Month: July 2014

Cover blurb for Danny Dirks

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Now that I have my (nearly) final draft in hand (it arrived tonight from my editor!), I’m working on crafting the cover blurb for the paperback. See blurb below:

1st draft:

Danny Dirks wants nothing more than to play baseball in his father’s orchard now that school is out and the summer has begun. But, with the approach of his 15th birthday, strange things begin to happen. He hears voices, sees visions of his dead mother, sleepwalks in the middle of the night, and wonders why the cute new girl next door seems to hate him so much. Then, on the day of his birthday, Danny’s grandfather reveals a long-kept family secret. A legacy that makes Danny the linchpin in a pact that keeps peace on Earth. But war is approaching. An unseen war that could tear apart the dimensional fabric of Earth. It’s up to Danny, along with his small band of allies, to learn to control his new found powers, keep the peace, and become the true Heir of Pendragon.

2nd draft:

Danny Dirks wants nothing more than to play baseball in his father’s orchard now that school is out. But, with the approach of his 15th birthday, strange things start happening. He begins to hear voices, see visions of his dead mother, and sleepwalk in the middle of the night. Worse still, he thinks that cute new neighbor’s daughter might be a dragon… which she is. She is sworn to protect the line of Arthur Pendragon, the keystone in a pact made centuries ago between man and dragon. But, there are dragons who are not happy with that pact and are bent on re-opening the portal through which they originally came, back to their homeworld, unleashing an army to rule over Earth. It’s up to Danny to accept his fate, control a power passed down through the ages, and, with the help of  his new friends, prevent the portal from being opened.

Let me know what you think. Also, if you’re a YA book blogger interested in reviewing Danny Dirks and the Heir of Pendragon, please leave a comment below. 🙂

Ummm… ok

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image

Apparently,  when you search for my book, Liquid Blue, on Amazon… this other title comes up right after. Yeah, I’m not even sure how to feel about that. 😉

Kindle Unlimited is live!

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Check out the new Kindle Unlimited. Readers get unlimited books for $9.99 a month from a pool of qualified books (639,674 books as of this writing). Authors whose books are enrolled in KDP’s Select program are automatically enrolled. Royalties will work as they do with the Global Fund for borrows, so long as the reader gets past the 10% mark of your book. In fact, it’s all coming out of the same pool.

Not sure yet what to think, but it sounds like this might be a good discovery tool for the first book in a series, but have negative affects on folks with books priced much more than $2.99. I have two books in Select at the moment and I wasseriously debating pulling them. Now, I’m not so sure. I might keep them in for another 90 days just to see what happens. Thoughts and comments welcome!

Kindle Unlimited

Kindle Unlimited for $9.99/month

My Top 5 Most Popular Articles on Writing and Self Publishing

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In case you didn’t know, I used to write strictly over at the blog reserved for my pen name. Now that I’m permanently here, I feel like I’ve left a lot of that good stuff behind. Below, I’ve listed the five most popular (most visits in the last year) posts I’ve written on writing and self publishing. I hope you find these useful.

Plotting Your Novel

Let’s Tell a Story

Strategies for NaNoWriMo

Top 10 Social Media Sites for Authors

The Great eBook Pricing Dilemma

All of these articles and more can be found here, in my collected toolkit.

My Book Cover Designer is Retiring! :(

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I was pretty thrilled to get a chance to work with Jason Gurley for my Danny Dirks series, but that sentiment is magnified by the fact that he’s now retiring from making covers! If you’ve read any of Hugh Howey’s ebooks, you’ve probably seen his cover designs. They are immediately recognizable. Anyway, he still has some premade covers available in his backstock. Highly recommended. Get them while you can! Also, be sure to check out his writing, as he recently released a wonderfully received book, call Eleanor.

Kindle Unlimited is coming. Will you sign on?

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Do/Would you use a subscription service for books?

Amazon just accidentally previewed a new subscription service called Kindle Unlimited today. Built in direct competition to Oyster and Scribd’s subscription services, I’m curious to see what happens with this new venture. Personally, I don’t read enough books (shame on me!) to warrant a monthly service at $9.99 a month. I’m lucky to clear 12 books a year. By the looks of it, so far they only have a few publishers signed on in addition to their indie authors’ books already signed up for Kindle Select.

Some authors are already worried that this could lead to a drastic reduction in royalties. Others are worried that they won’t have the option to opt in or out of the service, separate from being in Select. Of course, this is all just speculation as Amazon has not officially announced (or launched for that matter) the Kindle Unlimited service.

So, what are your thoughts? Do you use a subscription service? Will this make you want to sign up for one, or switch from the one you have? Comments welcome!

Danny Dirks is Coming…

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… back from my editor… soon. It’s scheduled to be back to me next Monday. It’ll probably still be another month or so before I’m able to release it (unless it comes back spotless, but let’s be real), but I can’t help but get excited about the prospects. This is a bit of a favored child for me. I kept it on a shelf for so long because I wanted to make sure it got the best treatment possible. This year, I finally decided to pay for professional editing and reached out to a fairly well-known indie cover creator. I’m really looking forward to being able to release Danny Dirks and the Heir of Pendragon. It’s my first full-length YA novel and is book 1 in a proposed 3-book series. If you like The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, then you’ll hopefully like Danny Dirks, which takes a modern twist to the Arthurian Legend.

Stay tuned for more info on cover reveal and release date down the road. In the meantime, you can read a sample chapter right here.

Me? On TV? Sure, why not?

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So, I was holding off on blogging about this, mainly because I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. It still might fall through, but the prospect is pretty exciting. Recently, we had a new addition to my weekly writers’ group meetup. It turned out, she was a writer for television. She’d created several reality shows and had recently sold one. We had a nice chat about writing and selling off your precious creations. She was debating whether to sell one particular idea because she didn’t think the production company that was interested would do a good job with the content. Anyway, I didn’t think much about it after that first meeting, until someone mentioned that she wanted to do a “reality” show on self-publishing.

MeTV

“Sign me up!” 😉

Of course, I still thought nothing of it. Someone says TV and I think, “Riiiight, like anyone is going to want a no name like myself.” But, then I heard the details. This was going to be a local thing, essentially a regional broadcast to an audience of ~50,000 viewers. When the call went out for those interested, I stepped up to be a guest. The show would consist of several 6- to 7-minute spots with a variety of authors from around the area. Local self-published authors talking about their writing to local readers. Cool, right?

Then, today I received an email from the writer/producer. Would you be able to help with the moderator auditions? I’d love to! Anything to help the cause.

I have no idea how this will pan out, but it’s a fun little adventure to be on. I’ll keep you posted on how everything works out and whether it actually makes it to the air. I don’t have any delusions of grandeur about this affecting book sales in any significant way, but it can’t hurt.