I Don’t Want Sympathy

I Don’t Want Sympathy. I Want You To Read My Books

Seriously. I Don’t Want Sympathy; I want people to read my books and enjoy them.

I’m broke. Right now I’m sitting at home with a shoulder injury, living on Workers’ Compensation that’s about 66% of what I normally make. The problem is that the job didn’t pay enough to cover all my bills when I was making 100% of my paycheck. Now take away a third of the income and do the complex math — there’s more month left at the end of the money!

There are medications I’m supposed to take that I cannot afford. $800 for one heart medication. I’m supposed to have insurance that my employer pays for. It doesn’t. I haven’t had insurance coverage, much less prescription coverage, since May 2025.

There are regular bills that don’t particularly give a damn that I am injured, working, writing books, or standing on a corner performing show tunes for spare change. Like too many Americans, I spend entirely too much time deciding if I put gas in my truck or buy groceries every two weeks.

I’m not sharing this because I want sympathy, and I sure as hell am not asking anybody for a handout. I’m not. I don’t want someone buying Countdown to Armageddon because they heard the author i struggling and figured tossing five bucks his way would count as their good deed for the day. So if that’s the only reason you would buy it, keep your money.

I Want You To Read The Damn Book And Enjoy It

That distinction matters to me because I’ve spent most of my adult life working. More than thirty years of it has involved emergency services in one form or another. I’ve been a firefighter, fire instructor, certification evaluator, fire chief, and federal disaster-response official. Also, I built a small marketing company. I have a regular job that I frankly hate, but I keep doing it because taking care of my fiancé, paying the mortgage, truck payment, taxes, insurance, utilities, groceries, and prescriptions have never magically paid for themselves.

I have this sneaking suspicion they never will. However, good intentions are not accepted anywhere as legal tender.

Now I’m injured, making two-thirds of a paycheck that already wasn’t enough, and trying to figure out how the hell to change the situation. I pray about almost daily, sometimes two or three times. The biggest problem it takes money to get anything in front of more eyeballs. Whether that is a book, a business, or some other product.

But somewhere amongst all that, and looking for a better situation, I wrote a book. Then I wrote another one. Now I am writing a third one. So this is where it stops being a story about being broke. Because I didn’t write these books so somebody would feel sorry for me. I wrote them because I believe they are damn good stories.

I Don’t Want Sympathy, And I Don’t Want A Participation Award

Countdown to Armageddon didn’t come from some grand plan to reinvent myself as an author. I had a story rattling around in my head, and eventually that story became Daniel Penn, Sergeant Major Cox, Blitz, Wolfgar, Project Chimera, PIRDD, and a world thirty-ish years in our future. A future where humanity has developed some incredible technology while remaining perfectly capable of screwing everything up with it.

Also, I wanted soldiers who weren’t superheroes and advanced technology that didn’t magically solve every problem. So I wanted good people capable of making terrible decisions and deeply flawed people occasionally capable of doing something extraordinary. Also, I wanted friendships, loyalty, faith, horror, violence, sacrifice, and the completely inappropriate things people sometimes laugh about when everything around them has gone to hell.

But most importantly, I wanted characters who felt like real people rather than paper-thin cutouts being moved around a cookie-cutter plot.

The book has to earn your attention on its own

If The Book of Daniel doesn’t grab you, put it down. If you don’t care about Penn, Cox, Blitz, or Wolfgar, then I haven’t done my job. So if you then reach the end of Book I: The Book of Daniel and don’t give a damn what happens in Book II: The Dogs of War, don’t buy it.

I would rather earn a loyal reader than collect a pity sale from somebody who never makes it past Chapter Two. I Don’t Want Sympathy, that doesn’t fix the problem.

What I Really Want

I want somebody reading at one in the morning who knows damn well they should go to bed but decides one more chapter anyway. Also, I want somebody to laugh at Sergeant Major Cox. Or become ridiculously attached to Blitz and Wolfgar. But I also want people to hate one of the villains or even some of the main characters. I want readers debating their favorite characters and whether they made the right decisions.

However, I want readers to notice something that looked insignificant fifty pages earlier and suddenly realize why I put it there. I want them thinking they know where the story is going only to discover that I spent the last one hundred pages quietly building the trapdoor underneath them.

Sometimes I want readers pissed at me. Sometimes I want them laughing uncontrollably. But mostly I want them wondering where the hell these books are going. So if they also wonder what’s wrong with me, that works too. Because it means they’re engaged. They’re entertained.

What I don’t want is indifference

That is the transaction I’m aiming for. That’s why these books are not corporate trash, mainstream mush, watery vanilla pudding. Give me some of your time and attention, and I’ll try like hell to honor that and make it worth your while.

That is a much better bargain than asking someone for five bucks because they feel sorry for me. But it’s also the only bargain that matters if I’m serious about getting the first book in front of one million eyeballs. I’m not an author for the sake of being labeled an author. I want people to love these books as much as I do writing them. I want these books to make them think, to feel, and just maybe make a few consider the eternal disposition of their soul in the process.

I Don’t Want Sympathy: I’m Selling A Series Of Good Stories

The marketer in me knows I’m supposed to wrap this up with something polished about supporting the independent author. To share the story of my journey, making dreams possible, or becoming part of an exciting new tribe. I’ve written enough marketing copy in my life to manufacture that paragraph in about thirty seconds.

But it also wouldn’t be true.

I’m not asking strangers on the internet to rescue me. Yes, I have problems to solve, just like everybody else does, and the buck stops here. Selling a million copies would certainly be a step or three in the right direction. I would be a liar if I said otherwise.

However, I do want Countdown to Armageddon to succeed. Making money from my writing is another nice little want. Also, writing becoming a meaningful part of making a living would be pretty damn groovy at my age.

But not because people felt sorry for me. I Don’t Want Sympathy.

How I want C2A Books to succeed

I want the series to succeed because somebody read The Book of Daniel, told three friends, and they told three of their friends. Then they all finish Book I and buy The Dogs of War because they need to know what happens next. So by the time they finish Book II, they want Blood Moon Rising.

Better yet, I want readers discovering the series months or years from now because somebody they know and trust told them, “You need to read this crazy bastard’s books.”

That’s success I can be satisfied with. But that success would belong to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Because NOTHING I have ever done on my own has remotely come close to that. The glory would belong entirely to Him.

What I’m Asking (Still, I Don’t Want Sympathy)

So if you’ve seen the character reels, stumbled across one of these blog articles, or encountered C2A somewhere on social media – read the Free Book I Preview to see if it’s right for you. Or if you wondered why some lunatic from Pennsylvania keeps talking about genetically engineered soldiers, secret military organizations, and supernatural warfare – check out the Book I ARC Reviewer option.

But don’t buy my books because I’m broke. Don’t buy them because I hate my job and the pay is a joke. A very bad joke at that. Also, don’t buy the books because I have a mountain of medical bills to pay.

Buy the books because it sounds like something you’d enjoy. Then read them. Then review them wherever you bought them. If I did my job right, you won’t care about helping me by the time you finish. Because you’ll want the next book in the series.