New Home Sweet Home

Just moved into a new house about two weeks ago.  What a huge endeavor.  Every time I move I get determined to throw things out.  Nothing was done during this time.  A few weeks before that I got a new NAS and installed Joomla on it.  Joomla is a free Content Management System.  Basically a newfangled webpage.  It was fun learning how to create a web page ( web.myworlds.icu ) though I still have issues with it saying it’s not secure.  I am not sure if its a firewall issue or a VPN issue.  I’ll figure it out eventually.  All in all a remarkably unproductive month.  I am trying to get back into a routine.  I still have those three projects to get out!

Perils and Plans

I have had a few questions from readers about how far along I am with book 3.  I am about 3/5 done (unless it runs longer than expected).  I am looking at a release around December.  If I can find that Amazon program where I submit it through them I may use that.  This would delay the release a few months since you promise Amazon not to publish it separately while they look over your submission.  However, I may never be able to find that offer again.  Never let it be said that Amazon’s publishing program is clear and well documented.  I will deny it!

On a somewhat related note, I am also working in parallel on two other books.  One is a children’s book.  I wanted to have it ready for my little girls’ 5th birthday, but it is going to be late (already is).  I am doing the drawings myself.  I used to draw when I was much younger.  My talent pales in comparison to a professional artist, however, I think it should be adequate for children’s illustrations.  I also narrated it and recorded it for my kids.  They enjoyed it.  I may use this to test out the waters for audio books.  It’s only a ten-minute story and I can do it myself, so it should be good to get my toes wet.  It is a fun side project and I suppose I would be done already if I were working on it for more than an hour a day.

The second project is sorta a lit RPG genre story.  This is a crossover genre, generally describing full immersion VR MMO games.  I find them frustrating since playing a computer game generally has no lasting real-life impact.  I am trying for more of a reality crossover.

I know it looks like I am splitting my time three ways… and I am.  However, I also find myself working on them all on regular basis.  So, all in all, I have actually increased my writing speed for Book #3.

Flash Forward

Wow, been over a year already.  Last year wasn’t great for my progress.  My mother passed away and I got distracted by other projects as well as having to move.  Still, I am getting back on track.  I am hoping to have the next book done by the end of the year.  Amazon has a program where if you haven’t published something you can submit it to them.  I am not sure of the details but I may try that.  If I do I’ll let everyone know.

Thanks for all the people asking for statuses.  I appreciate your interests and will try to do a bit better with updates.

Underground

I submitted my book for review to “Underground Reviews”.  I have received the following:

“Congratulations on having A Prison of Worlds (The Chained Worlds Chronicles Book 1) selected as a Pitch Perfect Pick Finalist!

Our judges analyzed your book’s pitch, sample content, and several other factors and found it’s initial presentation comparable to other quality books in its genre and market. Once qualified, it had to finish in the top five of all our weekly qualifiers. This is an honor not given lightly.

Your book will be promoted as a finalist on our Facebook page by Monday. The following Sunday, we will add up your Likes and shares on Facebook, as well as the votes on our website. The winner will be published to our Magazine the following week, and the synopsis will go out to our 2000+ subscribers and 2000+ social media followers. The winner will also join the ranks of a select few books that are eligible for entry into our 2017 Novel of the Year competition.”

I am not sure how their system works but I think they gave me an award for not having formatting that sucks.  A review may or may not happen later.  That’s encouraging, right?

 

 

 

Webpage updates

I recently made a few changes to the web-site.  I added a Bloopers page to the allow the reporting of errors from the books.  I really hate errors.  If I could put a bounty on them I would.  I know my readers aren’t too fond of them either.  Anyway, I don’t think posts or changes to other parts of the site get reported like an update to the Blog page, so I am not sure anyone noticed.

Second, I have added a minor animation to the top of the “Projects” page.  It was intended to be a tiny icon sized animation, however WordPress construction tools seem to lack the concept of manual sizing.  So it’s a bit grainy and cut off when its resized to be the entire top of the page.  It still was a cool little thing to put at the top of the page.  If I get feedback such as “It crashes my machine!” or “I spent five hours downloading that page!” I will remove it.

Matters of the Heart

A reviewer noted that I had messed up on a ‘Find and Replace’ while fixing the name Matt.  Now all such ‘matters’ simply don’t ‘mater’.  That’s a horrible ryhm but it was mildly amusing when it was pointed out.  Embarrassing too;)  I have since updated the story and all matters of importance are back in place.

On an unrelated note… I have been doing some research on advertising.  Two years ago when I published there wasn’t much guidance except to blog, Facebook and Twitter.  After I published my second book I did a bit more research.  It turns out that the most up to date directions focus on reviews.  Reviews submitted before the book is even published!  Amazingly enough, there are scads of review sites out there that only will review a book before it’s published.  I’ll have to remember this for book 3.

Amazon has an interesting program as well, where they accept unpublished manuscripts in some sort of contest and if you win they will sponsor your book and guarantee a minimum income over the five-year contract.  Again, something to remember for next time.

Since I seem to be a bit behind in the whole advertising and review curve, I have been submitting my story to several book review sites and blogs.  From what I have read only the free ones have any real weight, though most of the paid ones don’t actually guarantee a favorable rating.  It’s interesting, I’ll have to see if anyone will pick my book to review.  It’s all voluntary (unless you pay them) so I assume it depends a bit on luck.

There was an interesting tutorial that suggested that in order to have a hundred reviews upon the day you publish, you have to contact five (or maybe it was ten) times that many to solicit reviews.  It also had methods to contact reviewers on Amazon and request they review your book.  It seemed… exhausting.  However, if you follow his advice and get a hundred reviews on the day it’s published, you will probably deserve every one of them.  Another common suggestion is to request a review at the end of your book.  This seems fairly reasonable.  Do you think I should add this?

Version 2 is submitted!

Okay, not as fun as saying ‘Book 2 is submitted’ but still important.  Stewart was kind enough to review the book and add some excellent corrections.   He also fact-checked a few things which means I need to make a minor correction to Book 1.

For some reason, the first batch of corrections never got saved, so I had to redo them.  However, they are all fixed (until we find more) and the book is uploaded to Amazon for their review process.  Thanks, Stewart!

Next Steps

Published on Amazon!  Scrubbed it with Grammarly last night.  Hopefully, that got the worst of the errors.  One of my readers has kindly volunteered to read through it too.  Thanks!  As before it will get better and better as I clean it up, but my goal was to make it a decent read the first time through.  We’ll see if I succeeded pretty soon.

Almost There…

Finished Book 2.  I just got through proofreading it the first time round.  I want to see if I can find another set of eyes to look at it.  The last time I published (Book 1) I thought I had most of the errors caught but it took being read by another person and myself an additional two times to actually get most of the glaring errors.  Ideally, it would be someone with Word and willing to use “Track Changes”.  Last time my brother in law graciously volunteered, but he just got a new job so I think he’s busy.  I’ll try Grammarly but I had mixed results last time.

Inspiration in Odd Places

So we all know what happened on Tuesday.  Been a little depressed since then, however writing is actually a pretty good distraction.  I am about 3/4 to where I want Book 2 to be.