How to Succeed in Evil

The Latest Evil

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March 6, 2010 11 Comments

All Kinds of Evil — All Kinds of Available

PROMO & FIRST CHAPTER

In case you’d like an idea of what you are getting yourself in for.

Promo (please play everywhere and often)

Prologue: Song
FIVE CHAPTER PREVIEW

Just enough to get you hooked. Here it is in pdf format.

COMPLETE AUDIOBOOK — TRAFFIC HAS CRASHED MY DOWNLOAD SITE —

Seriously, folks, I’m scrambling to find more bandwidth. If you leave your name in the comments, I’ll let you know when they are up. In the meantime you can go to the individual audiobook files and click them one at a time. They’re hosted on Libsyn and they’ll work fine.

Sure, it’s 72 clicks, but otherwise, the book is free.

ORIGINAL PODCAST EPISODES

These are very interesting in their own right. Less an audiobook and more theatre of the mind. It’s an earlier version of the story, but if you are Jonesin’ for more evil, they might help.

Original Podcast Episodes

THE COMIC

And here is a pdf of the promotional comic.

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February 22, 2010 No Comments

How to Succeed in Evil in a Nutshell

Okay, boys, this is the week we knock over the barn.

Uh boss? Why a barn again?

Because that’s where the blue bag is, you idiot. Remember: everyone wear suits, so we’ll stand out in a rural setting. Then we’ll meet up right under the big metal grain chute.

And there it is, “Why a barn again?” The reason I wrote How to Succeed in Evil was to try and find a motivation for a villain that made a little sense to me.

Many more comic covers and commentary here:

http://www.lileks.com/institute/funny/07/45.htm

Blog

January 24, 2010 2 Comments

So hey, why haven’t you gotten any more ‘Evil?

You think it’s frustrating for you? You have no idea how frustrating it is for me not to be able to work on fiction full-time. Sadly, that’s just not the way things work at the moment. But writing isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. And if there is anything an endurance race calls for it’s patience. Patience and the ability to endure pain past the point where a more sane, reasonable person would give up.

But I’m still slugging it out. I’ve been creating a good deal of content on my other sites. All of it is aggregated on PatrickEMcLean.com — so if you haven’t swung by, you should check it out. My target is a blog post a week and a podcast a month. In the meantime, I’ve hit the 40k mark on Unkillable and feeling good about it. (after feeling hopelessly lost and confused.)

As soon as that’s done I’ll be back on How to Succeed in Evil. Sorry it takes me a little longer than some, but I feel that you have to give the work the time it needs. Otherwise it comes out covered in suck. Thanks for hanging in there.

Blog

October 29, 2009 12 Comments

Update: The End is Never the End (at least not with this book)

So I’ve gotten a number of emails asking about a sequel. And yes, another book is coming. (With that ending, c’mon? There has got be another book.) But here’s a brief update on what I’ve been up to, and what I will be doing before book two.

I have completed a massive rewrite of the book. I’m very happy with it. A pivotal event (to avoid spoiler) happens 2/3rds of the way through and Edwin spends the last 3rd of the book kicking ass. I cut about 20,000 words out and added 10,000 back in. So we’re at a much faster-paced 90,000.

As soon as I am done with this post I am calling an agent to finalize a contract. If that all goes well, I will have secured representation for the print version, and it’s off to the races. And by races, I mean publishers.

I’m the process of migrating all my work under one website, PatrickEMcLean.com, so that there will be a steady stream of updates and goodness and suchlike. (Don’t worry, this site will remain). Because if you just looked at the Seanachai over the last 6 months, it appeared that I was very lazy. This is not the case. I’ve got 71 chapters of written, recorded and produced non-lazy awesomeness right here.

Currently, I’m working on a novella/novel length project called Unkillable. For a number of reasons, it has been important for me to put How to Succeed in Evil down for a while. When Unkillable hits 50,000 words, I’m going to start Evil again. At the the very least there will be a 10,000 word short of How to Succeed in Evil in January. If you’ve been very, very good, maybe in time for Christmas.

Lastly, and more on this soon, I am self-publishing a collection of short stories entitled “Stories I Told Myself” They are taken mainly from the Seanachai. There will be several new pieces in this book. Including the story of how I was shot and almost killed when I lived in Los Angeles. (No punchline here. It’s a true story. Although it is fairly funny in places.)

That’s all the news I got. Hang on. There’s lots of great stuff in the pipeline.

Audio Novel

September 3, 2009 35 Comments

HtSiE:tN — Epilogue

Download this episode

In which all the loose ends are tied up.

Blog

August 24, 2009 9 Comments

You know, every once and a while…

I have take a pause and realize just how cool you guys really are. For example,
check out the comments on Chapter 70.

http://succeedinevil.com/2009/07/27/htsietn-chapter-70the-only-sane-thing-to-do/#comments

Helpful, critical, smart feedback. And a crapload of encouragement. It’s just awesome.

Blog

August 19, 2009 4 Comments

What’s going on? Where’s this ending?

It’s coming. I’ve actually reworked the entire last third of the book in preparation for submitting it to publishers, and am now working on a suitable epilog for these audiobook episodes.

Thanks for bearing with.

Blog

August 3, 2009 19 Comments

Oops, I forgot to kill the shark. (More ending to come)

So I bobbled the ending.

Well, that’s not completely true. The story has a great half an ending. See the story that really interests me is what would make a reasonable person decide that they need to take over the world? How does someone become an Evil Genius. Not in a “in the summer we made meathelmets” kind of way. But in a very real, step by step, that makes sense kind of way.

It’s Edwin’s internal story arc. And that’s a friggin tall order. And I pulled it off, so I am justly pleased.

But the problem is, the external story hasn’t been wrapped up very well. Let me use the example of Jaws to illustrate. Jaws is a movie about a shark. And when Chief Brody overcomes the shark, he’s won. Except it’s not. You can make a beautiful looking film, with far better special effects than Spielberg had available at the time, and it will still suck. Much like Jaws II.

See the inner story, the one that makes Jaws go, is about Chief Brody overcoming his fear of the water. I think that story arc is the difference between Jaws and Jaws I,II,III (oh my god please stop making sequels already)

So for people who were interested in the internal story, they are satisfied with the book as it ends now. Perhaps they feel something is missing (sound off in the comments folks) but they’re not emailing me. But you other people…

You other people are expressing your displeasure. Or at least, your confusion. And, you are right to do so. In fact, thank you for doing so. ‘Cause it will make the book stronger.

Download this episode

Edwin picks it up?

How to Succeed in Evil by Patrick E. McLean

The Latest Evil