Achilles was, of course, the greatest of all the warriors of Greek mythology and the magnificent champion of the Greek forces in the Trojan War. Here’s a brief (and, I hope, mostly accurate) retelling of part of his story.

Achilles’ father was Peleus, a mortal human, but his mother was the immortal sea nymph Thetis.

Thetis, being a good mother, wanted to protect her darling offspring, so she held the infant Achilles by one of his heels and dipped him in the river Styx to make him invulnerable. (What mothers won’t do for their children!) That one spot left him defenseless on his heel, but it also lent his name to the strong, fibrous cord that connects the muscles on the back of the calf to the heel bone, an area that’s susceptible to overuse injury. Ask any runner.

Back to the story: Although Achilles’ physical body was well protected, his ego was easily bruised. At the start of The Iliad, the epic poem about the Trojan War, we find Achilles pouting in his tent because the leader of the Greek forces has commandeered Achilles’ war prize for himself. Achilles can afford to be a spoiled brat. The Greeks need him to win the war, and he knows it.

Without Achilles on the battlefield, the tide of war turns against the Greeks, and a team of Greek leaders visit Achilles to try to convince him to return to battle. But Achilles isn’t ready to abandon his version of victimhood, and he tells them he’s considering giving it all up and going home. So there. He explains that his goddess mother told him he would have two options in life: a) he would fight in the Trojan War and die gloriously, or b) he would return home to live a long, but uneventful, life. 

It’s a great metaphor for the options we have and the choices we make in our own battles.

* * *

As writers, we’ve made a choice to bequeath something of ourselves to posterity.

So, TKZers: in the manner of the Achilles options, I present two hypothetical possibilities for your writing life and livelihood. Please pick one of the following:

Option A) You are a wildly successful author. Your books live on the New York Times best seller list for months. You make millions, and you’re sought after for interviews and guest appearances on the most popular talk shows. But fifty years after your death, your books are considered prosaic. They’re almost never read, and your name has disappeared from all things literary, never to be seen again.

Option B) You’re a midlist author. You may eke out a living with your writing, or you may have to work another job to stay alive. But you have a story to tell, and you work hard at the craft. Fifty years after your death, your books are “discovered.” You’re hailed as one of the hundred best authors of the twenty-first century, and your books are cited as classics for hundreds of years.

Which option would you choose?

By PJ Parrish

My husband does the grocery shopping in our house. He’s a sucker for buy-one-get-one free. He can’t resist, bless his little hunting-and-gathering heart. I just did a tour of our closets and pantry. We have four bottles of Gardini’s Caesar Dressing, three six-packs of Swiss Miss cocoa mix, five cans of Edge shaving cream, six bags of Greenie dog treats and 52 rolls of toilet paper.

The other day, after hitting the garden section at Home Depot, I popped the trunk to load in my mulch only to find the trunk stuffed with four 8-roll packs of Bounty paper towels. He knows we have no room for this in our small house, and this is a bit of a marital turf war, but he can’t help himself. Why buy just one if you can get three at a great price?

Okay, he did come home the other day with four bottles of my favorite pinot. It was buy-one-get-one day at Publix. Wine can go a long ways to soothing the savage wife.

Who can resist a real bargain? Buy-one-get-one-free packaging is a time-honored ploy to hook customers. Musicians have been onto this since the Great Vinyl Age. TV specials and movies are routinely packaged as one box-set either as physical discs or streaming options. (Being a Luddite, I treasure my CD box-set of the complete original Star Trek).

I realize this post isn’t for everyone. But if you already have some books out there, you might considering bundling. Bundled books can stoke new interest in old titles, especially if you a series, because readers love to move easily from one book to the next. Or perhaps, you’ve written books on one subject — like our own James here does with his series on fiction craft. Even if you’re still slaving away on that first book, file this away for the future marketing option.

I’m writing about this today only because my sister Kelly and I have finally gotten around to doing this. Today marks the debut of our first bundle in our Louis Kincaid series. I don’t usually go in for blatant self-promotion, but even if you don’t buy it, go check it out just to see if it might work for you.

We’re able to do this because we finally have the rights back to almost every book in our series. We’ve redesigned and self-published all the titles as ebooks and trade paperbacks, but we’re banking on the idea that a bargain bundle might stoke sales and reap new readers. Our plan is the bundle three titles at a time over the next couple months.

Okay, so what do you have to do to get this off the ground? My sister Kelly is going to answer here because she has handled all the technical aspects of this, including the formatting and cover designs. Also, my friend Neil Plakcy will weigh in. Neil has four series in bundle now: Golden Retriever Mysteries, Have Body, Will Guard, Mahu Investigations, and Angus Green FBI Thrillers. He has also bundled up a group of young adult romances, and collected together three unrelated contemporary gay romance novels. After retiring from teaching college, he now writes full-time, kept company by his husband and their two rambunctious golden retrievers. Check out his bundles at http://www.mahubooks.com

1. Why bother, if the individual books are already available?

Neil: The advantage is that readers can get a 600-page book for one credit. Bundling also helps read-through — the reader doesn’t have to go back to the store to get the next book. It’s already there. I also use the bundles to generate read-through. If you got 1-3 for free, or through Kindle Unlimited, I hope that you’ll be motivated to keep reading.

Kris: Neil’s point about read-through is a good one. A new release deserves its own launch and breathing space. But if the books have been out for some time, it can generate new interest. Binge consumption is the norm these days, and a box-set of your work at a good price entices readers.  As indie superstar Kristine Kathryn Rusch says, “The best way to get noticed is by publishing enough that readers can binge for a weekend.” Binge readers who buy box-sets are often a different audience than those who buy individual books. Why not go after them?

2. How do you decide which books to bundle together?

Neil: By theme? (I’ve done a set with stand alone gay romances) Or by series? That’s the traditional way I have done them. I usually do a three-book bundle but I’ve also experimented with a larger set. I’ve seen other authors who will put together a complete series. In my case, I’m usually still writing in that series.

Kris: Neil is very prolific. For us, we have just our Louis Kincaid series, so the decision is easy. It seems to me bundling would work best for series writers. Or perhaps you have a sci-fi or fantasy trilogy; that seems a natural. Also, romance novels in any given sub-genre, given the rapacious nature of its readers, would be a good fit.

Kelly: It’s important to keep the tone consistent in your bundle. Don’t bundle fantasy with romantic suspense, for instance. It takes time to create bundles. Use your time wisely. Three is a nice bundle, but I’ve seen authors do two-book bundles (say, a story and its sequel.) Authors also bundle 10 or more. Neil bundled nine in his golden retriever series — quite a haul for readers!

3. How do you set pricing?

Neil: Amazon lowers the royalty percentage for books over $9.99. I usually use $6.99 — that’s a bargain for three books that are usually $3.99 or $4.99 each. But most of my revenue from bundles comes from Kindle Unlimited, not from sales.

Kelly: If you’re a big gorilla, you can price your bundle high. But for the average Joe, you have to make the reader feel they are getting a deal.

4. How do convey that it’s a box set instead of a regular book?

Kelly: The most important thing you do is make sure the image you upload to Amazon or others looks like a 3D box-set (as opposed to a flat cover). Remember, the first thing a potential reader sees is this image. I designed all our individual covers. But when  I went to design the box-set image, I knew it had to look like a realistic box-set that you’d have on a bookshelf. I tried it first in photoshop but it looked amateurish, so I invested in a template specifically for this.

Neil: I use a 3-D cover that shows the front cover of the first book in the series, with an extra ribbon that indicates it’s “Books 4-6 of the Have Body, Will Guard series.” Also you can see the titles of all three books on the spine.

5. Can I do this myself?

Kelly: Yes, of course. But even if you are proficient in cover design already, it’s still a bit of a learning curve. Or hire someone to do this for you. I have designed all Neil’s covers and his box-sets. Formatting the books in the bundle is not hard if you’re used to formatting already. But it is time-consuming. You must combine three manuscripts into one file, and that can be troublesome. You’re now dealing with a 900-page file vs a 300-page file. Chapter headings can move, double breaks go crazy, and the tables of content can be a headache. If you have trouble getting professional looking interior ebooks, consider buying a template for that as well. Don’t wing it. Once you get the hang of a good template, you’ll be happy.

Kris: Back to those covers: Ugly covers signal amateur hour. If your covers are ugly, consider rebranding all your covers first before bundling.

6. Do I leave my individual books up if I upload a bundle?

Kelly: Absolutely. It’s one more product on your shelf. At the supermarket, you can buy one roll of toilet paper or 12. So it should be with your ebooks.

7. Is this really for me?

Kelly: If you’re like us, and your books have been out there for while, it spices up your bookshelf. If you are very prolific, like Neil, and have a several series and multiple stand alones, bundling them up can really expand your publishing real estate. Don’t let the possible problems intimidate you. Think creatively. You can bundle anything — and rebrand old material — if you pay attention to imagery, tone and genre.

5. What about bundling with other authors?

Neil: I have thought about it but haven’t found the right partners. Also the royalty accounting can be complicated, especially if your income is going to come from KU, since there’s no way to tell “which” pages the reader read.

Kris: This can get really messy in terms of dividing income and promotion duties. Whose publishing account will the box-set be loaded onto? Who gets the income and makes sure it is divided fairly? (Amazon allows you only to have one person on an account.). How will you handle this come tax time? Really do your homework if you are considering this. Get a legal partnership agreement. Kelly and I have one, and we like and trust each other. What happens if you and your box-set partner have a falling out? Marriage is beautiful. Divorce is ugly.

Our Louis Kincaid bundle goes live this morning. $6.99. Such a deal. Click here to check us out.

I have a new desk!

Well, truthfully it’s not new. The person who gave it to me said it was built around 1926, June 7 of that year according to a part stamp, and used by one of the most prestigious attorneys in Paris, Texas. It weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of a buffalo, and cost me not a dime.

I already had a desk, because that’s an essential part of being a writer. Thinking back, my first “desk” was a dented gray typewriter table that held a portable Smith Corona typing machine, and half a ream of paper on the left fold out wing, and two or three typed and oft-corrected pages on the right one that were the result of an hours’ worth of work.

That was back when I worked in a public library after high school and junior college, and had to set it up when I got home after class each time I wanted to be creative. Wish I’d kept those horrible pages. Back then it was hard to tear myself away from the books I was reading in order to write, and when I was struggling to come up with just the right words, I wished I was reading.

My next desk was made from cinderblocks and a piece of three-quarter plywood that sat in a corner of my first apartment. Only marginally larger than the typing table, it also served as a impromptu bar during parties. I hate to say it, but that was the best use for it at the time.

From there I built an oak rolltop that worked better as a hand-writing surface. The nostalgic appearance of those classic old pieces of furniture is worth more than the desks themselves, which seems to collect a truck load of assorted detritus that never seemed to belong to me. It barely worked with the old manual typewriter, and my first 286 computer looked ridiculous perched on the narrow surface in front of tiny drawers and cubbyholes.

But in my mind, authors wrote at impressive desks and therefore, I needed the proper accoutrements. The search continued.

The Bride and I married in 1998, and set up housekeeping with mostly hand-me-down furniture. I still had my parents’ tiny wooden Sears and Roebuck kitchen table. I sanded it down, refinished the wood, and reupholstered the seat cushions. Finished, it looked like a dining room afterthought in my little office, but it served the purpose. I wrote my first novel there, alternately typing and staring out the window and onto our front yard.

The next three books were birthed on the same piece of antique furniture Mom and Dad bought in 1950. Our close friends Mike and Keri Miller must have gotten tired of looking at the table every time they came over, because Mike gave me his old desk when he bought a new one. Made somewhere around 2000, it was so heavy I was afraid I’d have to add a new pier to support the slab.

More books were created on that desk with a finish so easily scarred one of my grandkids marked it forever with her fingernails when she was pretending to be a dragon. I kept it though, because it was a serviceable work surface and by then I didn’t care what it looked like.

Fast forward to this year when my hunting buddy and inspiration for the Tucker Snow series (the first, Hard Country, releases August 3, 2023), Constable Rick Easterwood (Ret), almost begged me to take an antique desk his wife, Kim, had procured and refinished. To put it simply, the huge desk took up over half of his garage and he wanted it gone.

Stephen King talks about desks, both large and small, necessary and unnecessary, in his book, On Writing. I took his story to heart and never aspired to have a fancy piece of writing furniture. But when I went over to see the desk Rick called about, I decided I wanted it.

So I have a massive, antique piece of furniture the grandcritters call the Spider Desk, because the wood grain on one end looks exactly like a spider.

So does it help me writer better? Nope. I’ve written in my recliner, lying in bed, and on the console in my pickup. Once on a deer hunt, it was so cold I couldn’t stay in the woods. I started my truck’s engine and when the thermostat opened and glorious heat poured through the vents, I sat in the back seat with my legs protruding between the driver and passenger seats, resting them on that same console and wrote with a fury, holding the computer in my lap.

The new desk speaks to me. It’s a serviceable conversation piece that I write on, and I love the stinkin’ thing. I finished the second Tucker Snow, Achilles’ Heel, on The Spider.

Furniture isn’t important. The bookshelves, the desks, and whatever computer or writing device you use are simply additional instruments that help you unlock your imagination and get a novel on paper.

In my opinion, it isn’t the desk or its placement in the house or room that counts. It’s the fact that you have to put your rear in a seat somewhere, turn off the television and stuff that infernal device we call a phone deep down into a well somewhere and get to work.

Should I make that clearer? Turn the phone off, get away from social media, and show up for work on whatever surface works for you.

With that said, do you have a precious piece of furniture to write on, and do you feel it’s essential to your creative process?