This week’s Teaser Tuesday is from Haunted House, by J.A. Konrath and Jack Kilborn (who, despite having different names, are in fact the same person, unlike, say, “Simon & Simon”, who had the same name but were different people). The setup is that a number of characters from previous books by the same author have been brought together in a house where, apparently, everything is trying to kill them. If that sounds a bit “Saw”-ish to you then, well, I’ll have to take your word for it, because I have never seen a “Saw” movie. But it does sort of sound like what I imagine a “Saw” movie might involve.
Something awoke Sara Randhurst from deep, intoxicated sleep.
She peeked an eye open, confused, her bleary eyes focusing on the clock radio next to the bed.
What woke Sara up? I have no idea. But I’m sure we will find out.
One feature of this e-book which I haven’t seen done before is that, the first time a character is introduced, you can click on their name to be taken to a bit of background information about that character. I did this the first few times, but then lost interest in the feature. It turns out that just reading straight-up exposition about the backstory of a character I just met is less interesting than a “where are they now?” montage at the end after I’ve gotten to know them, a la “Animal House” and any number of other films since. Still, it’s a worthy experiment, and maybe other readers would find it more compelling than I did.
And of course, here’s this week’s excerpt from The War of the Ravels!
So this wasn’t a remnant of the Æther at all. This was its vaporous heart.
Ooh, the heart of the Æther — not to be confused with the heart of an artichoke. Mmmm, artichoke …
Viscosity 
You can keep the artichoke!
I’ve seen a book that was sort of sci-fi that had a lot of its own words and concepts, and when you got to some of those, it would take you to the glossary if you wanted to read more about it.
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If you’ve got a few short stories, clean them up and include them as bonus content (and then publish them as stand-alones later so you can link to them from a bibliography in subsequent ebooks you publish). If you’ve started another book, polish the first chapter or two and add that content as a teaser.
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