with his celebrity girlfriend, Barbra Streisand. But unbeknownst to him, his darling Barbra has become a Muslim... which isn't a bad thing. Except for the rampaging zombie horde outside his front door who only want to eat Muslims. Between the Muslim-hungry zombies and the Google Robots that want to steal his Brussels Sprouts, can he save the woman he loves before she gets eaten? Will things ever be simple for him? Available at: Amazon.com

I had a lightning flash of an idea last weekend. It was the midnight of Sunday turning into Monday and I had wanted to go to sleep but suddenly there came into my brain a brilliant seed of an idea for a short story that I just had to sit down and write then and there. So I did. I hammered out a 3700 story about zombies. I don't usually like zombies. In fact, I hate zombies as a genre, but this idea seemed so good at the time I didn't want to lose the energy of the moment. When I was done, I reread it and I was pleased. It came out not-so-bad, if I do say so myself. Over the next few days, I rewrote it, gave it to some friends for advice on improving it and rewrote it some more after I got said solicited advice. My friends said they liked it and well, if they liked it, I suppose some other people out there would like it as well. At first I had wanted to self-publish the story on Amazon but something inside me said I should try submitting it to a certain magazine that I h...