I’ve had a heck of a time getting a chance to write blog posts, since our little daughter has hit another phase where she doesn’t want to sleep at night (and she never likes to sleep if “Dada” isn’t in the room). Nonetheless, I’m working on a project I’m excited about. I’ll give updates later, so stay tuned.
Tag: #amwriting
‘The Cup of Agamemnon’ Progress Update
Time to be working on my next project, a planetary romance full of war and exotic creatures, called The Cup of Agamemnon. The book is obsessed with cups and cup imagery from ancient literature, as will be evident from this three-part novel’s epigraphs, the first of which is Jeremiah 25:15–16.
I just made progress on The Cup of Agamemnon! So far I’m 4.5% complete on the Writing phase. 3 Months remain until the deadline.
The Cup of Agamemnon
One Week Left to Pre-order ‘Dead 2 Rites’
Only one week left to get your eBook of Dead 2 Rites, the second volume of Jake and Dana’s misadventures, for 99 cents. Bigger and better even than the first book, Dead 2 Rites features mystery, action, lots of girls, and, of course, lots of laughs.
Dana Volt, eleven-year-old powerhouse, and Jake Blatowski, befuddled teenager, are back for more in the action-packed sequel to Jake and the Dynamo!
Just when Jake thinks he might finally get a break, he has to face down a murderous kaiju with a skin condition and join the city’s hardest-rocking magical girl in an underground battle against an army of bloodthirsty pastry chefs. As if that weren’t enough, he also has to deal with Pretty Dynamo’s newest rival, a human Swiss Army knife who revels in rule-breaking.
But behind the chaos of these latest threats to mankind’s existence looms a greater evil, for Lord Shadow’s baleful eye has again fallen upon the Earth. Now a conspiracy of monsters may awaken a mad god from the sea of uncreation outside the cosmos—and the only girl who could unite humanity’s defenders for a final stand is slowly succumbing to madness.
Writing
Tonight for me is another writing night. I’m hoping to have a workable rough draft of my next project within a month, and I’ll let you know what it is when it’s complete. I do have reviews and other discussions coming in the near future, but for now I’d best be off to bed or I’ll be useless tomorrow.
‘Rags and Muffin’ Is Finished
I know I’ve been radio silent again for a while, but that’s because I was again in one of those stages where I have a project I want to complete but it seems to be taking too long. But, today, I have it done—the final edits and formatting for Rags and Muffin, the novel I am planning to release after Dead 2 Rites, which will release after Jake and the Dynamo.
This took longer than expected for several reasons, both related and unrelated to the project itself. One thing that took a while was inserting all the internal links: This novel has a glossary in the back, mostly because, when I was a kid, I thought novels with glossaries, such as Dune or Watership Down, were extra special. But in the world of eBooks, a functional glossary requires hyperlinks in the text. Vellum, my formatting software, has a limited ability to add internal links (though it has fewer options than I would like), and today, I got the links done.
The cover art for this project hasn’t been made yet. However, I uploaded the PDF of the paperback and mocked up a fake cover on Amazon KDP so I could use the previewer to make sure the internal margins are correct.
The chapter headers and section breaks are from Barbusco comics. At the moment, I only have the one chapter-header image, the gun next to a teacup. I’m thinking about commissioning a few more so there isn’t just one image at the head of every chapter, but if I do that, I can get them in the same dimensions so they won’t affect the page count. The complete PDF of the paperback clocks in at 490 pages, including the front matter.
Real Life
The only remaining delay has to do with real-life stuff: The magical girls and I are buying a house. We had been shopping for a while, but a house that met our wants came available suddenly and unexpectedly. We’re supposed to be moving in at the end of next week if all the paperwork is complete on time, and for that reason, after this post, I’m going to go radio silent again for a bit because I’ll be focused on packing, closing, and moving.
Release Dates
Because we suddenly had to drop money on the house to avoid losing it, there isn’t a lot in the kitty for my publication and advertising costs. After we’ve made the down payment, I’ll be better situated to assess our budget and figure out what I can do, but I think we should have enough for some modest promotion.
For that reason, tentative release dates for the books are:
- Jake and the Dynamo:
- Dead 2 Rites:
-
Rags and Muffin:
I am also (cross fingers) hoping to have the fourth volume of Jake and the Dynamo out by the end of the year.
Those are tenative, and I might tweak them by a day or three as I learn the business and, for example, figure out which days of the week are best for a release. Some unforeseen disaster or delay may also happen, but since two of the books are ready to go except for minor tweaks, I don’t think there should be any serious problem.
This has, of course, taken longer than I originally, optimistically anticipated. I can’t say I’m surprised because I haven’t self-published before; I’m just glad I didn’t have a Kickstarter because delaying release on a pre-funded project is bad form. I may, however, consider Kickstarters in the future when I’ve got the hang of this.
‘Dead 2 Rites’ Is Good to Go
Obviously, I’m still absorbed in my projects over here. I worked with Barbusco Comics and Nodsaibot to fix the issue with the cover of Dead 2 Rites. They were both very accomodating.
As you can see from the post’s eye-catch, I’m looking over the previewer on Amazon’s KDP module to make sure the paperbacks look the way they are supposed to. Once that’s squared away, I can look over the eBooks.
I can see that Vellum, despite its gigantic cost, has saved me any number of headaches. Since this is the first time I’ve done this, I now know I did a few things in the wrong order—for example, I should have already uploaded the manuscript and reviewed it before commissioning the cover art. Fortunately for me, Vellum’s presets are built to accommodate Amazon’s requirements, so, for example, my inside margins aren’t screwed up. If I had to widen those, that would throw off the page count, which would then throw off the cover art again …
Anyway, it appears my first-time, amateurish disasters have been largely averted so far. I learned a few lessons, but they have been mostly pain-free.
Also, Amazon’s software is more user-friendly than I expected, at least when you have all your files pre-built. (I understand that trying to build your paperback from a Word file using Amazon’s software is a major headache.) It automatically checks the margins on everything, and it automatically requires a deeper gutter for Dead 2 Rites than for Jake and the Dynamo because the former is considerably longer.
At least for now, it seems that the greatest difficulty comes from the requirement that the cover—front, spine, and back—need to be a single image, which means the book dimensions have to be set in stone. On the other hand, that makes wraparound covers a possibility, and that’s what we have for these two books.
Publication Update
I had an issue with a particular logo I needed to make these upcoming book releases look as official as possible, but I think I have that worked out. It appears I have also found someone to do the title graphics for the covers; I have to wait for my publishing logo first, but then we’ll go ahead with finishing up the cover designs.
I’m hesitant to give a definite date still. I’m new at self-publishing, and my last projection (last month) is obviously something I didn’t make. However, barring unexpected contingencies or work simply taking longer than I anticipate, I don’t know any reason why Jake and the Dynamo can’t see its re-release this month. If we make that happen, I intend to open Dead 2 Rites for pre-order at the same time. Its actual release will be a month later.
Things are also progressing well on Rags and Muffin. Again, I best not give a date, but I see no reason it can’t release soon after the two Jake and the Dynamo novels.
As for my optimistic goal of getting five books out this year, I think four is more likely, but aside from despondency and laziness and family issues, there is no reason I can’t get out four.
Also, I haven’t decided yet on cover art for Rags and Muffin, but I’m so pleased with the artwork of Eduardo Barbosa that I might employ him again.
‘Jake and the Dynamo’ Release Coming
Obviously, I’m behind the timeline I was hoping for, but I’m new to self-publishing, so that’s not particularly surprising. I’m waiting on a few things and also spending this evening putting together a package for the next guy I’m commissioning.
I can also tell you I’m approaching finished on the final product of Rags and Muffin. Haven’t quite decided what to do with its cover art, but I really should have three books ready to go in the near future here.
As for both Jake and the Dynamo, logos and title designs are all that still need to happen. I wanted the cover art and formatting squared away for both of those before commissioning the title designs so the artist could do both at once.
Project Update with a First Peek
I know I don’t post enough these days; aside from my projects, I’m getting used to the new baby. But I have some good news: The cover art for Dead 2 Rites, the second book of Jake and the Dynamo, is well underway.
My plan is to get both covers completed at once; then I will re-release the first book and offer the second for pre-order. I will hire a logo artist to make the graphics to go over the cover art, but I want to have both covers in hand first so I can offer them to the logo artist to do all at once.
In the image on this post, you can see an initial sketch of Van Halensing, the vampire-hunting rock starlet who features prominently in Dead 2 Rites.
Since I’m new at this, I’m still not comfortable giving a projected release date because I’m unsure how long the logo art will take, or whether there might be some additional delays on the roll-out. But I am still hoping to release Jake and the Dynamo this month and Dead 2 Rites a month later.
In the meanwhile, I am still working on the manuscript of Rags and Muffin, tightening the prose and putting on the final polish before I generate the books. I like the work of my present artist but haven’t decided yet whether to use him for Rags and Muffin or to find someone with a more gritty, and perhaps photorealistic, style, which I think would be more appropriate for this particular book, which is less cartoonish. There are plenty of pro cover designers who would be interesting to work with but also more expensive.
Editing and Formatting: Rags & Muffin
I am currently putting the final touches on Rags and Muffin, the book project, a long time in coming, formerly known as Rag & Muffin. I still like the original title better, but I changed it because the ampersand is a special character in HTML, so it would likely cause me grief when posting it on other sites.
Also, the book’s antiheroine main character is named Rags, and I’m tired of people asking me why it’s “Rag,” singular, in the title. The reason is because of the pun, but I don’t want to explain anymore.
I have said previously on this blog that Rags and Muffin was through the editing phase. This is my first novel (first written, not published), and like many first novels, it needed years’ worth of work to make it worthy of print. It really had been edited to death before now, but I’ve recently learned a lot about improving sentence structure and deleting unnecessary words, so I am giving it one last round of improvement—and then I will finally let my baby out into the world.
This will be the third book I release this year; it will appear after the re-published Jake and the Dynamo and its sequel Dead 2 Rites.
Once I’m done with this, I am back to working on the third book in the Jake and the Dynamo sequence, which runs under the working title of The Shadow of His Shadow. I hope to finish and release that book this year also.