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Sort of Running in Place

10/30/2016

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I'm getting very good reviews for Witchery. I hope my satisfied readers will share those good reviews on Amazon.  No full reviews for Just Lucky yet, but one reader that discovered why I'd said the book was rated R for adult situations and language expressed surprise at the "adult situation" she read near the beginning. I didn't tell her that she ain't read nothin' yet.
On a personal note, my wife's health problems continue without any sign of a solution. One-or-two-day hospital stays are getting more frequent, but not routine...quite.  But that kind of thing does subtract from the writing time.
My short story, "The Treasure of the Mountain King" will be published by Page and Spine on-line magazine, probably in December.
As for my monthly review article for them, November will be my last contribution, at least for the foreseeable future. Besides not having the time to do it in December due to my regular job's work hours, I need to take more time for my own fiction writing. The software edit of Just Lucky, Book 2 will take a long time. That is the most un-fun part of writing, but necessary to make the writing better.
I also want to get back to the paranormal romance Saving Atlantis. I took a break from it because I ran into problems with plot details; plus, as noted above, I had personal things going on. I'm still thinking about them but I do have some ideas.  I'll have to go back, re-read a few chapters to establish the flow of the story and then try to put characters where they belong.
I will be at the Freeport, Illinois library on November 5th for the author fair. I will have copies of all three of my published novels available for signing and sale. I'm considering a book signing at the local library, too, but scheduling may present difficulties. I'd like to do that and maybe sell some for Christmas presents.
Not a lot of content today. Sorry, but I came up almost dry for subject matter on this, except for current events. Please have a great Halloween and, above all, read something!

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Two New Books!

10/9/2016

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As revealed on my Home Page, I have two new novels published. Witchery, published by Double Dragon Publishing became available in e-book at the end of September. I had been told by Deron Douglas, the head of DDP, when the book was accepted, that it was slated for a November release or possibly earlier, so I'd predicted about the first of November. So a late September release was surprisingly early.
Deron did ask for some ideas on the cover, came up with one, and then was nice enough to modify it a little to please me. I think the cover is really dynamic. Hopefully it'll inspire sales all by itself. Also, Deron's experience tells him that the cover will appeal to a large part of my target audience—girls (and women) age fifteen and up.
This book is about 30,000 words longer than Prophecy of Honor, has a much larger cast of characters, and has magic as a much greater part of the story.
 
Just Lucky, Book One: Friends and Enemies is not fantasy (though there is a tiny bit of fantasy in it). It is, in my opinion, a mainstream commercial novel that takes place primarily on a college campus about 1970.
Just Lucky was also released initially as an e-book about the end of September. The almost simultaneous releases of these books was total unplanned; a coincidence of efforts from two different publishers.
The publisher is Gnome on Pig Productions, an independent Canadian publishing company. (DDP is also based in Canada.) Gnome on Pig has been great. They first offered me a working contract that basically gave them first refusal rights before I could even show it to anyone else. This was to protect them during the editing and finalizing phase. Alexis Allinson, CEO, did the editing. She admitted it took her longer than it should have because she would get so caught up in the story that she'd forget she was supposed to be editing it. That was certainly encouraging for me.
She expressed the hope that it would be ready by the end of August, but editing to our mutual satisfaction took longer than we expected. Part of this was my fault. I had submitted a manuscript that had two major flaws—one was lousy editing on my part and the other was a function of the conversion from a Word document to PDF. We finally got it ironed out, and then had to decide on a cover. That took a while, but, again, they were very cooperative. We finally had a finished product we both were happy with.
Despite all this work, I was not obligated to accept them as a publisher. This is part of their business model. But I was very happy with what they had done and what their plans are for distribution.
We signed the contract on October 4th. The official launch will be October 11th, and that's when paperbacks and the exclusive hardbacks will become available.
I suggest that if you are looking for a publisher you at least consider Gnome on Pig. Check out their Facebook page for starters.
Also, their interview with me is on their website.

 

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A Story's Origin

10/1/2016

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The obvious commentary is that my fantasy novel, Witchery, has been published by Double Dragon Publishing. The e-book is available on Amazon now, the paperback will be available next week. I think the cover is very powerful. I don't really agree with the clothing simply because there's no real basis for that bare midriff look. It is a sexy cover, though, and Deron Douglas, publisher and artist, is pretty confident that it will appeal to the target audience, which is anyone 15 and older, girls at least as much as boys. There's strong interesting characters to appeal to both genders.
Witchery is about half-again as long as Prophecy of Honor. It has many more contributing characters and a lot more magic, as the title implies.
I reviewed my entries and realized I was supposed to explain the origin of "Battle Scars" last posting. Sorry 'bout that; I was distracted by 9/11.
I am certainly a product of my times. In 1972 Harry Chapin recorded the song "Taxi," about a chance encounter by former lovers many years after they've said their goodbyes. Then in 1980 Dan Fogelberg released "Same Old Lang Syne," a song with the same theme—old lovers meet unexpectedly after a long separation. This one is a little happier, though, but in both cases the woman is living in a marriage with a man she does not love.
In 1970 the trial of Lt. William Calley began. He was accused of killing 109 Vietnamese, mostly women and children, in the village of My Lai in 1968.
Sometime around 1980, with the memory of the My Lai Massacre and the two songs, I got to wondering, what would the reunion be like if the man was accused of horrible war crimes? "Battle Scars" was the final result.  I tried to write the story back in the early eighties, but I couldn't come up with anything I was satisfied with. When I took up writing seriously in 2011 the story idea reemerged and this time I was able to get something I liked. It's been revised a time or two even after the version that won an Honorable Mention in The Robyn Herrington Memorial Short Fiction Competition in 2013.  

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    I'm a former teacher and current warehouse grunt that loves writing.

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