Tag: updates

Jake and the Dynamo, Re:Formatted

I’ve got the cover art farmed out for both Jake and the Dynamo and its sequel, Dead 2 Rites. With fingers crossed, I proclaim that Jake and the Dynamo will see its re-release next month, and Dead 2 Rites the month after. I can’t absolutely confirm that yet because art is the major factor again, and I’m not the one making the art.

The re-release is a new edition with a revised text as well as new formatting. The screenshots here are from Dead 2 Rites, but the J&tD re-release will look the same.

The new edition of the first book will be thicker than the previous one though the revised text is slightly shorter. The second book is a hefty 530 pages, partly because it is a long novel (132,000 words) but also because of layout: The layout of these books is more polished than before with a larger font and wider line spacing for more comfortable reading.

The internal illustrations of the first book will be the same. Roffles Lowell was not entirely pleased with the way his drawings originally turned out in the paperback; however, aside from uploading the biggest and best files I can, I have no real control over the appearance of the illustrations, so I assume they will look the same as in the first edition.

For Dead 2 Rites, however, Roffles produced black-and-white versions that we hope will print more clearly.

Internal illustration from Dead 2 Rites.
Example of an internal illustration.

Both books will feature full-color internal illustrations in the eBook versions. The books will go up on multiple platforms simultaneously, but on this blog and in my social media accounts, I will probably only advertise the Amazon versions since that’s where sales rank really matters.

Print editions with full-color internal illustrations are possible, but there would need to be a strong interest.

I am starting in on the formatting of Rags and Muffin, which is the now-official title of my third book. This begins a separate series. Previously, the working title of this book was written as Rag & Muffin to emphasize the pun, but that would likely cause a lot of grief later on since HTML and ampersands don’t get along. An ampersand will likely appear on the cover, but the official title has “and” in it.

Printed pages from Dead 2 Rites.
Example of printed pages.

Book Update

I just hit a major milestone in the effort to get my books (at least three with hope for five) out this year. It’s late where I am, so I’ll give more details later, but let’s just say I am most relieved that I can move ahead, as this particular phase—as things often do—took longer than I anticipated.

In any case, it’s exciting! Once Jake and the Dynamo makes its reappearance, I will have the long-awaited sequel Dead 2 Rites out the month after.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day

“>Magical Girl Concept for Dungeon Hunter Champions” by Xuexiang Zhang.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day. In case you don’t know, this holiday is in celebration of a Christian saint and martyr. The earliest hagiography has him martyred under Emperor Claudius II after he tried to convert the emperor to Christianity. A later hagiography asserts that he was executed specifically for marrying Christian couples, and another legend has him sending a love letter to his beloved, possibly a jailer’s daughter. Some of this may be fictional, but it’s possible that multiple Valentines were conflated, and it is also common for real, historal saints to accrete legendary material over time. His feast’s day is associated with romance in part because of a folk legend that birds mate on the fourteenth of February.

This Valentine’s Day has seen significant winter weather across much of the country. Here where I live, we were anticipating a bigger storm than we actually got. The predictions were so bad, my church encouraged parishioners to stay home this Sunday, which we dutifully did, though the actual “storm” turned out to be much milder than some considerably worse blizzards I’ve been out in when I lived farther north.

Staying home, however, gave me opportunity to cook brunch for my wife. She had recently used a bunch of egg whites in a recipe, so I decided to use the left-over yolks to make hollandaise sauce and serve eggs Benedict. It turned out reasonably well, though I don’t think this photo does it justice:

Eggs Benedict with potatoes O'Brien.

In any case, I am still working on preparations to produce volumes 1 and 2 of Jake and the Dynamo in the next few months. Being stuck at home does have its advantages. So stay tuned.

Marketing Research Begins

Tonight, although I’m still working on turning manuscripts into formatted novels, I am also beginning to look into promotion and marketing. I signed up for a class, and I bit the bullet and purchased Publisher Rocket, which analyzes Amazon data to help an author select the best categories and keywords. I am staring at it and can tell it will have a learning curve: It’s not hard to use, but its information is not easy to interpret. Also, all the categories that appear most relevant to my work have major players in their top slots, which probably means I need to dig deeper to find categories I can conceivably be competitive in.

In any case, tonight is yet another work night. If you’re interested, check out my Social Media page, which I have updated with some new accounts. If you’re using any of the platforms listed, I invite you to follow me; it takes only a moment and will help me build an audience.

Find Me on Social Media

Using social-media apps can feel like screaming into the void, but they’re still basic author-promotion tools. Since I’m planning some new book releases in the near future, I’m working to arrange and build my social presence. To that end I’ve created a new page for the blog that lists my active social-media accounts. You can find it in the menu at the top of your screen. WordPress will automatically push to some of those services, but others I have to update manually. So I created the page for my convenience as much as yours: When I post, I can easily find all my accounts and update the ones that need it.

So if you use any of the services listed, I invite you to follow me there. Much of the content will of course be mirrored from this blog, but I will make an effort to include original content on most of those platforms and to interact from time to time with other users. (The exceptions might be my author pages and Tumblr, which mirror the blog but for which I have no other plans at present).

Also, I likely don’t need to say this because my readers are unusually polite for internet denizens, but I wish to note that I am really, really not interested in the politics of social media. I’m only interested in creating a web presence and promoting my work. If you see an app listed that rankles you, I will not remove myself from it because you complain. If I stayed off every app that someone has said people should stay off of, I couldn’t use any.

Also, I’m thinking of creating a MySpace account just because it would be funny.

Editing and Formatting

I’ve almost finished plugging Jake and the Dynamo into Vellum. I’m still deciding whether I actually want to commit to this software’s steep asking price. It doesn’t offer a lot of customization, but it does remove a lot of major headaches. I’ve got pretty much the entire text and the illustrations plugged in and now just need to clean up a few artifacts from the reformatting. I admit it looks really clean, and it shows how it will come out both in print and on several devices.

My only serious complaint at the moment is that I can’t add a caption to a full-page image. I can insert illustrations with captions, but then I can’t make them as large as I want.

Update

The family is back from the hospital. We were there for quite some time because our little baby was too small to ride home safely in the car seat, something that might not have mattered except we live over an hour away from the hospital. So we had to wait a few days until it was safe to take her home. She is now sleeping soundly in her new crib.

My wife is also doing well. She and the baby are both troopers, having put up with a barrage of medical procedures. For my part, I mostly changed diapers, rubbed sore shoulders, and looked forward to being able to change my clothes. Since the baby came a month early, I was not yet packed for the hospital, and even if I had been, I probably would not have anticipated how long the stay would be. I have finally, just now, been able to clean up completely and feel civilized again.

It’s interesting, though, that when you have a newborn daughter, a lot of inconveniences become miniscule. I have had to go days without proper hygiene before (for archaeological reasons), but I have never before been so little bothered by it. Also, the lack of sleep, though it taxed me physically, never led to the irritation it normally would.

Anyway, our family is mostly moved in. Since the baby wanted to make her arrival before the end of , our Christmas ornaments are still up, so we’ll be taking those down tomorrow. I’ll also spend my spare time in the evening, between diaper changes, on my project, which is getting Jake and the Dynamo ready for a re-release. I’ll let you know how I progress.

Also, if anyone wants to plug a potential cover artist, now is the time. (Yes, the cover will be changing.)

I have baby pictures, but I’m going to restrain myself from posting them. I’ve shown pictures of my wife on here a few times, but I think it best to exercise caution when it comes to pasting small children’s photos on the open web. So no pictures for now.

Update

Mommy and baby are both doing well.

Baby caught us by surprise. She was due near the end of January and was hitting all her tests and milestones just right, but she decided to make her surprise debut before the end of the year.

She’s technically premature but she has passed all the medical tests and she latches and feeds without difficulty. So it seems she really was ready to come out. She’s quite tiny, but so is her mama.

We planned for as natural a birth as possible, but since the baby was premature and in breach, we had to have a c-section. Mom is of course in pain but is recovering as well as could be expected. She and baby are cuddled up right now as I write this.

Neither of us has slept much, of course, though I’ve probably snatched more sleep than she has. We might be out of the hospital as early as tomorrow. Because the baby’s so small, she has to be tested in our car safety seat tonight. She’s a really calm baby, but the test will almost certainly make her fussy.

Update

Wife having baby. I’m probably going silent for the next few days.

Merry Christmas

I have a movie review coming soon, but I’ve had trouble getting to it. I spent today doing several needful things around the house, including assembling the crib for the new baby.

My wife, who’s a nurse, got an emergency call into work, so after she left, I went ahead and prepared the ham we’re having tomorrow for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, she has to work on Christmas day, but she’s supposed to have tomorrow off, so we’re planning to have our Christmas celebration then. Of course, it’s just the three of us this year, but fortunately, we have a lot of fun together when it’s just the two of us.

Where I’m at, it’s well after nine now that I’m done with my tasks, so I intend to spend what time I have remaining on my manuscript, which has been time-consuming, but which is also nearing completion.

Part of the reason it’s time-consuming is that it’s increasingly obvious that my laptop is on its last legs. I’ve known that for years, but I’m probably not going to be able to put off replacing it much longer. It took about half an hour to get it to turn on without crashing so I could write this. Even so, one of my favorite shortcuts, Ctrl + Left Arrow, has mysteriously stopped working even though the left arrow key and the control key are clearly both operational … I might reboot again when I’m done writing this to see what happens.

Replacing this computer isn’t really in the budget right now, but even my wife has agreed that this machine is ridiculously slow and unreliable.

In any case, merry Christmas, and although I’ll have a review later, maybe on Christmas day, for now, enjoy this image of Christmasy magical girls.