Creating a schedule

Happy Holidays to all, and a Bountiful New Year!

After reading on the forums that many indie authors are aiming to release a book every 3-4 months to keep the interest of their readership, I thought I would make a New Year's resolution to do the same. As of now, Serpent's Bite is due to be out in January/February, and this will be followed by books 4 and 5 in April/May and July/August.

After receiving emails from some of you regarding the "next book" in the Waldgrave series, I am happy to announce that I have also added 3 more books featuring Lena Collins to my writing schedule in 2015, and I plan to release the first of those new books in October/November of 2015.  To clarify, these new books won't be a part of the now completed Waldgrave series, but will be a continuation in that same universe.  This new series will follow Lena in the years after Waldgrave, and I have added a few books to follow Brandon for 2016.

I'm hoping to get a little ahead of myself with writing, so my schedule has me pretty crammed in the early parts of 2015--writing 4 books before May, and 9 books total in 2015.  But if I keep to that schedule (check back here for updates), then I will be sufficiently ahead in my writing to start giving firm release dates for the books.

In other news, I got a shiny new food strainer for Christmas, and I've been using it to puree the remaining pumpkins in my food cellar (read: "corner of the unfinished basement") before the new year.  All advice and recipes are appreciated.  ;)

See y'all in 2015,
Al

Ah, December

It's my favorite month of the year, shortly followed by November, October, and August.  (Sorry September, but you aren't home to my birthday or any holidays involving great food...call again when you're ready to party.)

Where I live, December is the month that I can be sure we're done with the heat.  It's when I finish eating or storing the last little bits of harvest from my garden, and I get to do some cutting back on all the shrubs and trees that went a little wild over the summer.  I have an excuse to spend more time indoors, huddled with my laptop next to the fire, a cat on either side and a warm mug of tea steaming a safe 3 feet away.  I put up the holiday decorations, burn a pine scented candle, do some holiday shopping--online, none of those store stampede shenanigans--and then blissfully tap tap tap away on my keyboard.

I bought several boxes of lights on post holiday sale last year, so after decking the halls, I'll be decking the trees and shrubs as well.  I don't know why, but the lights and the smell of frost never fail to recharge my batteries.

I've been hanging around some forums for writers lately, trying to figure out how to increase my readership, and general consensus is to publish often, write books in series, and make the first book free.  I'm already writing series with a free first book, so I figure that last piece is my next step.  To that end, I am hoping to release a new book about every three months over the next year.  Other writers keep talking about Amazon's sales algorithms, and how getting a new book on the virtual shelves at least every 90 days keeps you from falling off the visibility cliff.  I have no idea how the algorithms work, but I figure 4 books in a year is a good goal regardless.

The Redemption series has at least 4 more books before we get to The End, so those outlines are high on my list, and so is the manuscript that I just finished for NaNoWriMo, which I intend to be a stand alone novel.  So I guess we'll see how it goes from here.  :)

Happy Holidays,
Al

Rabbit Bones is now available, and here's a new draft cover

After far too long, Rabbit Bones: Redemption Book 2 is now available!  It can be found on Nook here, and on Kindle here.  If you haven't yet and you want to, check here for where you can get The Spider Catcher: Redemption Book 1.

I've been busy trying to keep up with NaNoWriMo, and while I'm still moving up in word count, I'm a little behind--only clocking about 1,000 words a day.  It's been a little more challenging than anticipated with my little one in tow, but at least we're having fun.  :)

Here's the draft cover I've put together for Serpent's Bite: Redemption Book 3.  It's still pretty rough, so watch for edits.  I anticipate this one will be out sometime between late January and February of 2015.

...I am seeking beta readers for this project, so if you are interested and you've enjoyed the series so far, shoot me an email.

Thanks,
Al

In the works

I've finally got my bearings again and I'm cranking out about 2k words a day recently since my son turned 6 months old.  Some days are better than others, because writing time has mostly been relegated to nap time.  I've considered staying up late to double my word count, but I'm not sure if it's a fantastic idea to cut any further into my sleep deficit.

For everyone who has been patiently waiting, Rabbit Bones is due out later this month.  After some seriously long editing hours, I decided that 120,000+ words was making the book sluggish, and I cut the darn thing in two pieces and reworked the plot to give two manageable size stories.  Hence, Pale Hound will now be book 4, and a new book 3 was born.  I have tentatively titled this one Serpent's Bite, and it will be out in January 2015.

This month I am busy at work on my NaNoWriMo piece.  I'm planning for it to be a stand-alone, because I want to devote all of my series time to Redemption until it's finished.  Or near finished, anyways.  Perhaps I'll start a new one when I hit the last 1-2 books of Redemption.

Edit: If you want to follow my NaNoWriMo progress or buddy up, here's my page: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/altyler/novels/fortress-of-turns

Yeah, there's no cover yet because inspiration hasn't struck.  When I figure out what the face of this one looks like, something will get posted.

Happy Reading,
Al

New Covers

Last week I designed new covers for the Waldgrave paperbacks, and they are now available via Amazon!

It goes like this: when I first wrote and published Waldgrave, I only had the intention of making the books available as digital downloads.  People kept asking about paperbacks after I published, so I went out and taught myself how to format a book for print.  The catch was that I had invested a lot of time in making an ebook cover, and while those covers were fine for ebooks, they weren't good enough for print.  

Among the issues they had were the dimensions, the image resolution, the colors translating to print, and (oh, yeah...) an ebook cover lacks a spine and back cover.  So I took my ebook covers at that time and reverse engineered something passable.  I wasn't as pleased with them; they had a lot of wasted space, and I was never really fond of the blurb on the back.

Every so often, it's good to reinvent and see what happens.

Last week I finally sat down and created covers that were start to finish intended for the paperbacks. The book guts got a face lift with new edits, too.  

I still get feedback that people like the original ebook covers, so those won't be going anywhere for the time being.  If you haven't yet, stop by Amazon and check out the 3rd edition books, and let me know what you think!

Before:

After:

Thanks!

Al

Camp NaNoWriMo July 2014

I am still frantically typing away to create Pale Hound (Redemption #3) as part of NaNoWriMo (visit my camper page here!), and also tidying up final edits for Rabbit Bones (Redemption #2) before the release on September 5th.

For anyone who was waiting, The Spider Catcher went live on Amazon today.

Took a break to garden and visit with friends, and discovered that Rabbit Bones had magically appeared on Goodreads at some point, even though it's only on pre-release (the cover was missing, which makes me think it was pulled from B&N--still missing there as well--so I went ahead and uploaded it).

Don't hate me because a mainstream cartoon sent me to this song, and now I can't get it out of my head...

 
That's all for now,
Al

Pale Hound, Early Draft Cover

Still playing with the title and cover for Redemption Book 3, but here's something I threw together to give it a face for Camp NaNoWriMo this July.  The book is already written, but I'll be using my camp time to do some serious editing, revision, and rewriting to accommodate the content of Spider Catcher and changes I made to Rabbit Bones since the first drafts.

Enjoy!

Al

Rabbit Bones, now available on Pre-Order

Rabbit Bones, Redemption Book 2 is now available on pre-order with a tentative release date of September 5th!  Currently on Smashwords, the pre-order should show on Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Kobo soon.

That's all for now, but please feel free to email me if you need updates on other books.

Thanks!
Al

**6/18 UPDATE**

Well, I was just about finished with the final round of polishing, and then had an irrational moment and decided to kill a character.  This more affects Book 3, so Rabbit Bones will still be released in late 2014.

Also, here are links to the Pre-Order pages:
Rabbit Bones at Barnes & Noble
Rabbit Bones at Smashwords

Motherhood Hiatus

As some of you may have guessed, that's where I've been.  My son arrived about a week early, derailing my best-laid plans for things I needed to finish before the motherhood hiatus began.

Oh well.  :)

I'm editing the last 10 chapters of Rabbit Bones.  I know I promised to have it out before the baby arrived, but it just didn't work out that way.  For everyone that's waiting, it is all written; it just needs to run through my editors before I post it online.

See you soon on the digital shelves,
Al

This one found me on Pandora.  It's my current favorite.

Meatloaf and Writing

Today I needed to buy 2 pounds of ground beef to make a crock pot of chili.  I went to Sam's Club, ended up with 4 pounds, so now I am making a ginormous meat loaf with the extra.  Twenty-nine years old, and this is my first ever attempt at meat loaf; wish me luck.  (I forgot to add salt and pepper, and we were out of ketchup so I had to use BBQ sauce instead--really, wish me luck.)

Editing on Rabbit Bones is progressing.  I have one editor who has agreed to start on the first half of the book (she has it now), and one that wanted to wait until the manuscript is finished.  As of today, I am at 85,819 / 127,308 words.  I'm still aiming to have this book out before the baby arrives in April.

The first book in this series, The Spider Catcher: Redemption Book 1, is available now (for free!) on Nook, iBooks, Smashwords, and elsewhere.

Al