Tag Archives: Keith Roysdon

Filling the void in indie publishing? Is that possible?

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I won’t pretend to sum up the weird state of small publishing here. If you’re been following the world of indie and small publishing, you know that 2025 has seen some small imprints go out of business – in some cases leaving authors unpaid – and others purport to try to fill that void.

I’m not sure that Constellate Creatives’ publishing arm, Constellate Publishing, the enterprise I’m affiliated with, will fill that void. For one thing, we can’t be all things to all people.

But as we started Constellate’s venture into editing – developmental editing and copy editing — and publishing and marketing a few months ago, it became obvious that somebody needed to be around to step in and catch a few worthy projects. Or maybe juggle chainsaws.

It’s making for a 2026 I’m really excited about. Constellate Publishing will publish my novel SEVEN ANGELS but there’s a diverse lineup of books on tap for the first two quarters of 2026, including a book of mindful self-help, a book of poetry, my novel and two by Jill Blocker, a reissue of her WHAT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND GOOD and her new novel, HAPPILY AFTER EVER. The latter is what’s increasingly termed a “new adult” book and will appeal to readers post-YA in their reading interests.

I’m proud to have noticed that every book besides mine is written by a woman and even mine has a cast of woman as protagonists.

And note the slide I’ve posted above: Constellate Creatives is offering editing, publishing and marketing services, or some combination of those, and at socially-responsible fees based on the regional wage in each writer’s local economy.

Some of us love to edit copy and help with developing your work. Others (raises hand) love marketing. Yes, I’m weird like that. We can’t promise that PR about your book will land on large market-share sites like KTLA, where our news release announcing our slate for the first half of 2026, was picked up. But we’ll be pitching your work and you won’t have to deal with the dreaded marketing.

There’s a button somewhere on the CC site that will lead you to a free consultation. We might be able to answer some questions for you.

https://constellatecreatives.com/

Another career? In this economy? I’ve got a new title and new mission

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I’ve been a writer since high school and a reporter most of my life. As of today, I’ve got a new title: head of Content and Publishing at Constellate Publishing, part of Constellate Creatives.

The title is fun, but what I’ll be doing is what’s important: Helping other writers work toward their goals of writing, completing their book and publishing their work and helping them reach readers.

There’s a button on the CC site that’ll lead to a free consultation.

If writing is your dream, we can help make that dream a reality.

https://constellatecreatives.com/

Cryptic chapter titles? We got ’em for SEVEN ANGELS

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I love a good mystery. Obviously, it’s what I write, at least a lot of the time. So as Constellate Creatives is putting together my novel SEVEN ANGELS for 2026 release, I’ve put titles to the novel’s 69 chapters.

Here are some. And yes, I deliberately tried to invoke the “say what now?” feeling of the cryptic episode titles of shows like STRANGER THINGS.

Looking forward to June 2026 publication of SEVEN ANGELS.

https://constellatecreatives.com/

Playing with book pricing and formats is an interesting experience

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Some of you might know that in October I lowered the $9.99 price of my book THAT OCTOBER to $1.06. It was a pricing stunt, of course, and I increased the price to $8.99 today (although as of this writing, it was still $1.06).

Authors and publishers who’ve played around with prices before know there’s some fascination to watching what happens. No surprise that people are motivated to buy when the price is reduced and we saw a nice bump in sales all October long and the first week-plus of November. (The kindle version came out September 1.)

Royalties were down, of course, but we expected that, and that isn’t the primary point anyway, because I wasn’t going to get rich off sales at any price. (Maybe those solid gold editions I plan for the holiday season will take care of that!)

But practically giving the kindle version away caused the book to jump into the top 100,000 titles on kindle for a short period, which was very cool.

Also interesting was a price change I made in the paperback edition, which came out June 1. Most sites, like B&N and Powell’s and Bookshop dot org, have been selling it for the recommended $24. A few have knocked that price down a couple of dollars.

Recently I created a link to buy THAT OCTOBER directly from the printer, Ingram Spark, and at a discounted price of $20 for the paperback. It’s given the paperback a modest boost in sales.

We’ll probably run some other price discounts in the coming months, to get the book and ebook in more hands and to continue this experiment,

Here’s a link to get THAT OCTOBER for $20 from Ingram Spark:

https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=J7whM7pHUaWJ8Yo51MkumOJTtw3j1gvNLmIfhQBGBMi

Constellate Creatives Publishing gets a shiny new logo and shiny new projects

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It’s a work in progress, but aren’t we all?

Y’all know by now, if you care to, that I’m working with my friends at Constellate Creatives. We’ll be helping writers with editing (both developmental and copy editing) book design, cover design, marketing and publicity for their books.

The boss at CC came up with the CP logo above, which stands for Constellate Publishing.

We’ve got a bunch of stuff in the works and best of all we’ve got a few books in the pipeline for 2026, when we really gear up. They’re a diverse lot, too.

Here’s a link if you want to know more about Constellate Creatives. There’s a button on the site for more info (services with a foundation of socially responsible pricing based on regional wage numbers), including free consultation.

And I’ll tell you more over the next few weeks.

https://constellatecreatives.com/

Bring your story to life

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I’ll never forget seeing my novel THAT OCTOBER in the bookstore at Bouchercon, the world mystery convention, in New Orleans this summer. I geeked out and thanked the woman from Garden District Book Shop, which ran book sales for the NOLA Bcon, several times over the course of the conference.

I’ve been writing since I was in high school and over the decades in the newspaper business I won more than 30 first-place journalism awards, both state and national. I’m the co-author of four best-selling, award-winning true crime books.

But there was no experience quite like seeing THAT OCTOBER among books from other authors, available to anyone. (It’s all over online booksellers too, but again – having a novel that someone can pick up is an incredible experience.)

That’s a big reason I’m working with my longtime friends at Constellate Creatives to help other writers with developmental editing, copy editing, cover design, interior design, marketing and publicity including social media.

Maybe some of this perception was all in my head, but at the time of my first Bouchercon, in Nashville in 2024, I didn’t have a book in print and it felt very different to be in NOLA in 2025 with a book that people could literally pick up and purchase.

Constellate wants to help you with a goal of getting your book in readers’ hands.

There’s a button you can smash – as the young people say – on the site to ask about a free consultation.

We’re writers just like you. We’ve got some ideas.

Constellate Publishing

If you write, you’re a writer … and maybe you could use a boost

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It’s been observed by smarter people than me that writing can be a daunting profession and avocation because of the isolation inherent in sitting at a desk all day, typing on your laptop or making notes in your journal.

It can be a challenge, and I’m not talking about writer’s block, although there is that, too.

The bigger challenge can be the feeling of working in a vacuum, the feeling that you’re writing and writing and rewriting and aren’t sure if you’re getting where you want to be with your story, your article or your book.

I’m known to say, “If you write, you’re a writer.” It doesn’t matter if you’ve been published or not, if you’ve had short stories or books published, to great acclaim or total *cricket noise.*

Cause I believe if you’re writing, or making notes, or thinking about writing and sending yourself ideas in texts and emails … well, you’re writing.

Sometimes you need a boost. I know I do. I’m lucky to have writer friends who read my stuff, from flash fiction to novels, and tell me what they think. I’m lucky to provide the same kind of support for my writer friends.

So a small group of us are now offering a boost to writers, no matter what stage they’re in.

I joined up with Constellate Creatives a while back and just the other day announced my affiliation with CC, which is owned and overseen by longtime friends of mine who are writers but also know other aspects of the writing life, from editing (developmental and copy editing) to publishing to marketing and everything in between.

Our goal is to help writers.

There’s a contact button on the Constellate Creatives site that I’m linking to below.

And I’ll tell you more in the weeks and months ahead.

The image above isn’t the Constellate Creatives logo. It’s an image from the 1960s spy TV series “The Girl from UNCLE.” But it’s a pretty nifty bit of art and sort of communicates the international foundation of Constellate.

More info:

https://constellatecreatives.com/

Podcast: I talk a lot about journalism, writing and THAT OCTOBER

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Okay, be sure you have the beverage of your choice before you settle in for this.

I’m the guest for the new Pages & Partners podcast from Muncie Public Library. This interview was shot in June when I was last in Muncie. Host Gabby Sandefer was so much fun to sit down with.

I talk about journalism, true crime and my 1984-set high school crime novel THAT OCTOBER.

It’s almost an hour of me, but there’s lots of stuff about other topics, including late-night meetings with sources and how I cover cold cases and other true crime.

My world and welcome to it: Seven Angels and Middletown, my fictional places

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When my short story “A Fighting Life” was published in the past couple of weeks in the FIGHTING WORDS anthology, it contained the latest reference to the fiction worlds I operate in.

Since I wrote four or five novels back in the early 2000s – books that’ll probably never be seen, unless radically rewritten with what I’ve learned about writing in the meantime – I’ve enjoyed writing in a universe where, despite some timey-wimey variations, most of my characters and storylines play out in a shared world mostly consisting of the small city of Middletown, Indiana – based on my hometown of Muncie, Indiana, which was referred to in 20th century sociological studies as Middletown – and Seven Angels, a Tennessee town based on Jamestown, the small town my parents came from.

The early 2000s books featured Jack Richmond, a Middletown newspaper reporter, and a group of friends including Jess Peterson, an affable cop on the Middletown police force. There are lots of other characters too, including Luna, a topless dancer Jack falls in love with. By the end of the series of books, the two are married and have a son, Cody, and the final, still-to-be-completed book features Jack and Peterson’s desperate efforts to get Cody back after Luna’s ex brutally assaults her and kidnaps the boy.

When I wrote SEVEN ANGELS in 2019, my first crack at writing a novel in 15 years or more, I set it in the titular small Tennessee town with a side trip to Middletown and a pivotal appearance by Peterson.

My next novel, the also unpubished GHOST SHOW, is set in Middletown, but in 1948 and follows the Anderson family, who came to the big industrial town from the small Tennessee town of Seven Angels. No crossover characters, though.

My third novel, THAT OCTOBER, which was just published in June 2025, is set in 1984 Middletown and includes, among secondary characters, Richmond and Peterson at the beginning of their newspaper and police careers, respectively.

I won’t detail it all here, but I’ve returned to the Middletown and Seven Angels wells numerous times in short stories. The foul-mouthed, fightin’ siblings in “A Fighting Life” are pulled from GHOST SHOW. My very first published short story, “Independence” from the MOTEL anthology, is set in little Seven Angels, complete with the sheriff/main bad guy from the SEVEN ANGELS novel.

The seeding of characters from my earlier stories – like Butcher Crabtree, who I posted about here recently – throughout my fiction just goes on and on.

And so do I. To quote one of my (hopefully) self-deprecating quotes, “Enough about me. What do you think of me?”

The kids are alright – and interested in cold cases

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That’s a murder board. You’ve probably seen them in movies and TV shows. You might have made one yourself.

But have you ever seen a murder board, based on two real-life unsolved murders, put together by 13-and-14-year-olds? I didn’t think so.

Earlier this week I spoke to teacher Megan Byard’s middle-school class at Inspire Academy in Muncie, Indiana, my hometown. Ms. Byard had approached me and Douglas Walker, my longtime writing partner at Muncie newspapers and in four true crime books, including “The Westside Park Murders: Muncie’s Most Notorious Cold Case,” published by History Press in 2021, about talking to the class about Westside.

In September 1985, teenagers Ethan Dixon and Kimberly Dowell were shot to death in Muncie’s Westside Park. No one was ever charged with the crime, although police have had a person of interest for a few years now. In our book, we name that person, who is in prison following a conviction for a separate murder years after the Westside slayings. We explain the line of reasoning that prompted police to suspect him. We reached out to him in prison to ask about the case against him. He did not respond to written questions and a self-addressed, stamped envelope. In addition to naming him, our book explores many other theories and suspects connected to the case.

Since it came out, our book has received a lot of attention. Popular podcasts have been based on our book and the crime. On Amazon, the book has 163 ratings for 4 out of 5 stars. It prompted a Peabody-winning producer of non-fiction television to contact us about turning it – and some of our other writing – into a multi-part true crime series, but no networks or channels took the producer up on the pitch.

Of all the attention that our book has received, I think one of the coolest and most interesting was from Ms. Byard’s class. The students, who are interested in journalism and writing and true crime, studied the book and the crime in advance of having me do an online talk for their class. They asked good questions.

I think I was most impressed with the murder board, though. Made me feel like I was working in a police precinct, hoping for a breakthrough.

And I guess all of us are still waiting for a breakthrough.

Thanks to Ms. Byard and her class at Inspire Academy. Your interest and care made my week.

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon, although you can find it anywhere, including many libraries, including the Chicago Public Library.