Works in Progress

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Works in Progress

I’ve not posted much in the way of an update because I’ve not had much to say. Work continues apace on Midnight of Lanar’ya. Sales of Twilight of Lanar’ya are going fairly well. All told, I’m pretty happy with how things are turning out. I hope to have the first draft of Midnight of Lanar’ya finished within the next couple of weeks and will be looking for beta readers to give it an eye over and give me some critical feedback before I go into Editor Mode.

In unrelated news, I’ve also bought a bass guitar and have been teaching myself how to play it. That’s going fairly well. And, I’ve dusted off my US WoW account and gotten my character to 85 and have been gearing him up with an eye towards raiding again.

All in all, life is going well. My job is going nicely. I get paid to browse techie sites and post things to Facebook and Twitter. That’s awesome. I’ve really got nothing to complain about at the moment.

So now, I shall return to working on Midnight of Lanar’ya!

Latest Update Posted

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Latest Update Posted

I’ve just posted the latest update to Alayne’s Story over on the WoW RP forum. This week’s update starts off the Hour of Twilight arc and takes the characters into the Well of Eternity.

And, work continues on Midnight of Lanar’ya. I’ve also dusted off my US WoW account and can be found frantically gearing Geralin over on Medivh. Feel free to give me a /wave if you see me in-game or if I’m tanking your 5-man.

And now, off to work!

Twilight of Lanar’ya Has Nothing To Do With Meyer’s Twilight

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Twilight of Lanar'ya Has Nothing To Do With Meyer's Twilight

Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale in paperback (CreateSpace and Amazon) and eBook (Smashwords and Amazon).

…I’m not sure how people got confused about this but there were a lot of comments in the moderation queue about the vampire series Twilight. The only thing that Twilight of Lanar’ya and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight have in common is the word “Twilight” in the title.

Twilight of Lanar’ya deals with the twilight era of the Lanarian Empire. It’s the time just before the Empire falls completely into collapse. I picked the name because it really is the “twilight” of a once-great civilization. Think of it as being something like the post-Augustinian Rome or post-Peloponnesian Greece.

Now, I have nothing against people who like Twilight. It is an okay time-waster. My brother enjoyed the books and I’ve read them. I just found them to be a little young for me. The characters were too one-dimensional, the plot was too pedestrian, and the angst and drama reminded me far too much of the melodramas from high school. Of course, that series was aimed at teenagers and not 30-somethings so, to each his own, I suppose. I tend to prefer sagas like A Song of Ice and Fire or the Stormlight Archives or the Wheel of Time. I like characters with a lot of depth, a lot of facets to their personalities, and I like larger-than-life action.

So, if you came here hoping to get a book like Meyer’s Twilight or to talk about that series, you’re in the wrong place. I do hope you do get my book and give it a try but I’m not in the same genre as that series (I write swords’n’sorcery fantasy, not urban paranormal fantasy) and I’m not targeting the same audience (I’m going for 16+, not 10+). If you did get here because of Twilight, feel free to stick around and to expand your reading horizons a bit. However, let’s not have any major flame wars or trolling over that series. It’s like fighting over whether or not you like a burger with the works or like it plain and simple. Everyone has different tastes.

As for me, time to get back to working on Midnight of Lanar’ya!

Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale in paperback (CreateSpace and Amazon) and eBook (Smashwords and Amazon).

Latest Update Posted

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Latest Update Posted

I’ve just posted the latest update to Alayne’s Story over on the WoW RP forum. This week closes out the interlude arc between Uldum and the Hour of Twilight.

Work continues apace on Midnight of Lanar’ya. Once I finish up Alayne’s Story Part IV, I should have Midnight of Lanar’ya wrapping up closely after. Then it’ll just be time to proofread/edit it for a few months before committing to publication.

And now, back to work!

Time Gaps…Why I Use Them Even If I Hate Them

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Time Gaps...Why I Use Them Even If I Hate Them

Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale in paperback (CreateSpace and Amazon) and eBook (Smashwords and Amazon).

I think my #1 pet peeve in some works is time gaps. You get to know one group of characters and then, bam, you’re 4000 years later with a whole new bunch to learn. Sometimes, this tool (I hesitate to call it that) can be used effectively. Brandon Sanderson does it quite well in The Way of Kings and Robert Jordan really got you drawn into The Eye of the World with a prologue that takes place 3000 years before the story proper. However, with some other authors, it’s clear that it was just a crutch to cover the fact that they didn’t want to actually build up their characters and do a proper transition.

In Twilight of Lanar’ya I do have several time gaps. I wanted to set the prologue in the early days of the Empire and then show how Andral was coping with being an elf flung into a human world. I also wanted to show events that would be referenced in Jarl’s life but without having to create a monster-sized book. So, I used time gaps. The characters I used the gaps with were all built up either before or after the gap so I didn’t fall into the “I didn’t want to develop characters” trap but I did feel somewhat guilty about how often I was using time gaps.

Well, I’m hitting a point in Midnight of Lanar’ya where there’s going to be a bit of a gap. I’m in the homestretch for writing the first draft and if I can just sit down this weekend, undisturbed, and get some serious work crunched on it, I will definitely have the first draft finished by the end of this month.

Still, I hate using time gaps within a book. A gap between books is okay. A gap within better have a damned good reason for being there or else I’m going to need some sort of strong signal that “A Lot Of Time Has Passed.”

Anyhow, I’d best get back to working on Midnight of Lanar’ya. Apparently a bunch of people have finished Twilight of Lanar’ya and are bugging me to finish the next book already because they want to know what’s going on.

Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale in paperback (CreateSpace and Amazon) and eBook (Smashwords and Amazon).

Latest Update Posted

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Latest Update Posted

I’ve just posted the latest update to Alayne’s Story over on the WoW RP forum. This week’s update takes the characters through the Al’Akir encounter and finishes out the Uldum arc.

I did not get any work done on Alayne’s Story this week due to injuring my back over the previous weekend. However, I will be finishing it up within the next couple of weeks, giving myself more time to work on Midnight of Lanar’ya.

And now, back to work!

Latest Update Posted

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Latest Update Posted

I’ve just posted the latest update to Alayne’s Story over on the WoW RP forum. This week’s update takes the characters through the rest of Vortex Pinnacle and through the Council of Winds encounter in the Throne of the Four Winds.

I’ve also just finished up the Dragon Soul section of the Hour of Twilight arc and am working on the wind-down for the Epilogue. Now that the finish line is in sight, I’m feeling a little melancholic about Alayne’s Story. Still, I know it’s time to end it for now and focus on my other writing. I’ve just published my first novel (more info at my author blog) and I’m nearly finished with draft one of the second book, Midnight of Lanar’ya. So, I’ll have plenty of writing projects to occupy me but Alayne’s Story will always have a very special place in my heart as being my first publicly-viewed long work.

And now, back to work!

Adventures in Self-Publishing Part III — Formatting: Why Must Everyone Want Different Formats?

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Adventures in Self-Publishing Part III -- Formatting: Why Must Everyone Want Different Formats?

Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale in paperback (CreateSpace and Amazon) and eBook (Smashwords and Amazon).

So, having finished my first publishable novel and decided to self-publish, everything should have been simple. I just upload the files, find someone to do the cover and the maps, and then push a button and it’s all done, right? Right?

Ha. I wish.

Finding a cover artist was simple. I talked with my friend Daniel and he recommended Keary Taylor. I checked her out, liked what I saw, and contacted her. We went through a few rounds before we had a cover that was awesome.

I spoke with several people about maps and finally got my friend John-Paul Gorgoroso to tackle that issue. Once I had the maps in hand, it was time to upload.

And it was time to start playing the “Will It Work” drinking game.

Uploading to CreateSpace was simple. I selected the file, uploaded it, did the interior check, uploaded the cover, and ordered a proof. I did wind up having to make some formatting revisions to the first proof but the second came out perfect. It helped tremendously that CreateSpace provided a pre-formatted document. All I had to do was copy my text in to it, keep the formatting from the CreateSpace document, fix a few things here and there, and then, voilà, I was done.

Uploading to Smashwords, on the other hand, was not so simple. First I had to read their guide. I opted to read the HTML version in my browser so I could bookmark and browse between sections as needed. However, most of their anchors didn’t actually go anywhere. Then, even after I had meticulously followed all of the steps, their MeatGrinder still couldn’t handle having a first paragraph intent at the start of each chapter and it kept throwing my dividers out of alignment. After a few hours of growling, cursing, and wishing the MeatGrinder could at least tell me which friggin’ page the problem was on, I managed to get a workable draft uploaded and ran a quick check on it.

Then I had to repeat the process for Amazon Kindle since Amazon doesn’t automatically accept the requests from Smashwords.

By the time I had waged and won (barely) the formatting war, my head was spinning and I was wondering just why I had thought this would be a good idea to begin with.

Stay tuned for Part IV: Planning a Marketing Campaign!

Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale in paperback (CreateSpace and Amazon) and eBook (Smashwords and Amazon).

Adventures In Publishing Part II — Agent, Agent Where Art Thou? Eh, Screw It — Self-Publishing!

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Adventures In Publishing Part II -- Agent, Agent Where Art Thou? Eh, Screw It -- Self-Publishing!

Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale in paperback (CreateSpace and Amazon) and eBook (Smashwords and Amazon).

Finishing Twilight of Lanar’ya took me about three months total from start to completion. So, by August 2011, I had a fairly final draft ready. I just needed to fine tune a few areas of it and then I’d be ready to publish. So, I did what all writers who don’t know better do.

I started looking for an agent. (Even Neil Gaiman thinks it’s a bit of a waste of time).

If I knew then what I know now, I’d have saved myself the hassle and published a hell of a lot sooner. But, I was hung up on going the traditional route. I felt confident in my work and knew that the market had matured a good bit. I felt that I was easily better than some of the junk filling up bookshelves (Twilight, anyone?) and that I was on par with other big author’s earliest works. Certainly my writing had benefited from reading a lot. I don’t have the hubris to say I’m as good as Terry Goodkind or Terry Brooks but I do think I’m at least as good as some of the early stuff from Dragonlance (back when the world of Krynn was still being formed and the authors kept writing themselves into corners).

I sent Twilight of Lanar’ya to about fifty different agents. I heard back from about half of them. Mostly rejections, of course, because publishers are iffy about taking on new talent with it being so easy to self-publish and to distribute online. Plenty of bookstores and closing up shop for lack of customers and inability to compete against Amazon. Almost all the rejections I had acknowledged that my book was 1) well-written, 2) interesting, and 3) had potential but it’s gotten damned hard to sell a trilogy from a new name and, as I said, publishers are becoming very risk averse.

I did hear back a couple of tentative offers but nothing that I really liked on follow-up. Basically, if I was going to have to do all the marketing and negotiate the deals with bookstores myself and the publisher was just going to print a run and then charge me for it, why not just self-publish instead? At least with a print-on-demand service, I don’t have to worry about a publishing house playing games with the numbers until I have to take them to court to get my royalties the way Peter Jackson had to take New Line to court to get paid for The Fellowship of the Ring (which, according to Movie Industry Magic Math, did rather poorly). Perhaps big publishing houses don’t do this, but then, if I’m going to be doing all the footwork myself with no help, why should I get substantially less money than I would if I went indie?

So, I started looking into self-publishing.

My friend and fellow author, Daniel A. Kaine, had self-published his book, Daeva: Dawn of Darkness and so I went to him for advice. He gave me a few pointers and so off I went.

Now, lest anyone think self-publishing is easy, let me be blunt and say it’s not. Self-publishing is definitely not for the faint of heart. Self-publishing requires that you be your own editor, your own proofreader, your own marketing department, and your own format specialist. It requires that you study the market and the trends and that you set your prices according to what the cost of print-on-demand for your work is and how much of a royalty you need. A few people have gotten fantastically wealthy from self-publishing but, for the most part, the vast majority of us will not be able to quit our day jobs.

So, having decided to self-publish, I had climbed one mountain only to find a whole range of the things in front of me…

Check back in a few days for Part III of this saga — Why Formatting Is The Bane Of My Existence.

Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale in paperback (CreateSpace and Amazon) and eBook (Smashwords and Amazon).

Latest Update Posted

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Latest Update Posted

I’ve just posted the latest update to Alayne’s Story over on the WoW RP forum. This week’s update takes the characters through the Vortex Pinnacle encounters on their way to face off against Al’Akir.

I’m currently writing up the last encounter in Dragon Soul and should be starting on the final chapters soon. Then comes the Epilogue to round it out.

I’m hearing more about the storyline for Pandaria and may actually buy it (still very undecided) but I am not going to take my characters through it in Alayne’s Story. I’ve decided that it’s for the best that the story end here for a time.

And now, off to work!