Update on Serpent's Bite

All,

Here is an updated cover for Serpent's Bite, Redemption Book 3, which I will be releasing end of this month.  I'm in the final stages of editing now, and I expect to put up a pre-order in about 2 weeks.

It is such a huge relief to finally have this one off my plate...for anyone who's been following for a while, you may know that this manuscript has been a bear.  The first book I wrote in the Redemption series was actually what is now books 2 and 3 (Rabbit Bones and Serpent's Bite).  My initial readers couldn't make it past the first third of that manuscript, though, because they wanted to know what had happened during Ember's previous stay on the island.  These details were discussed later in the manuscript, but they said it just wasn't working.

So I started writing a new introduction.  The introduction got too long, and I decided it would be a short prequel.  Then I dropped the "short," and Spider Catcher was born out of snips and edits of various pieces of that original manuscript.  I took what was left after excising what is now book 1, and started to flesh it out.  Without all of the history and background explanations, there was a lot more room to focus on the plot and characters and developing the story, and soon I had a novel.  Then two novels...in addition to the other novel I had already taken out.  From one manuscript.

And that, friends, is the writing and editing history of the last two years of my life.  I've been wrestling with a bear, trying to make complete plots and catch continuity errors, and oh yeah, this entire story used to be told in the first person.  :P

The relief I am feeling right now, that I can finally proceed to a rewrite and edit of book 4 (tentatively titled Pale Hound), which was originally book 2, is immense.  Let's hope it's smooth sailing from here.  In any case, thank you all for your patience--stay tuned for the pre-order around January 14th-18th ish.

Al

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