The Trouble With Being God

New Signing Event Scheduled: Siler Studios in Portland on January 23, 2009

Posted by William under Events, book

If you’re in or around the Portland, Oregon area be sure to stop by Siler Studios Fine Art, Sculpture and Gicleé Gallery on January 23 between 6-8 P.M. I’ll be there for a signing event featuring wine, cheese, some amazing art, my book and myself. Feel free to bring in your copy of The Trouble With Being God for me to sign, or just pick up a copy there.

Here are the full details:

What: The Trouble With Being God book signing and reading
Where: Siler Studios (1106 NW Marshall Street in Portland, Oregon’s “Pearl District”)
When: Friday, January 23, 2009 from 6-8 p.m.

For more information on Siler Studios, visit the official site at http://www.silerstudios.com

Hope to see you there.

New Review by Todd Fonseca (Author of The Time Cavern)

Posted by William under reviews

Todd Fonseca, author of The Time Cavern, has read The Trouble With Being God and written a review of the book, giving it four out of five stars.

Here’s a bit of what he had to say:

… for those expecting neat and tidy closure to the various story arcs, you may be a little frustrated at the end. But realize Aicher’s focus isn’t necessarily the slayings themselves, though this provides the novel’s backbone pushing the plot forward, but the inner journey of our own occasional brutal thoughts and passions and how we choose to manage them.

Click here for the full review.

Listen to the Soundtrack for The Trouble With Being God

Posted by William under Music

If you’re at all familiar with my new novel, The Trouble With Being God, you already know one of the key components of the book is the set of footnotes for suggested listening for key points of the story.  While this listening is by no means necessary to enjoy the book, I do feel they add to the overall story, as they were painstakingly chosen through a process of basically listening to thousands of songs and knowing when a song playing was perfect to tie in with a key plot element.

Since I’ve worked in the music publishing industry for almost a decade, I know how difficult it can be to license songs for a project, the inevitable necessity to jack up the price for any book/CD package if one were available and the fact that people prefer to listen to music via many different mediums (online, downloads to iPods, old-fashioned CDs, etc). Therefore I opted not to pursue directly licensing songs for the book.  The other, perhaps less obvious benefit, of this is that I was able to select exactly the songs I felt were most perfectly matched to what I was going for in the storytelling, rather than being forced to simply choose from a batch of licensable songs which were simply “good enough.”  Basically, throughout this project my goal was to not have to sacrifice anything and to produce exactly the final experience I envisioned.

While you’re reading The Trouble With Being God (you have already bought a copy, right?), you do now have an option to easily hear the songs featured throughout the suggested listening soundtrack.  To hear the songs, just visit the “About the Music” page through the link at the top of the site, scroll down and you’ll have access to hear everything online (although I have to admit, I do prefer the studio version of Wilco and Billy Bragg’s “One By One” but as of this writing the only version I could find for free streaming was the live one from Wilco’s Kicking Television).

Of course, if you’re simply curious as to what music made the cut, or if you just want to get a feel of The Trouble With Being God, you can listen to the soundtrack now even without buying a copy of the book.

Now Available at Most Retailers

Posted by William under Music, Retailers, book

Previously I mentioned The Trouble With Being God is now available online at Amazon.com.  Today I’m pleased to announce that the book is also now available through most major online retailers, with more added daily.  So, if you’ve been waiting to pick up your copy from Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, A1Books, Powell’s, Amazon.co.uk or other retailers, you’re in luck. And, if your favorite retailer isn’t listing the book yet, it should be showing up any day now.

As for brick-and-mortar stores, the book is also available through them.  If they don’t have the book in stock, the easiest way for them to look it up is by ISBN number (9780615259963), or you can still have them look it up by title or author. Just ask at the service desk or counter and they should be able to help you.

Of course, one of your best options for buying the book locally would be to go through one of your local independent booksellers. Indiebound.org has a great site available for finding the independent bookstores in your area, and you can even look to see which independent bookstores are offering The Trouble With Being God.

If you do pick up a copy, be sure to stop by the beinggod.com site and send me your comments.  I love to hear from my readers.

Comments from a Twitter Follower

Posted by William under book, reviews

If you’re following me on Twitter, you know that in fits of blind generosity, I’ve given away a few copies of my books to some of my followers. One of the recipients of the book, user lrntoswim, has just finished reading The Trouble With Being God and sent me a nice long response as to her thoughts on the book.

Here’s some of what she had to say:

The questions you asked through your characters made me pause and ask them both of the characters and my own grasp on life.   “Can one know a truth without having experienced it firsthand?”  “Where did fault lie?”  They could be considered every day thoughts, but are the kinds of profound questions that shouldn’t always be thought of and discarded quickly.

<SPOILER ALERT (HIGHLIGHT TO READ)>When the story ended I wanted to know whodunit.  Why would Steven write the letter saying Karen should die?  Did he think he was God and could decide?  Did he think he was the killer?  Fully understanding why Steven was presumed the serial killer, I questioned why I believed this, what I had been suspecting the whole time. </END SPOILER> It made the truth clearer.  The truth, that we do not really know the truth unless we know everything.  Knowledge has seemed like a drug my whole life and your story made me understand, again, why.  We can’t leave big problems assuming we know the whole story, until we do.

A Philosophical Thriller?

Posted by William under book

When trying to describe The Trouble With Being God (TTWBG), I originally found it quite difficult to fit it into any specific category. Yes, it’s a murder mystery, it’s a suspenseful thriller, and it has some horror bits added in as well.

Then again, these are not always the main focus of the story. If you’ve read any of the book, you’ve already noticed that the story takes a bit of a rollercoaster ride through some very tense spots of horror or chilling suspense, but it also delves into a lot of questions and discussions among the characters that add their own sense of suspense, mystery and intrigue to the story.

One of my main goals in writing TTTWBG was to write a story that wasn’t just a bunch of disturbing murders with the goal of finding the killer. Instead, I wanted to write something smart, with the events of the murders serving as a backdrop for the story of these characters, in particular Steven (the main character). As a student of philosophy, I find discussions about some of life’s deeper questions can arise in any environment, but at times when one’s life is in a time of upheaval we often are more likely to ask ourselves these kinds of questions.

So, when describing The Trouble With Being God I was at a loss. It isn’t any specific genre, and although it does spend some time in several, the genre it shares the most in common with is the psychological thriller.  Again, if you’ve read the book you know there are absolutely some psychological aspects, but these are aspects of the characters much more than psychological effects for the reader.

What really lies at the core of TTWBG though (in my mind at least), is that basic question of “who am I?” as well as the (even sometimes more difficult) questions, “why am I here” and “how do I relate to everyone else?” These are philosophical questions, and Steven and Karen (and other characters to some extent) face them throughout this book.

What they find in the end is the importance of not only finding out the answers, but how important it is that they come up with the right ones. The ending, I hope, reinforces this.

That is why The Trouble With Being God is a philosophical thriller.

Now Available on Amazon.com!

Posted by William under book

I was just in the middle of writing a note announcing that The Trouble With Being God was coming soon to Amazon.com, when I checked the site and saw it is available there as of today.

So, if you’d like to order your copy, but have been waiting for it to become available on Amazon, now you can.

Please note the cover image is not yet available on the site, as the book is just now available.

Also remember, the book is also available for download on Amazon Kindle.